Lethal Factor Read online

  ‘Florence,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to barge in. I’ll talk to you at a more convenient time.’

  ‘No,’ she said, sniffing, wiping her hands down her white coat. ‘I’m okay. It’s just the shock and everything. I can’t believe that Livvy is dead. And in such a horrible way.’ There was a silence. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It can wait,’ I said. ‘I just wanted your opinion on something.’

  I saw the anxiety in her eyes as she lowered them to look over the tops of her glasses.

  ‘About BA,’ I added. I saw her relax.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ she asked.

  ‘Why would someone go to the trouble of forcing spore production to infect someone via the airways when the vegetative form of the bacteria will deliver just as much bang?’

  I saw her weighing it up. ‘It’s a good question,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised no one else has considered it.’

  ‘Do you think it might narrow our search down?’ I asked. ‘Should we be looking at people with access to military sources?’

  ‘We haven’t got a bio-weapons program,’ Florence said.

  ‘That we know about,’ I countered.

  ‘Even so,’ she said, ‘it wouldn’t be impossible to get hold of some weaponised spores.’

  I had to agree. Nothing is impossible if the will is strong enough.

  ‘I think it’s more likely,’ I said, ‘simply because it would be easier, that someone has got hold of BA in a legitimate way, through scientific warehouses.’

  ‘And bred it up from there?’ Florence suggested.

  ‘But it still would have to be someone with a certain level of scientific sophistication,’ I pointed out. ‘He’d have to know how to handle the stuff, how to transport it, and how to get it into the articles he infects without endangering himself.’

  ‘You’re saying “he”,’ Florence pointed out. ‘It could be a woman.’

  ‘I was speaking generically,’ I said. ‘In fact I had thought that poisoned chocolate had a female feel to it.’

  Florence regarded me with her most Sphynx-like expression. ‘Any experienced lab assistant could know how to do it,’ she said. ‘Male or female.’

  ‘But it still doesn’t answer my original question,’ I said. ‘Why go to all that trouble in the first place when all he—or she—has to do is breed up the vegetative state on a dish and then infect the chocolate heart with that form?’

  We looked at each other.

  ‘Did you find any additives that would indicate weaponisation?’ Florence asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t notice any traces,’ I said, ‘but I wasn’t searching for those at that stage.’ I might have to do a separate search of the items from Tony Bonning’s place, especially the red foil, to see if there were traces of the carrier or additives that help to ‘float’ the spores—trace elements such as bentonite or silica, which were used in the weaponisation process.

  ‘I also want to cut samples from the colonies I’ve cultured and run them through the Polymerase Chain Reaction process. Then when the samples from Livvy Worthington come in,’ I added, ‘I want to match them against this first batch.’

  ‘You want to see if it’s the same strain of bacillus?’ she asked.

  I nodded. The same strain would imply the same source. At the moment, without a suspect, finding an identical source didn’t mean anything, but later on in the investigation, it could be part of a body of evidence that might convict the killer.

  ‘God, it’s hopeless,’ said Florence. ‘We have nothing at all on this killer.’ She looked up at me. ‘We haven’t got the facilities here to profile bacteria. We might need the Department of Ag.’

  ‘I’m sending it away to the Institute for Genomic Reasearch,’ I said. ‘I’ve already started the paperwork.’

  A knock at the door signalled a security courier delivering a sealed package to Florence. After signing for it, she started to open it and I saw the dark fabric inside the plastic bags. ‘This is the clothing from the convent,’ she said. ‘The nun’s clothes.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this to arrive,’ I said. ‘I’d like to do the initial examination.’

  Florence waved at the package. ‘Be my guest,’ she said.

  ‘Then I’ll hand it over to you,’ I said. ‘If we’re lucky we might find a DNA picture of the killer.’

  Florence blew her nose noisily.

  ‘I might have to do a mass screening of the whole convent,’ I warned her as she shoved her hankie away.

  ‘I can’t wait. As if I haven’t got enough to do.’ She managed a wan smile. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘it’s good to be busy.’ Her face darkened. ‘I hope they get the bastard.’

  I picked up the bagged clothing and went back to my office, relieved that here at least, at work, my relationships with most of my colleagues, apart from Henry, were unproblematic. It was time to address the Convent of the Assumption again.

  I rang Mother Anacletus and asked if we could make a time for her to gather all the nuns together so that I could address them.

  ‘Mother,’ I said, thinking of DNA elimination, ‘do men ever go into the sisters’ rooms? Tradesmen?’

  ‘On rare occasions,’ she said. ‘Jeremiah does any handyman jobs that might need attention.’ I made a mental note to ask him for a buccal smear.

  ‘What about Father Oswald?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s spiritual adviser to some of the sisters,’ said Anacletus. ‘He sometimes comes here. But never to a sister’s room. There’s a little office just off the parlour and he meets his spiritual children there.’

  ‘Was Sister Gertrude one of those?’ I asked.

  There was a pause. ‘Yes,’ said Anacletus.

