Read Online The Darkest Hour by Katherine Howell - Free Book Online Page B

you wrote down what he said?’ the officer asked.
    Lauren’s heart shrivelled. ‘What?’
    ‘The stuff he was saying, about Thomas Werner stabbing him,’ Joe said. ‘You looked like you were writing it down.’
    It felt like Thomas had his hands at her throat again. She tried to swallow, and reached into her pocket for the dressing packet.
    The officer took it carefully and read what she’d written. ‘This is great.’
    Lauren felt faint.

FIVE
     
    E lla glanced across at the speedo and was surprised to see they were actually doing sixty.
    ‘The man’s not going anywhere,’ Murray said.
    ‘Except maybe . . .’ She pointed skywards.
    ‘If he’s that close to the edge they’re not going to let us near him anyway.’
    Bloody Murray, so full of reason. Ella sat forward in her seat and willed the cars in front of them to move out of their way. She didn’t believe in God but she wasn’t above praying now and then, just on the off-chance it might do some good.
Please keep this guy alive long enough to talk to us.
    They’d been talking in the office car park after their evening shift when Ella’s phone rang. DS Kirk Kuiper had said there was a stabbing victim at St Vincent’s, one likely to become a homicide if the reports were accurate, and would they mind popping on over? One of Eagers’s super-duper new crime-fighting initiatives was to get Homicide detectives on the job as soon as possible, the theory being that the quicker their knowledge and experience were brought to bear on the case, the more likely a speedy result. As crime was one of the major platforms of the next year’s election, Ella knew it was an exercise in political grandstanding more than anything – it sounded impressive for the Police Minister to say Homicide was on the case – but she didn’t care. She’d leapt into Murray’s car as it was closest. The previous case they’d worked, the Lachlan Phillips abduction, Murray had been the Commissioner’s liaison so had only ever tagged along, not driven.
Next time we go somewhere important, I drive
.
    ‘I bet he doesn’t die.’ Murray crawled around a corner. ‘It’ll just be an assault and the local Ds will take it over.’
    Ella was so conflicted. It was wrong to hope that he would die, but he’d apparently identified his attacker to the paramedics. What juicier open-and-shut could there be?
    When they finally arrived in St Vincent’s Emergency Department they found a uniformed officer leaning over a computer chatting to a nurse. When he saw them he straightened up and held out a man’s wallet. ‘This is the victim.’
    Ella opened it and pulled out a driver’s licence. ‘James William Kennedy. He’s fifty-one.’ The dark-haired man stared out at her with a half-smile.
    ‘I asked Radio for his info,’ the officer said. ‘He’s got a neg driving causing death from three years back – ran a red and killed a woman in her family car. Kid and husband were injured. Nothing else. Got a motorbike in his name, rego LM 326. That address on the licence is still current. And the paramedic gave me this.’ He held out a crumpled piece of paper in an evidence bag. ‘The blood’s all dry.’
    Ella took it from him. It was an empty dressing packet and on the back, between the printed brand name and size specifications and the smears of blood, were scribbled the words:
When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. I know who stabbed me. Thomas Werner. Thomas Werner stabbed me. I saw his face. Right there, against me, in the street. I know him. God help me, I know him. I’m not a good man. The things I did
.
    Ella felt a shiver run up her spine.
    ‘VKG gave me various Thomas Werners around the state but none with any record that leaps out.’
    ‘Is that the paramedic?’ Murray said.
    Ella looked where he pointed, at a woman in the paramedic uniform of white shirt and navy trousers writing in a folder at the nurses’ desk.
    ‘That’s her. Name’s