Sophie didn’t care. All that mattered was finding Lachlan.
Thursday 8 May, 1.20 am
D
ennis opened the door to the interview room and Ella went in first. Boyd Sawyer got quickly to his feet and shot his hand out, ready to shake theirs. He was gaunt, like a long-distance runner who trained too hard and too often. His palm was cold and clammy, his eyes red and his face lined. He wore dark pants and a grey shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he smelled of sweat and spilled alcohol and somewhere in there Ella caught a hint of vomit and maybe even urine. She put her hand behind her back to wipe it on her trousers.
Dennis introduced them. Tears ran from Sawyer’s eyes. ‘Finally someone’s taking me seriously.’
Dennis motioned for him to sit down. ‘Mr Sawyer, we’re sorry about your family.’
‘Thank you.’ Sawyer took a folded white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and carefully wiped his eyes. The skin around them looked red and chafed.
‘We’ll do this as quickly as we can then have someone take you home.’ Dennis leaned forward and put his hand on the man’s arm. ‘You need to be with loved ones tonight, not sitting about here.’
Sawyer wiped his eyes again then put the handkerchief down on his thigh, straightened his back and drew a deep breath, the very model of a man deciding to forge ahead as best he can. Ella narrowed her eyes.
‘We heard just a little about what happened tonight,’ Dennis said. ‘Would you mind going through it again?’
‘I was abducted and drugged,’ Sawyer said. His speech was well mannered and his gaze direct. He looked like a person who had high expectations of the police.
‘How did this come about?’
‘My wife and daughter died two days ago, after my wife gave birth at home. The paramedics… well, I find it hard to be in the house since.’
‘And tonight?’ Ella said.
‘Tonight I went out in the car, just to drive around. Get out of the house.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I don’t remember. I think I was at a pub or bar somewhere in the city, but that’s all I can recall until I woke up in my car surrounded by paramedics. They told me they brought me round with naloxone, so I’d obviously been given some kind of narcotic. Later I vomited and it smelled strongly of alcohol. The doctor took bloods so no doubt those substances will show up, as will the sedative I suspect I was given.’ He ticked these points off on his fingers.
‘Why do you think you were sedated?’
‘I would have resisted the abduction otherwise. Also, many sedatives have an amnesic effect, which explains why I can’t remember anything.’ He pulled his right sleeve up higher and held out his arm. ‘I expect you’ll need to take some pictures of the injection site they used.’
Ella saw a puncture mark and a bruise inside his elbow. ‘Are you left or right handed, Doctor?’
‘Left.’
He could have injected himself. Ella went on, ‘Were you injured in any other way?’
He blinked. ‘
Apart
from the attempted murder with the drugs?’
‘Was anything stolen? Your wallet? We know they didn’t take your car.’
‘No, nothing.’ Sawyer looked puzzled. ‘Surely that hardly matters, in this context?’
Dennis bumped Ella’s knee with his own under the table.
‘You don’t recall meeting anyone while you were out?’ Dennis said. ‘No memory of a face, a name?’
Sawyer shut his eyes for a moment then shook his head. ‘It’s all blank.’
‘Doctor, we checked your record before we came in here,’ Ella said.
He looked at her for a long moment before picking up the handkerchief again. ‘I knew that would come up.’
‘It’s just procedure,’ Dennis soothed.
Sawyer pressed the folded cloth to his eyes. ‘It’s irrelevant.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Dennis said. ‘We need to clarify things, that’s all.’
‘It was a short-term thing and I’ve touched nothing since,’ Sawyer wept. ‘It was a mistake, I got caught, I was punished, and that’s that.’
‘It’s okay,’ Dennis said.
‘Morphine and pethidine. Nineteen ninety-one, wasn’t it?’ Ella asked.
‘Ninety-two,’ Sawyer said.
