The Tribute

by John Byron

  So it was on. Porter would go in late on Sunday night, after the burghers of Taren Point had turned in for the night, and he’d have almost a week of splendid isolation with only Mr Henley for company. They had a significant quantum of detailed study to work through together. Porter sat back contentedly and nursed his tea, surveying the results of a good night’s work.

  ‘All right then, young Stephen?’ came a voice from right behind his chair.

  ‘Christ, Tom!’ Porter shot to his feet and wheeled around to place himself between the security guard and the main screen. The manoeuvre just about sent him tumbling, but it was entirely pointless anyway, with printouts on every surface and scrolls of data on the other terminals. Damien Henley was everywhere.

  He needn’t have worried. Tom evidenced his usual indifference to what actually went on in the business he was paid to protect. Instead, he watched with amusement as Porter recovered.

  For his own part, Porter sat down again, tilted his chair back and took a long, measured breath. ‘Whew!’ He grinned up at the guard, holding his hand over his heart for dramatic emphasis. ‘I didn’t realise you were there.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see that,’ said Tom. ‘Sorry, mate.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’ve been chasing down some transaction errors and became engrossed.’

  ‘Inattention’s a bit risky in this job, though, innit?’ Tom chastised. ‘Blimey, if I’d caught you like that in the army, I’d’ve put you on report. Nothing personal – I wouldn’t’ve had any choice.’

  ‘Eternal vigilance,’ suggested Porter, happy to proceed along this tangent. This was Tom’s special subject: the Improvement of Civilian Life through the Application of Military Principles.

  ‘Absolutely. The sentry has one job and one job only: keep watch for the enemy. All your mates are relying on you. Your country’s relying on you. You have to be completely alert, every moment.’

  ‘I agree, Tom, but you tell that to management. They deploy us to keep a close watch on the whole empire, and to immediately rectify any problem on any of these systems.’ He waved his hand, taking in a score of terminals and a dozen printers. ‘But at the same time, they think we’re doing nothing all night, so they allocate all the fiddly work to us. Transaction errors, processing anomalies, file cleansing, card activations.’

  Tom nodded sagely, having heard all this before. It was not his problem. The bank managers were not even his bosses anymore: he worked for a contract security firm nowadays. We each have our cross to bear, his expression said.

  ‘Well, sorry to have startled you. Not a guilty conscience, then?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Porter. ‘I sleep like a baby.’

  ‘That’s the way to a ripe old age, my boy. A solid eight in the rack.’ Tom stretched and yawned. ‘Anyway, pumpkin time for me. I came to tuck you in.’

  Porter had to hand it to the guard: he was as reliable as clockwork. He’d probably been an excellent soldier. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Have a good night.’

  ‘You too, hope your shift is quiet as the grave and smooth as a baby’s bum. And don’t concentrate so hard. They don’t pay us enough.’

  Tom shuffled off to complete his rounds, while Porter collated his printouts and packed them in his bag.

  Sunday 23 September – evening

  ‘That was great, darlin’,’ said Murphy, sighing contentedly.

  Sylvia returned his smile. Her smoked salmon pasta was dead-easy, actually, but it made him purr like a cat. It didn’t hurt that they’d enjoyed the gorgeous spring morning sailing on Pittwater, then the afternoon in the pool at home, where nature had run its course most agreeably. She reached for his plate and he for the bottle, taking it over to the sofa and switching on the television.

  She quickly cleaned up in the kitchen while he finished the shiraz in front of a doco about the Great Barrier Reef. When that finished they scrolled through the movies. They landed briefly on Bridget Jones’s Baby. Murphy just snorted and moved on, but Sylvia decided it was pretext enough. She’d drained his balls and filled his belly, and he was lightly toasted now: his mood was as good as it would ever be. She grabbed the remote and scrolled back to Renée Zellweger.

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Murphy. ‘I’m not watching that.’

  ‘All right, but doesn’t it make you think?’

  ‘Think about what?’ He retrieved the remote and scrolled on again.

