Claire McNab: Quokka Question

"Will you give up now?"

"Give up what? My share of Kendall & Creeling? Or give up you? I haven't got you, Ariana, so there's nothing to give up."

She looked away from me. "If things could be different…"

A dreadful feeling of loss flooded through me. "But they're not. I understand that."

She brought her blue laser eyes back to me. "So where do we go from here?"

I fought to keep my voice steady. "As friends? Colleagues."

"Can you do that?"

"I can do that," I said.

At three-thirty in the morning, Diana Niptucker called. The office number, as usual, was switched through to the phone on my bedside table. I was startled awake by the noise of its ring, which sounded so much louder in the darkness. Groping around, I found the handset and mumbled a hello.

"Kylie? Kylie Kendall? This is Di Niptucker, calling from Australia." Her voice was brisk.

I sat up, disturbing Julia Roberts, who'd been dozing by my side. "Dr. Niptucker! Thank you for getting in touch with me."

"What time is it there in the States?"

I squinted at the illuminated dial of my bedside clock. "Around three-thirty in the morning."

"Oh, then I woke you. Sorry, but I just picked up my e-mails, and saw your message. Been incommunicado at a dig in the middle of nowhere for weeks, and have just got back to civilization. Had no idea what was going on in the world. Oscar's gone, is he? Dead?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Shame. Talented man. We were intending to publish a joint paper on the quokka megafauna link."

"Tided 'The Quokka Question'?"

Di Niptucker gave a snort of laughter. "Good grief, no. That was Oscar's name for it, but I, of course, would have insisted on the correct scientific language, both in the tide and in the body of the paper. No point in dumbing down things, that's what I say. I believe 'The Quokka Question' was what he was calling his keynote address to the GMS, however."

A hope sprang to life. "Dr. Niptucker, if you were writing a joint paper with Oscar Braithwaite, perhaps you had some of his latest quokka research notes."

"All of them," said Di Niptucker. "I insisted on it. Oscar had a fine mind, but he was scatterbrained with it. No telling if he'd include everything relevant, so I asked for a copy of all his recent research."

"I think I'd better tell you what's been happening here," I said. I gave her a brief outline of the situation, and she listened without a single interruption, until I mentioned my suspicions about Jack Yarrow and Oscar's death.

"Revolting man," she snapped. "I know him. Academic fraud. Capable of anything."

"If we had a copy of Oscar's research notes, they could be compared to the material Professor Yarrow is using for his keynote address this Friday."

"Say no more," she said. "What's your fax number?"

After I'd given it to her, Di Niptucker said, "I'll send them straight away. And keep me posted. I'd love to see Yarrow cut off at the knees."

After I'd thanked her and she'd hung up, I bolted out of bed and went to check that the fax machine had plenty of paper. Jules took this as an indication it was time for breakfast, so I indulged her with six prawn pieces and made a cup of tea for myself while I waited for the pages to come through.

I took my mug with me and watched greedily as the fax machine spat out each page of Oscar's research notes. They were indubitably genuine, as Di Niptucker had scrawled across the top of the facing page: "Comments in spidery handwriting mine. Illegible writing, Oscar's."

When the last page had been faxed, I gathered them up and took the bundle back to the kitchen. Reading through it I found much was double Dutch to me, but the structure and headings were enough to provide a template against which I could compare Yarrow's material for his address.

I couldn't even think of going back to bed. I photocopied every page twice, put one set in the office safe and the other on Ariana's desk. The faxed pages I put in a large envelope to take to UCLA with me.

Ariana wouldn't be in until mid morning, as she was seeing a prospective client. Perhaps I should call her and tell her what Dr. Niptucker had supplied: the evidence giving Yarrow an excellent motive for murder. But Ariana was likely to tell me to hold off until she saw the pages herself, and time was of the essence. I knew where Yarrow's notes were, and if Georgia's office was unlocked, I could get to them easily.

As my mother would say, strike while the iron is hot.

The campus was barely waking up when I arrived. I'd left Ariana a note clipped to her copy of the faxed pages that outlined the situation and told her what I intended to do. This made me feel better. I might not have called her, but I did tell her what was going on.

It was so early I had to kill time drinking coffee in the student union, but at last the hands of my watch crawled around to a reasonable hour, and clutching my precious envelope, I set off on my quest.

The biology department was deserted, and the door to Georgia's office was closed, indicating she hadn't yet arrived. I tried the handle anyway and was surprised when the door opened. I hadn't thought of the cleaning staff. Perhaps they unlocked the doors every morning to empty the wastepaper baskets.

I slipped in, closing the door behind me. I checked, but there was no way to lock it from inside the room. It took only a moment to find the key to the bottom drawer of the desk and take out the pages Georgia had been working on yesterday.

I sat down in her chair and opened the envelope I'd brought with me. My plan was to do a quick comparison and, if the similarities looked convincing, to call the UCLA Campus Police and tell them I'd * discovered stolen scientific papers in Georgia Tapp's office. The officers would certainly confiscate all the pages until the matter was investigated, which would effectively stop Jack Yarrow from disposing of damning evidence.

It was quite silent, the only sound the pages as I flicked through them, looking for correspondences. And they were there, over and over.

It seemed Yarrow had lifted Oscar's work word for word, convinced it was safe to do so, as he held the only copy of the research.

My heart lurched as the door to the office opened with a soft snickering sound. I expected to see Georgia, but it was Winona Worsack who stood there, a look of cold surprise on her face.

"I'm waiting for Georgia," I said, "and catching up on research for my paper with Dr. Wasinsky."

She nodded as if convinced and closed the door again. I frantically collected the faxed pages, cramming them into the envelope. I looked around for something to conceal Yarrow's notes in, and found a manila folder. Better to call the campus cops from Rube's office-I'd feel safer there.

I'd got to my feet, stuffing the material for Yarrow's address into the folder, when the door opened again, and Jack Yarrow stepped in. His high, domed forehead was beaded with sweat. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for Georgia."

He looked at the folder in my hand, at the half-open drawer of Georgia's desk, and his eyes widened. "Give me that!" he said, attempting to snatch the folder from me. Pages cascaded to the floor.

"Pick them up," he said, "and give them to me."

Playing for time, I bent down to retrieve the pages. As I did so, Yarrow picked up my envelope and ripped it open. He clearly recognized the contents immediately. "Christ! Where did you get this?"

I shrugged, all the while desperately trying to find a way out. I could push past him and run. But that would leave the evidence with him, so I should snatch up as many of the papers as possible, and then get out of there. I could -

I saw with total astonishment that Yarrow was now holding a gun. Small and silver, it seemed impossibly melodramatic. "You're going to shoot me?" I said, incredulously.