by John Byron
Good enough for me, thought Porter, as his colleague bounded for the lift – and a fine thing, too. He had a lot of research to do on Detective Senior Sergeant David Murphy.
Five hours and two pots of Grand Yunnan tea later, Porter sat back and regarded the impressive dossier he’d assembled on the homicide detective. He knew now where Murphy lived, where his wife worked, what they each earned, how much their house was worth, what they drove, what they did on weekends, where they bought their groceries, how much alcohol they drank and what day their cleaners came.
And he had discovered the piquant fact that the Vesalius expert from the university, Joanna King, was David Murphy’s sister. She even lived near the detective, in Coogee. The sibling connection had brought him up short, but he’d stumbled on the next-of-kin entry just as a flurry of calls had come in, and he’d had to wait until the rush subsided around 10.30 before he could give it some serious thought. He sensed danger – his meticulous plan was all designed around police procedure and forensic practice, but this academic was cut from an entirely different cloth. If Murphy had the wit to consult her, she could offer a perspective on him and his Tribute that the linear process of the cops could never achieve, and that Porter himself would find difficult to anticipate. The scholar was a wildcard, one to watch. In light of this revelation he now found himself relieved that she had lacked the courtesy to arrange their coffee meeting.
He was satisfied with a good night’s work. He went into the kitchen and made another pot of tea to help him through until dawn. His evening of scholarship had made the first half of the shift pass quickly, but twelve hours were twelve hours.
Sunday 1 July – morning
‘Then he shows me this official letter saying the feds will treat it like proper research, impact assessment and all.’ Jo was debriefing with her regular Sunday morning brunch crew: Sylvia and two old friends from Jo’s university days.
‘The fix is in,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s creepy.’
‘Exactly!’ said Jo.
‘Surely they can’t force you?’ asked Katie.
‘They probably can, actually,’ said Freya gloomily.
‘They can’t just make her do anything, though, surely. Muck out the dunnies or something,’ said Katie.
‘But if this is applied research within her field of expertise,’ said Freya.
‘It isn’t bloody research!’ exclaimed Jo.
‘All right, but even you said it was a consultancy.’ Freya paused to slurp the last of her orange juice through the straw. ‘That relies on your specialist knowledge.’
‘They really want you,’ said Katie. ‘It’s a compliment, really.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Jo snorted. ‘Like having a stalker is a compliment.’
‘And Murphy lined this up without asking you?’ asked Sylvia.
‘Without so much as telling me.’
‘No wonder you were spewing,’ said Freya.
‘Too bloody right. I went to the bar to calm down, then I came around to have it out with him but there was nobody home.’
‘What day was this?’ asked Sylvia.
‘Wednesday.’
‘Our anniversary dinner.’
‘Yeah, I remembered after trying his mobile about eight times. Didn’t even ring.’
‘I made him turn it off.’
‘I bet he timed it that way on purpose, the bastard.’
‘I forgot about your night out,’ Freya said to Sylvia. ‘How was it?’
Sylvia pulled a face. ‘It was okay.’
‘Wasn’t the famous Greek taverna up to standard?’
‘No, Steki was fabulous – you really should go.’ Freya never went west of Kent Street if she could help it: she thought the black stump was located somewhere around Ultimo. ‘Murphy just made a scene afterwards.’
‘What happened?’
‘He got upset with some bloke for talking to me.’
‘Why? What’d he say?’
‘Just trying his luck. Nothing untoward.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Gently deflected, of course. And he was totally cool.’
‘So what was Murphy’s problem?’
‘The standard alpha-male bullshit?’ asked Jo, somewhat rhetorically.
Sylvia nodded. ‘And he’s such a hypocrite. He can rave about some woman’s arse, but when a bloke admires my dress …’
‘The blue one?’ asked Freya.
‘Oh, that dress,’ said Katie. ‘Hmm, well.’
‘Not you, too!’ Sylvia scowled. ‘Murphy gave me enough shit, after practically ordering me to wear it.’
