6

I WAS SCRAMBLING up a muddy slope in fading light. A grey mist swirled in the valley below and expanded towards me. I had to make it to a line of trees near the top, and I was making good ground.

Then I lost my footing and fell on my face, and started sliding backwards on all fours. The more desperate my efforts to halt my slide, the faster I descended the slope. And all the time the mist was closing in.

I got to my feet and was again scrambling up the slope. Then I tripped over a tussock of grass and went over again. I was looking up at the trees on the ridgeline when the mist enveloped me, the ground gave way, a hole opened up underneath me, and I fell in. Then, hurtling through total darkness, I braced for the impact, choking with dread, and suddenly I …

I sat up with a start and pulled in a big breath. My bedding was soaked, my eyes felt sore and heavy, but I was relieved to be awake. Woolly light framed the closed curtains of the rec room. According to the wall clock, it was six-fifteen. I’d had four hours’ sleep, and it was time to get moving again. I got up and left the room as quietly as I could so as not to disturb the other sleepers. I had a shower and got dressed, and then made a strong cup of coffee and took it to my desk.

The room was full of people. Some were on the phone. Others were tapping away at their machines. And another lot were deep in discussion in the back corner. I wasn’t up to talking, so I drank my coffee and trawled the morning papers. Then I moved onto the websites. All of them carried tributes from Wright’s admirers and colleagues, and most photo spreads included shots of me looking very solemn at the crime scene.

I glanced up at McHenry. He was behind his desk at the front of the room, the tip of his tongue moving between his lips as he prodded his keyboard with his index fingers. I’d put a note on PROMIS outlining what Stevo had told me about Mondrian. I’d also noted rumours about Sorby’s doubtful tenure with Wright. I waited for McHenry to finish what he was doing, then went up and told him that I wanted to pursue both leads.

‘Do it,’ he said, slumping back in his chair. ‘But use discretion on the Mondrian business, please. And don’t let this Stevenson play you. I’ll see if there’s someone in the opposition we can talk to as well, just to keep things balanced. But leave that for now — I’ve got something else for you to go on with.’

He signalled for Smeaton to join us, then unlocked his desk drawer and produced an evidence bag with Susan Wright’s name on it. The bag held some of the carpet fluff that had come from her clothes. He handed it to me.

‘Forensics sent it to their fibre expert over at the uni,’ he said, eyeing the fluff. ‘The expert reckons it’s from high-grade carpet. Axminister, to be precise. Eighty per cent wool. Twenty per cent nylon. The sort of floor covering you find in national institutions like the High Court, the National Gallery, and Parliament House.’

Smeaton usually looked vaguely anxious around McHenry, but, on hearing this news, he gave the boss a rare smile. I thought it sounded pretty good, too.

‘And it gets better,’ said McHenry, licking his lips. ‘A few years ago, this fibre guy got his students to analyse the carpets in ten public buildings around Canberra, including Parliament House. On the basis of what they found back then, he says he’s pretty sure our bluey-grey fluff here comes from carpet made exclusively for the House.’

This was stunning news, though it was hard to believe that we’d come up with something so solid so early.

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘The heaviest concentration of fluff on Wright’s clothes corresponded with those areas of her body where the lividity formed. So, presumably, she was lying on a floor thick with this stuff when she died, and it got compressed onto her. Now if this fluff is from carpet made exclusively for Parliament House, it either means she was killed up there, at the House, or …’

‘Or what?’ said McHenry. ‘What else can it mean?’

I had no idea, but I gave him the only other possible explanation.

‘Or the fibre expert’s got it wrong,’ I said.

‘Maybe, but I don’t think so,’ said McHenry. ‘Anyway, I’ve got the name of a bloke who helped lay the original carpet at the House. That’s the good news. The bad news is, this Barry Waldeck leaves this afternoon for a month in Hong Kong, so you two have about ten minutes before you’re supposed to meet him in Fyshwick.’

Barry Waldeck was waiting on the footpath when we pulled up outside Carpet Central. He was a little bloke with badly dyed black hair and a firm handshake. With introductions done, we followed him through his showroom, past a dozen or more giant rolls of carpet and into a small office set into the back corner of the place.

