‘Someone must know something,’ she said persuasively. ‘We know this vehicle was a red Ford Laser. An early 1980s model. We know what damage the car suffered.’
As prearranged, the camera view now changed to the table where the SCS had laid out the pieces of evidence collected from the scene. Charlotte moved to the table with a grace that belied the nervousness Hawk knew she was feeling.
‘The left-hand front indicator light was smashed. The wing mirror was snapped off. It’s quite possible the windscreen was damaged with what could have been a starburst pattern of cracks.’
Hawk glanced away from the live scene in front of him to where a bank of monitors displayed what was being filmed. Charlotte had refused to have her hair and makeup done for the segment, but it made no difference as far as Hawk was concerned. She looked gorgeous. He loved seeing her looking so professional in a crisp clean uniform with her hair tied back. He loved it because he knew what she looked like with no uniform on and he could imagine the slim, taut planes of her body beneath the clothing. And he knew what that magnificent hair was like when released from that long twisted rope. The way it rippled across her bare back…the way it felt when he pushed his hands into the tresses and used a length wound around a hand to bring her face close enough to kiss.
With some difficulty, Hawk concentrated on what Charlotte was saying now.
‘This incident happened two weeks ago. Maybe the car hasn’t been taken to a garage for repairs yet.’
Quite apart from her physical attributes, Charlotte was projecting both competence and intelligence. Currie was looking on with almost paternal pride and Hawk had the curious sensation of what could only be described as jealousy. Charlotte was his partner. He was the one who should be feeling proud of her. And he was. He just had to ensure his expression remained impassive. He didn’t want Elsie, or anyone else, picking up on any undercurrents.
‘Maybe this car is parked on your street,’ Charlotte was saying now. ‘Or in your neighbour’s back yard. We want to find the driver of this vehicle and we need your help.’ Her deliberate pause may have been due to nerves but it made the rest of her plea for assistance far more effective. ‘A man died as a result of this incident and he died alone.’ Large, golden-brown eyes stared into the camera with an authority that made even Lance Currie shift his feet a fraction. ‘Leaving the scene of an accident without offering assistance or notifying authorities is a crime. This is a case of manslaughter and we’re asking for you to help us solve it.’
The free phone line numbers available for the public to pass information on to the police were given out again and Charlotte left the studio area as the commercial break was signalled. She grimaced theatrically as she approached Hawk and Currie.
‘I have no idea how that came across. Was it terrible?’
‘It was OK,’ Hawk said reassuringly.
He earned an impatient snort from Currie who then turned to Charlotte with a wide smile. ‘It wasn’t “OK”, Charlie. It was fantastic. If we don’t get a few leads after that, I’ll eat my hat.’
Charlotte returned the smile but then sucked in her breath audibly. ‘I hate television interviews,’ she said. ‘Next time it’ll be your turn, Hawk.’
‘We’re far more likely to get a response from people seeing you.’
‘Why? Because I’m a chick?’ Charlotte’s tone was challenging enough to make Currie scowl.
‘When are you two going to stop bickering and realise what a tight unit you’ve become in the last two months? For heaven’s sake, Hawk, I would have thought the issue of you working with a female officer should have been long since buried.’
The briefest glance that flashed between Hawk and Charlotte was still enough to share satisfaction that their secret was still safe. If Lance had any idea just what a tight team they had recently become, he wouldn’t be congratulating them right now. He would be demanding a resignation from at least one of them.
‘You guys are getting known far and wide for the speed and thoroughness of your investigations. I’m getting requests to have you deployed to solve some of the sticky cases other areas have sitting in their files.’
‘We’ve got quite enough work to do here,’ Hawk reminded him.
‘Don’t I know it. It might be possible to have one of you available as a consultant if we had an extra team member, though.’
