The Darkest Hour (2 page)

She pointed into the alley with her thumb, and they walked together, the cops with the barrels of their four-cell Maglite torches resting on their shoulders.

At the body the officers stared at the face.

‘It’s him all right,’ the shorter cop said.

‘No great loss,’ his mate said, shining his torch beam straight into the dead eyes.

‘No loss at all.’

The taller cop shone his torch around and down the alley. ‘See anything?’

‘Two guys ran out, that’s why I stopped,’ Lauren said. ‘Young one, a prostitute by the look, ran down the street, and an older one jumped in a car and took off.’

‘See the model, the plates?’

She shook her head.

‘Hang around for the Ds, give a description of the men?’

She stuck her hands in her pockets. ‘Sure.’

The officer looked at his shorter partner who was still staring at the body. ‘Call it in, would ya?’

Lauren pressed her back against the ambulance while the police set up around the crime scene. She finished what was left of her coffee but kept the empty cup in her hand, something to hold onto. Her throat was sore but she’d climbed into the ambulance and checked her face and neck in the mirror, on the pretext of getting something out of her eye, and she knew she looked okay.

Five detectives, recognisable by their civilian clothes, stood on the footpath talking, then one came her way. ‘Lauren, is it? What station’re you at?’

She nodded. ‘Lauren Yates, from The Rocks.’

The man scribbled in a notebook. ‘I’m Detective Lance Fredriks. The officers said you saw two men running away?’

Lauren told the story. The detective’s eyes never left her and she felt self-conscious about her words and the way they came out of her mouth. Did lies look different from the truth? When she described the young man as a little taller than her, about twenty, with dark hair and a limp, could the detective spot the misdirection? The last thing she wanted was for the young man to be found, because he might have seen Thomas or the dark shape, and then the police would come back to her with their eyes and their questions once more.

The other man who’d run out of the alley was easier; she said what she’d seen, which was close to nothing. Older, heavier, with a car. No way he’d be found, or come forward.

‘You saw nothing else?’

‘Not a thing,’ she said, crumpling the cup in her hand.

The rest was the usual: come to the station in the morning for the formal statement; I’ll be in touch if there’s anything else. Lauren nodded and smiled.

‘Thanks,’ the detective said.

‘No worries.’

Five months later, on a bright morning in early summer, the Coroner declared Stewart Blake’s death a homicide carried out by persons unknown. The unsolved case would be relegated to a file drawer somewhere, to be taken out by an officer now and again, the pages flipped through, the cover signed and dated, then shoved back into the dark once more.

Her uniform damp with sweat, Lauren walked from the Glebe Coroner’s Court past the media crews. She wanted to forget the whole thing, forget the way that one lie led to another, then another, and next thing you were holding the Bible and swearing and hoping like hell you could remember the notes you’d scribbled on the Gilly’s paper serviette as soon as you’d left the scene about how you’d described the men you saw, because lies were harder to remember than truth. She’d studied those words for half an hour that morning then burned the paper in the bathroom, flushing the charred remnant and opening the window afterwards and watching the smoke blow out.

Felise had come in, nose wrinkled. ‘Max’s dad smokes in the bathroom too.’

‘I wasn’t smoking,’ Lauren had said, reaching for the brush, smoothing it over the thin silky hair on Felise’s narrow head. ‘I think the smoke came in from outside. Somebody must have a fire in their garden.’

Felise wanted to climb onto the toilet to look. They’d stood there, Felise’s thin hot arm around Lauren’s neck, her breath warm against her cheek. Lauren had watched her niece’s wide blue eyes move as her gaze roamed the neighbourhood. ‘What can you see?’ she’d said.

‘The whole wide world.’

Lauren had hugged her close.

How could Thomas even contemplate hurting her?

How could he call her ‘the kid’, as if she was just
some kid
, and not the centre of the world?

She could almost feel the slight body in her arms again now as she stood at the lights, almost hear Felise’s giggles over the noise of the traffic rushing along Parramatta Road.

The kid.

The light turned green and she strode across the street, sure of herself again.

Detective Ella Marconi turned to the next page in the print-out and rested her forehead in her hand. Across the room Detective Murray Shakespeare was fiddling with the aerial of an ancient radio he’d dug up from somewhere, and the staticky whine of its poor reception made Ella grit her teeth.

