‘Then you’ll become a suspect,’ she went on, ‘and you’ll be questioned closely. Your life will be exposed to the press. You’ll be hauled over the coals. I don’t have to tell you what that might be like for someone in your position. All that “discretion assured” nonsense you’ve promised your mugs will be shot to bits. No one will come anywhere near you again. You’ll be out on the streets with the other girls who have no alternative. So tell me about Lorraine.’
Once Gemma would never had made such a threat, too concerned for her licence. But life, she realised, creates situations that have no precedents and we have to do what we can. I won’t have a licence by the end of the week anyway, she thought. This idea toughened her up even further.
‘I’m running out of time, Skanda,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything you know about Lorraine or I’ll tell everything I know about you.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘What’s it to be?’
Skanda Bergen’s struggle still showed in her face and Gemma imagined she could almost pick up the electrical charge coming from the woman’s anxiety.
‘How do you come to know her?’
‘How do you think?’ snarled Skanda, her expression pinched with unwillingness. ‘She was a worker too.’
She moved a couple of pornographic magazines and wiped the surface of the low table. Gemma could feel her anger at being forced to talk.
‘And then she went and married Terry Litchfield,’ Gemma prompted. ‘And now she’s a rich widow.’
Skanda stared at her. ‘If you know so much, what do you want from me?’ she asked.
She turned to the kitchen annexe where she went to a cupboard and pulled on another pair of disposable gloves. Gemma wondered if there was a proper name for a glovaphiliac.
‘A friend of mine is a friend of hers,’ said Gemma. ‘I want to find out if he’s all right. And where he might be.’
‘How would I know?’ said Skanda, and there was a cocky insolence in her voice that Gemma hadn’t heard anyone use since about third class at school.
She moved nearer to Skanda, noticing the tiny flecks of skin around her nose and cheeks flaking from the sharkskin surface.
‘Listen to me, bitch,’ she whispered, using one of Angie’s techniques. ‘You find out everything you can about a man called Steve Brannigan, friend of your girlfriend Lorraine. Otherwise, as well as giving you up to the cops who will be looking all over Sydney for you, I’ll make sure my old colleagues in the job fit you up with anything that comes into my head. And then some. You’ll be fat and forty before you get outside again. Got it?’
Skanda looked wildly round, almost throwing off sparks. ‘But I hardly ever see Lorraine anymore!’
‘You’re about to change all that right now,’ said Gemma, keeping up the pressure, pulling her mobile out of her pocket. ‘And don’t even think of disappearing. I’ll be watching you like a hawk. I’ve got operatives all over Sydney. Stalking people is my job. I’m a professional. Okay?’ She thrust her mobile at her. ‘Use this. Now, ring her.’
‘What, now?’
‘Now.’
Gemma waited while Skanda reluctantly took the mobile from her and dialled a number, looking up at Gemma from time to time. She waited for the other party to answer and turned away to speak.
‘Hi, Lorraine,’ she said, sweet as pie. ‘It’s Skanda. Listen, honey, I’m in a bit of a fix. No, it’s not money. I need to talk to you about somebody. Someone called Steve Brannigan.’
Skanda’s startled face matched the way her body jumped at the response. Gemma could hear the high pitched yelling on the other end of the line, even though Skanda had moved away to the window for the call. Then it was only a few moments before Skanda thrust the mobile back to Gemma, a sly smirk on her face.
‘Lorraine’s not talking to anyone,’ she said. ‘About anything. She’s flying out of Sydney.’
‘What did she say?’ asked Gemma.
Skanda turned away, triumphant. ‘Lorraine is running for her life,’ she crowed. ‘And you can kiss whoever Steve is a big goodbye.’
Gemma wanted to hit her. But she restrained herself, trying to bring her shaking body under control. A sudden plop behind her made her spin around. A cat had jumped onto the windowsill from the roof outside. Skanda rushed at the animal and it vanished, to reappear in a higher position, near the roof ridge, but not before Gemma had noticed the distinctive harlequin pattern of its face.
