Dark Summer. Jon Cleary
‘I’m not jumping up and down over it, Keith.’
Cayburn was not tone-deaf: he noted the asperity in Malone’s voice. ‘Scobie, nobody’s blaming you. It’s just – well, it’s not something you expect, is it?’
‘No,’ said Malone. ‘No, I didn’t expect it.’
‘Well, we’ll keep an eye out. That’s what Neighbourhood Watch is for, isn’t it?’
‘That’s true.’ But he wondered if the neighbours would watch or would turn away when the enemy, whoever they were, made their next move. Keeping an eye out for car thieves or house-breakers was one thing; watching for murderers was something else again. ‘Things will be back to normal in a day or two, Keith. How’s the new year at school facing up?’
‘I’ll be under-staffed and over-enrolled. The system’s going to the dogs. You think you’ve got problems in the Police Department?’ He went off grumbling.
Malone drove into Homicide, left the Commodore and joined Clements in an unmarked car; they headed for Glebe and the City Morgue. ‘You hear anything from Doc Keller?’
‘I had dinner with her last night, then she went straight back to the morgue. Doc Gaynor gave her permission to work on his stiff, besides working on Grime.’
‘Neither of them have AIDS or hepatitis?’
‘No.’
‘What’s it like, taking out a girl who works amongst stiffs all day?’
Clements grimaced. ‘She says one or two of the married ones, if they’ve been working on a decomposed body, say, their husbands make them take two showers and wash their hair twice before they let ’em get into bed with them. The first night I took Romy out, I took her flowers. She said she’d rather have perfume. That answer your question, Inspector?’
‘I wish all witnesses were like you.’
‘Up yours.’
The City Morgue was on Parramatta Road, running right through to a rear street. Across the main road from it was the entrance to the playing fields of Sydney University; in his youth Malone had played cricket there against the university team, the closest he had ever come to tertiary education. There were no regrets that he had never made it there, but he was determined that none of his three kids would be denied the opportunity. These days education, not love, made the world go round, even if sometimes in the wrong direction.
They were told Dr Keller was working down in the Murder Room. Both detectives knew its location and they went through the long main room where several assistants, in their long white rubber aprons, were at work on corpses. There were sixteen stainless-steel tables, plus sinks, on either side of the main aisle; between each pair of tables was a hanging scale, such as Malone had seen in the local greengrocer’s. Blue-barred insect-killers hung from the ceiling like neon honeycomb and half a dozen air-conditioners whirred softly. A mixture of smells clogged the air: chemicals, blood, decomposing flesh. The staff looked up as Malone and Clements walked down the aisle, one or two of them tossing jokes as they leaned on the cadavers on their tables. Malone, a man with a reasonably strong stomach, kept his gaze above table level.
The Murder Room was at the far end of the main room and set off to one side. It was about twenty foot square, its doors lead-lined, a blue-barred insect-zapper on one wall, an X-ray machine above one of the two tables. On the other table, under a large green-domed lamp, lay Scungy Grime, naked, face down.
Romy Keller, in white gown and rubber apron, looked up as they came in. ‘I have nothing definite for you yet. Kissen, the other corpse, is outside in the filing cabinet.’ She didn’t smile, so Malone guessed that what had once been a joke was no longer so. ‘She has a puncture under her right buttock, just as our friend here has.’ She lifted the fold of Grime’s waxen buttock; the puncture was barely visible. ‘I’m still guessing, but I’d say they both died from the same means. Injection by an instantaneous poison, or as near as dammit to instantaneous.’
‘Kissen was a drug-user. She couldn’t have OD’d?’
‘No. When they OD, you usually find the needle somewhere near the body. More often than not, you find it still stuck in their flesh.’ Then she smiled. ‘What am I doing? Teaching my grandmother to suck eggs? You know all that. No, Kissen didn’t kill herself. In fact, I think she might have been off the heroin for quite a while. But she was on coke, pretty heavily, I’d say. There’s damage to the nasal membrane.’
Clements said, ‘What’s your guess on the poison, then?’
‘The toxic lab is working on that now. I’m only hazarding a guess, but I think they might come up with alcuronium chloride. It’s a synthetic derivative of curare. It’s a muscle relaxant they use in surgery. Given an overdose, there is neuromuscular blockage, respiratory paralysis and cardiovascular collapse, all pretty instantaneously. Mr Grime and Mrs Kissen would have felt the stab of the needle and that would have been just about it if the dose was large enough.’
‘Where could anyone get this whatever-it-is?’
‘The commercial name is Alloferin. It could be got from any hospital dispensary or from the hospital’s emergency clinic. It would have to be stolen, it would never be handed out without authorization.’
‘So a doctor or a medical student or a nurse could have used it to kill Grime and Kissen? Assuming Alfo – Alloferin? – is what was used?’
‘In the case of Mrs Kissen, you can eliminate a nurse, unless it was a male nurse. Just prior to death there’d been intercourse. We found semen in the vagina. I understand Mrs Kissen was on the game?’
Malone nodded. ‘Have you kept the semen trace?’
‘Yes, in case you pick up a suspect. We can apply a DNA test. The lab is doing a DNA profile on Kissen now.’
‘Are you doing one on Grime?’
‘There’s no point at this stage, he wasn’t sexually assaulted. But if we prove both died from alcuronium chloride poisoning, the odds will shorten that they were both murdered by the same person. Unless there’s a corps of curare killers roaming around Sydney.’
‘Why wouldn’t the killer use a condom? Most of the girls insist on it. Unless he was a regular, someone she trusted.’
‘Maybe he was a Catholic,’ said Clements.
The two Catholics gave him a look that should have laid him out beside Scungy Grime. Malone said to Romy Keller, ‘I’d better get him out of here. The atmosphere is getting to him. How do you stand it, day in, day out?’
‘I’m hoping for better things.’ She took off her rubber apron and followed them out of the Murder Room. ‘I’m studying to become a specialist in obstetrics. Bringing people into the world will be a little more rewarding than taking them out of it. Do you want to look at Mrs Kissen?’
‘No, thanks.’ Malone had had enough of death this morning; it hung in the air, clogging the mind as well as the nose. ‘Let me know as soon as you have something definite on the Alloferin, Doc.’
She nodded, then looked at Clements. ‘I’m not working this evening, Russ. Come home for dinner.’
‘You cooking?’
She smiled. ‘No. And I promise to have two showers and wash my hair before you arrive.’
Malone looked at the crumpled Clements. ‘And I promise to run a steam iron over him before he leaves Homicide.’
Outside, the two detectives got into the hot oven of the police car. Heat lay on the city like a yellow blanket; on the outskirts bushfires raged, the horizon in three directions lost in a yellow-grey haze; the roadway shimmered like hard blue water. In the trees in the university grounds the cicadas sang their brittle chorus; in Malone’s ear it, and not the splash of surf or the crack of bat on ball, was always the sound of summer. Clements turned on the air-conditioning,