Murray swung the aerial in a wide arc. ‘Stupid thing.’

‘Do we really need music?’

‘Sit in here all day reading these lists, drive anyone nuts.’ There was a quick blat of sound and he stopped the aerial short, feeling for the spot on the airwaves.

Ella tried to focus on the page before her. Her eyes blurred and the numbers ran into each other. She felt surrounded, leaned in upon, by the stacks of print-outs looming on the desk beside her. Of all the things she’d imagined she’d get to do in the Homicide Squad, searching for three specific phone numbers in a list of thousands had been strangely missing.

‘–
Eagers think he’s doing?
’ a voice shouted from the radio and Murray fumbled for the volume. ‘
Zero tolerance is what’s needed in this country, not the namby-pamby softly-softly approach. Next thing, Eagers and his cronies in State parliament will be offering to hold the hands of the criminals, offering them counselling to help them deal with the traumatic experiences they had as dealers.
’

‘We might need something to listen to but that’s not it,’ Ella said. ‘The Family Man’s rantings are more than I can stand.’

But Murray held the aerial perfectly still.

‘
This drug amnesty will do nothing for our country’s youth,
’ the voice barked. ‘
All it does is get rid of some higher dealers for long enough for the ambitious small-timers, the ones who’ve just been given immunity from prosecution, to move up the ladder and take their places.
’

‘Turn it off,’ Ella said.

Murray turned the volume down till the words became indistinct. ‘He’s got a point.’

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Ella said.

‘You don’t think he’s right about the ambitious small-time dealer?’

‘Better that we do something than nothing.’

‘Not if it makes the situation worse,’ Murray said.

‘How can it be worse? Look what’s happened in just the last few months with ice. If we can get information on some of the importers, find out how they’re getting it into the country, there’s not only some bad guys locked up but also some channels they can no longer use.’

Murray shook his head. ‘We need to lock them all up, big or small. Freely giving people immunity like this is just wrong. It’s like waving the big white flag: “Do what you want – we don’t care.” ’

‘As if getting the small guys off the street won’t then allow even smaller ones to come up,’ Ella said. ‘At least this way we strike some bigger blows.’

Murray switched the radio off and sat down. Ella turned to the next page of numbers and bent closer to it, but still her concentration wandered. The bustling Homicide office was three floors down and they were stuck up here in a file room dusty with disuse. Their boss, Detective Sergeant Kirk Kuiper, had said he’d call if he needed them. She leaned over and picked up the phone, listened to the dial tone, and put the handset down. Murray watched, then sighed.

They took a break twenty minutes later. Murray stood staring out the window, his coffee steaming the glass. Ella got out her mobile and dialled Detective Dennis Orchard. They’d trained together at Newtown, centuries ago it felt like, then worked at Hunters Hill while dreaming of Homicide. Dennis got his transfer a few years ago, leaving her pissed off and certain that her application was being stonewalled by an evil cabal working with then-Assistant Commissioner Frank Shakespeare, who she’d once inadvertently told to get the fuck out of her crime scene. (Not that she’d ever admit to Murray the hold she believed his father had over her career.) But earlier in the year Dennis had brought her in to work the Phillips case with him, and it had finally felt like the first step in the right direction.

The bad thing was that it could also mean a quick slide backwards.

‘No news?’ she said when Dennis answered.

‘They’ll call you before they call me,’ he said.

‘Sometimes my reception’s crap up here.’

‘Oh sure,’ he said, a smile in his voice. ‘I’ll send a carrier pigeon if they call me first and I can’t reach you, okay?’

She put the phone away. Murray was looking at her. She shook her head.

She’d run through the incident in her mind a thousand times, a thousand times a thousand, seeing the kidnapper outlined against the background of sky and trees, gun aimed at Chris and Sophie Phillips who were curled up together on the grass. Ella remembered her sprint across the slope, her own gun out. Her voice shouting ‘Drop it! Drop it!’ and then the moment of knowing she had no choice, the kidnapper was about to shoot, and she’d held her breath and pulled the trigger. There was the noise, the recoil, and the sight of the kidnapper falling to the ground. And then she’d reached the couple, sobbing with their arms around each other, and the beautiful, perfect and safe little child between them.

She rubbed her forehead, shielding the dampness in her eyes in case Murray was looking.

