Deserving Death (9 page)

He smiled back, but it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. ‘It’s going to be a late one tomorrow night.’

‘I know.’

‘So we should probably get a good night’s sleep.’

‘People still need breakfast.’

He looked down at the paper and mumbled something about coffee at the hospital.

She said, ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to stay tonight?’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to.’

‘Then what?’

‘I just feel I should go home.’

The elephant was squashing her against the wall. ‘Is this because of what I said earlier?’

‘What did you say earlier?’

She knew he knew. She could feel his back was up. If she repeated it they’d end up shouting and he’d storm out. If he was going to leave, she didn’t want it to be like that. ‘I can make you breakfast here if you’d prefer.’

He folded the paper and looked at the clock on the wall. ‘I’d better go.’

She sat there while he went into the bedroom and dressed. So much for the new Ella. So much for balance and happiness and peace.

*

After the bath, they got into bed and Linsey curved herself against Carly’s warm back, cupping her bare hip in her hand.

‘You’re shaking,’ Carly said.

Linsey pressed her face into Carly’s shoulder. ‘Life’s so fucking short.’

‘I know.’ Carly turned over and brushed Linsey’s hair back from her face, then traced the curve of her ear. ‘Will you move in with me?’

Linsey hesitated. ‘We’ve talked about this.’

‘I know. I’m asking you again anyway.’

‘It would mean . . .’

‘It wouldn’t,’ Carly said. ‘We’d do like you suggested before. You’ll say you’re my flatmate, and we’ll pretend the spare room is yours.’

Linsey blinked away tears.

‘You said it yourself, life’s so short,’ Carly went on. ‘I want us to be together properly, yes. But if I can’t have that, I want us to be together as much as we can. So we’ll work it however you need to.’ She tucked Linsey’s hair behind her ear. ‘Alicia’s dead, and all her plans and ideas are gone too. It makes me think about how I want to live, and whether I’m doing all I can to get there. So if we have to pretend to be flatmates, then we will. I don’t want to be apart from you any more.’

Linsey felt Carly’s hand cup the back of her neck, felt the warmth of her body, the movement of her ribs as she breathed.
She keeps me warm.

‘Okay, but not that way,’ she said.

Carly looked at her.

‘I don’t want anything to do with the spare room,’ Linsey said. ‘I want to move in with you as your girlfriend.’ The words, the thought, made her heart hammer.

Carly opened her mouth but didn’t speak.

‘I’m going to tell them,’ Linsey said. ‘Whatever the cost. I want to live the way I want, with you. And I know I’ve said that before, but this time is different. I’m going to do it.’

Carly pulled her close and wrapped her up tight. ‘And it’ll be okay,’ she murmured. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

Linsey pressed her head to Carly’s chest. She heard her heart beating, loud and strong. She felt her hand smooth her hair. She knew Carly was right, but at the same time she knew there would be a price to pay for that okayness. And despite her love for Carly, she was frightened of how high that price might be.

Eleven

E
lla called Callum at six thirty the next morning to wish him happy birthday but got voicemail. He must already be at the hospital, she thought. After he’d left last night she’d tried to keep being the new Ella, not thinking constantly about work, but that meant she just dwelled on the elephant. It was better to muse over Morris, and Hibbins, and what Carly’d said about Tessa. She felt much more comfortable thinking that way, puzzling things out.

She showered and ate breakfast with the TV on, and was brushing her teeth when the word ‘ambulance’ caught her ear.

‘The widow of John Butcher, eighty-two, who died after an ambulance took thirty-three minutes to respond to his call for help, has this morning staged a one-woman protest outside State Parliament,’ the newsreader said.

There was footage of an old grey-haired woman holding a blown-up photo of a similarly old grey-haired man outside the building’s barred fence, then footage of her holding a clipboard while passers-by signed, then shaking hands with some guy in a suit.

‘The Opposition’s health spokesperson has slammed the investigation as being too little, too late,’ the newsreader said.

‘The people of New South Wales need to be asking the government why it took the loss of seven lives to get this thing started,’ the suited man said to the camera.

He gave soundbite figures on budget cuts and staffing levels, then the newsreader went through the cases as photos of the seven were shown. A sixteen-year-old girl who fell off a horse on a remote property in the Blue Mountains; the ambulance officers couldn’t find her for an hour and she died in hospital three days later. A forty-one-year-old woman who collapsed at home alone in the middle of calling triple 0 from her mobile. She hadn’t been able to give any information about where she was, and by the time they’d worked out her address and the responding paramedics had climbed through a window to get in, she was dead. A fifty-four-year-old man who’d had chest pain and called triple 0 promptly, only for a glitch in the computer system to lose his case. He called again an hour later but died in hospital that night. An elderly man who’d called his doctor when his wife collapsed, and the doctor passed it onto the ambulance service as a routine case. When paramedics reached the house two hours later, the woman was comatose. She died the following week. And John Butcher. A ten year old suffering a severe asthma attack who was blue and not breathing when paramedics got to him twelve minutes after his mother called for help. He was later declared brain dead. A sixty-year-old woman who fell off a chair and hit her head while trying to clean a window. Her daughter called, the ambulance took twenty-nine minutes to reach her, by which time she was unconscious and died two days later.

