Frantic (22 page)

‘Oh, was she wearing a wig?’

‘I don’t know, I’m just making suggestions.’

Hollebeck turned to Draper. ‘Might have worn a wig. Write that down.’ He looked back at Ella. ‘See, we don’t know any of these things because nobody else saw her. Except Roth himself, of course. But he’s dead, so no help there.’

His tone pissed her off. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t have a guard posted for precisely this sort of event.’

‘Oh, but we did.’

‘I never saw one.’

‘He was cunningly disguised as a patient in a room across the hall.’

‘So what did he see?’

‘Nothing,’ Hollebeck said.

‘Too busy watching TV?’

‘He was asleep.’ He leaned further forward. ‘Because he’d been drugged.’

Ella had been about to suggest he pick his team a bit better. ‘That nurse again?’

‘He didn’t have an IV. All he’d done was eat the meals brought to him.’

‘Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you, finding someone with access to the meals as well as a fake nurse,’ Ella said.

‘I want you to think very carefully,’ Hollebeck said, ‘about whether anyone walked past the room when this nurse was in there, whether anyone at all may have seen her. Because otherwise…’

She folded her arms. ‘Otherwise what?’

‘Otherwise we have to consider the possibility that you may have done it.’

She snorted laughter. ‘I was trying to get information from him about the Phillips case. Why would I want him dead? That’s even if I knew how to connect an IV line, which I don’t.’

‘Just so you know where we stand.’ Hollebeck leaned back in his chair. ‘You can go.’

Ella grabbed up the manila envelope then slammed the door as she went out. The nerve of him! She knew what this meant: people would be looking into her, searching for links to Roth, the robbery gang, anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing to find – except maybe that thing about Shakespeare – but it was a nasty feeling.

In the Incident Room she slapped the envelope down on the desk. Dennis turned from the computer. ‘What are you all wound up about?’

‘Hollebeck just asked me if I killed Roth,’ she said. ‘Not in so many words, of course.’

‘They’re only barking up every tree they can find. They don’t really think it was you.’

‘So long as they don’t suspend me from duty while they make up their mind.’

‘How’d you go with the photos?’

Ella was still thinking of Hollebeck’s stare. ‘If only you’d been in Roth’s room with me, you could confirm that woman was real.’

‘Ella,’ he said. ‘The photos?’

She focused. ‘No good. If she is a drug dealer, none of them knew her.’ Nobody at the police stations around the pub even thought she looked familiar.

Dennis leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms above his head. ‘I talked to Arendson last night. He’s Chris’s current partner. He said Sophie can’t stop searching and he’s going along to make sure she’s okay while Chris is crook.’

‘That’s good,’ Ella said. ‘So does she think Sawyer did it?’

‘Apparently not. Arendson said Sophie told him about the birth and everything else, how we looked into him, and he simply wanted to see if the guy was in custody or not.’

Ella sat down and nodded at the computer screen. ‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Just rereading some stuff.’ He moved the mouse desultorily. ‘I feel like we’re in a holding pattern. We can’t show those photos to Sawyer because the funeral’s on today, we’re still trying to get access to the TV stations’ phone records, everyone’s out chasing down baby leads and getting precisely zip.’

Ella knew what he meant, especially about the photos. She aligned the envelope with the corners of the desk. ‘You don’t think we could duck around this afternoon, when the funeral’s over, take some flowers or something–’

‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘He’s not so major a suspect that he deserves that.’

She put her palm flat on the envelope. ‘Tomorrow, then.’

He nodded, eyes on the screen.

‘Hey,’ he said, looking up after a moment. ‘Did I tell you that the money found with Marisa Waters and Dudley-Pearson was really hers? She actually had sold a bunch of shares.’

‘So it was true love after all.’

‘Nothing dodgy at all.’

‘That’s so sweet.’

He grinned at her.

10.40 am

Sophie watched the paramedics emerge from the block of units with a female patient wrapped in blankets on the stretcher. She lay on her side with an oxygen mask on. The drip stand was up and a bag of Hartmann’s ran through the IV line. The paramedic at the woman’s head bent down and spoke to her. Sophie nodded to herself.
Conscious but drowsy, and hypotensive enough to need fluids: probably a drug overdose. Prescription tablets. Maybe antidepressants.

The paramedic at the foot of the stretcher glanced around and Sophie slid lower in the passenger seat of Angus’s car. The red kit, clipboard and tie were on the floor. She’d come up with the idea of having Angus in the block to visit a friend who wasn’t home, when he thought he heard a cry for help so called an ambulance.

Now he emerged from the door of the block carrying a baby. The baby was blond, and red in the face, and flailing its arms in his grip. Angus hurried to the ambulance and a slim arm snaked out from under the blanket towards the baby as the paramedics loaded the stretcher into the vehicle. The paramedic climbed in beside the stretcher then reached back out for the baby.

