Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  Jane took shelter behind her professional manner, brisk but soothing.

  ‘Well, for the Pap smear, you can see my practice nurse, that’s easy. Meanwhile we must sort out Kianna’s problems straight away. I’ll make an appointment with Dr Skeggs for as soon as I can. The booster shots we can work out later. And yes, what you have told me is confidential – between us.’

  For the rest of that day, though, Samantha’s story kept coming back to Jane. For one thing, she simply could not tell Lyndall – she was her closest friend in the town but she was also Trevor’s wife

  Lying in bed that night, Jane looked at her husband, and decided to broach the subject with him. A black man living in a largely white society, George was an astute judge of character. She’d agreed to keep Samantha’s secret, but there was no need to mention any names.

  ‘What would you say,’ she began, ‘to a patient who tells you their GP suggested they have sex?’

  George had folded his arms behind his head, looked up at the ceiling, and smiled. ‘What would I say?’ he asked. ‘A local GP?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Jane cautiously.

  ‘Well, I’d say, since it’s almost certainly a male, that it’s not Paddy McBean or John Donaldson, and unlikely to be Mervyn Chang, but it could be Trevor Symonds.’

  ‘George! That’s not what I meant at all! Umm … how did you know that?’

  ‘So I’m right? Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word. He’s divorced, or almost, which is a perfectly normal thing to be when you’re a philandering bastard. There’ve been … a few incidents. I did, for example, see him a few years ago in the hospital car park late at night, with a woman not his wife – in fact, that rather nice Sandra, the secretary who used to work in his practice – dropping her off to pick up her own car, and I did think, aha, that’s a curious event. And I might say,’ he grinned, caressing his wife’s breast beneath her nightdress, ‘in my case I really was working late. Why don’t you put that book down now …’

  ‘But George,’ Jane persisted, ‘what should I advise her? Should she complain to the Medical Board?’

  ‘Certainly, if it’s true it’s deplorable. Nurses and secretaries, which seem to be his usual targets so far as I know, are one thing; they’re adults. I neither approve nor disapprove. But patients are different, the doctor–patient relationship makes them much more vulnerable, quite apart from the fact that it’s forbidden by the Medical Board, and by medical ethics from way back. But – did he just make an advance, and get rebuffed? He didn’t actually have sex with her?’

  ‘No. Well, so she says.’

  ‘Well, it would be her word against his, wouldn’t it? She’d be very exposed. People would find out. And despite the rumours and the drinking, Trevor’s still quite well-respected around here. There’d still be colleagues who would testify on his behalf. When did this happen?’

  ‘I think about nine months ago.’

  ‘And she didn’t complain then? Even less likely to be believed now. I’d do nothing.’

  ‘But George, he may be trying it on with other women too. He shouldn’t be allowed to just get away with it. And maybe he needs help. We’re all being told to help our colleagues. In fact we’re really supposed to report stuff like this now. But no way could I do that. He drinks a lot, I know. Why does he behave like that?’

  ‘Honey, I’m surprised you’re even asking. That’s just the way some men are, you know that. He was probably like that long before he met Lyndall. Some men just think with their dicks; having a medical degree or a family doesn’t change that. If he’s making a regular thing of it with patients, eventually he’ll be caught. Probably turned in to the Board by a woman he breaks up with. You know what our ethics tutor told us in med school back in Montreal? Don’t have sex with your patients, guys! But he added – if you do, don’t stop, it’s the disgruntled ones who’ll turn you in.’

  ‘Oh George. But jokes aside, should I do something? There’s supposed to be this mandatory reporting now …’

  ‘Sweetheart, I don’t think you can do anything, except just be sympathetic to this woman. And be a decent doctor for her. Which I know you’ll do.’ His fingers stroked his wife more urgently, her nipples hardened in response, and she forgot all about Trevor Symonds for the moment.

