Frantic (13 page)

Eagers went on. ‘What protection do you have on Phillips?’

‘None.’

‘You can’t rule him out as the caller,’ Eagers said. ‘If he is, and if the gang members found out and set out to stop him, they might strike again once they learn he’s still alive.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what a precipice we’re standing on here. The community will be looking to me – to us – to lead the department out of the mire of corruption and chaos Dudley-Pearson left behind. I want you to impress on your team the importance of being above reproach in every possible way. Everyone will be watching. If things go bad and that child turns up dead, I don’t want people saying it’s because of corruption or that we should have worked harder or we shouldn’t have gone so softly on a witness.’

That child?

‘This could be the big one for the service,’ he went on. ‘We play it right and we can shuck off some of the grime. Play it wrong and we not only look worse than ever, but I also have to explain to the government why we should keep our budget.’

And he wouldn’t get the big chair. Ella kept quiet.

Eagers shot his cuffs and looked at his watch. ‘Media Liaison are arranging a press conference here at six. I’d like both you and Detective Orchard to be present, and Mrs Phillips too.’

2.29 am

Sophie’s mobile rang. She grabbed it up off the passenger seat. Detective Ella Marconi’s number was on the screen and Sophie braked hard in the middle of the road. ‘Did you find him?’

‘I’m sorry, Sophie, not yet,’ Ella said. ‘Where are you?’

A truck blasted its horn as it went round her on the wrong side of the road. Sophie edged the car to the kerb. ‘I’m in Waterloo.’

Ella had a brief muffled conversation with someone. ‘There’s an all-night café on Broadway, near Victoria Park; can you meet us there?’

The café was warm and well lit. Sophie ordered tea then asked the man behind the counter if she could sit outside. He took a table and chairs out for her. She sat with her back to the building and called the hospital on her mobile, but Chris’s condition hadn’t changed in the ten minutes since she’d last rung.

She wrapped her hands around the steaming cup and stared out at the street, thinking about her husband and son, her family. Last year they’d come to watch the lighting of the big Christmas tree in Martin Place. Chris had held sleepy Lachlan high against his shoulder and Sophie had slid her arms around them both, watching Lachlan’s face as he stared open-mouthed at the coloured globes. Chris had taken his tiny hand into his big one and sung the Christmas carols softly to him, and Sophie had watched with tears in her eyes.

The streetlights blurred. So many times she’d looked after people who’d been through devastating situations, tried to help and comfort them. She knew now there was no comforting.

Ella and Dennis walked up. Ella pulled her coat around herself and sat down. ‘How’s Chris?’

Sophie’s mouth was dry. ‘Still unconscious.’

Ella nodded. ‘I need you to look at something.’ She placed a photo of an orange and blue dummy on the table in front of Sophie.

Sophie grabbed it. ‘That’s Lachlan’s.’

‘Did you ever scratch his name into it?’ Dennis said. ‘Or did it have any other identifying marks? A manufacturing defect, something like that?’

‘No, nothing, but I swear this is his. Where did you find it?’

‘How can you tell it’s his?’

‘Same brand, same colour, same pictures on it,’ she said. ‘And you must think it’s his too or you wouldn’t be showing me.’

Ella said, ‘Our problem is that if there’s no name or other mark on it to say it definitely does belong to Lachlan, maybe it really belongs to some other child.’

‘So what are you telling me?’ Sophie felt as though they’d given her hope and now were taking it away again. ‘You never thought it was his? You just wanted to show me to test out some theory?’

‘It’s not like that,’ Ella said.

‘You could have asked me on the phone what his dummy looked like, you could have asked me that along with a whole lot of different things so I wouldn’t have got my hopes up,’ Sophie said. ‘I could be out there looking instead of sitting here wasting time.’

‘It’s not wasting time,’ Dennis said. ‘Every little piece of information brings us closer to the answer.’

Sophie let the photo drop to the table. ‘Lachlan has one the same as this, he sleeps with it. There’s no name on it. Was there one in his cot, or anywhere in the house?’

