Malicious Intent (31 page)

‘It’s different, and you know that.’ Anya didn’t find the decision as simple as her friend made it sound. ‘We’re legally bound to notify child abuse, and people who are potentially a danger to themselves or others.’

‘What do you call someone who falls off a bloody cliff?

Why don’t you let her out and see if she’ll do it again? See how safe she is to herself ?’

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Anya put down her bottle on an old
Police Journal
. She couldn’t win an argument with Kate right now with emotion, so she tried logic. ‘Maybe there is a way to establish whether Clare and Debbie had contact with the same man.’

Kate stood skeptically, hands on her hips.

‘Hear me out. Clare Matthews was initially ruled a suspicious death, because of scratch marks on her ears.’

‘Yeah, I was called but it ended up a false alarm.’

‘Once a death is deemed suspicious, all the specimens are labeled with a fluorescent orange sticker and the specimens kept. They’re not discarded, as in routine cases.’

Kate crossed her arms, ‘So . . . ?’

‘She was pregnant and if I know Peter Latham, he would have wanted a sample taken of the fetus. The specimen would have been tagged with orange stickers and no one would dare throw one of those out. That means we could compare the DNA from the fetus to the DNA in the semen from Debbie Finch’s throat. If the two match, you’ve got some interesting physical evidence.’

‘All right, I’ll arrange it. We can get to the witness later. If Debbie and Clare both had sex with the same man and we can prove it, forget the cult stuff. We could be looking at a serial killer. One who finally made a mistake.’

41

The next morning, Anya arrived at the home of Dr. Rosenbaum, three miles from the Bowral turnoff on the Hume Highway. Recent rains following one of the longest droughts on record meant much of the grassland had turned green, giving the place a warm, welcoming feel. She had stopped at a shop in town and bought some marmalade, plum jam and sour-dough, as a token for morning tea.

A balding, slightly stooped gentleman opened an oak front door, flanked on both sides by green and red stained-glass panels. The glass probably dated from the late nineteenth century, as did the house. Felix Rosenbaum dug one hand into a gray cardigan pocket and with the other hand, ushered Anya into an elaborate foyer with black and white marble tiles laid in a chessboard pattern. Light shone through a skylight, one of the few modern accessories.

‘You have a beautiful home,’ she said, handing him the parcel of bread and condiments.

He seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the gesture. ‘You’re coming was enough, really.’

Anya took off her long jacket and placed it over a chaise longue. ‘With such high ceilings, how do you manage to keep the place warm in winter?’ she asked.

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‘Since my wife died, I tend to stay pretty much in the kitchen, which gets the afternoon sun. The woodstove in there does the job.’

Mention of his wife seemed to make his shoulders droop a little.

Anya felt the temperature fall about ten degrees when he opened the glass sliding doors to a lounge room that boasted a bay window, in front of which stood a full-sized concert harp.

She stood in awe at the magnificence of the instrument. As for so many people, harps held an almost mythical quality for her. She put her hands behind her back to resist the temptation to touch it.

‘Do you play?’ Felix inquired.

‘No,’ she lamented, ‘just an admirer. The gold decoration on the column is stunning.’

‘My wife thought so, too. She used to play, you know. I could have sat here for hours as she practiced. Mind you, I was prone to falling asleep on the odd occasion, if on-call had been particularly busy. She was always insulted, of course, but I assured her that her music was so relaxing, falling asleep was indeed a compliment.’

Anya smiled. This man reminded her of many of the senior doctors she had learned from. Always good for an anecdote, and devoted to the wives they ‘widowed’ until retirement.

He stood touching the instrument with tenderness, as though it was his wife herself.

‘This harp was used in a tour with Dame Joan Sutherland.

Picked it up through the Harp Society over twenty years ago.

Had it restored, naturally, but I’m afraid the changes in temperature play havoc with the strings. My Eva used to say that a harp had to be played, or both its soul and sound would rot.’

He let go of the wood and wiped some dust off the soundboard with his cardigan sleeve. ‘Maybe I’m a sentimental fool, but I can’t bear to get rid of it. Now,’ he said, straightening a fraction,

‘about this case that has your interest.’

