Blood Sisters

by Caroline de Costa

  ‘If what has happened was a medical abortion then she’s taken medication to bring on contractions like labour, and that’s expelled the foetus. But she was much too late in pregnancy—I’d say about eighteen to twenty weeks—to do such a thing on her own, in a motel, or anywhere else outside of a hospital, for that matter. We use drugs safely and legally for some late abortions. Obviously, for a good medical reason, but always in hospital.

  ‘The problem here is that no matter how many contractions she had, that placenta was not going to come away easily. She would have started to bleed, and I think she probably tried to pull the placenta out herself. I can see blood under her fingernails. Pulling has torn very big blood vessels where the placenta is still attached, and they would have made the bleeding very much worse.

  ‘And as well, with this kind of torrential bleeding, it uses up all the factors in the blood that help form clots, so the blood gets thinner and thinner and less likely to clot. That would explain how it ran right across the floor and under the door, as you described.’

  ‘She couldn’t have just gone to a doctor for an abortion, here in Cairns?’ Cass asked.

  ‘Not at 18 weeks or more. Up to 12, 13 weeks, yes, it could have been done safely here. But she probably didn’t know that. She wouldn’t have wanted to go to a doctor she didn’t know, in that situation.’

  ‘But, why would she go to the motel to do this? Why not at home where she lives with her cousin?’

  Leah looked across at Cass. ‘Because of someone else who might come to their place, who she didn’t want knowing?’ she suggested. ‘Or simply for privacy?’

  Cass thought of the steady flow of clients they’d seen at the Mooroobool unit the previous day. Of Gerry Rose.

  ‘And if she had seen a doctor, it would have been okay?’ Cass asked.

  ‘Yes, if she’d seen a doctor in time to make the diagnosis. If she’d had an ultrasound. But this was hardly a planned pregnancy, so she probably had no antenatal care at all. If she’d seen a doctor here in time, she would have needed surgery and a blood transfusion, maybe even a hysterectomy, but she would have been okay. What she’s ended up with, though, is exactly the same thing as would have happened if she’d stayed in the Philippines and used the drug illegally. A complicated pregnancy, a botched abortion and a dead mother.’

  ‘There was a pair of scissors found in the bed in the motel,’ said Cass. ‘We were thinking they’d been used to stab her, in the vagina. But from what you’re saying it seems that’s not the case. Though why would she have scissors, kitchen scissors, there?’

  Susie lifted the remnant of umbilical cord from within Dorrie’s uterus.

  ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘that’s been very neatly cut off, not torn, after the foetus was passed, although I think she then probably tried to pull on it to get the placenta out. I’d say she brought the scissors with her specifically to cut the cord. She would have been able to do that; she didn’t start to bleed heavily until after the foetus was out.’

  Leah nodded in agreement with Susie, then said: ‘I’m going to take out all the genital tract, uterus and cervix and vagina, and make sections of each organ. Because the only alternative to doing a medical abortion would be to use some kind of instrument, and if that’s the case, there will be obvious signs of trauma. But there’s nothing yet that makes me feel I’m going to find anything like that. I’m going to do everything else, too, including the brain. But it looks like we’re going to end up with complications of abortion as a cause of death.’

  ‘I need to get back to my clinic,’ said Susie. ‘Thanks for calling me down. And I’ll be very interested to read your full report!’

  ‘Oh, thank you for coming,’ Leah replied warmly.

  By this time, Cass’s nausea had dissipated. She stepped back again to watch Leah as she worked quickly through the other organs which, apart from the pallor, seemed normal. Leah then fully opened the uterus and showed Cass how the placenta had grown right through. Some of it was stuck in the floppy open mouth of the cervix, but there were no lacerations.

  Leah placed the uterus on a tray, handed it to Laurie who would prepare the tissue for microscopic examination, and stepped back, stripping off her gloves at the same time.

  ‘Laurie will close up the body,’ she said to Cass. ‘Let’s go and have some coffee in my office.’

  ‘That sounds good,’ said Cass, relieved to be finished with this sad place. ‘I’ll just give Drew a call first and tell him we’re no longer looking for a murderer.’

