Frantic (16 page)

‘I drove to Mrs Macquarie’s Point and went for a walk. The pay and display parking ticket is probably still somewhere in the car.’

‘You walked for all that time?’

‘I sat looking at the water,’ he said. ‘Thinking about the guard.’

Sophie remembered how she’d feared he was planning to leave her.

‘But it wasn’t you who rang the TV stations,’ Dennis said.

‘No, it was not.’

Ella cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry that I have to ask this, but have you ever had an affair?’

Sophie tried to think how a guilt-free wife would react on hearing her husband asked such a thing. She was aware of the heat at the contact point between her body and Chris’s and wondered if he would notice a surge.

‘You think some jilted girlfriend stole our son?’ Chris responded.

‘You know how this works,’ Ella said. ‘We have to ask.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No affairs.’

Ella handed him a business card. ‘If you remember anything else, please call us.’

‘Of course.’

‘We’re doing everything we can to find Lachlan.’

‘I know,’ Chris said. ‘Thank you.’

Sophie followed them to the door and closed it behind them before Gloria could come in. She put her back to the door and looked at Chris. He hung his head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault.’ She climbed on the bed next to him and they hugged.

9.45 am

Sophie left the hospital when a police officer brought a message from Ella saying that Crime Scene was finished in their house and she could go back in. She needed to look and smell clean and tidy if her plan was going to work. Her crumpled uniform from last night was not going to cut it.

Angus was coming out of the coffee shop in the hospital foyer as she walked through. Again she felt no guilt, rather a kind of comfort at seeing a friendly and familiar face.

He fell into step beside her. ‘How’s Chris?’

‘He’s awake and told the detectives what he remembers, but none of it’s much use.’ She could smell coffee on his breath. They emerged from the building into the morning’s bright sunlight. The glare hurt her eyes and her head.

‘Did the detectives say they had any leads?’

Sophie shaded her eyes, looking for her car. ‘They talked to a doctor who blames me for his wife and baby dying in a case I did a couple of days ago. He was found last night overdosed in his car at the Meadowbank Wharf, but he says he had nothing to do with this.’

‘That doesn’t sound good.’

‘And they were just asking Chris about cases he’d done, and whether he’d rung the TV stations about the gang of bank robbers.’

Angus nodded. ‘They’ll look into every possibility, however remote, but that doctor has to be number one on their list of suspects.’ He walked with her to her car. ‘Can I help in any way?’

‘You can drive around looking. That’s what I do.’ She put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. She tried again. ‘Shit.’

‘Pop the bonnet.’

She did so then got out and went to the front of the car. Angus checked the oil and water and wiggled the spark-plug leads. ‘That’s about all I know, I’m afraid.’

Sophie rubbed her forehead with the heels of both hands. She couldn’t stand the thought of waiting for road service. In that space of time she could get home, get clean and be back out on the streets to start her plan.

Angus said, ‘I can give you a lift, if you need one.’

She sat self-consciously in his white Magna, remembering how they’d clambered into the back seat with the breathless impatience of sixteen year olds. She wondered if Angus thought of it every time he got in the car. She glanced over at him, his broad hands on the steering wheel, his eyes straight ahead on the traffic.

He slowed the Magna as they neared her house. There were cars parked on both sides of the road, some with the insignias of newspapers and TV stations on their doors. ‘You sure you want to go in?’

She nodded, then said, ‘Angus.’

‘Mm?’ His eyes were on the media crews.

‘I need a favour.’

Now he looked at her.

‘I want to search for Lachlan and I can’t wait for my car to be fixed.’

‘I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go,’ he said.

It would be more complicated than that, but she didn’t want to go into it now. ‘Will you wait here while I go in?’

He nodded. ‘Take your time.’

He parked and she got out and met the media at the foot of her driveway.

‘Mrs Phillips, how’s Chris?’

‘Any news on your baby?’

‘Are you happy with the progress of the police on the case?’

‘Has Chris been able to tell you anything?’

She held up a hand and they went quiet. ‘There’s been no news about Lachlan. Chris is awake and has told the police all he can. I have complete faith in the detectives but I want to appeal to every member of the public to please, please, study Lachlan’s picture – even better, cut it out and carry it with you – and look closely at every single baby you see. Somebody has him. If we are vigilant enough, we will find him. Thank you.’

She hurried away from them to the front door of her house. Flowers were piled against it. Some bunches were in fancy plastic wrap from florists, and some were tied with only a rubber band or a piece of string. Sophie saw that one note read ‘
To the Phillipses with love from your neighbours
’. The envelope attached to another bouquet carried the police crest. The ambulance insignia was on a third. There was also a small pile of soft toys: three teddy bears, a koala, a chicken and a pig.

