Claire McNab: Quokka Question

I'd never met the hulking man standing beside Georgia's desk, but I immediately recognized his too-small shaved head, his beady eyes, and his grossly overdeveloped body. In his photos Wally Easton, Yarrow's ex-brother-in-law, had looked unappealing-in person he was downright menacing.

"Come in, dear," said Georgia, all sweetness and light.

"G'day," I said to Wally Easton.

Easton's flat stare passed over me without interest. He didn't bother replying. I noticed he had disproportionately small, lobeless ears set flat to his skull. Somewhere I'd read that ears like that indicated antisocial tendencies.

"What are you looking at?" he asked belligerently.

He had a high, reedy voice. With a pulse of excitement I realized it was a good fit with Pen's caller on Saturday night.

Both Georgia and Easton were looking at me, waiting for my reply. It didn't seem safe to comment on his criminal ears, so I said, "I was just wondering if you shaved your skull, or if you used one of those hair-removing creams."

"Is she for real?" he demanded of Georgia, who looked embarrassed on my behalf.

"Australian," she said to him, as if that explained everything.

He grunted. Georgia handed me my assignment, and I skedaddled.

I found Erin Fogarty in the lecture room temporarily assigned for symposium matters. She was listlessly sliding items into envelopes and checking off names against a list.

"Are you feeling better?" I asked. Her eyes immediately filled with tears. Apparently not.

We were alone, at least for the moment, so I went directly to the matter at hand. "How could you blame yourself for Dr. Braithwaite's death? It was an accident, wasn't it?"

She looked at me with tragic, red-rimmed eyes. "I hope so."

"You hope so?"

Erin sniffed loudly. "If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have been there. I'm sure that's true."

I tried a puzzled expression-not hard because I was. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Oscar-Dr. Braithwaite-believed he was meeting me."

"You made a date to meet Oscar on the building site?"

Erin's weak chin trembled. "I did it for Professor Yarrow. How was I to know someone would get hurt?"

"Let's get this straight," I said. "Jack Yarrow asked you to set up a rendezvous with Oscar Braithwaite on top of the building he later fell off?"

Erin drooped her long neck, rather like a dispirited swan. "Not exactly."

Reining in an impulse to shake her until her teeth rattled, I said in a kindly, confiding tone, "Tell me all about it, Erin. You'll feel so much better when you do. My mum always says that a problem shared is a problem halved."

"What do you think of Georgia?"

"Georgia?" Crikey, I was sounding like an echo. "I hardly know her, but she seems nice."

'Nice,' I thought, was a safe word, which combined with 'seems,' didn't commit me to a definite view, so I could shift to agree with Erin, if necessary.

"Seems nice," said Erin. "Seems."

"This has something to do with Dr. Braithwaite falling off the roof?"

"Georgia took me aside and said she had a confidential task for me to do. She told me Jack-Professor Yarrow, that is-wanted me to meet with Oscar and tell him I'd realized I was wrong about Professor Yarrow and that he did steal Oscar's work." She sent me a fierce look, her cheeks glowing in pink indignation. "It isn't true. Dr. Yarrow was taking back what was his in the first place."

I clasped my hands and put an honest but naive expression on my face. "No! You're telling me Dr. Braithwaite stole research from Professor Yarrow? Why wasn't he denounced?"

"Denounced?"

Obviously Erin was developing my echo problem. "Why wasn't Oscar accused," I said. "Condemned, publicly humiliated, forced to admit his heinous academic sins?"

When she blinked at me uncomprehendingly, I spelled it out. "If Professor Yarrow believed his research material had been stolen by Dr. Braithwaite, why didn't he take steps to have this academic theft exposed? Why steal it back in an underhanded way?"

She looked relieved. "Oh, I see what you mean. It's simple, really. It was very sensitive material, a new discovery mat would turn quokka research on its ear. Professor Yarrow didn't want to provoke a scandal because the information would get out prematurely."

"I'm a bit lost," I said. "What has Georgia got to do with all this?"

"I think she's in love with him," said Erin, plainly bitter.

The sheila was getting me het-up, the way she was jumping all over the place. I calmed myself by mentally referring to Private Investigation: The Complete Handbook. There was a chapter on interrogation techniques. I recalled one piece of advice: Be a friend. Make the witness want to tell you everything.

"Erin," I said, "you've been through a lot. People have expected so much of you, but they haven't treated you with the respect you deserve."

She sat up straighten "You're right, you know, Carol. I wouldn't have said it myself, but yes, it's true."

"Kylie," I said. "The name's Kylie, not Carol."

She blushed, which together with her pink eyes and nose made her look positively rosy. "Oh, sorry. I'm just so upset I don't know what I'm saying."

To get her back on track, I said, "About Georgia-Zoran Pestle doesn't get on too well with her. He told me he thinks of her as a 'fat spider in a web.'"

Erin nodded vigorously. "He could be right." She clutched my hand, at the same time looking around the room for eavesdroppers. "I really believed Georgia was telling me what Professor Yarrow wanted me to do," she whispered, "but when I asked him face-to-face, he said he didn't know what I was talking about."

I was fed up with going around in circles. "Erin," I said firmly, "spit it out. What exactly did Georgia tell you to do?"

"I thought it was what he wanted," she wailed.

"Keep calm," I said, more to myself than Erin Fogarty.

She sniffed, swallowed, and thus fortified, began with, "Georgia asked me to get a message to Oscar that I wanted to meet him on Friday afternoon in the parking structure everyone in the department uses. I was to tell him that I…" She trailed off, blushing yet again.

"Yes?" I said encouragingly.

"I was to tell Oscar I still loved him and that I could get the evidence he needed to prove Professor Yarrow had stolen his research. I said I'd send a text message to his cell phone to say where and when we'd meet in the weekend." She snuffled and wiped her eyes. "Georgia told me to say we'd meet somewhere on campus, but it would have to be where no one would see me because I was afraid of Dr. Yarrow."

At last we'd got somewhere. For clarification, I said, "So you text-messaged Oscar to meet you at the building site on Saturday night?"

"Nooooo!"

I was startled. So was a meek-looking bloke on the point of entering the room, who gave Erin a horrified look and shot off.

"No? You didn't tell him that?"

"Georgia told me she'd handle that side of things. All I had to do was say I'd get a message to him." A sob racked her skinny body. "And I sent him to his death!"

I patted her shoulder. Surely she'd cry herself dry sometime soon. "This can all be sorted out," I said reassuringly. "You tell the police what Georgia told you to do, and they'll take it from there."

A few more body-wracking sobs greeted my observation. When she could talk, Erin cried, "You don't understand! When I saw Georgia this morning and asked her why, pretending to be me, she'd sent Oscar to that building site, do you know what she said?"

"Search me."

"Georgia said she didn't know what I was talking about-that we'd never had the conversation on Friday, that I was delusional and needed professional help urgently!"

" 'Strewth," I said, "you've been set up."

"You believe me? Jack didn't." She added quickly, "But he was very kind. He said I'd been working too hard, and had got confused."