Frantic (25 page)

‘What?’

Gloria paled under his stare.

‘You got Bee an abortion? Is that what you just said?’

‘You were away at cadet camp.’ Gloria wiped her eyes with her palms. ‘Bee didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want her own mother to know, or Angus. She said as a nurse I must have friends who could help her.’

‘How could you do it?’

‘It was for the best,’ she snapped. ‘You were both sixteen! There’s no future for a family that starts like that. And how could you have gone to medical school with a wife and child?’

‘She was underage. You didn’t have her mother’s permission.’

‘I did what I thought was best, and maybe Sophie’s doing the same,’ Gloria said. ‘Like I said, it’s a mother’s instinct.’ She came around the end of the lounge to sit with him but he turned away.

‘I can’t talk to you,’ he said. ‘You need to go home.’

She sat down anyway.

‘Mum, I mean it.’

‘It was for the best,’ she said again. ‘You think it hasn’t hurt me? That I didn’t think about that baby when Lachlan was born? You think it hasn’t been a burden, knowing what I did to my own first grandchild?’

‘Oh, now you feel sorry for yourself?’

She started to speak but he cut her off.

‘Just leave, okay?’

She slammed the door on her way out. Chris lay on the lounge, his face in the crook of his arm, his heart peeling away from the wall of his chest like a piece of dead dry paint.

9.10 am

Sophie’s heart pounded with anxiety and hope as she wheeled the stretcher through St Helen’s. Angus walked beside her, the Oxy-Viva backpack slung on one shoulder, the contents of the plastic bag tucked inside it. They waited for the lift then squeezed on board along with three chattering nurses and a grumpy-looking wardsman. Sophie resisted the urge to reach up and touch the ten millilitre syringe of midazolam in her shirt pocket and instead stood as though she were bored, as though this were a normal day of ferrying patients from one place to another.

On the fifth floor she and Angus got out and parked the stretcher against the wall. The floor had two wings that met in the lift foyer. One wing was a ward, the other was full of doctors’ consulting rooms. Sophie leaned casually against the stretcher and looked down the corridor. She felt conspicuous, like there was a neon sign above her head flashing ‘
CRIMINAL, CRIMINAL’
, but nobody ever looked twice at a pair of paramedics and a stretcher in a hospital corridor. Patients weren’t ready to go, or the doctor wasn’t finished writing some report, or you were just having a bludge. You were part of the furniture. She breathed in the familiar hospital smell and consciously lowered her shoulders.

Angus heaved the Oxy-Viva onto the stretcher. ‘That’s his office there.’ He nodded. ‘Third on the right.’

The blue door was closed. Sophie stared at it. She ran through the plan one more time in her head. Worries crowded in on her: what if he wasn’t there, or wasn’t alone? What if he called for help?

‘Ready?’

Sophie gripped the stretcher frame and tried to breathe. Sawyer could not hold out against them, surely. He would reach a certain pain threshold then tell them everything. When she imagined it, the time afterwards was a fog. She didn’t care about what the police and courts might do. She didn’t care if she was sent to jail for years. Once they found Lachlan, she’d get to see him when Chris visited. She’d know where he was, that he was fine, and that was all that mattered. Despite her fears of the previous night, she couldn’t imagine any result other than Sawyer telling them where Lachlan was hidden, alive and well. She worked up a bit of saliva so she could speak. ‘Ready.’

They wheeled the stretcher towards his office. Angus opened the Oxy-Viva and pulled out the plastic zip bag containing a cloth soaked in chloroform. He tucked it under his arm then used a tissue to open the door. It closed behind him, and Sophie waited in the corridor, sweating, acutely aware of the sound of voices in the lift foyer and a radio playing in an office further along. She pulled the syringe from her pocket and shoved it under the pillow, and waited for Angus’s signal.

