Malicious Intent (7 page)

MALICIOUS INTENT

der. ‘You’re not responsible,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not your fault.’

A woman’s voice interrupted from the corridor.

‘Maria? Are you all right?’

The receptionist grabbed a tissue from the box on the bench and wiped her eyes.

‘Dr. Crichton is here. I’m fine.’

Anya moved toward the door and greeted Jennifer Wallace.

The GP was a small yet imposing woman with long red hair and gray eyes. A bodysuit stretched to cover shoulders dispro-portionately large for her frame. She was businesslike in her apology for being detained but softened to address her secretary.

‘Harry’s in the waiting room. I can look after him, so why don’t you have lunch and I’ll see you back at three.’

Maria excused herself and left the room.

Dr. Wallace spoke first. ‘I hoped we could talk in private but one of my patients fell and lacerated his forehead. Harry’s pretty deaf and there’s no danger he’ll have his hearing aid turned on.’

‘Let me guess, he’s saving the batteries?’ Anya asked, familiar with the common elderly habit.

‘Exactly.’ The GP gave a relaxed smile. ‘We can talk while I suture him. Unfortunately it’s the best I can do today.’

Anya was unused to discussing cases in front of a patient. ‘If Harry doesn’t mind, of course.’

Dr. Wallace returned to the waiting room and helped the elderly man onto the treatment room bed. A blood-soaked hand towel moved to reveal a deep gash above his left eyebrow.

Touching his shoulder, she shouted into his right ear her intention to stitch the wound. He raised a hand in agreement.

On a silver trolley beside the bed, she unwrapped a plastic dressing pack, careful not to contaminate the contents. She scrubbed her hands and turned off the long-handled taps with her elbows.

Anya waited before breaking the silence. ‘Obviously this is a difficult time for you all, but I’d like to ask you some questions about Fatima Deab.’

‘I’ve already spoken to the police at length.’ The GP dried KATHRYN FOX

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her hands with a sterile paper towel from the open pack. ‘So you agree the death warrants further investigation?’

‘I am not actually working with the police. Fatima’s family has asked me to clarify what happened.’

‘In that case, I don’t see how I can help you.’ She snapped on surgical gloves.

‘The family has asked me to find out more about the circumstances of her death and what condition she was in since she’d been missing. Both the crime scene officer and the postmortem suggest the death appeared routine.’

‘Are you sure that’s what the family wants? I would have thought they’d want it all hushed up. This may look like a straightforward overdose, but not when you put it in context.’

‘Are you talking about the history of abuse?’

‘It’s more than that. Perhaps there’s something you don’t understand. Fatima’s family is fundamentalist. We’re talking about a group within a culture that condoned the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl, whom they accused of sleeping with a local boy.

The uncle chained her to a bed and beat her to death. Even when the autopsy found an imperforate hymen, men within the community proclaimed the death a moral victory. The family’s honor was at stake and to them, honor is everything.’

Anya tried to hide her revulsion at the inhumanity. ‘How severe was Fatima’s abuse?’

‘See for yourself. Her file and X-rays are on the shelf near the wall. Maria used to bring her here secretly when the father was at work. The mother doesn’t drive or speak English.’

While Dr. Wallace irrigated the man’s wound and injected local anesthetic, Anya opened the file. Notes dated back seven years. There were multiple entries for soft tissue injuries, bruising and suspected fractures. Anya held some X-rays up to the light.

Fractured forearms, jaw, cheekbones and ribs were alarmingly evident on dates spanning the period of treatment. She felt pity for a girl who had known little tenderness in her short life. ‘It seems as though the violence escalated the older Fatima became,’

Anya said.

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‘That’s right. She had another hairline fracture of the ulna not long before she disappeared.’

‘There was no cast on her arm when she was found.’

‘That’s because I didn’t plaster it. She let me treat her on the proviso that no one else found out. The father believed that her bruises should remind her of the wrong she was supposed to have done. I’d bandage the wrist when she came to work, but she’d take it off before going home.’

‘Didn’t Community Services get involved?’

