Cold Justice (21 page)

‘I’m in,’ Freya said.

‘Hartmann’s and five of morph, please,’ Georgie said.

Once that was on board she would organise a log roll to check Lucy’s back. For now she got splints from the truck and put one on the fractured femur. Lucy’s screams started to diminish.

‘Five in,’ Freya said. ‘Hartmann’s running wide open.’

Next, Georgie splinted the right arm and Lucy started to breathe rather than wail.

‘Lucy, can you hear me?’ Georgie said.

‘What happened?’ she sobbed.

‘You were hit by a car,’ Georgie said. ‘You don’t remember?’

‘What happened?’

It was the persistent concussion-caused question that Georgie had heard so often over the years. ‘You were hit by a car. Everything’s going to be okay. Just try to keep as still as you can.’

‘What happened?’

Freya went to get the stretcher and Georgie moistened a clean dressing and applied it more carefully to Lucy’s cheek, gently closing the wound as best she could then taping and bandaging the dressing in place.

‘Hurts.’

‘I know, Lucy, I’m sorry.’

‘What happened?’

‘You were hit by a car,’ Georgie said. ‘Hold still there, Lucy, we’re just going to roll you onto your side so I can check your back.’

She organised the police to help, and felt along Lucy’s ribs and spine before bringing her down again onto the spineboard so they could lift her onto the stretcher.

Once in the ambulance, she rechecked Lucy’s pupils, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and ECG. Her left foot had a strong pulse, which meant the femur fracture was well-aligned. She felt her right wrist. The pulse wasn’t so strong there but the skin was warm and pink.

‘Looking good, Lucy. How are you feeling?’

‘What happened?’

‘You were hit by a car,’ Georgie said. ‘You’re in an ambulance. Everything’s going to be okay.’

For the first time Lucy seemed to focus. She blinked at Georgie and tried to look around.

‘Don’t move your neck,’ Georgie said. ‘There’s a collar on it to protect it. I know it’s not all that comfortable.’

Lucy lay flat on her back staring at the ambulance roof. Tears flooded her eyes and Georgie paused in adjusting the flow of Hartmann’s to wipe them away for her. ‘It’s all going to be okay,’ she said again.

‘It hurts.’

‘I know,’ Georgie said. ‘Do you know what day it is today? Do you know where you are?’

Lucy was vague on the details at first, but her level of consciousness improved as Freya drove them smoothly to the hospital. Georgie gave her another five of morph and set up another bag of Hartmann’s for maintenance. When she asked Lucy to squeeze her fingers with her right hand, testing sensation and power below the fracture site, Lucy did so, then kept hold. Georgie felt her trembling and tightened her own grip. Sometimes holding hands counted more than anything else.

She looked up at the rear-view and met Freya’s eyes. Freya didn’t smile, but neither did she frown.

At the hospital, Georgie gave the nurse a detailed handover then helped to transfer Lucy onto the Emergency Department bed.

She put her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. ‘They’re great people here, they’ll look after you really well.’

Lucy welled up. ‘Thank you for everything.’

Georgie smiled at her. ‘You’re most welcome.’

Outside, she settled into the ambulance’s passenger seat to write her case sheet. So what if she and Freya had argued? She was happy, strong, good at her job. This was exactly what she’d needed, a decent trauma that reinforced to her why she was in the service and provided a bloody good case for the assessment. She nodded approval to herself.
Job well done.

Freya rattled about in the back of the ambulance. Georgie listened with half an ear as she wrote, hearing the noise of zips and lockers opening and closing as Freya restocked the Oxy-Viva, the clanks and bangs as she loaded the freshly wiped and made-up stretcher back in, the whir of the monitor printing out the ECG strip. The air was full of the alcohol from the environmental wipes she wielded. It was the smell of Georgie’s life.

Freya dropped the ECG strip over her shoulder. ‘Here you go.’

‘Thanks.’

Georgie tore it into six-second sections and stapled them to the case sheet. The back was silent and she realised Freya was still there, sitting in the resus seat at the head of the stretcher and looking out the windscreen. Georgie followed her gaze. It had started to rain. She bent to her paperwork again, but Freya didn’t move.

Twenty-three-year-old female pedestrian struck by a car.
The scratching of her pen was loud in the quiet. Georgie felt Freya’s eyes on her, felt her silence grow, taking up the cabin, pushing her back into her seat.

