Web of Deceit (2 page)

The bystanders who’d been at Marko’s window were on the footpath now.

‘Did any of you see it happen?’ Alex asked.

‘I did, sort of,’ the
woman in the frilly top said. ‘I was walking further down when I heard a horn blast, and I glanced around in time to see the car drive right up the kerb into the pole.’

‘Could you tell whose horn it was?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear any kind of collision before he hit the pole?’

‘No.’

‘How about the rest of you?’

‘I was driving behind him,’ one of the three men said.
He wore navy blue workshorts and his knees and boots were crusted with dirt. ‘A couple of cars back. It looked to me like he drove into it almost deliberately. I mean, he wasn’t fishtailing or anything beforehand, the street’s dead straight, and none of us were going fast. I don’t know how he could’ve lost control.’

The other two men, older, grey-haired, in suits and ties, had been in buildings
across the street and had come over at the sound of the crash to see if they could help.

‘And none of you noticed any other vehicles that might’ve been involved?’ Alex said. ‘Or who blew their horn?’

‘No.’

A marked police car pulled up behind them and two officers got out.

‘Is the man all right?’ the woman in the frills asked.

‘Looks to be fine.’ Alex smiled at them.
‘Thanks for trying to help him.’ They nodded, and Alex stepped away to speak to the police, listening on the way for the low murmur of Jane’s voice in the back of the ambulance. There it was. She was fine.
And so am I
.

‘Injuries?’ the younger cop said.

‘Possible psych,’ Alex said. ‘We’re going to RPA. You want to speak to him before we go?’

The cop shook her head. ‘We’ll catch
up with him there.’

Alex looked into the back of the ambulance. Marko lay on the stretcher under a blanket and Jane sat in the seat beside him, talking and holding his hand again. She smiled at Alex.

He nodded and shut the door.

The breeze rustled the leaves of the fig trees in the park and the sun was warm on the back of his neck as he walked around to the driver’s side. RPA
was just a few minutes away. Nothing bad had happened. He got behind the wheel, checked the rear-view and saw that Jane and Marko were still talking, then called Control and told them they were departing.

‘Copy, Thirty-five.’

He started the engine and pulled out, looking over at the corner Marko had been so focused on. Now only a few people remained: a child in his father’s arms pointing
at the ambulance, two young women talking and looking past him towards the scene, a man with his hands in his jeans pockets and dark sunglasses covering his eyes. Alex waved to the toddler as he went past.

The lights at Bridge Road were red and Alex checked his mobile. No text from Mia. What did you do when they were like this? Eleven years of parenting her on his own and he still sometimes
felt as lost as he had back at the start. There was a chance she was at Frances and Donald’s place; they hadn’t called to say she was late, after all. But with the way she’d been lately – with what had happened to him too – he needed to know for sure. He glanced at the lights and could see the oncoming traffic slowing. He was about to get a green. He’d have to wait and call after the case.

Five minutes later he backed into RPA’s busy ambulance bay, turned off the engine and met Jane’s eyes in the mirror. ‘Stretcher?’ Mobile patients often walked in.

She nodded.

He went to the back door, checking his phone again as he went, though he generally always heard a text arrive. Sure enough, the screen was blank. He lifted the door to see Marko had hidden himself completely
under the blanket.

Jane tucked the case-sheet folder under her arm and climbed out the back and patted Marko’s feet. ‘Few clunks underneath you now,’ she said, and she and Alex pulled out the stretcher then wheeled it into Emergency.

Two crews of paramedics with occupied stretchers waited ahead of them. Trudie, the triage nurse, a slender woman in her twenties with lots of make-up
and jet black hair, frowned over a wad of paperwork. Marko lay motionless.

Alex spoke to Jane in a low voice. ‘Mind if I step back out to check on Mia?’

‘Go for it,’ she said.

Outside the automatic doors, Alex called Mia’s mobile. ‘
Hey, it’s me
,’ he heard his daughter say. ‘
You know what to do
.’ Beep.

‘You were supposed to text,’ he said. ‘We’ll be talking about this tonight.
Again.’

He hung up and rang Frances’s mobile.

‘Alex,’ she answered. ‘How are you?’

He could tell from her tone that everything was okay, and turned his face into the breeze. ‘Checking in, you know how it is. She’s there?’

‘She was a little late, but she’s here all right,’ Frances said. ‘Would you like a word?’

‘One or two,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

Mia came on the
line. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘We have these rules for a reason.’

‘It went flat,’ she said. ‘I told you I need a new charger.’

