Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  ‘Holy shit! Anyone I know?’

  ‘Well I can’t tell you that but I will say that we’ll be very discreet. It’s an unusual case, to say the least. And Jim, although I don’t for a moment suspect you of involvement in Odile Janvier’s death, we’re going to have to get a full account of your whereabouts between 28 January and the start of Yasi.’

  As Leslie talked to Jim Hewitt, Tim was slowly descending the stairs on the side of the police headquarters building. He stopped for a moment to watch as the last of the mountain mist was lifted away by the midday heat. He cast his mind back to the night the Chinese girl came to Emergency.

  Standing outside the hospital that night, under the frangipani tree, watching Detective Fernando and the policewoman drive away, he’d remembered Moresby, and what had happened to Chris there. What had happened to both of them. What he’d done in the police cell.

  He’d been thinking too about his life 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 in the past, wasn’t it? He would do his very best professionally, for the Chinese girl. And she would have the benefits of the Australian justice system.

  But was that enough?

  Before Tim had turned back to the hospital that night and made his way to the operating theatre, he’d crossed the parking lot, put his head through the window of the Mazda, and spoken rapidly to the Chinese boys.

  It had taken Tim nearly an hour that night in theatre to repair the girl’s vaginal injuries, painstakingly matching up the pieces of torn and bruised tissue, inspecting the inside of the bladder, to make sure there was no damage there. While he worked, the surgical registrar stitched up lacerations on the girl’s knees and a nasty cut on her right elbow. She’d clearly tried to shield her face from blows.

  As Tim finished off, the theatre door swung abruptly open to admit the nursing supervisor.

  ‘You boys going to be much longer?’ she demanded briskly. ‘Because we have an urgent case coming straight up from Emergency. It’s the fractured femur – now he’s got stab wounds to the lung, liver, the works … Seems the guard went for a cup of tea, and a young Asian boy burst in with a knife. Presumably a friend of this one,’ she nodded at the girl on the operating table. ‘Gone in a flash, too, before the cop could even get out of the tearoom. They have no idea how he knew the man was there … If you’re right with this one, we’ll move her up to Recovery quickly and clean up ready for a laparotomy.’

  Tim was silent, but the surgical registrar, himself Asian-Australian, chuckled. ‘And I bet the cops never find him again either,’ he said. ‘Nobody will know nothing.’

  Still thinking about that night, Tim continued on down the stairs and made his way to his car. He’d need to get a move on, he’d be late picking up the girls from their swimming lesson.

  Far North Queensland,

  7 March 2011

  The rest of the weekend was quiet. Detectives Diamond, Borgese and Barwen worked a shift each, typing up reports on the events of the week. Then, at nine on Sunday night, Troy Barwen took a call from Mareeba. Bugsy and Sam Gecko had reported to the station that evening. They’d declined to say where they’d spent the weekend, however they were very happy to show Mareeba police where they’d found the Mitsubishi Outlander.

  ‘Detective,’ the Mareeba officer told Troy, ‘it sounds like it’s about three kilometres further down that Davies Creek road beyond where the body was found. It’ll be pitch black there now but if you want to come up in the morning we can meet you there. Whatever time you like. Well, some time after eight.’

  At eight the next morning the team met in Drew’s office. It was decided they would all three go to Davies Creek in a LandCruiser from the station pool.

  There were squalls of rain interspersed with sunbursts as they made their way up the range, Cass turning to admire the view across to the ocean as they reached the lookout. Drew drove on past Kuranda to the Davies Creek turn-off. The ‘secret’ entrance to the rainforest road was now a wide-open track where dozens of police and search vehicles had passed. Mud slurped beneath the wheels of the LandCruiser as Drew navigated his way back onto the road inside water catchment land. There were still areas marked off by crime-scene tape where the most intense searching had taken place. The LandCruiser crawled across the broken wooden bridge, which had been shored up with planks.

