26. Boomgate

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.”

22. Dirty hands

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.

19. What's it all about?

And the final corner, where the main gate area took a bite out of the Blamey Cresent intersection. Here a yellow-jacketed guard stood foursquare beside the gate. Quint took a photograph of the area, but he had no hopes in this direction. A guardhouse was manned around the clock and it was floodlit at night.

A few more lengths along Constitution Avenue and he would be back at the start point.

“Hey!”

The guard, calling him over.

17. Treasure trove

Quint kept a clean flat. His own books were lined up – in alphabetical order of authors – on a bookshelf. Such a minefield of decisions in arranging books. Samuel Pepys had ordered his library by height, even to the extent of having book cabinets made especially for them. His will had specified that they not be altered, and by some miracle, three hundred years later they were still in order in the same bookcases.

CDs were less trouble. They were all the same size, mostly, in their plastic cases. Quint selected a compilation, one he’d bought at Starbucks when they were still in Canberra, and put it on. Chet Baker singing You Make me Feel so Young. Hard to imagine Mrs Campbell as a schoolgirl, galloping through the trees, firelight on her face, burying pirate treasure.

13. Unslung hero

On his windowsill were two objects. The fireblackened stone from Quint’s now-vanished thinking grove. The metal disc from under the stone.

He picked up the disc, feeling the texture. It was about the size of a twenty-cent piece, but thinner and darker. There were figures on it, but it was blackened, corroded and encrusted.

Kitchen sink. Hot water, detergent and the old toothbrush kept for scrubbing at the shower times. He worked away at it, gently loosening the dirt, careful not to damage the surface.

7. Watching the birdie

Quint spent Saturday researching digital cameras on the net. He constructed a spreadsheet cross-listing models, features and prices, read a slew of reviews containing acronyms and arcane terms, aiming for something that he thought he could afford, would be easy to operate, and have the features he wanted. He was mainly looking for good zoom [...]

1. On the level

“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.”