The Darkest Hour (34 page)

Woolloomooloo was only minutes away. Not long enough to even start to tell him. ‘I’m going for boyfriend trouble.’

He laughed.

‘Clear this side,’ she said.

The block of flats at 19 Betts Street was new and clean and tidy. An elderly woman was waiting for them under a streetlight, holding the tails of a black-and-white scarf out of her face as the wind gusted. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said.

‘No problem at all.’ Lauren felt better already. This was completely different from the ice addict job.
Nothing bad is going to happen.
‘Do you know the man at all?’

‘He hasn’t long moved in,’ she said. ‘I keep meaning to introduce myself but haven’t had time. Can I carry one of those bags for you?’

‘Thanks, that’s fine.’ Joe brought the stretcher around and Lauren piled the Oxy-Viva, drug kit and monitor on top then topped it off with the first aid kit.

The woman hurried to get the door. Joe wheeled the stretcher past her and into the lobby. Lauren hit the lift button and they all squeezed in together.

The elderly woman looked up at Joe. ‘Aren’t you a nice young man?’

‘He is, isn’t he?’ Lauren grinned. Joe tried to kick her under the stretcher but she shuffled out of his reach.

The lift doors opened and they filed out. The woman pointed to a door numbered seven. Lauren heard a faint thump from inside.

‘He wouldn’t answer me when I knocked before, but you might have more luck. Or I can see if the caretaker’s home yet?’

‘Leave it with us for a few minutes,’ Lauren said. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘I’m right in here if you need me.’ The woman went into her flat and closed the door.

Lauren knocked. ‘Ambulance. Can you hear me?’

A low grunt. She knocked again and put her mouth near the crack. ‘Ambulance.’

Joe tested the doorknob. ‘Locked.’

Lauren pounded on the wood with her fist. She listened, and thought she heard moaning. ‘Maybe we should send her for the caretaker. Could be post-ictal or anything.’

Joe knocked on the old lady’s door and she was quickly on her way in the lift.

The caretaker was a brusque man in black jeans and a cream jumper. ‘Can you confirm for me that there is a medical or other emergency taking place within these premises which require me to allow you use of the key to access said premises?’

‘I can confirm that,’ Joe said with a straight face.

The man handed over the key. Joe fitted it to the lock and the caretaker backed away to the lift. ‘I’ll, uh, leave you to it. I’m not good with blood and that.’

Good, Lauren thought. Go.

Joe opened the door wide and they looked in. The only light came from the fridge but it showed a man lying on the kitchen floor. Lauren hit the living room lights and looked around as she went in. ‘Can’t see anyone else here.’

Joe asked the old lady to mind the door then followed Lauren with the stretcher and gear. Lauren turned on the kitchen lights and expected the man to look up at her blinking, but he stared vaguely around the room. Half the contents of the fridge were pulled out and on the floor, and when she took a step forward she felt stickiness under her boot. ‘Honey.’

‘It’s all over him,’ Joe said.

Lauren crouched by the man. His skin was sweaty where it wasn’t honeyed. Honey was smeared on his jeans and shirt too. ‘Looks like a hypo,’ she said. She squeezed his shoulder. ‘You’re a diabetic?’

He grabbed at her, putting honey handprints on her arm and shirt. Unable to focus or speak, he pulled at her arm.

‘I know, it’s okay,’ she said. Even through her gloves she could feel how wet and cold his skin was.

‘Jabber’s ready,’ Joe said.

‘Find something to wipe his hand or the honey’ll send it off the Richter.’

Joe ran a tea towel under the tap and squatted on the other side of the man. ‘How you doin’, buddy?’ He caught the man’s hand as he reached for him. Lauren kept hold of the other. Joe wiped the honey from the man’s fingers then held that hand still as Lauren pricked the man’s index finger and let a drop of blood fall onto the glucometer stick. The man put his free hand on the side of her head, smearing her ear and cheek and hair with honey.

‘Aw, crap,’ she said.

Joe giggled.

The machine beeped. ‘Low low low,’ Lauren read.

