Violent Exposure (36 page)

‘Your lack of paper trail is worse. And everyone knows you don’t gamble, so you couldn’t say you won it.’

‘I can’t, but Jo can.’ He looked at Aidan in the mirror. ‘You’d better think twice about your plan.’

Aidan sat in silence, then got up and
went back to the seat beside the patient.

Mick curled his hands into fists on the wheel.
Gotcha.

*

Ella’s phone buzzed in her pocket.

Got a possible location. Farley and Macy coming from the office. You?

The adrenaline leapt into her blood but she stuffed the phone away.

‘Look at her face,’ Netta said to Franco. ‘You can go, you know.’

‘I want to hear what the doctor says. I want to be
sure.’

‘They wouldn’t leave us alone for so long if he was bad, would they?’

That was true.

‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’

‘Fine, fine. Just go,’ Franco said. ‘You make me twitchy.’

She hugged them both, long and hard. ‘Call or text and tell me what they say.’

‘Go,’ Netta said.

She didn’t see the doctor who wasn’t Callum on her way out. She called Dennis as she crossed the ambulance bay
at a run. ‘Where is it?’

‘You have to come past here on the way,’ he said. ‘Pick me up.’

*

Connor was weak and dizzy. His heart was beating too fast. His mouth was so dry he had no saliva and his throat hurt when he tried to swallow. His skin and muscles and bones ached and he reeked of faeces and urine. It might be a relief to die and escape all that but he still didn’t want to.

He felt air
against his face.

‘John, please, let’s talk about this.’

There was no reply but the fresh air was still there. He smelled something like damp grass at night. The contact with the world strengthened his hope.

‘John, please. Put a knife in my hand and just walk away. I’ll wait an hour, two hours, and then cut myself free. I’ll tell them whatever you want. I could tell them I heard you saying
you were going to walk into the surf and drown yourself. You can disappear, like I did.’

He heard distant traffic sounds – the grinding of a truck’s gears, the stutter of compression brakes. He allowed himself to believe that John was considering his words.

‘I lit that fire,’ he said. ‘I was wrong and I’m so sorry. I was running away, I had my bag ready to go and all I wanted to do was burn
your precious MG. But I was fourteen. I had no concept of how fire could move. I lit it in the shed and rode away on my pushbike and it wasn’t until I looked back from the ridge that I saw it had spread to the house. I rode back as fast as I could but there was nothing I could do.’

He felt again the heat of the fire, smelled the smoke, heard the roar of the flames.

‘I didn’t hear them scream.’
He started to cry. ‘They died in their sleep. I believe that. They knew nothing. I’m so sorry.’

‘You ran away. You left them.’

‘There was nothing I could do! The phone was out, the neighbours were miles away. There was nothing –’

John seized his jaw. ‘Shut up.’

Connor couldn’t move. John’s fingers were hard in his cheeks and his breath was hot and feverish against his face.
Feel how sorry
I am. Feel how much you want to let me go.

‘I thought that people could change,’ John hissed. ‘They can,’ Connor tried to whisper, but John wrenched his head sideways. Pain shot through his neck.

‘I changed,’ John said. ‘People I helped could do it too. But then I saw you again. I always knew you’d survived, and there you were. Just the same. Still lying, and a murderer as well.’ His fingers
tightened on Connor’s face.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Shut up.’ Another wrench. ‘You made me realise it was all for nothing. These kids were never going to get anywhere. Emil thought he could keep that job? Stay off drugs? Persuade your wife she should be with him? I called him up and told him I’d help him. Pick him up that night, give him a good dinner, take him to your place. So gullible. He was nervous,
with this hope in his eyes. Pitiful and ridiculous. I told him what would really happen and he was devastated. Offered him his old friend smack again. He resisted at first but after a little persuasion found himself very relaxed.’ His voice came close. ‘Nobody can change. They’re delusional, all of them, and me as well.’

He shoved Connor’s head backwards into the pole and Connor saw stars inside
his blindfold. He struggled to speak through John’s grip. ‘Persuasion, my arse. He didn’t deserve what you did.’

‘Blame yourself, not me,’ John spat. ‘None of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for you. He’s better off now though. All that hope of his and his mother destined to go nowhere. Better she suffers now than later.’

He was insane. ‘John –’

‘Shut up.’

