The Correct Time

The Correct Time

11:12 p.m.

The fax from Sydney couldn’t be clearer. MANDATORY – Every unaffiliated person on-site after 1800 hours must be recorded in the official after-hours register. No exceptions. Len Tindall read the fax twice. Everything about it rubbed him the wrong way. He added it to security manual amendment on his desk. Six pages of instructions about registers and key control. Still nothing about the steady leak above the security desk.

Outside, Hunter Street lay black and mostly empty. Plywood covered the old rug centre opposite. An all-night chemist kept watch over the empty buildings whose owners lived elsewhere. The government building rose among them like a concrete safe nobody had bothered to fill. The glass outer doors rattled. Susan stood outside with a steaming newspaper parcel under one arm and rain shining on her dark hair. Len pressed the release. His daughter came through beneath the foyer camera and dropped the parcel on the paperwork on his desk.

“Chips. From Scotty’s. Since you won’t leave this palace.”

“Latest decree from Sydney says I can’t,” said Len, gesturing to the fax. Susan read it.

“They’ve discovered an all-new, all-dancing way of locking an empty building.”

At thirty, she still knew how to make worry sound like a joke. She also looked as though she had slept in her clothes. Again. Len asked if anything was wrong. She shrugged. Somewhere above them a floor polisher whined through the empty building.

“Stocktake at the car yard starts tomorrow. Nothing to it.” Susan tossed a chip, yellow with chicken salt, into her mouth. The after-hours register waited beside the telephone. She was not staff and family members weren’t exempt. Len left the line blank. He’d spent twenty-seven years policing Newcastle, deciding which rules were worth following. A daughter bringing her father dinner was none of their business.

11:21 p.m.

Len wrote the time before answering the telephone. Policeman’s habit. Record the call first, decide whether it mattered second.

“Keir there yet?” Terry Whelan asked.

“Not yet.”

“Right. I’ll be there before midnight.”

Terry’s good behaviour bond required him to be home before midnight. Last week Len had let Terry in through the fire door. When he’d left, the register showed “11:34 p.m. – Whelan entered main foyer. 11:52 p.m. – Whelan exited building.” Two hundred dollars bought a way into a secure building, a doctored log and no questions about what happened upstairs.

“Same as last week?” Len asked.

“Same.” Terry hung up the phone.

Len had arrested men for less when he still wore the uniform. Since the knee put him behind a desk, he’d learned that some offences hurt people and others merely kept Newcastle moving. He made sure never to ask which kind Terry’s visits were. Susan picked at the chips as he hung up. She caught his eye.

“Keir again?”

“Not my business,” said Len.

“You always said that meant it was somebody’s business.”

Len dunked a few chips in the sauce. “Eat. Before they go cold.”

11:38 p.m.

Councillor Rodney Keir arrived carrying a leather briefcase polished brighter than his shoes. Len knew him from the old job, a man who remembered your name only when he wanted something. He represented the council on committees that promised to repair Newcastle while the shopfronts continued their slow decay. The camera above the doors collected its few grainy black-and-white frames, transmitted to a security facility half a city away.

Keir signed the after-hours register log precisely, making a flourish of his gold watch when he noted the time.

“Eighth floor?” asked Len.

“I know where my office is.” Keir turned to look at her. He always made her feel uneasy. “Still keeping the car dealers honest, Susan?” he asked.

Susan smiled her best car yard smile. “We leave honesty to the council.”

Keir rested the briefcase on Len’s desk to take the offered eighth floor key. He took off his glasses and slipped them into his briefcase. Inside lay a thick bank envelope, secured with a red band.

Susan’s hand stopped halfway to the chips. When Len glanced at her she took another. Then Keir snapped the case shut and took the lift upstairs.

11:46 p.m.

“Where’s the ladies?” asked Susan, pressing her hand against her stomach.

“Ground floor is closed for repairs. Try the executive on level 9. See how the other half live.”

Len took his master key from its spot in the desk drawer. The last procedure said only security and the cleaning supervisor were allowed to have one. He looked at his daughter, pale beneath the fluorescent lights, and handed it over.

“Straight there and back.”

“What would I steal from the Government, Dad? Debt?”

The service elevator door slid open and she stepped inside. Len opened the key register, found the correct line. He paused, then left it empty. He told himself he would fill it in later, when she returned. He had told himself the same thing about her name in the after-hours register.

11:49 p.m.

Susan watched the numbers lighting up, one by one. By eight in the morning, three missing car-yard deposits would become a police matter. Seventeen thousand, four hundred and sixty dollars. She thought about the envelope in Keir’s briefcase. That would turn them back into bookkeeping. The eighth floor light came on, the doors slid open.

She crept down the corridor, focused on her plan. She would wait until he was out of the office, sneak in and take it. If he was there, she’d wait until his back was turned. She’d be back in the elevator before he knew what happened. She paused outside his office and carefully eased the door open.

