Dirty Weekend (4 page)

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.

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 foyer 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—’

‘You’ve tried to contact Dr Yu?’ I interrupted.

‘Of course. He had an important meeting with a scientist from the CSIRO today. I can’t believe he’d miss that. The man was on his way down from Sydney. It was very embarrassing. But Peter’s not answering his mobile. And his car’s not at his place either. I asked Pauline to check.’

‘Maybe they’re together somewhere,’ I suggested. ‘He and Claire.’

‘But Claire’s married to another scientist!’

‘So?’ I asked, surprised. Until he’d said this, I hadn’t considered anything but a professional association. Now I immediately suspected something more. ‘Are they romantically linked?’ I asked.

‘Certainly not,’ Dallas hurried on, as if aware he’d given something away by his remark. ‘Like I said, Claire’s married to another scientist—Anthony Dimitriou—a lecturer at the University of Canberra.’ He paused a moment before continuing: ‘Pauline tells me he’s away at the moment, attending an ANZFSS conference in New Zealand.’

‘I’ll need his details,’ I said, noting down the name and remembering that Gavin Samways, one of our junior chemists, had also attended. I could check up on Anthony Dimitriou’s attendance with him, if necessary.

‘Dallas,’ I said when I’d finished writing, ‘if you know something about the two missing people in the way of a personal relationship, you must tell me.’ I indicated the general direction of the laboratory. ‘The more I know beforehand, the better position I’m in to go inside.’

Dallas picked at a spot on his cuff. I waited. Sometimes silence does the trick.

‘It’s only rumours,’ he said finally.

‘So you have heard something about a romance?’

Dallas shook his head too emphatically. ‘Just tea-room gossip.’

‘And?’

‘I’m giving the wrong impression. It was just innuendoes, jokes. That silly nudge-nudge, wink-wink business. You know how people like to carry on.’

I looked at him squarely. ‘If you’ve heard anything, you’d better tell me now. If you’re concerned about Claire’s reputation, or the reputation of the institution, it’s essential that we get to the truth.’ I paused. ‘It’s easier to put the fire out when it’s only small,’ I added.

Dallas spread his hands in a helpless gesture, and a large ruby winked on his little finger. ‘You know the way people talk in these small, intense communities.’ He waved an arm around to indicate all of the research buildings.

‘Yes,’ I said curtly, his prevarications starting to irritate me.

‘And there was something else.’ His demeanour changed as he moved to surer ground. ‘One of the maintenance staff overheard Peter and Claire having words in her office yesterday.’

I made another entry in my notebook. ‘What sort of words?’

‘He didn’t tell me. Pauline mentioned it to me this morning, when we started to wonder about where Claire might be. You must understand that it wasn’t an issue until this.’ He made an open gesture with his hands. ‘Some sort of argument, I believe. But then scientists are always arguing. Especially when there’s a joint project between them. Different ways of procedure, of moving down the decision tree.’

‘But taken in context,’ I said, ‘with all the other things you’ve heard .
 
.
 
.’

‘It’s still only workplace gossip,’ he said, uneasy. ‘And it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this business.’

‘How in hell can you say something like that—’ I began, wondering who or what Dallas Baxter was protecting.

‘Dallas?’ A woman in a dark maroon suit approached, high heels clicking on the vinyl floor.

‘Pauline,’ said Dallas, clearly relieved by the interruption. ‘Pauline Lamb, this is Dr Jack McCain who’s going to take a first look inside the lab.’

We shook hands, but Pauline, despite her polite smile, was preoccupied. ‘Yvonne Abernathy on the line for you,’ she said. ‘And no, she
won’t
tell me what it’s about. She insists on speaking to you. Now.’

‘Yvonne?’ Dallas looked at me, the worry lines on his face deepening. ‘What does
she
want?’

Yvonne was the wife of George Abernathy, head of the school of chemistry at the university.

‘Tell her I’ll call back,’ said Dallas, shooting an embarrassed glance at me. ‘She must have heard about Claire.’

‘Heard what about Claire?’ I asked. ‘You told me you’d kept this under wraps.’

Dallas blinked. ‘I simply meant the fact that her car’s been here all night,’ he stuttered.

We both knew straightaway that his answer didn’t make sense.

‘She wants to talk to you
,
’ said Pauline. ‘Personally. I’ve been running round all over the place trying to find you.’

‘I want to know what Yvonne could have heard about Claire,’ I persisted. I was also interested in why she’d be ringing Dallas Baxter.

Dallas frowned. ‘Peter might have said something to someone.’

‘But he’s not here. You just said so yourself.’ I looked from one to the other.

‘I called his parents in Sydney, Dallas, just in case he’d made a quick visit,’ said Pauline. ‘No one seems to know where he is.’

‘Tell me about Peter Yu,’ I said, notebook at the ready.

‘Peter is a very bright, up-and-coming researcher,’ said Dallas. ‘University medallist. Got his doctorate three years ago and he’s been working with Claire for about two years now.’

