LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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