‘I’m not going to argue about it now,’ he said.

‘How am I supposed to stay in touch like you want when I can’t charge my phone properly? You expect me to do these things but then you make it impossible. It’s not fair.’

He heard raised voices
inside the department. ‘I have to go. Do your homework and be good for Frances. We’ll talk about this tonight.’

‘Why do you always talk to me like I’m five?’

‘I have to go,’ he said again. ‘Love you.’

She hung up. Alex put his phone away with his teeth on edge but the rest of him reassured and hurried back through the doors into Emergency.

‘Let me go!’ someone screamed
further inside the department. ‘Get off me!’

Jane stood by the stretcher with her hand on Marko’s blanketed shoulder. As Alex came up, he heard her say, ‘It’s okay. Just somebody having a bad day.’

Marko clutched the blanket over his face. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’

‘It’s all right,’ Jane said.

Trudie sent the other paramedics and patients on their way and bustled over.
‘What’s up?’

Jane told her the story.

Trudie’s frown deepened. ‘Can he sit in the waiting room?’

Jane motioned for her to take a few steps away. Alex knew she’d be explaining the possible psych angle, out of Marko’s hearing.

‘Jane?’ Marko said under the blanket.

‘She’ll be back in a moment,’ Alex said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Marko said.

‘You have nothing to be sorry
for,’ Alex said. ‘This is our job.’

‘Not about this,’ Marko said. ‘I’m sorry for anything that happens after.’

Alex put his hand on Marko’s shoulder just as Jane had done. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

‘I don’t think it will,’ Marko said. ‘I appreciate that you’re trying to make me feel better, but I truly don’t think it will.’

Alex studied the blanketed form. He sounded
less like a psych case now, but if that wasn’t the problem, what was?

‘Marko, what really happened today?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘There’s nobody here but you and me,’ Alex said. Jane and Trudie were still talking down the corridor, and from Jane’s pointed gestures Alex knew she was trying to persuade Trudie that Marko needed more care than being parked in the waiting room. ‘Nobody
can hear.’

Marko shook his head.

‘Look at me,’ Alex said.

‘No.’

‘Just for a moment.’ Alex tried to ease the blanket down.

‘Don’t.’

‘I want you to see that there’s nobody else here, that you can trust me. I’ve been through some stuff too; I know how much people can help.’

‘It’s all useless,’ Marko said. ‘No one can help me.’

‘We got you out of the
car, didn’t we? We got you here with no problems.’ Alex tugged at the blanket again and this time Marko let go. ‘See? Nobody here but us.’

Marko’s face was pale, his cheeks wet with tears. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Try me, please.’

He shook his head and wiped his eyes. ‘It’s no good.’

The hopelessness in his voice touched Alex.

‘Mate,’ he said, ‘people here really
can help you. You just need to tell them what the problem is.’

‘Mr Meixner,’ said Trudie as she approached, Jane furious-faced behind her. Marko tried to pull the blanket back up but Trudie held it down. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘RPA hospital,’ Marko said.

‘Do you know why you’re here?’

‘I was in a car accident.’

‘What’s the date today?’

‘The twelfth.’

Trudie shot Jane a look. ‘Seems perfectly with it to me.’

Jane’s lips thinned further.

‘Are you injured?’ Trudie asked.

‘A bit shaken up.’

‘Are you thinking about hurting yourself?’

‘What? No,’ he said.

‘You want to see a doctor?’

‘He needs to,’ Jane said.

‘And the police will be expecting him to be here,’ Alex put in.

Trudie didn’t even
glance his way. She grasped Marko’s arm. ‘Hop down. You can go to the waiting room.’

Marko resisted. ‘He’ll find me there.’

‘See?’ Jane said to Trudie.

‘Nobody will get you,’ she said. ‘There’s staff out there all the time and security is always close by.’

She tugged his arm and he slid off the stretcher.

‘Surely there’s somewhere in here he can stay,’ Jane said.

‘You want me to sit him on the floor by my desk?’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Alex said. They’d managed to bring Marko in; the least that could happen now was that he felt he mattered.

Trudie eyed him. ‘I was kidding.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘This way,’ Trudie said to Marko.

Alex looked at Jane, but there was nothing they could do. They watched Trudie walk the silent Marko
to the doors leading to the public waiting area. When the doors closed behind them, Jane threw the case-sheet folder onto the stretcher mattress. ‘He’ll just get up and walk out of there. You should’ve heard what he was saying to me on the way. He reckons there’s someone after him, that he saw this person in a car behind him and drove into the pole to get away from him.’

