The Simple Death

by Michael Duffy

  He saw she was out of practice too.

  ‘I’m driving.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ she said. ‘My flat’s walking distance.’

  Her place was on the third floor of a large block two streets back from the beach. When they got there they kissed in the hall and he saw she was in a hurry, half dragging him into the bedroom and kicking off her shoes as she pulled back the blanket on top of the bed. There was a determination in her, as though they needed to get this thing beyond a certain point as quickly as possible, and as they kissed some more he figured she was right. They passed that point pretty soon, and then she pushed him off.

  ‘That day you let Austin get away,’ she said, ‘you said you were looking at my shoulders. It wasn’t my shoulders, was it?’

  ‘You seemed happy with my story.’

  ‘Huh,’ she said, moving to the door. ‘Don’t go away.’

  He took off his coat and looked around the room. There were two books on a bedside table, the top one he recognised as a PQA study guide. He put it out of his mind, went over to the open window and removed his tie. The room was on the side of the building and you could see along the beach, the lines of surf white in the moonlight. A warm breeze was blowing off the sea with a faint scent of salt. He felt good and there was no thought of anything else, he was fully in this room, listening to the toilet flushing and the sound of Conti coming back. The noise of the toilet was kind of funny, but he figured not to mention it.

  They made love quickly. He tried to control things but she was pressing, and the tempo of their movements increased. Her body was sleek and smooth, she had swimmer’s arms and shoulders and her breasts and bum were not prominent, so his hands moved over her like moving through water, almost never stopping. She was unexpectedly noisy, and that was the last straw.

  She kept her legs around him, refusing to let him roll off her.

  ‘You really needed that.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’

  She laughed, although it came out as more of a gasp. ‘Can’t talk,’ she said, ‘not yet.’

  They lay there. As their breathing returned to normal, he could just hear the sea in the distance.

  FRIDAY

  Twenty-eight

  He slept over, and in the morning was determined not to mention the investigation. It was hard, because his subconscious brooded on work while he slept, and he often woke up with ideas. Now, struggling to keep his mind clear, memories of mornings with other women came back to him, dim times before his marriage. Mornings could be difficult, but there was nothing quite like them if you got it right.

  This one was right, and in the end Conti introduced the subject herself, while they were towelling each other dry in the bathroom. It was a small room and she banged her elbow, broke the mood.

  ‘Maybe we should go to Bourke and find Valdez,’ she said.

  He laughed and tried to put a hand on her bottom, but she wriggled away from him. ‘Feel like a break?’

  She wrapped a towel around herself. ‘Haven’t had leave in eighteen months. It affects you, dealing with low-life like Jim Austin all the time. We deserve a break, somewhere clean.’

  ‘You see a big gap there, do you? Jim and you?’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  Grabbed his head, kissed him hard. The towel began to slip.

  *

  When he was dressed he went into her living room and saw a photo of a couple in their sixties on a side table, the man Bill Conti. Troy recognised him from a famous picture of Conti and two other detectives standing over the corpse of a criminal they’d shot, back in the late seventies. A crim they shouldn’t have shot, in the opinion of many people, although no one would ever know. Unless one of the three detectives decided to talk about it, which in the scheme of things was highly unlikely.

  ‘What was your dad doing in 1979?’ said Conti, coming into the room and handing him a cup of coffee.

  As though she could read his mind.

  ‘Uniform, I guess. Maybe at Granville.’ He didn’t know much about his father’s police career.

  ‘Did he ever get into CI?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He had a vague memory of his father going to work in plainclothes while still in the job, so maybe he’d made it to criminal investigation. He looked at his watch.

  They had to go to St Thomas’, which meant a long journey. The traffic was like water running through a delta, it went everywhere it could. Except there was a logic to a delta’s flow: all the water was heading for the sea, even if this was hard to tell on the ground. But Sydney’s traffic, it went everywhere. No one knew its meaning.

  Stuck in sight of the city, they ran out of conversation. Eventually Conti said, ‘It’s weird, don’t you think, that David Saunders is still using his own office even though he’s doing Bellamy’s job? Most people couldn’t wait to move into the CEO’s office.’

  ‘Couldn’t they?’

  ‘It’s like he’s saying, “My job’s as important as his, I don’t need to move.’’ ’

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘Is that what he’s saying?’

  She’d put on sunglasses, and he couldn’t see her eyes.

  ‘That’s what he’s saying,’ she said, and there was a hint of impatience there. ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Come on. You must have formed some opinion.’

  He was saved by a call on the hands-free. It was McIver, said, ‘I’m at Manly. What about you?’

  Mac sounded spry, as though yesterday’s lunch had not happened. Maybe he’d forgotten it. Troy explained he was stuck in traffic.

  ‘That Conti,’ said Mac. ‘An attractive woman.’

  He looked across at Conti. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You with her?’

  Troy glanced around, at the cars nearby, wondering if McIver was spying on them.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Best not to. Work romances can only lead to sorrow.’

