‘We were really surprised when she didn’t turn up for her appointments earlier in the month. She never gave us a phone number so we couldn’t text her. It’s awful to think she couldn’t come because she was dead.’
‘It’s weird,’ Cass now said to her colleagues, ‘that she seemed to spend so much time on her appearance yet had no friends, no visitors to the house, no-one apparently wondering where she was when she went missing four weeks ago, apart from her hairdresser.’
‘Have you contacted the psych yet?’ Leslie asked her. ‘Dr Symonds?’
‘I called the consulting rooms,’ said Cass. ‘They’re over in Lake Street. There’s a recorded message saying that she’s away till next Monday and if there’s a medical emergency to contact the hospital. But I’ll try to track down her mobile number and see if I can get hold of her that way.’
‘Yes,’ said Leslie, ‘it would be good to get her impression of the family dynamics, even if it’s from some years ago. Especially what she thinks about the older son’s attitude to his mother.’
Leslie’s phone rang.
‘Di at switch, Inspector. I have Dr Tim Ingram here for his appointment with you.’
‘Please send him up.’ Leslie looked at Drew.
‘I don’t want to interfere with the way things are going,’ he said, ‘but I’d just like a few words with Ingram. Having met him on that other case.’
‘That’s fine, Sir.’
Cass returned to her desk with the intention of tracking down Lyndall Symonds. She would try the hospital, see if she could get a mobile number. She noticed three messages on her mobile, all from Jordon. Three more photos of the dog. Which was very cute. But in a North Cairns two-bedroom unit? Well it was ground-floor and had a tiny garden. But no … She texted back yes nice dog but still not poss mum. As she turned to call the hospital, she glanced at the police intranet, to see that an hour earlier a white Audi A5 registered in the name of Wilfred Lam had been driven at high speed off a cliff on the Port Douglas road. Right now police divers were extracting a single body from the wreckage.
Tim was happy to accept the Inspector’s offer of tea. It had been a long afternoon in theatre. Now he sat in a comfortable chair, with a splendid view of the Inlet and the mountains toward Yarrabah.
‘You knew that forest road, I take it,’ Leslie began. ‘You’d been on it before?’
‘Yes, I had. I know it’s private land, water catchment. But it’s a beautiful drive and goes right through to Lake Morris and the dam. We’ve done it a few times.’
‘And it was you who decided to go on the road on Sunday?’
Tim hesitated a moment. There was a deliberation in Leslie Fernando’s voice that hadn’t been there before. And he could see his hesitation had not escaped the Inspector’s notice.
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘It was my wife’s idea. I thought the road might be blocked by fallen trees. I didn’t really think about the bridge.’
‘Hmm. So how did you come to find the body? I understand it was quite well concealed behind trees.’
‘It was the smell, Inspector. A particular type of putrefaction. I knew it from a case I was involved in once, in Moresby. It’s unforgettable.’
Ah, that piece of the jigsaw fits after all, thought Leslie. ‘And your wife?’ he asked. ‘Did she see the body?’
‘No. I had a pretty good idea of what I might find so I told her to wait on the road.’
‘I see. Just one other question. The creek. It was flowing quite fast?’
‘It was. A bit more than a metre deep, I’d say. I tested the bridge. Thought it was OK. We were very lucky.’
‘So if someone had fallen into that creek, or somehow ended up there, they would have been swept downstream?’
‘When we were there? Yes, I think they could have been. And just after the cyclone, the water would have been completely over the bridge, the current would have been stronger then. Ah, do you think that’s what happened? To another person? Someone connected to the woman? Her killer?’
‘At the moment we’re still pursuing several lines of inquiry. And of course searching the area very thoroughly; you may have seen that on the news. We really don’t know yet what’s happened. But we intend to find out. Thanks again for your time.’
Tim made his way out of the Inspector’s office. He decided to take the stairs at the side of the building, which gave a good view over the mountains to the south of the city, right down to Walsh’s Pyramid. On the first landing, as the sun was sinking behind the mountains, he stopped to take in the view. And to think, again. About that night in ED. The Chinese girl. And about Chris and what happened. Their last days in Port Moresby.
It was ten years ago now, and still they thought of it every day.
Port Moresby, September 2001
Tim was in the leprosy ward of the Moresby hospital when his phone rang. He always did a round there in the mornings.
He’d been looking at Ubi Warenga’s foot; the plaster had just been cut off and to the great delight of Ubi’s wantoks, maggots had been found wriggling in the wound. There were screams of laughter as hard brown feet squashed the maggots onto the cement floor. Tim had been appalled the first time he’d seen them; he was fresh from the antiseptic wards of Australia then. Pretty soon he realised maggots do their job well. Apart from a little slough, the wounds were clean.
He had walked out into the Papuan sunlight to answer the phone.
‘Tim!’ Chris spoke slowly, grasping at the words. ‘Please just come home now. Don’t ask. Just come.’
Oh God, he thought, she’s having another miscarriage.
‘Just hold on there love, I’m coming now.’
Damn, damn, he thought, as he reversed the car out into the highway, narrowly missing a small girl with a cooking pot on her head. I should never have brought her here.
