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feeling.’
    ‘That’s hunger.’ He held out the plate again.
    She pushed it aside. ‘If only I could get a strong case before the report comes back. They wouldn’t move me in the middle of an investigation, would they?’
    ‘They’re not going to move you at all.’
    ‘This city needs more murders,’ she said.
    He barked laughter. ‘A case will come along soon enough.’
    Maybe, maybe not.
‘How’s yours going?’
    He shrugged. ‘Straightforward. Guy still denies killing his brother for his share of the inheritance, but it’s more than a million dollars and he’s in debt up to his ears. Blood traces on his shoes and clothes, witnesses saw him in the area, he’s behaving very nervously. I reckon he’ll confess by the end of the week.’ He bit into the final piece of roll. ‘How’s your mum?’
    ‘The actual hip replacement went fine but she picked up an infection.’
    ‘So she’ll have to stay in for longer? Bet that’ll piss her off.’
    Ella didn’t want to talk about domestic stuff. ‘What’s the latest on Gold?’
    ‘Looks like they’ve tracked Wilson down. He turned into a bit of a hermit in the wilds of Scotland, apparently.’
    ‘Good,’ Ella said.
    Evidence found in the previous case she and Dennis had worked together, the Phillips kidnapping, had indicated that Officers Wilson and Battye were part of the bank robbery gang that Strike Force Gold was after. In the six months since, investigators had discovered that the entire gang was police. Grant Battye had suicided, gassing himself in his car, while Matt Wilson and two others, Caleb Peters and John Fenotti, had disappeared. Two more officers had turned witness for the police and confirmed that Peter Roth and Angus Arendson were part of the gang too, though both were now dead. Dennis had told her they’d given up information on all aspects of the group’s operation, including details of offshore bank accounts where the money had gone.
    ‘Wilson’d need to be a hermit,’ Dennis went on, ‘seeing as we froze all his money.’
    ‘Living on moss and stream water,’ Ella said.
    ‘Delicious.’ He dabbed crumbs from the plate with his forefinger.
    Ella checked the screen of her mobile.
    Dennis smiled. ‘You’ll be fine.’
    ‘I need to know.’
    ‘Or what? You’ll explode?’
    ‘Don’t laugh,’ she said. ‘Maybe I will.’
    Lauren’s head was throbbing by the time she and Joe had found theatre smocks to wear, gone over the entire event numerous times with their area supervisor then with a couple of detectives, and filled out the necessary reams of workplace injury paperwork. She wanted nothing more than to go home.
    They were given the rest of the shift off. The supervisor dropped them at the station. ‘Sure you guys’re okay?’
    Lauren nodded as Joe unlocked the station door. The supervisor nodded back then drove away.
    Their ambulance was in the plant room, parked crookedly by the wall. John and Marcia had brought it back. Lauren remembered how she’d felt when they’d left the station in it that morning, and realised she’d hardly thought about court since then.
No big surprise.
    ‘You want a lift home?’ Joe said.
    ‘That’d be good.’
    She checked her watch as they got into his car. Her headache eased a little and she decided that today’s events – both the court appearance and the hostage situation – were best locked away in her mind and never thought of again. Her attention would be better spent on the world ahead of her.
    Joe lived in a small flat in Parramatta, so it was nothing for him to drop Lauren right at the door of her ramshackle rented terrace in Summer Hill. A train clattered past on the other side of the road as she climbed out then bent to look back in the open window. ‘Thanks again.’
    ‘You’re on the way.’
    ‘I’m not talking about the lift.’
    He said, ‘Next time I tell you to run away, you better do it.’
    ‘And miss out on all that fun?’
    He smiled at her. ‘See you