Chapter 44 #2
I recited a fake service number, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder as I took down Richley’s box.
‘Mate, I’m getting a different officer for that service number,’ Carras said. ‘Can you give it to me again? I can’t do anything for anybody until I’ve cited a badge or confirmed a service number.’
‘Yep, can you just hang on a second, though?’ I said. ‘My boss is just coming to my desk—’
I heard Carras give a sharp sigh of frustration.
I slipped my phone into my pocket, then flipped Marian’s box on its side and scraped the contents out.
Little brown wrapped packages, just like Linda’s.
I returned Marian’s much lighter box to the shelf, took down the box marked FRANKSTON, R.
1977. I slit the box open and shoved Marian’s packages into the Frankston box, hefted it, the base now bowing against my hands, back onto the shelf.
It was tipping back towards me, the base pinned shut by the edge of the shelf, when a voice at the end of the aisle sent a bolt of pain through my chest.
‘What are you doing?’
I turned, still holding the box at a 45-degree angle up on the shelf.
Carras was there, the cordless phone from the desk against his ear.
I froze. There was no disguising what I was doing now.
No escape. Nowhere to hide. I saw in a flash the rifle in my hands.
Felt the stickiness of the linoleum on my father’s kitchen floor as I stepped towards the man, who was scrambling, begging, bug-eyed.
I felt the rifle kick against my shoulder.
I imagined my hands coming around Carras’s throat now in the lonely evidence room aisle.
You’ve killed once to protect them. Chrissy. Delle. Yourself. You can do it again.
‘Are you taking that box down, sir?’ Carras let the hand that was holding the cordless phone receiver slowly drift to his side. I felt a quiver of hope in my throat. I swallowed hard, ran the words back over in my mind.
Are you taking it down?
‘Ah, yeah.’ I pushed the box back into place. ‘I was just going to see if there was a label on the back that had … uh … more information.’
Carras pocketed the handset, marched to my side. ‘You can’t be handling the boxes, sir. Not without supervision.’
‘I wasn’t going to open it, I just—’ I tapped the label on the front of the box. ‘I just wanted to see when the box was last accessed. Doesn’t say here on the front.’
‘A lot of the boxes don’t list that.’ Carras turned the box around on the shelf.
Rotated it, showing all sides. I felt sweat running into the waistband of my trousers, tickling down my belly.
I imagined Carras lifting the box. Even just slightly.
Tilting it backwards and noticing that the bottom was slit and sagging open.
‘They didn’t have a protocol, back then, for writing the name of the officer who accessed the box last on the box’s exterior.
So if there’s no one listed on the label on the front, I’d say the box hasn’t been opened at all since the original submission date.
Which would be … ah … See here? August 1977. ’
‘Okay.’
‘But, sir, you can’t handle the boxes at all without me being present. It’s bad enough that I left you alone with them.’
‘Got it.’ I nodded. ‘I’m done here.’
We walked back towards the front office. I stopped short by the desk, my phone in my hand. Carras had the cordless receiver back to his ear.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Can I just use your PC for a second? I want to print something.’
Carras took his phone away from his ear, frowned at it. I guessed he could hear the echo of my words through the call he was apparently on hold on, with the fictitious Constable Frankston. ‘Uh, yeah? Sure thing, sir. Go ahead.’
Carras stood there, an elbow on the desk, watching the screen as I drew up the Gmail log-in page. I punched in my email address, clicked the cursor into the password box, then threw Carras a pointed look. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Ah, sorry, sir.’ Carras turned away for the briefest of moments, huffing and sighing at his empty phone call. Keeping an eye on Carras’s reflection in the glass of the counter window in front of me, I logged in to my email, then set it aside, opening the find window to do a search of the device.
‘Where is that email?’ I asked myself quietly.
Carras gave up on the phone call and occupied himself at the other end of the counter, taking out his personal mobile, fishing around, looking busy.
I knew I didn’t have long, if all I was pretending to do was find and then print an email from my account.
I searched for the facility’s camera system.
It wasn’t hard to find. The program maximised from a shortcut on the desktop.
I went in and opened the program’s history, found the recordings were arranged by day.
I selected the past four days and hit the delete key.
A password rose on the screen.
‘Fuck.’
‘Everything okay, sir?’ Carras started coming over again. I clicked back to my email in the nick of time.
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I waved at him. ‘I just. I need to print the … the … the contents of a notebook. It’s from a case. Just … It’s a sensitive case, Constable. Okay? Unfolding right now. I have to get the images to, uh, unzip … Just leave me alone for a bit, will you?’
‘Do you really need hard copies of the images, sir? Could you ema—’
‘Carras! Fuck!’
‘Sorry, sir.’
He backed off again. In plain, panicked despair I stood there staring at the password-protected security system, knowing that if I didn’t disable that very system right now it would keep recording me.
It would hold on to everything I had just done.
I looked around the desk for the Hail Mary of all Hail Marys, a Post-it note with a password on it.
No luck. I saw myself hurling the computer across the room.
Burning the building down. I went back to my email and saw spam waiting, unclicked, in the unread messages.
Protect your computer from deadly viruses, download our …
I opened Google. Punched in something wild and desperate and certain—absolutely certain—not to work. Computer destroying virus instant download.
The screen filled with an infinite list. The first read Instantly Downloadable Whole-hard Drive Atomic Wipeout.
That sounded good. The website was so dodgy looking I actually smiled.
Black background. Red Times New Roman text in dozens of different sizes.
Animated icons. I clicked a link and watched a loading bar slowly filling with blue colour, and thought of venom being dripped into veins.
The screen in front of me blinked out with an audible ‘tink’ sound. I felt a surge of joy in my chest.
‘What the …’ I clicked the mouse a dozen times in rapid succession, mock confused. ‘What happened?’
Carras stepped over cautiously. Reached for the mouse. Performed the same useless clicking. ‘Did you turn it off, sir?’
‘No, I didn’t turn it off.’ Carras punched the power button on the PC’s tower. Nothing. Stifling my joy and relief took real effort. ‘Did you turn it off?’
‘No.’
Carras ducked under the desk to look at where the computer was plugged into the wall. He flipped the switch on and off. Tried the power again. ‘What happened? Did it just go blank?’
‘Yeah. It just died.’
‘I mean … Maybe there’s been a blackout. But there can’t have been. The lights are still on.’
‘Do you have another computer here that I can access? I really need this thing printed.’
‘Ahhh …’ Carras ran a hand through his hair. ‘Not really. There’s the desktop computers of the other staff, but they’re all password-protected. This is the big daddy here.’
‘Looks like you’re running blind, then,’ I said.
‘I can’t be, though.’ Carras nudged me out of the way, dragging the PC tower forward so that he could inspect the back of the machine. ‘This thing controls all the cameras. I have to have an unbroken eye on all the boxes, all the time. Chain of custody, you know?’
‘Sucks to be you,’ I said, clapping the constable on the shoulder. ‘I’m gonna sign out. I’m in a hurry.’