“So how’s Petrov now?”

Willow didn’t answer. Instead, she finished her lukewarm coffee and, aiming the cup at a nearby recycling bin, missed it by a mile, earning a glare from the college-kid working the holidays as a table-clearer in the Research Facility canteen. Willow scooped up her knock-off Tory Burch bag, paused to retrieve the cup and deposit it in the bin, and headed for the exit, accompanied by Harper, who was a nice enough kid, but – despite her gleaming array of qualifications, which put even Willow’s in the shade - a bit slow sometimes.

“I mean, the doctors must have said something,” persisted Harper as they exited the canteen air-con into the tropical shock of the Australian early evening sun, and made for the car park.
Unlocking the door of her fifteen-year-old Honda, Willow broke silence.

“Two months, I heard.”

Appalled, Harper shook her head while settling herself into the passenger seat.

“Oh, poor man: I can’t believe it. He’s such a nice old bloke. Reminds me of my grandpa. Doesn’t matter he’s a professor with about twenty degrees and Nobel prizes, and he’s working on that hush-hush thing that no one’s supposed to know about: he’s always ready to help people like me, just starting out. A real mine of information, once you get past the accent.”

“Yes,” said Willow heavily, doing her best to negotiate the Darwin evening rush-hour which, despite her efforts to postpone the worst of it with undrinkable coffee, was still in merry swing.
“Where’s he now?” pursued Harper. “I’ve not seen him for – oh, some days.”

Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out and glanced at it distractedly.

“He doesn’t seem to have been around for two or three weeks now,” said Willow, avoiding a courier who apparently wanted to deliver his pizzas somewhere under her front wheels. “OK, we know he’s really ill, so you wouldn’t expect to. But people have been trying to contact him at his flat, the hospital, his nephew’s … And there’s a rumour he’s tied up in property somewhere.”

“A professor’s salary stretch to a property portolio?”

“Whatever. Anyhow, seems he’s nowhere to be found.” Willow glanced over at Harper, who was still absorbed in her phone. “Bad news? Umberto stood you up again?”

“No,” said Harper. “This is really odd. It’s just one word: ‘Apricot.’”

“What: the fruit? Someone think you’re not getting your five-a-day?”

At that moment, Willow heard her own phone buzz.

“Could you get that for me? It’s probably Mom …”

Harper pulled the Tory Burch from the footwell, scrabbled inside for the phone, and held it up.

“That’s truly strange … “

“What is?” Willow was intent on trading glares with an over-feisty pick-up trying to push the Honda into motorised oblivion.

“One word: Bar.”

“Bar? What bar? Yes, and you!” She finally outmanoeuvred the truck, whose operator indicated his opinion in one of the many elegant ways affected by delivery-drivers worldwide.

“Don’t know. But it’s one word, like the ‘Apricot’ I got on mine. And it’s number withheld as well.”

A faint memory of an advert fleetingly glimpsed somewhere came to Willow.

“Just a minute: isn’t that the name of that ultra-trendy place opened last week down on Smith Street?”

Harper thought a moment. “Yeah … could be. So … what? Does someone want to meet us there? But how would they know we’d be together, because of you giving me a lift to meet
Umberto?”

She glanced down at her own phone, which was buzzing again.

“Hey, this is really weird. It’s Duncan - “

“Duncan?” Willow had to think a moment. “Oh, the geek from the Innovation Hub. Makes Alan Turing look like Elton John. What’s he want?”

“He says he’s just received a one-word message, he doesn’t know who from.”

“What word? (Lady, pedestrian crossings aren’t just for decoration: they’re meant to stop you becoming a statistic!)”

“Code.”

“What?”

“Code.”

Willow tried to make sense of this.

“So three of us have received a one word message from some unknown sender. Apricot and Bar might mean the Apricot Bar on Smith Street. ‘Code’ … well, that’s a sort of Alan Turing thing, so might suit Duncan. But what’s it all mean?”

“Could it be a sort of flash-mob thing, like back in the Noughties?” pondered Harper.

“What are you, twelve? When did you last hear of a flash-mob?”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Well, I was supposed to be taking Mom to look at that apartment in Muirhead, but she hasn’t given me any details. And you’ve got that hot date with Umberto.”

“Believe me, no date with Umberto could ever be described as hot,” said Harper, examining her buzzing phone.

“What’s that? Another one word mystery?”

“No. Umberto cancelling.”

“Told you!”

“Well … “ said Harper thoughtfully. “If your Mom hasn’t got back to you, and if you’ve nothing else lined up, what about the Apricot Bar?”

“What about it? Do I look like the sort of person who goes to strange bars on a whim because of a weird message from some anonymous axe-murderer?”

“We could ask Duncan to come with us,” suggested Harper.

Willow snorted. “Does Duncan strike you as someone who could fight off an axe-murderer?”

