Violent Exposure (29 page)

Ella felt sorry for her. ‘Emil
was doing well.’

She nodded. ‘Angie told me. She said Emil had given her permission to let me know that he had an apprenticeship and even a flat of his own.’ She smiled shakily through her tears. ‘She said she would try to get him to make contact.’

‘Did he?’

‘No.’

Ella said, ‘How bad were things between Emil and Victor?’

‘Victor cares for him, really he does, but Emil wanted freedoms that
Victor didn’t think he should have.’

Ella thought of what Angie had told her. ‘Was there ever any violence?’

‘Victor used to drink and it affected his behaviour.’ Miranda wiped her eyes. ‘He doesn’t any more. I asked Angie to tell Emil that.’

‘So Victor was violent towards him,’ Dennis said.

‘And me,’ Miranda said. ‘But he goes to AA now. I know he’s sorry for everything he did.’

‘Where is
Victor now?’

‘He’s been in Brisbane on business for two days.’

Ella hesitated, then said, ‘Is he Emil’s father?’

‘No. Nathan Page, my husband, died in a car accident when Emil was seven.’ She stared out the window. ‘Funny how your life runs along a track that you think will be yours forever, then a concrete truck goes through a light and everything is different. Then you meet someone new, and
it seems that track could be yours again, but there are problems you can’t fix no matter how hard you try.’

Unless you kick out the violent alcoholic
. Ella said, ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Emil?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you know the names Suzanne or Connor Crawford?’

‘No. Who are they?’

‘How did you find out that Emil was with the Streetlights group?’

‘Angie rang
me once, early on, to let me know that he was with them. She said they like to do that if the child okays it, so that the parents at least know they’re all right.’ Her voice was tight with tears. ‘He must’ve still loved me, if he wanted me to know that, right?’

Ella nodded. ‘Of course.’

Miranda put her face in her hands. ‘They’re good people at Streetlights.’

‘You’ve met them all?’ Dennis asked.

Ella’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen. The office. ‘Excuse me.’

She went into the hall. ‘Marconi.’

‘Call for you from a paramedic who says she’s found Brooke Hayes. I’ll patch her through.’

In the brief silence Ella heard Miranda telling Dennis about Linsey and John and Gus. ‘They’ve all been so lovely and helpful.’

She focused on a cross hanging on the wall.

‘Hello?’ The line was
scratchy.

She recognised the voice. ‘Carly?’

‘Brooke’s got something to tell you.’

‘Where are you? We’ll come out and –’

‘I’m sorry,’ a faint voice said. ‘I just didn’t want anyone to get in trouble.’

‘Let us come and get you,’ Ella said, but in the background could hear Carly saying, ‘Go on, tell her.’

‘I saw Suzanne in an internet cafe,’ Brooke said.

‘Which one? When?’

‘It’s called Bytes,
it’s just off Elizabeth Street in Surry Hills. It was three weeks ago. She was with this blond man and they sat at the computers right in the back corner.’

Ella jotted the information. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’

‘I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.’

‘Trouble for what?’

Silence. Ella heard Carly again. ‘Tell her.’

‘My friend who works there lets me use the net whenever I want.’

Ella blinked. ‘That’s it?’

‘In return for blow jobs.’

‘Brooke –’

There was a scuffling noise on the other end of the phone, then Carly came on the line. ‘And for helping him with his drug business.’

Ella heard Brooke wail, ‘He’ll hurt me!’

She said to Carly, ‘Tell her we’ll do what we can. Where are you? We’ll come and pick her up.’

‘St Luke’s Private Hospital in Potts Point.’

‘Someone
will meet you there in ten. Can you put Brooke back on?’ A moment later she heard snuffling. ‘Brooke, you did the right thing.’

‘Doesn’t feel like it.’

‘What’s your friend’s name?’

Silence.

‘You’ve come this far,’ Ella said.

‘Billy Gee.’

‘Thank you,’ Ella said. ‘Thank you.’

She called the office back and arranged for Jen Katzen to collect Brooke, and had them check Billy Gee’s record. She
pressed her notebook against the wall and scribbled down the information. She could hear Dennis murmuring as Miranda told stories of Emil as a small boy. Ella put her phone and notebook away and stepped back into the room.

