Frantic (2 page)

‘You haven’t said anything, have you?’ she said.

He made a zipping motion across his lips. ‘Never.’

‘He’s so angry.’

‘Depressed,’ he said. ‘I think it’s post-traumatic stress.’

‘So do I. I tell him to go and see someone, but he won’t listen.’

‘It’s the culture,’ Angus said. She could smell toothpaste and the same cologne she’d inhaled that night.

He took the handwash from her and she watched his broad hands squeeze the plastic bottle.

‘It’ll take time,’ he was saying.

Sophie raised her gaze. She’d promised herself she would stop thinking about it. Wasn’t each thought another betrayal?

She felt guilty. She always felt guilty.

Mick came back and said to Angus, ‘That detective wants you.’

Angus handed the bottle back to Sophie. It was warm. ‘You guys going to the Jungle tonight?’

‘Betcha,’ said Mick.

‘Good,’ Angus said. ‘I’ll see you there.’ He walked away.

Sophie had forgotten about the night’s fundraiser at the Southern Jungle Bar. She pictured herself sitting at a table, Chris on one side, Angus on the other. Oh Jesus.

‘You’re still okay to give Jo and me a lift home after, right?’ Mick said.

Sophie had been abstinent since That Night. It was the only sensible response, and it came in handy for other people too. ‘I guess.’

She tossed her gloves in the ambulance bin. She rinsed her hands then put the almost empty bottle back. Mick climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘What’s that, the fourth robbery?’

‘If it is the gang,’ Sophie said, ‘it’s their fifth.’

‘And the third person they’ve shot dead.’

‘Only the second. The other one’s still comatose.’

‘Good as.’ Mick started the engine.

Sophie picked up the mike. ‘Thirty-one is clear the scene.’

‘Copy that, Thirty-one,’ came the crackling reply. ‘You can return for your twenty.’

‘Hallelujah.’ Mick aimed the ambulance back towards the Quay.

In Alfred Street he parked in the same bus stop, took the portable radio and got out of the ambulance. Alone, Sophie stared at the case sheet and considered what she’d write.

She wanted to make it clear that the police had done everything possible. It was ridiculous, but a defence barrister might suggest that the guard’s death had resulted from their ineptitude rather than from the actions of whichever scumbag was paying his bill. Sophie had seen it done before; hell, she’d been accused of similar incompetence herself. No matter how solid she made the case sheet, there was still a chance that accusations would fly, especially with one of the police officers being her husband. She could just imagine it: ‘Isn’t it true that you are covering for your husband? Isn’t that why you pronounced the man deceased right there and then? Because you knew he had no chance, because these officers weren’t doing their jobs? Because their mistakes would be picked up if a doctor was able to examine the victim at hospital?’

God forbid they found out about Angus too.

She shook herself and focused on her wording. She scribbled some notes on a scrap of paper and was just starting to write when Mick came back with the food.

He drove them around to their station in The Rocks. The old brick building stood on the corner of George and Gloucester Streets, right under the southern end of the Harbour Bridge. Mick hit the remote to raise the roller door and backed into the narrow plant room. Traffic rumbled overhead on the Bridge as it did twenty-four hours a day, and closing the roller door made no difference to the noise. Taped to the muster room’s noticeboard were packets of ear plugs. It was a running joke: on nightshift at The Rocks you were never on station long enough to lie down, let alone fall asleep.

Sophie left the unfinished case sheet on the bench in the muster room and they sat in the lounge to eat.

‘That ranks in the top ten worst ways to go.’ She spoke through a mouthful of kebab. ‘It’s got it all. You’re in pain, you’re going slowly, you can’t breathe, and you’re totally aware.’

‘Did you see his hands were all bloody?’

It was too easy to picture the dying man grabbing at his own throat. ‘Number three, I reckon.’

‘No, it’s worse than the steamroller,’ Mick said. ‘This guy knew.’

