Frantic (3 page)

The newsreader spoke about the victim. The screen displayed a photo of the security guard in happier times. The red-haired woman smiled into the camera over his shoulder. They had twin boys, three years old. ‘Tragic,’ Sophie said.

Chris jumped.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘You didn’t.’ Chris stood up abruptly. ‘Mum’s coming over. You’d better go before she parks you in.’

‘Is that the real reason you’re not coming to the Jungle? You should tell her –’

‘I’d already decided not to go before I asked her over, okay?’

‘Fine.’ Sophie crouched to kiss Lachlan’s forehead. ‘You have a good night too.’

7.50 pm

Sophie drove to Annandale through the autumn night, trying to excuse Chris this latest episode of irritability. Everything else aside, he’d been covered in the guard’s blood and couldn’t save him. While paramedics were used to fighting in vain for people’s lives, she sometimes forgot that for others it wasn’t a routine occurrence. She felt bad that she’d been abrupt, too, but you could blame guilt for that, along with the cumulative effect of eight weeks of domestic disharmony.

She found a place to park some distance up Johnston Street and walked back to Parramatta Road. She waited at the lights then crossed to the brick-fronted building with the neon toucan in the window.

The Southern Jungle was a cop bar. Six police injured in the line of duty had pooled their payouts and bought it a few years before. They served the beers; they learned commercial cookery and ran the small kitchen. Police and their friends drank there, and this meant it was a haven. Any time an officer was badly injured on the job, a fundraiser was held. If the worst happened and an officer was killed, the wake was held here too.

She pushed the door open and was accosted by a police officer she recognised from the southern suburbs. ‘Door tax,’ he said with a smile. He held out a firefighter’s helmet half-full of cash. She dropped in a ten dollar note and he gave her three raffle tickets. ‘Lucky door prize. It’ll be drawn at nine.’

‘Thanks.’

The place was packed. She shouldered her way to the bar through the crowd of laughing, cheering people. On the wall behind the bar was a blown-up photo of the man of the hour, Senior Constable Dean Rigby.

‘Buy you a drink?’

Sophie turned to see Angus beside her. ‘Just mineral water,’ she said quickly.

He smiled. ‘Of course.’

When he had their drinks they moved to a space near the front window.

‘I had my blood tests.’ He showed her the bandaid on his arm. ‘And my butt’s sore from those boosters.’

‘It only lasts a week,’ she said. ‘Kidding. Couple of days.’

The light from the neon toucan turned Angus’s blond hair green. Sophie glanced around for Mick, and her gaze fell on the table in the corner where she and Angus had sat and talked for so long on that night. It had all been about work, she remembered, nothing personal was shared at all, but somehow – with a look, a touch – it had developed. She could smell his cologne again now, and the laundry powder he used, the scent rising from his clothes with the heat of his body.

Angus looked at the table too, then back at her.

She said, ‘I want us to be clear about something.’

‘You don’t have to say it.’

‘I need to.’ She felt a wave of guilt and regret. What a thing she’d done. She blinked back sudden tears. ‘It was wrong and I can never do it again.’

‘I know,’ Angus said. ‘I feel the same way.’

‘If Chris ever found out –’

‘I know,’ Angus said again. ‘He won’t find out from me.’ He touched Sophie’s arm lightly, reassuringly. She felt a thrill at the touch, and looked down at his hand, remembering.

She started when there was a loud cheer by the door. Dean Rigby walked in. He wore a soft foam collar round his neck and she could imagine the shiny pink of the recent surgical scars it covered. He was immediately surrounded by well-wishers.

‘Where is Chris?’ Angus said, his tone casual.

‘Felt like a night in,’ Sophie said. ‘He’s babysitting and entertaining his mum.’

‘Ah, the lovely Gloria.’

‘You know her?’

‘Chris and I knew each other when we were kids,’ Angus said. ‘He didn’t tell you?’

Sophie thought back to when Chris had come home from work a few days after the assault and mentioned he had a new partner. Sophie had said, ‘Good bloke?’ and Chris had shrugged. ‘Seems okay.’ That had been it.

‘Must have slipped his mind.’