‘That cat,’ Gemma said. ‘I know that cat!’
‘It’s just a stray,’ said Skanda. ‘It’s a pest, always trying to come in here.’
‘It’s not a stray at all,’ said Gemma. ‘I know whose cat that is!’
‘Get out of my place!’ Skanda yelled.
‘Why have you got Benjamin Glass’s cat?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! It’s just some damn stupid stray.’
Skanda lifted a pile of lacy underwear, grabbing something that Gemma recognised only too well.
‘Get out of my place now!’ Skanda screamed.
‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘I’m going.’
Skanda advanced, capsicum spray in front of her.
‘Get out!’ she screamed again. ‘Get out of my apartment. Leave now!’
Gemma backed away. ‘You’re in deep shit, lady,’ she yelled just before she turned and raced back downstairs. She saw Spinner look up at her sudden reappearance and he leaned across to open the door for her as she scrambled back inside.
‘Spinner,’ she said. ‘Skanda has Benjamin Glass’s cat!’
Spinner, who was still holding her mobile, looked at her wide-eyed. ‘Whose cat?’
‘The HTA case,’ she explained. ‘I’ve just spotted the missing cat.’
Skanda Bergen and Benjamin Glass’s cat, she thought. All the connections were there, just as Sean had said. They’d just run underground where I couldn’t see them, where I couldn’t make sense of them.
‘She just chased me out of her place with capsicum spray. I’m going to have to tell Sean Wright about her and the cat.’
That’s two women I’m giving him, she thought, Skanda and Minkie.
‘I got the conversation,’ said Spinner. ‘Wanna hear it?’ He played the recording he’d taken of the call Skanda had made to the widow. It was difficult to make out the words Lorraine Litchfield was screaming.
‘I can’t talk to anyone! I’m not here. Okay? All hell’s broken loose. I can’t talk now. Call me later.’
Spinner played it back a few times. ‘She’s shit scared,’ he said.
‘Of what? Of who? Fayed?’
Spinner shrugged. ‘Anyone who brasses up Fayed has got to be in deep shit.’
Gemma thought for a moment. ‘Fayed must have found out about the undercover job against him. Lorraine must have dobbed Steve in. But then Lorraine must have realised that her own position would also be compromised. It wouldn’t take Fayed long to work out that the police operation couldn’t have happened without Lorraine’s assistance in setting it up.’
‘She could play the injured innocent,’ said Spinner. ‘Pretend she’s only just discovered—oh shock and horror—that her new boyfriend is an undercover cop. That’s the only safe way to go.’
‘Why didn’t she see this coming?’
‘We’re making a huge assumption here,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what’s happening, really. Damn Skanda. I didn’t get what I wanted.’
She felt her body tighten in frustration as Spinner gunned the motor.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you home.’ He paused, his hand on the gear stick.
‘Why does Skanda have that cat?’ he asked.
‘And why is she compulsive about cleaning?’ she asked back. ‘She’s always wiping and spraying like something out of a ’60s television ad.’
‘Maybe it’s cat hairs,’ said Spinner. ‘She’s allergic to cat hairs.’
‘She’s allergic to something. I saw inside her fridge,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s like a pharmacy in there.’
On the drive back to the office, Gemma went over and over the facts of the Benjamin Glass case in her mind. Now it seemed far more complicated than it had when she’d been prepared to hand over the evidence to Sean Wright and wash her hands of Minkie Montreau. Now Skanda Bergen was suddenly in the frame as well. But her mind kept returning to Steve’s position. Had something happened to him? Is that why Lorraine Litchfield was panicked?
‘I’ve got to make Steve my first priority,’ she said. ‘I can’t think about anything else right now.’
‘Think about Mike Moody,’ Spinner said. ‘Think about what I said.’
