Violent Exposure (9 page)

M
ick woke at eleven thirty with a rumbling stomach. He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and went downstairs to find a note in the kitchen.
Gone to the park.

He grabbed four slices of bread, yanked on his runners and slammed the door behind him.

The park was one block down and half a block across. He jogged it, the bread going down in lumps, the sunlight making him squint when he looked ahead
to try to spot them. Lachlan liked the swings best, and sure enough there he was, giggling away while Jo pushed him.

Mick swung himself over the fence. ‘Hey.’

‘Mick!’ Lachlan shouted.

Jo smiled. ‘Short sleep.’

‘Knew I was missing out on too much fun.’ Mick hugged her tight.

The swing slowed. ‘Push!’

‘Sorry, mate.’ Mick pushed with one arm and held Jo to his chest with the other. ‘How are
you?’

‘Next question.’

He tucked her head under his chin. He felt the bones of her shoulders under his forearm and the movement of her ribs as she breathed. It was a week ago today that she’d screamed that she was bleeding and they knew they’d lost another one. Chris had offered to find someone else to mind Lachlan while he was at court today, but Jo had refused. The task was both a joy and
a heartbreak, and Mick squeezed her tight.

‘Puuush!’

‘Sorry, buddy.’

Lachlan’s back in the toddler swing was so little, so narrow. Mick’s hands dwarfed him.

Jo wiped her eyes and forced a smile. ‘How was last night? Did you get the letter? I thought you were going to ring if you did.’

She’d had her hands full with a screaming Lachlan when Mick got home that morning, and he’d gone straight
to bed, relieved there’d been no chance to tell her.

He said, ‘We were really busy.’

‘It’ll come.’ She tucked one hand into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘They’ll say yes and we’ll get the money for the next round before we know it.’

Mick’s fingers brushed Lachlan’s fat warm arms as he pushed. ‘Yep.’

‘Sixteen weeks,’ she said. ‘They can survive from twenty-four.’ She knew he knew. ‘Twenty-four.’
Her mantra, as if saying it meant she could hold on to the next one longer. Reach that point and everything might be different. ‘Eight more next time and we’re there.’

Mick let Lachlan swing by himself and pulled her close again. ‘I got the letter. They said no. I’m going to appeal it, and there’s a chance now, since last night . . .’ He’d explain later about that. ‘It’s not hopeless. I’m not
going to stop with them. And even then there are other jobs. Second jobs.’

‘Daddy!’ Lachlan shouted, and Mick turned to see Chris Phillips walking across the park. Jo lifted Lachlan from the swing and put him on the ground. He charged towards his father, who swung him up into the air. Mick had to look away. Jo seized his hand. ‘We’ll be okay,’ she said, but the words were high and choked.

*

Ella and Dennis found Daniel Farley pacing the first-floor landing in the block of brown-brick flats.

‘No word?’ Ella said.

‘Nothing.’

Ella looked at Aidan’s door. Somebody had smashed one of six small panes of yellow glass and cut themselves reaching in for the lock. Blood had run down the outer surface, and when she stepped carefully into the flat she found more on the inner side as well as
big drops on the floor. The place was otherwise neat, a blue fabric lounge by the window, a modest flatscreen TV on the opposite wall, silver iPod in a docking station with big speakers. Red tea and sugar canisters stood in a corner of the kitchen bench while a single crumby plate lay on the draining board. Three blown-up black and white shots of Aidan’s face and muscular upper body hung on the
living room walls.

‘We got here and found the place like this,’ Daniel said. ‘The door was closed but not locked, there’s no sign of him inside, no neighbours are home. We spread out with the canvass but nobody saw a fucking thing.’ He was sweating and ran a hand up his forehead. ‘Few blood drops on the stairs and then nothing. We don’t know whether he stuffed him in a car, dragged him down the
street, or what.’

‘Does he have a car? Is it still here?’

‘His garage is locked,’ Daniel said. ‘VKG says he has a blue ninety-seven Honda.’

Ella looked around. ‘No keys?’

‘None.’

‘Crawford busts in and abducts him and takes the house keys too?’

‘Maybe he’s going to come back and empty the place later.’ Daniel swept his face again. ‘Uniform and the others are still canvassing, and crime scene’s
on their way.’

‘Hmm,’ Dennis said.

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Daniel said. ‘We got held up in traffic on the way here and I keep thinking, you know, if only we were a bit quicker. If only we’d got here when it was happening.’