  ‘How’s Ruth?’

  ‘Ruth,’ Mac said, ‘is another story.’

  Troy didn’t push it, not wanting Conti to hear anything personal McIver might choose to tell him. But the sergeant changed the subject, and explained what had been done yesterday afternoon, none of it useful. Their knowledge of what had not happened to Mark Pearson was now comprehensive. Troy told him about the doctors he’d spoken with, and the Oncology stats.

  ‘You’ve come across BRISTOL?’ said McIver.

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘A mate told me. It’s Saunders’ ticket out if he can stop Bellamy from canning it. If he can get it up and have a big win, he might get hired as CEO by another hospital. Of course it’s bullshit, like all that UK stuff; targets, measurement, it all goes back to scientific management theory. You’ve heard of Frederick Taylor?’

  Troy looked at Conti, raised his eyebrows. Mac seemed to have a lot of time this morning. Maybe yesterday’s binge had cleared his mind.

  ‘Just.’

  ‘Father of scientific management. What few people know is that he made most of it up. Just told lies.’

  ‘I thought he was a hero,’ said Troy, who’d been told about Taylor on a course.

  ‘BRISTOL says the health system has five per cent waste, you cut that and you save so many hundred million. But every organisation has five per cent waste, at least, don’t have to be Einstein to work that out. Problem is how to target the waste when you make cuts. Truth is, BRISTOL can’t do that better than anyone else, so when you stick the knife in, you take out more muscle than fat.’

  ‘Saunders ought to know that.’

  ‘Of course he does. Management theory is the greatest crap—’

  ‘Mark Pearson approved of BRISTOL.’

  McIver laughed. ‘Poor bast
ard had an MBA. He wouldn’t have had a clue.’

  He talked some more, just housekeeping stuff, said he’d be at the hospital later, and hung up. Troy glanced at Conti, who was staring at the phone speaker with what seemed like mild shock. Although as she was still wearing the dark glasses, he couldn’t be sure.

  She said, ‘I’m doing an MBA.’

  Twenty-nine

  When they reached Room 233, Troy printed a document from e@gle.i. Then he found his way to the ombudsman’s office. It was one big room, with a quarter of the area partitioned off to create a private office where Pearson had worked. There were no windows, and no people in the outer room. He knocked on the door of the internal one and a voice told him to come in.

  Paula Williams was wearing a dark blue suit today, sitting behind the desk and tapping on a keyboard.

  ‘One of your colleagues just brought back the hard drive,’ she said. She stared at the screen as though it might reveal the secrets of Mark Pearson’s life. It wouldn’t, Troy knew. He knew exactly who Mark had emailed in the month before his death, knew where he’d travelled in cyberspace. There was nothing there to help them, no dating websites, no searches on the word pethidine.

  He went to the side of the desk and watched the screen with her. She leaned back, and he saw a flock of pigeons flying across the sky as the saver kicked in. The sky behind the birds was pure blue, apart from the very top of a church spire that came and went at the foot of the screen. In a few seconds the birds were replaced by a view of some building Troy thought he recognised. He asked Williams if she knew where the pictures came from.

  ‘You can load your own,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my boys on mine.’

  Some buildings appeared, modern townhouses designed to look like terraces, and he realised they were next to the park where he’d met Tim Kalnins.

  ‘Mark took these?’

  Williams nodded. ‘When we got the computers, they came with standard pictures, tropical fish, alpine meadows, all that. It was a bit pretty for Mark. One lunchtime he said he couldn’t stand it anymore, went out for an hour with a digital camera.’

  Troy nodded. Pearson’s camera, all the pictures on it and on his computers, had been checked too. An officer at Manly had spent two days going through the images, looking for anything of significance, identifying the people who appeared in them. Another picture of pigeons came on the screen, swirling around in a sort of pattern.

  ‘Nice pics,’ he said.

  ‘Mark had a good eye.’ She pointed at the wall. ‘Those are his.’

  Troy looked at two paintings, one a drab abstract in grey and black with a trace of red, the other more colourful, a bit like a close-up of a computer’s CPU. As Williams leaned forwards and began to type, he examined them more closely and found something inside himself stirring, as though feelings he couldn’t recognise had been aroused. He looked away.

  ‘Was there something?’ she said.

  ‘Do you think you’ll get Mark’s job?’

  ‘I don’t know if they’ll keep it,’ she said, reddening a little. ‘I don’t know if I’d want it, either.’

  He nodded, figuring the last bit of that was insincere. ‘Can I see the log of calls about the progress of complaints?’

  She stood up. ‘That’s the red book on Sally’s desk.’

  ‘Sally’s not here?’

  ‘Sick leave since you found Mark. Stress.’

