Vodka Doesn't Freeze

by Leah Giarratano

  Moving quickly now, Jill almost missed it when her hands ran over some sort of recessed panelling in the otherwise smooth concrete of the wall. This was not where the doorway should be, but, her hearing honed by years of training sessions in the dark, she could sense air moving behind the surface. She scrabbled at the area with her hands, trying to wedge her fingertips into the fine vertical fissure she felt running up the wall. Nothing. She couldn't make it move. She forced herself to slowly smooth her hands across each part of the surface, seeking a handle of some description. The moments ticked by, and her instincts urged her to move on. She forced herself to continue covering the area with her hands, but she could feel nothing marring the surface at all. Finally she reached another vertical crack in the wall and realised that this doorway was very large; it was probably a sliding door, and it might be operated by remote control, or by a button that could be anywhere in the room. With a squirm of frustration at the time she had wasted, she moved on, faster now, urgency bursting in her chest.

  The third corner. She knew the other doorway had to be close to the last corner of the room. Almost there.

  And then, from behind the wall, descending from a height, Jill heard someone clattering, running towards her.

  She scrabbled at her eyes, in her terror thinking she had a blindfold on, as she had countless times when training. Her fear redoubled when she remembered that her eyes were wide open and staring, and she could see nothing at all. She wanted to howl in the dark. Instead, she did the only thing she could: tried to make herself as small a target as possible. She squatted on the ground and listened.

  Pressed against the wall, Jill took several fast, very deep breaths to increase the oxygen in her blood, pumping herself up to attack. She crouched, poised, ready to spring as soon as the door opened. But the next sound shocked her so much that she almost lost her balance and rocked back on her haunches to the ground.

  Instead, she stood, a sob in her throat, waiting for the child who was crying and running behind the door.

  When the door opened and she heard his little body hurtle through, she called to him.

  'Jerome? Jerome Sanders?'

  He knocked her against the wall when he rushed at her, scrabbling, sobbing.

  'Help! Can you help me? He's coming.'

  'Jerome. We're going to get out of here. My name is Jill.

  I'm a police officer. I'm going to help you, and you're going to help me.'

  She reached for him, put her cool hands on his hot face, held his head still.

  'Is Jamaal behind you, Jerome?' she asked him.

  'The door in the floor was still open, but I slammed it when I got in. I could hear him behind me and I thought he'd follow me, but maybe it locked or something.'

  Jill couldn't make sense of all this, but understood they had very little time.

  'Jerome. There are three things I need to tell you. You've got to be brave okay?' She felt him nod. 'First thing is that there is another door in here, and you and I are going to find it and get out.'

  'Yeah! He brought me in that way. Come on!' He tried to run from her.

  'Jerome, I said three things. You have to wait, just a moment.' She held his shirt. 'I can't see anything, Jerome. They did something to my eyes. You're going to have to lead me.'

  'Uh-huh.' He sounded small, scared, waiting for the third thing.

  'The other thing, Jerome, is that there is a body down here. It's Mr Sebastian, the man who owns this house. I don't want you to freak out when you see him, all right? Best thing you can do is try hard not to look at him, take me to the door, and we'll get home to your mum and dad.' She paused. 'You ready?'

  'Let's go. Now, please.'

  Jill held Jerome's hand and they crossed the big room in about ten seconds. When she heard a sharp intake of breath, she squeezed his hand harder, knowing he'd just seen Sebastian.

  When Jerome spoke, though, his voice sounded steady. 'I saw Tadpole press this thing. Hang on.' He let go of her hand. She heard him moving a chair, and then a deep mechanical rumbling. Fresh, salty air hit her face.

  Next to her, Jerome suddenly screamed. She reached out, grabbed his arm and ran towards the air.

  46

  THE SOUNDS OF someone trying to move quietly woke Jill, but she felt so exhausted that she just listened for a while with her eyes closed. When she couldn't figure out what thesnick, snick noise could be, Jill opened her eyes and saw the blurry shape of her mother's back standing near a sun-filled window.

  Snick, snick.

  'What're you doing?' Her voice was gravelly.

  'Good morning, darling!' Her mum bustled over to the bed. She held scissors in one hand, a couple of wilted flower heads in the other. 'How are you feeling?'

  'Tired.' Jill looked around the hospital room, fingered a ribbon on the nightgown she was wearing. Pink. Definitely not one of her own.

  'And, how does everything . . . look . . .' she trailed off.

  'Blurry, but I can see. What did they do to my eyes?'

