"You know. In the arms of ecstasy."
He slapped the Pol-47 - Police Form 47, which is filled out by the attending constable and contains all the relevant facts about the scene of death, the person and his life. It's usually on the strength of terse account contained in a Pol-47 that the coroner decides whether a post-mortem is required.
I picked it up.
"The deceased is 63 years old and has no medical history of note. He breakfasted this morning on porridge and saveloys, but refused the saveloys because he said they were hard and gristly."
I sighed. Most Pol-47s contained these strangely irrelevant facts. What could you expect when they were taken by the most junior constable sent to the scene? If the family thought a piece of information was important, who was a young cop to judge?
I read on.
"He then left for work as usual. He is a salesman who travels a round of customers, selling hygienic merchandise to do with hand washing. A call was received at the Central Police Station at 11.30 hrs. The call was made by the owner of a local entertainment centre. The deceased appears to have succumbed while exercising, according to staff. There are no suspicious circumstances at the scene. His GP has been contacted and since he has not seen the deceased for three years is not prepared to sign the death certificate. The deceased man's car was legally parked down the road at a metered park. There was still 35 minutes to run on the meter."
That is all there was. I looked up at Bruce, perplexed. "I don't get it. So what on earth are the arms of ecstasy?" Bruce rolled his eyes. "Entertainment centre. It was a bloody knocking-shop, wasn't it? A whore-house. 'Died while exercising', my arse!"
Bruce was right. There was always a trickle of males who had passed away in the act of intercourse, usually legitimately with their wives, but surprisingly often while with a prostitute. I supposed it was the high blood pressure that went with the heightened excitement that did it.
Death in the arms of ecstasy. Some men might joke that it is a desirable way to go, but it could lead to major complications if they end up unexpectedly dead in the wrong place and in the wrong bed.
I knew what to look for, so the autopsy was brief. The answer, as expected, was in the coronary arteries, the only blood supply to the heart. I found a 60 per cent occlusion of the left coronary artery and a 90 per cent occlusion of the left anterior descending artery, the usual source of lethal heart attacks. There was a smidgen of haemorrhage underneath a fatty plaque in the artery. In his excitement, he had bled into one of the lesions in his artery. A bit of bleeding was all it took to close off the badly blocked artery completely.
I had seen it several times before. It was a pity, because he wasn't overweight, wasn't a diabetic and the blockage was quite localised. If it had been picked up earlier - yesterday morning, say - he could have had surgery. With a coronary artery bypass or a stent inserted across the fatty plaque, his might have lived for a while yet.
When I got back to my office, there was an invitation from Doug Brew to come up to the police station at 6 o'clock for drinks. There was a bar upstairs where the CIB members could relax and socialise without being out in the public eye. I accepted with pleasure, and settled down to write my preliminary opinion on the deceased's cause of death for the coroner. Graham Hubbard, the Palmerston North coroner, liked to have an advance note so he could have a chat with the family and tell them what had happened before his finding was handed down at the inquest.
Barely a quarter of an hour later, the hospital receptionist called to say there was a policeman wanting to see me.
I was surprised. We had a hospital policeman who often came to see me with information, requests or more often just to gossip about what was happening around the hospital and in the Manawatu. He was a fount of information and I usually knew what cases were likely to come my way even before the coroner had been informed. This couldn't be that man.
I went down to reception. A young constable stood there waiting, apparently ill at ease. He introduced himself and asked if I was the pathologist who performed the autopsy on the deceased we'd received that day. He was the officer sent to investigate the scene and had written the brief Pol-47 report. He wanted to have a private word with me. I was intrigued. This was unusual, and I was pretty sure it wasn't about the gristly saveloys.
I invited him up to the lab, where we could talk. No sooner had we got into my office than he thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. He didn't hand it to me, but placed it carefully on my desk and asked me to add it to the dead man's personal effects.
I opened it. There was $120 in it, a lot of money back then. I looked up at him, puzzled.
The constable looked embarrassed. He was perspiring lightly.
"It's the money that the deceased gentleman paid the, er, woman. You know, at the brothel. Apparently clients have to pay in advance. I felt that as the deceased hadn't finished, the woman had no right to the money. I found the woman in question and recovered the money from her. By rights, it should go back to the family."
I must have looked as astonished as I felt. The young man looked at me defiantly.
"She wanted to argue the point with me," he said. "I had to be very firm with her before she would hand it over."
"Don't you think she was doing everything she had contracted to do?" I asked gently. "The way things turned out was more of an act of God than any fault of hers. Why should she return the money?"
He flushed brick-red, but was adamant. I could see the determination on his face. He was determined that the money must go back to the deceased's family.
There was nothing for it. I picked up the envelope and agreed to make sure it went to the right place. The constable look relieved. I suspect he might have been wondering if he had gone too far. He insisted on a receipt, which I improvised, scribbling on a piece of notepaper.
He wanted me to count the money, but I declined, telling him I trusted him and with that he would have to leave it at that.
He shoved the receipt into his pocket, dumped his cap on his head and left as fast as he decently could.
