‘Oh no,’ murmurs Stuart.
He grabs the handle of one of the doors. It’s locked and he picks up a brick from the edge of a vegetable patch nearby and smashes a pane of glass. Leila is impressed: it’s as though the situation has brought him to life.
Julie’s wearing a green T-shirt and blue Adidas track pants. Her feet are bare, the toenails bright red. On the floor next to the sofa stand a bottle of white wine and an empty glass. Stuart goes in, moving neatly, and crouches over the body.
‘She’s been dead some time,’ he calls out.
Leila looks at the woman on the sofa, wondering what’s happened. Julie is big, she seems bigger than in life. Her skin is grey, her eyes glassy.
‘Shit,’ she says.
One death too many. Now she’s crying, maybe more than when she came home and saw her mother’s body. But with Julie it’s a surprise, not something she’s been expecting for months. There’s no illusion of control.
‘What is it?’ she says.
He leans over the body again and sniffs around her mouth. Then, still careful not to touch anything with his hands, he sniffs the wineglass.
He stands up. ‘Nothing.’
‘She’s killed herself, hasn’t she?’
She has no idea where that came from.
‘I don’t see how.’ He gazes around the room, at the floor around the sofa. There is nothing to see. She’s never seen him puzzled before.
‘Someone must have helped her,’ she says. ‘Carl.’
‘Leila, she hasn’t had any Nembutal. I could tell if she had.’
‘What about the wine?’
‘It’s not powerful enough to disguise the smell. That’s one reason we advise people—’ He stops and looks around, lowers his voice. ‘Wine wouldn’t. Believe me.’
‘I feel terrible,’ someone says, she realises the words are hers, they came without intention. She needs to get a hold on herself.
He sighs. ‘People sometimes do just die.’ Obviously not quite sure, but putting it into the mix.
‘She was thirty, for heaven’s sake.’
Shaking his head, he says, ‘It happens, an undiagnosed heart condition.’ Stares around some more. ‘Looks like it happened to her.’
It’s hot in the room and Leila can smell Julie’s musky perfume. Needing to get away, she goes through the internal doorway. On the wall of the kitchen is a poster advertising a lecture Philip Nitschke gave last year. It shows the face of an old woman and a dove flying just above her head, with the words Peaceful Exit. Leila wonders about the sort of person who would have something like this in their kitchen. She realises she is sweating, and this annoys her: except on rare occasions, she doesn’t sweat. Not so she can feel it, anyway. But the poster is not good. She imagines police coming to investigate the unexplained death, standing where she is now. She goes through to the other rooms in the house, a bathroom and a bedroom. Both are tidy, the double bed made and all the clothes hanging or folded away in an old wardrobe that takes up a quarter of the bedroom. There are some books, romances and vampire novels, along with one about Indian spirituality and Final Exit and an old copy of The Peaceful Pill. There is no bottle of Nembutal. She thinks about searching the rooms, but doesn’t want to get her fingerprints on anything. All this, it is so unplanned.
When she gets back to the end room, she tries not to look at Julie, and for the first time notices another poster, this one advertising a conference for a voluntary euthanasia society. Stuart is holding a pile of pamphlets from the society, which he has picked up from a side table.
‘She was very committed, wasn’t she?’ Leila says.
As though he hasn’t heard her, Stuart goes through to the kitchen. Still trying to avoid the sight of Julie’s body, Leila looks out at the backyard, studying the vegetables growing there. She’d formed a poor view of Julie from the front of the place, but the vegie patch has obviously had a lot of work, and the inside of the house is neat and clean. She hears a cupboard door creaking and the kitchen bin being opened and closed. Stuart is away for over five minutes. When he comes back he is holding his handkerchief and an empty garbage bag.
‘I can’t find any sign she killed herself,’ he says, ignoring Julie’s body lying there. Leila wonders how he can do that; she wants to scream.
‘Did you think—’
‘We need to go.’
‘Did you find the other bottle?’
‘No. Look, if the police find us here, they might start thinking about your mother’s death, you understand that?’
He points at the poster. Leila knows he’s right, thinks about Ben Farrell, looks at Julie again. She knows she can’t leave her, slowly shakes her head. She has done things she’d rather not have done, but that is over now. Normal life has resumed, and she is going to act normally. Leila Scott is basically a good citizen.
‘You go,’ she says. ‘Take the posters and the pamphlets. I’ll tell them she’s a nurse I hired to look after mum.’
‘Don’t be sentimental,’ he snaps. ‘There’s a chance they’ll find out about her work with us, talk to your doctor. Learn about Tijuana.’
Leila shakes her head. She never went to Mexico. Her mother’s body was cremated. The bottle and the glass and even the pliers she used that night were dumped in three different bins far away. By now they are landfill. There is no evidence of what happened. Ben can say whatever he likes.
‘I called Julie,’ she says, ‘from out front.’
‘Ah.’
He gets the significance of that immediately, and she is suddenly glad he’s here, a sensible man despite his sweating forehead and his silly Tweed jacket.
