Frantic (19 page)

‘Not really.’ She brushed at the knee of her trousers. ‘You know Peter Roth, don’t you?’

‘We did a course together a couple of years ago. Why?’

‘He’s dead.’

Chris looked shocked. ‘From the gunshot wound?’

‘At this stage, we’re not sure,’ Ella fibbed. ‘The PM will find out.’

‘But…’ Chris hesitated. ‘It wasn’t foul play, anything like that?’

‘Like I said, we’re not sure.’ She watched him closely. He lowered his chin to his chest and appeared deep in thought. ‘Chris, are you sure it wasn’t you who rang the TV stations?’

‘I told you before, no.’

‘And you know nothing about the gang.’

‘That’s right.’

Ella leaned forward. He wasn’t meeting her gaze. Her antennae quivered. ‘Chris, if you know something, you should tell me. I can help you. I can protect you.’ The thought sneaked into her mind:
Like I protected Roth?

Now he looked at her. ‘How can you think that I would hold back any information when my son’s life is at stake?’

‘Perhaps for exactly that reason,’ she said. ‘You think you can save him and we can’t.’

He pointed at himself. ‘We’re the victims here, me and my family. Is it easier for you to suggest I’m hiding something than to get out there and bloody work?’

She placed another of her cards on the bed. ‘Ring me when you want to talk.’

Thursday 8 May, 4.00 pm

A
ngus drove towards Glebe.

‘The car’s at North Shore,’ Sophie said.

‘I just want to see something.’

Sophie had no energy to argue. They’d looked at another seventy-three children and each one caused a little rise then crash of hope. She was exhausted and close to breaking point. Her chest ached. Her eyes and the skin around them hurt and when the tears began again she let them run down her face unimpeded.

At a red light on Broadway Angus reached over to squeeze her shoulder and she looked at him, desolate. ‘What if we can’t find him?’

His hand tightened on her shoulder. ‘We’ll find him.’

He slowed outside Sawyer’s house. Cars were crammed in along the street and a man and a woman leaned talking against the balcony rail at the front of the sandstone house. ‘He’s obviously still here,’ Angus said, driving past. ‘Not in custody.’

Sophie craned her neck back to look again. ‘You think he should be?’

‘It’s hard to say without knowing more about the case against him.’ Angus continued around the corner then into a parking space near the sportsground. ‘There’s the birth and the way he threatened you, which makes a pretty good motive in my book. Plus you said they found him overdosed in his car at the wharf, and they found a dummy like Lachlan’s there too.’

Sophie nodded, feeling sick.

Angus turned in his seat to stare at the back of Sawyer’s house. ‘It just seems weird the detectives don’t have him in the station, under pressure, getting him to talk.’

Sophie couldn’t look any more.
If it was Sawyer…

‘I’m going to ask around about it,’ Angus said with resolve. ‘There must be a reason why they let him go. I just can’t figure out what.’

Sophie sank her face into her hands.
If it really was Sawyer…
She swallowed back bile.

4.15 pm

When the meeting was over Ella and Dennis were left at the table in the Incident Room, sipping coffee and staring into space. Before Dennis was the information from the surveillance team, stating that Sawyer hadn’t budged from his house, hadn’t phoned anybody to talk about the missing baby, hadn’t stepped outside the law a fraction of an inch. Relatives had arrived in preparation for the funeral tomorrow, and, like yesterday, a number of floral arrangements had been delivered. The team had also reported that Sophie had been at his house twice that day, with an officer named Angus Arendson. They pulled up in Arendson’s car, sat there for a few minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon, then went on their way. It didn’t appear that Sawyer had seen them. Ella imagined that in Sophie’s shoes she, too, might want to keep Sawyer under her own surveillance.

‘I’ve met Arendson before,’ Dennis said. ‘I think I’ll ring him, see what they’re doing.’

Ella nodded, rubbing an eye.

Dennis said, ‘You don’t look like you had that nap.’

‘I read the Houtkamp file, then I went to see Chris.’

‘You should let the man rest.’

‘I had some questions about the assault.’

‘Like what?’

She held up a hand. ‘I’m not criticising Figgis’s work.’

‘Good.’

‘But how does one unarmed man get the better of two officers?’

‘He wasn’t unarmed, he had a metal pole,’ Dennis said.

‘And how did the officers manage to trip over each other so neatly?’

‘Do you think they’re lying?’