She’d thought about that child, Lachlan Phillips, a lot, and talked about the case at length with Dennis, and read her copy of the statement she’d given to the Critical Incident Team detectives so often the pages were soft and creased. She always came up with the belief that she was one hundred per cent justified in the shooting, but still couldn’t be sure the Team’s verdict would go her way. Even with the broom of Strike Force Gold having swept more than a few officers out of the job, clearing sufficient space in the various squads for fresh blood – including her and Murray – to step into temporary secondments, she knew that a poor report from the Team would see her shipped straight back to the suburbs. Even an average report, combined with an average performance during her secondment, could see her gone.

What she needed was a great case. Something open and shut – something with clearly defined good and bad guys, strong solid witnesses, textbook evidence and a good hearty sentence at the end. Something she could get stuck into, proving that she did have skills, that she knew how to work a case and was worthy of a permanent spot.

She stared at the phone.

L
auren caught the bus from the Coroner’s Court through the city to The Rocks and walked up the top end of George Street to the ambulance station. The roller door was up and her work partner, Joe Vandermeer, stood on the footpath talking to a group of tourists. Laughter rose as she neared them. Joe posed, smiling, by the ambulance and two of the group took pictures. They thanked him in Scottish accents before wandering off.

Joe smiled at Lauren. ‘Look at you. New boots, new belt, new tie.’

‘Got to be spiffy on court day.’ She yanked the tie off.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Got to change my shirt though.’

‘Court always makes me sweaty too.’ He followed her inside. ‘They sent a guy over from Randwick but he went home sick about half an hour ago,’ he said through the locker room door.

Lauren threw her grimy shirt into her locker and pulled on a fresh crisp one. She did up the buttons, avoiding herself in the mirror. ‘Were you busy?’

‘Nah. Nothing interesting either.’

She pushed open the door. ‘Good. I don’t want you running round doing fun things without me.’

He grinned at her. ‘I told Control that. I said he had to hold the good stuff for this afternoon.’

The phone rang. Joe lunged for it. ‘Rocks, Joe.’ He bent over a scrap of paper. ‘Okay, yep, gotcha. Ta.’ He put down the phone and gave Lauren a double thumbs up. ‘Man’s crying in Woolloomooloo.’

‘What man?’

‘Some man,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. The neighbour called it in, said she can hear this guy through the wall, crying.’

‘Call this good stuff?’ Lauren grabbed her bag and the keys and followed Joe to the ambulance. ‘They ever think to knock on the door, ask him if he’s okay?’

‘They call, we haul, that’s all.’ Joe got into the passenger side.

‘It’s crap.’ Lauren slammed her door. ‘Imagine this guy’s face when we turn up. I vote that after we talk to him, we talk to this neighbour.’

She started the engine and drove out of the station. Joe hit the remote to close the roller door. Lauren turned on the lights and siren and pushed into the traffic on George Street.

‘I don’t know if it’s that urgent,’ Joe said.

‘They call it, I floor it, that’s all.’

‘That doesn’t rhyme,’ Joe said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Because I can’t rhyme?’ She punched the horn to change the siren from wail to yelp as she approached a red light.

‘You’re all antsy.’ He looked out at the traffic. ‘Clear this side.’

Lauren accelerated through. ‘Court.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘Whenever I’m up there in that box I feel like I’m the one in trouble. I feel I have to be so careful with my words, that the lawyers are waiting for me to make a mistake and then they’ll get me.’ His hands seized and mock-strangled his own throat.

‘The families of the dead guy’s victims were there,’ Lauren said.

‘Oh.’ Joe dropped his hands. ‘You’re clear this side.’

Lauren had watched the faces of the people in the courtroom as she described how she’d found Blake’s body. There was one woman, about the same age as Lauren, whose right eye twitched while Lauren told how she’d checked for a pulse, as if she couldn’t imagine touching the man’s flesh herself. Or maybe she could, and thought about more than just touching it. Maybe she imagined the satisfaction of bringing down the unrecovered blunt object, of feeling the skull crack and sink deeper with each wet blow.

The fact that so many of the victims had come to court more than twenty years after Blake had assaulted them was evidence of his effect on their lives. Thinking about that, and seeing that woman’s twitch and the lined faces of the older people that were probably the victims’ parents, had made her feel that Thomas had done something of a community service. She’d read somewhere that people like Blake could not be rehabilitated. Whether or not he deserved to die, children deserved protection. Nobody could argue with that.

