27. The lovely buns

Buns! As if he didn’t have enough on his plate.
“Buns,” she had said, cooing over the phone. “Nice buns, Kim!”
“Sweet,” he had replied.
“No, darling. Sour. Sourdough. You remember?”
“Of course. Sourdough rolls, some infant painkillers, and some adult painkillers. A nice red.”
“Yes, Kim, that would be lovely. We’re having minestrone tonight. Something simple.”
“Love you, Lee.”
And he did. She might not be exciting, she might have changed from maiden to maternal in a year, but she still satisfied his needs. Put food on the table, wiped up the messes the twins made, kept a tidy house and warmed him in bed. What more did he want in a partner?
Passion would be nice. Lee didn’t dance through his mind the way Zoe did. She didn’t blow in his mind’s ear at inappropriate moments like Zoe, her breath stirring him to electric fantasy in a droning meeting.
Hell and Maria! That consultant archaeologist, once he had been reminded about the official secrecy provisions of the Crimes Act, had been as dry as the dust on his jacket. You’d think that discovering a body, and the surprising artifacts interred with it, would have stirred a scientist, but this fellow might have been listing the ingredients for well, sourdough rolls and minestrone.
Stace had set out sticky buns and tea in the boardroom. The three stammering security guards had been the opening act, making their reports about shots fired, fruitless searches, plausible excuses, and then hiding themselves in the tucker, slurping their tea and looking forward to a day off with their girlfriends.
HPL had jumped on that.
“We’re watching you. One word about last night’s activities and you’ll be guarding the car park at Pine Gap. All three of you. Got it?”
They had been marched out and the expert marched in. Digital presentation on the big screen as he talked. Tarpaulin lifted off the excavation, now sealed inside a tent borrowed from nearby Duntroon, portable lights poking in through the dawn’s early gloom.
Shadows and odd shapes as he brushed the dirt off, then steady excavation, cold daylight as the winter sun rose. The skeleton grew clear, beads and baubles on the bones as the orange-brown dirt was trowelled away. Measuring sticks in the photographs, the archaeologist’s dry voice describing each step. Finally the sad little shape was packed away in a box and the camera peered into an empty hole.
CAS broke the silence. “Bottom line? Foul play?”
“The body was interred with some ceremony, given the objects associated with the burial. A shallow grave, but not a hasty one. No coffin, of course, but given the time and place and the nature of the subject would make that unlikely. However, given the massive injuries to pelvis and spine, certainly not natural causes.”
“Let me put it another way. Do we need to call in the police to launch a murder investigation?”
“Given the age of the subject, any murderer would most likely be long dead. You’d be looking at someone pushing a hundred at the very least. But no, it looks to me like an accidental death and a quick burial by family.”
“If that’s the way your report reads, then I think we’re all done here.”
“I’d like more time in the lab before giving a full report, but I should be able to hand the remains back on Monday. You’ll have to look for relatives, I guess.”
“We’ll handle that end of it. Anything else?”
“Just one thing. She had brown eyes.”
Wanker nerd, Kim thought. How could he possibly tell eye colour from a pile of bones?
CAS and HPL and Kim had done the official business once Stace had lured the scientist off. Signed the forms, filed them away. The burial site would very quickly have to be explored fully because it was going to end up as part of one very big hole for the basement car park, but if it was archaeology rather than a crime scene, then that was it.
That was that. Now Kim’s major concern was the twins, both too sick with sudden colds to be taken out on a bitter day.
And Zoe hadn’t messaged him or chatted or phoned. There was still timings to be worked out. Zoe naked, hot and sweaty. Zoe naked, in a shower. Zoe naked, in his arms. Would he be able to fit her in as well as attend the planned protest meeting?
Time for lunch. No time for lunch itself if he was to drive over to Campbell for Lee’s supplies. Why couldn’t she load the twins into the Range Rover and pop down to the shops for the goods? It made no sense.
He was glad of the new roundabout at the Bowen Drive intersection. The old crossroads had been confusing, and more than one idiot tourist looking for the National Gallery had come to grief there. There were plans to remove the roundabout at the other end of the Kings Avenue Bridge, presumably a scheme thought up by the same people who had added the one at this end.
Driving in Canberra meant coping with roundabouts. Full stop.
Kim expertly slid the BMW around, past Bugs Bunny, and up Monash Drive, noting that work had resumed on the ASIO site after this morning’s delay.
There was a crush at the Campbell shops carpark. Always was nowadays at lunchtimes and after work. The small shopping centre was the closest available to the big Defence office complex at Russell Hill and while many workers chose to walk up Blamey Crescent to have lunch, visit the chemist or grocery, post a letter or whatever, it was far easier to just drive up.
Kim eventually gave up and parked around the back of the shops. There was a second car park here which overflowed onto what had once been a grassy expanse, but was now windswept dust.
Chemist for the painkillers, bottle shop for the red, Heartbake for the sourdough rolls. He bought half a dozen from the ridiculously handsome shop assistant – they were fairly small – and as he tucked them under his arm he caught sight of the BookCrossing.com shelf at the back of the café section.
Funny. There was a hardback book on the shelf with an image of a ticking bomb on the cover. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was the very same book which had featured prominently in this morning’s security bulletin, along with a photograph of a section of SAS snipers sliding down ropes from a helicopter hovering over Canberra Airport.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay