Thirty
When McIver arrived at the hospital, Troy told him what he’d learned that morning in the ombudsman’s office. McIver’s eyes brightened. ‘I think Saunders is involved. You talk to him, if that doesn’t work we question all the ombudsman’s staff.’
Mac nodded, said, ‘Next?’
Troy led him to a spare room he’d located, and left him for ten minutes with the stats. When he returned, he had Conti with him.
McIver threw the paper on the table. ‘I called Administration, got the codes,’ he said. ‘This shows the numbers of deaths of patients in the oncology ward for each of the past five years. They’re expressed as raw numbers and also as percentages of all patients admitted, which is what matters. This percentage figure is compared with the same one for all cancer wards in the state, and also for teaching hospitals only, because they get tougher cases. That’s the figure that counts, because St Thomas’ is a teaching hospital.’ He scratched his left arm, at the place where the bullet had hit him. ‘The last year, which concluded six months ago, wasn’t too good for the home team. They were sixteen per cent up on their own average for the previous five years, and twenty per cent up on the state average for teaching hospitals for the year.’
‘By up,’ Conti said, ‘you mean more people died?’
McIver nodded.
‘What’s the margin of error?’ said Troy.
‘High, because the samples aren’t big.’
‘Even so,’ Conti said, ‘they have a problem?’
‘You might think so.’ Again he rubbed his chin. ‘There were at least four more deaths than you’d expect if they were on the teaching hospital average. But of course, averages disguise the fact most things don’t happen evenly. So the question is . . .’
‘How unusual was it for someone to be twenty per cent off average?’
‘Pre-zackly. Looking at all of this, I’d say twenty is high.’
‘Saunders told me the type of cases the hospital deals with have changed.’
‘I rang a mate,’ McIver said, ‘a medical journalist. He knows all about that, says it wouldn’t affect deaths. He reckons in terms of case type, St Thomas’ was still similar to other teaching hospitals during this period.’
‘The fact they kept those files from us,’ said Conti, ‘shows they know there’s a problem.’
Troy said, ‘Or it might just mean they don’t want anyone thinking there’s a problem because of some unreliable stats that might be misinterpreted.’
McIver nodded. ‘We’d be thinking Saunders got Williams to withhold those three files?’
‘Most likely. He might want to protect the BRISTOL pilot, or maybe Carter. I got the impression he thinks the doctor’s pretty good.’
‘They actually go together,’ said Mac. ‘Carter ran the pilot that found BRISTOL is fabulous.’
‘Why are people dying?’ said Conti. Then, answering her own question, ‘Because BRISTOL cuts too much muscle.’
McIver smiled. Troy picked up the papers and banged them gently on the table, making the edges align. ‘So, we have a motive for Mark Pearson’s death.’
Conti said. ‘Saunders or Williams? Dr Carter? One of them’s a killer? You’re kidding.’
McIver said, ‘Let’s just say we may have a motive. Not strong, but possible.’
‘So, we talk to Saunders?’
‘Later,’ McIver said. ‘Williams would’ve told him about your little discovery by now. He can worry for a while.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s see if we can speak to Carter before he does.’
Troy led them through the long corridors, trying to find the oncology ward. He got lost and they wandered around the vast hospital, its size more apparent when you didn’t know the way. As they walked he told McIver about Carter, and realised he didn’t have much sense of the doctor. Finally he found a sign pointing to Oncology and they walked down more white hallways, past the staff in their pale uniforms. He looked into the rooms as they went, which appeared just like any other hospital rooms. But they seemed sinister now he knew people might have died here who shouldn’t have died.
At the nurses’ station, women were busy talking, all ignoring the detectives. A nurse with a small tub of pills balanced on a medication chart argued with a man in a white coat, while another on the phone was saying, ‘I really do think you should make the trip. He’s unconscious and not breathing well.’ She put a hand over the phone, called to someone, ‘Can you help Dr Wallis with a paracentesis on Mrs Ables in bed four?’ then continued with the call: ‘I know we said that, but his condition’s deteriorated. Don’t wait too long.’
