Day 33

This whole thing isn’t quite right

Tuesday arrives at the hospital doors.  With the first light comes the east wind and the promise of another frighteningly hot day ahead.  Not a single cloud opposes the sun’s rise.

The surgeon does his rounds and, at 10.33 am, pronounces the mystery woman well enough to go home.

An interpreter still hasn’t been found.  Hospital interpreter services has matched nineteen people with an interpreter in the last seventy-two hours, most of them in the mental health services section of the hospital.  Success in anyone’s language, and you can’t win them all.

The nurse manager calls the cops who were in to interview the mystery woman last Friday.  Now the surgeon’s given her the nod to go home it’s her job to clear the bed and make sure it’s available for someone else.  Bed clearance is one of the performance indicators in her contract and she’s up for quarterly review in a few weeks.

The nurse manager can’t think of a better way to get the bed cleared than to call the cops and hand mystery woman over to them.

When the Constables arrive at room 25, the woman’s sitting on the edge of the hospital bed that was so recently hers, dressed from head to toe in black.  Even the cast on her left wrist is covered.  She looks out of place among all the open faces of the staff and patients.  She sits waiting silently.

“G’day missus,” the older cop starts.

The other hangs in the background, at the doorway to the room, uncertain about what to do.  The gentle burst of strine does nothing to penetrate the woman’s vigil.

“Missus!  Hello?” the older one says again, this time a bit louder.

She looks up and the cop can just about see the deep brown eyes through the slit in the front of her garment.

“Listen, you’ve got to come with us.  You can’t stay here, they need the bed.  You need to come with us while we sort out who you are and where you live so we can get you home.  You live near here?”  The cop resorts to a sing-song tone and hand gestures to try to get through, although he’s stumped after pointing at the woman to emphasise “you”.

“You’ve got to come with us.”  The Constable reaches out his hand as he says this and makes to guide the woman from the bed.

He sees a sudden flash of defiance in the woman’s eyes and, as he reaches towards her, she makes a grab for the steel bar at the bottom of the bed, holds it tight with her right hand.

“C’mon love, you need to let go and come with us,” the cop says with what he hopes is gentle firmness.

His young partner steps forward from the doorway.  The older cop keeps his right hand held out towards the woman, palm up, the way you might with an unfamiliar animal.  With his left he gestures for his partner to stay back.  A few moments pass and the woman stays gripping the bed.

“C’mon,” the cop says again, moving closer to the woman.  He moves to take her by the left elbow, begins to take a grip when all hell breaks loose.

The woman is screaming and thrashing on the bed.  She’s chopping at the cop’s hand and arm with the cast on her left wrist.  It’s made of pink fibre glass and the first chop cracks the cop fair across his forearm.  He yelps with pain and backs off a bit, then makes another forward sortie and is greeted with more attempts to mash his arm to a pulp with the cast.

The younger Constable removes his handcuffs from his belt.  Behind him a nurse has come to see what’s happening, but he’s held her at bay with a look that leaves no doubt that this is now police business.  The young cop strides into the room and cuffs the woman’s right wrist where she’s holding onto the bed, then uses the chain on the cuffs to lever the hand from the steel bar and behind her back.  The pain of the half nelson stops the woman’s thrashing for a moment and the older cop finally grabs the woman’s left wrist.

The cops look at each other for a moment as if they’re wondering what to do next.  The older one takes charge again and brings the woman’s other arm behind her back so they can still both her hands.  Once she’s disabled, he grabs her right elbow, more roughly than he needs to, and pulls her to her feet.  The cops and their prisoner leave the hospital ward in silence.

The Constables argue about what to do as they drive back to the station.  Their prisoner sits in the back of the car in silence, still cuffed with her hands behind her back.  She looks down the entire journey.  All they can see from the front seat is the top of her head covered by black cloth.

The older one wants to charge the woman with assault.  The younger wants to bring her in and hand her over to community liaison.

