The Delta Chain (9 page)

‘I’m with you,’ Hadley said. ‘So, for instance, Dr. Hunter and his team begin testing with a hundred or so experiments suggested by the DataStorming analysis, as opposed to many more thousands of possible experiments?’

‘Exactly.’

‘There are, of course, no guarantees to getting the required result,’ Hunter said, ‘but DataStorming’s success rate in other fields is high – sixty to seventy percent – and the incredible thing is the enormous amount of time saved for research teams. In some cases we’re talking about saving decades spent on unsuccessful experiments.’

‘I could talk computers all day,’ Kate said, ‘but I’d love to hear a bit about a day in the life of an investment banker.’

‘You’ve echoed my exact thoughts.’ Westmeyer lied with the grace of the perfect host. Bill Hadley took the bait and the talk drifted to world developments in the money markets and the changing face of the multinationals.

When the lunch was over and they were returning to the boardroom for the final presentation, Hunter leaned toward Kate, his voice a husky whisper. ‘You haven’t been returning my calls.’

‘You got that right.’ Kate allowed her irritation to show. It was always the ones who thought they were irresistible to women who couldn’t take “no” for an answer.

‘I don’t know whether you listened to the messages I left on your answering machine-’

‘Actually no.’ Now she directed a flippant grin at him, ‘I deleted them. That was half the fun.’ She’d made it clear, after their last date over a month ago, that she didn’t want to pursue a relationship.

‘Okay, okay, I know I came on far too strong on that last date and that’s why you backed off. That’s what I was saying on those messages. Look, Kate, we really relaxed and enjoyed ourselves at first, didn’t we? At least grant me that.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Well, I really did. And I respect that you want some space, fair enough, but I’d really like to try it again. Take it nice and slow.’

‘Stephen, I’m seeing some-’

‘Hear me out. Look, I know I can get be overbearing.’

Kate’s raised eyebrow revealed her surprise. Stephen Hunter had never struck her as the sensitive type.

‘Anyway, why don’t you at least give it some thought.’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘By the way, you were great with those bankers. William will be very happy.’

‘He doesn’t need my help to win over the bankers, he does it brilliantly on his own. I’m here strictly for a limited time to sort out the system problems.’

‘I think he’d like you to stay around permanently. So would I.’ He gave her a carefree wave as he moved off into the crowd. ‘Think about what I said.’ He may be a brilliant researcher and a real hunk, Kate thought, but he really was an arrogant, self-centred man. She knew he’d been play- acting. What was it with him? Couldn’t bear to have had a potential conquest see right through him and get away? Years ago she’d seen a girlfriend get mixed up with a similar character and it had an ugly end.

She didn’t need
that
in her life.

After the final presentation, Kate hurried back to her office. She wanted to zip through her work and leave early. She called Betty, who confirmed she’d retrieved the diary back-ups and sent them to Kate’s laptop. Kate wanted to get home and start checking those files.

She was about to leave when the desk phone rang. ‘Kate, we’re running through some DataStorming results and the data’s going crazy…’ It was Stephen Hunter.

‘Don’t panic…’

‘It’s this damned virus,’ he shouted into the phone.

‘I’ll be right there.’ Kate knew Westmeyer was taking his guests on a guided tour. Hunter’s lab would be one of the star attractions, so this was the worst possible time and place for another virus attack.

She ran to the lifts and headed up to the second level.

Robert Parker, Communications Officer for the Northern Territory Wildlife Preservation Commission, was grim faced as he entered the office of Commission chief Harold Letterfield at 10.45. ‘Sir, I believe Conway advised you we didn’t receive this morning’s radiophone check-in from Kovacs. There’s been no further word since and all our attempts to raise him have met with static.’

‘Damn,’ said Letterfield.

‘We can keep trying…’

‘Yes, keep trying, but in the meantime I’m getting the chopper crew out there. There’s no way Greg or Walter would miss contact unless something was wrong.’

Fifteen minutes later the Commission’s Bell Ranger helicopter lifted off its pad in the town of Settler’s Gorge, carrying pilot Ron Mahoney and senior ranger Trish Watts north- east.

They followed the Adelaide River into the Van Diemen Gulf.