‘Let him pat your hair some more while I set up the dextrose.’

Lauren held both the man’s hands in hers. He was crying and trying to speak. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Sugar’s on the way.’

Joe used the wet towel to wipe a clean patch on the man’s arm, then cannulated a vein. He taped it down securely, flushed it with normal saline, then screwed the nozzle of the fifty ml syringe of dextrose into the cannula. ‘Twenty-five grams of sugar, mainline hit.’ He depressed the plunger slowly. It was thick, sticky stuff that was hard to inject. ‘Ooh, that feels good, doesn’t it?’

Within a minute the man was blinking and trying to focus. ‘Sugar,’ he croaked.

‘We just gave you some,’ Lauren said. ‘Can you understand me?’

‘Diabetic,’ he said. ‘Ambulance.’

‘That’s us.’ She squeezed his hands, and he focused and really saw her. She loved this bit, as they came back to full consciousness from their hazy and confused hell.

He looked up at Joe, then around the trashed kitchen. ‘Oh, wow.’

‘What’s your name?’ Lauren said.

‘Kieran Scott.’ He touched the front of his shirt. ‘Is this all honey? Oh, man.’

‘Can you remember what happened?’

‘I went to the gym, then came home and showered when I usually have a snack first. I remember feeling funny, and knowing what was happening, and coming into the kitchen. Then I must’ve gone too low to know what to do.’

Lauren took his pulse and blood pressure and checked his blood sugar again, while Joe made him a sandwich to build up his reserves. The old lady came in and introduced herself. ‘Are you okay now?’

‘Did you call for help for me?’ Kieran said. ‘Thanks so much. Can I offer you a cup of tea?’

‘Let me help you clear this mess up first,’ she said with a smile.

Down at the ambulance Lauren and Joe wiped down the handles of all the equipment they’d used. Joe said, ‘True neighbourly love. Good to see.’

‘It is.’ Lauren spread clean sheets on the seats to keep the honey off the upholstery. She could feel the stuff drying in her hair. She called Control on the radio. ‘Thirty-four’s complete at this scene, post hypo covered in honey, substance now transferred to both officers. Request to return to station for major clean-up, please.’

‘Go ahead,’ Control said. Lauren heard the smile in his voice and somebody in the background laughing.

‘It was pretty funny.’ Joe pulled out. ‘Especially when he started patting you.’

Lauren collected herself.
Now, do it now!
‘Joe,’ she said.

‘Hey, I just thought of something.’ He started to laugh himself. ‘That might’ve been the bad thing Claire was so worried about. Wait till I tell her.’

‘Joe,’ Lauren said again.

He looked over at her, smiling. ‘What?’

Ella was hunting for a park near Rosie’s when her mobile rang. She saw it was Kuiper, and ducked into a no standing zone and flicked on her hazards as she answered.

‘Deborah Kennedy gave herself up,’ he said. ‘She waited until there were a number of officers, including senior ones on scene, then asked the negotiator to meet her in the garden so she could explain everything. Kennedy was killed over drugs.’

Ella clenched her fist.
I knew it!

‘He was working with Thomas Werner and the Rios family, and with Adrian Nolan and Feng Xie too, just as you suspected. When the amnesty came along, they all decided they wanted out, but Werner had them so frightened with his threats they didn’t know what to do. He told them he had police working for him, and he sent Kennedy and Nolan photos taken of their wives out shopping or in their cars. He threatened to get Feng put into detention then deported. Kennedy told his wife all this, and they set up a code system so he could let her know if there was trouble and what she should do.’

‘The line of poetry in the dying declaration,’ Ella remembered.

‘Yes,’ Kuiper said. ‘She also said he told her Feng Xie had told him that Werner had made him teach him how to cook the drugs, and that he’d been instructed by the syndicate back home to leave out a step so that the process would never succeed.’

‘Protecting their investment,’ Ella said. ‘If Feng was out, then so were they.’

