Dirty Weekend Read online

  ‘I know. But I couldn’t really get out of this one.’ It sounded pathetic. ‘I wrap one job up and then I find another one coming in the door.’

  ‘You’ve got to learn not to pick the phone up,’ said Florence. ‘Just let it ring while you walk out.’ She sighed. ‘Now that you’ve found someone like Iona, you mustn’t neglect her.’ Florence had met Iona in the meal room and the two of them had hit it off immediately.

  Recalling Iona’s face that morning, her disappointment, I nodded. ‘You’re right. I should have let it ring this morning.’

  I looked more closely at Florence. Under her thick hair, her face showed tiredness and strain. I suspected mine would be the same. We were all overworked and understaffed, trying to straddle two, sometimes three people’s jobs—the disease of our age. The worst thing was, we were all adapting to this, as if it were acceptable, partly because if we said too often and too loudly that it wasn’t, our own jobs could be in danger. And I was about to add to Florence’s load.

  ‘Florence, I’ll be putting some items through your lab today or tomorrow. And you can expect more when Harry sends the victim’s clothing over here.’ I visualised the outflung body of Tianna Richardson, her dainty earrings and rumpled skirt. ‘I want samples cut and processed then sent on to CrimTrak for matching.’

  ‘Where am I going to find the time to do all this? You know I’m snowed under already—we all are.’ She gave me a look to emphasise her point. ‘And if you go on leave, it’ll be impossible. I’m behind with so many cases, and two new urgents came through last week. I’m supposed to be supervising junior staff as well as do my own work. Vic Agnew told me last week he’s thinking of taking a fortnight off—’

  I interrupted her, not wanting to get into a long argument about staffing levels and work overload.

  ‘I’ll ask Vic to help out,’ I said quickly. ‘Make sure Miss Verstoek takes delivery of the victim’s clothing before any other procedures are carried out.’

  Florence’s face reddened with fury. ‘Miss Verstoek? Don’t get me started on her,’ she said, getting well and truly started. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before! In my day, the junior scientists showed some respect for the older, experienced people. She’s already tried to tell me how to do my job and she hasn’t been here five minutes! We’ll be signing petitions soon to have her removed, understaffed and all.’

  ‘Surely she’s not that bad,’ I said, trying to make light of it. I didn’t need this right now.

  ‘I’m not joking, Jack. She’s a nightmare. No one can work with her. She’s hardly been here five minutes and she’s demoralising the whole team.’ She paused. ‘What’s left of it.’

  The team at Weston worked in state-of-the-art laboratories and with automated procedures using the latest techniques. There were separate rooms for the processing of known and questioned samples and completely different areas in the laboratory building for pre- and post-amplification material. But no matter how refined the analysing techniques, these systems were still run by human beings with all their passions, conceits and failings—and the current acting chief was one of these.

  Florence’s eyes narrowed and she looked closely at me. ‘You have met her. So you know what I’m talking about. You’ll have to do something about her, Jack. As acting chief, you’re responsible for talking to people—whatever they call it these days—human resource deployment?’ She paused, running out of puff. ‘If you were chief scientist you might be able to get rid of her somehow. Or at least get her shifted to another area. Surely the Ag Station needs botanists? So why don’t you apply for the top job?’

  If I did, I thought, I’d be having conversations like this all day every day. Just acting in the position was already giving me blisters. I shrugged and spread my hands, saying something about my love for hands-on science and bench analysis.

  ‘You’d be a much better contender,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll bet Little Miss Nightmare was out at the nightclub scene, bossing everyone around,’ said Florence, but I could see she was pleased by my comment.

  I didn’t want to become involved in office bitching so I made some sort of soothing remark and hurried away. I reached the relative safety of my office with relief, closed the door and made for the classy leather lounge the previous chief scientist had ordered for this spacious corner room. The office was equipped so that I could make tea and coffee here if I didn’t want to go down to one of the common room areas. There was even a small glass-fronted cabinet containing a bottle of scotch and a bottle of brandy for visitors.