‘I’m not sure what’s going on.’

‘Either you think they’re telling the truth or you think they’re lying.’ Dennis raised his cup to his mouth. ‘From the things you’re asking, I know where my money lies.’

‘It’s just a little hard to believe, you know? And I was thinking maybe something else was going on, maybe something that gave Houtkamp a good solid reason for wanting to hurt Chris.’

‘Houtkamp’s alibi checked out.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that too.’ She told him what she’d worked out. ‘I reckon he’s worth talking to.’

Dennis sighed and rubbed his forehead, then there was a knock at the door.

A young uniformed constable held out a sheet of paper. ‘A man made a report this morning about damage to his car. He drives a white Ford Falcon and he said he was parked outside a pub on Wednesday night and someone backed into him then drove off. It left blue paint on his car.’

Dennis sat up straight. ‘He’s sure it happened then?’

‘Yes. When he rang his insurance company they told him to report it to us and to ask the pub people about CCTV. Apparently there is footage of the incident.’

Ella took the piece of paper from the constable. ‘Do we have that tape?’

‘The manager wouldn’t give it to the complainant,’ the constable said. ‘It’s the Red Pheasant, in Newtown. The licensee lives upstairs.’

‘Ah, that charming establishment,’ Dennis said. ‘Let’s go.’

The pub was dark red on the outside, cool and dim and stinking of spilled beer on the inside. Groups of patrons in their twenties and younger sat drinking around tables while music pounded from huge black speakers. The licensee, James Bartrim, was a short nuggety man who rubbed a hand across his bald head when Ella told him what they wanted.

‘Don’t you need, like, a warrant or something for that?’

‘Sure, we can go and get one,’ Dennis said. ‘Out of interest, when was the last time you were raided for drugs?’

‘There’re no drugs here,’ Bartrim said.

‘Not now, no,’ Ella said. ‘We’d do the raid late in the evening. Probably a Saturday evening, I’d think. About eleven.’

Bartrim blew air out of his mouth and led them behind the bar to a tiny office. A small television and a VCR system sat high in one corner above shelves full of piled paperwork and unlabelled folders. Bartrim scratched through a box of video tapes and located one which he stuck into the VCR. He pressed the button to turn the TV on and leaned against the desk.

The screen showed a grainy black-and-white view of a laneway. The tape had been filmed at night. The screen was dark. A date and time counter in the lower right corner read ‘
Wednesday 7.5, 925 pm’
and the seconds whizzed by. Someone walked down the footpath past a line of parked cars. Then the door to the pub opened and two people stepped out.

‘That’s them,’ Bartrim said. ‘Hey, if you don’t mind me saying, this all seems pretty dramatic for a parking bingle.’

‘Ssh,’ Dennis said, though there was no sound. He and Ella stared at the image on the screen.

It looked like Sawyer to Ella. Same build. It was hard to tell from his walk because he was staggering. The person with him supported his arm. They moved to a dark-coloured car, which Ella thought she recognised as Sawyer’s BMW though she couldn’t make out the plates. Sawyer held out his hand, the hazard lights flashed as the car unlocked, and he got in. The other person – Ella was sure it was a woman – went around to the passenger side. Headlights and brakelights flashed up then the reversing lights lit as the car lurched into the car parked behind him.

‘He doesn’t even get out to look,’ Bartrim said.

‘Ssh,’ Ella said.

The car drove out of the parking space. Ella caught a glimpse of the numberplate but it was hard to decipher with the car moving. The brakelights disappeared at the edge of the screen. Bartrim shrugged. ‘That’s it.’

Dennis reached up and ejected the tape, tucking it under his arm. ‘Do you recognise either of those people?’

‘You’ve got to be joking. This is a student pub. The place is packed every night of the week.’

‘Not many students drive cars like that,’ Ella said.

‘I don’t look outside to see what they drive,’ Bartrim said. ‘I just try to keep up with their thirst.’

‘Just yes or no’ll do. Do you recognise them? Are they regulars?’ Dennis said.

‘No.’

‘We’ll need to talk to the staff who were working that night.’

‘That’d be Nicki and Luther and Farouk. They’re all on later tonight.’

‘We’ll need their addresses so we can speak to them before then.’

Bartrim pulled a folder off a shelf, causing a pile of papers to cascade to the floor. He found a page and turned the folder around for Ella to see. She wrote the names, addresses and phone numbers of the three staff in her notebook. ‘Can you show us where the camera is?’

