Frantic (5 page)

Sophie clutched the case-sheet folder to her chest. The man might not be the one shot in the bank hold-up. He might have been injured in a drug deal gone wrong or in some domestic dispute. The timing was perfect, though, and the story was definitely dodgy. ‘Any word on his history? What kind of deadbeat he is?’

‘Well, this is the thing,’ Mick said. ‘He’s a cop.’

Tuesday 6 May, 10.45 am

S
ophie stared at him. ‘Are you sure?’

Mick nodded. ‘Rob was in the neighbouring cubicle in Vinnie’s ED, dropping off a patient, when the guy was telling his story to the doctor.’

The doors to the Emergency Department swung open and a nurse stuck her head out. ‘Sophie, your husband’s a cop, isn’t he? You’d better come and see this.’

She hurried after the nurse while Mick went to clean the mop and put it away.

In the ED staff room the television’s sound was loud. Nurses and doctors on their breaks were packed around the table, coffees steaming before them. More staff stood behind them, talking in low voices, and people walking past crammed in for a few seconds, trying for a glimpse of the screen.

‘
–an anonymous caller has contacted this and other television stations alleging that all the members of the armed robbery gang are in fact serving police officers
.’ The newsreader was pink-cheeked with importance. ‘
In what he described a “gesture of good faith”, the caller gave the name of the man who presented at St Vincent’s Hospital today, claiming to have been shot in a mugging, as Senior Constable Peter Roth. The caller alleged that Roth was the gang member shot by the guard in yesterday’s bank hold-up. Both the Police Service and St Vincent’s Hospital are so far refusing to comment
.’

‘Like you couldn’t see this coming.’ A slim moustached man spoke knowingly from his seat at the table. He had a shiny black stethoscope slung around his neck and when people in the room turned to look at him he reached up to finger it. Sophie could feel the blood pumping in her face. A medical student. Know-all. He said, ‘Well, you think ordinary robbers would be allowed to go on for so long?’

‘Shut up,’ someone said. The student turned red.

‘
The caller identified himself as a police officer and said that he is prepared to give a statement, naming all gang members, once his safety has been assured by senior police management. Police Commissioner Stephen Dudley-Pearson was unavailable for comment but his office has downplayed the allegations, stating that they may be a hoax. They refuse to comment on whether they have been approached by a member of staff with information on the robberies. They also state that as a matter of course the gunshot victim will be interviewed and an examination done of any bullet fragments found during surgery.
’

‘Sophie,’ Mick hissed from the doorway. When she looked over he held up the portable.

In the corridor she said, ‘What is it?’

‘Everyone’s busy. They want us to head into town for cover.’

They walked back through the ED. ‘That didn’t look good,’ Mick said.

Sophie pulled her mobile phone off her belt. You weren’t supposed to use them in the department but nobody was looking her way. She raised the phone to her ear, half hiding it behind her hand.

Mick glanced over. ‘Who’re you calling?’

‘Chris.’ Her own voice said in her ear, ‘
Thanks for calling the Phillips house. We’re sorry we can’t get to the phone but please leave–
’

She cut herself off and dialled Chris’s mobile.

‘
The mobile you are calling is turned off or not answering.
’

Sophie hit the end button again. ‘No answer.’

‘Is he working today? He’s probably on a job.’ They climbed into the lemon-scented ambulance.

‘He’s home with Lachlan on a day off,’ Sophie said. ‘He should be answering one phone or the other.’

Mick drove out of the hospital grounds. ‘Flat battery in his mobile?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s obsessive about keeping it charged.’

‘Switched it off?’

‘He never does. I mean, never. Ever.’

Mick slowed at a crossing for a middle-aged woman walking a black terrier. ‘So the problem is… what, exactly?’

Chris’s state of mind was the problem. Sophie imagined him imagining the news headlines, the media frenzy. It was foul icing on top of the PTSD cake. ‘I just wanted to ask if this Roth actually is a cop,’ she said. ‘If it could really be a hoax.’

