Golden Relic Read Online Free Page B

violence. It
looked to Sam like the least suspicious of circumstances.
    "It's looks pretty straightforward to me," Rigby said.
    "That's because you haven't been down on the floor with me, lookin' at the poor man's face.
Someone's dealt him a couple of good punches. Help me roll him over please, Steve."
    Steve obliged and between them they rolled the body onto its back.
    There was still no blood but the late Professor Marsden had a black left eye and a large purple
bruise on his right jaw.
    "Injuries sustained during a fall following his stroke," Rigby suggested.
    Baird, who was still on his hands and knees, was inspecting the bruises with a magnifying glass.
"I don't think so Jack. There's a wee puncture mark at the centre of both bruises," he announced. "I
suspect the man was struck and poisoned."
    "Poisoned?" Sam and Rigby chorused, looking at each other and then back at Baird.
    "I might be wrong," Baird said doubtfully.
    "You're never wrong," Rigby moaned. "Though how you can tell that is beyond me."
    "What's that in his left hand?" Sam asked, squatting down to get a better look.
    Baird reached out with his gloved hand and picked up a small piece of paper which he carefully
unfolded. His eyes widened, then squinted, then he held out the paper for Sam to read.
    "I hope he's left us the name of his killer," Rigby stated.
    "If that's what it is," Sam stated, "we're going to need help deciphering it."
    Unevenly scrawled, and probably with the pen Lloyd Marsden held in his other hand as his life
left him, was the word:
     

Chapter Two
Melbourne, Thursday September 17, 1998
     
    "Oh my god! He was poisoned?" Daley Prescott sounded like all his worst fears and a
couple of phobias had just invaded his personal space. He looked even worse. Sam was glad Rigby had
waited till the man was sitting down before conveying Baird's suspicions.
    "That's just the pathologist's preliminary report, Mr Prescott," Rigby stated. "It is not for
general publication. We'll know more after the autopsy of course, but even if he wasn't poisoned,
the man was certainly beaten."
    "To death," Prescott snorted, almost as if Marsden's death was more of an insult, to him, than a
tragic end for the professor himself. Prescott swivelled his chair and stared blankly out the
window.
    Sam and Rigby, having left the forensics team to finish the crime scene investigation, had agreed
it was time to question Prescott about what sort of 'ramifications' the murder of one of his
colleagues was going to have - apart from the obvious ones - and why he had seen fit to contact the
Federal Minister for Cultural Affairs. They had walked the two city blocks from the Library to the
Museum's administrative headquarters on Exhibition Street and now sat with an agitated Daley
Prescott in his office on the 18th floor.
    While the Assistant Director tried to collect his thoughts, apparently by rubbing his fingers
vigorously across his forehead, Sam gazed jealously out the huge window at the jigsaw of building
facades, rooftops and patches of blue sky.
    The view was a far cry from the windowless cubicle she shared with Ben Muldoon. A calendar of the
world's most famous tourist sites, none of which she'd seen in person (nor was she ever likely to
given the pathetic state of her savings account), was the only non-work-related item on those dreary
blue felt walls. September was the 'Pyramids of Giza' which, as far as Sam was concerned, couldn't
be further away if they'd been built on Mars.
    "This is dreadful," Prescott finally said, stating the obvious.
    "Were you close?" Rigby asked, completely misunderstanding Prescott's anxiety. Sam, however,
could tell there was little, if anything, personal intruding on the man's concern.
    "Close? No, not really. Not at all, in fact," Prescott replied. "It's just that the international
repercussions of this are, they're…"
    "You keep saying that," Rigby interrupted. "What precisely are the repercussions or ramifications
of Professor Marsden's