Story by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Zero Sum

07 Out of The Fiery Furnace (1962)

The Humber Super Snipe purred up Barrenjoey Road from Newport, taking the climb over the headland in its smooth stride. Inside the car it was warm and comfortable. ABC radio was playing Alfred Hill’s Symphony No 8, “The Mind of Man”, and William Stafford was idly musing on the piece as he drove, noting similarities in the voicing of the orchestration that had an affinity with Arnold Bax’ “Tintagel”. Being contemporaneous composers probably explained that. Even high art has its fashions.

Catherine Stafford was sleeping in the passenger seat, her head resting on a small rough velvet cushion against the door pillar. There was the intimation of a smile on her sleeping face and William, taking a quick glance at his wife, felt that same old urgent twinge so often mistaken for the butterflies of anxiety, but which is nothing less than a visceral reaction to, and a physiological manifestation of the unexpected apprehension of love. William thought that Catherine was simply the most beautiful person he had ever known and believed himself unbelievably lucky that she had chosen him. 

Catherine had been very popular with the other young men at Sydney University. So much so that William, a very reserved young man from the country, had thought he didn’t stand an earthly chance. This sense of foregone failure must have seeped into his facial expressions giving William the caste of a poet lost in love.

He would see her in the Union, The Pleasaunce garden; always surrounded by eager young men and young women besotted with her beauty; but what William didn’t know was that Catherine, whilst charmed certainly, flattered of course, was not exactly bored, but certainly not interested in allowing these attentions to bloom into anything with the scent of spring. She had her eye on a young man with whom she had never even spoken. A physics student with the face of a sad poet.

She often spied him from the corner of her eye, and if their eyes met, it was only ever briefly. The young physics student would shuffle away as if suddenly remembering something he had to do. 

The truth was William just shattered every time he saw Catherine. How could he approach her? “I’m such a dummy!” he would tell himself. He began to believe that it was an impossible dream and, with First Year sliding towards examinations, he had better get down to the books or this “star crossing” might be the end of his University career. 

He made a point to avoid the places where he might see Catherine. If she so much as popped into his mind; something that happened unbidden several times a day; he would think of complex differential equations, hoping that the cognitive power required to mentally drive these calculations would leave little left for the winsome intrusions of Catherine’s beautiful face. 

So it was that for all of second and third year they hardly laid eyes on one another. They had no lectures in common. Catherine was studying Fine Arts. Her head was in Michelangelo’s clouds searching for the numinous. Across campus William’s head was in a cloud chamber searching for tiny evanescent particles that screwed themselves out of existence almost as soon as they had appeared. In his bleaker moments William equated these short-lived particles with his own chances with Catherine.

But just as absence is said to make the heart grow fonder; (perhaps in this case the archaic “fond” was more accurate. William certainly felt like a fool, and this programmed avoidance just made his yearning that much harder to bear); William tried but could not succeed in moving on from his infatuation with Catherine; who, in her turn, found that she spent a great deal of her time wondering and speculating about William Stafford.

Sublimation had seen them both do spectacularly in their Honours program and they were both contemplating what might be next when they both, separately, received invitations to a ball to be held at St Paul’s College to celebrate the end of the academic year.

William wasn’t going to go. He didn’t really get on with the Rugger Rowdies from the colleges. It wasn’t really him. Not that William was antisocial; it was that he was socially awkward to the point of embarrassment, and the prospect of having to make small talk, or worse, dance with a girl, filled him with dread. Besides, he assumed that Catherine wouldn’t be there so what was the point? “My God! What would be the point even if she was going to be there?” he found himself saying out loud. He’d never be able to overcome his shy diffidence to so much as even cross the floor in her general direction.

The world turns no matter the pressing concerns of the love lost; and so, in the week before the ball he had unexpectedly seen Catherine in the Quad resulting in the usual sudden sense of weightlessness such sightings brought forth in him. A friend with him at the time noted the look of confusion that swept across William’s face at the sighting, and quickly turned to spy the cause. The young woman coming out of the Nicholson vestibule was absolutely gorgeous, and he turned back at his friend with a look of respect, impressed that William had set his sights so high.

“You never know, Billy Boy; faint heart and the fair maiden, what?” His friend always affected silly British locutions, but William had to admit he was running out of opportunities, and excuses. He was going to take Lady Macbeth’s advice and screw his courage to the sticking place, and then hope like hell that things turned out better for him and Catherine than it did for the Macbeths. That was the problem with these old literary saws. They often came from places that didn’t really support their contemporary usage; a different world. 

William nodded to his friend, a gesture of both confirmation, and parting. He strode down the cloister on the western side of the quad towards the MacLaurin stairs. He had to go to the library anyway. He could fake a meeting he thought. Just run into her. It was a clumsy plan and didn’t take into account the fact that Catherine would almost certainly see right through it; and what would he say anyway?

As it turned out Catherine had seen him coming and planned her own cute meeting. She would call out to him and open with a question about X-Rays and their application in certifying the authenticity of old masters. Catherine had discovered that William was fast eclipsing his professors in the area of x-ray diffraction. 

One of William’s tutors, no doubt hoping to ingratiate himself with the beautiful Catherine, had let on that no less a person than Sir Lawrence Bragg, Australian head of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, youngest recipient of the Nobel for physics and world expert in X-ray crystallography, had offered William a position at that prestigious lab.  

Catherine had been working on “the first question” for some months. She wanted something that could combine their two separate interests and after receiving the intelligence on William from his tutor, she had finally settled on x-rays as the key to open the lock on William’s sociability. She hoped that it might help her see inside the diffident young man, draw him out so she could engage him in conversation.

So, like two of Williams accelerator particles, each with their own energy, each with their own purpose, they collided at the bottom of the MacLaurin stairs and something new was created between them. It had been just a light bump, followed immediately by hurried apologies and innocent smiles. William of course was then simply struck dumb, so Catherine piled up her courage and asked William about x rays and old masters. William, feeling on more solid ground here, burst into a speech giving Catherine all that he knew about x-rays and x-ray crystallography. 

It would have been obvious to any observer that Catherine was only understanding a tiny fraction of the information that flowed from William’s babbling lips. Yet she seemed to maintain a look of earnest interest; her eyes moving all over his animated face. She was trying to see through the young intellectual palimpsest. To see the William that only this morning she had admitted to herself, she loved. She knew it was silly. How can you love someone you’ve never really spoken to; but she was certain this was love none the less. 

She loved the way William spent a great deal of his time alone with his head in a book, occasionally looking up, as if to speculate on his reading, before looking back down and carrying on. She loved the way he walked around campus, his confident stride, his expressive face, curious and alive to all that was happening around him, but most of all she loved him for his version of “The Arab’s Farewell to His Steed” which she had seen him perform at a Victoriana night held in The Great Hall. 

His spoken performance had been accompanied by sentimentally sad piano; the accompanist dressed in full evening togs. William had on brown face and suitably draping Arab costume with a keffiyeh on his head. His rendition was full of hammy emotion fully appropriate to the Arab’s loss; his arms wide, his face to heaven, a picture of that loss; and as he spoke the lines, “I could not live a day, and know that we should meet no more!” Catherine had felt a powerful shiver move through her leaving her quite excited. She knew the line referred to the Arab’s steed, but my goodness! it had started something in her. Even her girlfriend noticed.

“Are you alright Cat? You aren’t feeling feint?”

