My Brother’s Keeper (10 page)

Somewhere inside, hidden amongst all the other little denials I was an avid collector of, was the tight little nugget of knowledge that my commitment to finishing the job wasn’t entirely altruistic. The surge of relief I felt when my flight was confirmed had as much to do with leaving Wellington as fulfilling my commitment to Karen. The real-estate agent’s confidence that our house would soon be sold had made the acid in my stomach squirt. Every time I thought I’d moved on from Sean, I discovered I hadn’t moved very far at all. Emotionally, I was still looking back over my shoulder at him. And then there was Robbie, asking me to move in with him — there was a lot going on that I needed to not think about for a few days. In
short, making sure Sunny was safe was the perfect diversion from my personal life.

On my way to the airport, I decided to drop in and see my old mate Smithy. The fact that he happened to be the pathologist performing the postmortem on Karen was nothing more than a happy coincidence. Well, happy for me, that is; probably not so thrilling for Karen.

M
ONDAY
26 N
OVEMBER
2012

W
hen I’d last seen Smithy he’d dropped ten kilos and undergone a complete makeover; contact lenses, capped teeth, the works. An actual hairdresser had done the job, with scissors, instead of his usual efforts with a scalpel. Eye-wateringly, he’d even gone under the nasal tweezers. A new love interest when you’re in your late sixties will do that to you. With relief I saw Smithy’s little potbelly was back again and straining for attention between two perilously loose shirt buttons. The body’s biological determination to return to its natural state is impressive. He’d ditched the contacts and gone back to glasses, which was a relief. The blinking mannerism that contact lenses had forced on him was one too many an addition to his already impressive repertoire of nervous ticks and gestures he used to
punctuate his sentences. Smithy’s previous glasses, those he’d stubbornly refused to replace for over twenty years, had been held together with an assortment of plasters, sticky tape and fuse wire, none of which really did the trick and had forced him to adopt strange nose-bridge prods and easily misinterpreted angled head movements to assist his focus. These new specs seemed to work fine but the habit of years of poking and shifting them around his face had clearly been hard to break. Despite all his eccentrics and oddities, Smithy was a brilliant pathologist. The best. I was very fond of him and I think he had a soft spot for me, too.

We sat in his small glass-walled office and simultaneously dunked ginger nuts into our mugs of insipid tea. After a decent passage of time dunking and slurping I asked after his love life. He sucked on his drooping ginger nut for some time before answering.

‘May-Lyn is rather demanding,’ he finally offered.

‘In a good or a bad way?’ I asked, dunking my last half crescent.

Smithy considered this as if I’d asked him about an intra-parenchymal haematoma. I was coming to that. ‘I’ve reached the conclusion that I’ve become rather selfish in my older years, Diane. I must admit to having found it difficult to include another individual in my own personal domain.’

I performed a quick translation into normal speech. ‘Oh, shit. I didn’t know you’d moved in together. Bloody hell. That was a big step.’

‘Rather bigger than I imagined,’ he agreed morosely.

‘How’s Blinky?’ I asked, hoping to cheer him up. Blinky was
Smithy’s spoilt, overweight, grumpy black cat. He adored her.

‘May-Lyn is allergic,’ he said, and slumped into a depressed silence. I decided it was safer not to ask if that meant poor old Blinky had gone permanently.

‘How’s that lovely big dog of yours?’ Smithy chirped up at the thought of Wolf. I did, too. Wolf had thrown me a pathetic, hard-done-by look when I dropped him at Gemma’s. But then he’d spotted a block of sunshine by her glass patio doors and trotted off contentedly to spend the rest of the day lying in it.

‘He’s still gorgeous.’ I conjured the sweetness of him. Grey muzzle. ‘Getting old,’ I added, realising with a gulp the awful truth of it. Wolf was getting old. It occurred to me I might not have him for much longer. ‘I like old dogs,’ I added, warding off the juju of Wolf’s death. ‘All dogs are smart, but old dogs are the smartest. They’re busy when they need to be, but they’re just as happy to sit in the sun all day and have their tummies scratched. He’s definitely my kind of dog.’

Smithy removed his glasses to wipe the back of his hand across his eyes. For some reason he’d become all emotional. I hoped he didn’t think my old dog reverie was an oblique reference to him. I avoided looking at his, no doubt scratchable, little protruding tummy just in case. ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Are you and the young policeman you were seeing planning to cohabit?’

‘It’s been suggested.’ Now it was my turn to slump. He nodded sagely and we sat in companionable despondency until he held the ginger nut packet out to me. Third biscuit and refilled mugs cheered us both up.

‘Hey, you did the post on Karen Mackie today, didn’t you?’

He wasn’t fooled for a moment by my casualness. ‘You knew her?’ His eyebrows puckered to form an unbroken hedge all the way from temple to temple.

‘Uh-huh. Professionally.’ That was true. ‘She hired me to check up on her daughter.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Smithy said. ‘How long ago was this?’

