‘Did you do it, Damien?’ Kylie said. ‘Did you rape that girl?’
‘I swear, Kyles, I didn’t. She came with me. She wanted it.’
‘He used her bra to tie her hands up,’ said Brian. ‘She tried to get away and he tackled her down. She was bruised all over.’
‘She liked it rough! She said so! I was only giving her what she wanted!’
Kylie’s face was stricken. But we had a job to do.
‘Like Tianna Richardson wanted?’ I said, remembering the rumour. ‘Except you got too rough?’
‘Jesus, Damien,’ said Kylie. ‘Is that why they’re here? Because they think you’ve got something to do with that woman’s murder?’ She swung on me. ‘What’s Damien got to do with that woman’s murder? He doesn’t even know her!’
No one said a word.
‘Do you, Damien? You don’t even know her! Why don’t you tell them?’
The silence lengthened.
‘Why don’t you say something? You didn’t know that woman. Tell them you didn’t know her!’
‘I knew her,’ Damien said, his voice almost a whisper.
For what seemed one long moment, Kylie stood, planted in front of him. I saw the struggle she had to keep her emotions from bursting out. Then, ignoring the pile of groceries on the floor, she went to the front door again.
‘Get a lawyer, Damo,’ she said from the open doorway, then slammed the door behind her.
Brian placed a restraining hand on Damien’s arm as the young man struggled to get to his feet. ‘I think we’d better do this properly at the police station, Damien.’
‘I’ve already told you—I don’t know anything about her murder,’ said Damien, but the fight had gone out of him.
Brian snapped his notebook together and gathered up his things, readying to leave. I was heading for the door when a strange sound made me look back. Damien was crying.
‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’
I jumped into my wagon, watching Brian and Damien disappear in the squad car Brian had called for. I sat there a while, unable to get Kylie’s stricken face out of my mind. I knew it could take the ground from under your feet when you learned something huge and shattering about the person you thought you knew better than anyone in the world. I remembered how I’d felt when I’d first found out about Genevieve’s lover.
It was looking bad for Damien Henshaw. And I was extremely curious about how the death of Albert Vaughan fitted into this. Why had Damien killed him too? Maybe he hadn’t, and the appearance of the coarse sandy particles in Albert Vaughan’s injuries were some sort of freakish synchronicity.
I was about to follow Brian down to the station to see if I could listen in on the interview when my mobile rang. It was Dallas Baxter, huffing and puffing.
‘Kevin Waites is here, saying that you organised to see him today. I wish you’d thought to include me in your generous invitation.’
‘That goes without saying,’ I said, realising I’d forgotten to clear it with the boss of the Ag Station when I’d organised my meeting with Kevin earlier that morning. ‘I’m on my way.’
I sneezed and cursed. My cold was freshening again. As I opened the glove box to fish out a tissue, I noticed the keys from Peter Yu’s carton on their red and white plait. I slipped them in my pocket and blew my nose. My head felt heavy and a dull ache behind my eyes reminded me of how unpleasant head colds are.
I walked through the main entrance doors of the Ag Station just in time to see Kevin Waites disappearing into Dallas Baxter’s office. I hoped Dallas would do the right thing and give the man his job back. Too many jobs in modern Australia offered little or nothing in the way of security, despite the fall in unemployment levels, and a cleaning job in a government department was better than a lot of other jobs. Pauline was just visible through the open door in the office beyond the reception counter, wearing a tight skirt and a blouse with frills. I filled in the visitors book and took my appointed number as Pauline clicked over in her high heels to usher me in.
‘The lab book from Dr Dimitriou’s lab,’ I asked. ‘Can you think of anywhere it might be?’
‘By rights, it shouldn’t really leave the laboratory, but it might be at her place,’ Pauline said. ‘I can’t believe all the dreadful things that have been happening. This used to be such a nice place to work.’
‘Tell me, Pauline, do you have any ideas of your own as to what might have happened in the Terminator Rabbit laboratory on Monday?’
Pauline cocked her head to one side, considering. ‘I think someone came in from outside and killed Claire and somehow took Peter away. I just can’t believe that he’d do anything to harm her. He thought so much of her. He told me once how much he admired her.’
‘Did you like Peter?’ I asked.
She hesitated. ‘I like all the people who work here,’ she answered.
I smiled quickly. ‘That’s nice,’ I said, matching her bland response. ‘Have you had any luck finding any details on Cheryl Tobin’s records?’
‘I can give you her last known address.’
Two years ago, Cheryl lived at an address in Turner. I took the details and thanked Pauline, then turned as I heard the door to Dallas Baxter’s office opening. Kevin Waites emerged smiling and I felt I’d done something good. Maybe it evened up the balance a bit for the undoubted damage I’d already done to my relationship with Iona. I wanted to send a text message to her, something romantic, but I feared hitting the wrong note. I sometimes wondered if women knew how much we worried about—feared, even—their reactions to our well-intentioned mistakes, perhaps they’d be kinder.
