Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  Hoping to be led to bigger fish, Leslie had ordered an extensive search for Wayne but it was only after weeks of fruitless inquiries that an anonymous call to Crimestoppers brought his team to the bottom of Heales Lookout in the mountainous rainforest south of Cairns. There they found their man. Others had been there before – probably honey ants first, then bigger ants, flies, spiders, maggots, crows, cane toads, rats and feral cats. There was little more than bones and hair, with a few strips of blackened flesh and rotting fabric. The smell had gone; Cass had been glad of that. Wayne had been identified by DNA samples from his toothbrush. The way some of his former associates spoke of him, Cass had been surprised to find he even used a toothbrush. The pathologist who performed the autopsy, Dr Leah Rookwood, had drawn attention to the stoved-in top of his skull, and multiple fractures elsewhere, but she couldn’t say whether he’d been alive or dead when these happened, and, whatever else had come his way, Wayne had definitely fallen a long way down a mountain. He’d last been seen leaving the Redlynch Tavern by car; it was said he’d then been dropped off at home. His DNA was found in that vehicle too but its owner freely admitted he’d given him a lift. He’d just never seen him again.

  The car owner was but one of the 116 people Cass had interviewed in the weeks since she’d begun this job. Few of these 116 had been attractive personalities and on one occasion she’d needed her skills in martial arts to deal with two she’d been trying to bring in for questioning from the Redlynch Tavern. She’d formed the definite impression that Wayne Buscati was not a person she would ever regret not meeting. However, not one of her interviews had brought her any closer to knowing who killed him. The Coroner would probably return an open finding.

  It had been a long afternoon. Unless there was the sudden announcement of a serious new crime needing her urgent attention, Cass would be off-duty in an hour, when her colleague Drew Borgese would take over. She was planning to drop in at home, see what Jordon was doing this evening, which was probably hanging out with one of his new friends, and then go for a run along the Esplanade. She’d found it was cool enough by evening to run the five kilometres from her unit in North Cairns down to the Pier and back. Then she’d jump into the pool in the unit complex before dinner. Which tonight was likely to be pasta. By Lean Cuisine. Again. Her fridge was a temple consecrated to convenience foods.

  At thirty-four, Cass was trim and compact. Today’s tan trousers and white shirt fitted her perfectly. She’d been running and working out regularly, ever since the day she’d left Rufus eight years ago, and it showed. In that time she’d shed ten kilos and was now a stable sixty-one. That same day she’d cut her waist-length hair short, very short, so that now it sprang in curls from her head, black with red glints from her Irish grandmother. It was also the day she’d started her application to the Police Academy.

  Cass had imagined that in Far North Queensland more people would recognise her for what she was. She’d been wrong; it was the same as Sydney. Some people thought she was Italian, others West Indian, and once in Cairns Central a complete stranger had addressed her in Tamil. She’d had a conversation with Inspector Fernando about this and discovered that he’d had the opposite experience. He’d been born in Sri Lanka. He told her how sometimes people would look at him, obviously asking themselves, is he or isn’t he? Then when he opened his mouth their faces cleared and you could see them thinking, no, he’s not. He’s educated; he can’t be.

  ‘And what about Drew’ he’d said, pointing at Detective Sergeant Borgese. ‘He’s always being asked by kids to sign autographs because they think he’s a Yank playing for the Taipans.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Drew, ‘I always give ’em a big smile when I sign, and tell ’em to keep practising.’ Drew was nearly two metres tall and skinny with it. Too skinny, in Cass’s opinion. He’d spent all his life in Cairns but one grandmother had been Fijian and had married a ship’s captain and come to Far North Queensland. Drew’s skin was the colour of a ripe kiwi fruit, his face sprinkled with darker freckles passed down by the other grandmother, a Welsh woman who’d married an Italian and moved to a farm outside Mareeba. Between them, the grandmothers had contrived to give him fuzzy gingerish hair, cut short, Cass had noted, in classic detective mode.