“Oh, yes. A little.” Catherine let out a slow nasal breath. “No. It isn’t that. I’m alright. I’m fine.” A broad and quite frank smile took up post on Catherine’s face.

She was still reliving William’s performance, and its affect on her, when she realised that William had finished rattling on about x-rays and was looking at her with a certain expectation of response. She just smiled at him and that turned out to be the end of their beginning.

Side by side, they’d climbed the MacLaurin stairs to the library and made their way down to a table in the back, for privacy; where they had spent the next several hours just talking, very quietly of course. 

William had found it surprisingly easy to talk to Catherine and his reserve was gradually replaced with an eager, almost boyish enthusiasm; and she had found, confirmed at last, that he was more than just a handsome young physicist with a yen for bad Victorian poetry. He was blindingly bright, sharper, more incisive than a microtome. He seemed knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects, but he was also gentle and kind hearted, he was empathic and seemed most concerned that Catherine should be comfortable with him, that she thinks well of him. He need not have worried on that account. 

In the course of their peripatetic talk they covered an enormous amount of territory between them, finding commonalities and likenesses, shared tastes, values and similar aspirations for the future; and they discovered that they had both received Paul’s Ball invitations. So it was that when the librarian came to tell them it was closing time and they’d have to leave, both William and Catherine had begun to make certain basic assumptions about each other and their shared future. They didn’t discuss these assumptions. They didn’t need to. They had found one another.

At the ball they had sat alone and talked, they had laughed together, made silly intimate jokes together, even danced to some of the slower tunes played by the small orchestra. It had all turned out to be so simple, so easy. 

William was surprised how quickly he picked up the steps and by the end of the evening he had begun to think that he didn’t mind dancing at all. It wasn’t so hard and his occasional clumsy missteps were soon forgotten holding Catherine in his arms, the couple seemingly existing inside their own bubble of young love. It was a Champagne night that William and Catherine had toasted to the dregs.

As the night drew to its inevitable close, they picked their way through the debris of the ball, the tired orchestra playing a ragged “God Save The King”. Stepping over inebriated undergraduates they both realised they too were a little tiddly, but neither wanted the magic evening to end. It was late and they thought they might go into town, perhaps a bite and a glass of Frontignac at Lorenzinis. In its turn, but only after a few Frontignacs, more talk and long pauses where they simply looked at one another, even Lorenzinis closed.

William and Catherine found themselves sobering as the sun rose. They’d walked and talked their way down Elizabeth Street and finally to the Quay where the early ferries were steaming up, the warming morning air filling with sooty smuts as the boilers came to pressure.

The day shift was just coming on at the Maritime Services site as William and Catherine, leaning over the sea wall, looked down into the water filled with flashing and darting juvenile Yellowtails and sinuous swaying sea weed. William was trying to model the chaos of the water as it slapped against the slimy seawall while Catherine saw only the beauty of the fish and their weedy resort.  

They must have looked a sight amongst the early hurrying workers, William in his tailed dinner suit and Catherine in a ball gown and short cape. Some of the Maritime Services workers, noting the line of Catherine’s bottom as she leant over the sea wall, showed their appreciation of Catherine’s beauty with shrill wolf whistles; and when Catherine turned to acknowledge the men with a beautiful smile and a wave, they had spontaneously erupted in applause. William, at first put out, then awkward, relaxed and acknowledged that the men probably had no choice, just as he William felt he had no choice. Catherine was simply that beautiful.

William had not taken up the PhD offer from the Cavendish, instead he had taken up a late offer from a private philanthropic trust that had offered William a free hand and an open bank account to study Folded Space Time. It wasn’t what William had been working on but the offer, made by the man who would be his supervisor, and the possibilities the research program offered, sounded absolutely fascinating and so William had accepted. It would be a new adventure befitting William’s increasingly adventurous bent.

Catherine had decided that she wouldn’t pursue an offer from the Coulthard Institute in London. It had been very flattering that they had thought so highly of such a young woman; but if William was staying in Sydney, so would she.

They had married soon after in a local magistrates’ chambers. A small affair; just the happy couple, her parents, and Catherine’s great aunt Primula Gilfilian, or Mrs. G; as the family always called her. William’s father had not been able to attend. He was dealing with flooding on the family property. He sent his best wishes to them both and hopes that he’d be able to see them soon. He came a few months later, to much fanfare and feasting.

Mrs. G let go a bombshell over coffee at the end of the first family dinner, a kind of second wedding feast with William’s father as special guest. Given who they were the discussion, prior to Mrs. G.’s bombshell, had been lively and at times humorous, was none the less serious.

They’d been talking about education spending and discussing the Education Minister, Bob Heffron and his plans to establish more universities, particularly in the country. The general consensus had stabilised at “Good Thing” when Mrs. G, ’til now not really having much to contribute, piped in.

“Education is so important.” said Mrs. G in her brogue. “In no time you’ll be havin’ to make decisions aboot the wean.” Mrs G was looking at Catherine’s tummy. Catherine’s mouth was hanging slightly open. She still managed to make her way to Mrs. G’s meaning.

The rest of the table just looked from Mrs G to Catherine and back again.

“You didn’t know…, none a ya?” Mrs G asked the table. Catherine, her face moving from speechless immobility to a slow shake, mouthed “No.” The others just seemed stunned though smiles were beginning to crack across the faces.

“Oo, I am sorry to let the cat out of the bag like that; but y’are.” Mrs G took a sip of her soda water. She never drank alcohol.

William took his left hand off the Humber’s wheel and pushed it through the already greying hair at his temple. That was nearly ten years ago.

He looked at Catherine again and saw that she had been looking at him.

“We’re nearly home.” he said and smiled.

“Mmmmhmmm…..” was all Catherine said as she wriggled herself up straight in the seat.

They pulled into the drive of their home at Whale Beach. William turned off the ignition and took the key out. He was about to open the door when he saw someone in the shadows of the front veranda idly sitting on the swing seat there. William couldn’t make out who it was.

“I think we have a visitor.” he said to Catherine with an uncertain tone in his voice. “Strange time to come calling.”

Catherine, becoming a little more alert after her snooze during the drive home, looked in under the veranda. “Mmmmmm…” she said. Not committing to any particular feeling for their late night visitor.

William came round to Catherine’s side of the Humber and opened her door, offering is hand. She stepped out of the car and straightened her gown with a few brushes of her hands on the folds of the skirt. She kissed William briefly, a perfunctory kiss.

“You’d better see who it is.”

“Hhhmmmmm….”

William stepped up onto the veranda, still not able to make out who it was that was sitting on the swing. Suddenly the light came on and the front door opened. It was the babysitter, Mrs. Morrow.

“I thought it was you two.” she whispered, “Ssshhh, I’ve only just managed to get Bess off to sleep.” Mrs. Morrow then spied the man on the swing. A look questioning his presence crossed her face. She gestured to Catherine to come in, mistrusting this late night assignation. Catherine, with a look like she should know the man but just couldn’t place him, followed Mrs. Morrow inside leaving William on the veranda.

“Hello Will. Long time no see. I don’t think Catherine recognised me.” He didn’t get up.

“Eric…,” William turned to look for Catherine but she had already gone inside with Mrs. Morrow. “This is an unexpected surprise. I thought you were out of the country.”

“Just got back earlier this evening.” Eric’s tone was unusually serious, so William would be serious too.

