The sunbaker, p.1
The Sunbaker, page 1
For Rhiannon and Louise
Chapter One
Monday, 6th January
Nicola Fox was doomscrolling on her phone. She’d normally work through her breaks, but the backlog of autopsy reports to finalise was now so monumental the only healthy way to deal with it was denial. She laughed out loud at a headline; a woman had accidentally joined a search party looking for herself.
‘C’mon, focus,’ she muttered, ‘those reports aren’t going to write themselves.’ She put down her phone and logged back into her computer. The backlog wasn’t because more people were dying unexpectedly, rather, finalising each report took so much longer since the hospital administrators had replaced all the highly experienced typists with computer voice recognition. There were so many errors, and they were hard to find because they often sounded correct. Proofreading required hypervigilance. Or was it hypervigilence?
A sudden sound caught her attention. Perhaps something metallic being dropped in the corridor. At least that’s what she thought she heard. The second sound was much louder. A crash – definitely a metal something clattering as it bounced across the floor. She stopped typing and looked towards the door. What was that? There was no doubting the third sound – a loud shriek that went on and on until it cut off abruptly, leaving a resounding silence.
Nicola raced from her office into the corridor. Left or right? She heard laboured breathing. And grunting. Left. The anteroom. She threw open the door and ran to the observation window.
Mr McKenzie lay on the slab, mid-autopsy, his gaping abdomen revealing glistening loops of bowel. That wasn’t unexpected. What was unexpected was that her boss, Bernard Henderson, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Karen, their new mortuary assistant, who should also have been in the room, attending her first autopsy.
Nicola could still hear a rhythmic, guttural grunting. She barged through the doors into the autopsy suite and found Karen, out cold, lying on the floor, her chest rising and falling gently with each breath, but her eyes staring vacantly. A large red lump of flesh snuggled up against her right cheek, almost like a pillow. A liver. Presumably Mr McKenzie’s. Lying beside it was an upturned stainless-steel dish. Blood was smeared on her cheeks and gown. Poor Karen must have fainted.
Then Nicola saw Bernard, also on the floor. His face had a shocking blue pallor and his arms and legs were jerking violently backwards and forwards, his laboured breathing erupting in grunts. He was having an epileptic seizure.
Nicola’s training kicked in: she shouted for help, hit the emergency call button on the wall and turned back to the chaos. Who should she help first? Karen was in no imminent danger of death: pink skin, breathing quietly. She’d recover soon without assistance. But Bernard did need help. She rolled him onto his side, supporting him as the jerking of his limbs continued. Why was he having a seizure? In the ten years she’d known him, he’d never mentioned he had epilepsy.
A man appeared at the window and she beckoned vigorously for him to come in. Stephen was their receptionist and, being both non-medical and very squeamish, always avoided what he called the ‘cutting room’. He stood frozen, eyes locked on the body of Mr McKenzie and the great gash in its abdomen.
Nicola yelled, ‘Stephen! I need your help. Now.’
He entered slowly, his eyes averted, and edged his way towards Nicola.
‘Karen’s around the other side,’ she told him. ‘She’s fainted. If you lift her feet up she’ll come around.’
Stephen looked over to Karen. As soon as he saw all the blood, and the liver, he let out a groan and began hyperventilating, placed one hand on his chest and then lowered himself unsteadily to the floor.
‘Stephen!’ yelled Nicola.
He didn’t answer, just stared, his eyes unfocused as he sucked in huge breaths, then rolled to the floor.
As a forensic pathologist, Nicola’s medical skills were tailored towards the dead not the living. And yet here she was, alone, with a dead body split wide open from sternum to pubis, three unconscious staff members and an escaped liver. Her thoughts drifted to all her colleagues who thought forensic pathology wasn’t ‘real’ medicine because there was no patient contact. They were probably all in the staff tearoom, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.
Karen stirred. Her eyes flicked open.
‘Karen, are you okay?’
The girl nodded weakly.
‘What happened?’
‘It was Professor Henderson. He let out this long groan, then his arms started jerking and he fell to the floor.’
‘You fainted.’
Karen struggled into a seated position. ‘It must have been the liver. It jerked out of the professor’s hand and hit me in the face.’ She turned and pointed at the offending organ, then her eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped back to the floor.
When Bernard’s arms and legs became still, and his breathing began to settle, Nicola left him on his side and rolled the other two so they were also in the recovery position. She headed towards the door to retrieve an oxygen bottle for Bernard and was almost bowled over by two security guards charging in holding batons.
She’d had quieter days in the office.
Chapter Two
Monday, 2nd March
Inspector Ken Begley knew he was a dinosaur. But he wasn’t happy being told so by the smartly dressed, twenty-something-year-old psychologist sitting in the chair opposite him. In fact, Begley had always been very fond of dinosaurs and thought the police force could do with more of them. These days it was so much harder to put the scumbags – correction, clients – away. And a whole lot less fun. The younger officers simply looked things up online rather than use what they considered outmoded methods like the phone book. But, unlike with a phone book, you can’t slam a computer against a hand or an ear without leaving telltale marks on the offender – correction, client – and without prompting a barrage of difficult questions from the IT department. Not that coercive methods were employed indiscriminately; they were only used when you were absolutely certain you had the right offender. Or if you were fairly sure they committed the crime, but were absolutely certain they were a scumbag. Nowadays, they didn’t even print phone books.
