by Debra Oswald
When Jemma buzzed from the front desk, Paula stepped out of her room into the corridor. From there, she could see a police officer standing at the counter.
Her heart rate shot up, blood whooshing in her ears, belly lurching as if she might start retching again. Ferguson had died and she was about to be arrested for his murder. Or Ferguson had recovered and reported what she’d done. Attempted murder.
‘Good afternoon,’ said the cop. ‘Are you Dr Kaczmarek?’
Paula just nodded, not sure she could trust her voice to come out plausibly.
‘You treated Mr—uh …’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Mr Ferguson?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. Yes.’ Too many yeses. ‘Did Mr Ferguson … ?’
‘He died.’ Then the cop winced, realising there were two little kids behind him in the waiting area, and he lowered his voice. ‘The gentleman passed away en route to the hospital.’
Not a gentleman. And now dead. Because she’d killed him.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ added the cop.
Paula was suddenly light-headed, grabbing onto the upper counter so she wouldn’t fall.
The policeman reached out to steady her. ‘You right there, doctor? Must’ve been full-on today. Oh, but I guess you handle stuff like that all the time. Part of the job.’
‘Oh well, yes, but no, it’s …’ Paula mumbled.
The police officer indicated that he’d like to move away from the desk, out of Jemma’s earshot, for a private exchange. This was it. They wanted to take Paula in for questioning, conduct a full investigation.
‘The thing is, Dr Kaczmarek,’ explained the cop, ‘the docs at the hospital thought we could avoid having to do an autopsy on this gentleman, if you’d feel happy to do the death certificate.’
‘Oh.’
‘I mean, based on your medical records and what you saw when he had his—you know …’
‘His cardiac episode.’
‘Right. Exactly. If you reckon that’s appropriate, it’d save everyone a lot of unnecessary trouble.’
This officer was not here to arrest her or even to question her. She was being asked to sign the death certificate for the man she’d just murdered.
As her breathing and heart rate steadied, Paula was able to take a clear-eyed look at the person inside the police uniform. The guy was young, maybe not long out of the academy, self-conscious, awkward. He was trying to hide his nerves about handling this duty on his own, but at the same time she could see he was relishing the authority and importance of the job, occupying the uniform with a slightly pompous stiffness, like a boy playing police dress-ups.
Based on Mark Lang’s files, Ferguson’s health status and the episode in her surgery, Paula could justifiably write the man’s death certificate and it wasn’t uncommon for police to make this request of a doctor. In the past, Paula had signed death certificates in similar situations, even if this situation was—well, not entirely similar.
The young cop handed her paperwork from the hospital emergency department and she found the other necessary information from the practice records. As she completed the form, she took a deep breath, wanting to monitor her own reaction to this: the certainty that she had killed a man. Her hand trembled as she held the pen, but she controlled it enough to sign her name with her usual sweep and definition.
When Paula switched her phone back on to active mode, there were several missed calls from Anita. Then her phone dinged with a message.
How are you? Can we have dinner or something? I could come to your place. A x
Paula’s instinct was to retreat, go directly home, engage with no one. How should she act now? How did someone who’d killed a human being behave? Would she feel compelled to blurt it out to Anita the minute she saw her? That would be foolish. It would be unfair to do that to her friend before she’d thought this through properly herself. She typed, Not tonight … too tired, but then deleted it. Anita would be anxious about how Paula was handling the phone video news and she would not be fobbed off without explanation for the second evening in a row.
Instead, Paula texted back: Movie maybe? Too tired to be good company for anything else. P x
She wasn’t sure Anita would be satisfied with that—she might insist on an all-emotions-hanging-out debrief about Stacey—but five minutes later there was a reply.
Good thinking. I’m shredded too but need to see you. Only found one movie that isn’t a) violent, b) grim or c) superheroes. So it’s Japanese Quirky Family Drama. OK? Can you make 6.45 session in Newtown?