Keir was standing at the window, looking out over the city. The telephone receiver against his ear. The open briefcase on a side table. He didn’t hear the master key turn in the lock, didn’t hear Susan creep across the carpet. Len wrote 11:52 p.m. into the ledger before lifting the receiver. “Security,” he said.

“Yeah, any word on Whelan?” asked Keir.

The envelope was already in Susan’s hand when Keir turned, his eyes wide. The telephone base within her reach. He lowered the receiver.

“What are you doing?”

Susan swung the telephone base. Hard. It struck his temple and tore the wall connection loose. The receiver hit the floor. Len’s voice vanished into a clean dead line.

Keir dropped to his knees. Blood ran into his eyebrow. Susan backed towards the door, holding the envelope against her chest. He collapsed, reaching for her.

“Susan,” he said.

She looked at the torn cable. She couldn’t know if her name had reached her father. She went back. Keir planted one hand on the floor and began pushing himself up. Susan coiled the receiver cord, pulled it across his throat and held on. Tighter. He was weakened, but not helpless. His hands scrabbled at her sleeves, her hands. His heel beat twice against the carpet. She held on for a few seconds more. Then the cord stopped trembling. Then she picked up the envelope, slammed the briefcase shut, and ran.

11:56 p.m.

Her heart was hammering in her chest. In the ninth-floor women’s toilet Susan washed Keir’s blood from her hands. The pink government soap wouldn’t lather. She scrubbed until her hands were clean, checking carefully for drops of blood in the mirror. The paper towels were equally useless, stiff and thin. She wiped her hands on her jeans instead. She stared at herself in the mirror, counting her breathing against the drips from a cistern. She needed to return looking as though she had spent too long being sick. That part required no acting.

She turned the envelope over in her hands. Twenty thousand. Enough to settle her debts, enough to replace the stolen deposits. No way she could hide it, no way she could sneak past her dad with it. The master key had to go back into Len’s hand. If he had heard her name, he’d be suspicious. The envelope was too thick to miss.

She pressed six without knowing why. She only knew that the eighth would be crawling with police once Keir’s body was found. She walked down the hall. The master key opened the fourth door she tried. A narrow electrical storeroom. Behind a carton of fluorescent tubes was a narrow cavity between the concrete wall and a dusty switchboard. She pushed the envelope into it and replaced the carton. Safe, until the building was safe again.

12:01 a.m.

Terry Whelan crossed Hunter Street without an umbrella, one hand holding his coat closed at the throat. Len saw him, releasing the side door before Terry reached it.

“You’re late.”

“Make it the same as last week.”

Terry followed Len to the security desk. The honest space waited for “12:01 a.m. – Whelan entered the main foyer.” He wrote “11:43 p.m. – Whelan.”

“Two hundred when you come down,” he said.

“If Keir behaves himself.”

Len could’ve asked what that meant. Instead he gave Terry a key for the eighth floor. After the elevator door shut, Len tried Keir’s extension. The line rang without answer. He looked towards the service elevator and told himself she was still in the toilet. Len picked at the last of the chips. “Cold,” he said.

12:06 a.m.

The elevator door opened and Terry burst out at a run. Keir’s leather briefcase struck his leg with every step. His face had lost all its careful fear and found something animal beneath it.

“Whelan, stop. What happened upstairs?” asked Len.

Terry did not slow. He headed straight to the side door, hit the crash bar and ran out into the rain.

“You owe me two hundred,” Len called after him. The stupid words followed Terry across the pavement. He disappeared between the boarded shops with Keir’s case still under his arm.

Len tried the extension again. No answer. He remembered the phone call, 11:52 p.m. in the register. He’d heard a crackle, something knocking against the mouthpiece and the line went dead. Now it didn’t look like Keir simply hung up. Now Len had to act. He took the lift to eight.

12:08 a.m.

Rodney Keir lay between his desk and the filing cabinet. The telephone base rested on the floor nearby, its plastic case broken. Its cable had been torn from the wall, the coiled receiver cord had tightened deep into the skin beneath his jaw.

Len had found bodies before. Retirement didn’t erase the years of training, the first things he looked for. No breath. No pulse. Blood beginning to dry. Bulging, bloodshot eyes. He did not touch the cord.

The briefcase was gone, Terry had run with it. Terry had paid for secret access. His name stood in the register nine minutes before Keir’s broken call. Len had manufactured a murderer without knowing there would be a murder.

He returned to the foyer and lifted the telephone. While the station transferred him to Newcastle police, the service-elevator door opened. Susan stopped when she heard him say there was a dead councillor on the eighth floor. Her hands were clean, still smelling of government soap.

“Stay there,” Len said, taking the master key from her hand.

She sat beside the uneaten chips. For the first time that night, Len entered the correct time. “12:12 a.m. – Police notified.”

12:28 a.m.

Detective Sergeant Jan Orman read the after-hours register beneath the security lamp. Susan watched two uniformed officers take the master key from the desk. They sealed the eighth floor, locked the exits and began searching every room. Two more officers were conducting interviews with the contract cleaners in the foyer. They’d signed in at ten, the beginning of their shift. Somewhere above them all, twenty thousand dollars had become unreachable.