The traffic on Broadway was sluggish, full of buses and couriers’ trucks trying to squeeze into the CBD. The sky was clouding over and wind whipped scraps of rubbish along the gutters. On the footpath a teenaged boy and girl stood together, the girl screaming at the boy, the boy looking away from her into the shop windows.

After a moment Sophie called Gloria. ‘It’s me. Is Chris there?’

‘Funny you should ask,’ her mother-in-law said. ‘He dropped Lachlan off this morning and was supposed to be back by now. I’ve got an art class soon and I have to pay even if I don’t turn up.’

‘Did he say where he was going?

‘He had to go into town,’ Gloria said. ‘Something to do with work. Have you tried his mobile?’

‘There’s no answer.’

‘If you do catch him will you tell him I’m waiting on him?’

‘How’s Lachlan? Is everything okay?’

‘Everything’s fine. Why?’

‘No reason. I’d better go.’

Mick took Eddy Avenue onto Elizabeth Street then stopped at a red light. His window was down and the smell of hot chips from a takeaway shop wafted into the ambulance. Sophie called Chris’s mobile again and when the tinny voice started up once more she pressed the end button so hard her thumb hurt.

Mick stuck his head out the open window. ‘Looks like rain.’

The wind gusted, rocking the ambulance. Two heavy drops landed on the windscreen.

‘That’s it for us then.’ Mick took his sunglasses off. ‘You know I don’t work in the rain.’

She smiled half-heartedly.

The airwaves became suddenly busy with ambulances calling mobile to a scene. Mick turned up the volume when the rescue truck dittoed the message. ‘Something big’s happening. Cross your fingers they want us.’

‘I thought you don’t work in the rain?’

‘It’s not really raining yet.’

Control said, ‘Thirty-one, what’s your location?’

‘Yes!’ Mick smacked a hand on the steering wheel.

Sophie grabbed the mike. ‘Thirty-one’s on Elizabeth Street in the city.’

‘Thanks, Thirty-one. Proceed to Anzac Parade, Kensington, for an MVA, query code nine.’

Mick hit the siren and the beacons and hauled the truck into a U-turn around a set of traffic lights, and Sophie felt the adrenaline start to pump again. She pulled on a fluorescent safety vest, her damp shirt cold against her back, and her hands trembled a little when she yanked on a fresh pair of gloves. Some days were like this in the job – one big case after another – and you soon got used to it, though secretly she would’ve preferred a cruise around town doing nothing for a while.

‘I love a good code nine,’ Mick said with a grin.

Usually Sophie enjoyed it too, though she knew how gruesome that could sound. She liked arriving at a scene of chaos to impose order, using all her skills to treat multiple injuries and plan the extrication at the same time. She invariably came out the other end sweaty and tired and feeling for the injured, but exhilarated at doing the job she’d trained so hard for. If she wasn’t so anxious about Chris, or wrung out after the birth, she’d be excited.

Mick turned left into Cleveland Street as an ambulance called on scene. The officer was back within a minute with a report. ‘Three cars and one small truck. Two people code four, three code nine and one of those unconscious.’

Mick screeched right onto Anzac and swerved around the back end of a braking bus. ‘Go you good thing!’ The traffic was heavier and he used the horn and the wrong side of the road equally. Sophie moved her shoulders, trying to work the tension from them.

‘Here we go,’ Mick said, switching off the siren as they approached the crash site. ‘What a beauty.’

Sophie assessed the scene quickly. A small glazier’s truck stood near a silver Ford sedan. The major damage to both front ends indicated a head-on collision. An old red Subaru was crumpled around a power pole on the side of the road by the golf course. Golfers had left their balls on the green to gather behind the low chain fence and watch. A yellow Daihatsu had been pushed sideways in a lane, damage to the front and back. Glass from the truck lay smashed everywhere on the road. Two ambulances were on scene, their beacons still flashing, and paramedics bent through the windows of the wrecked cars.

The wind seized Sophie’s door as she jumped out. She grabbed her equipment and crunched over the glass to Steve Jones, a stocky paramedic in a hard-hat. He was by the driver’s door of the truck. Steve’s patient was pale, sweaty and moaning. Steve’s gloves were covered in blood. Lightning flickered through purple clouds overhead.

