Frantic (17 page)

She had to tell him her plan. It would be more plausible if there were two of them. But he was a cop, sworn to the law. She looked over at him. What if he refused to help? Worse, what if he stopped her from doing it herself?

11.30 am

Ella turned her mobile off as she stepped out of the lift on the fourth floor of St Vincent’s Hospital. Dennis stayed in to go up to the fifth. He was going to see Marisa Waters, whom he knew from after-hours work functions. Ella guessed that the Strike Force Gold people had already asked her everything there was to ask about why she and Duds were doing what looked so much like a runner the very day that the robbery gang was alleged to be cops, but Dennis had a touching faith in the power of friendship.

She, meanwhile, was going back to see Roth.

The door to Roth’s room was open and he was watching TV. The IV fluid bag and tubing were gone, though the stubby plastic cannula was still taped in his arm. ‘Two visits in five hours,’ he said, turning the set off. ‘Careful, Detective, or I might start thinking you like me.’

She sat in the low vinyl chair with a smile. ‘Got anything to tell me?’

‘Nope.’

‘Still got that photo of the baby?’

‘I think the nurse threw it out when she was cleaning the room.’

‘Want another copy?’

‘No thanks.’

Ella crossed her legs. ‘So how’s it feel to be shot?’

‘Like being kicked really hard. First it’s numb. Later it hurts.’

‘What made you think you’d be able to hide it?’

‘Blind stupidity,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘What I figured.’

‘I tried to get that damn bullet out, digging in the wound. I had tweezers and God knows what.’ He made a pinching motion with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Got lots of meat but no lead.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Ella said.

Roth smiled at her and for an instant she saw past the tough facade. His story about being mugged was complete crap and he knew they knew it. He’d been at the bank that day, he was part of the gang. Once the ballistics report came back his life would turn upside down – he’d be arrested and charged over the death of the guard, refused bail, forced to live with the very people he’d once locked up.

‘We’ve got bugger-all decent leads on this baby,’ she said.

‘It’s early days.’

‘It’s frightening.’ Most cases like this were either solved quickly or not at all. Time was slipping away. ‘Can’t you just tell me whether Chris was involved?’

‘With what?’

She looked at him. ‘All we want is the baby. If we can rule out the gang angle it’ll help us a lot.’

‘But –’

Just then a nurse came into the room. Ella fell silent, watching the woman’s gloved hands hang a new fluid flask and connect the line to the IV site in Roth’s wrist. He said, ‘Thanks,’ and the nurse smiled at him and left.

‘Even if I knew,’ Roth went on, ‘why would I say anything?’

‘For the baby’s sake.’

‘Ever hear the word retribution?’ Roth said. ‘I’ve got a child as well.’

‘You can understand how the Phillipses feel, then.’

‘Yeah, and I know how, given the chance, they’d do anything to protect him too.’

‘We can arrange protection.’

‘Not the way I need it, you can’t.’ He put a hand to his chest.

‘We can,’ she said. ‘Trust us.’

Roth kept one hand on his chest and raised the other to his forehead. His face turned pale and sweat broke out on his skin.

‘Are you okay?’

He drew a breath between his gritted teeth. ‘I feel like I’m going to pass out. Feel really bad. God, oh God.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Oh shit.’ His eyes were full of fear as he looked at the new IV line and the bag of fluid. ‘Ella, they got me. I was never going to say anything and they fucking got me.’

Ella was on her feet. ‘Hang in there, Peter. I’ll get the nurse.’

‘It’s too late, I’m fucked.’ Roth clamped both his hands to his chest. ‘Listen… Chris.’

‘Chris what?’ Ella knew she should go for help but she wanted what might be Roth’s last words. She could see the slowing beat of Roth’s pulse in his neck. His pupils were huge. His skin was cold and clammy.

‘Chris…’

‘Chris is in the gang? Or isn’t?’

‘Not,’ Roth gasped, his hands still to his chest. ‘Not in.’

Ella saw the call buzzer hanging over the far bed rails and she launched across and grabbed it. ‘Chris isn’t in the gang, Peter, am I understanding you right?’

But Roth’s hands fell from his chest and he went limp.

