Compared to the chilly streets of winter Canberra, it was summer in Ounce Books, and customers were inclined to linger, browsing through the books, patting Grace the cat, or just chatting about books they had read or wanted to read or might be persuaded to read.

Grace lapped up the attention while Ann sipped on her second cup of cooling coffee. She wondered who had made them. Barista Ben had never failed to charm her with a heart-shaped arrangement of powdered chocolate on the foamed surface of the coffee.

Just like these two mugs today.

But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t have taught the skinny blonde how to do it. They could have stood side by side, his hand guiding hers as he showed her his perfect heart.

Ann could do with someone standing beside her. Or walking hand in hand, sharing the back seat of a taxi coming home from dinner, looking at her over a glass of something. Anything, really.

She bent down and rubbed Grace under her glossy black chin. The small black cat closed her eyes in happiness and began a low rumbling purr. She rolled over for Ann to tickle her tummy, legs stretched out in contentment. Ann would swap places in a moment, if she possibly could.

Instead, she sighed, slipped back behind the counter and selected her “comfort music” playlist on the docked iPod. Heavy on the Grateful Dead songs of her youth, the music took her to happy times and places. Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion was first on the shuffle.

California, early Nineties, camped out on a secluded beach for a week with a floating population of fellow students. Surfboards, joints, pretzels and Anchor Steam. A big black ghetto blaster chewing up D-cell batteries and cassettes. Nights around a driftwood fire, working out how to save the world. Days in the sun, salt in the hair, clothing minimal or non-existent. Sleeping bags zipped together at night with a computer science student whose grand vision of the future had turned out to be far short of 2009’s reality.

Dawns were cramped, sticky and sandy, but oh the closeness of their embraces, the sleepy eyes and tousled hair! Morning dips in the freezing surf, breakfasts of cold pizza and instant coffee. And love, barefoot and warm in linked fingers, slow caresses and shared looks. Ann’s Grateful Dead Skeletons from the Closet tape had been their soundtrack.

Somehow they had drifted apart. Last she’d heard of him, he was married with kids in some development south of San Jose, walking his poodle on weekends and cheering the Sharks to victory from season ticket seats in The Tank.

And here she was, alone on the other side of the world. Maybe she’d see him again in October on the way to or from the BookCrossing convention in Kansas City. Maybe he’d have a friend…

The door opened and a customer entered, bringing a blast of cold air with him.

“Ahhh, warm in here!” he said, automatically seeking out the heat vent.

Two weeks ago Ann had been in Edinburgh for the annual British BookCrossing UnConvention. “Un” to mark it out from the official world convention in New Zealand. Edinburgh had been grey and delightfully mediaeval. Rain in torrents giving way to watery sunshine. But a warm escape from Canberra’s winter. She had walked down Scotland Street in the New Town, poked her nose into the miniscule front room of the Oxford Bar, renewed friendships with the cheerful British BookCrossers – and a couple of visiting Aussies – and lugged home a bag full of books scooped up from the groaning table that marked every BookCrossing gathering.

Not a great deal in the way of unattached males. Not like Christchurch in April. And Tom.

Ann’s mind wandered off again. She and Tom had found a great drift of autumn leaves in one of the city parks. They had been hiding from a criminal lawyer at the time and had contrived to submerge themselves completely under the red and gold pile until the danger had passed. For the next day they had picked fragments of leaves out of their hair, their clothing, their ears. But it had been fun…

“This one of your books?”

It was the customer, holding out a book with a picture of a countdown timer on the cover. No wedding ring on his hand, Ann noticed.

“Ah, no. That’s a free book. See, there’s a BookCrossing label on the front. You can take it away with you.”

“I saw that. I mean, is it a book that you registered?”

“You know about BookCrossing?” Ann inspected the customer with more interest. Business suit, perhaps a little more charcoal-grey and snappier than the average public service manager. Somewhere around thirty, dark hair, lean face. And a pretty good body. She straightened up and drew her shoulders back.

“This book has caused a great deal of trouble. Do you think it’s wise leaving books around where they shouldn’t be?”

Ann gasped. That was the whole point of BookCrossing. She stood up even taller. “Maybe not wise, but a whole lot of fun! They’re just books!”

“Yeah. Well, this one cost a lot of people a lot of money.”

The shop phone rang. Ann glared at the man. “Excuse me.”

