by John Byron
His outstretched hand retracted slightly, and she tipped forward a touch to follow it. Then in a blur of motion the hand released the licence, clenched into a fist and flew straight at the middle of her face. Then there was a second punch before she could react, much harder, and an explosion of pain and light as her nose shattered and her orientation deserted her, and she was only falling, falling.
Her head hit the hardwood floor and a jet of thick rich blood swamped her face, gushing into her mouth. She rolled onto her side and spat, heaving in a deep breath and pulling herself upright. She rotated fast and lunged towards the door, blinded by blood and a wash of tears but aiming for the rectangle of light, filled now with a looming shape that she attacked with a ferocity she hadn’t known she possessed. She tore at flesh and fabric but the rectangle was narrowing, so she shoulder-charged and ricocheted off him towards the light. But he was inside now and the screen door was latched and she collided with the mesh, face abloom again in white bursts of pain. He was dragging her back into the room as she groped for the doorhandle but missed, slipping on bloodied paper and keys, falling backwards again onto the floor, then he was shoving her across the timber further into the room, the heavy wooden front door closing behind her.
She hauled herself upright on the hall table, opening the drawer and reaching for the heavy marble pestle lying inside, but he grabbed her by the waistband and heaved her around, the weapon flying from her slippery grasp as he threw her down again, a hand clasping a cloth against her face, wet with some acrid chemical. She twisted away and pulled in a lungful of air, desperate to yell out, but he kneed her hard in her ribs and knocked the wind out of her. She bucked and kicked, but he had all the leverage and a renewed grip over her shattered face, so she opened her mouth and bit down hard through the wet pad until she tasted blood – new blood, his blood – and he roared in pain and wrenched his hand away.
She twisted out from under him once more and pushed him over and away, blinking the blood and tears from her eyes until she found the pestle, grasping it by its haft and lifting it high above her head and bringing it down onto his temple, as hard as she could with no hesitation: she knew what this was she knew who he was she knew what she was fighting for. But he turned aside before the blow connected and he caught it instead on the jaw and neck, there was no crack but it laid him out on the floor and it was enough. She was on her feet and working the handles and she was through both doors, outside and making for the gate. But then her T-shirt went drum-taut around her shoulders and wrenched her backwards, clean off her feet, her back crunching onto the concrete path. He was pulling her by her arms back towards the door, her legs scrambling for purchase, her hands flailing. She heard Clare’s voice in strident command: ‘Leave her alone! I’m calling the police!’ and he dropped her weight to the ground and she looked straight up and read his face as he assessed his options, saw him give up his assault as a lost cause, saw the afterthought dawn, saw what was coming.
She closed her eyes tight as he dropped her torso and cradled the sides of her face, lifting her head up, up, pausing at the top of the arc to stroke her left cheek with his thumb, once, gently, then smashing her head down to earth with a terrifying velocity. And there was nothing in the world but an explosion of searing pain, an awful crack, a blinding white light, an annihilating mortal fear; then everything dissolved to a merciful, consuming blackness.
Tuesday 15 January – morning
Porter let go of Murphy’s wife’s head and scrambled to his feet, turning towards the side fence, but as soon as he stepped away from the inert form he was struck hard on the elbow by half a paving stone. The old woman was reciting her address into a cordless telephone while crouching down below her camellias, before coming up with another chunk of stone from the border of her garden bed. He evaded the second missile and retrieved his clipboard from the front step, shoving it into his Gladstone bag. He gathered up everything the candidate had dropped when he’d punched her and shoved it all into the bag. As he closed it, he collected another paving stone on the side of his neck, and he turned and crashed through the flimsy picket gate, the neighbour screaming blue murder behind him.
Porter ran diagonally across the road towards a side street, a final paving stone bouncing on the road behind him, and he risked a look back as he rounded the corner. The neighbour was crouching over the motionless candidate, still talking into her phone. He cut left as soon as he could and threaded through the maze of streets, slowing his pace to a brisk walk as he worked his way back to where he had parked.