After long seconds she heard his low whistle and pushed her way into the rooms. The first room was an empty waiting area. An open door led into Sawyer’s actual office, where she saw an upturned chair and Angus standing over Sawyer’s limp body. The air smelled of chloroform even though the cloth was already back in its plastic bag by Angus’s feet.

Sophie was dizzy, looking at Sawyer lying there. She could almost believe this was a case, this man unconscious on the floor her patient, and she had to protect his airway, check through the possible causes of his loss of consciousness, think which hospital was closest, which had neurosurgery perhaps. Because she surely was not really doing this; she wasn’t really about to kidnap a grown man and force him to tell the truth.

‘Sophie,’ Angus hissed.

She looked at him. It was hard to breathe.

‘We have to get moving.’

She was close to crying. She looked down at Sawyer again then Angus leaned over and grabbed her arm. ‘He knows,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Don’t forget that.’

Sophie bit the inside of her cheeks.

‘It’s him or Lachlan.’

Sophie rubbed a shaky hand across her eyes, then picked up the syringe and squatted by Sawyer’s side. ‘Hold his arm like I told you.’

Angus wrapped his hands around Sawyer’s forearm and squeezed till the veins stood out. Sophie tried to breathe deeply as she uncapped the needle and slid the tip into a vein on the back of his hand. ‘How did you do it?’ she croaked.

‘He was staring out the window,’ Angus whispered. ‘He never heard me come in.’

She injected three millilitres of the drug then withdrew and recapped the needle. ‘Okay.’ Angus lifted the Oxy-Viva off the stretcher then grabbed the unconscious man under the shoulders, while Sophie, trembling, grasped his belt with one hand and slid her other arm under his knees. ‘One, two, three,’ she whispered, and they heaved him up onto the stretcher. They rolled him onto his side, and while Angus arranged the pillow and blanket to cover as much of him as possible, leaving only part of his face exposed, Sophie set up an oxygen mask and slipped it over his head. It was another cover, distorting the appearance of his face for anyone who happened to glance at him. She clipped in the stretcher’s seatbelts, pulled the blanket a little higher over the side of his head, hung the Oxy-Viva on the side of the stretcher, then nodded at Angus.

Angus peered out of the main door then opened it wide. Sophie manoeuvred the stretcher into the corridor with sweaty hands. They walked to the lifts. Angus pressed the button with a knuckle and they waited, Sophie gritting her teeth, staring at Sawyer’s motionless form, willing him to stay unconscious, wondering if she should have given him more midazolam but knowing that could have stopped him breathing. She watched his chest rise and fall under the blanket. Her own breathing was twice as fast. A couple of nurses came towards them along the ward corridor; she looked anxiously at Angus but the women turned into the stairwell.

The lift gave a ping, the doors opened, and Sophie pushed the stretcher in so that Sawyer was facing the wall. She was trembling.

‘Almost there,’ Angus said.

The lift opened on the ground floor. Angus walked by the stretcher’s head, an additional shield for Sawyer’s face, and they moved along the passageway to the Emergency Department. With great effort Sophie controlled the urge to run, the desire to be safe inside the ambulance. The surveillance officers would be looking for an upright and walking Sawyer, not one unconscious on a stretcher, but any oddity could stick in their minds. Not wanting to know where or who they were, fearful of even making eye contact with them, Sophie kept her gaze on Sawyer’s chest, counting his breaths for distraction as they walked through the ED and out into the sunshine of the ambulance bay.

Angus took the keys from his pocket and clicked off the ambulance’s central locking. He opened the back door, and together they lifted the head of the stretcher inside. Sawyer didn’t move. Sophie went to the foot of the stretcher and pulled the release handle to collapse the legs as she pushed the stretcher in fully. Any second she expected a nurse to wander out of the ED for a chat, or another ambulance to pull in and the paramedics inside to recognise her, and as soon as she could she climbed into the back with Sawyer and motioned for Angus to shut the door.

He started the engine. Sophie peered out the rear window as he drove from the bay. Nobody was looking after them curiously. Nobody was looking after them at all.