Katie put her hands in the air. ‘No, you’re right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’
‘Anyway, it didn’t end well. By the time we got home it was all my fault.’
‘Happy anniversary, baby.’
‘I know, right? Then he makes nice on Thursday with next door’s camellias. Thinks I don’t notice what Clare grows in her front yard.’
‘No way,’ said Freya.
‘I came around yesterday to try again, but your place was quiet,’ said Jo. ‘I thought you two must’ve been out sailing.’
‘No, Dave’s away for the weekend so I did a relief shift.’
‘Where is he, anyway?’
‘St George are playing Brisbane, up there. It was a last-minute thing.’
‘Go Broncos,’ said Freya. They all laughed.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been shanghaied,’ Sylvia told Jo.
‘Ah, it’s not your fault.’
‘It is, kind of. It was my idea to bring you into it.’
‘That’s not the problem, Sylv,’ said Jo. ‘The problem is that Murphy still thinks he’s the boss of me.’
‘I feel you, sista.’
‘And you’re probably over-sensitive,’ said Katie.
Jo flashed her a look – Katie could be a bit liberal with the armchair psychiatry – but then her face softened. ‘You’re probably right. Anyone else I’d shake it off. With him, it pisses me off automatically. He doesn’t even have to try.’
‘Siblings,’ said Freya, who had two of her own. ‘You can’t live with ’em, and you can’t shoot ’em.’
‘When’s he back?’ Jo asked Sylvia.
‘I’m picking him up at eight. Do you want to come with me and say your piece?’
‘No, it’d only ruin my night. Might as well leave it to the morning.’
‘All right then, let’s get on with the quiz.’
‘Wait, I’m going to need more caffeine,’ said Katie.
‘Me too,’ said Freya.
‘Not for me – I’m cutting back,’ said Jo.
Sylvia waved to Lexie at the counter, held up three fingers and indicated herself, Katie and Freya. That’d be a macchiato, a latte and a black filter.
‘Oh fuck it, all right,’ said Jo. Sylvia waved again and added the fourth finger. Lexie smiled and nodded. And a strong flat white.
‘Okay, on we go,’ said Freya, retrieving the magazine. ‘Where were we?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Right. “In what year was an apparition of Mary seen at Coogee Beach?” Ha!’
‘Our Lady of Coogee,’ said Katie. ‘Early two thousands, wasn’t it?’
‘So what’s the story?’ asked Sylvia. ‘I was still in the West.’
‘You know the reserve at the other end of the beach?’ asked Jo. Sylvia nodded. ‘There’s a white two-rail wooden fence along the edge.’
‘Yeah, I’ve see the shrine.’
‘Okay. So from a certain position near the Pavilion, if you looked along the fence when the light was just right, it made the shape of a statue of Mary.’
‘Flowing robes, headscarf, arms held out from her sides, the whole bit,’ said Freya. ‘It was a pretty good optical illusion.’
‘But then someone claimed it was an actual visitation,’ said Katie.
‘Seriously?’ said Sylvia.
‘Hence “Our Lady of Coogee”,’ said Jo. ‘Ra
ther tongue-in-cheek.’
‘It’s not still there, I gather.’
‘No, some dickhead knocked it over,’ said Freya. ‘The council rebuilt the fence but it doesn’t work anymore.’
‘It’s a shame, I liked it,’ said Katie.
‘But what year was it?’ asked Jo, referring back to the quiz.
‘It was an Ashes year,’ said Freya. ‘I was seeing that Barmy Army bloke. He thought it was hilarious.’
‘Before or after New Year?’ asked Katie.
‘Hmm. After, I reckon. Just before he went home.’
‘So that’s, what, early 2003,’ said Katie.
‘Sounds good. Next?’
Jo nodded. ‘Okay, thirteen: “Who’s the only prime minister to have done prison time?”’
