Daughters of Eve, page 30
‘What other ambulance?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The hand dryer in the squad room women’s toilet had almost dried my hair. That was more than I could say for the clothes still sticking to my skin but at least I wasn’t dripping puddles anymore. Hanging upside down, I checked the burner phone for what must have been the millionth time, waiting for a response to the furious texts I’d been sending.
‘Are you alright in there?’ Matt called from out in the hall.
‘Won’t be long.’ I had no idea when I’d be coming out.
I’d been in here since Robbo had signed Matt in. That was half an hour ago, now—but I couldn’t face him, not until I knew if I was responsible for Rose’s shooting. My mind raced around the same track, over and over, like a greyhound in training.
The Coalition wanted Rose dead, but the fake ambulance felt like an escape. If the ambulance was the Daughters, how did they know they’d be called? And if the shooting was the Coalition, why did they bother sending the ambulance. Around and around, twisting this way and that, desperately searching for a scenario that didn’t have the Daughters shooting Rose, with my help.
I flipped the phone’s lid open and closed again, hoping it would refresh the screen but it didn’t.
‘That’s what you’ve been saying since I got here. Is there anyone in there with you?’
‘Don’t come in.’ I pulled my head out from under the dryer and looked around frantically for somewhere to hide the burner.
The squeal of a door and Matt’s face peered around it. ‘Whatcha doin’?’ He pushed the door wider and leaned against the doorframe.
‘Just trying to get dry.’ I held the phone tight in my hand, hoping he’d be distracted by the wild halo of hair I’d just spotted in the mirror.
‘Uh-huh.’
My lips twitched as I tried for a smile but failed. He was watching me, worried about me and I was pretty sure he wanted to comfort me.
‘The boys out here reckon you’re crying.’
That got me in the guts. As wobbly as I was, I didn’t want Willoughby and Robbo to think I was blubbering in here like a baby.
‘What do I care?’ My eyes flicked down to my hand, an unconscious reflex.
‘Maybe it’s like a watched pot.’ He nodded at my hand. ‘Won’t ring while you’re waiting.’
I sighed, put the phone down on the dodgy laminate beside the basin, and turned to face the mirror.
‘I haven’t seen that phone before.’ He came up behind me, and wrapped his arms loosely around my waist.
‘It belongs to a friend.’
I met Matt’s eyes in their mirrored reflection. Could he tell I was lying. I’d never really got a feel for how good he was at his job.
‘It was a clean wound. Through and through, that’s what Robbo said.’
I nodded.
‘Shoulder. Missed the heart and probably the lung, he thought.’
I shrugged. She hadn’t been struggling to breathe so a collapsed lung was unlikely.
‘So, she’ll probably be fine.’
‘You reckon? The people who took her probably shot her. Does it sound like her best interests are top of mind for them?’
He flinched as if I’d slapped him.
‘I’m sorry—’ But my apology was cut short when the phone buzzed.
Matt got to it first. He picked it up and stepped out of reach.
‘Leave it, Matt. It’s none of your business.’
I watched him read the message and then work back through them, probably in reverse order. He would have seen my pleas for information and then the details of Rose’s transfer. He probably didn’t read past that.
He handed the phone to me and I read the new message.
Stop calling. Stop texting. Lose this number.
I pressed to call and this time the number picked up. It was a recorded voice. ‘The number you have called is not in service.’
Sitting in the passenger seat I clutched the burner, still hoping it might ring. Maybe Rose would use it to call me when she was feeling better. Beside me, Matt sat like a storm cloud, dense and dark, his eyes on the horizon.
We’d answered the DCI’s questions with the answers we’d prepared. No, I hadn’t realised I’d been sitting in a CCTV blackspot. Yes, I’d been out there all day, guessing she’d be transferred soon and that they’d use the back entrance to avoid the protesters at the front.
Willoughby had sent a uniform out to collect my sodden coat from the park. It was flimsy evidence but it supported our story.
