Violent Exposure (18 page)

The thought made him shiver; then the thought that he might’ve just done the most stupid thing of his life – not because he might get caught but because of the ramifications both of telling and not telling her – made him feel sick.

But what could he do now? Take the money
back? Drop it here on the street somewhere?

At least in his possession it would go towards a good purpose.

The best purpose.

Somehow he would deal with Jo’s questions.

First things first. He picked up the radio microphone. ‘Thirty-seven’s clear, police are handling.’

‘Thanks, Thirty-seven,’ Control said. ‘Head back and collect your partner, please.’

‘Copy.’

He took South Dowling Street
towards the CBD, locking the money into a corner of his mind and focusing on Aidan’s work instead. He’d had poor trainees before, ones who’d panicked, who’d been unable to keep the dread from their face and the fear from their voice, scaring patients witless because if a paramedic was frightened things must be
really
bad. He’d had trainees who were more focused on impressing him with their book
knowledge than on giving the patient the care they needed. He’d had ones who performed for the onlookers, shouting encouragement at the all-but-dead patient during CPR, wiping sweat from their brows with a flourish, rushing self-importantly around the scene and bellowing codes into the radio like they were on TV. Aidan, though, was something else.

His mobile vibrated in his pocket. He saw Carly’s
name and pulled over.

‘So you’re taking the lad to Rozelle,’ she said.

‘It was a classic case,’ Mick said. ‘I couldn’t believe he had no idea.’

‘I’m so pleased you’re doing this.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Enough’s enough, you know?’

‘Good on you.’

‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘Long story but I have to pick him up.’

‘Make sure you call me and tell me what they say.’

Five minutes later, Mick turned
into Sydney Hospital’s ambulance bay to find the idiot leaning against a wall and reading Mick’s notebook. Mick’s first instinct was to cringe, but as Aidan flipped the cover shut and walked over, he told himself it was nothing to be ashamed of.

Aidan got into the passenger seat and shut the door. The new bandage was bright white.

‘How’s your hand?’ Mick said.

‘Fine. What job did you do?’

‘Concern for welfare that turned into a code four. All waterproofed in? Otherwise you should sign off sick.’

‘Good to go.’ Aidan tapped the side of the notebook against his thigh, then handed it to Mick. ‘You were gone for ages. Who was dead? An oldie?’

‘Drug dealer, looked like. Probably had a seizure and nobody was around to help him. Had to wait for the cops but they’re all over it now.’ Mick
tucked his notebook into his shirt pocket and drove out into the laneway. ‘Have you had a chance to think about that diabetic case?’

‘I need to practise setting up the burette, I know.’

‘You need to practise a bit more than that,’ Mick said. ‘Can you see where you slipped up with the diagnosis?’

Aidan put his elbow on the sill and looked out the windscreen. ‘I guess.’

‘So tell me what you
should’ve done.’

‘The things that you did.’

‘Which are?’

‘I’d better call Control.’

‘Not yet,’ Mick said. ‘Tell me what you’d do if the next call we get is just like that one.’

Aidan put his hand on the mike. ‘They might have a job for us. They might get angry.’

‘I’ll deal with it if they do,’ Mick said. ‘What should you have done at that scene?’

‘Blood sugar test.’

‘Start at the start,’
Mick said. ‘Danger, response . . .’

‘I’m not a complete idiot.’

Mick breathed long and deep. ‘So tell me then.’

‘Airway, breathing, circulation. He had all those.’

‘Then what?’

Aidan muttered something.

‘Sorry?’

‘You think you’re so great.’

‘What?’

‘You think you’ve seen and done everything and that you’re therefore so fucking wise.’

Mick looked at him. ‘What exactly is your problem?’

‘You guys who’ve worked on the road for a while think you can lord it over the rest of us, rubbing it in when we don’t recognise something the absolute instant we get out of the truck, bringing it up over and over again later to make sure nobody can forget –’

Mick stomped on the brake. ‘I bring it up because you need to learn.’

‘You bring it up to make yourself feel like a fucking hero,’ Aidan
said. ‘I knew it even before I saw that poem in your notebook.’

‘That poem isn’t –’

‘What’s that line?
Can I forget the voice of one who cried, For me to save him, save him, as he died?’

Mick bristled. ‘You’re totally missing the point.’

