In Deep (eBook)

Science, Secrets and a Conspiracy Buried Deep

Paul Ferrar (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Vivid Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-923078-90-1 (ISBN)

Infos

A senior scientist is found dead - head-down in a bin of wet cow dung - at a Canberra research facility. At first, it looks like a bizarre accident. But the investigation quickly uncovers hidden wealth, a secret handgun, and suspicious ties to the southern U.S. As police dig deeper, they hit resistance. Records vanish, a key witness is shipped overseas, and the name 'Pepe' keeps surfacing. A secretive group called BLANK emerges, and even members of the investigation team may not be what they seem. With danger closing in, the chase leads far from Canberra - and into a conspiracy no one saw coming.

Paul Ferrar is a biologist who worked on dung beetles and maggots in northern Australia, on termites in a South African game park, as a rat-catcher in a large mental hospital in the UK, and in the Australian aid program managing cooperative research projects between Australian agricultural scientists and those in developing countries working on similar problems. He is also the author of a 907-page monograph on all you ever wanted to know and more about the maggots of 96 different families of flies. He is married to a very tolerant wife, also a research scientist and administrator but fortunately with a more conventional career.

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A senior scientist is found dead - head-down in a bin of wet cow dung - at a Canberra research facility. At first, it looks like a bizarre accident. But the investigation quickly uncovers hidden wealth, a secret handgun, and suspicious ties to the southern U.S. As police dig deeper, they hit resistance. Records vanish, a key witness is shipped overseas, and the name "e;Pepe"e; keeps surfacing. A secretive group called BLANK emerges, and even members of the investigation team may not be what they seem. With danger closing in, the chase leads far from Canberra and into a conspiracy no one saw coming.

Textauszug

AGRICOZ, SYMONSTON

Why am I always the mug that gets jobs like this? We had this bizarre call from AGRICOZ at Symonston, about a dead body upside down in a barrel of wet shit. It wasn’t April Fool’s Day, but it certainly sounded like some sort of practical joke.

Anyway, I rounded up Bill Hansen who was one of my saner colleagues, and we shot off to Symonston with sirens at full blast. We were met at the gate by one of the AGRICOZ staff, who climbed into the car and directed us to the scene of the crime.

We arrived to see two paramedics lifting up a female who’d been lying on the lawn, and putting her on a stretcher. We went over and one of the paramedics said: ‘This is the lady who found the body. She’ll be okay. The stiff’s in the lab over there.’

The AGRICOZ guy led us to the glasshouse at the back of the lab. The sight that greeted us did look like an April Fool’s joke, but in the worst possible taste. A bin of wet cow-shit with two stiff legs standing upwards from it. Too much to hope that it was a tailor’s dummy or something.

I looked closely at the legs, then felt them enough to determine that they really were human, not a very good dummy. Hairy legs indicated a male, and the legs were completely cold.

‘Bill, we’re absolutely going to need a forensic team for this one, and we can’t disturb anything till they get here. Scene of Crime people and a cadaver expert. They’re going to have to document this one really carefully. God help the pathologist who gets this job – the body’s going to come out caked in shit. The post mortem boys will love this one.’

‘I’ll give ’em a call straight away, mate.’

‘And we’d better send a constable to the hospital, wherever the ambos have taken the cleaner, to interview her when she’s ready. It sounds like she was the first one on the scene. I don’t imagine she’s a suspect, but we need to hear what she’s got to say.’

Bill made the calls, then said: ‘What next?’

‘We’d better make a start on examining the scene while the others are getting here. I’ll go and check to see if there’s any signs of a body being dragged around. There’s no reason why the victim had to be killed here, though he might have been. I’ll also check what CCTV is in the vicinity, then get a plan of all cameras on the site from the management. You could have a poke around the immediate vicinity of the shit bin to see what you can find, but don’t touch anything. Make damn sure nobody comes into this room before forensics get here. Repeat, nobody – not even if they’re AGRICOZ.’

‘Will do, Tony.’

I went back into the glasshouse and felt the legs of the body again. Rigor mortis was clearly well developed, which was why they were standing so straight upright. I’d been an assistant in a forensic pathology lab for a year before I joined the AFP, and I knew it would take a minimum of four hours for rigor to develop. It was pretty unlikely that the victim was killed in the dung laboratory and then the killer waited for four or more hours to stash the corpse in the dung. I reckoned it must have been brought in from somewhere else, in which case there ought to be drag marks somewhere around the building.

There were no such marks inside the glasshouse or the adjacent office, so I went outside and examined the immediate area. No obvious dragging there either. Maybe two people carried the body in? Come to think of it, it might have needed two people to bury it in the dung. It wasn’t so liquid that you could just immerse the body – it would take a fair bit of shoving, and one person couldn’t really have done it alone. CCTV pictures might help with that.

