by Marele Day
‘So he had a pacemaker fitted.’
‘Yes. An artificial pacemaker that replicates the function of the natural one.’
‘Did you do the operation?’
‘No, my dear,’ he said with a smile that felt like a pat on the head, ‘I’m a GP, and a very old one at that. I’m retiring at the end of this year and having a good long rest.’
‘You probably deserve it. I bet you’ve eased a few aches and pains in your time.’ I was looking at the last of the old time doctors, the ones who didn’t do Medicine because they got 450+ in the HSC and it was the most prestigious university faculty. Who came when you called, even if it was two o’clock in the morning, who warmed the old stethoscope before listening to your heart, who didn’t have baby grand pianos in the waiting room, and who weren’t photographed at the races flanked by a drug importer and a High Court judge.
‘You can say that again.’
I didn’t say it again but I did ask another question. ‘Who was Mark’s surgeon?’
‘Just a minute, I’ll get his card,’ he said buttoning his cardigan and going to the door. ‘The memory’s not what it used to be either.’
He came back in with a couple of cards paperclipped together.
‘Let’s see now . . . Dr Prendergast did the first one and . . . Dr Villos did the second.’
Villos. I recognised the name. It was in the social pages every second Sunday.
It was also Sally’s name. The city was full of coincidences.
‘Why did he have two?’
‘They don’t last forever, they have to be upgraded.’
‘How long had he had the second one?’
‘Two years.’
‘Where was the operation done?’
‘At Prince Alfred.’
‘I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Dr Mackintosh, but did you know that Mark took heroin?’
The pen dropped and rolled across his drawing of the heart. Dr Mackintosh sighed deeply, shaking his head. ‘No. No I didn’t. Mark stopped coming to me after that last operation. Oh dear,’ he sighed again. ‘Why would a boy like that jeopardise his life? Why do young people . . .’
‘Would someone with a pacemaker endanger his life by taking heroin? Could it interfere with the pacemaker?’
‘I shouldn’t think so, but you’d be better off asking an expert. I’m not an expert in either area. Why do young people do that sort of thing? Why do they find it necessary?’
The question was addressed more to the world outside his cosy office than to me.
I thought of my youth. And of those who hadn’t survived it. Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse. The cliché had grown old and bitter. Paradise now, even if it was only for a few hours. And once you’d tasted paradise, and knew how easy it was to get more . . . ‘The same reason people go to the movies or get drunk. Sometimes reality is . . . insufficient. There’s not a human culture on this earth that doesn’t have some sort of drug, perhaps it is . . . necessary.’
‘Even if it kills you?’
‘Is that what you think killed Mark?’
‘Miss Valentine, I was ignorant of his addiction before your visit. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mark’s sister: if pacemakers allowed us to live forever we’d all have one. People with pacemakers die, the same as people without them. We are not immortal, not even the young.’
DESPITE the No Smoking signs in the Allergy Clinic, I found Lucy leaning out one of its windows smoking.
‘Hey-hey!’ she sang, slapping me on the bottom. ‘Claudia!’
A cheek-to-cheek hug between Lucy and me was near impossible. She was five foot nothing, thin as a rake and moved like dynamite. At karate she was always the last one chosen as sparring partner.
‘Well that’s a fine example for your patients. I hope you’re not treating anyone for tobacco allergy.’
‘Look, it’s the end of the day, a packet lasts me a week and I’m blowing it out the window.’
‘And where are you ashing?’
‘I wait for bald men to pass by and ash on their heads.’
She stubbed the cigarette out on the sole of her shoe and dropped the butt neatly out the window.
‘Do you know a Dr Villos?’
‘Raymond Villos, the heart surgeon? Sure. I catch fleeting glimpses of him along the corridor. He’s a busy man. Not a busy doctor but a busy man.’
‘Could you arrange a meeting with him? He treated a patient I’m interested in.’
‘I could. But you’d have to go to Europe for it.’
‘Oh,’ I said, deflated.
Lucy was sitting on the desk now, swinging her legs.
‘What did he treat him for?’
‘He put a pacemaker in him.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes’
‘Maybe our technician can help. The patient most likely comes here for check-ups.’ She hopped off the desk and stood with a hand on one hip. ‘He’s cute, unattached and heterosexual. He’s an angel. Literally.’
I tsked. ‘Lucy do you have to do that Thai bar girl routine?’
‘What’s wrong with Thai bar girls? Do you want to meet him or not?’
‘I want to meet him. But not necessarily because he’s cute, unattached and heterosexual, OK?’
‘I’ll page him right away,’ she said knowingly.
She tapped her fingernails impatiently on the desk.
‘No luck. I’ll try another number.’ Her fingers skimmed lightly over the numbered buttons, hardly touching.
‘Nancy? Doctor Lau here. I’m looking for Steve Angell.’
‘Oh. Is he? What time will he be finished? Round about.’
‘Uh-huh. Nancy, if you see him beforehand, will you tell him to wait? I’ve got someone here who’s just dying to meet him.’
I grimaced. ‘Thanks a lot!’ I said when she hung up.
