Spiking the Girl

by Lord, Gabrielle

  ‘Some drunk ran over him?’ Gemma repeated. ‘Sandra Samuels ran over one of the men who raped her. What if that was Kodaly?’ She felt a surge of hope. ‘Sandra could identify him!’

  ‘How convincing do you think that sort of ID would be in the hands of a good cross-examiner?’ Angie said. ‘Look, I know how you feel. But twenty years makes a big difference in people’s appearances. Throw in the distressed emotional state Sandra would have been in and I think you can forget the idea of a clear eyewitness account.’

  Gemma slumped back in her seat. Whatever she put up, Angie batted down. And she knew her friend was right.

  ‘So far, all we’ve got is a bunch of circumstantial stuff. Like the vinyl flooring in the galley of the GBS. The physical evidence team matched it against the stuff Amy was wrapped in.’

  ‘I want to get these bastards,’ said Gemma. She could feel anger, like fire, heating her back.

  ‘You think I don’t?’ said Angie. ‘And there were lengths of that fancy green and white cord on board. It’ll be a few days before we get confirmation, but for sure all those girls were held on that cruiser.’

  ‘That’s got to point to Brissett,’ Gemma said. ‘It’s his boat.’

  ‘Brissett’s saying he had no idea of what went on there, that he hasn’t been on board for ages,’ said Angie. ‘He’s blaming Kodaly and Eddie—says Eddie had keys to the boat. Kodaly’s blaming Brissett and both are dumping on Eddie.’

  ‘They should go in for politics,’ said Gemma. ‘Or policing.’

  ‘I want to lock Scott Brissett and Vernon Kodaly up for a long time.’ Angie spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘But if I’m charged, I could be suspended and then it’s going to be hard for me to stay in touch with the investigation. As it is, Bruno will do everything he can to get me out of his way. I know Julie would do her best to keep me informed. Not so sure about Sean, the way Bruno’s been sucking up to him lately. Not that there’s anything I can do right now. All I can do is watch as the whole case falls to pieces.’

  Gemma remembered the searing photographs of Sandra’s abused body in the old file. Her heart sank. These men were going to get away with it.

  ‘Angie,’ she said, ‘with everything we’ve talked about, isn’t there enough circumstantial evidence to bust Brissett?’

  Angie considered. ‘I doubt it. Even if we get all the samples back from the cruiser saying that the two dead girls and Claudia have definitely been there, it’s still going to be very hard to prove that Brissett had anything to do with it. Especially if he maintains his line that he had nothing to do with the club or that people went out to the cruiser without his knowledge. We haven’t got enough to charge him. Even if we did, my feeling is it wouldn’t get past committal.’

  ‘What about a search warrant for his house?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘That was being organised just before Bruno and I had our run-in. But I’m betting Brissett’s too smart to have anything incriminating in his own nest,’ said Angie, despondent. Then, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot.’ She fished around in her navy briefcase and brought out a tiny package. ‘I bought something for you. To thank you for your help in this. You made the connection—the tip about the cruiser. Thank you for getting Claudia back safely.’

  ‘It wasn’t me really,’ said Gemma, glancing at the Ratbag with gratitude.

  She took the small package and unwrapped the tissue paper. ‘Oh, Angie,’ she said, ‘it’s beautiful.’

  ‘I thought it would be perfect. To replace that black stone you lost from your pendant.’

  On Gemma’s palm, glowing like a drop of honey in sunlight, lay a small rounded gemstone.

  ‘It’s a citrine,’ Angie was saying. ‘I hope you like it. See if it fits okay.’

  Gemma took the pendant off and laid it on top of the smooth drop of light. They could have been made for each other—the golden stone warming the silver serpents of the setting.

  She picked the stone up again and rolled it around in the palm of her hand. She kept thinking of Tasmin and her crush on Brissett. And what about Amy, she wondered—the man who’d been obsessed with her wasn’t that old, according to what Amy had told Eddie. Rewrapping the stone with a new urgency, she put it in her purse together with the pendant. She wanted to move.

  ‘I think I know,’ she said, ‘why Jim Buisman took Bruno off the case.’

  •

  Gemma dropped Hugo off near Central station, ordering him to go straight home and stay there, then she ran Angie home and headed south again.

  Buisman was already installed in his corner at the Kensington Club, his copy of the Sportsman and the daily newspaper in a messy pile near his schooner glass. She walked over to him and sat down opposite before he could say anything.

  ‘You took Bruno Gross off the original investigation into Amy Bernhard’s disappearance because you discovered there’d been a prior, non-professional relationship between the two of them. Bruno was the “old man” who was obsessed with Amy, hanging around, perving outside her window. I don’t know how Bruno’s involvement came out. Maybe he talked to you about her and you worked it out? Maybe he’s one of the men on the video? Maybe we’ll be able to identify him with some fancy technical work. Whatever, you decided he had to come off the investigation.’

  Buisman continued to stare at her, eyes blazing contempt and intimidation.

  Unmoved, Gemma hardened her own gaze. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Who cares if you’re right? You’re just a little piece of shit who couldn’t make it as a cop and now you’re running around playing cop games. You’re pathetic.’