‘Goddammit.’ Ella dropped the buzzer. She fumbled at his neck for a pulse but couldn’t find one. ‘Help!’ She didn’t know how to make the head of the bed lie flat so she started CPR with him sitting up. He lolled from side to side with her compressions then she grabbed his head, tilted it back, pinched his nose shut and pressed her mouth over his. Was it one breath or two? Oh, Jesus, where were the nurses? She took a breath of air. ‘Help!’

A male nurse came in, saw what was happening and hit a red button on the wall. He grabbed at a lever under the bed and the top fell back with a clunk. Another nurse rushed in with a bag and mask set-up that Ella had seen paramedics use. ‘Okay, we got it,’ she said and Ella stepped out of the way.

‘What happened?’ the male nurse asked Ella, compressing Roth’s chest.

‘A nurse came in and connected up that IV bag there, and within a minute he said he felt bad and was going to pass out. Then he went limp.’

The female nurse looked at the bag of fluid then at her colleague. ‘Was he on fluids again?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Was this nurse male or female?’

‘Female,’ Ella said. ‘Short blonde hair. Mid-twenties. Good tan. She wore a blue skirt and white shirt.’

The nurses looked at each other in confusion. ‘There’s nobody like that on the ward today.’

Wide-eyed, the female nurse grabbed a clamp on the IV line and shut it off.

Ella felt a surge of adrenaline. ‘This could be a crime scene. I want the tubing disconnected from his arm. Nobody is to touch it. I’ll bag it as evidence when I come back.’

Before she could open the door a medical team of four burst in with a defibrillator and crash cart. Ella hurried out past them and down the corridor, checking rooms, pushing open the stall doors in the bathroom, dialling her mobile as she went. Dennis’s voicemail picked up and she swore, remembering he’d turned his phone off.

She shoved open the heavy door into the stairwell and listened for the sound of running feet, then hurried back to the nurses’ desk, where she flashed her badge. ‘I need to contact my colleague upstairs.’

The grey-haired clerk dialled a number and handed over the phone. Ella quickly filled Dennis in and described the nurse.

‘Go downstairs,’ he said. ‘See if you can spot her. I’ll get back-up.’

In the main foyer Ella stood panting at the door, examining the faces of everyone who left the building, knowing it was an almost useless task. Precious minutes had passed before she’d realised what was going on, easily time enough for a woman in a nurse’s uniform to slip outside unnoticed. There were so many exits too. Standing at this one – probably the door least likely to be used – felt futile.

Dennis stepped out of the lift, accompanied by a hospital security guard. ‘No sign?’ Dennis asked.

Ella shook her head.

‘Describe her again.’

Ella did so. The guard repeated her words into his radio. Dennis then motioned Ella towards the lifts. ‘We need to see how he is, what the doctor says.’ Inside, he pressed the button. ‘After all, it could be nothing more than a medical hiccup.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Ella said. ‘Dennis, he told me he was never going to say a word but they still got him.’

Dennis narrowed his eyes.

‘And he told me that Chris isn’t in the gang.’

‘But can we trust him?’ Dennis said. ‘He’s not exactly cop of the year.’

The lift doors opened and they walked out.

‘What did he have to lose?’ Ella said. ‘He was sure he was about to die. Telling me that made no difference.’

‘Who knows what his agenda might be,’ Dennis said. ‘Anyway, let’s hope he survives and is in a mood to clarify his words when he wakes up.’

Ella knocked on the door to Roth’s room. The female nurse peered out. She was sweating. ‘Just a minute.’

While they waited, Dennis told her what Marisa had said. ‘She and Dudley-Pearson were in love.’

Ella raised her eyebrows.

‘She said it’d been going on a couple of months and they’d planned for a while to just up and leave. She’d sold some shares to finance the little adventure. It was only a coincidence it happened the same day as the news on the gang came out,’ Dennis said. ‘You should’ve heard her. She’s like a lovelorn teenager, all naive about what would happen down the track, trying to tell me why doing it that way was better than the adult method of divorcing partners and resigning jobs. I felt embarrassed for her.’

‘You think she’s telling the truth?’

Dennis nodded. ‘What I don’t know is whether Dudley-Pearson was being honest with her when he said he knew nothing about the gang.’ He looked at his watch. ‘How long does it take to save a life?’

‘Longer than on
ER
,’ Ella said. ‘Did Marisa ask him about the gang, or did Duds volunteer the information?’

