Frantic by Katherine Howell

anyone with any reason to attack Chris or your family?’
    ‘Like I said, Chris was bashed a couple of months back, while on duty–’ Sophie started up out of her chair. ‘There was this man, at my work. Oh my God. How could I have forgotten? His name’s Boyd Sawyer. His wife was in labour. We were called to his house but there were complications. The mother and baby both died.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘Yesterday morning. And then in the afternoon he tracked us down in the ambulance and punched my partner.’ Sophie shivered. ‘He told me I killed his family.’
    ‘Can you remember his address or his car rego?’
    ‘He drives a blue BMW, I don’t know the plates. He’s a plastic surgeon,’ Sophie said. ‘They live in Glebe Point Road, right down the end by the water. And yesterday Senior Constable Allan Denning from Wynyard arrested him for DUI.’
    Sophie watched the detective go to the door and call her partner over. They had a brief conversation, then he handed her what looked like a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve before he hurried off.
    Sophie heard car engines outside roar to life and tyres squeal away. ‘I keep wondering whether he’s hungry now. Whether he’s warm enough. He’s going through a clingy stage and he’ll really be screaming. They won’t know how to comfort him. He needs us and he won’t understand why we don’t come when he cries.’ Sophie wiped her eyes. The skin around them was sore. ‘He’s so little and so helpless.’
    ‘Mrs Phillips, I need to show you something.’ The detective slid the plastic sleeve across the table. ‘This note was found with your husband.’
    Sophie read: ‘ Keep your mouth shut if you know what’s best .’
    ‘Does that mean anything to you?’
    ‘Not a thing.’ The letters were black and sharp against the white paper. ‘If it’s Sawyer, why would he leave that?’
    ‘It might not be Sawyer.’
    ‘Then who?’
    ‘We don’t know yet.’ The detective took the note back and looked at it herself. ‘We’ll test this for fingerprints, and we can find out the brand of paper and hopefully what kind of computer printer it came from. Crime Scene’s examining the house for evidence too,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a big team on this case, Mrs Phillips. We’ll find him.’
    Sophie shivered.
    Thursday 8 May, 12.05 am
     
    Sophie stared at Chris’s motionless face. He lay unconscious and on a ventilator in Royal North Shore Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. The clear plastic tube was tied into his mouth with white cloth tape and his bare chest rose and fell in time with the machine’s hiss and beep. His head was swathed in bandages. He had two black eyes and his nostrils were thick with dried blood.
    Gloria held Chris’s left hand to her forehead and muttered through her tears. Sophie gripped his right hand. Her fingers had automatically crept round his wrist to settle on his pulse. The smell of blood and antiseptic was so strong she could taste it. It reminded her of her training weeks spent in theatre, of the man who’d also been shot in the head, the way the surgeons sweated and swore over him. He’d died.
    A doctor in surgical scrubs came into the room. ‘I’m Pete Jones.’ He held out his hand to Sophie. His eyes behind his glasses were tired.
    Sophie introduced herself and Gloria.
    The doctor nodded. ‘Any word on your little boy?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    He squeezed her shoulder silently.
    ‘How was the surgery?’ Gloria said.
    ‘It went extremely well. The entry wound was just above the bridge of Chris’s nose but the bullet didn’t penetrate to his brain. It deflected through his sinuses. We were able to remove it without much trouble and so the entire surgery was much shorter than we’d envisioned.’ He hesitated. ‘We found on the CT scan that there’s a contusion to the frontal lobes. Because of this, plus our suspicion that he may have been hypoxic before the paramedics arrived, we’re concerned about neurological