Page 30 of Down the Track
‘Do you know Charlie Cocker, the owner, at all?’
‘Well. Not really.’
‘“Not really” won’t suffice, Dr Tan. Let me remind you, your answers are being recorded. Yes or no: Do you know Charlie Cocker?’
‘I’ve met him. A long time ago. This isn’t the first time I’ve been involved with a dinosaur dig out in this district—it’s kind of a hotspot for fossils of the Cretaceous period—and the last time I was here, Charlie Cocker and Gavin Huxtable were both involved in flying supplies out to us on a regular basis. That was east of here near Winton, not out at Corley Station, though. I’ve never been there before today. Charlie and I might have chatted about the weather or whatever, but that’d be it. I doubt he’d recognise me if we passed each other on the street.’
‘And Gavin Huxtable? Would you recognise him if you passed him on the street?’
Jo took a breath, conscious that whatever she said now was going to be stuck in some police file until the end of time. Her defunct love life hardly seemed relevant to anything the Queensland Police Service would be interested in. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you asking me that?’
The police officer had a file open on the desk in front of her, one of those buff manila folders that were ubiquitous in any office and which, until now, had always seemed totally banal and harmless. Her arm lay over it so Jo couldn’t quite see what was on the top page. Notes, typed, with handwritten scribbles.Something something bananaboat…? Reading upside down didn’t help, but it rather looked like the next line down said,Fly River, Mt Isaand then$1,000,000+?had been written and circled in fat red pen.
Jo relaxed a little. She was over-dramatising things; none of that could have any relevance to her dig project.
‘Here’s another question,’ the police officer said, snapping the file shut as though she’d seen Jo staring. ‘Can you tell me why it is that the very same week our missing man—Dave—wants to get flown out to a remote location in Western Queensland, some woman from Brisbane rocks up wanting to be flown to the exact same location? By the exact same helicopter company?’
Sure, when she put it like that, there did seem to be some coincidences. But guess what? Coincidences happened. Science had the statistics to prove it. And her exact same helicopter company accusation was a bit of a stretch—therewasonly one helicopter company in town.
‘Look,’ Jo said. The sooner she cleared herself from the policewoman’s lines of inquiry, the sooner she’d be allowed back out to Corley. ‘I do know Gavin better than I know Charlie. We were … friends in the past. But I hadn’t seen him in years until this morning, and the first I knew of a missing person was today, when I overheard the Cracknells gossiping about it. Charlie was supposed to be the pilot on the charter I booked. I don’t know why he wasn’t. Also, your suggestion that the missing guy was flown to the exact space where I want to dig isn’t necessarily true. Until I get there and I’m able to have a thorough look around, I’m just assuming that rock pile where the search party was is my dig site. And why am I here now? This week? My ten-year-old son’s on water polo camp so it was the only time I could come out here.’
‘What’s so important about this dig site? If it is the dig site.’
Jo sighed. ‘Maybe nothing. I’m out here looking for a ditch in the ground that may or may not be there, and I’m using some old photos and the often-conflicting advice of the Cracknell sisters, who used to enjoy a hobby as amateur fossil hunters back when they were still working the station themselves, on the very slim chance that there’s an as-yet-undiscovered ornithopod skeleton that a whole university team has missed but which I’m hoping, probably foolishly, can still be found.’
‘Sounds like fairly flimsy reasoning.’
‘Yeah. Well.’ Jo’s earlier enthusiasm was waning now she was having to describe just how little she had to go on. Even she could hear how depressed her words sounded. ‘Sometimes you have to work with what you’ve got.’
The officer nodded in what might have been agreement and Jo noticed her manner had lost a little of its acerbity. Maybe there was an opportunity here.
‘I could go out to the site with you,’ Jo said. ‘Like an expert witness. See if your missing man’s site and my dino site reallyarethe same place.’
Acting Senior Constable Clifford frowned. ‘I don’t think so. Tell me. These dinosaur bones, if they’re there, are they valuable?’
Jo gasped. ‘My god, yes, they’reinvaluable. They’re ninety-five-million-year-old fossilised relics of Queensland’s prehistoric past. Reminders of a life and a time in our natural history that we are only just beginning to understand. Their value is beyond anyth—’
‘No. I mean are they valuable on the black market? Are there buyers out there willing to do dodgy crap to get their hands on dino bones to get themselves a nice chunk of cash?’
Wow. ‘That is—’
‘A possibility?’
‘Um, no. No.’
‘Why not? I have here—’ she flicked at one of the pages in her manila folder ‘—a report of a triceratops skull selling for four hundred thousand dollars.’
Gosh, how on earth was Jo going to explain the process fossils go through before they’re actually recognisable as anything other than rock to someone who wasn’t a scientist in one or two sentences? ‘Okay. Yes, in some countries, dinosaur bones can be sold at auctions and there are some private collectors who buy them like they’re trophies or whatever. But what’s being sold would be fully cleaned fossils that have some recognisable shape to them. What comes out of the ground is covered in rock. Itisrock, really, sedimentary rock, which is hard and difficult to remove from the fossil, which is no longer actual bone, but mineral deposits. Often incredibly fragile mineral deposits. The cleaning process can take weeks if a huge team is involved, but more likely months. Even more likelyyears, if it’s a large fossil. Trust me, officer, no-one who knew anything about fossilised bone would think digging something up out of the ground is a way to make some fast cash.’
‘I see. And if I were to contact another palaeontologist, they’d support your view on that?’
Jo pulled her bag onto her lap and shoved her hand into it. ‘Here’s my card,’ she said. ‘The number for the museum is on it; you can call the palaeontology department there, or at the University of Queensland. I can give you some names. They would all agree with me.’
She held the card out but Acting Senior Constable Clifford made no effort to take it, so Jo laid it down on the desk and straightened its edges so it aligned with the blotter. ‘Do you … have any further questions?’ she said.
‘That’s all for now.’
‘And … you can’t give me any indication of when I might be able to get back out to Corley Station?’ If she didn’t get a chance to even walk over the dig site, all she’d have to show for her trip would be credit card debt and blighted hopes and the memory of those chambray blue eyes looking at her like she was nothing.
