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

The cold hit her as soon as she opened the door, and, not for the first time, Ann wondered why she had moved to Canberra.

Life as an assistant at Manly Books in Sydney had been close to perfect. An even climate, beaches, the harbour, the excitement of the big city. Even in midwinter, a jog around Tania Park, just up from her “granny flat” in Balgowlah Heights, was no hardship at all. A t-shirt and sweatshirt, Bella bounding along at her heels, a navy ship heading out into the Tasman Sea if she cared to look to her left – and she did – the air clean and salty, other runners nodding greetings.

Here in Canberra, Tuesday’s dawn was still a way off, it was below zero, the grass was frosted and her breath was mist in the crisp air. It took everything she had to start off up Monash Drive. Heading up the hill. Work. Get the body warm.

The Grateful Dead helped. Truckin’ on the iPod.

Moving to Canberra had been a lifestyle change. An inheritance had paid for the shop, the stock and a small townhouse in the Harry Seidler units where Monash Drive crossed Blamey Crescent. The alternative was back to California, where she had been born and grown up, but after nearly twenty years in Australia, she preferred it here.

Perhaps she’d grown too used to comfort, too used to staying inside on a cold morning or evening. She was so out of condition!

Breathing deep on the freezing air, the cold like knives in her throat, the rising incline picking out muscles unused for months. She’d feel it tomorrow, but that was the best time to make progress. This morning was only a beginning.

Up she went, passing the duplexes, entering the territory of the big houses. Big houses, huge front gardens. Some of them were listed in architectural registers, tall blocky piles that must have seemed like something out of science fiction in the early Sixties.

At last the houses were behind her, and she was on the verge of Fairbairn Avenue, turning left, the slope easing, levelling out and falling towards the west. Different leg muscles made their complaints now, but it was easier going, and her breathing settled into a better rhythmn.

A small mob of kangaroos, startled by her approach, bounded across the road, heading back into the bushland of Mount Ainslie through the lawns of the War Memorial.

Left again and the broad axis of Anzac Parade opened out. This was the view the tourists paused for, the ceremonial parade route between lines of eucalypts and memorials, its line continuing across Lake Burley Griffin, through the smile of Commonwealth Place, on past the white wedding cake of Old Parliament House, and up to the boomerang lawns, stepped walls and pyramid flagpole of the new Parliament House topping Capital Hill.

It was a prospect in the dawn’s level light that never failed to move her. Here was the heart of Australia, the heroes and common people represented and remembered. In summer there were concerts, waving flags and television singers celebrating Christmas, Australia Day, Canberra Day. Firework displays at night, coloured reflections on the lake’s dark water. National Library, High Court and National Gallery floodlit in splendour.

Canberra was a city like no other in the world. Maybe the Mall in Washington DC or the Champs Elysees in Paris could provide a similar vista, but Canberra went on and on, wide avenues and motorways passing through parkland and garden suburbs, the streets in elegant symmetry or swirling mandalas.

At Constitution Avenue she turned left again, but here the parkland came to an end halfway along. The site of the ASIO building had been enclosed in chainlink fencing, shrouded in blue plastic, and hung with “DANGER KEEP OUT” signs.

Ann slowed to a walk. She was about done in now. She was perspiring under her sweatshirt, her body warm and glowing, burning fat. The remaining distance home would cool her down for a shower and breakfast. A light, healthy breakfast.

Almost all the trees on the ASIO site had gone now. Earth movement had begun, yellow-painted digging equipment grouped in a muddy circle. Magpies and currawongs warbled from vantage points of fenceposts, rubble piles and backhoe roofs. They stalked on the fresh earth, searching worms and grubs. They were everywhere, black and white feathers against the brown earth and green grass.

Then it hit her. The birds had always been there, guarding their territories, but hidden in the trees. Magpies didn’t flock, yet here they were, twenty or thirty at once.

Their trees were gone, and with them their shelter. There would be no nests this season, yet the birds were locked into their old territories, unable to displace the existing avian residents of backyards and street trees.

Ann walked sternly on, turning the corner into Monash Drive. There was a figure visible in the upstairs corner flat. Quint’s flat. She waved to him, but he didn’t react.

The street tilted uphill and Ann jogged for a hundred metres or so, before giving it away entirely. She’d be doing the whole course at a run within a week, best not to strain anything on the first day.

Her shower was bliss, the hot water warming her chilled extremes, washing away the sweat, and encouraging her to linger longer.

Grace the cat demanded breakfast before Ann could sit down herself.

Cup of tea and a bowl of cereal – just one bowl today, Ann! – and she clicked the laptop on to check her mail.

Nothing from Tom, though he’d updated his Facebook page to show a location of American Samoa. Ann sighed.

An email from BookCrossing.com – one of her books had been found!

The journal entry cheered her up. It was always nice when somebody found a book and went to the website to make a comment. This person had even joined the site and their profile page promised that they would get further involved. A paragraph about the book – a murder mystery – and a few words apparently aimed at her:

A loose book from a generous person. What will she give away next?

