The Darkest Hour (3 page)

The man went to the window and peered out.

Joe’s back was warm and damp against Lauren’s. ‘You okay?’ he whispered.

The man looked around. She pressed against Joe and didn’t speak. When the man turned his back she whispered, ‘What are we going to do?’

‘You should’ve run away.’

She moved her shoulder blades against him in an emphatic
no
.

‘Devils!’ the man shouted out the window.

That should get some attention, Lauren thought.

‘Devils, all of you!’

That’s the way. You tell them!

She felt Joe’s fingers slip inside the waistband of her trousers, then out again. She sat still. What was he doing? He tugged at something, then she felt her new belt begin to turn around her body. He was pulling it through the loops. She shifted her weight to help the buckle through each one, while watching the man ducking and weaving by the window. He looked like he was avoiding being shot. Aliens and their laser beams.

Joe stopped pulling on her belt. She felt it tighten for a second then go slack. He’d undone the buckle. His hands twisted and worked between their backs. He pressed the buckle into her hands and she grasped it, feeling pressure against it, realising he was trying to cut through the tape around his wrists with the buckle’s tongue. She felt the turning of his forearms against hers, felt the skin becoming slicker with the sweat of his efforts.

The man pulled a milk crate to the window and hunched down onto it, staring outside. Lauren hoped he’d forgotten about them. Maybe they’d be free before he remembered.

She wondered what time it was, how long it’d been since she’d called Control. Surely they would have someone on their way to check on them by now, once they realised they couldn’t raise her on the air. Surely this would not be the place of their deaths. But it was too easy to make a mental amalgam of the murder scenes she’d been to – the slumped bodies, the cut throats, the finger marks in the blood proof of the final struggle.

Joe’s back towered over hers, and when she leaned her head back it rested at the nape of his neck. She only did it for a second before realising it would interfere with his arm movements, but was aware even in that short period of time that they fitted together like they were moulded.

The man stood up. ‘Devils!’ he gasped, looking down at something in the street. The cops?

Lauren felt Joe work faster. The heat between their backs was intense. She could feel sweat beading on her face. She thought of the long blade of the man’s knife. A patient had once described how it felt to be stabbed, how you felt a blow like a punch rather than the sharp pain of the knife going in and out.

The man was muttering, making thrusting movements with the knife. Lauren tried to swallow. Her mouth and throat were dry. The air was hot to breathe. She and Joe didn’t deserve this. They only wanted to help. She wasn’t a religious person, and she didn’t believe in karma, but she wondered now if being stuck here with this psycho was what she got for letting Thomas go free then lying about it in court.

No. She wouldn’t think that way. She
knew
life didn’t work that way. How many good people had she seen hurt or killed just from being in the wrong place at the wrong time? What about drink-drivers (
like Kristi
– but she shied away from that thought) – how many had she seen stumbling out of wrecks without a scratch on them while the family coming the other way lay screaming in their mashed car? She needed no more proof than that to understand that they were here simply because they happened to be on duty and nearby when somebody happened to call. She shut her eyes.
They call, we fall. That’s all.

A siren sounded a short half-wail outside. Lauren pictured a cop making somebody move their damned car. How would this work? Cops kick the door down and stream on in? She strained for sounds of bodies massing in the stairwell, the soft shuffle of black boots and body armour, the smell of leather belts and gun oil and rescue.

The man’s attention was caught by something across the street, higher than them. He crouched, then darted to the side, then slammed the foil-covered window shut. He pressed against the wall facing them, looking at the ceiling and muttering. Lauren hoped he’d spotted police across the street, spying from a window to see what was happening. She hoped they’d seen her and Joe strapped to each other on the floor, knew where in the room they were, how far away the man was, at that moment anyway.

Joe changed angle. His movements felt increasingly desperate. The corners of the buckle dug into Lauren’s palms and she could feel the tension of the tape against it, as firm as ever. The tongue was cutting nothing.

The man seized the front of his own shirt and slashed at it with the knife. ‘Devils!’ His skin underneath was fish-belly pale in the gloom. The air was growing hotter and harder to breathe. Lauren flexed her biceps, testing the tape on her arms, but her sweat had made no difference.