‘Didn’t we decide the steamroller guy knew too? You get caught legs first, you’ve got a second or two to figure things out.’

‘A second or two is quicker than this guy had,’ Mick said. ‘Muuuuch quicker.’

‘Okay. This goes in at two. The steamroller goes to three.’ Number one was kept vacant for the awful death even they couldn’t imagine.

Lettuce fell out of Mick’s kebab. He collected it in a pile on the coffee table. ‘Mind me asking – you and Chris okay?’

Sophie looked down at her food. Where was this going? Had he guessed something? If he asked her straight out was there something going on between her and Angus, could she look him in the eye and lie? Well, hang on, she thought. There wasn’t anything
going on.
There had been one incident. One.

‘Chris just seems really down,’ Mick said. ‘He had tears in his eyes when we were helping that woman.’

Sophie relaxed, just a fraction. ‘It’s since that assault. I think it’s PTSD.’

‘He should get some help.’

‘We argue about that every day.’ Sophie felt tears come into her own eyes. She was grateful when Mick looked away, intent on an OH&S poster on the wall.

After a moment he looked back. ‘It’ll be okay, Soppers.’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

6.58 pm

Chris was in the kitchen of their Gladesville home when Sophie got in. She dumped her bag on the floor and looked into the living room. Lachlan pulled himself up on the side of his playcot when he saw her, and she went to him and picked him up. ‘Hey, my boy, who’s my lovely boy?’ The sight of him, the feel of him in her arms, took away every bad thing the day had thrown at her.

She carried him into the kitchen. Chris was bent over a dish on the bench. She held Lachlan on her hip and smiled at the child.
My wonderful son.

‘There was a load of washing still in the machine.’ Chris’s tone brought her back to earth.

‘Dammit, I forgot to hang it out this morning before work,’ she said. ‘Will we put it out now?’ She nudged Lachlan’s forehead with her nose. ‘Will we, huh, will we?’ He grinned at her.

‘It’s done,’ Chris said.

‘Oh. Thanks.’ She raised her eyebrows at Lachlan. ‘At least we’re speaking.’

Chris didn’t look at her. ‘When were we not?’

‘What would you call it?’

‘We were at a job. I had work to do. Things to think about.’

‘You’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.’

‘I told you how busy I am.’

‘Yes, I know, and the robberies bother you, and the media pressure, and everything else.’ He didn’t answer. She wondered at her own behaviour, the way that without even planning to she poked at him with her words, trying to make him talk. Part of her swore it was for his benefit, that if he could talk about what was on his mind, even through provocation, he’d feel better. At the same time another part of her was terrified he’d turn to her one day and say, ‘You want to know the truth? The truth is I know what you did!’ A small cynical voice suggested maybe she wanted this to happen. She couldn’t stand the pressure, the secrecy, the guilt, and needed it in the open in the same way that she wanted his problems out there.

She noticed he was making lasagne. ‘Aren’t we eating at the Jungle?’

‘I don’t feel like going,’ he said. ‘I spent most of the afternoon doing a statement about the bank job and my head’s killing me.’

‘But it’s for Dean.’

‘I rang him. He said he didn’t mind that we wouldn’t be there.’

‘I promised Mick and Jo a lift home.’

‘You can still go.’ He spooned sauce into a baking dish. ‘If you want.’

She didn’t know what she wanted. Going meant getting out of the house, away from the uncomfortable silences and the awkwardness that now filled the space between them. Being around Angus would feel less weird if Chris wasn’t there, and although every time she saw Angus her cheating behaviour slapped her in the face like a cold wet fish, there was something secret and deep inside her that wanted to see him again. Wanted to remember what they’d done.

No.
She hugged Lachlan gently to her.
I am not going down that road. It’s dangerous. And wrong.

Chris continued to layer the pasta sheets and the meat. Sophie studied his face. He didn’t even glance at her to see if she’d made up her mind.

He doesn’t know, or he wouldn’t be quite so blasé about letting me go out without him, to a place he knows Angus will be.