Finally, he’d released me, tasking Peterson with submitting a report to Professional Standards to add to my already impressive list of potential crimes and definite misdemeanours. I couldn’t help but wonder if the report would get written, if Peterson’s hatred of me could triumph over his natural laziness.
Matt hadn’t spoken since we’d left the squad room. He’d driven straight to Bondi and parked in an almost empty car park. The ocean was grey and bleak today, with rain sheeting down and the wind whipping up salt spray so it lashed against the windscreen.
Matt drummed his fingers on the wheel. ‘So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
‘You’re a detective.’
His fingers kept tapping. ‘Well, as a detective, it looks to me like you offered up your daughter to a bunch of killers.’
I sucked my lower lip. ‘I thought they were her friends. I didn’t think they’d …’
‘Shoot her?’
That was below the belt.
‘It was a clean shot.’
The rhythmic pattering continued, like he was drumming something into his head. ‘Robbo says they’re checking every hospital and medical clinic in the metro area. They’ll be starting on the doctors’ surgeries next.’
I put my hand over his to stop the damn drumming. ‘There’s an automatic report on gunshot wounds. I don’t know why they’re wasting time. They should be looking for the ambos, they must have caught their faces on CCTV as they came in.’
He turned to me. ‘They’re doing that too, Hart. They’re being thorough. She can’t be the one that got away. The country’s tearing itself apart.’
‘And that’s why I did it. Why I took a chance with the Daughters.’
He looked back out to sea and I hoped he was listening.
‘The public wanted a body to hang in the town square, Matt. I couldn’t let it be hers.’
It was a while until he spoke again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? If you thought you were doing the right thing, why hide it?’
I was exhausted from keeping up with his emotional gymnastics. He’d been confused in the bathroom, comforting in front of Robbo and the squad, furious on the way here, and now he seemed hurt.
‘It would have made you an accessory.’
He smiled and reached across the handbrake to take my hand, then he leaned closer. For crying out loud, was he going to kiss me now?
‘Matt, stop.’
He froze. ‘What?’
‘I can’t do this anymore.’
The clouds were pouring mayhem into the sea as he released my hand. ‘Do what?’
I sat back, putting space between us.
‘This. The whole love’s golden dream routine.’
‘You don’t want me to kiss you?’
Now he was definitely hurt.
I looked at the wild weather tearing up the idyllic beach, a symbol of Sydney to so many tourists.
‘It was Robbo who asked you to come, not me. And I definitely didn’t ask you to quit your job.’
He fell back in his seat like I’d hit him, his head lolling on the window. ‘I told you, that was my decision. It’s not on you.’
I looked at him. ‘But it is, isn’t it? You’ve been mooning around since I turned up in Melbourne. I don’t know what you think is going on here, but you don’t know me and I don’t know you. This isn’t Romeo and Juliet. And if it was, it’s worth remembering that they both ended up dead!’
He smiled. ‘You think I’m in love with you?’
‘Well, why else would you disobey orders and quit your job and … oh, shit. It’s the case, isn’t it? You’re using this case to move to Sydney or get a promotion or something? Oh, I’m such an idiot.’
Now he was chuckling. ‘It’s not the case. It’s not Sydney. I’m here because of you. I just don’t know if I’m in love with you or not.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Matt?’
A fork of lightning split the sky, far out in the ocean. I counted the seconds until thunder rolled over us.
‘I’m talking about taking a chance, Hart. I’m talking about giving it a go.’
He was making no sense.
‘When I saw you at that conference, you took my breath away. You’d stand up to ask a question and if the speaker tried to fob you off, you went after them like a terrier. You were fearless and passionate and so bloody hot I could have cooked eggs on your engine block if you’d been a car.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. My engine block? What was it with men and cars? And I’d been far from hot at that conference, what was he talking about? I was a jeans and t-shirt girl who struggled to scrub up to smart casual at work.
