Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  But my attention was quickly taken by the books on microbiology on the bench above the stark corpse, the Petri dishes, the one-litre fermentation vessel, the empty nutrient container in the bin beside the door, the incubation cabinet and waterbath, the small centrifuge and drying cabinet. Anchored in the sticky congealed muck near his head was a stained piece of paper. I looked closer. It was a receipt from Bioport, the American supplier of special vaccinations. Despite the staining, I could just make out what Henry Dupont had ordered. A course of BA vaccination dated eighteen months ago. Something bright caught my eyes, on a high shelf, three of them, on top of each other, shining innocuously, in red foil. My sadness evaporated. I’d seen a lot of clandestine labs in my day, dedicated to the production of amphetamines and other white powders. I backed away. I wanted to be a million miles from here. Florence was right. Henry was the anthrax killer.

  It was less than half an hour after I’d alerted the authorities that Brian Kruger and Harry Marshall arrived. We decided to keep the initial crime scene team as small as possible, until we knew exactly what we were dealing with. We set up an outer perimeter at the gates of the property and despite snooping neighbours and the local media, no one was permitted entry. I posted biological hazard warning tape and signs at the gates and along the tumbledown barbed-wire fencing that fronted the road. Bob arrived later, having organised a flight with a National Parks and Wildlife ranger from Sydney.

  Harry Marshall did what he needed to do, Brian Kruger video-taped the lab and house, Bob and I poked around, bagging and labelling obvious items from the house and lab. When we’d exposed and recorded the obvious items, including the three chocolate valentines in bright red foil, the Fire Brigade came in and did a full bleach and steam clean. Brian Kruger would organise a full-scale search of the property as soon as possible. Until then, the place was locked up and sealed, a uniform left at the front gates. The miserable corpse was bagged as a bio-hazard and taken to the morgue.

  ‘I’m putting every other case off,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll have the official result for you as fast as I can.’

  After we’d been thoroughly decontaminated, Bob and I went separately back to town. An urgent call took him away before I packed up and drove away from Henry Dupont’s sad life and its ending. It was right that he’d died in the very laboratory where he’d been manufacturing death for colleagues. There was a natural justice in it.

  Back at work, I made my way along the corridor to my office and Florence almost jumped out of her room at the sound of my footsteps.

  ‘I just heard,’ she said. ‘About Henry. I was right, wasn’t I?’

  I didn’t know how much she knew, and I didn’t want to talk about it at all. I was sick at heart that someone I’d worked with, argued with, even occasionally felt empathy for, had been so consumed by hatred and resentment that he’d turned his mind and his expertise to murder. Florence and Charlie had both been right. The best place to hide something is right under people’s noses.

  ‘It looks that way,’ I said.

  ‘Jack,’ she said, coming up close. ‘You look heartbroken.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ I said.

  On the way back to town I drove round to Digby’s town house to tell him the news.

  I got out of the car and knocked on the door. A woman who looked like a softer version of Digby opened the door and I guessed who she was before she spoke.

  ‘I’m Marcella,’ she said. ‘Digby’s sister.’ She ushered me in and we went into the comfortable, book-lined living room. ‘Dig’s just having a little nap,’ she said.

  ‘No I’m not,’ Digby said, coming into the room, pulling a cardigan on. ‘I was only dozing. Good to see you, Jack.’

  He was looking a bit better, I thought, since the last time I’d seen him, with more colour in his face. He must be well and truly over the strong reaction he’d had to the first vaccination injection. Marcella busied herself in the kitchen preparing a late afternoon tea.

  ‘Shocking news about Henry,’ Digby said after I told him. ‘It never occurred to me that he could hate me like that.’ He paused. ‘Or poor Tony Bonning,’ he continued. ‘And he was very smart about it. The way he used a real case, that Delmonte extortion thing, where all our names were linked together. Very smart.’

  Marcella carried a tea tray in and I was suddenly starving, noticing homemade cupcakes on a plate.

  There were still some aspects of this case that puzzled me. ‘Why do you think he went to all the trouble to make spores?’ I asked. ‘And why did he change the method of delivery?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to trial two different methods,’ he suggested. ‘His inquiring scientific mind perhaps?’

