Malicious Intent (14 page)

Grant added, ‘The police chose Friday four pm for the arrest so he had to wait for weekend court. He was denied bail at the station and we didn’t have any luck in court either.’

‘Based on the severity of the assault?’ Anya asked.

‘And the chance he could intimidate Galea’s mother,’ Grant answered without emotion.

Brody began his familiar doodling. ‘When is the committal hearing?’

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‘The brief is supposed to be finished in six weeks. We’ll have to ride them or they’ll drag it out again.’ Grant licked a crumb from between his teeth. He and Brody couldn’t have been more different, but they worked well together.

Brody drew rows of boxes. ‘What about witnesses?’

‘The fact sheet just says he was seen entering and leaving the premises, but doesn’t say who saw him. He could have been under surveillance again.’

‘You mean the police might have seen him do it?’ Anya asked.

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Grant continued. ‘Someone saw him enter the house with a colleague and come out a few minutes later.’

‘Did anyone hear him threaten to kill the boy?’ Brody frowned.

‘The mother is still under sedation. We’re not sure what she said to the police, but the prosecutor could argue intent was implied from the injuries sustained.’

‘If it comes to that, we respond that someone as experienced as Deab in assault knew when to stop before the boy died.’

‘Does anything else place him at the scene?’ Anya asked, suspecting the police had some physical evidence.

‘There’s the matter of the company car swiping the parked van. Our client says he heard sirens and thought there could have been an accident, so drove off quickly.’ Grant explained this for Anya’s benefit: ‘Chasing sirens is how tow trucks get a lot of business.’

Brody stopped writing. ‘What about a weapon?’

‘The police couldn’t find a crowbar when they searched the business or his home. Although that may look suspicious – a smash repairer without a crowbar on site.’

‘He’s not charged with workplace incompetence,’ Brody declared.

Grant grinned and returned to his notes. ‘He’s also up for malicious damage and assault. The surgery on Merrylands Road, where his daughter worked.’

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Anya interjected. ‘Was anyone –’

‘No one was hurt,’ Brody assured her. ‘The doctor and her secretary cowered under a desk while two men with balaclavas smashed up the place. The assault was an implied threat.

Human feces was deposited at the back door as a farewell gift.’

‘Doctors are often targeted by angry patients or relatives, or anyone looking for drugs or cash,’ Anya said. Her mother had been assaulted at least twice and the surgery vandalized three or four times to her knowledge. ‘What evidence do the police have?’

Brody answered, ‘Just the calling card feces. Although our client denies involvement, we’re assuming they won’t bother extracting DNA from the aforementioned bodily excrement.’

Both men laughed. Anal humor – the one thing boys never outgrew.

Brody referred to the hospital notes. ‘I’d like to talk about the injuries to the Galea boy. He’s still unconscious, and in no position to provide a statement at this stage. How serious are the injuries, Anya? What are the chances he’ll survive?’

Anya scanned the emergency doctors’ and surgeons’ summaries. Broken ribs, ruptured spleen, renal trauma, description of a bootmark on the front of his shirt when he arrived. The most significant injuries were to his head. A CT scan showed a subdural hematoma and a ruptured vessel at the base of his skull. The neurosurgeon drained the hematoma but nothing could treat the ruptured vessel.

‘Slim. At this stage. He’s critical.’

Brody drew heavy lines through his row of boxes.

‘What happened to the shirt?’ she asked, skimming the rest of the report.

Brody smirked. ‘The guys in Casualty cut it open to treat the injuries. It got lost in all the excitement. No chance of a clear bootmark comparison now.’

Anya remembered what working in Casualty was like. The priority was to save a life. It was bad enough knowing these injuries were deliberately inflicted but finding out that the KATHRYN FOX

105

person who did it could get off because the patient, not the shirt, was the priority, beggared belief.

‘Any chance some of the injuries were preexisting or idiosyncratic?’ Brody asked.

Defense lawyers automatically looked for a predisposing problem with the victim. Mohammed Deab regularly beat his own daughter, intimidated witnesses to his assaults, and had no qualms about bashing someone to death. She began to feel uncomfortable about where the conversation was going. ‘What in particular are you thinking about?’

