Later, half tangled up with him, she drifted off, wondering hazily why she did the sort of things she did with strangers when things were so good with Steve. She tightened her hold on the warm body next to her as she felt him move. She barely heard him whisper.
‘I can’t sleep. I’ll go and watch TV for a while.’ Gemma was just aware of him sliding out of bed as she drifted into sleep.
•
It seemed only seconds later when she woke in alarm to his angry voice. He’d switched the bedside light on and was standing beside her. ‘What’s this?’ he was demanding. ‘These are your clothes on this video. What happened to them?’
Gemma sat up. ‘Oh Jesus, Steve,’ she said, immediately awake as she blinked at the cassette in his hand, scrambling about in her mind for some way to save the situation, or at least delay it until she could sort out damage control. She cursed herself for not leaving it with Angie when she’d had the chance at the police centre. ‘This is not a good time. Can we talk about it in the morning?’
‘No. We cannot.’ He stood there, eyes angry, and also fearful. ‘I want to know what this means. What happened to your clothes? Who did that to them?’
Gemma sighed and swung out of bed. She walked out into her sitting room. She could see where Steve had been lying on her lounge, a plate with biscuit crumbs and yesterday’s newspaper spread on the floor. Now, he followed her out. She turned and took the cassette from his hands and put it on the table. ‘You were never supposed to see that,’ she said. ‘You had no right to go through my private things.’
‘Go through your private things! Give me a break! It was sitting there on top of the “Wizard of fucking Oz”.’ He was staring at her, demanding an explanation.
She couldn’t think of any way out of this except the truth. ‘Steve, I spent the night before last at a motel. With someone. When I got up next morning, I found that—’ She indicated what he’d seen on the cassette. ‘I videoed it. I sent the clothes with the physical evidence to Lance at Paradigm. That’s what happened.’
‘What physical evidence?’
‘He—whoever—had wanked over my pantyhose. As well as slashed them. Stevie, I—’
‘Shut up. Just don’t say a word.’
‘But Steve, it’s worse than just what I did. I mean . . . a woman’s been murdered. He’d done the same things with her clothes.’ She stopped, aware that the woman’s death was irrelevant to what was happening between her and Steve right now. He stood up. He went to the dining table, where his leather jacket hung from the back of one of the chairs. The little wrapped gift was perched brightly on the table, and Steve scooped it up and threw it as hard as he could onto the floor where it slid across the parquetry to disappear under the sideboard. Then he turned back to her with a long, hard look. Slowly, he put on his jacket.
‘Are you going?’ she asked stupidly. Steve walked towards the door, but Gemma got there first and stood in front of it. She wanted to say: ‘Please don’t go. Please listen to me. I do this sometimes. I don’t even know why. You are my good friend; I’m so sorry. I love you and please don’t go.’ But her tongue baulked at saying those words. Instead she yelled at him: ‘Don’t be so damned self-righteous, Steve! Don’t tell me you haven’t been in any of the gang-bangs going down with your hoodlum bikie mates. Don’t tell me you haven’t fucked someone else in the months you’ve been away.’
Steve walked up to her, grabbed both her shoulders, picked her up bodily and set her firmly aside from the door as easily as if she’d been a sandwich board. ‘I don’t fuck you, Gemma,’ he said in an angry hiss. ‘We make love. But that seems to be beyond you.’ His angry eyes blazed straight into hers a split second, then he swung away to go straight on past her and out the door. He closed it carefully behind him, his controlled anger somehow far worse than a tantrum. She heard his steps leaving, eventually heard the motorcycle start a long way down the road and the angry roar as it accelerated away.
Still standing where Steve had left her, Gemma could feel herself wanting to cry. She wanted to scream out loud in pain and frustration. Instead, she steeled the muscles in her throat and jaw and tightened her neck. Damn you, Steve, she said to herself. Piss off, then. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone. I never have.