  ‘At this stage,’ I said, ‘we’ll never know.’

  ‘Can we change the subject?’ Marcella begged. ‘Dr Lowenstein’s bringing Digby’s newest journal publication with him,’ she said. ‘We’re very excited about that. Dig’s been invited to New York.’

  ‘I hope it’s a piece about your ants,’ I said to Digby. ‘I’ve been looking forward to that for years.’

  ‘You’ll just have to wait a little longer then,’ he snapped. He hadn’t enjoyed my levity, I thought.

  ‘I’m thinking of a change of address for myself, too,’ I said, happy to change the subject. ‘I’m thinking of moving to Canberra. I’ll be looking around for a place to rent for the rest of the year and maybe next year, too.’

  ‘I’ve got the perfect solution,’ said Digby, and for the first time since Livvy’s death, his face became animated. ‘Why don’t you take advantage of Seven Oaks? It would be good to have someone house-sit while I’m away.’

  ‘Oh yes, do,’ said Marcella.

  Digby smiled at his sister. ‘I might settle over in Perth,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here now.’

  The idea of staying out at Seven Oaks pleased me very much.

  ‘Cecil from down the road has been locking the fowls up at night,’ Digby was saying, ‘and checking on the ants’ food and water. And keeping an eye on the horses.’ He leaned over and picked up the plate of cupcakes, taking one and offering the plate to me. ‘And I know Jacinta will be pleased,’ he added. ‘Duchess and Taffy are getting very fat. They need some work to condition them both.’

  He found me a spare set of keys and explained them to me. ‘The door handle on the poultry shed door is broken on the inside,’ he said, ‘so for goodness sake don’t let the door slam while you’re in there. Prop it open with something. I keep meaning to fix it. I was stuck in there all afternoon last year, till Livvy came home . . .’

  I saw him control himself. He rallied quickly. ‘You’ll find everything you need out there so make yourself comfortable. You might need to get basic things like bread and milk. I haven’t been out there since you and I—’

  His voice faded again. ‘The ants,’ he said. ‘Their food is in a large bin on the verandah near the home-brew kit. There’s a bag of bran in the cupboard in the shed for the chickens, and their pellets. I usually mix it together.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘They’d all be inside by now,’ he said. ‘They put themselves to bed. All you have to do is close their door.’

  I was on the way back to my car when my mobile rang. ‘Can you come over?’ Harry Marshall asked. ‘I’m just finishing up Henry Dupont. There’s something you should see.’

  •

  It takes a while, getting organised for the bio-hazard autopsy area, but when I was ready, Harry, who was closing up the messy cadaver on the table, beckoned me in.

  I heard his muffled growling throat-clearing behind his mask. ‘Makes you think about being careful of what you eat,’ he said. ‘And there’s no doubt about it. He died of the disease he’d sent to others. He must have breathed in spores during the manufacturing process.’

  ‘But Harry,’ I said. ‘He had receipts from Bioport. I saw them
. They were dated at least eighteen months ago. He should have been completely protected.’

  Harry Marshall shook his head. ‘He couldn’t have been,’ he said. ‘Look at him.’

  I stood looking at the eviscerated corpse, the face that was barely recognisable now as the irritable, envious man I’d known. Or rather, not known, as it was turning out.

  He raised the corpse’s stiff right hand and I remembered how I’d seen the dark lividity as I stood in the doorway. I peered closely at the blackened fingers. There was damage to the nails and fingertips: abrasive marks.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Harry asked me. ‘I’ve never seen that pattern of injuries before.’

  ‘They’re not defensive injuries,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what they are.’

  Harry put the dead hand back down and leaned over with a probe, lifting the top lip, pulling the bottom one down with small forceps. ‘Then there’s this,’ he said. ‘When I checked the mouth area, I found this bruising here on the gums.’ I looked through to where Harry had pulled the sticky lips apart and saw what he meant. There was a darker rectangular-shaped mark in broken skin against the gums of both upper and lower teeth. ‘Looks like he fell against something,’ I said, peering closer at the small square marking. ‘Injured himself in the fever stage.’