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

The taxidriver’s navigation screen was tilted. Quint noticed it as soon as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. He almost reached to straighten it, but instead buckled his seatbelt and put his hands in his lap, sitting quietly.

“Where are we off to?” asked the cabbie, looking at Quint looking at the map screen.

“2A Monash Drive, Campbell 2612.”

“Ohhhh-kay!” The driver put the car in gear, pulling away from the taxi rank into the maze of roadworks surrounding the airport. This was jarring, as the road surfaces were uneven, speed bumps mingled with potholes and abrupt changes in level as the cab sped past construction barriers and signs.

“You know the way?” Quint asked, quite lost already.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve driven along here!” the cabbie said. He paused. “Oddly enough, that’s how it works out.”

Quint guessed there might be a joke somewhere in that, but he decided that it meant the cabbie knew how to find his home.

The interior of the taxi was cluttered with keypads, screens, mysterious gadgets and notices, and it took time to look at them all. The map screen was canted in two directions, he saw, but he kept his hands in his lap. Soon the jumble of the airport roadworks was behind, they had passed the guns mounted either side of the entrance to the Royal Military College, and Quint saw the name of Monash Drive come up on the tilted screen. He angled his head to read it.

He liked seeing streets and landmarks labelled and presented for his view. Like a living, moving map. From the air, although everything was laid out, especially when the plane was taking off or landing, there were no labels, and you had to guess what things were.

The cab turned into Monash Drive, and the cabbie, looking at the house numbers, said a rude word. But Quint knew where they were. The high end of his street had the high numbers and it was easy to remember. The cabbie couldn’t have been driving around Canberra long.

Here the houses were grand, on big blocks, with views out over the rest of the suburb, across the lake and onto Parliament House. The house price numbers were also high.

As they descended, the houses became smaller and closer together. Grouped around a central oval were the retirement home, school and shops. Newsagent, a small supermarket, restaurant, bakery and bookshop. A cluster of flats formed a red brick block between Monash Drive and Blamey Crescent.

Then a small hill, right in the middle of Campbell, and after that they were going down again, through the ex-government houses. Many of the cheaper sort, the “monocrete” fibro houses, had made way for more modern homes, usually with flat slab sides in pastel colours of mauve and green.

Sometimes the developers had managed to squeeze in two or even three small houses on a single block. The wide lawns and roomy yards replaced by a few square metres of pebbles.

Quint looked at a block enclosed by mesh fencing. Just a tangle of rubble where a home had been. A couple of bare fruit trees forlorn to one side.

The bottom of Monash Drive, where it hit Constitution Avenue, was home. Quint’s block of flats stood four and square on the corner. They were ugly but practical, and they suited him. A companion block on the Blamey Crescent corner had been modernised, and the tall panes of glass, angled like the prows of a fleet of ships, made them look most un-flatlike. Flats should be flat, Quint thought, not tricked out to look like an airport terminal or sports stadium.

The cabbie stopped in the centre of the row of flats. Quint looked at him sharply.

“Number 2A, please. Look, there it is. The number’s on the door.”

The cab moved forward five metres and the meter ticked over five cents to $16.20.

“That’s eighteen-twenty with the two dollar parking fee they stick us with,” the cabbie rattled, indicating a slip of paper. “Ah, just make it eighteen dollars, thanks.”

That seemed very high.

“Have the taxi fares gone up?” he asked.

“Not since the last time.”

Quint looked in his wallet. He had a twenty, two tens and a five. He pulled out the twenty, considered that the cabbie might not have any change, put it back and after some thought, handed over a ten and a five.

“I’ve got the rest in coins. Is that okay?”

“Fine, fine,” the cabbie said, watching Quint count out a fifty-cent piece, eight twenties, four tens and a series of five cent coins.

Quint wasn’t sure he’d gotten it right, and began laying out the coins on the centre console, but the driver scooped them up and jangled them into a bag. There might have been five cents extra, he thought, trying to remember how they had looked on the black vinyl. That wasn’t right.

But it could be a tip if it was extra. He smiled. “Thank you!”

The driver said something, but his words were lost in a great rending sound. Quint looked out to see one of the trees in the parkland across the street crash to the ground. There were men in orange vests with tools and helmets, vehicles with flashing lights, signs and barriers.

“That’s the new ASIO building going up,” the driver said, seeing Quint’s blank face. “Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation. The spy mob. Going to be a huge building. Five stories high.”

“Five stories?” Quint tried to imagine an office block stretching along Constitution Avenue, rising above the oak trees.

“Of course, those five stories will be underground. Security, you see. Just a grassy knoll on top.”

That didn’t sound so bad.

“Mind you,” the driver went on, “it’s going to be chaos here for the next couple of years.”

Chaos opposite Quint’s home. This was not good. He reached out and straightened the driver’s map screen.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay