Hush Hush Read online

  ‘I’m here to tell you that the arsenic thing might be key to finding that missing mother and her kid,’ Tox said. They walked together slowly towards the lifts. ‘Wendell Hamm’s death might be linked. I’d like to get a copy of the rest of the files on his death. Everything you have, in case we need it for trial. Things tend to disappear as soon as you need them.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they’ve found the girl and her daughter poisoned with arsenic,’ Chloe said.

  ‘No. It’s complicated. Let me tell you all about it down at Jack’s.’ He punched the lift button, and before Chloe could protest the doors opened and her emergency-room supervisor appeared.

  ‘Oh,’ the man said. ‘Chloe. Just the woman I was looking for. Who’s this?’

  ‘A friend,’ Tox said confidently.

  ‘That’s a bit of a stretch,’ Chloe murmured.

  ‘Director wants to see you, Chloe.’

  ‘What?’ Chloe felt a wave of exhaustion roll over her. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Right now.’ The supervisor held the door open for her.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I’ve been advised to bring you upstairs. That’s it.’

  ‘I’ll go.’ Tox got into the lift with her. ‘I’ll catch up with you –’

  ‘You can come along too.’ The supervisor looked Tox up and down with a superior gaze. His lip twitched. ‘In fact it might be best if you did.’

  Chapter 63

  THEY RODE TO level eight of the hospital in silence. The supervisor walked ahead of them, his shoes clacking on the linoleum. Chloe didn’t even notice Tox take the strap of her backpack and slide it off her shoulder. The relief when the weight lifted was minimal. Dread was pounding like a hammer at the back of her skull.

  ‘This must be about the Woods records,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be sacked. You can’t give out medical documents like that without approval.’

  ‘I’ll take the rap,’ Tox said. ‘It was my fault. I pressured you.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d held me at gunpoint. It’s protocol.’

  ‘Fuck their protocol.’

  Chloe heaved a sigh. She was already thinking about disciplinary hearings, job applications. Maybe Prince of Wales had an opening. She could try Concord Hospital, though the commute would be a nightmare.

  ‘If the guy tries to sack you I’ll put his head in a bucket of concrete,’ Tox said.

  ‘Oh yeah, that’ll help matters.’

  She prepared to turn into Director Gallagher’s office when the supervisor carried on walking ahead of them.

  ‘He’s in the boardroom,’ he said, gesturing up the hall.

  ‘This is worse than I thought,’ Chloe whispered.

  Chapter 64

  THE SUPERVISOR HELD the door open for them and Tox and Chloe walked ahead into the huge, brightly lit room.

  ‘Surprise!’

  The word rose in a roar from twenty or more people. Chloe looked behind her at Tox for some sign of collusion, but he seemed as confused as she was. Everyone was there – Director Gallagher, all of the section heads, some of the emergency-room night crew and a smattering of day nurses. The long boardroom table was cluttered with plates of food, cakes and stacks of paper cups. Chloe’s supervisor clapped like the rest of them, a room full of faces turned towards her, beaming.

  ‘Oh, no way.’ Chloe spied the little display at the head of the table, a certificate and trophy. ‘Oh, no. It can’t be me.’

  ‘It’s you.’ Director Gallagher, a huge pot-bellied man in a salmon-pink shirt, came and shook Chloe’s hand so that her whole arm wobbled. ‘Well done, Chloe. Very well done.’

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Tox asked through the commotion around them. ‘Is it your birthday or something?’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Chloe already felt her cheeks aching with a wide smile of pride. ‘A few months ago the hospital nominated me for an award. It’s an industry thing. The Royal Australian College of Surgeons. I … I must have won. I can’t believe –’

  She was swept away into the hugs and congratulations of her colleagues. Into the sudden, terrifying limelight as everyone turned to her and the director gave a little impromptu speech. A cup of wine was thrust into her hand, and more people slid into the crowded room, dashing past on their way home or before they started their shifts. Chloe examined the certificate in the light of the boardroom. She held the trophy and thanked everyone and blathered on about her surprise. The exhaustion of the day’s shift, the relief that the director hadn’t been about to strip her job away from her, the sizzling joy of seeing her name carved in the trophy swept her up so that when she finally remembered Tox Barnes, she found that at some time during the celebrations he’d slipped away.