‘You’re thinking of expanding the team?’ Charlotte didn’t sound keen and Hawk could share the sentiment. They worked so well together because they were together. Just the two of them. Having a sizzling affair ongoing in their private lives had, if anything, made it easier to work together. The distraction of overwhelming desire had gone from work hours because they both knew it would be satisfied as soon as they reached a private space.
‘It’s just a thought.’ Currie glanced at the team manning the phone lines. ‘They look busy. Let’s go and see if any useful information has come in.’
Hawk checked his watch. Crimewatch had only a few minutes to run, which was a relief. Very soon, he and Charlotte would be able to escape. Together. Thank goodness that plump paramedic, Laura, was still caught up in that weird babysitting situation. The fact that Charlotte was living in Laura’s house gave them a retreat that was almost neutral. It enabled Hawk to keep his personal, professional and passionate lives remarkably separate, and that suited him just fine.
He had everything under control. While it was surprising that the novelty of a sexual relationship with Charlotte hadn’t even begun to lose any of its appeal, despite the amount of indulgence in the last fortnight, Hawk still wasn’t bothered by any resurgence of those alarm bells. This was still a temporary interlude in his life, just as all his affairs in recent years had been but, by God, he was going to make the most of it while it lasted.
‘They’ve found the driver.’
‘What driver?’
‘The hit and run. He’s been arrested thanks to a lead from a call to Crimewatch. Elsie’s rapt.’
‘Really? That’s great!’
But Charlotte didn’t look delighted for very long. Hawk raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s up?’
‘Just a bit of a crisis at home. I need to ring Laura and make sure she’s OK.’
‘Why wouldn’t she be?’
‘She came back home just after you left last night. She was a bit upset.’
‘Oh?’ Hawk looked disconcerted at the news. ‘Why?’
‘The wheels have fallen off. The baby’s mother came back. She wants the baby…and the fireman.’
‘Oh. I guess Laura isn’t too happy, then.’
‘You don’t look too happy about it either, Hawk.’
‘I don’t want to seem unsympathetic with your friend’s plight or anything, but it will make things a bit awkward for us, won’t it? When we want to…I mean, when we’re not at work.’
‘Maybe you’ll just have to shovel up the piles of dirty socks you’ve got lying around at your place. Or is there something else you don’t want me to see?’ It hadn’t bothered Charlotte that Hawk had never invited her to stay at his place. OK, maybe once hadn’t been enough, but this was still just a brief fling after all. A trial period before she started a new phase of her life. So why was she feeling suddenly anxious? Would the change in arrangements be enough for Hawk to call a halt to their out-of-hours liaison?
‘I don’t have piles of dirty socks,’ Hawk told her. ‘And people in glass houses shouldn’t be chucking rocks.’ He cast a pointed glance at her desk and Charlotte grinned.
She was still smiling as she reached for her pager which had sounded an urgent summons. ‘Priority one to the airport,’ she said. ‘What’s that about, do you think? A plane crash?’
‘Details to follow.’ Hawk snapped his pager back into its holder clipped to his belt. ‘Let’s go, Charlie.’
The phone call from Lance came as they were speeding towards the airport. Charlotte clicked on the speaker-phone attachment so they could both hear what was being said.
‘There’s a mass
casualty incident just outside Hamilton,’ Lance told them grimly. ‘Train versus bus. We’re sending some resources to back up what’s coming from Auckland and I’ve agreed to send you two. You can catch a ride with the rescue helicopter that’ll be taking off in ten minutes. You’ll need to get your skates on.’
‘We’re nearly there.’ Hawk blipped the siren as they negotiated an intersection and then turned it off so they could still hear Currie. The squad car’s flashing beacons were still warning traffic of their rapid progress. ‘Why us, boss?’
‘Sounds messy and there’s going to be huge media coverage. There’s already a fuss going on about state maintenance of railway lines and some of the bus passengers include the immediate family of an All Black. Witness accounts are already contradictory. We need to get this investigation under way, pronto.’