Seventeen
Spinner dropped her home and she went straight to the bathroom for a shower, trying to wash off the day but she couldn’t shake its problems. The complete destruction of her business almost eclipsed other concerns. Then there was Mike Moody, recently separated, angry with his wife, batching and making cakes. Could he have the necessary psychological profile for someone who attacks women? So many men, she knew, believed their estranged wives ‘owed’ them, believed they were guilty of something. Anything. That they needed punishing. Would this justify attacks on women? She recalled the cases she knew of violent men, their rage kept in check during the years they had the services of a wife or steady girlfriend, but who, when those services were lost, lashed out at other women, strangers to them. Was Mike one of those? Quite a few police officers turn out to be very nasty indeed, she knew.
She put on a new silky tracksuit and sneakers, and went into the operatives’ office to the desk where Mike usually sat. It was unlikely that he’d leave anything incriminating here, she knew, but sometimes even master criminals slip up. I don’t even know what I’m looking for, she thought, going through his drawers. They were neat and innocuous: files of the jobs he was working on, notes on Belinda Swann. The trouble is, Gemma realised, he’s so far ahead of me in technical know-how that I could be looking straight at the proof of his guilt and not even recognise it. She pulled his large blue desk diary over and opened it, flicking through the days and months. Details of jobs she remembered, times, meetings. She was about to close the book and push it back into position, when a familiar phone number jumped out at her. She looked closer. It was Angie’s. Why would Mike have Angie’s number? she wondered. She frowned, then stared. Underneath that was George Fayed’s name, spelled out large and clear, together with a mobile phone number. Gemma jumped to her feet. What’s going on here? she thought. Why did one of her colleagues have the mobile phone number of a drug lord? She recalled that the external security gate was standing open and was on her way to get the key. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the desk phone rang. She came back to answer it.
‘Ric Loader here, Gemma. I’ve got something for you. You’re not going to like it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That sample you gave me.’
Gemma remembered the bloodstained handkerchief taken from Mike’s coat pocket.
‘I ran it through Genotyper and we got a match. Two matches, actually.’
She remembered the bedroom, the ugly defaced poster, the woman’s breast targeted and stabbed.
‘What matches?’
‘Whoever attacked Robyn Warburton and killed Shelly Glover is the same person.’
Her mind tried to put it all together as Rod continued.
‘And we found the same profile on that handkerchief.’
Gemma’s could hear nothing for a few seconds except the sound of her pounding heart. To Ric, the traces left on objects were simply the matrix from which to extract a profile. He had no knowledge of how or where the objects might be connected, let alone connected to Gemma herself. She recalled the fringed cowboy jacket in which she’d found Ric’s sample; now she understood why she’d had the impressions of ribbons flying from her attacker.
‘My God, Ric,’ she said. ‘He works for me.’ She thought of something. ‘And probably George Fayed as well,’ she added. My enemy has been here all the time, she thought.
She heard a sound outside and jumped back from Mike’s desk.
‘What!’ Ric’s shocked voice shrilled in her ear.
‘His name’s Mike Moody and he works for me! His address is 646 Todman Avenue, Kensington. For God’s sake get to him fast!’
Another sound out the front and she wished she’d locked the security door earlier.
‘Someone’s here!’ she said. Her heart contracted as she realised it could be Mike himself.
‘Ric!’ she said, her voice hoarse with urgency, ‘call triple 0! Tell them a Signal One! Unit two, number 8 Phoenix Crescent, Phoenix Bay!’
Ric started to say something. ‘Just do it!’ she screamed, repeating her address, dropping the phone.
She ran into her bedroom, unlocked her gun safe and pulled the Glock out of its case. Fingers trembling, she loaded it and slipped it into her tracksuit pocket. Its comforting weight pressed against her thigh and she kept a hand in her pocket, ready to pull it out in an instant. She peered into the hall. Mike was coming in, opening the unlocked grille door.
