Frantic (27 page)

He tossed her the car keys then pulled out his phone and dialled a number. ‘I need a warrant for Sophie Phillips’s house.’

Saturday 10 May, 1.25 pm

W
hen she knocked on the door Ella heard running footsteps then the door was almost torn off its hinges. ‘Chris?’ Gloria Phillips’s eyes were red and her face tear-streaked.

‘Mrs Phillips, we have a warrant to search these premises,’ Ella said. ‘Are Chris and Sophie home?’

‘No, I don’t know where they are. When I got here I found the back door unlocked and windows open, and they never do that,’ she said. ‘It’s as if they took off in a big hurry. I thought maybe you’d called and said you’d found Lachlan.’

‘I’m sorry, we haven’t,’ Ella said.

Dennis squeezed past them and started upstairs. Ella went into the living room and looked around.

Gloria followed, sniffling. ‘I’m sorry to be in such a state but Chris and I had a big argument today.’

‘It’s a stressful time,’ Ella said, peering into the kitchen. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit in the living room while we take a look around?’

Gloria took a box of tissues with her.

Ella went upstairs to Dennis. ‘They’re not here, are they.’

He shook his head. He was standing in the main bedroom. There were piles of clothes on the floor. An ambulance uniform lay in a corner. It looked as though it had been there for a few days. ‘Just like she said, seems they left in a hurry.’

The sliding door of the built-in wardrobe was open. Ella looked in, expecting to see clothes and suitcases missing, thinking now they were on the trail of a fugitive murderer. Instead she saw an open shoebox on the floor, its contents tipped out among black work boots and men’s running shoes. She knelt for a look. ‘Eight years and under, 50 metres backstroke,’ she read from a small faded blue ribbon. ‘Boys’ junior soccer, runners-up.’

‘Funny what some people keep.’ Dennis went into the next room.

Ella stood up and saw a collection of letters on the bed. She smoothed out the top one. ‘
Dear Chris
,’ it began. ‘
I will always love you
.’

‘Got some love letters here,’ she called. She scanned down to the bottom of the letter. ‘To Chris, from someone called Bee.’

‘New or old?’

‘Undated.’ Ella shuffled through the pile but there were no envelopes, no helpful postmarks. They didn’t look recent but it was important she find out. They could be evidence that Chris was having an affair after all.

‘Distinctive name,’ Dennis said. ‘Mrs Phillips might know.’

Ella took the letter downstairs. Gloria was sitting on the lounge, rocking back and forth, twisting a tissue in her hands.

‘Do you know a person named Bee?’

Gloria looked up. ‘That’s Angus’s sister.’

‘Angus Arendson?’

‘Well, not really his sister,’ Gloria said. ‘Angus was adopted by Bee’s mother when he was small. His mother and Bee’s were friends, but his mother was a bit of a no-good, well, I mean, she took off with this bloke, to India or somewhere, and never came back. Bee’s mother took Angus in and after a while she adopted him.’ She dropped shredded tissue on the floor. ‘None of the other kids knew and Bee’s mother asked that we never tell them. I don’t think Chris ever knew. Well, unless Bee told him. She might have done. I don’t know.’

Ella tried to keep it straight in her mind.

‘And Bee and Chris used to go out when they were teenagers. Now she has a little boy and he’s sick, he’s got cancer, poor little thing.’ She started to sob. ‘Life isn’t fair when such bad things happen to such little babies.’ She pulled another tissue from the box. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I found some letters from her upstairs,’ Ella said.

‘Chris must have been reading them after I left.’ Gloria wiped her eyes. ‘She was the reason for our argument.’

‘Had she been around? Was Chris seeing her again?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ Gloria covered her face with her hands. ‘I helped her get an abortion when she was sixteen. Chris didn’t know until today.’

Ella stared at her.

‘He was furious,’ Gloria went on. ‘He hates me now.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I don’t blame him either.’