Ella softened her voice. ‘It makes sense to me, actually. I understand that you were having personal problems when you took the drugs before. The drugs stopped the pain. And tonight was the same. You were so full of rage, so angry that this woman who had a hand in the deaths of your wife and baby should still have her own family, that you were drawn back to the needle. You can buy the stuff in bars, everybody knows that, so you were there, buying the drugs and drinking, and with a bit of alcohol under your belt it suddenly seemed there were other things you could do. Before you knew it you were at the Phillipses’ door.’
Sawyer looked up, teary-eyed and puzzled. ‘Who?’
‘Sophie Phillips is the paramedic who attended to your wife.’
‘What’s she got to do with anything?’
‘Her husband was attacked tonight and their child kidnapped.’
Sawyer stared open-mouthed. ‘You think I had something to do with that?’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You told her she killed your wife and daughter, and said you wanted to kill her.’
He shook his head. ‘I was drunk and grief-stricken.’
‘And tonight you weren’t?’
His mouth was a thin white line. ‘I came here to make a statement about a crime committed against me, not to be accused.’
‘We understand,’ Dennis said, ‘and nobody’s accusing you. Like I said before, it’s procedure that we check into a person’s background.’ He reached to touch Sawyer’s arm again. ‘Do you remember driving to the wharf? Can you remember anything about the bar you think you were in?’
Sawyer dabbed the handkerchief to his eyes. ‘Nothing.’
‘Do you recall your car being hit by another?’
‘My BMW’s damaged?’
‘It’s quite minor but if we can find out when and where it happened, it may help us find the people who drugged you.’
‘I would certainly remember that. If I hadn’t been drugged, I mean.’
Ella folded her arms.
‘Okay,’ Dennis said. ‘Well, I think we have enough to go on with at the moment. Come with me and I’ll take a picture of your arm there, and a hair sample, too.’
‘What for?’
‘We found some hairs in your car. They might be from the people who drugged you but we need to exclude yours first,’ Dennis said. ‘We already have your prints on file, and are examining the car for any your assailants may have left.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Then I’ll find someone to give you a lift home.’
Sawyer followed Dennis into the corridor and Ella stayed back in the empty room. It had gone exactly as planned. Sawyer hadn’t backed out, hadn’t called his solicitor, and now they’d have his hair and his prints. If he left either in the Phillipses’ house or on the note, they had him.
1.45 am
Sophie sat in the car with one hand on the steering wheel and the other over her face. It was cold and the night pressed in on her. She was hyperventilating but she couldn’t stop. The tingling grew in her fingers and it was hard to swallow and the city was so huge, she could feel it stretching out around her, she felt tiny and ineffectual and so, so alone.
She was just off Cleveland Street. The traffic was busy even at this hour. The network of streets in her mind spread out like veins in a body and she could no longer decide which way to go.
She lowered her hand and looked out the windscreen. A car passed, slowly. Its brakelights came on and she hit the door lock with her elbow. When at work on these streets she felt safe, confident. Now there seemed nothing out there but threat.
The car moved off and she took her foot from her own brake. Nothing was gained by sitting here. She held the wheel in both trembling, tingling hands and turned towards Randwick.
She pulled into the driveway of the familiar house. The building was in darkness. She almost tripped up the step, then knocked on the door. A light came on deep inside and she knocked again. There were footsteps, fast and anxious, then a light went on over her head. She looked at the peephole and heard a male voice say, ‘It’s Sophie.’
The door opened a moment later. Cynthia was on the stairs in a dressing-gown, looking alarmed. Her husband, Ray, stared out at Sophie. ‘Are you okay?’
Sophie burst into tears.
Their kitchen was warm but Sophie still shivered. Cynthia sat rubbing Sophie’s cold hands with her own warm ones while Ray made coffee and toast. Sophie told them what had happened and tears welled in Cynthia’s eyes. She leaned forward and folded her arms around Sophie, who wept into her shoulder, glad of the comfort.
