Malicious Intent (9 page)

She clicked on her discussion groups and sent a question to KATHRYN FOX

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the forensic list group, along with the jpeg files of the slides. The list comprised crime scene police, forensic scientists, pathologists and criminal lawyers from all over the globe. The forum had proven useful over the last couple of years and meant invaluable access to some of the world’s foremost forensic experts. Someone was bound to recognize the fiber, or give the name of someone who could.

Checking her inbox, she found a message from her father reminding her of the next Victims of Homicide meeting on Tuesday night. This time he hadn’t phoned. She didn’t know whether it was a relief, not having to give him a feeble excuse, or whether he’d given up asking. It was too late to ring – her stepmother loathed calls in the evening – and an e-mail seemed inadequate on what would have been her sister’s thirty-second birthday.

She picked up the phone and dialed her mother in Launceston. The answering machine clicked in, saying that Dr.

Jocelyn Reynolds was on call for the practice. She was currently on a housecall and would be back as soon as possible. Anya decided not to leave a message and hung up. She couldn’t think of anything that would make tomorrow more tolerable. There was only one day worse than Miriam’s birthday – the anniver-sary of her disappearance.

Right now, the computer screen seemed strangely comfort-ing. She had privacy and independence but could communicate with the world – on her terms.

The next fifty e-mails were spam. One click and they were banished to the black hole of cyberspace. If only dealing with family and the past was that simple.

Another e-mail appeared in the inbox, this one from Sabina Pryor, a lawyer with the indictable section of Legal Aid. Sabina congratulated Anya on the positive press for her testimony in the Barker case and wasted no time inviting her to provide opinions for a number of trial cases. At five hundred dollars per case involvement, the money wasn’t worth it, but the work was interesting. She didn’t have any pending court cases, so she typed a message agreeing to help where she could.

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She glanced at her watch and realized it was 1:00 am. Time to clean up after dinner and throw the leftovers in the bin. After checking the locks on the doors and windows, she listened for any strange sounds. All she could hear was the silence of being alone.

The next morning, Anya found Peter Latham drinking coffee in the institute’s tutorial room with Zara. She loaded the floppy disk into one of the computers and showed them the e-mailed slides.

‘Two sets of fibers is an unusual coincidence, particularly given the nature of the inflammation and the age of the women,’ Peter said.

Zara interrupted. ‘What are you saying? Do we have a serial killer?’

‘No, that’s not what we’re suggesting at all!’ Anya couldn’t hide her irritation. ‘These two young women have somehow been exposed to a fiber. If the fiber causes inflammation after a relatively short time, given these women’s ages, who knows how much damage it could do over time? It’s more likely to be a public health issue.’

‘I agree,’ said Peter. ‘Whenever we see two similar cases in a short period, alarm bells ring.’ He turned his attention to Zara.

‘Two infants recently died from choking on the same brand of block. If we hadn’t made the connection, the company wouldn’t have recalled the blocks and more kids would have been at risk.’

‘If the fiber is a hazard, shouldn’t it be removed?’ asked Zara.

‘A large amount of asbestos in buildings has been, but in other cases it’s safer to leave it in place,’ Peter said. ‘The danger lies in disrupting the dust in the process of removal, or in some cases, renovations.’

Zara fiddled with the elastic on her plait. ‘But I thought this fiber wasn’t asbestos.’

‘We don’t know what it is, exactly,’ Anya said, ‘but so far it appears to cause inflammation, like asbestos does.’

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‘What happens now that you’ve got two similar lung cases?’

‘A couple of problems,’ Anya replied. ‘For one, we don’t know where the fiber came from, whether the women were exposed at work, home, or somewhere else.’ She stood up, walked over to a portable whiteboard in the corner and pulled the lid off a marker.

‘First, we need to establish whether this is an artifact, or not.’

‘Don’t we want to know if anyone else has the same finding?’ Zara asked.

‘Yes. If the fiber appears in every lung slide, we can assume there’s something wrong with the slide mounting process and take it from there. But if it isn’t frequently occurring, it’s important to determine whether there are any other cases.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘I’m glad you asked,’ Anya said.

