Dirty Weekend

by Gabrielle Lord

  I took the completed folder from her and again she threw her hand to her hip, her stance now insulting. You’ve wasted enough of my time already, it conveyed. I’m working way past capacity. Just get out of here.

  ‘Sofia,’ I began, ‘there’s something else I need to know.’

  The wary eyes flickered.

  ‘Dallas Baxter informed me about the colour coding of the partner-swapping group.’

  She gave me an ambiguous glance, sideways. ‘I thought you said you didn’t want to discuss last night.’

  ‘This is not about last night. This is about the investigation into Dr Claire Dimitriou’s murder.’

  The wariness relaxed a little.

  ‘And Dr Dimitriou was overheard saying something about Blue.’

  The wariness returned in full force.

  ‘In the partner-swapping group—’ I continued.

  ‘That you’re not talking about,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I believe you’re coded as Blue?’

  ‘You know I am. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘It means you could be connected to that case.’

  ‘Give me a break! Now I’m part of a murder case?’

  ‘I need to know about number sixteen,’ I continued, ignoring her outburst. ‘What venue is that?’

  The large brown eyes glared at me.

  ‘This is not a trick question,’ I added. ‘It could be very important.’

  ‘It mightn’t be a trick question,’ she said, ‘but it’s a meaningless one. What do you mean? There is no number sixteen.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  She raised an I-should-know eyebrow. ‘We only use a dozen places. Nothing like sixteen. What was said to make you think that?’

  ‘Why? Is something worrying you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why should anything be worrying me about that case? I don’t even know—didn’t know—Claire Dimitriou. It’s just a job to me. I did the pollen assemblage on her clothes. In the unlikely event that Brian Kruger and his lot ever find a suspect.’

  ‘No number sixteen at all?’ I insisted.

  ‘Absolutely not. I can count. You can check what I’m saying with some of the others.’

  ‘You can be sure I will.’

  It was time for me to go. The vision of the night before was starting to loom again. I needed to attempt the restoration of usual relations—not that they were cordial. But now that we’d both let off steam, it was worth the attempt. ‘You’re a good worker, Sofia.’

  That comment brought about a seismic shift in the atmosphere between us, but not the one I’d been hoping for. Now the room was charged with dangerous energy, like that of a predator about to pounce, and my skin prickled.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, wary again and unsure.

  ‘You work quickly and off your own initiative,’ I said, listing her positive traits. ‘I like that. You could be a valued member of a hard-working team.’

  She was unused to compliments, I thought. Whatever it was in the atmosphere dissipated and I stood up, ready to go.

  ‘Sofia,’ I said, pausing at the door, ‘I’ve been in this game a long time. Don’t make enemies of your colleagues. God knows you’ll encounter enough of those in your professional life without going out of your way to create them.’

  I picked up the folder she’d thrust at me and walked out of her office, still doing battle with the image of her naked. It didn’t work and I barely noticed Vic heading towards Sofia’s office.

  ‘Is she in?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  He grimaced with theatrical fear, waving a letter addressed to Sofia at me. ‘The secretary must have dropped this in the hall.’ He gestured towards her office, ‘Wish me luck’, and kept going, then called back over his shoulder, ‘Jack, I’ve left some more Public Service amendments on your desk. I wasn’t sure where to file them.’

  Great, I thought. The joy of filing government publications.

  Almost at the door of my own office, I remembered that in the tension and drama of our conversation, I’d left my own manila folder with notes about Tianna Richardson’s murder in Sofia Verstoek’s office. I made my way back, thinking of Iona. How come I can deal with a problematic junior scientist, I asked myself, yet be so inept when it comes to my significant other?

  I was distracted from these thoughts by a strange sound coming from the half-closed door to Sofia’s office. For a moment, I thought she was laughing to herself. But I quickly realised my mistake.

  Discreetly, I peered through the door window. With a letter crushed in her hand like a used tissue, Sofia Verstoek was sobbing violently. I knocked softly and she swung around. Instead of the impassive mask, the obsidian surface I’d previously encountered, her overlarge eyes were now despairing. For an instant, I saw the heartbreak of a betrayed child as she backed awkwardly against her desk, hands and letter behind her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back another time.’

  She rallied, dashing tears from her face with one hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I jammed my thumb.’

  ‘That folder?’ I started awkwardly at the same time Sofia started to say something. I looked around for where I’d left it. The pile of books on the desk behind her wobbled and I realised then she’d slid the letter she’d been holding underneath them, undermining their balance. The furtiveness of the movement alerted me.

  ‘I put it over there,’ she said, indicating a table against the wall.

  In the awkwardness of her lie and my curiosity about the letter, we both dived for the folder at the same time, colliding and banging our foreheads together painfully. I swore. So did she. Worse, I lost my balance and grabbing the closest thing, which happened to be the unstable wheelie chair, I went crashing to the floor, taking Sofia down too. Putting my hand out to break my fall, I grabbed her left breast instead and she clutched me in a useless attempt to regain her balance. We rolled together, ending up banging into the footing of her desk. Then we lay still, our arms still around each other.