‘Last week,’ I admitted. I would never lie to Smithy.

‘I see,’ he repeated, more slowly this time. ‘And you’d like me to give you a preliminary report on my postmortem findings?’

Sarcasm noted. Silence was my only defence. I paid close attention to my ginger nut-dunking. He downed the last of his tea, stood and stretched, hands in the small of his back like a pregnant woman; in fact, exactly like a pregnant woman. Stretched out like this, his little potbelly didn’t look all that little any more.

‘It will all be public information once I’ve sent my report to the coroner and he’s ruled on it.’

I knew better than to push him. It looked like Smithy wasn’t going to share on this one. Still, no harm trying.

‘Okay, but hypothetically speaking …’

Smithy raised those generous eyebrows. ‘Oh, yes?’ he said. Very droll.

‘There wouldn’t be many situations where someone died from hitting themselves on the neck, would there?’ I said, recalling Gemma’s astute reference to my own neck bruise.

That got a little flicker of amusement. ‘Not in my experience, no.’ He stared wistfully at his empty mug. ‘But it’s not my job as pathologist to decide on whether the deceased hit themselves, or was hit by someone else. Or for that matter, whether they
sustained the injury — or injuries—’ he added pointedly, ‘in a hit or a fall.’ Having segued into teaching mode he was on a roll. There would be no stopping him now. He turned his back on me and stared down the corridor at an invisible lecture theatre of students. ‘The pathologist’s job is to ascertain cause of death by meticulous examination of the body and, if required, to answer questions by authorities, such as the courts, as to whether a given scenario may or may not have been possible, or indeed plausible.’

I knew better than to interrupt. Smithy had, literally, written the manual on postmortem procedure and this sounded like a version of the preface to me. Smithy was a born teacher and would give away far more than he intended if I kept my mouth shut and my ears open. I focused my eyes on my last fragment of ginger nut but concentrated on listening hard.

‘Some causes of death are more complicated to unravel than others. Take this latest case, for example.’ I held my breath. ‘The fact that the woman sustained a number of minor injuries — in all, I counted a total of twenty-three bruises down the left side of her body — may or may not be significant. Speaking as a pathologist, they are, I believe, irrelevant to cause of death. But to the police, those same bruises may be a clear indicator of events leading up to her death, and therefore are indeed significant to their investigation. Whereas the impact or blow to the back of the head was, in my opinion, the most likely to have caused the subdural haemorrhage that killed her. But—’ he added, pointing his finger at an invisible crowd of medical students, ‘there was also evidence of a number of small prior bleeds, which muddy the waters, so to speak. Unlike the bruises
to her body, these may indeed be significant with regards to cause of death. Or they may not be significant at all but, without doubt, they deserve careful thinking about.’

He lapsed into silence, doing, presumably, just that.

‘What could cause prior bleeds in her brain?’ Smithy turned to face me, blinking rapidly. I’m pretty sure he’d forgotten I was there. ‘Hypothetically,’ I added belatedly. He turned back to stare out at the corridor.

‘Well, cerebral amyloid angiopathy for one, but I don’t think that’s the cause here. Beatings. That would do it,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘But I’ve also seen little haematomas like these in sportspeople, too, contact sports in particular. Or, in theory they could be caused by something as seemingly innocuous as a migraine.’ He scratched at his comb-over before turning his attention back to me. ‘Did your client have a history of high blood pressure or serious headaches?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But she had spent the last seven years in prison, which would fit with the beatings theory.’ He nodded, lost in thought again. It seemed a good time to take my leave. But I had one last thing to ask. ‘Was it quick?’ The question was no surprise to Smithy. It’s what everyone asks.

‘The subdural haematoma in her body had time to surface,’ he admitted. ‘But she wouldn’t have suffered for long.’ He threw a little smile in my direction, wanting to give me some good news, I think. ‘She was most likely in a coma not too long after the blow to the head.’

I gathered up my coat and overnight bag. ‘Well, thanks for the tea, Smithy.’

He took my coat and held it open for me.

‘I’ll be in touch when the report’s made public.’

Smithy nodded. ‘Sorry I wasn’t able to tell you more.’

He didn’t seem to realise how much he had told me. I was pleased about that. I didn’t want him feeling bad. He ushered me out, a protective arm hovering tentatively over my shoulder. I couldn’t resist giving him a peck on the cheek. He blushed at the touch.

When I turned back from the door to wave goodbye he was standing in the one little block of sunshine, deep in thought, patting his comb-over affectionately. I suspect poor old Blinky had been permanently dispatched to the big farm in the sky.