When she sat back Ray put a plate of toast before her then rested his broad hand on her shoulder in sympathy. Sophie moved the plate away a little. Coffee she could maybe manage. Toast, no way.
‘Do you want us to drive you back to the hospital, to be with Chris?’ Cynthia said.
Sophie shook her head. ‘I can’t stay in there, I need to be out looking.’
‘But it’s dangerous,’ Cynthia said. ‘It’s a job the police can do best.’
‘I can’t just sit and wait.’ Sophie raised the coffee cup to her lips then lowered it again. ‘Doing nothing lets the thoughts flood in.’
‘And you’ve seen too much already, haven’t you,’ Cynthia said softly.
Sophie remembered the time early in their friendship when Cynthia, a midwife, had had a problem with her pregnancy. She’d appeared at antenatal class, pale and shaken, determined as ever, but said to Sophie that at a time like this it might be better to know less rather than more. Sophie wondered whether the same applied now, whether her own experiences with bereaved mothers and dead children meant she could too easily picture herself in their situation. But the job gave her good and important things too: she knew the streets, she knew how things worked in the hospital, she wasn’t scared by the tubes and machines that surrounded Chris.
What it didn’t give her was knowledge about specific places to look for Lachlan.
Cynthia rubbed her shoulder. ‘Would you like to stay here for the night?’
Or did it?
‘Or if you want, if you give me a minute to get dressed, I’ll come with you, stay with you there,’ Cynthia said.
Sophie was already on her feet.
‘Sophie?’
She had a plan. She couldn’t carry it out until daylight but its mere existence made her feel that she had direction again. She would continue her crisscrossing of the suburbs until the morning and then the real search would begin. ‘I have to go.’
‘It’s not safe,’ Cynthia said. ‘Ray.’
Ray put his hand on Sophie’s arm. ‘Soph, sweetheart, you’re not thinking straight. Let me drive you to the hospital, or stay here tonight and in the morning we’ll help you do whatever you need to.’
Sophie twisted out of his grip. ‘I have to go,’ she said again, and headed for the door.
1.47 am
Ella came out of the tea room and almost walked into Acting Commissioner Rupert Eagers. ‘Detective,’ he said.
‘Sir.’
Eagers was dressed in a navy suit, white shirt and tightly knotted light blue tie. Ella couldn’t decide whether he was on his way home from some late-ending dinner or had dressed up to come in. He carried his dress uniform on a hanger, covered by a plastic bag.
He hooked the hanger over the top of the tea-room door. ‘I’d like an update on the Phillips case.’
Ella explained the night’s events and why they were looking at Sawyer. ‘He’s got no record of gun ownership however,’ she said. ‘That note doesn’t exactly fit in with him either.’
Eagers nodded.
‘It’s been suggested that Chris Phillips may have been the caller to the media about the robbery gang being police officers,’ she said. ‘If it was him, the shooting and kidnap and note might have been to silence him. Though, of course, we haven’t been told whether the caller was for real or a hoax.’
Eagers rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Did the wife have any ideas about it?’
‘She said Chris had been distracted lately and upset about the bank guard’s death. She couldn’t say whether Chris actually knew anything.’
The Acting Commissioner studied her. Ella met his gaze straight on. His eyes were light brown, his hair a shade paler again, and the overall effect was one of sallowness. Then again, nobody looked their best at this time of day.
‘The caller is real,’ Eagers said. ‘He phoned me before he rang the television stations. I advised him not to but he was determined.’
‘So who is he?’
‘He wouldn’t give his name but he knew enough about the internal workings of the service to persuade me he is, or has been, a serving officer,’ Eagers said. ‘He was meant to call back but hasn’t.’
Ella wasn’t satisfied. Any ex-officer with a gripe against the service could’ve made up the story. With the books available and the information you could find on the Internet, practically anyone could learn how the job worked. Without a name to confirm the caller’s identity, nothing was certain.