Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  ‘Indeed it is. My lab technician’s been complaining bitterly. He prefers standard decay. It’s partly ammonia but there are other chemicals in it. Sickeningly sweet, isn’t it? It does go away or at least become acceptably sweeter with the passage of time.

  ‘The benefit of adipocere in this case is that it tends to hold together other decomposing tissue like muscle, so there is some preservation of her facial structure. So we have more idea of what she looked like in life than had she undergone straightforward putrefaction. That’s helped do the comfit picture for the media. There’s also some adipocere around her abdomen that is cancelling out some of the loss of tissue from putrefaction. So she’s kind of the same shape that she was, and is fitting into her clothes. Whereas in these pictures of her lower limbs you can see that the skin has just sloughed off in sheets along with her toenails. The same thing on her hands; no chance of fingerprints.

  ‘So … bone structure Caucasian. Age – I’d guess forty-five to fifty-five but if she was on hormone replacement she might be older, it maintains bone density and skin quality. Those designer labels suggest a woman who took every precaution against the changes of ageing. Hair grey at the roots but coloured not long before her death.’

  Cass nodded. She’d noted this at the site.

  ‘No fractures,’ Leah continued. ‘There was some fraying of those scarves around her wrists as though she might have struggled a bit, but no evidence of bony damage. No marks or grazes on the skeleton consistent with bullet or knife wounds. No injury consistent with wounds by firearms or knives within the skull, thorax or abdominal cavity, although the organs are in an advanced state of decay. No bullets or foreign bodies anywhere in those cavities.’

  She looked up at Cass. ‘I presume your people haven’t found anything at the site suggesting she was shot?’

  Cass shook her head. ‘They’ve found practically nothing apart from some makeup and lipstick that were close to the body. And cigarette butts, although they could be from anyone.’

  ‘The items of clothing, although very dirty and wet, don’t show any sign of damage from an instrument or firearm,’ Leah went on. ‘In fact all the buttons on the shirt were intact and done up to a level above her breasts, and the skirt was zipped up and in place around her waist. No knickers though and the bra fastenings undone. Very expensive jewellery, I’d say, that interestingly wasn’t taken from her.’

  She raised an eyebrow at Cass. ‘Pearl necklace and earrings. Solid silver bangle on her right arm, no helpful identifying marks on this, and Bulgari watch on her left. Still going and telling correct Cairns time and date when handed to Drew yesterday – not much use to us in establishing time of death. Again, not a cheap item.

  ‘From what remains of her I would say that she was in good general health. One hundred and sixty-three centimetres tall. From various conversion tables I’ve worked out that she weighed about 62 kilos in life. Consistent with her wearing size 8 Australian, maybe 10, which is equivalent to European 36 to 38, which is what she was wearing. Quite petite by most Australian standards.

  ‘She coloured her hair a very dark brown, which suggests that’s what it was in her earlier life. Eyes – well, from what remains, under my microscope, I’d say they were brown. Most remaining skin very necrotic and peeling; what there is of it looks light brown, olive. Can’t say if it’s natural or if she was suntanned or had one of those fake tan jobs – she does seem the kind of woman who might have been spray-tanned.

  ‘Bilateral breast implants – the silicon kind, not saline. They’re an American make but that means nothing. Most European countries would import them from the States. They’re certainly registered for import here. I checked on the company website and this type’s been available about ten years. So she’s had a boob job in that time, either for the first time, but more likely, given her age, to replace earlier implants that were leaking or just old.

  ‘Teeth in very good condition – or at least, mostly porcelain. She’s had a lot of expensive dental work. Caps or crowns where her own teeth remain. So if we can find her dentist, identification would be definite.’

  ‘Could be somewhere in Europe, judging by her clothes,’ Cass said. ‘Although fashion’s global now. They sell the Hermès scarves in Sydney and Melbourne.’

  Leah nodded and went on: ‘She’s also missing her gall bladder so she must have had surgery, a cholecystectomy, at some point. There’s no evidence of any major animal interference with the body, so it’s not that the organ has been taken away. It’s been surgically removed, although the site of the scar on the body surface has completely disappeared with the post-mortem changes and the weather and exposure. The uterus is slightly better preserved than other organs. That’s what we usually find, because it’s protected in the pelvis and it’s a dense fibro-muscular structure. It has a scar, probably a caesarean scar. So this is somebody’s mother.’