An elderly voice on the phone. “Hello? May I speak to Ms Ounce, please?”

“Speaking.”

“You wrote a letter to The Canberra Times about the new Commonwealth office building.”

“About the magpies.”

“Yes. I liked the point you made. That’s why I’m calling you. There’s a group of concerned residents meeting tomorrow for a public information evening. We’ve invited someone from the government to come along and answer questions. Would that be something you might be interested in?”

Ann considered this. It wasn’t that she was having a wild night on the town. A can of diet soup in front of the box, more likely. “Yes, please.”

“Good on you. Six-thirty tomorrow at the Ainslie Football Club. Sorry about the short notice, but it’s important we get things going promptly. The room’s booked under the name of Kern, but we’ll have a sign up showing the way.”

“Thank you for the invitation. I look forward to it.”

“I’ll see you there, then. Goodbye!”

Ann put the phone down. She was becoming quite a public figure! Letters in the paper, invites to meetings. Maybe there would be a television crew in attendance, and she could tell the world about the magpies.

She looked up. The man with the BookCrossing book had gone while she was talking. But he’d left the book on the counter. Neatly ripped in half.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

“So I see,” Ann replied. “Sorry to hear it. And Harley here cut himself shaving, maybe.”

Quint considered the other man in the shop. A taxidriver he’d used previously, bearing a bandaid on his cheek and a mug of coffee in his hand. Odd. He’d left Heartbake just before Quint, carrying two mugs. Where was the other one?

The other man extended his hand. “Harley. Cabbie. Booklover. Careless shaver.”

Quint shook hands briefly. “Am I interrupting anything? You wanted coffee, Ann.”

“Thanks, William. You’re a sweetie. Harley was just telling me about BookCrossing.”

BookCrossing. Giving away perfectly good books to strangers. Quint couldn’t understand it at all, but Ann took a strange amount of fun from the disease, often closing the shop for weeks at a time while she travelled to conventions where fellow-sufferers gathered to discuss their symptoms.

“Not my cup of tea, Ann. You tried to sign me up, remember?”

“You either get it or you don’t.”

Quint nodded. “Like a cold.”

“I caught it off Ann,” Harley said. “Anyway, I was on the airport rank yesterday, and I had a couple of spare seconds, so I whipped out and released a book against one of the pillars. This book.”

He held out a book. Quint took it. A hand-scrawled note stuck onto the dustjacket, the endpapers defaced with numbers and another sticker, more marks on the fore-edge. He winced at the wilful destruction.

“That makes a Very Good book into Fair. Might have been worth maybe three dollars originally, but now you couldn’t give it away.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. Anyway, last night I got pulled over by the cops, and they asked me about this book, and told me to come in to the main cop shop this morning. Which I did, on top of everything else.”

“They arrested you for littering,” Quint guessed. He didn’t like litterbugs,

“Cops don’t care. I was awake all night worrying about it. And other things. So when I gave my name at the counter, and they took me into a room full of blokes in suits, I was shitting myself.

“They all stood up and had a go at me. They took turns. First cab off the rank was the police commissioner. In full uniform. He said that I was responsible for closing down the airport for two hours, and did I have any idea of the trouble I’d caused?

“Then there was the airport manager, and he really laid into me. He was spraying spit at the end, and he looked like he was going to punch me. Trouble is, everyone else was egging him on. You could see it.

“Anyway, he sat down, and the Qantas bloke stood up and asked if I knew how much it had cost to divert flights. Then the Virgin manager said exactly the same thing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was going to get a bill from them. Then another policeman from bomb disposal blew me up. Said I was putting the lives of his best men at risk. The Urban Services Minister was there too, and he had the hide to tell me I was an idiot. I started to give him a serve about his useless bloody roadworks but the Ambulance manager sat me down again.

“The army guy got up and looked at me and asked if I knew how much it cost to put a helicopter in the air and would I like to apologise to the SAS guys yanked away from their training on a wild goose chase. But I lost it when the construction company boss asked if I knew how much it cost to pull his road crew off.”

“Uh-oh,” Ann groaned. “What did you do?”

“I told him I could arrange a group booking. Then the police chief made this weird noise, told me not to do it again, and to get the hell out of his sight.”

Ann snorted.

“Yeah. Like that except lower.”