‘Bus,’ Joe said.

‘I can see it.’

She wondered, though, why Thomas had done it. He hadn’t grown up here, couldn’t have been a victim of Blake’s.

‘Clear this side,’ Joe said.

Thomas and Kristi had been together almost a year, and Lauren had been glad when he disappeared soon after the car accident. He’d eventually written from Austria to say he’d been deported for overstaying his visa, how that meant he couldn’t come out again, he was so sorry, but by then Kristi had been clean for a couple of months and able to recognise their relationship for the disaster it had been. She’d sat in the neonatal ward cradling Felise and shaking her head over the man who wanted nothing to do with his daughter. It was no surprise to Lauren. Kristi, when pregnant and out of her head, had been foggy to say the least, so hadn’t noticed how Thomas always changed the subject when the topic of the baby came up, how he looked at her growing belly with distaste. Lauren, however, had seen, and remembered, and stewed.

‘Next left,’ Joe said. ‘Number four ten, flat seven.’

She had to put it all behind her now, stop thinking about it. The case was over, if not entirely closed; the cops didn’t give two hoots who’d done it, and they had enough work without spending more time looking; and Thomas had probably been back in Austria for months anyway. She’d protected her sister and that was all that mattered. After losing Brendan nine years ago, she knew that for the rest of her life she’d do whatever was necessary to keep Kristi safe from harm. Everything was fine. She and Kristi and Felise were free and clear.

She wriggled back in the seat a little, sat up straighter. ‘Four ten?’

‘Yep. There it is.’ Joe pointed, and Lauren switched the lights and siren off and parked in a no standing zone.

They met at the ambulance’s side door, pulling out equipment. ‘Bets?’ Lauren said.

‘Break-up with his girlfriend.’ Joe slung the Oxy-Viva over his shoulder.

Lauren twisted the portable radio into its clip on her belt. ‘I’m going with the utter hopelessness of life.’

Joe laughed and started up the stairs. Lauren followed, the monitor and drug box stretching her arms from their sockets. ‘Coffee at Gilly’s says I’m right.’

Joe reached the third-floor landing and knocked on the door. Afternoon sunlight streamed in the landing window and made the delicate hairs on the back of his neck glow. Lauren, looking up at him and climbing the last few steps to where he stood ready to knock again, felt a rush of happiness.

‘Hello?’ The voice was muffled by the closed door.

‘Ambulance,’ Joe called. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘I’m stuck.’

‘On the floor?’

There was no answer. Joe looked at Lauren. She pulled a face, the radar in the depths of her brain starting to ping. Joe leaned close to the door. ‘You there?’

‘It’s my head.’

The voice sounded like the speaker had changed position in the flat. Lauren whispered, ‘Let’s go back down.’

But Joe was reaching for the door handle. ‘He’s confused. Probably fallen, got himself a head injury.’ He raised his voice. ‘Sir? Do you need some help?’

Lauren looked at the other doors on the landing. ‘I’ll get Control to ring the caller back, see if they know anything about him.’ She put down the monitor and drug box and raised the portable radio. ‘Thirty-four.’

‘Thirty-four, go ahead,’ Control answered.

Joe opened the door and in a flash a man lunged out and grabbed him. Lauren saw the blade of the knife, the wild red eyes and the stubbled chin, caught the smell of his unwashed body.

‘Don’t,’ the man said, looking at her. She saw his decayed teeth when he spoke.
An ice addict
.

She moved slowly, raising her other hand to take the radio aerial between two fingers, showing him she wasn’t going to transmit. Before releasing the body of the radio she slid her hand along it and flicked the volume to zero. Control would call her again in a minute or so and she didn’t want the man to hear. If he made her say that everything was fine, forget she called, no help would come their way for an hour or more. If Control got no reply, they would realise something was up and send help.

Or she could throw it, she could throw it really hard and startle him.

Her eyes met Joe’s and read the silent message there. Joe was ex-Navy, trained in who knew what. She would do what he said. She lowered the radio to the floor beside the equipment, the sweat on her fingers making the aerial slippery.

‘Come here,’ the man said.