‘She said he told her he was upset about it and felt bad about leaving his staff at a time like this.’ Dennis’s mobile chimed and he looked at the screen.

‘But he still left,’ Ella said.

Dennis made a noncommittal noise as he thumbed through a text message. ‘Jesus.’

‘What?’

‘Roth’s ballistics results.’ He slipped the phone back into his pocket. ‘It was from the guard’s gun all right.’

Roth’s door opened and the medical team manoeuvred his bed into the corridor. One nurse hurried alongside, compressing Roth’s chest. A tube was tied into Roth’s mouth and another nurse squeezed the connected bag regularly. Ella found it difficult to match the slack and mottled face to the once-living man.

‘Where are you taking him?’ Dennis said.

The doctor jabbed the lift button. ‘To the Emergency Department.’

‘When will he wake up?’

‘The way he’s going now, never.’ The lift doors opened and the nurses rolled the bed in, then the doctor put her foot against the door. ‘There was no order for IV fluids and the ward staff tell me there are no nurses on duty today who match the description you gave. I’ll need the test results on the IV bag and tubing to be certain, but from your account of what happened and Roth’s clinical condition, it’s possible he was given an overdose of a cardiac drug such as lignocaine, which stopped his heart. It’s also stopping the drugs we’re giving from having their effect. I’m betting there were other drugs in there too: perhaps insulin. A large enough dose can cause brain damage very quickly.’ She shook her head. ‘So far we’ve had no response whatsoever, and I doubt we will.’

Thursday 8 May, 11.50 am

‘P
ark here,’ Sophie said. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’

Angus looked at the brick front of The Rocks ambulance station. ‘And then you’ll tell me what’s going on?’

She nodded and got out.

The day crew was on a case somewhere so she let herself into the station with her key. In the store room she found a spare red nylon kitbag. She threw in a thermometer, a paediatric blood-pressure cuff and a couple of bandages and dressings, just enough to make it appear legitimate to an onlooker. Paramedics never went about empty-handed.

Back in the car she cradled the bag on her lap. Angus eyed it, then her, but she was conscious of the chance that the day crew might return. ‘Better drive off,’ she said.

‘Where to?’

‘Just wherever, for now.’

This was one time it was good that parking in the CBD was so scarce. She didn’t want him staring at her while she tried to explain her idea.

Just start.
She squeezed the bag to her chest. ‘I spent last night driving about looking for Lachlan.’ Angus started to speak but she shook her head. ‘I needed to do it.’

He closed his mouth and nodded.

‘I know the chances of finding him that way are incredibly slim. Middle of the night, people with babies aren’t out and about on the streets much. And then I realised there was a better way.’ She glanced at him. ‘A better place and time.’

He drove in silence.

She took a deep breath. ‘If you’d taken a child, where’s the best place to hide it? Not in an area where kids are scarce. You’d try to blend in somewhere where there are already heaps of kids. Where another baby crying at night doesn’t even register.’

He indicated and turned a corner but still didn’t speak.

‘You know those big housing commission blocks in Waterloo?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘They’re full of kids. Overflowing with them.’

Angus pulled into a bus zone and yanked on the park brake.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said. ‘I’m not after your approval or your permission.’

‘So why are you telling me?’

She stared out the windscreen. She would’ve liked to say ‘because you have the car and I need a lift’ but it was more than that. She wanted his help. She wanted him beside her.

‘Have you told your idea to the detectives?’

‘Police would scare people off,’ she said. ‘I knock on their doors in my uniform and they see a person who’s there to help.’

Angus turned the steering wheel thoughtfully from side to side. ‘And then what?’

‘I ask to see any young children in their care,’ she said. ‘I tell them some story about an infectious disease doing the rounds. I’m a free community service, right there on their doorsteps.’

‘And you think they’ll go for that? They’ll let you in?’

‘Yes.’
Probably. Hopefully. Maybe.

Angus made a face. ‘It seems a lot of risk for not much reward.’

‘What risk? I’m going to get mugged for knocking on someone’s door? And maybe I don’t find him, but at least I’m looking.’

A bus braked behind them with a blast of its horn. Angus waved and pulled out of the spot.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you to Waterloo on one condition: I come into the blocks with you. You can make me part of your story, I don’t care, but you’re not going there alone.’