Angus waited on the street until the ambulance was gone, then came to the car. ‘Lucky for her we came along,’ he said.

‘Tablets?’ Sophie said. ‘And alcohol?’

Angus nodded as he started the car. ‘When the three of us were kicking at that bloody door she actually woke up enough to come over and unlock it.’ He put the car into gear, then slipped it back into neutral. ‘Where to now?’

‘Home, I think.’

‘Really?’

She nodded. She’d made her decision and she had some serious planning to do. Gloria would be at the hospital all day, so the house would be peaceful and quiet; and if she wavered, Lachlan’s empty cot would spur her on.

Gloria’s car was in the driveway, its aerial a mass of pale blue ribbons. ‘Damn.’ Sophie recalled Angus sympathising when she’d bitched about Gloria that night at the Jungle. She wondered how well they’d known each other. It would be odd having him in the house, but maybe he and Gloria would sit around reminiscing and she could retreat into her head and scheme. ‘Do you want to come in?’

‘Why not.’

Gloria opened the front door.

‘Gloria, you remember Angus?’ Sophie said.

Gloria glanced at him and nodded, then reached for Sophie’s arm. ‘Chris signed himself out of hospital. He needs to go back. You need to tell him so. To make him.’

Sophie motioned for Angus to go in past her. ‘I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.’

‘He doesn’t.’ Gloria slammed the door. ‘That’s the problem.’

‘He always was stubborn,’ Angus put in.

Gloria looked at him, and Sophie took the opportunity to run upstairs. As she reached the landing she heard Gloria ask about Bee. Angus started telling her about Bee’s sick son, Ben.

Chris lay on his side on the bed, his mobile phone on the covers next to him. ‘I hope you haven’t been running around the streets again.’

So that’s how it’s going to be.
She kicked the kitbag into a corner and started changing out of the uniform. ‘I hear you signed out against advice.’

He said, ‘It’s not safe for you out there, and anyway are you allowed to be in uniform if you’re not on duty?’

‘It’s not safe for you here,’ she said. ‘You could have a cerebral bleed, and what can Gloria and I do about it?’

‘Are you trying to control me again?’

She threw the clothes onto the floor. He’d been badly injured, she reminded herself. He could have died. His son was missing. He needed understanding. And so did she. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Says who?’

‘Says me. I’ll find him.’

‘Because I can’t?’

‘No, not because you can’t,’ she said. ‘Because it’s my fault, and I’m going to fix things.’

‘It’s not your fault.’ But he didn’t look at her as he said it, and she suddenly saw all his anger, his silence, even his resistance to her wanting to get on his bed in the hospital, for what it was.

He blames me.

She didn’t know why it should hurt so much, because he was right to blame her. But the two metres of space between them suddenly seemed like miles and his back looked like that of a stranger. When she spoke the words fell into dead air. ‘I’m going downstairs.’

He didn’t reply.

Friday 9 May, 11.30 am

D
etective Murray Shakespeare was leaning in the doorway watching officers take calls on the public hotline. Ella pulled Dennis into a corridor before he could spot them.

‘Do you a deal,’ she said. ‘You keep him for the next couple of hours and I’ll take him all weekend.’

Dennis frowned.

She put her hands together in prayer. ‘Houtkamp’s not going to talk if he’s there.’

‘He also won’t talk if he doesn’t know anything.’

‘An hour. Just give me one hour.’

Dennis rolled his eyes and held out his hand. She shook it with glee.

She was heading out of the station carpark when Shakespeare ran from the building into her path. She braked. ‘What?’

He opened the passenger door and got in. ‘Dennis said he was going home for a break and I should find something else to do.’ He shrugged. ‘So here I am.’

Oh, great.
‘That’s really nice, Murray, but I’ve got something I need to do on my own.’

‘Like what?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Acting Commissioner Eagers said I’m to get full access.’

‘To the case, yes. But I’m not sure yet if this is related.’ She smiled at him. ‘So you’d be better to go back inside. Read through the computer log. You might see something we’ve missed.’

He seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘Thanks, but I’ll stay.’

She couldn’t think of a way to get him out, short of opening the door and kicking him, and that’d no doubt end in someone else kicking her.
Goddammit.

They drove without speaking to Banks Street in Waterloo. Ella tried to clear her mind of anger and concentrate on what she’d say to Houtkamp and how she’d say it, but Murray’s nose whistled when he breathed and made it impossible to think.

When she parked outside number thirty-nine, Murray narrowed his eyes at the eight-storey block of flats. ‘Who lives here?’

‘The person I’m going to talk to alone.’

‘It might not be safe.’

‘It’s broad daylight,’ she said.