‘He offered me my old job back,’ said Kevin. ‘Said he’d been misinformed about me.’
I congratulated him and said, ‘Before we go to the laboratory, I’d like you to show me where you were when you overheard the disagreement between Dr Dimitriou and Dr Yu.’
By this time Dallas had joined us and the three of us walked along the corridor down to Claire Dimitriou’s former office, her name still on the door.
Kevin stepped back a few paces.
‘Just here,’ he said turning and looking upwards. ‘I was just here on the stepladder.’
Standing a couple of metres from the doorway, he went through his story again, pointing to the light fitting he’d replaced.
‘Okay,’ I said when he’d finished. ‘Let’s go and have another look at the lab.’
‘What on earth for, Jack?’ Dallas’s pink cheeks flushed. ‘Surely a
cleaner
isn’t going to be able to assist you!’
‘Kevin might notice something you or I might have missed,’ I said.
‘Like what?’ Dallas’s voice was icy.
I gave him a look. ‘Like the subtle changes that can be easily overlooked,’ I said. ‘The sort of thing someone who’s in and out of an area all the time and is familiar with it is far more likely to notice.’
I could see that Dallas wasn’t at all happy about this and it made me wonder why.
The three of us walked through the building towards the old Level Four lab. As we went outside to cross to the Faithful Bunnies building, I turned to Kevin. ‘She must have come back over here to the lab not long after you’d overheard them. Or maybe they went over together.’
‘I can’t say,’ he said. ‘Like I told you, Dr Yu closed the door, I finished fitting the light, then climbed down the stepladder and carried it back to the storeroom. It was time for me to start cleaning the labs at the other end of the station.’
They must have gone over to the lab, I thought, where they were isolated from everyone else. That’s when he could have shot her. Or maybe he drove away, still brooding over the argument, and came back later. With a weapon. Or he drove away and never came back, because
someone else
came into the lab. Annette Sommers? Cheryl Tobin? And was the murder witnessed by Peter Yu who then bolted? Maybe the killer followed Peter Yu and dealt with him later. Doubtless, Claire Dimitriou would have opened the security doors for either of the women.
‘If she worked back,’ said Dallas, echoing part of my thoughts, ‘Claire would have had to let him in. She wouldn’t have let in a stranger.’
Maybe she didn’t have to let anyone in, I thought. Maybe the killer was someone else already working in the building who didn’t bother filling out the Working Alone register. I glanced at the array of cleaning and antibacterial agents stored in the annexe before the negative pressure chamber. We stepped through. No negative airflow was necessary, nor the need for any precautions.
Dallas and I walked straight through into the laboratory, past the door with the silly little cartoon on it, leaving Kevin behind. As I stood there, looking around the sterile lab, something occurred to me that I should have thought of a hell of a lot earlier.
‘What if Peter Yu
didn’t
leave the premises?’ I asked.
Dallas swung round at me from his slow pacing alongside the central workbench. ‘Of course he’s left the premises. Surely he would’ve turned up by now if he were still here! There were police crawling all over the place.’
‘Hey,’ said Kevin standing stock-still and staring at the corner. ‘What’s going on here? They’ve all gone!’
I turned to see him pointing.
‘What’s all gone?’ Dallas snapped.
‘The rabbits. They’ve all gone! They were all in their cages through there, in the dirty room.’ Kevin stared with disbelief. ‘Dr Dimitriou’s rabbits.’
I followed his gaze into the corner where the stacked cages gleamed, as clean and empty as they’d been on my first visit. I turned to Dallas. ‘You didn’t tell me anything about any rabbits.’
Dallas blinked. ‘I didn’t
know
about any rabbits! I’d have to check the records.’
‘But you
must
have known they had animals here,’ I said, finding his denial unconvincing. ‘You’re the boss! You’d have to sign off things like that.’
Dallas Baxter’s ruddy cheeks suddenly paled.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t know,’ I continued. Either the man was a liar or a total incompetent.
‘Of course I know that Claire
had
animals,’ he said, flustered. ‘She’d applied for some and been allocated them. But that was ages ago. Now you mention it, I do remember the ethics committee meeting. But I’d forgotten about that. How was I supposed to know how many damn rabbits she had? I’ve got enough to do keeping up with staffing levels and administration without knowing where every damn mouse, sheep and rabbit is in the complex!’
‘I know the staff who have animals,’ said Kevin, obviously relishing this discussion—the cleaner knowing more than the boss. ‘Dr Claire had six rabbits. Nice little fellows. They had numbers instead of names—1 to 6 with the initials RP.’