“What about the paperwork?  She’s got no ID.  We don’t even know what language she speaks, where she comes from, anything.  We’ll be fucking hours just sorting everything out.  Mate, she’s not our problem.  We just don’t need this shit.”

“Mate, watch your language, will you.  You don’t know what she understands.” The older one is worried about complaints.  He doesn’t want internal affairs up his arse with a torch.

“Oh, fuck off, will you.  She can’t understand a fucking word,” the younger one turns in his seat to face the woman in the back, turns up his voice, “Can ya? You can’t understand a fucking thing I’m saying, you, you,” he’s searching for the right epithet, the usual ones don’t seem to fit the woman in the back seat of the cop car, “stupid cow,” is all he can come up with.  His voice tails off with the inadequate words.  He turns back to the older Constable, “We’re handing her over to community liaison.  If you want to charge her, you’re on your own.  I didn’t see anything.”  He turns to watch the road while the older Constable keeps driving, saying nothing in spite of himself.

The older Constable drives around to the back of the police station, uses his swipe card to trigger the automatic gate.  They assist the woman out of the back of the car and escort her inside, the trio pausing for a moment while the older Constable uses his card again to unlock the door that opens into the secure custody area.  In front of them is the reception desk, to their left the cells and to their right an interview room.  The interior is austere, every surface is worn to a shine and well lit.  It already has an ingrained smell of vomit, stale beer and cigarette smoke, though the building is a no smoking area.

The Constables separate.  The older one escorts the woman to the interview room, gestures for her to sit down and takes up a seat opposite her.  The younger Constable approaches the custody desk to speak to his colleague.  He comes into the interview room a few moments later.

“It’s all set, mate.  I’ve called community liaison and they’ll be down in a while.  Garrett’ll keep an eye on her from behind the custody desk while they come.  It’s quiet here, anyway.  C’mon, let’s get going.  We can grab some lunch and then get to some real work.”

The older Constable looks up at his partner and, for a while stays in his seat.  He looks across at the woman, who’s still not making eye contact.  In the end, all he does is say, “What’ll we do about the cuffs?  Do we leave them on, or what?”

Since their argument in the car, the younger one has taken the upper hand.

“Take them off.  Garrett’s got the CC-TV behind the desk and she can’t get out of custody without a card.  If you take them off now, we won’t have to come back for them later.”  The younger man is eager to be gone.  The woman holds no interest for him.  It’s not his job to baby sit foreign nutters.

As they leave the secure custody area, the older Constable thinks how they must be the first cops in history to be happy about having CC-TV inside a police station.  This whole thing isn’t quite right, but he keeps following the young Constable anyway.  It may not be quite right, but it’s not so wrong that anyone will follow it up.  He’s pretty sure of that.

It’s in the Detectives’ manual

“Baker?”

“Um, yes?” Chris knows the voice at the other end of the phone line, but he’s not letting on that he knows.  Not until he has to.

“Baker, we’ve checked out your computer.  You’ve got some interesting stuff stashed on there, haven’t you, matey?”

Chris doesn’t bother to respond to Lambert’s taunt dressed as a question, just concentrates on breathing.

“So, now you want to add heavy breather to the list, do you?”  Lambert keeps taunting, he knows it’s a bona fide way of breaking down perves and crims like Baker.  It’s in the Detectives’ manual.

Chris’s breathing shortens to a pant, involuntarily.

Lambert ploughs on.  “I think you’d better come down to the station to pick up your computer.  Then we can have a nice little chat.”

“When?”  It’s the first word that comes into Chris’s head.  He’s really hoping the answer will be, “Next year,” maybe, “Never,” but he knows what’s coming next.

“Get yourself down here now, Baker.”

“But I don’t have my car.  I, um, it’s still, it’s not fixed, I don’t have it.”

“Well get a fucking cab.  I want you here in an hour.  Don’t make me come and get you.”