  Harry rearranged the dead body. ‘I can’t explain it,’ he said. ‘I’ve simply mentioned it in my report.’

  I looked down at the dead face. Henry’s features seemed to have shrunk and tightened even over the last few minutes. Nothing stays the same in this world, I thought. Especially when you’re dead.

  After we’d de-gowned and washed up we went back to Harry’s office and I thought of Sister Gertrude who had lain in the morgue not so long ago. ‘The prayer book that came over with the murdered nun,’ I said. ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘It’s here waiting to go back to the investigating officer. Let me see.’ He moved a few piles and found a manilla envelope, opened it and took the pearl-covered book out. ‘I marked the place she had her fingers in. See there?’ he said indicating a piece of cardboard at the section of the gospel.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll drop it over to Brian Kruger,’ I said, signing the envelope under Harry’s name.

  •

  I was just about to shower and turn in for the night when my mobile rang. My better angel prevented me from switching it over to voice mail.

  ‘Guess what we found at Henry Dupont’s place?’ said Bob. He didn’t bother waiting and my brain was fused, anyway. ‘When the young blokes did the house search.’

  I waited.

  ‘Two handbags,’ said Bob. ‘From the first two campus assaults. The young women identified them.’

  Every instinct of mine went into alert. This didn’t feel right to me at all.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  ‘As I can be,’ Bob said. ‘I’m sending them over.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s odd?’ I said. ‘That a man who’s ready to kill people and himself with biological weapons turns out to be also a bag-snatcher?’

  ‘Okay,’ said my friend. ‘It does seem strange. The DNA will say for sure.’

  ‘Otherwise,’ I joked, ‘I’d think you were loading up a dead man, Bob.’

  My friend chuckled and rang off. I didn’t have time to worry about it. I crashed and slept until the gang-gang parrots woke me. It was nearly seven am.

  Twenty-one

  I rang Sydney and talked to Ryan Holbrook, who I knew was working with Bob.

  ‘How’re you getting on with Gavrilovic’s interrogation?’ I asked.

  ‘What interrogation?’ said Ryan. ‘We had to let him go. We had nothing to hold him on.’

  ‘He’ll leave the country,’ I said.

  ‘We’re keeping an eye on him,’ said Ryan.

  That didn’t fill me with confidence. I just hoped that Marko Gavrilovic’s contempt for the law might be sufficient to keep him here until my evidence against him had ripened . . .

  I rang Jacinta with an invitation to stay at Seven Oaks. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘I’ll get down there as soon as I can. Give the horses my love.’

  I drove by work and pinned a note up on the noticeboard near the secretary’s office, letting them know of my change of address and the phone number out there. Then I drove out to Seven Oaks, buying some basic groceries on the way.

  It was strange to be there alone. I parked my car under the bare oak tree and walked round the back, past the dark and mysterious workings of the huge ant farm. I let myself in and walked through the house, the ghost of Livvy almost palpable in the rooms, and the strong sense of her presence in the stacks of research papers and shelves of reference materials. The world had lost a brilliant research worker, there was no doubt of that, I thought. I went round, opening curtains, letting light in, and felt immediately cheered as winter sunlight fell on the carpet. I soon had a good fire crackling away in the lounge room and did a reccy of the kitchen. The basics were there, as Digby had said, but I’d need to stock up for myself. There were three large bedrooms, the master one opening onto a paved terrace where the twisted grey ropes of wisteria curved around a pergola. I didn’t want to live in that one, it was too much Digby and Livvy’s, but the second bedroom, cheerful and north-facing, suited me well and I knew Jacinta would love the third bedroom at the back, with its huge bow window and private bathroom. My plan was to get the house ready and then go into work for a while. I found linen and made up the beds, and worked out how to put the washing machine on.