VOLUME III
THE VEINS AND ARTERIES
ontemporary artistic tastes may favour the horrors of Volumes I and II, but medical history holds that it was the Fabrica’s study of the vascular system that did most to propel medical knowledge into the modern era, by disproving numerous misapprehensions that had prevailed since the second century on the strength of a mighty name: Galen of Pergamon.
The premier medical authority since Hippocrates of Kos, Galen navigated a middle path between the feuding sects of the Dogmatic and the Empiric schools of medicine, founding a tradition that dominated for well over a millennium. Yet for all his reputation for mastery of human anatomy, Galen never once dissected a human cadaver: his knowledge came solely from work on animals.
Serious errors were thus introduced or consolidated in Galen’s corpus, enduring until Vesalius’s close study of his predecessor – and of human bodies – exposed the twin follies of theoretical orthodoxy and proxy empiricism.
Vesalius approached the colossus of western medical knowledge with respect and humility. He translated Galen into Latin from the original Greek, and defended him against Dogmatic hostility. Yet the Master did not harbour any reverence for Galen’s standing: to Vesalius, the only human authority was that of the body itself. He corrected without triumphalism a series of misconceptions, introduced by Galen’s flawed method and perpetuated by thirteen hundred years of intellectual cowardice.
The Master demonstrated that the great blood vessels did not originate in the liver, as Galen had declared, but instead constituted a distributive system with its nexus in the heart. (The Arab polymath Ibn al-Nafis had already rectified this error in 1221, in his encyclopaedic Al-Shamil fi al-Tibb, ignored by Europe for centuries.) Vesalius also mapped the blood circulation to the foetus, and discovered the venous valves within the liver.
Vesalius made the definitive description of the azygos vein – from the Greek, meaning ‘unpaired’ – an asymmetrical formation that runs alongside the thoracic spinal column, offering an alternative route for deoxygenated blood from the posterior thorax and abdomen to the superior vena cava. Because of its atypicality in both structure and function – being at once unilateral and redundant – it had presumably been dismissed as anomalous, if it had even been noticed by earlier anatomists. Through his revolutionary method of conducting numerous dissections and recording scrupulously all that he saw, Vesalius realised that, far from being abnormal, the azygos was in fact ubiquitous.
Yet even history’s greatest empirical mind made the occasional error. So it goes. (Indeed, Vesalius embraced fallibility as inevitable, encouraging his students to take nothing on authority – including his own.) Vesalius propagated Galen’s error that the veins and the arteries carried different fluids, although he contributed to the ultimate correction of the error, after a fashion, through his incapacity to resume his professorship at Padua in 1564. Denied their preferred candidate, the Venetians installed the eminently capable Fabricius, who held the chair for four decades. One of his students was a bright young Englishman by the name of William Harvey.
Harvey established for European anatomy the true structure and precise function of the circulatory system, set forth in De Motu Cordis in 1628. On the Motion of the Heart and Blood proved that blood was propelled from the heart through the arterial supply to the organs and limbs, cycling back to the heart through the venous return – resolving the misapprehension under which Galen, Vesalius, and thousands of European physicians, surgeons and anatomists had laboured since antiquity.
Monday 2 July – morning
Jo entered the Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills and approached a long counter. A portly uniformed policeman with his back to her pivoted with a touch of gravitas and greeted her with a courteous smile.
‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your enquiry. Is it about a bicycle?’
‘Ah. No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Why?’
He indicated the helmet in her hand. ‘Been a spate of thefts lately.’
‘Oh. No, my bike’s fine. I’m after David Murphy.’
He picked up the phone and pressed a button. ‘What’s your name, miss?’
‘Joanna King. I’m his sister.’
He replaced the phone. ‘You’d best leave a message. They’re flat chat just now.’
‘Yes, I know, it’s not a family matter. I’m here on business.’
He dialled again. ‘Whyever would anyone tell the desk sergeant what’s going on?’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Gately here, Niko. I have a Joanna King for Spud. Righto.’ He hung up and slid the visitors’ log across to Jo. ‘Fill this out, please.’
‘My bike’s locked up out the front,’ she said while she wrote. ‘Is it okay there?’
