‘Look, I can explain –’
‘Tell someone who cares. A mate rang me to say that the Lindfield rifle was being removed from the exhibit room and shipped out somewhere for further ballistics testing. Now why would that be?’
Now they stood in the middle of the renovations and Gemma remembered the last time she’d been here; the questions about Jaki Hunter revealing a little too much interest.
‘I’ll tell you why,’ said Paulette, throwing clothes into a suitcase, without releasing her hold on her Glock. ‘Because some nosey bitch kept sticking her face into police business, that’s why. Just keep standing there, nice and quiet, against the wall. Someone,’ she gestured with the weapon in Gemma’s direction, ‘just wouldn’t leave things alone. Angie McDonald had arrested the bitch who stole Bryson from me. Just like I’d set it up. But then this nosey PI started dragging things out of the woodwork. Angie was grizzling about your phone calls like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘Paulette, that Glock of yours is making me nervous. Put it down.’ Gemma tried to lessen the fast beating of her heart by taking some deep breaths. Where are you, Mike? ‘You can’t run away from this.’
‘Wanna bet? I’ve done pretty good so far. I know some very powerful people who’ll help me.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ Gemma said, thinking of Louis Fayed.
Big mistake. Paulette’s face suddenly suffused with rage.
‘What would you know, bitch?’ She raised the Glock deliberately. ‘You’ve already got in my way. And you should know by now what I do to people who get in my way. Who take away the things I want.’
‘Take it easy, Paulette,’ said Gemma. ‘I meant no disrespect.’
Paulette glared at her, the anger still blazing from her eyes. ‘You shut up!’
Gemma complied. The flaring rage of the woman could at any time end in the same sort of result she’d seen in the crime scene photographs of the Finn murders.
Surely Mike must have dried his distributor cap or whatever it was by now! Surely he’d realise that she must be in the house when he came upon her empty car! Where the hell was he?
‘Uncle Louis will organise a passport for me. He always looks after me. I thought the superintendent would do the same. He made me his special protégé, his lover. I loved him. I used all my spare time following him, seeing where he went, who he met. He was my god. I just loved watching him. But something happened. He started looking at me differently – coldly. Then I found out why. I saw him meeting the bitch who took him away from me. I was transferred out from Manly into the city. Imagine how I felt when I found that my replacement was in the same work team as me! When I saw a replica of the Venetian glass heart he’d given me on her desk, I made a vow. That they’d both suffer like I was suffering. I was smashing it up when I realised her glass heart would have her DNA on it. That gave me an idea. That’s when I knew what I had to do. How I could punish them both. She had lots of personal items at work. Tissues from that damn flu of hers. That gave me all the material I needed. I wanted to throw that glass heart in his face. It became my revenge talisman.’
Tears sprang to her eyes and her voice wobbled. ‘He thought he could betray me and get away with it.’
The damaged heart she’d found at the picnic grounds, Gemma thought. Paulette had dropped that. That’s where Jaki’s heart had gone. And now Paulette was triumphantly boasting about what she’d done. Gemma’s mind raced. This was dangerous.
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ she asked.
‘Because you’re not as clever as you think,’ said Paulette giving her a narrow-eyed glance. ‘Do you really think I’m going to stay around and just meekly wait for them to arrive and arrest me? I’m leaving now for a new life. And you’re coming with me. You’re my insurance.’
She gestured with the Glock towards the kitchen area and Gemma started walking slowly, turning to see what her captor was intending.
‘Is that your weapon or is it another borrowed exhibit, like the Anschutz?’ Gemma asked, trying to buy time. She studied the handgun, made frighteningly long by the attached silencer.
‘If you’d kept out of it, you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be in this predicament – having to bolt. Angie McDonald and the others couldn’t see what was done under their noses.’
‘What about Donovan?’ Gemma asked, stalling. ‘You even tried to murder a little kid!’
Paulette’s voice wavered. ‘He got in the way.’
‘And what about Bettina? What had she done to you?’
‘Same,’ Paulette snarled, defiant again.