‘What’s contradictory?’ Charlotte queried. Interest in an MCI would be huge even without the background of a political issue or the personal involvement of a sporting hero. The more information they could get upfront, the better they would be able to handle both the investigation and any media pressure.
‘Someone says the signals weren’t working but another witness says a car had stopped at the crossing and the bus just ploughed into the back of it—shunted it clear, hard enough to flip it and then caught the train smack on the tail end of the bus. Half the train was derailed.’
‘Good grief!’ Hawk took a turn-off well before the airport terminal buildings. ‘How many fatalities?’
‘Ten and counting. There’s still quite a few people trapped in a couple of the train carriages. A USAR team has been deployed to assist extrication. Things should be more under control by the time you get there, but do what you can. Good luck!’
‘Thanks.’ Hawk raised his hand to thank the airport security guard manning the gate leading directly to the area of runway designated for the rescue helicopter. ‘We might need it.’
The aerial view of the incident they gained on approach was helpful in getting a perspective of the incident. It was also horrific. The snake of train carriages had a large crumpled kink that had to contain the wreckage of many human lives. The passenger bus lay on its side, the rear half-crushed. The wheels of an overturned sedan could also be seen but the evidence of death and destruction was now only part of a much larger picture.
Dozens of rescue vehicles were dotted over the scene like pieces on a vast board game. Fire appliances, ambulances, police vehicles—including a huge command centre truck. The bright colours of other rescue helicopters were nearby, and Hawk’s and Charlotte’s pilot was waiting for one to take off before going in to land himself.
Charlotte recognised the long igloo shape of a triage station the ambulance service had erected, and as they swooped lower she could even see the whiteboards outside that would be keeping the details of patient numbers and their status as current as possible. Hundreds of people milled about but what made the whole scene horribly real was the sight of the injured still being carried or helped towards the triage tent and, worse, a stretcher with the body completely draped bypassing the treatment area on its journey to another enclosure.
Charlotte turned to Hawk, suddenly scared of the enormity of what they were now facing. She had to shout over the noise of the rotors.
‘This is huge.’
Hawk simply nodded, his eyes reflecting the grim reality Charlotte wasn’t sure she was ready to face. Then he reached out and gripped her hand. ‘We’ll stay together,’ he shouted back. ‘We can handle this.’
And Charlotte squeezed back. Of course they could. In Hawk’s company she could handle anything. She would just have to make sure they didn’t get separated.
But separating them was the first thing the incident commander decided on.
‘You’re a paramedic, right?’
Charlotte nodded. ‘But I’m here with Hawk in my capacity as a crash investigator.’
‘We need you more as a paramedic right now. We’ve got other investigators who can work with Officer Hawkins. I want to put you with the USAR team that’s dealing with trapped victims on the train. There’s too many priority-one people still out there for our medics to cope with.’
So Charlotte was taken away and kitted out with medical supplies, overalls and protective gear, including goggles and a hard hat. She met the group of Urban Search and Rescue personnel that included civil defence and fire officers.
‘We’ve just gained access to the last carriage,’ the squad leader informed her. ‘They’ve triaged and started moving the accessible patients but there’s at least one person trapped under some crushed seating at one end.’
The USAR headquarters was close to the main command area for incident management. Charlotte’s attention was caught as they walked towards the train by a shower of brightly coloured cardboard tickets. Someone had tripped over a guy rope and a boxful of triage labels sent flying. Seeing something that she had used only in training exercises gave her another jolt of reality.
There were four colours of the large tickets with labelled spaces for information and a soft elastic band for attaching them to a patient’s wrist or ankle. Fluorescent pink signified priority-one casualties, who were considered to have life-threatening injuries and needed the most urgent treatment and transport. Orange labels were for those who needed treatment prior to transport but whose lives would not be at risk if they weren’t attended to in the shortest time frame possible. Orange labels could easily be upgraded to pink ones, however, if the patient’s condition deteriorated.