She walked slowly, shooting a glance at the closed door of the next flat. Maybe somebody would look out of the peephole and see what was going on. Maybe the person who’d called them – people loved to watch paramedics doing stuff. Or maybe somebody would trip over all the gear left on the stairs and realise something was wrong.

The man backed into his flat, dragging Joe with him. The knife pressed into Joe’s neck. Lauren could see where it obstructed his jugular, making the vein bulge above the blade. It made her own throat and neck sore to see it, a physical reminder of Thomas’s attack in the alley. She was shaking.

‘Now,’ the man snapped.

Joe’s eyes flicked madly from Lauren down the stairs, back to Lauren, back down the stairs. She shook her head slightly. They had a better chance if they stayed together. If she ran for it, who knew what the man might do to him?

She stepped inside the flat.

‘Shut the door.’

She did as he said.

‘Lock it.’

There was no way to pretend to lock the door and leave easy access for the police who would hopefully arrive soon. She turned the deadlock. At least the door itself felt flimsy.

The man adjusted his grip around Joe’s neck. Joe’s face was turning red and he made calming motions with his hands down by his sides. Lauren drew in a shaky breath.

‘What’s your name?’ she said.

‘That’s privileged,’ the man snapped. He wore blue football shorts and a faded Nirvana T-shirt. She could smell the rot on his breath.

‘I’m Lauren and that’s Joe.’

‘Shut up.’

She glanced around the small room without turning her head. The floor was covered with cracked and dirty linoleum. The only furniture was a pair of blue plastic milk crates. Aluminium foil was taped over the glass of the windows, blocking the alien death rays or mind-reading impulses or whatever he was fixated on. All but one window were closed. Lauren could hear the traffic on the street below through the small gap at the bottom of the open one.

A tiny kitchen area opened off the far end of the room, empty takeaway containers covering the bench and spilling onto the floor. To her left was another doorway, leading to a bedroom and bathroom she guessed. The place stank of rotting food and blocked drains.

She met Joe’s eyes again. The man’s arm was high up under his chin and it was clear he couldn’t speak.

Lauren swallowed. ‘Did the voices tell you to do this?’

‘Voices.’ The man hauled Joe backwards across the room to the wall and pressed against it.

‘I’m just wondering why you’re doing this,’ Lauren said. ‘What you want us to do.’

The man’s red eyes flicked about the room. ‘Are you with them?’

‘Joe and I are from the ambulance service,’ Lauren said. ‘We’re here to help you.’

‘How did you get the message? Did it come down from them?’

‘Your neighbour rang us on the telephone.’

The man’s eyes blazed. ‘God will get you, you know.’

‘Why don’t you let Joe go?’ Lauren said.

Somewhere outside a siren wailed. The man seemed to grow another ten centimetres at the sound. ‘Devils!’

This was bad. You couldn’t reason with a person who’d lost touch so completely with logic and reality.

Lauren wished Joe was free and they could talk about what to do. His face above the man’s arm was turning purplish. He was blinking at Lauren. Some kind of code? Or just dry eyes?

The siren grew fainter and disappeared in the noise of the city.

‘Please let Joe go,’ she said again. ‘Let him go, and we’ll just walk out the door and leave you alone.’

The man clacked his teeth together and peered towards the window.

Lauren took half a step forward. ‘If you need to look out there, you can’t do it while holding onto Joe.’

The man appeared to think about this. He took his arm from Joe’s neck and Lauren saw the knife had cut the skin. Blood trickled down onto the collar of his crisp white shirt. The man stepped to one side, the point of the knife at Joe’s chest. ‘Take off your shirt. Let me see the wires.’

‘There are no wires.’ Joe’s voice was croaky. He cleared his throat.

‘Let me see!’

Joe started unbuttoning.

‘You too,’ the man said to Lauren. When she hesitated he faked a stab at Joe and she held up her hands then grasped her buttons.

‘See?’ Joe said. ‘No wires.’

‘Sit down. There. Back to back.’

In her bra and uniform trousers Lauren sat on the cracked lino. The man grabbed a wide roll of silver gaffer tape and bound their hands behind them, then wrapped the tape around both their bodies. His proximity made her skin crawl, and she smelled his acrid sweat. Her heart kicked harder in her chest and the tape pulled at her skin. Drops of nervous sweat ran down her sides and she wondered how much it would take to defeat the tape’s stickiness.