‘Where do you want us?’ Sophie said.

Steve nodded at the silver car. ‘Man’s code four. Woman’s code nine with chest and head injuries. They’re all yours.’

Sophie crouched by the silver car. In the driver’s seat a heavyset man was slumped with the seatbelt still across his chest and his head resting against the door. Deflated airbags sagged from the steering wheel and the passenger dash.

The woman in the passenger seat said, ‘He’s dead.’

She couldn’t have seen the massive wound to the right side of his head, but it didn’t take a genius to understand the half-closed eyes and the motionless chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sophie said.

The woman closed her eyes. Her face was pale.

Mick was by her door. He pulled the handle then tried the rear door. ‘The impact’s jammed everything,’ he said over the roof. Rain started to spit from the sky.

‘Same here.’ Sophie reached in beside the dead man, her shoulder against his as she fumbled for the rear window winder. The glass rolled down most of the way before jamming. She put her arms and head through the rear window, grabbed the edge of the back seat, and pulled herself inside.

The seat was soft underfoot. The car smelled of vinyl cleaner and blood. Rain spattered on the roof.

The woman was crying. Sophie rubbed her shoulder. ‘I’m Sophie, I’m a paramedic, and we’re going to get you out of here,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Marisa Waters.’

‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘No. Ow.’

‘That’s sore, is it?’ Sophie palpated the wound above Marisa’s ear. It felt soft and boggy.

Mick leaned in the open window, shoving the Oxy-Viva, drug box and monitor inside. Sophie said quietly, ‘Skull fracture.’

He matched her frown. ‘I’ll get rescue.’

‘Marisa, is your neck sore?’ Sophie felt the vertebrae, one by one.

‘No.’

Sophie saw Mick by the Subaru. He was talking to a rescue officer who was shaking his head. A paramedic was bent in the driver’s window of the red car. He held a mask and resus bag over someone’s face. The background was a tarp, sky blue. It was draped around the pole and over the passenger side of the car, hiding the body there from the golfers.

‘Marisa, can you take a deep breath?’

‘It hurts.’

Sophie wriggled her upper body between the seats so she faced Marisa. ‘I’ll touch your chest and you tell me where it’s sore.’

The ribs moved normally under Sophie’s hands until she reached the far side. Marisa flinched. ‘I promise I’ll be gentle,’ Sophie said. This time she recognised the grating sensation of bone end against bone end.

‘They’ll be here as soon as they can.’ Mick handed her a plastic collar. He’d put his raincoat on. It flapped in the wind.

‘We’ve got crepitus in the lateral ribs.’ Sophie pressed her stethoscope to the woman’s chest. ‘Air entry’s good though.’

The rain got serious. It struck the cracked windscreen at an angle. It came in the open windows and splashed off the dead man’s face. Glancing over at him Sophie noticed the heavy jowls. She paused and studied him a moment longer.

Marisa wasn’t wearing any rings but Sophie could see a white line in her tan where one had been. The man’s hands were pale and chubby. On his ring finger there was an indentation in the flesh. Sophie said, ‘Is this your husband?’

‘My friend.’

‘What’s his name?’

Marisa closed her eyes. ‘I want to die.’

‘No you don’t,’ Sophie said. ‘We’ll have you out of here in a flash.’ She put an oxygen mask on Marisa’s face, the plastic collar around her neck, and attached the cardiac monitor. When Mick got back she was deflating the blood pressure cuff. ‘Ninety systolic.’

‘I want to die,’ Marisa repeated.

‘You’re doing fine.’ Sophie scrambled into the back seat and put her head out the rear window into the rain to speak to Mick out of Marisa’s hearing. ‘Ask one of the police to come over, would you? See if they recognise this guy.’

Mick came back with a young police officer. He bent to peer into the car. Sophie saw his eyes widen and knew she was right. The dead man was Police Commissioner Stephen Dudley-Pearson.

In a moment two older officers were looking grim-faced into the car. There was a lot of gold braid on their epaulettes. One said, ‘Hello, Mrs Waters.’