Free Dark Summer by Jon Cleary Page A

She lifted the fold of Grime’s waxen buttock; the puncture was barely visible. “I’m still guessing, but I’d say they both died from the same means. Injection by an instantaneous poison, or as near as dammit to instantaneous.”
    â€œKissen was a drug-user. She couldn’t have OD’d?”
    â€œNo. When they OD, you usually find the needle somewhere near the body. More often than not, you find it still stuck in their flesh.” Then she smiled. “What am I doing? Teaching my grandmother to suck eggs? You know all that. No, Kissen didn’t kill herself. In fact, I think she might have been off the heroin for quite a while. But she was on coke, pretty heavily, I’d say. There’s damage to the nasal membrane.”
    Clements said, “What’s your guess on the poison, then?”
    â€œThe toxic lab is working on that now. I’m only hazarding a guess, but I think they might come up with alcuronium chloride. It’s a synthetic derivative of curare. It’s a muscle relaxant they use in surgery. Given an overdose, there is neuromuscular blockage, respiratory paralysis and cardiovascular collapse, all pretty instantaneously. Mr. Grime and Mrs. Kissen would have felt the stab of the needle and that would have been just about it if the dose was large enough.”
    â€œWhere could anyone get this whatever-it-is?”
    â€œThe commercial name is Alloferin. It could be got from any hospital dispensary or from the hospital’s emergency clinic. It would have to be stolen, it would never be handed out without authorization.”
    â€œSo a doctor or a medical student or a nurse could have used it to kill Grime and Kissen? Assuming Alfo—Alloferin?—is what was used?”
    â€œIn the case of Mrs. Kissen, you can eliminate a nurse, unless it was a male nurse. Just prior to death there’d been intercourse. We found semen in the vagina. I understand Mrs. Kissen was on the game?”
    Malone nodded. “Have you kept the semen trace?”
    â€œYes, in case you pick up a suspect. We can apply a DNA test. The lab is doing a DNA profile on Kissen now.”
    â€œAre you doing one on Grime?”
    â€œThere’s no point at this stage, he wasn’t sexually assaulted. But if we prove both died from alcuronium chloride poisoning, the odds will shorten that they were both murdered by the same person. Unless there’s a corps of curare killers roaming around Sydney.”
    â€œ Why wouldn’t the killer use a condom? Most of the girls insist on it. Unless he was a regular, someone she trusted.”
    â€œMaybe he was a Catholic,” said Clements.
    The two Catholics gave him a look that should have laid him out beside Scungy Grime. Malone said to Romy Keller, “I’d better get him out of here. The atmosphere is getting to him. How do you stand it, day in, day out?”
    â€œI’m hoping for better things.” She took off her rubber apron and followed them out of the Murder Room. “I’m studying to become a specialist in obstetrics. Bringing people into the world will be a little more rewarding than taking them out of it. Do you want to look at Mrs. Kissen?”
    â€œNo, thanks.” Malone had had enough of death this morning; it hung in the air, clogging the mind as well as the nose. “Let me know as soon as you have something definite on the Alloferin, Doc.”
    She nodded, then looked at Clements. “I’m not working this evening, Russ. Come home for dinner.”
    â€œYou cooking?”
    She smiled. “No. And I promise to have two showers and wash my hair before you arrive.”
    Malone looked at the crumpled Clements. “And I promise to run a steam iron over him before he leaves Homicide.”
    Outside, the two detectives got into the hot oven of the police car. Heat lay on the city like a yellow blanket; on the outskirts bushfires raged, the horizon in three directions lost in