Quint wasn’t sure if he liked this taxi driver. But he could see that Ann had made up her mind. And she’d been drinking his coffee, after sending Quint out for a mug.

“All that for you?” she said. “Poor Harley!”

“They were having a security conference,” Quint said. He’d read it in the paper. The airport terminal was being upgraded and it was going to have the most comprehensive security in Australia.

“They didn’t tell me that,” Harley groaned. “I thought it was just for me, and I’d never get out of jail long enough to pay out the fine.”

“How did they know it was you?” Quint asked.

“They have a security camera on the taxi rank. They make sure we pay our two dollars to get through the boomgate out of the cabyard. So they knew it was my cab. And then they put the numberplate into the police computer. They have this high tech camera that looks at numberplates, and if it’s a stolen car or you haven’t paid your rego, they flag you down.”

Quint liked this. Good system.

“At least they gave you the book back,” Ann pointed out. “They could have blown it up”

“I’m going to leave it at the train station next.”

“Train drivers can’t read,” Ann twinkled back. “Not timetables. No way!”

“You could put it on your Official BookCrossing Zone shelf.” Harley said.

“Would you be a sweetie and do that for me?”

“I’m at your command, Ms Ounce!” Harley drained his mug, gave a mock salute and marched out.

Ann gazed after him. Quint set his cup down and pulled over the spreadsheet listing the books he’d bought from Violet Campbell. He had to be careful here.

“I need to talk to that old lady with the books. Have you collected yours yet?”

Ann sighed. “I’ve got a friend with a van. She helped me load them last night. Is there a problem?”

“You might want to check through them for personal items. Bookmarks, photographs. I found a few things last night she might want back.”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

“Jesus H!” exclaimed Ann, as the cold bit her on the nose.

“Christ!” she said, taking a second breath.

Frost crunched on the grass, cars were ghostly shapes, their windows covered in ice, and her breath was a white flag of surrender as she turned to go back inside.

Maybe tomorrow. She didn’t have to go for a run every single day, now did she?

Grace understood. The small black cat, elegant in looks, clumsy in action, looked up at her with adoring bright copper eyes. “Early breakfast!” she seemed to say, as she tangled in Ann’s ankles.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Ann warned the little cat. “Coffee first!”

Ann’s espresso machine spluttered cheerfully as she unwrapped The Canberra Times. The dew had beaded the plastic wrapping. And then frozen solid. This didn’t happen in Sydney. Or San Francisco.

“At least you’ve got a fur coat, little one,” she told Grace, who was sitting alert beside the heating vent.

Ann added milk, stirred a teaspoon of sweetener in, and took that first wonderful sip. Nothing quite like freshly ground coffee, best thing in the morning. The day didn’t start until that caffeine hit chased away the last wisps of sleep.

“All right, little Miss Hungry!” Ann tore open a sachet of cat food, dumped it out onto a saucer, and sprinkled kibble on top. Grace sauntered between Ann’s feet, sniffed the offering, and began to eat.

Ann did the same. Half a grapefruit and a glass of tomato juice. Part of the trim-Ann-down-for-romance plan.

The Times had changed their Sudoku source. Once upon a time she could get the puzzles out in ten productive minutes, but nowadays, the difficulty ratings merely referred to the number of start digits – all but impossible to complete before the next one arrived, and then only with tiny numbers in the squares, pencilled-in guesses – crossed out, erased and rewritten – and marginal notes spreading out over the page between the comics and the crosswords.

She was still working on the puzzle four hours later and the strain was beginning to tell. She’d gone through all her usual strategies, filled in a dozen easy numbers, and it just wouldn’t go.

Sighing, she set it aside and reached for her mug. Still half full. Of cold instant coffee.

She grimaced. Not her day today. Quint, entering her shop, caught her brow wrinkling and for a moment his expression mirrored hers, though Ann didn’t have a bandaid on one cheek. Then he began unloading his suitcase onto the counter.

“Good morning, Ann,” he said. “Cold today.”

“Good to see you, William!” Ann said, brightening up. “Would you be a darling for me, please, and fetch me a coffee from Heartbake?”

She counted out the money. “Cappuccino, large, no sugar. And one for yourself, if you want to keep me company.”

Quint wouldn’t buy a drink for himself without prompting, she knew, but he liked to be thought of as social. And she could use a drink. And company.