She hung up, noticed McIver’s face and then his badge, smiled. Mac explained who they were after and she paged Dr Carter, then left.
Troy heard another nurse on the phone: ‘He had a little bit more to eat today. Oh yes.’ It sounded like good news. He hoped so.
An older nurse came by and asked McIver what he wanted.
‘Are you a NUM?’ he said.
‘A what?’ She blinked. ‘Can I help you?’ He explained about Carter. ‘He’s halfway through two days’ leave,’ she said.
‘The other nurse paged him. She didn’t know?’
The woman stared around the station for a moment, at all the activity. ‘There’s too much to know.’
As they walked back towards the lifts Conti said, ‘We should talk to Saunders.’
She was pushing it, Troy thought, as though she sensed Mac was off his game. He’d enjoyed last night, very much, but there was something hard about her.
McIver said to Troy, ‘Got Carter’s address?’
Troy nodded and took out his phone. ‘It’s a short walk, I’ll get someone to take a car.’
‘You,’ McIver said to Conti, handing her his keys. ‘Meet us there.’
McIver and Troy left the hospital, slowing down as the heat struck them, and made their way through narrow, leafy streets towards Carter’s place. Troy used the sat nav on his mobile. The roads were lined with terraces, charming but tiny. They came to a hill and the dwellings grew bigger as they climbed, and shrunk again as they went down in the direction of Darlinghurst. Mac was panting, and Troy could smell the alcohol coming out of his pores. He wondered why the sarge was here: picking up Carter could have been left to Conti and himself. They still had little idea of what had gone on in Oncology. Mac’s amateur reading of the stats needed to be confirmed with a health expert; even if there had been unexpected deaths, there might be a reasonable explanation, it could have been an accident.
But he thought he knew what Mac was up to. Sometimes in an investigation you did things just to keep moving.
They were on a wider street now, and half-way down an unmarked police car was already parked by the kerb. When they reached it, Troy saw Conti in the driver’s seat. She got out holding a bottle of water and indicated Carter’s house, a narrow terrace a hundred metres away.
‘You take the back lane,’ McIver said.
Paddington was laced with these laneways, once used by the night soil men and now convenient routes for burglars.
‘You expecting trouble?’ she said.
McIver examined her sourly, said, ‘I have no idea.’
He took a few steps away from Troy while they waited, lost in his thoughts or the distant view of the harbour. After five minutes Troy walked up to Carter’s door and knocked. There was no answer and he knocked again, loud and slow, aware the doctor might be in bed. He knew from experience what odd work hours could do to your sleep patterns. When there was still no response, he retreated to the footpath and examined the outside of the building more closely. The curtains in the downstairs windows were drawn, but those up top were open. The windows themselves were all closed, with bars across them. Troy dialled Carter’s number and waited. It rang through to voicemail, and he left a message aski
ng the doctor to call him.
McIver went over to the car, sank into the passenger seat while Troy climbed in the driver’s side. He didn’t want to, but it would be too noticeable to hang around on the deserted street. The car was hot and he thought about turning on the air conditioning, but knew McIver considered this a waste of energy. He wound down all the windows and reflected again on why they were here.
‘You okay?’ he said.
‘It’s all good. Young Conti needs to slow down. You were like that once.’
‘Was I?’
‘Being a detective requires reflection. I bet you a hundred she ends up in management, loosely defined.’ Troy nodded, and McIver said, ‘How’s Father Luke?’
‘Stuff ’s happened.’ Troy tugged an ear, found sweat there, wiped it off. Said, ‘In confidence?’
‘Yeah.’
Troy told him about Luke’s admission of the abuse, and then about Tim Kalnins’ revelation. It was the first time he’d ever seen Mac look really surprised.
