The nightclub, Indigo Ice, was shut and she had to lean on the bell for a while before the door was yanked open. The stench of alcohol and cigarette smoke spiked with the sharp stink of vomit hit her.
‘Who’s making all that racket?’ A man’s angry face appeared. ‘Gemma! It’s you! Come in, come in! Sorry about the mess. The cleaner packed it in last night. Good to see you.’
Kosta Theodorakis, her late friend Shelly’s boyfriend, led her through the dark, deserted club. With the chairs piled up in groups and a mop and bucket in the middle of the floor, the space looked like the set for a cabaret act.
‘Someone’s on my tail, Kosta,’ she said, bypassing the usual pleasantries. ‘Someone in a white Ford. Multi-coloured shirt. Dark hair. Rego with a three, six and seven in it.’
Kosta shrugged. ‘No one I know. You’ll need a drink.’ In Kosta’s world, most people were being tracked, one way or the other.
‘Not right now,’ said Gemma. ‘I just want to know who it is and why. I’ve had this feeling for a few days now. And today I spotted him. Ask around for me—see what you can find out about who might be tailing me? And why?’
‘But Gemma, babes. You’re the investigator.’
‘I don’t want to draw attention to myself,’ she said. ‘I go asking around and everyone and everything pulls back. You know how toey people get. You can go where I can’t go.’
‘Anything I can do for you, I will. You know that. Friends for life, we are.’
He took a swig on his beer and walked over to a wide scissored broom which he started pushing around the floor, gathering butts, ring-pulls and other assorted debris. Gemma wished she’d brought her camera with her: a Greek man sweeping an interior floor, the assistant manager of the club no less.
‘Give me that,’ she said. She pushed it along in a wide square. There was something very satisfying about seeing the dust and dirt and bits of paper all being collected in the vee-shaped arms of the broom.
‘I still miss her heaps,’ Kosta said, swigging more beer. ‘Whenever I see you, I think of the Shell. What a good woman she was.’
Gemma gave him a hug.
‘So watcha doing these days?’ he asked. ‘Apart from getting yourself into strife. Haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘This and that,’ she said. ‘Busy looking into the disappearance of that girl from the flash ladies’ college last year.’
‘Everyone knows what happened to her!’ said Kosta with a pitying look. He pulled out his cigarettes. ‘That’s old hat. You wanna know?’
Gemma pulled out her notebook. This was too easy.
‘She ran away to Brisbane, to live with her dad.’
‘And?’
‘And that’s where she is. She’s no more disappeared than I am when the licensing demons come round.’
‘So how come her body turns up wrapped in vinyl near Port Botany?’
‘Shit! Is that what’s happened?’
‘That’s what’s happened.’ She put her notebook away. ‘Where did you get the Brisbane story?’
Kosta went all vague. ‘Oh, everyone was saying so a while back. Her father was involved in a modelling agency when he was in Sydney. Used to have an office round here. Few doors up.’
Lauren Bernhard hadn’t mentioned anything about that, thought Gemma. But then why would she? Could that have been the secret? She made a mental note to follow the lead. ‘So how’s your business?’
Kosta shrugged. ‘I don’t know whether it’s this terrorism business or whether that new club in Darlinghurst is taking people away from me.’ He picked up a business card and threw it to Gemma who caught it as it spun past.
‘Deliverance,’ she read. ‘The very best in cool. Day or night. We deliver.’ The ‘D’ of the club’s name was a cleverly stylised razor blade cutting a line of powder.
‘That’s pretty bloody blatant,’ she said. ‘What are the cops doing about that?’
Kosta did his best Greek grimace, shrugging, mouth turned down. ‘What do you think? Fuck all.’
Gemma frowned. ‘I know how cops think. They might be turning a blind eye, or even getting a piece of it, but they wouldn’t tolerate this being shoved right in their faces. They’re practically advertising that they’re dealing.’
‘They did a few busts and got nowhere. The owners are pillars of the community. Rotarians, that sort of thing.’