  9

  Angeles City, the Philippines

  2010–2013

  Dick. Cock. Prick. Ding-dong. Weenie. Willie. Fucker. Boner. Pecker. Big boy. Old boy. Rod. Old sausage. Poker.

  These were a few of the English words Marcie taught Dorrie when she started work in Jack’s Bar. Schlong and schmock, among others, for the Germans. All these silly names men had. Just for buto or titi.

  Marcie also taught her nuts, balls, googlies, blow job, hand job, go down, cum, jerk off, finish me off.

  Of course, Dorrie already spoke a lot of English. Everyone did on Fields Avenue. And she had learned it in school—the four years of school she’d had in Angeles—two years primary and two years of high school. Marcie had wanted her to finish school. She’d wanted to herself. But when Dorrie found she was having Little Ronny she couldn’t continue with the nuns.

  Marcie showed her how to put on condoms: first with her hands then with her teeth. She practised on a ripe banana. Marcie told her what to say. ‘Always tell them how big they are. Even when they’re not.’ Marcie stroked the banana. ‘You soooo big,’ she lisped at it. ‘I’m gonna need loooong time with you!’ She roared with laughter as she peeled the banana and broke it into pieces to share with her young cousin.

  Marcie taught her how to please clients. ‘Each one, you have to tell him he’s the one for you, he’s special.’ She got Dorrie to practise shouting—oh, oh, oh, awooooh!! Yes, yes, yes!!

  And Marcie taught her how to check a man for infections.

  ‘Have your hair loose and falling on his chest,’ she said, ‘so he can’t see you’re looking down and checking.’ Dorrie had never cut her hair, it hung so far down her back she could sit on it. Marcie told her to look for discharge, cuts or pimples, scabs. To smell the guy’s pre-cum.

  ‘Pre-cum should be clear,’ said Marcie, ‘not green or yellow.’ Jack’s Bar had high standards: girls could refuse clients vaginal or anal sex if they thought the guy had an infection; but they were still expected to give hand jobs.

  ‘Get yourself checked at the clinic every month. And don’t forget the needles every three months. They’ll stop you having baby brothers for Ronny and stop your monthlies, too, so you don’t have days when you can’t work.

  ‘Don’t put up with rough play you don’t want,’ said Marcie. ‘All the girls will look after you anyway.’ Marcie had a lot of friends along the Avenue.

  ‘When a guy is taking you to a hotel, always try to tell someone where you’re going first,’ she told Dorrie. ‘And if one of the girls catches your eye or shakes her head when you’re meeting up with a guy, tell him you’re already with someone else.’ Dorrie easily understood this. It was just the year before that Yandy, a girl from a bar two doors down, had been strangled and dumped head first in a canal in one of the poorest parts of the town. No one knew who she’d left the bar with, and her killer had never been found.

  ‘Don’t tell guys your real name. The bar will give you a name. Don’t tell them anything about your life. It’s just work, it’s nothing to do with your real life,’ Marcie said. ‘Don’t talk about your baby or where you come from.

  ‘Beware of guys who want to make you theirs only. To save you from “this life”. Of course, all the girls want to find The One. The one who’ll take them back to Australia or Germany or Sweden or America; who’ll put them in a big house and give them money and kids. It happens, but not often. Often it’s only to make the girls slaves.’


  Most of the advice she followed, all the time she’d been in Angeles and in Malaysia. Just the injections. They made her stomach swell up with gas and she felt sad a lot of the time. She knew other girls who had the same problems. She’d put it off a bit more each time, until last time it had been nearly five months instead of three. And there’d been that guy who came back again and again. That German fellow. She’d let him, finally, go bareback. After he’d worn her down. That was all he wanted. Just once. To make her do it. He paid her double, but she never saw him again. Then when she saw her stomach was swelling even more than usual, she knew immediately what it was.

  It was a big problem, because by then Australia was all arranged. Marcie had left for Australia and Dorrie was supposed to go there too. Marcie was waiting. The work was good there, they’d been told. They could make much more than in Angeles, and it would be safer than Malaysia, where a client had beaten her with a stick so hard she’d had to go to the hospital. They’d have to pay back their fares, but they could send some money home even from the first month. Enough to look after Little Ronny.

