Читать книгу Golden Relic - Lindy Cameron - Страница 9

Melbourne, Friday September 18, 1998

‘Don’t do this to me,’ Sam begged, pounding the steering wheel. A sharp rap on the window nearly frightened the life out of her. The bizarre appearance of her sister completed the job.

Jacqui’s hair was littered with sequins, teased outwards in all directions and frozen in space and time by what could only have been the contents of 23 cans of hairspray. She wore a gold mini-skirt, a leopard-skin singlet, fishnet stockings and very high heels.

Sam struggled out of her seat belt and out of the car. It was eight o’clock in the morning and her sister looked like a tart. Correction. She looked like a drag queen dressed as a tart.

‘I’m afraid I have to arrest you,’ she said. ‘You cannot go out looking like that.’

‘I’m not going out, I’m coming home.’

‘Oh my god! In that case, I’ll have to shoot you,’ Sam stated. ‘Right after I’ve emptied a clip into this useless bloody car of mine.’

‘I’ll give you a lift to work if you can resist making further comments about my attire,’ Jacqui offered, flouncing back to her car which was parked behind Sam’s outside their house.

Sam locked her clapped-out Mazda, got into Jacqui’s brand new Celica, put her sunglasses on even though it was overcast, and tried to pretend she was in a taxi with a total stranger.

‘I had the best time last night,’ Jacqui volunteered after several minutes silence.

‘Did you go out with Ben dressed like that?’ Sam braced herself, as Jacqui swung out into the traffic on Beaconsfield Parade and headed towards St Kilda.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Jacqui declared. ‘Ben and I have a date on Friday. Last night I went around to Leo’s for pasta and got picked up by an absolutely gorgeous American sailor.’

‘I’m not surprised a sailor picked you up if you trawled Fitzroy Street dressed–’

‘I was wearing jeans and a shirt, Sam,’ Jacqui interrupted.

Sam decided it was too early in the day to be dealing with her sister’s habit of providing only half the information necessary to make a conversation understandable. She stared out the window at the dreary sky which was hanging lower than usual, making everything dull and lifeless. In the distance she could see a red supertanker, ploughing towards the Heads, and one determined shaft of sunlight that provided the only light and colour on the flat, grey-green expanse of Port Phillip Bay.

‘Reuben, his three friends and I had a few drinks at Leo’s,’ Jacqui explained, while Sam silently questioned the common sense of the four joggers who were pounding along the footpath breathing in toxic peak-hour car fumes. She watched, impressed, as a windsurfer demonstrated perfect control by leaping off his board as he ran it into the sand of St Kilda beach; and astonished, as a middle-aged man in an expensive suit lost control of his morning completely by rollerblading face-first into a No Standing sign.

‘...and then we went to a gay bar in Commercial Rd.’

‘A gay bar? What on earth for?’ Sam asked.

‘Reuben and his mates wanted to check out the local scene,’ Jacqui replied, turning left into Fitzroy Street. ‘That’s what gay guys like to do, Sam. There’s no need to look so amazed.’

‘I’m not amazed, I’m confused. You said you were ‘picked up’ by a gorgeous sailor.’

‘Yeah. We went drinking and dancing, then we met these drag queens and went back to someone’s penthouse and put on a fashion parade. Hence the outfit. It was a real hoot.’

‘No wonder you have trouble finding ‘the right man’,’ Sam remarked, shaking her head.

‘Well, not that you’d know Ms Workaholic, but the only men out there these days are married, gay or desperate. And the gay guys are, without doubt, the most fun.’

‘I think you’re looking in the wrong places,’ Sam remarked.

‘Oh yeah? When was the last time you had a date?’

‘I’m not looking,’ Sam stated.

‘There you go then.’

‘There I go where?’

‘To an old policemen’s home where you can while away your dotage with other socially retarded cops, reliving old cases and wondering whatever happened to your sex life.’

‘Well, at the rate you’re going, Jacqui my sweet, you’ll end up in charge of the geriatric make-up and karaoke sessions at the old queens’ disco,’ Sam retorted.

