Odds & Ends: Death in ways diverse and not always intended

By Greg Cornwell

Canberra, Country, City, whatever, wherever, the subject is the same.  People die, motives are mixed and popular Detective Inspector Maria Lech is back, relocated to Canberra. Enjoy the mayhem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922788771

Greg Cornwell

Greg Cornwell AM is a former Member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1992-2004 and Speaker 1995-2001). He is a proponent of death with dignity, has appeared before the ACT Assembly’s recent End of Life Choices and wants a national referendum or plebiscite on the subject ASAP. He is more well-known for his crime novellas published as e-books and in print, featuring John Order, a local ACT politician and sleuth. He regards Twilight as ‘reality fiction’, a story addressing an issue of concern to everyone, as all should have a choice of death and the legal right to decide.

Book preview

THE MOROCCO CASE

CHAPTER ONE

It was a competition they held each week to see who picked up first the deaths of people they had known. A morbid game only retirees would enjoy.

Remember that woman on our tour of Morocco, Cossie something?

Like the Aussie swimming togs?

It was a beautiful spring day, a Saturday and they were reading The Sydney Morning Herald, its sections all over the balcony, while they sipped their breakfast coffee. The sun simmered on Lake Burley Griffin from between the disfiguring forest of high-rise.

He was a big man now running to fat in the wrong places but still strong while she was a faded beauty, the attractive face still visible.

That’s very old fashioned, dear, Todd’s wife reproved. They’re swimsuits now and anyway, I think she spelled her name with a K.

An’ you’re right, she did.

An’ in more ways than one.

Todd Lant looked at his wife in puzzlement. What do you mean?

Past tense, because if it is her, she’s dead.

She proffered the news section to her husband. Suspicious death, police investigating, she added.

The body of an older middle aged woman, Kossie Montaro, had been found by a neighbor in her flat in Mortlake, a Sydney suburb. A widow, the woman had no known relatives and it had taken time for the death to be announced. Police declined to say how she had died.

While his wife made the usual expressions of grief and sadness she tried to remember the woman, but unsuccessfully. She simply was one of a party of twenty Australians, predominantly retirees, visiting Morocco with mixed fortunes.

The Lant’s enjoyed travelling overseas once or twice a year, investments permitting and Merry’s husband regarded himself as reasonably experienced in assessing the success or otherwise of group tours. Morocco had been only so-so.

The country was fascinating, well worth a visit, the people friendly, the teeming cities of Casablanca, Rabat, Fes and Marrakesh with their sprawling souks, their palaces, mausoleums and huge mosques, safe under the watchful eyes of armed soldiers and police patrolling in threesomes. Colourful open markets too with shops selling Berber carpets, ceramics and intricate silver items, teapots and plates.

The downside as they remembered lay in the tour group itself. Coming from Canberra the Lant’s were subject to some criticism, even envy, for the privileged lifestyle it was believed everybody enjoyed living in the national capital of Australia. However it was generally good natured banter. Only one man maintained his criticisms until Todd shut him up by asking where he lived and enjoyed the man’s embarrassment when he admitted the Queensland Gold Coast – playground of many wealthy.

Illness seemed rife with at least a dozen of the score of people down with some bug or other. Todd and Merry disagreed upon the reasons: his wife claiming it was the heat and in the high thirties it certainly was hot.

Todd thought it the food. The wide variety of spices set around every table amid the tomato, cucumber and other assorted fruit and vegetables was too enthusiastically enjoyed by people unused to such rich alternatives. He recalled a guide in Cairo cautioning against uncooked Egyptian food years before, explaining it would take six months of such a diet before the body adjusted favourably.

Then there was the alcohol. Expensive and being a Moslem country available only in pricey Western hotels or high class restaurants. Something some of the more budget conscious tourists did not anticipate, which didn’t lend to a carefree holiday.

Australians abroad are not renowned for sartorial elegance. Many look like they had just come in from weeding the garden. Another failing is ignorance: few seemed to have done their homework, read up upon where they were going.