‘Also, Mendelssohn and Greer have identified the mole. Tracy Potter works part-time for Human Resources. They were checking the phone records of the suspects and found multiple calls from her mobile to one belonging to Sal Rios. They went to her place but she appears to have done a runner.’

‘That’s maybe why I can’t find Sal too,’ she said. ‘They’re probably hiding out together.’

‘There’s more. One of Potter’s neighbours described a male visitor and remembered the numberplates of Jason Lambert’s car. We’re looking for him now.’

‘Dorky Lambert?’ she said. ‘She had both of them on the go?’

‘And she drives a yellow car.’

Holy crap.

‘We’re in the process of getting the warrant for the Rios house now,’ Kuiper said. ‘Meet us on scene in twenty.’

Ella dropped the phone on the passenger seat and gripped the wheel. It had all happened just like she’d thought. The amnesty was the trigger. Nolan and Kennedy were in cahoots, they’d tried to get out together with Feng Xie, and Werner’s threats kept them from acting then eventually came true anyway. Nolan’s desperate flight from the uniformed officers who pulled him over made perfect sense.
Wait till I tell Wayne!

She drove towards Maroubra. The orange sodium lights on the highway made all the light-coloured cars appear yellow. She was trying to see the occupants of each one that passed her going the other way when her mobile rang.

‘Marconi.’

Silence.

‘Lauren?’ she said.

‘It’s Sal Rios.’

Ella almost drove into a pole. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

‘I need to tell you some things.’

‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘Let’s meet and do this face to face.’

‘It can’t wait.’

‘Just tell me where you are.’

‘No, listen,’ he said. ‘I know Thomas Werner. I saw him today. He’s got a gun and he said he’s going to get the paramedics.’

L
auren took a deep breath. ‘I have to tell you something.’ ‘That sounds serious,’ Joe said.

‘It is.’
Come on, say it!
She shut her eyes tight. ‘I love you.’

Silence. She glanced over. He was staring straight ahead. She held her breath.

Suddenly a small yellow car shot around them and darted in front, the occupant waving a hand for them to pull over. Joe stepped on the brake. ‘What’s this wacko up to?’

‘Joe,’ she said.

He gestured at the car. A young woman scrambled out of the driver’s seat. ‘Let’s see what she wants, okay?’

The woman rushed up to his door. ‘It’s my brother.’ She was crying, and clutched at the side of the truck. ‘He rang me, he’s going to kill himself, can you help me?’

Joe was all business. ‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know the exact address, I only know how to get there.’ She flapped a hand down the street.

‘Show us then.’

She rushed back to her car and shot away. Joe followed, and Lauren picked up the radio microphone. ‘Thirty-four to Control.’

There was a burst of static. She waited a moment then tried again.

‘Black spot,’ Joe said.

‘Not usually around here.’ They were heading into the Darlinghurst backstreets.

‘Try when we get there.’ Joe’s words were clipped and short.

He’s angry, Lauren thought. Have I offended him? Or could he be fighting with his feelings?
Now you sound like a bad romance novel.
‘Can we talk?’ she said.

‘Let’s just do this job, okay?’

Lauren stared out the windscreen. Of all the responses she’d imagined, this wasn’t one of them. Thrilling wonderful acceptance she’d dared dream of; gentle let-down she’d told herself to expect. Not anger.

The yellow car turned into an alley, then into another narrower one. Lauren couldn’t recall having been in any of these streets. The buildings were old and partly demolished. Joe slowed to get around a skip bin. Lauren tried the radio again but only got more static.

The alley was dark, the one streetlight broken. The sliver of moon was no help. The ambulance headlights cast eerie shadows.

The yellow car stopped and the woman leapt out. ‘He’s in here!’

Lauren and Joe got out of the ambulance. ‘Why’s he in there?’ Joe said.

‘He’s homeless, it’s a squat,’ the woman said. ‘Bradley, we’re coming!’ she shouted into the open doorway.

Lauren suddenly felt sympathy for her and anger at Joe. ‘Get the torch.’

‘I’ll just phone Control.’