Peter gave her a familiar smile. ‘I might leave you two to it, to see how you go. In the meantime I’ll ask the other pathologists whether they remember seeing something like this.’ He collected Zara’s empty cup and left the room.

Anya continued. ‘What we do know is that both women lived and worked in older buildings around Sydney. It’s possible they were exposed in daily life, through either their jobs or home. Dilapidated buildings could be leaching something.’

‘How are we going to prove that?’

‘The first step is to establish whether the two women lived or spent time in the same places, and more importantly, if we’ve had anyone else through here with similar lung findings.’ On the whiteboard she wrote a question mark, followed by ‘number of cases,’ then turned to her student. ‘We need to make some very subtle inquiries. This may be nothing at all, but it’s a good opportunity to see how pathologists can make links and investigate unusual findings.’

‘What can I do?’ Zara asked.

‘Let’s start with a search of the departmental database. That way you can get some hands-on experience of the system.’

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Zara sat at the computer, lowered the seat and logged on with Anya’s instructions. She then typed the word ‘fiber’ with two fingers.

The computer took what Anya thought was far too long until she saw the search results. Thousands of entries contained the word ‘fiber’. Hair fibers, muscle fibers and clothing fibers were mentioned in almost every postmortem report, it seemed.

This wasn’t going to be easy. Zara typed in ‘lung and fiber,’ locating all the references for lung as well.

‘We have to think laterally,’ Anya said.

‘What about where the nun was found?’

Zara typed in ‘the Gap.’ Again, reams of references appeared on the screen. The word ‘gap’ appeared in thousands more references to teeth, distance between injuries and lesions. It was impossible to manually search each entry.

Frustrated, Anya knew she’d have to wait until Jeff returned from overseas to access his department’s records. Alf Carney was less than likely to be helpful, unless the approach came from Peter Latham. That was still one avenue that remained unchecked.

‘What about the National Coroner’s Information System?’

Zara suggested. ‘I don’t know much about it, but we had a lecture saying it was set up.’

‘That might be worth a try,’ Anya agreed. ‘It’s based in Melbourne, at the Victorian Forensic Center.’ The NCIS was established in 1998 to collate postmortem findings around Australia to identify clusters of similar cases and trends in order to reduce preventable death and injury. ‘Ordinarily you need written permission to do a search, but this is in the interest of public health, after all.’

Anya located the Web site and typed in her password and access code. Zara read the entry screens and resumed the search. Again, the term ‘fiber’ yielded thousands of results. The full text of each PM report appeared with the relevant word highlighted on the screen. It made a visual scan easier, but the process remained time consuming, without any guarantee of a result.

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Undeterred, Zara’s determination seemed piqued by the challenge.

‘How about “asbestosis” ?’

The search yielded a couple of hundred cases. Zara would have to read the whole of each report to see if an hourglass-shaped fiber was mentioned.

‘This is one of the problems with the database. Pathologists don’t have a standardized way of reporting things. It’s easy with something like toxicology, which has a protocol and terms with strict definitions, but our work is largely subjective, interpret-ing findings. What I describe as hourglass-shaped might be called something else by a different pathologist.’

Zara balked at the number of files on the screen.

Anya had a better idea. ‘Let’s take the slide and show the respiratory pathologist at Royal Prince Albert Hospital in town.

She does most of our difficult lung cases. Maybe she can identify it for starters. Now, just to warn you, Dr. Blenko is a stickler for detail and she is likely to ask questions we can’t answer, and not too diplomatically.’

‘Sounds like a scary woman.’ Zara quickly logged off and grabbed her backpack from near the door.

‘That’s why I’m going with you.’

Professor Blenko sat at the microscope in her office with chained glasses hanging around a thick, wrinkled neck.

‘Come,’ the professor commanded without looking up.

Anya and Zara stopped inside the doorway, awaiting further instruction.

‘What do you want?’ demanded the gravelly voice.

