Death by Beauty

by Lord, Gabrielle

  CHAPTER 16

  Throughout the next day Gemma’s mind kept turning to fearful thoughts about Mischa’s safety. She’d tried to contact her all morning without success. She was also unsettled by the complex and dangerous situation in which Steve was floundering. She couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding – increased by the evidence of the rose bush – that there was something else she should be doing but she couldn’t think what it might be. Added to all that she thought of Rafi, and worried about the prowler coming so close to where he sleeps at night.

  Late in the afternoon her mobile rang.

  It took her a few seconds to register what Angie was saying. ‘It’s Janet Chancy. Her body’s been found.’

  Gemma braced. She realised she’d been expecting this. No longer just missing, Janet was dead. The finality of Angie’s announcement further darkened the day.

  Gemma tried to ignore her racing heart and focus on what Angie was saying. This required her full attention.

  ‘Janet? Where?’

  ‘Near Kadogil Lagoon. Not far from where her car was found. The boss told me to get out there, so I’m going now. I want to have a bit of a look before the homicide detectives arrive later.’

  ‘Let me have the details?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘Only if you promise me you’ll stay in your car,’ said Angie. ‘No, better I come and get you. That way I can keep you on a leash. I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.

  ‘Okay. I’ll see if Kit can pick up Rafi.’

  Kadogil Lagoon was a new housing estate about fifteen kilometres south of Sapphire Springs Spa. Angie drove with intense concentration, answering Gemma’s questions as best she could. ‘They didn’t tell me much. A birdwatcher found her.’

  ‘Birdwatcher?’

  ‘There actually is a lagoon there. It used to be much bigger, but there’s still some wetlands around it. The birdwatcher’s in a state of shock, poor bloke. The uniforms from Kadogil are there, holding the fort and waiting for our guys to arrive with the forensics people.’

  Gemma nodded, thinking hard. ‘You’ve got a directory somewhere?’ she asked.

  ‘GPS,’ said Angie. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’

  ‘Sure I have. But I want to see a map to work out how far Kadogil Lagoon is from the quarry where Rachel Starr was found.’

  ‘You’re thinking it’s the same guy?’

  Gemma shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  She flicked through the directory until she found what she wanted, then pinched the pages between her fingers so that she could look from one map to the other. She was aware that her hands were shaking a little. ‘It’s not all that far, Angie. About nine kilometres by the back roads.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Angie asked. ‘I’m picking up distinct distress flares. It’s a while since you were so close to a crime scene.’

  ‘It’s not only that,’ Gemma admitted. ‘There are a couple of things. First of all, I knew Janet. We weren’t close friends but we met up occasionally. Also, someone’s been hanging round my place, standing in the bushes outside our bedroom window.’

  ‘Get them on camera.’

  ‘We will – if they come back. The other thing is … I went over to Steve’s place. He’s in a really bad way. He’s talking about leaving the country.’

  ‘Holy shit. It’s that bad?’

  ‘He reckons it’s just a matter of time before he’s arrested, Ange. It’s stacked against him. There’s got to be a way to make Litchfield and Fayed withdraw those allegations.’

  ‘And face fresh charges? Perjury and conspiring to pervert the course of justice? There’s no way they’re going to change their story now.’

  ‘We’ve got to find something they fear more than jail.’

  ‘That being?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’m working on it.’

  ‘Who would be hanging round your place?’

  Gemma shrugged. ‘Could be someone from the Litchfield team. But we’ve got it covered now.’

  As they drove down the Kadogil Lagoon turn-off, Gemma saw a police vehicle parked just off the road, and Angie pulled in behind it. Gemma jumped out before Angie could protest and noticed that the land sloped away, allowing a distant view of the cityscape and a long sweep of horizon to the north-east. Straggly eucalypts grew along the roadside, and a small fenced lookout area with a fireplace and a table and benches had been built just beyond the road not far from where the police vehicle had parked. Gemma went to the lookout. At the bottom of the slope, a woman’s figure lay crumpled on the bare ground, a dark stain surrounding the upper body. Around her were the scattered contents of a large handbag.

