Expectant, page 19
‘We were wondering how much information we can access about any patients and families that might be affected.’
‘I understand why you would want to know who has a life-threatening disease as part of your investigation into the recent murder and the motive for it. But there is very little I can tell you. I can say that yes, there are families in Dunedin with children who have some really distressing and life-limiting diseases. But because of patient confidentiality I can’t give you any names or details.’
The response didn’t surprise me, and given our privacy laws it was to be expected, but it was still disappointing.
‘What if we had a specific name or case where we suspected family might be involved, would you be able verify it?’
‘Not unless you had a warrant, but I’m not even sure if they would issue a warrant under those circumstances. Look, that poor woman’s murder has really shocked everyone around here, and we all want to see whoever did it locked away, and preferably the key thrown away. So I really am sorry I can’t be of much help.’ She meant it too, judging by the expression on her face.
‘Large flat white with sugar for Harris,’ came the call from the barista.
‘Hang on a tick.’ She manoeuvred over to the counter, thanked the staff and wove her way back through the sea of waiting patrons.
‘Thank God for coffee,’ she announced on her return.
‘It makes the world go around,’ I replied. ‘There is something else I was hoping you could help with. Other than bone-marrow transplants, who in New Zealand does stem-cell therapies? Can it be done under the public health system?’
‘No, not at the moment. The only places offering those services that I am aware of are private hospitals or practices, and none in Dunedin. I think the majority only do therapies relating to degenerative diseases in joints, that kind of thing.’ She punctuated her sentences by sipping from the coffee in a semi-worshipful kind of a way.
‘There may also be some specialists involved in research or clinical trials through universities, but I couldn’t tell you those off hand. It’s certainly an area that is evolving rapidly. Actually, now I think of it, there is a new clinic in Auckland that has only opened in the last three or four months – it’s offering more complex treatments and all of the support services around that, but of course any treatment would be unfunded, so it would be very expensive. I’m not aware of any families from Dunedin who have opted to do that, but then, our most complex paediatric cases are referred to Starship Hospital in Auckland. I could find a contact person for you there who may have the most up-to-date knowledge of what’s happening in paediatric therapies, if that helps?’
‘That would be great, thanks.’
‘I’ll send that through to your email.’ She took another sip from her keep cup and looked disappointed that it was empty. ‘Hmmm. I’ll do that later today. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful, but at least that contact will make me feel like I’ve done something useful for you. God knows we all want this person caught. Look, I have to dash. Do feel free to get in touch again if you have any other questions. Oh, and all the very best with that,’ she said, pointing to my middle.
She headed off in the direction of the stairs and up to the paediatric ward on the first floor. The maternity unit was on the second floor. Perhaps a little visit there would be a good idea, considering I was going to be in there doing the hard yards sometime in the very near future. It might be an opportunity to familiarise myself with the place. My feet started to head in that direction, but then I lurched to a halt, overcome with a wave of Braxton Hicks – and apprehension.
Maybe another time.
CHAPTER 49
Gravity wasn’t your friend when you were pregnant. One of my favourite releases from its relentless drag was the delicious sensation of buoyancy that came with swimming. There was something so curative about being immersed in water, its velvet feeling against your skin. If running wasn’t an option right now, putting some time in at the pool was pretty good compensation. Moana Pool was close enough that I could zap up the hill in the car and get some laps in during my lunch break. At this time of day the main pool wasn’t inundated with children and swim classes, and I often got a lane to myself, thank God. I didn’t like sharing. The greatest challenge with swimming had been finding a pair of togs that were small enough for my frame, but big enough to accommodate the basketball and the boobs. In the end I’d settled for some daggy, old-style nana togs and a rash top.
The sunlight pouring in the huge, angled wall of windows dappled across the rippled surface of the water, giving an extraordinarily serene ambience to the space. Swimming was incredibly meditative, much like running, allowing my conscious self to tune out, and my subconscious to do its magic. I was ever hopeful that the kind of epiphany pounding the streets generated would occur in the pool.
The massive fibreglass bulkhead halfway down the pool divided it into twenty-five-metre lengths, doubling the number of lanes available for swimmers, and also making it more pleasant when you were in it for exercise rather than racing. My days of competing in swim meets ended in my early teens, when to progress in the sport you had to commit to 5.30am training starts, several days a week. No one in the family had the dedication required for that, neither the swimmer nor the long-suffering taxi service. Oddly enough there had been no protests or complaints when I gave it up. My swim speed had dropped in recent times due to the fun breathlessness that came with having your internal organs squished upward by an ever-growing baby. Consequently I alternated one lap freestyle with one lap breaststroke, so I could get my breath back on the breaststroke leg.
I paused for a moment, clinging on to the starting block at the deep end, before setting off on a freestyle leg. As well as counting my strokes before breathing, and the number lap I was on, I counted the number of bandaids and hair ties wafting adrift along the bottom of the pool. It was two of the former and one of the latter today. Greatest of all time had been three and one with a bonus point for one of the bandaids being Dora the Explorer. The curse of wearing goggles was the clarity with which you could see all the crud.
