Golden Relic (5 page)

"He arrived with his colleagues and the first shipment last week; then returned to Paris so he
could travel with the remainder of the exhibits."

"Why two shipments? And why did Dr Bridger accompany both?" Sam asked.

"What does this have to do with Lloyd?" Prescott looked worried.

"Just background information," Rigby replied casually. "We never know what may be useful in an
investigation of this kind. And you did bring it up."

Prescott nodded. "Firstly, this travelling exhibition grew out of a smaller one that Marcus put
together from the existing collection at the British Museum. When he thought about taking it on tour
he decided to broaden the scope and make it truly international. So, as well as the original
collection, there are many artefacts on loan from museums and cultural institutions all over the
world; brought together for the first time. Marcus is responsible for all of them, hence he insists
on riding shotgun for both shipments."

"He thinks someone is going to try and steal funeral relics?" Rigby asked, his tone implying
there was no accounting for taste.

"No, Detective Rigby, though stranger things have happened. And in fact there was a hijacking of
some valuable pre-Columbian artefacts in Paris just yesterday. In answer to your other question,
having two or more shipments for exhibitions of this kind is standard operating procedure. The
reason is not so much theft prevention as accident prevention or rather, reducing the odds against
complete loss should, for instance, a plane carrying priceless and irreplaceable objects go down in
the middle of the Pacific Ocean, never to be seen again."

"Well," Rigby announced getting to his feet before Prescott could launch into another aside,
"that will probably do for now. We'll be back if we need anything else."

"And to keep me apprised of your investigation?" Prescott asked hopefully, glancing meaningfully
at Sam as they both stood up.

"Of course Mr Prescott," she replied.

"Oh there was one other thing," Rigby remembered. He opened his folder, pulled out an evidence
bag and placed it on the desk. "Do you have any idea who or what Professor Marsden might have meant
by this?"

Prescott inspected Marsden's note and tried to make sense of the scrawl by mouthing the letters.
Finally he tried a few combinations: "hanosgoo, hancsgoc, hanfgoo," and then shrugged. "I'm sorry, I
have no idea."

Rigby reclaimed the bag. "We'll need to look at your personnel records to see if there's any
names that come close."

"Of course. I'll get Anton to organise it for you," Prescott said, showing them to the door.

Once they were out in the hallway Rigby consulted the list Rivers had given him and suggested
they split the task to save time.

"I'd like to check out Marsden's office and talk to this Robert Ellington," Sam requested.

"Fine," Rigby agreed. "I'll track down the others. Rivers, you go with Sam."

Sam looked at Rigby askance. "You seconded him to your team Jack," she reminded him.

Rigby gave her the same look back. "There's no need to get your knickers in a twist. I need him
with you because he is on my team. I know how you work Sam. You keep too much up here." He tapped
his finger on his temple. "I need a pair of eyes and a mind that remembers to write things down
occasionally so I have some idea of what I don't see and hear first hand."

"All right, already," said Sam. "Now whose knickers are all twisted?"

"You and Rigby seem to know each other quite well," Rivers commented as he followed Sam, who
followed Anton's directions to Marsden's office.

"I haven't seen him for two years, but we worked closely together for six months on the Carjacker
case," Sam explained.

"The serial killer?"

"Yeah. The Bureau joined the hunt when it was discovered the killer hadn't confined his
activities to Victoria. It was actually Jack and I who tracked Neville Strickland down to that
fleapit hotel where he shot one of his hostages before turning the gun on himself."

"I remember that siege lasted nearly three days," Rivers said. "Cultural Affairs must seem pretty
tame, if that's the sort of work you were doing before - tracking serial killers."

"You sound like you think it's an adventure, Rivers. It's not. It's awful work. I'd much rather
there weren't any serial killers to track. Luckily Australia doesn't produce too many men like
Strickland. He was a really sick individual, and I don't mean insane. He knew what he was doing, and
what he did to those women was indescribable. You'd have to see it to believe it and, believe me, it
is not something you ever want to see. I transferred to the Anti-Drug Task Force after that case."
Sam looked at Rivers, then added, "Which I suppose, when you think about it, is really just a police
response to a different form of serial killing."