‘Who carries shit like that round with them? A fucking wanker, that’s who.’

The notebook was a steady comfort over Mick’s pounding heart. ‘You have no idea
about any of this job.’

‘But I can guess you’re about to tell me.’

‘More than that.’ Mick grabbed the microphone. ‘Thirty-seven to Control.’

‘Go ahead, Thirty-seven.’

‘Request permission to go to Rozelle to meet with the training coordinator re my trainee.’

‘What?’ Aidan said.

Control said, ‘Sorry, Thirty-seven, I have a job for you. Woman query unconscious in the toilets of Hyde Park Barracks.
Do my best to get you there after that.’

‘Thirty-seven’s on the case.’ Annoyed at the delay, Mick rehooked the mike and reached for the lights and siren.

Aidan said, ‘This is bullshit.’

Mick swung the ambulance around at the lights, determined not to answer him.

‘I know I could do better, but that murder’s on my mind,’ Aidan said. ‘Maybe you’re a cold bastard who can move on instantly but
some of us have a heart.’

Mick’s hands were tight on the wheel.
Don’t you dare talk to me about heart.

‘You think I should be perfect at everything, that I should know as much as you do after whatever-the-fuck years in the job.’ Aidan pulled on gloves, slow with his bandaged hand.

The blood thundered in Mick’s veins.

‘It’s not my fault you forget I’m only three months in.’

Mick braked hard
at the end of Macquarie Street. ‘I expect you to know only what any trainee knows,’ he snapped. ‘And any trainee should recognise a bad hypo when he sees it.’

At the Barracks’ front gate, a woman was waving them around the corner.

‘So I slipped up,’ Aidan snapped back. ‘You never made a mistake?’

Mick floored it around the side of the Barracks then another woman gestured wildly for him to pull
through a gate into the grounds. He stamped on the brakes in the gravel. ‘Oh, was it only the one you made?’

Aidan flung his seatbelt aside. ‘I’ll fucking show you.’

‘I just wish you could.’

Aidan jumped out and grabbed the Viva from the back. ‘She’s in there,’ the gesturing woman gasped. ‘She looks really bad.’

Mick hauled out the monitor and drug box and looked pointedly at Aidan.
You think
you know better than me, you go right on ahead.

Aidan marched towards the building. Mick pressed the remote to lock the ambulance then followed. There was no way he’d let any harm come to this woman but it was time that Aidan learned just how much he didn’t know.

*

Ella closed her mobile. ‘Katie Notts has no record. No record, no alibi.’

‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ Dennis said. ‘Kidding.
Lucy and Dan have the restaurant patrons, but Ben and Scott have only each other as an alibi.’

‘Suzanne didn’t hit on them and upset them like that.’

‘That we know of.’ He pulled up outside Stewart Bridges’ house in Stanmore. ‘This weasel here’s our prime real estate now.’

‘You stole my word.’

‘It fits so well.’

Ella went up the narrow path and banged the side of her fist on Stewart Bridges’
door. It was time they took him to the station for a formal interview; time they found out what was really going on between him and the Crawfords, especially in light of what Katie Notts had said about Suzanne planning to try Bridges next.

There was no answer.

‘I’ll check the back,’ Dennis said.

Ella tightened her fist and hammered on the wood.

‘Hello?’ An elderly woman was looking over the
low fence from next door, a tea towel in her hand.

‘Hi.’ Dennis held up his badge. ‘We’re looking for Stewart. Do you know if he’s home?’

‘He’s gone away.’

Ella’s back prickled. ‘Where to?’

‘Somewhere on the south coast,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the name of the town. He asked me to get his mail.’

Ella swore under her breath. ‘When did he leave?’

‘How long did he say he’d be gone for?’
Dennis asked.

‘He left earlier today and said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.’ She frowned. ‘Is he okay?’

‘I don’t suppose he gave you his phone number or address there?’

She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Do we have his mobile number?’ Ella asked Dennis in a low voice.

‘In the statement, I think.’

Ella smiled at the woman and gave her her card. ‘Please get in touch if you see him around, or
if he contacts you, or if you happen to remember the town he went to.’

In the car she said, ‘So much for being all distraught about finding his friend’s body.’

Dennis was already on the phone to Hepburn in the office. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘He’s looking.’

