The Bat(115)

There was another sound. Harry concentrated but he was unable to identify what it was.

‘It makes me nervous when you don’t answer, Harry. Very nervous. I don’t know what you want, but perhaps I should switch off this phone. Is that it, Harry? Are you trying to find me?’

The sound . . .

‘Shit!’ Harry shouted. ‘He hung up.’ He flopped onto a chair. ‘Toowoomba knew it was me. How on earth could he know?’

‘Rewind the tape,’ McCormack said. ‘And get hold of Marguez.’

Yong ran out of the room while they played the tape.

Harry couldn’t help himself. The hairs on the back of his neck rose when he heard Toowoomba’s voice again over the speakers.

‘It’s definitely a place with a lot of people,’ Watkins said. ‘What’s that bang? Listen, children. Is it a fair?’

‘Rewind and play it again,’ McCormack said.

‘Who’s that?’ Toowoomba repeated, followed by a loud sound and children’s shouts.

‘What’s . . .?’ Watkins began.

‘That’s a pretty loud splash,’ said a voice from the door. They turned. Harry saw a small brown head with black curls, a little moustache and tiny, thick glasses, attached to a large body that looked as if it had been inflated with a bicycle pump and could burst at any moment.

‘Jesús Marguez – the best ears in the force,’ McCormack said. ‘And he’s not even blind.’

‘Just almost blind,’ Marguez mumbled, straightening his glasses. ‘What have you got here?’

Lebie played the tape again. Marguez listened with closed eyes.

‘Indoors. Brick walls. And glass. No muffling of any kind, no carpets or curtains. People, young people of both sexes, probably a number of young families.’

‘How can you know all that from listening to some noise?’ Watkins asked suspiciously.

Marguez sighed. It clearly wasn’t the first time he had come across sceptics.

‘Do you realise what fantastic instruments ears are?’ he said. ‘They can distinguish between a million separate differences in pressure. One million. And one and the same sound can be comprised of tens of different frequencies and elements. That gives you a choice of ten million. An average dictionary contains only about a hundred thousand headwords. A choice of ten million, the rest is training.’

‘What’s the sound in the background we can hear the whole time?’ Harry asked.

‘The one between 100 and 120 hertz? Hard to say. We can filter away the other sounds in our studio and isolate it, but it takes time.’

‘And that is what we haven’t got,’ McCormack said.

‘But how could he identify Harry even though Harry never spoke?’ Lebie asked. ‘Intuition?’

Marguez removed his glasses and polished them absent-mindedly.

‘What we so nicely call intuition, my friend, is always supported by our sensory impressions. But when the impression is so small and delicate that we only perceive it as a sensation, a feather under a nose while we’re sleeping, and we cannot put a name to the associations, the brain cuts in and we call it intuition. Perhaps it was the way . . . er, Harry was breathing?’

‘I held my breath,’ Harry said.

‘Have you rung him from here before? Maybe the acoustics? Background noise? Humans have sensationally good memories as far as noises are concerned, generally better than we ourselves are aware.’

‘I’ve rung him from here once before . . .’ Harry stared at the old fan. ‘Of course. That’s why I can recognise the background noise. I’ve been there before. The bubbles . . .’

He turned.

‘He’s in Sydney Aquarium!’

‘Hm,’ Marguez said, studying the shine of his glasses. ‘That makes sense. I’ve been there myself, of course. A splash like that can be made by the tail of a pretty big saltie.’

When he looked up again he was alone in the room.





55


A Straight Left and Three Shots


SEVEN O’CLOCK.

They would perhaps have endangered the lives of civilians on the short stretch from the police station down to Darling Harbour, had it not been for the storm that had cleared the streets of people and cars. Lebie did his best, nevertheless, and it was probably the blue light on the car roof that allowed a solitary pedestrian to jump for his life at the last moment and a couple of oncoming cars to swerve to safety. Watkins was in the back seat swearing non-stop, while McCormack was in the front ringing Sydney Aquarium to prepare them for some police action.

As they turned into the car park the flags in the harbour were flying horizontal, and waves were crashing over the edge of the quay. Several police cars were already there and uniformed officers were closing the exits.