Frantic (18 page)

‘Can I use the phone please?’

When the cordless handset was in his grasp and the nurse out of earshot, he dialled the number he knew by heart.

‘Recruitment,’ a female voice said.

‘Is Dean Rigby there?’

‘He’s in a meeting at the moment, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Can I take a message?’

‘Tell him that Chris Phillips called, and ask him to ring me back as soon as he can. I’m in the ICU in Royal North Shore Hospital,’ Chris said. ‘Tell him it’s urgent.’ He hung up and sat with the phone in his lap. A message like that would surely get handed to Dean straightaway. With any luck he’d call back in minutes, Chris would be able to say what he needed to say – or arrange a meeting if Dean was reluctant to talk on the phone – and it’d all be over with before Gloria arrived back.

2.15 pm

As the door of the last flat in the block closed behind them, Sophie and Angus headed for the stairs. ‘How many babies do you reckon we checked?’ Angus said.

‘Fifty-seven.’ Sophie moved swiftly, her hand on the railing, the kit bouncing against her leg. The next block waited. She no longer felt bad about causing concern, and in fact seeing all those parents worry over their babies strengthened her resolve. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to find Lachlan.

Angus said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Keep going like this. I don’t think I could get up off the floor if I had a child who was missing.’

‘It’s hard to explain.’ It was more than that: it was impossible. Only somebody who’d lived what she was living could understand.

‘My nephew has cancer,’ Angus said. ‘It’s so hard watching him suffer, but at least we can be with him. I can’t imagine how it would feel to not know where he was, whether he was okay.’

Sophie slowed and glanced back up at him. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. How old is he?’

‘Almost a year. He’s been sick for a few months now. Leukaemia.’ They emerged from the building and crossed a thinly grassed lawn. ‘My sister Bee’s on her own, so I’m the nearest thing to a dad he’s got. I take a lot of pride in that.’

Sophie looked at him, striding along beside her, the tie swinging from side to side, the clipboard tucked under his arm. Of all the people she’d spoken to since Lachlan was taken, he came closest to her position. Being faced with the loss of a child was just one step – albeit a big one – from the loss itself.

She said, ‘I get up off the floor because I have to. If I don’t do absolutely everything I can to find him, I’m letting him down. I already have, just by allowing him to be taken.’

‘You didn’t do it. You weren’t there,’ Angus said.

‘I know, but I’m his mother and it’s my job to keep him safe, yet now he’s not,’ she said. ‘And God forbid that it was Sawyer, because then I’m even more to blame.’

2.35 pm

Ella told Dennis she was going home for a couple of hours’ sleep but really she wanted to be away from the noise and bustle of the station when she read the assault file. Roth was on her mind too. She kept seeing his stricken expression as he looked at the IV bag.

The afternoon sun streamed through the living-room window of her half-a-house and she pulled her armchair around to take advantage of the warmth. She put a cup of coffee on the floor next to her and rested the closed folder on her knee.

The smile on the fake nurse’s face was what got to her the most. Such an ordinary smile. Ella would have liked to think the woman didn’t know what she was doing and that was why she was so calm. But if she really was an interloper then she was there for one reason only.

It frightened her to imagine that the same people were behind the shooting of Chris and the kidnapping of Lachlan.

Enough.

She opened the folder and began to read.

The assault had happened two months before, on 8 March. Chris Phillips and Dean Rigby started their shift at Wynyard Station and answered a call to a violent domestic argument in Surry Hills. When they got there things had quietened down. They spoke to the occupants, who said they were fine, they didn’t want to make complaints against each other, it was just a bit of a disagreement which had got out of hand. When Phillips and Rigby headed back to their car, Rigby spotted somebody he recognised on the street. Chris’s statement said:

Senior Constable Rigby told me the person was Simon Leeman and there was a warrant out for his arrest on rape charges. I didn’t know Leeman but once we started running after him, the man ran away. Senior Constable Rigby continued the pursuit on foot while I went back and fetched the car. I saw the suspect run into a small laneway, followed by Senior Constable Rigby. I entered the laneway about two minutes later. The lane is straight for about seventy metres, then bends to the right and dead-ends about fifty metres further on. When I entered this section I saw the suspect had his back to a fence and was swinging what looked like a metal pole at Senior Constable Rigby. I saw the officer duck then slip over. The pole struck him in the neck and shoulder and he fell to the ground. By this time I was approaching the suspect. I had my OC spray at the ready. I told him to drop the pole. He lunged at me, and as I side-stepped, Senior Constable Rigby tried to get up. We collided and I fell too, and lost hold of my OC spray. I grabbed the suspect’s legs and pulled him off balance. The three of us fought on the ground. Senior Constable Rigby and I managed to cuff the suspect, then I went to the car to call for assistance and paramedics.

Ella picked up her coffee. It was odd that Chris Phillips hadn’t sprayed the suspect immediately, and also that he’d be so close as to get tripped up when Rigby tried to climb to his feet. Second-guessing was a dangerous habit though. She’d talk to Chris and see if he could make things a bit clearer.

The bigger problem was that the man turned out not to be Simon Leeman at all but a man named Paul Houtkamp. Ella looked at his sheet. He was thirty-six years old, he lived at 5/39 Banks Street in Waterloo, he held a truck licence, and had a history of convictions for assaults and minor robberies. A small-time guy really. There was nothing listed for the past two years – not that that meant a whole lot, only that he hadn’t been caught doing anything.

The mug shot taken after the assault showed a clean-shaven man with his dark hair brushed back. His left cheek and jaw were bruised, consistent with a good hard belt from a right-hander. Ella expected to see defiance in his dark eyes but instead recognised fear. Had he expected another wallop? A visit from Rigby’s friends when he was in the cells?

Before she left Gladesville she’d looked up Houtkamp on the computer file of the Phillips case. On the night of the kidnapping he claimed to have been at the Bower Brae Nursing Home in Randwick. The detectives who had investigated him said he’d signed in to the visitors’ book at eight-forty pm and out at ten, and had been seen to come and go by two of the nightstaff, both of whom knew him. Ella sipped her coffee and looked out the window. Fergus Patrick, the Phillipses’ neighbour, believed he’d heard the shot that injured Chris Phillips at about ten pm, then found him unconscious fifteen minutes later. Paul Houtkamp couldn’t have left Randwick at ten and made it to Gladesville in much less than half an hour.

Unless Chris had been shot much earlier. She put the coffee down. Just because Houtkamp had been seen to come in, and leave, didn’t mean he was there the entire time. Fergus Patrick said he first thought the sound of the shot was on the TV show he was watching. Maybe it was, and
nobody
had heard the actual shooting. Houtkamp could have signed in to the nursing home, sneaked out, done the job, dumped the baby off somewhere, and sneaked back in to sign out for ten pm quite easily. His poor demented mother or whoever he was visiting probably didn’t even know who she was herself, let alone who was sitting next to her.

It was a drastic action, however, for a guy who hadn’t done too much big stuff before.

That we know of
, she reminded herself.

Even so. What could he really hope to achieve? On a quick flip through the file, Figgis’s work looked solid. What crack could Houtkamp possible hope to widen by putting a witness out of the picture? Even if Phillips had died, Rigby remained alive to stand up there with his neck brace and his records of surgery and the workers’ compensation directive that put him behind a desk for the rest of his career.

Still.

Ella looked at the photo of Houtkamp again.

Maybe there was more to this than met the eye.

3.17 pm

Chris’s hospital room was empty. Ella looked at the rumpled bedclothes then around at the nurse who came up behind her. ‘He’s in the bathroom,’ the young man said.

‘He’s walking?’ Ella said. ‘So soon?’

The nurse nodded. ‘Some people will do anything to stay clear of a bedpan.’

