The Simple Death

by Michael Duffy

  Carl nodded. ‘There’s more acceptance there, of death. And they’re better at pain management. She’d been hurt a lot as a child. Pain worried her.’

  ‘Abuse?’

  He nodded again. ‘I suggested she seek help, but she seemed to be handling it.’

  Troy said, ‘When Julie got depressed, did her behaviour change?’

  Burns frowned in concentration. He was looking at them more often now, making more of an effort.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you ever see her harm a patient?’

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondering,’ said Troy, not wanting to say anything to alert Burns to the concerns of the investigation. The detectives at St Thomas’ would be doing that soon enough.

  ‘No,’ Burns said, looking sharply at both of them. Then, ‘Well, once I saw her about to give an old lady too much morphine. I pointed this out to Jules and she changed the quantity, said it was a mistake.’

  He looked down at the table, apparently recalling the incident.

  Conti said, ‘Would it have been a fatal dose?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s not that easy to kill someone with morphine.’

  ‘Why do you think she did that?’

  ‘A mistake. Like I said, by then she wasn’t operating all that good.’

  Troy cleared his throat. ‘Do you think there might have been other mistakes?’

  ‘No.’ Burns looked wretched. Despite his quick answer, you could see he was still thinking about it. Maybe it was something that had been on his mind.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m not sure of anything.’ He brushed a few tears from his face. ‘But we had a talk about what I’d seen, and she resigned soon afterwards.’

  ‘You told anyone?’

  ‘No. Nothing actually happened.’

  ‘Because you were there.’

  Conti said, ‘If Julie had these issues relating to death, wasn’t a hospice a strange place to go to next?’

  Burns shook his head vigorously. ‘It wasn’t the death that worried her in Oncology. It was the attitude. Cancer doctors are A types, always running around trying to save people who don’t have a chance. It’s like it’s about them instead of the patients.’

  ‘What about Dr Carter, is he like that?’

  ‘He’s got other problems. There’s this ward-management system—’

  ‘What about with the patients?’

  ‘He’s no worse than the others. The point about the hospice is they accept death and that was important to Julie. It made her at ease with the work.’

  Changing tack, Troy asked Burns about the night of Cornish’s death, and learned that he’d had a migraine, had taken a tablet and gone to bed, alone at home. They went over the whole business but Burns had nothing to add. As far as he knew, Julie hadn’t experienced heart problems before.

  ‘How long had you two been in a relationship?’ said Conti.

  ‘About eight years.’

  ‘Did you ever live together?’

  ‘No. We often slept at each other’s places. But she needed her personal space. She was plain to look at but had a heart of gold. She was one very special lady.’

  ‘You ever fight?’

  ‘Yeah, we separated for a while around the time she left Oncology. She wanted children, I didn’t. She left me, came back.’

  Troy terminated the interview soon after, thanked Burns for his time.

  Conti and he walked over to Emergency. She asked what he thought.

  ‘I don’t like him. Bit of a slug. But still—’

  ‘You think Julie recorded her mistakes in the diary, and now he’s trying to hide the evidence?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Troy said. ‘He seems pretty upset. Maybe he’s like us, trying to find some answers.’

  ‘Sounds like they had an unusual relationship.’

  ‘That’s no crime.’

  ‘Yeah, but still.’

  Troy realised that because he’d met Julie he was making allowances for Carl, sympathising with his grief. But Conti was right: there was an oddness to the man that required more thought.

  Forty-three

  Leila Scott was in a corner of Emergency, lying on a bed with a curtain giving her some privacy. She was propped up on pillows, her head partly wrapped in a bandage and tilted sideways. From what Troy could see, she was a slender woman, just above average height. Prominent nose and chin, a small but well-shaped mouth. Her skirt was an unusual caramel colour and there was a jacket of the same material on a chair next to the bed. Made him think of the last century, maybe the 1960s. He introduced Conti and himself, and Scott nodded vaguely. A nurse had told them the head wound looked a lot worse than it was, and she was on painkillers that were making her groggy.

  Troy asked her to tell them what happened, and she looked at him blankly.

  ‘You drove home from work?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She giggled. ‘What have they given me?’ She spoke clearly, like a radio announcer, but more slowly.

  ‘What time did you get home?’

  ‘About eleven. Then I went—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you’re sure about that?’ said Conti. ‘The time?’

  ‘I’m not sure about anything right now,’ said Leila. ‘You’re not chewing gum, are you? Either of you?’

  Troy looked at Conti.

  ‘Eleven o’clock?’

  Scott closed her eyes. ‘Why don’t you call my PA, Amie? She’ll know when I left. The trip takes about forty minutes, you do the maths.’

  It was a halting interview. Troy tried to get Scott to talk about Julie, but she didn’t seem to know much. For periods she would stop and drift, and Troy could hear loud noises around them, people coming and going, snatches of conversation, at one point the yells of a patient. Scott winced and he felt some sympathy: this was no place for a sick person.

  Apart from the time difference, her account of the morning matched Burns’s.

