The Simple Death (26 page)

Forty-eight

D
r Ben Farrell called Troy while Mac and he were driving over to City Central to interview Leila Scott. Bidwell must have passed on his number. Troy put the call on hands-free and the doctor told what he knew of the voluntary euthanasia movement in Sydney, including the influence of a doctor named Stuart Emery. It sounded like a speech, prepared.
Prepared and bitter
.

‘You seem to know a lot about it,' Troy said, after the doctor had given him some of the proprietary names that might be found on bottles of Nembutal.

‘I know very little,' said Farrell. ‘They keep most of their activities secret. It's taken a long time for Dr Emery's connection to become more widely known. It would be interesting to know if Leila visited Mexico, where you can buy Nembutal over the counter.'

‘Yes,' said Troy. Farrell had brought this up already, although he hadn't called her Leila before. Until now she'd been Dr Scott. ‘What about Carl Burns? Have you come across him?'

‘Who?'

‘He's the boyfriend of Julie Cornish, the nurse who—'

‘I know who Julie is, of course. I've never met her boyfriend.'

‘Burns told us you recommended Julie and him to the Scotts.'

‘That's not true. I don't know where she came from.'

‘Did you know she was a member of a voluntary euthanasia society?'

Pause. ‘No. Oh dear.'

‘Julie would have given Mrs Scott painkillers?'

‘Sure. The local pal care service devised a plan in consultation with me. I checked the drugs that were left after Elizabeth died. There was nothing missing.'

Troy changed the subject. ‘You've said Nembutal would show up in an autopsy. Is there any other way to kill yourself and leave no trace?' It didn't seem likely, but he had to ask.

Farrell was silent for a moment.

‘I have heard of a method,' he said at last. ‘I've never heard of it being used, I imagine it's not very appealing. But I've seen it on the net, and it would work.'

‘Yes?'

Farrell explained it involved obtaining a container of nitrogen, which was legal, and hooking it up with a tube and a flow regulation device to a big oven bag you placed over your head. ‘Apparently you hold it over your forehead, breathe out, pull the bag down and pull the bottom closed with a drawstring, take a few deep breaths.'

‘And that's it?' Hard to believe it could be so simple. Needham wouldn't need to eat his gun after all.

‘Pretty much. Apparently it's quite easy to obtain nitrogen.'

‘Could you kill someone that way?' he said.

‘Do you mean Elizabeth Scott?' Troy didn't, but he said nothing. ‘I suppose you could put it over a person's head while they were asleep, but they'd probably wake up and resist.'

‘Elizabeth was on morphine?'

‘Yes, but I don't know if it was enough to stop her struggling. Even when it's asleep, the body likes to protect itself. I think I would have seen marks, bruises. There weren't any.'

There hadn't been any marks on Julie Cornish, either.

‘Thanks,' Troy said.

He was about to say goodbye when Farrell said, ‘There is one thing. I hesitate to mention it.' Troy gave an encouraging murmur. ‘The timing of Elizabeth's death.'

‘Yes?'

‘This is all confidential?'

‘Of course.'

‘It's just—and this is probably nothing—from what I know, Elizabeth died just before Leila was due to go back to work.'

‘Yes?'

‘She'd taken a year off work and that year was almost up.'

‘She could have extended it.'

‘I asked her that, just before she went on holiday. As Elizabeth's GP, I was interested in what arrangements were being made for the future. It occurred to me Leila is in a pretty senior position, I imagine she couldn't take time off indefinitely.' He stopped.

‘What did Dr Scott say?'

‘She said she hadn't yet decided what she was going to do. That strikes me as odd, for two reasons.' He laughed dully. ‘Leila is the most organised person.'

‘And the other reason?'

‘When she came back from the States, she told me a promotion opportunity had come up and she was about to go for an interview. As if she knew she wouldn't be caring for her mother much longer.'

‘Thanks, doctor.'

Farrell laughed nervously, hung up.

Mac, who'd heard the conversation on the loudspeaker, said, ‘Talk to this bloke Emery, when you've got a moment.'

‘Do we care about this?'

‘It's illegal to help someone kill themselves. Don't you care?'

‘Yes. It's just, compared with Furnace—'

‘Talk to Emery. If we can get Scott to tell us about Burns and Cornish, this
is
all about Furnace. Talk to Immigration about her movements.'

Troy looked out the window, said, ‘How did the Zantac go?'

‘Living with a pregnant woman,' Mac said carefully, ‘is not as much fun as I'd expected.'