‘So, Ken. It’s nice to see you again.’
He knew she was lying. Last time he’d just missed her with a stapler – accidentally, of course, he’d been aiming for the wall.
She asked, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Feeling good, Gabby. I’m pleased to see you too.’
Now they were both lying.
She checked her records. ‘The last time we met was about nine months ago. What were those sessions for again?’
Begley wriggled in his chair. ‘Anger management.’
She pretended to refresh her memory. ‘And I signed you off, saying I was confident that with the strategies we worked on you could return to the workplace in a manner safe for your colleagues.’
Begley nodded.
‘How is the anger management going, Ken?’
‘Absolutely fucking fine.’
‘Ken, please, I understand you might find these sessions confronting, but if you could refrain from swearing … I’m only here to help you.’
Begley forced himself to nod. He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to put up with this shit.
‘So, now, following on from your recent performance review, you’ve been sent back to me for …’ She checked her notes, but didn’t continue, merely raising a questioning eyebrow at Begley.
Begley mumbled, ‘Anger fucking management.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Begley spoke up. ‘Anger management.’
‘And how do you feel about that, Ken?’
Begley could feel the heat rising on his neck and face. Someone had ratted on him to the chief inspector. As soon as he found out who it was … Constable bloody Anderson, he reckoned – the little do-gooder. The back of Begley’s shirt was damp with sweat. He forced himself to slow his breathing just as Gabby had trained him.
‘Just one minor lapse, Gabby, in a year. And I’m glad we have an opportunity to address the issue together.’
Gabby smiled. ‘Good.’
‘So are we done?’
‘Oh, Ken, we’re just getting started. You’re on your last warning and I have to assess whether Professional Standards needs to be called in. As much as we want to retain old, experienced police officers like yourself, the modern police force expects its officers always to behave in a respectful manner. It’s no place for cranky old …’
His pulse was hammering in his neck, and he was breathing rapidly. If she said the word, he was going to lose it … He looked around. She’d taken precautions and cleared not only her stapler but everything else from the desk.
Gabby continued, ‘… with no disrespect, no place for cranky …’
Begley’s phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket and answered before she could protest. ‘Begley. What do you want?’
It was his second-in-command, Senior Sergeant Steve Kowalski. ‘There’s been a murder. Brunswick Heads. It’s bad.’
‘Christ on a bike. I’m on my way.’ He ended the call and looked back to Gabby. ‘I’m afraid this dinosaur needs to go. But it’s been really nice meeting you again, Gabby. This has been very helpful.’
As he strode towards the door, she said, ‘I’ll see you next week.’
&nb sp; He stopped and turned back to her. ‘I have to attend more sessions?’
‘Six.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ He slammed the door as quietly as he could on the way out.
Chapter Three
Hang-gliding was never on Jack Harris’s bucket list. In fact, if there was an anti-bucket list of things he never wanted to do, hang-gliding would be at the top, just edging out ‘Wire both testicles to a car battery’. Jack had never been good with heights. He’d always wondered whether his affliction dated back to when his father had dropped him as a baby. According to family lore, that was the last time his father ever held him. Was it that incident that led to a lack of trust in things that should normally hold you up, things that should prevent you from striking hard surfaces at terminal velocity?
As Jack hung suspended beside his tandem pilot two hundred metres above certain death, his nausea teetered on the brink of major embarrassment. He forced his eyes open. A sea of yellow, no, a beach of yellow, of sand, was racing up towards him. Sand toys, chubby babies, candy-striped shade tents, and a topless sunbaker exploded towards him like a supernova. Twenty metres above the sand, he threw up. Or was it down? He didn’t care – they were going to crash. Just before they impaled themselves on a beach umbrella, Jack heard laughter, deranged laughter, from the pilot beside him as the nose of the hang-glider rose clear of the ground, and soon they were effortlessly gliding back up towards a canopy of blue and onward to the lighthouse standing sentinel over Cape Byron.
That the scenery was sublime was inconsequential. Jack was breathing hard, his pulse beating in his ears. The pilot grinned maniacally at him. The sadistic bastard seemed to be revelling in having someone petrified of heights strapped to his kite. Jack wondered whether Caitlin had put Bruce – or was it Brian? – up to the death-defying acrobatics. Probably.
He looked up through watery eyes and saw Caitlin’s hang-glider; a picture of serenity as it cruised calmly along the escarpment and looped around in front of the lighthouse. A few minutes later the pilots brought the hang-gliders side by side. Caitlin was laughing as she flipped the bird at Jack – the last thing he saw before Beelzebub Brian pushed the glider’s nose forward and once more they were plunging downward to dice with death.
As they plummeted sand-wards, Jack’s smartwatch came to life with an incoming call. He couldn’t hear it over the wind whistling past his ears and the internal scream reverberating around his head, but he could feel its insistent vibration against his wrist. The watch was hidden beneath his sleeve so he couldn’t read the caller ID. It kept ringing, but there was no way he was prising his white knuckles off the bar to answer it. A minute later it rang again, then again. Jack caught the pilot’s attention and pointed to the ground.
