Stronger Than Death

by Manda Scott

  ‘Mmm.’ She smiled sleepily and leant back in her chair. ‘I’m not sure you’re going to want to know.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘OK. The lad in the prints was Martin Coutts. Forty-two years old. Divorced. Lived alone. If you think back to Otago Street, you’ll have met him in the Department sometime around then. He’s a medical statistician. He worked with Murdoch and the Duncans way back in the days when I was still in surgery. He was one of the few who was happy to see her back. Apparently he liked the way her mind worked.’ You would have to know Lee very well to appreciate the irony of that one. You wouldn’t have heard it in her voice. I watched her take a long drink straight from the bottle, swallow and smile. The lines around her eyes were no deeper than they should have been. She finished the bottle and spun it carefully in the centre of the table. ‘He went to work last Friday morning to another exciting day as a post-doc statistician up on the hill, soft money, no tenure. Got bored of that and went home at lunchtime complaining of a migraine. Nobody saw him again until Ms Friendly Neighbour came round to rescue her cat from his greenhouse about ten this morning and noticed his curtains drawn and a “bad smell” coming from the bedroom. She called in the police, who, with their usual tact and skill, failed to ask the neighbour on the other side for her spare key and broke the door down instead, thus removing any chance the lads in forensics might have had to check if the lock had been tampered with.’

  ‘Sweet. They weed them in at interview. And so?’

  ‘And so the bedroom faces south with a nice big picture window. He’d been lying in the sun for the best part of a week.’

  ‘Good stuff.’ This is why I never wanted to do pathology. ‘So why was the mortuary decked out in wall-to-wall policemen when I came in this afternoon? The lad had an axe in his head?’

  ‘No. He had synthetic amphetamines—Flatliners—in his stomach contents, which was odd because the packet by his bed said they were Migrotol. They look pretty much identical, so either someone was selling him a pup or he was starting to go recreational. And he had soda-lime dust up his nose. That’s where I found the bit we were looking at this evening.’

  ‘The police think that the locals have taken to snorting soda lime? Is that likely?’

  ‘Who knows? I guess if you’re a statistician, you’d need something fairly different to make life exciting. Anyway, that’s not why the police were here; I called them in before I found that.’ She turned over a piece of lamb’s lettuce and pushed it to the side of her plate. ‘He had mask marks on his face, Kellen. They match exactly, absolutely exactly, with the ones I found on Joey Duncan, and even the police can see them.’

  ‘Oh. Hell.’ Somewhere at the back of my brain is the headache I’ve been fending off for the past two days. It hasn’t really gone since I woke up on Tuesday morning. This is the kind of thing that it feeds on. This and the heat. ‘Why, Lee?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She gave up on the salad. It wasn’t a good day for eating. The air pressed in and left no space for anything else—only the mortuary was cool enough to be pleasant. ‘He had enough of the amphetamine on board to space him out, but there wasn’t enough there to kill him, just like the alcohol wasn’t quite enough to kill Joey. And there aren’t any marks down the back of his throat.’

  ‘Just soda lime up his nose.’

  ‘Right.’ She handed her plate to a passing waitress, then tilted her chair back against the balcony and hooked her heels over the edge of the table. ‘Do you remember physiology practical classes, way back in first year?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Do you remember the one that gave you your first migraine?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ Physiology practicals were always something of an unknown quantity. Half of them were random and very boring exercises in bio-statistics. Most of the rest were the kind of things that would have the place fire-bombed if they happened today: decerebrate frogs, one to a pair, proving obscure facts about the nerve-muscle interface; rat hearts in saline being made to beat at different rates by the addition of adrenaline or beta blockers; a thoracotomy in an anaesthetised rabbit as a class demonstration of the vagal reflexes. None of these was significantly different to anything else we had to learn, but somehow it was deemed necessary for something to die so that we would understand the mysteries of cardiac function when the equally obscure mysteries of, say, the control of intestinal motility were to be gleaned only from a textbook. Once in a while, though, we paired up and used each other as the models. That’s probably been banned by now, too. In our day, the soda-lime experiment was the earliest and easily the most spectacular.