Ella sighed. Like cops, paramedics did their best, but between staff cuts and poor information and trouble finding patients, sometimes things didn’t go well. She felt for the dead and their families, though, and knew she’d be unhappy and wanting answers too if someone she loved had died. It made her think about what a person might do if they were blinded by grief and held someone responsible. She remembered a case she’d done a few years ago, where a baby had been kidnapped and the mother, a paramedic, thought she knew who was to blame. An innocent man had died as a result.

Now the newsreader was talking about the murders. There were shots of Maxine Hardwick’s house and her body being carried out on a covered stretcher, then some of Alicia’s house, including a couple of seconds of Ella and Murray conferring in the street, and a couple more of uniformed officers going door to door. They then showed Maxine Hardwick in a years-old news clip, speaking about a fatal accident involving a busload of schoolchildren. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed, pretty and intense. The kids had minor or no injuries, but people in the other car had been killed. ‘It’s always a tragedy,’ Hardwick said to the camera. ‘Please, everyone, slow down.’

Then the breakfast talent came back on, talking serious-faced about police refusing to comment on links between the women, hinting about what that refusal might mean. It was always the way: when the media had few details, they stretched them out, read between the lines, inferred connections that weren’t there. But neither Bayliss nor Hardwick had been involved in the seven cases where paramedics had been blamed for deaths, and only two of those had happened before Hardwick’s murder. Besides, Ella thought, nobody rushed to join the dots if two cleaners were killed, or two doctors, or two journalists or students or librarians.

It still nagged at her, though, as she finished getting ready, then drove to work with her dressy shirt and pants in the back seat ready for tonight’s party – assuming she was still invited – and her present for Callum tucked securely in her bag.

*

The meeting room was crammed. Detective Paul Li from the Hardwick case was there again. Dennis got things moving quickly, which made Ella happy; there was an enormous list of things to do, and she wanted to get out there and do them.

First to speak were Charlie Sharp and David Watkins, who’d tracked down the taxi the blond man had climbed into outside Castro’s.

‘Bad news is the camera was broken, so there’s no footage.’ Sharp looked tired but bright-eyed. ‘Good news is that the driver, Manu Prasad, remembers him well. He said he looked to be in his late twenties, with messy blond hair, a big build but not fat, and his manner made him uncomfortable. He said the man wouldn’t tell him where he wanted to go, just said “Drive straight ahead”, then told him to turn corners as they neared them. He said he asked a couple of times for a destination. The man initially ignored him, then said angrily to just shut up and drive. Prasad started thinking about pulling over somewhere public and ordering him out, worried that the trip was going to end in a dark side street with him getting assaulted, but then they reached St Peters and the man told him to pull over outside the McDonald’s there on the Princes Highway. He paid Prasad, tipping him five bucks, and got out.’

‘That was right on 1 am, and the location’s about fifteen minutes walk to Bayliss’s house,’ David Watkins said.

‘How’d he pay?’ Murray asked.

‘Cash,’ Watkins said. ‘Untraceable.’

‘Did Prasad notice whether they seemed to be following another taxi?’ Dennis said.

‘No,’ Sharp said. ‘He said there were lots of cars around and none stood out in that way.’

Ella guessed that Prasad might’ve been watching the man in the back seat more closely than the particular cars in front, especially if he feared he was going to be assaulted.

‘Did he see which direction he went?’ she asked.

‘Prasad said he stood on the footpath looking at his phone. He – Prasad – drove away pretty smartly in case he decided to get back in,’ Watkins said. ‘Last he saw in the rear-view, the man was still just standing there.’

‘Make enquiries at the McDonald’s this morning,’ Dennis said. ‘They might have him on their CCTV.’

Detectives nodded.

‘The evening canvass of the residents around Bayliss’s house – her street and the neighbouring ones – located a man who heard a car idling late at night, near the end of the path that comes out near Bayliss’s house,’ Dennis said. ‘He looked out his window and saw a late-model Commodore, but couldn’t tell the colour apart from that it was reasonably dark.’

‘Red could look dark at night,’ Ella said, thinking
John Morris
. You always hoped that some nosy neighbour would not only have heard something but got a numberplate too, or recognised the suspect, or even written down a super-detailed description. She remembered the witness a couple of years ago who’d taken photos of a carjacking and helped solve her case.

‘He said the engine was turned off and a man got out and went down the path, into Bayliss’s street,’ Dennis said. ‘Describes him as average height and build, dark clothing, possibly short dark hair or a cap. He said he estimates this as happening around one, as he was about to go to bed. He heard the car start up and leave some time later, when the engine woke him from sleep. He doesn’t know what time that was, but said it felt like an hour or so later.’

Ella knew how sleep distorted time; you could wake up and not know whether you’d been out of it for five hours or five minutes.