  Chapter 65

  SHE DISCOVERED HIM sitting at the bar at his usual spot, under a vintage candelabra adorned with little green lampshades. He was tapping an unlit cigarette on the felt bar runner, reading his phone as though he’d never left. The same bartender from her first visit nodded at her and reached for a bottle of wine from the shelf.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Tox asked. ‘You should be out celebrating.’

  ‘I’ll celebrate,’ she said. ‘Right now I’ve got about half an hour left in these shoes before my feet fall off. I’m saving the party for when I can enjoy it properly.’

  She set the trophy on the bar in front of them. It was white marble, cylindrical with a wide, flat base, like an upside-down torch. In gold lettering, etched into the stone, was her name and award.

  ‘Excellence in Clinical Practice,’ Tox read. ‘So that’s it? They just give it to you? There’s no ceremony or anything?’

  ‘Oh, yes, there will be a big awards night,’ Chloe said. ‘A banquet, where all the other awards are presented.’

  ‘What?’ Tox frowned. ‘So why did they spoil it by telling you early that you’ve won? Why not tell you on the big night so you can be all surprised and make a gushy speech?’

  ‘Well, they want to make sure you go to the banquet, I guess,’ Chloe said. ‘Surgeons are busy people. When we’re not working we’re sleeping, and those banquets are long and full of boring speeches.’

  They both looked at the trophy in appreciative silence.

  ‘It’s a nice trophy,’ she said. ‘It looks maybe a little bit … ah …’

  ‘Like a tombstone?’ Tox asked.

  ‘I was going to say …’ Chloe gripped the smooth stone cylinder, slid her hand up and down its shaft.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Tox shook his head. She rocked back in her chair, laughing. She laughed so hard people at the low tables at the back of the room looked over in their direction.

  ‘I thought it looked familiar,’ Tox said, gripping its girth.

  Chloe giggled. ‘I guess it was probably designed by a man, for a man. I’m only the second woman ever to have won it.’

  ‘Well, don’t win it next year,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If you win two years in a row they give you a big set of stone balls that attach to the bottom of it.’

  He watched her laughing, handed her a napkin when tears started leaking from the corners of her eyes. He seemed content, sitting looking at her, one elbow resting on the bar. They were almost like two people just enjoying each other’s company, Chloe thought. Two people who had just met, whose lives weren’t inescapably and terribly tangled. For a moment, in the warmth and quiet of the bar, she was able to forget completely about what had happened to link them many decades earlier.

  ‘Fresh air,’ he said, taking his cigarette packet from the bar top. ‘Want to come?’

  In the street he tucked the cigarettes away and instead drew her to him. They held each other and kissed in the dark.

  Chapter 66

  THE LITTLE DOGS mobbed me when I arrived home. Pops was in the kitchen, lit by the glow of the range hood over a big pot of what smelled like very good Irish stew. He was bopping along to jazz as much as his bad knees would allow, pointing the woode
n spoon at me as I appeared in the kitchen like Frank Sinatra singling out a fan in the casino lounge between verses.

  ‘It’s kind of nice having someone come home at dinnertime,’ Pops said. ‘I can say things like “How was your day?” and “Can I pour you a drink?”’

  ‘You can talk to the dogs,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but then all I get to say are things like “Stop licking me” and “Don’t put your nose there.”’

  ‘Some men would pay anything to spend their whole day saying things like that,’ I said. ‘But in any case, the answers to your original questions are “Crap” and “Yes”.’ I slumped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. He poured me a glass of wine. ‘They’ve got Dolly on the rocks.’

