Abacus

on what he was doing, pushed the lid on the marker, and gave her his full attention. “All righty, what indecipherable name did the computer spit out this time?”
    “Can you believe it,” she said excitedly. “Task Force Sphere.”
    Randall smiled, “A touch of irony there, head-sphere… head-sphere… Yeah, I like it; at least we can spell this one.” He turned and wrote the new name in big letters on the whiteboard, before underlining it. “Leanne,” he said, admiring his writing, “could you do me a favour, and let the duty inspector know we are going to need our analyst to start at seven A.M. sharp tomorrow morning? Tell him he will be required for a couple of weeks at the very least.”
    “Sure, no problem, I think I can hear some of the guys coming back now.”
    “ Good, good.”
    * * *
    About a half hour later the team slowly filtered into the task force office where they sat around the large meeting table. Leaning casually against the whiteboard, Randall tapped the marker loudly on it to get their full attention. “All right, folks, as you know we have a homicide to investigate. At this very early stage it is clear that our initial focus will be on confirming the identification of the victim.” Randall turned to Leanne. “Leanne, can you please put them in the picture about the scene and the morgue, please?”
    Leanne repo rted to the team, the findings at the scene and during the post-mortem, which included the discovery of the partial phone number that was missing the last two digits.
    “Shei k, what have you got for us?” Randall asked.
    Sheik stood up from his seat and flipped through his notebook. “Well , the canvas of the neighbourhood surrounding the park was pretty uneventful until we visited ten Dyson Street, which backs directly onto the park. This morning, about seven thirty A.M., the female occupant was in the kitchen making breakfast when she looked out over the park. She saw a middle-aged Asian man fishing on the mud flat where the bag was later located. The man had a brown dog with him, similar to a kelpie breed. The dog mainly sat on the grassed area behind him as he fished.”
    “Has she seen him before?” Leanne asked eagerly.
    “Yeah, she has seen him about four times before,” Sheik snapped. “But usually just walking the dog, this is the first time she has seen him fishing.” Leanne lifted her hand apologetically as Sheik continued. “Anyway, she has described our man as being Asian, about fifty-five years of age, short black hair, five feet six tall, with a solid build. He was wearing denim jeans, a light blue spray jacket and brown boots.”
    “So taking into account our crime scene,” Jesse said a s he clicked the end of his pen, “with the drag marks in the mud exiting the water, there is every chance that our middle-aged Asian angler might have hooked up and landed the bag.”
    “Then when he opened the bag, he saw the hea d, crapped himself, and ran off,” Leanne added.
    Georgie G nodded. “I suppose the last thing he wanted to do was to explain to the cops how he went fishing and landed a head.”
    “Al l right, Sheik,” Randall said quickly glancing up at the wall clock. “Can I leave you to organize some surveillance in the next couple of days to I.D. our Asian man and his hairy accomplice? We need this loose end tidied up as soon as possible.”
    Hobbs was next to repo rt as he stood up from his seated position and leant over the table with his long arms outstretched. “Well, we didn’t turn up anything of interest in the line searches of the park and both sides of the river. The divers searched the riverbed but the visibility was poor. They were unable to find any further evidence. The riverbed was quite clean with the exception of a couple of dumped cars, which were on the opposite side of the river from where the bag was located. I have a copy of the tide charts here.” He removed some cards from his folder and handed them to Randall who reached over and dropped them into a tray on one of the filing cabinets along the wall. “Anyway, boss,” Hobbs continued, “the depth of the water directly in front of the bag was a lot deeper than we expected, it averaged at about twelve metres, and the temperature of the water near the bottom was quite cold, being about fourteen degrees Celsius.”
    Randall rubbed his chin and stared thoughtfully at the blank wall opposite. Looking back at Hobbs, he spoke as he thought out loud. “If we assume