Ella shook her head.

‘Then the kidnapper took it with him.’ Sophie tried to swallow back her nausea. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘Near Doctor Boyd Sawyer’s car.’

‘So you’ve found him? What did he say?’

‘He said he’s not involved.’

‘Can he prove that?’

‘We’re looking into his alibi.’

Sophie ran her tongue along her dry lips. ‘Where was his car?’

‘Next to the Parramatta River at Meadowbank.’

The river. Sophie shrank inside the police leather jacket.

‘People are searching,’ Ella said.

Sophie abruptly got up. ‘I have to keep looking.’

Ella followed her along the street. ‘You’re out looking, on your own?’

Sophie unlocked her car and got in.

‘Let me get an officer to go with you.’

‘I’d rather be alone.’

‘It’d be safer–’

‘I’m fine.’

Ella put her hand on the car door. ‘Sophie, there’s a press conference at six at Gladesville Police Station. Do you think you can speak?’

Sophie started the car. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’

5 am

The Incident Room fell silent as Dennis walked in. ‘Let’s get started. Street canvass first.’ He looked at Detective Eddington.

The young woman checked her notes. ‘Nobody in Easton Street remembers seeing anything unusual. While Fergus Patrick next door to the Phillipses believes he heard the sound of a silenced gun going off, nobody else recalls any such sound.The family who live directly behind the Phillips house is overseas at the moment and it’s possible the abductor accessed the Phillips yard through there, parking in that street. A search has turned up no physical evidence, however. One resident thinks she heard a car stop in the street near that house but didn’t notice the time, or the time at which it left. That was it.’

‘Nothing came up on Fergus Patrick himself, either,’ McAlpine said. ‘Solid work record, couple of honours, moved to be near family four years ago. Sees the Phillipses like family too, apparently. He’s just brought in a new batch of posters.’

‘Good,’ Dennis said. ‘How’d Crime Scene go?’

‘They have prints and hairs and fibres from the house and will need samples from Chris and Sophie to match.’

Dennis nodded. ‘Sugden, how’d you go with the phone?’

‘Trace is set to go. No calls yet.’

‘Kemsley, De Weese?’

‘There are no recent complaints or threats against Phillips, no suggestions of corruption. Two months ago he and Senior Constable Dean Rigby were assaulted by a suspect, Paul Houtkamp, after a chase in Surry Hills. Houtkamp is currently on bail. We found him at home and he said he was visiting a relative in a nursing home last night. The staff there confirm that,’ De Weese said. ‘Another man, Shane Brayfield, was paroled last week after eighteen months for various PCA and driving while disqualified offences. Phillips caught him three times. We’re looking into Brayfield now.’

‘Herbert, Kim?’

‘There are two known sex offenders in the Gladesville area,’ Kim said. ‘One has a penchant for ten-year-old girls, the other for six- to eight-year-old boys. Both have alibis. One was at work as a cleaner and his supervisor confirmed they were together the entire night. The other was picked up early in the evening by officers in the Cross and was in custody at the time.’

Dennis looked at the line of detectives sitting with Lunney. ‘How’s that robbery angle look?’

Lunney sat forward. ‘The strike force detectives we spoke to said that Chris Phillips’s name hasn’t come up in any of their investigations to date. A check of his rostered days off shows they coincide with all but the last of the five hold-ups, but with a few thousand officers in the city it’d be a fair bet that many would be in Chris’s situation.’

Dennis nodded.

‘On Tuesday the sixth, the day the calls were made to the TV stations, Phillips was off duty,’ the young detective said. ‘His wife was on day shift so he was caring for their baby. Checks of their home phone records showed he made a call at eight thirty-three to the recruitment section in HQ. Phillips left the house some time after that and drove to his mother Gloria’s unit in Epping, arriving at about nine, and asked her to mind the baby. She said he seemed tired but otherwise normal. He told her he had to go into work but didn’t say why, and said he’d be back in about an hour and a half. She took the child and he left.’ The detective glanced along. ‘Jen?’