“Well hello, Eric. To what do we owe the pleasure of your nocturnal presence. It must be more than five years….”

“Too long between drinks, I’ll grant you; and I wouldn’t normally dream of intervening in Catherine’s and your domestic idyll if it weren’t of the most immediate and urgent importance. There’s nasty work afoot Will and I’m afraid I need the Stafford family, and your very particular talents, to see us through to tomorrow; but first there’s some very difficult and confronting things we have to deal with.” Now he stood up, straight.

“Cup of tea….?” William had been hooked on the mystery of the thing.”

“Something stronger, perhaps…..” 

The mystery thickening as William, his hand in the small of Eric’s back, took them both inside.

• 

Zero Sum

The First Death (1985)

Story by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Bess finished reading the forty odd pages of text she’d printed from the work file found open on the desktop of a new Macintosh Computer sitting on an “L” shaped work bench that filled the centre of the room. She sucked her lips onto her teeth and made a smacking sort of sound, followed by a long “Hhhmmmmm…” as she spun slowly on the chair taking in the arrangement and content of the room.

Three of the walls were covered with floor to ceiling book cases assembled from recovered timber. They were full of an eclectic variety of fiction, history, science and philosophy. There were many literary novels and there was also a great deal of science fiction and some fantasy, though heavily biased to the literary end of those genres, as Bess took a cursory glance along the shelves. 

Here and there, sitting between books, in front of books, pinned to the bookcase timbers, were postcards, bits and pieces of pottery, small ornaments in china or glass, cheap souvenirs, even some fine pieces of brass trench art, certificates, old school pennants; for hockey, Bess noticed; and there was a proliferation of Kookaburra iconography. He liked Kookaburras. 

So the subject was well read, a bit of a Womble, and apparently had literary ambitions of his own; even if the subject matter of those current ambitions, hanging loosely from Bess’ hand, seemed bizarre and somewhat confronting.

The body of the young man had been taken away before Bess had arrived at the scene and the SOCO’s were now going through the rest of the house on Keegan Avenue in Glebe. She could hear them moving about at the back of the single story terrace.

They were talking quietly to one another as they worked; about ordinary things, mundane things, as though their professional task here was secondary to the social opportunity, as though it was everyday that they confronted the death of a perfectly healthy young man. Which of course, quite often, it was. Though generally speaking the subject was less well presented than in this case. 

This body had apparently looked like it had just put its head down for a quick power nap before forging on with the writing now printed out and hanging from Bess’ hand. The file’s metadata showed that he had applied the last full stop and saved the file at 10:09AM this morning. Liver temperature said that he had died shortly thereafter, though the coroner had been reluctant to make even a suggestion as to what had caused the young man’s demise. He’d expired in the chair she was sitting in. 

Bess stood up and folded the printed pages in half, pushed them into the back pocket of her trousers; she’d read the whole thing again later. 

Bess had wondered why she’d been taken off her current work and told to, very quickly, fly across town and take part in the investigation of this suspicious death; though, at this stage it was the man’s life that seemed suspicious rather than his death. 

“You’re gonna wanna see this Bess.” the Chief Super had said. 

Now she knew why; but this was just the beginning, there was going to be more. Bess knew that too.

For now it was time to go and see what, if anything, had turned up in the rest of the house.

It was a simple single story terrace in a street of identical terrace houses sitting atop a sandstone cliff above Pyrmont Bridge Road. There was no street frontage. Keegan Avenue was just an eroded, broken bitumen pathway that provided access to the front of the houses, enclosed on the cliff side by a rusting shoulder height steel fence.

The young man had turned the front room, with its obscured view of the city skyline over Harold Park, into his work room. He slept in the second bedroom, and the back of the house included a lounge room, kitchen, small bathroom and a laundry which doubled as an entry vestibule. The sort of home an artisan tradesman and his family would have enjoyed in the late 19^thcentury. A modest house of modest proportions, perfectly fitted to its current modest literary life.

Bess walked up the short hall, glancing into the bedroom where a forensic officer was taking photographs and bagging and tagging evidence that they might later rely on. 

“Find anything? Bess asked casually.

“Yeah there’s a number of letters to and from various persons. They might be good background to his recent activities, give some insight into what might have happened here.” The SOCO turned in place and pointed to a collection of a dozen or more photo albums. “Lots of photos, but from a quick look, very few of him.” 

“Hhmm, well, put them aside I’ll look at them all later. Nothing else?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Its a bedroom with all you’d expect in a bedroom, though he obviously had a thing for shoes.” the officer pointing to the bottom of an open wardrobe from which spilled multiple pairs of shoes in a spectacular variety of shapes, colours and uses. 

Bess smiled inwardly. A proto-novelist with a shoe fetish. Add a few more cute conceits and you’ve got the beginnings of a novel. Though how it might develop she had no idea of at the moment.

Bess walked through into the small lounge room. There was a high end sound system powered by a professional looking Crown amplifier which pushed a pair of bulky Tannoy monitors. There was a direct drive turntable and a seemingly brand new CD player. There was a large collection of LP’s and some CD’s; a copy of Bobby Bland and BB King’s “Together Again” on the turntable. 

“The thrill is certainly gone here.” Bess thought darkly. “So he valued his listening experience quite highly,” Bess thought to herself. “I wonder what else he listened to.” 

She flipped though the LP’s. There was some rock and pop, but he apparently had a preference for 20^thcentury composers. He liked the Brits. There was Walton, Williams and Britten, Elgar of course, interestingly Bax; but there was even more of the Europeans, Hindemith, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Ravel and many others including Berg and Stravinsky. Eclecticism once again. 

There was some jazz, mostly great solo artists who played sax, trumpet or piano, Roland Kirk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis of course, but also Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans trios, even one that Bess had herself. Bill Evans and Tony Bennett doing picks from the standard catalogue. Bess sang quietly as she looked through the rest of the albums. 

“Just when the fun is starting, Comes the time for parting. Lets just be glad for what we had, and what’s to come…” Bess was going to catch up with this young man “Some Other Time.” 

Bill Evans accompanying Tony Bennett on that singular album was often all Bess needed after a long day. A glass of Wolf Blass Colombard Cruchen Chardonnay and Tony singing just for Bess. So she had something in common with her unlucky subject, though the wine rack in the fire place had mostly reds, notably a Henschke 1976 “Hill of Grace”. “Top drop.” Bess thought.

There was no television but the walls were covered with art reproductions from dog eared post cards to full size prints, John Olsen’s “Five Bells” filling most of one wall. Bess had seen the original at the SH Ervin gallery in the rocks some years ago. It was an impressive piece.

A telephone sat atop a small sculpture made from zinc galvanised steel sheet held together with pop rivets. It was all odd twists, planes intersecting, a topological nightmare to cut. There was also a notepad and pen; the top page of the pad, while blank, showed the imprint of numbers and notes scribbled on the previous pages, and then torn off the pad.

“Can someone be sure to get the impressions off this note pad.” Bess asked the room.

“On my “to do” list.” a SOCO answered. 

Blue-tacked to the wall just above the phone was a post card of Pope Paul VI. Someone had defaced the image with blue biro; a discrete but erect penis tentatively emerging from the pontiff’s cassock, and a thought bubble, “Goonders! I Fink I got a Stiffy!”

