Frantic (8 page)

She spread the fire photos out and stood over them but found no insight, no breakthrough – just the throb of an incipient headache and the memory of the stink of burned plastic.

One thing that wasn’t helping her frame of mind was what she’d overheard in the Jungle the night before. People said that Strike Force Gold was going to be widened in scope to take in the crash that killed Dudley-Pearson. The Homicide Squad would join in. Ella had been hit with the thought that Dennis was the investigating officer. In that light, his reluctance to talk made perfect sense.

The phone rang. ‘Detectives, Hunters Hill.’

‘Um, Detective Marconi please.’

‘Speaking.’

‘Hi, it’s Edman Hughes, from the fire? I called in yesterday but you were out. I was wondering if I could come in and make my statement today?’

‘That sounds fine, Mr Hughes.’ Ella checked her watch. It was almost midday. ‘How does one o’clock suit you?’

‘That’d be good. Thanks.’

‘See you then.’ Ella put the phone down and reached for a piece of paper. ‘
Steve, had to go out. Do us a favour and grab a statement from this Hughes guy, please? Thanks.
’

Detective Steve Clunes ran his life like clockwork. The mornings he spent out, the afternoons in, wherever possible. He liked to finish each day with pages typed out and neatly collated. This morning he’d been to see a witness in hospital and Ella knew he’d be back soon. She left the note on his desk, grabbed her bag and headed out the door. She might not know what she wanted but she knew talking to Edman Hughes was not it.

5.52 pm

The phone rang as Sophie walked into the ambulance station. ‘The Rocks, hello and good evening.’

‘You nightshift? Your partner there?’ a stressed voice asked.

Sophie heard noises in the locker room. ‘Yep.’

‘I’ve got two people code seventeen, unconscious, query not breathing, in Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo,’ the Control officer said. ‘It’s crazy out there; this is the fifth OD call in the last half-hour.’

‘Heroin?’

‘Yeah but way strong. People all over are going down and some aren’t coming back up.’ Phones rang in the background. ‘Good luck.’

Sophie banged on the locker-room door. ‘The sick of the city await your loving care.’

Mick stuck his head out. The bruise on his cheek was darker. ‘Already?’

The roads were thick with evening traffic and when they reached the scene a woman with purple hair screamed in the dusky street, ‘Where you been?’

There was no time to explain. Mick and Sophie grabbed the equipment and followed the woman into a narrow alley. There was enough light in the sky for Sophie to see two figures on the ground. Closer up she saw they were two young men, twenty years old if that, both with the dark blue complexion of the non-breathing. They wore dirty ripped jeans and grubby T-shirts, and smelled like they hadn’t showered in a while. The one with the scruffy moustache had vomit around his mouth. Sophie yanked her gloves on and reached for his neck. ‘Mine’s in arrest.’

Mick crouched by the other one. The young man’s light brown dreadlocks were spread out around him. ‘Mine’s still going.’

Sophie looked for the woman but she’d gone. She grabbed the portable radio and called for urgent back-up.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Control said.

Mick injected naloxone, the narcotic antagonist, directly into his patient’s veins, while Sophie tore open the dirty T-shirt and slapped the defibrillator pads onto the arrest victim’s skinny chest. The screen on the monitor showed the wiggly line of ventricular fibrillation. She charged the machine and hit him with a shock. His body jumped but the monitor showed no change.

Mick rolled his patient on his side and kept an eye on him as he came over to help Sophie. ‘Good. My guy’s starting to breathe up.’

Sophie charged the machine again. ‘Clear?’

Mick let go of the arrest victim’s head. ‘Clear.’

This time the shock caused the man’s heart to go into the flat line of asystole. Mick started one-person CPR while Sophie searched the scarred arms for veins. ‘He’s all trackmarks.’

Mick paused in his CPR to poke his patient in the ribs. ‘How you doing?’

There was no reply. Mick watched him closely for a few seconds. ‘His resps are falling,’ he said. ‘How strong is this shit? I’m going to have to hit him again.’

