‘And look at this.’ Dennis pointed to a twin pack of dummies lying on the floor. One was missing. The one that remained had a sun and moon pattern Ella recognised from the dummy found next to Sawyer’s car at the river.
Ella’s phone rang. She handed the lamp back to Dennis. ‘Marconi.’
‘It’s me,’ Murray said, excited. ‘Belinda Arendson’s had four registered births but they were all stillborn. Apparently once the pregnancy gets over twenty-eight weeks and the baby’s born dead it has to get registered as a birth, but it’s not registered as a death because–’
‘Four dead babies. We get the picture,’ Ella said. ‘No live ones?’
‘Nope.’
She punched Dennis’s arm. ‘Let’s go.’
In the car she accelerated hard, while Dennis fumbled with her phone, trying to put it on loudspeaker. ‘That button there,’ she said.
Suddenly Murray’s voice came through. ‘Hello?’
‘We hear you,’ Dennis said.
‘Okay. Record-wise Bee has a good behaviour bond from eleven years ago. She was a nurse and worked in a nursing home and this old guy died from a drug overdose. She said it was an accident but the family said he’d told them he wanted to die and that a nurse was going to help him. Old guy dies, family kicks up stink, in come the cops.’
‘What was that drug that came up on Sawyer’s tox screen?’ Ella asked Dennis. ‘The one that knocks you out and makes you forget stuff?’
‘Midazolam.’
‘We need to find out how closely that’s controlled in hospitals, especially anywhere Bee’s worked.’
Dennis gripped the door as she took a bend at speed. ‘You’re thinking Bee and Angus are behind the entire scheme?’
‘Maybe,’ Ella said. ‘Bee wants a baby. She can’t have one. She sees Chris and Sophie with Lachlan, she feels cheated, she decides she’ll just take what she wants. Angus, being the helpful adopted brother, goes along, spying on the family, plotting out how they’ll do it.’
‘And Sawyer?’
‘Maybe Angus found out about Sawyer’s wife and baby dying and how Sophie was involved, perhaps after Sawyer was arrested for that DUI,’ Ella said. ‘He sets Sawyer up so we’ll find him unconscious by the river. Bee picked him up in the pub and gave him the drugs so he wouldn’t remember any of it, which in turn increases our suspicion of him.’
Dennis murmured something incredulous.
Murray jumped in. ‘Angus could’ve done the actual shooting of Chris and kidnapping Lachlan. He left the ‘
keep your mouth shut’
note because first of all it would cost us time to look into it and then if we found out Chris had indeed called the TV stations, we’d believe the kidnapping was tied to that.’
Ella started, realising where she might have seen Bee. ‘I think it was Bee who killed Roth, too.’
‘Really?’
‘I’d have to see her in the flesh to be sure,’ Ella said, ‘but what I’ve seen so far fits.’
Dennis rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m too old for this.’
Murray said, ‘You think Angus is involved with the gang as well as being behind the kidnapping?’
‘Maybe he’s planning a quiet life for the three of them and his takings from the robberies were making a little nest egg.’ She was all excited. ‘Even the cancer story fits. You said there weren’t many disguise options for babies, but one was to shave his hair off. They could tell everyone he’s being treated for cancer, that’s why he’s got no hair, and they keep shaving him to keep him that way.’
Dennis was still frowning. ‘You have some imagination.’
‘It works for me,’ Murray said.
Ella smiled at the phone. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
‘But where does Sawyer getting killed fit in?’ Dennis said.
‘I guess that was Sophie believing he was behind the kidnapping,’ Ella said. ‘We know that Angus spent some time with Sophie the last few days, including driving past Sawyer’s house. Perhaps he egged her on. Perhaps he even helped kidnap him, maybe even kill him.’
‘But why, if they just wanted the baby? Why not take him and disappear?’
‘Good question.’ Ella sped through an intersection.
‘Maybe it wasn’t just the baby,’ Murray said.
‘What?’
‘Maybe they were out for more than the baby,’ he said. ‘If Bee’s got trouble with her upstairs wiring, as sounds increasingly likely, what if she blamed that first abortion for all her stillbirths since?’
A light went on in Ella’s brain. ‘That’s it!’
‘Eyes on the road,’ Dennis said.