  Soda-lime crystals absorb carbon dioxide to produce sodium carbonate, heat and water. If I looked up my notes I could write out the equation, but that isn’t quite the point. The soda-lime experiment was designed to demonstrate how easy it is to die when there is no carbon dioxide to tell your body that you’re suffocating. We were armed, each of us, with a rubber bag connected to a cylinder of soda-lime granules, which was, in turn, connected to a rebreathing mask. A mask like Jack Souter’s. Or Joey Duncan’s. We breathed slowly and gently into the mask. Our breath went out through the cylinder, into the bag and back again at the next breath. The carbon dioxide was removed by the soda lime. Our bodies used up the oxygen. All that was left in the bag was the nitrogen that makes up the other eighty per cent of room air. Breathing pure nitrogen doesn’t keep you alive for very long, but the trick of it is that, without a rise in carbon dioxide to trigger the central reflexes, you don’t notice that you’re dying. Nobody lasts for long on diminishing oxygen. Most of us passed out within the first three minutes. When I woke up, I had my first-ever migraine. It’s difficult to forget that kind of thing. It is difficult, also, to forget the colour of Lee’s face as her blood oxygen dropped. A deep, dusky purple. Exactly the same as a cardiac arrest. You don’t forget that in a hurry either.

  I looked over at Lee, found her watching me, waiting for the pieces to fall into place. ‘Was our sievable friend blue when they found him?’

  ‘He was black but most of that was decomposition. I haven’t got all the lab reports back yet, but I’d say he was completely hypoxic before he died.’

  ‘Shit. You think someone’s been practising physiology labs for real?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘But Joey wasn’t purple. He was white. I saw him.’

  ‘He didn’t have soda-lime grit up his nose, either. I know. I’ve spent the best part of the afternoon looking. But if I’m right about the mask marks on his face, then we have two men dead in the space of seventy-two hours with remarkably similar pathology. Two deaths that almost, but not quite, look accidental. And then there’s Eric …’

  She brought her chair back to the floor. In this light, with the moving shadows of the fan and the swirling smoke from the floor, she looked different. More vibrant than she was before, more like the old Lee. It’s the challenge. She lives for the challenge. ‘None of these was an accident, Kellen. Martin Coutts wasn’t an accident, Joey Duncan wasn’t an accident. Eric wasn’t an accident. If I can get Colin to give me a second opinion on the mask marks, then I think I can prove the first two. If we can find the missing friend in the rock tomorrow, then we can prove Eric, by circumstance if not pathology. After that, we have to think very carefully about the other things they had in common.’ She paused. Bruce stopped by the table on his way past to check that we were happy. He said nothing, asked nothing, offered no sympathy. It’s possible he didn’t know. We smiled and drank and shared amazement at the weather and he passed on without touching on anything painful.

  Lee looked at her watch as he left. ‘Will MacDonald be home at this time of night?’

  ‘I doubt it. If he’s not at work, the chances are he’ll be out with the dog, but we can call in on him on the way back to the farm if you like.’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’ She raised a finger and called for the bill. ‘If nothing else, we have three deaths of thr
ee men in three days. Three’s a series, in forensics as much as in medicine. I think he needs to know.’

  ‘I thought you’d faxed in a report?’

  ‘I did. One interim pathology report per body. But I can’t put in writing what I haven’t got as proof and it’s too vague to work with just yet. All I’ve got now is a hunch and some marks I think I can see on a face. It’s not a pathological certainty. The best I can do is spin it to MacDonald and see if he takes it seriously.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I finished my drink and stood up, hunting in my pockets for the keys. ‘Shall we go?’

  Three is a series. A thesis on death.

  Abstract: Three men die in three separate locations within the space of one week. All deaths appear accidental except under very close post-mortem scrutiny, when it appears that at least two of the three may have ante-mortem injuries in common. All three subjects work in the same field of medicine. The statistical probability of this being chance is nil. This presentation proposes the apparent and actual cause of death in each case.