‘What’s to worry? Lots of people are dying till they meet Steve. He gives them a new lease of life. Don’t worry about it, he’ll be intrigued. He’ll be in theatre another ten minutes, then he’s all yours.’
‘Are you going to tell me where to find him or am I just going to be drawn magnetically towards him?’
‘Out the door, turn right, it’s a white building, sixth floor.’
‘Thanks a lot, Lucy.’ This time I meant it. ‘Ah, by the way,’ I said, moving towards the door, ‘Dr Villos: does he have a daughter?’
‘Yes, he does. Only child. Spoilt brat from what I hear.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Umm,’ she clicked her fingers, ‘it’s on the tip of my tongue: Susie. No, not Susie. Um . . . Sandra, no . . . Oh God, I should know it.’ Lucy was nearly dancing to the tune of her singsong voice, ‘Sally, yes, that’s it. Sally.’
STEVE ANGELL MAY have been unattached and heterosexual but he was not cute. He was stunning. As tall as me, if not taller, with eyes like the pools you find beneath waterfalls. It was all I could do to stop myself taking off my clothes and diving in.
I waited till he’d assured an elderly gentleman his pacemaker was good for at least another five years, saw him to the door, then turned and gave me what I took to be his undivided attention. He certainly had mine.
‘Private detective, eh?’ I saw perfect white teeth and tantalising glimpses of a healthy pink tongue. ‘That’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to me all day.’
And meeting an angel had certainly brightened up my day.
The head told the heart to get back in its box and get on with business.
‘Most of it’s pretty routine, not like in the movies.’
‘Yeah, even doctors look good in the movies.’
‘Some doctors look pretty good in reality,’ I said too obviously. ‘I mean Dr Villos, for example. He seems to lead a pretty exciting life.’
‘You want to pick my brains about Dr Villos?’
‘About a patient of his actually, an ex-patient: Mark Bannister.’
‘Bannister!’ He winced, a
s if I’d reminded him of something he’d rather forget. ‘What’s your interest in Bannister?’ he asked, more composed now, fingering an ear that had once been pierced.
‘How he died. Heroin was found in his blood stream, could that interfere with the pacemaker?’
‘If you OD, you OD. With or without a pacemaker.’
‘They found heroin, but not enough to kill him. Couldn’t it speed the heart up and blow the system?’
‘Heroin slows the heart down, if anything . . .’ I wondered what circuitous route had led him to where he was sitting at this very moment.
‘What about the pacemaker itself? Could it have broken down?’
He smiled. ‘Pacemakers don’t “break down”. They’re super reliable, they’re checked and tested and checked again, before during and after the operation, especially after.’
‘When was the last time Mark Bannister had his checked?’
‘Bannister, Bannister . . .’ he said softly, tapping the computer’s keyboard. The screen came to life and filled with print.
‘Oh the 23rd.’ Two days before he died.
‘Did you check it yourself?’
‘No. He did it from home.’
‘Did it from home?’
‘Yeah, you can do that. Usually it’s country patients who live a long way from the hospital, but Mark had a modem and tester at home. That’s all you need. The transmitter relays an ECG to the clinic. If it corresponds to the picture we have here, fine. If not, it can be adjusted. All through the phone.’
‘Did Mark’s need adjusting last time he rang in?’
‘No, everything was hunky-dory.’
No, not everything. Terminal. Illness.
‘Was there anything . . . special about Mark’s pacemaker?’
‘It was state of the art, dual chamber.’
‘Jewel chamber?’ Was that like having a quartz clock ticking away inside you?
I must have looked dumb because for the second time that day a member of the medical profession started drawing me hearts.
‘The old pacemakers only connected to the ventricles and produced the same heartbeat whether you were asleep or swimming the English Channel. But of course with the old ones you couldn’t do strenuous exercise like that. The dual chamber or responsive pacemaker, by stimulating the upper chambers as well as the lower, approximates the natural rhythms of the heart, so that when you exercise the heart beats faster. Young people like Mark Bannister are particularly suitable recipients for the dual chamber. You can swim the English Channel if you want to and you don’t die every time you have sex.’
‘I can think of worse ways of dying.’
He leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs and putting his hands behind his head. ‘One of my sisters had a bloke die on her like that. Woke up in the morning and found a smiling corpse lying beside her. He was only 48. Put her off older men for life.’
I smiled. I liked men with sisters. It usually meant they treated women as friends. ‘How many sisters do you have?’
‘Three. One older and two younger. It was one of the younger ones that gave this guy a good send-off. What about you?’
I laughed. ‘Haven’t yet managed to kill anyone though I’ve sometimes noticed a certain comatose condition.’
He grinned with his eyes: ‘No, not that: have you any sisters or brothers?’
‘No, there’s only me.’
‘Any husbands or kids?’
‘One of the former and two of the latter. And the former is former.’
‘Divorced?’
‘Isn’t everyone? It’s history now. My husband remarried: nice country girl, content with what she’s got.’
‘Do I detect a note of sarcasm?’
‘Do you? It was my decision. It wasn’t easy at the time, I went through a lot of soul-searching. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few hard edges, scar tissue, especially with the kids, that was hard, leaving the kids.’ I kept my eyes focussed, refusing to look back. ‘Gary’s a good parent. They have a great life in the country. They spend all the school holidays with me, and some weekends in between.’