  Cass’s own skin was the colour of almond peel. In Sydney she’d met white women who had themselves sprayed this colour at enormous expense. Someone had once even asked her where her tanning salon was. Cass had responded with a perfectly silent gaze. Slowly realising her mistake, the woman had blushed with confusion.

  Cass typed away at her report. She was almost finished. She was considering whether to go downstairs and get another coffee. Just one shot this time, she thought, conscious of the day’s caffeine intake so far. Her New Year’s quota, she’d promised Drew, would be four a day. But all four today had been double shots.

  Downstairs, she was likely to run into someone for a chat, so that was appealing. People were friendly here. Within six months she’d got to know just about everyone working in the building.

  Not that they were unfriendly down south. But there had been problems. Dubbo had been her first posting after she graduated from the Academy. A lot of people there had known her dad in the old days. Or had at least heard him sing. Some were critical of what they saw as betrayal. ‘You were doin’ good, girl, why’d ya join the cops?’

  She’d learned to smile and shake her head at this. Occasionally, when it was a serious question, say from a reporter on the Dubbo Weekly, she’d waffle on about ‘one way to make change’ or ‘we need more of our people on the ground.’ She knew that she really believed both these things, even though the most compelling reason, when she’d first applied for the place at the Academy, was to stick it to Rufus.

  The difficulty with being a copper had been her family. They were spread right across the state. Many she knew intimately, had known all her life. Others – aunties, uncles, cousins – just turned up for Christmas or funerals, or appeared from distant parts to stay for weeks that turned into months. No problem with that. She’d had her share in return, in what her mother called her ‘gap years’. And after those years, after Richie’s death and the realisation that she alone was responsible for Jordon, she’d finally got herself back on track, thanks to one auntie – her dad’s sister, Nellie – who literally shook her when she was nineteen, and said, ‘Girl, you gotta go and do something good with your life, not just hang about with the kid.’

  Because of who they were, these family members often found themselves in confrontation with the law. Mostly just in small ways. Then they would turn to her for help. When she could help that was fine. She’d guide them through the paperwork, point them in the direction of the free legal service. But most times there was nothing she could do. They had to go to court, maybe serve time. Those things were hard.

  Cass had thought to make a new start in Queensland. She’d had to spend more time in uniform there before she could be considered for detective training. For this she’d been posted to Logan. Not a good place for Jordon, her mum said. And she was right. Six weeks into the job, Jordon, fourteen, was picked up by a patrol car late at night, when he was supposed to be sleeping over with a new friend.

  Mum and Mo had stepped in then. They’d taken Jordon in for his final high-school years. The same years and the same school that Cass herself had dropped out of. Dungog High. Jordon had been happy to shift to the sprawling mudbrick cottage in the bush outside Newcastle, with Gran and Mo and the four aunts and uncles who were his own age. Not to mention Richie’s family, who were spread throughout the district. Cass commuted home whenever she could.

  After Year 12, she’d expected he’d want to stay down south, where his friends were. But he’d come up here instead of going on schoolies’ week. That had surprised her. He’d taken a look around. ‘It’s cool here, Mum,’ he’d said. Next thing, he had a job at Wok in a Box, and was thinking about the university at Smithfield. A science course. He had the marks for it.

  The
first time he’d come in to pick her up after work, because she’d lent him her car for the day, the desk officer, a chatty woman called Di, said, ‘You don’t look old enough to have a son of eighteen!’

  ‘No,’ Cass said, ‘I’m not, really. I wasn’t.’ She’d been a week short of her sixteenth birthday when he’d arrived in Blacktown Hospital in Sydney.

  Di listened to this, cocked her head and said: ‘Well he’s turned out a credit to you, love.’

  Cass saved the report and sent it to the printer. She logged off and was about to go in search of that coffee when the desk phone shrilled. The very same Di from the front desk.