Like me, Gemma thought, as Paulette waved the Glock again. In the way.
‘Keep moving. Right through the kitchen. Out the back door. Then down to the garage.’
‘I’m not alone,’ said Gemma. ‘Unlike you were that day. I’m working two out. My partner will be here any minute.’
‘Sure. Get moving.’
‘It was you who wrote that note found in Bryson’s pocket. You called him a bastard because not only was he getting rid of you, he was also replacing you.’
‘Miss Know-It-All. But you’re stuffed now,’ said Paulette. ‘Move!’
Gemma made her way through the rainy overgrown backyard towards the garage. A light came on at their passing. Where the hell was Mike?
‘Push that door open,’ Paulette said, and Gemma saw that two cement steps led down to a door in the garden end of the garage.
She pretended to fumble the door, her mind desperately seeking a way out of this. There was no way Paulette could drive and keep her under control. She would have to immobilise Gemma. She’d either be knocked unconscious. Or worse. Paulette had nothing to lose.
‘Hurry up!’
‘I can’t open the door,’ said Gemma.
‘Just push it! It sticks sometimes.’
The door gave suddenly and Gemma stumbled through. Barely inside, and before the door was completely opened into the garage, Gemma swung back on it, slamming it shut with all her strength.
She heard Paulette curse and stumble and fall backwards. Gemma wrenched open the door, spearing herself into the stumbling figure who still had control of the weapon, barely aware of the driving rain or the shock when her shoulder hit the ground, trying to pin Paulette’s firing arm with her own body weight, struggling to apply a carotid come-along hold on the thrashing woman. But Paulette was wise to that, younger and stronger, and her training was more up to date. She deftly twisted aside, using her free arm to aim a vicious jab underneath Gemma’s nose. Instinctively, Gemma pulled back, but in so doing lost her advantage. Paulette squirmed free from beneath her.
Gemma thought she heard a sound from the back lane. Maybe Mike had arrived. Outmanoeuvred, outgunned and unable to match the younger woman’s physical strength, Gemma threw herself on top of Paulette, trying to buy time to improve her position, trying to get hold of the Glock. But it was hopeless. Paulette viciously grabbed her by the throat, applying the very hold Gemma had been struggling to use. Gemma screamed, the sudden agony blinding her. Then she felt the hard barrel of the silencer pressing against the side of her head.
‘Don’t shoot,’ Gemma whispered.
Paulette slowly stood up, raising the pistol in the rain.
This is it, Gemma thought, as Paulette deliberately took aim. ‘I’m sorry, baby,’ she whispered.
Just for a second, Paulette’s gaze lost its focus, then her eyes dropped to Gemma’s stomach. Her hand holding the Glock trembled.
‘Okay, that’s enough! Drop it!’
Gemma heard Angie behind her, sensed her pistol trained on Paulette. ‘I swear to God I’ll shoot you, Paulette!’
For a second, Paulette stood undecided. Then she slowly lowered the Glock, letting it slip to the ground. Warily, Angie moved forward to kick it back towards Gemma
and Gemma pounced on it. Sirens screamed on the street outside.
Gemma was too adrenaline-charged to say anything. She sat back on her heels, clutching Paulette’s weapon, watching in stunned silence as Angie was joined by two other detectives and Paulette was cuffed and escorted back to the house.
Angie ran to her side, squatting beside her. ‘You okay?’
Gemma nodded.
From somewhere, she heard Mike’s voice, the thudding of his feet through the rain and the roaring of her own blood. Painfully, she straightened up to see him hurtling towards her. She tried to stand but her legs were shaking.
‘What happened?’ asked Mike, grabbing her as she swayed.
‘Okay, Gemster. It’s okay. You’re safe. We got her.’
Thirty-Two
‘You’re going to have to explain to me,’ said Mike, holding Gemma tightly in the back of Angie’s car, ‘why the hell you went in there by yourself.’
‘Are you sure about doing the statement now?’ Angie asked, turning from the front seat. The second police car remained outside Paulette’s house and already the place was being cordoned off.