‘A good job,’ she finally said.

‘Kind of,’ Freya replied.

Georgie wrote the next line and told herself not to be drawn in. It was a good job. She ticked the treatment boxes and filled in the drug and fluid doses and drew on the printed figure to indicate Lucy’s injuries, and tensed her shoulders against Freya’s gaze, and fought hard, but finally couldn’t help but look up. Freya was watching her.

‘You know I have this report to fill in about you at the end of each week,’ she said.

‘I’ve seen it done,’ Georgie said. ‘It’s a pain. I’m sorry.’

Freya shrugged. ‘It’s not that. I’m just not sure what to write.’

Georgie felt the air leave her lungs. ‘I guess it’s never easy.’

‘You got that straight.’ Freya yanked stuffing from a hole in the driver’s seat upholstery. ‘I mean, that job there, for example.’

‘Yep?’ Georgie pressed her fingers hard against the corners of the case-sheet folder.

‘Well.’ Freya left it hanging.

When feeling returned to her fingertips, Georgie filled in their surnames, employee numbers, the date and location of the accident with obsessive neatness.
I will not speak first.
It was like high school all over again. She’d always spoken first back then, unable to bear the swelling silence, the aching desire in her throat to say something to heal the petty disagreement. Now she gritted her teeth and held it back. She could see from the corner of her eye that Freya was playing with the bit of stuffing, twirling it around her finger while she gazed out the windscreen. Georgie didn’t know how she did it, how she’d always done it. She herself could never act so unconcerned.

‘It’s so hard, sometimes, when you
think
you’ve done a good job.’ Freya sighed and rammed the stuffing back in the hole. ‘It’d be such a pity if you failed.’

Her eyes on the floormat, Georgie saw it all.

‘Wouldn’t it?’ Freya said. ‘I mean, think of everything you’d lose. Your job, maybe your house if you couldn’t pay your mortgage, and I guess it’d be tough to get another job once they knew you got sacked from this one, plus stupid Ross what’s-his-name would win –’

‘I get it,’ Georgie said.

‘Get what?’

‘What you’re saying.’

Freya shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is what a pity it would be if you failed.’

Georgie felt sick and angry and hurt. She’d thought the assessment might be at risk because of the tentacles of Ross Oakes, never because of something like this.

‘Such a
terrible
pity,’ Freya said.

NINE

T
hey dropped the USB stick into Technical on their way through the city. Ella’s mobile rang as she was about to get back into the car. She saw her parents’ number and sighed.

‘Do you know how many messages I’ve left?’ Netta said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ella said. ‘I should’ve called you back.’

Murray put his hand out for the keys.

‘I called this number, your home phone, and at the office.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I even called your old number in Homicide and asked if they knew where you were.’

Ella closed her eyes.

‘Didn’t they tell you?’ Netta said.

Murray waggled his fingers.

‘I’ve been out.’ Ella reluctantly handed the keys over and got in the passenger side. ‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Too busy to let your poor mother know that you’re still alive.’

‘Of course I’m still alive.’

‘How am I to know that?’

‘Don’t give her a hard time,’ she heard her father say in the background.

Netta shushed him.

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘She won’t want to come for dinner tonight.’

‘Of course she’ll want to come for dinner tonight,’ Netta said. ‘After making us worry like this, she’ll absolutely want to come for dinner tonight.’

‘I was going to have dinner with Wayne,’ Ella said.

‘Bring him! Stella from down at the club gave me some lovely fresh eggplant and I’m making those rolls you like. I’ll make extra. It’s time we met him anyway.’

Ella could hear the joy in her mother’s voice. ‘Okay.’

‘Half six? Or seven? Whenever you like.’

‘Okay. Bye.’

She rang Wayne. ‘I’ve just received a summons. Mum wants us there for dinner tonight.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Meet at your place when?’

‘Six thirty’d be good.’

‘See you then.’

She put the phone away. It was overdue, she had to admit. It was the thought of the sizing up that would go on, the glances between her parents, the scrutiny that poor Wayne would be under, that had made her less than willing. But there was no getting around it. She would just have to remember to tell him that whatever else he said he had to praise the cooking.

Murray turned off the Great Western Highway into Concord.