Alex wheeled the
stretcher outside. ‘That doesn’t make much sense.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘That’s what I pointed out to that woman. She said something about it sounding like a bad excuse for losing control on a wet road.’

‘What’s his medical history?’

‘He said he doesn’t have one.’ Jane opened the back of the ambulance and sat on the step. ‘But all that paranoia could easily be the start of some
kind of psychosis.’

Alex’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out to see a text from Frances’s number.
I want to be with mum.

He froze.

‘Everything okay?’ Jane said. ‘Alex?’

He fumbled the phone back into his pocket and tried to collect himself. ‘Was he – did he say who it was that’s after him?’

‘He wouldn’t say. He said we’d all be in danger if he did.’

Alex struggled to pay attention. ‘He was saying similar things to me.’

‘More proof of a developing mental condition,’ Jane said. ‘Who the hell’s so powerful they could hurt not just him but us too? Only a psych patient could dream up someone like that.’

TWO

J
ane checked her watch again. Ten to six. After leaving Marko in the oh-so-capable hands of Trudie at RPA Emergency, they’d taken a diabetic amputee from one of the wards all the way out to Nepean Hospital, and were now finally almost back in the city. She’d thought the timing would be perfect, they’d reach station right on knock-off, but then they’d hit this traffic
on Anzac Bridge. Five minutes they’d been here and had moved only the length of the ambulance. Plus, judging by the radio messages flying back and forth, there was something big happening at Town Hall railway station. They hadn’t been called yet, so she was crossing her fingers that it was under control, but when it came to knocking off you could never assume you wouldn’t get another case. Not
until you were walking out the station door, and sometimes the phone rang even then.

Alex looked across from the driver’s seat. ‘You all right over there?’

She tried to stop wriggling. ‘I was really hoping we’d finish on time tonight.’

‘Hot date?’

She laughed. ‘Kids are in town.’

The words sounded fake, but Alex smiled and nodded. She’d lied so much these past few
months. She’d been surprised sometimes how easy it was.

The setting sun turned the rear windows of the cars in front aflame, and the sky ahead was purple. Two vehicles along, a driver opened her door and stood on the sill, craning her neck to see the problem. Jane could’ve told her not to bother: she couldn’t see herself – God knew, she’d been trying – and she was much higher up. There’d
been no talk of an accident on the air, so it was either a breakdown or simply traffic. The Town Hall thing was too far away to be at fault.

She shifted in her seat again, then got out her phone.
Won’t be finished on time
, she texted.
Typical. Sorry.

A minute later the reply arrived.
Let me know when you’re leaving.

She texted back,
Will do
, then put her phone in her pocket.

Alex sat with his elbow on the wheel and his chin in his hand. She thought he looked anxious.

‘Mia will be okay,’ she said. ‘I know that’s hard to believe when you’re right in the middle of it, but she’s a good kid, and you’re a great dad. Those things win out in the long run.’

‘I hope so.’

‘I know so,’ she said. ‘David was a little shit between fifteen and seventeen, and
there was more than one night I lay awake terrified he’d end up in jail. Breanna was no angel either. Glenn wasn’t too bad, thank goodness. But they’re fine now. You just have to keep talking to her, keep those lines of communication open.’

‘That’s just the thing,’ Alex said. ‘She’s become so secretive. We used to be such a team, we used to share everything, but now she hardly speaks even
if I ask her a question.’ The traffic ahead began to move and he put the ambulance into gear. ‘I understand that a fourteen-year-old girl doesn’t want to tell her dad about every aspect of her life, but it’s like I’m the enemy and the tiniest scrap of information might get her killed.’

Jane nodded. ‘I never told my parents a thing.’

‘So what can I do? How can I protect her when I don’t
know what’s going on in her life?’

‘You have to trust her a little,’ she said. ‘Give her some space. Keep talking to her as if she is answering. At least that way she knows that if she does have a problem you’re ready to listen.’

Alex didn’t look like he believed her.

She reached across the cabin to touch his arm. ‘I know the things you’ve seen, and I know how hard that makes
it. But chances are, if you try to keep her locked off from the world, she’ll work even harder to bust out and away from you.’

He didn’t answer.

She hesitated. ‘You’ll be fine too. You did good today.’ It felt condescending to say that when she was in no position to lead or guide. He was the one who’d had to cope alone at that crash the night she’d chucked a sickie; he was always focused
on his patients while she often found her mind straying to the place she’d rather be. She kept seeing such doubt on his face though. If she didn’t support him, who would?