Bartrim jammed the folder back onto the shelf and they walked out through the noisy bar. He pulled open a side door and fresh evening air poured in. Ella and Dennis stepped into the street.

The side of the pub was as red as the front. The camera was high on the wall. The street was narrow. A rusting red VW Golf was parked in the spot where Sawyer’s car had been. Behind it, gumleaves collected in the gutter. The wind blew and the spindly tree in a backyard across the street lost more leaves.

Bartrim watched them look around. ‘Anything else you want?’

‘No.’

Bartrim didn’t have to hear it twice. No sooner had Dennis spoken than he’d disappeared.

‘Well,’ Ella said. ‘That looks like our man to me.’

Dennis nodded slowly. ‘I agree.’

‘With a woman,’ Ella said. ‘What kind of man comes to a bar and picks up a woman the day after his family dies?’

‘A lonely and sad one,’ Dennis said.

Ella snorted.

‘Give the man a break,’ Dennis said. ‘Everyone copes with grief in their own way. He said himself he was out driving around. So he comes here for a drink, then some friendly and kind person starts to talk to him. More people would appreciate the sympathetic ear than not.’

‘If he wants to drink, why not take a bottle home? Or just park somewhere quiet?’

Dennis rubbed his forehead. ‘What matters is that this happened half an hour before Phillips was shot. This woman might be his alibi.’

‘Or maybe she saw him do it.’ Ella paced the footpath. ‘If she’s a local drug dealer people here might know her. We have to bring more people tonight and canvass everyone.’

‘Or,’ Dennis said, ‘if we show him the footage he might remember and be able to tell us.’

Ella looked at him. ‘You don’t think he knows exactly what he did?’

‘Maybe he really doesn’t.’ Dennis flicked a gumnut onto the road with his shoe. ‘Those drugs were in his blood.’

‘So what?’

Dennis shrugged. ‘Also it’s convenient that just after the guy’s wife and baby die, this happens to the family of the paramedic who was called to them.’

‘That’s called a motive, not convenience.’

‘I mean it works well as a red herring. It’s such a good motive we latch onto him straightaway.’

‘You’re suggesting that somebody set all this up?’ Ella said. ‘That in some magnificent lining-up of the planets, a birth gone wrong happened to occur around the time persons unknown decided to act against Chris Phillips, and that same birth was in the hands of Chris’s wife?’

Dennis picked up a gumleaf and crumpled it between his fingers. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Then what?’

‘Maybe the birth was convenient cover. Maybe the rest was already planned and they’ve been fortunate that this happened and threw us off.’ Dennis paused. ‘I know how that sounds.’

Ella placed the flat of her hand on the roof of the rusting Golf. ‘What would they have done if the birth hadn’t happened?’

‘Gone ahead anyway,’ Dennis said. ‘If they leave no evidence, and nobody talks, we have no case.’

‘How about the fact that Chris survived?’

‘Nobody shoots another person in the head and expects them to live.’

‘But anybody who’s familiar with guns and wanted him dead would hedge their bets and use something other than a twenty-two subsonic,’ she said. ‘And still the question remains: why take the baby?’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I told you that I know how it sounds.’

Dennis had developed an incredible scenario but was it any more incredible than her musings about Houtkamp? Yes, she decided after a moment, it was. ‘This is out there.’

Dennis dropped the leaf and brushed his hands together. ‘It doesn’t really matter at the moment. Until we know more about what Sawyer did that night, we can’t say for sure whether he was involved.’

4.45 pm

Chris asked for the phone again, and dialled another number. ‘Hi Angela, is Dean home yet?’

He wasn’t but Angela said she’d pass on the message. In the background he could hear their kids yelling.

‘Perhaps he could come and visit me?’ Chris said.

She’d tell him. She had to go. She was always abrupt on the phone – because of the kids, Chris guessed. He couldn’t tell from her tone whether she knew what had gone on between him and Dean or not. He suspected not: if Dean had told her about that, she naturally would have asked the reason why, and that was a place Dean would never have wanted to go.

He pulled his pillow higher so he was sitting more upright. The room turned and the black spots appeared but he needed to overcome his dizziness. The nurses kept telling him to rest, to save his strength for getting better, that was the best way he could help Lachlan, but none of them understood. Even Sophie didn’t get it. No matter how bad she felt, it wasn’t her fault that Lachlan was gone.