Joe stopped trying to cut. His fingers took the buckle from her hands, then he put his palms on her lower back, curving around her hips. His skin was warm, his fingers spread wide. She pressed her shoulders against him. He adjusted his hands, as if taking a better grip, then pushed her to the left. Instinct made her resist for an instant then she felt his body going that way too and she let herself fall with him.

They thudded onto their sides on the cracked lino floor.

The man said, ‘What?’, and a second later a crowd of police in navy jumpsuits crashed through the door. The man went down screaming under a storm of shields and bodies. Lauren let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. A police officer cut the tape binding her to Joe, then the tape around their wrists, asking, ‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’, but Lauren couldn’t answer, could only let her head rest on the floor, her eyes on the most beautiful forest of boots and trouser legs.

Two paramedics from Headquarters rushed in, kits swinging from their shoulders. Marcia Dunleavy’s face was pale, her eyes wide as she helped Lauren sit up. ‘Shit, mate, you okay?’

Lauren pulled at the tape still hanging from her arms, suddenly needing to get it off. ‘Got any Hexol?’

Marcia rummaged through the drug box. ‘Here.’

Lauren squirted the alcohol solution along the tape where it stuck to her skin but it did nothing to the adhesive.

‘Let me do it.’ Marcia pushed Lauren’s hands away and started to peel the tape away. Lauren felt like a child being ministered to. She leaned back a little and found Joe’s back with her own. The other paramedic, John Hawthorn, was wiping at Joe’s neck with a dressing. Lauren felt Joe flinch.

‘Sorry,’ John said.

Lauren felt for Joe’s hand and gripped it as the police hauled the handcuffed and still-screaming man to his feet. The knife lay on the floor by the wall. Officers marched the man past Lauren and she made sure to look him in the face, telling herself he wasn’t scary any more. Joe’s fingers curled around hers.

A police officer brought their shirts over. The white cotton was stained with dirt from the filthy lino. Lauren couldn’t stand the thought of putting it on and dropped it back on the floor. Marcia Dunleavy put her hand on Lauren’s arm. ‘Sit tight and I’ll get a blanket.’

Lauren sat with her arms folded across her chest. She was shivering now, cold even in the stuffy room. Police searched the flat. One dropped the knife in an evidence bag. Lauren could see blood on the blade. She drew in a long shaky breath.

‘Okay?’ Joe said. He was on his feet. A dressing was taped to his neck. He reached down a hand to her. She took it and stood, weak in the knees. He put an arm around her shoulders, and when Marcia came back with two white cotton blankets he helped her wrap one around Lauren, then draped the other over himself.

Marcia said, ‘I’ve told the police we’re taking you to St Vincent’s for a check-up before you’ll do statements.’

On the landing Lauren looked across to the neighbour’s door. It was open and an old lady was peering out, her dark hooded eyes sharp on them. Lauren nodded, and the woman nodded back.

They walked downstairs as a group. Marcia and John carried their own gear plus the kits Joe and Lauren had taken up. It seemed so long ago to Lauren that they’d come up here, joking about the reason for the man’s crying. She could hear voices on the ground floor and pulled the blanket close around her neck and torso. She was aware of the beat of her heart and the movement of air in and out of her lungs. She wanted to go home.

The day had turned cloudy in the time they’d been held, and the gloom of the apartment block’s foyer gave Lauren an eerie feeling. She could see onlookers trying to peer through the grimy glass doors, and a TV crew frantically setting up. She felt Marcia gather up a handful of the blanket at her back. ‘Ready?’ she said.

Lauren nodded.

Outside the air was humid and full of noise. Marcia and John’s ambulance, twenty-seven, was parked beside Lauren and Joe’s. The hazard lights flashed just out of synch. As the group neared the vehicles the clouds parted and sunshine lit the world. Joe opened the side door of twenty-seven for Lauren and held out his hand. ‘Your chariot.’

She took his hand and pulled him to her. He smelled of nervous sweat. The blankets slipped partly off and Lauren was aware of the skin of her chest against his.

‘How did you know they were there?’ she asked.

‘Lucky guess.’

She looked up at him.

‘I know safeties going off when I hear them,’ he said. ‘Even through a door.’

‘Thank you.’

He kissed the top of her head.

Three ambulances and a supervisor’s car were already at St Vincent’s Hospital. The officers crowded around as Lauren and Joe climbed out of twenty-seven.