  ‘About having a baby.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  Sylvia burrowed into his side. ‘I just think maybe we could discuss it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss.’ He stopped on the Blade Runner sequel. ‘What about this?’

  ‘But come on, honey, wouldn’t you like to teach your son how to kick a footy?’

  ‘For fuck’s …’ Murphy recoiled as though she were electrically charged. ‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you? For real?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, calmly but firmly. ‘I’d like us to consider it.’

  Murphy gaped then shook his head in a performance of incredulity. It was like a switch had flicked. ‘Jesus, Sylvia, you’re a piece of work.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Last year you wanted to take five years off to go to fucken medical school —’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Whatever. First you want to take four years off work because some doctor’s trying to flatter his way into your pants —’

  ‘Iain’s gay, Dave. And Christel said the same thing about my potential.’

  ‘And she’s probably a dyke. She certainly loves looking at your twat.’

  ‘She’s my gynaecologist, David.’

  ‘Yeah, well, trust me, this has nothing to do with your “potential” darlin’, they just want to fuck you. Anyway, it’s beside the point.’

  ‘Really. And what is the point?’

  ‘The point is that this is why I can’t take you seriously. You were going to be a professional musician, remember? How’d that work out for you? Then it’s your life’s ambition to be a doctor. Now it’s a baby. Next you’ll be wanting to trek across Antarctica or some fucken thing.’

  ‘People do have medical careers and children, you know. Even the lady doctors.’

  ‘Oh, right, you’re going to do both, are you? You think you can take a kid to lectures? Onto the wards? “Mrs Murphy, please demonstrate how to palpitate the patient’s liver.” “Certainly, professor, as soon as I get this infant off my tit.” You’ve got no fucken sense, Sylvia.’

  Murphy stood abruptly and lurched to the sideboard to pour a long whisky. ‘You know what your problem is? You listen to all that fucken “women can do anything” hippy shit. Life’s not like that. You need to separate fantasy from reality.’ He drained the glass, refilled it and reeled back to the sofa. ‘Truly, if it weren’t for me you’d be completely rooted.’

  ‘Reality,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yeah, fucken reality.’

  ‘And what is “reality” according to you?’

  ‘Reality is what we are living, not all your unicorns-and-rainbows horseshit. It’s our fucken life, right here, right now. You’re a nurse, I’m a cop. I deal with dead people and you deal with sick people. We live in a bloody nice house that costs me a fortune. You swim at Coogee, I play footy for Maroubra. You play your guitar and read your books and watch your pretentious foreign movies with your film wankers’ group. I follow rugby league and motorsport and the cricket. On weekends you have brunch at Industry Beans with my sister and those other two chicks, and I go to the Diggers or the pub. We fuck, we get pissed, we have the odd misunderstanding. Then we make up, and on Mondays we do it all again.’

  ‘So that’s all life is to you? Just that, week in, week out.’

  ‘Nah, course not. We go sailing when we can, we go to the flicks, we see the odd band, eat at flash restaurants, take nice holidays, drive up the mountains or down the coast … fuck, I dunno. What more do you want, Sylvia?’

  ‘I want a
child.’

  ‘You don’t want a child, you want a fucken baby.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘See, that’s my point exactly.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You want a pet, like a kid who wants a puppy without thinking about what happens when it isn’t cute anymore. It might feel all nice and glowy while you’re knocked up, with your baby showers and your maternity leave and your girlfriends egging you on, but once the fucken thing’s out and screaming night and day, shitting everywhere and chewing your tits raw and keeping you awake all night, then all bets are off. Where are the bitches then, eh? You’re on your own. It’d be penal fucken servitude, and not just for eighteen years – it’s for the term of your natural life. You’ve got no idea what’s involved, darlin’, no idea at all.’

  ‘I take it you wouldn’t be getting up in the night, then?’

  ‘Fucken oath I wouldn’t – fuck that. A baby is the last thing this household needs. Anyway, it’s all academic. This is the one thing left a bloke can still control —’

  ‘What do you mean, “the one thing left”?’

