Free Harum Scarum by Felicity Young

amusement on her face.
    ‘Doctor Sutcliffe will see you now. Please come with me,’
    she said.
    He followed her past several cubicles of quivering curtains to the last one. A middle-aged doctor stooped over a trolley, finishing his notes.
    ‘Good of you to see me, Doc, I appreciate how busy you are,’ Monty said.
    The doctor looked over the rims of his glasses. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Inspector, a hectic day.’ He pointed to the empty trolley. ‘An infarct right here, a man only about your age, your build, stressful job—chronic smoker of course.’
    Monty felt himself being examined. He shifted his feet and cleared his throat. ‘You said you had some luck with my query about an Asian man with kidney necro...’ he struggled to remember the rest of it.
    The doctor smiled, ‘Nephropathy.’
    ‘That’s the one.’
    ‘You suggested the patient might have been an illegal migrant. Well, you were right in assuming he might have presented here for treatment. We get quite a few at Royal Perth—no Medicare cards, just a wad of sweaty cash, and of course we treat them with no questions asked. I spoke to one of my registrars and she remembers seeing just such a man. She’d talk to you herself only she’s just come off a week of nights. I told her I’d handle it.’
    ‘Okay, you might start with telling me about this disease, keeping it simple, please,’ Monty said with a smile.
    ‘The common name for IgA nephropathy is Berger’s disease. It affects three times more men than women, with Asian men at the top of the list. It’s a kidney disease characterised by abnormal deposits of the protein IgA in the kidney’s filtering system and one of the symptoms is blood in the urine—that’s what the man presented with when he checked himself in.’
    ‘Did he speak English?’
    ‘A bit.’
    ‘Name?’
    The doctor smiled. ‘Bruce Lee.’
    Monty smiled wryly. ‘Of course.’
    ‘As well as the blood in his urine, he had a history of upper respiratory infection and high blood pressure. My registrar made the preliminary diagnosis and arranged tests to confirm. But when she mentioned the possibility of a kidney biopsy, he jumped off the trolley and became quite aggressive, forcing her to press the emergency button for security assistance. He was eventually escorted from the hospital, having refused treatment altogether.’
    ‘How sick was he exactly?’
    ‘Still in the early stages of the disease so he would’ve been able to function relatively normally for a while. Left untreated however, the disease would most likely have slowly progressed to acute renal failure and possibly death.’
    ‘Did he know the dangers do you think?’
    ‘My registrar explained them. She said he seemed to take them on board because he got more and more agitated with everything she said.’
    Monty rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘When you tell something to patients that they don’t want to hear, what do they tend to do?’ he asked.
    ‘I see your point,’ the doctor nodded. ‘They usually get a second opinion.’
    Monty thanked the doctor, stepped into the corridor and phoned Wayne Pickering, asking him to make some enquiries at Northbridge Chinese herbalists and medicine centres. If the guy thought he’d been let down by the western medical system, he might very well have gone down the street to one of these for a second opinion.
    He pocketed his phone, about to turn on his heel and leave the hospital when an unsettling thought stopped him in his tracks. He looked back into the examination cubicle where Doctor Sutcliffe was still finishing his notes.
    ‘Just one more thing, Doc,’ Monty said through the parted curtains.
    ‘Yes Inspector?’
    ‘The bloke you had in here before, the one who had the heart attack. What happened to him, where did he go?’
    ‘He didn’t go anywhere. I’m afraid he died.’
    Monty felt the blood drain from his face.
    The doctor looked concerned. ‘I’m sorry, did you know him?’
    Monty shook