The Simple Death (16 page)

Twenty-five

I
n the corridor after seeing Ian Carter, Troy realised he hadn't heard from the hospice and made a call. They put him through to Carolyn Moore, who said Luke still didn't want to receive visitors.

‘Did you tell him I called?'

‘I'm sorry, but we have to respect Father's wishes.'

‘Can I talk to him on the phone?' At least that.

But no.

‘The archbishop was here again today,' she said. ‘They had a very long conversation. I can assure you Father Carillo is being looked after very well. At the highest level.'

He hung up and walked in silence.

Finally Conti said, ‘Dr Carter liked you.'

‘Yeah?' he said, not getting it. And then: ‘He's gay?'

‘Come on!' She laughed with delight, calmed down. ‘It can't be easy for him here, with all the statues and crucifixes. They even had a problem about abortions a while back.'

‘Nuns did start the place.'

‘Back in the day,' she said. ‘It's just another public hospital now. I'm surprised they're allowed to keep the hagiography.'

‘That's a big word.' He wasn't sure she'd used it correctly, either.

‘I thought you could cope. Am I wrong?'

He smiled and shook his head, starting to get a feel for Conti's mind, liking it.

She said, ‘It's hot. Feel like a swim?'

Her face was a little red, but also keen, her smile hovering uncertainly. The proposal took him by surprise. Maybe it shouldn't have, but it did.

This was it, the chance to move on.

‘With you?' he said.

‘That's the general idea. It's been a long day.'

‘Your beach or mine?'

She laughed, and he felt the surge. It was not simply that she was attractive, or even just the proposal: he felt at ease with her, and this was tremendously relieving. It had been a long time.

He looked at his watch and saw it was after five. ‘You've got your costume?'

‘In my gym bag.'

His phone rang. It was David Saunders, asking if he could drop by the office. Alone. Troy did a quick calculation and told Conti the swim was off, maybe dinner instead? She told him dinner would be fine. Said she was hungry.

Saunders' secretary had gone and the door to his office was open, the big man peering at his computer. When he saw Troy he jumped up and showed him to the sofa. He sat down in an armchair with relief, as though it had been a hard day. Troy thought about making a friendly comment, but Saunders was not a man who invited intimacy. Everything about him was formal. Even his shirt was still crisp, as though freshly ironed. Troy had noticed this before with executives, and wondered how they did it, if there was some special fabric they had their shirts made of. Or maybe they changed them at lunchtime.

Saunders said, ‘Any leads?'

‘A few.'

‘You think Austin's death is related to Mark's?'

‘No.'

Saunders seemed happy to hear it. He pointed to a manila folder on the coffee table. ‘The stats Mark requested just came in.'

Troy blinked. ‘You mean the ones Paula Williams was getting for me?'

‘That's right.'

Troy picked up the folder and opened it. The figures were presented in a way that was almost meaningless to him, lists headed with unfamiliar terms and acronyms, in some cases just numeric codes. He wished Mac was here: he'd studied statistics at university.

‘What do they say?'

Saunders came over to the sofa, spent fifteen minutes going through the figures. Apparently there was a small increase in deaths in Oncology, but it was explained by case-mix changes, and alterations to the way data was collected and presented.

Troy said, ‘So there's no problem?'

‘No. If there was, it would've shown up in the complaints to the ombudsman.'

Troy nodded: one of the things Rostov's unit had done with the complaints was group them according to the area of the hospital they involved. Oncology was well down the list for unexpected deaths and other adverse events. So was Paediatrics.

He stood up, his mind drifting. ‘Could Mark's interest in the stats have anything to do with BRISTOL?'

‘You've heard of BRISTOL?' Saunders smiled. ‘Everything's connected to BRISTOL, or will be. But not yet, we're still at the pilot stage.' He put out his hand for the folder.

Troy said, ‘I'll hang on to this.'

‘You want it? We can make you a copy.'

‘I'll bring it back tomorrow.'

‘Okay,' Saunders said. Somewhere in the room, a mobile rang, and he shook Troy's hand and showed him out the door in a matter of seconds.

Troy didn't mind. He was thinking about Conti.

Twenty-six

A
t Julie's place the local police are all right, Leila thinks, but it is taking far too long. She is passed from one lot to another, from the uniforms to a pair of detectives, and tells her story so many times she loses count. It's as though she's being handed along an invisible production line, in a system understood by everyone but herself. No one makes any effort to explain it to her, and between interviews they expect her to wait on the footpath outside the house, or in her car. The vehicle is hot, so she turns on the engine to run the air con, gets a glare of disapproval from a woman pushing a three-wheel stroller along the footpath. She doesn't care, listens to music.