Childish certainly and probably nothing, but it was funny in an embarrassing way. An absurdist foil for the great art covering the rest of the room. Bess smirked a little and admitted she liked this young man, or would have, if things were different. 

“Who found the body?” Bess asked no-one in particular.

“Woman next door. He was still warm. The Boss has just gone in there.” a SOCO replied without looking up from his work. He was carefully collecting ash from a small frog shaped ashtray with a rest forming part of the frog’s bottom lip. Bess noted that there were two rollies already safely ensconced in an evidence bag.

“Dope?” Bess asked as she fiddled with the printed pages in her back pocket.

“Yeah. Looks like it.”

“Hhhmmmm…..,” Bess consciously pulled her hand away from the pages. “I’m just off next door, if anyone needs me.” Bess walked out through the laundry vestibule and went next door.

As Bess swung open the neighbour’s back gate she noticed that the mailbox was stuffed with post. She grabbed the bundle of mail and walked inside.

The house was exactly like its neighbour except it was mirrored and Bess found the Senior Investigating Officer sitting with the neighbour in her lounge room. They both looked up as Bess came in.

“Please don’t let me disturb you. Just carry on. I’ll listen in if you don’t mind.”

The officer turned to the woman and made the introduction. “This is Inspector Bess Stafford. She’ll be providing some psychological assistance on this one. Bess, this is Wilhelmina Kinnane. She found the body.”

“Please, call me Billy.” The woman nodded a greeting and smiled absently as Bess handed her the post. “Bess, did you say? Bess Stafford?”

Bess nodded.

The woman gave Bess a closer look. She obviously didn’t understand why “psychological assistance” might be necessary; but more particularly, it seemed that the mention of Bess’ name had triggered something in her memory. She fidgeted with the mail.

“I think he may have mentioned you once or twice,” her tone suggesting this was an uncertain recollection but that there was definitely something about Bess’ name.

The SIO, an Inspector from the Glebe station, seemed surprised at that and looked from the neighbour to Bess and back again, hoping that something more illuminating might pass between them.

‘Hhmmm,” Bess responded, and said to the Glebe Inspector, ‘You didn’t see his computer then?.” The inspector shrugged a no. “So you have no idea why I’m here, do you, really?” The Inspector gave a more nuanced shrug no. Bess smiled softly at the Glebe Inspector and mouthed “I’ll fill you in later.”

She turned to the woman. “Regarding him knowing me; yes, he seems to have known me, or more accurately a version of me, a possible me; but I don’t know him from Adam. Curiouser and curiouser….” Bess shrugged elaborately and smiled at the woman, who smiled back, as if to say it was all a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, tucked inside an enigma.  

Bess was thinking that “psychological assistance” as a job description was a bit vague, perhaps even obscurantist, but there was certainly something psychological going on.

While the SIO continued the interview, collecting the boilerplate answers that every investigation needs, Bess looked around the room. The hall door was open and Bess could see the hallway rainbow illuminated through what she assumed to be coloured glass in the front door. There were bookshelves running down the party wall of the hall.

Back in the lounge room there was an upright Ronisch piano, some Mozart on the stand and other music books and manuscripts stacked higgledy-piggledy across the top of the upright. It had intact candle holders fitted with white wax candles, burned about halfway down. A tall narrow bookcase sat next to the piano, groaning under the weight of what appeared to be the entire Oxford Reference Set and a collection of well thumbed paperbacks.   

Along the wall, and on which Bess and the SIO sat, was an elaborate nineteenth century cane swooning divan with worn silk damask upholstery and cushions; “call me Billy” sat in the only other chair, fifties Scandinavian minimalism. In front of the closed fireplace sat an old AWA “Deep Image” black and white TV on a low table, a ragged looking tortoise shell cat asleep on top.

There were two professionally framed prints, both Pre-Raphaelites. One was the ever popular “Ofelia” by John Everett Millais; that Shakespearean heroin lying half submerged in the water, her red hair spread and drifting around her while her posey slipped from her loosening grip. Bess remembered a Fine Art lecture from her days at uni that had enumerated the flowers and their meanings. A mix of metaphors jumbled together, Millais had added additional blooms to those mentioned in Shakespeare’s text, creating a sort of semiotic density more suited to viewing than reading.

The other print was “Elegia di Madonna Fiametta” by Rosetti; Boccaccio’s heroine looking not unlike a younger version of the neighbour being interviewed; long red hair, noble nose and large widely-set blue-grey eyes, full lips. Bess tuned in to their conversation.

The mantle over the TV had a collection photos, one of which showed the dead man’s neighbour in cricket whites, padded and holding a bat. She was standing with a young man similarly attired, his trousers held up with a knotted tie.

“…..and he was quite bright, but he didn’t fit in at Sydney. I think it was the first time he’d ever really been free to think for himself. He is.., was, very self possessed and seemed to pursue his own curriculum which, increasingly, diverted from the curriculum he would be examined on. He tried first year twice and failed to complete on both occasions.” 

“How did he support himself? Did he work?”

“He always seemed to get by but he was never flush. To be frank I’m not really sure what he did to earn a living but I know he often wrote advertising copy for print ads. Just print ads. He told me once that he’d got them all fooled at McCann Erickson. Half a dozen lines of semiotic hooks and unconscious memes and hey presto a cheque. He seemed to be always working the edge of something and rarely showed any interest in the core of a matter.”

“Could you elaborate on that?”

“Well, look I could be completely wrong about this but he seemed always to be in a sense, in hiding, but also…, “questing”. The woman had put an uncertain tone to the word as though she were unsure whether that was exactly the right way to describe her neighbours daily life. “He was a nibbler.., at things. If the taste was not to his liking, he moved on to something else He bought the house ten years ago; just before his second attempt at first year. In that time he’s only held one job, you know, a regular job, and that was in the public service. It lasted less than a year. He’s worked with pop bands, on films, TV, that sort of pop cultural stuff. I liked him. I liked him a lot. He was good company, a good friend. I’ll miss him….” 

The neighbour’s recollections tailed off and she looked out the window. Bess noted the look of loss and confusion. She had been genuinely fond of her neighbour.

The Glebe Inspector looked over at Bess, and shrugged, his eyes asking whether or not Bess had any further questions. Bess nodded.

“Sorry to have to keep at this.” The woman blinked a few times, then gave them her attention. Bess continued, “Did he have many visitors, particularly in the last few days?”

“No,” the woman looked absently through her mail, “he never was all that much of a host. There was more activity when he first moved in. The occasional dinner party, sometimes just a group of people around to have a drink and talk. 

I sometimes have friends over to play poker. He became a regular and popular player. He introduced his favourite form of the game to us, 5 Card Hi Lo Screw Your Buddy. Absolutely cut throat game. We all loved it, win or lose.”   

“So no-one in the last few days, that you know of?”

“No, I’ve not seen anyone recently, and certainly no-one this morning. I’ve been in the back garden since just after breakfast, tidying up and wrangling my sweet peas back onto the trellis after the winds yesterday. I’d have seen anyone this morning. No one ever arrives at any of these houses by the front path.” This last sentence trailing off to a murmer. 

The neighbour was looking at a piece of her mail, a look somewhere between concern and confusion.

“This one’s for you. It’s his writing.” She said, awkwardly handing Bess a standard, white, DL envelope, no window, inscribed with her name in a clear hand, no rank, just her name.