  I explained the warden’s refusal to let me into the prison. Pops pushed open the laptop that was sitting on the table beside me and clicked on a video file.

  ‘It gets worse,’ he said. ‘I got this from the contact I was telling you about.’

  I watched. It took a moment to realise what I was seeing. The video was a black-and-white view of the outside of Doctor Goldman’s surgery, a slice of door and wall before a stretch of hallway and a corner. As the video progressed I saw Goldman’s elbow come into view through the glass window in her door, pointed downwards like she was holding something to her ear. The phone call. She opened the door of the surgery room and walked out, disappeared around the corner.

  She didn’t lock the door behind her as Dolly had said she did.

  As I watched, Dolly appeared, limping on her twisted ankle. She turned and followed Doctor Goldman around the corner, a lean black object gripped in her fist.

  Chapter 67

  I WATCHED THE first half of the video seven times without speaking. Pops stirred the stew. He was no longer dancing.

  ‘She said she stayed down on the floor the whole time,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She said Goldman locked her in.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘Both of those are lies,’ I said.

  ‘All is not lost.’ Pops gestured to the laptop. ‘Watch the second half of the video.’

  I watched. Goldman reappeared on the screen, staggering, smearing a bloody handprint on the wall that was a dark grey in the video. Dolly was with her, holding her up, an arm around her back and a hand clutched with Goldman’s hand over the wound in her neck. Goldman collapsed on the floor in the doorway of the surgery, dragging Dolly down with her. The two bloodied women held each other as Goldman kicked and shivered and died.

  I put my head in my hands.

  ‘She’s helping the doctor,’ Pops said. ‘That’s plain as day on the tape. Why stab a woman and then help her get to safety? Hold her while she dies? That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Why lie about leaving the room if all she did was go and help Goldman?’

  Pops shrugged.

  ‘Are there any other angles of it?’ I asked. ‘Something looking down the hall where the attack occurred?’

  ‘Nope,’ Pops said. ‘That would be too easy. The camera with the perfect angle down the hall beside the doctor’s rooms was malfunctioning.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ I sneered. I held my head, burning with frustration. ‘Of course it was!’

  ‘It doesn’t look good, the tape,’ Pops said. ‘Dolly said she didn’t follow the doctor out into the hall, and she clearly did. If she’s told the prison staff this, then she’s lied in an official statement. And she’s carrying something in her hand. Gripped in a fist. It’s long and thin, whatever it is, and it’s gone by the time she comes back. I’m seeing if we can have the tape cleaned up, of course.’

  I watched the video five more times. It was a sequence only one minute and forty-five seconds long. By the time I was done Pops was slipping slabs of garlic bread under the oven grill.

  ‘She’s in the infirmary now,’ I said. ‘They pulled her out of ad seg for a supposed suicide attempt. She’ll be strapped to a bed in the hospital wing.’

  ‘So?’ Pops said.

  ‘So if we want to call her, the prison would be expecting us to phone the ad seg line,’ I said. ‘Inmates can only receive calls in the prison in two areas: the general-population phone bank, and the ad-seg phone bank. If I can get Dolly on the phone in the infirmary, whatever we say won’t be recorded.’

  ‘Will they even transfer an outside call to the infirmary?’

  ‘They don’t have to. I know all the extensions.’ I smiled.

  ‘But what are you going to say? They’re not going to give her the phone for a quick chitchat,’ Pops said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘They’re not going to let Harriet Blue call.’

  Chapter 68

  THE PHONE RANG. I slipped off my shoes and wriggled my toes underneath the belly of one of the dogs. Pops was staring at me, our bowls of stew and plates of garlic bread steaming on the table before us.

  ‘This isn’t going to work,’ he said.

  I held a finger to my lips. He sighed and picked up his spoon.

  ‘Infirmary.’ A male voice. ‘Officer Darender.’

  ‘My name is Adriana McKinty, QC,’ I said, glancing at the bookshelf near the entrance to Pops’s kitchen and snatching an author’s name. ‘I’m calling to speak to an inmate named Dolly Quaddich.’