He gave her a strange smile. ‘I guess the bigger question is whether I can keep it up.’

‘I think you’ll do great.’
Oh man, just shut up!

They were coming into the city now and the evening was settling into the
streets. Drivers turned on headlights, and shopfronts cast a glow onto the crowds of pedestrians making their way home. They could be at the station in five minutes if they got all greens. With a tingle deep inside, Jane crossed her fingers that they’d sign off before another job came in.

‘Thirty-five,’ Control called.

‘Dammit.’ Jane grabbed the microphone. ‘Thirty-five’s on King Street
in the city.’

‘Thanks, Thirty-five. Sorry to do this to you but I need you to back up your nightshift at Town Hall train station. Patient’s code four under a train, but the officers require assistance there.’

‘Thirty-five’s on the case.’ She slammed the mike back on the dash. A body extrication could potentially takes ages. ‘Dammit!’

Alex hit the lights and siren and hurtled
right into George Street as Jane grabbed her phone and typed another quick text.
I don’t believe it. Got a job, can’t say how long.

The road ahead was choked with cars and beyond them Jane could see multiple flashing lights and the tops of fire engines. The earlier radio messages hadn’t given any insight into what was happening, just that multiple ambulances had been sent to the scene and
most of them had cleared off empty not long after. Now they were all obviously tied up on other cases and unable to return.

Alex crossed to the wrong side of the road then swung into Druitt Street, flipped off the lights and siren and parked behind Thirty-six. Four fire engines and multiple police cars were lined up along the kerb. Further down two more ambulances sat with their back doors
open, and Jane could see a couple of patients being treated inside. Pedestrians milled, cops trying to move them along. Despite all this, the air felt calm.

‘Whatever happened, it’s over.’ She reached for the microphone. ‘Thirty-five’s on scene.’

‘Copy that, Thirty-five.’

Her phone buzzed.
I can wait.
It buzzed again.
I want you.

A thrill ran through her.
I want you too
, she sent back, then got out to grab equipment. The air was cool on her overheated skin. She just had to get through this job. How long could it take, really? Two hours? She could wait. She seized the Oxy-Viva and drug box.

‘Kids’ll have to cook their own dinner.’ Alex hauled out the first-aid kit and monitor.

She smiled. ‘Guess so.’

A stocky middle-aged security guard came up
to them. ‘This way.’

They followed his wide safety-vested back through the press of people, down the stairs, along the station concourse, then deeper and deeper into the system of grimy fluorescent-lit platforms, escalators and stairways. Police were everywhere. Jane could hear the muted rumble of distant trains in the tunnels and, as they descended another flight of stairs, felt the push
of air in her face. The guard said something over his shoulder that she didn’t catch. She glanced at Alex but he shrugged.

The next flight took them past more cops and onto a mostly empty platform. The air looked and smelled smoky, and firefighters in full gear and helmets crouched around something small by the far stairs. On the left side of the platform stood a train, doors closed, empty
as far as Jane could see. Police talked with three people who she guessed were witnesses; the man and two women were dressed as if heading home from work, and had the stunned look she’d seen on countless people’s faces before. Near them, a man sat on a bench with his head in his hands. The train’s driver, judging by his uniform.

‘This way.’ The guard turned past the end of the railing and
led them alongside the train.

Torch beams lit the darkness in front of the first carriage, and Jane heard their boss Ken Butterworth’s voice down on the tracks. She put the gear on the platform and crouched on the edge. ‘Partying again?’

Ken smiled wryly up from where he lay between the rails. ‘Bloody back.’

His partner, Mick Schultz, injected the contents of a syringe into the
IV cannula taped into Ken’s wrist. ‘Ten milligrams in. Partying soon.’

A cop standing near them held two torches on the scene. At the edge of the light Jane could see blood splattered on the train’s silver metal and a grey-trousered leg with no foot on the far side of the track.

Behind her Alex said, ‘Stretcher, spine board, what else?’

‘Blanket to cover my face,’ Ken said.

Alex went back up top to get the equipment. Jane lowered herself down onto the line then tried to brush the black dust from her hands.

‘Give up now,’ Ken said. His face relaxed, the morphine taking effect. ‘It’ll be all over you by the time we’re done.’

‘Great.’ She looked at the leg. The body it was attached to was a dark shape in the shadows under the train. ‘Suicide?’

