The Tribute

by John Byron

  It was the constantly changing shape of muscles beneath skin that had drawn his twofold intellectual attention: the swell and strain of the propulsive flesh engines; the flex and twist of the finer manipulative servos. The perfect union of form and function, mechanical and aesthetic. His interest was consolidated by the superbly efficient tethering of the muscles to the skeleton by the tendons, lending maximum leverage, torsion or finesse of control.

  It was then, in the medical school’s anatomy museum, that Porter discovered the Fabrica: a facsimile of the 1543 first edition, followed by a nineteenth-century English translation in the rare books collection of the university library, complete with Vesalius’s glorious illustrations. From the first he had felt that Vesalius was speaking directly to him, and he quickly apprehended the scale of the Master’s radical intellectual ambition: to banish from science the illegitimate deference to authority and usher in a new age of empirical fidelity to evidence.

  Porter had soon realised that the practice of medicine was not his vocation, but his fascination with human anatomy prevailed, his passion for the musculature finding expression through re-engagement with life drawing. Before long, his intellectual and aesthetic interest was matched by his developing technique: he had found a new calling.

  Porter’s obsession was tolerated cheerfully by the teachers and students of the Sydney College of the Arts. Despite his bland personality and unfashionable concentration on figurative representation, his technical proficiency and single-mindedness were much admired. Paying work was a different matter. He was far from a natural teacher, and commercial art he spurned on principle, so he’d graduated with consummate technique but poor career prospects. He increased his hours at the part-time job that had seen him through art school, drew from life when he could afford the models, and awaited inspiration.

  Porter’s tardy muse finally attended him one sunny afternoon in the Mitchell Library rare books reading room. Immersed in Volume II of the library’s 1555 second edition Fabrica, he had rested his head on the table in an ecstasy of wonder, and fallen into a reverie. His Project came then to him entire, as had Kubla Khan to Coleridge: this time there was no visitor from Porlock.

  While his Tribute had always been about the Fabrica’s anatomy in totality, then, its logic started and ended with the muscles. Each system retained his entire attention, but just as the digestive tract inspired involuntary pangs of disgust, he felt an undeniable aesthetic excitement at the prospect of working on the muscles, tendons and ligaments.

  Particularly those of this incomparable specimen.

  Even in silhouette at a distance, Laura Newman’s musculature had surpassed Porter’s aspirations. As she’d approached her locked front screen door from inside the house, moving like an intricate clockwork of inter-coiled springs, she was powerful, agile and poised. Balletic. He had every confidence that her musculature would prove exemplary.

  In this anticipation he was entirely vindicated, in due course, but it very nearly didn’t come to pass.

  Despite explaining himself in detail with an obsequious and servile manner – and despite concealing his capable physique beneath a layer of characterless clothes to match his nondescript face – her demeanour from the outset had been wholly uncooperative, even mildly hostile. While accepting at face value his stated reason for being there, she’d steadfastly refused to open her front door.

  Six weeks before, Anthony Williams had admitted him to the Glebe terrace house at this point of the conversation, switching from distracted and slightly puzzled to cordial and grateful: just as planned. Yet Laura Newman had simply refused to comply. It was completely irrational, defying the logic of the encounter entirely. She’d maintained her stance with impressive resolve, almost to the end. It very nearly saved her life.

  Standing outside her locked screen door, Porter had found himself abruptly depleted of options. He was rigorous about risk mitigation, which entailed gaining access to the property with the consent and cooperation of the candidates. He decided to abort the operation, perfect musculature notwithstanding: there were other highly toned individuals in the Sydney metropolitan area. Disappointed and angry – with himself more than his candidate – he fired her a sharp parting broadside about the inconvenience she would now endure, having refused his generous offer of assistance.

  He was already turning away when the screen door latch unexpectedly clicked open. He froze while the door swung outwards: once its arc passed him, he stepped inside its sweep and wrenched the door open, the handle flying from her grasp.

  Instantly realising her error, the candidate turned and sprinted towards the back of her house. More athletic now than balletic, she was a conditioned specimen in flight for her life, as though years of hard training had been directed at this moment. But it was already over.