Sophie hugged the kitbag tightly. ‘Thank you.’

He turned south and she looked him over. He was dressed in a light blue button-up shirt and tan trousers. She said, ‘Would you mind stopping at Woolies first?’

He let her off in a no-standing zone outside Woolworths opposite the Town Hall. She was back in minutes with a bag of purchases and tossed a dark blue tie at him. ‘Put this on.’ She tore a notepad from its plastic packaging and jammed it inside a clipboard, then added a pen, and explained her idea as he drove.

She pulled her uniform shirt on over her T-shirt, and fell silent as they neared Waterloo. The odds of finding Lachlan this way were terrible, but every baby she looked at was one she could be sure wasn’t him. If she could only look long enough, eventually she’d find him. If there were a million babies in the city, then she had to look at a million faces, and the next one would be him. If there were two million, three million, she didn’t care. She had only to work hard, not give up, not waver in her belief that she would find him, and sometime she would be looking into his eyes, holding his warm wriggling body, and she would never let go of him again.

A woman was coming out of the door of the first building and Angus smiled at her and caught the door before it closed. Sophie knocked at the door of the first flat and readied a smile on her face.

A rangy woman wearing jeans and a denim jacket opened the door. ‘Yes?’

‘Good morning,’ Sophie said. ‘I’m Penny Burke from the Ambulance Service and this is Brian Stevens from the Department of Health.’

Angus stood beside her with his feet apart and the clipboard in his hands. He smiled at the woman.

‘We’re currently going door to door in your building notifying people about a potential health risk to young children.’

The woman lost her wary look. ‘Like what?’

‘A child in the next building has been diagnosed with a particularly contagious strain of meningitis,’ Sophie said, ‘and we’re letting parents know about the signs and symptoms, and also offering a free on-the-spot examination of young children and babies.’

‘Come in, please.’ The woman hastily opened the door wide and Sophie felt a flash of shame for making her afraid. ‘I have a daughter, she’s only three months old. Could you check her over?’

‘Absolutely,’ Sophie said. She followed the woman into the bedroom where the baby was asleep in a cot. Sophie looked down at the tiny form under the little blanket, the perfect features, the curled fist as it lay on the sheet. ‘She’s beautiful.’

The woman smiled. ‘Thank you.’

Sophie checked the baby’s temperature. ‘No sign of a rash?’

‘She does have this thing here.’ The woman pulled up the baby’s singlet, exposing a red flaky area the size of Sophie’s thumbnail on her back. The baby stirred but didn’t wake.

‘The meningococcal rash is a distinct one,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s dark red or purple and appears in spots or blotches.’ She pressed a finger to the reddened area on the baby and it blanched. ‘If you do that to the meningococcal rash it won’t lose colour like this one did, even for a second.’

The woman was nodding.

‘Other signs to look out for are drowsiness, fever, stiff neck and inability to tolerate bright lights,’ Angus said behind them. ‘Is this your only child?’

‘I have a five year old, but he’s at school.’

‘Okay then,’ Sophie said. ‘Your baby looks very healthy. Thank you for your time.’

‘Thank you,’ the woman said.

In the corridor Angus said, ‘You sure you want to do this at every flat?’

Sophie’s answer was to knock on the next door.

11.59 am

Dennis took charge of the IV stand and drip and put Ella in the ward staffroom to wait for the Strike Force Gold investigators. She was looking out the window at the junkies sleeping in the park when the detectives came in.

Hollebeck was a balding man in his fifties who’d been part of the team on the homicide where Ella had told Shakespeare off. He sat at the table and looked in the biscuit barrel labelled ‘
Nurses only’
, took out a milk arrowroot and said, ‘Roth’s dead. We heard as we came through Emergency.’

Ella sat down, feeling weak. She’d seen bodies, she’d seen people in the process of dying in car wrecks, but she’d never seen anyone killed in front of her. She felt for Roth, and his ex-wife and child.

‘I hear you’re working with Murray now.’

Ella focused on Hollebeck. ‘Are you going to take my statement or not?’

Draper, a soft-featured woman in her twenties, opened a notepad. ‘So what happened?’

Ella went through it while Draper scribbled shorthand.

‘Describe the nurse.’ Hollebeck got another biscuit.