She ducked back behind the door that separated her apartment from the two front rooms off the hall. She could hear Mike moving around in the operatives’ room. Then she pressed back against the door as he walked across the hall and into her office. She crept through the door, sliding her feet along the floor, slow and soft, until she came to her office. She paused outside, then ducked her head around the doorway. Mike suddenly turned from where he sat in front of her computer and caught her, peeping around the door.
‘Gemma!’ he said. ‘You gave me a fright!’
He sat back in the chair, which he’d swivelled round in the first second of seeing her, relaxed and perfectly at ease.
She raised the Glock into the firing position, bracing herself near the doorway.
‘On the floor!’ she yelled. ‘Now! Get on the floor!’
She saw his shocked face. He half-tried to stand up and she moved closer.
‘You heard what I said! Get on the fucking floor! Ric Loader just rang. Your DNA was all over Robyn Warburton and Shelly! Do it now!’
Mike slid out of the chair and awkwardly knelt on the floor. ‘Who? What are you talking about?’
‘Right down! Down!’
Mike opened his hands, pleading.
‘Gemma, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know why you’re doing this!’
She moved into the room. ‘Get down. On your stomach,’ she yelled as he dropped to all fours.
‘It was you all the time! Get down!’
Keeping the gun trained on him, she moved in closer, willing her ears to hear the wail of sirens, praying that car after car was speeding towards Phoenix Bay.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said. ‘You can’t be serious! This is crazy.’
He made as if to stand up.
‘Don’t move!’ she screamed. ‘The cops will be here any moment. Just stay where you are.’
She saw him look up at the Glock, only a metre away from his face, and duck his head again. ‘Tell me what’s going on, for Chrissakes,’ he said.
‘I should have realised it was you. You’re in touch with George Fayed. I found his number in your diary. You’re working for him. You’re being taken to the cleaners by your ex-wife. You hate women,’ she said. ‘You want to punish them, so you attack street girls, not only for pleasure, but because your filthy boss pays you for it! You killed Shelly. I saw that ugly poster in your bedroom.’
‘This is totally insane,’ he said, his voice muffled, from the floor. ‘I don’t know where to start. I’ve got n
othing to do with any attack on anyone. What ugly poster? What filthy boss?’
Even in her fizzing high adrenalin mode, Gemma recognised that Mike’s responses seemed genuine, the reactions of an innocent person shocked by someone else’s extraordinary and unreasonable behaviour. But there’s no arguing with a DNA match, she reminded herself.
‘You can’t deny a DNA profile,’ she said. ‘You raped and bashed Robyn, murdered Shelly and came after me! I got you in the face with my knee.’
‘Gemma,’ he pleaded. ‘These injuries,’ he said. ‘Take a good look. They’re not from a knee. Fists caused this’—cautiously he raised a finger to point to the split on his brow and near his mouth—‘and this. Not a knee. I can get a pathologist to certify that, if you like. And I can get eyewitnesses to that brawl outside the Hellfire Club. I’ve already lined those guys up for an assault case. Against them and the bloody copper who paid them.’
‘You could still have had time to attack me in the lane. I saw the fringes of your jacket. And Ric Loader got a perfect match from your bloodstained handkerchief.’
‘What jacket? What handkerchief are you talking about?’
‘Stop lying!’
‘I’m not lying. I haven’t got a fringed jacket, for Chrissakes. What the hell are you talking about? This is ridiculous.’
She could hear the bewilderment in his voice wearing off and the anger starting up.
He struggled to stand.
‘Stay down,’ she warned.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he repeated. You can’t do this to me. For God’s sake, Gemma, I had a party recently with about forty people at my place. There were coats and bags all over the place. I’m still finding things people left there.’ He lifted his upper body up and made a gesture of appeal. ‘That jacket you’re talking about has been hanging on the doorknob of the bedroom since the party. It could’ve come from anyone who was there that night.’
It was true. She’d forgotten the party Mike had thrown.
‘That poster was just a joke,’ he said. ‘I’d completely forgotten about it. We played darts, that’s all.’
Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing Page 31