  Porter entered, locking the heavy wooden door behind him while observing the superb body in flight, the bare feet achieving perfect traction on the polished wooden floor, the body’s entire kinesis reduced to the vectors generated by its muscles of propulsion and balance. It was mechanical perfection.

  Above the lean, sinewy hollow behind the knee, the biceps femoris and the other hamstring muscles reached up to the pelvic girdle, which anchored the whole locomotive apparatus. The shiny blue athletic shorts highlighted each gluteus maximus, catching the sunlight at the top of each stride, at the very moment of zero gravity, as the body exited the hallway into a deep, brightly sunlit room beyond.

  Even as Porter made pursuit he felt amply justified in his selection. But later on, well after the unpleasantness, on first direct sight of the musculature freed from its concealment, he exhaled long and deep in sincere appreciation. This: this was beauty.

  He went to work.

  Friday 8 June – late morning

  Sylvia opened the doors and took her coffee out the back into a gloriously mild winter’s day – still, clear, sunny and blue, the weather utterly defiant of the season. It had been a revelation when she’d moved here from Western Australia, where winters were short but unsympathetic. Sydney in complete seduction mode.

  She decided to exploit it to the full. She skipped breakfast, threw on a bikini and a sarong, grabbed her swimming keys and a towel and headed for the Ladies’ Baths, over the road from Jo’s flat in Coogee.

  Sylvia and Jo both did their serious lap swimming at Wylie’s Baths a little to the south, but the exclusively female enclave of McIver’s Ladies’ Baths was where they went to lounge around. For a gold-coin donation, women could bathe untroubled by the male gaze in the loveliest ocean pool on the Sydney coast.

  She dropped her coin in the blue bucket then followed a concrete path down several flights of stairs, making for the wide, flat expanses of rock above the pool itself. She lay face-down on her towel and enjoyed the mild noonday sun on her back. In much of the world this would qualify as a perfect summer’s day. So lucky.

  After a while, she rolled over and propped herself on her elbows, sighing contentedly as the breeze caught her hair and caressed her skin. Half a dozen sails peppered the stretch of ocean out to the horizon, with Wedding Cake Island nestled in the mouth of the bay in front, the swell slapping languidly across its base as the tide began to turn. This was her very favourite view, anywhere.

  It had been love at first sight between Sylvia and the island. Murphy had brought her to Coogee Bay five years ago while he was sweeping her off her feet with his grand tour of Sydney’s Greatest Hits. He’d been amused to learn that Perth had its own Coogee Beach – named after this Coogee, he was certain, although Sylvia thought it was a Noongar name – and he’d insisted that Sydney’s version was superior, not that he’d ever seen the other one. As much as she loved those wide-open Indian Ocean beaches, she’d had to agree. Wedding Cake Island was a big part of why.

  From their vantage on Dolphins Point to the north of Coogee Bay, she’d understood the hydrology at once: the way the island took the sting out of the heavy Pacific Ocean rollers, so that the beach enjoyed
all the shelter of an inner reef with the expansive outlook of an open bay. The island seemed perfectly engineered for the amenity of humans, making Coogee the most pleasant swimming beach in Sydney, if not the entire Pacific coast.

  Murphy had told her the rock’s name was inspired by the rippling foam that perpetually crowned it, and she was smitten. Sensing his advantage, Murphy had chosen that moment to propose. While she hadn’t known him long, she’d accepted on the spot. Murphy had his rough edges but he was strong and protective, like the island, and she was grateful for the shelter. They were married within the year.

  From then on, the island had been intimately entwined for Sylvia with her ideal of life partnership. Her marriage would be like Wedding Cake Island: a buffer against the unrelenting wildness of the world. A sanctuary from the corrosive environment she’d grown up in, then fled.

  So the island had become a talisman of hope and comfort nestled in this Coogee she’d chosen for herself: an anchor to her beautiful new home. Whenever her marriage had been tested, she’d found herself drawn almost viscerally to Wedding Cake Island, back to her faith in its capacity for protection. It had never failed her.