Ella repeated the phrases she’d used earlier. ‘A woman in her mid-twenties with short blonde hair and a good tan. She wore a blue skirt and white shirt.’

‘That’s it?’ Hollebeck said. ‘How’d she behave?’

‘Like a nurse setting up an IV.’ The woman had been so matter-of-fact, so routine in her actions, that Ella hadn’t noticed anything more about her. If there’d been some edginess the situation might be different. What kind of nerve did it take to do a thing like that while someone watched? Ella remembered something else. ‘She smiled at Roth before she left.’

‘Did she speak?’

‘No.’

Hollebeck and Draper looked at each other. ‘Okay, that’ll do for now,’ he said. ‘We know where to reach you if we need you. Little old Hunters Hill, isn’t it?’

‘I’m on the Phillips case at the moment, out of Gladesville.’

‘Of course. I forgot.’ He took a handful of biscuits and slammed the lid back on the barrel. ‘Say hi to Murray.’

Ten minutes later she was in the car with Dennis, heading back to Gladesville. ‘I hate that bastard Hollebeck,’ she said. ‘Rubbing it in about Shakespeare.’

‘Senior or junior?’

‘Whichever,’ she said. ‘They’ll never let me forget that homicide.’

‘People know you bite, that’s why. If you forget it, so will they.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Your statement didn’t take long to do.’

‘Nice change of subject there.’

He inclined his head.

‘They only took notes. I get the feeling they’re not really that interested in who got to Roth.’

‘But if they figure that out, they’ll have a lead to the people with a vested interest in his silence,’ Dennis said.

‘Unless they themselves are those people.’

He looked over at her.

‘Hey, I’m just saying.’ She shrugged.

As they crossed the Anzac Bridge she looked southwest to Glebe Point. Boyd Sawyer’s house was hidden by blocks of flats and a spreading figtree. ‘If Roth was telling the truth, and Chris wasn’t in with the gang, where does that leave us? Just with Sawyer?’

‘And the unknown kidnapper.’

Ella was silent for a moment. ‘Remember that assault on Chris and his partner, a couple of months back?’

‘Dean Rigby was his partner.’

‘Wasn’t he the guy Chris went to see the day before he was shot?’

‘Yep. They’re friends.’

‘And the assailant had an alibi,’ Ella remembered. ‘But I wonder if that’s worth looking into further. I mean, the guy’s got a case pending against him; maybe he figures if he knocks out a solid witness he’s got a better chance.’

‘He’s got no chance at all,’ Dennis said. ‘That one’s cut and dried. My mate Figgis worked it.’

‘The famous Figgis,’ Ella said.

‘You wouldn’t be so mocking if you met him.’

‘I have met him.’ She hadn’t been impressed. Darnell Figgis stood too close to you and kept hold of your hand too long when he shook it. He’d leaned on the bar in the Jungle and talked too loud and in way too much detail about a woman whose death he was investigating and what he’d found in her chest of drawers.

‘If you worked with him, then.’

Ella raised her eyebrows. ‘Get me the file on the assault and let me see his work on the page, maybe I’ll change my mind.’

12.20 pm

Chris sat in the hospital bed with his hands on his thighs under the blanket, pinching his skin to stop himself passing out. ‘I promise you I’m right to go home.’

The doctor shook his head. ‘You’re not even one full day post-op.’

‘I feel fine. I want to go.’

‘Out of the question,’ the doctor said. ‘There could be swelling, you could have an intracranial bleed. You need to be monitored here.’

Chris pinched harder. There was a roaring in his ears and the doctor was disappearing behind a wall of black dots. ‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Next week at the earliest.’ The doctor’s voice came down a long tunnel. ‘Do you want to lie down?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look it.’

Chris drew a deep breath. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’ As he’d hoped, the doctor took it as an indication to leave. Chris slumped back on the pillows, sweat trickling down his face. Of course the doctor would have been able to see how pale and clammy he’d turned, but with Lachlan’s life at stake Chris would die before admitting how weak he really was.

He sucked in lungfuls of cold hospital air. He’d told Gloria he wanted to put on pyjamas from home instead of the hospital gown he was wearing, and estimated he had half an hour before she returned. He reached for the call button looped around the bed railing.

The young male nurse stuck his head into the room. ‘Wassup, Chris?’