Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(72)

He’d heard the call on the radio – possible sighting of one of the Georges River Killer suspects. One wounded, one missing, one dead. When Whitt failed to get Tox on the phone, and then heard the location of the incident come through, he knew. He grabbed his badge from his back pocket and started pushing through the people, approaching the police tape.

Upstairs, a broken window. Glass in the hall. Whitt was charging up the stairs when he was flattened against the wall by paramedics wrestling a stretcher around the tight corner. It was Tox, his blond hair slicked back, wet with blood, an oxygen mask clamped to his face. Blood all over his neck. He looked waxy, grey.

‘Get out of the way!’ One of the medics shoved at Whitt, leaving a big red handprint on his shirt. ‘Move!’

‘Is he alive? Is he alive? Oh God!’

One wounded, one missing, one dead. Whitt hadn’t prayed in many years. But he was praying now that this man, this strange creature he hadn’t even been sure he liked, wasn’t dead. Because he knew now he had indeed liked him all this time. He was badly behaved, callous, unpredictable. A lot like Harry. Whitt had taken a long time to realise he liked Harry too, and now he’d do anything for her. Further down the hall a big man in a polo shirt was sprawled out on the blood-soaked carpet, two paramedics pumping on his chest.

Whitt ran behind the paramedics carrying Tox’s stretcher.

‘Tell me if he’s alive!’

The paramedics were barking at each other, medical terms, directions. One of them seemed to be wrestling with Tox as they ran along, trying to pull his hands apart. Whitt caught up. Tox was indeed lying with one arm tucked tightly against his chest, the fist closed, holding the arm there with a tight grip on his own wrist. He was alive. Fighting for consciousness, unwilling to let his arm go. Whitt watched, his skin tingling with joy and relief, as Tox’s eyes opened, shifted to him briefly before rolling up in his head.

‘Sir, I need to get a line into that hand! Let go!’

‘Reverence!’ Tox moaned, the oxygen mask muffling his words.

‘What?’ Whitt shoved the paramedic on his side of the stretcher away. ‘What is it? What did you say?’

‘ Reverence.’ Tox was struggling to breathe. He coughed, sprayed the inside of the mask with blood. ‘Rev. Er. Ence.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Whitt struggled. ‘I –’

Tox let his wrist go, reached out and grabbed Whitt by his shirt. The other fist was still balled against his chest. ‘EVIDENCE!’

Whitt heard the word through the mask that time. He looked at the fist on Tox’s chest.

‘Oh God. Oh Jesus. OK! I get it! I get it!’

Whitt dashed into the street, wrenched open the door of the nearest patrol car and grabbed an evidence bag. He ran back to the ambulance just as the medics were loading Tox into the back. Whitt jumped into the tiny space.

‘Sir, you need to get out of this van! We’re trying to save a life here!’

‘No way.’ Whitt took Tox’s wrist and slid the evidence bag over his hand. He was passed out now. The wrist was limp.

Whitt grabbed a roll of bandages from the shelf beside him and began winding them around and around his partner’s wrist, sealing the bag around his hand. ‘He’s got forensic evidence under his nails. I’m preserving that evidence until we can get it tested.’

‘How can you be so selfish?’ one of the medics snapped as the doors shut behind her and the engine roared to life. ‘This man is dying!’

‘Not without reason, he’s not,’ Whitt said.





Chapter 116


THERE WAS A whump sound, like a fist hitting a taut stomach, and Dez’s body bucked backwards in the chair, tipping it onto its hind legs. His head sprayed upwards, a mess of blood and skull and teeth and brain matter lost in a yellow ball of flame that vaporised as quickly as it had ballooned. The headless body rocked forwards, taking the chair with it, and collapsed onto the tiles. I hadn’t made a sound. I had no voice. The air was trapped in my lungs, and only when Dez fell did it ease out in a short, harsh yelp.

Blood was everywhere. On the ceiling. On the furniture. On my face.

I like to think I’m pretty tough. But nothing I’d ever experienced had hardened me enough to bear this as coldly and emotionlessly as Bella. I went from understanding and sympathising with her to suddenly being so terrified of her that I could scream. I’d thought I understood. I didn’t understand at all.

I watched, frozen with terror, as she took another plastic water bottle from the pile of things on the table.

‘Oh God, please. Please don’t. Bella, Jesus.’

I’d stood. But she had the gun again and was ushering me back down into the chair with the soothing motions of a mother. She took the roll of duct tape and tossed it at my feet.

‘Strap up,’ she said.





Chapter 117


WHITT STOOD IN the hospital hallway, motionless. To his left down the stairs was the triage unit where Tox had been taken. The man had died in the ambulance and been resuscitated right in front of him, a pulse lost, a pulse encouraged to return. Whitt supposed that was death. He wasn’t sure. A paramedic had clamped another mask over him and sat squeezing a rubber bag, forcing air into his lungs. Another had shone a torch in his eyes, stuck him with needles, strapped things to his limbs. All the while the hand with the evidence bag tied to it remained flopped down by Tox’s side, untouchable. Some silent understanding had come over everyone, after the panic of the first moments, that the hand held the evidence of who had done this. Whitt hadn’t said anything. He couldn’t find the words. But after an hour or so in the emergency room one of the nurses had come out and handed him a glass slide in a little pouch. Whitt had thanked her and run it up to a lab on the third floor. He’d commandeer the lab. Whatever it took. There was no time to waste getting the sample to a police forensic unit.