She unlocked the door and went inside. The house smelled of other people and chemical cleaners. Chris had been shot right there in the doorway but there were no bloodstains. Sophie crouched and touched the beige carpet. It was damp, and the chemical smell was stronger. Carpet shampoo.

Sunlight was coming in the kitchen window at the back of the house and, looking down the hall at its glow, she saw dust motes hanging in the still air. Upstairs the first-floor landing was gloomy.

She went up the stairs. Lachlan’s room opened off the left side of the landing and their bedroom was opposite. Both doors stood wide open but the curtains were drawn in the rooms, cutting out the sun. This was how it would have been last night. At ten pm Lachlan would have been asleep in his cot for hours.

On the wall in front of her, between the bathroom and the small study they mostly used to store junk, hung a framed black-and-white photo. It was a close-up of Lachlan, just one day old, lying asleep on Chris’s open hands. She remembered taking it and looking up from the viewfinder with tears in her eyes, so grateful for her family.

She went into Lachlan’s room with the picture held tight in her hands. There was an odd smell, one she couldn’t place until she saw the black dust lying in the cracks on the white windowsill. Fingerprint dust. They must have tested everything then cleaned as best they could.

The sides of the cot were up but the sheets and blankets were gone, leaving the plastic-covered mattress bare. It seemed an odd thing for a kidnapper to do: it would take time to loosen the fitted sheet and gather the lot together.

The black dust on the cot railings made her think again. Forensics. They were looking for a clue to the man who’d been here. A hair might have fallen from his head, or a fibre from his clothes, when he bent over her sleeping son.

With shaking hands she turned the picture over, unclipped the back of the frame, took out the photo then turned and flung the empty wood and glass frame hard against the wall.

Thursday 8 May, 10.30 am

E
lla placed the stapled pages of test results on the table and offered up thanks for the lab folks who’d cleared the decks to do them that morning. She read again the substances detected in Sawyer’s blood, then looked at the surgeon. ‘Alcohol, morphine, midazolam. Heroin breaks down into morphine in the body, doesn’t it?’

There was no answer. Sawyer held the same white folded handkerchief to his eyes. His solicitor, Ron Van Pelt, sat beside him, a huge lump of a man in a black suit, arms crossed over a mountainous belly.

‘Doesn’t it, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was quiet.

‘And the lab tells me midazolam’s a sedative, which also reduces anxiety and causes amnesia.’

‘Yes.’

‘Alcohol, morphine, midazolam,’ Ella said again. ‘Quite a mixture. What were you hoping to achieve?’

‘I didn’t take it.’

‘This is your name at the top here,’ she said. ‘This was your blood they tested.’

‘I told you what happened. Somebody drugged me.’

She turned the page over to expose another sheet underneath. ‘But your prints are on the syringe.’

‘So they put my fingers on it.’

‘In exactly the places you’d hold it to inject yourself?’

Sawyer looked at Van Pelt. In a gravelly smoker’s voice the solicitor said, ‘I told you at the start, you don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to sit here and listen. Until they arrest you, you’re free to go.’

‘I just want them to believe me.’

‘They’re cops. They believe only what they want to believe.’ Van Pelt turned his beady eyes on Ella. ‘Isn’t that right, Detective?’

She ignored him. ‘Doctor Sawyer, the sooner you tell us what happened last night, the sooner we can understand what’s going on.’

‘You said you had information on my case and asked me to come in and help you.’

‘We said on
a
case,’ Dennis said. ‘You can see the position we’re in, can’t you? We need to clear things up. It’s just procedure.’

‘You think I give a fuck about your procedure? My wife and daughter are dead!’

‘We understand–’

‘No, you don’t,’ Sawyer snapped. ‘If you did, you’d have taken me home last night. You’d have never even brought me in here in the first place.’ He placed a tightly balled fist on the table. ‘My wife and newborn baby are lying in a morgue, and somebody attacked me and shot me full of drugs, and you don’t give a shit.’

Van Pelt laid a meaty paw on Sawyer’s arm. Sawyer lowered his head and started to sob, the handkerchief in his shaking hands, tears dripping onto his rumpled trousers.

Van Pelt glared at them. ‘My client has nothing more to say.’

Ten minutes later Ella and Dennis watched Ron Van Pelt drive his Mercedes from the station yard. Sawyer was in the front passenger seat, ranting and gesticulating.

