Death by Beauty

by Lord, Gabrielle

  ‘What sort of trace evidence did you get from the car?’ asked Gemma, scribbling in her notebook.

  ‘Julie Cooper did that job. The report from the analysis was a big fat zero.’

  Gemma stiffened at Julie Cooper’s name. The young police officer had been briefly engaged to Steve after he and Gemma broke up last year. The sound of her name still stung. If Julie hadn’t lied about being pregnant, Gemma thought, there’d have been no engagement. And maybe …

  Angie continued, ‘I think “forensically stripped” was the term the analyst used.’

  These words brought Gemma’s mind back to the job. ‘Forensically stripped?’

  ‘That’s right. It was as if the body and the clothing had been put through a washing machine. The only DNA they got was Rachel Starr’s.’

  ‘So, he really cleans up after himself,’ Gemma said.

  ‘Ted says he hasn’t released all the information from his report yet. But he’ll tell me more when I go and see him.’

  After a pause, Gemma added, ‘We’ll have to talk to Rachel’s family and friends too.’

  Angie leaned forward, grinning. ‘Gemster, I love it when you talk about “we”. I can feel my workload easing already. Family and friends have been interviewed. I can tell you now that we didn’t uncover anything that throws any light on Rachel’s murder. So, I was thinking along the lines of a jealous student discovering that the object of their artistic infatuation would never be interested in them. That was until Marie-Louise Palier was found washed up on a beach with similar pelvis and head injuries. Her handbag and shoes were found at the top of the cliff nearby and it was presumed she’d jumped. Again, Ted Ackland came to the conclusion that she’d been dead before she jumped …’ Angie cleared her throat before continuing. ‘Sorry, that was a joke going round the Forensic Services team. Of course, it could be someone doing a copycat – killing first, then setting up a theatrical death scene – hoping that the first murderer will also pick up the tab for the second one.’

  ‘Or the same person, hoping to cover the original cause of death,’ Kit said.

  ‘And because of the time in the water,’ Gemma asked, ‘I guess there’s not much in the way of forensic information?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Angie, as Gemma added these details to her notes.

  ‘And the original cause of death in these two cases?’ Gemma continued, looking up again.

  Angie referred to her laptop, perched on her knees. ‘Catastrophic head injuries,’ she said, ‘as well as massive damage to the lumbar areas. So, back to the story on the second murder. Marie-Louise left her office in George Street in the city at six-thirty. She met up with her boyfriend in a cafe at Bondi, had a coffee with him and then headed towards her apartment at North Bondi on foot about an hour later. That was about eight-thirty.’

  ‘And the boyfriend?’ asked Kit.

  ‘He went to the gym not far from the cafe and then home. He says he offered Marie-Louise a lift but she said she liked the walk. She disappeared somewhere between the cafe and her apartment about two kilometres away. There’s no evidence that she arrived home that night. The mail was still in the letterbox and the breakfast things were still in the sink. Like Rachel Starr, she just vanished off the street. Her bag and shoes were found hidden under some bushes near the cliff edge at The Gap. Nothing was missing. We did a re-enactment with a police woman wearing similar clothes, and several locals contacted us saying they’d seen Marie-Louise walking along Campbell Parade, but then she seems to have become invisible. Nobody saw her with anyone or getting into a cab or a car or onto a bus. The CCTV coverage doesn’t quite extend all the way to the turn-off to her street, so it’s no help in this instance.’

  ‘What about the boyfriend?’ asked Gemma. ‘He was the last person to see her alive.’

  ‘Mmm. I’m not sure about him. One of the reasons I’m telling you all this, Gemma, is because I’m hoping you’ll give me a hand with some of the follow-up. Unofficially, of course. Like a second informal interview with him. He might be more relaxed with you. He says he went to the gym, and a couple of people say they remember him being there but they’re not sure of the time.’

  ‘Okay. I wonder if he’ll talk to me,’ said Gemma, giving up all hope of easing slowly back into work.

