Frantic (14 page)

Ella nodded.

‘About Doctor Boyd Sawyer,’ Dennis said. ‘He says he was drugged and abducted over the hours in question. We’ll check his prints and hair against the samples from the Phillips house, and also for anything on the note that was left there. A baby’s dummy was found near his car, which Mrs Phillips says is the same kind and colour as Lachlan’s. There is white paint and a dent on his bumper, so there’s a chance he’s had an accident, but so far we’ve found no reports of one. If we can find it, of course, it’ll help determine where his car’s been. We don’t have sufficient evidence to arrest him, or even get a warrant to search his house, but Miller and Lee are surveilling him now. Hopefully in time something more will come up.’ Dennis checked his watch. ‘Okay. Any questions?’

‘Has Phillips woken up at all?’

‘The doctors have him sedated but we’re hopeful that will be turned off later today,’ Ella said. ‘In case he is a target for the gang, we’ve posted a guard on him.’

‘Mrs Phillips has had no more insight?’

Dennis shook his head. ‘Anything else?’ There was nothing. He ran through the team, moving some people from the almost-finished street canvass around the Phillips house to the teams checking the shops and places that had been open overnight. Others were to look into the rest of the hospitals. ‘We’ll meet back here at eleven. Call in with any news. Pick up some of the new flyers on your way out. Good luck.’

Within minutes Ella was looking at an empty room.

‘We’ve got that press conference in ten minutes,’ Dennis said to her. ‘Then how about we go and see Roth?’

‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t know Chris, my foot.’

Thursday 8 May, 6.41 am

S
ophie arrived at the hospital after the press conference to find Chris’s sedation turned off. The head CT they’d done that morning had showed that there was no further swelling and the contusion on his frontal lobes hadn’t increased. The next hour was the test, as his body metabolised the drugs. He should then start to come round, but nobody could say if he would wake up alert, or if he might be confused – perhaps permanently – or even that he would wake at all.

She sat on the edge of her chair, staring at his face. The tube was out of his airway and he was breathing on his own. She squeezed his hand and willed him to open his eyes.

Gloria had gone home for a shower and to feed her beloved cats. Down the corridor a plainclothes cop was drinking coffee and eating chocolate croissants with the nurses. Without explaining why, Ella had said his presence was necessary. The questions posed in the press conference had left Sophie in little doubt. She rubbed the back of her neck where tension and anger had turned her muscles into hard knots. How dare they suggest such things!

She leaned close to Chris. Hearing was the first sense to return; even with no other sign that Chris was aware, he might be listening. ‘Chris, honey, it’s me. I know you can’t move or speak. That’s okay. You probably feel confused too. You don’t know where you are and why.’

She took a deep breath.

‘Something bad’s happened, honey. Someone came to the door and shot you and took Lachlan. You’re going to be fine, even though you probably hurt like hell. But I need you to remember what happened so we can find our boy.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Some people are saying it happened because of the robbery gang, you were part of it somehow, but I know that you weren’t. You are a good man and a good cop, Chris. I trust you and I believe in you.’ She laid her cheek to his. ‘I know you can hear me and you’re fighting your way up. The drugs are wearing off and you can feel more of your body, you feel the pain, you feel you’re lying in a bed, you can hear me talking. Open your eyes, Chris. I’m right here. Look at me.’

He didn’t move. His breathing stayed at the same regular pace.

She straightened the fingers of his limp hand, then rolled them into a fist. ‘They had a press conference this morning. There were cops everywhere, they all send you their best.’ She thought about their hugs and quiet words. Hugh Green had been there, tears in his eyes. She’d given the jacket back but she missed it now. ‘I talked to the cameras about Lachlan, how much we love and miss him. They were lined up in front of me like…’ They were like a firing squad but she didn’t want to mention guns now. ‘Like a row of big round eyes. I thought, the person who has Lachlan might be watching. If I can make them see how much we hurt, then maybe they will realise that it’s time for Lachlan to come home.’ She flexed his thumb. ‘It’s funny though, I don’t really remember what I said. The whole room was quiet, I remember that, and I could hear how powerful my voice was. I’d thought I’d be all quavery and nervous but I wasn’t at all. I talked, I don’t know how long for, but at the end I saw this man in the crowd, holding a microphone, and there were tears in his eyes.’ She paused, remembering. ‘I thought, good, that’s what we need people to feel. Someone who feels that way will call the cops when they hear a baby crying in their neighbour’s place where there’s never been a baby before. They’ll remember Lachlan’s big brown eyes from the photo that was shown, and they’ll spot him in a stroller in a supermarket or somewhere and they’ll find a phone and before we know it he’ll be home.’

