‘Whatever, mate. The office is free.’
* * *
‘OK, let’s have a look at this laptop,’ said Phoenix once they were settled around the desk. He plugged the USB into his own computer. ‘There’s a lot of data here,’ he commented. ‘Where should we start?’
‘Look for anything to do with his dad, for starters,’ said Jazz. ‘Or the Medusa. Sir Robert went all weird and demanded to talk to Toby right after he saw the statue.’
‘Alright, I’ll use those as keywords and set up a search.’ Phoenix began to type them in. ‘I’ll also include some generic terms like “statue” and “transport”.’
‘Look for “Zhang” too,’ said Jazz.
Phoenix added in the extra word. ‘This search will take some time to complete.’
‘What do you think is going on between Dr Zhang and Toby Grimshaw?’ Jazz mused, fingers drumming on her folded arms. ‘Do you think he had anything to do with those phone calls we overheard? Maybe Toby has been more involved in the exhibition than we thought.’
‘One way to find out,’ said Phoenix, placing Dr Zhang’s mobile on the table in front of him.
‘Phoenix! Did you take that from his office?’
‘It was too good a lead to pass up.’
‘It’s interfering . . . no, worse, it’s stealing,’ said Jazz.
‘Look, you want to find your friend’s dad, right?’ argued Phoenix. ‘Only you and me know that something might be wrong—everyone else thinks he’s gone to ground because he’s a crook. This could lead us straight to him.’
Jazz breathed deeply. ‘I still don’t feel right about it.’
‘What better clue is there to finding a missing person than their phone?’ Phoenix pressed.
‘What are you planning to do?’
‘Well, first I need to figure out his passcode or lock pattern. Luckily, I have something slightly more twenty-first century than that pencil rubbing you did back in Zhang’s office.’ He pulled out his own phone and opened up an app.
‘Another one of your “white-hat” programs?’ Jazz asked, sarcastically.
‘You guessed it,’ he said. ‘This one is kind of like fingerprint dust, but it uses light instead.’ He tapped and the light on his phone shone brightly for a moment. He shone it over the screen of Zhang’s phone and tapped another button. The phone made a chk sound like it was taking a photo.
‘Now, as long as he hasn’t cleaned his screen lately, we should be able to—’ there was a chime from his phone. ‘Yes! Here we go! It’s a lock pattern.’
Jazz looked at his phone and saw the photo of Dr Zhang’s phone in Phoenix’s app. A red line in a simple zigzag pattern was superimposed over it. She watched as Phoenix switched on Zhang’s phone and traced the pattern. The phone unlocked.
‘Wow!’ Jazz said, impressed in spite of herself. ‘Remind me never to leave you alone with my phone.’
‘Let’s flick through his call history first, see what we find.’ Phoenix went to work, flicking between screens and scrolling. ‘Plenty of missed calls, not surprisingly. All the ones listed as Home or Mackenzie are pretty self-explanatory. And yep, going back to last night, there’s one from Robert Grimshaw.’
‘That’ll be straight after Sir Robert looked at the Medusa,’ commented Jazz. ‘And presumably after he’d spoken to his son.’
Phoenix flicked to a different screen and nodded. ‘Toby Grimshaw is also one of Dr Zhang’s contacts.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s a lot of calls between them.’
‘That’s not too surprising. The calls were probably to talk about the exhibition,’ said Jazz, a little defensively.
Phoenix made a noncommittal noise. ‘Except that Toby’s never been seen at the museum or shown any interest in the exhibition.’
‘It would be good to know more about those two phone calls we overheard in Dr Zhang’s office,’ said Jazz.
Phoenix kept scrolling through the call history. ‘I’ll look at incoming calls just before that one from Sir Robert . . . I’d guess they’re these two here,’ Phoenix said, pointing out a sequence on screen. ‘Two calls received pretty much one after the other.’
‘It’s a landline,’ noted Jazz. ‘And just the number is listed, so they’re not from contacts in his phone.’ She eyed the phone on Simon’s desk, then looked up at Phoenix. ‘You tell me the number and I’ll dial it.’
‘What?’ he said, puzzled. Then he smiled slowly in understanding. ‘You’re going to call it.’