‘You okay?’

‘Joe, what happened to your neck?’

‘Was he a loony?’

‘Give them some space,’ Marcia shouted, still inside the ambulance.

Joe held the back of Lauren’s blanket as they moved towards the doors of the Emergency Department. She liked the feel of his hand so close to her back and let him steer her through the concerned paramedics.

The doors slid back and Joe’s fiancée, Claire Bramley, rushed out. She threw her arms around both of them, her RN badge poking the side of Lauren’s neck. Her grip was tight. ‘I was so scared for you guys.’

Joe shifted her arm from his throat. Claire gasped at the dressing. ‘What did that maniac do?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Joe said. ‘Doesn’t even need stitches.’

Claire pulled the corner of the dressing free but Joe took her hand. ‘It’ll be healed well before the wedding. You won’t look like you’re marrying Frankenstein.’

‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’ Claire looked him over, making him raise his arms in his blanket and turn around on the spot. She then turned to Lauren. ‘You okay?’

‘I am,’ Lauren said. ‘Thanks to Joe.’

He smiled. ‘It was nothing.’

Lauren felt a lump rise in her throat, and Joe went blurry. She clutched the blanket tightly around her.
Don’t cry, don’t you dare cry!

‘Come on, pilgrim.’ Joe nudged her. ‘I’m dying for a coffee.’

She followed him through the Emergency Department doors, breathing deep, her throat aching. The doors slid shut behind them and they were alone in the corridor, Claire still outside.

‘Lots of sugar, hey?’ Joe said. ‘Boost the levels.’

‘Joe.’ It came out squeaky. ‘I want to say . . .’ But she couldn’t say anything.

‘It’s okay.’ He put his arm around her.

She closed her eyes over her tears and rested her head on his shoulder.

‘Come on,’ he said after a moment. ‘Coffee and a sweet biscuit. You’ll feel like a million bucks.’

Lauren wiped her face with a corner of the blanket as the doors slid open and Claire came in. She stopped short just inside. ‘Weren’t you going for coffee?’

‘On our way right now,’ Joe said, and Lauren let herself be steered down the corridor, feeling safe with his arm across her shoulders.

I
n the café next door to the police building in Parramatta, Ella watched Dennis Orchard tear a cinnamon roll to pieces and stuff the largest bit in his mouth. He saw her looking and held out the plate. She shook her head. ‘Thanks anyway.’

He mumbled something unintelligible. He’d stopped smoking again, and looked like he’d put on weight over the last month. Well, she couldn’t talk, and she didn’t have giving up smoking to blame it on.

He swallowed. ‘Find those phone numbers?’

‘They weren’t there.’

He smiled and took a sip of coffee.

‘We’ve got a new list now,’ she said. ‘Twice as long.’

His mouth full again, he gave her a wink.

‘I’m in a holding pattern and I think I know why.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Unless that shooting report comes in clear they don’t really want me.’

‘Not true.’ Crumbs fell out of his mouth.

‘I also think it’s going to come back bad.’

He twirled a finger beside his forehead.

‘Why are they taking so long then?’ She put her folded arms on the table. ‘I knew this move was too good to be true. I’m going to be back in that little room at Hunters Hill before the week is over, I bet you.’

Dennis swallowed, grimacing as it went down. ‘It’s a committee thing. Plenty of red tape. They always take ages.’

‘I have a bad feeling.’

‘That’s hunger.’ He held out the plate again.

She pushed it aside. ‘If only I could get a strong case before the report comes back. They wouldn’t move me in the middle of an investigation, would they?’

‘They’re not going to move you at all.’

‘This city needs more murders,’ she said.

He barked laughter. ‘A case will come along soon enough.’

Maybe, maybe not.
‘How’s yours going?’

He shrugged. ‘Straightforward. Guy still denies killing his brother for his share of the inheritance, but it’s more than a million dollars and he’s in debt up to his ears. Blood traces on his shoes and clothes, witnesses saw him in the area, he’s behaving very nervously. I reckon he’ll confess by the end of the week.’ He bit into the final piece of roll. ‘How’s your mum?’

‘The actual hip replacement went fine but she picked up an infection.’

‘So she’ll have to stay in for longer? Bet that’ll piss her off.’

Ella didn’t want to talk about domestic stuff. ‘What’s the latest on Gold?’