On the breaststroke legs I liked to observe the various forms of humanity that visited the pool. There were the young mums emerging from the changing rooms, trying to keep up with toddlers hellbent on reaching the wave pool and water features. There were the fellow lunch-breaker trainers, although to be fair, they looked a damn sight more serious about it than I did. My favourites were the oldies in their various forms of repair and decrepitude, still getting out there and enjoying a swim, and often a spell in the spa pool afterwards. I fully intended to be banging out the lengths in my eighties, nana togs and all.
Next freestyle leg I swam past the first bandaid, and besides making my left eye twitch at the grossness of it, it triggered a thought I’d had earlier, but couldn’t quite put my finger on. Ten metres later, as I spotted the second one, the thought solidified. Wounds. I’d been thinking about Alistair’s postmortem report and his observations about the victim’s incisions – and they were incisions, as opposed to stab wounds or cuts. They were purposeful.
I paused at the bulkhead before turning around and back into the breaststroke.
There were two issues: the incisions had been made with something extremely sharp, but they hadn’t been confident, or tidy. But whoever did this had known enough about pregnant anatomy to do the cutting in two operations, as it were. We had joked about it clearly not being an obstetrician, although even an experienced obstetrician might get the yips when carving open a women down an alleyway in the middle of the night. But what if it was someone else who knew about pregnancy – another health professional? A nurse, or a doctor? Someone who had access to, say, scalpels?
I paused again at the starting block, hanging onto the backstroke bar, catching my breath and trying to see where this train of thought was taking me. I also took a moment to try and unblock one ear that had filled with water and gone weird.
And who would carry a scalpel around, anyway? Nurses, as far as I was aware, didn’t tend to carry around the tools of the trade in their handbag or their car. I’d never seen a car first-aid kit that contained anything sharper than a blunt-nosed, kiddie-sized pair of cheap scissors. District nurses, the ones out in the community who visited people in their homes, might, I supposed. Paramedics, if they were on the job? Doctors would have kits if they were making home visits. And midwives – they had to be prepared to go to a birth any old where, any old time.
Still, I found it hard to imagine that anyone in a profession where your one job was to ensure the health and wellbeing of your patient would commit a murder. But then again, there were the Harold Shipmans of the world, or the Angels of Death – nurses who had murdered those who were supposed to be in their care. Nothing could be discounted.
I knew from looking through Aleisha Newman’s cell phone texts and phone records that her midwife was Miriam Hardcastle, she of the dramatic rescue, but I didn’t have a clue who her GP was. That was something to check when I got back to the office, and perhaps I would take a more thorough look through those phone records. What other health professionals had Aleisha been in contact with in the days, or even weeks, prior to her death? This train of thought didn’t sit easy with me. What possible motive could a health professional have? It all kept coming back to that idea of the desperately sick child. What would you do for your child?
Suddenly being in the pool with dead bandaids and God knows what else no longer appealed. All these thoughts really didn’t float.
CHAPTER 50
While I was showering off after the swim, another thought had popped into my head, something that had been percolating around the fringes for a while, but which now felt more of a possibility to consider. I know I’d only talked with her this morning, but Dr Harris had made the offer to call back anytime, and I was the kind of gal who always took up an offer. She probably hadn’t anticipated a call quite so soon.
I was still in the carpark at the pool, watching some fantails through the windscreen, flitting around the flax bushes.
‘Thanks once again for your time. I feel like I must owe you a coffee by now.’
‘I’d never turn one down, but honestly, only too happy to help.’
‘I’ve been thinking about how the person who committed this crime could have found out about potential donor matches, if it was to do with saving their own child because they had an illness that required transplantation. I’ve talked with people about access to medical information – who has it, that kind of thing. But then I got to wondering, what if it was in fact someone who worked in a hospital or clinic setting – could they secretly take samples on their own, from patients, from children?’
‘Oof, that’s a scary question. Theoretically yes, but in a practical sense, it would be difficult. Children are very rarely left on their own for any length of time. Most of the time they have a parent or family with them, because it can be a scary place and time for kids. If not, there’s always staff around. Although, as you said, if it was one of the staff…’
‘Yes, sorry to cast suspicion over everyone.’
She chuckled. ‘Also, any blood sample would involve needles. Kids generally don’t like needles, and they cry, so someone would come running. I mean you could perhaps persuade an older child that this was a normal blood test if they’d had lots of them before, but a littlie or a baby would bellow for sure.’
It did seem a long shot, and also something that would carry a high risk of being caught. Still, for someone who risked committing such a violent act down an alley in the middle of the town, maybe analysing risk wasn’t their strong point. The other element to consider was how would you get the sample processed? Fake a lab request? Fake a recipient? Unless you stole an identity or even used that of your sick child. That might work, but there were so many ways it could come back to bite you in the butt. That would all take a bit more mulling over.