By 6.15, I was comfortably ensconced in the police bar, a glass of whisky in my hand. The bar was warm and filled with the usual fug of smoke. Two hours and a couple of whiskies later, I felt light and comfortable. I could relax here.
That is what the whisky was telling me.
I found myself telling them about the "arms of ecstasy" and the problem I was having with the $120. They roared with laughter. A detective told me that his first homicide investigation had been at a brothel in Wellington. The client had refused to pay and the girl took to him with a short-handled spade, an entrenching tool from World War I. She apparently got off very lightly, all things considered. Opinion was that the judge quite liked the look of her and admired her spirited defence.
"So what are you going to do with the money?" someone asked.
"Oh, I think I'll find the woman and give it back," I replied.
I think I surprised them. I definitely surprised myself.
"You could compromise yourself," someone mused. "Better not. Wouldn't do for someone in your position to be seen handing over money to a working girl."
"That's right," another added. "Lots of them are mixed up in gangs and that sort of stuff. Some of them are on drugs. You don't want to get tangled up in that kind of shit."
I considered the advice. It made sense, sort of. Any thought of getting the police to return the money was out of the question, for precisely the reasons they'd offered.
"How would I find her, if I wanted to do it anyway?" I asked. They all shrugged.
It's funny, but before the first whisky, I had no idea what I was going to do with the money. By the time I'd had a third whisky, I had more or less made up my mind to return it to the prostitute. The plan seemed right. Whisky is good like that.
By the next morning, as I laboured through my day examining specimens in the lab while nursing a serious headache, all thoughts of the money had gone out of my mind.
It wasn't until I got back to my office and found a handwritten note on my desk with a name and an address, and an amount - $120 - that I remembered. The note was unsigned and I didn't recognise the writing. The lab receptionist hadn't seen anyone come through to my office, so I had no idea who had put it there. But I knew what it was about. Someone out there agreed with my plan of action and was helping me.
The address was just around the corner from where we lived. We were almost neighbours. I'm not sure why this was surprising. Sex workers have to live somewhere and someone is bound to be their neighbour. Why not us? I decided to return the money early that Saturday afternoon.
After lunch, I played with our children, drawing it out. For the more I thought about my plan, the more ridiculous it seemed. I dithered even longer by deciding to mow the lawn, although it didn't really need doing. Displacement activity. It's what people usually do when they don't want to face up to something.
"Why don't you just put the envelope in her letterbox?" Elayne suggested.
"It's a lot of money to leave lying about," I replied. "How about you take it around?"
She stared at me as though I was mad.
I sighed. I knew I had to do it. I didn't even have any chores left to do.
I took my young daughter Victoria along as a chaperone. I even thought of taking our golden labrador, but decided against it, as there could be other dogs or cats there. The last thing I wanted was to create a scene.
I have to admit I was nervous. The woman's house was reasonably tidy, the garden neat, up to a point. But there was a lot of maintenance to be done. The spouting was obviously clogged with leaves and mould. I could see where the rain had spilled over and stained the stucco walls. I knocked on the door. My heart was racing. What a ridiculous situation to be in.
She wasn't what I expected. Actually, I wasn't sure who or what I'd been expecting. She wasn't tall and her dark hair was cut in a sort of pageboy style. She was pretty in an elfin way and wore glasses with thick frames. She was carrying a young boy, maybe a few months older than Vicky, on her hip.
"Hello?" she said. She smiled at Vicky, pushed her hair to one side and smiled interrogatively at me. Her voice was strangely gravelly.
"I've got something to give you," I said. I shifted Vicky from one side to the other and pulled the now crumpled envelope from my pocket and passed it to her.
She took it uncertainly. She put her boy down and opened the envelope. For a moment she stared at the money and then looked back up at me, frowning, as I stood there holding Victoria.
"What's this for?" she asked.
I introduced myself and explained that I investigated deaths for the coroner. I told her where the money had come from. She blushed deeply as she realised what was happening.
She started talking rapidly. She told me her name and that the police officer had been rude, telling her that the death was entirely her fault and she was lucky she wasn't being charged.
I snorted. "No. That's not right. He had no right to do that. The money's yours."
She told me that the deceased was the first dead person she had ever seen. He'd turned black. As she spoke, her voice wobbled. It had obviously been an awful experience for her.
As soon as I decently could, I left. She walked with me to the gate.
"You should clear out your spouting," I said, and pointed out where it had been overflowing.
She smiled. "It's on my list. I've got to borrow a ladder from next door."
She watched me strap Vicky into the car.
"Thank you," she said. "Thanks for doing that."
I don't think she meant the spouting.
Late the next week, I had a call from reception saying they had something for me to collect.
I went down from my office to find a rather clumsily iced chocolate cake. It had been left by a young woman who wouldn't leave a name. There was a note with it.
"Thanks," it read. There was nothing else, but I knew who had sent it.
I put the cake in the tearoom with a "help yourself" note on it. I've never been a fan of chocolate cake.
The Cause of Death: True Stories of Death and Murder from a New Zealand Pathologist, by Dr Cynric Temple-Camp (HarperCollins, $40) out on August 1. Royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter.