She pressed her forehead to the back of Chris’s wrist. He smelled of iodine. The tiny hairs on his arm moved to her blinking. ‘Come on,’ she whispered, squeezing his hand gently, trying not to show him how desperate she was. ‘Wake up and tell me what you know.’

Chris didn’t move.

7.00 am

On the drive to St Vincent’s, Dennis said to Ella, ‘I might leave you alone in there with Roth for a while.’ He glanced over at her. ‘He fancies himself a ladies’ man, apparently. You never know, he might feel inclined to unburden himself to you.’

Fat chance. In Ella’s experience, even guys who thought of themselves that way had certain criteria, usually to do with looks and age. She doubted the appearance by his hospital bed of a stocky early-forties woman with dark messy hair was going to inflame Roth’s desires one little bit.

The ward was busy with staff. Dennis went through them waving his badge but nobody took any notice. Roth was in a single room tucked away in a corner of a corridor and Dennis knocked once then opened the door without waiting for a reply.

Roth was half sitting against a stack of pillows. His face was pale and skinnier than in the photo. He needed a shave and there was a smell in the room that reminded Ella of her grandfather’s room when he was losing his battle with cancer. The smell of a sickbed lain in around the clock.

Roth folded his arms. ‘If it’s visiting hours already my watch is wrong and someone forgot to bring my breakfast.’ He wore green striped hospital pyjamas with the thin cotton sleeve pulled up on his left arm to leave an IV site exposed. A clear tube snaked from his arm up to a pump and above it to a bag of clear fluid with a bright orange sticker plastered on it. Ella could make out the words ‘
antibiotic added’
.

Dennis stood at the foot of the bed, his own arms folded. ‘We need information.’

‘No “hello”, no “how you going”? Bit rude, don’t you think?’

Dennis shifted his weight so that his knee bumped the bed. Roth grimaced. Dennis said, ‘You think baby Lachlan has time for pleasantries?’

Roth sniffed and looked towards the small window. Ella looked too. She saw the edge of the White City tennis complex. Further away, over the suburbs of Bellevue Hill and Bondi, a grey smudge hung motionless.

‘So early and the smog’s there already,’ Roth said.

This time Dennis kicked the bed. ‘You said you didn’t know Chris Phillips.’

‘I don’t.’

Dennis tossed the class photograph on the bed. ‘Yet here you are, side by side.’

Roth picked it up. ‘Oh, him.’

Dennis rolled his eyes at Ella. ‘Lo, his memory returns.’

‘Just because they sat us like that in the picture doesn’t mean we were mates,’ Roth said. ‘Do you know the names of everyone in all your courses?’

‘What can you remember about him?’

‘Nothing.’ Roth dropped the picture. ‘I recognise his face now, and I can match his name to it, but that’s it. I don’t know if he came out drinking with us every night, what station he was from, even whether we ever spoke.’

Dennis put the class photograph back in his coat pocket, then tossed the photo of Lachlan on the blanket. ‘Here’s his son, the one who’s missing.’

‘Yeah, they look the same around the eyes,’ Roth said.

‘What do you know about his abduction?’

‘Nothing. I told them that last night.’

Dennis threw up his hands. ‘I’m going for coffee.’

‘Bring me back one,’ Roth called as Dennis went out the door. He smiled at Ella. ‘You know I don’t buy this.’

‘Buy what?’ she said.

He didn’t answer.

There was a low vinyl chair against the wall opposite the window. Ella found it much less comfortable than it looked. She leaned back and pretended to be lost in thought, her elbow on the arm, her chin in her hand. Roth plumped up his pillows and closed his eyes.

There was the frequent sound of footsteps and voices in the corridor outside but nobody came in. Ella wondered how long Dennis would stay away. If he came back soon they could admit this was a waste of time and do something useful.

Then Roth spoke. ‘You have no idea how high this goes.’

She turned her head, still in her hand. ‘Really.’

‘Those strike force Ds come around all the time, asking who else is in the gang, saying if I don’t give them names I’m looking at life inside. They don’t seem to realise there are worse things.’

‘Like having your kid nicked?’

‘Or disappearing yourself.’ Roth shifted position in the bed with a grimace.