Ella frowned.

*

Lachlan wanted to go back on the swing so Chris pushed. His tie was loose and his suit jacket open. He looked tired.

‘The jury’s out,’ he said.

Jo slid her arm around Mick. He felt her fingers hug his hip. ‘How’s Soph doing?’ she asked.

‘Not good,’ Chris said. ‘Andrew says to say whatever I have to to keep her spirits up, but she just looks right through me.’

Mick nodded. Andrew Fermi was her barrister, a decent kind of guy he’d thought when being questioned by him. Sophie had sat in the dock watching him talk about the day they’d been
called to Julie Sawyer giving birth and the debacle that had turned into – the assault on him by Boyd Sawyer, the awful night when he’d had to tell her that Chris had been shot and Lachlan kidnapped.

‘She holds Lachlan like she’s drowning,’ Chris was saying. ‘I know she’s thinking about not coming home and it just about kills me.’

Jo hugged him and Mick took over pushing the swing.

Fermi had
asked him about the list of the worst ways to die that he and Sophie had kept in their heads. He’d explained how it came from jobs they’d done, and how Sophie had told him when Lachlan was missing that she’d realised there were worse things than death, that not knowing where her son was was worst of all. Fermi had then talked to the jury about violent exposure – about the things paramedics saw
and dealt with every day, and how this changed a person’s outlook on life. How Sophie knew from experience what could happen to an abducted child and this drove her to the edge of desperation and insanity, which in turn forced her to do what she’d done.

‘Higher!’ Lachlan shouted.

But the prosecution had taken the idea and run with it, putting to Mick on cross-examination that since Sophie had
been exposed to so much, wouldn’t he agree that she knew exactly what she was doing when she abducted Boyd Sawyer? When she put the IV in his arm? When she injected adrenaline and took him repeatedly to the brink of cardiac arrest in the hope that he’d tell her where her son was? She could understand what the man was suffering. She understood and she did it anyway. And she had admitted it all.

‘How long does Andrew think they’ll take?’ Jo asked.

‘He’s hoping days,’ Chris said. ‘He said if they come back this afternoon, prepare for the worst.’

‘Higher!’

Mick pushed, and thought about Sophie being found guilty. He didn’t want it to happen, but she’d done it, so it was hard to see how they’d decide anything else. It made him feel sick.

He’d thought he knew her. Now he thought that maybe
nobody ever knew anyone. If she could do that – she, Sophie, hugger of crying strangers, she who’d cleaned the blood-drenched bathroom of a dying cancer patient so his wife wouldn’t have to do it, she who talked him through the longest nightshift of his life after Jo’s first miscarriage – if
she
could do
that
, what boundaries were left in life?

*

‘Find a wallet?’ Ella asked.

‘No,’ Daniel said.

Ella put her hands on her hips. Something was wrong with the picture Daniel was building. ‘Are people checking medical centres?’

‘Yeah, everywhere. Just in case.’

Daniel’s phone rang. ‘Laurel, hey.’ He listened and smiled. ‘Good. Great. Thanks.’ He hung up. ‘He’s okay. Locked himself out, broke the glass, cut his hand, and walked to the doctor. He’s being looked at now.’

The medical centre
waiting room was full and smelled of impatience and Vicks VapoRub. A toddler screamed in a stroller while his mother tried fruitlessly to push a bottle in his mouth.

Detective Laurel Macy motioned for Ella and Dennis to follow her down a hallway. ‘I’ve told him about our worry regarding Crawford, but it doesn’t seem to be getting through.’ She knocked on a half-closed door and led them in.

Aidan Simpson sat on a high bed while a tall Indian doctor with a plait down to her waist bent over his left hand.

‘Just promise me it won’t scar,’ Aidan said.

‘Excuse us.’ Ella showed the doctor her badge. ‘Mind if we talk while you’re patching him up?’

‘Talk away,’ she said, picking up a wet gauze square with plastic tweezers.

‘That better not make it scar.’

‘It’s just disinfectant.’

Aidan
scowled.

‘Aidan,’ Ella said. ‘You know about Connor Crawford, and Detective Macy explained why we’re concerned.’

He watched the doctor. ‘Don’t stitch it. I don’t want stitch holes.’

‘Aidan, listen. The mere fact that we all came rushing when blood was found at your flat should tell you how seriously we’re taking it.’

‘Steri-strips will hold it.’

‘Aidan.’