  'I'll get the doctor, darling. He can explain. It's good to see you awake at last. They've kept you sleeping for twenty-four hours.' Her mum beamed, wiped her eyes, and left the room.

  Jill stretched gingerly, registering surprise that she didn't feel too bad. She reached up and touched the back of her head, pressed her fingers against the bandage there. A bit harder. Didn't hurt too much. Her ribs ached a little, but she was getting used to that.

  Sensing her body was going to be okay, Jill prodded a little at her feelings, memories. The knowledge that she had literally been back in the basement with Sebastian was there, but it didn't send her scurrying behind her mental doors. Nor did it drag forward image after image of what she'd endured when she was twelve. Huh.

  She wondered how Scotty had handled the clean-up at the mansion in Hunters Hill. The waves of relief she had felt on hearing his voice when she and Jerome had run out of the underground room had dropped her to her knees.

  When she'd come home from that basement the first time, when she was twelve, Jill had found herself waiting to feel safe again, to feel like it was really over, but the wait had stretched from days to years, and still the feeling had not come. Twenty years later, on her knees, sobbing in the grass, Jill finally felt like she had come home. She cried with relief. She cried for Jerome. She cried for what her mum, dad, brother and sister had endured. Most of all, Jill cried for the white-eyed girl who had watched it all, and was gone forever. The tears had not stopped until she was in the ambulance and felt the morphine take effect.

  A voice outside her door interrupted Jill's thoughts; you always heard Scotty before you saw him. She wiped her eyes before he entered the room.

  'Loud bloody bastard,' she greeted him, as he strode through her door, laughing at someone outside on the ward. 'People are sleeping, you know.'

  'Only lazy buggers who should be out working like the rest of us. When are you getting up, Jackson? There's shitloads of paperwork.'

  'Suffer. I'm blind, remember?'

  'Bullshit. Doctor said your eyes are fine.' His voice softened a little. 'They used the same shit they put in little Madeline McKenzie's eyes. Turns out, one of the squirrels at the party was an optometrist; he'd handed round this stuff that makes you temporarily blind if you use enough. They had a vet too. They had a real-life e-Bay thing happening there. They were trading all sorts of shit with each other – horse tranquillisers, coke, some other sick shit.

  'We've got ten of them locked up,' he continued. 'Six of them won't say a thing. Two don't speak English. But we got two in there who've spilled their guts about everything. One of them only wanted some McDonald's, and when he got that we couldn't shut him up.'

  'Mahmoud?'

  The clouds came over Scotty's face. 'We didn't get him. He hasn't been home either.' He blew off a sigh. 'He'll show up, J.'

  'Yep. What about Mercy?'

  Scotty's brow creased. 'Pretty sad all round, really,' he said. 'Her mother's dead, no siblings, and her
father's a hard bastard. Didn't want to know. Wouldn't even come and ID her body. I thought maybe it was a shock reaction, so I went round to his house again a couple of hours later. He practically slammed the door in my face.'

  Jill shook her head and stared at the sheets. Mercy's life had been dedicated to helping others, and in death she was on her own.

  'We ended up having to get a bloke she worked with to come down to the coroner's,' Scotty continued. 'I don't know about you, Jackson, but I reckon some of those counsellors are more screwed up than their clients. What was his name – Noah Griffen – that's it.'

  'What'd he do?'

  'Nothing really. He pretty much didn't say a word. Didn't want to know a thing. Shocked I s'pose. I just thought shrinks were supposed to deal with stuff like that better.'

  'That's what people think about us,' said Jill. 'Not exactly true in my case is it?'

  'Yeah. You were a total stuff-up. Got the baddie, saved the kid, lived to tell the tale. You really dropped the bundle, Jackson.'

  Jill hid a small smile with her hair. 'Jerome all right?' she asked, finally looking up.

  The sun came back out when Scotty smiled. 'Him and his whole family got here at eight o'clock this morning. They wanted to come yesterday, but the doctors told them you'd be asleep all day and they'd be wasting their time. They got told to come back some time today. They walked in the doors as soon as visitors were allowed.'

  'How do you know they were here that early?' Jill smiled.

  Scotty looked sheepish. 'Someone told me. Anyway, Mrs Sanders and your mum haven't stopped talking all morning. You can't shut some people up.'

  'What time is it?'

  'Eleven.'

  'What are you bludging around waiting for then? Let the poor people in.'

  'You ready for them, Jackson?'

  She nodded.

  At twelve o'clock, with a box of tissues and Jerome Sanders eating chocolates on her bed, a nurse came in and told the Sanders, Jacksons and Scotty that it was time to go, that Jill had to rest.