Once we were seated around his desk, I told Waldeck that we were trying to identify an assault victim who’d been found with lots of carpet fibre on their clothes. Waldeck looked at me doubtfully and asked where the assault had occurred. Everything to do with the crime was confidential, I said. He nodded, but I figured he’d seen me in the media and had put two and two together.

When I handed him the evidence bag, Waldeck took it like it was some fragile thing. He placed it on his desk, opened it, and carefully removed the small sausage of fluff. Then he smelt the fluff, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, and stretched it a bit. Finally, he put it under his desk lamp and closed in on it with a giant magnifying glass.

‘Blue-grey Axminister,’ he said at last, easing the fluff back into the plastic bag. ‘That’s what this lint is. From the same stock we laid up at the House. Tassie carpet. The best. Made especially for the job.’

‘So these fibres are definitely from the carpet you laid at Parliament House,’ I said. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No. What I’m sayin’ is, I’m pretty sure it’s from the same stock. But whether it came off any carpet laid up there, I don’t know. Let me get old Len in ’ere. He’ll explain it better.’

Waldeck got on the phone, and soon there was a rap at the door, and a craggy old bloke in faded blue overalls limped into the room. After introductions, ‘old’ Len slumped into the only spare chair and Waldeck pointed to the bag of fluff and asked him where he thought it was from. Len removed the fluff from the bag and rubbed it between knuckles bulging with arthritis. He stretched it and smelt it, just as Waldeck had done, only more slowly. Then a faraway smile lit his face, as though the fluff had prompted a pleasant memory.

‘It’s Parliament House stock,’ said Len, nodding as he continued to study the fibre. ‘This stuff went down in most of the public areas. And the ministerial wing. And the library. And a few other places. I don’t remember the dye lot number. I knew it back then, but the memory’s a bit like the knees these days. It’s from Brindells, though. And they’d have it. The number. Ya see, no two dye lots are the same, so you send them this bit of lint, and they’ll give you the details, for sure.’

‘And would Brindells have used the same dye on other jobs?’ I said. ‘I mean, would you find the same-coloured carpet in other places around Canberra?’

‘No way they’d do that,’ said Len, looking at me doubtfully. ‘That was an exclusive run, that one.’

I looked at Smeaton and he smiled back at me, both of us chuffed at this apparent confirmation that Susan Wright had died up at the House. I looked at Len. The semi-scowl on his face told me he was about to set us straight.

‘As for where this lint came from,’ he said, ‘I really can’t say for sure. Possibly Parliament House. But those pollies, you know, they’re like you cops. Very particular types. They like their offices spick and span, so they get them vacuumed every night. I could spend half a day rolling around on the floors up there and still wouldn’t get half as much lint on me as this little bit. Yah know what I’m sayin?’

‘No, Len,’ I said, my guts in freefall. ‘Exactly what are you saying?’

‘I think it’s for sure that this lint is from Parliament House stock,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think it’s from up there.’

Oh no. Snakes and ladders.

‘So where do you think it’s from, Len?’ I said.

‘Here’s what I reckon,’ he said, leaning in close. ‘It’s from offcuts.’

‘Offcuts? What offcuts?’

‘There were all sorts of offcuts from the Parliament House job. Bits of granite. Lengths of timber. Plasterboard and the like. The construction authority sold it all off to a few places around town, and then those places broke it down into smaller parcels and flogged it off to the punters. For souvenirs and the like. Some of it was absolute rubbish, but it sold — boy did it sell. One bloke I know got all the excess granite from the outside walls. He had it stacked up in a paddock out on the Captains Flat Road. Some big pieces, too. That sold so quick it was unbelievable.’

‘And don’t tell me. There were carpet offcuts, too.’

‘Too right there was. And we bought the lot. Barry here did, at least. Ended up with the equivalent of about ten rolls, didn’t you, Baz?’

Waldeck nodded and smiled, but said nothing, enjoying the memory.

‘We had some little pieces and bigger bits,’ said Len. ‘And we put a notice in the local rag and sold the lot. Didn’t we, Baz? You remember. The place was crawlin’ with people. Most of it was gone by midday.’

‘That’s right,’ said Waldeck, now looking a bit sheepish. ‘But I’m sorry, detective. Like Len says, it was all a bit mad in here that day, so it was strictly cash sales, and we kept no record of any of them.’