Lauren stamped around and grabbed the torch and the Oxy-Viva and the first aid kit. The woman had already started into the building, sobbing her brother’s name. ‘You coming or not?’ Lauren said to Joe, heading for the black doorway.

He put his phone away, took out the monitor and drug box, locked the ambulance, and followed her in.

Kuiper said, ‘Slow down, you’re getting garbled.’

‘We need to see where the tracker is,’ Ella barked. ‘I’ve just spoken to ambulance Control and they haven’t heard from them since they left a job in Woolloomooloo. They were meant to be returning to station but aren’t answering the phone there. I’ve tried Lauren’s mobile but get no answer, and they said they get the same with Joe.’

Kuiper shouted an instruction to somebody else in the office then came back on the line. ‘Sal doesn’t know where they might be?’

‘He has no idea. He’s told me everything else, about how he saw Werner kill Blake, and that Werner drowned Feng Xie and took the drugs to finish the cooking, so I can’t see why he’d hold out on that.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘Darlinghurst,’ she said. ‘Looking.’

‘Okay. Let me call Control, get the rego of their ambulance, put out an alert. I should have the tracker location in a couple of minutes.’

Ella threw the phone down and concentrated on her search. She put her lights on high beam and drove down every alley and laneway, even if it was too small to turn around in and she had to reverse out. She squeezed the wheel. Lauren was her responsibility, and she felt that this was now somehow her fault, as if she’d been too focused on tracking down Sal and Thomas and in the process forgot about protecting the innocent.

And she
was
innocent too. Sal had told her how Thomas had tricked and attacked Lauren in the alley the night that Blake died, while Sal himself hid trembling behind the dumped car. It had happened exactly as Lauren had described.

Her phone rang. Kuiper said, ‘The tracker’s somewhere just off Desmond’s Lane in the ’Loo.’

‘I’m right near there,’ she said.

‘I don’t have to tell you–’

‘Sorry,’ she said, and hung up.

Desmond’s Lane was thirty seconds’ drive. Ella was almost hit by a yellow car screeching past her as she turned a corner. Tracy fleeing the scene of the crime, she thought, seeing the plate in her rear-view. Or sneaking off to an arranged location to pick Thomas up once he’d done a rat-run through the back-blocks of the ’Loo. She couldn’t worry about her now.

She turned another corner and her high beams flashed off a reflective strip on the back of the ambulance. She flicked her headlights to low and crept forward. Her skin prickled. This was dangerous. She should back out, wait for the cavalry, let them storm the joint in all their protective gear.

She got out of her car and eased along the side of the ambulance. The cabin was empty. There was no sign of the officers in the alley. Ella could hear only the traffic on the street and her own rapid breathing.

The doorway into the dilapidated building was black as pitch.

Lauren’s phone beeped that another message had been left on her voicemail.

‘You’re a popular girl,’ Thomas said.

‘And you’re an arsehole.’

‘Keep walking.’

She stumbled forward in the darkness. Joe was behind her, his fingers tucked into her belt. Thomas was behind him, the muzzle of a gun pressed into the back of Joe’s neck.

Lauren wanted to tell Joe she was sorry, this was all her fault, he was right, they should’ve rung Control, they should’ve lingered a moment, she’d got all snippy and rushed in here because she was angry at him, and the woman’s concern for her brother Bradley sparked memories of her own brother Brendan, and when Thomas had stepped out of the darkness and said, ‘Thanks, Tracy,’ Lauren saw she’d been led into the entire mess like a pig to a fucking trough.

He’d taken their torch, made them drop their gear and forced them to walk deep into the abandoned building. It stank of decay and urine, and Lauren kept tripping on the broken concrete and exposed reinforcing bars. She could hear the scuffle of little ratty feet, and beyond that the sound of traffic on the city streets. She listened for sirens. She had the tracker. The number of calls on her phone surely meant they’d realised they were missing.

She tried to think positively, told herself that they’d survived the ice addict, they could survive this too.

But this was different.

She gulped back a sob. She felt Joe’s hand move a little, and his thumb stroked her back, just once.