Ella went out in the hall to read further in the letter. ‘
I’m sorry that I was nasty yesterday. Sometimes I feel so bad, so ugly, about things going on in my life. Things I can’t tell anyone about, they are that bad. But at the same time it feels so nice! I don’t understand that. If it’s all so wrong, shouldn’t it feel bad at the time, not just later?
’

Ella struggled to get her thoughts in order. Angus and Chris knew each other years ago; Chris went out with Angus’s adoptive sister, Bee; Chris’s mother arranged a secret abortion for Bee when the girl was sixteen.

Chris obviously thought the letters were relevant because he’d got them out of the box, either today or very recently, and he and Sophie had left the house so quickly they hadn’t even locked up. It was possible that they’d rushed out because of what Sophie had done, but Ella didn’t think that was the reason.

It was a long shot, but she pulled her phone out and called the Incident Room. Murray answered. She said, ‘Grab a piece of paper.’

There was a shuffling sound. ‘Okay.’

‘Woman by the name of Bee Arendson.’

‘Bee’s short for Belinda,’ Gloria said from the doorway.

‘Belinda Arendson,’ Ella said into the phone. ‘Put her in the system, see what we’ve got.’

‘System’s down,’ Murray said. ‘All the metro computers are offline. They’re working on it, but–’

‘As soon as they’re back up, then,’ Ella said. ‘Meanwhile, call Births, Deaths and Marriages and check for registered births. A son.’

‘Named Ben,’ Gloria said.

‘Ben,’ Ella told Murray, then covered the phone. ‘Have you ever seen him?’ she asked Gloria. ‘Or a picture?’

Gloria shook her head.

‘Call me back when you know anything,’ Ella said to Murray, and hung up. ‘Dennis!’

‘Why are you asking about Bee’s little boy?’ Gloria said.

Dennis came halfway down the stairs. ‘What?’

‘A lead.’

‘What is it?’

Ella nodded at the door.

Gloria followed them outside, clutching at Ella’s sleeve. ‘What are you thinking? Do you know where Lachlan is?’

‘We’ll call you the second we know anything,’ Ella said. ‘I promise.’

2.10 pm

‘I don’t know,’ Dennis said, frowning in the passenger seat. ‘I can’t see it.’

‘It is a lead, though,’ Ella said.

‘Absolutely. Just not one strong enough to get us a warrant.’

‘We’d better start hoping he’s home then,’ Ella said. ‘Try Murray again, see if things are working yet.’

Dennis did so. After a short conversation he closed his phone. ‘No go, and so far nothing back from Births, Deaths and Marriages.’

Ella braked to a halt in front of Angus’s house. The carport was empty. ‘Shit.’

They got out anyway and went to the back door. Ella opened the screen and was about to knock, then stopped. ‘Hello.’

‘What?’

‘Door’s open.’

Dennis leaned in to see the centimetre gap between the door and the frame.

They looked at each other.

‘Could be somebody injured in there,’ Ella said.

‘Could be,’ he said, pulling his gun out. ‘We’d better go and see.’

She got her own gun out, pushed the door open with her foot and waited a moment. ‘Police, coming in.’

The house was silent. Ella shivered, then stepped inside, listening hard. A car droned past outside. She could feel Dennis’s breath on the back of her neck as she started down the narrow hallway.

The first doorway on the right was the bathroom, painted green, small and unrenovated. Opposite was a tiny laundry with a dented washing machine and a sink.

At the end of the hall was the small kitchen. The sink and cracked linoleum benches were bare.

The living room contained a worn lounge and small TV. There were two bedrooms, one obviously kept as a spare with a mattress leaning against the wall, the other with a double bed made up with flannelette sheets and wool blankets. A rug was pushed up close to the bed and Dennis almost tripped on the folds when he went to check under the bed. ‘Place is empty.’

The dresser drawers stood open and held just a few crumpled T-shirts. Dennis looked into the wardrobe as he reholstered his gun. ‘Someone’s packed and left in a hurry.’

Ella put her gun away then stood in the hall with her hands on her hips. ‘But where’s he gone, and why?’

Dennis didn’t answer. He was smoothing the rug’s worn pile with his shoe.