Ella turned to Dennis. ‘So now what?’

He shrugged. ‘We keep working.’ His tone was cool. They’d just argued about the merits of charging Sawyer with self-administration. Ella hadn’t been persuaded by Dennis’s stance that it would achieve nothing and that Sawyer, who might very well be innocent, had been through a tragedy and deserved a little slack. Now she saw the muscle move in his temple and knew he hadn’t come around to her point of view that, tragedy notwithstanding, they needed to know the truth and a little lever like that could do a lot of good.

She leaned against the wall, trying to appear casual. ‘I mean, we’ve got motive, we’ve got a crap alibi –’

‘But there’s no DNA on the dummy and all the prints on it are so smeared they’re beyond recognition. There’s no evidence to say Sawyer was ever in the Phillipses’ house or that Lachlan was in his car,’ Dennis said. ‘You’re in a hurry. These things take time.’

Ella wanted to ask how much time Lachlan had, but pulled back. ‘One little break,’ she said. ‘We find who he had that bingle with, or who he bought the drugs from and when, and we can at least pin down part of his evening.’

Dennis sighed and checked his watch. ‘Come on. It’s meeting time.’

10.40 am

Chris struggled to sit up on the side of the bed. He was dizzy and his heart and head pounded. He had to get out of here and back home. The people who had Lachlan would get in contact somehow and it wouldn’t be by waltzing into the hospital. He had to be home and available to them. Sophie needed his protection, too. He could do nothing where he was.

‘What are you doing?’ Gloria grabbed his arm and tried to make him lie down.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Your nose is bleeding.’ She pulled a handful of tissues from a box.

The wound on his face throbbed. He held the tissues to his nose and looked at Gloria over the top. ‘Did the doctor say when I can go home?’

‘Not for a few days yet,’ she said. ‘You need to be taken care of.’

He edged over the side of the mattress and rested his bare feet on the floor. ‘If I’m up and about, what’s the point in staying?’

‘But you’re not up and about.’ She had hold of his arm again and tried to stop him standing up. ‘You’re too weak. You could faint.’

Chris forced himself to his feet. The room spun and he saw black spots. He staggered. His ears rang so loudly he couldn’t make out what Gloria was saying. Then another pair of hands had him and pushed him back onto the bed. Once he was lying down again his head cleared and he saw a nurse standing with Gloria. They looked at him sternly.

Chris closed his eyes, humiliated. It made him feel weaker than ever, being flat on his back in bed while people stared at him, or talked to him, like the detectives. And having to lie to them – and to Sophie – was awful. He kept telling himself he had no choice, but still he felt guilty.

The nurse left the room and Gloria pulled her chair close to his bedside. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Good,’ he lied. He watched her pat his hand, and decided on a plan. If they wouldn’t let him get up, he’d do it when they weren’t around. He’d exercise all night if he had to. He’d get himself strong enough to leave, strong enough to go home and wait for their contact. And if it didn’t come, he’d go after them.

Simple as that.

11 am

The Incident Room smelled of coffee and sweat. Detectives yawned as they waited their turn to tell about their morning’s work. Ella held her own yawns down deep in her throat and made notes; a theme was emerging: the leads were fizzling out.

Shane Brayfield, the drunk driver Chris had put away, was at a cousin’s wedding over the time of the kidnapping and had the witnesses and mobile phone pictures to prove it.

The hospital CEO had handed over the details of the parents of the stillborn baby. Laurel and Daniel had found them at home, the woman glued weeping to the news reports about the case, the paramedic father on the phone asking his work HQ for the Phillipses’ address so they could send flowers.

Forensics had examined the note left on Chris. The paper was Reflex brand, eighty gsm, sold all over the country. The kidnapper had used a Canon printer, also sold all over the country. There had been no fingerprints or hairs found. Ella rubbed her eyes and thought of their target: a white man who owned a balaclava, a Canon printer and an all-but-complete ream of Reflex paper.

‘What about the font?’ a detective asked.

Dennis glanced at the report and shook his head. ‘Times New Roman, standard on every computer.’

Travis Henry slid a note along the table top to her. ‘
You were right. Sylvia Morris was hiding that baby girl for a friend.’
Ella shrugged at him in a resigned way.

There was a knock at the door and Acting Commissioner Rupert Eagers looked in. Dennis nodded at Ella.