At first, they were afforded a bird’s-eye view of undulating plains cut by low mountain ranges and rocky hills. Later, the landscape became flood plains and wetlands with areas of monsoon forest.

The Northern Territory’s Top End is drained by several rivers flowing into the Gulf. The Adelaide River rises near Mt. Smith, to the south of the Adelaide River township, and runs a strong course through a landscape rich in eucalypts, paperbarks and pandanus palms, constantly brimming with its own ecological melting pot of water birds. Flocks of pelicans, herons and jabirus drifted by and it occurred to Trish Watts that the Bell Ranger, with the mechanical whirr of its rotor blades, was like an unwelcome alien to this vast stretch of wilderness.

‘There’s the Rover,’ Mahoney said, spotting the four-wheel drive. Kovacs and Coolawirra had left it by the side of a rocky trail that was an offshoot of the Arnhem Highway. The chopper flew low, following the river.

‘Like looking for a needle in a bloody haystack,’ Trish Watts shouted over the constant roar of the rotor blades. She trained her binoculars on the riverbank, sweeping her view in an arc, back and forth, over the mangroves. The special gyroscope, fitted to the binoculars, allowed her to zero in for close-ups. Trish was an earthy, energetic young woman who’d grown up in the Northern Territory and who’d been a friend to both Greg and Walter for a number of years. She began to feel stabs of anxiety as, kilometre after kilometre, she saw nothing but swamps and lagoons and pockets of forest; flocks of birds, wild pigs and rabbits. No men. And no watercraft – this was too far north for the tourist cruises and pleasure boats of the Adelaide River region.

Later in the afternoon, with twilight not too far away and the fuel gauge low, Mahoney put the Bell Ranger into a 360- degree turn and headed back to Settler’s Gorge.

Walter Coolawirra heard the faint strains of the helicopter, somewhere in the distance. A soft, almost imperceptible sound that only a trained bushman’s ears would detect. He stopped, cocked his head slightly and listened with a new intensity.

But the sound faded further, and then was gone.

He pushed on, drenched in the cold sweat of fear, keeping to the edge of the mud flats, away from the river bank, cloaking his movements with the long, broad leaves of the trees and the intermittent sprays of tawny bottlebrush. He didn’t want to be in the possible view of the hunters if their boat was following the same direction on the river. He knew they would kill him, but he couldn’t be sure if they were on the water, or tracking him by foot, or both.

He’d covered a great deal of ground, stopping for only a few hours in the dead of night so they wouldn’t hear his movements, but not sleeping. Sleep seemed to him an impossible dream, something he would never know again.

He was certain the chopper he’d heard was evidence the Commission was out searching. But it was getting late in the day and they would’ve turned back now, intending to refuel at Adelaide River. He knew he had to reach an open area, as close as possible to the four-wheel drive, so that they’d be able to spot him in the morning. In the meantime he couldn’t stop. He ached all over, every muscle dragging as though weighted by slabs of stone, every nerve end screaming for relief, but he could not stop. He couldn’t take the chance the hunters would catch up to him. There was something uncanny about the way they’d known he and Greg were out there, and then pinpointed their location in the dark.

And Walter couldn’t allow himself to sleep in these swamps, where he’d quickly become food for the reptiles.

He pressed on. Darkness fell, and the long stretch of time without sleep began playing with his senses. Many times he thought he heard the whirring blades of the helicopter, approaching. He would look into the night sky, scanning the stars, slowly realising each time the sound was his own exhausted brain’s imagination, teasing him with hope when all seemed hopeless. Together with the chatter of the birds and the eerie night sounds of the reptiles and bush animals, Walter, at times, believed he was listening to the cacophony of hell itself.

For the editor of the Northern Rocks Express, a phone call from the mayor was not an unusual thing. But the subject matter and the mayor’s attitude came as a surprise to Eddie Cochrane when he answered his phone at 12.45.

‘Some sparky reporter of yours called my media guy this morning,’ Sandy Bingham said, ‘and tried to force a connection between a drowning last night and some case up in Morrissey three or four months ago.’

‘That’d be Melanie Cail,’ said Eddie with a chuckle, but the mayor’s reply made clear he wasn’t treating this in a light fashion.

