I consider Eric’s workstation. I’ve already unburdened my shelves and mobile pedestal ahead of the big move. The green wheelie bin next to the pod is full and anything that I want to keep, I’ve put into labelled files. The hole-punch and stapler have been put to good use and I’ve even deployed coloured file dividers. My workstation looks like an advertisement for Officeworks. All I need to do now is slide the files into an archive box (floor seven, workstation thirty-six) and pack up Eric’s old papers.
Eric’s mobile pedestal hasn’t been opened in six months. I was the last one to close it. The key is still hanging in the lock. It sticks when I turn it and, for a horrible moment, I think it might break off.
‘Let me.’ Belinda wriggles the key out of the lock and rubs the edges over the tip of a pencil. ‘Try it now.’
The key slides in and turns without complaint. Belinda high fives James.
The suspension files in the drawer are labelled with blue plastic clips and hold manila folders. There are no loose pages; everything is hole-punched, stapled and threaded into file binders. This orderliness is not a credit to Eric, but to me. I was the person delegated to give the police access to his working papers after he disappeared, and I wasn’t going to hand them over in the condition I knew they lived in. I flick through the pages and even I, Queen of Invoice Reconciliations, have to admit they’re boring. Excel spreadsheets with rows and rows of patient names accompanied by a string of dates, ticks and crosses. Handwritten interview notes with health administrators explaining how they follow discharge protocols and why their patient records are incomplete (the hospital’s fault if the administrator worked for an outpatient clinic and the clinic’s fault if the administrator was based in a hospital). It would have driven Eric crazy. Not exactly the big picture stuff he craved.
One of the rows is underlined in green pen. Helen Stewart. The name is familiar and I look for her in the back of the file. Ms Stewart spent three days in hospital for asthma complications. Her discharge plan is hole-punched and threaded into its correct place, along with records of her follow-up appointments. Behind them are tenancy inspection reports, stamped with a familiar blue logo. Helen Stewart, it seems, is one of the public housing tenants that so offended the page-three reporter, although I can’t see the relevance of the tenancy reports to the community health inquiry. She’s a single mum with one dependent and neat six-monthly inspection records – and I realise she rings a bell because she is the same tenant whose misfiled records I put in Bigfoot’s Miscellaneous folder. Oven cleaned and cockroach baits laid. Renew tenancy. Well done, Ms Stewart.
I put the file in the last space in my own archive box, then stop. I figure I might as well set an example. I take the file to the photocopier, where I unthread the papers, lever out the staples with my fingernails, and scan each document. I reassemble the file and mark it as archived. On my way back to the pod, I cross paths with the level five analyst who’d been trying to file the other community health inquiry papers. I hand her the folder.
‘This belongs with those other papers,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve scanned it in but it’s best if you keep all the hard copies together.’
She beams. ‘Thanks, Frances. Bigf—Catherine gave me some papers as well, so we should have them all together now.’
‘Brilliant. You can shred it when I’ve confirmed that the documents are in the cloud where I hope I’ve just put them.’
Her face is already red from the Bigfoot slip-up, and she blushes deeper at the implied imperfection of our new technology.
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell her, ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’
I return to the pod and close the drawer of Eric’s now-empty mobile pedestal. Something swishes along the bottom. I frown, annoyed that I’ve missed something, and pull it open again. I’ve left a photo lying in the bottom of the drawer. It is small, maybe five by seven, and faded. I hold it to the window. It’s well composed: a river, sand dunes, and a picnic setting in the bottom right-hand corner. It could be the river on the cover of my landscapes book, but the colours are so washed out that the dunes could just as easily be the white dunes of my own childhood. I flip it over. 2005. No location, very enigmatic. I tuck the photo into my handbag and take my empty cup to the tearoom. Then my phone rings and everything goes to shit.