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in the office while he looked over a briefing paper, then gone back into the session. Frances and Jeremy had stayed in the office, apart from Jeremy’s two trips to the cafe for sandwiches, which they’d eaten at their desks. The police had turned up at around eleven.
    I probed gently as to how Frances had got on with DS Brideson, but Frances didn’t want to talk about that.
    Then I asked about Jeremy.
    â€˜He’s fine.’
    â€˜And Bronwyn?’
    Frances thought for a moment before replying. ‘Bronwyn’s stand-offish. I don’t mean that in a bad way necessarily. But she never used to socialise. You know, in all the time we worked together, I don’t think I ever heard her laugh. In a job like that, you’re with people all the time. You’ve got to be able to get on with them. And it’s not that Bronwyn couldn’t , it’s more that she wouldn’t make the effort.’
    â€˜When did Bronwyn leave the office?’
    â€˜A few weeks ago.’
    â€˜Were she and Laila close friends?’
    â€˜I would have said Bronwyn didn’t have close friends in Canberra. I was surprised when I found out about the car.’
    â€˜So she never mentioned Laila to you?’
    Frances made a face. I waited.
    â€˜Laila liked dropping in,’ she said.
    â€˜She hung around the office?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’
    â€˜But that Monday night Laila had made an appointment. Do you think it was because she had something special to talk to the senator about?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t know,’ said Frances. ‘I couldn’t speculate about that.’
    â€˜I’d like to talk to Bronwyn if I could.’
    Frances made a face as if to say that I could try, but she couldn’t predict what kind of reception I’d get. ‘I’ve still got her number in my phone, I think.’
    After I’d copied the number, I went back to Frances’s opinion of Laila, probing to find out what she’d really thought.
    â€˜I didn’t know her well. I just chatted to her a few times when she came in to see Brian, that’s all.’
    Frances blushed the way very fair-skinned people did, all down her neck and upper arms. Clearly the reminder of Laila ‘dropping in’ made Frances uncomfortable.
    She burst out, ‘It isn’t true that Brian was having an affair! That’s a vicious rumour! Brian’s devoted to his family. He’s got two boys. I’ve met them. They’re great. And Imogen, his wife, she’s lovely. I’m angry with him for what he did to me, but he wasn’t having an affair with Laila. It just isn’t in him.’
    The lady doth protest too much, I said to myself. I would have said that it wasn’t in Ivan to have an affair either, but I knew now that, if Laila hadn’t rejected him, he wouldn’t have given me and Katya a moment’s thought.
    I sat in my car and tried ringing Bronwyn, but she wasn’t answering. Back home, I printed out a staff list for CSIRO’s marine science division.
    A couple of names were familiar to me from recent press reports, and I underlined them. I got out the list of documents Don Fletcher had sent me and downloaded several maps of Bass Strait. A coral reef had recently been discovered in the proposed marine park, as well as large, species-rich sponge gardens. These partly overlapped an area which Geoscience Australia, the commonwealth department responsible for surveying and releasing areas for oil exploration, had also marked as promising. While parts of Bass Strait had been mined for oil since the 1960s, others were relatively unexplored. I noted that several of the papers on Don’s list were authored, or co-authored, by Dr Gregory Tarrant, a senior marine scientist at CSIRO.
    I tried Bronwyn again, this time with more luck. When I introduced myself, she sounded as though she’d had enough of answering questions,