‘We did it,’ she said.

‘Did what?’ Sawyer mumbled.

She clipped a tourniquet around his arm, found a vein and injected another half-millilitre of midazolam. She didn’t want him awake until they reached their destination.

Saturday 10 May, 9.50 am

A
s Angus drove west, Sophie rolled the unconscious Sawyer onto his back. She made four limb restraints from triangular bandages and tightly tied his hands to the stretcher rails and his feet to the stretcher frame. She watched him carefully and when he started to snore she inserted an oral airway. Having come this far, the last thing she wanted was him dying from an airway obstruction before she learned anything.

‘Five minutes,’ Angus said.

Sophie clipped the tourniquet around Sawyer’s arm again and this time inserted a cannula into his vein and connected an IV line. She taped it down well, knowing he would be struggling later, trying to pull it out. She connected up a bag of Hartmann’s fluid and hung it from one of the hooks screwed into the wall.

‘Two minutes.’

Sophie watched out the window as Angus took a winding route through an industrial estate. Being Saturday many of the businesses were closed, but here and there roller doors were up and she saw sparks from welders and heard music playing. Nobody stood on the street and watched them go by, but that didn’t mean they weren’t noticed. Well, if the police knew to come here and ask if anyone remembered the ambulance, they’d already know the rest.

Angus rounded a bend, turned into a driveway and circled around the back of a deserted warehouse. He got out to open a door then drove in.

Sophie drew a shaky breath. She looked at Sawyer, flat on his back with the plastic airway in his mouth. It wasn’t too late, she thought, they hadn’t done anything really bad yet. They could take him back, make up some story about what happened.

‘Sophie?’

‘What?’

Angus was watching her in the mirror. ‘You okay?’

She felt sick. She looked at Sawyer again.
We have to do this for Lachlan.
She imagined holding him in her arms, rubbing her cheek on the top of his head. She pictured herself taking him home to Chris.
We have to.

‘Sophie?’

‘I’m okay.’ She made herself look out the window, away from the man on the stretcher. ‘How big is this place?’

‘Come up here and see.’

She went forward and leaned into the front as Angus drove through the enormous space. The concrete floor was cracked and littered with smashed bottles. ‘How’d you find this?’

‘Good cops have contacts,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that just in movies? Chris has never mentioned any.’

‘Oh, he’d have them too.’ He turned behind a wall in to a smaller sectioned-off area. It was the perfect size for the ambulance and the extra walls would muffle any sound even further. It was exactly what she’d asked for. Angus said, ‘Seriously, if you have the money you can get anything.’

‘That
is
from the movies.’

‘I’m not kidding,’ he said. ‘I could get you a fake passport, driver’s licence, birth certificate – a whole new identity if you wanted one.’ He turned off the engine.

Sophie looked back at Sawyer. She was drenched in a cold nervous sweat. But they were here now, and maybe he would be reasonable. ‘Let’s get him out.’

Angus opened the back door and they pulled the stretcher out onto the concrete floor. Sawyer didn’t move. Sophie felt under the stretcher mattress for the metal drip stand and stuck it in its hole on the stretcher frame, then hung the IV bag from the top.

Angus was staring at Sawyer. ‘How long till he wakes up?’

‘Not long.’

Angus reached out and flicked Sawyer’s cheek with his fingernail. ‘Hey.’ He flicked again, leaving a red mark.

Even this ran against the grain of everything Sophie knew and believed in. She stood in the cavernous warehouse, shivering and afraid. How could she threaten to seriously hurt a man if he didn’t tell them the truth, when she knew she couldn’t really hurt him at all?

10.15 am

Ella sat at the computer, her chin in her hand. Since getting back to the station from the Phillips house she’d been looking up information on Chris, Dean Rigby and Peter Roth, trying to find links between them. All she found was what she already knew: that Roth and Phillips had attended the same in-service course, and Rigby and Phillips had worked together at Wynyard.