A shiver ran through Bess as she took the envelope and opened it. There was a single white, unlined page; in the centre of which, in the same plain hand, was written, “It wouldn’t have been any good.” Bess handed the page to the Glebe Inspector. He read the note, looked at Bess, turning the note so that the message was towards her, his head tilted slightly, his eyes wide with enquiry.

“I have absolutely no idea what it means.” she said quietly, her mind racing through possibilities, probabilities and getting nowhere. Her hand went to the folded printout in her back pocket. “I suppose he’s trying to tell me something, but not knowing what “it” is that wouldn’t “be any good”, I’m afraid I’m clueless.”

The neighbour had turned to look out the window again. The Glebe inspector looked at Bess and kicked his head to the side as if to say, “let’s get out of here.”

Bess pulled her lips back, nodded and let out a short nasal huff. They thanked Ms. Kinnane for her time and said they might be back if they needed more from her. Bess touched the woman gently on the shoulder. She turned from the window and Bess said, “I’m very sorry about your friend. Sudden death is hard to come to grips with. If you need to talk…” Bess gave the woman her card. Bess smiled softly at the woman again, which seemed to perk her up a bit; and then followed the Glebe Inspector out through the back of the house.

When they were out in the lane Bess asked if she might take the computer with her, as well as the photo albums and letters.

“Take whatever you need, just be sure to maintain the integrity of the chain of evidence.” He gave Bess a searching look. “What was on the computer?”

“It looks like the beginning of a novel about me, but its set thirty years from now, just before my retirement.” Bess said flatly.

“Really! How’s that?” Incredulity all over his face. “But you say you don’t know him. How the hell does he know you?”

“At the moment I have absolutely no idea. Maybe his notes and working files will turn up something. I started the day working on a forensic psychiatry report for the Chief Super and ended up here. You now know as much as I do. Look, this is your investigation and you’ll have to carry it. My part seems to be of another order of weirdness entirely. It may be nothing or it may be everything, but right now, I can’t say.”

Bess and the Glebe Inspector went back into Number 5 and he helped Bess gather up the photo albums, letters and the computer and put them in Bess’ car. It was going to be a long night.

Story by Warrigal Mirriyuula

 

Zero Sum

02 An Open Investigation (2019)

It had been a long, hot, 5 hour drive out from Wellington as Bess Stafford finally nosed the  Landcruiser into a parking spot outside the Bourke Police Station. She threw it out of gear, pulled the handbrake and killed the engine.

The sudden, simultaneous silence of the diesel, the air-conditioning and Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” on the audio system, felt more a palpable presence, than a sudden absence. The early afternoon heat immediately began to broil the interior of the truck.

Bess took up the song under her breath, “I go out walking after midnight”, undid her seatbelt and gathered up her phone and hat. “I’m always walking, after midnight, searching for you”. She looked at the thick old manila and paper file sitting on the passenger seat, decided she didn’t need it and just gave it a pat as if to say, “I won’t be long”. She opened the door and stepped out into the hard light.

The heat was like a smack in the face. She pushed her phone into the thigh pocket of her trousers, adjusted her aviator style sunglasses and pushed her Akubra onto her head, tugging the front brim down low.

The heat was intense, the display in the truck had said 45; hot, even for Bourke. The air was incredibly dry, Bess ceased singing as she looked about, up and down the main thoroughfare. Her drill cotton shirt began to cling as the sweat started to run on her body.

There was no-one out on the street. Not a bird in the sky, not even the occasional dog bark. Even the insects were quiet. It was too bloody hot!

A few hundred metres down a B Double cattle truck rumbled through an intersection kicking up a low, translucent cloud of dust in its wake. The heavy growl of the engine, the spit and hiss of the air brakes died away and the dust just hung in the hot still air, suspended in the heat plume rising off the tar. The street went quiet again, the silence seeming to intensify the heat.

Bess walked over to the station and under the low verandah that surrounded the old colonial building. Glad to be back in the shade, even after so short an exposure to the early afternoon sun, she pushed through the heavy single government-green wooden door into the reception area. The high ceilinged, cool interior exerted a quick chill on Bess. She smiled and shivered delightedly as she took off her hat and wiped her brow and the interior band of the hat with an old hankie she kept wadded in a pocket for just this purpose.

It was quiet inside the station too. The whir of a ceiling fan and the occasional crackle and unintelligible bit of yak on the LAC frequency in the com.’s room off a corridor to the side was all that disturbed the peace and quiet of the station interior.

A ruddy faced young constable with a fresh haircut was behind the counter sorting a sheaf of papers into some kind of order. He held the sheets like a hand of oversized cards and deftly pulled a page out and inserted it higher in the order. The tip of his tongue was just visible between his lips.

He noticed Bess and hurriedly, self consciously, put the papers down and ran his left hand over his hair. He smiled his best public service smile.

“Yes missus, what can we do for ya t’day?”

Bess removed her sunglasses, “That’s Detective Superintendent “Missus” to you young constable,” Bess smiled as she flipped her warrant card at the young officer.

The young constable leaned over to take a look at the card and badge. “Yes Ma’am, sorry Ma’am”, the now straightened junior replied, “What can I do for you? Who do you want to see?”, he asked hurriedly, now at attention.

“This your first posting?” Bess asked fondly. She had a soft spot for embryo coppers and smiled warmly at the young bloke, “You can relax. I’m just here as a courtesy. I’m passing through to a place over the river. An old open case and I thought, before my retirement, I might just give the whole thing the once over again, you know, just in case.” Bess’ eyes brightened and focused on the constable’s face.

“You weren’t born round here were you?” she asked him directly, “You might be able to help with some background.” There was a little hope in the question but these days young constables were placed all over.

“Nah, I grew up round Hexham just out’a Newcastle.” The young constable visibly relaxed and leant on the counter, “You’re right, this is my first posting.” He smiled back.

“Well good luck to you Constable Hourigan.” offered Bess generously, spying the young man’s light blue name badge. “Keep it tidy, play a straight bat and you’ll do alright;” Bess smiled again, “but as I said this is just a courtesy to say I’m in the area and I might like to drop in some time in the next few days to go through your intelligence files and old case notes.”

O’ yeah,” he nodded, “well that shouldn’ be a problem.”

“If you could let the Boss know I’m about. I’m not sure where I’ll be staying but I’ll call once I’ve booked in and let you know. In the meantime here’s my card with my mobile and email details.” Bess had opened her wallet and taken out a standard police card. She handed it over as she flipped and clipped her wallet and stuffed it back in the right rear pocket of her worn desert camo trousers.

“Righto. No worries.” The constable looked at the card. Except for the details it was the same as the ones in his own wallet.

“I’ll let the Super know when he gets back in later. He’s down at the town hall with some councillors. We’ve had some trouble lately with bloody kids going joy riding and then torching the stolen ride. Its a real bastard, if you’ll excuse my French.” The young constable was trying to give the impression that he was intimately involved with the matter. “We’ve had three of them so far.” he said shaking his head.

“Bloody kids, eh?” Bess said shaking her head too. “Not a lot else for them to do, I suppose. Well I’m sure you’ll sort it out in the end,” Bess offered indulgently, “but right now I have to get on, so I’ll say hoo-roo until next time.” Bess gave the young bloke her best smile, turned and walked out the door.

The sudden heat felt like a pressing iron, as she stepped out again into the hard hot light. Pulling her brim down and pushing her sunglasses up her nose, she walked over to the Landcruiser, got in and lit it up, pushing the AC to maximum.