‘Please,’ said Gemma. ‘I must do it now. Get it over and done with.’
The shaking that had started at her knees had spread through her entire body, so that she felt as if the fluid in every one of her billions of cells was shivering.
‘Are you cold?’ Mike asked.
She nodded and he moved her closer into his solid warmth.
Gemma closed her eyes against the tears.
At the Police Centre, Angie found a vacant interview room. As Gemma sat down, she became aware of the growing pain in her shoulder. It had built to a steady throb, and with Mike’s help she carefully removed her jacket and undid the first few buttons of her shirt, slipping the sleeve off the shoulder.
‘Holy hell, girl! What have you done?’ Angie asked.
A massive red and purple haematoma from the impact of hitting the cement in the struggle with Paulette was spreading outwards and upwards around her shoulder.
‘That looks nasty,’ said Mike. ‘Can you move everything?’
‘I think so.’
‘We should take you down for an X-ray,’ he went on.
‘Let’s get this over with first,’ said Gemma.
In the interview room, Mike sat close by while Gemma made her statement about the incident in Paulette’s backyard. The shaking had calmed down until it was nothing more than a cellular tremor, and Angie had borrowed a greatcoat from some giant. Gemma, wrapped up like a baby, sipping sweet milky tea from a plastic cup, described the actions that had led to the confrontation with Bryson and Bettina Finn’s murderer.
Later, when Mike drove her home, all she wanted was a bath and Vegemite toast. She lay in the steaming bath, nursing her injured shoulder, and for the first time in many hours, started to warm up.
Mike tucked her into bed like a little girl, leaving her for a while to catch up with some work, then slipping in beside her much later. It was good to wake in the night and feel his warmth.
•
Next morning, Angie rang. ‘Feel like a celebration breakfast?’ she asked. ‘Jaki wants to thank you in person.’
Angie and Jaki arrived not long after, Jaki bearing a beautifully wrapped parcel and Angie a large box of croissants and a pink iced cake. But Hugo had gone back to Melbourne, and Mike, after taking one look at the pink cake, secretly dropped it in the kitchen tidy.
The four of them sat on the timber deck in the early sunshine of a perfect pre-spring day with the coffee percolator steaming in the middle. Gemma unwrapped the gift from Jaki – a hand-sewn patchwork bunny rug.
‘I want to know,’ said Angie, pouring herself a second cup, ‘how you knew about the Anschutz.’
Gemma smiled. ‘I’ve got Julie Cooper to thank for that. Because once I started trying to blame her – and that was only out of jealous hurt – I was pointing in the right direction. It had to be a crime scene person. Someone who was in fairly close contact with Jaki. And who was also burning with jealous rage. She’d been supplanted as Bryson Finn’s protégé by Jaki. Remember, Paulette had transferred into Sydney crime scene only a few months ago. She was the woman who made the phone calls to the Finn household, enraged that she’d been replaced by Jaki and determined to shake things up. Bryson had given her a piece of Venetian glass jewellery before giving her the shove. Sean Wright told me Paulette had been working at Manly prior to her Sydney transfer. He also told me she’d been suddenly transferred out. Paulette confirmed that last night. My guess is Bryson had discovered the Fayed connection – that Paulette had been as good as married to Benny Fayed at one stage. He was a womaniser who did his homework.’
‘Oh God,’ said Jaki, ‘I had no idea he was like that.’
‘He was very like that,’ said Angie. ‘We thought he’d settled down a bit. He’d just got smarter.’
Gemma reached towards the water jug but Mike pre-empted her, picking it up and pouring a glass for her.
‘Paulette Heath felt the same anger as Jade Finn – that the man who was central to their lives had given the same gift to several people,’ Gemma went on. ‘I started thinking of the security door to the exhibits area being propped open, and thought that it would be possible to take a weapon from there and return it. That idea made me think of an even simpler way of “losing” a murder weapon – using it again on the way from another crime scene. Paulette was working one out that day. She simply didn’t bag the Lindfield Anschutz until she’d used it herself at Killara.’