"Ludicrous. Ludicrous," came a voice from behind them. "One would think they were professional
enough to pay attention. I should have done it myself." The words, delivered as if they'd been fired
from a Gatling gun, were obviously being spoken to the person they were being spoken by. A man with
unbelievably wild grey hair, and wearing a suit that looked like it had been retrieved from the
still-to-be-ironed basket, overtook them in the corridor.

"I'm late, I'm late for an important date," Rivers whispered to Sam, as the man, still talking to
himself, darted into what turned out to be Marsden's office. Sam and Rivers followed him in.

Bookshelves, interspersed with filing cabinets, covered most of the walls, including the
floor-to-ceiling window. Two desks, and their surrounding mess of things in boxes, sat on opposite
sides of the room facing the centre. Framed photographs crowded a section of wall behind what Sam
guessed was Marsden's desk, next to which was a cluttered pinboard hanging precariously from a bent
coat stand.

"Robert Ellington?" Sam enquired.

"Of course," he snapped, losing control of the manila folders he was trying to stack on the other
desk. Sam bent down to help him pick them up but it wasn't until Ellington was completely happy with
the repositioned pile that he acknowledged her presence.

His eyes looked left, then right, then squinted at Sam. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"No. I'm Special Detective Sam Diamond, from the Australian Crime Bureau, and this is Constable,"
she hesitated, but her new sidekick chose that moment to stare at the ceiling. "Rivers," Sam
continued. "We're investigating the death of Lloyd Marsden."

"You mean murder. The word around here is that it was murder. Poor old Lloyd. Do you think he
suffered? I hope he didn't suffer."

"I don't know. But if I could ask you a few questions about Mr Marsden…"

"Professor," Ellington interrupted. "He liked to be called Professor; God knows why. It's a bit
pretentious in this day and age, don't you think? Call me plain old Bob, I say. On second thoughts,
I probably wouldn't answer since no one has ever called me Bob. I wouldn't know who you were talking
to, would I? But Lloyd was a trifle old-fashioned, and just because the rambunctious old bastard is
dead doesn't mean we ignore his wishes."

"Robert." Sam used his first name to try and get him back on track. When he smiled as if she'd
recognised him in a crowd, she continued. "We understand you saw Professor Marsden at some stage
yesterday."

"That would be correct. Sam," he smiled. "We had breakfast together, as usual, in a cafe near
Flinders Street station. We walked together as far as the Library, where I left him and continued on
here. I also saw him just after lunch, about 2.30, when I had cause to go to the Library myself. I'm
researching blacksmiths and boilermakers at the moment for a future exhibit on trades during the
early days of the colony. I just nodded hello to Lloyd on that occasion, as he was talking to that
twerp Trevor Brownie."

"The assistant financial administrator?" Sam wandered over to Marsden's desk.

"One of the assistants," Ellington confirmed. "A sycophantic, jumped-up little sluggerbug who
acts as if the Museum's money comes out of his own piggy bank. Sorry. Sorry. But I don't have much
time for middle-management types who have invariably, and inexplicably, risen above their limited
talents."

"It's a universal problem, Robert," Sam agreed, sitting in Marsden's chair. The desk top was an
inch deep in scattered clutter, some of which had spilled onto the floor, and one of the drawers was
half open. "Is this normal or has the Professor's desk been searched?"

Ellington glanced over. "Quite normal, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been disturbed. Lloyd had
a mind like a steel trap but no sense of order."

"Do you have any gloves, Rivers?" Sam asked. The Constable stopped taking notes, fished in his
uniform pocket and handed her a pair.

"You obviously knew the Professor well Robert, perhaps you could tell us about him." Sam began
picking through the leftovers of Marsden's working life. In a comparatively ordered pile on her
right, topped by a shopping list, was a variety of museum-related invoices and inventories, plus a
hardware store's catalogue, a pile of what looked like chocolate sprinkles, and a red phone bill
bearing Marsden's name and a South Melbourne address. Sam scanned the phone bill and handed it to
Rivers who dropped it in an evidence bag.

"Actually, I didn't know Lloyd all that well," Ellington was saying.