David Saunders rang McIver who put the call onto the car's speaker system, in time for Troy to hear Saunders say, ‘I've persuaded Bellamy to let you have the remaining personnel files.'

‘You've done well,' said McIver.

‘They're waiting with my secretary.'

‘Rostov will be right along,' said McIver. ‘Could I get you to read out the highlights of two of them?'

‘Which two?' Saunders sounded irritated, but it was under control.

‘Julie Cornish and Carl Burns.'

‘They're suspects?'

‘David, please.'

There was the sound of rustling papers.

Carl Burns had worked at St Thomas' for almost two years, Royal Brisbane for a few years before that, and the Bridley Hospice at Toowoomba for the preceding five. He'd been at the Royal for his training, too. During his last years at school, and occasionally afterwards, he'd worked casual shifts at the Wilton Nursing Home in suburban Brisbane.

Saunders said, ‘His references from the Royal and Bridley are fine, and they were checked. We spoke with the referees.'

‘Can I have their names?'

Saunders read them out, and Mac took notes.

Julie Cornish had also trained at the Royal, her first year overlapping Burns's last. She too had gone on to work at Bridley, and stayed there until moving to the Royal and then to Sydney at the same time as Burns.

‘Her references are not so good,' said Saunders, and Troy could just hear the flicking of papers on the file. ‘Two episodes off work due to stress at the Royal, and one here—she was on workers' comp for three weeks. Her performance was a bit below average at Bridley, one manager said she couldn't handle complex situations, felt inadequate about this. On the other hand, she had above average empathy with patients, kept her head in a crisis, and the director said they were sorry to lose her. She seems to have found her niche there.'

‘Nothing in her file about Carl Burns?'

‘No, there wouldn't be. But they started here in the same week, both in Oncology.'

‘Anything on why she moved to Charity?'

‘Not really. There's a report here from the NUM in Oncology, says Julie was competent enough, could get a bit teary but did all right. She just announced one day she was going back to hospice work.'

‘There was nothing unusual about that?'

‘Not really. Nurses move around all the time. Is that all?'

After Saunders hung up, Troy said, ‘You've made a new friend.'

Mac smiled. ‘I'm a friendly fellow.'

Forty-nine

W
hen Leila wakes up on the day after the assault, she feels surprisingly good, some pain on the surface of her head where she's been hit, but no headache. She decides to go in to work, important that she be there, visible to the people who are making the decision on her promotion.

It turns out, though, the choice has been made. Director Wallace calls her into his office soon after she arrives, asks her to sit down. Fiddles with his pen, the way he does, then tells her Lewis has won the position. He was acting in the role for the previous two months, did a wonderful job, convinced the panel.

Lewis also plays cricket with you every Saturday, she feels like saying, but doesn't. What she says is, ‘I would have been acting if I hadn't been off nursing my mother.'

‘Not necessarily.' He says it quickly, has seen it coming. She was able to see things coming herself, before this business with her mother. ‘But anyway, this is the way it's turned out. I understand you've still got some problems. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.'

‘What are you talking about?'

He has something up his sleeve. That too she once knew all about.

‘Let me know if there's anything I should know. No surprises, eh?'

‘You're not going to tell me what this is about?'

He points at the door with his pen, says, ‘Don't be obtuse. How's the head?'

‘The head,' she says, ‘is fine.'

He must know, she realises as she walks down the corridor back to her own office. He must know about the police. They called her last night, wanting to make a time to interview her later this morning. She assumed it was about yesterday, but perhaps it is to do with her mother's death. Possibly Wallace knows this already, knows more than she does. He is a connected man, heavily so. She goes into her office and stares out the window, scarcely seeing the tawny sandstone building across the road. Takes a deep breath and tells herself this is not so bad, she still has a good job even without the promotion. Turns to the Kandinsky print and her two framed postgraduate degrees, the shelves full of books, in a gap a copy of a small Degas sculpture. She bought that at the Orsay, must go back to Europe soon. Fuck America.

Forget the promotion, she tells herself: think about why the police want to talk again. You need to hold on to what you have.

Although she reaches the police station at the agreed time, she is made to sit in the front area. It must be one of the advantages of being in the police: everyone has to wait for you. No matter what other people are paid, how important their jobs, you can make them wait. Only the innocent can afford not to cooperate, and she wonders if she should throw a hissy fit and walk out, if this would be taken as a sign of innocence. But then, they can't be completely stupid: they must realise that guilty people can think like this.