  Angie joined her. ‘I guess that’s what we’ve come to see,’ she said tersely before returning to the boot of her car and pulling out a Tyvek space suit and blue plastic booties. She stepped into the suit, zipped it up then pushed her feet into the booties. She took out a box of disposable gloves and wiggled her fingers into a pair, then grabbed her camera and headed off to join the two uniformed cops, calling back to Gemma: ‘I’m going to introduce myself and then try to get in to take a look before the crime-scene people get here and tape it all off. As for you, get back into the car and stay put, Gems. There are some binoculars in the back on the floor.’

  Gemma watched while Angie introduced herself to the two uniformed officers, her auburn head gleaming above the white space-suit hood. They seemed in no hurry to leave after the conversation with Angie, despite the fact that someone more senior was on the spot now. But a radio call from their car had them reluctantly driving away, leaving her in charge.

  Gemma found the binoculars and started up Angie’s car, nudging it as close as she could to the edge of the lookout, swearing at the bumps. She opened the door, stepped out and leaned against the bonnet. From here she could better see down into the large hollow beneath the lookout. She focused the binoculars on the broken figure lying on the ground some twenty metres away. To her surprise and relief, Gemma saw that Janet’s face, which was slightly turned towards her, seemed unmarked. She leaned forward, focusing on the lower body, which also seemed intact, Janet’s straight skirt curving across her undamaged hips. And there had been no attempt to stage a secondary crime scene, like setting up a car crash or a jump from a cliff.

  Gemma lowered the binoculars, frowning. This was different. Was it a different killer? Or had he perhaps been interrupted before he could complete his grisly work?

  As Angie slowly circled the scene, recording it with her video camera, Gemma raised the binoculars again to take in the area surrounding the body, noting the lipstick, pens and pencils that had spilled out from the handbag. There was something unreal about the body, the way it was lying there, surrounded by these intimate objects, with the pool of blood blackening as time went by and the light of the late afternoon turned to dusk. Gemma recalled Janet’s vivacity and tears stung her eyes as she thought of all that energy reduced to this. Her sadness quickly changed to anger. We’ll get you, she thought. You won’t get away with this.

  A short while later, alerted by the sound of an approaching vehicle, Gemma turned to see the large Forensics Services Group van pull up.

  She watched as Angie climbed back up to meet them, and was half listening to their conversation, unable to focus clearly on anything except Janet Chancy’s body. Had the killer been lurking at the lookout hoping for a victim? Had Janet stepped out of her car to enjoy the view and been set upon by the same person who was murdering women in the most violent manner? Was he brazen enough to carry out his attack in broad daylight?

  Or had the killer murdered Janet somewhere else and then driven here to dump her body over the edge of the lookout? Gemma considered the distance from the road and the infrequent traffic that it carried. Because of the relative seclusion of the lookout, many metres off the main road, the odds were good that a person could get away with it unobserved. Gemma also had to keep her mind open to the possibility that Janet’s murder was not related to the others. She had to be re
ady to consider everything.

  ‘Better go down and take a look,’ she heard the woman from Forensics say. ‘Thanks for covering this, Angie. We’ve been run off our feet in the last twenty-four. See you.’ Moments later, fitted out in their space suits, holding their crime-scene kit bags and carrying the heavy generator to run powerful lighting through the night, the two Sydney detectives slowly made their way down the slope.

  Angie stripped off her gloves and stepped out of her space suit, while Gemma opened the car door and stepped in.

  ‘I’m glad I could hand that one over,’ Angie said, getting in too. ‘Ray and Fiona can have all that with my pleasure. It looks like she’s been there a while. Her wallet was there with about fifty dollars in cash, plus her press card and driver’s licence. Everything had fallen out of her bag. I recorded it all so we can have a closer look.’

  ‘There didn’t appear to be any savage injuries,’ Gemma said. ‘I wonder if she was killed somewhere else and brought here. She was seen leaving Sapphire Springs a bit after eleven last Monday morning and she hasn’t got very far along the road back to the city.’