“…I walk for miles along the highway, Well, that’s just my way”, Patsy sang as Bess reversed out, and headed down Oxley Street, turning right on Sturt and driving through to the old Bourke Dock on The Darling.

Back inside the station young Hourigan entered Bess’ visit in the log and put her card front and centre on the counter so he could pass it over to the Super immediately he returned. He didn’t go back to sorting the papers. Instead he thought about Detective Superintendent Stafford and her brief visit.

She was an odd stick, he thought. She said she was nearing retirement but she looked quite vigorous. She was short, only about 165cm, and had a little barrel of a body, big arms and thick legs, big bum and bust. “Solid”, was how young Hourigan thought of her, “but nice with it.”, he added in his mind. She had a thick head of unruly salt and pepper curls, cut short and allowed its own way; and really bright green eyes. When she smiled her chubby cheeks dimpled.

She’d been dressed for Bourke he noted. All hardwearing practical fabrics, strong boots, good hat, and it all looked like it had a working life before the visit. He’d noted that her watch had one of those old fashioned bands that included a leather cover for the watch face. Hourigan’s grand dad had one like that.

But it wasn’t what Bess looked like that fascinated him, it was that he’d felt she was special in some way he couldn’t put his finger on. Like that smile hid some kind of knowing that he was yet to understand.

It had been a very brief visit and she’d been nice enough, she hadn’t really pulled rank on him, she seemed to understand who and what he was. She’d known he was new. That could’ve been just sharp observation or maybe it was the way he’d reacted when she’d pulled her warrant card. For a moment he felt like an arse, and then he thought that she wouldn’t have seen it that way. In the end he just stopped at the fact that the brief encounter had lifted his spirits. He felt good and she’d smiled so nicely.

He went back to sorting the papers and didn’t think of Bess again until the Super came through the door about an hour later.

When young Hourigan handed over the card and gave a brief report of the visit, the Superintendent took one look and stopped, still, staring at the name on the card. Slowly a vague smile began to form at the corners of his mouth as he just looked at the card.

“Bess Stafford, ay? Well I’ll be buggered. I wonder what she wants.” he muttered, scratching his sunburned chin as his smile broadened to light up his entire face. He looked at the younger policeman. “You’ve never heard of D.Supt. Stafford have ya Bob?” The Super had never used Hourigan’s first name, let alone the familiar diminutive.

“No sir.”

Young Hourigan could see that even though his commanding officer hadn’t been about for the visit, just the mention of D.Supt. Stafford had a similar effect on the Boss as her visit had on him.

“You’ve been in the presence of greatness, young Bob, You’ll never forget her.” the Super said, then drawing his breath in and looking at the young Constable. “She’s one of the best investigators I’ve ever met and I don’t know of any better when it comes to interview technique. Mind like a steel trap, that woman.”

The Super warmed to his theme and drew in to lean in on the counter with the young constable before continuing in an almost conspiratorial tone.

“I saw a video once of her interviewing a Serbian war criminal. It had the transcript running over the picture at the bottom, you know, like the news.”

She was on secondment to the International Warcrimes Tribunal in the Hague. She got a complete confession from this evil bastard; entirely against his will. It was breathtaking to watch. She remained completely calm throughout, but pushing his buttons mercilessly, smiling that smile of hers all the while. The rage in him as he admitted his crimes to her was unbelievable. It cost him every time he uttered a word, and when she finally broke him and he let it all go, I swear, if he wasn’t restrained he’d have killed her with his bare hands, and all the while he’s spitting and shouting chapter and verse as though his crimes were actually grand final wins. He was a bad bugger.

Well Bess, she just sat back out of the range of most of the flying spit, an impassive, smiling face, a quiet reasoning voice occasionally prompting him to greater revelations of his bastardry. When he’d finished threatening and raging at Bess he just sat there, shackled in that sad little cell with a look of triumph, like he ruled the world; only realising as Bess got up to leave, that he’s just confessed to multiple rapes and mass murder!”

“For Christ’s sake Bob, she speaks fluent Serbian! I can’t even remember my school boy French!”

“Wow….” slowly, was all young Hourigan could muster.

The super looked at the card again, and again shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how she did it.” A look of uncertainty flitted across the Super’s face but then, just disappeared.

“She’s got a fabulous smile though, hasn’t she?. Did she give you one of her smiles?” the Super asked, still looking at the card. He didn’t wait for the answer. He just wandered down the corridor to his office, went in and closed the door, leaving young Bob Hourigan to wonder just what it was, apart from speaking Serbian, that constituted the “greatness” that the Super had alluded to.

He sat down behind the reception desk and Googled “Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Ruth Stafford” on the station computer. She’d had a storied career apparently and after futzing through the results, catching a paragraph here, an image there, he finally settled on a YouTube ENG video of Bess back when she was a Sergeant.

She had been involved in the search for a child missing for several days in rugged terrain. The video showed the parents, and Bess dressed much the same as she had been earlier, with the little boy on her knee clinging to her as if she were life itself, Bess telling the assembled media pack that apart from being very hungry and sporting some bruises and scratches, the little bloke was as right as rain.

“Aren’t you little mate?” she’d asked the boy, who smiled a huge smile and hugged Bess even harder. Bess had then looked directly into the lens of the camera and smiled too.

It was a great smile. Young Bob Hourigan hit pause and “full screened” the image, pushing himself back on his chair, he raised his hands up behind his head, laced his fingers and leant all the way back, his eyes never leaving that smile.

Bess was down at the river. It was a few degrees cooler by the water. The Darling was its usual sluggish low muddy self. A bit of good rain in southern Queensland a month ago had sent a of pulse of water flowing down the course, but as Bess stood at the rail of the old Bourke Dock she could see that the water today was now barely up to where the thick wooden piles drove into the dry bank just above the low water level.

She made her way down to the slack brown water by way of the stairs under the dock. With water levels in the river so unreliable the dock had been built with several landings at different levels that made it possible for passengers to get on and off the river steamers no matter the level of the river.

Down by the water Bess sat down on one of the worn wooden steps, pulled out her phone and went to the folder of case notes and images. She slowly swiped through, pausing on some, passing through others, trying to let her imagination take up the mental slack and begin to focus.

Bess had picked up the case when the body of the an unidentified “academic” had vanished from its locked cooler at the morgue, leaving no evidence that it had ever been there. The stainless steel of the tray was absolutely clean, not a trace of the frozen body that had been lying there for years.

She noted again as she had so many times since she’d been engaged in this investigation, that the face of “Eric Hansen”, a Bourke local who died over fifty years ago and her reason for being in Bourke, was just like the face of the dead man at Sydney University; biometrics confirmed through a friend in the AFP; though showing the wear of thirty odd years of additional life in the relentless arid environs of Bourke.

Problem was, Hansen 01 had been dead over forty years before the putative Hansen 02 had shuffled off his mortal in the stacks of Fisher Library, and then had the temerity to disappear completely from the morgue a few years later. It was all very confusing and not a little contradictory.

That curious alphanumeric string was the ticket to the two Hansens connection. At first impossible to decipher without a “key”, it was now revealed as a publicly available Geohash of a location which turned out to be Hansen’s abandoned place over the river from Bourke. That had led to the State Archives and the file on the earlier death in that location. Which facts were interesting in themselves in that the Geohash system had not been released for public use until 2008, fully two years after the discovery of the Library body. Maybe that body had known the young Brazilian Geohash inventor Gustavo Niemeyer, Bess had thought.