She yawned. Her head ached. The bustle and noise of the station washed around her as she tried to think of what to do next. She could wander down and see how Dennis was progressing: the calls to the TV stations had been traced to a public phone in Raglan Street in Waterloo, and he had people checking for CCTV and any parking tickets given out in the vicinity. She yawned again. Maybe in a few minutes, after she rested her eyes.

‘Wakey wakey,’ Dennis said. ‘We struck gold on the parking tickets.’

She woke up smartly. ‘Chris’s car?’

‘No – Angus Arendson’s.’

‘The guy who was with Sophie outside Sawyer’s house?’

‘Booked in a no-standing zone almost opposite the phone box at the time the calls were made.’ He offered her his hand. ‘May I take the dozing nanna for a drive?’

10.20 am

Sawyer gagged on the airway and Sophie pulled it from his mouth. She had to resist the urge to talk to him reassuringly as she’d do with a patient, biting her cheeks to keep from speaking. Sawyer blinked groggily and tried to raise his hands but the triangular bandages held him tight. The stretcher shook as he struggled to move his arms and legs. He grunted and coughed.

Angus slapped his forehead. ‘Time to wake up, dumbo.’

Both Sophie and Sawyer flinched at the assault. Sawyer peered at Angus, then at Sophie. Recognition spread over his face and he raised his head and stared wildly around the empty echoing warehouse. ‘Are you nuts?’

Sophie said, ‘I want my son.’

‘What did you – you kidnapped me to ask me where he is?’

‘Smart man,’ Angus said.

‘I don’t know anything about him.’

‘I think you do.’

‘Well, I fucking don’t!’

Sophie checked the flow of the IV bag. She was shaking and hoped he didn’t see it.

‘Oh, I get it,’ he said. ‘Next you’re going to inject me with something. Threaten to kill me if I don’t tell you.’

‘Did we say anything about killing?’ Angus said.

‘You think I’ll promise not to tell the cops if you don’t?’

‘See, now, you’re smart in some areas and not in others,’ Angus said. ‘You need to realise that we don’t care. Getting Lachlan back is all she wants. If the price we pay is jail, then that’s fine.’

Sawyer struggled against the arm restraints with renewed vigour.

Sophie collected her strength. ‘I’ve tied up violent psychotics with those,’ she said loudly, hoping to conquer the waver in her voice. ‘You’ll never get free.’

‘I don’t know anything!’

Sophie climbed into the back of the ambulance and opened the drug drawer. The cardboard boxes were colour-coded. Her hand shook as she reached for them and she closed her eyes for a moment. Lying in bed last night she’d imagined having Sawyer at her mercy, and he always gave in before she had to act. The scenario was always in her control. How could she proceed, now that he wasn’t giving in? She looked around the ambulance interior as if the answer might be written on the walls.

Bluff. That was what it boiled down to. When she had a patient she wasn’t sure what was wrong with, she never let it show. It was the same here – Sawyer had to believe that she was willing to hurt and even kill him. If he saw that she had doubts, it was all over. She’d have no chance.

She took out a box and climbed down from the ambulance. Sawyer nervously craned his head around to see. She stood by his side and showed him the grey-striped box of adrenaline, fitting her thumb to the indented line at one end so the cardboard tore. Inside the box lay a glass vial and a plastic tube with a needle inside it. Both were sealed at one end with yellow plastic caps. She held one in each hand and flipped the caps off with her thumbs, then fitted the exposed ends of the glass vial and the plastic tube together and twisted. The needle in the tube ruptured the seal inside the glass and the drug was drawn up, ready to be injected. She attached a needle to the end and pressed the plunger until a glistening bead appeared on the point. A couple of millilitres injected into a vein was enough to reverse a severe asthma attack or kick a too-slow heart rate into a good solid rhythm. It also had the potential to shoot your heart rate through the roof and kill you. Sawyer, a surgeon, would know that. She held up the syringe so he could see it held ten millilitres.