‘With respect, Dr. Crichton, you may not understand some of the complex issues we’re dealing with. I’m obliged by law to notify Family and Community Services. I tried it once for Fatima and never again. The father was so enraged by the department’s attempted interference, the beatings got worse and Fatima was kept under lock and key. It was two years before she was allowed out on her own. Every visit had to remain confidential. I made the decision to support her rather than provoke more violence. You have to remember that Fatima was a victim, sure, but she
wanted
to stay at home.’

Anya wondered how many more young women were like Fatima Deab.

Dr. Wallace sutured the wound with a semicircular needle.

‘This isn’t an isolated case. Domestic violence is a way of life in many cultures. Look at African American women, Aboriginal communities. We Anglo Saxons can’t be proud of our record either. Domestic violence rates are horrific but it’s difficult to help when women don’t want to isolate themselves from their communities and prefer to stay where there is financial and social support. As doctors, all we can do is be there to patch them up, wait for the next crisis and hope something like this doesn’t happen.’ She finished tying the stitch. ‘Do you mind cutting?’

Anya picked up the pair of scissors and snipped the end of the stitch. ‘Did you know if she experimented with drugs?’

‘There was nothing to support that. She looked anemic so I took a blood count and iron levels when she had the last frac-KATHRYN FOX

49

ture. I’d have noticed track marks if there were any. Besides, she was needle-phobic.’

Suicide remained a possibility, Anya thought. She thought about the nun suiciding off the Gap and wondered if Fatima had felt as desperate. ‘Was she depressed?’

‘Not clinically.’ The doctor inserted another suture.

‘To your knowledge was she sexually active?’

‘I discussed contraception and pap smears but she denied any sexual activity. There was never a suggestion of sexual abuse.’

‘Or herpes?’

‘Definitely not.’ The GP slowly tied off the last stitch and looked at Anya. ‘Is that what they found at autopsy?’

‘It looks like it.’ Anya averted her eyes.

‘Oh, God. Did the father know?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Suddenly Anya felt as though she’d breached a confidence.

Dr. Wallace wiped the closed wound and applied a waterproof dressing.

‘What that poor child must have gone through. Now, herpes is so common. There’s not supposed to be a stigma attached to something that affects one in eight adults. But none of that applied to Fatima.’ The doctor’s eyes moistened as she spoke.

‘For a girl like Fatima, herpes was akin to a death sentence.’

7

Debbie Finch watched the little boy’s chest rise and fall with each artificial respiration. A cardiac monitor lauded one hundred beats per minute. He could have been any other sleeping five-year-old except for the ventilation tube in his neck.

She reached down and tucked his tiny cold hand under the cotton blanket.

The night doctor approached. ‘The CareFlight team will be another twenty minutes. You might as well hand over and go home,’ he said before moving on to the next patient.

Debbie checked the fluid dripping into the boy’s vein, unable to move her eyes from her little patient who, only a few hours ago, no one thought would survive. He had choked on a cherry tomato and lay limp in his mother’s arms.

When the doctor had tried to intubate, the fragile tomato broke into pieces and completely occluded the windpipe, rendering him without oxygen for three more agonizing minutes.

The doctor performed a tracheotomy and inserted a breathing tube into the child’s motionless neck, bypassing the obstruction. Debbie had deftly handed him sterile equipment, connected up the ventilator and administered medications efficiently and accurately.

Her hands were still warm from the nervous excitement.

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She couldn’t remember feeling this charged, not in all her nursing career at Gosford Regional Hospital. She didn’t want to go home, not to her father, not tonight.

She glanced down at the watch pinned to her blue uniform.

The carer had to leave at 11:00 pm, so she’d better make a move.

Debbie pushed through thick plastic doors to the corridor and turned into the staff room, where earlier that night the casualty team had celebrated her fortieth birthday. For once Debbie had been the center of attention and people were waiting on her. It felt good.

Before leaving she indulged in one more slice of chocolate cake. It was funny, but even if she starved, her uniforms still needed letting out. The hospital laundry had a habit of shrink-ing them, or so she preferred to think. With a full mouth, she put the card in her bag, grabbed the bunch of flowers and headed out of the building.