‘Why not?’ said Jazz, the receiver already in her hand. ‘It won’t be easily traceable from here.’ She pressed speaker and began punching in the numbers as Phoenix read them out. There was a click, then a ringing, then the call picked up. Jazz could scarcely breathe.
‘Thank you for calling Kendricks Engineering and Restoration Services. No-one is available to take your call right now, but please leave a message. BEEP.’
Jazz hung up and exhaled a long breath. ‘That was an anti-climax,’ she commented.
Phoenix was typing on his laptop. ‘Or not,’ he exclaimed. ‘Check this out—I just did a web search for that company name and look what’s come up!’ He turned the screen.
‘Balfour Park again!’ cried Jazz. ‘Kendricks Engineering is at the address in Dr Zhang’s ledger. This is a huge clue!’
‘Hmm,’ murmured Phoenix, distracted by something else on the phone.
‘What is it?’ asked Jazz.
‘This is interesting. That same number—the Kendricks Engineering one—rang again, half an hour after the call we overheard. And guess what? They left a voicemail.’
‘Phoenix, no,’ said Jazz firmly. ‘Flicking through Dr Zhang’s contacts is one thing, but accessing his messages would be tampering with evidence. We need to follow proper procedure and hand this over—to the police or his family. Let’s get out to Balfour Park before it’s too late and check out Kendricks Engineering. On the way, I’ll text Mack and ask her to call us tonight. She can decide what to do with her dad’s phone.’
Phoenix was about to reply when Jazz’s phone rang. It was Anika.
‘Have you guys found anything?’ she asked.
Jazz gave Anika a quick run-down of their progress.
‘It sounds like you have some great leads,’ Anika said encouragingly. ‘I wish I could come over and help, but I’m still not allowed out of the house in the evening.’
Seeing Phoenix at his laptop, Jazz had a sudden idea. ‘There is a way you can help, and you can do it from home. Hang on a sec. Phoenix, has that search on Toby’s files finished yet? Can you give Anika the results?’
‘It’s just about done,’ said Phoenix. ‘I’ll encrypt the files found in the search and send them to a secure cloud storage site. Tell Anika I’ll email her the login details.’
Jazz relayed the info. ‘Phoenix is giving you access to some files we took off Toby Grimshaw’s computer. Can you go through them? Anything you find that might be relevant to the case—drop it into a new folder.’
‘That was a good idea,’ said Phoenix as Jazz hung up. ‘Got any more for how we can persuade Simon to give us that lift to Balfour Park?’
‘Can’t you just ask him?’
‘Remember what happened to his ute the last time he helped us out?’ Phoenix reminded her.
Simon had helped them track down Anika, but her kidnapper had stolen his ute and smashed it into a train.
‘He got a new ute with the insurance money didn’t he?’ Jazz said thoughtfully. ‘He’ll want to show it off.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ Phoenix said.
Phoenix packed up his laptop and they went over to where Simon was showing a student how to block a punch. He looked up as they approached.
‘Uh-oh,’ Simon said. ‘Whenever I see those expressions on your faces, I sense that my life is about to get more complicated.’
‘We just need a favour,’ said Phoenix. ‘Nothing major, I promise. Your shift ends in ten minutes, doesn’t it? Got time to give us a lift out
to Balfour Park on your way home? Show us your new ute?’
‘It is a sweet ride,’ replied Simon, taking the bait. ‘The torque on this is way better than my old ute . . .’
But Phoenix wasn’t listening. Jazz had drawn his attention to the TV monitors suspended from the walls. ‘Look. More about the robbery,’ she said.
The headlines on-screen confirmed that Sir Robert remained unconscious in hospital under police guard.
Simon looked from the TV to their intense gazes. ‘This lift to Balfour Park wouldn’t have anything to do with a major criminal investigation, would it?’
Jazz and Phoenix exchanged a swift guilty glance before Phoenix replied confidently, ‘No way, mate. We’re just helping out a friend.’
25:03
Balfour Park was a small industrial estate with a strip of houses and shops along the western edge. Most factories were closed for the weekend, so the whole area seemed very quiet. Kendricks Engineering and Restoration turned out to be tucked away in a dead end. Simon brought the ute to a halt outside a large hangar-like building on the corner.