‘Maybe I will go,’ she said.

Chris shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

She took Lachlan into the lounge room and sat down. Marriage was a minefield sometimes, and for the past five weeks she’d been stumbling through it blindfolded.

She sighed. At least she had Lachlan. He lay on her chest, still for a rare moment, his head against her neck. She inhaled his sweet baby scent. She’d been living her life flat out, running frantically from one thing to the next, with no time to sit and breathe. Lachlan must feel the same, passed continually between his parents and grandmother, depending on who was working and when. She should try to go part-time, if the mortgage would allow it – no, even if it wouldn’t – and make more time for him. She rubbed her cheek against the top of his silken head. He clutched at her throat and she stood him up, facing her, his feet stamping in her lap and his tiny starfish hands reaching for her face. She brought him closer. His fingers groped along her chin and came to rest on her lips. His deep brown eyes stared into hers, unblinking. ‘I love you more than anything, and I always will,’ she said around his fingers, and his face beamed with joy.

Fifteen minutes later, in the shower upstairs, she squeezed the shampoo bottle hard. Nine weeks ago their house had been a happy place. Coming home had been a delight. She and Chris had willingly shared household tasks and looking after Lachlan. They’d had small disagreements – who didn’t? – but they had always made up before the day was out. Then two months ago he had been bashed. Sophie remembered his bruised ribs and throat, his torn uniform shirt, and the story of how he and his mate Dean Rigby had fought with a suspect in a back lane in Surry Hills. Dean came out worse and was permanently off the road now: hence tonight’s fundraiser.

Chris had changed that day. He’d become preoccupied.
Much
less communicative. As for their sex life, well. He was quicker to anger, and they fought. Did they ever fight!

The night she’d done The Stupid Thing they’d had a big one. She’d tried again to get him to agree to see a counsellor. He’d said some things couldn’t be helped by talking. She challenged him to explain himself but he wouldn’t, and she took that to mean that he couldn’t. It was a bad move, she knew that now, because next thing he was accusing her of needing to control everything in their life, not just him but Lachlan too, and that their son would grow up under the thumb and hate her for it. She had walked out the door and went to the Southern Jungle, started drinking, and then Angus introduced himself. She’d thought about it a lot since, and sometimes she decided that what she’d done was due partly to alcohol, partly to anger, and partly to her wish to prove that she was not obsessed with control, that she could go with the flow as much as the next person.
See, Chris?
she’d thought, squashed into the back seat of Angus’s car, her head bumping the roof.
See how uncontrolled I can be?

Sometimes she decided even that could not explain it.

It was the worst mistake of her life.
But it was also – No.

She stepped from the shower and dried herself as though she could wipe the memory from her skin, and turned her thoughts back to her husband. The problem was that the robberies and the assault, on top of all the things Chris had seen and done in his years of service, were piling up around him like a wall he could find no way around. He was so lost he needed someone on the outside waving a big flag, calling in a loud voice, helping him discover the way through. And as his wife, wasn’t that her job?

She dressed in jeans and a red shirt then dried her long brown hair and tied it up again. Being on the road was no good for Chris, the way he was. The sooner he got a transfer into the Academy, the better for all of them.

The smell of baking pasta greeted her as she returned downstairs. Chris was perched on the lounge in front of the TV. Lachlan was on the floor nearby, looking at a cardboard book. Sophie stood in the doorway and watched the Police Commissioner speaking about the robbery on the news.

‘Secondly, I want to ask every person with medical experience to be aware they may be approached for assistance by this man. Do not accuse him or attempt to apprehend him yourself. He is armed and very dangerous. Call the police immediately.’ With all those microphones in his face, Commissioner Dudley-Pearson looked like a man being held up himself. ‘Finally, I want to assure the city that its police service is working extremely hard to catch the perpetrators of these robberies. And no, I will not be resigning.’ His bulldog jowls wobbled as he spoke. ‘Now more than ever the service needs strong leadership.’