‘He dated my sister Belinda when they were sixteen,’ Angus said. ‘It was kind of funny when we met again. He didn’t recognise me at first. Only natural, I suppose. I guess I was just a pesky fourteen-year-old brother when he and Bee wanted time alone.’ He smiled. ‘How well do you get on with Gloria?’

Sophie rolled her eyes.

He started to laugh. ‘I see.’

‘We have different ideas, about child-raising, motherhood, you name it.’ Sophie mashed the lemon in her glass with the straw. ‘Plus, she and Chris have this ongoing thing about his dad.’

‘Still?’

‘It’s as if she feels the bad fathering genes might’ve been passed down and if she’s not vigilant Chris’ll do something awful,’ Sophie said. ‘I think he should stand up to her, tell her to leave him alone, but he’d rather keep the peace.’

‘She a matron yet?’

‘She quit nursing to tell us how to live our lives,’ Sophie said. ‘I should be grateful to her, because she looks after Lachlan when we’re both at work. And she adores him. But I can’t get over her attitude.’

‘Hey, Soph!’ Mick grabbed her from behind. ‘Did you hear, the youngest kid from that fire in Randwick’s still hanging in there?’

His wife, Jo, carried glasses of red wine. The contrast between them was stark: Mick’s white blond hair and easily sunburned skin looked all the more pale beside Jo’s black hair and fine features. The only thing that matched were their blue eyes. Mick introduced Jo to Angus, then swigged half his wine and looked about. ‘Deano!’ he called and pushed through the crowd to talk to the man of the moment.

At eight-thirty, they shared a jumbo plate of nachos. At nine, Angus’s number was drawn out as the lucky door prize winner. The prize, a bottle of Glenfiddich, he immediately donated to the fundraising auction. By closing time Sophie was yawning, Mick was wearing the NSW Blues rugby league jersey he’d successfully outbid six other people for, and Jo was dancing with Angus to the Bee Gees’ ‘Night Fever’.

‘Signed by the current team,’ Mick said to Sophie. ‘Look.’

‘You showed me before,’ she said.

‘All of them.’ Mick stared down at the front of the jersey and ran his finger over the names.

Angus and Jo came back laughing. The barman shouted for last drinks. The four of them stood up to go.

Angus walked them to Sophie’s car. ‘See you on the streets tomorrow?’ Mick asked him.

‘Not likely,’ Angus said with a smile. ‘Few days off for me.’

‘Lucky bastard.’

Angus bent to look in Sophie’s window. ‘Say hi to Gloria.’

‘Ha,’ Sophie said.

It was only a five-minute drive to Mick and Jo’s place in Chippendale but Mick was asleep before they got there. Sophie double-parked and leaned into the back seat to punch him in the leg. He opened his eyes. Jo climbed out of the car and pulled on his arm, and he struggled, grumbling, out onto the footpath.

‘Don’t you dare ring in sick tomorrow,’ Sophie called.

Fifteen minutes later she parked in her own garage and let herself into the house. Lachlan was asleep on his stomach in his cot. She gently rolled him onto his side. He snuffled and made a face then relaxed again. She stroked his head and kissed him.

Chris lay in their bed in the dark. ‘Hi.’

‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘It’s okay.’

To Sophie’s relief he sounded friendly. When she climbed into bed Chris moved close to her and they hugged. ‘Sorry about before,’ he said.

‘Me too.’

‘You smell of cigarette smoke,’ he said. ‘How was it?’

‘Good.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘Angus was there. He told me about your disreputable past with his sister.’

She felt him smile against her cheek and her spirits rose.

Chris answered, ‘It was totally innocent.’

‘Yeah, right. I remember being sixteen,’ she said, smiling herself. ‘How was dinner?’

‘Same as ever.’

He was quiet. She propped herself on her elbow and ruffled his short dark hair. ‘Still thinking about that guard?’

‘And his wife. And his kids.’ He pressed his head into her hand. His eyes were open and he looked at the ceiling. ‘That gang needs stopping.’