  In the following days, however, Jane turned the problem over in her mind. Trevor might try this on other women, on women who were more vulnerable than Samantha, who had probably compromised her child’s health as a direct result of Trevor’s behaviour. Jane decided that she must encourage Samantha to make a formal complaint. Maybe Brian, her husband, wouldn’t need to be told about it.

  Joe Skeggs telephoned Jane. Kianna’s shunt had become disconnected. He’d been able to fix it fairly easily. The little girl had needed only a few days in hospital. Now that the pressure was off Kianna’s optic nerves, there would be no further deterioration in her sight. But that would not fix the damage already done. She would always have some impaired vision and would need glasses.

  Shit, had been Jane’s first thought. If Trevor had left Samantha alone, she’d have taken Kianna back months ago. He’d have looked at her, found out about it, done something … he was still a competent practitioner. There was all the more reason, in her mind, to press ahead with a complaint.

  She saw Kianna for a follow-up visit four weeks later. The little girl was bursting with energy, running around the consulting room and down to the toy room. It was clear that the shunt blockage had been making her very unwell before. But her mother looked drawn and anxious.

  ‘I caused it all, didn’t I? I should have brought her in earlier,’ Samantha suggested.

  ‘Oh, Samantha, we can’t really say that, we don’t know how long the shunt was blocked. You mustn’t blame yourself. We’ll just have to do the best we can with the sight she has left,’ Jane reassured her. ‘But, I did want to talk to you, you know, about what you told me, last time.’

  ‘You didn’t tell anyone, did you?’ Samantha asked.

  Jane skirted the question. ‘I think you should do something about this, Samantha. For the sake of other women, maybe not as strong as you, that he might make suggestions to … If you made a complaint to the Medical Board, your name wouldn’t be published anywhere, everything would be completely confidential. And I’m sure, if Brian did have to know, he would understand why you were doing it.’

  Samantha flushed a deep red, twisted her rings, looked at the floor. ‘It’s more difficult … there’s more to it than I told you.’ There was a long silence.

  Then she said: ‘You see, I did have sex with him, that time, when he asked me, in the surgery, and other times …’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jane feebly.

  ‘I … I said to you, that I did think he was … more mature, more sophisticated than, than Brian, and I was flattered, I suppose, that he was interested in me, that he liked me. Or at least,’ she added with obvious ill-feeling, ‘I thought he did. I never thought someone like him, a doctor, would notice someone like me … I knew he was married. But he told me he didn’t have sex with his wife any more. I know that can happen. And Brian and me … well, it’s always been rather flat, our sex life, especially since we had Kianna. We tend to blame each other for her problems, and that affects … everything else. So, you see, that would all come out if I made a complaint, wouldn’t it?’

  Jane took a deep breath, and then said slowly: ‘Yes, it might. It would certainly make it worse for him, but even just making suggestions, as he did initially, as you said he did initially, would be bad enough for the Medical Board. The fact that you were … willing … wouldn’t affect that. It’s one thing that’s strictly forbidden, for us, for doctors. And for you, yes, I can see, obviously you were not intending to tell Brian?’

  ‘No, and I could never mention it, and say, he just made a pass at me, and look Brian in the eye, and not have him know.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Jane. And added gently, ‘It’s not still going on, I take it?’

&nbs
p; ‘No,’ Samantha gave a bitter smile. ‘If it was, there wouldn’t have been any problem for me, would there? I could have just taken Kianna to see him … even had a Pap smear! But he broke it off. After a few weeks. I always went to the surgery. As the last patient in the evening. He would always write something on my notes and bulk-bill me.’ Jane’s eyes widened at this novel use of Medicare funds. ‘Then, suddenly, he just said, he was very sorry, we couldn’t go on, although he would still be our GP and everything. And he said he thought I was mature enough to understand.

  ‘But I was devastated … and I couldn’t talk to anybody. And for months I just couldn’t go to another doctor. Now, I feel, yes, that I would like to dob him in, I’m really angry at how he used me, the bastard. I’d even thought … it might lead somewhere … that I might leave Brian.’