Chris holds the phone for a while after Lambert hangs up.  It’s a little away from his ear and for a while he has trouble remembering who he’s just been speaking to, what was said.  When he does remember, the simple act of calling for a cab seems insurmountable.  He can’t even remember how to look up the number.  But he does it, then sits and waits.

He’s got no way of knowing if she understands

Garrett gestures to the woman in the black robe to follow him out of the interview room and come sit in one of the chairs that is bolted to the wall in a row opposite the custody desk.  The interview room is needed by CIB.

“Stay there,” he says to the woman, pointing to the seat.  He sees her sit and returns to his desk.

“Better call community liaison if they don’t come soon,” he thinks.  He’s beginning to regret allowing the Constables to offload the foreign woman on him.  He gets back to his notes and forgets about her after only a few moments.  Garrett’s thought of calling community liaison doesn’t even make it into his long-term memory.

Garrett nods as Detective Senior Sergeant Lambert enters the custody area. He’s been expecting him.  Lambert holds the door open with his left hand and gestures the man walking in front of him towards the open door of the interview room with his right.  They’re half way across the linoleum floor when the noise starts.

Garrett looks up confused about where the sound is coming from.  Detective Lambert stands still.  The only one still moving is the man walking in front of Lambert.  Chris Baker keeps moving, because he recognises the noise.

Next thing Garrett knows, the woman on the seat is on the move and the noise begins to make sense.  It’s still coming in high pitched and loud, but he recognises now that it’s English and that the woman, who hasn’t made a sound in the almost three hours she’s been in the station, is the one forming the words.  They’re heavily accented, but he can make it out now: “Mr Baker,” is what she’s saying, alternating with, “Chris Baker.”  Over and over and over again.

Chris Baker and the woman have made contact before Lambert reacts.  The woman, fuck knows who she is, has grabbed Baker by both arms and is screaming at him, her face, behind the cloth she’s wearing, up close to Baker’s.  Baker is standing still and uncertain, passive, his hands hanging limp at the wrists as the woman repeats her words over and again.  Lambert moves forward and pulls Baker backwards with his right hand on the collar of his shirt, uses his left hand to break the woman’s grip, noticing the cast on her left wrist as he pulls her away.  As he continues to pull Baker backwards, the woman falls to her knees.  She keeps repeating Baker’s name.

By this time, Garrett has come around from behind the custody desk.  He pulls the woman to her feet and manhandles her back onto a chair.  He has both his hands on her shoulders.  By now she is silent.

All hearts in the room are racing.

“Stay there!”  Garrett punctuates the two words by pushing down on the woman’s shoulders with his hands.  When he’s sure she won’t move, Garrett turns back to Detective Lambert, who still has his man by the scruff of the neck.  “What the fuck was that?  Who’s this?”  Garrett asks.

As he begins to answer, Lambert lets go Baker’s collar.  “Just someone helping me out with my inquiries.  What’s this woman doing here?”

“I’m waiting for community liaison to come and deal with her.”

The woman’s voice cuts into their conversation, this time less anguished, but repeating the same words, “Mr Baker.”

Garrett’s the first to ask the obvious question, “Do you know this woman?”  He’s looking at Chris Baker, who by now is standing at Detective Lambert’s side.

“I, I don’t know.  I think so.  I can’t tell, the way she’s dressed, I can’t see her.”

“Well, she seems to know you, mate.”  She’s been brought in from the hospital, no ID, doesn’t speak the language, but she seems to know your name.”

“Mr Baker?”  The woman again.

“The hospital?  My neighbour?  Chris Baker directs his attention to the woman, “Mrs Yannis?”

“Yes, yes, Yannis,” she says.

Lambert cuts in, “All right, now we’ve had our little reunion, shall we get on with what we’ve come here for.”  It’s not a question, he’s guiding Chris by the shoulder towards the interview room as he’s saying the words.

“Just a mo,” Garrett takes half a step toward Baker,  “Do you have an address for her?

“Yes, um, 42 Coldstream Street, next door to me.”