  ‘Ted Ackland will tell us more when he’s seen her and we get a more accurate time of death. This one feels different from the other killings.’

  ‘We’ll have to go back to Sapphire Springs,’ said Gemma, ‘and speak with everyone who met up with Janet. She must have talked to some of the medical people there to get her story. Maybe she got into the secret area somehow. Maybe that’s what she was so excited about.’

  When Angie dropped Gemma home she passed her the camera. ‘Have a look at the footage I took. I won’t have a chance until I get into the office. I’m going home to have an early night. The crime-scene people will have the official footage, but you might pick up something helpful.’

  ‘Okay. And Angie, about the other case, the vampire attacks … I’ve found a third girl, a sex worker, who conforms to the pattern: a minor assault involving a puncture of the skin, and then a week later she was attacked again, except that she managed to get away from the second assault – and she recognised the guy. He was the one who’d carried out the first “vampire” attack. I reckon she’d have been the third murder victim if she hadn’t got away.’

  ‘Hell, Gems. We need to speak with her. She can ID this offender.’

  ‘She’s left town. She’s spooked. And who can blame her?’

  There was a silence. ‘I’ll see if I can get more information about where she might have gone,’ said Gemma, making no attempt to get out of the car.

  ‘Okay,’ said Angie. ‘Spit it out. What’s going on with you? There’s something you haven’t told me. I can tell when you’re worried, Gemster.’

  ‘I told you how I went round to Steve’s place. Angie, I haven’t even begun to let go of him. It was just the same between us as it always was. The whole of the last year just slipped away.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘No, no,’ said Gemma, shaking her head. ‘We didn’t. Nothing like that.’

  Angie gave her a hard look, then gazed out the window before speaking. ‘You have to let Steve go, Gemma. He’s made his choices. He’s a grown-up. He has to live with the consequences.’

  ‘Angie, that’s not fair. He’s been falsely accused.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Steve wouldn’t lie to me about this.’

  ‘Maybe not. You’ve got another life now.’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘Listen to me, lecturing you about an unsuitable man. Oh boy, what a joke.’

  Suddenly she grew very serious. ‘Gems, you’ve moved on. Steve couldn’t come with you. You’ve got to let him go.’

  Gemma drove to Kit’s, picked up Rafi and then took him home in time for his dinner and a bath. He looked up at her from the tub and splashed with pleasure, clearly thrilled to be back at home with her. Afterwards, she put him on the floor and he immediately took off for the kitchen, so she opened all the cupboards and he sat among pots and pans clashing saucepan lids. As his bedtime neared he was still bouncing with energy and wanted to play, so she put on the Mozart Concerto for Three Pianos. Mozart always seemed to have a calming effect on Rafi. She took him in her arms and rocked him gently. Within ten minutes he was dozing, and she sneaked him into their bedroom and placed him softly in his cot, making sure the blind was drawn down. She remembered the way he’d been staring at the window some days earlier, and she checked the outside image on the monitor that Mike had mounted on the wall. The front garden was clear and silent, with a soft sea breeze blowing the tops of the bushes. Gently, she closed the door. Not a sound.

  After Mike called to say he was on his way home, Gemma dialled Mischa Bloomfield’s number again. When she answered, Gemma said, ‘I’m checking to see if everything is okay with you, Mischa. Are you at your mother’s place yet? I’ve been trying to contact you.’

  ‘Why is everyone after me? Detective McDonald called me earlier,’ said Mischa, her voice shaky, ‘asking me the same thing. Should I be worried? I mean, more worried than I already am? Is there something I don’t know?’

  Gemma made a quick calculation. She decided that fear now was the only way to keep Mischa safe. ‘Mischa, please listen. I don’t want to panic you. But in two other cases like yours – I mean, where there was some kind of ugly assault—’

  ‘What?’ The girl’s voice was panic stricken. ‘What others? What happened to the others?’