Anita booked tickets online and Paula drove straight there from the surgery. There was only time for a quick greeting hug before the two women found their seats in the darkened cinema, the ads already playing.
Paula was relieved she’d suggested a movie. It gave her time to settle a bit before any conversation would be required of her. Sitting together would hopefully neutralise Anita’s worry, but because they were sitting in the dark Anita couldn’t scrutinise her too closely.
Paula felt excoriated by the last week—Rochelle, the video of Stacey, Ian Ferguson—as if all her protective coating had been scraped off, so now her emotional responses were overwrought, overly reactive. During the three-minute trailer for a mawkish English rom-com, she found herself actually crying over the sixty-something couple finding love in the autumn of their lives in Umbria.
Anita must have heard the tearful sniffing, because she glanced sideways to check on her. Then she leaned against Paula, arm pressed against arm, and rolled her shoulder with wordless affection. Paula leaned back into Anita and rolled her shoulder in reply. It was comforting. It was good.
The next trailer was for a squawky French farce and Paula wound up laughing way more than the galumphing comedy warranted. Again, she saw Anita sneak looks at her, smiling this time, relieved to see her cheerful.
The Japanese movie started and the subtitles proved handy, something to hook her focus on. The film was eccentric and straining to be so. (‘Kwerky with a capital K’ was Anita’s term for such films.) But the lead actor was charismatic and the family reconciliation story drew Paula in. It was pleasing to see the Tokyo locations and recall the week she’d spent there with Remy not long before he was diagnosed.
When the lights came up at the end, Anita was in one of her bouncy, slightly manic moods.
‘In a fitting thematic link to the movie, I reckon we need to go to a Japanese restaurant,’ she said.
‘Oh honey, I’m so whacked, I won’t last long,’ Paula moaned. ‘I mean, food’s a good idea but it has to be something quick.’
‘Which makes Japanese the ideal choice!’ Anita grinned. ‘It’s quick. They don’t waste time cooking the fish!’
Anita knew a Japanese place not far down King Street; as promised, the service was swift. Paula didn’t eat much—her guts were still knotted, touchy—but she speared a gyoza with chopsticks and levered in enough rice that Anita didn’t question her lack of appetite.
Anita was still fizzing, words tumbling out of her mouth, with or without sashimi in there at the same time. She was chattering about the ‘theme nights’ Stacey used to arrange when they were in their early twenties. She would choose a foreign movie for the three of them to watch on half-price Tuesdays, followed by a cheap restaurant with cuisine that matched. During the themed meal, Stacey, Paula and Anita would plan an itinerary for the perfect holiday in that country, even though they couldn’t possibly afford it.
As Anita yabbered, Paula’s head swam with the unreality of this moment—to be here eating Japanese food given what she’d done that day. Could she ever share this thing with her friend? Should she offer Anita a redacted version? An account of Ian Ferguson’s death which omitted the adrenaline ampoules but included the part about Paula deliberately delaying the attempt to resuscitate him? Then again, maybe she could never tell any of it.
Anita suddenly stopped mid-sentence, inhaled sharply and said, ‘Okay, Paula. What is going through your mind right now?’
‘I can see you’re thinking about—I mean, are you thinking it’s wrong we haven’t talked more about the video of Stacey?’ asked Anita. Her buoyant mood had suddenly deflated.
‘Oh. Well …’
‘But look, maybe we don’t have to go through it all right now.’
‘I don’t think we have to,’ Paula said quietly.
‘No. But of course, I mean, yeah, we can, anytime, if you need to or—well, if either of us needs to—down the track. But tonight I reckon we should have a break.’
Paula nodded and Anita reached across the table to squeeze her hand.
‘You look so exhausted, P. Your eyeballs are lolling out of their sockets.’
‘In an attractive way, I hope.’
‘Gorgeous. Hey, I’m sorry for dragging you out for quirky Japanese cinema when you’re so tired. You should’ve told me to fuck off.’