  I picked up the phone and rang Sydney to speak to my old friend and erstwhile crime scene colleague, Bob Edwards. We often swapped intelligence and I told him about the murder of Tianna Richardson. Bob, now team leader of the Physical Evidence Unit, was pleased to hear from me and we talked for a few minutes about the crime scene. Like me, he remembered meeting Tianna once or twice.

  While talking to Bob, I started sorting through the formidable pile of mail on my desk: invoices, staff claims for interstate travel and accommodation, inter-agency accounts that I’d have to examine, debtor invoices from different case officers, incident reports, government circulars and additions to the Public Service Act that would have to be filed in the right places, as well as orders needing to be checked.

  ‘How come you’re involved with the Richardson case?’ Bob asked.

  ‘Bloody Earl Richardson rang me from Sydney at some ungodly hour this morning. He was a mess,’ I said, wishing again I’d never got involved. ‘Asked me to make sure things were done properly.’

  ‘That prick,’ said Bob. ‘He’s been ringing around like a blue-arsed fly, leaning on everyone he knows. He deserves to be locked up just for being a pain in the backside. Best thing that ever happened was when he left the job. But this morning he was back on the phone, bothering us.’

  ‘What do you know about his private life?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone religious,’ said Bob, in exactly the same way he might have said ‘he’s gone mad’. ‘His first wife left him a couple of years after they were married. Can’t say I blame her. When we heard he was getting married again to Tianna, we took bets in the meal room on how long that would last.’

  I’d never heard Bob quite so hostile about an ex-colleague. Over the years a cop could attract a lot of bad feelings—not only from colleagues. I thought of the gangland killings in Melbourne and how, more and more, the sentimental bullshit of not harming women and children was being disregarded.

  ‘I wonder if her death is connected to Richardson.’

  ‘The man’s a complete dill, but it’s unlikely anyone would take it out on his missus. Especially since they separated.’

  ‘But they’d recently reconciled,’ I said.

  ‘He thought so,’ said Bob.

  ‘One of the young fellows here had heard she liked a bit of rough,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll keep my ears peeled.’

  ‘Thanks. What’s new down your way?’

  ‘Too bloody much,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve just been seconded to the commissioner’s new baby, the Unsolved Homicide Unit. I’ve spent a couple of days going through the bone room with the forensic anthropologist, sorting through the boxes. We’re making a list of anything with any physical evidence attached, noting it down for possible DNA testing or other analyses that weren’t available in the past. Remnants of clothing, wallets. Shoes. You know how much things have improved. You’ll probably end up getting samples if DAL can’t handle them all.’ The Division of Analytical Laboratories covered almost every field of forensic testing using modern instrumental techniques.

  I recalled the bone room at the morgue, where tiers of shelves held large brown boxes, sometimes two deep, containing the unidentified skeletal remains found in shallow graves around the state, revealed in crawl-spaces during renovations, partly buried in caves, u
pturned in excavations, along with any remnants of shoes, wallets, rotted clothing or personal effects. I liked bones and I knew Bob did too. It was the living who created problems.

  I wished Bob luck with it all and rang off, looking with dismay at the pile of mail I’d been trying to sort. After being away in Sydney for a few days with Jacinta and barely back in the building, already staff bitching and work overload were coming straight at me. At the bottom of the pile of things I had to do was the almost forgotten outline of the presentation I was supposed to be giving to George Abernathy’s senior chemistry students in a few weeks. Somehow, I would have to make time to do that. Worse was the finished brochure for the three-day conference we were hosting here for police personnel from all over Australia, due to start happening all too soon. Fortunately, I hadn’t had to organise that, but it was yet one more piece of business that needed attention and would take up people’s time and energy. I glanced over the contents: ‘Increasing the probability of finding clandestine graves’, ‘Comparative investigative technology over the last twenty years’ and ‘On-site detection systems for accelerants’, and a presentation by Peter McGrath, one of our team working on the Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta. I stood a few moments, reading down the list. Despite the remarkable improvements in technology, Newton’s laws were still fundamental to the physicist; we were still building on foundations laid down in earlier times. I put the brochure down, remembering I’d promised George Abernathy that I’d do a paper for the conference as well.