‘I’m –’

‘Shut. Up.’

Connor
heard a sound like liquid slopping. And a smell. Petrol.

‘John, please. No. Cut me free and I’ll help you disappear. I know how it’s done! I’ve got money, I’ll give you everything.’ Connor’s heart hammered and his breath rasped in his throat. ‘John, please!’ Hard fingers wrenched his jaw open and shoved the rag back into his mouth, then a long strip of tape was plastered across it. ‘Think about
your mother and sisters while you wait to burn.’

Connor heard the flick of a lighter. ‘Mm!’

There was a soft crackling. Not the whoomp of fumes catching alight – not yet.

A car started up and drove away.

‘Mm! Mmm!’

He fought the tapes around his chest, his legs, his arms. He felt the skin on his wrists start to bleed again. He screamed into the gag with all his might. He prayed for someone
to see the fire, and strained against the tape with a strength born of terror.

*

Mick sat in the ambulance. They’d delivered the old man to the nursing home and come out without a word to each other, and Mick had made up the stretcher with fresh linen and put it away, closed the rear door, and now was waiting for Aidan to get back in.

Aidan leaned against the bonnet with his back to Mick. Mick
settled down in his seat. Aidan could have the sulks for as long as he wanted; it wasn’t going to make any money appear. Nor would it make Mick change his mind about taking Aidan down with him if he told.
Don’t like being in a corner, huh? Welcome to my world.

His mobile beeped with a text from Carly.

Still hate me?

He sent back,
Never hate you. Sorry about everything.

I’m sorry too, she wrote.
Agree to disagree?

Copy that :)

How’s A?

Actually okay. Can you believe it?

Guess you’re right – the threat was enough.

‘We’ll see,’ Mick said aloud. ‘Thirty-seven,’ Control called. ‘You clear at Rozelle?’

‘Thirty-seven, that’s affirmative.’

‘Thanks, Thirty-seven, got a report of a building on fire, occupants unknown.’ He read out an address off Lilyfield Road in Lilyfield. ‘Police and
fire have been notified and are on their way.’

‘Thirty-seven’s on the case.’ Mick rehooked the mike, typed a quick
Gotta go
, and leaned out the window. ‘Got one.’

Aidan came and climbed in without a word.

‘Building on fire.’ Mick clipped on his trauma equipment pouch, started the engine and pulled out of the ambulance bay.

‘I guess that means you’re going to ask me which locker the burns kit’s
in, or how to add up the percentage of burns on a person’s body,’ Aidan said.

Mick ignored him and concentrated on the road. He could already hear other sirens, and as he flipped on theirs he hoped that if anyone was trapped in the building they could hear them too and know that help was on its way.

*

Ella drove down The Crescent in Annandale. ‘So this house is Miranda Page’s renovator’s dream?’

Dennis nodded. ‘She inherited it a while ago and hadn’t decided what to do with it. Last week John Oberon kindly offered to give her a detailed quote. All he needed was the keys for a while. She went past a few days back and saw he’d had a construction-type fence built around it, and rang him, and he’d said it was to stop vandals.’

‘He just put up a fence without telling her? She didn’t think
that was weird?’

‘I asked her that,’ Dennis said. ‘She said a fortune teller had told her to accept all help that came her way this month, so she did.’

‘Fortune teller,’ Ella said. ‘She’s right into it,’ Dennis said. ‘Says she always consults one before any big decision.’

‘Emil rang one the day of the murder,’ Ella said.

‘Checking if it was a good day to talk to the girl of his dreams, I guess,’
Dennis said.

‘Poor kid.’

He nodded. ‘And Hepburn just told me they found a taxi driver who dropped a man aged around sixty and one in his late teens in a street near the Crawfords’ house the night of the murder. He remembered them because the young one seemed drunk or stoned, and could hardly stand without help. The older one said he was his dad and was taking him home. In-car CCTV is on its
way.’

‘Huh,’ Ella said. ‘So maybe John used Emil to get access to the house?’

‘Hopefully we’ll find out soon.’ His mobile rang. ‘Orchard. Yep. Yep. Okay.’ He hung up. ‘Reports of a fire at our address.’

Ella accelerated and hit the lights and siren. She heard another and saw Daniel Farley speeding up behind them, Lauren Macy in the front seat.

