Malicious Intent (26 page)

Abusers denied fault and blamed their victims as well. Deab had accused his daughter of being a slut, and thought Fatima deserved to die.

Jesus! Deab could have written the textbook on battered woman syndrome. For someone who lacked formal education, he had a hell of an instinct for manipulation. He could have run his own cult. In a way, he did, from the comfort of his own home.

A cult was beginning to make more sense as a plausible link among the women with the lung fibers. Each was intelligent, vulnerable and at least three of them – Fatima, Debbie and Clare – were deprived of affection. Joining a cult could explain their sudden disappearances and the fact that no one heard from them when they were missing.

Anya realized how ridiculous her theory would sound to the police. Deab’s confession made the link more tenuous.

Unless he was involved with more than one of the women, no one would investigate another lead.

She went to bed wondering if Deab was capable of murdering anyone he deemed immoral and making it appear like suicide. If he’d done it once, was it possible he’d done it before? She hoped they hadn’t seriously underestimated Mohammed Deab.

32

Anya drove along Old Northern Road, past a weatherboard school on the left with horses and bulls feeding in green fields opposite. The scene seemed anachronistic. She pulled over to the side and stopped outside a gated house, about where Glenhaven became Dural. After checking the address, she left her car on the side of the road and walked down a long, graveled path that crunched beneath her shoes.

An overwhelming scent of manure filled the air, which she found oddly refreshing. It reminded her of Evandale markets in Tasmania, where she would go with Damien and her mother on weekends. Local farmers brought their trash, treasure, crafts and produce to sell on land surrounded by farms. In many ways, these parts of the Hills District were similar to Tasmania, where rural life was possible, close to city comforts. In this case, people could live on a couple of acres and be minutes from one of the largest shopping centers in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately for Anya and Ben, real estate prices in this part of Sydney were prohibitive, for now.

She rang the doorbell of the sandstone brick cottage, her arrival already announced by a dog barking loudly inside the house. A man in his early forties opened the door, restraining an excited Irish setter with both hands.

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‘He hasn’t gone for his W-A-L-K yet and gets a bit impatient.’

The attempt at secrecy was redundant. The dog knew what a walk was, no matter how it was spelled.

‘Come in. I’m Paul Blakehurst.’

‘Thanks for seeing me.’ Anya wiped her feet and entered. ‘I appreciate it.’

The man steered the setter through a door that opened into the garage. ‘He can get to the backyard from here so he won’t bother us.’

On the hallway table stood a black and white photo of a striking Alison Blakehurst graduating from medicine. Beside it was a professional family portrait.

‘We can talk in the kitchen. I’m just organizing dinner.’

He led the way into an open-plan living room and timber kitchen. Two teenagers, older than their newspaper and portrait shots, sat at a dining table doing homework, still in school uniforms. They barely noticed the visitor.

‘Could you two please clean off the table and get changed?

I’ll set the table tonight.’

‘Great,’ said the boy.

‘I’ll be on the phone,’ said the girl.

In a blur, the books, laptops and owners were gone. No interest in introductions.

‘Dinner will be in an hour,’ their father called to an empty corridor.

He picked up a knife and continued chopping carrots as Anya took a seat at the kitchen bench.

‘We eat together every evening. I don’t want them getting into’ – he took a deep breath – ‘trouble of any sort. This is family time.’

‘I understand. I know how special that is.’

He slid a bowl of peas across the bench for shelling. ‘Would you mind? I’m curious as to why you’ve come now, when Alison died almost six months ago.’

Anya could see how painful each of those months had been.

He probably knew how many days and hours had passed, too.

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‘I apologize for the timing, but I’m looking into some specific findings that occurred in your wife’s case. They’re not isolated and may tell more of a story about what happened to her.’

He slid the carrots from the board into a saucepan, filled it with water and placed it on a ceramic cooktop.

‘Isn’t it clear what happened? Once an addict, always an addict. I was too stupid to believe it. Everyone told me how addicts manipulate everyone to get what they want. God knows, I’ve seen it enough at work.’

‘How long had she been abusing drugs?’