  ‘Thanks, Gemma,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll send you his details and a copy of his statement when I get back to the office. I found him a difficult character. He was evasive and unhelpful. Maybe you’ll get something useful out of him.’

  Angie turned her laptop around so Kit and Gemma could see it and brought up the crime-scene footage.

  ‘This is the first crime scene. Rachel Starr.’

  She fast-forwarded through the establishing shots of the bushland near the quarry, long since overgrown and disused, finally pausing the screen on a stony cliff wall.

  ‘The quarry hasn’t been used for over twenty years. There’s still a road up there that’s passable. We’re looking at people who would know about its existence – forestry workers, anyone once employed at the quarry who might have had a connection to Rachel. The killer must have driven up there with her body in the car, then transferred her to the driver’s seat, wedged the accelerator and jumped out before it crashed into the stone walls.’

  ‘Dangerous way to set something up. What if he hadn’t got out in time?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘And that could be the reason why the killer – if it is the same killer – dropped the second body into the sea,’ said Angie, nodding. ‘A safer option. It also saved him the trouble of washing down everything.’

  The camera panned closer to what looked like a pile of car parts and tyres in a corner of the quarry. Slowly, the pile revealed itself to be a crumpled car body, distorted out of all shape, one door hanging open. As the camera moved to the driver’s side, Gemma could not stop her gasp of horror at the state of what had once been a human head, now inextricably embedded in twisted wreckage, the upper body partly impaled on the steering column, the lower body invisibly wedged under the dashboard. Angie froze the screen. ‘Now I want you to have a look at Rachel Starr as she was.’

  Gemma was pleased to avert her eyes from the horrible mess on the laptop screen to the photograph Angie passed her. Rachel Starr had been a delicately beautiful young woman, with refined features, a patrician nose, rosy skin and fine, fair hair. Gemma made herself look at the mashed-up flesh and bone on the screen again and then back at the photograph. The word that came to mind was ‘desecration’.

  ‘Sacrilege,’ said Kit, voicing her sister’s feelings. ‘The destruction of the temple. Whoever did this is destroying the female – her face, her beauty.’

  ‘The other one was horribly similar,’ said Angie, turning off the footage and opening another file. ‘Okay. Crime scene two. Marie-Louise Palier. I’ve got a few stills from that one. First, this was Marie-Louise before she washed up on the beach.’

  Another beautiful girl gazed out serenely from her portrait. She was wearing her mortar board tilted at an impish angle, and holding the scroll of her degree, her evening dress glittering under the dark graduate robe; glossy chestnut-brown hair framed her face and her steady grey eyes shone through dark lashes.

  ‘Now take a look at these.’

  Angie passed three photographs to Gemma, who studied them and then handed them to Kit. The first one showed an object lying at an angle at the water’s edge; the second photograph was closer and showed a woman’s body, dressed except for shoes; her head, oddly shaped, was turned away from the viewer.

  Gemma stared unblinking at the third photograph and then silently passed it to Kit. This time it was Kit who gasped. ‘He’s done it again. Totally destroyed her. This guy is very, very dangerous.’

  ‘Until I saw these and realised they were almost identical,’ said Gemma, indicating the photographs on the screen, ‘I was playing with the idea that it was a copycat, but … these photographs have never been released, have they?’

  ‘No, nor have we said any
thing about the massive damage to the lower bodies of both these women.’

  ‘So no one could have known how to copy the first one,’ said Gemma, ‘except whoever did it.’

  ‘What exactly are the other injuries to the lower bodies?’ Kit asked, as Gemma lay the three photographs down on the coffee table. ‘You’d think that if he was destroying the woman he’d also attack other uniquely female parts, like breasts and the genital area? Is that what’s happened here?’

  ‘That’s the odd thing,’ said Angie. ‘And that’s what the pathologist and a lot of the senior police were saying: that when you get this sort of facial destruction, there’s often violence inflicted on other parts of the body. But in both cases, the women were fully dressed. We believe the killer had put the clothes back on the bodies, after cleaning them to remove all traces of foreign genetic material. Rachel even had one shoe still on. The pelvic injuries involve the hips rather than the genitals. In Marie-Louise’s case, there’d been some damage caused by fish, but not enough to account for the destruction of the head and the hip bones. And no signs of sexual interference.’