‘Let’s go take a closer look,’ said Jazz, opening the passenger door and climbing out.
Phoenix followed her. ‘Simon, do you reckon you could hang around for a bit? We’re just going to have a look.’
‘My life is but to serve you, Phoenix,’ Simon said drily, switching off the engine to wait. ‘You’ll be washing the towels at the gym all next week though!’
The streetlights turned on as they approached the factory, walking carefully through the long grass past some straggly eucalypts. On the right-hand side of the building was an old narrow footpath.
‘Everything looks pretty dark. Hopefully there’s no-one around,’ said Jazz in a quiet voice. ‘Let’s try to find a window where we can see inside.’
Keeping low and trying not to make a sound, they crept down the narrow path. At the far end they noticed some windows, high up, protected with rusty wire grilles. Several small pallets were stacked against the building.
‘Hold them while I climb up,’ Phoenix whispered.
While Jazz held the pallets steady, Phoenix made his way to the top of the pile and peered through the security grille on one of the windows.
‘Can you see anything?’ Jazz asked, raising her voice just above a whisper.
Phoenix shook his head and waved at her to be patient. Holding on tightly to the top pallet with one hand, Phoenix reached up with the other and tugged at the rusty grille. It was old and loose and came away, dangling against the wall, allowing Phoenix a clearer view through the window. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and raised it as high as he could. The pallets wobbled a bit and Jazz did her best to steady them. With the phone pressed up against the window, Phoenix took a series of fast automatic photographs.
The flash lit up the dark interior like lightning and Phoenix heard surprised exclamation from inside the building. Afraid he had been seen, Phoenix jumped down to the ground. His landing was slightly off-balance and he stumbled, falling onto his side. ‘Run!’ he urged Jazz, ‘I think there’s someone inside!’
Seeing Phoenix was unhurt, Jazz sped back up the narrow footpath and along the street to where Simon waited in the ute.
On his feet again, Phoenix followed her at a run. But just as he emerged at the building’s front entrance, a vehicle, headlights off, came sweeping past. Phoenix zigzagged and ducked behind a garbage bin. Seconds later, Phoenix took off again, sprinting towards the ute. He wrenched the door open and threw himself into the cabin, almost falling on Jazz who was buckling up in the middle seat.
‘Look!’ Phoenix said, pointing. ‘The van!’
‘It’s the blue one that’s been following us!’ Jazz exclaimed.
‘Time to go, I think,’ said Simon, but Phoenix put his arm across and gripped the wheel. ‘Hold up a second,’ he commanded, and they watched as the driver’s-side door opened and a man got out. As he stepped out from the shadows into the glow of the streetlights they got a clearer look at him. He was a heavy-set man, nearly bald and with a magnificent set of eyebrows.
‘Phoenix,’ stammered Jazz, ‘that’s the security guard!’
‘Oh yeah, it’s Sammy, the jerk from the museum.’
Before they could think through the implications of this, Sammy walked around and opened the passenger door, impatiently waiting for whoever was in there to clamber out.
Jazz let out a gasp. ‘Dr Zhang!’
‘What’s he doing out here?’ Phoenix’s question hung in the air. Once the men had disappeared into the factory, Simon started the engine and gently pulled away.
An awkward silence settled on the car.
‘So,’ said Simon, with a forced brightness, ‘where am I dropping you guys, next?’
‘My place?’ Phoenix looked at Jazz.
‘Works for me,’ said Jazz. ‘I’ll send Mum a text.’
‘Sure you don’t want me to stop by a police station so you can hand over this investigation to them?’ Simon smiled at their shocked faces. ‘I’m joking. Just glad to be getting home with the ute intact for a change.’
‘Not funny, Simon,’ said Phoenix.
24:11
Once they got back to the house, Jazz and Phoenix set up at opposite sides of the kitchen table—Phoenix with his laptop, Jazz with CrimeSeen on her tablet.
Mack still hadn’t replied to the text Jazz had sent her that afternoon, so she tried calling. She left a voicemail urging Mack to call her as soon as possible. Jazz didn’t know what Dr Zhang was doing at Kendricks, but at least she would be able to tell Mack he was alive.