‘Is that what you think will happen to you?’

Roth’s eyes searched her face. She was used to this kind of examination: police got it all the time from dirtbags who thought they could get one over on you once they found your weak spot. She was good at the blank face, the bored little lift of an eyebrow, the reflection of the gaze right back at them.

‘You love your job,’ he said. ‘I used to, too.’

Love?
Hmm.

He closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘I used to think I could save people. I thought that was our goal, more than catching the bad guys even. Conviction, no conviction, what did it matter as long as the innocent in the middle was safe?’

The room suddenly felt hot.

‘But then you realise that most people in the job feel differently. The bosses particularly. Sometimes they’re fixed on juggling the numbers so the government’s happy at the end of the year and hands over more money so they can buy a new car. Sometimes they just want good press, good image.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Makes it hard, doesn’t it?’

Ella managed a shrug.

‘Anyway, I think it’s good you still believe that even the worst things can be made right. I hope you can keep believing it when the truth comes out about all of this and you see how far the corruption has spread.’

‘And how far is that?’

‘How far have you got?’ Roth looked at her in a measuring way, then Dennis came in, slopping coffee from a takeaway cup onto the brown linoleum. Ella could have strangled him.

‘Great,’ Roth said. ‘Here I am, throat dry as a dead dingo’s donger after telling your little mate here everything, and you forget my coffee.’

Dennis turned to Ella. ‘Did he–?’

‘Of course not.’

Dennis glared at Roth. ‘You understand that you can be made to talk. You can be locked up. Your pension, all your benefits can be taken away.’

‘Like I haven’t already heard that from the strike force,’ he said. ‘Why threaten me with that when I have nothing to tell you?’

‘You’re not still claiming to have been shot in a street mugging?’

‘Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Any witnesses? Any CCTV film?’

Dennis pointed at the photo of Lachlan. ‘All we want is the baby.’

‘Well, I can’t be one hundred per cent sure, because I can’t get out of bed to look underneath it, but I don’t think he’s in here with me.’

Dennis’s face went pinched and white around the temples. ‘When that bullet they picked out of your butt is found to match the bank guard’s gun, we’ll be back.’

‘Why don’t you get out there and look for the baby instead of harassing innocent and injured people like me?’ Roth picked up the remote and turned the TV on.

Dennis reached out and turned it off. The white spots on his face were spreading. Ella checked behind her to make sure the door was shut. Dennis leaned over Roth, the cup of coffee trembling in his hand. ‘You make me ashamed of the job.’

Before Roth could answer Dennis stormed from the room. Ella followed. The door swung shut with a bang behind them.

‘He knows more than he’s letting on.’ Dennis glared out the corridor window. ‘I’d just hoped that because he’s a cop, even a rotten one, and because Chris is a cop too…’ He took a gulp of coffee and grimaced. ‘I hoped that the good guy in him would come through.’

Ella realised she’d forgotten the photo of Lachlan. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’ She left Dennis frowning down at the bustle of Victoria Street and walked back up the corridor.

She didn’t knock and Roth didn’t appear to hear her come in. He was staring blankly out the window. Lachlan’s picture was in a different position on the bed, as if he’d been looking at it then put it down again. The expression on his face was one that Ella had trouble labelling: a combination of anxiety, fear, worry and something else. Terror?

She backed out of the door and closed it quietly behind her.

Dennis was waiting by the lift. ‘Did you get it?’

She shook her head. ‘Maybe it’ll work on him.’ The lift doors opened and they got on board. ‘He definitely knows something.’

They were getting in the car when Ella’s mobile rang. ‘Marconi.’

‘It’s Clinton. We’ve got something.’

Ella fumbled for her notebook. ‘Go.’

‘The checkout chick in the Ampol on Epping Road said a woman in her fifties came in early this morning and bought nappies. She came back about ten minutes later, saying the nap-pies were the wrong size and could she swap them.’ His voice rose with excitement and Ella had to move the phone away from her ear. ‘We watched the CCTV tape and you see the woman’s face pretty clearly. Plus she’s driving a light-coloured VK Holden Commodore and we’ve got a partial on the numberplate. It ends in 487. Travis is still on the system checking for cars but we’ve got a possible hit: one’s registered to a fifty-six year old woman named Sylvia Morris. She’s got previous convictions for assault and resisting arrest when police and DOCS workers took her kids into care, and she lives on Herring Road, close to both the servo and the Phillips house.’