Detective Eliopoulos took up the story. ‘Phillips turned up at HQ at nine thirty-eight. Tracking him on the CCTV system we know he went through the lobby and to the lifts. Upstairs he went to the recruitment offices. There he met with Senior Constable Dean Rigby, who’s worked in there since going off the road due to injury. Rigby has confirmed that Phillips called him earlier that morning. He said that they are friends and that Phillips was upset over the bank guard’s death. They talked for about half an hour, then Phillips is seen on the CCTV crossing the lobby and leaving the building at ten-twelve. He got back to his mother’s place at half-past midday.’ The detective looked around the table. ‘We don’t know where he was for those two hours and twenty minutes but that period covers the time at which the calls to the TV stations were made.’

‘Tomorrow we’ll start the process of getting the phone records of the TV stations,’ Dennis said. ‘Any joy about the one in hospital? Roth?’

‘Senior Constable Peter Roth,’ Detective Bill Simpson said. ‘The bullet entered his left hip and he has a fractured pelvis and intestinal injuries. He’s on painkillers – not enough to affect his thinking, his doctor said, but he keeps saying to the strike force guys that he’s in too much pain to talk. He’s been told about Chris and the baby and he showed no reaction, except to deny knowing either Chris or Sophie. But he and Chris did a course together two years ago.’ Simpson passed around a photo which showed a class of police, twenty strong, half of them sitting neatly along a bench with their fists on their knees, and the other half standing at attention behind them. Ella recognised Chris’s dark eyes and broad smile from the photos she’d seen in his house. Someone had scratched an arrow in biro over the head of the person sitting next to him, a slim-faced man with a clipped moustache and a sharp nose and chin. He stared directly into the camera and his smile was bold.

‘If Phillips was a member of the gang,’ De Weese said, ‘and he’d decided to quit, it’d make sense that he wasn’t in the last robbery.’

‘Or maybe there were more than four in the gang and they took turns on the jobs,’ Herbert said. ‘Chris couldn’t go on the last one because he was working.’

‘Did you talk to Roth yourselves?’ Dennis asked Simpson.

‘No, the Strike Force detectives did.’

‘Ella and I will visit him later today.’ Dennis gestured for the photo. ‘Onto the baby.’

‘I’ll start,’ Laurel Macy said. ‘Dan and I began with the bigger hospitals in the city and already have two leads to follow up. First one: four months ago, staff at St James Private in Rozelle caught a woman in her early forties attempting to make off with a newborn girl from the nursery. When spotted, she put the baby down and ran for it, so we don’t know any of her details. The incident wasn’t reported – something they won’t fail to do next time, believe me – but they say they’ve tightened security considerably. The staff who got the best look at the woman are starting work in a couple of hours and we’re going back to see them then.’

‘The second one’s a stillborn baby,’ Detective Daniel Farly said. ‘He was the first child of a young couple and was born in Prince of Wales Hospital six weeks ago. The mother checked out against medical advice the day after the birth, and calls made by the hospital’s social workers have not been returned. Apparently there was concern because the woman had had some bleeding and might be in need of care. The nurse we spoke to made a point of saying it was peculiar that the couple had behaved this way, when the husband should’ve known better, being a paramedic.’

‘Patient confidentiality became a problem at this point,’ Laurel said. ‘We whipped out the picture of Lachlan and talked at length about his poor parents, but they wouldn’t come across with any details. The hospital CEO starts work at eight, so we’ll go back then.’

‘Nice work,’ Ella said. ‘Sandy?’

Sandy Kameyama folded her hands. ‘Steve and I have handed out the baby’s picture and talked to people in service stations, train and bus stations, taxi stands and every shop we could find open, heading east and south from the Phillips house. Nobody saw anything odd so we collected no CCTV footage.’

Ella nodded. ‘Clinton and Travis?’

‘We’ve done the same, heading west and north,’ Travis Henry said. ‘Nothing to report so far.’