  ‘What are the chances that this was done by a woman?’ asked Gemma. ‘Who tried to make it look like sexual assaults?’

  ‘There’s always the chance,’ said Kit, ‘but statistically it’s unusual and I wouldn’t be backing it. But I suppose it’s possible – destroying the beauty of a hated rival as well as eliminating them from the competition.’

  ‘Any other leads?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘The fact I want to stress,’ said Angie, putting the photographs into an envelope and back in her briefcase, ‘is that in Rachel Starr’s case the massive injuries were inflicted sometime after death. Likewise, the medical evidence indicates that Marie-Louise’s head and pelvic injuries – not counting the post-mortem damage by fish – occurred hours after her death too. Because of the injuries to Rachel’s head and throat the actual cause of death hasn’t been properly determined – bludgeoning, strangulation. We just don’t know the finer points at this stage. Same thing with Marie-Louise.’

  ‘Do you think it was done to hide their identity?’ Kit asked.

  Angie shook her head. ‘No. Rachel’s bag was in the wreckage near her body. Marie-Louise’s stuff was left at The Gap.’

  ‘Maybe he kills them first and then he gets scared so tries to destroy their identity,’ Gemma ventured. ‘If that’s the case, it certainly points to a personal relationship with the women.’

  ‘I’ve got a somewhat different take,’ said Kit. ‘Could it be that this killer is so passive when it comes to women that he can only attack them – I mean really attack them – when they’re dead?’

  ‘A bit like necrophilia – except in this case, he’s substituting homicide for … how can I put it … romance?’ Angie suggested in her driest manner, green eyes narrowed.

  ‘Something along those lines, yes. My guess is that he kills them in a really passive way – something toxic, some kind of poison, drugs them. Then when they’re dead, the raging attack takes place.’

  Angie nodded slowly. ‘We’re still waiting for the toxicologist’s report for Marie-Louise Palier,’ she finally said, ‘but Rachel Starr’s autopsy didn’t turn up anything like poison. I’d better get out of here,’ she continued, stowing her laptop in her briefcase. ‘I’ve got so much work on my desk at the moment – I might as well stay there all night. Except I can’t.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Hell, I’ve got the sex workers meeting in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Angie is liaison officer with the sex-workers outreach group,’ Gemma explained to Kit, adding, ‘I’ll talk to Naomi, too. She’s running Baroque Occasions now, the brothel my old mate Shelley bought. Naomi always knows what’s going on in town, and if she doesn’t she has the network to find out.’

  ‘I’ve got loads of people to interview about the two dead women,’ said Angie, ‘second interviews with their families, friends and acquaintances, just in case they’ve remembered something. I’ll be calling on you for help, Gemster. What do you say? How about helping me with getting witness statements? They’d all have to be done officially by me or someone else on the team later, but you could help the interviewees get their facts marshalled?’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s so long since I exercised my mind with a complicated case like this.’

  ‘I can pay you by doing a lot of overtime and quietly slipping something extra your way.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Good,’ said Angie, handing Gemma a list of contacts for Marie-Louise Palier. ‘So, what’s the grim smile all about?’

  ‘I thought I was going to work part time for a while. You know, start back slowly. Let Rafi and I both get used to the idea of leaving him at daycare. Then you come and tempt me.’

  ‘Crime never sleeps, Gems,’ Angie quoted, with her cheeky smile. ‘And it doesn’t work part time. Rachel Starr’s murder doesn’t strike me as a first attempt. With this sort of violence, the killer has to have committed previous serious assaults. Maybe he’s even responsible for earlier, unsolved murders. If we can find any physical evidence, I feel sure we’ll get a match from the Crimtrak database. This is not the behaviour of a newbie. Sonia at DAL suggested calling in the palynologist to see if he can get anything botanical from the clothes. So I’m doing that.’

