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Golden Relic. Lindy Cameron
Читать онлайн.Название Golden Relic
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780992492526
Автор произведения Lindy Cameron
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Издательство Ingram
‘No thanks. I have to go to the office first, for a quick briefing, so I’ll walk.’ Sam bent down and gave Jacqui a peck on the cheek. ‘See you at home later. Unless of course you ring that little cubicle of mine and arrange a date with the boring Ben Muldoon.’
‘Hey,’ Jacqui shrugged. ‘I usually get my thrills vicariously by regaling my friends with lurid and fictitious accounts of your adventures as a secret agent. Even boring Ben has got to be better than that.’
An hour later Sam alighted from a Swanston Street tram in front of the sweeping steps of the green-domed State Library of Victoria. She was still trying to work out how a museum curator had been found murdered in a building that hadn’t been a museum for over 12 months. But then, the rather disjointed briefing she’d been given by her new boss in Canberra via her old boss in Melbourne had been confusing on almost every level.
A man was dead, possibly murdered but probably not, in a building that no longer had anything to do with the museum, yet someone from the museum had bypassed the Victoria Police and the State Government completely and placed a call directly to the Federal Minister for Cultural Affairs, Sam’s soon-to-be boss. And why? Because that someone was convinced the man’s death was an “act of sabotage with international ramifications”.
Good grief! Sam passed between the columns of the Library’s imposing facade. She was often perplexed by how fast the paranoia virus was spreading through society as it rushed towards the new millennium, and sometimes worried that it might be contagious.
As if to confirm that, a woman – well-spoken, middle-aged, wearing a twin-set, pearls and a crisp tartan skirt – stopped in front of her, nodded and said: ‘The government will get you, you mark my words.’
Sam couldn’t help herself. ‘It’s my job to get you,’ she said.
Mrs-Middle-Class sidled away, swearing under her breath, and listing what sounded like the ingredients for a batch of lamingtons.
Sam muttered a few words to herself, like “dipstick” and “one too many diet pills”, to reassure herself that all was hunkey-dorey in her world and then turned back to the task at hand. She calculated that it had been at least fifteen years since she’d set foot in this grand old building but she knew well the peace and quiet that lay beyond those unpretentious front doors. She’d spent several months at a desk under the impossibly high vaulted ceiling of the Library’s Reading Room while she finished her Criminology thesis and wondered how they cleaned the windows.
Sam’s memories fled in several horrified directions as she entered the foyer to find it packed with a noisy, ratty, pubescent horde in untidy uniforms. Her initial head count produced a tally of a thousand and three high school students; her second count was a more realistic thirty-three – and one poor demented teacher. Sam made her way over to a uniformed police officer who was guarding against any incursions into the roped-off hallway behind him and, judging by the look on his face, was also responsible for scanning the crowd for terrorists. When she flashed her badge he smiled with relief and explained he was her escort.
‘Can you fill me in?’ Sam asked as they made their way into the section of the building that had, for nearly a century until the previous year, housed the various collections of the Museum of Victoria. Sam wondered where all those artefacts, those wondrous things she recalled from childhood visits, were being stored while the new Melbourne Museum was under construction.
British flintlock cavalry pistol, .590 calibre, recovered after the Indian Mutiny in 1857. Brought to Victoria by Viscount Canning, Governor General of India 1856-1862.
Sam could picture the label for the handgun as clearly as if she was looking at it now. Then there was her favourite exhibit: stuffed, encased in glass and towering over her, Sam had been no less impressed by Australia’s greatest racehorse than her grandfather who had actually watched Phar Lap win the 1930 Melbourne Cup. ‘Where’s Phar Lap?’ Sam asked, interrupting Constable Rivers who had been telling her he couldn’t tell her much, except that the deceased’s body, lying by his work bench in one of the storage rooms, had been found by an assistant curator at nine that morning.
‘I’ve no idea where he is,’ Rivers said.
‘Does the forensic pathologist know the cause of death?’
‘Phar Lap’s or the guy downstairs?’ Rivers asked.
‘Phar Lap was allegedly poisoned,’ Sam said, as if this was a perfectly logical conversation. ‘How about the guy downstairs?’
‘I don’t know about him,’ Rivers shrugged and waited while a museum guard used a security card to open a door for them before continuing. ‘The forensics team have only been here about half an hour and the pathologist arrived just before you did.’
Sam gave him a sideways glance and then looked at her watch. ‘It’s nearly 2.30.’
‘Ah well, apparently,’ Rivers explained, escorting Sam down a wide staircase to their left, ‘the assistant curator, named Duncan Jones, found the body and informed the security boss, who came and had a look at it. He notified the Chief Librarian who also came and looked at it, and when she saw who it was she rang the Director of the Museum, who was in a whole other building in the city. After he too came and checked out the deceased, he called us. That was 11 am. We attended the scene and then called Homicide who arrived just before noon. The crime scene team only just got here because they were tied up on another job.’
‘And the forensic pathologist?’ Sam asked.
‘He was doing lunch with the Commissioner, the Police Minister, the Premier and members of a citizen’s group lobbying for – something,’ Rivers said, running out of details.
‘That’s a pretty sound alibi, if he needs one,’ Sam said dryly.
Rivers laughed. ‘Yeah, but only for lunchtime. Where he was before that, is anyone’s guess.”
They passed through a door on the next landing and entered another hallway at the end of which Sam could see the obvious signs of a crime scene investigation in progress: police tape, police officers, police cameras and a familiar voice booming at everyone to get the hell out of the way.
‘Am I allowed to know why you’re here, Detective Diamond?’ Rivers asked. ‘I mean, what interest does the ACB have in all this?’
Sam grinned. ‘Somewhere amongst all those phone calls this morning, someone also rang my boss – in Canberra – who rang me, at lunch on my day off, and said, “Get down there and have a look at that body”. So here I am, at the end of a rather long queue of spectators by the sounds of it.’
“Is that Sam?” It was those familiar bellowing tones again, fast approaching the doorway Sam and Rivers were about to enter. ‘It’s about bloody time she got here.’
Detective-Sergeant Jack Rigby, all six-foot-five and three miles wide of him, came barrelling out of the room. Sam stepped aside; the Constable didn’t stand a chance.
‘Damn it Jack,’ Sam said, helping Rivers up from the floor, ‘this is not a football field.’
‘The boy is half my size and age Sam, he should have better reflexes.’ Rigby placed a hand on Rivers’ shoulder. ‘Isn’t that right mate?”
‘Yes sir. Whatever you say,’ Rivers smiled.
‘Good. Now step aside,’ Rigby commanded and then wrapped Sam in a bear hug that left her breathless. ‘Completely unprofessional, I know,’ he said, letting her go. ‘But it is so good to see you.’
‘And it’s reassuring to find you haven’t changed a bit, Jack,’ Sam said, giving him the once over. Jack Rigby’s clear blue and ever-watchful eyes were the most noticeable things about him, apart from his height and despite the almost comical distortion of his ex-boxer’s nose. His crew cut had turned quite