But she’d wanted to come. They’d spoken enthusiastically about it at home before he’d signed the contract. They’d studied Pidgin language books and read about the Kokoda Track. ‘I’m fed up,’ he’d told her, ‘of eternally filling in forms and putting in drips. This isn’t why I went to medical school. I want to go somewhere I can really use my medicine, feel that I’m doing some good.’
Chris had understood. She was eager to come. She wouldn’t be able to work, as ex-pat nurses couldn’t get work permits, so they’d hoped to start a family. But after two miscarriages, she was six weeks pregnant again, and she was anxious and depressed.
He swung off the highway and down the track leading to their townhouse. On the left was one of the country’s oldest squatter settlements, the huts of rusting iron camouflaged with dripping bougainvillea, papaw and mango trees. Chris sometimes took the children food.
She was sitting upright on the bed, white-faced, hair dishevelled, nightdress torn, lip bleeding.
‘Darling … my God, what’s happened?’
‘I’ve been raped. He came from the bathroom.’
He got her into the car and back to the hospital. A private room was found. An Indian colleague, a gentle elderly man, examined her and confirmed the assault. So far the pregnancy was unaffected. But she wept into Tim’s shoulder.
‘Oh God, I feel so dirty, to have had him touch me there … the baby, everything that was ours … he’s just destroyed …’
Later, Tim held her hand as Sergeant Arua made laborious notes. Chris had torn a piece of blue and white checked cloth from the man’s shirt as she’d struggled. She thought she’d seen him before, maybe in the squatter settlement. He was certainly a Highlander, not much taller than herself, but squat and solid. Barefoot and armed with a knife that tapered to a fine point, which he’d held at her throat with one hand while the other kneaded her breast. No, she hadn’t answered the door to him, today or any other day.
It seemed to Sergeant Arua that the man had watched the house, noting Tim’s regular departure time; knew Chris was alone. This was the third case of rape in the area this month, said the sergeant.
&nb
sp; ‘We’ll leave, go home,’ Tim told her, when the Papuan policeman had respectfully departed. ‘Straight away, within a week – there’s no need for you ever to go back to the house.’
‘But your contract, and your patients … there’s no-one else to do the work.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
Toward evening, Sergeant Arua rang from the police station. The suspect had been arrested, could Tim please come down. When he arrived, the sergeant was smiling widely.
‘Doc, he was still wearing the same shirt with the piece missing. Chimbu – from the settlement. Bad, bad people. Come with me, I’ll take you down to the cells.’
The sergeant stood up, and Tim realised with a rush that he was about to see the man who had raped Chris. The tight feeling he’d had in his stomach since morning suddenly expanded into nausea. He followed the sergeant down a concrete corridor that stank of urine and lysol.
In a small windowless room he saw a terrified Highlander, with matted hair and a ring-pull from a San Mig can in each earlobe. So terrified he’d pissed all over his shorts. Terrified because he was being held by two constables. Blood trickled from a graze at the corner of his mouth.
The sergeant chuckled. ‘Right doc, five minutes. My boys will hold him for you. Just don’t break any bones.’
It took Tim a moment to understand. Then the nausea swept over him again. Christ, payback. The sergeant expected Tim to beat the man. Of course, Bomana Prison was a joke: three meals a day, cigarettes, wantoks in other cells, no punishment at all. But he hadn’t foreseen this.
The constables clearly expected it of him. Looking at Tim, towering above the prisoner, they didn’t see an idealistic young doctor who’d come from Australia to help the people of Papua. They saw a white man whose wife had been raped and who surely expected revenge. And the prisoner, he expected it too.
Is this what Chris would want? She’d been concerned about the squatters’ hovels, the sickness of the children. But how did she feel after this morning?
Tim hit him first on the chin. The man winced, but didn’t cry out. The nausea grew worse, then suddenly was replaced by hot rage. ‘You bastard, black bastard!’ Tim shouted. He hit him again, on the head, in the chest, tearing checked shreds from his shirt. He was dimly aware of a cut over one eye and blood running from his dark nostrils. Then, blindly striking out again, he felt himself held by one of the constables.
‘Doctor – enough, enough … we don’t want too many marks, his wantoks are outside …’
Dazed, Tim let himself be led by a constable back to the car park. In the dimness, he glimpsed white flowers of a frangipani tree. The air was fragrant with their perfume. He fumbled for his keys, climbed into the car. Then, as the policeman left, he leant out and vomited, again and again, beneath the clear Papuan night.
That Moresby experience was on his mind the night the Chinese girl came to Emergency. When, under another frangipani tree, he watched Detective Fernando and the policewoman drive away. He’d been thinking about his life here in Cairns. How it had all worked out in the end. He was in his final year of specialist training. He and Chris were the parents of two healthy girls. She was nursing three days a week, and he had every prospect of a good consultant post here next year; Henry had assured him of this. Moresby was the past, wasn’t it?
Tim turned back into the hospital that night. He made his way to the operating theatre. He’d done his very best, professionally, for the Chinese girl.
But first, he crossed to the parking lot, put his head through the window of the Mazda, and spoke quietly to the Chinese boys.