‘And that night. Jesus, Hart. Talk about ruining a guy for other women. I waited for you to call me for months. I even came to Sydney once for a holiday, intending to look you up, but I lost my bottle.
‘Then you rang me out of the blue. And you were in Melbourne overnight and …’
And I remembered that night well enough to finish the sentence so I stopped him.
‘We work well in bed, Matt, but you don’t give up your job for good sex.’
He went quiet and looked out to sea. ‘It isn’t just the sex.’
I wanted to throw my arms in the air and scream. If it wasn’t the sex and it wasn’t love, what the hell was it?
‘I’ve only felt this way once before.’
I rolled my eyes but he was still watching the horizon.
‘Felt what?’
‘Like I might want to wake up next to you every morning for the foreseeable future. Might want to walk through life seeing things through your eyes as well as my own. Might want to find out if this feeling lasts as long as I think it could.’
His words had filled the car and they kept expanding till I wanted to climb out of the car to escape the pressure but I didn’t.
‘You said you’ve felt like this before?’
He nodded, his eyes still lost to the storm.
‘But that feeling didn’t last?’
He turned and I saw a sadness that felt contagious. ‘I didn’t get to find out.’
I’d been stuffing my own feelings down so hard and for so long that his sadness tipped the balance.
‘She got a job in London when I was still at the academy. I stayed back, thinking we had all the time in the world. That first winter, she slipped going down some steps by the Thames. Hit her head on a sandstone railing.’
I reached for his hand as he took a shuddering breath.
‘She never regained consciousness. Her parents brought her body straight back and buried her before I knew she was dead. That’s why I came, why I need to know what this is.
‘I know what it feels like to let someone leave and regret it. I won’t make that mistake again.’
The weight of what he’d said pressed on my heart and I wasn’t sure I had the emotional capacity to process it. Thankfully Matt’s phone rang and broke the moment.
‘It’s Robbo,’ he said, looking at the screen. I held my hand out but he swiped the screen and put it to his ear. ‘Right … Yes … Okay, I’ll tell her.’
He put the phone on the dash and turned to me.
‘The Daughters of Eve website went down forty-five minutes after Rose was shot. Cyber advised something’s been triggered in the app’s code. It’s deactivated and uninstalled the app from any phone that had downloaded it. The Daughters of Eve have disappeared.’
Grace’s face was pressed against the window alongside Zanthe’s when Matt and I pulled up outside Angie’s house.
‘It looks like she knows.’ Matt’s voice was calm as we climbed out of the car, but my heart still pounded in my chest.
I’d texted Angie from the Bunker’s bathroom asking her to keep the girls off the internet and away from the news until I could pick Grace up. It didn’t look like she’d succeeded.
Grace threw open the door. ‘She’s not dead. Tell me she’s not dead,’ she wailed as she ran to me. I pulled her into my arms but she struggled against comfort like the wildcat she’d been any time child services had tried to separate us.
Zanthe and her mother stood in the doorway, their arms wrapped around each other with the haunted look of the almost bereaved still shining in their eyes. If Angie hadn’t checked in on her sleeping daughter that night, if she hadn’t found the bottle of pills beside her bed, Angie would have been standing in my shoes right now. Her sympathetic smile cut me like a knife. Even if Rose was alive, I would never see her again. My loss was as real as if her body were lying on the racks at the Lidcombe morgue.
‘Grace, baby.’
Grace slumped as tears took the place of her raging denial and she sank into me. I wanted to tell her Rose was alive, or had been the last time I’d seen her, but what was the point? If we’d been alone, and I’d been free to speak the truth, I’m not sure what I would have said.
But orders had come through while Matt was driving. Peterson calling on Willoughby’s behalf. The Commissioner wanted a media blackout. We were not to talk about the Daughters of Eve to anyone, and definitely not to correct the media’s assumption that Rose Hart had died during her transfer.