Ten minutes later Sam stood with a small crowd, in the foyer of the Anato Building on St Kilda Road waiting for the lift. The lower twelve floors of the 14-storey building accommodated a variety of organisations including law and accounting firms, a psychiatrist or three, a couple of dentists and doctors, a firm of private investigators and a publishing house that produced what Sam called ‘woo-woo’ publications – books and magazines about crystals, angels, spirit guides, and out-of-body encounters with aliens from the Pleiades. The top two floors belonged to the high security offices of the Australian Crime Bureau, Melbourne branch.

Sam squeezed into the lift, waited while buttons were pushed by the other occupants, then pressed 12A. By the time the doors opened on the 13th floor the lift was empty except for Sam and two detectives she recognised but didn’t know. While they waited for the officer on the other side of the bullet-proof security door to okay each of them as they swiped their ID cards, Sam wondered whether her companions were also ‘socially retarded’ or had wives and children to go home to each night.

One of the pitfalls of being on the force was that the most suitable partner for a cop was another cop – someone who understood the hours and the unique stress of the job. But the odds were against finding the right someone in such a limited pool. That’s why so many cops retreated to the pub after work, to debrief with mates who shared the same daily crap, so they didn’t have to take it home to a civilian husband or wife who could not possibly empathise.

Sam’s own experience of the cop/civilian tango had been three times unsuccessful. One guy found he couldn’t date a cop; one had offered to support her so she didn’t have to be a cop; and the last had given the ultimatum – him or the job. The job was far more interesting. She then tried dating a fellow officer but that ended in disaster when his concern for her safety, because she was a woman, jeopardised an assignment.

So Sam decided there was nothing wrong with being single. It made her career choices easier and her social life freer. She was still open to taking a chance should a potential someone enter her world, but she wasn’t desperately seeking anyone. Besides, judging by the trouble her sister and half her friends, also in their thirties, were having finding a compatible partner it obviously wasn’t her job that was the problem. It was her generation; it was the gains of feminism versus the stagnation of masculinism; it was life at the arse-end of the millennium; it was the hole in the ozone layer; it was–

‘Morning, Sam. You’re in deep shit.’

Ben Muldoon – case in point, Sam thought. Thirty-six years old, good prospects, not bad looking (in a scrawny sort of way), never married and prepared to date Jacqui – a lunatic masquerading as a sister – just for something to do.

‘Morning, Ben. You’re looking pretty good yourself,’ Sam smiled, depositing her gun and holster in her desk drawer.

‘I mean it. You know that cocaine you sent for testing?’ Ben pushed his chair back and crossed his arms. ‘It was icing sugar.’

‘Damn.’

‘That’s not all. That shipment you sent us to examine? Carved penises,’ he said, as if it was business as usual. ‘Some were attached to little goblin-type figures, but most of them stood alone. Made all us blokes feel pretty inadequate.

‘Oh, there were also some sticks and stones, ceremonial items I believe, a bunch of huge photographic displays and the ashes of some dead geezer from Persia, but mostly there were penises. The sniffer dogs had a good time with the mummified cat though.’

Sam took a deep breath, ran her hands through her hair and sat down heavily in her chair.

‘The Boss is ropable,’ Ben added, unnecessarily. ‘And the guy, that Dr Whatsit in charge of the exhibition, he’s as mad as hell; although he took it out on his own staff instead of us, which made a nice change.’

‘Muldoon! Is that ex-partner of yours here yet?’ Dan Bailey, the ACB’s Chief Inspector, otherwise and universally known as ‘the Boss’ and who, until probably this very minute, was Sam’s mentor in the Bureau, stuck his head over the partition. ‘You two. My office. Now.’

Bailey closed his office door calmly, waved them to the spare chairs, sat down at his desk and smiled benignly at Sam.

‘Special Detective Diamond, would you care to explain, precisely, why you sent Muldoon and the squad on a wild willy chase to the airport yesterday, and why you wasted valuable lab time on a substance commonly, and legally, used in the making of fairy cakes.’

‘I’m sorry Boss but, at the time, the facts I had pointed to the possibility that the exhibition was being used as a cover for drug smuggling. Professor Marsden’s murder itself appeared to indicate that he had stumbled on something.’