He frowned down at his hand.

The
doctor inspected the bright red cut on the side of his thumb and said, ‘Stitches are best.’

‘No way.’

‘
Aidan
,’ Ella said.

‘You know how much money I make from that hand? You think anyone would want to buy a watch when they can see stitch holes in the hand modelling it?’

‘It’ll keep opening up when you use it,’ the doctor said.

‘Aidan!’

‘Steri-strips or I walk out and go home and do it myself.’

The doctor muttered something. Ella knew how she felt. ‘Aidan, look at me right now.’

He watched the doctor open a packet of Steri-strips then looked at Ella. ‘There’s no need to shout.’

‘You got any family that you can stay with?’

‘Why?’

‘Because Connor Crawford probably knows where you live.’

‘And what? He’s after me?’

‘Don’t mock us,’ she said. ‘We’re here for your safety, not our own
entertainment.’

‘Thanks very much and all that, but I’m fine. I did karate for six years. I go to the gym every day. I can bench ninety kaygees. Tighter there,’ he said to the doctor as she applied the strips.

Ella stepped close. ‘You saw Suzanne’s body for yourself. You know that Crawford got a taxi from close to your fat. What seems so fine about that?’

‘Really, I think you’re overreacting.’
He pushed the doctor’s hand away and smoothed the end of the last strip.

‘You want to bandage it yourself too?’ she said.

He didn’t reply, and looked at Ella, who forced down all the things she really wanted to say.

‘I cannot speak more strongly,’ she said. ‘Go and stay with a friend or family member for a few days. We’ll have someone take you home and wait while you pack some things and get
the glass repaired, then get you where you need to go.’

He was already shaking his head. ‘Forget it.’

‘Listen,’ Dennis said. ‘There’s no point being all he-man about it.’

‘He-man,’ Aidan said with a laugh. ‘Gee, thanks, granddad. But really, truly, I’ll be fine.’

The doctor finished the bandaging, said, ‘Pay the bill at reception,’ and walked out of the room.

Ella was turning away too. ‘Last
chance.’

Aidan restuck the tape on the bandage then slid off the bed. ‘I cannot speak more strongly. I will be fine.’

‘It’s your funeral.’ She marched into the corridor, blood thumping in her veins.

‘I hope you’re harassing the other guy like this.’

She came back. ‘You have one single second to explain yourself.’

‘Suzanne called me by another name when we were having sex.’ He restuck the
tape again. ‘Right at the climax, she called me Robert.’

‘She what?’ Ella said.

‘She shouted out the name Robert,’ he said. ‘So I hope you’re telling him to run and hide too.’

First Emil, then Aaron, now Robert. ‘You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?’

‘I really, really wanted to,’ he said, ‘but you were speaking much too strongly.’

‘It would almost be justice if Connor did get him,’ Ella
said as Dennis parked in a street near the Streetlights office in Kings Cross.

‘But what a loss to the world,’ he said. ‘You think Suzanne was impressed with those objets d’art on his walls?’

‘Had to be. She’s only female.’

‘As are you.’

‘Don’t talk about it any more,’ she said. ‘You’re making me all swoony.’

The Streetlights office was a cramped second-floor space reached by following gloomy
corridors between odd stretched-out fights of stairs. The door was held open by a plastic bottle filled with sand, a strand of tinsel tied round its neck, and behind a cluttered desk sat a squat woman with upright green hair, closed eyes, and a phone pinched between her shoulder and ear.

Ella knocked on the door and smiled. ‘Police, hello.’

The woman slammed the phone down. ‘Perfect. I wanted
an excuse to hang up on Telstra and here you are.’ She jumped to her feet and stuck out her hand. ‘Angie Crane, how’s it going?’

Ella introduced herself and Dennis.

Angie set up two folding chairs and said, ‘Please, sit.’ She herself perched on the edge of the desk and folded her hands in her lap. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘We have some questions about some of your charges,’ Ella said.

‘We
prefer the term young people.’

‘Specifically a boy named Emil,’ Ella went on. ‘To start with.’

Angie Crane nodded. ‘Emil Page. Good kid. Well, they all are really. Once you scrape off the shit from the first however many years of their life.’

Ella wasn’t sure she agreed with her on that. She’d met plenty of kids who had it deeper than just an outer coat.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Angie
said. ‘But just like how you naturally suspect the bad in everyone, I have to believe there’s good in these kids. Or I’d probably neck myself.’