  A shriek of laughter from a trio of teenagers pulled Sylvia out of her reverie, and she looked around the grounds of the Ladies’ Baths. There were women of all ages and all shapes, mostly in pairs, a few solo, a few with young kids: a family of Muslim women, dressed modestly despite the privacy; a raucous group of young women, all topless, beyond the range of phone cameras or wolf-whistles; an elderly nun from the Brigidine convent being helped into the water by her young carer. The old woman was a local fixture, who’d once confided to Sylvia that the buoyant salt water afforded her aching joints some welcome relief. Sylvia supposed the carer was a nun too, although the slightly racy red one-piece might not be Vatican-issue.

  Sylvia stood and crossed the flat rock to the maze of concrete paths and stairs, aiming for the steps down to the pool on the seaward side. A leisurely swim in the salt water, a shower at Jo’s then home for a bit of guitar practice. A run in the late afternoon and a glass of wine over a decent novel before her husband came home from work.

  All in all, a perfect day off.

  Tuesday 12 June – morning

  ‘Jesus Fucking Christ, he did all this right here?’ Murphy surveyed the carnage across the spacious, sunlit living room.

  ‘In full view of the entire world,’ replied Mack, gesturing to the sweeping panorama beyond the expanse of glass.

  They were in North Curl Curl, atop Dee Why Head, with a broad ocean view from Long Reef right around to the Queenscliff bombora, across something like two hundred degrees. It was a very fancy house in a stunning location. The victim had clearly been loaded.

  ‘Yet out of sight,’ said Janssen. The architects had avoided any sightlines from land, and the container ships a couple of kilometres out were simply too far away.

  They turned back to the scene inside. A long dining table, entirely lacquered in blood, bore a comprehensively flayed body. Here and there the innermost layer of muscle clung to bone, but it was a much-diminished form. Sheets of skin were heaped on the coffee table, while ropes of excised muscle filled the leather sofa.

  ‘Godskolere.’ Janssen took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The speeding fine on the fridge says she’s Laura Newman,’ said Mack. ‘We’ve taken fingerprints, should have confirmation this arvo.’

  Murphy struggled to picture the fingerprinting process. Untidy. He gestured to the sofa. ‘Surely that can’t be all from one body?’ It didn’t seem credible that one garden-variety human could pack this much muscle. She wasn’t even tall.

  ‘Mm, looks about right to me,’ said Mack. ‘Subject to tissue matching, of course.’

  ‘Fuck me. And definitely the same guy?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s him all right. Same injection scenario, same anatomical fixation, same obsessively clean site.’

  ‘You call this clean? He still hasn’t worked out the blood drainage.’

  ‘No, he has,’ said Mack, pointing at a maroon slick running up the hall. ‘There’s a lot of blood in the muscles themselves – gets expressed in dissection.’

  ‘This must have taken him the whole long weekend,’ said Janssen.

  ‘I reckon. Maybe more.’

  ‘Fuck. Again.’ Murphy sighed in frustration. ‘How does he know he has all that time? It’s a hell of a risk.’

  ‘Was he interrupted?’ asked Janssen. ‘Before he got to the bones, I mean.’

  ‘If you’re asking whether he’s repeating himself, I don’t think so. At Glebe he didn’t take this trouble before examining the bones,’ said Mack.

  ‘So what’s your theory?’ asked Murphy.

  ‘It’s a systems approach,’ said Mack. ‘He showed no interest in the muscles last time, just cut them away to get to the bones. This time it’s the muscles’ turn.’

  ‘You’re giving him too much credit, Mack,’ said Murphy. ‘It’s a fucken abattoir.’

  Mack held the line. ‘You can see it in the cutting, Spud. He’s really careful with the tissue he’s interested in and heedless with everything else. Bones at Glebe; muscles here.’

  ‘But you said he was careful with muscles last time.’

  ‘No, muscle attachments. Tendons. Not the muscles themselves.’

  Murphy grunted, but moved on. ‘Any biological samples?’

  Mack shook his head. ‘Not yet. We’ll see, but I have my doubts.’