‘Untie me and let’s talk about this,’ he said.

‘Where’s Lachlan?’

‘I don’t know.’

Angus stepped close. ‘Tell us where the baby is and all this will stop right now.’

‘I don’t fucking know!’

Sophie concentrated on hiding her shakes as she brought the needle towards the IV line. Was he really going to let her do it? The second he felt the drug hit his system, accelerate his heart beat, would he shout out where Lachlan was?

The needle slid into the plastic port. She fitted her thumb to the base of the plunger. ‘Last chance.’
Please, tell me.

‘If I knew where he was I’d tell you, but I don’t!’

‘Wrong answer.’ Sophie braced herself.
For Lachlan.
She pushed the plunger in. One millilitre: enough to produce a reaction yet still be safe. In seconds his skin turned cold and clammy as his peripheral blood vessels shut down. He broke out in a pungent sweat, his pupils dilated, and Sophie saw the racing pulse in his neck.

‘You bitch!’ He was crying and retching.

Sophie felt like crying herself. Why wouldn’t he just give in and tell them?

Sawyer retched again and spat a gob of mucus at her. Angus punched him in the stomach. Sawyer groaned and Sophie felt sick. She wanted to scream at Angus for hitting him but Angus had told her it was important to appear united, that if Sawyer saw a gap between them he wouldn’t tell them the truth. She tried to breathe deeply, evenly. If she could keep control of the situation Angus might not hit him again.
It’s Sawyer or Lachlan
, she told herself, and gathered her courage to take hold of the syringe again.

10.25 am

During the drive to Angus Arendson’s house in Enfield, Ella and Dennis discussed the possibility that he was the person who had called the TV stations. It was the first time they’d had a particular person other than Chris to consider in that role.

‘There’s nothing else to suggest it was him, though,’ Ella said.

Dennis rubbed his chin. ‘We’ve got very little to say it was Chris.’

They pulled up outside his house in Flax Street and Ella said, ‘Well, it’ll be interesting to hear him explain why he was there.’

The house was a small, plain fibro building, painted grey with darker grey trim. The lawn was cut short and there were no garden beds.

‘Carport’s empty,’ Dennis said.

They approached the front door and knocked. The house was silent. Ella looked at the collection of dead leaves along the bottom of the door. ‘Try the back?’

The back yard was almost as stark as the front. A lone mango tree stood in the far corner, its dark green leaves shivering in the breeze.

Dennis held open the screen while Ella knocked on the door. There was no answer. ‘You did check he’s not working today?’

‘I thought you did.’ Dennis let the screen go. ‘Kidding. Of course I checked.’

Ella knocked again. She could hear no sound in the building. ‘I guess he’s out.’ She wrote ‘
Pls contact me
’ on the back of one of her cards and stuck it in the doorframe.

Dennis let the screen slam shut and they walked back to the car.

10.35 am

Sophie crouched in the back of the ambulance, trying to catch her breath. She’d twice more injected small doses of adrenaline and Sawyer was still crying that he knew nothing. Angus had hit the doctor three more times in the stomach, once hard enough to make him vomit for real, and they’d shouted at each other so much Sophie was worried somebody outside would hear them. The situation was completely out of her control. She needed time to think, time to breathe, but while Angus was yelling and punching she had neither. He was like a madman and Sophie was afraid of where he was taking them.

‘You can’t let him be for too long.’ Sophie looked up to see Angus leaning into the vehicle. He said in a low voice, ‘If he gets his equilibrium back he’ll be harder than ever to break.’

‘You don’t have to hit him so much.’

‘People like this are tough targets,’ he said. ‘Softly softly will get us nowhere.’

She stared at him, and it suddenly seemed odd that he would go to such lengths for someone else’s child. She thought of his story of the young girl and his revenge on her attacker. Maybe he enjoyed violence and this way was able to do it for a reason?

Behind him Sawyer started a fresh struggle with the bandages thheld him down. The stretcher rattled with his movements.