I’d rung Robbo and he’d explained in more detail. There’d been no deaths from the Daughters’ list since Rose’s surrender and now the lightning rod of her presence was gone and the website and app had come down.
Australia seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see what happened next, and the Commissioner and his political masters didn’t want to blink first.
Matt was up and scrambling eggs by the time I joined him in the kitchen the next morning. We’d managed to sidestep the conversation in the car if last night had been any indication. That is, before Grace had come knocking again and crept into the bed beside me.
‘Robbo rang while you were in the shower. Still no sightings of Rose and he says you need to come in this morning.’
I poured a coffee and topped up Matt’s before I dropped into a seat.
‘It’s Saturday and I’m suspended. And before you get too cocky, you’re unemployed.’
‘I’m between jobs, thank you.’
I looked up and he was smiling. I sipped my coffee and watched him stir the eggs in the pan while the thoughts I’d spent the night pushing away came crowding back.
Rose taking the impact of a bullet playing over and over on a loop. The jerk of her upper body. The look of shock. Her knees bending and that sickly slump forward.
And now the Daughters had disappeared, packing up their website and app like the proverbial bat and ball being taken home.
‘Do you think she’s okay?’
Matt turned the burner off and came to sit beside me, taking my hands in his.
‘From what you and Robbo have told me, it sounds like her wound was serious but survivable. If the Daughters shot her and stole an ambulance to collect her, they must have had a plan to patch her up.’
‘Unless they meant to …’ I couldn’t say the words that kept rattling around my brain. ‘Silence her.’ That was as close as I could get to saying it.
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. ‘We may never find out, Emilia. You’re going to have to find a way to live with that.’
He was right and I hated that.
‘Do you think they’re really gone?’
‘Seems like a strange move if they’re not. An earthquake in Rome and political corruption in Canberra have pushed them off the top spot on my newsfeed.’ He indicated his phone and I opened the news app.
He was right. For the first time in weeks, the Daughters weren’t the top three stories, with every journalist searching for a new angle or offering a fresh opinion.
‘What if the killing doesn’t stop? Maybe the Daughters have put a match to a pile of kindling we’ve been sweeping under the carpet for years.’
He went back to the pan and scooped eggs onto the toast he’d buttered. Settling at the table he looked up, his face sombre and sad. ‘If that’s the case, I guess it’ll end up burning all our houses down.’
Robbo was pacing in the foyer when we arrived an hour later.
‘What took you two so long?’
Matt let his hand slip out of mine and some of my confidence went with it. I hated that his touch gave me strength. Since Rose’s arrest, I’d been limping along and while I hadn’t asked for help, I’d been leaning on Matt.
‘What’s the rush?’ There was steel in my voice but it was mostly bluff.
‘Not here. The DCI’s upstairs with the Commissioner.’
What the hell did the Commissioner want with me?
Robbo signed us both in and we followed him into the lift where he hit the button for the top floor. Willoughby was waiting, hovering under the official insignia of the New South Wales Police, that was mounted on the wall opposite the lifts.
‘About bloody time.’ He flicked his wrist before looking at the enormous gold-plated watch he wore.
‘I’m suspended, sir. I didn’t expect to be called in.’
Willoughby’s eyes ran the length of me and his lips curled into a sneer. ‘Evidently.’
I looked down at my crumpled shirt and thought about doing up my overcoat buttons but it was too warm. My career wasn’t going to live or die on the Commissioner’s appraisal of my off-duty dress sense.
Willoughby turned and started down the corridor towards the big conference room.
I’d only been up here once before, when I’d been awarded a bravery medal for saving a kid from a meth lab fire, back when I was in uniform. That medal was probably what pushed me over the line for a spot in the coveted Homicide Squad, much to Willoughby’s annoyance. It wasn’t that he didn’t like women, or so he kept telling me; it was that he only hired on merit. He picked me and Peterson up off the same promotion list, just before they scrapped it and started another selection process.