‘Gloria started it all by arranging that abortion, right?’ Ella said. ‘Say things went to plan for Bee and Angus. Chris ends up brain-damaged, maybe really badly. If Angus helped Sophie today he’s probably arranged things so that all evidence points to her and not him, and she winds up in jail. He even told us his alibi on the phone, remember? Meanwhile Lachlan is never found. So what happens to Gloria?’
‘She’s lost her family and she’s all alone,’ Dennis said.
‘A fate worse than death, some might say,’ Ella said. ‘I reckon Chris and Sophie have reached the same conclusion about Angus and Bee and that’s why they left their house in such a hurry.’
‘Without letting us know?’
‘Sophie may have just killed a man,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing she thinks we’d arrest her first and ask questions later.’
Murray put in, ‘And maybe they think if the Arendsons get away now, none of us will be able to find Lachlan.’
Dennis put down Ella’s phone and pulled out his own. ‘I’m arranging back-up. If Angus and Bee have guns and we’ve got an unarmed paramedic and an injured copper going up against them before we get there, they’re going to need a hell of a lot of help.’
Saturday 10 May, 2.24 pm
‘O
kay.’ Chris scribbled as he listened into the phone. ‘Got that. Yep. Thanks, Mick.’
Sophie glanced over from behind the wheel at the little map he’d drawn. They were almost at Palm Glen. When Allan Denning at Wynyard had told him that all the city computers were down, Chris had called a friend on the South Coast to look up Bee’s address; then, because they had no map of the area, he’d rung Central Coast Ambulance Control for help on the location of Marshall Road. Mick was the controller on duty and he had looked up the computer-aided dispatch map for them.
Now Chris held the phone out. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
‘Hold it up to my ear,’ she said.
‘I don’t think you should go in,’ Mick said, his voice tinny on the phone. ‘Wait for the cops. There’s a siege in Gosford at the moment, so response might be a bit down, but they’ll come when I tell them what Chris said.’
‘This guy can get passports, fake ID, anything. If they get away from us, how will we know what name they’re going under? How could we stop them at the airport if we don’t know that?’
‘But how risky is it, you just charging in? What happens if you both get shot? Then where will Lachlan be?’
Mick made good sense but Sophie had no choice. She was a churning mess of emotions: fear that they might get away, or that Lachlan might be harmed; guilt that she’d had a one-night stand with the man who’d taken her child (and was that part of his plan? Had he been manipulating her even then?); the roaring fury of the betrayal of his ‘assistance’ to find Lachlan while all along he was actually steering her further in the wrong direction; and the awful sinking knowledge that she had been involved with him in the torture and death of an innocent man.
‘The exit’s coming up,’ Chris said.
‘I have to go,’ she said to Mick.
‘Please don’t do it, Soppers.’
‘I have to.’ She moved her head away. ‘Turn it off.’
They were on the exit. ‘Head up here then turn left onto Palmdale Road,’ Chris said. ‘Travel along about a kilometre then Marshall turns off to the right. Lot thirty-seven is on the right, a couple of clicks along, past a creek.’ He held up the map, his finger on a crosshatched section. ‘See this?’
She glanced over.
‘It’s State forest. Full of four-wheel drive tracks that come out all over, Mick said. Their house backs right onto it.’
‘We can’t let them get in there,’ Sophie said.
‘We won’t.’
They shot onto Palmdale Road. ‘So what are we going to do? Just drive through the front gate?’
Chris pored over his scratch map. ‘Mick told me there’s a right-hand bend around a hill and their house is on the other side of that. I think our best bet is to try to take them by surprise – go through the forest and come at the house from the back.’
Sophie hurtled onto Marshall Road, taking note of the speedo. A couple of clicks, he’d said. She tried to look everywhere at once: the letterboxes on the roadside with ‘
Lot 12
’ and ‘
Lot 17
’ painted on them, the road ahead in case they met Angus coming out, the speedo again. They covered the few thousand metres quickly and crossed the creek. ‘Right-hand bend,’ she said, slowing the car. On their right was a tree-covered hill.
‘Along here would be best.’
She pulled over and popped the boot. From it she took a tyre lever and a jack handle. Chris wiped his nose, which was starting to bleed. ‘You okay to go?’ she said.
‘Don’t even ask that.’ He took the tyre lever, grabbed her hand, and crossed the road.