“She’s your neighbour?” Garrett’s incredulous.

Cops don’t like coincidences.  Everything has a reason.  Everything fits together neatly when you know what’s what.  He doesn’t get a chance to learn more, though.  Detective Lambert’s already closing the door of the interview room.

“Fucking prima donna,” Garrett murmurs at Lambert’s disappearing back.  He takes another look at the woman as he heads back to the custody desk.  “Don’t worry, love, I’ll get you home, now we know where you live.”  Her head is already bowed again and he’s got no way of knowing if she understands.

The ragged labouring that precedes fight or flight

The two men sit opposite each other, silent.  Inside Chris’s head, hours pass.  He goes to say something a few times, but words won’t come.  There’s nothing he can think of to say that’s right, that will fit the occasion of his first time in an interview room at a police station.  He’s been racking up the firsts like no one’s business lately.

Lambert sits on his chair like it doesn’t fit.  One leg is over the side, one is straight, facing towards the Formica-topped table.  The Detective’s body is slouched and angled, leaning back and to one side, head continuing the trajectory, everything except that single leg reaching away from Chris.  But even with all this strenuous leaning his gut still hangs over his pants.  Lambert’s eyes don’t seem to blink as he looks at Chris.  As ever, Chris can’t hold the Detective’s gaze.

Another hour passes before the Detective speaks.  He’s known this was coming for ever now, but Chris still flinches at the sound of the Detective’s voice.

“So, going to tell me where the boy is?”

Chris doesn’t say anything, just shakes his bowed head.

“C’mon, you must have had your fun with the kid by now.  A man with your liking for variety, you must be getting bored by now.  Why don’t you at least tell me if the kid’s OK.  His mum and dad deserve to know that much, don’t you think….” the Detective pauses, “…,” before he releases the sobriquet into the room, “…sissychrissie?”

“How, how did you know?”  It the only thing Chris can think of to say.

Until now, Lambert has maintained an even, almost friendly, tone.  Two men talking about important business across a table, nothing out of the ordinary here.  Baker’s idiotic question changes all that.

“Look, you stupid-dumb-faggot-fuck,” Lambert’s leaning forward now, head stretching towards Chris as he bangs the table with his fist to punctuate the ‘fuck’ and, inevitably, Chris jumps in his chair as his pupils dilate until his eyes are almost entirely black and his breathing becomes the ragged labouring that precedes fight or flight, “we’ve had our propeller heads crawling all over the insides of your computer.  We know where you’ve been, who you’ve been sending email to, what your username and password at the bank is.  We know everything.  And yes, we know the little name you use online when you’re in touch with your freaky little friends.  Now tell me where that little boy is and then you and I can go our separate ways.”  Lambert says this last sentence with such tenderness that he seems to even surprise himself.  He’s sitting slumped in the chair now, as if he’s spent, but his eyes never move from Baker’s.

“I don’t know where the boy is.  Detective Lambert, I truly don’t know where he is.”  Chris looks back at the Detective, holds the green cop eyes with his own, says no more.

Another hour passes while the two men look at each other across the table.

“All right.  Fuck off then.  Get out of here.  C’mon, I’ll show you where you can pick up your computer and you can get out of here.”  There’s nothing in Lambert’s voice anymore, not a single emotion or feeling, it’s dead, a garden without water during the summer heatwave.

The Detective gets up and Chris Baker follows him through the police station, signs for his property and allows himself to be escorted to the glass front doors.  As they slide silently open, letting in a chunky blast of the maddeningly hot easterly, Lambert opens his mouth, he can’t help himself, “This isn’t over, Baker.  I’ll be coming for you.  This isn’t over yet.”

Chris doesn’t look back as he navigates carefully down the steps of the police station towards the taxi rank, holding the grey plastic box awkwardly across his chest.  Waiting for a taxi, Chris strains to look at the watch on his left wrist, wedging the computer between his chin and his left forearm.  He’s surprised to find he’s only been in the police station just over half an hour.