‘No, no, I’m glad you dragged me out,’ said Paula. ‘But I now need to fuck off to bed.’
‘Yep. I’ll sort the bill.’ Anita jumped to her feet, switching back into her hyper mood. ‘I’m prescribing you a big dose of sleep. You need to be ready to heal the sick and save lives tomorrow.’
Anita waved away Paula’s proffered cash and darted over to the cash register. Paula watched her chat to the Japanese waitress, doing a little floorshow to describe the movie they’d just seen. The waitress was baffled at first, but eventually she was smiling and laughing.
Paula found herself consciously drinking in the sight of Anita being her awkwardly delightful self with the waitress. Paula did that a lot now; she was determined to store moments, images, scraps of the people she loved in some part of her brain that might not be infected with bad things.
NINE
ANITA SOMETIMES IMAGINED A WILDLIFE DOCUMENTRY AS she observed the journalists and TV crews outside the court buildings. One moment, the media would be hanging around as solitary birds or in groups of two or three, pecking at their phones, swivelling their heads to survey the area, waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, someone from a high-profile trial would appear on the footpath, and the journalists and crews would swoop in, flapping around the person like a flock of pigeons encircling the remains of a discarded hamburger.
For a regular individual caught up in a juicy trial, the walk to the entrance of a court building must be unnerving, the media pack shuffling with them every step of the way. The legal bods were fine, of course. They strode through, safely zipped inside their lawyer costumes, holding big white folders like shields. But the people fronting the court system for the first time were clearly overwhelmed, faces pinched against the questions being squawked at them, clinging to the advice they’d been given about not responding and not hitting out at the cameras in their path.
As a print journalist, Anita wasn’t right in there shoving a microphone in anyone’s face. Unlike the TV journos, she wasn’t required to provoke distressed people into blurting out a sound bite in the street. But she was still obliged to hover close enough to hear if anything was said that should be part of the coverage. In a way, she got the benefit of the TV journos badgering these poor people, so she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t morally complicit. What did that make her? A scavenger bird? Maybe best not to run the birdlife analogy too far.
This morning, waiting to cross the street, she saw the media flock around a figure emerging from a black hire car. Then she recognised Gilbert Woodburn’s luxurious curve of silver hair, always easy to spot because he was several centimetres taller than anyone around him. Woodburn, one of the most expensive criminal barristers in Sydney, still handled a hefty case load at the age of seventy-two. He’d made a career of renting his authoritative presence (the hair, the height, rich baritone voice, patrician demeanour) to clients of questionable reputation.
Woodburn moved calmly towards the main doors of the building as if the flapping media pack were not even there. He was followed by his courtiers (junior members of the legal team), who kept their arms tucked in to their bodies, making themselves physically small so as not to draw attention away from the magnificence of their boss.
When a second vehicle pulled up, Woodburn turned and walked at a stately pace towards it. His courtiers clustered around him to form a human shield so the passengers emerging from the car wouldn’t stumble directly into the media scrum.
First out onto the footpath was Woodburn’s client, John Santino, charged with the murder of Kendra Bartlett almost two years ago. He was pleading not guilty, claiming his girlfriend had committed suicide by jumping off a motorway overpass into oncoming traffic.
Santino was thirty-six, with Italian-pretty-boy looks and a gym-muscled body visible inside the sober suit he’d obviously been advised to wear to court. Whenever Anita saw pictures of Santino, she was puzzled that his face was so shiny, you could even say glossy. In person, his face looked as if it had been lacquered. It must be the skincare regime he followed.
Stepping from the far side of the car was Santino’s younger sister Marina, who had been by her brother’s side at his committal hearing and every other public appearance. Marina was there to demonstrate the adamantine support being offered to John by his wealthy and tightly interlocked family. His father, the patriarch of the Santino family, had started out as a labourer and ended up making serious money in the concreting business which the elder sons now ran. John had never worked in the family trade and instead had been indulged, bailed out of several failed ventures, installed in a huge apartment in Darlinghurst and, in recent years, had been subsidised by family money to run a couple of bars in the eastern suburbs.