  There was a moment of silence while Officer Darender assessed the situation.

  ‘I … uh … You’ve got the wrong line, Ms McKinty. This is the prison infirmary, and you’ve called well outside the permitted hours for –’

  ‘Yes, I realise it’s late,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been patched through from the switchboard. I’ve got approval from the warden to speak with my client. It’s regarding a matter of some legal urgency. I need verbal affirmation from Ms Quaddich to release some documents pertinent to her case and that has to occur within the next hour.’

  ‘The warden?’ Officer Darender baulked. ‘But the warden went home at five.’

  ‘Officer Darender.’ I sharpened my tone. ‘I’d be happy to describe in excruciating detail the various leaps and bounds I’ve made trying to get in contact with my client tonight, a veritable jurisdictional and administrative gauntlet that I’ve not experienced in all my years at the bar. But the clock is ticking. I’m sure you realise that not only is restricting my client’s access to legal counsel a breach of professional conduct by Johnsonborough staff, but if I can’t speak with my client in the next –’

  ‘Jesus, just hang on, will you?’ Officer Darender sighed. We waited. Pops was smiling over his stew, shaking his head.

  ‘Hello?’ a familiar voice said.

  ‘Dolly, it’s Harry,’ I said. ‘Don’t say anything. I’m pretending to be your lawyer so they’ll let us talk.’

  There was silence on the line.

  ‘Is the officer listening in?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he walked away,’ Dolly said.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘What are you doing in the infirmary?’

  ‘I can’t talk about that,’ Dolly said. ‘There was a fight, that’s all. In my cell.’

  ‘With other inmates or with the guards?’

  ‘The guards,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not a fight, Dolly. That’s a beating.’ I could hear the rage in my own voice. I gripped the edge of the table and tried to breathe evenly. ‘Listen, Doll, we need to get you out of there. You’re not safe. We don’t have much time to talk, so listen up, OK? I need to know what you saw the day Doctor Goldman was stabbed. I know you followed her out of the medical room and around the corner into the hall. Did you see who attacked her?’

  ‘No,’ Dolly said. ‘I didn’t see anyone else. Just her.’

  ‘Why did you tell my friend Trevor Morris that you’d stayed in the doctor’s room when the attack happened?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You said you lay down at the sound of the alarm. But you didn’t. You followed the doctor out not long after she left.’

  ‘I don’t know, Harry.’ Dolly’s voice was hoa
rse with tears. ‘I was so scared. It was bad stuff, man. It was so bad. I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’m from the country, you know? We’re, like, simple kind of people. You don’t get stabbings and that sort of thing out there.’

  ‘You had something in your hand when you left the medical room.’

  Dolly said nothing.

  ‘Do you remember what it was?’

  ‘The guard’s on his way back, Harry.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘I want you to get yourself into the doctor’s room tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. That way you’ll get the night doctor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell the guards you’re sick or something. You’ve got sharp pains in your belly. I don’t know. Just get into the surgery and I’ll talk to you there.’

  ‘But how can you –’

  ‘Just do it, Dolly,’ I said. ‘Seven o’clock.’

  There was a rattle, a shuffling sound. I heard the officer telling Dolly her time was up, and the line went dead.

  Chapter 69

  I COULD STOP this now, she thought.

  The thought came even as they rode the lift in her building together, as her hands held him against the stainless-steel wall, his hands gripping her hips, their bodies locked together. His breath was sweet from the Scotch and ashy from the cigarettes, foreign and yet strangely familiar, a body she had known under different circumstances, scared and helpless and wounded, now furious and forceful with passion. Chloe had to drag herself away to get to the door, drunk on the wine in the boardroom and at Jangling Jack’s, and dizzy with excitement. She dropped her keys at the foot of the door, laughing as she scooped them up. They didn’t turn the lights on, staggered over a stack of library books in the hall, fell onto the couch together.

  I should stop this now, she thought.