Quint took the coins. “Here’s the list,” he said, handing over the spreadsheet printout.

Ann nodded and waved him out the door. “Quick as you can.”

Three minutes later, busy checking off Quint’s latest batch, the first of the Violet Campbell booty, the door opened and the fragrance of fresh coffee filled her nostrils.

She looked up to see two mugs of coffee, a nervous smile and a bandaid on one cheek. Not Quint. A taxidriver and occasional customer. He had an odd name, she remembered.

“Cappuccino, large, one sugar,” Harley said, setting it down on the counter. “They told me your usual.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I thought you might like to have a coffee with me while I tell you about how I started off in BookCrossing.”

“You’re a BookCrosser!” Ann reached for the mug. BookCrossers were the finest people in the world.

“I joined BookCrossing a few days ago,” he confirmed. “You got me going!”

Ann was responsible for a lot of BookCrossers. Dozens, she supposed. Some people joined the site when she told them about how much fun it was. Some people picked up a book she’d released into the wild and when they journalled it she was automatically listed as their source. Either way, it was always a buzz to have someone share in the silly thrill of it all.

“I’ve been reading some of your books from the café,” Harley said, responding to her smile with one of his own, “and just reading them and putting them back on the shelf, or forcing them on my passengers if they misbehaved.”

“Aha!” Ann twinkled. “That explains a journal entry that turned up in my email two weeks ago. The finder said they’d been given it by a stand-up cabedian. Now it makes sense!”

“Yeah, have to remember that. Anyway, I started registering my own books. Mostly thrillers and mysteries. Big hardbacks taking up too much space in my little flat. Like this one.”

Harley held out a book. 01-01-00 by R J Pineiro. It had a cover design in ominous black and red. He had attached handmade labels to the outside: “Free Book! Look Inside!”

“I didn’t have any official BookCrossing labels, not yet, anyway. So I made my own.”

“They look just fine,” Ann said. “If you want, I can give you some of mine.”

“I’d like that. Just until mine arrive.” He went on, holding the book carefully. “I left a few books around Canberra, writing down where I left them so I could make release notes on the computer later on.”

“You should do the release notes first,” Ann said, “if you have time. Otherwise someone might find a book and not know that it’s meant to be there.”

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t know that, and besides, I didn’t know where I’d leave them. I could go anywhere in Canberra. I just ducked out of the cab and left them anywhere that looked good.”

“That’s okay. Sometimes you just see a place that looks right. I left a copy of Jaws outside a dentist’s surgery once.”

Harley smiled. “Love it!”

The door behind him opened, letting in a draught of winter, another man with a bandaid on his cheek, and two more steaming mugs. With an apologetic glance at Harley, Ann quickly moved her existing mug out of sight.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

“You’re quite sure he got away?” Kim asked.

The guards looked dubious in the dim light.

“Okay. If this gets into the papers, it will be only be in the comics.”

“Fair suck,” said one. “There was only the two of us. We couldn’t do a full search.”

“You didn’t think to follow him?”

“He was gone.”

“We were shooting at him,” said the other guard. “He just ran for his life.”

“You didn’t hit him, you didn’t follow him, you didn’t detain him. Now we’ve got a problem.” Kim indicated the skeleton with his torch. “And it’s not just this poor bloke.”

“Our job is to secure the site. We’re not the police to arrest intruders.”

“Didn’t stop you shooting at him like the police. Except you didn’t hit him.”

“Well, what would you bloody do? He was swinging a shovel at us!”

Kim spread his hands in a soothing gesture, keeping them well away from his own weapon. “Sorry. Okay. What’s done is past. Let’s do our jobs. I’ll stay here to secure the scene. You,” he indicated one guard, “go back to the gate. We’ll have reinforcements arriving soon, and they’ll need to be signed in. And you two with the big searchlights, make a patrol around the fence. If you see him, you can shoot the bastard. Or politely ask him to come to the gatehouse while we call the police.”

“So the police will be coming?”

“Not unless we need them. I’m an authorised Commonwealth officer and I’ll take responsibility for determining if any crime has occurred, or if we need police involvement.” Kim flicked his light over the excavation. “This looks like ancient history to me, and I’ll get a forensics investigator in at dawn tomorrow to give an expert opinion.”