He pulled some potatoes out of the pantry and a peeler from the top drawer.

‘Who knows? We met at the university. We both did medicine as mature-age students. I’d done science and she’d done economics. I knew she’d used heroin in her teens and her boyfriend died of kidney failure thanks to strychnine mixed in a batch. After that she swore off the stuff and never looked back. Or so we all thought. She even got honors.’ He kept peeling. ‘That’s something I didn’t manage.’

Anya felt he needed the distraction of doing something with his hands. She appreciated having a task herself.

‘As an anesthetic registrar,’ he said, ‘she ran the pain clinic at Southern General.’

‘Do you think she was using drugs then?’

‘Someone reported her to the medical board and she had conditional registration imposed. That’s when she admitted to being dependent on codeine.’

Anya shelled another pea. ‘How did she react?’

‘Career-wise, well. She studied hard for her fellowship and enjoyed general practice. She said it was a wake-up call and, to save our marriage, agreed to regular urine tests. Do you know that when she got pregnant, she wouldn’t even take a headache tablet? Said she wouldn’t do anything to endanger her child.

And I believed her. Again.’ He chopped the potatoes into wedges and laid them in a baking dish.

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‘When your wife died, the PM found evidence of a fiber deposited in her lungs. Any idea if she had exposure to anything like asbestos?’

‘Not to my knowledge, but then I didn’t know everything.’

‘What about a history of respiratory illness?’

‘Mild asthma. She self-medicated and didn’t seem to need much treatment, except when she caught the kids’ colds.’

‘What about where she grew up?’

‘She lived at home until we got married. Her parents still own the home in Pennant Hills. A lovely old federation place on half an acre.’

‘Did they renovate?’

‘It still has a 1950s kitchen, if that’s what you mean.’ He wiped the scraps into a small container on the bench.

Anya shelled another pea. ‘Somehow she inhaled an unusual fiber. Could her father have brought it home?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘We’re finding a new generation of asbestosis sufferers. The kids who cuddled their fathers when they came home from work with fibers all over their clothes.’

‘Look, where is all this going? Al’s father owned a menswear store and made his money franchising.’

‘I’m trying to source the fibers.’ Anya continued shelling.

‘While you’re at it, how about you find out who she was sleeping with?’ The knife slipped and the end of his finger oozed blood. ‘Damn!’ He sucked it and ran it under the tap.

Anya walked around the kitchen bench, looking for something to apply pressure with.

Paul Blakehurst stared at the water and blood running down the sink. ‘I always thought I’d know if my wife was involved with someone else. You hear about partners having late meetings, change of habits. Alison wasn’t any good at lying. Her voice would go up an octave even if she lied about a surprise birthday party. Can’t believe I had no idea. Nothing seemed different with me or the kids.’

Anya found a box of tissues on top of the fridge and pulled KATHRYN FOX

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a handful out to press on the cut. Paul took the tissues and turned off the tap.

‘One day I came home from work and she was gone. Can you believe she didn’t even take her favorite photo of the kids?’

‘What makes you so sure she chose to leave?’

‘It’s pretty obvious. The affair, running away. Initially I thought she’d joined some sort of cult but there were rumors around the clinic she was seeing an obstetrician.’

This man had lost his wife twice. Once to an unknown man, and then to drugs. Anya remembered being too busy working to notice Martin’s early behavior changes. Looking back, signs were there. Moodiness, starting fights as an excuse to walk out. The marriage counselor called it transference, or projection, or some other clinical name. Anya just recognized it as guilty behavior hiding infidelity.

‘What makes you so sure she was having an affair and wasn’t part of a cult?’

‘A drug habit wasn’t the only thing she picked up. The children know their mother was found lying in vomit, dressed in a see-through cheesecloth dress and G-string in a hotel room.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean –’

‘She
had
an affair. How do I know? I know because she had herpes and that’s one thing I couldn’t give her.’

33

Elaine opened the mail and presented Anya with a series of bills and a request from Sabina Pryor at Legal Aid. Attached was a photograph of the back of a ten-year-old girl. The child was covered in linear bruises down her spine, fanning out from the vertebrae.