‘So far they’ve just been lucky,’ she said. ‘They’ve never been spotted stealing or torching their getaway cars, they don’t leave their prints, and nobody’s come forward to identify the CCTV pictures. But that guard might have done the trick. Your guys will test that blood left behind and, who knows, the DNA might match up. The name will pop out and that huge strike force will absolutely swamp him and his mates.’ She ran her hand across his bare stomach then snapped the elastic of his pyjama trousers against his skin, but he kept staring at the ceiling.

‘Chris?’

‘The DNA database isn’t that big,’ he said. ‘Chances are it won’t match anyone.’

‘But he’s been shot, he’ll have to get some help, right? He’ll turn up at a hospital or doctor’s surgery sometime soon. All you guys have to do is wait.’

‘Maybe it’s not a bad wound though. Maybe the gang will treat it themselves.’

Sophie rolled onto her back. ‘Or maybe it’s really bad and he dies and you find his body with the bullet still in it, but at least then you’ll know who he was and you can start checking out his mates.’

‘I just worry.’

His tone made her soften. ‘I know you do.’ She pressed against him, absorbing his warmth. ‘You will catch them.’

‘I know.’ But there was doubt in his voice and tension in his body, and Sophie wondered what he really thought.

Tuesday 6 May, 4.10 am

D
etective Ella Marconi both loved and hated being on call at night. People thought they could get away with things in the dark, and there was always the potential that it would be interesting. But while someone outside the job might think it was a fifty-fifty shot that when her pager went off it would be something decent, something worthwhile, Ella knew the odds were actually very different. Boring and stupid beat interesting almost every single time.

Like this case: a fire in a takeaway shop on Victoria Road in Gladesville. The passing traffic, steady even at this hour, meant that it had been quickly spotted and reported. The fire brigade had soon had the place covered in water and foam. The firefighters had told the uniform cops that there was evidence of a Molotov, and so Ella’s pager had gone buzzing off her bedside table onto the carpet.

Ella stood on the footpath outside a newsagent three shops up from the burned takeaway. She held back a yawn. The fire truck was still on the scene and fat hoses lay across the wet footpath. Firefighters walked around, doing Ella couldn’t figure out what. The air stank of burned plastic and smoke. Every time a car went past the smell was stirred up even more.

So far the owner of the takeaway business had not given Ella any facts she didn’t already have from the constables or the firefighters. ‘I don’t know who would do this,’ he said again. His name was Edman Hughes. He was a skinny white guy in a brown T-shirt, dark blue jeans and dirty Dunlop Volleys. His arms were bony and when he talked he scratched one or the other of his elbows.

Ella held her pen over her notebook and looked at him. ‘How’s business?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Rent must be high on this stretch.’

He shrugged and glanced along the line of shops. ‘It’s a tax deduction.’

She said nothing. He scratched his elbow again. ‘I don’t know what this city’s coming to, that somebody would do such a random thing as this,’ he said.

The good old Molotov. Such a handy random thing. She flipped the notebook closed. ‘I’ll need you to come to the station during the day and make a formal statement.’

‘Sure, okay.’ He took the card she held out. ‘Thank you.’

The front windows and door of the shop were smashed. Ella looked in at the blackened dripping mess. A firefighter picked through debris on the floor. The case was such a washout she could feel it sapping her strength already. Paperwork, identification of the accelerant – she was guessing petrol – talk to Edman again, put a little pressure on, but in the end what for? If he admitted to the insurance fraud it’d only mean more paperwork. Days hanging around court waiting for his hearing, which would probably end in a suspended sentence. If he’d been a bad boy before, maybe a few months inside. Whoopee.

Ella watched the firefighters roll up the hoses, and sighed. Where was the big case, the one that would envelop her, the one she could attack with passion and drive? Over the last few months her enthusiasm for the job had leached away like water through Sydney sandstone. She found it hard to know whether she still loved the job or only the potential it held. She sometimes felt a little of the old thrill when she drove in to work, or when she was at home and the pager went off, but lately all the cases were such crap. Stupid people did stupid things to other stupid people and she had to sort it out and clean it up. She was like one of Pavlov’s dogs in reverse. When the bell rings but there’s no meat, you soon stop salivating.

She heard a thump and looked around to see newspapers being dropped at the newsagent’s door. She walked up as a man came out of the shop. A few coins later she was reading about yesterday’s bank hold-up and shooting.