  ‘Where might I find the Father?’ I asked.

  ‘He has a little hermitage at Rockwell,’ she said. ‘You can’t miss it. It’s almost the only building there now.’

  I noted the directions down and thanked her.

  As soon as I rang off, my mobile rang again. It was Jacinta.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve asked me.’

  ‘Well, is it?’ I persisted.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Mum’s in a weird space at the moment.’

  I felt it best not to say that for as long as I’d known Genevieve, she’d been there.

  ‘And Bob Edwards dropped in on me and prowled around Charlie’s place as if he was looking for something.’

  ‘He was,’ I said. ‘He was checking the security. I need to talk to you about a serious matter.’

  ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘you’re scaring me.’

  ‘I’m not mentioning it to scare you, but I want you to know what’s going on.’ Here goes, I thought. ‘Marty Cash will do anything to get hold of that money,’ I said. ‘You know, your money. His plan is to kidnap you and hold you until I pay up.’

  ‘Kidnap me?’ Her voice trembled and I swore that I’d fix Cash for good.

  ‘But I thought—’ she started to say. ‘You said—’ and I could hear the fear in her voice.

  ‘He had a spontaneous recovery from his coma,’ I said. ‘But luckily, the bloke who’s offered to do the kidnapping job happens to be Colin Reeves.’

  ‘Colin from Lane Cove? Your Colin?’ she asked, bewildered.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s working undercover at the moment and he heard about the job and applied for it.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t get too relieved,’ I said. ‘I won’t be until Marty Cash is locked up.’

  ‘No way is that horrible brute getting hold of me, Dad. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’ My daughter had rallied. I admired the fast way she worked.

  ‘I
didn’t want to scare you until we’d worked something out. We’re putting something into operation that should fix Marty Cash for good.’

  ‘Dad,’ she said, in the patient tone of a parent explaining something to a child, ‘I’ve lived on the streets. Lived, survived, conned, done the works. No out-of-work, overweight ex-cop could outstreet me.’

  Her youthful bravado touched me. ‘Of course he couldn’t,’ I said.

  ‘A car would keep me really really safe,’ she sang.

  ‘I get the hint,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk about it when I come back.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Mum’s been asking me some really funny questions,’ she said. ‘About the bad old days.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’ Immediately I regretted asking, weary of it all. ‘Never mind. Forget what I just said.’

  ‘You are so freaky sometimes,’ she said. ‘Gotta fly. Charlie’s already in the car.’

  ‘Remember everything I taught you about vigilance,’ I said.

  ‘Dad, for God’s sake.’

  She rang off.

  I found an empty examination room, very keen to see the murdered nun’s clothing, remembering the small white crumbs that had dotted it and the floor around her. I donned protective gear to avoid contaminating the clothes and started going through the labelled packages. I found a heavy black serge dress, a veil, some sort of starched headdress in the form of a winged bonnet, underwear, stockings and shoes. There was also a heavy leather belt, a large set of rosary beads, and the pearl-covered prayer book, now somewhat powdery after Fingerprints had done their work on it. I found the smaller packets of floor sweepings and the powdery white flecks I’d noticed in and around her clothing.

  The black robes contrasted sharply with the clean white paper that lined the table and I examined them first with a hand glass. In some cases, I could see that the white particles had actually embedded themselves in the fibre of the black cloth and I could just discern the fine spray of dried blood that had also settled onto the material. Both these factors suggested velocity to me, that considerable force had been used to hurl them into place. When I’d first noticed the white specks, I’d even wondered if they were part of the murder weapon, but this seemed most unlikely given Harry Marshall’s description of what had killed the nun. I straightened up from my examination. I’d do the proper tests to discover the exact nature of this material, but I was prepared to stake my life on the fact that these chalky white particles with the coloured surface on one side were made of plaster and that they had come from some object that had smashed in that room. The most likely objects made of plaster in a convent would be the various sentimental statues of saints and angels that decorate chapels and corridors and I wondered which celestial being had been smashed in Sister Gertrude’s room and why.

  Florence would need to cut samples from the fabric at the neck and arms because if there’d been a struggle, the offender might have left enough of himself in those areas. When a killer uses a weapon rather than his hands, he’s one step away from his victim as far as leaving traces are concerned. I wanted those weapons very much. A weapon with trace evidence on it can be a wonderful gift to an investigator. It is the microcosm of the crime; it can be almost a complete record, the physical object where motive, action, means, place, hunter and hunted all come together in the explosion of homicide. I repacked the clothes and the debris from the floor, keeping only a little aside for further tests, and took the rest back to Florence.

  Then I geared up and went back to the samples from the Tony Bonning crime scene, particularly the red foil wrapper, carefully examining it and its contents again, finding only more of what I’d found before, large amounts of BA spores bound together by electrostatic charge into heavy clumps, compelled by gravity to fall to earth. Nowhere did I find anything suggesting that a carrier had been used—no traces of silica, bentonite, or anything else that might have helped spores to stay separated and airborne, waiting to be inhaled. I felt I could say with confidence that these spores had not been weaponised but I was no closer to answering the riddle as to why the killer had gone to so much trouble. To work this out, I would have to gather more intelligence.