Porter’s outward calm was a complete fiction, his disappointment only eclipsed by his self-loathing, and he choked back a sob as he approached his car. With anyone else he would have aborted the attempt once entry had become problematic. He would have simply found another candidate upon whom to perform the Volume. But this one was special. The Tribute had become personal. So when she had failed to let him in, he had escalated to violence, assuming she’d turn and run inside like Laura Newman, retreating further into the trap of her home. But she’d stood her ground and fought to gain the greater safety of the outside world.
And now he had been seen, had fled instead of walking away. It was a serious setback, but he would not fail Vesalius. Or let Murphy off the hook. He made a silent, solemn vow that he would complete the Tribute, no matter what. And he would make Detective Senior Sergeant David Murphy pay.
Tuesday 15 January – morning
Murphy woke up fairly dusty on Tuesday morning, but three doppios and a proper hot breakfast at Cumulus sorted him out.
The cool change had come in overnight and he walked down Flinders Lane towards the police headquarters in a very light shower. Typical Melbourne. It had only a little more weight to it than mist: less rain itself than a metaphor for rain. He’d never admit it to a Mexican, but it was actually quite pleasant.
The morning at Vic Homicide lacked the energy of the previous day, as the novelty of an interstate visitor started to wear off. Late morning found him in a forensic lab, his mind wandering, in desperate need of another coffee.
Then a door behind him crashed open, and everybody turned around, and Murphy knew immediately that something had gone terribly wrong with his plan back in Sydney.
‘Detective Senior Sergeant Murphy?’ It was one of the juniors from last night. He’d told this young copper to go home when he’d started looking green around the gills. He looked a lot worse now.
‘What is it, son?’
‘Your … it’s … you need to talk your office, sir.’
‘Are they on the phone now?’
The boy nodded, gulped. He looked as clammy as warm cheddar.
‘Which line, constable?’
He held up two fingers.
Murphy crossed to the flashing handset. They would have called his mobile, vibrating uselessly in a basket outside the lab door.
This couldn’t be good. It was a day too early; she wasn’t supposed to be discovered until Wednesday. What had happened? Was it done? Was Porter in custody? Was Murphy under any suspicion himself?
Only one way to find out.
‘Murphy here.’
VOLUME VII
THE BRAIN
n 1564, the City of Venice recalled Vesalius from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, requesting that he resume his old chair in anatomy and surgery at the University of Padua, vacated by the untimely death of his protégé Fallopius. Accepting Venice’s offer, the Master set out for Italy, arguably in imprudent haste, certainly by unreliable means.
After trekking overland from Jerusalem to Alexandria, he impatiently took a pilgrims’ charter boat for Venice, instead of waiting for the Venetian line’s vessel. The cruise was cursed from the outset, with passengers falling ill and dying from a mysterious ailment soon after they’d embarked. Then the ship was delayed for weeks in the Ionian Sea, safe within Venetian waters but frustrated by recalcitrant winds.
By strange coincidence, a thunderstorm had been brewing when Vesalius was hims
elf struck by illness. Then – we owe a debt here to C.D. O’Malley, who translated the deposition on Vesalius’s death – then the storm broke, with a violent flash of lightning and an appalling crash of thunder. As the disease ravaged the Master’s body, the ship struck rock off the island of Zante, and Vesalius leapt out and swam for the deserted shore. When he nerved himself to turn, the storm had done its work: the ship was lost. Despite his weakened condition, the Master stumbled to the city gate, only to succumb at the threshold of salvation. He was forty-nine.
The historical account suggests that the mysterious ailment was scurvy. Records show that the malaise on the unfortunate ship was concentrated on the poorer travellers, pointing away from infection and towards a factor that was a function of wealth. Absent violence, diet was the most likely culprit. It was common for all but the very wealthy to forego fresh food on Mediterranean voyages, which were typically of only a few days’ duration. The early deaths may be attributable to an equally impoverished desert caravan diet prior to boarding. As the voyage dragged on, both morbidity and mortality increased rapidly.