‘Like nobody gets killed in the day.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m coming with you.’

She’d have dearly loved to order him to sit down and shut up but they were of equal rank. She slammed the door and stalked across the footpath.

Flat five was on the second floor. Ella knocked on the door and waited. Behind her the nose whistled. ‘Have you got a cold?’ she said.

‘No, why?’

She knocked again.

‘Doesn’t look like your secret squirrel’s home.’

‘He might be in the shower.’ She pounded on the door with her fist.

Across the landing a door opened and an old man looked out. ‘You after Paul? He’s at work.’

‘Right, right,’ Ella said. ‘Of course. I asked at the nursing home but they said he wasn’t there. I should’ve realised he’d be at work.’

At the mention of the nursing home the old man smiled. ‘Do you want the address of his site?’

Site?
‘That’d be great, if you have it handy.’

‘It’s on Mooramie Street in Kingsford. Going to be big, he told me, penthouse at the top and all.’

Ella thanked him.

He nodded. ‘If you’re going there now, would you mind taking this to him?’ He reached back inside his flat and brought out a floral arrangement in a basket. ‘I’m leaving for a few days’ fishing up the coast. Paul goes straight to the nursing home after work on Fridays, so I won’t be here when he gets home. Can’t leave it in the hall: who knows who might pinch it.’ He held it out with a smile.

Ella handed it on to Murray then smiled at the old man. ‘Thanks for your help.’

In the car Murray balanced the basket on his knee. ‘You bluffed that old guy.’

Ella pulled out into the traffic.

‘You should’ve identified yourself and asked him straight out.’

‘And get some poor old bloke in a tizzy about why his neighbour’s got detectives at his door? This way’s kinder.’

‘Easier, you mean,’ Murray said. ‘It saved you figuring out what to do if he wouldn’t give you the information.’

Oh yes. Dennis was going to pay.

Utes and trucks were parked along the kerbs near the site in Mooramie Street, and dirty tyre tracks led out onto the asphalt. The builders were having lunch, sitting on their eskies with a radio playing and a fire going in an empty drum. They watched with interest as Ella approached. Behind her Murray stumbled over a clod of earth and almost dropped the flowers. One of the builders laughed.

‘Paul Houtkamp?’ Ella said.

The builders’ heads turned towards a dusty-faced man drinking chocolate milk from a carton. He wiped his mouth and put the carton on the ground between his feet before looking up. ‘Yes?’

‘Can I have a word please?’

He got up and came over. The fact that he didn’t ask who she was meant he’d probably already figured it out and didn’t want to talk in front of his work mates. He wore dirty work boots, stained khaki shorts and a navy T-shirt. He walked past her to the footpath so she had to follow. He leaned against the side of a grimy ute, waiting for her to speak.

‘I’m Detective Ella Marconi. I want to ask you about the assault two months ago.’

Houtkamp studied Murray. ‘Who’s the flowerboy?’

‘I’m Detective Murray Shakespeare.’ He put the basket on the ground.

Houtkamp said to Ella, ‘You could’ve read the file instead of coming out here.’

‘I’ve read it,’ she said. ‘I wanted to hear about it from you.’

‘I confessed. What more do you want?’

‘How did you get the upper hand on two experienced officers?’

‘Just lucky.’

‘One of those officers, Constable Chris Phillips, was shot and his child abducted two nights ago.’

‘I’ve already been questioned about that. I was at the Bower Brae Nursing Home.’

‘You told the investigating officers you were there from eight-forty until ten pm. Were you there the entire time?’

‘Of course I was.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘Ask the staff, check the visitors’ book.’

‘I know the staff saw you arrive and leave. Did either of them come into the room while you were there?’

Houtkamp folded his arms. ‘No.’

‘And I don’t suppose the person you were visiting would remember, would they?’ Ella said. ‘Or they wouldn’t need to live in a nursing home.’

Houtkamp stared at her with anger. ‘Am I under arrest?’

‘No.’

‘Then I don’t have to talk to you.’ He started to walk away but Murray grabbed his arm.

‘When a detective wants to talk to you, you listen,’ he growled.

‘Whoa,’ Ella said. ‘Let him go.’

A couple of the builders got to their feet. Houtkamp wrenched his arm free. Murray glared at him, red-faced. Houtkamp muttered something and turned to go, then Murray picked up the basket of flowers and thrust it at his back. Houtkamp spun around at the touch. When he saw what Murray held out he put his hands in his pockets.

‘Fer Chris– It’s not a bomb,’ Murray said. ‘Your neighbour said these were delivered to your place.’ He dropped the basket on the ground and stalked away.

Houtkamp pulled the envelope from the handle. He tore it open, read the card and turned white.

‘Are you okay?’ Ella said.