  She paused a moment, then added: ‘Of course we’ll test what remains of vaginal secretions for evidence of sexual assault. I note that her legs were tied to the tree though. Her thighs must have been close together when she was first bound up. But she could have been raped, given how tightly her hands were tied.

  ‘It’s all very weird. And although it doesn’t bear thinking about, with no sudden cause of death clear so far, it does seem she might just have been tied up like that and left to die. Which might have taken a while, depending on how hot it was there. You said it was shaded; that would have prolonged things. In open sunlight, without water, she would have died of dehydration much more quickly. And even in the shade she might have very quickly become confused and then unconscious.’

  ‘Toxicology?’ Cass asked.

  Leah nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve sent samples for drugs and poisons,’ she said. ‘The adipocere means we have more tissue for that, which is good. I’ve asked them to run the tests urgently.’

  While she talked, Leah was studying Cass. She’d liked this woman from their first meeting, in the initial stages of the Buscati investigation. At that meeting Leah had noted Cass’s name. She had asked where Cass came from and when told New South Wales, north of Newcastle, she immediately asked, ‘Are you related to Lexie Diamond?’

  ‘His daughter,’ Cass had answered, with some surprise. ‘You knew Lexie?’

  ‘No, but I loved his songs,’ Leah said. ‘Still do. I have lots of those old cassettes from the 80s, when I was a student, and all the CDs that have been re-issued. And I heard him once in Brisbane. That would have been just a couple of years before …’

  ‘Before he died,’ Cass finished for her. ‘Yes. I was eight then .’

  ‘So your mother is Suzanne?’

  ‘No.’ Cass had smiled. ‘My dad, well he was a product of the sixties, y’know, he liked to spread the love around. My mother is Alice, she’s American but she’s lived in Australia for yonks now. White American, as I guess you can see. She was never married to him.’

  ‘But you have your father’s name?’

  ‘Yes. Mum wanted me to have his name, well his stage name, the one everyone knows, not his Aboriginal name. She wanted me to have that identity.’

  ‘So did you see him much, when you were growing up?’

  ‘Oh yeah. He was around a lot, up until the time he got sick, despite all the other family and kids he had.’

  Two wives, three other long-term relationships, eleven children. Or so his family had thought, Cass had explained to Leah. When, about two months before he died, it became clear that the liver cancer that had made its first appearance when he turned fifty was winning the battle, Suzanne, the second and still incumbent wife, had got together with Venetia, the first wife, and Mary, an early love. Together they planned a Sunday picnic to which all of Lexie’s children were invited. This was to be at the house on Port Stephens, with its rambling bush grounds, that was Lexie and Suzanne’s home, and where in the last months of his life he lay in bed on the veranda. Still smoking, still drinking – and why not? Cass had said to Leah, who nodded
her agreement. The media had cited his drinking as the cause of the liver cancer. In fact, he’d contracted hepatitis as a child, living in a tiny lean-to outside Moree. Like so many Aboriginal kids.

  ‘But,’ Cass had told Leah, ‘as well as the expected five women and their eleven kids, three other kids turned up. Including Patrick, who was just four then. The others were in their teens.’ Each with a mother and each with such clear facial features and broad Lexie smiles that there was no doubting their paternity. Lexie had greeted them all, quite unsurprised and seemingly intimately acquainted with what each was doing.

  ‘So you have, what, thirteen brothers and sisters?’ Leah had asked.

  ‘More,’ Cass had answered, ‘because my mother had four more kids after me, though Lexie wasn’t their father. I grew up with all of them; the youngest is fifteen now. And I have dozens of cousins, and uncles and aunties spread right across New South Wales.’

  Now, as she talked about the autopsy findings, Leah watched Cass making rapid notes on her laptop. She doesn’t miss a thing, Leah thought, and she always looks stunning. Not a trace of makeup when she’s at work apart from lip gloss, but her skin is perfect, she has the figure of an athlete and that fantastic springy, glossy hair. She must cause a stir down in Sheridan Street every time she moves.