‘Anything that could predispose him to more serious injury than anticipated?’

‘Are you asking whether his skull is a millimeter thinner than the average so your client can say, “Oops, it’s a mistake anyone could make. I only meant to kick his head around. How was I supposed to know the guy was thin-skulled and couldn’t handle the usual amount of kicks?” Is that what you mean by

“idiosyncratic” ?’

Brody straightened. ‘In a manner of speaking, but we can do without the editorializing.’

Bourne quietly finished his muffin.

‘He didn’t just happen to run into that boy.’ Anya’s temper flared. ‘He found out where Galea lived, took a thug along and hunted him down. That’s premeditation, not a spur-of-the-moment thing.’

The senior lawyer asked Grant to organize some coffee.

The lawyer quickly left and closed the door behind him.

Brody clasped his hands on the desk. ‘This isn’t helping.’

‘How can you do this?’ She dropped the notes on the desk.

‘Defend bastards like Deab and sleep at night?’

‘It’s complicated.’ He rose and walked to the bookshelf. ‘The whole purpose of the defense is to give the accused – who is innocent until proven guilty, in case you’d forgotten – the chance for fair representation. That’s what the law is for – to protect us all.’

‘What about the victims? Who’s protecting them?’ She stood 106

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with her hands on the desk, trying to remain calm. ‘Last night I examined a middle-aged woman who’d been raped by two men who promised to do the same to her daughters.’ She felt a rage welling, one that hadn’t surfaced for years. ‘Who protects that woman and her family? Who gives her fair representation?’

Brody remained calm. ‘In the eyes of the law, no one. The prosecution represents the community, not individuals. Rightly or wrongly, that is how the law operates. Our job is to make sure we do the best job to defend our client within the letter of the law.’

‘Your job, not mine. In case
you’d
forgotten, I don’t work for the defense. I give expert opinion on what is presented to me. My role is to tell the truth, not manufacture a version of events that makes someone seem innocent.’

‘The truth? We each have our version of the truth, Anya.

The only thing that matters is fact. And fact is whatever I can prove in a courtroom.’

‘How’s this for fact? The man you are defending has a long history of violence. It’s not restricted to men who cross him.

This man brutalized his own child every day of her life and got away with it. Now’s he’s caught for damn near killing someone and you’re playing semantic games. Tell me, Dan. Are your clients above the law, or just beyond justice?’

Grant Bourne reentered the room with a cardboard tray containing three plastic cups.

Brody stood. ‘Philosophical debate isn’t getting us anywhere.’

Anya collected her briefcase. ‘Galea’s condition is stable, but critical. There’s a good chance he’ll die from those injuries and you’ll be defending a murder charge. Then how will you feel?’

‘No different. My role remains the same. If Deab is acquitted then I am happy because there’s a chance he is innocent.’

‘And if he’s convicted?’

‘I’ll console myself with the fact that there’s a fair chance he is guilty.’

Anya left an open door in her wake.

16

Peter Latham looked at the pile of work on his desk and reached for an antacid. He was beginning to feel every one of his fifty-five years and each joint begged for at least one early night. His wife had long ago given up on shared meals and usually ate before he’d finished for the day.

He found this time of the evening the most efficient. No phone calls, interruptions or meetings. The morgue technicians had gone home and the upstairs offices remained quiet. Nothing but paperwork to deal with.

He read and signed the reports his secretary had deciphered and typed. His duties also included reviewing postmortem reports from other centers as a part of quality assurance. As tedious as it seemed, it kept everyone honest.

The Newcastle file contained autopsy findings on two road trauma deaths, a homeless man found in a bus shelter, a young mother strangled by her ex-husband, a two-year-old child drowning, and a murder-suicide from the Central Coast. Under greater scrutiny than ever, reports were becoming more detailed and Peter plodded through each one.

The murder-suicide immediately grabbed his attention. An elderly man had been shot in his wheelchair. The bullet had traveled down and backward from his collarbone, through the 108

MALICIOUS INTENT

lung, and lodged in the back of his chest wall. Judging by the amount of blood in his pleural cavity, death had been slow, maybe up to half an hour. Of note was a large amount of red viscous substance, identified later as jam, in his mouth, esopha-gus and stomach. It also extended to his large airways. Jam was smeared down his shirt front, and on his semi-exposed penis.