Todd thought this was discourteous to their guides and particularly disrespectful when so many, the women usually, insisted on showing iPad pictures and talking over others about their children and grandchildren.

His critical memories of the trip were disturbed by Merry who had slipped away earlier and now reappeared with diary and photo album.

Old fashioned perhaps but the Lant’s liked to keep a permanent record of their travels. It had proven useful on previous occasions and now Morocco was no exception.

I’m not sure but I think that’s her, Merry said, pointing to a small woman wearing dark trousers sitting in the front row of the group photograph.

Maybe, Todd agreed doubtfully. It had been two months since their Moroccan visit and he didn’t regard it as one of their memorable trips. Looking at the photograph reminded him of the nondescript dress of his fellow travelers, including those dreadful shorts and short business socks favoured by so many of the male retirees.

An’ there’s a reference in the diary to Kossie, I think, said Merry. Our laundry ended up with her in Fes. She flipped through the pages. Yes, here it is. Room 415, Kossie Montaro. We had to retrieve it from her.

But Todd was distracted by another woman in the photograph, Bronte Little. Smiling from the back row, a colourful scarf draped around her neck, perhaps trying to brighten up an otherwise thin ordinary face peering from behind glasses.

The person who put the final demerit on the tour by falling five storeys to her death from the balcony of her room in Marrakesh, the Ochre City, the day before they departed for Australia and home. Fell, Todd recalled, landing between tall thin green cacti growing in pots.

What a sad coincidence, he murmured more to himself, as Merry went back inside to return the two items and he resumed his reading of the newspaper.

CHAPTER TWO

Subsequently, as Todd later recalled, an even greater coincidence occurred, again thanks to Granny Herald as it was known.

Ron and Mavis Blake, his wife quoted from the newspaper the following week. Woy Woy. Savage attack kills two retirees. Weren’t they on our Morocco trip?

He was reluctant to admit the possibility. Nice old couple, and she was keen on the grandchildren’s’ photos? he added doubtfully.

An’ from the New South Wales central coast, added Merry. That’s Woy Woy.

Which should have ended the tragic sequence except that when they returned from the weekend shop, Eddie’s email awaited them.

Eddie and Mavis Clark – another minor confusion – also had been on the tour and lived in Melbourne. Merry and Mavis had a mutual interest in flowers and the abundant colourful bougainvilleas and oleanders growing throughout the African country drew them together. This led to a rare, for the Lant’s, exchange of email addresses before their separate flights home from Doha.

Merry and Todd did not encourage too much familiarity when travelling, reasoning people on tour could be very different when at home, where issues like politics or religion – the social no-no’s in polite conversation – might hold a more predominant place.

Thus Merry and Todd usually did not add their email or address when the list was circulated among the tour group at the farewell dinner.

Mavis Clark regularly reported on her spacious garden, much to Merry’s balcony limited envy, and Melbourne’s often unpredictable weather. This email was from Eddie however, and it shocked them both.

Lois Watson from the tour is dead, he wrote to Todd, "so The Age has reported. It must be her, she lived in the next suburb to us and we exchanged some photos when we got back. Looks suspicious according to the police."

This is like an Agatha Christie, said Todd, not wishing to worry his wife but nevertheless uncomfortable with the news.

It was Merry who broke open the topic.

That’s five, if we include poor Bronte Little. A quarter of the tour. Shouldn’t we call Des, dear?

Des being a senior officer in the ACT police, specific role unknown, and a family friend with whom with his wife Bev they occasionally had dinner.

About our suspicions? asked Todd, reluctant to involve themselves and a friend for the first time in a police matter.

The tentative nature of their concerns set Merry thinking about the tour and its members, particularly any incident which might have triggered … but no, the idea was absurd. Inevitably there were minor disagreements, likes and dislikes usually resulting in people avoiding each other at table, on the bus, at the bar, but murder?

Todd meanwhile tried to remember the last time the group had all been together. It had been Casablanca and briefly, before members headed off on flights to Europe for further travel and those homeward bound split between the great divide of business or economy class and also between different airlines.

