Leah Giarratano - Vodka doesn't freeze

When she'd come home from that basement the first time, when she was twelve, Jill had found herself waiting to feel safe again, to feel like it was really over, but the wait had stretched from days to years, and still the feeling had not come. Twenty years later, on her knees, sobbing in the grass, Jill finally felt like she had come home. She cried with relief. She cried for Jerome. She cried for what her mum, dad, brother and sister had endured. Most of all, Jill cried for the white-eyed girl who had watched it all, and was gone forever. The tears had not stopped until she was in the ambulance and felt the morphine take effect.

A voice outside her door interrupted Jill's thoughts; you always heard Scotty before you saw him. She wiped her eyes before he entered the room.

'Loud bloody bastard,' she greeted him, as he strode through her door, laughing at someone outside on the ward. 'People are sleeping, you know.'

'Only lazy buggers who should be out working like the rest of us. When are you getting up, Jackson? There's shitloads of paperwork.'

'Suffer. I'm blind, remember?'

'Bullshit. Doctor said your eyes are fine.' His voice softened a little. 'They used the same shit they put in little Madeline McKenzie's eyes. Turns out, one of the squirrels at the party was an optometrist; he'd handed round this stuff that makes you temporarily blind if you use enough. They had a vet too. They had a real-life e-Bay thing happening there. They were trading all sorts of shit with each other – horse tranquillisers, coke, some other sick shit.

'We've got ten of them locked up,' he continued. 'Six of them won't say a thing. Two don't speak English. But we got two in there who've spilled their guts about everything. One of them only wanted some McDonald's, and when he got that we couldn't shut him up.'

'Mahmoud?'

The clouds came over Scotty's face. 'We didn't get him. He hasn't been home either.' He blew off a sigh. 'He'll show up, J.'

'Yep. What about Mercy?'

Scotty's brow creased. 'Pretty sad all round, really,' he said. 'Her mother's dead, no siblings, and her father's a hard bastard. Didn't want to know. Wouldn't even come and ID her body. I thought maybe it was a shock reaction, so I went round to his house again a couple of hours later. He practically slammed the door in my face.'

Jill shook her head and stared at the sheets. Mercy's life had been dedicated to helping others, and in death she was on her own.

'We ended up having to get a bloke she worked with to come down to the coroner's,' Scotty continued. 'I don't know about you, Jackson, but I reckon some of those counsellors are more screwed up than their clients. What was his name – Noah Griffen – that's it.'

'What'd he do?'

'Nothing really. He pretty much didn't say a word. Didn't want to know a thing. Shocked I s'pose. I just thought shrinks were supposed to deal with stuff like that better.'

'That's what people think about us,' said Jill. 'Not exactly true in my case is it?'

'Yeah. You were a total stuff-up. Got the baddie, saved the kid, lived to tell the tale. You really dropped the bundle, Jackson.'

Jill hid a small smile with her hair. 'Jerome all right?' she asked, finally looking up.

The sun came back out when Scotty smiled. 'Him and his whole family got here at eight o'clock this morning. They wanted to come yesterday, but the doctors told them you'd be asleep all day and they'd be wasting their time. They got told to come back some time today. They walked in the doors as soon as visitors were allowed.'

'How do you know they were here that early?' Jill smiled.

Scotty looked sheepish. 'Someone told me. Anyway, Mrs Sanders and your mum haven't stopped talking all morning. You can't shut some people up.'

'What time is it?'

'Eleven.'

'What are you bludging around waiting for then? Let the poor people in.'

'You ready for them, Jackson?'

She nodded. At twelve o'clock, with a box of tissues and Jerome Sanders eating chocolates on her bed, a nurse came in and told the Sanders, Jacksons and Scotty that it was time to go, that Jill had to rest.

Frances Sanders and Jerome were the last to leave. Jerome's mother bent as though to give Jill a final kiss. Instead, she just rested her forehead against Jill's own.

'Bless you,' she whispered, barely audible.

Jill swallowed.

'For God's sake, Mum! She's a cop. You don't have to go bawling all over her.' Jerome turned to Jill. 'Don't forget you said I could hold your gun some time.'

'I said you could see it.'

'Yeah, okay, then.' Jerome gave her a last big smile, stole another two of her chocolates when his mum wasn't looking, and they left the room together.

Jill leaned her head back against her pillows and was asleep by 12.05.

Scotty was right. There was shitloads of paperwork.

It had been a week since she'd been released from hospital and Jill sat opposite her partner, whose desk was also covered in files. Forensics were still sending in their reports, but the urgency had diminished given that Sebastian was dead and it looked like he'd done all the killing. Finding Mahmoud was certainly a priority. They had him for the kidnapping after Jerome had picked him from several photos, but whether they could implicate him in any of the murders remained to be seen. Regardless, the whole country was on alert for him now.

Jill was supposed to take another week off, but she knew Scotty needed her help and, despite her fatigue, she couldn't handle any more bed rest. Andreessen hadn't seemed to care either way when she'd shown up in her casual clothes that morning.

When they'd finished big-noting themselves about the bust at Hunters Hill, Harris, Jardine and Elvis had managed to get out of all the wrap-up work on the case. Jardine had taken compassionate leave: trying to get his marriage back together, they said. Harris caught another case back at Central and his boss could no longer spare him for the task-force. With them gone, it made sense to move the wind-up work back to Maroubra, but yesterday they'd been told that Elvis was on sick report – hurt on duty. 'What for?' Scotty had asked Inspector Andreessen.

'Back injury. Remember when he fell down those stairs chasing a druggie in Darlinghurst? It's playing up again.' The Inspector dismissed them.

Back at their desks, Scotty stared morosely at the reams of paper on his desk. 'Fat fuck. Hurt on duty, my arse. Gibson reckons he hurt his back after a pub crawl when he fell off the platform at Central station.'

Jill laughed. 'Hope it hurt.'

They worked quietly for a while, but Jill couldn't settle into it. 'Scotty,' she said.

'Mmm.'

'I'm gonna go out for a while.'

'Not you too, Jackson.'

'I want to go and pick up Mercy's files from the hospital. I want to have them all here to see whether she wrote anything in them about Mahmoud or Sebastian.'

'You right to drive?'

'Yeah.'

'You're on my shit list,' he growled. 'No really, that's cool. I'll see you tomorrow then.'

On the way out to Richmond, Jill wondered whether she was holding off closing down this case because it would mean finally ending a huge chapter in her own life. That would mean changing the way she did a lot of things. Was she stalling? She'd had a couple of days in bed to think about her punishing food and exercise regime, her obsessive cleaning, her arm's-length relationships with others. None of her safe-guards felt as relevant any more. She planned to change a lot of things in her life now.

She reasoned that she really did want to see what Dr Merris could tell her in death that she had been unable to share in life. She felt she owed Mercy something. It was really Mercy who had saved Jerome. It was Mercy's actions that had forced Jill to finally confront Sebastian and end the years of fear.