The Darkest Hour Read Free Page A

prosecution, to move up the ladder and take their places.
’
    ‘Turn it off,’ Ella said.
    Murray turned the volume down till the words became indistinct. ‘He’s got a point.’
    ‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Ella said.
    ‘You don’t think he’s right about the ambitious small-time dealer?’
    ‘Better that we do something than nothing.’
    ‘Not if it makes the situation worse,’ Murray said.
    ‘How can it be worse? Look what’s happened in just the last few months with ice. If we can get information on some of the importers, find out how they’re getting it into the country, there’s not only some bad guys locked up but also some channels they can no longer use.’
    Murray shook his head. ‘We need to lock them all up, big or small. Freely giving people immunity like this is just wrong. It’s like waving the big white flag: “Do what you want – we don’t care.” ’
    ‘As if getting the small guys off the street won’t then allow even smaller ones to come up,’ Ella said. ‘At least this way we strike some bigger blows.’
    Murray switched the radio off and sat down. Ella turned to the next page of numbers and bent closer to it, but still her concentration wandered. The bustling Homicide office was three floors down and they were stuck up here in a file room dusty with disuse. Their boss, Detective Sergeant Kirk Kuiper, had said he’d call if he needed them. She leaned over and picked up the phone, listened to the dial tone, and put the handset down. Murray watched, then sighed.
    They took a break twenty minutes later. Murray stood staring out the window, his coffee steaming the glass. Ella got out her mobile and dialled Detective Dennis Orchard. They’d trained together at Newtown, centuries ago it felt like, then worked at Hunters Hill while dreaming of Homicide. Dennis got his transfer a few years ago, leaving her pissed off and certain that her application was being stonewalled by an evil cabal working with then-Assistant Commissioner Frank Shakespeare, who she’d once inadvertently told to get the fuck out of her crime scene. (Not that she’d ever admit to Murray the hold she believed his father had over her career.) But earlier in the year Dennis had brought her in to work the Phillips case with him, and it had finally felt like the first step in the right direction.
    The bad thing was that it could also mean a quick slide backwards.
    ‘No news?’ she said when Dennis answered.
    ‘They’ll call you before they call me,’ he said.
    ‘Sometimes my reception’s crap up here.’
    ‘Oh sure,’ he said, a smile in his voice. ‘I’ll send a carrier pigeon if they call me first and I can’t reach you, okay?’
    She put the phone away. Murray was looking at her. She shook her head.
    She’d run through the incident in her mind a thousand times, a thousand times a thousand, seeing the kidnapper outlined against the background of sky and trees, gun aimed at Chris and Sophie Phillips who were curled up together on the grass. Ella remembered her sprint across the slope, her own gun out. Her voice shouting ‘Drop it! Drop it!’ and then the moment of knowing she had no choice, the kidnapper was about to shoot, and she’d held her breath and pulled the trigger. There was the noise, the recoil, and the sight of the kidnapper falling to the ground. And then she’d reached the couple, sobbing with their arms around each other, and the beautiful, perfect and safe little child between them.
    She rubbed her forehead, shielding the dampness in her eyes in case Murray was looking.
    She’d thought about that child, Lachlan Phillips, a lot, and talked about the case at length with Dennis, and read her copy of the statement she’d given to the Critical Incident Team detectives so often the pages were soft and creased. She always came up with the belief that she was one hundred per cent justified in the shooting, but still couldn’t be sure the Team’s verdict would go her way. Even with the