Another awful thought crossed my mind. AGRICOZ has got a lot of political clout, and there’ll be huge publicity and plenty of ruffled feathers. I’ll have to alert my bosses about what’s likely to be coming, and fast. I’ll do the crime part of it, but I’m buggered if I’m going to get involved with the politics and the media. I called headquarters and briefed the desk officer.

* * *

An hour later the Scene of Crime officers and the forensic pathologist had arrived and were busily working. There were the usual complaints about what they were faced with, and bitter comments about being given the shitty jobs.

I left them to it and went to the main office to talk to the management. I found my boss, Inspector Marcus Wiersma, already there.

‘G’day, Tony. This is Frank Arbuckle who’s the Chief Personnel Officer and this is Remy Marchand who’s the Assistant Chief Administrator.’

Christ, the titles. Shows the level of bureaucracy here.

‘We’ve been discussing how to handle the press and publicity side of this event. It’s so bizarre it’s going to be hugely sensational, and we need to ensure that the minimum harm is done to AGRICOZ’s reputation. I don’t imagine you have any idea who the corpse was yet?’

‘No, sir – forensics are going to have to clean him up first for that, and I reckon it’ll take them a while.’

‘Okay. We’ll have to hope that it wasn’t a staff member from here, but we’ll have to be prepared for both contingencies. Whichever, it’s going to be very tricky.’

That’s the understatement of the year, if not the century. I hope my head’ll be far enough below the parapet to escape the worst, but probably not.

‘Sir, if it’s all right with you I’ll leave you to discuss that with the management here, and I’ll get on with the investigation. Beginning with looking at whatever CCTV there is on the site. I’d be pretty sure that the victim wasn’t killed in the lab because rigor mortis was already well developed, and if we can find that he was brought on site from outside that should reduce the involvement of AGRICOZ, shouldn’t it?’

Remy Marchand answered. ‘I think that’s a very sensible idea. You probably know that we’ve got sensitive projects going on in some parts of this organisation, so we’ve got a pretty good CCTV network. I’ll get the Chief Security Officer to help you with that.’

God, another Chief. Anyway, my boss nodded, and in a few minutes the head of security arrived and led me away to the main security office. He turned out to be a reasonable bloke, thank God.

‘Hi, I’m Pete Smith. You want to know about the CCTV network. Here’s a plan of the whole site with the location of every camera. For obvious security reasons it’s a classified document and I’m not supposed to copy it, but if you’d like to sit here and see which cameras you’d like the footage of, I can call them up here. And ask for as many as you need – we’re as keen as you to have this whole bloody thing cleared up.’

I sat at a table with a notepad. Pete pointed out the dung laboratory to me, and I worked outwards from there. They had a pretty good coverage of most of the site, but as Sod’s Law would have it there was the least coverage in the area of the dung lab. I commented on this to Pete who just said: ‘We didn’t think anybody would want to steal shit. A few gardeners, I suppose. We gave that area the lowest priority because we thought it was the lowest risk.’

I noted all the cameras at entrances to the overall site, where a body could have been brought in from outside. Each entrance had a camera. I also made a note of the cameras closest to the dung building. When I’d got it all down I showed the list to Pete. He grimaced a bit, but said: ‘I guess that’s about what I’d expected. Come and sit at this screen and I’ll get them all up.’

Not surprisingly most of the tapes showed nothing, but we scored off two of them. One was from a camera on the outside of the main building closest to the dung lab. It was shadowy because the camera was some way away and it was still dark, but there seemed to be two figures carrying a longish object between them. They went up to the door of the corridor closest to the dung lab, paused as though they were inserting a key, and then went in. The time showed as 1.54 am.

The other camera had rather clearer vision because the light was better. It was at the external gate that led into Narrabundah Lane, which was also the external gate closest to the dung lab. That suggested that the two people had some prior knowledge of the site. The object was carried in from outside, but the perpetrators could still have been employees of AGRICOZ.

This picture showed one figure going up to the gate and using a bolt-cutter to cut the chain that secured the gate. Then the figure moved out of sight again, and soon after two figures returned carrying the object between them, opening the gate and entering. They closed the gate behind them. The object being carried was about body-sized, and was wrapped in some sort of sheet. Both figures wore nondescript loose clothing, and were hooded. They appeared to be wearing gloves and snap-on surgical masks. Almost certainly male, and slightly above average height – not much to go on by way of ID. Also bad news in that it looked like a pretty professional operation.

The figures left through the gate again at 2.41 am. There was no further relevant activity...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.8.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-923078-90-9 / 1923078909
• ISBN-13: 978-1-923078-90-1 / 9781923078901