  The more urgent items of mail had already been processed by the secretary but this still left me with a pile that needed my personal attention. I skimmed through it, making diary notes about conferences and fancy new equipment that I already knew our budget for this year couldn’t allow.

  My mobile rang and I hoped it wouldn’t be Earl Richardson again. When I heard the voice, I smiled. One of my two favourite people.

  ‘Dad!’ Greg said. ‘We’re in town! Me and Charlie.’

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Here. At the cottage. Charlie brought heaps of food.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at uni?’ I scolded.

  ‘I’ve only got two lectures and a tute this week. Ellie’s doing my lecture notes for me and this tutor never marks the roll.’

  I’d met Greg’s spike-haired girlfriend a couple of times and hoped she would be a good influence on him. He’d been finding it hard to settle down after a year away, travelling around Europe as the spirit—and his bank balance—took him.

  ‘Ellie spoils you,’ I said. ‘And you shouldn’t be skipping lectures like that.’

  ‘What time do you think you’ll be back?’ Greg asked, giving no indication he’d heard my last remark, let alone been affected by it.

  I looked at my watch. ‘I promised Iona I’d be back in time for a picnic lunch on the river. Give me an hour or two,’ I said, glancing at the horror pile of mail. ‘I should be there by about one.’

  My spirits lifted after hearing my son’s voice and I looked at the beautifully coloured Venetian glass paperweight that sat on a small wooden stand on my desk, a gift from Iona. It was a good feeling. Almost all the people I loved most in the world close by and Jacinta only a phone call away in Sydney. Thinking of Iona’s complaint, I rang my daughter but the call went straight to voicemail.

  I turned to the paperwork with renewed enthusiasm, making a priority pile. Next I checked the internal phone book and called Sofia Verstoek.

  ‘The clothes from this morning’s case are in the exhibit storage area. You indicated you wanted them first,’ I said, quoting the case number.

  If I’d been expecting that this concession might soften her approach to me, I was sadly mistaken.

  ‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice them?’ she snapped.

  ‘If you can’t manage your workload,’ I said, deciding to ignore her belligerence, ‘someone else can do it. Vic Agnew has expressed interest.’ It wasn’t quite true.

  ‘Okay,’ she finally said. ‘I’ll take them.’

  I rang off.

  An hour later I was preparing to go home, my hand on the door, when the desk phone rang. Recalling Florence’s earlier words, I hesitated. If I didn’t pick it up, I could walk out right now. Someone else would hear it or it would go back to the switch and be redirected. Or, even if I did pick it up, I could always delegate it. I stood, irresolute, thinking of lying back on a blanket in the autumn sunshine, replete with ham, chicken and crème caramel, reading something unrelated to my job, my head in Iona’s lap, Charlie and Greg beside us, listening to the sounds along the river and the distant lowing of cattle.

  But the ringing of the phone summoned me in a way I couldn’t explain and I strode back to the desk and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Jack,’ said Dallas Baxter, chief scientist at the Agricultural Research Station a little out of town, attached to the university. ‘Thank goodness you’re there. I was told you were away.’

  ‘I’m trying to be,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve got a problem out here,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. I’ll make sure someone competent follows it up for you,’ I said, not even wanting to know what the problem was.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Dallas. ‘I want you to come out. You’ll realise why once you’ve heard what’s happened. We’ve got a sealed lab situation and I don’t want anyone else in on it at this stage. There’s been an incident.’

  ‘What sort of incident?’ I asked. Agricultural scientists can be working with pesticides, toxicides, disease pathogens and every biohazard imaginable—all of them reasons to seal off a lab in the event of a spill or contamination incident.

  ‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what we’ve got. And until we do, I’ve sealed everything right off. I can’t keep this under wraps much longer. That’s why I want you over here right now. Can you come? I don’t want to say too much over the phone. But you’d better bring full protection gear.’