‘That poor child!’ Elaine said, covering her mouth.

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Anya said, reserving judgment.

She read the letter from Sabina, which explained that the parents of this girl moved from Vietnam two years ago. They were being investigated for child abuse and had little understanding of Australian law. Through an interpreter, they denied harming the child.

They came to the notice of Family Services when the child complained of pain in her ribs at school. The school teacher noted a fever, and saw the bruises on the girl’s back. Mandatory notification laws meant she immediately contacted the department, which promptly intervened. The child was admitted to hospital with a right-sided pneumonia and was currently in foster care.

Sabina wanted a second opinion regarding the injuries to the girl’s back – what most likely caused them and were they consistent with an Asian healing therapy, as the parents claimed.

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‘I’ve seen this before,’ Anya said. ‘The bruises are symmetri-cal and outline the ribs. It looks like someone has drawn on top of the backbone and ribs with a red marker.’

Elaine peered at the photos.

‘These injuries weren’t caused by hitting or striking. See, the skin isn’t broken. They’ve been caused by a blunt injury, in this case, something rubbing against the skin. It’s a common practice in Asia, especially Vietnam, to rub coins along the ribs to relieve pain. Pneumonia can cause inflammation of the pleura, which feels like pain in the ribs. The teacher automatically assumed the marks on the skin were the problem.’

‘I’ll be damned. The family thought they were doing the right thing, treating the pain. I’d have thought the same thing as the teacher.’

‘So do many doctors in Casualty. Intravenous antibiotics and physiotherapy are obviously more effective and don’t involve Family Services. It’s a good, straightforward case. I’ll dictate a letter this afternoon. So, what else have you got?’

‘I’ll type it but invoice Legal Aid before it’s sent. That way you’ll be paid for your effort, rather than donating your time again.’ She referred to a list on her notepad. ‘Dr. Latham called while you were on the other line. He’s on his way over with some files for you to look at. I’ll go and put the kettle on.

Lucky we’ve got some biscuits in the tin.’

Elaine seemed to be fussing more than usual.

‘Has Anoub Deab been bothering you?’ Anya asked.

‘He turned up with a girlfriend draped all over him to find out if there was anything new, but didn’t “bother” me. I just wish he wasn’t so rude.’

On time, Peter arrived, and Elaine presented him with tea.

‘Ah, perfect brew, just the way I like it. Thank you. And coffee creams, my favorite.’

Anya noticed that his normally woolly hair had been combed down.

For a moment, Elaine seemed coy. Anya wondered if the pair were flirting.

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Peter quickly suggested it might be a good idea for Elaine to document the meeting. She flicked over a page on her pad and sat on the spare chair, beside Peter.

‘I brought Alison Blakehurst’s PM.’ He seemed pleased with himself. ‘Carney wasn’t keen to let it go, but he could hardly refuse to send it when I mentioned a possible connection with other cases. He even included the tissue samples.’

‘It’s what we needed.’ Anya sat, elbows resting on the arms of her chair. ‘I suggested we meet here because I didn’t want to talk in front of Zara or anyone else. Having an occupational health issue is one thing, but dealing with a possible serial offender is something I’d like to keep quiet until we know more. Besides, I’d prefer that everyone at the State Forensic Institute didn’t think I was out to show them up, looking for mistakes, to make a name for myself.’

‘If we’ve missed something, we need to know so it doesn’t happen again.’ Peter frowned. ‘They know I believe in quality assurance, but I agree. Meeting here is wise. After all the media attention on retention of body parts, everyone’s more than a little paranoid right now. I looked at the fibers again and sent the slides along with tissue samples from both the Matthews girl and Alison Blakehurst. Electron microscopy confirmed the presence of pseudo-asbestos bodies.’

‘Sorry, what sort of asbestos bodies?’ Elaine asked without looking up.

Peter explained, ‘ “Pseudo-asbestos,” meaning they mimic the appearance but are chemically different in makeup from asbestos. I can give you a copy of the printouts.’