Scurvy may be considered guilty civilly if not criminally, as it were: the case is not beyond doubt, but on the balance of probability, that hypothesis best explains the distribution and timing of the ship’s calamity.
As everyone knows now, but nobody knew then, scurvy is a long-term selective malnutrition caused by a deficiency of vitamin C. It befell those forced to rely for long periods on preserved rations: sailors, soldiers, overland traders. It took centuries for medical science to resolve. While long observed, this expensive disease was not properly described until 1753, two centuries after the death of Vesalius, by Royal Navy surgeon James Lind in his Treatise on the Scurvy. The culprit had evaded deductive reasoning due to the coexistence of two independent factors: the quite random assortment of foods containing vitamin C, obscuring any trend; and the propensity of vitamin C to degrade under preservation, such that the same food might or might not have been a source, depending on its treatment. As Lind observed: ‘I do not mean to say that lemon juice and wine are the only remedy for the scurvy. This disease, like many others, may be cured by medicines of very different, and opposite qualities to each other.’
Most animals are not susceptible to scurvy, because they can manufacture L-gulonolactone oxidase, the enzyme required to synthesise vitamin C. Simians – including humans – and certain birds, fish and other mammals have lost this ability along the way. In humans, the necessary DNA code is missing from the p arm of chromosome 8, which is strongly connected to brain development and function, and also happens to be highly mutagenic.
This high rate of mutation on a chromosomal fragment fundamental to brain development is one of the critical factors that enabled the rapid evolution of the human brain. There is some evidence that mutations at location 21, where the nonfunctional gulonolactone oxidase pseudogene is found, are implicated in schizophrenia.
Scurvy and schizophrenia, then, may be the genetic price that humans pay for our intelligence.
Once Lind had identified the cause of scurvy, eradication was straightforward. The disease has all but disappeared today. It can be easily prevented by the consumption of foods rich in vitamin C, including citrus, guava, strawberries, whale skin, cabbage, oysters, spinach, horse meat, capsicum, adrenal glands and potatoes.
Another fine source of vitamin C is the central nervous systems of animals, including humans.
Tuesday 15 January – noon
Murphy had to admit, the Mexicans handled the situation bloody well.
They let him vent his shock and fury, then waved away his apologies. Victorian Police ops admin liaised with their New South Wales Police counterparts to change his flight. They put him in a pursuit vehicle with their best wheelman and sent a couple of blue-and-whites ahead up the freeway to clear the express lane.
He phoned Janssen back from the car.
‘Sorry about that.’ All his deputy had managed to tell Murphy earlier was that their perp had savagely attacked his wife in his own home, putting her in hospital, and had fled the scene. Murphy had cut him off by slamming down the lab’s telephone in fury.
‘You don’t need to apologise, David.’
That conveyed the gravity more than anything. Janssen had never called Murphy by his given name, not even once, in all their dozen years.
‘How is she?’
‘She has serious injuries to her head and upper body, but the ambos reckon she’ll pull through. Your neighbour was on scene; she did all the right things until they arrived.’
‘Is she conscious?’
‘Not last I heard, no.’
‘Probably better off. She at Prince of Wales?’
‘Yes, they’ve pulled out all stops.’ Sylvia would get the royal treatment, at her own hospital. ‘And I’ve posted guard – a couple of our spare uniforms.’
‘Good. Does my sister know what happened?’
‘Not yet. Chartier’s on her way to tell her.’
‘No, I want to tell her myself. Get Chartier to just bring her in.’
‘Okay.’
‘Something I don’t follow,’ Murphy said. ‘What makes you so sure her attacker is our guy?’
‘He dropped a cloth soaked in midazolam in your front room.’
‘Oh, thank Christ. Finally Mr Perfect fucks up.’