  Cass looked up. ‘The strangest bit about all this,’ she said slowly, ‘has to be the scarves.’

  Leah nodded. ‘Yeah. I’d have to think there’s some significance in them. Significant to the person or persons who tied her up, and maybe to the woman as well.’

  ‘I’ve tried the Hermès stores,’ Cass said. ‘They still have to get back to me but if that gets us nothing I’ll try all the retailers.’

  She sat, thinking, for a moment. Then said slowly to Leah: ‘Would a tourist bring four silk scarves on a trip to Cairns? All in the same kind of design. Four?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Leah. ‘Maybe if she was going to spend a lot of time in the casino or something? But what you’re thinking is – she’s more likely to be local?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cass said. ‘And to have got to that particular spot, someone needed good local knowledge. To get onto that road. Maybe not the woman herself. But whoever took her there.

  ‘Like the doctor who found her – he knew how to get in through the bush.’ She stood up, thinking of how Tim Ingram must have known about that rainforest road for quite a while. She picked up her laptop and phone.

  ‘Thanks for that, Leah. And for the coffee. You’ll send through a copy of your report?’

  ‘Yes – later today. The body will stay here for the moment of course. No-one has claimed it yet, anyway.’

  ‘We’ll put the comfit image on the evening news,’ Cass said, as she moved towards the door, thinking again about those scarves. ‘Someone has to know who she is.’

  Cairns, February 2009

  Two years earlier, Dr Lyndall Symonds had sat rigid, facing Dr Jane O’Malley across the desk in Jane’s surgery.

  ‘Shit, Jane, the bastard mustn’t even use condoms!’

  Jane, her personal doctor but also Lyndall’s friend, reached out a hand. Jane had not been looking forward to this encounter. Just that morning, she’d received the report of the Pap smear she’d taken for Lyndall the previous week. Lyndall, who’d never had anything wrong with her Paps before, had put off having this done, for two and a half, then three years. The results had been unexpected: high-grade changes, together with the presence of the wart virus. Jane had called Lyndall that morning, sounding as light-hearted as she could, but Lyndall had not mistaken the urgency of her message, and had made an appointment for that afternoon.

  ‘Lyndall,’ Jane began slowly, ‘let’s take things one at a time. All this is common. The wart virus is common. You know that. Some types are associated with the development of cervical cancer. But you haven’t got cancer. You’ve got pre-cancer, it seems, on the basis of the smear, but that’s a completely curable condition. That’s the whole point of Pap smears, to pick up things before they become serious.’

  ‘And what do I have to do, who do I have to see, in this town, to cure my … pre-cancer?’ demanded Lyndall. ‘Everyone we know will know now what they always suspected: Trevor Symonds sleeps around as well as drinks too much. He doesn’t worry that he gives … his wife … this … disease!’ Tears of rage welled up.

  Jane said gently, ‘I do understand how you feel … but we need to do something about the Pap result. You’ll need some treatment. You could go down to Brisbane, keep it away from here, but really there’s no need for that. Why don’t I send you to see Henry – I know he’s a friend, but he’d be very good and helpful. He’d manage it very discreetly for you.’

  Jane bit her lip, then continued: ‘You said you didn’t know, weren’t sure …’ Her voice trailed off. She had no particular interest in gossip, but she’d heard Trevor’s name linked to a member of the hospital theatre staff, as well as a medical secretary. She just hoped both those women had regular Pap smears.

  ‘Jane,’ said Lyndall, ‘you know, and don’t know. Since I had the kids it’s been the same – late nights “working back at the surgery”, weekend calls that take three hours, conferences away on his own. By the time I realised what might, well, what was happening, it was already too late. It was a pattern, between us as well as for him. Even though we’d still been having good sex … it wasn’t that he was missing out at home, as far as I could see. I’d find out what was going on, get more and more fed up, we’d fight, not speak for a week or so. Often it seemed to me that the affair would break up in that time, almost as if he wanted to finish it but needed to provoke me to do it. Then we’d have another almighty row, which usually ended up, well, frankly, with us having sex, and me forgiving him all over again, without anything really changing between us. Until the next time. And it’s been like that for nineteen years.