Sydney, 2 March 2011
Henry threw the stick as far as he could across the park. The dog raced after it.
‘Come on, boy!’ he called, and the labrador obligingly bounded back, dropping the stick at his feet. ‘Good boy, Fred,’ he said, patting the dog’s head.
They’d done this now at least fifteen times. Henry didn’t know much about dogs but he felt he’d fulfilled Emma’s instructions about a good workout for Fred, who otherwise spent most of his day in the small back garden of his daughter’s North Sydney townhouse.
He clipped the lead onto Fred’s collar. Perhaps they’d manage a couple of circuits of the oval before going home.
He’d not only promised Emma dog-walking, he’d also promised dinner. She was a lawyer in the Attorney-General’s office, and tonight she had a late meeting. This morning, grabbing her laptop and pecking him affectionately on the cheek, she’d asked, ‘What about your risotto, Dad?’
He had only a few recipes but the asparagus and lemon risotto was well rehearsed. He’d spent the early afternoon shopping, making the stock for the risotto and preparing a marinade for two barramundi fillets now in Emma’s fridge. It was good to be able to cook for two sometimes.
Which brought him back, immediately, to Dr Susanna Ortega. Not that she’d been very far from his mind at any waking moment since he’d been in Sydney. Well, at any time at all in the past four weeks.
He’d mulled over the advice Tim had given him. Thought about what he should do. Then, in the end, it had all happened very fast.
There’d been several difficult theatre cases that Dr Ortega had managed very well on her own. Henry planned to find her alone for a moment and compliment her on these. That would be a start. In his mind he practised this conversation. But somehow it took more than three weeks to get to the point. Well, the cyclone had taken up a lot of time. Then the previous Thursday, he’d almost stuffed it up completely. Seeing her alone in Recovery, writing up the notes after a challenging caesar, he slipped alongside her. She looked up, surprised.
‘I just wanted to say how well you handled that,’ he began. She flushed with pleasure at her boss’s praise. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I was thinking, perhaps, a little celebration? We’ve all worked so hard these last couple of weeks, since Yasi.’
‘You mean, something for all the registrars? Drinks somewhere?’
‘No no,’ said Henry hastily. ‘I was thinking, er, of, just yourself. And me. Dinner, er, actually. Somewhere. I hear there’s a nice place at Trinity Beach. L’Unico.’
After a moment’s hesitation she said yes, she’d love to come, but she reminded him that he was starting two weeks’ leave that weekend. And she was on call for the weekend. Henry was about to back away, cowed, when she said:
‘But tonight is possible …’
So before he’d had time to worry about it they had a reservation at L’Unico and he was picking her up, in the Peugeot he’d bought in Cairns but hardly ever had occasion to drive, since he lived practically next door to the hospital, and they’d sat beside the sea and talked non-stop, first of all about the weather, the cyclone and all that had happened with it, then about work, about rainforest walks, about visiting the northern beaches, and then as they moved onto their second glass of merlot (like him she preferred red, and she knew a lot about Chilean wines) about divorce, and how difficult it was, and the loneliness that followed. And then dessert was finished and he was driving her home, wondering what was to come, and whether he should have self-prescribed himself some Cialis, just in case; after all, it had been four years. Four bloody years … because of that woman and her tricks. The injustice of it.
But at her gate she leaned over in the front seat of the car and kissed him quickly, but hard, on the cheek, then said: ‘Henry I’ve really enjoyed the evening and I’d love to get to know you better. But it’s going to have to wait until you get back from leave.’
Then she was out of the car and waving, and the last thing he remembered seeing was her hair, which had been demurely piled on her head at dinner, falling down over her shoulders as she swung the gate behind her. The memory of it now brought a rush of blood to his loins; he felt he probably wouldn’t need the Cialis after all.
He had planned to spend his leave in Sydney, with Emma and friends from his many years in practice there. Yet all he could think of now was Susie’s laugh, and her h
air falling to her shoulders as she swung the gate shut.
How could he possibly tell her? he’d asked Tim that Sunday night before Yasi hit. They’d been sitting in Henry’s office going through the perinatal charts. It had turned out to be quite easy to talk to his younger colleague. He’d told Tim there’d been a misunderstanding, that he’d been compromised. And in the end, he told him about the money.
Tim had given good advice, at least in regard to Susanna. In regard to the money issue, what he’d suggested sounded just too dangerous.
‘Just be upfront about it,’ he’d said immediately, of Susanna. ‘Stuff happens. You’ve been married and divorced, so has she. Obviously there have been other things in your life. In hers too, I’m sure. Write her a letter, a nice letter, if you feel you’ve got to get it off your chest.
‘But,’ he’d added, ‘I’d keep it brief.’
It was a plan, and Henry had already composed several brief letters in his head, and discarded them all. Now, as he walked the oval at the end of Fred’s lead, words began to form more clearly in his brain.
A short description of the unfortunate events. Of his misunderstanding of the woman’s purpose. Of his subsequent compromise. Of the involvement of money. Of his inability to change the situation. Of his hope that this would not mar the prospects of a possible relationship. Mar, he liked that word.
Double Madness Page 12