Kim watched the guards trudge away. What he really wanted was a shovel. A true cover-up. Problem with a quick fix on a construction site was that another idiot with another shovel or a back-hoe would undoubtedly uncover the bones all over again. Besides, whoever the intruder was, he or she had been busily disinterring them.

The skeleton, or at least the parts he could see, looked old. Fossil rather than fresh. Maybe there was an elderly murderer out there mounting their own cover-up.

Kim fingered his weapon and looked around the site with fresh eyes. No, do the job properly.

His main task was to limit the damage. Restrict the people who knew. Then get the facts. Do some digging. If it was a murder, then the police would have to be involved. Find some cops who could keep their mouths shut as they checked back through missing persons reports from the 1850s or whatever.

He made some phone calls. Briefed CAS. Arranged for site access at dawn. When the two guards returned empty-handed from their patrol, apart from identifying the likely entry point, he got them to remove a tarpaulin from a nearby pile of stores, and together they spread it across the excavation, weighing it down at the corners with planks lifted from a pile of scaffolding materials.

A platoon of replacement guards arrived, drawn in from the standby list, and eventually the site was secured to his satisfaction. Double guard on the excavation, with strict instructions to leave the hazardous material undisturbed. Better there be a rumour of asbestos than a body.

And then, finally, home again.

Zoe was long since offline.

Lee was a huddled shape under layers of bedclothes as Kim carefully replaced his gun and ammunition, stripped off and changed into pyjamas. But she reacted strongly when Kim slid up against her.

“Oooh! You’re cold!”

“And you’re so warm!  You love me, right?”

“Mmmm.” She had to think about that.

And then she rolled over, facing him. “Things I do for you, dear!”

Dear. Oh well, he was doing very well for an icicle.

“Kim?”

“Yes, dear?”

“You weren’t at the office, were you?” She inhaled. “And you’ve been with someone who smokes.”

“Just doing stuff.”

“And you had your gun. Anything I need to know?”

“Nothing you need to know. Just thought it prudent – there was something came up I had to look into, and until I knew the facts, I wanted to make sure I was covered. As it turned out, I didn’t need to defend myself.” Except maybe from trigger-happy security lunks.

“I love you, but you speak a lot of crap sometimes, Kim.”

“Yeah. This is really need to know material. It’s my job.”

“And I’m your partner. If you put your life in danger, don’t you think I’m going to get worried? And don’t you think I hate being lied to?”

Kim held Lee tighter. “I’m not lying to you.”

“Lying beside me, yes. Lying by not telling me things I need to know as your partner?”

Kim paused. Paused too long.

“Kim, how can I ever trust you?”

“There was an incident at a secure location. Shots were fired at an intruder. I was asked to check it out. It’s dark, there was some violence, and the people acted in self-defence. Given the limited details I was given, I thought it best to be armed.”

“And…?”

“And the intruder got away. We didn’t see any blood trail, we couldn’t find anyone on or near the site.”

“And…?”

“And that’s all I can tell you. It’s not the sort of thing we want in the papers. Look, honey, I was never in any danger. Even if I hadn’t taken a gun, I was with armed officers every moment. People trained and alert.”

“But they missed your intruder.”

“They fired to scare him away. We don’t shoot to kill unless there’s an immediate and major threat to life. A terrorist with a bomb. A maniac with a machine-gun.”

“I thought you were just a clerk when we got together.”

“Well, I am. Mostly. I’m not James Bond. As far as I’m concerned, the enemy lives on Pirie Street in Fyshwick, and I’m not allowed to shoot the buggers.”

Lee moved against him. “Hey, are you sure you put your weapon away?”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

“I don’t suppose you ripped out the roof lining as well?”

“Duct tape is a marvellous thing,” Sharkey grinned, “but not even you can see through it.”

Harley nodded.

“It’ll do for a bit. I’ve got a mate’ll fix it up, good as new. And fit you a new window. I’ll give him a hoy tomorrow”

Harley nodded again, settling down behind the wheel. He took a sip of his cold HeartBake coffee and grimaced at the taste of fresh bullet, spitting the acrid liquid through the empty space to his right.

“Hey, Sharkey. You want to hear a good joke?”

“Sure.”

“So do I. You know any?”

Sharkey chuckled. “Knew we could cheer you up!”

Harley drove through Fyshwick’s deserted streets. One thing about the nightshift, there were never any traffic problems.