He says, ‘They’ll want to know how you met her.’
‘I’ll say it was at a party. These things happen.’
He shrugs and carefully removes the poster on the wall. Placing the pamphlets on it, he wraps and puts them in the bag.
She goes into the bedroom and gets the books about euthanasia. Then she pulls the poster off the kitchen wall, and picks at a piece of blu-tack still on the plaster. Stuart comes into the room behind her, breathing heavily.
‘They’ll be able to tell there was a poster,’ he says, pointing to the four faint marks where the blu-tack was.
‘It’ll give them something to do,’ she murmurs, folding up the sheet of paper and handing it to him with the books. ‘Don’t you remember telling me that officials will ask you to explain everything, but you shouldn’t feel obliged?’
He wipes his forehead with the handkerchief once more and thrusts it into his pocket, nods and smiles. A man with certain qualities.
They stare at each other for a moment, both thinking about what is happening, how much they have to lose.
Leila says, ‘So she didn’t die by taking the other bottle?’
‘No. I had a good look round. Carl must still have it.’
She walks around him and out to the back room, keeps going until she is in the yard and then turns, thinking about what traces Stuart might have left. He has followed her.
She says, ‘Poor Carl.’
‘They’ve been very close for years. I always expected them to get married. I should give him a call.’ He looks around. ‘I can’t stay, you know.’
Leila nods and reaches for her mobile, and Stuart puts out his free hand as though to touch her bare arm, thinks better of it. Clasping the books and the garbage bag, he moves off.
Leila hits the 0 button three times and puts the thing to her ear, watching him stumbling down the passage at the side of the house, as though walking is something he’s learned from an instructional video. But the man is taking an enormous risk for her, for all of them, and she feels a rush of affection, wants to give him her thanks. Now he’s gone, it’s easier to feel generous.
When the emergency woma
n comes on, Leila tells her she needs an ambulance. Does she want the police too? the woman asks. Leila says she doesn’t believe so. The woman says, a situation like this, she has to inform them anyway.
Twenty-five
In the corridor after seeing Ian Carter, Troy realised he hadn’t heard from the hospice and made a call. They put him through to Carolyn Moore, who said Luke still didn’t want to receive visitors.
‘Did you tell him I called?’
‘I’m sorry, but we have to respect Father’s wishes.’
‘Can I talk to him on the phone?’ At least that.
But no.
‘The archbishop was here again today,’ she said. ‘They had a very long conversation. I can assure you Father Carillo is being looked after very well. At the highest level.’
He hung up and walked in silence.
Finally Conti said, ‘Dr Carter liked you.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, not getting it. And then: ‘He’s gay?’
‘Come on!’ She laughed with delight, calmed down. ‘It can’t be easy for him here, with all the statues and crucifixes. They even had a problem about abortions a while back.’
‘Nuns did start the place.’
‘Back in the day,’ she said. ‘It’s just another public hospital now. I’m surprised they’re allowed to keep the hagiography.’
‘That’s a big word.’ He wasn’t sure she’d used it correctly, either.
‘I thought you could cope. Am I wrong?’
He smiled and shook his head, starting to get a feel for Conti’s mind, liking it.
She said, ‘It’s hot. Feel like a swim?’
Her face was a little red, but also keen, her smile hovering uncertainly. The proposal took him by surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did.
This was it, the chance to move on.
‘With you?’ he said.
‘That’s the general idea. It’s been a long day.’
‘Your beach or mine?’
She laughed, and he felt the surge. It was not simply that she was attractive, or even just the proposal: he felt at ease with her, and this was tremendously relieving. It had been a long time.
He looked at his watch and saw it was after five. ‘You’ve got your costume?’
‘In my gym bag.’
His phone rang. It was David Saunders, asking if he could drop by the office. Alone. Troy did a quick calculation and told Conti the swim was off, maybe dinner instead? She told him dinner would be fine. Said she was hungry.
Saunders’ secretary had gone and the door to his office was open, the big man peering at his computer. When he saw Troy he jumped up and showed him to the sofa. He sat down in an armchair with relief, as though it had been a hard day. Troy thought about making a friendly comment, but Saunders was not a man who invited intimacy. Everything about him was formal. Even his shirt was still crisp, as though freshly ironed. Troy had noticed this before with executives, and wondered how they did it, if there was some special fabric they had their shirts made of. Or maybe they changed them at lunchtime.
Saunders said, ‘Any leads?’
‘A few.’
‘You think Austin’s death is related to Mark’s?’
‘No.’
Saunders seemed happy to hear it. He pointed to a manila folder on the coffee table. ‘The stats Mark requested just came in.’
Troy blinked. ‘You mean the ones Paula Williams was getting for me?’
‘That’s right.’
Troy picked up the folder and opened it. The figures were presented in a way that was almost meaningless to him, lists headed with unfamiliar terms and acronyms, in some cases just numeric codes. He wished Mac was here: he’d studied statistics at university.
‘What do they say?’