  Outside, the powder puff fowls were clucking and freely ranging around the garden and beyond the house. I could see their very well-built fowl house. I wandered over and checked it out. It was state-of-the-art animal husbandry, a luxurious hen hotel, I thought, with air-conditioning and all sorts of other mod cons. A couple of the powder puffs were busy in nesting boxes so I left them in peace and stepped back out over the walk-through disinfectant tray. Clearly, Digby was taking no chances of disease getting a foothold on his precious chooks. The nut trees in a line against the ridge were covered with tiny knobs. Soon it would be spring and this place would be flocked with blossom. I felt my spirits lift. Despite everything, it was good to be out here and I was grateful to Digby for the chance. I felt a real sense of pleasure, heightened as it was by the knowledge that the automated DNA process was working away for me, hopefully providing the evidence to lock Gavrilovic up.

  In the home paddock, in a far corner, Duchess and Taffy necked gently and then resumed grazing. I glanced at my watch. I should have a reference sample by now, I hoped, to match against Marko Gavrilovic’s mouth swab.

  When I arrived back at work, I went straight down to my lab. Florence was working away in her office, head down, diligent as always, as I passed by. I sat down at the computer, pleased to see that the automated DNA extraction procedure had completed its process.

  Now, with gloved hands, I propped up my secret weapon—the icon of St Sava I’d taken from Ksenia’s wall—and studied it. His coal dark eyes glowered at me. ‘Thank you, Saint Sava,’ I said to him. ‘You’ve been a great help to a jobbing scientist.’

  I had a look at Florence’s findings after matching the trace results with the buccal swipe Gavrilovic had given me, as well as checking for a match with the idiosyncratic profile we’d earlier gained from the murdered nun. When the results showed up on my screen I leaned back in my chair, a great big grin on my face, and rang Bob.

  ‘Have I got a surprise for you,’ I told him. ‘And Gavrilovic. Bring him down to Canberra.’

  I printed off both profiles, and put them in an envelope together with the icon of St Sava.

  I spent the next few hours tidying up reports that needed the last touches, and signing documents. A packet of tickets for the Wesley Morton memorial dinner lay on the desktop, reminding me that I needed to dev
ise a fancy way of avoiding it, when Bob rang from his car, telling me that he was almost in town.

  ‘I hope this is worth my while,’ he said. ‘Our friend is threatening legal action against us.’

  ‘In his dreams,’ I said.

  I jumped into my car and drove to Heronvale Police Station to meet them. As soon as I walked down the corridor towards the detectives’ rooms, Marko Gavrilovic’s voice—the edges of the words clipped, his accent tightening under stress, reached me. He stopped short when he saw me walk into the interview room.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ he asked Bob.

  Brian Kruger came in and the three of us stood around Gavrilovic.

  ‘Why should I answer any of your questions?’ he hissed. ‘If he says he’s got DNA from the convent that belongs to me, he’s lying.’

  ‘I don’t have to lie, Marko,’ I said. ‘I’ve got what I need to put you back in Sister Gertrude’s room. The room you say you’ve never been in.’

  ‘Impossible!’ he said. ‘If you’ve got anything, you put it there yourself.’

  ‘You must have been very very careful, Marko,’ I said, ‘to be so confident when you killed Sister Gertrude. What did you do? Wear protective clothing?’ Only hostility and suspicion showed in the handsome features before me.

  ‘I’m going to tell you a story,’ I said. ‘Not for your benefit, because you already know it. But these two detectives—’ I nodded to my colleagues, ‘don’t.’

  Bob leaned back in his chair in his usual comfortable sprawl, while Brian Kruger’s eyebrows reached higher limits as he positioned himself near the door in a straight-backed chair. Gavrilovic continued to lounge back in his seat.

  ‘Fairytales,’ he spat. ‘That’s all you have!’

  ‘During the 1990s,’ I said, ‘you went back to Yugoslavia like a lot of young Serbs. You were trained by your grandfathers’ and your father’s generation. They taught you all about how to serve the nation of “Greater Serbia”—a place that only existed in the delusions of men like Slobodan Milosevic. His “Greater Serbia” was already occupied by large populations of Croatians, Albanians and Bosniaks who’d lived in these territories as long, if not longer, than the Serbs had.’