‘Yes, he left in a hurry. And your neighbour said he ran off with a Gladstone bag – looked heavy.’
‘His bag of tricks.’
‘I’d say so.’
‘Circumstantial, but I like it,’ Murphy said, nodding.
‘We’ve got a lot of blood here, too. We’re hoping some of it’s his.’
‘How much is a lot?’
‘It’s pretty messy, Spud. She put up a hell of a fight.’
Murphy cursed. This was not the plan. It was all supposed to be rapid, clinical, virtually painless: a shock, a few seconds of fear, then nothing. Like a light going out. But instead it had been violent, ugly, traumatic.
Not to mention that she was still alive. He had no idea what that was going to involve. He hadn’t wanted her to suffer, particularly, but he hadn’t wanted her to fucken survive, either. What if she was a vegetable? What if she wasn’t? Neither prospect was enticing.
Janssen interrupted Murphy’s gloomy reverie. ‘And the neighbour said she hit him with a couple of paving stones.’
‘Who did, Sylvia?’
‘No, Clare Vaizey, your next-door neighbour. She chased him off while she was on the phone to 000. Not bad for ninety-odd.’
Murphy grunted, reluctant to give credit. ‘So he’ll have lost some skin.’
‘Mack’s confident we’ll get some DNA at last, one way or another.’
‘Good.’ Murphy paused for a moment, then dropped his trump card. ‘But we also have video.’
‘What? How?’ Janssen’s excitement was palpable.
‘Security cameras, front and back. Motion-activated. They record onto the PC through the wifi. The picture’s very good.’
‘Where do I go?’
Murphy directed Janssen to his study and talked him through downloading the week’s footage that was automatically saved by the system.
‘Okay. So, how did he get to her?’ Murphy asked while Janssen worked the camera program. ‘Did she let him in?’
‘No, it all happened right at the front door. It looks like she’s opened the door and he’s forced his way through.’
‘The famous twelve red roses.’
‘There’s no sign of flowers, but something like that, yes. Did she order anything to be delivered?’
‘Not that I know of, but that doesn’t mean much.’
‘We’ll check the financials.’
‘And ask Jo when she comes in.’
Janssen blew out a long breath. ‘Nondedju. That’s not going to be good.’
‘It is not. Okay, I’ve gotta go, we’re almost there.’ Twelve minutes from the police headquarters to the airport: he
doubted that could be done from Surry Hills to Mascot, and this was three times the distance. This driver was good.
‘I’ll be there when you land,’ said Janssen.
‘No, you stay there; get Harris to pick me up. We’ll come to you.’
‘I’ll send Harris, but you can’t come here, boss.’
Murphy arced up at that. ‘Don’t fucken patronise me, mate. If you’re so worried about my mental health let me catch the cunt.’
‘It’s not about that, Spud. Your home is a crime scene. You know the protocol. You’re off the case, officially.’
‘Fuck protocol.’
‘Really, Spud? You want the prosecution thrown out of court?’
Murphy had no plans for Porter to see trial, but he couldn’t very well say that to Janssen. And not in the back seat of a police car, in another jurisdiction. He chose another tack. ‘You can’t lock me out of the case, mate.’
‘Of course not, it’s just a formality. But you can’t go to the house. You know the brass will be watching. It’s both our necks.’
‘Fuck. Fuck.’ Murphy punched the seat beside him. He fumed, but he knew his deputy was right. ‘All right. Meet me at the office when you’re done.’
He hung up and glared out the side window until he recovered his composure, then faced forward again. The driver and his offsider were scrutinising the landscape as carefully as if they were scanning the Fallujah roadside for IEDs. They’d exchanged silent glances during Murphy’s conversation, but hadn’t reacted overtly. Smart fellas.
The head of airport security was waiting out the front. Murphy was able to cut the queue at the scanners, and a courtesy cart took him to his gate. Someone must have primed the airline: they gave him an upgrade and he was first on the plane. An attractive young blonde offered him a drink before he even sat down.