‘Girlfriend?’ I asked.

Dallas shrugged. ‘I believe there’s a girlfriend somewhere.’

‘There’s always a girlfriend,’ said Pauline with a tolerant smile. ‘Dr Yu has the reputation of being a bit of a heartbreaker,’ she said, then suddenly turned around and wrinkled up her nose. ‘Can you smell something off in here?’

I shuffled my feet. Surely it couldn’t be that goddamn shoe again.

‘It’s probably something from one of the pens,’ she concluded.

‘What’s this nonsense about being a heartbreaker?’ Dallas said, his face becoming pinker.

‘You
must
have noticed, Dallas,’ Pauline insisted.

One of the most common motives for crime—sex—was already becoming a possibility. The crime scene I’d visited earlier came back vividly. Tianna Richardson had almost certainly died because of sex.

I refocused my attention on the present situation.

‘Were there rumours of something going on between Claire Dimitriou and Peter Yu?’ I asked again, looking from one to the other.

Pauline looked at Dallas. Secretaries generally knew everything going on in a department. She gave me an arch look and shrugged again. ‘It’s quite possible,’ she said. ‘This place is a hotbed of intrigue.’

‘Don’t exaggerate!’ Dallas scolded.

Pauline rolled her eyes. ‘What’s to exaggerate?’

I made a mental note to get Pauline aside for a chat.

‘What were Claire and Peter Yu working on?’ I asked.

Instead of answering, Pauline tapped her boss on the sleeve. ‘Are you going to take that call?’ she insisted.

‘Tell Yvonne I’m in the middle of something,’ said Dallas, looking irritated. ‘Can’t you see I’m tied up here?’

Pauline looked at Dallas uncertainly and then turned and walked away in her clicking heels.

Sometimes government scientists, sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act, undertake work for the Department of Defence. I wanted to know as much as I could about what had been going on in the sealed-up laboratory before I went in.

‘You’re sure they weren’t involved in some sort of secret Defence project?’ I said.

‘Not unless the Army’s taken to using rabbits and mice as WMDs,’ Dallas joked, standing back to allow me through a security door.

‘So what were they working on?’

‘Straightforward, non-secret, agricultural research on rabbit control,’ he said. ‘Claire and Peter started their Faithful Bunnies project about two years ago.’

‘Faithful Bunnies?’

‘It started as an experiment to alter the mating habits of rabbits.’

‘And all the research is open and available to scrutiny?’ I asked.

‘Of course. It’s a supervised project. Dr Leonie Pringle was signing it off every month.’

Immediately, the project rose in my esteem. Leonie Pringle was Emeritus Professor in the science department at our premier state university, not to mention an international legend in the world of molecular biology. She was
the
expert in lagomorphs—gnawing animals with large incisors top
and
bottom; unlike rodents—as well as leporids: rabbits and hares.

‘I know from my own experience that researchers can be very protective of their projects,’ I said, thinking of the other big motive. ‘Especially if it involves something that has the potential to make a lot of money down the track. Like rabbit eradication.’

‘I guess it could be a goldmine one day,’ Dallas said, after a pause. ‘But you could say that about any of our research.
If
the project is successful. And it’s always a pretty big “if”.’

I knew there were a hell of a lot of steps between doing research and then attracting the big money. Most scientific research was underfunded, so researchers had to scratch for money all the time. Until the events in Bali and Jakarta had opened the funding purse more generously, research labs had not had big budgets.

‘They might have been using potentially dangerous pathogens,’ I said.

‘Like myxomatosis and the
calicivirus
?’ Dallas’s voice was derisive. ‘They’re only dangerous if you’re a leporid. Claire and Peter were working at the cutting edge of molecular design, shuffling receptors and genetic markers, encoding proteins, that kind of thing. No pathogens dangerous to humans were involved.’

‘But they were arguing,’ I reminded him, glancing down at my notebook.

‘That’s hardly a revelation. As I said, scientists are always arguing.’

I made a note to get back to that one later.

We’d stopped at a large, secured biohazard door with a warning about unauthorised entry and a sheet of Hazchem protocols affixed to it. Tanks of oxygen and fire extinguishers stood nearby, adjacent to a cleaning station where gumboots, buckets and sophisticated cleaning and antibacterial agents sat on a shelf.

‘Beyond this door is the clean room, where you can gear up, and then an airlock and a negative pressure chamber, then the lab,’ said Dallas.

‘There seems to be a great deal of security for an innocuous research project,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about a set-up demanding high levels of safety. There must have been
some
concern about what they were working on.’

‘Highly infectious material is handled here,’ Dallas said, ‘but it’s only dangerous if you’re a rabbit. We’re still using these old Level Four labs even though we now have the new additions—you saw the ones we walked through. We’ve got state-of-the-art Levels Three and Four safety rooms in the new wing, so the old hot suites in this building are used for routine work. We can’t afford to have any of our facilities lying idle.’