  He waved that away: a debate for another day. ‘I’m not reversing the vasectomy, Sylvia. It doesn’t matter how much you bitch and moan, it’s my right of veto. Thank Christ. And it’s not fucken happening.’

  Friday 28 September – morning

  Murphy and Janssen walked up the driveway of the palatial house in Taren Point. Mack met them at the front door.

  ‘You sure you’re not our serial killer?’ asked Murphy, by way of greeting.

  ‘Now why would you want to say a thing like that?’

  ‘You’re always here first. It’s like you know in advance.’

  ‘Ah, well, I’m not carrying your old football injuries, Spud,’ replied Mack. ‘There are some benefits to the contemplative life.’ He nodded at the coffee cup in Janssen’s hand. ‘That wouldn’t be for me, would it, Matthijs?’

  ‘Certainly is,’ said Janssen. ‘Strong flat white.’

  ‘You are a gentleman and a scholar, my boy, and a prince among men. Keep away from the likes of this one and you’ll go far.’

  ‘What have we got, Mack?’ asked Murphy. ‘Volume Four?’

  ‘Yep. The nervous system. No question.’

  Murphy turned to his deputy. ‘Get hold of Jo, will you? I don’t care what she’s doing – pull her out of class if you have to – I want her at the scene this time. Now.’

  Janssen peeled off to make the call while Murphy followed Mack to the body.

  ‘Detective Senior Sergeant David Patrick Murphy, meet Damien Rufus Henley, Esquire.’ Mack waved with a melodramatic flourish at the sliced-up cadaver lying on the long plateau of polished concrete that served as a dining table.

  ‘Rufus?’ asked Murphy, ignoring the brutalised corpse to take in the room’s sleek Scandinavian feel. The aesthetic might have been minimalist, but there was a lot of it. The wide smear of blood where Henley had been dragged from the central bathroom only added to the arty tone.

  ‘That’s what it says on the phone bill.’

  ‘Sure it’s him?’

  ‘His cleaners found him this morning, reckon he’s the right build.’ Mack shrugged. ‘The photo on his staff card isn’t much help, obviously, but the company’s going to decrypt the biometrics on the chip so we can cross-check the irises and fingerprints. We’ll know today.’

  ‘Any struggle?’

  ‘No sign of one. We’ll check in the post-mortem but the house is in order.’

  ‘Fuck, again.’

  Murphy crossed to the window and parted the curtains. It was a magnificent Sydney spring day, the best time of year in a city that did not want for agreeable conditions. They were in that perfect fortnight that Sydney laid on every September, going all-out to impress: sunny and warm beneath clear blue skies, the air fragrant with everything in bloom. Right now it was probably the finest place to be on the planet.

  The outlook was even better than he’d expected: looking straight across the Georges River, over Tom Uglys Bridge to Blakehurst behind. The panorama took in a long inlet and the western side of San Souci, a riot of green and gold with all the wattle in full glory. ‘Nice view.’ He let the curtains fall back into place. Their skirts were flecked with blood and particles of flesh.

  Janssen came back in. ‘Jo’s on her way. Twenty minutes.’

  Murphy nodded. ‘All right, Mack, show us what you’ve got.’

  They approached the ravaged corpse from its right. ‘See here, detectives,’ said Mack, pointing with a pen at the near arm. ‘On the right side he’s gone all the way in, just cutting everything away to find the nerves in situ.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But come around this side.’ Mack walked around the head of the table and bent the flexible neck of a battered forensic services floor lamp to throw more light onto the other shoulder. ‘Here on the left he’s gone in much more carefully, gently lifting the nerves up and right out, can you see?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘He’s started right up in the neck, dissecting down to find the brachial plexus and track it under the clavicle into the axilla, here. He’s cut away ahead so he can work it all the way down the arm. He’s lost track of the posterior cord, back in here, but he’s found it again in the radial nerve down here, see?’ Mack pointed at the forearm.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Murphy, not really following. Janssen grunted ambiguously.