‘Who are they?’ Gemma wanted to know.
‘You’d know the names if I could remember them. Some bloody foreign name.’ Kosta wasn’t being ironic. ‘Believe me, if I had any dirt on them, I’d be dishing it. They’re the bloody competition. They’re hurting me.’
Gemma glanced down at the provocative logo.
‘But I reckon it’s more than just a new club on the scene,’ Kosta continued. ‘You ask any of the girls. They’ll tell you business is slow.’
Gemma handed him back the broom and picked up her briefcase, preparing to leave. ‘You tell me anything you hear, right? About those schoolgirls.’
‘Right.’ He started sweeping. ‘Know any good cleaners?’
Gemma walked back to her car second time around, checking every white Ford she passed. None of them contained the driver in the colourful shirt. She unhoused the radio and called Spinner. ‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘I was on my way home.’
‘When you’re not busy with Daria Reynolds, could you do some counter-surveillance for me from time to time over the next few days? If you see a white Ford sticking to me, I want to know.’ She gave him the partial rego she’d noted down.
‘I’ll keep an eye on you, Boss,’ said Spinner and called off.
•
Long experienced in making use of the girls’ breathtaking network of information, Gemma drove to Baroque Occasions, the licensed brothel in Darlinghurst that her dead friend Shelly had paid off over many years, ‘lying on her back’. Too many sex workers accumulated addictions and bad relationships rather than property. But Shelly, smart and educated, had left her daughter, Naomi, a two-storey terrace, nicely restored, with a couple of large rooms downstairs, a small kitchen and extra bathroom beyond, and two bedrooms and a luxurious spa bathroom upstairs.
‘Come in, come in.’ Naomi smiled, delighted to see her mother’s old friend. ‘What can I do for you?’ In her shorts, T-shirt and bare feet, she looked fit, healthy and about fourteen. She wasn’t that many years older but looking after her mother had caused Naomi to grow up fast and she was as savvy and sophisticated as many women twice her age. Like her mother, she wore no make-up when she wasn’t working; her hair was in two streaming tails on either side of her head.
‘I wondered if you’d heard anything on the street,’ said Gemma. ‘About the missing schoolgirls.’
Naomi shook her head.
‘You look like you’ve just stepped out of an advertisement for Danish ice-cream,’ Gemma continued. ‘All scrubbed and wholesome.’
Naomi laughed. ‘Want a cuppa?’
‘Sure,’ said Gemma. ‘How’s tricks?’
Naomi put two yellow cups on the table, pushing textbooks and an exercise book out of the way, turning down the radio. ‘Not as many as I’d like. Business is slow. We had the Americans here for a few days and that was fantastic. I worked my arse off. In a manner of speaking. I thought you might be here because of Hugo.’
‘Hugo?’ Gemma was astonished at this mention of the Ratbag. She’d only recently been thinking of the boy. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve seen him!’
‘Seen him? I had to hide him last night. He was on the run.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ said Gemma.
‘He lobbed in here when I was doing my homework—about midnight, I guess. Don’t laugh. I’m doing my HSC at tech. If it’s a bit quiet of an evening, I duck out here and work on m
y assignments.’ She indicated the pile of textbooks. ‘He was tired and hungry. Hadn’t eaten for a day or so. Said he’d had a fight with his mother and pissed off a couple of days ago. He’d been crashing at some guy’s house but the guy wanted sex and it freaked him out. I was going to ring you about him but he’d gone by the time I got up. Which was late, nearly midday.’
‘That’s the second time he’s done this,’ said Gemma. ‘Things must be tough at home.’
Naomi rolled her eyes as she poured Gemma’s tea. ‘Tell me when it’s not.’ She opened a cupboard. ‘I’ve got some nice little bickies somewhere. Want one?’
Gemma nodded to the biscuits. ‘If you see him again, Naomi, let me know fast, will you?’
‘He’s a great kid,’ said Naomi. ‘You’d think his parents would be proud of him.’
‘Yeah.’ Gemma picked up one of the books on the table. ‘What’s this like?’ she said, holding up The Big Sleep.
‘Haven’t read it yet,’ said Naomi. ‘We’re studying “Noir” fiction.’
‘That won’t be hard for you,’ Gemma laughed. ‘You live noir!’
Naomi tipped some Tiny Teddies onto a plate. ‘I don’t want to be selling my arse for too much longer. I’d like to get into managing places,’ she said, nipping a teddy in half. ‘I’d like to build up to a few houses. Good, safe, legitimate businesses. Classy service. That’s what I’m aiming for. That was always Mum’s dream. She never quite made it, but I could. I’ve got a couple of girls who’ll work for me at very short notice if we need more staff. They’re smart as tacks. Between us, we’ve got every sort of woman the mugs could want—mumsy, nursie, schoolgirl, dominatrix, water sports, SM. We offer every possible humiliation that money can buy!’
She laughed and pushed a long tail of blonde hair back over her shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t believe how weird some mugs are.’ News on the hour started and Naomi turned the radio up a little.
Gemma went to the kettle and topped up her strong tea. ‘Try me.’
‘There’s this guy who comes every week and prays over me.’
Gemma dunked a Tiny Teddy and lost it.
‘He is truly weird. First he prays over me, then he gets me to undress and, while I’m doing that, he starts wanking. He wants me to do the same. So I do the Meg Ryan thing—very convincing.’ She smiled. ‘You can’t imagine how weird a guy sounds when he’s praying and wanking at the same time!’
‘And that’s it?’
Naomi nodded. ‘He doesn’t touch me. Then he prays over me again while I get dressed and off he goes.’ She bit the head off a Tiny Teddy. ‘I wish they were all as easy as that. Mum had her toe-sucker for years.’
‘I should get out more,’ said Gemma. ‘I always learn something when I visit you.’
‘I used to do these regular well-paid outcalls—sometimes with Robyn or sometimes just alone—for this mug who always had a friend with him. Fantastic house at Watsons Bay. Really classy. They were loaded, I reckon.’ She finished the last of her tea. ‘Lots of photographs of a big boat—a yacht or something—which the active one said belonged to him. The quiet one would pin me down while the other mug acted out his rape fantasy. I’d have to struggle and scream. They wanted to tie me up but that’s something I’ve never allowed. As it was, I always got Kosta or someone to drive me there and wait outside. No way I’d do an outcall without security. I’d always offer the inactive one something.’ Naomi grinned. ‘Anything he wanted. Always looking for that extra buck for that extra fuck.’ Her face grew serious again. ‘But he never took me up on it.’
She stood up, carrying her empty cup to the sink. ‘They were a strange pair. The inactive one was always waiting for me on this big leather lounge or the floor. He wasn’t anything to look at, but the other one was a well-built, good-looking guy. Bit knocked around but a good body.’
‘Maybe they were bi or something?’
‘Who knows? It was always in the study—the office—and there were heaps of sporting trophies along a shelf. I never got the chance to see what they were for, but some of them had initials on them, like GPS or something. I asked them if they’d gone to private schools. For some reason, they found that very funny.’ Naomi shrugged.
‘Private schoolboys can be very up themselves,’ said Gemma, feeling angry on Naomi’s behalf.
‘Wonder what happened to them? I lost two good-paying mugs.’
‘Maybe the watcher found that Viagra works for him so he can do it himself,’ Gemma suggested. She took her cup over to the sink and dropped it into the sudsy water, rinsing it and stacking it next to Naomi’s.
Naomi’s mobile rang and her normal voice vanished, replaced by her working voice: a breathy siren’s, docile and accommodating.
Gemma signalled goodbye and drove home via Double Bay, thinking of families—of Shelly and her daughter Naomi; of her father and Kit and herself. And of her unknown sister. She had just pulled up outside her place when the radio crackled again.
‘Tracker Three, copy, please.’
‘Spinner? What is it?’
‘I just followed you home. Picked you up at Baroque Occasions.’
Spinner, she thought. What a pro. She looked around. ‘Where are you?’
She heard him laugh. ‘On my way back to work. I left you at McPherson Street.’
Inside, her thoughts tumbling round, Gemma made coffee and a smoked salmon sandwich while Taxi smooched around her legs, purring like a V8. But when she finally gave him a piece of expensive salmon, he sniffed it and walked away. That’s cats for you, she thought.
•
Up early the next day, Gemma determined to do as much work as possible in the morning and take a few hours in the afternoon to check through newspaper archives in the State Library, looking for her half-sister.
After breakfast, she set about rereading the witness statements. Looking up from time to time to let things sink in, this time she pinned down the something that had teased her yesterday. With her red pen, she drew a circle around it, isolating it from the rest of the print. She read through the other statements again and kept coming back to Claudia’s.
It might be just an oversight on the part of the witnesses, or things might have been different that morning because the bus was so crowded, but there it was—the discrepancy, or at least the possibility of one she’d been hoping for. There was absolutely nothing else that supported Claudia’s claim that Amy had been sitting towards the front of the bus on the morning of the second of December. They always sat together. Why on that morning, of all mornings, had Amy not been with her two friends? And now that it wasn’t possible to re-interview Tasmin Summers, there was only Claudia’s word for how things had been that morning.
Gemma looked up in triumph to see pure white jet trails spiking the sky above her. A break, at last. Only a tiny one, but somewhere to start. She jumped up and hurried back inside to her office.
There were so many things she wanted to get onto, but she knew she needed to do an hour of paperwork before she got back to young Claudia and leaned on her a bit.
Her mobile rang. It was Angie, ringing from a public phone. ‘Want to talk to you about something. Can I detour your way?’
‘I’ll be here,’ Gemma said.
It seemed only a few minutes before Gemma glanced out the window to see Angie arriving, loaded with shopping bags.
‘You’ve been busy,’ said Gemma, taking some of the bags from her and following her down to the living room. On the radio, she heard Scott Brissett announcing his decision to sue the woman who’d made false allegations about him.
‘I want a quick shower,’ Angie said. ‘And the use of your shampoo and blow-dryer.’ She lifted up a shopping bag. ‘I’ve got a new outfit and the shoes I bought last week.’
‘I’ll get you some clean towels.’
Angie dropped her
briefcase on the table together with the shopping bags. ‘Trevor’s in town for a day and a night—sudden change of plans—and we want to make the most of it.’ She started digging through her briefcase. ‘There’s a really nice photo of him in the Police News.’ She pulled out a copy and opened it at a page with the corner bent down, passing it to Gemma.
There was Trevor, all tooled up, waving his baton around and firing off a blast from his capsicum spray, all the time with one eye on the photographer. Gemma looked closer at the regular features and smiling face. ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘I remember him! I even worked with him once.’
‘When? What job?’ said Angie, suddenly alert.
‘Give me a break, Ange. It must be ten years ago! I can hardly remember the details. But I remember him. He talked about that bad shooting at Bexley.’
‘That’s right. His partner shot a guy who was shooting at them. That’s when Trevor decided to apply for the Terribly Rough Gentlemen,’ Angie said, referring to the now disbanded Tactical Response Group. She took the magazine back, gazing fondly at her beloved, then pulled out a large envelope.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I could lose my job over this, but I want you to have a squizz at this.’
Gemma took the envelope and drew out a path report, frowning as she started to read it. ‘It’s the doc’s findings on Amy Bernhard,’ she said.
‘That’s right,’ said Angie. ‘I’m supposed to be passing it back to Bruno as soon as I’ve signed it.’
‘Bruno?’
‘He’s supervising the investigation.’
‘But he was taken off the case,’ said Gemma, looking up from the document and remembering the memo she’d read. ‘He was in charge of the first investigation and then removed from it. Remember that memo from Jim Buisman mixed up with the witness statements?’
Spiking the Girl Page 10