  I didn’t get the chance to get a word in as Dallas hurried on. ‘I heard you were called out to a death near the Blackspot Nightclub earlier today?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, wondering how he’d heard this news so quickly.

  ‘Anyone we know?’ asked Dallas after a slight hesitation.

  ‘Do you mean someone from the academic world?’ I asked.

  ‘I just wondered—you know—if it was anyone I might know.’

  ‘She was a local,’ I said.

  ‘Jack, you’ve got to come here personally,’ Dallas said, changing the subject abruptly. Suddenly, I was everyone’s favourite scientist. ‘With this sort of situation the scientists have to go in first. It’s in the protocols.’

  He was right. I put the phone down. Why the hell had I picked it up?

  My daydream of the riverbank had been pulled out from under me. No, I corrected myself, I’d pulled it out from under me by picking up the damn phone in the first place.

  I locked up the office, gathered up the equipment I might need from a storeroom, including full self-contained breathing apparatus, and packed it all into the car. Then I headed for the Agricultural Station.

  Four

  Twenty minutes later, I turned off the highway and drove through a raised boom gate before continuing up a dirt driveway and pulling up near the clearing in front of the main entrance to the Agricultural Research Station. Set well back from the road, its several buildings were surrounded by both native eucalypts and acacias as well as ripening exotics, their leaves a mixture of reds and golds among the green. As I looked at the splendid foliage, I realised I’d never much liked Dallas Baxter. I distrusted his pink and gold smoothness.

  From some distance away, a plume of steam arose in the cool air. The autoclave must be working, I thought.

  I pressed the security door and was let into the foye
r carrying my gear, video camera and notebook. Challenged at the security desk by a man with a huge belly and a lot of metal hanging off his belt, I told him why I was there and was directed towards the reception counter, a little way down the corridor, where I filled in the visitors’ book. I took a clip-on tag to identify myself and glanced around at the pale grey walls and matching non-slip, easy-clean floor covering. Gone forever was the freedom of movement we’d all once enjoyed, moving around government and private institutions with relatively few restrictions. Individual acts of bastardry and the international menace of pathological religio-politics had changed all that.

  Almost before I’d finished reading the one-page sheet concerning visitors’ behaviour, and before I could ask for Associate Professor Baxter, I looked up to see Dallas himself, impeccably suited, striding towards me, gleaming blond hair brushed back from his fleshy face, his slightly protuberant eyes even wider than usual above his blue shirt and pink tie. He always looked spick and span, even when tending his famous garden at Airlie House. Dallas Baxter was the sort of man who wore ironed khaki shirts and trousers and matching hat outdoors.

  I hurried to join him and, as we shook hands, I thought I saw something else behind the expression of professional concern on his face. We set off along the narrow corridor, where offices with half-closed doors revealed staff members sitting in front of computer screens or scribbling at desks.

  Dallas pushed open the double doors that divided the offices from the working laboratories. ‘No one really noticed anything amiss,’ he said as we walked along an enclosed verandah then into another building, passing various airconditioned laboratories with banks of cages and radios tuned into the local ABC station for the lab animals’ benefit. Outside again, and into another smaller building where the dedicated labs were: Susceptible Culture, Resistant Culture, a wash-up room and the scullery.

  ‘It wasn’t until my secretary, Pauline, called me to say that Dr Dimitriou—Claire—wasn’t taking any of the calls she’d been trying to put through all morning and that Peter Yu hadn’t turned up for work either today, that I started to get worried. Then Pauline went out to the car park and noticed that Claire’s car had condensation rivulets over the roof and bonnet, indicating it had been there all night. When I checked her office computer, I found she hadn’t logged off from our internal security website.’ He paused. ‘That’s when I really knew something serious was amiss. Look, Jack,’ he said, eyes flickering away from mine, ‘it may be nothing. She might have got a lift with Peter yesterday—I don’t know. Or she might be lying in there ill. Or anything. But with the two of them not accounted for like this—’