Saunders came over to the sofa, spent fifteen minutes going through the figures. Apparently there was a small increase in deaths in Oncology, but it was explained by case-mix changes, and alterations to the way data was collected and presented.
Troy said, ‘So there’s no problem?’
‘No. If there was, it would’ve shown up in the complaints to the ombudsman.’
Troy nodded: one of the things Rostov’s unit had done with the complaints was group them according to the area of the hospital they involved. Oncology was well down the list for unexpected deaths and other adverse events. So was Paediatrics.
He stood up, his mind drifting. ‘Could Mark’s interest in the stats have anything to do with BRISTOL?’
‘You’ve heard of BRISTOL?’ Saunders smiled. ‘Everything’s connected to BRISTOL, or will be. But not yet, we’re still at the pilot stage.’ He put out his hand for the folder.
Troy said, ‘I’ll hang on to this.’
‘You want it? We can make you a copy.’
‘I’ll bring it back tomorrow.’
‘Okay,’ Saunders said. Somewhere in the room, a mobile rang, and he shook Troy’s hand and showed him out the door in a matter of seconds.
Troy didn’t mind. He was thinking about Conti.
Twenty-six
At Julie’s place the local police are all right, Leila thinks, but it is taking far too long. She is passed from one lot to another, from the uniforms to a pair of detectives, and tells her story so many times she loses count. It’s as though she’s being handed along an invisible production line, in a system understood by everyone but herself. No one makes any effort to explain it to her, and between interviews they expect her to wait on the footpath outside the house, or in her car. The vehicle is hot, so she turns on the engine to run the air con, gets a glare of disapproval from a woman pushing a three-wheel stroller along the footpath. She doesn’t care, listens to music.
Eventually they ask her to drive to the police station. There she has to wait in the front office for a long time. At first she takes an interest in what is going on around her, the stories told by the people who come through the front doors with their problems. Most seem to have lost something. After a while she thinks about Julie and Carl. She has nothing in particular to think about, but they’ve become lodged in the front of her mind and she goes over her memories of them. Large, slow people, but with strong impulses. Julie’s outburst of yesterday keeps coming back, although she has no idea what it meant. But she was a woman in trouble, and Leila hopes this had nothing to do with Elizabeth’s death. She doesn’t see how it could have.
There were moments, in the interviews she’s just given, when she wanted to blurt out the truth. The fact the police were so accepting of her story made the desire to do this stronger rather than weaker, which is strange. No one asked to see the money when she was questioned back at the house, the money she said she’d come to pay Julie. In case they wanted to see it now, she stopped at an ATM on the way to the station and withdrew five hundred dollars.
All the police are incredibly young. They say you know you’re getting old when the police are all younger than you, but she isn’t all that old. If you want to get specific, she is about halfway through the average working life. Maybe not even quite there yet. She hasn’t spoken with one cop over thirty. It’s as though some epidemic has run through the force, removing all the older officers.
Eventually she’s taken inside by one of the detectives, who chews gum as he sits down and types up her statement. She wonders why he thinks it’s all right to do that. But then, she is lying under oath as she signs the printed statement; no one of us is perfect. He thanks her and takes her to the front room, holds open the security door that leads to the waiting area, clearly considering whether it is worth the bother of coming out with her and having to use his pass to get back in. He decides it isn’t, grunts words to the effect they’ll be in touch. Gravely she thanks him and walks out of the station.
She feels like screaming at them all for the way they tre
at the public, their lack of explanations and casual trampling of emotions. But she just keeps walking.
Twenty-seven
Back in Room 233, Conti was reading what looked like a textbook, but she had it inside her gym bag by the time he got to her.
‘The night cometh,’ he said, recalling one of Luke’s gags, ‘when no man can work.’
‘You religious?’
‘To a point.’ He smiled. ‘Is your car here?’
‘It’s at Manly.’
‘I’ll take you back. There are restaurants there?’
‘In Manly?’
‘I guess there are.’
‘There’s a great Thai place at Narrabeen.’
‘Let’s go.’ He pulled out his keys and they went out to the car park. ‘Where do you live?’ he said.
‘Narrabeen.’
The food at the restaurant was good although the decor was kind of primitive. There was lino on the floor and the staff were just as busy with the takeaway business as with the customers at the plastic tables. Troy wondered why she’d chosen a place so functional. Maybe he’d misread her, and this was really nothing more than a work dinner, two busy colleagues postponing going back to their empty homes. He ought to be able to pick it, but after all this time, it was hard.
She was telling him about where she lived, in a flat she used to share with a girlfriend who’d gone to London. While she spoke she somehow managed to finish her chicken curry. He tried to remember if Anna had liked her food when they first met. Since Matt was born, she’d been on a semi-diet. But he didn’t want to think of Anna now, pushed her away.
‘I never did the Europe thing,’ she said.
‘Me neither. But there’s time.’
She laughed, and it made a big difference, the way her face relaxed. Some people look relaxed all the time, but not Conti. He reached across the table and touched her hand, and she turned hers up to take his.
‘Have some more wine,’ she said.
The Simple Death Page 17