  ‘Detective? A bit of excitement for you. Dead woman up in the Davies Creek area, reported about half an hour ago by a passing traveller. Informant’s a doctor from up at the hospital. I know him. He’s quite sure she’s dead, no need for emergency services. Tied to a tree.’

  ‘You mean the woman? Tied to a tree?’

  ‘Yep. Apparently. The doc said he didn’t stay long at the site. Well, I don’t blame him. Seems his car broke down and he was walking out to the main road.’

  ‘Where’s Davies Creek? Is it far?’

  ‘It’s up on the Tableland. National park. Not all that far for a crow, a bit south and then directly inland. But it’s all state forest. There’s no direct road from here to where the lady is. Seems like the folk who found her were taking a shortcut on a private track. I’ve known a few people do that; it’s very pretty up there on the range. There’s a squad car going out from Mareeba, but they’re going to want you up there, and Drew, and the scenes-of-crime officers.’

  ‘What kind of age is the woman?’

  ‘Dunno – the doc didn’t say. He sounded pretty crook. Well, you would; something like that really spoils your day. Mixed up in drugs like that other bloke Buscati, I’d say she was. In fact I’d bet the farm on it. Nasty though, dying up there. Whatever she’d done.’

  ‘So how do I get to this place, Di, if it’s so far off the beaten track?’

  ‘It’s a toss-up – take the Kuranda road and turn south, or the Gillies road up the range and turn north. I reckon Kuranda’d be better – too many turns on the Gillies, and it’ll be getting dark. You’ll need a LandCruiser from the pool. And I’ll organise a plain vehicle to bring the body down to the mortuary when you’re ready. Get yourself a takeaway coffee. It could be a long night.’

  Cass paused just long enough to text Jordon. Sorry will be late called out new case spag in fridge cu later luv mum#

  She grabbed her jacket, tucked the phone in the pocket, and made her way downstairs towards the car park. On her way she’d pick up that coffee. With three shots.

  Cairns, 30 January 2011

  Three weeks earlier, on a Sunday, at around eight in the morning, Dr Henry Jolley had glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, then, with his old horse-hair shaving brush, begun lathering his cheeks. He’d never liked that spray-on foam that passed for shaving soap these days. Happily, the soft, faintly perfumed genuine article his father had always used was still available in Sydney. He always stocked up when he went down south.

  He stepped back and squinted to get a better view. Once or twice he’d tried shaving with his glasses on, but the soap had smeared the lenses. He picked up the old Gillette razor, and began the job.

  This was a good time of day for thinking. Beneath the lather, Henry often found he saw the problems of life with a new clarity.

  But no problem had ever been as difficult as the one he now wrestled with.

  This damn situation! This … this woman he’d got entangled with. He’d stepped straight into her trap, and yes, it was only with hindsight that he could see that. At the time, who would have thought such a thing could happen? Would any other man in his early fifties have acted differently? Thought differently? Yet there it was. The threat loomed over him from one month to the next, and he could see no escape. Apart from just continuing to pay.

  And now, Henry thought, guiding the razor, it’s just got worse. I could not possibly tell Susanna what I’ve done. What I’ve committed to.

  Susie, she’d said he could call her. But he preferred her full name. He said it softly now – Su-san-na.

  Earlier that week he’d supervised her in a difficult hysterectomy. She’d done it beautifully. He’d left her to close up the abdomen, and wandered into the tearoom, where he’d found Tim.

  ‘She has the makings of a very good surgeon,’ he’d said to Tim.

  ‘She has,’ Tim had agreed. He cleared his throat. He hadn’t failed to notice that Henry’s concern for their senior registrar was becoming more than professional.

  ‘She’s also a very attractive woman, Henry.’

  Henry sat forward, interested. ‘She is indeed. She is. Do you think … um …’

  ‘I think you should go for it, Henry.’

  ‘But she’s a registrar, and I’m her supervisor. And, at my age …’

  This was fast becoming the most intimate conversation Tim had ever had with his older colleague.

  ‘She’s a senior reg and she’ll be finished her training in June,’ he ventured, tilting his head to look directly at Henry.