She’d contacted Niemeyer in Brazil and he had very graciously thanked her for the fascinating contact. He’d never been involved in a police investigation, but his response to the mortuary portraits Bess had emailed was “No, I don’t know this man, and I’ve asked amongst colleagues that worked with me in developing the Geohash system and none of them remember an Australian being in touch prior to release.”

Then there was the assumed date at the end of the string. A geohash doesn’t have or need a date, usually.

So how did the dead man know about Geohash and be able to provide the location of a spot several kilometres outside of Bourke a few years before that system was even available? And the date, or assumed date, would have been 13 years in the future at the time the unknown man inscribed it on the pad found with the body at the scene. What could a future date mean to a dead man?

There were too many impossibles and precious few probables and the whole process had taxed the oft repeated investigative maxim, keep an open mind and follow the evidence. Problem here was, as Bess thought on the crazy and the curious, the evidence was leading her to cloud cuckoo land. Not a place Bess had ever felt comfortable in, though she had to admit, she’d been there often enough in her peripatetic career.

Bess continued to swipe through the gallery until she came upon the historical images she’d gathered at the State Library from the late 19^th century and early 20^th century when the Port of Bourke was one of the busiest ports in Australia. She wanted the images for backgrounding, to get the feel of the place.

As she interrogated the images she found herself mentally “falling” into them, their irresolved, grainy, black and white transmuting to the blown out light and sun bleached colours of reality in early Bourke. Bess relaxed and let her imagination expand.

Soon she was seeing the old time paddle-steamers and barges tied up at the dock and along the river bank. All shallow draft vessels, their broad flat decks piled high with bales of wool and corded wood for the boilers. The wharf labourers shouting to one another as the steam cranes lifted bales of wool, farm machinery, even horses and other live stock, onto or off the craft moored at the dock. In Bess imagination the dock was a maelstrom of noisy activity and from out of the dust and smoke walked a tall thin man, a “roll your own” hanging from his lip. The man stopped and looked directly at her. She noted a look of anticipation, and maybe, just a hint of trepidation.

Bess snapped back to the now. Had she just seen the face of Hansen, the man, in life? Was that him? It couldn’t be. It was just her imagination playing tricks in the heat; but the figment had looked directly at her, in her own imaginings. What was her unconscious trying to say? Bess let that question hang for the moment. Her unconscious had a way of revealing itself according to its own imperatives. Sometimes Bess even thought that below her conscious life there was another life playing out by a completely different set of rules.

Bess climbed back up the stairs and walked back to the Landcruiser. She’d check into the Riverside just up the road. She liked its old Bourke feel and all that beeswaxed woodwork she’d seen on the internet.

After checking in she had taken a shower and put on some fresh clothes before ordering sandwiches and a pot of tea. “Real leaf tea please, brewed in a pot with boiling water, and can you bring me lots of biscuits. I love biscuits”

She called the station to let them know she had checked in and she had another brief chat with Constable Hourigan. Young people always opened up to Bess and she enjoyed their youth and enthusiasm, their innocence and ernest commitment. They had yet to see what she had, do what she had, and dealt with the personal consequences.

They’d spent a few pleasant minutes chatting about his experience at the training college in Goulburn. He’d asked her what she was after, but she had deflected that line of questioning, not really being able to say just how she had arrived in Bourke for fear of being thought soft. Her reasons were compelling to her but she wasn’t sure she could explain that reasoning without it sounding like a science fiction fantasy. She’d cut the conversation short as she realised just how much revision and reading she had to do before tonights exploratory excursion.

By the time the tea and sandwiches arrived she had opened the old manilla file and spread its contents across the floor. She ate one of the sandwich quarters whole and then grabbed another. She was quite hungry. She poured herself a black tea and sipped the tea and chewed on the sandwiches as she stood in the middle of the spread documents, slowly turning to take in the material arrayed about her.

In Bess’ mind these original and photocopied documents, images, handwritten notes, scraps and bits and pieces of “evidence” all represented data points in a developing cloud of points from which she hoped would emerge a discernible pattern or picture. The problem with this case, or rather these cases, was that there were precious few reliable data points to map. As she had pondered on the matter her mind had thrown up all sorts of speculative points, possible points yet to be observed, confirmed, but which had a persuasive resonance that found a mesmeric harmony with the real, but that didn’t make them real. Bess had to admit this wasn’t like any other case she had ever had to work on and she further realised, now she was in Bourke, she was in for both the penny and the pound. The problem had her by the mind and it wasn’t letting go.

Story by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Zero Sum

01 A Confounding Death and an Impossible Disappearance (2006 and 2009.

The note found at the scene simply read, “It wouldn’t have been any good.”, under which was an alphanumeric string of 9 characters, a hyphen, and then five more characters, “r4xw28n6w-15f19”, all written in a clear blue biro hand with minimal embellishment in the middle of the top page of a plain A4 paper pad. There was no explanation as to what “it” may have been, or why “it” wouldn’t have been “any good”, or what the alphanumeric string signified.

There had been no doubt that the body found slumped over a desk in the stacks of Fisher Library at Sydney University was dead; though it looked as if in life it had just put it’s head down for a quick nap. Perhaps “lifeless” would have been a more accurate descriptor.

In time the Coroners Report read, “Cause of Death: Undetermined” and that seemed to be an end to it. There’d been no missing person fitting the corpse’s description, no one had claimed the body and there had been no identifying documents, not even a tag or brand on any of the clothes; which were all clean, of good quality if somewhat rural in style, and had been brought to that comfortable softness that characterises well worn favourite clothes.

The wallet had no driver’s license, credit cards, membership or security cards, no health-fund or Medicare card, in fact no cards, not even a Fisher Library card; which alone begged many unanswerable questions. It was empty except for a fat wad of cash, almost $2,000, all in crisp new non sequential 50’s and 100’s, but chasing that trail also led nowhere. The notes had been distributed to ATM’s all over the country and there was no telling how they had all ended up in the same wallet having apparently not suffered any visible wear and tear.

There were no marks on the body suggesting violence or some final paroxysm or fit. Indeed the body seemed to be that of a tall lean, unusually healthy late middle-aged man. The toxicologist found nothing out of the ordinary and, also unusually for a person of an age finally agreed as “early to mid sixties”, there was no trace of the usual drugs often found in such investigations. No statins for cholesterol, no agonists or antagonists for various problems associated with senescence, no mood modifiers, nothing, not even aspirin. Traces of THC were found but it was impossible to say how it had been taken. Besides, it couldn’t have contributed in any way to the death.

The contents of the gut indicated that the man had last ingested porridge, orange juice, tea and a piece of vegemite toast. A modest breakfast, but apparently no lunch or dinner.

In the end no cause of death could be determined. Privately the pathologist had admitted to colleagues that the body was a mystery. It had simply stopped, all systems simply shut down and the body heat fading to room temperature, but there was none of the usual indicators of sudden death. Indeed, if not for the palpable fact of the body’s lifelessness, it seemed that if some animating force could be applied in some way, the body would wake up, perhaps shake its sleepy head and get back to its calculations.

The note made no sense without context, but if it hadn’t been for that cryptic missive there’d have been no speculation about suicide at all, and being unable to determine the identity of the body meant that it was impossible to pursue that line of enquiry in any event. Suicide was possible but it would take further evidence as to how the body had self terminated to support that proposition, and that evidence was completely lacking.