Toxicology failed to identify any toxins or poisons, so the daughter must have poured almost two kilograms of strawberry jam down his throat
after
shooting him. In all his years, Peter Latham had never seen anything like it.

The suicide appeared straightforward. The woman, identified as the man’s daughter, had a single bullet to the temple. Her death would have been quick. She had a small quantity of jam in the back of her throat, but none in her stomach contents.

Peter had long ago accepted that some scenarios would never be explained, although he was intrigued as to what had happened in the room that night.

He skimmed the histology pages and noted the findings that most interested him. The old man had a squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. The daughter had a mild inflammatory respiratory condition, attributed to a series of irregularly shaped fibers in her lungs.

Peter e-mailed Gosford Regional Hospital pathology department and hoped David Connelly hadn’t left yet. Within minutes, his colleague had scanned and sent the images of two lung slides.

Peter enlarged the images. Filling the screen were multiple fibers, exactly like the hourglass shapes he’d seen on the nun.

Peter Latham flicked through the notes and found the name of the detective in charge of the case.

17

Anya pounded the treadmill and raised the incline. Sweat leached through her T-shirt and leggings as a revamped, decades-old disco song pulsated through the speakers. Anya had disliked ‘Staying Alive’ back then and the second – or was it the third? – remake irritated her even more.

‘What’s up?’ Kate Farrer threw her towel on the bar and started up the adjacent treadmill. ‘Martin piss you off again?’

‘Not for a couple of days. This time I pissed myself off!

Don’t think I’ll be working any more paying cases with Dan Brody.’

‘Turn down a ride in his Ferrari, did you?’

‘Worse. Got on my soapbox instead. You’d think I’d be able to bite my tongue at least until I can choose jobs.’

Kate increased to jogging pace. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. He’s a lawyer; probably didn’t even notice.’

Anya’s legs ached but she increased the incline again.

Kate studied her friend. ‘You really are pissed off. I wouldn’t worry. You’ve stuck to your principles. Ben would be proud of you.’

‘Pride doesn’t pay the bills, as Martin keeps reminding me.’

Anya watched the clock on the wall. Forty minutes of torture had taken its toll. She pressed the control panel and 110

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returned to the flat position. Another button slowed the pace.

‘I’ll find the money another way.’

‘It’s bloody unfair. The only reason you lost custody is because you were the one out working to support the family. If Martin hadn’t been so stupid, you wouldn’t be stuck paying the bills.’

The treadmill stopped and Anya stood down, wiping her face, neck and hands with a towel. ‘The Family Court doesn’t care about fair. The magistrate awarded custody because Martin was, at the time, a stay-at-home parent, the primary carer.’

‘Instead of the lazy shit who wouldn’t work if his arse was on fire.’ Kate was now jogging fast, without even raising a bead of perspiration. ‘If you applied that logic, every babysitter in the country should be awarded custody.’

‘After what happened in England, you can’t blame him for quitting nursing.’

‘So he stuffed up. Grown-ups own up and deal with it. He never has. He just gave up and decided to live off you for the rest of his life. I’m buggered if I know what you ever saw in him.’

‘No matter what you think, he still fathered Ben.’

‘Okay, he made a great sperm donor.’ Kate stared up at the ceiling. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Guess I haven’t helped your mood.’ She slowed her machine and finished with a cool-down walk. ‘Fancy Italian for dinner?’

‘Thanks, but there’s something I’ve got to do. Raincheck?’

‘Sure.’ Kate’s mobile phone shrilled the theme from
The
Magnificent Seven
, her favorite movie.

‘Dr. Latham, hi.’ Kate paused. ‘Officially, I’m consulting on that investigation.’

Anya raised her hand in a wave and took a step toward the change rooms, but Kate signaled her to stay.

‘Do you think these fibers are
exactly
the same? . . . Sure.

I can go over the crime scene video in the morning.’

Mention of fibers caught Anya’s attention.