‘So,’ he concluded, ‘Luke lied to me.’
‘Don’t take it personally.’ Troy did, a bit. But mainly he was lost. McIver said, ‘People lie for all sorts of reasons. Luke’s made a false confession to keep the Church investigators out of his private life. Doesn’t want them sniffing around up in Gosford, asking about living arrangements at the presbytery in the eighties.’
‘But why lie to me too?’
‘He thought if you believed he’s innocent, you’d look into it, try to clear him. And then you’d stumble across his relationship, maybe learn about the kid.’
‘But—’
‘The guy’s been like a father to you, hasn’t he? He doesn’t want you to know about Tim. This is all about defending his boys.’
Troy considered this, Luke and Brigita, Tim and Sam, the closest he’d had to a family when he was in his teens. It hadn’t seemed like it at the time, there’d been no warmth, no one had ever talked to him as though he was their son. Or brother. No one had ever held him. Still, maybe Mac was right. He wondered why this explanation hadn’t struck him before. But where Luke was concerned, his thoughts moved through mud.
McIver broke the silence. ‘Anything else?’
‘I met Walsh at the hospice, told him what Luke had said to me, his admission to the abuse. I thought Walsh looked surprised, just for a second.’
‘And his surprise surprises you?’
‘He strikes me as a guy with his emotions under a lot of control.’
McIver leaned back and closed his eyes again. ‘Walsh is so slippery it could mean anything. He started out to be a Jesuit, did two years with them, then he switched to train as an ordinary priest. Told a friend it was because he’d discovered Jesuits can’t become pope.’ Troy smiled. McIver said, ‘You want to crack this one, I’d get the archbishop in an interview room.’
‘Okay.’
‘Don’t leave any marks.’
McIver’s phone rang. After he’d hung up he said nothing for a while. Finally: ‘Rostov’s people have finished their work. Mark Pearson was not killed by a complainant, unless it was Ed Valdez.’ He punched a few of the buttons on his phone and, after asking to be put through to an inspector whose name Troy didn’t recognise, had a mildly heated conversation. When this was over there was more silence.
‘Bourke,’ he said at last. ‘Still no sign of Valdez. Think they have someone who was drinking with him in town the night Pearson died. Bloke’s a pisshead, but it seems right, says Valdez was shooting on a property a few hundred k out. The locals are still looking.’
‘Bugger.’
‘Makes you think about Dr Carter.’
Troy took out his own phone and made a call to the hospital. Made another. Said to McIver, ‘We’ve been assuming Pearson hadn’t received the stats when he died. But he did, two days before. Paper copies.’
‘Which we haven’t found.’
‘If people are really dying in Oncology, I wonder how.’
‘Saving money, cutting corners,’ McIver said, ‘people might start to die more quickly. They’re dying anyway, so you mightn’t notice for a while. If Carter told you the truth, that it was him suggested Pearson pull the figures, he probably didn’t know anything about it.’
‘Surely he would have?’
‘Maybe not. Oncology must see hundreds of patients a year, lots of them die. A few extra deaths, who’d notice?’
‘You’d hope they’d be watching the mortality figures if they were cutting their inputs by five per cent. As part of the pilot evaluation.’
‘You’d hope. But let’s say they decide to ignore the figures, for whatever reason. Then Pearson gets onto it and approaches his mate Dr Carter for an explanation.’
McIver smiled and closed his eyes.
After ten minutes, Troy was finding it difficult to keep his own eyes open. He examined the view, looking for a point of interest to occupy his attention. The flat land at the foot of the hill led across to the harbour, although the sight of it was blocked by the elevated Eastern Suburbs Railway, which ran through a jumble of trees and tall buildings. In front was a patch of light industry, dominated by a large grey building that looked like an old factory, about six storeys high.