‘Which ‘facts’ were these?’

‘I suppose, in retrospect, it was a hunch based on a set of coincidences,’ Sam admitted.

‘It’s not often that Sam is wrong, Boss,’ Ben volunteered.

‘Granted. But all her other miraculous flashes of intuition put together do not make up for this bloody disaster.’

‘Despite the outcome, Boss, I’m convinced that the Professor’s murder has something to do with the exhibition or those involved in it. And just because Ben found nothing yesterday, doesn’t mean there wasn’t something in the first shipment.’

‘That’s possible,’ Bailey conceded. ‘And I can see the headline: ‘Drug lord arrested; famous archaeologist charged with operating icing sugar ring.’

‘Okay, so I jumped to conclusions on the drug thing. I’m sorry, it was a bit far fetched.’ Sam felt suitably chastened but not convinced her theory was wrong as the prickling sensation in the back of her neck had not dissipated.

‘Actually, it’s not all that far-fetched,’ Ben stated. ‘After I had rejected the notion that Sam sent us to check out those things in order to get revenge for the girlie calendar in the lunch room, I figured there must be something to her request, so I did some checking – internationally.’

‘And?’ Bailey demanded impatiently.

‘A sudden, and unexplained, influx of cocaine has coincided with a visit from this Life and Death show in Paris, London, Anchorage, San Francisco and now Melbourne.’

‘I knew it!’ Sam exclaimed.

‘That doesn’t mean diddly,’ Bailey said.

‘We’re not going to ignore this are we?’ Ben argued.

‘No. But what we are going to do, is exercise a little discretion. Do you actually have a suspect Sam, or does your hunch involve everyone at the Museum?’

Sam ignored the patronising tone. ‘The show’s manager, or logistical expert, apparently engages in extra-curricular business in every city they visit. According to the exhibition curator, Enrico Vasquez, Andrew Barstoc is a businessman – and his business is private.’

‘Barstoc?’ Ben interjected. ‘He was the one the boss cocky was venting his anger at.’

‘Dr Bridger was angry with Andrew Barstoc?’ Sam asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Elaborate, Muldoon.’

‘The Customs guys moved the crates into a small warehouse so we could go over them. This Dr Bridger was irate but, given the circumstances, he was reasonably cooperative. We told him it was a routine search, by the way. So he asked to oversee the unpacking, and insisted on attending to some items himself. He was afraid we’d break his precious phallic things. Anyway when the job was nearly done, this Barstoc bloke turns up. I honestly thought the good doctor was going to deck him. He shoved him against a wall and got right in his face about something. I couldn’t hear what it was, but he was mighty pissed off.’

‘And you think Barstoc killed the Professor,’ Bailey addressed Sam.

She shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know, Boss. I had a hunch about the drugs – which may still prove correct. Because if there was cocaine in that first shipment of artefacts, and if Professor Marsden found out about it, then it stands to reason that he was murdered because of it. In that case Andrew Barstoc would be my prime suspect. Jack Rigby, on the other hand, thinks it was the workplace equivalent of a domestic argument.’

‘Ah, a voice of reason surrounded by conspiracy theories,’ Bailey remarked.

‘You may be right,’ Sam agreed. ‘But that wouldn’t explain why Marsden’s house was searched by someone who didn’t care about cleaning up afterwards.’

‘What was the cause of death?’

‘We’re waiting for the autopsy results, but Ian Baird thinks he was poisoned. He was also bashed but Baird found puncture marks and traces of a sticky blue residue on the face.’

‘That’s a bit Agatha Christie isn’t it?’ Bailey shook his head. ‘Do not let the press get hold of that detail, Sam.’

‘What do we do now?’ Ben asked.

‘Now? You can look into this cocaine coincidence Muldoon. You may have two squad members to keep Barstoc, and only Barstoc, under surveillance. There will be no more raids, in fact no contact of any kind with the alleged suspect unless you observe him red-handed with the goods. You got that?’

‘Yes Boss.’