Green labels were the priority-three patients with minor injuries who would be kept in a holding area and medically assessed before leaving the scene. And white labels were for the deceased. White labels could also be used for those with injuries so severe that they would require too much time and too many resources to attempt resuscitation in an MCI scenario. Charlotte was very glad she wasn’t the one to have to try and make that kind of judgement today.
Near the junior ambulance officer, who was trying to collect the cards being further scattered by a stiff breeze, sat a woman with a green label on her wrist. A police officer who had been standing beside the hunched figure moved to help catch the triage labels and the woman looked up in time to catch Charlotte’s stare. She felt the anguish in the eye contact like a physical blow. The green label on the woman’s wrist fluttered as she scrambled to her feet.
‘Are you going into the train?’
Charlotte gave a brief nod. She could see the police officer watching the woman’s movements.
‘My baby’s in there. They can’t find him. They think he might be dead but it’s not true. It can’t be true.’ The woman clutched Charlotte’s arm. ‘Please…bring him out to me. I’m not leaving without my baby.’
The police officer took the woman’s other arm. ‘Come and wait back here, Sarah. Someone’s on the way to help you.’
Shaken, Charlotte continued her journey and within a short period of time she was too busy to think of the woman with the green label. Or of what Hawk might be doing. Three people still in the carriage were wearing pink labels and Charlotte found herself temporarily separated from the USAR team as she assisted first one ambulance crew and then another.
A man with broken ribs and a tension pneumothorax needed a chest needle decompression before he succumbed to a respiratory arrest. An elderly woman had lacerations to her forehead, an open fracture of her left humerus and was pale and sweaty as she told her rescuers it was her crushing, central chest pain that was her chief complaint. Charlotte administered oxygen, aspirin, GTN and morphine before they settled the woman into a Stokes basket to be carried away for urgent further assessment and treatment.
Through a carriage window, Charlotte saw Hawk walking past the command centre at one point in the company of several police photographers. Their route must have taken them past the young mother who was still sitting nearby. Despite the urgency and drama of treating the critical patients, the thought of that missing baby had rem
ained at the back of Charlotte’s mind and, even though it was probably pointless, she had found herself looking for any signs of the missing infant as she moved between patients.
The anguish the baby’s mother was experiencing epitomised the feeling of this whole incident for Charlotte. She had never had a baby herself—probably never would—but she could imagine the depth of that bond and how devastating such a loss would be. And how excruciating such a wait must be, trying to hold onto a hope that one’s worst fears would not be realised. Why hadn’t something been done to help her yet? They must have grief counsellors or victim-support services available on scene by now. Had Hawk noticed her? Spoken to her, maybe?
‘Over here, Charlie. We need a hand with a log roll.’
A teenage girl had a cervical injury. She had no sensation in her legs and pins and needles in both arms. Her breathing was abdominal and becoming laboured as her panic increased. Then Charlotte was called to the end of the carriage to rejoin the USAR team as a trapped victim was extricated from beneath mangled seating. The man was alive but his abdominal injuries were severe enough to warrant a pink tag.
It was beginning to get dark as the final victim was being freed from the carriage Charlotte was working in. Suddenly, things became chaotic.
‘We need the USAR guys. Somebody heard something coming from under the carriage over there.’
Charlotte felt the same surge of adrenaline that prompted the rapid exodus of the USAR team. Had the baby been found? Alive? The bustle of movement around the man-made gap that now provided access to her carriage created enough of a new problem to distract her.
‘Careful!’ she warned. ‘Mind that sharp edge! The IV line’s—’
But her cry came too late. The IV line had been ripped clear and her patient’s arm was bleeding profusely.
‘Wait! Put him down,’ Charlotte ordered the team of army personnel carrying the stretcher. She pulled open the pouch at her waist as she dropped to a crouch. ‘Damn!’
‘Can I help?’
‘Hawk!’ Charlotte now had a wad of dressing pressed to the wound. ‘Where did you spring from?’
The Recovery Assignment Page 14