Cold Canberra winter nights, on the other hand…

He pushed the heater up to the maximum, but realistically there was no hope of countering the cold air pouring in through the empty window. Much more of this and his ear would freeze and snap off. As they accelerated onto the 80 km/h stretch along the Monaro Highway heading back to Campbell, the breeze became a blast. This trip would have to be his last for the night.

And fair enough, too. He worked insane hours to begin with, and tonight had been stressful in several ways.

The massage had worked to reduce the immediate tension of being shot at and having his cab damaged, but when the soothing hands had finished their work on his body, and it had become obvious to all parties that some body areas were anything but relaxed, he had balked at the range of solutions offered.

Not a prude, not inexperienced in any of the proposals – well, one or two, maybe, and he’d wonder about the sort of pressure that could be brought to bear by those magnificent breasts for some time – but the whole thing had seemed wrong.

It wasn’t as if he had a girlfriend to be faithful to, either. Just himself.

Sharkey sat beside him, perhaps privy to the problem, perhaps not.

Harley’s phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mrgble whssssh?”

Too much noise in the cab for speakerphone. Harley pulled the handset out of its cradle and held it to his ear. No cops around this time of night.

“Hello?”

“Harley, this is Olivia here. Are you anywhere close?”

“Five minutes.”

Bugger. He didn’t really want to do another job and risk his brain freezing. But he couldn’t refuse Olivia.

“I’ll be at King O’Malley’s. I’ll be the one freezing her tits off.”

Harley laughed. “Always ready to help a damsel in distress! See you soon.”

Harley turned up Blamey Crescent instead of Monash Drive, dropped Sharkey off just around the corner from Erstwhile Garden, waving aside the proffered twenty, and headed into Civic.

The King O’Malley Irish Pub was inside the Civic bus interchange, and until midnight, off limits to taxis except from the Bunda Street cab rank. But it was far more convenient to make the right turn into the interchange from London circuit, rather than wade through the turns and traffic lights to get in legally. Besides, there were never any police there this time of night.

Harley pulled up outside the pub. Olivia and a companion detached themselves from an alcove and bundled into the back seat. Harley got a glimpse of a skinny young woman with short blonde hair – another officer cadet, obviously – before the door closed and the light went off.

“Turn the heat up, would you, Harley? It’s a fridge in here!”

“Sorry. My window’s broken.” He turned the cab and took the easy but illegal way back out onto London Circuit.

“How’d you do that?”

“Stuck my elbow though it.”

Olivia giggled. “Right.”

London Circuit to Constitution Avenue, turn onto Parkes Way at Coranderrk Street. As they passed the Convention Centre, the zebra crossing lights shone into the back seat and Harley automatically checked the mirror, wondering why Olivia wasn’t riding her usual shotgun beside him.

“Eyes front, driver!” The other cadet was glaring at him, before returning her attention to Olivia, who hadn’t been distracted.

“Don’t worry, Rose, he’s a darling.” Harley heard Olivia’s sigh.

Silence from the back seat, apart from the soft embracing sounds that every night cabbie hears. Harley kept his eyes front and his eyebrows raised.

Flashing red and blue lights on Parkes Way beside the ASIO site. Half a dozen police cars, officers in reflective vests, orange wands. Random breath test. They never pulled cabbies over – a taxidriver would have to be insane to drink on a shift.

But a policeman was waving him to the side.

“Random breath test. Just turning the meter off,” Harley informed his passengers. He always did this if a delay was his fault or outside the limits of normal traffic.

Both cadets were sitting upright now, he noticed. Seatbelts buckled, two respectable young women at opposite ends of a wide back seat.

“Taxi 377?” A policeman leaned in through the empty window. Gold badges and a fancy cap.

“That’s me.” As if it wasn’t visible on the number plate.

“Mister Barnardo?”

“Right.”

“Did you leave a parcel at Canberra International Airport this morning?”

“No.” Oh, hang on. Maybe he had.

“Sure about that? A book with a picture of a bomb on the cover?”

“Uh, yeah. Forgot about that. You found my book, then?”

“There’s a few people would like to speak to you about that, Mister Barnardo. I’ve been asked to request that you attend the Civic police station tomorrow at nine AM. Be there. These are the kind of people you don’t want to upset even more.”

The officer rapped the roof of the cab twice and Harley indicated, pulling back out onto Parkes Way.