Dr. Rosenbaum opened another set of sliding glass doors, 250

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these leading into an antique dining room. He pulled out a chair for her at one end of the cedar table buried beneath a stack of books and papers. He sat beside her and opened a faded envelope. It contained a pile of cards covered in obsessively neat handwriting, and carbon copies of typed correspondence.

‘This fellow came to me with weight loss and shortness of breath in 1957. Phil Abbott. A nice fellow, I remember because he had a true passion for music. Chest X-ray showed calcifica-tion and pleural thickening. I trust you saw the slide images I e-mailed.’

‘Yes. They were very clear.’

He carefully removed an X-ray from a package mended with yellowing sticky tape, handed it to his guest and walked to the doorway to switch on the chandelier. Anya held the X-ray toward the light source. White spots on the lung periphery looked exactly like calcium deposits seen in cancer. She noticed the patient had large lungs, and flat diaphragm markings, suggesting hyperinflation. He had signs of airflow obstruction such as emphysema as well. In cases like these, asbestos disease in smokers was far more dangerous than in nonsmokers. ‘Did he smoke?’

‘Never. None of his family did, either, which was unusual back then. That’s why his case played on my mind for so long.’

Dr. Rosenbaum switched off the chandelier.

‘Of course, we didn’t have CT scans back then. There wasn’t much we could do to detect soft tissue tumors, except in the brain. And we only diagnosed them by injecting air during a lumbar puncture and taking X-rays of the brain to show up any compression or obstruction to the air.’ He sat back at the table and opened a textbook of radiographic procedures over the last century. He located an image of the procedure and slid the book to Anya. ‘That’s how George Gershwin, the greatest composer of our time, went. Did you know that he had headaches and used to smell burning rubber when he played piano? People thought him depressed or crazy back in ’37.

Today we recognize the symptoms as classic for temporal lobe KATHRYN FOX

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pathology, but of course, that’s with CAT scans and MRI. Back then they did the LP and made the poor fellow’s headache worse in the process.’

Anya enjoyed the anecdotes, but knew it would take a while to answer all her questions. The doctor had the unenviable combination of knowledge and a gift of storytelling in a world where almost no one remained to listen.

‘Can you tell me what you remember about your patient’s work?’

‘Ah, he and his cousin were sound engineers with the ABC, back when that stood for Australian Broadcasting Commission. Of course, it’s now a corporation. Phil did balance tests for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. I remember, you see, because my brother was the ABC concert manager and used to get us tickets.’

‘What was a balance test?’

‘The sound engineer’s job was to balance the sound so that one instrument didn’t dominate the orchestra. That entailed using a VU meter, a small box, something with a needle on it–

it looked a little like a battery tester, you could say, except it measured sound intensity. That way he could perfectly position the various microphones relative to the orchestra players. They use room-sized electronic mixers today, and I don’t believe the sound is much better than we had.’

A grandfather clock chimed ten times. Felix pulled a small pillbox from his trouser pocket and swallowed a tablet dry.

‘Did you have any idea where the fiber he inhaled could have come from?’

‘For a while I wondered whether it was in the speakers he worked on. You see, he was obsessed with perfecting an amplifier for the electric guitar. Cost him his marriage, and, who knows, possibly even his life.’

‘Did you investigate the amplifiers as a potential source of the fiber?’

‘No, his wife burned everything after the funeral. I think they had a small daughter, from memory, he called her Meggie.

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I kept the lung slides and you may borrow them, if you wish, provided you return them.’

‘I’d appreciate that. We’ve seen the fibers turn up in a number of women postmortem and are trying to identify the source.’

‘I hope you can. He suffered the horrid end we, as physicians, try desperately to prevent.’

Anya copied some of the details from Dr. Rosenbaum’s notes. Felix stood and rubbed his hands together.

‘Now, for morning tea, if you’ll do me the pleasure of joining me.’

‘Just one cup, and then I have to go.’ She smiled, knowing she’d be lucky to get away before lunch, and not until he’d regaled her with more stories from times and people long gone, people who may hold the key to mysteries of the present.