The pilot looked at him, bemused, shook his head, and shouted, ‘No way, mate, you paid for half an hour so that’s what you’re getting. Besides, I’m really enjoying myself – it’s been a long time since I could scare the living crap out of someone.’
In spite of his masochistic streak, the pilot proved himself a highly adept flyer and twenty minutes later when they landed on the soft sand at Tallows Beach, it was like a feather touching down. Still breathing. No head injury. In retrospect, as Jack stood firmly on the sand with neither of his legs broken, he conceded the rush had been half-enjoyable. Maybe he would do it again one day.
Caitlin landed a few seconds later, letting out a loud whoop and smiling uncontrollably. It was good to see her looking happy, even if he knew he didn’t have to scratch too deeply to uncover the grief simmering beneath the façade; it had only been a few months since her father, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, had died.
As soon as Caitlin was freed from her harness, she skipped over and gave Jack a high five. ‘So, barf boy, you survived.’
Before he could object to his new nickname, his phone rang. With his hand still shaking from the adrenaline, he removed the phone from his pocket and checked the caller ID. Begley.
Inspector Ken Begley, the Commander of the Byron Bay Police Station, hated every journalist on the planet with one exception – Jack. This absence of hate didn’t manifest itself as love – there were no hugs on greeting, no kissing of both cheeks. Rather, it was more like tolerance, the kind of tolerance you have for a GP sticking a finger in your bum to check for prostate cancer. Jack had earned Begley’s paper-thin respect by saving him from being transferred to Broken Hill by a vindictive superior officer during a recent murder investigation.
He accepted the call. ‘Inspector, how are you?’
Jack smiled on hearing the familiar gruff voice. And the absence of niceties – Begley didn’t have them in his vocabulary. ‘I hope you’re not still pretending to be a news hack at that shit-sheet of yours?’
‘Yes, I am. Just like you’re pretending to be a police officer even though you sit on your arse all day shuffling paper.’
‘A body has just turned up. In the backyard of a house in Brunswick Heads. How soon can you get here?’
‘I’m on my way.’ Jack was released from his harness. ‘Thanks for the tip-off, I appreciate it.’
‘Hey, pal, don’t get tickets on yourself. I’m not doing you a favour. The lady who owns the house asked for you. Says she knows you. She’s pretty upset. I think she’s looking for a shoulder to cry on.’
Jack tried to think of someone he knew in Bruns and drew a blank. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Nicola something.’
Jack reached back into his memory. He only knew one Nicola, but she lived in Newcastle. ‘Is it Fox? Nicola Fox?’
‘Bingo. It’s her holiday house. Now, get up here pronto, she might start bawling any minute.’ Begley ended the call.
Jack was surprised to hear Nicola’s name. She’d been the forensic pathologist involved in the murder investigation he worked on with Begley a few months ago and it had seemed pretty clear at the time she’d be happy never to see Jack again. So why was she asking for him?
He took a few paces up the beach towards the carpark, but was cut off by Caitlin.
‘So, Chicken Little survived. Are you still on for a debrief at The Rails?’ She held up an action camera. ‘I can’t wait to show you these. They’re mostly of you scared shitless.’
Jack enjoyed every minute he spent with Caitlin, even if it was proving exhausting. Her mother had suffered from Huntington’s disease, which meant Caitlin had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the gene herself and, if she did, sometime in the future she would develop symptoms that would spiral into severe disability and an early death. Caitlin wasn’t going to hang around waiting to see what panned out, instead she was determined to try to live a whole normal life compressed into a decade – just in case she only had one left.
Embarrassed by the time-wasting in his own life, Jack had willingly signed up for the ride, but trying to match Caitlin’s determination to keep the needle in the red was proving more and more challenging: they’d swum across the bay, abseiled sheer cliffs, cycled further than he’d ever cycled in his life, and even eaten at a vegan restaurant.
He realised he was staring at her; he’d been doing that more and more, and feeling an innate happiness when close to her. With her deep green eyes, a face covered in a thousand freckles cleaved by a beaming smile, and red dreadlocks tumbling haphazardly over her shoulders, he wasn’t the only one who stared at her. And then there were her two tattoos: Betty Boop, smiling at him from her shoulder, seemed to have enjoyed the hang-gliding more than Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who glared sternly at Jack from just above Caitlin’s ankle.
‘Wake up, Jack.’ Caitlin tugged at his sleeve. ‘Pub. C’mon.’
‘Sorry, Caitlin, that was Begley on the phone. A body has been found. I need to go.’
‘Oh, Jesus! Where?’
‘Bruns.’
There was hesitation before she responded, and Jack sensed she was thinking of her father.
‘I hope it’s not too bad. Will you call me when you’re done?’
He nodded. ‘Are you right to get home?’
‘Yes. I’ll call a taxi. Don’t forget to put our next little adventure in your diary.’
Jack looked at her warily – she was smiling a bit too much. ‘And what has your mischievous mind come up with this time? And don’t say parachuting.’