Besides, was the note a suicide note? It seemed a little ambiguous. The alphanumeric string was worked on by cryptographers but to no avail. They just couldn’t crack it, though they assured the investigators that if they had the “key” they’d have it deciphered in no time.

The pens and pad on the desk were common brands you could buy at the Co-Op or The Union, and while a few of the librarians said that they recognised the man, none of them had seen him on the day he was found in the alcove. None of them knew his name or what he had been doing in the stacks. He’d been coming to the library for a few weeks, regularly at 10 AM each morning, and always occupied the same alcove on level six, head down over the books or working assiduously, manipulating data on a laptop.

That laptop had been of great interest to the forensic IT people until it was determined that there was something about the way the operating system and the internal programming worked that just produced nonsense when the device’s higher functions were accessed by the investigators. That operating system, they said, was similar to Linux, but that it did things that Linux couldn’t do, and they were sorry, but they couldn’t work out how. Their investigations had to stop when the device finally ceased working altogether after they’d opened it up to try and get a look at the motherboard. There was no brand on the laptop, nor on any of the internal components. The spooks at ASIO and The ONA were contacted, but while they were more than happy for a copy of the data stored on the laptop to come to them, they uncharacteristically claimed unequivocally that the dead man was not one of theirs, nor did they have anything that might add to the investigation. None the less they did demand that the laptop be forwarded to them immediately the police investigation of the device was concluded. They had sent an agent to personally accompany the device to their Canberra lab where the device dissolved into the miasma that is “national security”. Shhhh…, not a word.

The files cached in the memory indicated that the man had been working on calculations to do with gravity waves and dark energy in the Zero Point Field, but some of the mathematics and many of the algorithms were entirely novel. It wasn’t that they were wrong, it was that no-one the police or coroners investigator had contacted for an insight into the work could provide anything other than a shrug and the suggestion that the work was obviously brilliant but unfortunately incomprehensible beyond a certain point in the calculations. Curiously, when the body was discovered there had also been an old, well worn bamboo slide rule in the body’s left hand, the cursor marking a solution for which the problem remained a complete mystery.

As time passed and the investigation ground down for want of good information; the body went from being that mystery, to a conundrum, and finally a simple curiosity. As no one had come forward to claim the body and it had remained unidentified and the cause of death remained unknown; the body went into refrigerated storage and there it stayed, waiting on further information before its final disposition could be determined.

After almost twelve months of fruitless investigation everyone involved in the matter had moved on to other more pressing and tractable problems and the death in the alcove on Fisher level 6 slipped from memory.

That was until a graduate student working late in the stacks one night had been disturbed by a lone voice in a nearby alcove remonstrating with itself over a number problem. The student had been researching an academic paper she was to present at a conference on Jane Austen so the mathematical mumblings from the other alcove made no sense to her literary sensibilities, but it was disturbing to her concentration so she determined to say a word or two to her noisy neighbour.

When she looked all the alcoves were empty. She looked again at the next alcove on each side. Still nothing, in fact she determined that she was the only person on level six as far as she could tell.

The experience was a little unnerving and had put an end to her study. As she left the library she stopped at the front desk and told the sole librarian on late shift what she thought had happened. As she told the story to an obviously bored student librarian, a security guard, who had up to this point been watching his favourite cop drama on a nearby portable TV, his big booted feet up on the desk, eating from a Chinese takeaway container, put down his food and turned to look at the student.

“Alcove 4 on level six did you say?” He fixed her with his best narrow eyed, rent-a-cop stare.

Somewhat surprised by the man’s intervention in the conversation, her reply, “ er, yes…”, was as uncertain as the guard seemed cryptically interested.

Not taking his eyes off her and obviously looking for a reaction, he said, “That’s were that guy died a few years ago. I don’t think they ever worked out how or why.”

“Oh…, well then…,” was all the academic offered.

A little disgruntled that the mystery of the thing seemed to have failed to light the literary academic’s imagination, the guard’s face briefly assumed a caste of disappointment and he reluctantly decided, “Well, I better go and take a look then I s’pose.”

He brushed some crumbs and scraps of noodle off his shirt, swung his legs down and got up out of the chair, leaving the cop drama to play out unwatched.

Making great show of adjusting the various tools on his utility belt; his few symbols of empowerment; twirling, then pushing his heavy MagLite into its ring holster and adjusting his radio, he set off across the lobby to the lifts.

Level 6 was silent and the air still, filled with the faint smell of slowly decaying paper and old ideas slumping into a forgotten superannuation. The guard moved down the aisles checking all the alcoves, leaving 4 till the last.

When he finally turned into number 4 he was surprised to be confronted by a man hurriedly exiting the alcove, his arms full of paper files. They crashed together and the files went everywhere. Both stooping to pick up the scattered papers, their heads cracked together in a continuing comedy of collision.

The man, rubbing his head with one hand was sweeping up his papers with wide swings of his other arm, muttering annoyedly about “being late” and gathering the scattered papers to his chest while the guard picked up the outliers.

Over in the lift lobby a bell rang indicating the arrival of a lift on L6. The guard pivoted to the lobby, absently handing the papers he’d collected to the man now behind him. The lift doors opened but no-one alighted. After a moment the bell rang again and the doors closed. The level display indicated that the lift was returning to the ground floor The guard turned to comment to the man expecting him to still be gathering the scattered papers.

The aisle was entirely empty; no man, no scattered files, nothing.

The guard, his mind spinning in place wondering where the man had disappeared to, extended himself cautiously up to his full height, hitched his utility belt for courage and hesitantly entered the alcove. It too was entirely empty, except for the faint whiff of something just managing to hang in the air; not smoke, nothing to really get your nose into, just a burnt, composty smell that seemed to fade as he sniffed for it, to be overlain once more with the musty fragrance of old books.

The guard was not a man of great imagination and he soon exhausted the possible answers as to where the disappearing academic had gone, and he was definitely gone. A quick further check showed that L6 was unoccupied. He’d thrown a “hoy” into the fire-stairs. There was no reply. He laughed nervously and shook his head. The bloke must have found some other way out, maybe…

In the lift on the way back to the ground floor the guard determined that he wasn’t about to put himself on offer for the ridicule of his workmates. Disappearing academics in the stacks would make him a joke. He would say nothing, and it wouldn’t be entered in the night’s Incident Log.

When the bell rang and the lift doors opened on the main lobby he strode confidently out of the lift, across the floor and took up his former position, feet up on the desk, Chinese food, now cold, back on his paunch. The Austen academic had gone. The junior librarian was playing a game on his phone and barely noticed the guard’s return.

The guard re-committed himself to shovelling the cold food into his mouth, “Nuf’thin…’ere.”, he finally said over his shoulder to the librarian, the words finding their way around a mouthful of cold Hokkien noodles and fried rice.

The librarian, who had never been interested anyway, grunted; a minimalist, non-committal response. They both relaxed with their seperate entertainments and their seperate thoughts, and again the matter of alcove 4 on level 6 just slipped back into the mist of library memory.

That night, at the morgue across Parramatta Road from the Uni, something related but totally unprecedented had happened. A body in cold storage had disappeared from its assigned space in the locked long term cooler. Those bodies were only checked once a month and the last check had only been three days ago.