‘The search of the path turned up nothing of interest, but we’re extending the canvass to see if anyone else heard or saw that car or person,’ Dennis said. ‘Overnight we had a lot of calls about both Bayliss’s and Hardwick’s deaths, most in the not-very-useful category: random allegations along the lines of a man one caller overheard five years ago in Brisbane saying he hated paramedics; others about aliens, the government and would-be paramedics trying to improve their job prospects. However, one woman said she was at Castro’s and saw the girls dancing together, and overheard two men talking about them.’

‘Over the music?’ Murray said.

‘Squeezed up at the bar apparently,’ Dennis said. He looked at his notes. ‘She caught the word “paramedics” and looked around, thinking someone was sick, and saw the men looking at the women dancing. One of them said something about asking to play doctors and nurses, and the other said, quote, no need to ask, just follow them home and take what you want.’

Nobody spoke. Ella thought of the post-mortem scheduled for this morning, whether they would find that Bayliss had also been sexually assaulted.

‘The woman didn’t know the men but thinks she’s seen them there before. She believes they’re friendly with a couple of the bar staff,’ Dennis said. ‘Pilsiger and Turnbull, you speak to her, find out what you can, and once we get the CCTV from the club see if there are any images to show her. Speak to the bar staff too and see what correlation you can work out there.’

The detectives nodded.

‘Then speak to Mark Vardy, Bayliss’s station boss. He was spoken to briefly yesterday when he arrived at the scene, but go deeper this time around. Were there problems, conflicts at work? Complaints? Look at her file. And look into her colleagues too.’ Dennis turned to Ella. ‘You have something new on that, correct?’

‘Last night I took a call from Carly Martens, the paramedic. She went to meet her colleague Tessa Kimball, who she felt had been acting suspiciously,’ Ella said. ‘Martens said that Kimball was nervous and on edge. She claimed she wanted to debrief but then didn’t say anything and left in a hurry. Martens feels sure that Kimball knows more about Bayliss’s death than she’s letting on, and certainly her apparent familiarity with John Morris doesn’t fit with the impression she gave us yesterday, that she knew him only vaguely through Bayliss.’

Dennis said, ‘You and Shakespeare go see Kimball first. Then you’re on the PM at eleven.’

Ella nodded.

‘After that, talk to John Morris’s friend and alibi Ben Trevaskis, and his flatmate, Patrick Green. Both are rostered off today.’

‘Copy that,’ Murray said.

‘Murphy and Hossain, you’re on the warrant for the CCTV from the club and then the footage itself,’ Dennis said. ‘It’s going to be a long day at the TV screens for you, I’m afraid. We need everything: outside the door, inside, whatever they’ve got. We need to see the women, see who was around, whether we can spot the blond man in any detail. Who the men at the bar might’ve been.’

Lola Murphy and Aadil Hossain nodded.

‘Katzen and Bennett, interview both John Morris and Robbie Kimball again. They need to know we’re looking at them,’ Dennis said. ‘Now, we’ve also got an eye on social media. A couple of Facebook pages have been set up, one called “RIP Alicia” and the other “Maxine and Alicia – save our paramedics”. The admins appear to be friends of theirs, and the content’s being monitored, as is Alicia’s personal page – nothing but condolences so far. We’re looking at Twitter too: people have been venting the same opinions that’ve been on the mainstream news media this morning, that there must be some kind of link.’ He gestured to Detective Li. ‘We’re looking into that, and also into the backgrounds of the families of the people who died in the recent ambulance cases, which was the other view being tossed around. I can tell you that nobody in the families has a criminal record, and neither Hardwick nor Bayliss were involved in any of the cases anyway. We’ll spread the net a little wider and check the victims’ friends next.

‘Finally, Alicia Bayliss’s family arrived here from Melbourne last night. I spoke to them, but they weren’t able to shed any light on possible suspects, saying that she had no enemies at all as far as they knew. Alicia had told them that she’d broken up with John Morris, but said it was amicable and that she was doing okay. They hadn’t met him but said she’d never given them cause for concern about him. They asked for thanks to be passed on to all of you for looking after her.’

Ella got goose bumps.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Any questions?’

Before anyone could speak there was a tap on the door and the admin guy put his head in. ‘Dennis, RPA’s on the line. A nurse in emergency has identified a patient as your killer.’

*

Kristen Szabo was trembling. ‘It’s him, I swear it’s him.’

Ella looked down at the unconscious body of the tall broad man, then up at Murray and Callum, standing on the other side of the bed in one of RPA’s resuscitation rooms. The man’s shaggy blond hair was damp and he was naked under heated blankets. His wet clothes lay in a bag on the floor. A catheter bag hung off the side of the bed, a small amount of dark yellow urine in the bottom, while IVs ran into both his arms. He looked to be in his late twenties. There was nothing distinctive about his face to either catch your eye or make you look away. His cheeks were pale with a light overnight stubble; his nose was plain; his lips neither thin nor full. His eyes were taped closed. He’d been found by a jogger that morning lying in the shallows of a duck pond in Sydney Park, deeply unconscious and with no wallet or identification.

‘Sydney Park’s not that far from Alicia’s house,’ Szabo said. ‘And look – look at the size of his hands.’ She pulled one free of the blankets.

‘Careful of the line,’ Callum said.

Ella glanced at him but his gaze was fixed on the patient.