They climbed a fence into a paddock. The grass was long and caught at their feet, and it hid hollows which made them stumble. The paddock was a narrow strip running along the lower slope of the hill below the forest. Sophie looked up at the tree line as they neared it. She was breathless with nerves and exertion. The afternoon sun was hot on her back and she felt conspicuous in the open.
They clambered through another wire fence into the forest. It was cooler here and the ground sloped more steeply and the undergrowth was thick and spiky. Branches of shrubs scratched their arms and faces. Chris slashed at bushes with his tyre lever but they sprang back at him.
Adrenaline and effort made Sophie’s heart pound. What would happen when they found the house? She had to assume Angus would have at least one gun. He was a trained cop, while the best defence strategy she knew as a paramedic was to run away. They’d need to take him by surprise, but how could they do that? What if he had seen them coming and was lying in wait? What if he held a gun on them, put Bee and Lachlan in the car, then left? What if he told Chris about her cheating to throw him off, even momentarily? She smashed the jack handle into a tree trunk. She couldn’t think like this. If it cost her her life she would do everything in her power to stop Angus getting away.
Chris struggled through the scrub beside her. His nose streamed blood and he didn’t bother wiping it away. His legs were trembling, and sweat soaked his shirt. She reached out to stop him and briefly feel his racing pulse, measure his gasping breaths. He took her hand from his neck. ‘I’m fine.’ He tugged her forward.
‘How are we going to do this?’
‘Find the house first,’ Chris panted. ‘Then see what we’ve got.’
They crested the hill together. Going downhill was easier but the undergrowth was thicker. Sophie looked ahead for the glint of a farmhouse roof or for movement of any kind. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Something reflecting.’
They worked their way ahead more cautiously. The scrub thinned, then the trees thinned too, and they could see a small unfenced dam full of brown water, three cows lying in the shade of a eucalypt, and a grey weatherboard house. It was a Queenslander, elevated two metres off the ground, the underneath area fenced in with wooden slats. Angus’s white Magna was parked at the side of the house. There was no sign of any people.
Sophie only realised how much she had been hoping that the police would be here when she saw they weren’t. She gripped the jack handle and stared down at the little house.
Chris whispered in her ear, ‘See how some of those slats are broken? I reckon we should get under the house itself then attack from there.’
A cry broke out in the house and the hair stood up on the back of Sophie’s neck and she grabbed Chris’s arm. It was Lachlan!
They both burst into tears. Chris slid his arm around Sophie’s neck and hugged her tight. Sophie wrapped her arms around Chris’s body and pressed her face into his sweaty bloodied shirt and wanted to scream out her relief and joy.
Thank God, oh thank God!
But there was no time to waste. She turned her head to speak. ‘We’ve got to get down there. If they make it to the car, we won’t be able to stop them.’
Chris wiped the tears from her cheek with his thumb. ‘We approach from different angles so there’s less chance he’ll spot both of us. You go from here. I’ll work my way around there a little and then down to the house.’ He raised the tyre lever in a warrior pose. ‘See you under the house, okay?’
They hugged briefly then he was gone. Sophie tightened her grip on the jack handle and started down the slope. She moved from tree to tree, trying to be quiet as the scrubby bushes caught her legs. Crickets chirped and birds called in the bush around her, and a breeze rustled the leaves. She stared at the house as she crept forward, searching for gun barrels protruding from windows, but saw nothing. Lachlan’s crying subsided and the house was silent. She wiped her tears away. It was time to be strong.
The trees stopped ten metres from the house. Sophie eyed the open area of grass she had to cross and the single window that overlooked it. A tattered blind hung from the top. Further along the back of the house six concrete steps with no railing led up to the back door. It was open. A wooden-framed screen door banged in the breeze.
Chris peered from behind a tree at the other end of the house. He scanned the windows then gave Sophie a thumbs-up. She checked her window again, took a deep breath, fixed her eye on a gap in the slats and ran.
Under the house was gloomy after the bright sunlight outside. Sophie stood panting on the bare earth floor, listening for any sounds above her that would indicate she’d been seen. She could hear footsteps and the murmur of voices, but none were panicked. She allowed herself a couple of deep breaths. She’d made it – this far, anyway.