Marina walked around the vehicle to join her brother. She was made up for the cameras, her dark hair freshly blow-waved and clothing carefully chosen—today’s corporate suit with a high-throated silk shirt was considerably toned down from the sexy clubbing outfits Anita had seen in Marina’s posts on Instagram.
Santino lunged over to help another woman out of the back seat of the car. Brooke Lester had been photographed on Santino’s arm several times over the last year, but it wasn’t until she stepped out onto the footpath that everyone could see she was pregnant.
Anita noticed Brooke tug on the waistband of her skirt where it was cutting across the tightness of her belly. The pencil skirt was too restrictive, even with one of those expandable maternity panels at the front. Along with her stiffly fitted jacket, low-cut clingy jersey top and high heels, it was an uncomfortable outfit for a pregnant woman.
The TV journos peppered Brooke with questions about her pregnancy, and after a huddled conversation with John Santino and Gilbert Woodburn, Marina was the one delegated to speak to the media.
‘Yes, as you can see, my brother’s beautiful partner Brooke is thirty weeks pregnant. Our whole family is thrilled. We pray that the truth will come out and my brother will be acquitted, so he can be the wonderful father I know he will be. Thank you.’
With his usual smooth choreography, Gilbert Woodburn swept the three of them away from the media pack. Just outside the entrance, there was one last moment of pageantry.
Marina took Brooke’s hands and held them in her own for a moment. ‘I’m not allowed to be in there with you today,’ she said. She was on the defence witness list, so could not attend court as an observer until after her testimony.
Before she left, Marina Santino made a show of hugging her brother, then clasped his and Brooke’s hands together, urging him, ‘Take care of her.’
This was all a show for the cameras. How could Santino be guilty of a horrible misogynist crime when two women who knew him well—his girlfriend and his sister—would kiss him on his glossy cheekbones because they loved him, felt safe with him, believed in him?
As John Santino headed inside the court building, he slipped his arm around Brooke, hooking her in close to his side. The gesture, his hands on that woman’s body, h
it Anita like a thump in the solar plexus.
The trial was being held in the courts just off Phillip Street in the CBD—an elegant stone colonial building with all the period trimmings: red wine carpet, toffee-coloured timber seating like church pews and arched windows high in the walls. For a trial like this one, with intense public interest, it was an awkward choice. The narrow corridors barely allowed for the security screening set-up and the extra bodies milling around.
In Court 3, seats were limited, so Anita was quick to grab a good spot in the public gallery to set up her laptop. There was a bit of sotto voce chat with the other journos, helpful swapping of seats to gain access to power points and a palpable buzz of anticipation.
Following the official thumps at the chamber door, everyone rose for the judge’s entrance. It was only then that Anita saw where Brooke Lester was perched, surrounded by a contingent of Santino family members.
Justice Roland Burke swept through the door to take his position at the bench.
In her years covering trials in Australia and the UK, Anita had generally been impressed by the judges. Sure, there were exceptions—arrogant dickheads, dozy muttering guys who didn’t comprehend much, or other varieties of woeful—but mostly she found judges to be thoughtful people, wearing their huge responsibility with great care and with sympathy for the bewildered civilians in their courtroom. Justice Burke, though, was a hard one to classify. Anita had seen him snort contemptuously at something he considered to be ‘whining, self-indulgent codswallop’. ‘Codswallop’ could be respect for a transgender person or making allowances for disadvantaged people. But he’d also made unexpectedly compassionate judgements. Other judges had told Anita off the record that Burke was regarded as a worry, too unpredictable, but here he was, in his scarlet robes and wig, presiding over a high-octane murder trial.
The first decision Burke made was an absolute fucking cracker.