  Two men from Mareeba station were waiting about eight kilometres past Davies Creek picnic ground. With them were Bugsy and Sam Gecko, clearly not enjoying the experience. Bugsy and Sam were remarkably alike. Cass, who’d interviewed them in connection with the death of Wayne Buscati, wondered if they might be brothers. Small, nuggety men, prematurely middle-aged, both puffing on hand-rolled cigarettes which they stubbed out on the ground as the team arrived.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bugsy. ‘Like I said, we just found the car. Right in here. Behind the bushes. Couldn’t see it from the road. About two or three weeks ago.’

  He parted some scrubby eucalypts and they could see the rutted tracks where the Mitsubishi had been driven into the bush, and where it had been driven out.

  ‘And what brought you to this neck of the woods?’ asked Drew.

  ‘Just doing a bit of bushwalking, like.’

  ‘Hmm. So you took the car?’

  ‘Nope. Not that day. Look, this is the honest truth. Come back again a couple of days later, it’s still here. Leaves all over it. There was already a lot of mud on it. Like maybe it was here during Yasi.

  ‘Still we didn’t touch it. Came back another time, and thought, well, it’s got to be abandoned. Asked around the pubs, nobody knew nothin’ about it. So – started it up.’

  ‘There were belongings in the car? Personal items?’ Cass asked.

  There was silence, then Bugsy said: ‘We dumped everything in the council bins in Kuranda. All the documents.’

  Sam Gecko added: ‘OK. I’ll tell you. There was needles in there. And glass that drugs had been in. Like someone had been shooting up. And panties. Women’s panties.’

  ‘What did you do with those?’

  ‘Put them in the bins like Bugsy said.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘I reckon two weeks.’

  The bins would have gone to the Cairns waste-processing centre by now, Drew knew.

  ‘What was the drug?’ he asked.

  There was a long silence. ‘It was ketamine. Least, that’s what it said on the label.’

  ‘Interesting. How many glass ampoules were there?’

  ‘Just two. Both empty.’

  ‘You’re quite sure there weren’t more?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s the truth, Detective. I tried ketamine once. Saw all sorts of terrible things. Taipans coming at me, ghosts. Wouldn’t touch the stuff again.’

  ‘Anything else in the car?’

  ‘Well. I guess you know. A spare set of keys. Danno had them.’

  ‘That was handy! Saved you wiring the ignition!’ Bugsy didn’t rise to this.

  ‘Honest, that’s all I know. I never saw this car before that. I knew it was no-one from up here that had it. It was just sitting in the bush like I said. I don’t know anything about the woman, Sam neither.’

  ‘And the numberplates? You know anything about a white Honda that’s missing, that had those plates?’

  ‘Yeah, well, I did a swap with a mate. He’s gone back down south.’

  ‘So you reckon there might be a white Honda around with the Mitsubishi plates. Somewhere down south?’

  ‘Well you said it, not me. But yeah, I reckon so.’

  ‘There’ll be some charges, Bugsy. You know that. You can go back to Mareeba for those. But anything else you remember, don’t hesitate to let us know. It could be helpful for all of us.’

  In the car on the way back Cass called Leah Rookwood
.

  ‘Ketamine, Leah,’ she said. ‘Would toxicology screen for ketamine in the samples they’ve got from Odile Janvier?’

  ‘They can do that,’ she answered. ‘Ketamine? That’s interesting!’

  ‘Can you just remind me,’ asked Cass, ‘about ketamine’s legal medical uses. I’m more familiar with the illegal ones.’

  ‘A very useful drug,’ said Leah promptly, ‘for certain kinds of anaesthesia. It’s very safe, because it doesn’t depress breathing or blood pressure. It’s used for minor surgery. It’s also used in cases where there’s serious trauma but a person can’t be moved until something’s done, like an amputation to get someone out of a vehicle or a collapsed building. The downside, the reason why it’s not used a lot more in hospitals, is that it can produce quite dramatic hallucinations. People having out-of-body experiences, thinking they’re God … that kind of thing. Which is why it’s been popular with ravers, ecstasy-takers, who want big experiences and often mix it with cocaine. Sometimes doing that brings them my way.’