  Case one. Dr Eric Dalziel, physician and climber.

  Apparent cause of death: fall from a height. Multiple fractures. Rupture of internal organs. Precise cause of death: fracture dislocation at C1/C2 leading to complete transection of the spinal cord.

  Negation: Eric was a safe climber. You have to believe that. There is no way he would have climbed that rock without a partner. So, we have to ask ourselves what happened to the partner, the one who should have been there to keep him alive?

  They got scared when he fell—realised he was dead and ran?

  Unlikely. Climbing accidents happen all the time. You don’t hold anyone on suspicion of murder if some idiot chooses to fall off a rock. An innocent partner would report an accident as soon as it happened. Only someone with something to hide would remove all of the climbing equipment and leave.

  We have no proof of this.

  We don’t. But if we can find the friend lodged in the rock, we will have enough to ask questions.

  You said that last Tuesday. I’ve already asked the Rescue to take a look.

  And?

  And they found nothing.

  With the greatest respect, they didn’t know where to look.

  If you say so.

  I do.

  Case two. Professor Joseph Aloysius Duncan, orthopaedic surgeon, raconteur, husband and father.

  Apparent cause of death: drowning secondary to inhalation of vomitus precipitated by an excess intake of alcohol. Subject’s plasma alcohol level found to be 173 milligrams per millilitre, adequate to create unconsciousness in the average adult male but not fatal. Fatal level in the adult male is approximately 300 milligrams per millilitre.

  Negation: Joey Duncan had a liver that could chew through alcohol like cockroaches through a barrel of biscuits; 173 mg/ml would have rendered him sleepy, but not unconscious. There is evidence, very nebulous evidence I grant you, but I believe it to be real, of ante-mortem bruising in a position that would coincide with the controlled application of a medical mask. A nail mark has been found in his throat that he did not make. Suppose he was made to breathe something that would make him sleep? Not ether or chloroform—neither of those is fast enough, whatever you might have been led to believe. It takes ten minutes of conscious cooperation to mask someone down on ether. But desflurane, or sevoflurane, even possibly isoflurane, any one of the new volatile anaesthetics, would work in seconds. Ten big breaths and you’re gone. If he was already sedated with alcohol, you could cut that time in half.

  Have you found any traces of these drugs in his blood?

  Not yet. It takes time to run the tests. I’ll have the results next week.

  But these things don’t kill, do they?

  No. But they’d get him sleepy enough for someone else to stick their finger down his throat to make him sick.

  And leave him lying there, drowning?

  Yes. It would be very fast. If you kept the mask on his nose, he wouldn’t know anything. He certainly wouldn’t be in any position to fight.

  Christ.

  You said it.

  Case three. Dr Martin Damien Coutts, statistician.

  Apparent cause of death: mistaken ingestion of amphetamine. No evidence of attempted suicide. No note or other common debris of a suicide found at site of death. Empty pack labelled Migrotol found at site. Pack identified as having contained the synthetic amphetamine 4MTA, known on the street as Flatliners.

  Negation: Martin Coutts is the simplest. Perhaps our serial killer is becoming less careful. Or perhaps this was the first and not careful enough. He was sedated with amphetamine. He may have taken it by mistake but he wasn’t given it by mistake. Pharmacists don’t make that kind of error, or if they do, they don’t follow it up with a mask and a cylinder of soda lime. He hadn’t taken enough to kill him, but it would have kept him doped up long enough to breathe out his last breath of oxygen into the bag. Martin Coutts was suffocated; it was simply a more sophisticated method of suffocation than the average pillow.

  Who, Lee? Who did this?

  I don’t know. But whoever is doing this, why ever they are doing it, they have to be a medic. No one else could have put all this together.

  Why?

  I don’t know. I have no evidence. Only an idea.

  Just tell me. It’s up to us to find the evidence. Just now all we need is enough to stop the deaths. Give me something we can use to stop the killing.