  ‘The police think it was opp—’ she said. ‘Tunistic. Shouldn’t have left the front door open. But you can’t live in a fortress, can you? And it’s such a quiet neighbourhood. I mean, I grew up there.’

  Rich kid, thought Troy. I wonder what I’m owed, Conti’s fighting for what she’s owed. But this woman has already got it. Always had it.

  ‘You left work to drive all the way up here to meet Carl,’ Conti said. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘There was the payment for looking after Mum. And after what’s happened to Julie, I wanted to do the right thing by him, and he was desperate for that diary. Why would someone steal it?’

  ‘Mr Burns suggests the thief thought there might be money in the book, it was a ledger and he might have believed it was accounts. So he just grabbed the whole lot when he heard Mr Burns coming.’

  Scott leaned back as though willing the pillows to give way so she could lie flat. For a second Troy could see what she’d be like without the bandage and realised she was an attractive woman. You’d probably have to look twice, because she didn’t give off any of the indications many women did that she considered herself pretty. But she was, if you liked skinny women.

  ‘We’ll have another talk tomorrow,’ he said, ‘when you’re feeling better.’ She had her eyes closed and he wasn’t sure she’d even heard him. ‘Is there anyone we could contact? Someone who could come and get you?’

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, as though peering at something that was hard to see.

  ‘I’ll be just fine,’ she said with a sudden burst of energy. ‘I might be single but I can look after myself. Don’t patronise me. I have a PhD, you know.’

  ‘I’m not patronising you.’

  ‘You see a single woman and think she’
s helpless.’

  He guessed she was not normally like this.

  ‘Ms Scott, do you mind if we search your house?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just in case the diary is there somewhere.’

  ‘You want to search for the diary?’ She yawned and closed her eyes. He thought they’d lost her, but twenty seconds later she murmured, ‘Okay.’

  Outside, Conti looked at Troy, said, ‘I give up. Why do we want to search the house?’

  ‘What if Burns did it and stashed the stuff?’

  ‘Pretty implausible. He would have been taking a big risk she’d see him. And that was a bad knock he got on the forehead.’

  ‘Could have done it to himself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The diary.’

  ‘But she was going to give it to him anyway.’

  Troy shrugged. His mind was blank. Sometimes ideas come, sometimes not. He wondered how things were going at St Thomas’.

  They drove to Leila Scott’s place, and Conti called the Eastwood sergeant who was managing the search of the neighbourhood, learned they’d found nothing. She asked nicely and the sergeant said the search team would meet them at the house.

  When the call was finished, Troy pointed at her mobile and said, ‘Check them out.’

  ‘Cornish and Burns?’

  ‘The three of them.’

  She made the call while he concentrated on finding his way to the Scott residence in Beecroft. It was one of many big places in a leafy street. There was a hedge and a gravel drive, and a tennis court at the side. Troy wondered if Scott would be selling to the developers, now her mother was gone. He didn’t want to patronise her, but it was too big for a single person, even a woman. The gardening would kill you.

  Up ahead, Burns and Latimer were getting out of a marked police car. Troy looked around: there was no one else in the street. It would be attractive to an opportunistic thief, maybe an apprentice from another part of the city, working somewhere in the neighbourhood that day, going for a walk in his lunch break. Maybe someone who was a little high, or had a debt that had to be paid that night to avoid a kicking. You see an open door and it’s like an invitation.

  Conti took a call. She gazed out the window as she listened, and he glanced at her neck, remembering the feel of her skin on his lips. She looked at him and he turned away, got out of the car and went over to the gravel driveway. When the call was finished, she joined him, said, ‘This is interesting. Julie Cornish and Carl Burns are clean.’

  ‘That’s interesting?’

  ‘Leila Scott, though, executive in the Department of Education, has two drug convictions. Possession in ninety-one and, get this, did almost a year in ninety-three for intent to supply.’

  Troy thought of the woman they’d just interviewed, with her stretched-out words and fine clothes. The tilt of the head that indicated, even when she was zonked on painkillers, that she held herself in high regard.

  ‘Some people say rehabilitation isn’t possible,’ he said, ‘but they’re wrong.’

  She rubbed the ground with a toe, pushing the white gravel around. He saw she didn’t like Leila Scott.

  She said, ‘You reckon?’

  *

  There was nothing of interest in Burns’s car.

  When the search was finished, Troy said to him, putting some aggro into his voice, ‘There’s a discrepancy in times. You say the attack occurred about eleven-forty. Ms Scott says it would have been at least half an hour earlier.’

  Burns didn’t seem worried by this. Sitting on the bonnet of his car, he felt his forehead gingerly, keeping away from the stitched wound. He considered the times. ‘I’m sure I’m right,’ he said. ‘And I called emergency less than a minute after the attack.’

  Troy knew the call had been logged at eleven forty-one.

  ‘So you’re saying Ms Scott must be wrong.’

  ‘She’s had a nasty blow to the head. I know when I got here, know when I made the call.’

  They went over it a few more times, then Troy told Burns he could go. The nurse was smiling as he pulled out his keys, trying to hide it but relieved at something. Interesting, Troy thought. So often when you interviewed a person, you knew something was wrong but had no idea what it was. Usually, you never found out.