She went over to the dining table and sat down in the chair Steve’s jacket had so recently embraced, staring at the choppy night surf, the breaking crests just discernible under a steel night sky. Just as well I don’t need anyone, she thought, because everyone I love goes away. She felt a headache starting to build up in the back of her neck so she went to the bathroom and found a packet of Digesics. She took two, grabbed Taxi and went back to bed. The drug worked quickly.
Eight
Gemma woke late, hung-over from the strong analgesics. The events of last night filled her with gloom and her body felt heavy and sad. She rang Steve’s flat but the phone rang out and she hung up, wondering where he was. Maybe in a bar, drinking himself stupid. That was one of his solutions sometimes to the pressures of life. Taxi slipped between her ankles, whingeing for breakfast. ‘Shut up, you stupid cat,’ she hissed at him. But he was insistent and she relented, opening his favourite cat dinner. This is how I’ll end up, she thought bitterly, a bloody woman who lives with a damn cat. She washed her face and went for a walk along the path around Tamarama. For a moment she considered walking along the coastline to Kit, but changed her mind and turned north instead, towards Bondi. She was blind to the brilliance of the morning sea, laced into surf by the wind and with cirrus flying in filigreed mares’ tails in a wide blue sky.
When she got back, she showered and arranged to visit Philip Hawker. She left another message for Imelda Moresby.
The day was spent catching up with paperwork, filing reports, doing the accounts and generally tidying up. Gemma’s heart was heavy with pretending not to care.
It was early evening when Spinner radioed in. ‘Mr Georgiou is definitely playing out of school,’ he said. ‘They’ve been in the motel for an hour and a half. No need to put him to bed. I’ll go home now. Got some great stuff on video. They were almost doing it in the car.’
Once, Gemma remembered, she’d videoed Steve as he crossed the road after making an ATM withdrawal and came back to the car, walking around to open the passenger door and get inside.
‘Didn’t you see me?’ Gemma had asked him.
‘See you what?’ he’d asked, putting his wallet away. Gemma lifted the video camera. ‘I was shooting you. You were looking straight at me. I was sure you could see.’ She played it back for him, but Steve had shaken his head. During the day, the slightly tinted windows reflected clouds, sky and passing cars and no one seemed to notice a person with a video camera shooting through a slightly opened window. And during the night, the traffic lights and reflections and the general darkness of interiors kept a watcher’s secrets.
‘Good on you, Spinner.’ He signed off.
•
After making a steak and salad, Gemma couldn’t settle down for the night. She prowled around, sometimes sitting on the timber deck, sometimes flopped on the lounge. But some demon made her go out and she was on the way to Bondi almost before she knew it. Instead of driving to the beach to watch the moon on the water she found herself in Curlewis Street, where Steve had his flat. There was no car, of course. He’d left his car with a mate last year when he’d taken the job working alongside the drug squad, only visiting his flat infrequently. There were no lights on and she wondered where he was. He could hardly continue to live there, she realised, now that he’d been burnt by the outlaw gang. He’d need to lie low for some time. Because of the bust, his evidence wouldn’t be needed so he wouldn’t have to expose himself in a court, but even so, outlaw bikies were not known for their forgiving natures and it wouldn’t be hard to work out who had betrayed them.
She made a U-turn and drove past the flat again. This is
pathetic, she thought to herself as she sped off down towards the beach. It was impossible to park on Campbell Parade so she abandoned the car and walked the rest of the way. The beach and its surrounds curved around like the sprawling arc of a Whitely painting, drained of its trademark blue. This beach was all muted greys, darkness and luminosity. In that unseeable sea, monsters could lurk. Gulls wheeled like ghosts in the misty radiance of the powerful lights along the curved walkway, and ahead of her, low breakers rolled in dim parallel lines. Miles out at sea, a thunderstorm pulsed in silence. She shivered, as a jag of lightning split the distance. Somewhere in this city, Gemma thought, was a man who laid out women’s clothes in a strange, ritualistic pattern, a man who had killed a woman who interrupted him two nights ago. A man who’d acted out his weird compulsion only inches from her sleeping body. And somewhere, the man that she loved, but couldn’t bring herself to say the words, was living. And she didn’t have a clue where he was, either. Damn you, Steve, she thought, fighting tears.