  ‘It’s something that would be easily accessible to doctors?’ asked Cass.

  ‘Yes. And dentists,’ replied Leah. ‘It’s a standard, widely used drug.’ Cass drew in her breath. Wilfred Lam, she wondered, did he use ketamine?

  ‘Up here,’ Leah continued, ‘especially out in the bush, there’d be more doctors who’d use it in their practices, because they’d be more likely to do minor emergency surgery than doctors in the cities. It’d be common to have it in stock in the smaller hospitals outside Cairns, and in rural doctors’ surgeries.’

  ‘Is it in a special category? Can any doctor prescribe it? Surgeons? Gynaecologists?’

  ‘Yes, any doctor can prescribe it, but there are only certain types of practice where doctors would prescribe it. Surgeons and gynaecologists, yes certainly, they could use it for anaesthesia. It’s also used for various kinds of chronic pain and depression, in which case I think it’s often taken orally, whereas for anaesthesia it’s injected.’

  ‘So it would be possible for a Cairns doctor or dentist to get a supply of ketamine, supposedly to use for his or her own patients? That they could then use in other situations?’

  ‘Yes. You’re thinking that a Cairns doctor got hold of some ketamine and then gave it to Odile Janvier illegally? But that would then involve a pharmacist, who would know that the doctor had ketamine. Although their possession of it would be technically legal they might be called upon to explain what exactly they wanted to use it for. And where.’

  ‘Could it have been prescribed for her? I mean legitimately? If it’s used for depression like you said?’

  ‘Well, if she had been a hospital patient with severe depression or severe pain. That may have been the case; I don’t know. I’m just a pathologist. It’s the kind of drug you’d want to supervise quite closely. Not like prescribing Prozac. Does she have a GP? Was she seeing a psychiatrist? She seemed to me to be in quite good physical health prior to her death.’

  ‘She seems to have consulted dozens of doctors. I can’t tell you more than that at the moment. Though no psychs that we’ve come across yet. From what you’ve said though, Leah, it sounds like it could have been used to get her to that spot in the forest and tie her up?’

  ‘Yeah, depending on the circumstances. If the tox testing’s positive for ketamine that still won’t tell us if she got it orally or by injection. Or both. But it would tell us that she got ketamine into her system some way in the few hours before she died. The fact that it wasn’t fully metabolised would mean that she died fairly soon after she got the drug.

  ‘But Cass,’ she added, ‘there’s a fairly steady party trade in ketamine. It’s very possible that she got it off the street, no? Maybe in the belief that it was something else?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m just exploring the medical possibilities,’ Cass said. ‘Thanks for organising the toxicology, Leah, that’s really helpful.’

  Cairns, September–October 2010

  Six months before the discovery of the body in the rainforest, Lyndall Symonds had been summoned urgently to the Emergency Department. Although she and Trevor had been divorced by then for several months, it was on his account that she was called.

  Lyndall didn’t know where Trevor had been when the world he knew had disappeared. All she was told was that he’d been brought into ED with the sirens blasting. She’d heard the ambulance from her consulting rooms in Lake Street, where she’d been thinking about a change of medication for a long-time patient with bipolar. As she’d written a prescription for droperidol and signed it, the paramedics were thumping Trevor’s chest and giving him adrenaline and electric shocks, but there was no response. At the age of fifty-one Dr Trevor Symonds had succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

  She was still listed as his next-of-kin. Despite the divorce, and all their years of emotional trauma, she had been shaken, setting foot behind the curtain, to see him laid out like that, cold and still, eyes closed forever, his face marked by patches of grey and purple as post-mortem lividity formed. They had been happy together, once.

  Lyndall had quickly stepped outside the cubicle. She signed the papers that formally identified him, and walked out towards the sunlight of the Esplanade. She would call her children in a moment. And she would call Bernard as soon as it was morning in France.

  There were two paramedics standing outside the ED as she passed. ‘Heard you had a Billy Snedden,’ one said to the other.