Dennis looked at her. She widened her eyes and glanced at the door. He nodded.

‘Mrs Page, is there anyone we can call for you?’ he said. ‘A relative or friend?’

‘My friend
lives next door but she’s out on her walk.’

‘We can call an officer to sit with you until she gets back.’

‘I’ll be okay. She won’t be long.’

‘Are you sure?’

Miranda nodded, wiping her eyes. ‘Just find who did this.’

In the car, Ella filled Dennis in on the news. ‘She said Bytes is just off Elizabeth Street.’

He drove through an orange light. ‘Good for Carly.’

‘Did Miranda say anything interesting?’

‘Just that the Streetlights people are lovely, helping her boy, letting her know how he’s going. She said John came around once to talk and admired her house, they talked about renovating old houses – she has one in Lilyfield that she inherited and isn’t sure what to do with. She also said that Gus phoned her after that bakery visit and told her how well and happy Emil was.’

‘Grief-stricken ramblings
through memory,’ she said.

‘You got it. Nothing much to see on the snoop either.’

Fifteen minutes later they walked into Bytes. Billy Gee was a lanky tattooed twenty year old with peroxided hair scruffed up into a point. He lurked behind the counter like a surly elf. Ella saw recognition in his eyes the instant they stepped up, and no wonder, with his record.

They got out their badges.

‘I
don’t know anything about anything.’ Ella held out a photo of Suzanne. ‘You know this woman?’

‘Nope.’

‘You have to at least look at it.’

He did so pointedly. ‘Nope.’

‘She was here three weeks ago with a blond man. They used the computers at the back there’ – she pointed to the corner that Brooke had described – ‘and you were working at the time.’

Gee folded his arms. ‘I still don’t know her.’

‘Your boss here?’ Dennis said.

‘Nope.’

‘Better shut the doors and get him on the phone because we’re bringing in techs to examine your system.’ Dennis went to ask the seven male teenagers at the monitors to leave.

Gee said, ‘Whatever people do on those computers is their business.’

‘Not when crimes occur as a result,’ Ella said.

‘Not my job to stop them,’ he said. ‘I’m not the scum-suckin
po-lice.’

Ella waited until Dennis had locked the doors behind the meandering teens, then said, ‘Step around the counter.’

‘What?’

‘Stand here, and put your hands on the top there.’

‘This is bullshit.’

‘You’re under arrest for supply of a prohibited drug.’

He tried to twist away. Ella grabbed his arm and forced him to stand still while Dennis put on the cuffs.

‘Fuckin bullshit,’ Gee snarled.

Ella pushed him into a chair. ‘Don’t move.’

Gee hissed something under his breath about that snitchin bitch. Ella said nothing but made sure to step on his foot when she went to let the techs in.

The techs weren’t sure they could find what Suzanne had searched for but they would try. Ella called the Drug Squad about Gee and soon two detectives came to collect both him and the packet of white
powder they found in a sports bag in the staffroom out the back. ‘That’s not mine,’ Gee said, until one of the detectives pulled a wallet from the bag and opened it to his driver’s licence and said, ‘Really?’, at which point Gee shut up.

Ella and Dennis left the techs to their incomprehensible work and walked outside into a light shower of rain. Dennis called Steve Mitchell for a progress update
on the hospital warrant but got his voicemail. He left a message.

Ella said, ‘Why do I feel like that didn’t get us much closer at all?’

‘Because you’re too impatient,’ Dennis said. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.’

*

It was busy for the rest of the morning, one job after another, and Mick had no chance to say anything to Carly until lunch. Then, as they pulled two chairs into the station doorway
to watch the sunshower, he said, ‘You scared me back there.’

She looked over at him, her cheeks full of sandwich. ‘Huh?’

‘I had no idea what you were doing. I thought you’d lost it. I thought you were going to do that girl some real damage.’

‘Who me?’ She tilted her head to one side and smiled.

‘Technically you kidnapped her, and from a packed street no less.’

‘It was for a bloody good reason.’

‘Sophie thought the same about her actions.’

Carly stared at him. ‘There is no comparison.’

Mick shrugged.

‘Besides, I got what the cops needed. I didn’t hurt her or threaten her or anything really.’