‘I have a daughter in Germany. I miss her like hell. Miss her growing up. I have one month a year with her. Every year she’s that bit older, a different person, and I have to get to know her all over again. She speaks English with a German accent. It’s a strange feeling when your kid is foreign.’
Scar tissue, but he was still smiling.
‘How did you get into pacemakers?’
‘Job ad in the paper. I’d just come back from overseas, I’d done a bit of electronics work in Germany, along with a lot of other things like driving trucks to Afghanistan when you could still drive to Afghanistan. Came back broke, found the job and here I am.’
‘So you’re not a doctor.’
‘I did that study after—how the heart works mainly, the rest of it is electronics.’
‘Maybe sometime you could tell me how the heart works. The head, I know all about that, but the heart and its motivations are infinitely intriguing.’
‘What about tonight? I have some diagrams at home, they’re not quite etchings but they’ll do. Perhaps we could discuss them over dinner. I’m a great cook.’
He was looking better all the time. Old enough, tall enough, and wise enough not to try and talk to me in the morning.
‘I have to work tonight, but I’m certainly interested in trying your cooking, I never cook any more, I eat pub food.’
‘What time will you be finished?’
‘It’s hard to say. I don’t have fixed hours, the job takes as long as it takes.’
‘Here’s my address in Newtown. Come over when you finish. You look like the kind of woman who’d enjoy a glass of champagne at two o’clock in the morning.’
Picked it in one, angel face.
We looked at each other steadily, for what seemed like hours. If I was going to dive into those liquid pools, he was going to get wet too.
But hang on, Claudia, I thought, you’ve dived in before and found the waters murky and cold.
‘I do. But I like the first glass to be a little bit earlier. I’ll ring you. Soon. Maybe before dinner at your place we can have a drink at mine. I live in a pub.’
‘Right where the action is, eh?’
‘It has its moments.’
I had to drag myself away.
‘See you soon.’
‘Soon.’
I turned.
Then I turned back.
‘Steve, when I mentioned Mark’s name, you recognised it immediately. Do you remember all your patients so well?’
‘I remember Bannister, I nearly killed him. The guy had really sensitive ventricles. I was trying out programs on him to find the most suitable. You pick a program by testing each section of the heart. I tried one particular program and his heart went haywire. If I hadn’t put a magnet on his pacemaker he would have died.’
MARK’S FLAT WAS in a street off Campbell Parade. We swung down the hill overlooking the black expanse of Bondi Beach and the lights twinkling on the foreshores. So pretty and so innocent, the facade of lights covered a multitude of sins and one of those sins was murder.
‘There it is,’ I said to Otto, pointing out a not too salubrious set of stairs disappearing into the dark between two shops.
We were two blocks away before we found a place to park where the shops finish and the houses begin.
‘Typical, isn’t it,’ I snorted as we got out of the car.
‘The walk will do you good,’ said Otto flippantly.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I countered.
My legs are my best weapon. If I’m close enough I can do a karate kick that knocks them flat. If I’m far enough away I run. That’s what they mean in the profession by ‘using your legs as a weapon’. And I don’t carry a gun like some of my more cowboy colleagues. ‘Why don’t you, Claudia? Can’t fit it in your handbag?’ If I don’t have one then I can’t use it and conversely it can’t be use
d on me. There’s more than one way of skinning a cat.
There are more women in the profession than you’d think. Hardly any of them carry guns and they manage quite well. Like I say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and most of the time it’s not necessary to skin it. People tend to talk more, be more open with a woman, less guarded, less wary. If you can get past the cowboys, being a woman in this job is a distinct advantage. The crims don’t discriminate anyway: they’ll blow away a woman on their trail as readily as a man.
AFTER the first landing the dark staircase branched off right and left. At the top of the stairs on the right was a door with a metal ‘4’ on it. The key I’d managed to extract from the real estate agent turned in the lock and we entered.
The flat was small but surprisingly luxurious for these surroundings. At the end of the hallway was a bedroom with a kingsize bed in it and a CD sound system. Off the hallway itself was a loungeroom with huge cushions around a glass topped table, a TV and video.
The boy was certainly well-equipped.
Off the kitchen was another room: the room that housed the computer and the telephone. I followed the cord down to the wall socket. A modem was wired into the telephone system. Otto glided to the computer like a zombie summoned by its master. The computer sat there blankly reflecting Otto’s face in its screen. Mineral stillness. Not a master, a servant. Innocent, clean-cut plastic. Too much like a child’s toy to make life and death decisions. It almost smiled. Not the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa but the pretty little blond smile of The Bad Seed.
These three rooms, the lounge, kitchen and computer room, were lined with windows, curtains now drawn, that looked out over rooftops and the back windows of an older block of flats. There was washing hanging out on those retractable washing lines you see in apartment blocks in Europe. You could nearly reach out and touch it. And from the back windows of those flats you could see right into this one.
It was neat. Very neat. The wastepaper bin, usually such a wonderful little receptacle of people’s lives, was empty. There was, in the flat, hardly any paper at all.