  The weather is breaking. My head is breaking with it. Outside, the air is caving in under the pressure, folding and twisting in ever-tighter knots until the sky weeps. Inside, my brain has long since caved in. I weep and it makes no difference. The pressure in my left eye grows with the pressure in the room until I know that if I move, it will burst. Outside, there is thunder, long and low: the hidden snigger of gods. Inside, my pulse hammers tidal surf through my ears. When I was a child, I held the twisting shell to my ear and heard the waves. Now, as an adult, I have no shell. I lie rigid on the pillow, splinted with pain and the fear of moving. With every heartbeat, I can hear the hissing rush of the sea, louder than any thunder, and I know that if I move, the swelling balloon that is my eye will rupture, that the thin, cracking shell that is my skull will shatter and spill all that is left of me over the pillows.

  The rain falls in single, counted drops on the ledge outside the open window. Three is a series. An old medical joke. A way of counting cases for papers because everyone knows that only with papers, properly published, are careers and reputations built. One is unfortunate. Two is a trend. Three is a series. For the police as well as for the medic, three is the key. As in: ‘I have created a series of murders so medically perfect that even the pathologist, even this pathologist, could not stand up in a court of law and swear that this is murder.’

  Four is Lee. Or maybe Hillary Murdoch. Then whichever one of them is left will be five. And then you will have the full grouping. The totality of the team that came together for a single year in the spring of their careers: the physician, the surgeons, the statistician, the pathologist. It was never a marriage made in heaven, and the end results were hell, but not significantly worse than any of the hell around them, and the flames died down in time. Roles changed and people moved. The surgeons stayed friends with the physician and the three of them moved up their ladders together; one progressed to alcohol and professorship, the second moved by force of circumstance from surgery to the dead ranks of pathology, the third made a name in intensive care. These last two shared a passion for climbing and, later, they shared a house. Of the doctors, only the pathologist was never a friend. She walked across the water and made waves and enemies in equal proportions on the other side until the offer of the ultimate promotion lured her back. The number-cruncher faded into statistical insignificance and would never have been remembered if he hadn’t been third on the list of the dead. Or maybe first, because these things are difficult to date.

  But why would anyone want to kill a handf
ul of junior doctors?

  People died. A lot of people died. I can imagine any one of the relatives would have happily seen us all dead.

  How long ago? Ten years? Longer? Why now?

  I don’t know. But until three months ago, they’d have had to go over to Boston to take out Hillary Murdoch. Maybe it’s simply convenient that we’re all together now.

  And you’re sure she’s next?

  I’m sure of nothing. But I’d put money that anyone who cares enough to take out Martin Coutts will be coming back sometime for the woman who made his career.

  The rain is faster now. Uncountable. A drumming rhythm of water on slate. It is softer than it was and the thunder is not so constant. If I listen hard, through the pulsing surf in my ears, I can hear other things in the bedroom. I can hear Nina, breathing slow sleep into her pillow. I can hear the soft hush of the duvet as it moves with the breath and feel the twitch of her fingers against mine as the noise of the rain brings her closer to waking. I can hear an old greyed-out cat, purring in his sleep, a steady, sawing ratchet. He lies on the floor, on his blanket, just in reach of my hand. If I dared to move, I could touch him. He would rather be on the pillow but we have limits and we set them for an eighteen-year-old cat of unreliable continence. Ten years ago, two years ago, he would have been out hunting on a night like this, daring the thunder, risking the slamming death of the lightning. (There is lightning. I can see it, even through closed eyes. It does nothing to help move the pain.) Now, he simply sleeps. By day, he sleeps on the Rayburn. By night he sleeps by the bed. In between, he sleeps on whoever will sit still long enough. Lee sat still. And Stewart MacDonald. Both of them sat, first on the fallen log by the river, in the dancing clouds of midges and the dark speckled soot of the thunder flies, her talking and him listening while she spun him her story of a medical series. A series of medics, deprived of life by a medic. Later, they sat still by the fire, and the cat sat on one and then the other as they talked themselves into knots over the how, which was easy, at least for the statistician, and the who, which was impossible except that it had to be a doctor, and the why, which was utterly unknowable and always would be without someone there to answer questions.