Sophie found a tiny vein and quickly cannulated it. She injected adrenaline and took over CPR while Mick gave another shot of naloxone to his patient. Sirens sounded in the distance. People wearing suits and carrying briefcases walked past the end of the alley, looked in and kept going. Sophie envied them the end of their working day when hers was just beginning. She compressed the skinny man’s chest. His ribs were bony, his skin thin. His head lolled. The vomit on his face was drying. The chances of getting him back were slim, but he was so young. They had to try.

‘There you go,’ Mick said. His patient coughed and tried to get up. ‘Relax for a moment, mate. Just sit tight.’

The man shoved Mick’s hands away. ‘Fuck off.’

‘Listen, mate, you were almost dead.’

‘Bullshit.’ The man staggered to his feet and headed out of the alley. The sirens drew closer.

Mick followed him. ‘What’d you take?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s good,’ Mick said. ‘The Narcan won’t have any effect then.’

‘You din’t give me that shit? Aww.’ The man threw a punch at the brick wall as he lurched along. ‘Fuckin’ bastards.’

‘What about your friend?’ Sophie shouted but the man turned the corner into the street and was gone. Sophie shook her head as she compressed her patient’s chest. Addicts hated Narcan. They didn’t care that it saved their lives; it ruined their high and meant they had to go out and beg, borrow or steal enough to buy another hit.

Mick took over squeezing the bag, inflating the arrest victim’s lungs. Sophie paused in her compressions to inject another bolus of adrenaline. They were watching the monitor screen, hoping for a reaction, when the back-up crew arrived.

They took the man to St Vincent’s, where he was declared dead on arrival. A nurse searched his clothes but found no wallet or identification. He was logged in as ‘Unknown male’.

In the ambulance bay Sophie found Mick restocking the drug kit. He said, ‘That crew was saying there’s been nine overdoses today and this is the third death.’

‘Last week was bad too,’ Sophie said. ‘Remember we did that group of four friends in the Cross?’

Mick nodded. ‘Supply’s outstripping demand. They don’t cut it down so far and everyone drops from the purity.’ There was a crackle from the car radio and Mick paused in his restocking, packaged syringes in his hand. ‘Are they calling us?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘Car fifty-one.’

‘Good,’ Mick said. ‘So what’d you do today?’

‘Home stuff, you know.’ She started changing the oxygen cylinder in the Viva. ‘You?’

‘I got a call from Central Coast Control, wanting me for a radio shift up there tonight.’

‘Another one?’

‘That flu’s still doing the rounds of the staff.’ He shoved the kit back into the vehicle. ‘I would’ve liked the overtime but it’s kind of hard to be in two places at once.’

‘Just a bit,’ she said.

Mick started to say something then his mobile rang and he moved down the driveway to answer it. Sophie tightened the cylinder connection and thought about Chris.

When Lachlan had woken at six that morning, Chris got up to him. Sophie appreciated the sleep-in, especially prior to night-shift, but when she’d finally crawled out of bed at eleven she’d been surprised to find they were out. By midafternoon she was sitting by the front window with her mobile in her hand. She wasn’t going to call Chris. He could call her and tell her where they were. Or come back and get her, seeing as he had the car, and they could continue the outing together. As a fucking family.

By the time she’d started getting ready for work she had herself believing he was definitely leaving her. He was that very moment signing the lease on a small two-bedder near his mum’s place, picturing the smaller of the bedrooms as a nursery, planning to hire a trailer to move the cot and everything else that night. She’d come home in the morning and find the house empty, a scrawled note giving his new address, because that was only fair, but nothing else.

When the car pulled into the driveway she stayed in their bedroom, ramming the metal buttons into their holes on her shirt, yanking on her epaulettes so hard she tore the stitching on her sleeve.

Chris burst in the front door. ‘Guess what!’

Sophie debated what to say.

‘Lachlan walked!’

She came to the top of the stairs. In the hallway below Chris was propping Lachlan against the open front door then backing away a few steps and calling to him. Lachlan’s shirt bore food stains and the knees of his trousers were filthy. He laughed at Chris, then up at Sophie, but stayed clinging to the door.