Now that was a decent job. Strike Force Gold – so called because the thieves were scoring pots of it, the joke went – was a huge team made up of detectives from the Metropolitan Robbery Squad plus a few from various city stations. They and the other squads in Crime Agencies had everything: resources, money, profile, interesting cases and genuine bad guys. They never had to deal with assault complaints where Girl A accused Girl B of throwing an avocado at her, while Girl B said Girl A threw it first.

Ella ground her teeth. Over the past three years she’d applied regularly to move into Crime Agencies – preferably Homicide Squad, but she’d take whatever she could get – yet never scored so much as a week’s secondment. Forget what her mate Detective Dennis Orchard said about the process being fair; someone was white-anting her.

Oh, it was fine for Dennis. He was already in there. It was easy for him to say nobody remembered the time on her first homicide case when she’d barked at the Assistant Commissioner to get the fuck out of the crime scene before she had him arrested. It wasn’t entirely her fault: the man wore civvies and it had been
really
dark at the time. His name was Frank Shakespeare and he was retired now, but it was clear he still had friends in the job.

Ella watched Edman Hughes stare into the ruins of his shop. The world was chock full of weasels like him determined to pull the wool over her eyes, and it would always be so, but she wished it could at least be for a big and juicy reason.

5.05 am

Ella’s bank owned half an unrenovated Federation house in Putney, a small suburb sandwiched between Victoria Road and the northern shores of the Parramatta River, and let Ella live in it for an exorbitant amount of money each fortnight. The house was built of dark red brick with a red tile roof, the kind of place where you expected to see a swan made from an old tyre on the front lawn and the lawn itself to be thick and springy and mown once a week right down to the white. The lawn around her house had neither a swan nor springiness. It was thin and weedy and grew rank along the edges where unused garden beds lay like the mounds of simple graves.

She parked the unmarked car on the street, leaving the windows down a bit to let out the smoke smell. Her part of the house was the back. The front was owned by a thin young man by the name of Denzil, who was deaf and worked as a computer programmer from home. He kept hours as odd as hers; even now the light in his study cast a glow on the path down to her door. They had a nodding relationship and kept an eye on each other’s places when one went away. Well, she kept an eye on his place when he slid a note under her door saying he was off to another conference. She herself didn’t go away. That was what piddling wages and a Sydney mortgage could do to you.

She unlocked her front door and went inside, snicking the deadbolt behind her. She’d bought the place not long before Dennis left Hunters Hill Station for the bigger, brighter world of the Homicide Squad. On one of their last shifts together he’d brought her home after a scumbucket had deliberately vomited on her, and had waited to take her back to work. When she’d come out of her room, freshly showered and in clean clothes, sniffing at herself for any lingering hints of semi-digested hamburger, he’d been all around the place and made a helpful list. ‘Your shrubs are too close in the back there.’

‘I’ve bought an axe and a hoe and Dad’s booked in for next weekend.’

‘The locks on the side windows are flimsy.’

She pulled a plastic bag full of clinking steel out of the pantry to show him.

‘The front door–’

‘Is not solid core, but will be replaced.’

He’d nodded and flipped his notebook shut. ‘Good.’

She’d made coffee. Dennis had talked about what he hoped to achieve in the squad and Ella had felt like a little sister being left behind. The more enthusiastic Dennis had become the darker her emotions had turned. They’d joined the job together, been probationers at Newtown together and helped each other through some pretty tough early days. He’d become a detective before her but that was no reason why his application should have been accepted while hers was turned down. She’d finally jogged the table with her leg to tip over Dennis’s coffee and make him shut the hell up.

Ella opened a window and leaned on the sill. The sky over the city turned brighter as sunrise approached. The air was cool and clear, as yet unspoiled by the breath of thousands who would spend their day creating annoying cases for police.

The house was her refuge. After a day spent listening to people bitch and moan it was wonderful to return to the clinking of mast cables on the yachts moored in Kissing Point Bay. With the shrubs gone from the wall no perp could lie in wait or try to jemmy the windows without being seen. The doors were solid and deadlocked, the window frames were equally secure. Even the manhole into the roof space was padlocked from the inside. Her mother said she was paranoid but Ella had seen too many crime scenes to feel comfortable in a house with less security.