‘Tell that to a disciplinary review if just one person puts in a complaint,’ Mick said. ‘You crossed the line.’

‘I’m sorry you feel that way, and I disagree.’

‘So you’d do it again?’

‘Yes,
I would,’ she said. ‘It’s the same as with patients: sometimes you have to hurt them to save their life.’

‘It is not the same.’

‘It is so,’ she said. ‘The end justifies the means.’

He stared out at the rain-wet street, his sandwich dry in his mouth.
Who are you to accuse her of crossing a line when she did in fact help? What have YOUR actions achieved?

‘And listen.’ She turned her chair to
face him. ‘Haven’t you ever thought that the line might be flexible? What if Sophie actually got the information she needed to save her son? What about those times when we know a patient’s going to die but we tell them or their family they’re doing well?’

‘This is different.’

‘Look me in the eye and say that,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you ever done anything that wandered up to the line, that thought
about putting a toe over? That took the big flying leap?’

He suddenly wanted to tell her about the money. She might understand, she might support him, she might think of a way that he could tell Jo.

But what if she didn’t understand? Or what if she let something slip? It was bad enough that Aidan knew.

He looked at her. ‘No. Never.’

She studied him for a long moment, then raised her sandwich
to her mouth. ‘Let’s call Control about going to Rozelle after this.’

‘I don’t actually think we need to.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the threat of taking him seemed to smarten him up,’ Mick said. ‘I think we should just let him hang on that and keep the real thing as a backup.’

She put down her sandwich. ‘I don’t understand you. Why give him another chance? It’s been three months and he can hardly
get a single thing right.’

‘I just think it’s unnecessary. And you know what they’re like in there. The problem would just be swept under the carpet and then we’d feel more frustrated than ever.’

‘Now you’re really confusing me,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to go because you think they won’t listen to us?’

‘I don’t want to go because we don’t need to go.’

She ripped off a corner of her sandwich
and said through the mouthful, ‘I’ll go on my own then.’

Oh no.
‘It’d be better if we waited a while, then went together. United front, all that. If you complain and I don’t, what’s that tell them?’

‘So come with me,’ she said.

He balled up the rest of his lunch in its wrapper. The rain had stopped and the sun was out and the glare off the street was blinding. He could hardly see her but that
was good. If he didn’t stop her now and she went ahead, Aidan would drop him in it. It was selfish and he felt dirty and mean but he had to protect himself and Jo and their future.

He braced himself. ‘Do you think you have the right?’

‘
What?
’

‘If somebody who was on that street complains –’

‘I bet you they won’t.’

‘Even if they don’t,’ he said. ‘What’s that thing about glass houses and throwing
stones?’

She stood up so quickly her chair fell over. ‘I thought you were just a coward because you didn’t want to stand up and report Aidan. Now it seems you’re an arsehole too.’

She stormed away. He stared out at the street. The muster room door slammed and he righted her chair and put his hand on the back. It was still warm.

I’m so sorry.

*

Connor had managed to compress the rag in his
mouth so it felt less like it was choking him, and he’d concentrated on slowing his breathing, telling himself he wasn’t going to suffocate. The dust on the rag made his thirst even worse and it burned his throat and made his jaws ache. The pain in his arms and legs and back made it impossible not to shift position constantly, even just the couple of centimetres the tape allowed. He saw bizarre and
frightening red patterns in the darkness of his closed and taped-over eyes, but he needed to put all that aside and work out why he was here and how to convince the whisperer that he’d learned whatever lesson he was being taught and should be set free.

Who was he?

Suzanne had recognised him. He’d brought Emil with him, though as a captive. Was he from that Streetlights place? But Connor couldn’t
recall having seen him before, and he’d been to that fundraiser night and seen them all there – hadn’t he? It was a busy event, a fancy-dress do where the blokes had to dress as girls and the girls as blokes, people everywhere, laughing, and a big dinner and auction and all sorts going on. He and Suzanne had been fighting, partly about the usual thing, partly about the ridiculous dress she’d
got for him from some second-hand place, shoulder straps cutting into him the whole night and him feeling like a fool, so he’d been drinking too. He’d even gone outside for a while and cadged a cigarette from some miserable-looking guy in a white lacy number, and stood watching the smoke rising into the night sky.