‘So I missed it,’ she said.

‘He’ll do it again.’ Chris gathered him up. ‘Good sleep?’

‘Where were you?’

‘We went to the zoo.’ Chris nuzzled Lachlan’s neck. ‘And what did we see? Monkeys, seals, tigers–’

‘Why didn’t you take me?’

‘You were sleeping.’

‘I don’t sleep all day.’ She came down the stairs. ‘What did he eat?’

‘I took some formula, and some of those Heinz jars from the cupboard.’

‘They’re all desserts.’

‘He liked them,’ Chris said.

Sophie could smell Lachlan’s nappy before she reached them. ‘He needs changing.’

‘I know that,’ Chris said. ‘I’m not totally useless.’

Sophie bent close to her son, laying her cheek to his sticky one. He grasped at her hair and she kissed the top of his head. ‘I have to go.’

Now, turning the regulator on to check that the new oxygen cylinder was full, she was ashamed to think that was how she’d left things. When she’d headed out the door she’d said ‘Bye’ and from the kitchen where he was feeding Lachlan, Chris had said the same, but they hadn’t kissed or even looked each other in the eye.

In the morning she’d buy croissants on the way home, and maybe they could all snuggle in bed for a while, and she’d ask Chris to tell her every little detail about Lachlan’s first steps.

The radio crackled. ‘Car Thirty-one.’

‘Here we go,’ she called to Mick.

They did four cases on the trot. First was a drunk who tried to cross the Cahill Expressway and got multiple fractures for his trouble; then a screeching teenage girl who’d been glassed in the face by another girl over a boy; then there was a Korean tourist who spoke no English but seemed to have chest pain, at least according to his hand gestures. The next call was ‘person query dead’ in bushes in Hyde Park, no other information given.

Mick eased the ambulance up the kerb from Macquarie Street and drove along the central path past the Archibald Fountain. The ambulance’s sidelights illuminated the grass, shiny with damp, and the pale trunks of the figtrees. Beyond them much of the park was dark. They’d obviously arrived before the police. Mick shook his head. ‘I will never understand the inconsistency of calling the ambulance but not waiting long enough to point the patient out.’

‘Probably found by someone up to no good.’

‘Yeah, but what do they think we’re going to do? Chase after them and force them to give us their name?’ Mick flicked the headlights on high and put the foglights on for good measure. A path led off to the right by a sculpture and its own small fountain. Mick drove onto the grass and in the headlights Sophie spotted two feet under the low branches of a shrub.

She called Control to say they were on scene, then she and Mick got out either side of the ambulance. Sophie crouched with a torch and Mick peered over her shoulder into the bush.

‘Goner,’ Mick said.

‘Reckon.’ The half-open eyes and the pale purplish colour of the young woman’s face gave it away. Sophie touched the bare back of her wrist to the stockinged ankle between the brown leather shoe and the long skirt. Her skin was only slightly warm.

‘I’ll call it in,’ Mick said.

Left alone with the girl, Sophie looked at her more closely. She had smooth blonde hair tied back with a black scrunchie. Above the skirt she wore a white shirt and a loose brown jacket. Her shirt had pulled out of the skirt, revealing a narrow band of tanned stomach. The left sleeve of the jacket was pulled up, exposing a fresh injection mark on the inner aspect of her elbow. An empty syringe with needle attached lay by her side. What looked like a handbag strap with its ends cut was wound around her arm. On the ring and little fingers of both hands she wore gold rings, and around her right wrist was a tight-fitting gold bracelet with a nameplate. Sophie couldn’t see the name.

‘Not the usual heroin death,’ she said when Mick came back.

‘Rich people take the stuff too.’

‘Yeah, but not usually in the bushes in parks.’ In her experience the rich ones took it home and did it with friends. Rumour was you could get good money by selling naloxone black market because the rich ones knew the risks and wanted to be safe, so they bought the narcotic antagonist for their friends to hit them with if the worst happened. They had profitable day jobs in places like the stockmarket and the fashion industry and they wanted to get up in the morning. ‘See what she used as a tourniquet?’