She went into the corridor and closed the door behind her. Eagers was in full uniform. At the press conference that morning he’d fielded questions not only about the kidnap and shooting, but also about the robbery gang, the caller to the TV stations, and the recent surge in drug overdose cases, including the apparent accidental death overnight in Hyde Park of Lily Jones, daughter of ex-State MP Zander Jones. Ella wasn’t surprised that he looked distracted and harassed.

Beside him stood a young man in a dark pinstriped suit. Ella didn’t know him but saw something familiar about his face.

‘How’s the case going?’ Eagers said.

‘Slowly.’ She outlined their progress so far. ‘The public hot-line is ringing off the hook, however, so we have a lot of things to follow up there.’

‘Good, good.’ Eagers rubbed his forehead. ‘This is Detective Murray Shakespeare.’

Ella looked harder at the young man.

‘He’ll be my liaison on the case,’ Eagers said. ‘I want to be kept completely up to speed on events, so he is to have access to all areas of the investigation.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Eagers left them standing in the corridor. Murray Shakespeare smiled at her. He had the same long eyeteeth, the same slaty eyes.

She said, ‘Your dad’s Frank Shakespeare, right?’

He nodded. ‘He said you’d remember him.’

Ella clenched her hands behind her back. Shakespeare wore a knowing look. Having a liaison was a pain in the butt; they always needed things explained to them and you’d always rather be getting on with your case. For it to be a Shakespeare – well.

‘Detective?’

Ella and Shakespeare spoke at the same time. ‘Yes?’

The uniformed officer from the front desk handed Ella a sheet of paper. ‘This was faxed over.’

‘Thanks.’ Ella read it quickly. It was the report on the bullet taken from Chris’s head.

‘Subsonic twenty-two.’ Shakespeare was reading over her shoulder. ‘Makes sense. Anything bigger and faster and he’d be in the morgue.’

Ella held back a sigh.

‘No rifling marks survived though,’ Shakespeare said. ‘That’s what hitting a skull will do to you.’

Ella folded the page over and went back into the Incident Room, where Dennis was finishing giving out tasks. Detectives scribbled details of their assignments. He said, ‘We meet again at four this afternoon, and decide then who wants to knock off.’

People filed out. Dennis looked at Shakespeare. Ella explained who he was and why he was there. Dennis’s temples turned white.

She held out the report. He read it. ‘Hm.’

She knew what he meant. It added little to their knowledge of the culprit and was as useful as the Reflex paper and the Canon printer.

Dennis gave the sheet to Detective Roger Fenwick, who would enter the details into the computer programme.

‘Detective Marconi?’ The uniformed officer from the front desk was at the door. ‘There’s an Edman Hughes on the phone, asking about the progress on his arson case.’

‘How’s he know I’m here?’

‘Someone at Hunters Hill told him, he said.’

Ella rolled her eyes. ‘Tell him I’m busy with this.’

‘I did,’ she said.

Ella dug her hands into her pockets. ‘Tell him I’ll get back to him when I can.’
When this case is solved.

The constable nodded and walked away.

‘So what are we doing now?’ Shakespeare asked.

‘I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on.’ Dennis cast a glance at Ella. She caught his meaning, and said, ‘I’m going to look over some of the calls from the public.’

‘Is there anything for me to do?’ Shakespeare asked.

‘Not really,’ Dennis said. ‘You can go on the phones if you want.’

Shakespeare looked dissatisfied. ‘I guess.’

‘Good-o,’ Dennis said. ‘We’ll call you if anything happens.’

When Shakespeare was out of sight down the corridor Dennis winked at Ella. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

11.20 am

At the end of Glebe Point Road sunlight shimmered on Rozelle Bay. In Angus’s car Sophie looked in the other direction, at Boyd Sawyer’s house.

Freshly showered and dressed in clean navy ambulance uniform trousers and a blue T-shirt, and with a clean ambulance shirt neatly folded in a bag, she sat taut, stretched almost to breaking point, and thought of all that had happened since she’d last been here; then she saw a figure walk past a window in the house. ‘That’s him.’

Angus stared. ‘How come he’s not in custody?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What exactly did the detectives tell you?’

‘What I told you before, that he was found overdosed but says he wasn’t involved. Plus they found a dummy like Lachlan’s beside his car at the wharf.’

‘They have all that plus motive and they let him go?’

It did seem wrong that Sawyer was free but Sophie didn’t want to acknowledge him as the likely culprit. Doing so would force her to recognise that Lachlan might be in the river. She turned away from the house. ‘Let’s go.’

As they headed into the city she twisted in her seat, examining every person on the street with a baby in their arms or in a pram. Angus drove without speaking, staying in the left lane and going slowly. ‘So where exactly are we going?’