  She took him out front and found the book, and when she’d gone back into the other office, he sat down and went through it. There was a handwritten record of every phone call the office received, with the name of the patient involved, the name and number of the caller, and a brief description of the purpose of the call. At first there’d been a diversity of calls, but in the past month over half had f/u written next to them, presumably meaning ‘follow up’, along with another surname. A key at the front of the book indicated this meant the caller was asking about the progress of a complaint that had already been lodged.

  The list he’d pulled off e@gle.i earlier contained all the complaints received by the ombudsman since the position started, in alphabetical order. Rostov’s group had compiled this from all the files they’d been given. Troy went through the red book and checked that every name with f/u before it also appeared in the list of complaints. It took over an hour, and by the time he’d finished he had found three instances where someone had called about a complaint that did not appear on the list of files. The names were Des Bernfeld, Marion Dougherty and Jean Smith. There had been several phone queries about the last two.

  He made a few calls and then took the book and the list into Williams, and told her what he’d found.

  She flushed, more scarlet than pink, and frowned. ‘I can’t understand it. We investigated those complaints, they should be there. I thought we gave you the files.’

  He sat down and watched her across the desk, watched her gaze shift around. ‘The thing about being a good liar,’ he said, ‘is that it needs practice.’

  ‘I’m not lying. That’s—do you have any reason to say that?’

  ‘I’d say David Saunders had some practice.’

  She shifted in her seat, said, ‘You’re suggesting Mark destroyed some of the complaints?’

  ‘Not really,’ he smiled. ‘But let’s pretend for now. I just rang the three people who made the calls on the missing files.’ Williams stared at him. She looked frozen, and he wondered what the deal was: probably, Saunders had offered her Pearson’s job if she went through with this. But what really interested him were the bigger questions, why these complaints had been removed, what Saunders was trying to hide.

  He had the beginnings of an answer to that. ‘I got on to two of the callers,’ he said, ‘asked about the nature of their complaints. Both involved deaths in the same ward, and I’m betting the third will too. The cancer ward.’

  ‘Oncology.’

  He watched her some more and she said nothing.

  ‘Is that all you can say? “Oncology”?’

  ‘That’s the correct name for it.’

  ‘Where are the files?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  She was scared, he could see that. But determined too. David Saunders was a very powerful man.

  He batted it around with her for a few more minutes, but she refused to admit to any knowledge of the missing files. She grew more confident, clear about where her loyalty lay. He pulled out the stats for Oncology deaths and threw them on the desk.

  ‘You’ve seen these—you gave them to Saunders,’ he said, guessing.

  ‘Admin sent them up here for you. I asked him to pass them on, thought you’d be seeing—’

  ‘What do they mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Some years you’re up, sometimes you’re down.’

  He took out his digital recorder and turned it on.

  ‘We’ll have them looked at by experts,’ he said. She flinched; she was frightened, maybe finding herself on the wrong side of things, seriously, for the first time in her life. ‘You need to talk now,’ he said gently, pointing at the stats. ‘If there’s anything there, it’s going to come out.’

  She shook her head twice, said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He spent five minutes trying to break her down, using all his experience. How hard can this be? he thought as he got a little heated, made her cringe.

  But she refused to break.

  *

  Back in Room 233 Troy went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of instant. For a while he was alone, thinking about Saunders, and then Conti came in. White blouse, sleeves rolled up, snug-fitting brown slacks. She kissed him, sliding a hand down to his crotch and disrupting the view he’d formed of her as a woman who kept her life in compartments.

>   She stepped back and examined the coffee tin. Mountain Roast.

  ‘I can’t believe you drink this stuff,’ she said, as though it was important. She looked towards the door of the small room. ‘There’s a fire escape at the end of the corridor.’

  Doing more serious damage to his view of her.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You turn left outside. Don’t keep me waiting.’

  She winked and walked out, just as one of the other female detectives came in.

  ‘Hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ she said, and laughed.

  How could they know already? he wondered, as he took his cup back to his desk. Maybe Conti had told someone. He waited for the anger to rise but there was none there, and he saw he didn’t care. Realised he was happy.

  In the stairwell they kissed, and soon the bright light and the smell of concrete didn’t matter anymore and it started to get out of control. She smelled good today, a perfume that was lighter than last night, although you had to be close to notice. He was very close, and she moved her hand down to his fly. He pulled away.

  ‘Not here,’ he said.

  Anyone could come in.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Tonight. Let’s go out.’

  ‘You still want to see me, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can we go to Maroubra, to your place?’

  ‘Do you need to go home first?’

  ‘I travel light. Remember?’

  ‘Well—’

  But her face creased and she took a step back. ‘I forgot,’ she said. ‘I’m off to Lismore tonight for my brother’s birthday. Back on Sunday.’

  ‘You forgot?’

  ‘I was carried away. By desire.’

  He smiled. Sunday seemed far away.

  Looking at his watch, he said he had to meet Mac soon.

  ‘Keep me involved?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I want to be involved.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I think I’d better go now.’ She turned to open the door, said, ‘You might want to wipe your lips.’