  Jane thought of George’s lecturer’s advice: it’s when you stop that the trouble begins, hell hath no fury, etcetera, but she still felt that even though Samantha had been willing, even if she’d thrown herself at his feet, Trevor had a clear professional duty to resist temptation.

  Samantha said again, ‘I can’t complain because I can’t risk Brian finding out.’

  Jane spent days going over the problem in her mind. Should she go and talk to Trevor herself? She could no longer stand the man, now that she’d heard Samantha’s story. Quite apart from what had happened to Lyndall, she would be betraying Samantha’s confidences. Even if she didn’t mention any names, he’d obviously know who she meant. Of course he’d deny everything. It might make him more prudent towards patients in the future but she couldn’t even be sure of that. Should she sound out the Medical Defence Union, the Doctor’s Health Advisory Service? To do anything properly, there’d have to be a written complaint, she’d have to make it and thus betray her own patient’s confidence.

  Jane had still not resolved the issue when, three weeks later, she received a letter from Samantha. The family was moving to Melbourne. Samantha asked to be referred to a GP there.

  Jane replied immediately with the name of a colleague she’d trained with, prudently choosing a woman. This solved some of the immediate problems, she thought. But long-term, it only made matters worse. It did nothing to change Trevor Symonds’ behaviour, or, to take a more charitable view, to get him help.

  ‘Well,’ George had said, when Jane confronted him again with the problem, ‘I guess some of us, say, me and Tim from the Medical Staff Council in the hospital, and maybe someone senior, like Arthur Mellish, could just have a word with him. Tell him there have been rumours, that we’d be concerned if they were true. Remind him about mandatory reporting.’

  ‘That would be good. It should be just a male thing, I think,’ Jane responded. ‘But is Mellish the best person to ask? After Nimal?’

  George had got himself onto the selection committee for the new hospital surgeons and managed to push through Nimal Jayasinghe’s application for a post.

  ‘Oh he’s got over it now that Nimal’s taken on Arthur’s weekends on-call. And Trevor has some respect for Mellish; he’s been in town a long time.’

  So it had come about that at 2 pm on a Friday afternoon in September of 2010, George, Tim and Arthur Mellish had gathered in Tim’s office for the appointment with Trevor Symonds, who had not been told the purpose of the discussion.

  ‘Old Arthur was very uncomfortable about it all,’ George later told his wife. ‘I guess it’s a generational thing. Just mentioning the “s” word seemed too much for him. Sex with patients – he was red in the face, didn’t want to even think about it! I can’t imagine he and Winifred get up to much these days. She’s a pretty straight-laced old biddy. Probably wears corsets.’

  Jane laughed and punched his arm.

  In truth, the three of them had sat there waiting for half an hour. The office was above the Emergency Department. They heard an ambulance come in, its siren going. Nobody took any notice. Tim took out his mobile and called Trevor’s number but was just switched over to voicemail. Damn the man! They all had much better things to do than have cautionary talks with Trevor Symonds.

  After forty minutes they gave it away.

  ‘I’ll write him a letter,’ George said. ‘Tell him we’ve a serious matter reported to the Medical Staff Council that has to be discussed. And make another appointment. Thanks for coming along, both of you.’

  Cairns, 2 March 2011

  Early on Wednesday morning, following the visit to Paradise Close, all three detectives met in Drew’s office to discuss progress. The previous afternoon, warrants had been issued for the search of both Janvier properties – the Earlville house and the Portsmith office – and the search had gone on late into the night.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ said Troy Barwen, who with scenes-of-crime officers had spent a large part of the afternoon at Portsmith. ‘At least, no legit cleaning business working away like you’d think there’d be. Just a sign. Kwality Kleening. The place looks as though no-one’s been there for weeks. Needs cleaning, really. About five hundred flyers for pizza and gym membership clogging up the letterbox but interestingly no business mail.