  ‘Then here – this part is astonishing. You see how delicately he’s displayed the lateral cord? Cutting ahead and threading the pectoral nerves back out, excising everything else to reveal the union of the medial and lateral cords. Then he’s worked the median nerve right down —’ Mack tracked down the arm, tracing a thin brown filament with his pen, ‘— through the cubital fossa and into the carpal tunnel.’

  ‘Okay, I see,’ said Murphy, beginning to appreciate Mack’s point. Once the homicide victim turned into an anatomy specimen, you began to inhabit the medicos’ perspective. And the killer’s, presumably.

  ‘It’s very detailed work,’ added Janssen.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Mack. ‘This is the most accomplished nerve dissection I’ve ever seen outside an anatomy atlas, in my entire career. If I’d seen a brachial plexus demonstrated like this in second year, I’d have saved myself a week of exam prep.’

  ‘It must have taken a good while,’ said Janssen.

  ‘No, it must have taken ages,’ said the SOCO. ‘And the lumbar plexus is just as good. That’s why all the guts are in the living room. After he’s finished with the intestinal nerves, he’s pulled it all out and mapped the lumbar plexus off the back wall and right down the left leg.’ Mack pointed from the hollowed-out cavity down towards the left foot.

  ‘How long do you think, Mack?’ asked Janssen.

  ‘Four, five days. Until he started to ripen.’

  ‘How the fuck does he buy himself that much time?’ asked Murphy in frustration.

  ‘He must know their every movement for days to come,’ said Janssen.

  Murphy shook his head then leaned in to peer inside the abdominal cavity. He was surprised to see daylight through the other side. ‘Have you turned him over yet?’

  ‘No, we’re waiting for photography. But I can already see he’s opened up a stretch of spinal cord. Upper lumbar and lower thoracic, by the look. And you can see the same detail on the face, here.’ Mack moved up to the head and outlined the familiar pattern of patient excavation and extraction on the right side of the face.

  ‘What’s up with the other side?’ asked Murphy.

  Mack circled around to the left and pointed with his pen. ‘He’s pulled back the skin and fascia very carefully to get underneath. He’s cut away the mandible entirely, and carved away the maxilla and the zygomatic bone to get to the base of the skull.’

  ‘What’s he after?’ asked Janssen.

  ‘The cranial nerves.’ />
  ‘What are they?’ asked Murphy.

  ‘Twelve pairs of nerves that feed straight out from the brain through a series of apertures in the skull.’ Mack leaned in underneath and pointed to a thin, bloodied cord hanging out of the bone. ‘This is the mandibular nerve, the third branch of the trigeminal; cranial nerve five.’

  ‘Is this one?’ asked Janssen, pointing to a thicker cord emerging into the vacant eye socket.

  ‘Yes, the optic nerve, cranial two. That’s the easy one. He’s had to resect all the soft tissue almost to the median line to get to the others. See: oculomotor, facial, abducens, glossopharyngeal, vagus, accessory,’ said Mack, pointing as he went. To the policemen they were just strings of bloody sinew of different thicknesses hanging out here and there from the base of the skull. Mack chuckled to himself.

  Murphy regarded him with distaste. ‘What could possibly be funny, Mack?’

  ‘I’m just remembering a bad med school joke.’

  ‘Okay, spill.’

  ‘You won’t get it.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘What do the vagina and the chorda tympani have in common?’ He indicated a thread exiting through the earhole.

  Murphy sniggered. Janssen showed no expression.

  ‘They both supply taste to the anterior two-thirds of the tongue,’ said Mack, unable to suppress a smirk.

  Murphy laughed. After a slight pause, Janssen asked, ‘Were there not too many women in your class, Mack?’

  The medico shrugged. ‘The dean said our generation would have the distinction of practising twenty-first-century medicine with nineteenth-century minds.’

  ‘Perhaps that was generous,’ suggested Janssen.

  ‘You haven’t heard the cranial nerve mnemonic yet.’

  There was a loud, sharp intake of breath behind them, and they all turned at once. Jo was standing in the doorway, utterly alabaster, staring at the remains on the table. She was holding the door jamb, anchoring herself at the room’s entry. Thijs offered her a kind smile, but she never saw it.