‘Crawford’s car was snapped heading south. Do you think Connor could be down the coast as well?’

‘You’re thinking they
might be meeting up there?’

‘What if Suzanne wasn’t the only one sleeping with various guys?’

‘Connor and Stewart?’ he said. ‘Yeah, I’m here,’ he said into the phone, and scribbled a mobile number in his notebook. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and hung up.

‘What if they were?’ Ella said.

‘And what – they killed Suzanne so they could be together?’

‘Maybe it was Connor who called while we were in Stewart’s
lounge room,’ she said. ‘Who told him to shut up. Can we hurry up those phone records?’

‘We can try. You ring Bridges while I call the office back.’ Ella got out of the car and flattened Dennis’s notebook on the bonnet. The day was bright and she took a deep breath of warm air then dialled.

‘
Hi, you’ve called Stewart Bridges, photographer. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back
to you as soon as I can.
’

She hung up. Her number would show as a missed call and if he didn’t think to compare it to the card she’d given him he just might be curious enough to call back. Fat chance really, but if she left a message she could pretty much guarantee she’d never hear from him at all.

Back in the car it was getting hot. Dennis folded up his phone, started the engine and switched
on the aircon. ‘Hepburn’s trying to pull some strings and is putting out an alert for Bridges’ car too.’

‘Slimy little weasel.’ Ella felt antsier than ever and itched for someone to confront. ‘How far’s that bakery where Emil the ex-Streetlighter works?’

*

Mick stood in the cubicle doorway with his hands in his pockets. He’d taken a quick look over Aidan’s shoulder at the woman lying with her
arms wrapped around the toilet base then stepped outside to thank the two hovering staff and say that they could go back to work, he and Aidan would be fine.

Now Aidan knelt on the concrete floor with one gloved hand on the woman’s arm, saying, ‘Can you hear me? What’s your name?’ over and over again.

Mick leaned against the doorframe and kept a straight face.

Aidan attached the oxygen saturation
monitor to the woman’s finger. ‘Ninety-eight per cent.’ His hand lingered over the oxygen masks but he apparently decided – rightly – that she didn’t need supplemental oxygen and reached deeper into the Viva instead. Mick bet himself that he was going for the sphygmo and would take a blood pressure, more for something to do rather than with any reason or possible diagnosis in mind.

Sure enough.

‘One-oh-five on seventy-five,’ Aidan said.

Mick didn’t reply.
Until he asks for it, no more help.

The woman groaned and Aidan grabbed her arm. ‘Can you hear me? What’s happened?’

Mick almost wished he had a chair.

Aidan opened the monitor. He attached the dots to the woman’s chest and ran an ECG strip. He studied it, then held it out to Mick, who kept his hands in his pockets. Aidan put the
strip on the closed toilet lid. ‘Looks fine,’ he said, almost to himself.

Mick shifted his weight. Aidan glanced up at him and missed the split second when the woman peeked. Her gaze met Mick’s then she snapped her eyes shut again, and when Aidan looked back at her there was nothing to see.

Aidan sat back on his heels.

Mick bit his lip.

Aidan opened the drug box and looked in. Mick saw the
instant he spotted the blood sugar kit, that buzz at having something else to do, and watched him get it out and set it up.

‘I’m going to prick your finger now and get a little drop of blood,’ he said to the motionless woman. She didn’t flinch when he jabbed the lancet into her index finger. Mick admired her fortitude.

Aidan held the cotton ball on her finger to stop the bleeding while watching
the machine’s tiny screen. ‘Four-point-two.’

Again Mick said nothing.

Aidan shook her arm and asked the questions again, then took another blood pressure. ‘One-oh-five on seventy-five.’

Mick stayed silent and still.

Aidan said, ‘Get the stretcher, please, and we’ll transport.’

‘What’s your diagnosis?’ Mick said.

‘Unconsciousness of unknown origin.’

‘That’s what you’ll say to the triage
nurse when we get there?’

‘Yep.’

‘What do you think she’ll say?’

‘“Fine, put her in bed two.”’

Mick said, ‘Have you thought about the causes of unconsciousness?’

‘How stupid do I look?’

Behind Aidan, the woman was peeking again. Mick kept his eyes fixed on Aidan’s face. ‘What are they?’

‘Alcohol, epilepsy,’ Aidan said. ‘Insulin.’