Besides, her mother said many things. When would she settle down? How could a nice girl get a man if she was always at work? Perhaps if Ella took a desk job in Traffic or in the courts she’d have time for a family. What her mother couldn’t grasp was that Ella was happy with her life. She didn’t need a man to make her feel complete. She had no desire for children. Going to work each morning, or night, or whenever her pager went off, and doing the job she’d looked forward to her whole life was plenty.

She picked peeling paint from the windowsill.

Had been plenty.

9.35 am

‘Thirty-one, you on the air?’

Sophie scrambled into the ambulance cabin to grab the radio. ‘Thirty-one’s clear in Stanmore.’ They’d just delivered an elderly woman to her nursing home following her discharge from hospital. Mick leaned on the bonnet, taking a moment, chin in his hand, face turned into the sun.

‘Wonderful, Thirty-one,’ Control said. ‘I have a woman in labour. Waters broken, contractions less than five minutes apart. She’s at 320 Glebe Point Road, Glebe Point.’

‘Thirty-one’s on the case.’ Sophie banged on the windscreen.

‘What?’ Mick said.

‘Labour, waters broken.’

He ran for the driver’s seat. Sophie was still yanking on her seatbelt when he gunned the engine and swung onto the street. They raced down Percival Road and screeched right through the green light onto Parramatta Road.

Sophie knew that like many paramedics Mick was apprehensive of maternity cases. He didn’t have much practice at them. They involved two patients instead of one, and the potential for disaster always seemed so great. The whole aim was to get in and out and to hospital as quickly as you could before anything happened.

Mick weaved through the traffic, blasting the horn, then took the angled left into Pyrmont Bridge Road. The engine revved hard. ‘Go, baby, go,’ Mick said.

Sophie, on the other hand, was looking forward to the case. It would be her first maternity call since Lachlan’s birth, and already it was bringing back memories of the pain and euphoria. More than likely the baby wouldn’t be born until hours after they got the woman to the hospital, such was people’s understandable tendency to ring early rather than late, but she thought through the possibilities anyway, knowing that being prepared equalled staying in control.
Cord around neck – if loose, lift over head; if tight, clamp and cut. Prevent tears by slowing and controlling the delivery. Be sure to suction the baby quickly, clearing the airways. Wrap warmly to prevent heat loss.

Mick roared left into Glebe Point Road. ‘Numbers?’

Sophie looked for letterboxes as she pulled on a pair of gloves. ‘Two-ten this side.’

Mick’s head bobbed as he drove and searched for a street number on his side of the road. Down at the end of the street Sophie saw a man run waving into the road. ‘Starjumper dead ahead.’

‘Got him.’

Mick turned the siren off and pulled up outside a two-storey house painted in heritage colours. The man ran past a dark blue BMW parked at the kerb and went up the sandstone steps to the front door of the house. ‘Please hurry,’ he shouted. ‘It’s coming!’

Sophie grabbed equipment and hurried to the open front door. The foyer was large and spacious, white walls decorated on one side with an oil painting of the beach and on the other side with framed degrees declaring that Boyd Sawyer was a plastic surgeon and a member of some college. Sophie went by too fast to read any more details.

In the living room the man crouched by a weeping woman. He wore a rumpled white shirt and grey suit pants. ‘She’s six weeks early. She’s booked into RPA and our obstetrician wants her there immediately.’

The woman wore a pink nightdress and lay on her side on the carpet. She clutched her swollen abdomen. The man tried to pull her up by the arm. ‘Julie, they’re going to take you to hospital now.’

Sophie knelt with them. She introduced herself. ‘Is this your first?’ She put her hands on Julie’s abdomen and felt the tension there.

‘Yes.’

‘How long have you had pain?’

‘About an hour, but they’re less than a minute apart now,’ Julie wept.

‘When did your waters break?’

‘Just when we rang you,’ the man said. ‘Our obstetrician said–’

Julie cried out and clutched between her legs. ‘Boyd, it’s coming!’

He grabbed Mick’s arm. ‘Where’s your trolley?’

‘It’s going to be okay, sir,’ Mick said.