  ‘Yeah, mate. Found in one of those motels out on the highway south. Died happy, though. The condom was full.’ They both roared with laughter.

  Nicola and David, Lyndall and Trevor’s children, organised a small private funeral and a public notice asking those friends and patients of Dr Symonds who wished to mark his passing to contribute to the hospital’s charitable foundation. She was glad it had been low-key.

  ‘Mum, I know you’re divorced and he could do what he wanted,’ Nicola had said. ‘But there’s been a lot of talk and you didn’t need to hear it.’

  Jane O’Malley had been a great support to Lyndall when she’d first left Trevor, and she was again in the weeks after Trevor’s death. They had lunch every Friday in the same place on the Esplanade, making room in the middle of busy patient schedules for it, and had a policy of never talking about work. Once Lyndall’s divorce was proceeding and she was settled in her new apartment, Jane and her husband George, and other friends came often for drinks or dinner. Jane was totally enthusiastic about the reappearance of Bernard in Lyndall’s life. Envious, even.

  One Sunday in October Jane had invited Lyndall for lunch. George was in Sydney for a conference. There would just be the two of them. ‘Oh no, don’t bother to cook, we’ll go out,’ said Lyndall.

  ‘No, I need to be able to talk to you.’

  At lunch, Jane opened a bottle of sauvignon blanc and poured them both a generous measure, as Lyndall watched, curious. What was this about?

  ‘I’ve a tale to tell you,’ Jane said, ‘and I hope you’ll understand why I didn’t tell you before.’

  She began to tell Lyndall the story of Kianna, and the consultations with Samantha. How Samantha had delayed taking her daughter back to Trevor Symonds and had eventually come to consult Jane instead.

  Lyndall listened intently, the chicken salad in front of her sitting untouched. When Jane reached the point where Samantha had told her about Trevor’s advances, Lyndall reached out and poured herself a second glass of wine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said, ‘I just couldn’t tell you earlier what a patient had told me in confidence.’

  Lyndall nodded. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I spoke to George,’ Jane went on, ‘not mentioning any names. But he guessed at once who it was.’ She continued to the point in the story where Samantha had moved to Melbourne and George had called the meeting with Tim and Arthur Mellish.

  ‘George asked Trevor to come along to his office,’ Jane said, ‘at one o’clock on 16 September.’

  ‘
Oh,’ said Lyndall faintly, recognising the date and time.

  Jane nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘all three of them were waiting there for Trevor. They heard an ambulance come in, but of course they were just above ED; they didn’t think anything of it.’

  George, Tim and Arthur Mellish were descending the stairs when they saw Nimal Jayasinghe emerging from ED.

  ‘Oh Sirs!’ he cried, when he saw them. ‘Jolly bad news! Dr Symonds has sadly passed away. Brought in by ambulance. Probably an infarct. Very sudden.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper and added: ‘He was completely naked! In a motel in the middle of the day.’

  ‘I had to stop myself giggling,’ George had told Jane. ‘Of course I felt sorry for the guy! What a way to go out. The opposite of panache. Hope it doesn’t happen to me.’

  ‘I punched him on the arm,’ Jane said, before looking directly at Lyndall.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve had to tell you all this. But I did remember what you said to me, when I told you about your Pap report. From Samantha’s account I’d have to say that it sounded like he might have been involved with patients before. No-one knows who he was with in that motel, as far as I know. But it just might come out that it was a patient.’

  Lyndall nodded grimly.

  ‘I’ve really hated knowing all this and not being able to tell you,’ said Jane. ‘Now that he’s dead it’s all right. And Samantha’s moved away, and you’ve never met her. So I felt that I could tell you, finally.’

  Cairns, 8 March 2011

  At midday on Tuesday Leslie called a meeting of the whole team for a rundown on everything they knew so far. Equipped with coffee, they gathered around the table in his office. Drew spread out a map of the area west of Cairns, including Lamb Range, which contained Davies Creek National Park.