“No, not exactly … but he’s so geek he could probably fathom out who’s sending these things. So the police could find the axe-murderer really quickly.”

“Yeah, really comforting for his victims ... Unless it’s Duncan sending the messages.”

There was silence while the Honda waited in traffic.

“Oh, text him,” said Willow eventually. “He’s got the hots for you. He’ll come running.”

“Hots? Duncan? For me?” Harper was aghast.

“Yes, didn’t you know? Look, are we going to this place? Because if so, I’ll need to turn off soon. If it’s somewhere that’s been taken over by weirdos, we need back-up, even if it’s only Duncan … “

“Unless, as you say, it’s Duncan’s the weirdo.”

“But someone texted him with ‘code.’”

“So he claims.”

Harper sent a text. An apprehensive silence reigned for the rest of the drive.

***

Some twenty minutes later, the two women were standing uncertainly outside the Apricot Bar, which was all psychedelic neon and Terminator liquid chrome. Despite the relatively early hour, up-to-the-minute boutique couples in kill-me-dead make-up were already pushing past them, impatient to immerse themselves in the pulsing hip-hop inside. Harper and Willow, still in nondescript Research Hub gear, exchanged doubtful looks, and were on the point of turning away when a figure in baggy jeans, faded Space Invaders T-shirt and straw hat came into view. On seeing Harper, a beaming smile lit up his face. Willow couldn’t decide whether he reminded her of a blushing parsnip or a terrified beetroot.

“Hey, there!”

“Hi, Duncan.” Willow wondered how his straw hat, apparently either a donkey’s headgear or its interrupted meal, would go down with the glazed and sculptured stiletto-clad crowd inside.

“So what’s all this about?” said Duncan, politely waiting for his colleagues to precede him into the pulsating gloom inside.

“No idea,” said Harper. “I texted you what little we know. We were hoping you might have worked out who sent those words – what are they? Apricot – bar – code.”

But Duncan looked blank.

“Means nothing to me. Still, looks a … nice place. Different. Drinks, ladies?”

They ordered margaritas.

“$60,” announced the tepid and lank barperson.

“Wha-?” Clearly Duncan, thrilled though he was to finally be in such close proximity to Harper’s coy curls and eyelashes, was ill able to cope with the idea of parting with the equivalent of a week’s grocery bill in return for three dolls’-house glasses of sugar-rimmed ether.

Willow came to the rescue.

“Dutch?” She dived into the recesses of her pseudo-Tory Burch, wishing that she wasn’t surrounded by quite so many real Tory Burches. After a moment’s hesitation, Harper followed suit. They handed over the money to the barperson and turned away, sipping frugally at their drinks and trying not to look overwhelmed by the other people in the bar, the quivering slivers passing muster as dresses, and the jagged streaks of their wearers’ improbable hairstyles.

“Hey!”

They looked back. The barperson, fractionally less tepid and lank, was holding two white cards.

“Harper and Willow?”

Willow stared at him. “How would you know our names?”

Apparently taking this query as confirmation, the man thrust the cards into their bewildered hands and immediately turned away to more pressing tasks elsewhere. Abruptly, the hip-hop stopped in mid-hop, substituted with what sounded like some form of 1970s New Wave retro-stomp.

Willow glanced at her card. It bore just two scrawled words: “Willow” and “Architecture.”

She looked over at Harper’s; just Harper’s name and “Elvis.”

“Elvis?” said Harper. “Euwww! So last century!”

Duncan set down his margarita, took the two cards, studied them, and scratched his hat, dislodging a piece of straw that fell unnoticed by him into his drink. But he was anyway too absorbed in the cards to care.

“So, for reasons unknown, we three have been presented with five apparently unrelated words or terms,” he said. “Apricot; bar; code; architecture; Elvis.”

“The only thing I can think of,” said Willow thoughtfully, “that has a series of terms whose very unrelatedness carries a message is What3Words.”

“Oh – that mapping app that covers the entire world,” nodded Harper. “Like if you feed worker.monitored.wriggled into your phone, it’ll take you to the Charles Darwin Lookout Point in the park here.”

“Slight problemo, ladies,” Duncan pointed out. “We’ve got five words, not three. So, whatever’s going on here, it can’t be What3Words.”

“Can’t it?” said Willow. “Think about it. The first two words were texted to me and Harper. Then, separately, you were sent ‘code’. Now Harper and me have each been sent two more. But supposing ‘code’ means that what we’re looking at is actually a code. Supposing it really is What3Words: but minus two of the words we’ve been sent.”

“ What3Words won’t work with proper names,” said Harper, “so – whatever the reason it was sent - we could discount Elvis. Or Presley.”

“Let’s try feeding in the words,” suggested Willow. “How about starting with apricot.bar.code?”

Duncan pulled out his phone and tapped away, while Harper and Willow exchanged puzzled glances.

“Bars, not bar,” he said at last. “It would have to be apricot.bars.code. If it is, it would take you here.”