Eventually they ask her to drive to the police station. There she has to wait in the front office for a long time. At first she takes an interest in what is going on around her, the stories told by the people who come through the front doors with their problems. Most seem to have lost something. After a while she thinks about Julie and Carl. She has nothing in particular to think about, but they've become lodged in the front of her mind and she goes over her memories of them. Large, slow people, but with strong impulses. Julie's outburst of yesterday keeps coming back, although she has no idea what it meant. But she was a woman in trouble, and Leila hopes this had nothing to do with Elizabeth's death. She doesn't see how it could have.

There were moments, in the interviews she's just given, when she wanted to blurt out the truth. The fact the police were so accepting of her story made the desire to do this stronger rather than weaker, which is strange. No one asked to see the money when she was questioned back at the house, the money she said she'd come to pay Julie. In case they wanted to see it now, she stopped at an ATM on the way to the station and withdrew five hundred dollars.

All the police are incredibly young. They say you know you're getting old when the police are all younger than you, but she isn't all that old. If you want to get specific, she is about halfway through the average working life. Maybe not even quite there yet. She hasn't spoken with one cop over thirty. It's as though some epidemic has run through the force, removing all the older officers.

Eventually she's taken inside by one of the detectives, who chews gum as he sits down and types up her statement. She wonders why he thinks it's all right to do that. But then, she is lying under oath as she signs the printed statement; no one of us is perfect. He thanks her and takes her to the front room, holds open the security door that leads to the waiting area, clearly considering whether it is worth the bother of coming out with her and having to use his pass to get back in. He decides it isn't, grunts words to the effect they'll be in touch. Gravely she thanks him and walks out of the station.

She feels like screaming at them all for the way they treat the public, their lack of explanations and casual trampling of emotions. But she just keeps walking.

Twenty-seven

B
ack in Room 233, Conti was reading what looked like a textbook, but she had it inside her gym bag by the time he got to her.

‘The night cometh,' he said, recalling one of Luke's gags, ‘when no man can work.'

‘You religious?'

‘To a point.' He smiled. ‘Is your car here?'

‘It's at Manly.'

‘I'll take you back. There are restaurants there?'

‘In Manly?'

‘I guess there are.'

‘There's a great Thai place at Narrabeen.'

‘Let's go.' He pulled out his keys and they went out to the car park. ‘Where do you live?' he said.

‘Narrabeen.'

The food at the restaurant was good although the decor was kind of primitive. There was lino on the floor and the staff were just as busy with the takeaway business as with the customers at the plastic tables. Troy wondered why she'd chosen a place so functional. Maybe he'd misread her, and this was really nothing more than a work dinner, two busy colleagues postponing going back to their empty homes. He ought to be able to pick it, but after all this time, it was hard.

She was telling him about where she lived, in a flat she used to share with a girlfriend who'd gone to London. While she spoke she somehow managed to finish her chicken curry. He tried to remember if Anna had liked her food when they first met. Since Matt was born, she'd been on a semi-diet. But he didn't want to think of Anna now, pushed her away.

‘I never did the Europe thing,' she said.

‘Me neither. But there's time.'

She laughed, and it made a big difference, the way her face relaxed. Some people look relaxed all the time, but not Conti. He reached across the table and touched her hand, and she turned hers up to take his.

‘Have some more wine,' she said.

He saw she was out of practice too.

‘I'm driving.'

‘You don't have to,' she said. ‘My flat's walking distance.'

Her place was on the third floor of a large block two streets back from the beach. When they got there they kissed in the hall and he saw she was in a hurry, half dragging him into the bedroom and kicking off her shoes as she pulled back the blanket on top of the bed. There was a determination in her, as though they needed to get this thing beyond a certain point as quickly as possible, and as they kissed some more he figured she was right. They passed that point pretty soon, and then she pushed him off.

‘That day you let Austin get away,' she said, ‘you said you were looking at my shoulders. It wasn't my shoulders, was it?'

‘You seemed happy with my story.'

‘Huh,' she said, moving to the door. ‘Don't go away.'

He took off his coat and looked around the room. There were two books on a bedside table, the top one he recognised as a PQA study guide. He put it out of his mind, went over to the open window and removed his tie. The room was on the side of the building and you could see along the beach, the lines of surf white in the moonlight. A warm breeze was blowing off the sea with a faint scent of salt. He felt good and there was no thought of anything else, he was fully in this room, listening to the toilet flushing and the sound of Conti coming back. The noise of the toilet was kind of funny, but he figured not to mention it.

They made love quickly. He tried to control things but she was pressing, and the tempo of their movements increased. Her body was sleek and smooth, she had swimmer's arms and shoulders and her breasts and bum were not prominent, so his hands moved over her like moving through water, almost never stopping. She was unexpectedly noisy, and that was the last straw.

She kept her legs around him, refusing to let him roll off her.

‘You really needed that.'

‘And you didn't?'

She laughed, although it came out as more of a gasp. ‘Can't talk,' she said, ‘not yet.'

They lay there. As their breathing returned to normal, he could just hear the sea in the distance.