‘Looks like they’ve tracked Wilson down. He turned into a bit of a hermit in the wilds of Scotland, apparently.’

‘Good,’ Ella said.

Evidence found in the previous case she and Dennis had worked together, the Phillips kidnapping, had indicated that Officers Wilson and Battye were part of the bank robbery gang that Strike Force Gold was after. In the six months since, investigators had discovered that the entire gang was police. Grant Battye had suicided, gassing himself in his car, while Matt Wilson and two others, Caleb Peters and John Fenotti, had disappeared. Two more officers had turned witness for the police and confirmed that Peter Roth and Angus Arendson were part of the gang too, though both were now dead. Dennis had told her they’d given up information on all aspects of the group’s operation, including details of offshore bank accounts where the money had gone.

‘Wilson’d need to be a hermit,’ Dennis went on, ‘seeing as we froze all his money.’

‘Living on moss and stream water,’ Ella said.

‘Delicious.’ He dabbed crumbs from the plate with his forefinger.

Ella checked the screen of her mobile.

Dennis smiled. ‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I need to know.’

‘Or what? You’ll explode?’

‘Don’t laugh,’ she said. ‘Maybe I will.’

Lauren’s head was throbbing by the time she and Joe had found theatre smocks to wear, gone over the entire event numerous times with their area supervisor then with a couple of detectives, and filled out the necessary reams of workplace injury paperwork. She wanted nothing more than to go home.

They were given the rest of the shift off. The supervisor dropped them at the station. ‘Sure you guys’re okay?’

Lauren nodded as Joe unlocked the station door. The supervisor nodded back then drove away.

Their ambulance was in the plant room, parked crookedly by the wall. John and Marcia had brought it back. Lauren remembered how she’d felt when they’d left the station in it that morning, and realised she’d hardly thought about court since then.
No big surprise.

‘You want a lift home?’ Joe said.

‘That’d be good.’

She checked her watch as they got into his car. Her headache eased a little and she decided that today’s events – both the court appearance and the hostage situation – were best locked away in her mind and never thought of again. Her attention would be better spent on the world ahead of her.

Joe lived in a small flat in Parramatta, so it was nothing for him to drop Lauren right at the door of her ramshackle rented terrace in Summer Hill. A train clattered past on the other side of the road as she climbed out then bent to look back in the open window. ‘Thanks again.’

‘You’re on the way.’

‘I’m not talking about the lift.’

He said, ‘Next time I tell you to run away, you better do it.’

‘And miss out on all that fun?’

He smiled at her. ‘See you tomorrow night.’

She stood up and he drove off. She started towards her front door but paused to watch the car brake at the corner of the street then swing right. She saw Joe’s head turn her way just before the car disappeared behind the wall of the railway bridge. She stood there a moment longer, then took in and released a deep breath.

She and Joe had worked together for almost two years and knew each other so well that they hardly needed to speak while on a case. Whichever one of them was treating the patients that day, the other knew what equipment they wanted and when to fetch it. They were great friends too; best friends, in her mind. She could talk about anything with him. She remembered a night when they’d been sent to stand by at a quieter north shore station and had taken the opportunity for a lie-down in the bunk room. She’d lain there in the dark, knowing he was in the bed just across from her, that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted. They’d told ghost stories like a couple of kids and when the job phone rang she’d hardly been able to speak for fits of giggles.

She was glad he’d been there today. His efforts to try to cut them free had made her feel less of a victim. It was a childish wish, but she hoped they’d be able to stay working together forever.

Inside the house she checked her watch again then ran up the stairs. She almost tripped over Felise’s one-eyed mostly bald toy gorilla and hoiked it with her toe into Kristi’s room, then in her own room she stripped off her uniform and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. She pushed her bare feet into runners then hurried back downstairs and out the front door.

The school bell rang when she was still a block away, and she moved faster. She only slowed once the group of mothers and younger children standing around the gate came into view.