‘Not sure,’ Mick said. ‘The driver said he just appeared. When we first got here the place was all smoky, and I heard people saying there’d been a fire and everyone’d freaked out and tried to run and that maybe he was accidentally pushed.’

‘Poor bastard.’

The top of the sock was intact around the leg’s ankle, the exposed skin above it tanned with dark hairs. The wound was a clean line
like a surgical amputation and she could see the leg in cross-section: the tibia and fibula stark white against the dark red tissue and yellow fat. She couldn’t see the foot anywhere.

She turned to Ken. ‘So what were you doing?’

‘Jumped down and stumbled and that was it.’ He blinked slowly and smiled.

She smiled back. This wouldn’t take so long. They could have Ken in hospital
in twenty minutes and get back to station ten after that, if they went hard. And as it didn’t sound like a clear-cut suicide, the body would be someone else’s to deal with after the cops had crawled all over everything. I’m coming, she thought.

Alex came back with the stretcher, spine board and four burly firefighters. He lowered the board to Jane, then jumped down onto the tracks himself.
Jane laid the board on the rocks next to Ken, who was humming untunefully, and she, Mick, Alex and the cop, who’d put down her torches, rolled Ken gently onto his side and slid the board underneath his uniformed back. They strapped him securely to it, Ken giggling at their touch, then they lifted the board to waist height and walked to the platform. The crouching firefighters took hold of the front
and helped slide it along, then Mick clambered up and coordinated the lift of the board up onto the stretcher.

Down on the track, Jane closed Mick’s drug box and zipped up the Oxy-Viva.

Alex went to peer around the front of the train at the body. ‘Poor sod.’

‘I know. Especially as it might’ve been an accident.’ She heaved the box and the Viva onto the platform. ‘Apparently there
was a fire and people panicked.’

‘It wasn’t a fire,’ one of the fireys said. ‘It was some kind of smoke device that someone dropped up the other end there.’

‘Deliberately, you mean?’ Jane said.

The firey shrugged. ‘Idiots everywhere.’

‘On a peak-hour platform too.’ Jane scrambled back onto the platform and tried to brush off her hands. Her palms were black with train dust
and there were smears of it on her shirt and trousers too.

Flat on his back on the stretcher, Ken said, ‘Told you.’

‘We got everything?’ Mick said. ‘Where’s the lift?’

Jane slung the strap of the Viva over her shoulder, then heard a voice say, ‘I was about here,’ and looked around to see one of the witnesses talking to a uniformed police officer near the bottom of the stairs.

‘He came barging through so hard that he caught my eye,’ the man said. He looked to be around thirty, his clean-shaven face, neat navy suit and white shirt contrasting with the rough way his tie had been loosened and now hung at an angle from his collar. ‘Then the smoke started, then I saw the guy go in front of the train.’

‘The guy who’d been barging?’ the cop said.

‘No, the
one from before. The one who pushed past me muttering about somebody being after him, somebody going to get him.’

A chill touched Jane’s heart.

‘First I thought the barger was just getting to a good spot on the platform, to be ready when the train came in, but later I thought it was more. He had real purpose. And then he glanced up from under his cap and saw me looking at him.’ He
tugged at his tie. ‘I don’t know if I’m making much sense. It all happened so quickly. But somehow the way the first guy was saying someone was after him, then the second guy came through behind him –’

Jane dropped the Viva on the platform and jumped back down onto the line, grabbed one of the torches off the cop who was still standing there and rounded the front of the train. The torch
beam lit up the grey trousers, stained with dust and grease and dark drying blood, but she could only see as far as the upper thighs; the rest of the body was under the train, twisted around and between the wheels. She squatted down and tried to find the man’s face with the beam, her heart pattering in her chest, a whistling sound in her ears. Blood lay in clotted puddles between the rocks, and scraps
of flesh were stuck to the undercarriage. She could see a stark white hand, but no face.

‘What are you doing?’ Alex said on the platform.

‘Get the other torch and shine it in from the front.’ She reached between the wheels.

Alex jumped down, then shone the torch in.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ the cop said, crouched at Alex’s side.

‘Can you see his face?’ Jane said. ‘Is
it him?’

‘Who?’ Alex said.

The wheel’s edge cut into her shoulder, its flat surface cold against her cheek. She could see the back of his head. The hair was brown. She felt sick.

‘You’re not allowed to touch anything,’ the cop said again.

Jane heard Alex moving on the rocks past the front of the train. She looked under it to see his beam cut off by the first wheels then
shine again. The light flooded across the body, blinding her. Then he clicked it off.