: Paul Ferrar
: In Deep Science, Secrets and a Conspiracy Buried Deep
: Vivid Publishing
: 9781923078901
: In Deep
: 1
: CHF 5.20
:
: Krimis, Thriller, Spionage
: English
: 320
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
A senior scientist is found dead - head-down in a bin of wet cow dung - at a Canberra research facility. At first, it looks like a bizarre accident. But the investigation quickly uncovers hidden wealth, a secret handgun, and suspicious ties to the southern U.S. As police dig deeper, they hit resistance. Records vanish, a key witness is shipped overseas, and the name 'Pepe' keeps surfacing. A secretive group called BLANK emerges, and even members of the investigation team may not be what they seem. With danger closing in, the chase leads far from Canberra - and into a conspiracy no one saw coming.

Paul Ferrar is a biologist who worked on dung beetles and maggots in northern Australia, on termites in a South African game park, as a rat-catcher in a large mental hospital in the UK, and in the Australian aid program managing cooperative research projects between Australian agricultural scientists and those in developing countries working on similar problems. He is also the author of a 907-page monograph on all you ever wanted to know and more about the maggots of 96 different families of flies. He is married to a very tolerant wife, also a research scientist and administrator but fortunately with a more conventional career.

AGRICOZ, SYMONSTON

Why am I always the mug that gets jobs like this? We had this bizarre call from AGRICOZ at Symonston, about a dead body upside down in a barrel of wet shit. It wasn’t April Fool’s Day, but it certainly sounded like some sort of practical joke.

Anyway, I rounded up Bill Hansen who was one of my saner colleagues, and we shot off to Symonston with sirens at full blast. We were met at the gate by one of the AGRICOZ staff, who climbed into the car and directed us to the scene of the crime.

We arrived to see two paramedics lifting up a female who’d been lying on the lawn, and putting her on a stretcher. We went over and one of the paramedics said: ‘This is the lady who found the body. She’ll be okay. The stiff’s in the lab over there.’

The AGRICOZ guy led us to the glasshouse at the back of the lab. The sight that greeted us did look like an April Fool’s joke, but in the worst possible taste. A bin of wet cow-shit with two stiff legs standing upwards from it. Too much to hope that it was a tailor’s dummy or something.

I looked closely at the legs, then felt them enough to determine that they really were human, not a very good dummy. Hairy legs indicated a male, and the legs were completely cold.

‘Bill, we’re absolutely going to need a forensic team for this one, and we can’t disturb anything till they get here. Scene of Crime people and a cadaver expert. They’re going to have to document this one really carefully. God help the pathologist who gets this job – the body’s going to come out caked in shit. The post mortem boys will love this one.’

‘I’ll give ’em a call straight away, mate.’

‘And we’d better send a constable to the hospital, wherever the ambos have taken the cleaner, to interview her when she’s ready. It sounds like she was the first one on the scene. I don’t imagine she’s a suspect, but we need to hear what she’s got to say.’

<