FRIDAY

Twenty-eight

H
e slept over, and in the morning was determined not to mention the investigation. It was hard, because his subconscious brooded on work while he slept, and he often woke up with ideas. Now, struggling to keep his mind clear, memories of mornings with other women came back to him, dim times before his marriage. Mornings could be difficult, but there was nothing quite like them if you got it right.

This one was right, and in the end Conti introduced the subject herself, while they were towelling each other dry in the bathroom. It was a small room and she banged her elbow, broke the mood.

‘Maybe we should go to Bourke and find Valdez,' she said.

He laughed and tried to put a hand on her bottom, but she wriggled away from him. ‘Feel like a break?'

She wrapped a towel around herself. ‘Haven't had leave in eighteen months. It affects you, dealing with low-life like Jim Austin all the time. We deserve a break, somewhere clean.'

‘You see a big gap there, do you? Jim and you?'

‘You're kidding, right?'

Grabbed his head, kissed him hard. The towel began to slip.

*

When he was dressed he went into her living room and saw a photo of a couple in their sixties on a side table, the man Bill Conti. Troy recognised him from a famous picture of Conti and two other detectives standing over the corpse of a criminal they'd shot, back in the late seventies. A crim they shouldn't have shot, in the opinion of many people, although no one would ever know. Unless one of the three detectives decided to talk about it, which in the scheme of things was highly unlikely.

‘What was your dad doing in 1979?' said Conti, coming into the room and handing him a cup of coffee.

As though she could read his mind.

‘Uniform, I guess. Maybe at Granville.' He didn't know much about his father's police career.

‘Did he ever get into CI?'

‘I don't know.' He had a vague memory of his father going to work in plainclothes while still in the job, so maybe he'd made it to criminal investigation. He looked at his watch.

They had to go to St Thomas', which meant a long journey. The traffic was like water running through a delta, it went everywhere it could. Except there was a logic to a delta's flow: all the water was heading for the sea, even if this was hard to tell on the ground. But Sydney's traffic, it went everywhere. No one knew its meaning.

Stuck in sight of the city, they ran out of conversation. Eventually Conti said, ‘It's weird, don't you think, that David Saunders is still using his own office even though he's doing Bellamy's job? Most people couldn't wait to move into the CEO's office.'

‘Couldn't they?'

‘It's like he's saying, “My job's as important as his, I don't need to move.'' '

He looked at her and smiled. ‘Is that what he's saying?'

She'd put on sunglasses, and he couldn't see her eyes.

‘That's what he's saying,' she said, and there was a hint of impatience there. ‘What do you think of him?'

‘I'm not sure.'

‘Come on. You must have formed some opinion.'

He was saved by a call on the hands-free. It was McIver, said, ‘I'm at Manly. What about you?'

Mac sounded spry, as though yesterday's lunch had not happened. Maybe he'd forgotten it. Troy explained he was stuck in traffic.

‘That Conti,' said Mac. ‘An attractive woman.'

He looked across at Conti. ‘I think so.'

‘You with her?'

Troy glanced around, at the cars nearby, wondering if McIver was spying on them.

‘No.'

‘Best not to. Work romances can only lead to sorrow.'

‘How's Ruth?'

‘Ruth,' Mac said, ‘is another story.'

Troy didn't push it, not wanting Conti to hear anything personal McIver might choose to tell him. But the sergeant changed the subject, and explained what had been done yesterday afternoon, none of it useful. Their knowledge of what had
not
happened to Mark Pearson was now comprehensive. Troy told him about the doctors he'd spoken with, and the Oncology stats.

‘You've come across BRISTOL?' said McIver.

‘Yeah. You?'

‘A mate told me. It's Saunders' ticket out if he can stop Bellamy from canning it. If he can get it up and have a big win, he might get hired as CEO by another hospital. Of course it's bullshit, like all that UK stuff; targets, measurement, it all goes back to scientific management theory. You've heard of Frederick Taylor?'

Troy looked at Conti, raised his eyebrows. Mac seemed to have a lot of time this morning. Maybe yesterday's binge had cleared his mind.

‘Just.'

‘Father of scientific management. What few people know is that he made most of it up. Just told lies.'

‘I thought he was a hero,' said Troy, who'd been told about Taylor on a course.

‘BRISTOL says the health system has five per cent waste, you cut that and you save so many hundred million. But every organisation has five per cent waste, at least, don't have to be Einstein to work that out. Problem is how to target the waste when you make cuts. Truth is, BRISTOL can't do that better than anyone else, so when you stick the knife in, you take out more muscle than fat.'

‘Saunders ought to know that.'

‘Of course he does. Management theory is the greatest crap—'

‘Mark Pearson approved of BRISTOL.'

McIver laughed. ‘Poor bastard had an MBA. He wouldn't have had a clue.'

He talked some more, just housekeeping stuff, said he'd be at the hospital later, and hung up. Troy glanced at Conti, who was staring at the phone speaker with what seemed like mild shock. Although as she was still wearing the dark glasses, he couldn't be sure.

She said, ‘I'm doing an MBA.'