‘And you, Sam, stay away from the drugs angle. You get any more wild hunches, you run them by me first. Understood? Your assignment is to continue the joint murder investigation with Rigby; but your priority, as far as Cultural Affairs go, is to contain this incident. Damage control, okay? Keep that Museum boffin happy and off the phone to the Minister. Discourage this delusion about a conspiracy to wreck his conference, or the silly bastard will discover that publicly voicing his own paranoia will have the same effect.’

Sam returned to her desk, checked the business card Ellington had given her and dialled the number for James T. Hudson, of Hudson & Bolt. She was put through immediately but Mr Hudson, citing client confidentiality, asked if he could ring her back – to ensure that he was, in fact, speaking to someone from the ACB. Her phone rang a few minutes later.

‘I apologise for the runaround, Detective Diamond, but please understand you could have been anybody. The press, for instance.’

‘The press? Are you expecting them to call in regard to Professor Marsden?’

‘Not particularly. But you never know what prompts them to do the things they do.’

‘I guess not,’ Sam said. ‘Robert Ellington said the Professor asked him to contact you immediately should anything ever happen to him. Obviously, unless it has a bearing on the case, you’re not required to divulge the details of his will but can you explain the urgency?’

‘No,’ Hudson said.

‘You are aware this is a murder investigation?’

‘Perfectly aware, Detective. I am not being difficult, I simply cannot answer your question. This has nothing to do with Lloyd’s will, it was a separate matter. He came to see me last Thursday and entrusted me with a package that was to be delivered immediately to a certain person should anything ever happen to him. They were his words, and it seems he used the very same with Mr Ellington, but he did not explain the urgency.’

‘Do you know what was in the package?’

‘No. But I suppose I can tell you that it is currently with a colleague who is waiting to deliver it personally, as per Lloyd’s instructions, to a Dr Maggie Tremaine at Sydney University. Perhaps she will be in a position to help – if it is relevant to your investigation.’

What’s with this Maggie Tremaine popping up all over the place, Sam wondered as she ended the call and sat back in her chair. Her phone rang again, this time it was Rigby.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said.

‘Jack, I think I’m ready to believe anything.’

‘The cause of death was poison, but get this, Baird thinks the stuff was injected with one of those poison ring gadgets you see in spy films.’

‘You’re right, I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s fair dinkum. The doc says the tiny punctures are too wide and too shallow to have been caused by a syringe; and there was an oval mark around each of the holes in the cheek, the jaw and the jugular vein.’

‘The Boss just said this was very Agatha Christie.’

‘That ain’t the half of it. The poison was a mean and bizarre little cocktail of curare and peyote. Weird, huh?’ Rigby had a knack for understatement.

‘Peyote?’

‘Yeah, you know mescal, peyote. Indians use it for their vision quest things.’

‘I know what it is, Jack. It’s an hallucinogen. You can remind me about curare though. What does it do exactly?’

‘Used medicinally, it’s a muscle relaxant. As a poison it attacks the motor nerves and causes muscular paralysis. The South American Indians use it on their arrows.’

‘Arrows, poison rings, peyote. Great,’ Sam moaned. ‘Consider our possible suspects, Jack. We’ve got one certifiable South American, Señor Vasquez the Colombian, plus a whole swag of archaeologists and their ilk, who have probably all traipsed round that part of the world at some time in their careers.’

Rigby grunted. ‘Let’s start with Barstoc and Douglas,’ he suggested. ‘They’re at the Exhibition Building waiting for the rest of their stuff. What happened with your cocaine theory, by the way?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Sam pleaded. ‘I have to talk to Prescott again, if you want to join me later. And we still haven’t interviewed Haddon Gould, the other curator.’

‘We can’t talk to Gould till later this afternoon. He was rushed to hospital yesterday for an appendectomy. Rivers can sit in on your chat with Prescott. We’ll meet you at the Exhibition Building in half an hour.’

Rigby hung up before Sam could object to being nursemaided by Constable Hercules Rivers. She snapped her gun and holster in place on the belt of her slacks, dropped her phone into the pocket of her black jacket and then slipped that on over her white shirt.