  Gemma flinched, unsure now about what was best for Mischa. She desperately searched around for a gentler way of framing what she had to say. ‘It seems that sometimes this offender comes back – not to everyone, but to someone he’s already attacked.’

  ‘What does he do?’ her voice tense with terror. ‘He kills them, doesn’t he? That’s what you’re going to tell me, isn’t it? That’s what happened to those other two women.’

  ‘You need to move out of your house and take some leave from work – just for a while.’

  ‘You’re telling me that he’s going to come back and kill me!’

  ‘Mischa, listen to me. Please go and stay with your mother. Until it’s safe. And take some holidays from work. Just drop off the radar for a while. Get a medical certificate if you need one,’ said Gemma. ‘Okay? Let me know where you are. Can you do that?’

  But Mischa had already rung off.

  Gemma called her again. This time the call went straight to voicemail. ‘Please call me,’ said Gemma.

  Later that night, the only thing that could keep Steve and Mischa from taking turns in freewheeling through her mind was helping Mike prepare dinner while bringing him up to date with what she’d been doing that afternoon. After telling him about Janet Chancy, she went over the vampire cases, trying to figure out why Annabel Carr was only attacked once, nine months ago while the other victims had suffered a second – sometimes fatal – attack within a week.

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t find her again,’ said Mike, rinsing the lettuce for the salad he was making.

  ‘I doubt it. She still lives at the same address, works at the same job. He’d have had ample time to go through her belongings and find everything he needed to know about her.’

  A couple of times Gemma almost told him about her visit to Steve, but pulled back. She didn’t want to deal with the turbulence this incident caused in her whenever she focused on it. She didn’t want to talk about Steve.

  I’m keeping secrets from Mike, she thought, and the idea made her uneasy.

  ‘This vampire guy is a real monster. He selects his victims. He marks them. And then he comes back – like the Komodo dragon. Two of the women he punctured are now dead, and the third one—’

  ‘The girl Angie brought around to see you,’ said Mike, comprehension dawning in his face, ‘who was bitten by a vampire …’

  ‘Mischa Bloomfield. Her neck was punctured, Mike. He’d injured her.’

  Mike stopped and looked at her. ‘If what you’re suggesting is right,’ he began, ‘that girl is in serious danger.’

&
nbsp; Gemma nodded. ‘I rang to warn her. But I think I panicked her.’

  ‘Better to be panicked than to be dead, Gems. She has every right to be scared.’

  ‘And she’s not the only one. There’s a terrified sex worker in hiding somewhere. He marked her before and tried to get her again,’ she said. ‘Mike, I’ve thought of something. I have to call Angie.’

  ‘It’s me,’ Gemma said, on the phone to Angie. ‘He’s not a vampire. He’s a Komodo dragon. Mischa Bloomfield is in terrible danger. She must have some sort of protection or go into hiding.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Angie, ‘but I got lost around the Komodo dragon bit.’

  ‘Starr and Palier were both victims of an earlier assault. He selected them and marked them first, then he came back to get what he wanted – and then really do a job on them. That’s what Komodo dragons do. I saw this doco about how they bite their prey with their toxic fangs and then later they move in for the kill. Can you do something for her?’

  Angie considered the options then said, ‘I could suggest to Gross that we put a twenty-four-hour watch on her.’

  Bruno Gross, that bit of very bad judgement on my part, Gemma thought. A crazy alcohol-fuelled romp in a motel one night years ago, when she’d still been in the job. A night she now profoundly regretted.

  ‘And what are the chances of that happening?’

  ‘Nil.’

  ‘But Angie, you know what this means for Mischa. She needs protection.’

  ‘She’s not going to get it, Gems, not with our budget. We’ve already gone way over, according to the boss. The best she can expect is maybe a squad car driving by her place now and then.’

  ‘Can’t you squeeze out something more? There’s no security in her house; you can practically walk through the walls!’

  ‘You know Gross, Gems. All that matters is that the crime figures look good so he looks good. That, and going for the next promotion.’