  She got the tablets from a friend of Maria Angela’s in her village. The woman told her what to do and put a hand on her stomach to feel if the baby was too big already. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘But do it soon.’ She gave her six tablets and charged her 200 pesos.

  ‘After about four hours,’ the woman said, ‘it will all come away in the toilet. With bleeding but like your monthlies. Take some Panadol as well. It will all stop in about a week.’

  But when she arrived in Australia, she couldn’t do it straight away. There was work every day and the mamasan took almost all the money. There was just enough for food for the two of them, and to send some each week to Maria Angela, when Marcie also put in what she had earned.

  When Marcie heard she was pregnant for a second time she slapped her again. But she gave Dorrie enough money to go to the motel for a night.

  ‘You can’t stay here with clients and maybe the mamasan coming,’ she said. ‘I’ll take your phone and deal with the guys’ calls. And when it’s all over we’ll get you back on the needle so you don’t have any more babies in Australia.’

  ***

  Marcie first heard about what abortion was soon after she began working in Angeles. The other girls in Jack’s Bar told her how it was done. It was against the law, but women did it anyway. Then she understood what her own mother must have done. She had gone to a backstreet abortionist and died from the procedure. Her mother just couldn’t bring up another child with a husband who drank too much and had no legs.

  ‘Don’t go to someone who wants to stick something inside you,’ the girls in Angeles told her. ‘It’s much better to take the pills. They get rid of it for you. It’s safer.’ It seemed like all the girls in Jack’s Bar had done this at some time. And they were all just fine.

  So when Dorrie told Marcie that she had the pills, and that she was going to do it in that nice clean motel room with its flowery bedspread and ensuite shower, Marcie had thought that her cousin would be just fine too.

  10

  Cairns

  Thursday 23rd August 2013

  On Thursday afternoon, Dorcas and Mai Ling were rostered for the junior school car pickup. This was a regular Baptist College task for Year 11s.

  Dorcas was sitting in their homeroom texting her boyfriend, Esteban. He was at a boarding school in Townsville and could only visit a few times each term. Dorcas was therefore the most skilled texter of all four girls. ‘I can do it without looking,’ she’d boasted.

  ‘Come on, Dorc,’ Mai Ling said, ‘stop giving the guy a virtual blow job: it’s our day for helping the yummy mummies!’

  Dorcas added some kisses to her message, pressed send, then twisted her long fair hair into a knot on top of her head. She got to her feet and the two girls crossed the shaded playground, tall blonde Dorcas loping alongside the petite Mai Ling, with her shining black helmet of hair. There was already a queue of cars at the school entrance. Parents collecting offspring from the junior school pulled one by one into the drive and had their child or children delivered to the car by senior students. Today, Mai Ling’s boyfriend James Wang, and his mate Harry, were already there. A stream of four-wheel drives—BMWs, Audis, Mercedes, most of which had never encountered any obstacle more challenging than the Cairns Central carwash—flowed slowly along as Dorcas, Mai Ling, James and Harry gathered up the appropriate juniors.

  ‘Kristy Lee! Kristy Lee—hurry up, your mum’s gotta get you to the orthodontist to tighten up those braces!’

  ‘Jayden Flanagan! Jay-den! Is that your sports bag you’re leaving behind, Jay-den??’

  ‘Darcy children! The Darcy family! Ernest and Pandora, per-lee-ase!’

  ‘Casey Robinson stop pushing Miranda and wait your turn!’

  Dorcas grabbed Mai Ling by the arm. ‘Hey! Don’t look now but isn’t that the woman we saw yesterday at the Lily Pad? The one who took Marcie away?’

  Mai Ling stood on tiptoe and peered over Dorcas’s shoulder. There was the red Mercedes station wagon they’d seen outside the café.

  ‘Yeah, that’s her. That’s her car. Yeah, that’s right: she’s Braydon’s mum!’

  Braydon, from Year 4, had already gathered up his school bag and computer and was making his way to his mother’s car. He was a slim Asian-Australian boy whom Dorcas now remembered as not having many friends at the school. He was always very shy in the presence of senior students and never messed around with anyone his own age.

  ‘What’s his last name?’ Dorcas asked.