  Burns said, ‘Can I stay and see if you find it? Then I could take it with me.’

  ‘No you couldn’t,’ Conti said. ‘It’s evidence.’

  The nurse looked upset.

  Troy said, ‘Did Julie write about her work in the diary?’

  ‘No. Not at all. It was all personal.’

  ‘Did she like working in Oncology? Apart from the problems with the pain, did she get on with people? Happy with the way the place was run?’

  ‘What do you mean? What’re you suggesting?’

  ‘It’s a simple question, Carl.’

  ‘Things were cool. It’s like I said, she needed a change.’

  ‘Okay.’ Troy smiled. ‘You can go now.’

  Burns just stood there, and Troy wondered what was going through his mind. Confusion maybe, the consequences of intense grief. Finally he nodded and got in his car.

  The uniforms arrived and spent an hour searching the house and grounds. Conti and Troy helped, and he was struck by the number of books in the place. One room, a stale-smelling study, had so many book- shelves it was almost completely lined with them. He wondered how anyone could find the time to read so much. There were paintings, too, in other rooms, and he spent some time looking at them, deciding on the whole he preferred them to those in the Pearsons’ flat. These were a lot older, and apart from one that looked like someone had rubbed it with boot polish, he could see what was going on.

  When the search was finished Troy thanked the sergeant for the effort. Pat Bidwell was an intense man with unusually clear eyes and skin, and took him by the sleeve and drew him aside. They stood on the lawn next to a hedge.

  ‘Leila Scott’s mother Elizabeth died here last week,’ he said. ‘On Friday I had a call, off the record, from Ben Farrell, Elizabeth’s GP. He signed the death certificate, death from bone cancer, but after the funeral he heard she’d been friendly with another doctor, a bloke who’s rumoured to be involved with voluntary euthanasia.’

  ‘Rumoured?’

  ‘That’s all he had. He said Leila Scott went to Los Angeles a week before her mother’s death. Apparently you can go across the border to Mexico and buy a drug that people use to kill themselves. This Dr Farrell said it happens a lot.’

  Troy didn’t want to hear this. He wanted to find the killer of Mark Pearson. He’d been running scenarios through his mind, wondering if Julie Cornish might be the killer, she had been big and strong enough to throw Pearson off the ferry. Could she have got the pethidine into him, and placed the ampoules in his flat? Or maybe Burns had been involved. His alibi for the night Pearson died needed to be checked, but maybe he’d helped in other ways. None of this was working at the moment but it was the main game; he had no interest in whether Leila Scott had helped her mother die.

  Such cases were black holes. Homicide had been involved in a suspected assisted suicide two years ago, a difficult business that had torn a family named Simkins apart and led to a sensational trial. The jury had been hung and the Director of Public Prosecutions decided against another trial, so the accused, a seventy-year-old woman, walked free. Some members of the squad had declared the whole thing a waste of police time.

  He said to Bidwell, ‘There’s no evidence for any of this?’

  ‘Our detectives went and talked to Dr Farrell, but there was nothing more.’

  ‘Any suggestion Cornish and Burns knew what was going on?’

  ‘It’s Scott I’m interested in. People can’t be allowed to break the law, no matter who the
y are.’ Bidwell was staring at him with wide eyes; he seemed to care deeply about the subject.

  ‘There was no autopsy?’

  ‘No. At the time it seemed straightforward. She was cremated.’

  Troy felt almost relieved. But Bidwell was still staring at him, as though expecting something.

  Troy shrugged. ‘What do you think we should do?’

  ‘Leila Scott’s got previous.’

  ‘I know.’

  Bidwell nodded eagerly, as though this was significant, as though happy Troy had thought to look into it himself. Troy resisted the temptation to shrug again.

  ‘I’ll have a think about this,’ he said.

  Bidwell was still staring at him. ‘You work for Alan Peters, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I heard that last year, after the Simkins case, Peters said, “Don’t we have enough real murders to be getting on with?’’ ’

  That sounded like Peters, and Troy wondered how Bidwell had heard. Maybe he was part of some Catholic prayer group in the force. Troy had once been approached to join one but he’d declined, not wanting to be known as someone who picked his friends by their affiliations. The job had seen enough of that in the past, Micks versus Goatriders.

  As it happened, on voluntary euthanasia he suspected he’d be closer to Bidwell than Peters. But it was not something he wanted to talk about.

  ‘You’ll let me know?’ Bidwell said, putting out his hand.

  Troy shook it, nodded. ‘Likewise,’ he said. ‘The diary would be handy.’

  ‘I’ll put a car here tonight if you like. In case Burns comes back for it.’

  ‘That’s a generous offer.’

  ‘If I get the diary for you, will you talk to Helen Kelly about Leila Scott?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Forty-four

  At Marrickville Police Station, Troy and Conti met Jim Needham, a young man with a surprisingly big gut. You couldn’t stay in the job these days if you carried too much weight, and Troy wondered how he’d survived. Needham seemed bemused by their interest in Cornish’s death, until Troy explained they were looking into the possibility someone at St Thomas’ had been killing patients.