Chris squeezed through a break in the slats and came towards her, past old farm implements and a dusty workbench. A beaten-up and rusty Landrover was parked facing out. He glanced at it then crouched by a rear tyre.
‘We don’t have time,’ she whispered.
Air hissed from the tyre as he depressed the valve. ‘I’m cutting down their options. We should do something about the Magna too.’
‘He’ll spot us for sure.’
Chris peered out through the slats, then around at the jumble of tools on the workbench. ‘I could cut the fuel line, stop them going anywhere.’
‘I’ll do it,’ she said.
‘No way.’
‘You need to fix your nose and have a rest, even for thirty seconds,’ she whispered. He was ghostly pale and clammy to touch. When she moved close to look at his pupils she could hear his breath rasping in his throat. He was shaking hard, and she pressed her hand on his shoulder to try to make him sit down, but he shrugged out from under it.
‘Tell me where the fuel line goes and I’ll be out and back before you know it,’ she said.
He started to speak but was interrupted by a voice from the house.
‘Hurry up, will you?’ It was Angus. Sophie looked up at the floorboards over her head. He sounded curt and angry. There was a murmured reply. He said, ‘I told you to always be ready.’
‘I usually am,’ a woman’s voice said. Bee.
‘I don’t care about usually,’ he said. ‘I rush up to take the two of you away and you’re not even here! You’re over at that bloody creek!’
‘Ben wanted a swim.’
Sophie’s blood surged.
‘Just pack, would you?’
Sophie felt a fresh burst of rage at Angus. She leaned close to Chris. ‘I’m going.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘The fuel line runs along underneath the chassis. Cut it, crimp it, do anything, then get back here.’
She found a dusty pair of pliers on the bench. She stood at the slats, eyeing the Magna, wishing she could see the windows above her. There were footsteps across the floor in a far corner of the house and she took a deep breath and squeezed through the gap. She ran to the car and dived underneath.
The chassis and engine were hot. She burned her shoulder trying to get on her back, but she hadn’t been shot and there were no shouts from the house. She looked at the slats and saw Chris’s bloodied face peering out. The underneath of the car was filthy with road grime and dirt and she searched for a moment before locating the small pipe. She grabbed it with the cutting edge of the pliers and with a great effort snapped it in two.
Take that, you bastard.
She wriggled to the edge of the car. Lying right at the border of the sun and shade she tried to look upwards to the windows but could see no higher than the slats. Chris stared at her fearfully. She offered up a little prayer then rolled out, leapt to her feet and bolted.
Chris caught her as she came through the gap in the slats. There were no shouts from above, no shots. She whispered, ‘He doesn’t know we’re here!’
‘Come
on
!’ Angus was right overhead.
The air smelled of smoke. Sophie sniffed at it. ‘He’s surely not burning the place down?’
‘Let’s not wait to find out,’ Chris said in her ear. He had a strange light in his eyes. Bits of bloodstained rag were twisted up his nostrils. He held her tight. ‘You know that we could die.’
‘If they get away with Lachlan it’s all over anyway.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
If Angus tells you what happened you might not believe that, but I do, I swear on my grave I do.
‘Follow me.’ He squeezed out through the gap in the slats and edged along the wall to the front steps. Sophie hunched her shoulders, frightened to think that Angus might lean out of a window above them, but desperate to save Lachlan. Chris put his finger on his lips then started up the steps. Sophie got it – as long as Angus didn’t know they were here they had the upper hand.
The front door was open. There was nobody in the first room, a mangy sitting room with a tatty cane lounge and a threadbare maroon rug. A cloth nappy lay on the back of the lounge.
Sophie’s heart hammered in her chest. The back door banged and she jumped. Chris squeezed her arm reassuringly but his forehead poured sweat and blood was making its way around the rags in his nose.
The smell of smoke was stronger. Someone sneezed and a shadow passed the doorway to the next room. Chris raised the tyre lever. Elsewhere in the house Angus said, ‘You want these bottles?’ and Bee appeared in the doorway with Lachlan in her arms. He was bald but Sophie recognised her son in a heartbeat and she grabbed for Chris’s arm, terrified he’d accidentally hit him.
Chris’s blow glanced off the side of Bee’s head onto her shoulder. She screamed and heavy footsteps thudded their way. Chris raised the lever again as Sophie dropped the jack handle and reached for Lachlan.