M
ONDAY
26 N
OVEMBER
2012

F
or a full ten minutes I weighed the ethics of staying at Norma’s place against my non-existent bank balance. Since I wasn’t being paid for the work, free board seemed reasonable. No doubt the townhouse would eventually be sold as part of Karen’s estate, but that wasn’t going to happen in a hurry. Meanwhile it was just sitting there with the key under the welcome mat. There was no sign of Ned. If he did turn up, I didn’t think he’d object to my company. As long as I didn’t attack him again, that is.

On the flight up I’d thought about what I’d learned from Smithy. Karen had bruising down one side of her body and what had killed her was a blow to the back of the head; she hadn’t died immediately and would have been in excruciating
pain before slipping gratefully into a coma. And yet she hadn’t called the police. All the scenarios I could think of for why she would have kept silent relied on the notion of her having known her attacker. According to Fanshaw, someone known to Karen came to see her on the Friday night. It could have been Karen’s friend Manny, who was coming for a prayer session. Or it could have been someone else. Whoever it was, they were possibly the bearer of Sunny’s photo. No doubt there were other possible scenarios but I needed more time than a one-hour flight to Auckland to come up with them. One thing was certain: Karen’s killer was still out there and this meant there was a good likelihood Sunny was still in danger.

At nine o’clock I took a deep breath and used the landline to ring Sunny’s house. If Justin answered, this was going to be one of the shortest phone calls in history. Luckily, it was Sunny who picked up. I hadn’t spoken to her since I’d informed her of Karen’s death, and then stayed on the phone with her until Justin came home. I had wanted to keep Sunny talking until she had someone with her who she knew and trusted; someone she could really talk to. We’d covered a lot of ground in that talk. She’d rabbited on about whatever came into her head and I’d just let her talk. Precipitated by the news of her mother’s death our conversation had been unnaturally intimate. Two days had passed since that call.

‘How are you handling things?’ I asked.

‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t like my mother and I were close or anything.’

‘I know,’ I said far too quickly.

The truth was I had no idea what it was like to have your
mother die hours before you’re about to meet her for the first time since she tried to kill you. I kept my tone light. ‘Hey, listen, I’m in Auckland for a couple of days and I thought maybe we could meet up.’ I could almost hear the shrug.

‘Sure. Whatever. I do reception at the gym after school. Salena thinks I should work for my miserable pocket money. Not that she ever works. Not unless you call pole dancing work. Did you know that’s what she teaches at the gym? Pole dancing! And what makes it totally tragic is she’s Polish! Which is a total joke only she doesn’t get it. Anyway, you could come to the gym tomorrow, if you want. I look after my little brother Neo there too. Come at around six.’ As if reading my thoughts she added, ‘Tuesdays are Salena’s hair days and Dad’s not likely to turn up.’

The prospect of being confronted by Justin was daunting.

The remainder of last week’s bottle of wine was still in the fridge. It was worrying how happy it made me. I thought back over the last few days. It was now Monday night. Yesterday was Sunday: open home day. Shit! That reminded me — I hunted down my phone and found this morning’s text from Jason and forwarded it to Sean. Then I turned off my phone. I didn’t want to talk with him about the likelihood of our house being sold within days. I didn’t want to talk about it or even think about it. Real grown up.

In my little black notebook I drew a timeline. Working backwards I wrote Sunday and drew a line leading back to the day before, Saturday. The day Sunny and Karen were going to meet, the day I found Karen dead. I drew a line leading back
to a box and labelled it Friday. I’d spent Friday investigating Justin and Salena’s finances. That night, I’d dipped into my own meagre funds to pay for dinner with Ned. Too many wines at Prego that night but not so many that I didn’t remember the phone call from Karen. She had been happy and excited about meeting her daughter for the first time since … well, since she’d tried to murder her. I had a flash of the two-door Holden drifting down through the murky water. Falcon’s pale little moon face pressed against the back window, Sunny screaming. I forced my thoughts back to the timeline. Sometime between Karen’s call to me on Friday night and her death the following day, she had got hold of a recent photo of Sunny. Karen had dropped her letter and cheque to me at my house somewhere on this timeline, too. My pen wavered between the boxes. Friday night? Saturday morning? Karen had made a reference in the letter to not knowing what Sunny looked like. She had to have written this before she got hold of the photo. I wrote ‘Dropped letter off at my place’ and then drew a big question mark beside it. When? When did she drop it off? Was it Friday night or early Saturday morning before she was due for her flight?

I left a note on the stairs warning Ned that I was asleep in the main bedroom and put my phone under my pillow for safekeeping. Until I’d deleted the photos of the crime scene, I’d keep it with me at all times. The likely interrogation I’d have to endure with Detective Inspector Aaron Fanshaw and Detective Sergeant Brett Coleman if my phone was turned in to police with a bunch of illegally obtained crime scene photos on it, didn’t bear thinking about.

I thought I’d have nightmares about death and dying, stiffened rigor-mortised zombies coming for me with outstretched arms. Marital homes collapsing around me, cops dragging me off to prison. I don’t know what I dreamed. All memory of it had gone when I surfaced the next morning.