‘Sorry, miss, worst place for it. Local thieves have it in for us; can’t imagine why. I’d move it if I were you.’
‘Where to?’
‘The racks at the milk bar are pretty safe.’
‘Bugger that, Gately, this one’s a VIP,’ said a plainclothes policewoman who’d materialised beside Jo. ‘Amy Chartier, Dr King: detective senior constable.’
‘It’s Jo,’ she said as they shook hands.
‘You were quick,’ said Gately.
‘Walking past.’ Chartier turned to Jo. ‘Recognised you from your photo.’
‘What photo?’
‘In Spud’s office. The two of you with Sylvia, all dressed up.’
‘Huh.’ Jo was surprised her brother had her photo on his desk. Maybe she didn’t give him enough credit. But then she remembered how she came to be here this morning. Prick.
Chartier signed Jo in, and Gately handed across a plastic ID badge. ‘Wheel your bicycle down the driveway. Chartier will buzz you in. There’s a bike rack near the lift.’
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Chartier. ‘Do me a favour and let them know I’ve got her?’
The policeman nodded and they went outside.
‘We’ll set you up with carpark access,’ said Chartier. ‘Visitor tags can’t get in.’
‘No space left for the brass?’
‘How’d you guess?’
‘I imagine that stuff is the same everywhere.’
‘I thought universities were bastions of civility. Dreaming spires and all that.’
Jo just snorted as she keyed the bike lock.
‘Nice wheels,’ said Chartier, admiring Jo’s Dutch commuter.
‘You should see my road bike.’ Jo was an enthusiastic road cyclist with an unhealthy appetite for speed, but she’d woken up still pissed off with her brother, so it had seemed prudent to ride the sensible bike in. ‘Sounds like you reckon I’m going to be with you for a while.’
‘If we catch him tomorrow, it’ll only be his own fault. Your angle’s our most promising, so far.’
‘I’m not sure how much I can help,’ said Jo, wheeling the bike down the driveway. ‘I’m happy to brief you, but I don’t know anything about what you do.’
‘At this point you have the best shot at getting inside his head,’ replied Chartier as she swiped them into the carpark. ‘You could recognise things the rest of us don’t se
e.’
‘Hmm. Your forensic fellow said the same thing.’
‘Look, Jo,’ said Chartier, stopping her with a hand on her forearm. ‘I heard how this secondment was set up. I’m sorry about that.’
‘Yeah, well, my brother’s only part human. More your monster truck.’
Chartier smiled. ‘But we do need your insights. I’m sure they’ll review things if it goes nowhere, but we have to try.’
‘And meanwhile he’s out there killing people, I get it,’ Jo said. ‘Thanks, Amy, I appreciate it.’
They locked her bike then took the lift upstairs to Murphy’s office, a glass-and-plasterboard box in a corner of the open-plan floor. Chartier rapped on the open door and walked in. Murphy was on the phone, facing the other way, but he twirled in his seat and waved Jo to a chair before turning his back and continuing his conversation. Chartier left Jo to it.
She looked around her brother’s domain. Messy, but not as chaotic as she’d expected. There was indeed a photograph, and not in a modest desk frame but as a large print on the wall. It was from the night of Jo’s PhD graduation, when Murphy and Sylvia had taken her and Lachlan to Tetsuya’s to celebrate. The two were not obvious siblings – Murphy had his father’s dark brooding Irish looks and stocky build, while Jo had taken after her own father, all fair hair, blue eyes and athletic frame – but on that particular night they must have both been channelling their mother, and they looked for once like they belonged together. It was her own favourite picture of the two of them.
But more surprising was a painting of hers on the other wall, from her second solo exhibition. He’d missed the opening and she never knew he’d gone to see the show, let alone bought a picture. It showed Guy Pearce, Nick Cave, Ray Winstone and John Hurt drinking beer in front of a boxy old television in the iron-red desert. It was called ‘The Proposition: The Ashes’. She was touched.