  In that split second I became painfully aware of the length of her body against mine, the swell of her belly and hips against my groin. Her tear-stained eyes looked straight into mine and I knew the Brazilian was close to my thigh and only covered by fabric. Tears magnified her large brown eyes and I had to fight a sudden urge to kiss them. Then the teetering pile of books on the desk, unbalanced by our collision, crashed all over us, the corner of one hitting me painfully on the mouth. The hidden letter fell out near my face and, as I clambered to my feet, I saw some of the words.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, passing her the letter and putting out a hand to help her up. She ignored it, snatched at the letter and climbed to her feet, blood rushing to her cheeks. She shoved the letter in the wastepaper bin. The book avalanche had changed everything.

  I picked up the folder and made to leave.

  ‘You know last night,’ she started as I opened the door.

  I stood there and left it too long before replying. ‘I said that subject is closed, Sofia.’

  I didn’t think my voice would have conveyed much authority in that moment.

  She turned her back on me, pretending to be rearranging the books that had fallen.

  ‘You said you knocked on the wrong door,’ she said, her back to me.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, leaving her office about fifteen seconds too late.

  I didn’t even turn back when she called my name and her voice followed me down the corridor.

  ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t the wrong door.’

  Twenty-two

  Sofia’s words stayed with me, re-echoing through my mind on the drive back out to the Ag Station via the city. The memory of the way her body had pressed into mine as we crashed
to the floor together, the moment when I’d looked straight into her eyes—these unforeseen intimacies were creating all sorts of interference to my normal state of mind. Not to mention the words I’d seen of the letter she hadn’t wanted me to see. The letter that had made her weep. It wasn’t the wrong door, she’d said. Even a man as thick as I was to these sorts of signals had to admit the woman was making a serious pass. It was a flattering thought but my heart was well and truly connected to another woman.

  Once I’d signed in at the Ag Station, Pauline took me under her wing and issued me with a visitor’s badge. I told her what I wanted to see and we wound through the vinyl corridors until we came to a closed door some distance from the clean-up area I’d showered in after the animal pit. Pauline opened the door, her hand feeling inside for the light.

  ‘This is the wash-up room,’ she said, pushing the door fully open. ‘We call it the scullery.’

  Ahead of me was a long, narrow room, with incubators on the left and a big industrial washer for laboratory glassware. At the end stood the autoclave, like some huge clothes dryer, its door ajar. I went up to it and peered at its stainless-steel interior. This was the pressure cooker that sterilised glassware and treated hazardous waste materials from the research station. Behind it, several large bags were stacked and I noticed the black stripes on the tape that bound their necks.

  ‘They’ve been done,’ said Pauline, giving me my second lesson in how the black stripes indicated autoclaving. ‘They’re waiting for waste disposal to collect them.’

  I picked up the end of a long paper tape extruded by the autoclave. Like the rolls of paper in cash registers, this one was printed with a series of dates, times, temperatures and pressures. ‘What happens to this?’ I asked her, the tape looped through my hands.

  She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure anything much happens to it. We certainly don’t keep records of use. Only the fellow who comes out every so often to service it takes any notice of that.’

  I pulled the tape through my fingers, noticing the pattern of use went back to last week. Monday before last, the autoclave had been used at the end of the day, starting run number 3948 at 15:34, ending its steam, sterilise, dry and complete cycle at 16:56. Tuesday and Wednesday of that week both showed similar figures, give or take half an hour. And so on to Friday. But when I came to the beginning of this week, Monday’s figures were quite different. On the last Monday of Claire Dimitriou’s life, run number 3953 had started much like the other days at 15:04, finishing at 16:56. But unlike any other day, the autoclave had been used a second time. Run number 3954 had commenced at 22:09 and had not ended its cycle until 01:34 the following morning. Someone had made very sure that no evidence could survive the heat, steam and pressure of intense autoclaving. Someone had killed Claire Dimitriou and, while the autoclave was doing its run, had calmly cleaned up the Faithful Bunnies lab. They’d then come back, unloaded it and taken its contents down to the animal pit. If we hadn’t dug through the pit, we’d never even have known about this anomalous run.

  ‘I’m taking this section,’ I said to Pauline, snipping off the length of tape and furling it into a protective envelope. More than anything else, I wanted to know what had happened in that laboratory.

  ‘One more thing, Pauline. The digital print-out of Claire Dimitriou’s key number.’

  ‘I have it back in my office,’ said Pauline, returning soon after with some pages in a protective sleeve.

  ‘Is this Claire’s code?’ I asked. ‘Four, seven, zero, eight?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pauline. ‘She could never remember it so she had a post-it note stuck on her computer with the code on it. You can see where she’s checked in every fifty-five minutes on Monday evening and even in the early hours of Tuesday.’