She looks at her watch and sees with surprise it is only ten past eleven. There is a need to get herself under some sort of control. She calls Amanda, a friend in the syllabus area, and without much effort learns Lewis has told the director she is under investigation for the death of her mother.

‘But I'm not!' she says.

Amanda is suitably shocked. They talk for several minutes and then Leila, a heavy feeling in her stomach, says she has to go. She recalls she rang Lewis from the hospital yesterday, told him in his capacity as her acting boss what had happened, not mentioning the Nembutal of course. Then Wendy called while she was still there, after the police had interviewed her. She'd been groggy, feeling sorry for herself. And she can't remember what she said. She must have said too much, Wendy told Lewis, he put it together.

‘The shit,' is what she says now.

‘I'm sorry?'

Looking up, she sees the male detective from yesterday, Troy, a tall man with blond hair, good-looking but hard to read.

‘Sorry to drag you away from your work,' he says, holding the door open. ‘Thanks for coming in.'

He has a strong nose and jaw, is tanned and moves slightly awk- wardly, as though he'd rather be doing something more active. His suit is dark with faint stripes, over one of those awful textured white shirts, some government grey tie, diagonal stripes over a faint outline of the map of New South Wales. The classic Cro Magnon Anglo Australian male.

‘No bandage today?' he says, looking at her head.

‘No.'

She doesn't want to go through the doorway with him: it is a physical reluctance. But she does. Inside, everything is scratched and tatty, just like a typical school. She relaxes, slightly. They go down a corridor and into an interview room, a white space with a table running down its centre, no windows. At the far end there is a stack of electronic equipment, including a camera mounted on the wall facing the door, which Troy shuts behind her. He drags a chair into position and asks her to sit at the end of the table, facing the camera. Leila notices a blank screen on the wall next to the camera; the technology has improved since the last time she was inside a police station. She wonders if they are aware of her criminal history.

The woman who was with Troy yesterday, attractive but with hard eyes, is not here. Another man is in the room, fiddling with some of the equipment. Troy says nothing until he finishes and turns around, introduces him as Detective Sergeant McIver. He is slim and a lot older than Troy, too old for his rank, she suspects. There is something knowing in his expression, as though whatever is going on, he is complicit. The effect is not entirely unappealing.

‘We're from the Homicide Squad,' Troy says as he sits down, ‘investigating the death of Julie Cornish.'

This is good.

‘You didn't say that yesterday.'

‘Is it a problem?'

‘She was murdered?'

‘We'll get to that in a moment. Do you mind if we record this interview, sound and vision?'

‘Is this, um, does it mean I'm a suspect?'

‘No,' says McIver. ‘We used to use it only for suspects, but these days it's often used for witness interviews too. It means we have a record that can be shown in court, if necessary. Sometimes a witness might be unavailable.' His voice is warm and full of charm.

She tries to look interested, one public servant learning something from another, says, ‘Okay.'

She needs to be sceptical of everything they say. But the way the older man is looking at her, it is harder than it should be. He has deep lines on his face, like Harvey Keitel in his prime. But taller.

McIver reaches across and hits a button, and Troy announces the location and date of the interview and who is there. He asks about her head injury and has her declare she feels well enough to proceed. His voice changes when the recording starts, is now formal and slow. Even his eyes seem to have grown dull. Leila knows she has to change too, adapt to the rhythm inside the room, just as the police have done. She forces herself to breathe more deeply.

‘You've been offered the chance to contact a solicitor and you've declined?'

Leila nods: she has nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

‘Would you answer the question for the tape?'

‘That's correct. I don't want a solicitor.'

McIver looks around and says to Troy, ‘Have you got the DVD?'

He rummages through his folder and takes out a disc in a flat case, slides it across to McIver, who picks it up and examines whatever is written on the cover. He nods to Troy, who half turns and switches on the screen on the wall, which fizzes with static.

This all takes time, and the detectives obviously feel no need to fill the silence. It is a strange experience, Leila thinks. Prime-time cop shows prepare you for some aspects of police work, but not for the silence and the waiting.

McIver looks at the screen and says to Troy, ‘You can turn that off for now.' Then, to Leila, ‘You maintain you were alone when you found Julie Cornish's body, and until the police arrived?'

‘Yes.'

‘You dialled triple-oh at ten seventeen am. For the moment, I'm interested in the events leading up to that phone call. Can you tell us why you were at the premises?'

Leila realises she is almost panicking already. This is much worse than the airport.

‘I called Julie the day before to arrange a time to pay her some money I owed her, and she invited me over for a cup of coffee, and to show me her vegetable garden.'

She resists the urge to lick her lips.