‘She had damned bizarre angles slanting all over the place, Eddie. What the hell is going on? If the police find a connection, fine, but so far there’s no such evidence of the kind. Even if they do, it’s just another case, not something for scaring the whole town shitless by inventing sinister theories…’

‘Well, Sandy, of course I agree-’

‘We’ve got the tourist season and the town’s fiftieth just around the corner, so why does this stupid girl want to cast dark shadows all over it-’

‘Whoa, Sandy. Calm down. Melanie’s very ambitious, comes on a little strong sometimes. I haven’t seen any copy from her yet, and when I do – well, you know me, I don’t run irresponsible journalism in the Express.’

‘I just wanted to make my thoughts known to you, Eddie. That girl’s whole approach was sensationalist. I’m sure you’ll agree and keep the whole thing in its proper context.’

They said their good-byes but after he’d put down his phone, Eddie reflected with concern over the mayor’s tone. Normally Sandy Bingham was a smooth operator, getting his point across with charm. Oodles of it. Then again, Eddie thought, Bingham had been known to lose his cool in council meetings. Nature of the beast, perhaps.

Eddie thought of “old” George Watson, the ex-farm boy, ex-policeman who’d been the steadfast, down-to-earth mayor for seventeen years before his retirement. Eddie missed “old” George. Sandy Bingham reminded him of the big city politicians, too much style and not enough substance. Bingham represented the new order, hyped up and lightning paced, and Eddie increasingly felt it was no improvement on the old days. No improvement at all.

It was a brief car trip from the police centre to the council building. Arthur Kirby drove and his eyes were fixed firmly on the road when he announced to Adam: ‘I don’t want to see this case blown out of proportion by the media. Or to put a strain on our relationship with the mayor. We need a fast, tidy wrap up to the whole damned thing.’

‘You’ve already said that and I agree.’

‘That’s why I’ve decided to get the mayor’s endorsement in asking Brisbane Central to send in a senior homicide/missing persons specialist to work this one.’

‘Hold on, Arthur, there’s no need-’

Kirby raised his hand to halt the protest, his eyes still fixed on the road. ‘There’s no need for injured pride or anything like that. It’s just pure logistics, Adam. Let’s face facts. You’ve very little experience with difficult cases-’

‘We don’t know this case is going to be all that difficult.’

‘Hear me out. An experienced, senior city man, taking charge and assisted by you, is in my opinion the smart way to tackle this investigation. In particular we want a man who can quickly squash town gossip or media beat-ups.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Adam said between clenched teeth. The real fact of the matter was that Adam had four years experience as the town’s solo detective, and he’d had far more difficult cases, including several homicides, over those years. He’d had a particularly good relationship with the previous, now retired station chief. Arthur Kirby had arrived to fill the post eighteen months ago and had continually proved himself antagonistic. Adam had never known why.

‘My mind’s made up on this, Adam. And whilst I don’t run the detective side of things, as station chief I have the right to make this request. I expect Bingham will be of the same view.’

Adam kept his anger in check. After he and Kirby arrived at the council building and had each said their piece in the meeting, the mayor’s response came as a welcome surprise to Adam. ‘Sorry, Arthur, but I have to agree with Detective Bennett on this one. Surely bringing in a city boy is only going to give the local media food-for-thought and make a connection to this other case seem even more likely. And we don’t want that.’

‘We’d be sending a message that we’re dead serious about closing the case quickly, well in advance of the holiday season and the celebrations.’

Bingham considered this briefly. ‘No, I still think it’s too early to take any drastic actions, but I do appreciate where you’re coming from.’ Bingham shifted his focus to Adam. ‘What’s the current status on this, Detective?’

Adam talked the two men through the results of Markham’s autopsy. He didn’t deny the possibility the two cases were linked. He clarified that the girl’s identikit had been despatched to every police station nationally, and to Interpol. He sketched in details of the standard procedures already undertaken: dental matching, blood testing; and his own initiative in accessing information on the tides and currents.

For a man usually given to constant movement, Sandy Bingham sat still, absorbing Adam’s summary. ‘So there’s nothing in the pathology to suggest death by anything other than drowning?’