  I was about to ring Colin Reeves when the door to my room was suddenly pushed open and there stood Henry Dupont, clutching a folder and wearing the same tie he’d worn every day as far as I knew for the last nine years—a repeated frill-neck lizard motif now almost disappearing under layers of grime. He was trembling, but it wasn’t with cold, and there were two white compressions on each side of his mouth. He advanced into the office, shaking the folder at me.

  ‘I should be sitting there!’ he shouted. ‘I’m always passed over. First that woman got the senior position in the DNA lab.’ I presumed he was referring to Florence. ‘Then you end up sitting here!’ he yelled. ‘I’ve got far more seniority than you. It’s ridiculous that you’re there. What sort of scientist are you, anyway?’

  I stood up, shocked at the intrusion. ‘Henry,’ I started to say, but he interrupted me.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘Doctor Dupont. You will please address me correctly.’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel this way,’ I said. ‘I’m very aware of your seniority. And your PhD,’ I added.

  ‘Then you would have been aware that accepting the position of Acting Chief Scientist is completely out of order. You could have refused. You’re just an ex-policeman, for God’s sake!’

  He made my earlier profession sound disgusting. I moved smartly to the door and placed my hand on the knob. ‘I suggest you put your complaint on paper, Dr Dupont,’ I replied, ‘and take it up with the relevant people. Digby decided to give me the position. No doubt he had his reasons and that’s all I have to say on the matter. I’m sorry you’ve taken it so personally. Now, would you please leave this office? I have work to do.’

  The two declivities near Henry’s mouth whitened further. He flung the folder he’d been carrying down on the desk. ‘These are from that woman,’ he snarled. ‘Apparently that’s all I’m good for. Running messages for people.’

  He walked out without another word and I closed the door behind him. Bloody administration, I thought. This was certainly not my cup of tea, and Henry was welcome to it. But Digby had appointed me Acting Chief and Henry Dupont would just have to deal with it.

  A tentative knock sounded on my door. ‘Come in,’ I said.

  It was young Vic, back to get some extra gear. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing most of that,’ he said. ‘What’s eating him?’

  ‘I think he made it pretty clear, Vic,’ I said.

  ‘Is that sort of thing common down here?’

  I remembered that Vic hadn’t been with us all that long. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But life here can be intense.’

  ‘I think it’s pathetic,’ he said. ‘We’re supposed to be professional people.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘But our profession doesn’t preclude the normal range of human neuroses. A pity, that.’ I paused. ‘How’s the Decon going?’

  ‘Seven Oaks has been wiped over and steamed,’ he said. ‘We’re about to do the town house.’

  Vic ducked away, and I wondered where Digby had gone. I picked up the folder Henry had thrown in such a dismissive fashion. It was the follow-up matching of the samples from the two young women students attacked late at night in the university grounds, the final, coloured graphical print-outs. I glanced at the results. Not surprisingly, the two profiles showed identical results. The suggestion that the assaults had been carried out by the same offender was now beyond a shadow of a doubt. All we had to do was find him. Good on you, Florence, I thought to myself as I put the folder with the profiles on my desk.

  I drove to the Convent of the Assumption, glad to be leaving the office and the jealousy and resentments of Henry Dupont behind me. It was a c
old white day, with low cloud and bleached grasses in the paddocks. I reminded myself to stay detached as far as possible from emotional involvement, especially of the negative kind. Henry Dupont was a sad and neurotic man, and his outburst was an expression of the forces that drove him. His outburst had nothing to do with me. A good investigator doesn’t make judgments or get tangled up in other people’s neuroses—as far as possible, I reminded myself. Judgment closes up the capacity to see and hear things undistorted. Non-judgment keeps the mind open and wide awake for any tiny nuance, the smallest detail, the sort of thing that is lost to the closed mind. Proceed from ‘what is’ to ‘what is’, Jack, I reminded myself.

  When I arrived, Mother Anacletus led me through the winding corridors and up and down stairs again until we came to a large room that overlooked the quadrangle, with a sentimental print of the Madonna and a large green blackboard on the wall behind me. As I stood in front of the seated nuns, some regarding me with surprise, most of them with downcast eyes, reading their little black prayer books, I counted them and found there were thirteen besides Mother Anacletus. What impressed me most was the silence, somehow accentuated by the clicking of Sister Felicitas’s knitting needles from where she sat, a little to one side.

  Mother Anacletus introduced me and then stepped back with her hands muffed in her sleeves. The Great Silence seemed to have imbued the very building with a quiet that rang in my ears. I didn’t have to raise my voice, so deep was the silence of these women.

  ‘I know you must all be very distressed by what has happened here,’ I said. ‘And we—the investigators—need every piece of information you can give us about the night that your sister was murdered. Any tiny thing that you may have noticed would be useful. Any sound you may have heard. Does anyone have anything to say about that?’