Kristi was talking to another young mum. Beside her Felise clung to the fence, her red sneakers jammed into the weldmesh, her hands grasping the top of a metal post, her gaze fixed on the wide double doors leading into the school building. She wasn’t starting school until next year but couldn’t wait. Mondays were a high point in her life because they came to the hallowed buildings to collect their six-year-old neighbour, Max Saleeba. As a stream of children burst out of the school Felise stood up on her toes, neck straining, thin arms like sticks below the sleeves of her shirt. Kristi put her hand on the back of her daughter’s neck and leaned down to speak to her, and Lauren’s throat swelled. Times like this she imagined what it would be like to still have their brother Brendan around, how he’d have loved to play with Felise and would have watched with such pride as she grew.

She had done absolutely the right thing in court that morning.

As she reached them, the object of Felise’s urgent staring came into view. With his real uniform and his school hat and lunchbox and backpack, Max represented everything grown-up and important to Felise. Unable to contain her excitement any longer she jumped down from the fence and ran to the gate. Kristi watched with a smile on her face, a smile that grew when she caught sight of Lauren.

‘Let you off early, did they?’ Kristi said.

‘Something like that.’

Kristi came closer. ‘Have you been crying?’

Lauren shrugged and smiled and looked away at Felise who had Max by the hand and was dragging him over. ‘We can go now,’ Felise announced. ‘Hi, Aunty Lolly.’

‘Hi, Flea.’ Lauren smoothed Felise’s thin hair back from her narrow forehead. The top of the scar that ran down her chest was visible in the open neck of the pink ‘My Little Pony’ shirt.

They turned for home. The bells on Kristi’s embroidered slippers jingled and Lauren could smell the essential oil of whatever that she liked to dab on herself. It used to annoy her, but now it was the smell of home. Max and Felise walked in front, Felise with Max’s pack on her back, asking, ‘Who did you play with at playlunch?’

Kristi pulled a leaf from a shrub, crumpled and sniffed it, then passed it to Lauren. ‘Seriously,’ she said in a low voice, ‘have you been crying?’

Lauren gave the leaf a token sniff then dropped it. ‘It’s just work.’ She couldn’t go into detail. The incident reminded her too much of Thomas’s assault.

‘Keeping emotion in is bad for your spleen,’ Kristi said.

Lauren produced a smile. ‘My spleen’s tip-top.’

If somebody had told her five years ago that Kristi would be like this now, she’d have booked them into the nuthouse. But maybe some alcoholic drug-users were like smokers – there were none so rabidly against their old lifestyle as the reformed.

At their house Kristi unlocked the door and Max and Felise charged up the stairs. Max’s mum, Tamsyn, worked five days a week, and his dad, Ziyad, worked in an office on Mondays and from home the rest of the week, so that day Max spent the after-school hours at Lauren and Kristi’s. Lauren felt for him because he always wanted to run in their yard and swing from the tyre that hung in the ancient mulberry tree, but Felise and her will of steel forced him to play school in the big attic playroom first. From the living area on the first floor Lauren could hear her bossing Max around. ‘You sit there and be the teacher, and I’ll sit here and write in my book, then I give it to you and you mark it and give me a big gold star and tell me what a good girl I am.’

Lauren pressed the button on the answering machine. ‘
Hi, I’m calling for Kristi Yates
,’ a man said. ‘
We’d like you to come round and give us a quote for a feature wall in our courtyard. Can you call me back on
–’

‘Delete it.’

‘It’s a job,’ Lauren said, trying to hear the rest of the message.

‘He didn’t even say please.’

‘He might have at the end. I’ll rewind it and see.’

‘He sounds like a wanker,’ Kristi said. ‘Just delete it.’

Lauren ignored her, rewinding the tape and copying down the man’s contact information.

‘Told you he wouldn’t say it.’

Lauren played the next three messages, all left by people with similar requests, and wrote down their details. Across the room Kristi scratched with scissors at the grout that had dried around her nails.

‘This is money,’ Lauren said.

‘We’re getting by.’

‘Only just.’

‘We’re happy,’ Kristi said. ‘That’s what matters.’

The sound of running feet echoed down from the attic. Felise shouted, ‘No! You have to sit
there
!’

‘I have more than enough work to go on with anyway,’ Kristi said.

Lauren rubbed her forehead. The headache was coming back. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you.’ Kristi put down the scissors. ‘There’s no hot water.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m not a plumber.’

‘Did you call one?’

‘I only remembered just then.’

Lauren stood very still.

‘You want me to call one now?’ Kristi said.

‘Might be an idea,’ Lauren said. ‘Don’t you think?’