  ‘What about sex-type stuff?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. The vagina and anus are intact and undisturbed. It’s interesting: he’s cut well wide down there, but very closely up here in the head.’ Mack approached the face and indicated. ‘See, the lips are completely gone, revealing the orbicularis oris muscle, which he’s then partially cut away. The eyes, too. See the left socket? Almost down to the bone. He’s gone in for a real close look. But he’s left the anus and the vulva alone.’

  ‘Why’s that, do you think?’

  ‘Well, he’s not squeamish,’ said Mack, both police snorting in agreement. ‘I wonder if he’s making a deliberate point about his motivations.’

  ‘To whom?’ asked Janssen.

  ‘To himself, maybe. Us. The media.’

  ‘You reckon?’ asked Murphy.

  ‘It’s a woman this time, Spud,’ reasoned Mack. ‘He’d know we’d be checking for any sign of molestation.’

  ‘It’s the first thing the media will be onto, for sure,’ agreed Janssen.

  ‘So maybe he’s making it clear from the outset it’s not about that,’ continued Mack. ‘Whatever he’s after, it isn’t a sexual thing.’

  Murphy considered for a moment. ‘So, Mack, you’re saying he comes in here, kills the girl, skins her completely, spends the Queen’s Birthday long weekend cutting her into steaks – but his main concern is that nobody thinks he’s a pervert?’

  ‘You could put it like that.’

  Murphy grunted again, reserving judgment. ‘All right, what else?’

  ‘He’s done a very tidy job removing the skin, not just the fine work but in the initial long incisions. Too tidy.’

  ‘What do you mean, “too tidy”?’

  Mack picked up a sheet of skin from the coffee table, and showed the edge to the detectives. ‘See these long, smooth, continuous strokes? Dead-straight, confident, very precise. I’m not sure where you’d get the practice to do that. I know pathologists who can’t cut skin this cleanly, and they do it every day.’

  ‘Could he be a forensic pathologist, do you think?’ asked Murphy.

  ‘An anatomy professor?’ added Janssen. ‘Surgeon?’

  ‘Maybe. Definitely maybe,’ said Mack. ‘He certainly knows his way around a human body. But you’d have to wonder why. If dissection is your thing you get every opportunity in the medical game.’

  ‘What else, then?’ asked Murphy. ‘Abattoir worker? Roo-shooter?’

  ‘Taxidermist?’ suggested Jan
ssen.

  ‘Taxidermist, perhaps,’ said Mack. ‘The others aren’t exactly fine arts. And any of them would have known to bleed Williams out properly at Glebe.’

  ‘Check them out anyway,’ Murphy told Janssen. ‘Plus the RSPCA and the zoos.’

  Janssen nodded. ‘What about something industrial, where you learn to cut like that? Lino, or something.’

  ‘Very different texture, but you couldn’t rule it out.’

  Murphy stared down at the muscular face, devoid of all expression, while the dead eyes stared right back. After a while, her gaze was all he could see. He held it a long while, and made her the customary promise.

  Mack went back to cataloguing the pile of discarded musculature. Janssen went outside for a break from the carnage and rang the squad to summon another detective and a couple more uniforms. Murphy stepped onto the balcony and opened a well-used app on his phone to scope the local barista situation. They were going to be here for some time.

  Thursday 14 June – evening

  Jo stood up and started clearing her dining table. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘I’d love one, thanks,’ said Sylvia, moving to help.

  ‘Stay right there, you,’ Jo said. ‘No dirty dishes on your birthday.’ Sylvia smiled and sat back down.

  Jo looked pointedly at her brother but he only handed her his empty plate. She sighed and repeated her question. ‘Tea?’

  He shook his head. ‘Can’t handle the caffeine this late.’

  ‘I have peppermint. Home grown, in fact. Organic.’

  ‘Where do you grow it?’ asked Sylvia, turning to look out at the small balcony overlooking the park and the ocean beyond. It held only an easy chair, a side table and a bougainvillea, all thoroughly soaked from the steady rain that had been coming down all day.

  ‘Up on the roof terrace,’ said Jo as she put the stack of plates down in the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. ‘We put in a herb garden last spring.’