“Cameras?” Orman asked.

“Entrances and lift foyer. Recorded at Kotara.”

“Can you play them?”

“Sorry, not from here. Don’t have access,” said Len.

“When can we get the tape?”

“Monday, unless you can get a manager tomorrow. Black and white. A few frames a second. Not usually enough for identification.” Orman looked up at the black dome above the entrance.

“So tonight all we have is your book.”

She traced Terry’s entry with her fingernail. “Keir called you at eleven fifty-two. Whelan was already upstairs. Then, according to your story, he ran with the dead man’s case.”

The arithmetic sat between them. Simple enough for a child because Len had simplified it. Orman took a sip of her coffee, her finger tapping the register. A constable entered, shaking the rain off. He had the leather briefcase. They had found Terry beneath the awning of a boarded nightclub a few blocks away. Trying to forcing the clasp. Inside were Keir’s glasses, his papers. But no envelope.

12:34 a.m.

Terry sat in the building manager’s office with rainwater dripping beneath his chair. Orman questioned him with the door open, while Len and Susan remained at the security desk.

“Keir was supposed to have twenty thousand on him. It’s missing,” said Terry.

“Why was he paying you?”

“I knew something.”

“What?”

“Something he wanted kept quiet.”

“So you blackmailed him.”

Terry gave a tired shrug. “He had money. I had information. That’s a transaction.”

“And when the transaction failed?”

“He was dead when I got here. I grabbed the case and ran because I figured my money was in it.”

Orman placed the register where Terry could see it. “You arrived at eleven forty-three.”

Terry looked through the doorway at Len. “No, just after midnight. Ask Tindall what time I arrived. Ask him about his two hundred.”

Susan’s head turned towards her father. The surprise on her face was clean. Whatever she had done upstairs, she didn’t know what Len was selling downstairs. Len felt something approaching relief. One corner of her was still innocent of him. Orman closed the office door, shutting Len and Susan out.

12:41 a.m.

Susan stared at the office door. “Rodney rang you,” she said, her voice quiet.

“Just before midnight.”

“What did he say?”

“Couldn’t make it out. Something. The connection dropped.”

“Before, did he say anything?”

The old part of Len heard the question. The policeman in him heard a suspect probing for what the police knew. She hadn’t asked if Keir suffered. Or how he was found. She wanted something, maybe a name, in relation to that broken call. He had to know.

Len looked at her, her pale face. Her eyes. “I heard a name.”

“Mine?” she asked, her voice cracking. Len had heard no name at all. His face softened into disappointment. Susan understood a second later. Not guilt, recognition. A daughter had asked her father a question. A suspect had answered an old policeman’s trap.

“Dad?”

Len remembered Keir’s briefcase opening on the desk, Susan watching the envelope. He remembered the empty line in the key register, the long time she’d spent upstairs. The facts had always been there. He just didn’t want to see them.

12:44 a.m.

“It wasn’t meant to happen. I only wanted the money,” Susan said. Len didn’t ask where it was. Police were searching the building and asking would only make him part of whatever answer she gave.

“He saw me. He said my name. He knew it was me. I didn’t know if the line was still connected.”

Len took a deep breath. “So you made sure he couldn’t say it again.”

Susan stared at her hands. “I thought you heard,” she said in a tiny voice.

That was the ugliest part. She had come downstairs and sat beside him. Knowing he might have heard enough to destroy her. Trusting that if he knew, he would find a kinder version of what she had done.

“Leave the book. Don’t change it. Terry was there. He ran with the case. He was blackmailing Rodney,” she said.

“He didn’t kill him.”

“Terry isn’t innocent. Neither of them are.”

Neither was Len. If he left the register untouched, Terry’s smaller crime would be made large enough to cover Susan’s. If he corrected it, Susan would answer for Keir. And Len would lose his daughter. Be out of a job. Disgraced.

He’d spent a career believing justice required somebody sensible to decide which rules mattered. Somebody brave enough to follow them.

12:56 a.m.

Orman opened the manager’s office door and Terry was led away in handcuffs. She called for Len and Susan to come in. He sat in front of her, the ledger open on the desk.

“Mr Tindall, are these entries accurate?” She moved the book under the lamp. Len shook his head. Orman watched as he wrote “12:56 a.m. – Corrections to previous entries.”

11:12 p.m. – S. Tindall entered main foyer.

11:46 p.m. – Master key issued to S. Tindall.

12:01 a.m. – Whelan admitted through side entrance.

12:12 a.m. – S. Tindall returned master key.

He signed the correction. “Before you ask, my daughter told me she was in Keir’s office,” said Len.

Orman read them. Her eyes moved from Len to Susan.

“Where were you between eleven forty-six and nine past twelve?” she asked.

“The ninth-floor toilet.”

“We’ll start there.”

Orman stood up, leaving the room. The constable took Susan’s arm. “Dad?”

Len did not look at her. Looking had always been where the exceptions began. He closed the book in front of him as they led her away.