"But you said you had breakfast with him 'as usual'," Rivers quoted from his notes.

Sam investigated the half open drawer. It was full of chocolate bars and empty wrappers, and a
box of half-eaten donuts and cakes - a sugar-junkie's variety of jam-filled, chocolate-topped or
smothered in icing sugar or cream.

"Lloyd and I had been eating breakfast in the same establishment for 15 years. Earlier this year,
when a bus load of tourists invaded the place, we had to sit at the same table and discovered we
share a passion for the horses. We've been breakfasting together ever since."

"It took you 15 years to share a table?" Sam attacked the pile in front of her, finding
newspapers, museum publications, and manila folders filled with notes and printouts about the
collection Marsden was responsible for relocating.

"That was Lloyd's choice. He was a private, thoughtful man not given to socialising."

"But you were sharing an office as well," Rivers commented.

"Only for the last two months. I have been working for this institution on and off, mostly on,
for nigh on 40 years. Lloyd has been here, but mostly off doing field work or fulfilling his
teaching commitments at Melbourne University, for the past 30 years. A long time yes, but our
disciplines rarely connected. I know a great deal about his work and reputation but little about his
personal life."

Sam opened the long, deep drawer in the middle of the desk. "Whoa!" she exclaimed.

"What is it?" Rivers stepped forward eagerly.

"Ah," Ellington said. "Lloyd's only other passion outside of his work; that I know of."

"A man after my own heart," Sam declared. The drawer was full of cryptic crosswords, all cut from
newspapers and in various stages of completion. Sharing the space was a dictionary and a
well-thumbed thesaurus.

As she shut the drawer, Sam noticed something protruding from under the large blotter that
protected the surface of the desk from the paraphernalia and food scraps on top of it. Clearing
everything back she lifted the blotter and set it down on the floor.

"Make a list, Rivers," she advised. "Three Mars Bar wrappers; an airline ticket dated for this
Saturday, in Marsden's name - destination Lima, Peru; a dry cleaning bill - with pick-up for
tomorrow; a prescription for malaria tablets - already filled; a catalogue for the 'Rites of Life
and Death' exhibition; and three betting slips, from Sandown last Friday."

Sam opened the full-colour catalogue which featured pictures of artefacts and photographs of
'real-life' funerary and fertility rituals. On the inside cover, next to an article about the
purpose of the exhibition, was a mugshot of a broodingly-handsome man, of the Heathcliff variety.
The caption read: Dr Marcus Bridger. MA, PhD, FSA.

Sam turned several pages of sponsors' ads, until the catalogue settled open, through previous
use, on the captioned photos of the other exhibition team members and the show's worldwide
itinerary. The fold was full of icing sugar, as if Marsden had eaten his lunch over it, so it was
reasonable to assume that it had been he who used a marker pen to highlight some of the overseas
tour dates.

Sam replaced the blotter on the desk and nodded to Rivers. "Better get forensics in to check any
prints found at the crime scene against any that shouldn't be here."

Sam returned her attention to Ellington who had been patiently sitting at his desk. "Do you know
of anyone who knew Marsden well?"

"Pavel Mercier," he replied instantly. "And Maggie of course. They were the only people he spoke
of with any kind of fondness or familiarity. They worked together over the years."

"And who are they?"

Ellington scuttled over to the bookshelves next to Marsden's desk, drawing Sam's attention to two
shelves of hard and soft cover publications, the spines of which wore the names Professor Lloyd
Marsden, Dr Pavel Mercier and Dr Maggie Tremaine, either independently or as co-authors in various
combinations. The titles ranged from the readily understandable - such as
Time Stands Still:
An Exploration of Archaeology
;
The New Technologies of History
;
Inca Roads to
Power
;
Aztec Glory, Aztec Blood
; and
Adrift in a Sea of Sand: The Ruins of Tanis
;
- to the more esoteric:
An Interlude in Hatshepsut's Kitchen
;
Sipán and
Chimú: Benefactors of Tahuantinsuyu?
; and
Anthropomorphic Entities and the Andean
Supernatural Realm
.

"That's quite a body of work. Are they on staff here or do you know how to contact them?"