Ella went back to the kitchen. Magnets held two photos to the fridge door. One showed Angus and a young woman sitting smiling on a lounge, the other the same young woman holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. Ella looked closely at it. The baby was hardly visible. It could be anyone. She focused on the woman, noticing skinny arms and small breasts. ‘Do you think this could be the woman from the pub CCTV?’

Dennis came to look. ‘She’s a similar build.’

Ella thought she looked a little familiar from somewhere else too, but couldn’t place her.

‘Next stop Bee’s house, once we get the address, right?’ she said. ‘Dennis?’

‘Mm.’

‘What is it?’

‘Just thinking.’ He was walking through the rooms, hands in pockets, staring at the walls.

Ella headed down the hall. ‘I’ll ring Murray.’

Dennis followed, frowning.

She was on the step at the back door, starting to dial, when she saw him whirl and charge back up the hall. She ended the call before it went through and ran after him.

He was in the bedroom, tapping his knuckles along the wall, then he grasped the corner of the dresser. His eyes were bright when he looked up at her. ‘Help me with this.’

They dragged the dresser away from the wall. Its legs came to rest against the folded rug. ‘I knew it,’ Dennis said.

‘Knew what?’

He pointed at the rug, then at the corners of the room. ‘There’s a false wall here.’

Ella squinted at the walls. ‘Really?’

He ran his hands across the wall and pinpointed a crack in the paint. ‘He closed it up but forgot about the rug.’

‘If you say so,’ Ella said. ‘You want me to ring for a warrant?’

‘Take too long.’ Dennis went into the kitchen and started opening drawers. He came back with a screwdriver, and slotted the tip into the wall. ‘I don’t care any more about the rules of evidence. I just want to find this kid before something bad happens.’ He managed to lever off a panel. Behind it was a small dark space. Dennis grabbed a lamp and turned it on, and they peered in.

The place was tiny but organised. A laptop, printer and digital camera lay on a bench to one side, below a sheet of cork to which colour photos were pinned.

‘Canon printer,’ Ella said. ‘And look, half a ream of Reflex paper.’

The other walls were covered in shelving. The equipment the shelves had once held was now mostly in a jumble on the floor. Dennis raised the lamp higher and Ella saw pages stapled in bundles, labelled audio tapes, photocopies of maps with particular routes highlighted, and newspaper articles spilling from torn cardboard files on the floor. There was a clear plastic disc and microphone, and a small directional ‘gun’ microphone, the likes of which Ella had seen used in surveillance operations. A tangle of wires and a pile of small black listening devices had tumbled from an upended cardboard box. There were three cameras with long lenses, and four boxes of different ammunition. Ella’s gaze fell upon one open box. ‘Twenty-two subsonics.’

‘Can’t see any guns but we’ll pull up the floor, go into the roof space,’ Dennis said.

‘He might have them with him.’ Ella took the lamp to examine pictures on the corkboard. It was a series of colour shots of Chris, Sophie and Lachlan out shopping somewhere, a close-up of Lachlan sucking on a dummy the same as the one found by Sawyer’s car, a shot of Sophie talking on the radio in an ambulance, and one taken through a window of Sophie feeding Lachlan in a highchair. The dates printed in the corners ranged from two weeks to three months ago.

Dennis picked a photo up by its corner. ‘Here’s the phone box in Raglan Street.’

The shot showed Chris on the phone looking anxious. In the background was a shop awning that read ‘
Raglan Street Drycleaners’
. In the bottom corner of the photo was a time and date stamp.

‘“
May 6, 10.22 am
”. I guess we know who the caller to the TV stations was,’ Ella said.

‘So Angus or Bee followed him, took this happy snap and–’ Dennis poked the directional microphones lying on the floor with his foot ‘–listened in as well?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘So they heard Chris call the stations and say the robbery gang was all police.’ Dennis pinched his chin between his finger and thumb. ‘And then what?’

Ella was about to answer when she spotted a couple of bills in the mess on the floor. ‘These are addressed to Bee. Lot 37, Marshall Road, Palm Glen.’