‘You're interested in gardening?'

‘I made the mistake of pretending I was interested one day when we were talking, to be polite. You know how it is.'

‘Exactly when did she invite you?'

‘Two days before. She called to say she was sorry she hadn't been able to make Mum's funeral.'

‘She rang you on your mobile?'

Leila wonders where this is going.

‘I don't think so. She rang me at home.'

‘Her phone book only has your mobile number in it.'

‘Well, she spent six days at our place. Maybe she memorised the number.'

McIver looks at his notes, taking his time again. This is part of how it works, Leila realises: they use silence to make you nervous. But the panic has abated, because she's worked out the rhythm. She can wait as long as they can.

They go on, running through the details of her arrival at Julie's and the discovery of her body. Leila answers smoothly, but with caution, waiting for the boot to fall, the announcement of some fact that will destroy her story. Maybe a neighbour saw Stuart. Maybe something else. But so far, nothing comes. She is handling it well. What is she missing?

‘How did Julie die?' she says.

Troy looks up, says, ‘At the moment we don't know.'

‘How can . . . how can someone just
die?
She was only thirty.'

‘People do just die, but it's very unusual. That's why we're here.'

This is good, she thinks again.

McIver examines his folder some more, allowing the silence to build again. It is aggressive, and she finds it hard not to be upset. Troy just sits there, holding the pencil he's been using to make marks on a piece of paper while McIver asked his questions. Leila guesses it is a list, and he is ticking off the answers as they are given. She looks down at the table and thinks about her mother's funeral. In the silence she realises just how tired she is, a deep tiredness that needs more than sleep if it is to go away.

At last McIver nods to Troy, who says, ‘There's a poster on the wall of the back room that someone has removed recently. Do you know anything about that?' Resisting the urge to ask how they know this has been done recently, Leila shakes her head. ‘Would you speak your answer for the benefit of the tape.'

‘No. I don't know anything about any poster.'

‘You've never seen one in the house before?'

‘I'd never been to the house before.'

‘Did you remove anything from the home?'

‘Of course not.' Time for a little indignation.

‘When did you first meet Julie Cornish?'

‘About six months ago. Julie—'

‘If you can just stick to answering the question.'

‘Okay.'

They have her behaving like some laboratory animal. That's what this place is, she thinks, looking at the white walls: a laboratory.

Troy makes a mark on his piece of paper, says, ‘How did you meet her?'

Leila looks at McIver, wondering if she should complain. They are being deliberately rude and she needs to respond as an innocent person would. But not yet.

‘I'd been caring for my mother for about nine months and a friend of hers, Tami Goddard, knew I wanted a break. She said she knew a nurse who did that sort of thing, and brought her around to meet Mum. They got on well and Julie came around a few more times, so Mum would be at ease with her while I was gone.'

Troy asks for Tami's phone number and writes it down. Then he says, ‘You went away for a week even though your mother was dying?'

She hates him.

‘Yes.'

‘Were you aware Julie Cornish had an interest in euthanasia?'

Leila forces herself to pause before answering. ‘It came up in conversation once, I think. It was something she'd thought about. A lot of people do. From memory, it was assisted suicide she was interested in.'

‘There's a difference, is there?'

‘Of course.' Touch of steel, now; they'd expect it of her if they're smart. Wonders if they are. Why would you be a cop, if you were smart.

More waiting.

‘Does the name Dr Stuart Emery mean anything to you?'

Here we go. Maybe. Not so good anymore.

‘He's an acquaintance of my mother.'

‘He's a friend of yours?'

‘No.'

‘You've met him more than once?'

‘I'd say three or four times. People used to come to the house to keep Mum's spirits up. She was very social.'

‘Do you know how she met Dr Emery?'

‘No.'

‘Might it have been through Ms Goddard?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘How long did you live in your mother's house, caring for her?'

‘Eleven months.'

‘When's the first time you remember Dr Emery calling?'

Leila thinks about it, wondering if she can get away with a lie. Probably not.

‘I'd say six months ago, roughly, but I can't be sure. When people came, I was either in the kitchen making them coffee or I'd take a walk.'

‘Did Dr Emery know Julie Cornish?'

‘I don't know.'

‘She wasn't recommended to you by Dr Emery?'

‘No.'

‘Who told you about her?'

‘I've told you already.'

‘Would it surprise you to learn that Dr Emery also has an interest in euthanasia, in
voluntary
euthanasia?'

‘I didn't know that, but it wouldn't surprise me. A lot of people do. According to opinion polls—'