  I studied the log: fifty-five-minute intervals of the twenty-four-hour clock with 4708 printed beside them, the last one appearing at 02:15. I glanced back at the autoclave records. The last cycle of Tuesday morning had ended at 01:34, a little under three-quarters of an hour before Claire’s last keyed-in number. That would give the killer nearly three-quarters of an hour to unload the autoclave and take the contents to the animal pit, then come back and clean up in the showers, make one last entry of Claire’s code and leave the premises.

  ‘Once the building is empty, the automatic alarm resets itself,’ Pauline was saying. ‘Security would only be alerted if the sensors detected someone moving around on the premises and alerted the remote monitoring service. But the alarm didn’t go off and I was the first to arrive at the building that morning. There was nothing out of the ordinary.’

  Anyone knowing Claire’s security code could have keyed in her number, I thought, on the drive back to the city. According to Harry, time of death was sometime between 9 p.m. Monday and the early hours of Tuesday, give or take a few hours. In the dead of night, the killer had had all the time he or she needed to cover their tracks—do the clean-up, kill the rabbits, run the autoclave, then dump the bag in the animal pit.

  Whoever had put the bodies of the rabbits, the ELISA plates, Claire’s laptop and the lab book into the autoclave, and then dug them into the animal pit, had to have hung around till 1.34 a.m. before he or she could open its door. That someone would have been dirty. Even if the steam-cleaning had been done at speed, such an action would have to take half an hour or so. The killer could not have left the premises until some time after 2 a.m. This was the sort of killer who would take every precaution. The clean-room annexe to the Faithful Bunnies lab was full of protective Tyvek suits and polypropylene shoe covers. The killer could ditch them and get into his or her car and drive home, neat and clean. And out here, with only paddocks fronting the road and the homesteads half a mile away at the end of a long driveway, the chances of anyone having seen a person leaving at that hour weren’t good. North, south, east or west, whichever way he took, the killer had a good five or six hours, maybe longer, to get away, before Pauline had noticed that Dr Dimitriou was not answering the calls switched through to her lab and then investigated further and noticed that her car had been there all night and she’d failed to log off.

  It had been a long day and I knew I should have headed home, but instead I found my car pointed back to work. When I got there, I found a folder from Sofia Verstoek pushed under my door—the results of her soil profiles from the Kincaid Street house and the house out along the Ginnindera Road. I slipped them in my briefcase, checked for any messages and then locked my office. But I couldn’t switch off from Claire’s murder. I replayed the overheard conversation between the two scientists, trying to make some sense out of the scant information, again trying to work out what they might have been disagreeing about. She wanted to do something and he was dead against it. I had to find another way of looking at this. There were six other deaths to consider. Why did the rabbits—RP1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6—have to die? What if the argument had not been about sex but about science?

  I rejigged their words, trying to imagine what sort of scientific dispute might have led to such passion. But after examining the dialogue from this angle, I still ended up nowhere. Finally, I had to admit that the argument between the two scientists could have been about any damn thing, from whether to approach the Meyer Foundation for funding or whether they should put all the tea money on a sure thing in the fifth at Randwick. There were a million possibilities.

  Nevertheless, a new series of questions and ideas about why Claire Dimitriou had died was starting to emerge in my mind.

  I looked at my watch and realised I was probably going to miss dinner at home. I didn’t want to think about Iona, so I decided to follow up one more lead.

  I parked on the street outside the address Pauline had given me for Cheryl Tobin—a bungalow with a well-established garden. My mind was still preoccupied with the reason for the heated argument between Claire and Peter Yu, right up to the moment someone answered my knocking.

  �
��Who is it?’ said a frightened female voice.

  ‘Cheryl Tobin?’ I asked. ‘I’m a scientist who works with the Federal Police. May I have a moment of your time?’ I held up my ID near the door that had opened a crack.

  ‘Have you seen Cheryl?’ the woman asked, opening the door wider. ‘She hasn’t been home for a week. I’m worried sick about her.’

  The lined and harassed face belonged to a woman in her sixties; her anxious eyes scanned mine. I realised she hadn’t taken in anything I’d said.

  ‘Are you her mother?’ I asked, after repeating my greeting. She nodded. ‘I want to talk about Cheryl,’ I said, quickly adjusting to the situation. ‘May I come in?’

  She stepped back and I followed her through into a living room where she indicated a chair for me and sat opposite, right on the edge of her seat, hands clenched.

  ‘Have you heard something?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t any news of Cheryl,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could help me find her, Mrs Tobin. I believe she used to work at the Ag Station a couple of years back?’

  ‘She hasn’t worked since,’ said her mother. ‘That’s when she just went to pieces. I didn’t know what to do about her. She started drinking heavily and then, God knows what else . . . I’m at my wit’s end.’

  I’d heard this sad story so many times in so many different guises. A big disappointment happening to a stunted spirit resulting in growing drug dependency. I’d lived it myself. Eventually, the corrosion of addiction destroyed whatever remained of personal relationships. As I listened to Mrs Tobin’s anguish, I thought she could have been talking about Jacinta, or about me twenty years ago.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs Tobin,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a few friends around. I’ll ask them to keep their eyes open for her. Ask her to contact you.’