Golden Relic. Lindy Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ shrugged. ‘I’m here because the Assistant Director called the Minister. Why exactly did you do that, Mr Prescott?’

      Prescott started rubbing his forehead again. ‘I took one look at Lloyd’s body and realised a thing like this would send the media into a frenzy. I felt I had to act quickly to contain any possible fallout,’ he explained. ‘And the best way to do that was to go right to the top. To the Minister. If Lloyd had died from a stroke, as first thought, then I would simply have apologised for wasting your time. On the other hand if it was murder, which we now know to be the case, then my actions would have been, and in fact are, the right ones to ensure that a lid is kept on this whole affair.’

      Rigby looked unimpressed by Prescott’s logic. ‘Why the Federal Minister?’ he asked.

      ‘This is an international conference, Detective. While it is being hosted by the Museum of Victoria in Melbourne, its success reflects on the entire nation. At the very least this will have a disastrous PR effect on the final preparations, and anything detrimental to the success of this conference is, in my opinion, of federal concern. Also, Jim Pilger is a friend of mine.’ Prescott held up his hand to forestall any snide remarks about nepotism and turned to Sam.

      ‘You are here, Special Detective Diamond. Whatever you may think, that says less about my ‘connections’ than it does about the fact that the Minister shares my concerns in this matter enough to send his representative. And you already know about ICOM ’98, so I assume you have been briefed.’

      ‘Brief being the operative word, Mr Prescott,’ Sam admitted. ‘I do, however, understand your concerns about the likelihood of the media turning this incident into a three-ring circus.

      ‘I am authorised to work with both you and the police,’ Sam glanced at Rigby, ‘to exercise damage control and minimise the fallout. We can’t make this go away, Mr Prescott, but we may be able to obfuscate matters so the media takes little or no interest.’

      ‘Un-bloody-likely,’ Rigby declared.

      ‘I’m afraid I agree with Detective Rigby on that point,’ Prescott’s defeated tone seemed to be saying more than he was.

      ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ Sam asked.

      ‘I believe that Lloyd Marsden’s murder may have been a deliberate act of sabotage,’ Prescott announced.

      ‘Sabotage? Why?’ Rigby was incredulous.

      ‘I don’t know.’ Prescott searched his desk drawer for something. ‘But there are a lot of sick individuals out there.’

      And paranoid ones, Sam thought, leaning forward to inspect the postcard of the museum that Prescott passed across the desk. Typewritten on the back was a limerick:

      You’re failure will be my success

      The confrence will be such a mess

      One by one you will fall

      Till theirs none left at all

      And the hole thing will cause you distress.

      ‘I received that last Wednesday,’ Prescott said.

      ‘And you didn’t call the police?’ Rigby raised an eyebrow. ‘Or ring the Minister?’

      Prescott smiled humourlessly. ‘It is a dreadful limerick with atrocious spelling, but until this morning I thought it was merely a joke in extremely poor taste.’

      ‘They may not be connected,’ Sam said.

      Prescott looked at her as if she was daft. ‘You don’t think ‘one by one you will fall’ is a threat now made manifest by the body of one of my curators lying down there in the library?’

      ‘I’d like to ask you about that,’ Rigby said. ‘I’ll have this analysed.’ He picked the card up by the corner and slipping into his inside jacket pocket.

      ‘Ask me what?’

      ‘What was Marsden doing in the library? Wasn’t the museum closed over a year ago?’

      ‘Closed to the public yes, but the task of moving the collections is monumental and we have many staff, and that included Lloyd, who still spend much of their time in the old building. Our Collection Relocation Department is responsible for the move, but they have to liaise with the curators and collection managers to ensure the safe packing, labelling and cataloguing of all the items. So Lloyd has an office here, but his work is... was there.’

      ‘But it’s been 12 months, surely you don’t have that much stuff to shift,’ Rigby said.

      Prescott laughed. ‘You have to understand that, historically speaking, the curatorial staff of this institution have, primarily, been ‘collectors’ and they have been collecting for 150 years. We have about 16 million pieces of ‘stuff’, Detective. Moving them is not something that can be done overnight. It is a logistical nightmare, although it has provided us with a unique opportunity to assess, reorganise, catalogue and even photograph the entire collection. Everything is being moved in sequence to our storage facilities, and each transit lot is barcoded and the information scanned into a database so we know exactly where it is.’

      ‘Storage facilities,’ Sam noted. ‘That’s something I don’t understand. Why close the old Museum before the new one is finished if it means everything is going into storage?’

      ‘For the same logistical reasons. The new Melbourne Museum is not due for completion until the year 2000. Preparation for this move actually began over two years ago, long before we closed the doors on Swanston Street, and it will take another two. It’s not simply a case of wrapping everything in old newspapers, packing them into cardboard boxes and wheeling them a couple of blocks across town.’

      ‘I realise that–’ Sam started to say, but Prescott was obviously on a roll.

      ‘A great proportion of our collection is extremely fragile and irreplaceable. We have something like three million spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, butterflies, beetles and other insects; over 30,000 mammal skins, mounts and skeletons; 70,000 reptiles, and the same number of birds including thousands of eggs and nests. They all require completely different handling and even the packing material itself has to be non-abrasive and acid free. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, we can’t pack and move the ornithological or insect specimens in the same way we pack and relocate the dinosaur skeletons or a three tonne meteorite.’

      ‘Naturally,’ Sam managed to say. She noticed that Rigby, who had given up trying to get a word in edgewise, was sitting with his mouth half open.

      ‘And, of course,’ Prescott continued, ‘before any actual moving happens, we have to tackle the problem of pest management – to ensure that the new storage areas, and ultimately the new Museum, are not contaminated by things like borers and moths from the relocated items. So, as you can see, it is not a simple procedure.’

      ‘Besides, the library wanted the floor space, so you had to go somewhere,’ Sam said.

      ‘That is true,’ Prescott agreed, ‘but even so, it would never have been a case of closing the old museum doors on a Friday and reopening in the new building after a quick move on the weekend.’

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