  Gemma walked with Kit and Angie to the door, then watched as they walked up the stone stairs that led to the road above. Just as she took the first step, Kit called back: ‘There’s always a reason for an obliterating attack. There’s always a logic to it. Find the reason and you’re over halfway to finding the killer.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Gemma collected Rafi from daycare and fed him a sandwich, then played with him on the rug in the living room. He giggled with pleasure, his plump starfish hands reaching out for her, grabbing strands of hair and yanking them. ‘Ouch!’ she cried, wincing and untangling the strands from his strong little fingers, while he shrieked with joy and bounced his fat, nappy-covered bottom on the rug before rolling over and breaking into a high-speed escape. He was recovering from his heartbreak at being left in the mornings at the daycare centre. Gemma wondered whether the wrench to him was as bad as the ache in her heart, as she turned her back on him and hurried away those first few mornings, to the sound of his distressed crying, ignoring the powerful, hard-wired impulse to run back and pick him up. His carer reassured her that he was settling in well.

  With Rafi playing around her, she put on a load of washing and cleaned up in the kitchen, setting the table in the living room to be ready when Mike came home.

  When she finally put Rafi to bed, he grizzled for a while, but the sounds became quieter and then finally there was silence. She sneaked in and looked at him lying on his back with his head turned a little towards the door, one hand near his face, the other stretched out. She kissed him softly.

  She tiptoed out and walked onto the deck, breathing in the evening air, then jumped in fright as Taxi collided with her legs before racing inside. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’ she called after him.

  Gemma peered into the darkness, uneasy. In the south-east the sky brooded, the line of the horizon and ocean indistinguishable. She shivered and went inside.

  ‘What’s wrong, Taxi?’

  The cat was standing on the coffee table, fur erect, doubling his body size and tripling the girth of his tail into a furry bottlebrush. She hoped it was only a stray tom invading his territory and she looked out, restless and on edge.

  Half an hour later she heard Mike come through the front door, and she felt relieved and pleased. When he walked into the living room she threw her arms around his neck in welcome.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said, kissing her. ‘I bought some takeaway from the Thai place you like.’

  ‘Thanks, Mike,’ she said. ‘After dinner I need to go out for a while. Would you listen for Rafi? He should be right for a few hours. There are a couple of things I’d like to do. I want to
cruise past the Tolmacheff household; get a sense of the place, some SA.’

  ‘Situational awareness is a good idea, but a better one is spending the evening at home with me.’

  Gemma looked contrite. ‘Tomorrow night? I need to catch up with Naomi at Baroque Occasions – see if any of the girls have heard anything about vampires in the city. The Tolmacheff house is on the way.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mike, but she could see his disappointment. She knew he liked to have her company. Now he’d be spending most of the night on his own.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise,’ she said, putting her arms around his neck again, kissing him again.

  ‘Hey! Come back here!’ He grinned as she disengaged, pulling her back to embrace her. ‘I’ll hold you to that promise,’ he said quietly.

  After dinner Gemma jumped into her car, and with AC/DC thumping out she headed for the address that Delphine Tolmacheff had given her. Despite her intense love for Rafi, she felt refreshingly free driving alone in her car. She sang along with the band at full throttle, elated at once again being Gemma Lincoln, PI.

  It took less than twenty minutes to reach Delphine Tolmacheff’s address in Bellevue Hill. The marital home stood well back from the road in one of the grand boulevards, a two-storey Tuscan-style villa, angled north-east, complete with a vine-covered colonnade wreathed with twinkling fairy lights that ran the length of the front terrace. The pergola continued at a right angle along the fence line.

  Gemma parked across the road, switched the lights off, turned down Acka Dacka and settled back to watch. She got lucky almost immediately: headlights approached and one of the double garage doors at the end of the driveway next to the house started to open.

  A few moments later, the same dark blue Mercedes she’d lost on the Liverpool highway swung in from the road and drove up the driveway, briefly illuminating Delphine’s Audi parked on the left-hand side of the garage.