Houtkamp kicked the basket into the street. Petals flew as a passing four-wheel drive tried to swerve around it.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ella asked.

Ella reached for the card but Houtkamp crumpled it in his fist. She lowered her voice. ‘Tell me. I can help you.’

He ran to the fire in the drum and threw the card and envelope into the flames. Ella put her hands on her hips. Houtkamp glared at her from the midst of his work mates.

Murray came back. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Ella said. ‘We were just leaving.’

12.10 pm

Sophie stayed out on the driveway after seeing Angus off. The media watched her in silence from a distance, and she was risking having a neighbour coming over to inquire about the case, but going inside was worse, with Gloria fussing about and Chris’s accusatory silence radiating from upstairs. She kicked a pebble into the street. She didn’t blame him for blaming her, but the burden of her guilt would be easier to bear if he’d take her in his arms and kiss the top of her head and lie.

An ambulance approached and parked at the kerb. A pale blue ribbon fluttered from the aerial. A photographer raised a camera. It was her truck, number thirty-one. Mick got out of the driver’s seat and she ran to throw her arms around him.

‘Hey, Soppers.’

The affection in his voice made her throat ache. When she could speak she said, ‘I’ve realised what number one is.’

‘You found something worse than the shooting and the steamroller?’

‘It’s being alive and suffering,’ she said, tears in her eyes, ‘not knowing where your baby is, wondering what happens if you don’t find him, how you’re going to endure the rest of your life in despair and grief. You’re dead inside, forever.’

He blinked back tears, hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her close again. The metal paramedic badge on his shirt pressed into her cheek as she clung to him. This was what she needed so badly from Chris. Plain old comfort.

‘Don’t the police have any leads?’

‘Boyd Sawyer denied it and they let him go. The law says they need evidence.’

‘Law,’ he said. ‘Shit.’

That was her feeling too. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of hospital disinfectant from his uniform. The smell of her old life.

‘Hi, Mick,’ Gloria called from the house. ‘Want a cuppa?’

‘Can’t stay long, I just brought some forms for Sophie to sign.’

She let him go and wiped her sore eyes.

‘It’s your leave paperwork,’ he said. They leaned on the bonnet of the truck while she signed the pages. The return-to-work date was blank. ‘The boss said for you to take as long as you want.’ Mick looked at the media. ‘They always here?’

She nodded. ‘They keep their distance though. Anyway, I don’t mind, as long as they keep printing Lachlan’s picture.’ She gave him back the forms. ‘Thanks for bringing them out.’

He smiled at her. ‘Mind if I borrow your loo?’

‘Careful Gloria doesn’t bully you into that cuppa.’

When he disappeared into the house Sophie opened the side door into the rear of the ambulance and climbed up the steps. Sitting in the seat beside the stretcher she looked around at the labelled lockers on the walls, the oxygen masks in the netted compartments, the flow meters and the resus bags. She opened the bottle of antiseptic handwash and sniffed at it. A few days ago this had been her second home; now the whole environment felt distant and strange.

She pulled open the drawer at her knees. The drugs and needles were in colour-coded packets. Sophie studied them, her mind ticking over.

She glanced at the house. There was no sign of Mick. She looked the other way and saw the photographers had got back into their cars.

The drugs kept here were replaced as they were used, sometimes after each case, or sometimes, if the shift was busy, at the end of the day. It wasn’t unheard of for them to sometimes be forgotten altogether, and the next crew to use the truck would find the drawers short. Sophie calculated that she could take two boxes of adrenaline, two of atropine and one of lignocaine without raising suspicion. She shoved the boxes into her bra then slipped in a vial of midazolam too.

She glanced up at the house. Mick was in the doorway talking to Gloria. Sophie grabbed an assortment of needles and syringes. She was pushing them down her shirt when Angus appeared in the ambulance doorway. She froze.

Angus said,‘You’d never make a criminal with that guilty face.’

‘I was only–’

He held up a hand. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

Mick came down the driveway. Angus went to meet him and they stood talking. Sophie took a moment to breathe, then slammed the drawer shut. She patted herself down, making sure nothing stuck out too much, thankful she was wearing a loose shirt. She climbed out of the ambulance feeling bulky and guilty but determined to hide both.

‘Reminiscing?’ Mick said.

‘Something like that.’

He put out his arms to hug her again and she froze. He would feel the boxes! But just as he reached her the portable radio on his hip crackled. ‘Thirty-one for a code two.’

‘You’d better go,’ Sophie said, taking a surreptitious step back.

He leaned to kiss her cheek while unhooking the radio. ‘Keep me posted.’

‘I will.’

He raised the radio to his mouth as he ran down the driveway. ‘Thirty-one’s ready for details.’

When Mick drove off, Sophie turned towards Angus, wondering if he’d raise what he’d seen.