He displayed the screen. It was an expanse of blue, evidently sea; scrolling eventually revealed a location somewhere off South Korea.

“Doesn’t mean anything to me,” said Harper.

“But if ‘code’ was an indication of what the message was, rather than actually forming part of a What3Words reference,” said Willow, “that leaves just apricot.bars.architecture. Where would that take us?”

Again Duncan tapped away, and stared at his screen in puzzlement.

“What - ?” said Willow, peering over his shoulder. The screen displayed a uniform caramel almost as blankly uninformative as the sea off South Korea.

“Well, where is it?” said Harper impatiently. “Scroll, Duncan!”

A few seconds’ twiddling brought the location into a more readable view.

“It’s in the Top End, somewhere south of the Barkly Highway. Maybe about six, seven hundred miles from Darwin?”

“Yes, but what is the place? What’s it called?”

Apparently, Duncan couldn’t find the answer very quickly.

“It’s just a locality,” he said at last, “somewhere in the outback. Aboriginal lands, and so forth. Miles and miles of pretty much nothing at all.”

Harper and Willow were silent.

“Does it have a name, this place?” pursued Willow eventually.

Duncan glanced down at the screen.

“Called after a nearby mountain range,” he said. “Costello.”

Willow began to say something, and then stopped. She listened a moment to the closing bars of the New Wave track that had been playing.

“Pump it Up!” she exclaimed.

“Beg your pardon?” said Duncan.

“We had the wrong Elvis. That track they’ve been playing is by Elvis Costello, not Elvis Presley.”

Duncan and Harper looked bewildered.

“What … ?”

Willow didn’t blame them. She could hardly believe what she was about to say: but said it anyway.

“The name of this bar contains two of the words that turn out to be part of a mapping app reference. We were handed two more words when we got here: one was architecture, the final word of the map reference. And, as soon as we were given those final two words, the bar stopped that hip hop stuff to play a track by Elvis Costello – ‘70s New Wave, look it up.”
Duncan and Harper still looked bewildered.

“The message that someone has been trying to send us is that we should go to Costello!”

“But why?” said Harper. “Some place out in the back of the back of beyond. Why couldn’t they just write or phone, and explain properly, like normal people? Why all this subterfuge?”

An exclamation from Duncan stopped her. He was staring down at his screen.

“Listen to this,” he said. “Well known scientist and Nobel Prizewinner, Professor Dmitri Petrov, has been found dead after a shoot-out between police an unknown group who appear to have been holding the scientist hostage at an undisclosed location in Darwin. From texts found on the group’s phones, they seem to have been demanding a top-secret piece of equipment, required to complete an important international project, in return for Petrov’s freedom: although it seems no-one knew where the equipment was. Unbeknown to his captors, Petrov had a phone with him: although there was little charge left on it. But, just before his death, it seems he managed to text a few meaningless words to different recipients, and a brief instruction to a business he part-owned.”

There was a stunned silence: broken by the barperson.

“Hey,” he said, holding out an envelope over the bar to them . “I was told to give you this. And look for a text.”

He thrust the envelope into Willow’s hands.

Silently, Willow opened the envelope, and pulled out a bundle of cash.

Harper’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen.

“Take cash. Go soonest to Costello and ELDO Rocket Shelter Annitowa. Inside - “

But there the text ended.

“Petrov,” said Willow. “His phone was losing charge.”

“But why has it only reached us now, when he’s dead?” asked Harper.

“He must have been using an app with scheduling capability,” said Dunan.

“OK … but what the blessed blue blazes is the ELDO Rocket Shelter Annitowa?” demanded Harper.

“It’s a left-over from when they thought there might be dangerous fall-out in that part of the world from the 1960s European rocket program,” explained Duncan. “So a few shelters were built, and some still survive – look like a cross between a chapel and a sauna. I’ve got a lot more information about that rocket program,” he went on enthusiastically.

“That would be great, Duncan," said Willow hastily, "but maybe keep it for another time."

She examined the bundle of cash.

“What’s supposed to be inside the shelter?” asked Harper.

Willow shrugged. “Maybe the secret equipment Petrov was trying to keep from the bad actors? Maybe he thought we were the best people to find it and bring it back?”

“So what do we do now?”

Willow looked around, finished her drink, and glanced at her watch.

“I suggest, compadres, that, if we’re all agreed we want to carry out Petrov’s last wishes, we get going for Costello. We’ll have to go off-road at the end, so we’ll need to hire a ute, and get supplies: job he left this cash for us.”

As they left the bar’s air-con and hip-hopfor the steamy temperature outside, Harper wondered miserably how she was going to fare cooped up with Duncan in a ute for what might be the best part of a week, forced to listen to endless stories about the 1960s European rocket program; and whether she might have been better off with Umberto after all ...

(2,650 words)

Hermione
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