  Frances Sanders and Jerome were the last to leave. Jerome's mother bent as though to give Jill a final kiss. Instead, she just rested her forehead against Jill's own.

  'Bless you,' she whispered, barely audible.

  Jill swallowed.

  'For God's sake, Mum! She's a cop. You don't have to go bawling all over her.' Jerome turned to Jill. 'Don't forget you said I could hold your gun some time.'

  'I said you could see it.'

  'Yeah, okay, then.' Jerome gave her a last big smile, stole another two of her chocolates when his mum wasn't looking, and they left the room together.

  Jill leaned her head back against her pillows and was asleep by 12.05.

  47

  SCOTTY WAS RIGHT. There was shitloads of paperwork.

  It had been a week since she'd been released from hospital and Jill sat opposite her partner, whose desk was also covered in files. Forensics were still sending in their reports, but the urgency had diminished given that Sebastian was dead and it looked like he'd done all the killing. Finding Mahmoud was certainly a priority. They had him for the kidnapping after Jerome had picked him from several photos, but whether they could implicate him in any of the murders remained to be seen. Regardless, the whole country was on alert for him now.

  Jill was supposed to take another week off, but she knew Scotty needed her help and, despite her fatigue, she couldn't handle any more bed rest. Andreessen hadn't seemed to care either way when she'd shown up in her casual clothes that morning.

  When they'd finished big-noting themselves about the bust at Hunters Hill, Harris, Jardine and Elvis had managed to get out of all the wrap-up work on the case. Jardine had taken compassionate leave: trying to get his marriage back together, they said. Harris caught another case back at Central and his boss could no longer spare him for the task-force. With them gone, it made sense to move the wind-up work back to Maroubra, but yesterday they'd been told that Elvis was on sick report – hurt on duty.

  'What for?' Scotty had asked Inspector Andreessen.

  'Back injury. Remember when he fell down those stairs chasing a druggie in Darlinghurst? It's playing up again.' The Inspector dismissed them.

  Back at their desks, Scotty stared morosely at the reams of paper on his desk. 'Fat fuck. Hurt on duty, my arse. Gibson reckons he hurt his back after a pub crawl when he fell off the platform at Central station.'

  Jill laughed. 'Hope it hurt.'

  They worked quietly for a while, but Jill couldn't settle into it. 'Scotty,' she said.

  'Mmm.'

  'I'm gonna go out for a while.'

  'Not you too, Jackson.'

  'I want to go and pick up Mercy's files from the hospital. I want to have them all here to see whether she wrote anything in them about Mahmoud or Sebastian.'

  'You right to drive?'

  'Yeah.'

  'You're on my shit list,' he growled. 'No really, that's cool. I'll see you tomorrow then.'

  On the way out to Richmond, Jill wondered whether she was holding off closing down this case because it would mean finally ending a huge chapter in her own life. That would mean changing the way she did a lot of things. Was she stalling? She'd had a couple of days in bed to think about her punishing food and exercise regime, her obsessive cleaning, her arm's-length relationships with others. None of her safe-guards felt as relevant any more. She planned to change a lot of things in her life now.

  She reasoned that she really did want to see what Dr Merris could tell her in death that she had been unable to share in life. She felt she owed Mercy something. It was really Mercy who had saved Jerome. It was Mercy's actions that had forced Jill to finally confront Sebastian and end the years of fear.

  She clicked the radio on in the car and watched the sunlight outside painting the trees red and gold.

  'Carole Dean's off today,' the CEO of the hospital, Frank Black, told Jill as she waited in his office for someone to accompany her to Mercy's rooms.

  They sat in awkward silence until Black's phone rang and, relieved, he dived upon it.

  One of the nursing staff poked her head around the door, and smiled. Jill had met Kim once before when she'd come to visit Dr Merris. They walked together through the hospital towards Mercy's rooms.

  'People here are pretty shook up about Mercy's death,' said Kim. 'Not just her patients either. The staff liked her, too. She used to be great. But she just went right off towards the end.'

  Jill walked and listened. They left the plush foyer of the main part of the hospital and moved into a more sterile section of the building. The private psychiatric hospital had previously also offered medical-surgical procedures, but the cost of maintaining the equipment had rendered that part of the business unfeasible, given that psychiatric beds could pull in as much money for much less outlay.

  'You see it a fair bit in the mental health field, but no-one wants to be told they're burning out,' Kim continued. 'I tried to talk to her, but she was just unreachable, you know?'