  ‘But it was always … understood, though we never actually talked about it, that he’d use condoms … elsewhere. He didn’t want to, with me, once I’d had my tubes tied.

  ‘I had the kids to think of. Each time I’ve thought of leaving him, I’ve said to myself, just wait, Lyndall, until the kids finish school. Well, Jane, just today, on my way down here, I’ve realised that’s now. David’s already moved out, and Nic’s starting uni this year. Driving along, I just felt so angry … I hope his prick gets warts all over it and falls off! I suppose you don’t know how long I’ve had the virus?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Certainly it’s been some time, maybe years, and it’s taken a while to bring about these changes. It’s not only hard to say when it might have happened, it’s pointless.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lyndall, ‘I’ve had an affair, too – only one – since I married the shit. With the kids’ music teacher.’ She laughed, briefly. ‘When Trevor was working up in the bush and having an affair with a nurse there. It was, um, twelve years ago. And we always used condoms. Anything from then would have shown up long ago, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Probably,’ Jane nodded.

  Lyndall realised that in asking this, she did want to know the answer. But she also wished, somehow, to show Jane that she was not completely defeated by the day’s revelations. She’d been able, once at least, to give as good as she got. Driving down to the surgery that day, her mind in a turmoil, she had thought, among other things, of Bernard. Fondly.

  He had been four years younger than her, but infinitely more experienced. She remembered the initial boredom of those Tuesday afternoon piano lessons. His patient French accent: ‘Now, Dav-eed, just try again slowly … drop your hands like leetle parachutes … Nic-o-la … you must practise more … make your fingers like a too-nel for a train …’ Bernard’s own fingers were long and slim. One Tuesday, Lyndall had watched them sliding over the keys and, unaccountably, imagined them stroking her clitoris. She’d raised her eyes to Bernard’s face, and had seen, amazingly, that the thing was arranged between them.

  It had been easy to leave David’s
music books behind so that Bernard had to bring them around later that evening. Trevor had that nurse he was seeing up in Weipa on Tuesdays, and always stayed there overnight. He imagined Lyndall didn’t know. But of course Lyndall always knew. Good God, didn’t he realise that her whole working life was about understanding how other people behaved and thought? She knew him better than he knew himself.

  Lyndall had told Bernard about Trevor, that first night. The children were only mildly curious to see their music teacher there, and David was pleased his books had been returned. Lyndall had put them to bed while Bernard drank brandy in the living room. Then she’d led him by the hand quite deliberately to the bed she shared with Trevor. She’d been anxious about a new man, after having had the children, both forceps deliveries, about how much she’d stretched inside, about the sagging of her breasts. But Bernard had been tender, appreciative, cuddling her in ways that Trevor never had, and had soon introduced her to the delicious pleasures of anal sex, while his fingers played arpeggios just as she had imagined.

  Each Tuesday for several months she’d put the kids to bed and ring Weipa to check that Trevor was still there, before Bernard arrived. She hadn’t dared to go out with him, to risk getting a babysitter and being seen with him around town. It had been as much to prove to herself that she too could still do it, was still attractive, as the delights of the relationship itself.

  After they’d made love he would ask her about her work. She’d tell him about the cases she’d seen that day. A pregnant woman with an acute psychosis who’d been picked up off the Bruce Highway by the police: naked, on all fours and barking like a dog. With the right drugs and therapy she’d been restored to sanity and would be able to take her baby home. A cane farmer gone broke who’d tried suicide with weedkiller. He’d been in intensive care for two weeks with poisoning. Now Lyndall was helping him through the depression and out onto the other side, hopefully to some semblance of normal life again. Bernard listened intently, as Trevor never did, and asked gentle questions about the lives and families of these people she talked of so affectionately, about which parts of their brains produced these dramatic actions, and why. He himself believed strongly in the power of music to calm mental distress. As a student in France he had regularly played piano for dementia patients in a locked ward. He remembered elderly women with tears in their eyes clapping for a Strauss waltz as if they were at the opera.