My Brother's Keeper

Chapter 15



MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2012

When 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.