The sky above all this was an even blue. As Troy scanned it in vain for a cloud, a flock of birds came from behind the factory and flew for several hundred metres towards him and then turned sharply. There were a few dozen, and from their shapes and the way they turned, he knew they were pigeons. He watched as they swung around again and repeated the manoeuvre, and kept doing it. There was a slight variation each time but not much, as though each of them was attached to the same point on the ground by a long piece of elastic. This reminded him of something and he tried to think what it was, moving his gaze back and forth from the birds to Carter’s front door.
The image from the screensaver on Mark Pearson’s computer at the hospital. And he’d seen this before, too: long ago, when he’d been seventeen and living in an abandoned workshop by an old railyard. They were homing pigeons. He’d met the man who owned them and learned how they were let out twice a day for exercise, would always return when a bell was rung, for food.
The birds in front of him suddenly changed their motion and dropped down on the grey building, descending to one point as though sucked from the air by a giant vacuum cleaner. The sky was clear again but Troy could still see the birds in his mind’s eye, realised the photograph on Pearson’s screensaver showed a much closer view. The birds there looked as though they were only ten or twenty metres away. He recalled that the top of a spire had appeared at the foot of the screen, and looked around for a church. It was off to the right, in the distance in Darling Point. He tried to work out where the photo would have been taken.
Shaking McIver awake, he told him he was going for a walk. Before Mac could complain, he was out of the car and heading downhill. He would have found it hard to explain what he was doing, but any reason for getting out of the car was good enough. His whole body was sticky and he reached up under his coat at the back, pulling the shirt away from his skin.
In five minutes he reached the commercial area, saw the grey building was more likely a renovated warehouse than a factory. He couldn’t see the church anymore so he stopped and looked around, figured the photo might have been taken from on top of the building. There was a row of homeware shops at street level, and according to the directory in the lobby the upper storeys contained a mix of offices and design studios. He climbed the wide wooden stairs until he reached the top floor and wandered about, looking for a way onto the roof. It was pleasant up here, light and quiet and not too hot. He found a woman making hats in a small workshop; she directed him to a plain wooden door.
‘Derek Burton lives there,’ she said. ‘The caretaker.’
The roof was largely covered w
ith what looked like tarpaper shot through with some metallic ingredient, so that it managed to be black and bright at the same time. Troy squinted and saw several structures. There was a big shed for the lift machinery, and a large caravan standing on concrete blocks, with a substantial pigeon loft next to it. Troy blinked. The caravan and the loft were covered by two shade cloths, held up by an elaborate arrangement of posts and ropes attached to yet more concrete blocks. A man was standing outside the caravan door, arms folded.
‘Mr Burton?’
Troy produced his badge. Burton was mid-sixties, a balding, stout guy in old jeans and a worn Specials T-shirt. His expression was blank. Troy replaced his wallet and took a photograph of Pearson from a coat pocket. Burton found a pair of reading glasses and peered at the picture.
‘That’s Mark,’ he said, his accent English, west country.
Troy swallowed. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Thursday.’
Troy looked around the roof. He still couldn’t quite believe a caravan was sitting up here. ‘What time?’
‘Six, six thirty, same time he usually comes. Is something wrong?’
Burton mustn’t read the Sun Herald. Or watch television.
‘Could you tell me how often he comes here?’
‘Once or twice a week. He likes to see the birds fly. We have a chat.’
He pointed to some plastic chairs near the pigeon loft, under the shade cloth. They were on green matting.
‘You’re the caretaker?’
‘Cleaner, mainly. What’s this all about?’
‘I’m afraid Mark’s dead.’
The man looked surprised, then sad. Took off his glasses and nodded several times, as though acknowledging he had heard the words but for the moment was unable to speak.
At last, ‘What happened?’
As Troy told him about the ferry, Burton blinked and looked at the pigeons, standing on ledges on the back wall of the loft. There was a soft murmuring coming from the birds, competing with the sound of traffic from the street below, which was louder than Troy would have expected.
The Simple Death Page 19