‘Pendle Hill and Wade Tavris are that way,’ Ella said.

‘We should drop in on his ex first.’

‘Little consultation might’ve been nice.’

‘You were sorting out your social life.’

‘For all of five minutes.’

He shrugged. ‘We’re almost there now.’

She looked out the window at the sun on the leaves and tried to count to ten.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I read your reports. I think Tavris is the one to focus on.’

‘Really.’

‘That family-barbecue-argument angle – I can’t see it. Whereas Tavris had the car that was a) seen near the pub where Tim and his friends were, and b) later found burnt out.’

‘The car he claimed had been stolen, and that was used in a robbery that night.’

‘Claimed being the operative word.’ Murray turned off Concord Road. ‘And he couldn’t have done the robbery himself?’

‘So he grabs Tim off the street, kills him, does the robbery, dumps the body, burns the car? Busy boy.’

‘Kinda handy that it was “stolen” that very night,’ Murray said. ‘The robbery is a nice extra touch. Makes it almost convincing.’

‘Did you read the reports? Constantine and Tynan got stuck into him good. Plus there was no evidence found –’

‘Because it was destroyed in the fire.’

‘– none on Tim to link them together, and Jane Lincoln was a solid alibi even six years ago when they spoke to her again.’

‘But now they’ve broken up,’ he said. ‘Which is why we’re going to see her first.’

Ella folded her arms. ‘If we see Tavris first we can pressure him with the knowledge that we’re going to talk to Lincoln later.’

‘If we see Lincoln first, we can pressure Tavris with the knowledge that we’ve just talked to her and he doesn’t know what the hell she’s said.’

Ella shut her eyes, the better to count to twenty.

Jane Lincoln lived in a unit on the second floor of a tired brick building overlooking a service station. Ella followed Murray up the stairs.
She might be at work
, she thought.
We might have to talk to Tavris first after all.

Murray knocked on the locked screen.

The door opened and a woman in a pink dressing gown looked out. ‘Oh.’

Ella held up her badge. ‘Jane Lincoln?’

She was already unlocking the screen. ‘Yes.’

The living room was small, the brown carpet thin and worn. The TV was muted. A rumpled blanket and pillow lay on the lounge and a box of tissues and bottle of cough syrup stood on the coffee table. Jane Lincoln wiped her red nose then pushed the tissues into her pockets. Sue didn’t invite them to sit down.

‘I saw the news,’ she said. ‘I know this is about Wade.’

‘Are you still in contact with him?’ Murray asked.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘I left him five years ago and that was that.’

‘Why did you break up?’

‘Because he’s a bastard.’

‘Meaning what?’ Ella said.

‘Meaning he’s a bastard,’ Jane said. ‘Things hadn’t been good for a while, then one day he came home pissed and hit me. I took the next day off sick and moved out while he was at work. Stayed with my sister for a while then found this place.’

‘Did he try to get in touch?’

‘He called up work for a while. They used to put him on hold and never pick up again. He gave up after a month or so.’

Ella said, ‘What did you think when he was questioned about Tim Pieters’s death?’

‘That he didn’t do it.’

‘You still think that?’ Murray said.

‘I know it. He was with me all night. I’ll swear that on a stack of Bibles.’

‘You were awake and watching him?’

Jane gave him a look. ‘Is that what you do when you have somebody stay over?’

‘I’m just asking how you can be sure that he didn’t sneak out.’

‘I sleep light,’ she said. ‘I would’ve woken up.’

‘How can you be certain?’

‘I just am.’

‘What about his ute?’ Ella said. ‘Where was it parked?’

‘Like I told the detectives back then, it was on the street. My unit was at the back of the block. We couldn’t have seen or heard anything even if we’d been expecting it to get stolen. First thing we knew about it was when Wade went down to go out and came back up swearing.’

‘Did you know that Wade’s been in jail?’ Murray said. ‘He just got out.’

‘I didn’t know he was out yet, but yes.’

‘Killed a man,’ Murray said.

‘I know.’

Ella started to speak but Murray cut across her. ‘If you want to change your statement now’s the time to speak up.’

‘I told the truth.’

‘Think for a moment,’ Murray said. ‘While reflecting on Wade’s true nature.’

‘I stand by what I said.’ She folded her arms. ‘He might’ve killed somebody since, but the night that boy died he was home with me.’