Meanwhile, Phoenix mulled over what they had just seen. He cleared his throat as Jazz ended the call. ‘So,’ he prompted.
‘So?’
‘So . . . we saw Dr Zhang. That’s pretty huge. But let’s go through everything we saw from start to finish and see how it fits in with what we already know.’
‘Alright,’ Jazz agreed.
Phoenix transferred the photos he’d taken on his mobile to a photo editing program on his laptop and played around with them, softening the contrast to reduce the sharp light of the flash. As he tweaked, several objects arranged on a workshop bench became clear.
‘What are those?’ Jazz asked.
Phoenix zoomed in on them. ‘They look like items from the museum’s Antiquities wing.’
‘Kendricks is a restoration place, right? Maybe the items were damaged,’ offered Jazz. ‘The conservators at the museum might have been too busy working on the exhibition to repair them in house.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Phoenix, but he didn’t sound convinced. ‘The first one looks like that statue of Pan playing the flute again. Dr Zhang had one in his office and you almost knocked one over last night. Does this mean there are three of them now?’
‘Three the same, you mean? They could just be similar. Pan was a pretty popular guy for old sculptors, as I understand it.’
‘I guess so. It’s still a bit of a coincidence that statues of him keep cropping up.’ Phoenix zoomed in on another part of the image. ‘This one has wings . . . and the third one looks like some guy on a horse.’ He continued to look at the photos, switching between one figure and the other, frowning in concentration.
‘Dr Zhang could have brought them to Kendricks before the robbery,’ Jazz said. ‘But—’
‘But that doesn’t explain why Dr Zhang was there today. He’s wanted for questioning by the police and his family think he is missing!’
‘He is missing,’ Jazz insisted. ‘We saw him, but I bet he’s not at Kendrick’s anymore and he clearly didn’t stay there last night. Something definitely isn’t right. We have to stay on the case until we know he is safe. And I have another question. What was the security guard doing there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Phoenix admitted as he flicked between the photos on his computer. ‘Could he have been helping Dr Zhang somehow?’
Jazz frowned in concentration. ‘Hmm, let’s try something
.’ She went into CrimeSeen, and selected a folder. ‘I’m emailing you the photos I took in Dr Zhang’s office. One of them shows the Pan statue. Can you run some kind of image comparison?’
Phoenix opened the file she sent and selected the photo of the Pan statue. Then he took the clearest photo from the factory and loaded both images into the app he’d used when he scanned Medusa at the museum. With the images side by side, Phoenix set the program to test for similarities.
‘I’m no art critic, and with better quality images I could do a better analysis, but as far as I can tell these are the same sculpture.’
‘There’s something else familiar about them,’ said Jazz, going through the images. She came to a photo of the handwritten list of antiquities from the ledger in Dr Zhang’s bottom drawer. ‘That’s what I thought! These last three entries—their descriptions match up with the items you photographed at the factory.’ She read out: ‘Pan with flute, Artemis figure, warrior on horse . . .’
‘What do you think it means?’ Phoenix asked.
Jazz frowned. ‘Maybe this ledger has nothing to do with lending out artefacts. Maybe it’s just a record of artworks that Dr Zhang is having repaired. That would make sense with the dates.’
‘But not with the financial figures! And it doesn’t make sense that he kept it in a locked drawer.’
‘So what’s your theory?’ challenged Jazz.
‘I think there’s a pretty obvious possibility that we need to consider, especially looking at the analysis on these Pan sculptures.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That Dr Zhang isn’t just lending out artefacts for a fee, he’s also getting them copied.’
Jazz’s stomach sank. She’d been thinking the same thing, but hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. ‘I’m sure he has legitimate reasons,’ she replied coolly.
Phoenix raised an eyebrow. ‘Like what?’
‘Say he is lending out antiquities. He probably gets copies made so a replica can be on display in the museum while they lend out the genuine one.’
‘He’s not exactly lending them out of the goodness of his heart though, is he?’ countered Phoenix. ‘He’s making serious money from it. And why get multiple copies made?’
The Medusa Curse Page 7