“Your pet cabbie’s a terrorist, Liv!”

Harley sniffed. There was a new fragrance in the cold cab. Warm and musky and penetrating directly into the bit of him that had wanted to say yes to the suggestions made to him in Fyshwick.

“Sorry about that.”

Harley reached down to the console and took another automatic sip of his coffee. He gagged at the taste and launched the whole cup out of the window.

“And a litterbug!”

“Home, Harley, and step on it!” Olivia was holding the hand of her slender blonde companion, sliding back across the seat.

“Eyes front, Osama bin!”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

He’d have to think about this.

First things first. He wriggled back under the fence, ignoring the shouts and noise. He’d left things behind, he was sure of it, but he wasn’t going back to retrieve his trowel, not if people were trying to kill him for it.

He hurt, too. Somehow he’d collected a smear of blood on his hand, and he wasn’t sure where it came from. Something caught on the wire and tore as he pulled free. Quint fumed inside. This was not a good day.

He limped across Constitution Avenue, back home to his familiar boxy flatblock. At least here everything was in order. His key fit the front door, there was a hook for his jacket, his beanie, space for his shoes.

Shoe. He only had one. Somewhere out there lay the other one. What good was half a pair of shoes? Good comfortable shoes. Shoe.

If Quint was the swearing type, he’d be saying a few rude words now. But if Quint was the swearing type, most of the words of his life would be rude, and people would step around him on the street.

Quint set down his bag. He’d look through that later, but for now he had to find out where he was leaking blood from. Somewhere on his head, most likely, because it wasn’t gushing out of anywhere visible. Unless it was on his back. Quint suffered badly from his back. There were parts he couldn’t reach, and they itched.

The face in Quint’s bathroom mirror was scratched. He looked like someone people would walk around on the street now. Hair full of mud and rotten oak leaves, eyes full of emotion, cheek covered in dried blood. Hands dirty and fingernails badly needing a scrub.

He tended himself as best he could, but there were parts of him that a shower and a bandaid wouldn’t cover. There was a vacancy on the shoe rack and a hole in the laundry tool rack.

And a fence around his thinking place.

He made himself a special coffee in the moka pot, doused the lights in his bedroom, and stood at the window sipping his coffee, looking out over the site. He turned on the camera, set it for night exposures and attempted to gain some control, to record the moments. People with torches, shouts and commands, a car pulling up. Police and flashing lights next, no doubt.

Quint was rather proud of his ability to take photographs at night. Some embarrassing first attempts of dark blurred shapes had become either dark or blurred and then, when he had mastered extremes of exposure and aperture, photographs of some particular beauty. The final touch had been setting a two second timer delay, so the vibration of his finger on the shutter release died away before the exposure began.

Quint remained still until the shutter clicked to signal the end of each exposure. Even with a tripod, the weight of his body shifting on the creaking wooden floor could blur a time exposure slightly.

Zoom photographs needed even greater care. When a car paused for the gate to open, Quint zoomed in, and hardly dared breathe. The gate area was well-lit, but at extreme optical zoom just a breath of wind through the open window could spoil a shot.

More magic could be performed in the computer after uploading the images from the camera chip. Just click on the “Autocorrect” control, and dim images became visible. Nothing much could be done to fix unfocussed or blurred shots, however.

After a while, the lights and the noise died down. Other vehicles and people showed up, but even Quint lost interest after a while. He took one last careful panorama and went back downstairs.

His bag of treasures, carefully laid out on the kitchen bench, hardly deserved the description. One piece of gold: a dollar coin dated 1988. Like the copper penny, this had the monarch on the obverse and kangaroos on the reverse. Quintessentially Australian, though how much relevance the British queen had to the modern Australian culture was a matter for debate.

A doll. Clothes long gone, but a china head on a wooden frame had survived life under the ground. Vanished threads had held the toy together, but when Quint laid the pieces out, a hand and leg were missing. Nevertheless, she smiled bravely up at him, blue eyes twinkling over red cheeks.

Some pieces of glass and china. A handful of small bones. Some larger pieces of bone, curved too sharply to come from any human. A kangaroo maybe, or a sheep.

And that was it. There had certainly been more to be found if he’d had more time, but Quint ruled a mental line under his thinking place. The grove was gone, the stones scattered, the place guarded by killers. No more.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay