Spiking the Girl

by Lord, Gabrielle

  He looked around the room, spotting the fraud investigation magazine. ‘Anything interesting in that?’

  She shrugged. ‘Couple of good investigations from the US. And a feature on those cute little micro digital cameras,’ she said, heading down the hallway.

  Spinner snatched up his bag from the table, shaking his head as he followed her to the master bedroom. ‘Those James Bond things,’ he said, ‘they’re only bloody gimmicks. I don’t know why anyone would buy them. They’re bloody expensive, too.’

  ‘I want one,’ said Gemma. ‘One of those tiny cameras is something we should have in our stock.’

  ‘Hey,’ said her ace agent, looking into her face when she turned to explain the job to him. ‘What’s up?’

  Spinner’s knockabout, good-bloke manner hid an extremely sharp mind. For a fleeting second, Gemma wondered if she could talk to Spinner about Rowena Wylde’s phone call. No, she decided. This was family business—she’d speak to Kit first.

  ‘Steve and me,’ she said, deciding to tell him one of the reasons for her agitation. ‘We’ve separated.’ She tried to maintain a steady voice. ‘And it’s final.’

  Spinner threw his carry bag onto the double bed. ‘That’s sad,’ he said. ‘Me and Rose are in the same boat. Or not in the same boat. We’re just not getting along anymore.’

  ‘What are you two fighting about?’ Gemma knew that arguments between couples could be about anything. It didn’t seem to matter what the subject matter was—its only function to be a carrier of the hostility.

  Spinner looked uncomfortable. ‘Religion.’

  Gemma heard something rustling outside and glanced through a gap in the curtains. A dust devil materialised, spun up the path a little way, then dissipated. She couldn’t say ‘I told you so’, but the thought of charismatic fundamentalist Spinner and exotic Greek Orthodox Rose Georgiou trying to get it together over holy communion just didn’t work.

  ‘Rose is at me all the time to convert,’ Spinner was saying. ‘Become Greek Orthodox. She says if I can’t do that for her, then I don’t love her.’

  ‘Can’t you just go along with it? What’s the difference between one lot of religious business and another?’

  Spinner shuddered. ‘Are you serious? Orthodox! They’re even worse than Catholics!’

  Nobody could be worse than Catholics, Gemma thought.

  She crossed to the big window and wrenched the curtains right back, letting light into the room. Spinner looked around, avoiding the further clutter of saints and angels standing on the dressing table.

  ‘What are we here for?’ he asked.

  ‘An ex who won’t take no for an answer.’ Gemma pointed to the central light fitting in the bedroom. ‘We could spike that light.’

  ‘Boss, you’ve been off the road too long. Don’t you want the potential of live feed all the time?’

  Gemma was rattled. She had forgotten the need for constant current. If Spinner wired up the spycam in the light fitting, power would only be available when the light was switched on.

  ‘I’ll use that,’ said Spinner, pointing to a small black clock radio on the right-hand bedside table. ‘As well as the power being on all the time, the spycam can be easily integrated.’

  Gemma filled Spinner in with more details about the Reynolds case while he squatted by his bag, sorting through cabling, pliers and other tools until he found the package containing the small camera, which, with all its fittings, was about the size of a bottle top. He held it up to her. ‘We’ll never need anything smaller than this.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll install motion-activated hook-up for the outside. Back and front. Then we’ve got the place covered. And that way you can check in at any time with your GPRS mobile. It’ll email stills to your laptop if you want that.’

  Gemma had recently upgraded to a general packet radio service phone which meant she was always logged on to the network and internet connection.

  ‘She wants physical surveillance, too,’ said Gemma. ‘Best if you pick it up on your laptop. You’ll be the one sitting out there.’ She pointed to the street.

  Spinner set about his business, installing the necessary equipment, hiding the tiny camera lenses near the eaves outside.

  ‘I’m presuming,’ he said, when he came inside again and squatted beside the bedside table, ‘that there’s no pressure here? That we haven’t got a tight schedule?’

  I have been off the road too long, Gemma thought. Vincent Reynolds could walk in any time and bust them doing this. ‘Daria only mentioned nocturnal visits.’ It sounded lame.

  ‘What is he? Some sort of fruit bat?’ Spinner said, removing the backing of the small clock radio unit and peering inside. ‘That’s good,’ he added. ‘I can connect the voltage regulator there and splice in the power wires. Pass me those little pliers.’

  Gemma did so, then glanced out the window again, remembering how she’d nearly died a couple of years ago because someone had wired up a light fitting the wrong way. Past the rustling leaves of the ginger plant outside the window, all was quiet on the street. The few Indian mynahs picked at a plastic bag on the nature strip.

  ‘Now, pass me the drill. No, the cordless one, please.’

  He drilled a tiny hole in the plastic, fitted the spycam into position with the microphone, taping it securely inside the housing. ‘There. How does that look?’ he said, putting the clock radio back down on the bedside table.

  Gemma stood back to look at it. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t know it was there if I hadn’t seen you do it. It just looks like the button for some other function.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Spinner. ‘The perv function.’

  Another hour and Spinner had checked that everything was working, turning the power back on while Gemma, inside, adjusted the green digits on the clock radio according to her watch. She checked to make sure the radio functioned, catching the end of the news: ‘ . . . alleging that Scott Brissett sexually assaulted her twenty years ago. Brissett has denied the allegations, saying they are a tissue of lies and that he will be taking legal advice on the matter.’

  Gemma switched it off and gave Spinner the thumbs-up at the window, then went outside, taking the white paper bag of pastries. She locked the house and threw the key back through the grille in the window. Back in her car, she gathered up the file for one of the new jobs that she wanted to discuss with Spinner. Then she joined him in the white Rodeo, putting the pastries on the console between the seats while Spinner opened his laptop. Sitting here with Spinner reminded her of her early days as a surveillance operative, living, breathing, eating, even peeing on the job in the back of a van.

  ‘Let’s check it one more time,’ he said and started running through the program.

  ‘Who’s Scott Brissett?’ Gemma asked. ‘The name’s vaguely familiar.’

  ‘Vaguely familiar?’ Spinner looked at her in disbelief. ‘Boss, where have you been?’

  Gemma shrugged apologetically.

  ‘Scott Brissett,’ Spinner continued, ‘was a Wallaby and a Waratah legend. He’s on television all the time. He’s just become the corporate face of the Boofhead Cup.’

  Gemma knew from overhearing previous discussions between Spinner and Mike that the Boyleford Cup was an international rugby play-off, second only to the World Rugby Cup. ‘You know that sporting heroes aren’t my strongest point,’ she said. She recalled a recent television news item and a weathered sportsman speaking with a group of French players. ‘Is he that good-looking guy in the ad with a scar through one eyebrow? Late forties?’

  Spinner nodded. ‘That’s him. Some GPS kid split his face open in his school years in competition footie.’

  Spinner adjusted his receiver and laptop and looked up with satisfaction. ‘It’s all working well,’ he said. ‘And that remind
s me. You and Stevie-boy will be right as rain. You two are an institution.’

  Gemma shook her head. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘How did the fight start?’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Sure it matters. It’s where the conflict lies.’

  She thought about the origins of the fight. ‘Steve started talking about us getting a place together.’

  ‘And?’ Spinner prompted as the silence lengthened.

  Gemma shrugged, feeling uneasy. ‘It started me thinking. About all sorts of things. Lorraine Litchfield for one.’

  ‘The crim’s widow? The blonde bombshell whose weapon of choice was a Colt M1911?’ Spinner’s words were tinged with respect.

  Hot anger and shame arose as Gemma remembered a scene involving Steve, the widow Litchfield and the wrong end of that same Colt.

  ‘She put me through hell,’ said Gemma, recalling the overstuffed room, the looming gun and the other woman’s overpowering scent. ‘I can’t forget that he slept with her,’ she said.

  Spinner made as if to speak.

  ‘Don’t even think about it!’ said Gemma. ‘I don’t want to hear any bullshit about what an undercover cop might have to do. Don’t give me that line of duty crap!’

  Gemma thought she would never forget the one and only time she’d met stunningly beautiful Lorraine Litchfield, nor her terror and complete humiliation at the hands of the jealous woman who’d waved the heavy weapon around and forced Steve at gunpoint to choose between the two of them. ‘Baby,’ Steve had said, indicating the mirror in which the three of them were reflected ‘There’s no contest. Look at you. Look at her.’ Slowly, Lorraine had lowered the Colt. And Gemma had wanted to die.

  She tried to counter this memory with another: the sweet scene some days later at the hospital, where Steve had made it very clear to Lorraine that he loved Gemma, and Lorraine’s enraged response had been, ‘You’re dead, bitch!’. But that memory wasn’t enough and it was too painful to stay in the past. Gemma forced herself back into the present.

  ‘Steve said he’s tired of being punished by me about something that meant nothing to him. He brought up how I’d endangered him last year. I let him have it about Lorraine Litchfield. Things went from bad to worse.’

  She shrugged, trying to minimise the pain of their fight. It was painful, too, to acknowledge that the memory of Lorraine Litchfield still exerted such a grip. Even though she’d completely disappeared from their lives like the thirteenth fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.

  Gemma bit into a pastry, still starving. ‘Steve got angry,’ she continued. ‘I got furious. He walked.’

  ‘Hey!’ Spinner interrupted. ‘We’re on!’

  On the laptop’s small screen, Daria Reynolds’s double bed and the dressing table beyond it could be seen. Then the screen changed as feed from the cameras at the front and back of the house rotated with the internal view. Anyone approaching the house from any direction would be captured on video. Anyone in the bedroom would be picked up by the camera in the clock radio.

  Satisfied with the reception from Daria Reynolds’s room, Spinner packed up his receiver, laptop and handycam while Gemma flicked through the completed cases.

  ‘I’ve never seen you like this,’ Spinner said. ‘Your colour’s lousy.’

  Suddenly his radio crackled. ‘Tracker Two here. Copy, please.’

  ‘Copy, Mike,’ Spinner responded. ‘What’s up?’

  The static behind Mike’s voice made him a little hard to hear. ‘I’m trying to contact Gemma. She’s off the air.’

  ‘She’s here with me. Stand by.’ Spinner handed Gemma the radio.

  ‘Mike?’

  ‘I’ve just had a call from a Mr Bertram Dowling. Wants to make an appointment with you.’

  ‘My diary’s on my desk. Try and fit him in tomorrow morning.’

  Spinner rehoused the radio.

  Gemma’s mobile rang and she switched it over to voice mail. Just a few moments, please, she thought, without being online to the whole world.

  ‘I’m sad, Spinner,’ she said. ‘My heart hasn’t accepted the news about Steve.’ She felt like crying and covered her face with her hands. She felt Spinner gently take them away.

  ‘Look,’ he said to her, still holding her hands, ‘I’m sure you could salvage things. Don’t ever lose hope.’

  ‘Don’t you dare go religious on me!’ she warned.

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’ He sounded hurt. ‘Remember I’m your friend as well as an employee. I know you. I know Steve.’ He relinquished her hands. ‘Have you ever thought,’ he asked ‘that maybe your attitude’s pushed Steve away?’

  ‘Me push him away? How do you work that out?’ Now she felt irritated.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Spinner. ‘I’m sorry. I was out of place.’

  ‘I’ve got to get going,’ she said, still unreasonably angry with him.

  She climbed out of the Rodeo and headed for her own car. Spinner gunned his engine and did a U-turn. As she sat in her car the reality of the break-up with Steve hit her like a dumper at Maroubra. The anger left her and suddenly she felt like howling.

  •

  An hour later, red-eyed but with fresh lipstick, Gemma drove through the grand entrance to Netherleigh Park Ladies’ College, past the letters carved in gold on the tall sandstone pillars of the wrought-iron gates. The main building was set back from the road and Gemma drove slowly past what had once been rolling lawns and playing fields but was now built up with modern additions. Behind her, the constant roar of the traffic dimmed to a distant hum, absorbed by greenery and dark, ancient Moreton Bay figs. The winding driveway ended at a magnificent Georgian mansion, the original building, now overshadowed by additional wings.