‘You haven’t had any odd reports from parents about noticing puncture marks or anything like that – that they felt their child had been, for want of a better word, tampered with?’
‘Gosh, that’s a tough question, because some parents come in already really suspicious of hospitals and anything we do, so yeah, I can think of some incidences where they’ve been adamant something happened without their permission.’
‘Where does that get reported? Is there somewhere I can check them?’
‘Most of the time their fears are allayed by just talking everything through with them, so it’s not reported. There may be something recorded in the patient notes, depending on who was on and how insistent they were. Unless they make a formal complaint, in which case there will be a proper record of it, and it has to be followed up. You could check with the hospital management, I guess.’
Access to that information could be simpler if it was part of a complaints process. I’d have to see.
‘Sorry, I’m being called. Got to go. But hopefully that’s been of some help. I really would like to think it’s nothing to do with any of our staff.’
‘So do I. Look, thank you so much for your time, once again, I really appreciate it.’
‘No worries.’
I felt like I almost had all of the pieces for this case, but just had to figure out how they slotted together, and of course, who they would reveal in the end. It was like one of those Wasgij puzzles, where they gave you the clues – the view from the other side, or hints from the past – but were too bloody mean to print the solution for you on the box.
CHAPTER 51
Back in the marble edifice that was the police station I set to on Aleisha Newman’s phone log. A quick check on her records had shown her general practitioner was Dr Alan Kenilworth at the medical practice in South Dunedin. She didn’t have him in her contacts list, but did have the medical centre’s phone number, which was the norm. Most of us didn’t have a hot line to our GP. If we did, the poor buggers would never get a moment’s peace. There hadn’t been any calls to or from the medical centre in recent times, so that pretty much ruled that out.
Midwives were another matter – that was a far more specific relationship. Miriam Hardcastle was in Aleisha’s contacts, as would be expected. I sure as hell had Naomi locked and loaded in mine. My previous check through the records Otto had shared had only taken in the two weeks prior to her death. This time I went back six weeks, just in case there were any patterns I hadn’t noticed.
I could see regular text messages from Miriam, which were mostly appointment reminders. They had increased in the last few weeks; also expected, as I knew my regular check-ups had moved to weekly from around thirty-six weeks. There were also a number of phone calls. Of course, the trouble with phone calls was we had no idea what their purpose was. I could see a couple where Aleisha had rung Miriam, and also some where Miriam had rung her. The only way I could check what they were about was to ring Miriam herself. This was problematic, as if I were considering her a potential suspect, which still felt all wrong, asking her why the call had been made would alert her to my suspicions. Providing, of course, she could even remember the call, or just didn’t lie about it. The most recent call had been from Miriam to Aleisha on the afternoon of the day she had died. I was definitely going to have to follow up on that, but it would require a bit more thinking on the best approach.
I noticed that some of the numbers that had previously been logged from non-contacts had now been reverse-searched and the details filled in by Otto. There was still one call from a cell phone in the week prior to her murder that hadn’t been identified, which was frustrating. In this instance we couldn’t get the skinny.
My eyes scanned further down the list of calls and one of the fill-in names pulled me up short. Naomi Orr. Why on earth would Naomi have rung Aleshia? In all of our conversations she had never mentioned she knew the victim. The call had been placed four weeks prior to her death, so it wasn’t a recent interaction. Still, it had me perplexed. The only thing I could think was it related to maternity services. I looked at the date the call was made and scrolled down the text messages that had been sent from Miriam. It was the day after one of Miriam’s appointment-reminder texts. In fact, it was made on the morning of the appointment.
Relief midwife? That would make sense.
There was only one way to find out.
And while I was at it I could quietly ask a few questions about Miriam.
I reached for the phone.
CHAPTER 52
At this rate Naomi was going to get heartily sick of hearing from me, but the voice that replied seemed its usual warm self and didn’t have any ‘bloody hell, not her again’ undertones.
‘Hi, Sam. What’s up? Are things happening?’ she asked.
‘No, no, all good there. Nothing’s moving on the baby front other than lots of Braxton Hicks and her having a few wicked attacks of the hiccoughs.’ I did have to admit I found it really amusing when Bubs got the hiccoughs. It was kind of cute.
‘Well, I am pleased to hear it, because if it was all systems go the timing would be a bit challenging, with one of my other mothers in labour.’
‘Actually, that’s one of the things I was wanting to ask you about, and the reason why I’m ringing.’ She’d inadvertently provided a perfect segue into the conversation without it getting awkward. ‘What’s the plan for me if you are caught up with another woman giving birth at the same time? I’m guessing you’re not allowed to flit between women and rooms at the hospital and juggle it, are you?’
Actually the thought of having someone other than Naomi help me deliver this kid was bit terrifying. She had just the right kind of calm vibe for me – that knack of allaying my fears. I thought we would be a good team. Paul liked her too and found her equally reassuring. It would be gut-wrenching to not have her there at the last.