Anya had always thought that manners and people skills were inversely proportional to levels of expertise. Judith Blenko’s expertise remained unrivaled. ‘Professor, thanks for making time to see us.’

‘I don’t have time to waste. Where is it?’ She looked up and stuck out a hand.

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Anya removed the Clare Matthews slide from her coat pocket and placed it in the professor’s palm. Not invited to sit down, she and Zara remained standing.

The respiratory pathologist adjusted the slide and buried herself in the view. A few silent minutes passed.

‘Clinical history?’ she asked without disturbing her line of vision.

‘This was an incidental finding on a young woman who committed suicide off the Gap. We’ve learned of another case with a similar fiber and were wondering –’

‘Did the patient have respiratory symptoms?’

‘None recorded in the GP’s notes,’ Anya said, and thought she heard what sounded like a grunt.

‘Where are the other specimens?’

Anya transferred weight from one foot to the other, anticipating a dressing down. She hated being made to feel like a naughty child, but being confrontational toward the Blenkos of the medical world was almost always counterproductive. ‘There are no other specimens.’

Dr. Blenko looked sideways with a scathing expression.

‘When will you people understand the importance of obtain-ing quality slides?’ She returned to the lens. ‘What were the weights of the right and left ventricles?’

‘They weren’t recorded at PM,’ Anya admitted.

This time the professor didn’t bother to look up.

Recording the weight of the ventricles was helpful to a lung expert in establishing the significance of lung disease and pulmonary hypertension, but was unnecessary in a suicide. Anya had always wondered how to accurately record the weight of individual heart chambers when they shared a common wall.

‘Can you identify the fiber?’ she asked.

‘I see very few postmortem slides. Ninety-nine percent of my work is from tissue biopsied during a diagnostic bronchoscopy, or taken during lung resection surgery. This fiber is probably an artifact. It doesn’t look anything like asbestos. I suggest you review your slide preparation technique.’

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‘If it were an artifact, it should be appearing in other cases.

At the moment it’s the only one we have. The other suspected case was found at Western Forensics.’

Dr. Blenko reexamined the slide before handing it back.

‘This may be something that presents to occupational health and safety. I suggest you talk to someone at WorkCover or the Dust Diseases Board. If this is not, in fact, an artifact.’

With that, Anya and Zara were dismissed.

11

The man in the car watched Mohammed Deab park his vin-tage gold Mercedes. As usual, Deab lit a cigarette and looked up and down the street before entering the smash repair workshop. From what the man had seen, only two types of cars ever came in for repairs – the nondamaged, and others so smashed up, they would be a write-off in anyone else’s book.

Within minutes, a tow truck pulled in with a vehicle so man-gled its make was unidentifiable. He relaxed and switched on the car radio. It could be a while before Deab showed his face again.

Outside the workshop, the daily parade of men smoking, loitering and arguing continued. Right on midday, a police car drove in and blocked the workshop entry. Before the two officers had closed their car doors, four men from outside had an urgent need to be somewhere else. No doubt about it, the boys in blue knew how to disperse a crowd. Half an hour passed before the constables came out, had a final look around and left.

Within minutes, Deab appeared again, talking into his mobile phone, waving his cigarette around as he spoke. Most of his conversations were animated, at least from a spectator’s viewpoint, but this one was different. He almost looked excited, pacing around the driveway, with one hand on his hip.

When the conversation finished, he shoved the phone into his KATHRYN FOX

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shirt pocket and disappeared into his office. It wasn’t long before he rushed out with a long, black sports bag and checked his watch.

A red Torana, its license plate obscured, lurched into the driveway from the rear of the building with one of Deab’s work-men behind the wheel. Mohammed looked up and down the road again, flicked his cigarette and got into the passenger seat.

The Torana screeched back onto the main road, barely missing an oncoming bus.

Detective Constable Brian Hogan left his car and briskly headed over to where Mohammed Deab had last stood. The place was strangely quiet after the constables’ visit. He bent and pretended to tie a shoelace. Scanning the ground, he pulled on a latex glove.