  ‘Dunno.’ Mai Ling waited a moment until Braydon was swept away out of earshot by his mother, who didn’t even glance towards the seniors, let alone give them a smile of thanks. Then she called across to James: ‘Do you know that kid’s name? The one who just got into the red Mercedes?’

  ‘Yeah, Braydon McFadden.’

  ‘McFadden!’ said Mai Ling. ‘Like us—half Scot and half Chink!’

  James laughed.

  ‘Filipino, I think. The dad’s a big fat Aussie. They have a shop out towards Edmonton, selling furniture. And a big house halfway up the mountain at Bayview.’

  Mai Ling looked thoughtful. ‘The Filipino connection!’ she said to Dorcas. ‘That woman, yesterday, looked like she came from the Philippines, like Marcie.’

  ***

  At five that afternoon, Cass and Drew met with Leslie Fernando in Sheridan Street.

  ‘First, the woman who died in the motel,’ Cass said to Leslie. ‘I went to the autopsy this morning. It showed she bled to death after an abortion she did herself. She was probably four or five months advanced in pregnancy. The scissors we found, according to the docs, were probably used to cut the umbilical cord after the foetus was expelled and, presumably, flushed down the toilet, since it wasn’t found in the room or bathroom. She wasn’t assaulted with the scissors, or with anything else. It looks as if no one, apart from the woman herself, was ever in the room. We believe that she went to the motel intending to take the medication that would cause the abortion. The meds packaging we sent for analysis has been identified as something that’s available in the Philippines; the tablets were made in China and it’s definitely an abortion drug. She either already had the medication when she came here from the Philippines two months ago or someone sent it to her.’

  ‘What about the cousin?’ asked Leslie. ‘Wasn’t she involved in the abortion too?’

  ‘Her cousin may have known what Dorentina was doing, but from her phone records we know she was nowhere near the motel when Dorentina took the tablets. It would be a stretch to say she had a role in the death,’ said Cass.

  ‘Having talked to Marcellina Lavides yesterday,’ she continued, ‘and seen her despair at her cousin’s death, I’d be very sure that if she knew Dorrie was taking the pills, she had little idea there was any risk involved. Certainly, no idea that the abortion could kill her. And Dorentina did not try to contact Marcellina once she started to bleed. We
still don’t know what happened to Dorentina’s mobile but there’s a landline phone in the motel room. She didn’t try to use it, according to management. Dr Ortega thinks she began to bleed very heavily, very quickly. So maybe she wasn’t able to do anything to help herself. The position of the placenta meant that whenever the pregnancy ended, she would always bleed very heavily, no matter where she was.’

  ‘The Coroner’s looking at our reports and Leah Rookwood’s from the autopsy,’ Drew said, ‘but it’s unlikely she’ll find the death suspicious.’

  ‘Okay then,’ Leslie said. ‘So, what about the other women? The ones you think might have been trafficked?’

  ‘I’ve checked back from the newspaper ads, sir,’ Drew said. ‘There seems to be a whole stream of women who’ve come here from the Philippines for a few months. At least, just for a few months in Cairns—all sex workers with ads worded the same. They get mobiles which are then passed on to others. Some of them have gone to Sydney or Melbourne and later left the country. But some of these women just seem to have disappeared. I’ve checked their visa status: they were all here as students and at least four have overstayed, some for more than two years.’

  Drew produced his Excel spreadsheet which he had colour-coded to show which mobile phones had gone where. Pink, red, blue and yellow columns snaked across the screen. Leslie smiled.

  ‘Well that’s very pretty! But what do we really make of it? It could just be a group of women getting together in the Philippines and talking about job opportunities here. There’s clearly a market. They tell each other how to get visas, where to go when they get here, and pass on mobiles from one to the next. Of course, we’ll report your findings to the Taskforce—they could look at whether there’s a syndicate sending them. Of course, we don’t want sex trafficking on our patch. But it’s their job not ours.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Drew, ‘that’s one aspect. And it could be innocent, as you say. Or it could be someone masterminding all this—maybe with people in the Philippines helping with the visas and someone in Australia organising the phones and placing the ads. Somebody quite clever who’s organised things so their identity isn’t known. And who ultimately gets most of the money.’