Loud music throbbed across the road from the large hotel opposite the beach and she could feel the mindlessness beginning. A few drinks and she wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about either man. She went straight up to the bar and ordered a Scotch and ice. She sat at the bar, twisting on her stool, looking round the crowded, noisy lounge at the talent. Apart from a couple of men who were drinking alone, most of the men were accompanied by women who all seemed younger and prettier than she was. She scanned the single men’s general appearance, avoiding eye contact. There was one distinct possibility. A suit—she liked suits—sitting by himself in a corner. She picked him as a businessman of some sort; good-looking, well-groomed with dark hair and powerfully built. She liked her men big, liked to feel their physical impact on her body. Her mobile rang in her bag and she fished it out.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Gemma. It’s me, Shelly. I’ve heard something from one of the girls. You know I said I’d ask around?’
‘Tell me,’ said Gemma.
‘Jasmine told me about a girl called Bo who had this client tonight. He took all her clothes off and laid them out on the floor, all in order, like you described. Then he got her to lie on top of them. He told her she was not to move. She was to pretend to be dead. She did this and he told her to close her eyes, because she was dead.’
Shelly paused and Gemma could hear her intake of breath. ‘But she peeped and just as well she did because he’d taken out this knife. She was up and out of there in a flash, yelling her head off.’
‘And what about him?’
‘Bastard got away in all the confusion. She’s putting the word around the other girls. But you can’t warn everyone in this business.’
‘Would she talk to me?’
‘I don’t know. The ex-cop bit might be a problem. I’ve asked her to ring you.’
Gemma rang off and was putting the phone back in her bag when a voice interrupted her. ‘He can’t make it?’ said the man. ‘What a shame. Can I buy you a drink?’ It was the good-looking man in the suit who’d somehow picked up the vibe coming from her. He stood too close and he was smiling as she looked him up and down. He was perfect. No matter what script they used, always in the past she would have ended up going to a hotel with him.
She was aware of the terrible sadness under the anger about Steve, and for one awful moment she thought she might cry. She looked hard at him. She recalled another night and slashed clothes on the floor. She heard Kit saying, ‘That’s what you do, my Gems. You leave doors open and the hell beings can slip in.’
Gemma put her drink down. This all had to change, she thought somewhere. ‘I buy my own drinks, thank you,’ she said.
He raised an eyebrow to show he didn’t care. ‘Suit yourself, darling,’ he said. Gemma suddenly saw the contempt that was his real stock in trade. She slid off the bar stool, couldn’t bring herself to leave the last of the Scotch, tossed it back and walked out. Halfway back to the car, her unease started building. She reached her car and got into it, starting up the ignition. Bloody men, she thought. A memory of Steve kissing her goodnight and tucking her in before he left one night made her eyes fill with tears. Why is it so damn difficult? Gemma cried all the way home.
Nine
In the morning, Noel came by to pick her up; after a quick coffee, they headed off. During the trip to Camden, Gemma found herself occasionally eyeing Noel on her left as he sat silently beside her, sometimes digging into his bag where he had catalogues and samples of the newest, smartest cameras for covert operations. In the confined space of the car, his male smell was interesting. But she knew what she was up to; that this was a distraction to take her mind off Steve. That’s what I do, she thought. When I’m unhappy or anxious, I immediately think about sex to take my mind off the sadness. Kit was right. What the hell’s wrong with that anyway? she asked herself. But it wasn’t convincing. I can’t go on picking up men for the rest of my life every time the anxiety gets to me. Besides, it would be very bad form, she lectured herself, to become sexually involved with one of my operators. Very bad form, very silly. But Noel was safe. He wasn’t a hell being. He wouldn’t be like a stranger from a club. He was safe, stolid old Noel. And he had a big, hard solid body that she had always found pleasing.