‘Before you put the kettle on, do you recall the daughter’s full name by any chance?’

‘I used to always document family members, so I could ask about them by name. Always seemed more personal when we met.’ He shuffled his file cards and deciphered a scribble in one corner, which he’d circled. ‘That’s it. He called her Meggie, but that’s right, her name was Lucinda Margaret.’

‘And the address?’

‘Seventy-two Lennox Crescent, Pennant Hills.’

42

Anya stopped outside the hospital florist. A row of white buckets contained mixed bunches of gerberas, baby’s breath, roses, and her favorite, deep purple irises. On a stand stood boxes of arrangements for all occasions, with red and yellow the dominant themes. Inside the small shop, a young woman put a lavender ribbon around an enormous white bouquet.

‘Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with a couple of things. I’m Dr. Crichton, and I noticed some gorgeous flowers of yours up in room twenty-three, third floor. Is that your design, or did the person who ordered them specify what they wanted?’

The young woman took a minute. ‘Room twenty-three.

We’ve done a new bunch every day for that patient. Someone is pretty keen to impress her. He leaves it up to me, but asks for something extra special.’

‘He must be a nice guy.’

‘I just talk to him on the phone. But he sounds so romantic, and pretty cute.’ She stifled a giggle.

Kidnapping, brainwashing and killing weren’t Anya’s ideas of romance. ‘You mean he doesn’t even see what he’s ordered?’

‘No, he says he’s seen our work and loved it. What’s the other thing I can do for you?’ she asked, placing the bouquet to the side of the countertop.

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‘I’m trying to locate the person sending the flowers.’ Anya knew she wasn’t a good liar, but tried anyway. ‘You see, I’m concerned he may be walking around totally unaware he has a serious medical condition.’

‘Oh, my God! That’s terrible.’

Anya felt guilty playing on the girl’s emotions, but she needed more information. ‘You may be his best chance of getting help.’

The girl plucked at her floral apron, to which the name badge ‘Taylah’ was pinned. ‘We’re not supposed to give out information about our clients.’

‘I understand that, and respect that you have a strong code of confidentiality. Imagine the mess if people found out who sent them Valentine’s roses?’

‘That’s right.’ Taylah smiled. ‘You do understand.’

‘But in this case, it’s very important that I find this person.

He may be ill right now.’

‘Gosh, I wish I could help,’ she whispered, as a man browsed outside the shop window. ‘But he does it all by phone and all I know is, an envelope with cash in it comes through internal mail. Last lot was enough to pay for two weeks’ worth of flowers.’

‘Do you have the envelope, by any chance?’ Anya realized that the chances were minimal.

Taylah shook her head.

‘Does he call you from inside the hospital?’

‘I dunno.’

Anya pushed for any morsel. ‘Sometimes phones have a double ring when it’s an outside call. It only does it once if the call originates in the hospital.’

She tilted her head, as though listening. ‘Come to think of it, you’re right. It does have different rings. When my mum rings from her work, it always rings twice. He’s definitely not in the hospital.’

Whoever ‘he’ is, this man phoned from outside, but paid via the internal mail system. So far, that could mean an employee, KATHRYN FOX

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possibly a shift worker, who called during shop hours from outside. Then again, he might not even work at the hospital.

‘Do you have any idea where the internal mail comes from?’

Taylah kept an eye on the fellow outside the shop. ‘Could be anywhere. There’s a big letterbox in the foyer and other places all over the departments. It’s collected, sorted and delivered. Tons of it every day.’

Great, Anya thought. Try again.

‘Do calls come directly to you, or do they come through the switch?’

‘We’ve had problems with our line, so switch puts them through.’

Anya knew there was no chance of checking phone records.

Switchboards at hospitals the size of Western District handled thousands of calls per day.

‘Did he give a name?’

‘No, but he calls me by my name, probably ’cause I say it when I answer.’

The man entered the shop carrying a box of red carnations.

‘Excuse me, can I help you, sir? Beautiful, aren’t they?’

As he opened his wallet and exchanged pleasantries, Anya excused herself, left her card on the counter and asked if Taylah could let her know when he called again.