Debbie glanced around for a security guard, but knew he’d be on rounds. She’d missed his 10:30 pm nurses’ escort. At the bottom of the road she turned left and began the walk up the dimly lit street toward her car. Ahead of her she could make out the silhouette of a man.

He carried a baby in a car seat in one hand, two bags in the other and something else slung over his shoulder. Typical of a new father, he didn’t look like he’d make it to wherever his car was parked.

He dropped one of the bags and arched his back.

‘Excuse me,’ Debbie called and caught up. A street lamp illuminated a nice-looking man dressed in a polo shirt and dark slacks. A baby teddy bear protruded from one of the bags.

‘You look like you could do with a hand,’ she offered.

‘Thanks. I’m not used to this. Can’t believe how much equipment you need to carry around.’

Debbie chuckled. ‘From what they tell me, you’re supposed to be an octopus to cope.’ She picked up one of the bags, wondering why the father and child were leaving the hospital so 52

MALICIOUS INTENT

late. ‘Surely you haven’t been discharged at this hour?’ She leaned over to peek at the baby, but the man was shielding the baby from the light with his side.

‘My wife’s been readmitted, some kind of infection, so I decided we would be better off at home.’ He gestured with his free hand. ‘The car is just around the corner.’

Debbie lifted the bag with the teddy bear and shuffled the flowers under her arm.

‘They’re beautiful. Are they from a grateful patient?’

Debbie felt her face flush. ‘No, actually they’re from work-mates. A birthday present.’

‘Happy birthday!’ He began to walk and picked up pace. As they turned into Faunce Street, Debbie started to puff, regretting the extra piece of cake.

‘Not much farther, it’s the four-wheel drive up ahead.’

As they stopped at the vehicle, he unlocked both back doors. ‘I haven’t got used to the restraint yet, do you mind giving me a hand?’ He lifted the child’s seat into the back on the driver’s side.

Men were so useless sometimes, she thought. How difficult could it be? Still slightly short of breath, she placed the bag behind the passenger seat and self-consciously hitched up her skirt just enough to climb onto the seat. The interior light didn’t come on. She reached for the harness and tried to clip it in place. Curious to see the sleeping child, she leaned across and gently peeled back the blanket. Inside the car seat her hand touched something cold and hard.

Heart hammering, panic filled her.

There was no baby.

8

The following evening, Anya finished some paperwork, edited two articles for a forensic journal and formalized the notes of her discussion with Dr. Wallace. She had thought about Ben most of the day and wanted to hear his voice. Martin may have won custody but couldn’t deny her that.

She finished her report, went straight to her room and phoned from the cordless handset. The call diverted to Martin’s mobile.

‘Martin, it’s me. I’m calling to remind you about Friday.

What time can I get Ben?’

Across the corridor, soft toys lay on a Harry Potter duvet cover, ready for his fortnightly visit. A plastic tyrannosaurus sat propped on the red pillow, ready to attack a triceratops lying underneath. Only two days to go, or ‘two big sleeps’ as Ben would say. She walked in and straightened the duvet. Being around his things helped sometimes, but it was nothing like being with him. If she closed her eyes, she could almost smell his hair.

Martin’s voice sounded strained. ‘Something’s come up. We won’t be back for the weekend.’

‘What do you mean you won’t be back?’ Anya’s pulse quickened. ‘Where are you?’

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‘Decided to have a bit of a break down the South Coast.

We’ve been to Merimbula and thought we’d stop in Batemans Bay.’

It was just like Martin to disappear for days at a time, if he thought the surf was up. She’d heard it before, but this time he
knew
it was her turn to see Ben. ‘You have no right . . .’

‘Don’t talk to me about rights. I look after our child. You come and go as you like, and it suits you to have him the occasional weekend. This time we wanted a bit of a holiday and Ben’s having a ball. Do you want to ruin it because of your selfishness?’

‘That’s outrageous and you know it!’ She struggled to regain composure. ‘You should have told me – we could have organized another time. Maybe I could come to you.’

‘That’s
not
an option.’

Anya took a deep breath. Out of spite Martin once threatened to take Benjamin away – permanently – somewhere she’d never find him. It was what she feared most of all. She thought quickly. ‘Who are you staying with?’