‘Police, Fire or Ambulance?’ The dispatcher spoke slowly and clearly, knowing the caller on the other end of the line was likely panicked.
‘All of them!’
Yep. Freaking out. He took a deep breath. ‘Can you tell me what’s happened?’
‘An accident. Oh God! I think they’re dead.’
‘What sort of accident?’
‘It’s awful! The car’s upside down. I can see a man but there might be others. I can’t open the door. Help me!’
‘Where are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ the woman wailed. ‘I’m not from round here.’ ‘Where are you travelling from?’ He kept his voice calm despite the jittery sensation bubbling in his veins. These were the tough calls where logic and sleuthing fought the clock.
‘Perth,’ she sobbed.
‘And where are you heading?’
‘Um … it’s … hang on.’ There was the sound of papers scrunching. ‘Gar … Gar-Garring-gar-up. Is that how you say it?’
‘Garringarup.’ He brought up the map. A series of spoke roads radiated in all directions from the heritage Wheatbelt town. Coming from Perth, the woman could be on one of three roads, but it was likely the Great Southern Highway. Only he’d been doing this job for too long to depend on ‘likely’. ‘Do you have GPS coordinates?’
‘I don’t know! How do I get them?’
He gave a moment’s thought to explaining how to locate the coordinates but worried the spiralling woman might disconnect the call in the process. ‘Do you remember the name of the last town you drove through?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember anything about it?’
‘It had a pub.’
In small-town WA that didn’t narrow it down any…
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