The detective who was meant to be minding Chris came out of the lift, carrying a newspaper. He saw Ella and frowned, then put the paper behind his back. She raised her eyebrows. He turned away, heading for the staffroom. Ella made a mental note to mention him to Dennis.

‘You can wait in Chris’s room if you want,’ the nurse was saying. ‘And let him know his friend Dean still hasn’t called, and Mrs Schlink in room four will have the cordless phone for the next half-hour or so, but if Dean does ring, switch will divert it to one of the other numbers.’

‘Oh, you mean Dean Rigby?’ Ella did a quick bit of creative thinking. ‘He’s been tied up with a case.’ It was a fair bet the nurse had guessed Dean was a cop but didn’t know he was off the road.

‘That’d explain why he hasn’t rung.’ The nurse looked at his watch. ‘It’s been almost three hours now.’

Ella sat in the plastic chair by Chris’s bed. So Chris was keen to talk to Dean. Super-keen, in fact, by the sounds of it. They were friends, and it was plausible Chris just wanted his mate’s shoulder to cry on, but hearing about it so soon after reading the Houtkamp file made Ella wonder. Was it possible that Chris suspected Houtkamp was involved in the kidnapping and wanted Rigby to find out? But why wouldn’t he have told her and Dennis? She thought back to the conversation they’d had with Chris that morning. Nothing had struck her as odd. Perhaps she needed to power up her antennae a little.

Chris came slowly into the room then stopped when he saw her. ‘Is there news?’

‘Not yet, I’m sorry,’ Ella said.

He was pale and as he climbed into the bed his nose started to drip blood. He pulled a bloodstained tissue from his pyjama pocket and jammed it into his nostrils.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

‘Fine.’

Ella let the obvious lie pass. ‘The case is progressing well.’

‘Then where’s my son?’

Okay, not that well.
‘We’re getting loads of calls on the public hotline. Everyone in the city is on the lookout.’

His face softened a little. ‘That’s good.’ His voice was dulled by his blocked nose.

‘I’ve been reading the file about the assault on you and Senior Constable Rigby,’ she said. ‘Which reminds me: the nurse said he hasn’t rung yet.’

A flicker of some emotion crossed his face too quickly for Ella to recognise. Then he said, ‘Why are you looking into the assault?’

‘I wondered if Houtkamp might have had reason to want to hurt you.’

He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t him. He’s taller than the guy who shot me.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Ella said, ‘I was curious about the case.’

‘In what way?’

Practising in the car on the way over here it had been easy to ask aloud, ‘Why did you wait so long to spray him? How did you manage to trip over Rigby? And how the hell does a lone bad guy get the upper hand over two experienced officers?’ But now she was faced with the man whose son was missing and they felt like cheap-shot questions. The second-guessing thing again. She would take it more carefully. ‘Could you describe what happened?’

He told it almost exactly like it was written in the statement. Not quite word for word – but close. Ella sat rubbing her chin, thinking as she listened. Rehearsed lies sometimes came out this way but so could a statement repeated numerous times to various investigators.

‘And then I called for urgent back-up and for paramedics,’ he concluded.

She sat up straight. ‘But Houtkamp was cuffed by that time, wasn’t he? So why
urgent
back-up? He was no longer a threat.’

‘Chris studied her over his tissue. ‘Both Dean and I were hurt, and I didn’t know how badly. If something happened to the prisoner, I couldn’t guarantee we’d be able to look after him.’

‘If something happened,’ Ella said.

‘Yeah, like if he had a fit. He was face-down in cuffs.’ Chris shrugged. ‘I was trying to help Dean, too. I had my hands full just with him.’

Ella nodded. It was a plausible answer. ‘Have you thought of anyone who might have done this?’

‘It’s all I think about, but I really have no idea.’ He was calm and collected. They watched each other for a long moment.

She said, ‘Why are you so eager to talk to Dean?’

He gave her a puzzled look. ‘He’s my friend. Do I need a reason?’