  ‘It’s one of those industrial estate places, and Janvier’s unit is at one end. Next door is empty. Two doors down is a panelbeater, takes up two units. The bloke there says he sees Janvier occasionally. Never the wife. They say hello, that’s about all. He sees him come in at odd times during the day but no visible business ever conducted there. And I mean no business. It’s not like people are rolling up there for something other than cleaning, or that he’s stashing something there. The panelbeating bloke used to own Janvier’s unit, sold it to him about twelve years ago – for cash, which is interesting – and says he’s always been a bit of a mystery. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw Janvier, but he reckoned it was after Christmas but before Yasi.’

  Troy showed them numerous photos of Janvier’s unit. There was a small front office area with a sink, looking dusty and neglected as Troy had said. There were a few brooms and buckets and cleaning products, none showing signs of recent use. Behind the office was a toilet and a storeroom.

  ‘There were a few empty files in the office,’ Troy said, ‘and some receipt booklets. Unused. And some letterheads that looked like they’d been set up by Janvier himself. But there was no computer or printer.’

  Across the back wall of the store was a cupboard containing piles of newspaper. ‘Old copies of the Cairns Post and the Brisbane Courier-Mail going back for years, in no particular order,’ Troy said. Beside that stood a rack of steel shelves, empty apart from a few more newspapers. The store was clean and the piles of newspaper tidy. There seemed nothing else to find.

  Outside, photos showed the unit was at the very end of the row. To its left, beyond the empty unit, was the panelbeating workshop, which spilt out onto the courtyard in front. The main entrance to the whole complex was further down, beyond several more units – a cabinet-maker, an ironmonger, an importer of office furniture. Troy had spoken with everyone in these units. They all knew Michel Janvier by sight and had passed the time of day with him but otherwise had no contact.

  Beside the unit was a stormwater canal with a bridge across to a side street that led in turn onto the main Portsmith road. The allocated parking spot for Janvier’s building was on the canal side of the unit. Drew studied the photos carefully.

  ‘It looks like Janvier could park on the other side of the canal and cross the bridge and get to his place and hardly be seen by the panelbeaters,’ he said.

  ‘Yep,’ said Troy, ‘he could. If he had some reason to do that. The other thing that’s interesting,’ Troy added, ‘is that the only prints here match many of those in the Earlville house. We’re presuming for the moment that these are Michel Janvier’s. But there’s no evidence of anybody else ever having been in that office. None at all.’

  Cass swallowed the last of her first double shot of the day and said: ‘I checked with ASIC and the tax office and drew a complete blank.’ Kwality Kleeni
ng of Portsmith was not a registered company name. It appeared to have no bank accounts. There was no record of it making any money, filing a tax return or having any employees at any time in the last ten years.

  At the Earlville house, valid Australian passports for both Janviers had been found in a desk drawer. They were now on Drew’s desk. There were also out-of-date European passports identifying the couple as French citizens. Cass studied the passport photos of both Janviers but especially Odile.

  ‘Still hard to say it’s her,’ she remarked. ‘But having seen the body there’s nothing in these that would make me feel it’s definitely someone else. And it certainly looks like these two are missing from home.’

  Cass had ascertained from Immigration that there was no record of a Michel Janvier leaving Australia on any other passport in the past four weeks. So wherever the man might be, he had not legitimately left Australia.

  At Earlville the search had turned up bank statements showing regular sums paid into the couple’s account from France. Around 3000€, appeared to have gone into their joint account each month for as far back as the records went.

  ‘That’s about $4000 – a nice little earner,’ Cass said. ‘But is it enough to pay for all those clothes? Those shoes with the pricey red soles? And whatever else the woman who wore them wanted? Everything we saw in that bedroom? I don’t think so.’

  Apparently there was no mortgage on the house; certainly no payments could be identified. Credit card statements were scanty, mostly for electricity and other utilities. Otherwise the Janviers seemed to use cash, which they drew regularly from ATMs.

  The neighbours in Paradise Close reported that no visitors ever came to the house, apart from one young man about a year ago. Mrs Berry had remembered him turning up, but nothing about his appearance or that of his car. There’d been an argument and the man drove off quickly soon after.