Rabbit pox, I thought. Six different strains. ‘When did you last see them?’ I asked.
‘They were all here last Friday when I cleaned out the cages. Any day I come in to clean, I always give them a pat.’ He threw a deadly glance at his erstwhile boss. ‘Well, I always
used
to.’
‘Six rabbits in separate cages?’ I checked.
Kevin grinned. ‘They’ve got to have separate cages. You know what rabbits are like.’
‘They’re not here now,’ I said. ‘So where are they?’
Dallas glared at me, his polished pink brow darkening. ‘I don’t know. Under the circumstances, Jack, the
murder
of one of my scientists, rabbits were the last damn thing on my mind!’
‘Where might they be?’ I persisted. ‘In another lab? Maybe the tests were discontinued and they’ve gone somewhere else? You know as well as I do that every experimental animal must be accounted for. They must have gone somewhere else. They can’t have just vanished.’
‘If they’re not in their cages,’ said Kevin, his voice sad, ‘there’s only one other place they’d be.’
Of course. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me earlier. I
did
need a break, missing obvious things like this.
I looked at Dallas and, although his glare was still in place, I had no doubt he was thinking the same thing.
‘We’ll have to have a look,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to check it out.’
‘But I don’t quite see—’
‘The animal pit,’ I interrupted him, impatient. ‘We have to examine the animal pit.’
A long silence in which Dallas seemed stricken. ‘You don’t think that Peter Yu is in the
animal pit
?’
‘I’ll get Brian and the crime scene people back here straightaway,’ I said. ‘This should have been checked out earlier. Where is the animal pit?’
Dallas shook his head. ‘I can’t take you there.’
This was getting ridiculous. ‘You don’t have any choice,’ I said, my voice hard. ‘This is a murder investigation. The police must be informed.’
‘You don’t understand. I’m not refusing to take you.’ His voice faded away. ‘I
can’t
take you. I’ve never actually known where the animal pit is.’
He must have seen the look on my face because he said, ‘I know, I know. It seems unbelievable. But I’ve made it my business not to know. I’m very squeamish about things like that.’ He waved an arm vaguely. ‘I know it’s somewhere out there.’
‘I’ll show you where it is,’ said Kevin.
I called Brian and left a message for him to call me urgently, while Dallas and Kevin went to get the keys from the key cupboard. While I waited for them, I castigated myself. The animal pit was one place that should have been checked out thoroughly and as soon as possible after the murder of a scientist—of anyone—on these premises. I’d be having a serious chat to Brian about the search he and his crime scene team had made of this place.
But then, thinking more about it, I realised he wouldn’t have known about the pit. And if no one mentioned it, Brian wouldn’t know what questions to ask. Even so, this was not my job, not my case. But the second I thought about leaving the Ag Station and driving back to Forensic Services and the pile of administrative jobs that awaited me, the Brazilian filled my mind again, distracting and deterring me from anything sensible. This case was my only hope of distraction from the primal scene of last night and the mess I was making of my relationship with Iona.
Kevin and Dallas returned with the keys and I followed Kevin outside, Dallas bringing up the rear. Crickets fell silent at our passage through the sun-burnt grass. After following the path for a minute or two, we arrived at a three-metre cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. Set in it was a padlocked gate and through the wire, I could see a large, circular clearing. In the centre of the clearing the ground level had sunk to a smaller circle, about the size of a small dam, which was now surfaced with sticky mud after the rain. It looked as if the pit had been dug by a backhoe, the dug-up soil then pushed into a circular rim, like that on a shallow dish, so that animal corpses could be dropped into the pit and then soil either bulldozed or backhoed in on top of them. A shovel stood by the fence; a few scoops with it would have covered lab mice and rats. The larger beasts might need a tractor.
Brian rang as I was contemplating the pit and I told him where we were. I could hear from his voice how tired he was. He’d told me earlier how he’d spent most of the night at a suicide call-out.
‘I didn’t know about any damn animal pit!’ he said.
‘You’re not the only one,’ I said. ‘Even the boss here didn’t know where it was.’
‘Damien Henshaw’s still denying everything. We’ve let him go for the time being but I’m determined to nail that little prick.’
I listened to Brian ventilate for a moment and then explained a little more about the animal pit and how I hoped that digging it out might throw more light on the death of Claire Dimitriou.
By rights Brian should have come straight over, but I knew he probably hadn’t slept for twenty hours. ‘I’ll send Debbie over with the camera,’ he said.
‘I’ve got my video camera with me,’ I replied.
‘We still haven’t been able to interview Anthony Dimitriou,’ said Brian, as if reading my thoughts. ‘They found a whole lot of antidepressants in his gut. I’ll get to him as soon as I can.’