  Henry nodded, though thinking more of Susanna’s enticing Chilean accent and her green eyes above her surgical mask as she calmly handled the instruments. And the slight glimpse he’d had of cleavage beneath her scrubs as she’d bent to insert a catheter.

  Warming to the topic, Tim went on: ‘She lives at Trinity Beach. You could ask her out to L’Unico. She’s in her forties and divorced; she can look after herself and say no if she wants to.’

  Henry emptied the soapy water from the basin and replaced it with fresh. It wasn’t as easy as Tim made out.

  He couldn’t possibly tell her his secret. It was so tawdry. So nasty. What it said about him. A serious breach of the doctor–patient relationship. And a married woman. Though none of that really summed it up.

  But how could he pursue a relationship with Susanna, and not tell her? He knew that, ethically, morally, he could not, and in a town the size of Cairns there was always the possibility he would be found out anyway.

  Henry rinsed in warm water, splashed with cold, reached for a towel. And observed that the smoothest shave could not conceal the furrows deepening at the sides of his eyes. Ah well, he had made the right decision to leave Sydney five years ago, leave the comfort of the big city hospital and try to do something worthwhile up here in the bush. In just a few more years he’d be retiring. He hoped to feel then that he had made some contribution.

  None of this helped solve the immediate problem.

  At a party just before Christmas, he’d run into that detective. Inspector Leslie Fernando. They’d found themselves standing alone on the balcony of their hosts’ hillside pole house, looking over a damp green garden stretching down to Lake Placid. With his second Scotch in hand, Henry had decided to sound out Leslie on the possible criminal aspects of his problem. In a red batik shirt and chinos, his hair now streaked with silver, Leslie exuded an air of relaxed authority. Henry decided to make it sound like something that had happened to another doctor, a long time ago, in another state. A misunderstanding by a patient, he said.

  ‘This is just a rumour?’ asked Leslie. ‘You don’t know who this woman is? You’ve no evidence?’

  ‘Well. They, she, the woman … could have been a patient of mine at some time. Not here in Cairns. Elsewhere.’

  ‘But no hard evidence? No videos, threatening notes, anything like that?

  Henry took a gulp of Scotch. ‘I can’t exactly say that, no.’

  Leslie had looked at him closely. ‘If there is something, don’t tell me anything about it! Unless you do want to pursue this case. One thing, I suppose, if you know who these people are, you could make some discreet inquiries. See if there has been any trouble in the doctor’s family – a divorce say, resulting from this, ah, this misunderstanding. And yes, in answer to your question, if there were a complaint the
police are bound to investigate.’

  ‘I see,’ Henry had said.

  Now Henry pulled on trousers and shirt for a quick ward round, and made a decision. It was by no means a solution, but it was at least a plan.

  He was meeting Tim this evening. They planned to go over their perinatal figures for the previous year for the annual report. The cyclone was also on its way. At some point he’d mention Susanna. Tell Tim a bit about the problem. Choose his words carefully. Misunderstanding. Compromise. What did Tim think he should do? Could Tim help him, help him find a real solution – with Susanna. But also with the real problem.

  The real problem. That was something else he would have to deal with today. Again, dammit. It was the last Sunday in January; the day that the Controller insisted on receiving payment. He wanted it placed under cover of darkness, not during daylight hours. He? Well, Henry had always assumed that the Controller was a man. But as to his relationship with the woman, Henry didn’t know. He felt his blood pressure going up just thinking about it and tried to calm himself. But hell, sometimes he felt he could bloody well kill someone to get out of the spot he was in.

  Henry took a deep breath, and ran a comb through his hair. There was still plenty of it left, thank God, even if that was more salt than pepper now.

  From a drawer he took a plain buff envelope and, opening his wallet, checked that his ATM cards were there. He needed to withdraw twenty $50 notes during the course of the day. This evening, around eight o’clock, he’d be pushing the stuffed envelope through the letterbox of that strange backlane unit.