Ella’s hands were sweaty on the wheel and she
tightened her grip as she swung onto Victoria Road. The evening traffic was slow to move out of her way and she had to brake and swerve to get through. She saw a maroon Ford with familiar plates darting towards them through the oncoming traffic. ‘Isn’t that Oberon?’

Dennis grabbed the radio and called it in as Oberon accelerated past. Ella caught a glimpse of his pale face through the window
as Daniel swung off their tail, launched his car over the median strip and took off after him.

Ella wrenched the wheel the other way and screeched into Lilyfield Road.

Dennis grasped the armrest.

‘Not scared of my driving, are you?’

‘Shush and watch the road,’ he said.

She saw the glow of the fire in a gap between trees, and prayed that they would get there in time.

F
lames were licking out the broken window of the first floor of the ramshackle building when Mick pulled up. People tugged at the construction fence surrounding the block, and a woman ran up to say that a man had climbed over and gone in. ‘I heard somebody moaning in there and he went to try and help. Where’s the fire brigade?’

Obviously not here yet
, Mick thought, but said, ‘On their
way.’

He headed for the fence. A man appeared with boltcutters and popped the triple-padlocked chain on the gate. At least three sirens grew closer.

Aidan was looking at him; all the bystanders were looking at them both. It was one thing to learn in the classroom about how your own safety was your number-one priority; another to stand by the concept here with the flames licking higher into the
air and somebody heard moaning and a bystander already in there doing his best.

‘Come on,’ he said to Aidan, and they ran around the back of the building.

A woman next door was squirting a stretched garden hose as far as she could but it wasn’t reaching the house. ‘The man went up there,’ she said, pointing to a side verandah. Her eyes were huge with fear.

Mick felt sick. Adrenaline was making
his heart pound and his skin tight, while smoke stung his eyes and lungs.

‘Stay here,’ he said to Aidan.

‘Fuck that.’

‘You know the rule. Protect yourself.’

Aidan shouted at the woman, ‘Squirt us!’ and turned briefly in the spray. Mick did the same then they leapt onto the verandah.

A man appeared coughing in the doorway. ‘There’s a guy in here tied to a chair! I can’t budge him!’ He pointed
to the left inside the door.

Aidan darted in and the man started to follow. The back of his shirt was smouldering and Mick grabbed him and pulled him away. ‘Stay out now!’ He shoved him towards the spray from the hose, then took a huge and frightened breath and followed Aidan through the door.

A short corridor led to the left. Mick could hardly see through the smoke. A moan guided him to a doorway.
Mick could just make out the shape of a man struggling on a chair, Aidan bent next to him. The walls were thick and heavy with something that looked like nailed-up blankets. Smoke oozed between them and poured through the doorway.

Coughing, Mick grabbed for the man’s arm but couldn’t lift it.

‘It’s tape!’ Aidan shouted.

Mick felt the tape all over the man. It was even across his eyes and mouth.
The rest of his face was battered and covered in dried blood. Mick tore the tape from his mouth and he screamed and his lip was bleeding, but at least he could breathe a little better.

Mick fumbled for the trauma scissors in his pouch. Aidan already had his out and cut frantically at the tape holding the man down.

The smoke grew thicker. Mick could hardly breathe. The tape was bound too thickly
on all the man’s limbs for them to have time to cut him free. Mick tried to pull the chair forward, then went behind it and found it was taped to a pipe cemented into the floor. He slashed wildly at the tape, his eyes stinging, his lungs hurting in his chest. He could hear the crackle of the flames getting closer, and Aidan coughing. He kept cutting.

The man in the chair was screaming non-stop
now. Mick could feel himself grunting with each shallow breath he took, and Aidan coughed so hard he dropped his scissors. Mick cut harder and faster then the tape fell away and the chair was free.

He grabbed Aidan’s shoulder. ‘Help me!’

Aidan stumbled and almost fell. Mick hauled him upright. Aidan was coughing too much to speak.

The taped man was gasping now and Mick grabbed one side of the
chair and started dragging it towards the doorway. Aidan staggered behind him. The doorway was aglow with the approaching flames. Mick’s eyes burned from the smoke, and when a shape appeared in the doorway it took him a moment to see that it was not the fire officers he’d hoped for but Detective Ella Marconi.