  Gemma parked her car in a visitors’ bay and got out. Groups of girls in the distinctive light blue, green and mauve tartan of the school uniform chatted in groups and, as she mounted the steps towards the main door with its ‘Office’ sign, she could hear someone practising piano scales very fast, up and down, the major scale followed by the minor and melodic minor. If only I could play like that, Gemma thought. She’d done no practice this week and Mrs Snellgrove would give that disappointed little smile and shake her de Beauvoir-scarfed head. Attending to more business started working its magic, her thoughts quickly switching from Steve and the curiosity arising from the phone call of a dying woman.

  At the office, a woman with a pure white elf lock peered at the ID Gemma showed through the sliding window.

  ‘Gemma Lincoln. Here to see Miss de Berigny. She’s expecting me.’

  The elf lock beckoned to a passing senior girl. ‘Tiffany,’ she said. ‘Please take Ms Lincoln to Miss de Berigny’s office.’

  Tiffany didn’t look thrilled at this, but she nodded and Gemma followed the willowy teenager up the grand staircase to the second floor.

  ‘What’s on the next floor?’ Gemma asked, noticing the staircase rose to yet another level.

  ‘Dormitories,’ said Tiffany. ‘For the country boarders.’

  Gemma followed Tiffany along the hall, past other offices and rooms. The piano scales sounded much closer now.

  ‘Someone’s a good pianist,’ said Gemma, as much to break the silence as anything else.

  Tiffany flashed her a look. ‘Claudia’s good at everything,’ she said in a voice edged with anger. ‘Some people have all the luck.’

  They turned a corner and her guide indicated a door on Gemma’s right. Before Gemma could thank her, the girl had darted back round the corner and vanished. Gemma knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said a high-pitched voice. ‘Just push it.’

  Gemma did so and found herself in a large, bright north-facing room where two tall French windows overlooked the driveway and the dark green masses of fig tree
s. The principal advanced, her hand outstretched in welcome, a wide red smile showing perfect white teeth, dark hair glossy in a French roll.

  ‘Miss Lincoln. Beatrice de Berigny. Thank you so much for agreeing to come.’

  The two women shook hands, and Gemma sat in the proffered leather chair. After the gothic, incense-filled Reynolds place, this room with its well-appointed academic furnishings seemed another universe. Yet something was stirring Gemma’s instincts in a negative way.

  Miss de Berigny smoothed her black skirt over her knees as she sat on the other side of the colonial cedar desk, laptop in front of her. With slightly too much ivory foundation, dark red lipstick and pencilled eyes, Madame de Berigny’s face had more than a suggestion of a mask, thought Gemma.

  ‘I’ve been told you’re the right person for this job,’ the principal was saying, shrewd eyes glittering under the almost invisible brows. In the gaps between her words, distant chromatic minor scales reached impossible velocity. ‘Detective Sergeant Angie McDonald recommended you,’ Miss de Berigny continued. ‘You know her?’

  ‘For many years,’ Gemma said. ‘We worked together when I was in the police service.’

  ‘You are no doubt aware of the dreadful incident that befell our school last year. The disappearance,’ she could barely say the word, ‘of one of our most promising students.’ She hesitated. ‘It is still unsolved. Although the police claim everything possible is being done.’

  Gemma recalled reading about Netherleigh Park in the newspapers and nodded. She remembered it didn’t seem likely the girl had run away. Her bank accounts had remained untouched.

  ‘As you can imagine, it’s had a very bad effect on the school,’ Beatrice de Berigny was saying. ‘Far worse, in fact, than I would have thought likely. Morale is low. Enrolments are down for next year and we’ve lost several students already. Other parents are talking of taking their daughters away.’

  Gemma remained silent, her eyes flicking over the desk’s polished surface.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ the principal said. ‘And illogical. The school had nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance.’