‘Okay,’ said Mike, ‘so you were working on the idea that the killer could be a crime scene person. But why fit up Jaki? Wouldn’t it have been easier to make it look like a family murder? Given all the bad blood in that particular family?’
‘This was vengeance,’ said Gemma. ‘Vengeance for infidelity. Bryson was probably discussing this mess with Bettina. He couldn’t really talk it over with anyone else.’
‘So by fitting up Jaki, she gets both of them punished,’ said Mike.
‘She told me how she used discarded items full of Jaki’s DNA. I didn’t ask her about your customised gloves, Jaki. But my guess is they were a great asset.’
‘How?’ Jaki asked, puzzled.
‘They stand out,’ said Gemma, ‘and they’re easily retrieved when the waste at a scene is bagged up – those light blue gloves would be very obvious. Paulette had only to whip them out and, making sure she was gloved herself, carefully turn them inside out and wear them over her own gloves. That way, she’d be touching everything with Jaki’s hands.’
Jaki shook her head as if to clear it. ‘That’s diabolical.’
‘Maybe. But it was a dead easy way to do what she needed to do. Paulette had been plotting and planning her vengeance for some time. She saw her chance and simply took an exhibit from one crime scene, the Lindfield shooting, and used it at another. She’d been waiting for this perfect moment. She told me she’d been stalking the superintendent, although she didn’t use that term. Bryson Finn was a dead man the moment he got in the way – as she might see it – of her dream of love with him. I saw the rage she’s capable of when someone thwarts her. The Anschutz and its ammunition were perfect. She could use her faithless lover’s own pet weapon to murder him. The silencer, I imagine, she carried with her. Just in case. She probably had a range of them, suitable for handguns and rifles. She had one on the Glock last night.’
‘And Bettina?’ Angie asked.
Gemma looked out to the horizon, gleaming under a perfect sky. The rain had freshened her garden so that even the hardy native bushes seemed greener and thicker than usual.
‘Paulette may have thought that Bryson was renewing his interest in Bettina. Or it may be that she just got in the way.’
‘I wonder what she thought when she saw the ne
cklace around Bettina’s neck,’ Jaki said. ‘That probably confirmed her suspicions. That he handed out these baubles to his harem.’
‘And the blood on Jaki’s overalls?’ Angie asked.
‘That’s easy,’ said Gemma. ‘Paulette simply “borrowed” Jaki’s work overalls. Wore them to Lindfield, and was still wearing them when she tracked the superintendent to Killara. She knew he was there, took her car around to the picnic grounds, hurried through the bushland, screwed the silencer on, went to the house – which she was familiar with from previous trysts with her lover.’ Jaki made a muffled sound but Gemma continued, ‘Shot her victims and drove back to the Police Centre. Poor little Donny just got in the way. The murder weapon she’d used was all nicely bagged up and would go straight into the exhibits room awaiting destruction. It would never be needed as evidence in a court room because the guy who shot his wife had already put up his hand.’
She paused. ‘I had this weird experience when I was at the clinic. I’d had a pre-med injection and I was drifting in this dreamy, trance-like state when I remembered Paulette wearing really heavy make-up.’
‘Heavy make-up?’ Angie said. ‘Normally she wears no make-up at all. Maybe just some lipstick.’
‘But two days after the shootings,’ Gemma said, ‘when I first met her at the Police Centre, she was wearing thick foundation.’
‘Yes,’ said Angie, ‘her face would have been peppered with tiny glass fragments. She might even have had little red marks on her skin. She wasn’t taking any chances.’
‘And all along we were wasting time and energy chasing people like Findlay and Natalie and then finally charging Jaki,’ said Angie. She reached her hand across the table. ‘Sorry, Jaki. No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘You were just doing your job,’ said Jaki, ‘according to the evidence trail. But you seemed pretty eager to believe it was me.’
Gemma looked at the two women, wondering if their friendship would survive this. Maybe it would, given time. At least there had been no malice involved.
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