West Africans had been everywhere including the comfortable J lounge, proving not everyone on the vast continent was a poor refugee nor restricted to the plentiful supply of bottled water.

The country’s flag, the green star on a red background, hung proudly from the main concourse roof, portraits of the Moroccan king, Mohammed VI were prominent and a prayer room sign was displayed.

Nothing of significance had happened there, Todd decided. Everyone was saying their goodbyes and moving their hand luggage to the various departure gates.

Earlier then. The farewell dinner.

No, move forward a little to the nightcaps at the bar. Bronte, he recalled, liked a drink and she was with a group, although he couldn’t remember whom they were except that there were two groups, standing beside each other. A noisy boisterous party where you needed to shout to be heard.

Funny how people here remind me of people I know at home, someone said.

I know what you mean, Todd remembered another saying. One of us reminds me of someone who used to wander the Cronulla sand dunes years ago. Before two young girls were killed there. Awful.

Who? someone bellowed.

The exchange occurred in a sudden noise lull and Todd, standing in the adjoining group, Merry having gone upstairs to finish packing, heard the remarks clearly. He wondered how many others had heard.

I’m certainly not prepared to say. It’s just a resemblance after all.

The conversation moved to other topics and the tour group gradually broke up. Todd could not remember who was still at the crowded bar from his circle when he retired to bed, briefly mentioning the remark to a sleepy Merry.

Unusually for breakfast when most people preferred to dine alone or with their companion-spouse-significant other. But then most already had heard the news of Bronte’s death and perhaps felt obliged to cluster together, motivated by a sense of fear or comfort.

Saw her, y’know, a man opposite tucking into an omlette said. Last night in the corridor. Someone was following her. A man.

What d’you mean? It might have been Eddie Clark, but Todd had just resumed his seat with his mixed fruit so he could not be sure.

I was going downstairs to pay my bill, like Jock suggested, to avoid this morning’s rush. I came out of my door an’ glanced left an’ saw them both. Bronte was stumbling a bit – too much to drink, I guess.

Please, reproved a woman, Lois Watson perhaps. She’s dead.

But how d’you know she was being followed? persisted the man, Todd thought he now remembered was Eddie Clark. He might have been going to his own room.

That’s true. Mightn’t even been one of us. I didn’t pay much attention anyway an’ what I did pay was concentrated on Bronte.

And the conversation around the table lapsed until Jock, their tour director, announced in spite of the tragic accident the Moroccan police would allow the travelers to leave the country as planned with details of the incident to be addressed with the local tour guide.

Todd had his accident depriving him of much of his memory a week later, during a visit to Sydney.

It was a simple fall but it left him vague about particulars, names especially if he was required to remember them, while still capable of recalling details of larger events.

Thus the bar and breakfast conversations he could recollect but not all of the people who initiated them. Frustrating but his doctor said his brain would adjust itself, perhaps by a surprise, meanwhile Todd and Merry would have to be patient.

CHAPTER THREE

That’s why I can’t tell you more, Des. Todd looked apologetically across at his friend. It’s not much to go on.

And I can’t help either, said Merry. I was upstairs packing for most of the exchanges and even with the breakfast conversation I was still serving myself at the buffet. It still seems a remarkable set of coincidences, five deaths from one tour. Her voice trailed away doubtfully.

I agree. Des gave a reassuring smile nevertheless. Florid face and going to fat, his middle-aged body not benefiting from the desk job his senior police position now entailed. There’s no common link I can see but I’ll make enquiries. Now, how was Morocco?

And true to his word the policeman came back a few days later to confirm apart from the tour connection there was nothing the victims appeared to share.

Two from Sydney, two from the New South Wales central coast and one from Victoria, well Melbourne. Were they all friends?

Merry had retrieved the group photograph.

Kossie Montaro and Lois Watson teamed up she said. See, Lois is behind Kossie.

Not so odd for two single women on tour, Todd explained. What about the others?

"Not that I recall. Ron and Mavis kept