It gave her courage. ‘You know they’ll all be here soon. I’ve got this tracker. They know
exactly
where we are.’

‘It’s not that accurate,’ Thomas said. ‘But it’ll help them find your bodies.’

‘You know this won’t fix anything,’ Joe said.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Thomas said. ‘Stop there. Turn around.’

Oh Jesus.

They faced him. Lauren was shaking. She felt the steady pressure of Joe’s arm against hers. ‘You should let Joe go,’ she croaked. ‘It’s me that–’

‘Shut up,’ Thomas said again. He held the torch low, and he looked gaunt and crazed in the poor light as he aimed the gun directly at her.

‘Police! Drop your weapon!’

Lauren was suddenly knocked flat. A gun went off, the sound deafening. The torch hit the floor and blinked out.

She pressed herself against the rough concrete. There was another shot, then another, and she held her breath as her heart galloped in her chest and her skin crawled with the expectation of the punch of a bullet at any second.

But it didn’t come. The room felt still. She couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in her ears. She felt tentatively around for Joe. Her fingers touched something soft. Skin. An arm. It was warm but didn’t move. She felt her way up it, her breath coming fast in her throat. She found the edge of a sleeve, the round ambulance patch.
Joe, it’s Joe.

She slid her hand to his chest and felt a rush of relief at the movement of his breathing.
Alive, but unconscious.
Further across she found wetness and warmth. He was bleeding from a chest injury.

Shot.

Shot!

Get the gear and save him. Get the radio and scream for help. Find the torch, get it working, see what you’re doing, could be a tension pneumothorax, could need decompression, you can save him, you can. You can.

Somebody grabbed her leg. She leapt away in fright –
It’s Thomas, oh god –
but then Ella said, ‘Help me.’

Lauren put out a trembling hand. Ella’s fingers seized hers. ‘Help,’ she said again.

‘Shh.’ She pictured Thomas lining them up in the dark, working off their voices.

But she could hear the bubbling of blood in Ella’s lungs.
That is it. She and Joe could die. You have to move, right now.

Ella wouldn’t let go of her hand. ‘Help me.’

‘Shh.’ Lauren prised her fingers off, feeling the slick of blood.

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I’m coming back.’

Lauren scuttled across the floor, groping for the torch, sure she’d find a gun barrel pressed against her forehead instead. She fumbled around a pile of rubble then her hands closed on the torch’s round plastic body. While Ella coughed wetly behind her, Lauren pressed the button on and off then shook the shit out of the thing. The beam came on and she swung it in an arc across the room.

In the flash she saw Ella clasping her chest with her left hand, her gun wavering about in her right, and Joe flat on the floor.

No Thomas.

Ella pressed desperately against the hole in her chest as blood slid oily and warm between her fingers, soaking her shirt. She watched Lauren dart back across the room towards her, drop the torch, and ease Joe onto his side. She saw her feel at his neck for his pulse, put her hand on his chest to check his breathing. She fought against the sensation of simultaneously drowning and being consumed chest-first by fire, and hung on for as long as she could. After all, he was the worse of the two of them, he was unconscious, he needed more care, but finally she could hang on no longer. ‘Can’tbreathe.’

Lauren scrambled over. She moved Ella’s left hand from her chest and slid her shirt up to see. Ella fought to hold her right arm up, to keep her gun ready in case Thomas appeared, but somehow the gun came to rest on the filthy concrete floor.

‘Press your hand flat here again.’ Lauren put Ella’s hand back on her chest. ‘Press it.’

‘I am.’

‘You’re not. Press.’

Ella tried her hardest.

‘Better. I’ll be back in a sec.’

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I need the gear.’

‘Dontleaveme.’ Ella let go of the gun and grasped Lauren’s trouser leg.

‘I can’t look after you properly without the gear.’

‘Holdmyhand.’

Lauren knelt beside her. Inexplicably, Ella smelled honey. She thought of heaven, and Netta.

‘Let me get the stuff,’ Lauren said.

‘Holdmyhand.’

‘I am.’

But Ella couldn’t feel it – she couldn’t feel anything.