The rural landscape on each side of the freeway gave way to new housing estates, where washing blew on lines, and dinkies and tricycles could be seen in backyards. Domestic life probably is not for me, she thought. I’ll be thirty-five in a minute. Then forty. Steve would never be the sort of person who’d make a good father; undercover work was not the sort of employment taken on by the ideal family man. She tried to imagine him burping an infant and failed badly. She couldn’t quite bring herself to see the infant as hers.
‘What are you laughing about?’ Noel broke the silence.
‘I was just thinking of a U/C cop burping a baby,’ she said.
Noel turned away, shaking his head. ‘This work we do,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s pretty weird.’ It wasn’t often that Noel said much; he was a silent man as a rule.
‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.
‘Remember when you did that undercover job,’ he said, ‘the one at Nutramaid?’
Gemma nodded. She’d been put on the payroll on the assembly line because someone was putting ground glass in the cake mix.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’ve been offered something similar,’ he said. ‘Full-time job. Undercover. Might mean I’m not available for a month or two.’ He flashed a glance at her.
Gemma shrugged. ‘I can always put more hours in on the road or get someone on contract. Who’s the job with?’
Noel leaned back in his seat, hugging his shoulders to his ears, stretching and moving his back. ‘It’s not settled yet. I’m not even sure I want to do it. I felt bad last time I did that sort of work. I got to like the bastard. I know, I know,’ he said, speaking before she could. ‘We’re not supposed to get emotionally involved. I know it sounds off, but after you spend hours with someone, drinking with them after work, listening to their shit, hearing their problems, you get to, well, you get to be mates, sort of.’ Noel looked across at her, making sure she was listening, seeing the understanding in her eyes. He turned his attention back to the road. ‘Then I had to set him up. Once I was sure he was the one doing the thieving I had to dob him in. Give evidence at court with him looking at me like I was bloody Judas.’
‘I didn’t get to love my subject at Nutramaid,’ Gemma said. ‘But he wasn’t just thieving. It was a pretty psychopathic thing he was doing. Ground glass in the vanilla sponge, for Chrissake.’
‘But you know what I mean,’ Noel said.
Gemma looked away. She did. We sit outside their houses and we watch their lives, she was thinking. We end up knowing almost everything about them; their interests, their friends, their weaknesses, their sex habits, their diet,
how often they shit. We comb through their rubbish and we know what they like to eat, what toiletries, laundry products, wines, spirits, cosmetics and reading material they like. We know all this about them and they don’t even know we’re in the world.
‘I’m not denying that what my subject was doing was wrong,’ said Noel. ‘But he wasn’t a bad sort of a bastard when you got to know him. He was thieving to pay household bills. Bloody wife always at him for not earning enough. He wasn’t a real crim. Then I had to give evidence in court. He was looking at me like I’d betrayed him.’
He paused and wound up his window as a huge rig passed them. ‘Which I had.’
‘Goes with the territory, Noel. That’s why we never get too close. Never get involved.’
‘Woman started doing the business on me a few months ago,’ he said. ‘That Seaforth job. Remember?’
Gemma nodded.
‘The old man was playing out of school and I got the video evidence for her. After she watched it, she rang me. Wanted me to help her make one of her own. To show hubby.’
Gemma couldn’t help imagining being in bed with Noel. She took another quick glance at his handsome, calm figure beside her, his good profile and thick hair. She briefly wondered what might happen if she ran her hand over his thigh and into his crotch. ‘Did you?’ she finally asked.
Noel didn’t answer directly. ‘He’d been playing up with his daughter’s best school friend.’ Gemma brought her attention back to the conversation. ‘It would blow the whole family apart. His daughter, his wife. The little school friend’s family, too.’
Gemma looked sideways at him again. ‘Did you make the video? To help the aggrieved wife?’
Noel turned to her and smiled. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I did?’
Gemma looked away. She had to let the matter drop now, or reveal too much. She shrugged. ‘None of my business,’ she said, staring at an insect that had smeared itself across the windscreen in a pale orange glaze.
Feeding the Demons Page 9