  ‘You’re out of the job now,’ Gemma continued, determined not to be needled by him. ‘You don’t have to worry about a thing. I just want you to confirm the truth.’ She stood and pushed the chair back in, resting her hands on the back of it, leaning forward. ‘An eyewitness has come forward who can put Bruno outside Amy’s window only a short time before she disappeared.’

  ‘Tell someone who gives a shit,’ he said.

  Gemma continued to stare him down. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I give a shit that the original investigation was so incompetent, so tainted, so compromised by the unprofessional behaviour of Bruno Gross because he got himself involved with a schoolgirl. Maybe if you had taken over the investigation yourself and followed it up properly, chased up the witness statements, found the webcam and the websites, or at least appointed someone competent to do this, Amy might have been found in time.’ She straightened up. ‘But instead, Bruno was taken off the case and none of the follow-up work was done properly. If Amy had been found in time, there’s a very strong possibility that Tasmin Summers would never have gone missing. I hope you think of that, every day. How two young girls are dead because you didn’t do your job properly.’

  She walked away back out to the street, heart pounding. As the doors closed behind her, she couldn’t help glancing back at Buisman. He hadn’t moved. He sat in his corner, staring after her.

  •

  She was just pulling up outside her place when her mobile rang. It was Beatrice de Berigny.

  The account was already made up, so Gemma picked it up and put it in the glove box and drove to Miss de Berigny’s residence at Netherleigh Park. The removalist van was loading a dainty Louis XV-style settee as she parked next to it. Two chairs, covered in the same white and gold brocade, waited in the garden.

  ‘Hullo?’ she called through the open doorway.

  Beatrice de Berigny appeared from the bedroom. With her hair tied back in a scarf and wearing pale rubber gloves, she looked more like a tea lady than the recent head of one of Sydney’s most salubrious colleges.

  ‘Excuse the mess,’ she said. Stacks of crockery stood next to bundles of cutlery and potted plants in cartons, their wandering tendrils wound around and bound with string. A pile of cups and
saucers stood near a stack of butcher’s paper.

  ‘I was sorry to hear of your resignation,’ Gemma said. ‘You’re an institution at this school. So everyone tells me.’

  Beatrice sighed. ‘It was time to move on and give someone else the chance to run Netherleigh. This whole dreadful business has made me take a long hard look at myself—the way I was living, the values I was teaching. It’s too easy to get caught up in the materialism and rampant socialising in schools like this.’ She wrapped a cup and stashed it in one of the cartons.

  ‘Tell me something,’ said Gemma. ‘You and Mr Romero—’

  Beatrice held a cup to her breast. ‘He’s been released, but he’ll never teach again.’ She picked up some butcher’s paper and wrapped the cup in it. ‘You knew there was something between us.’

  ‘From the very first day,’ said Gemma. ‘From the way he walked into your office without knocking. I even thought you might have been lovers.’

  There was a long silence. In the distance, Gemma could hear someone practising scales on a piano and it reminded her of her first visit here and Claudia’s melodic minor scales.

  ‘You were right to think that,’ Beatrice finally said. ‘Mannix Romero and I were lovers. But it was a long time ago.’

  Gemma, about to put the account down on a spare surface, paused. Something was starting to make sense. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Thirty years ago.’

  Gemma did some quick calculations. ‘But you’d have only been very young then.’ She hesitated. ‘Fourteen or so.’ She thought of the schoolgirl in Bathurst who had eloped with her teacher.

  ‘Fifteen,’ said Beatrice. ‘When Mannix wanted the job here,’ she continued, ‘I could hardly refuse him. Especially when he hinted that if I did, he had a marriage certificate that would be very embarrassing if it ever came out. Imagine, the principal of Netherleigh Park eloping as a schoolgirl with her teacher.’

  She pulled an empty carton towards her and reached for the stack of saucers.

  ‘When that damned letter turned up in Mannix’s desk, I got really scared. I thought he might be up to his old tricks. And that the past would race back and swallow me up.’ She put down the saucer she’d started wrapping and Gemma saw tears streaming down her face. ‘The past is never over. Not while I was still running from it. Not while someone’s alive to remember it.’

  Seventeen

  By the time she got home, Gemma was past being tired. Hugo was nowhere to be seen. She felt drugged so she tried to nap, but could only doze, worried for the boy. She remembered her missed music lesson yesterday and called Mrs Snellgrove to apologise and make another time. Later, she went for a run when the heat of the day had faded. It was twilight by the time she got back. A sudden hot gust of wind moved the leaves on the young eucalypt on her nature strip then died as she jogged past. Spooked, Gemma trod softly down the steps from the road to the front garden, grateful when the automatic spotlight flooded the area, piercing the evening light. The Ratbag had still not returned and Gemma wished she’d kept him with her.

  Taxi uncurled from the lounge and plopped on the floor, rolling inside out and upside down to greet her. She walked all the way through her apartment, checking every room.

  Her mobile rang. Naomi. ‘I wanted to thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Me?’ said Gemma. ‘What for?’

  ‘I heard the news. Getting that little girl back safe.’ Naomi’s voice softened. ‘One of my friends is screwing a cop and she showed me the website those girls made and then the porn site. From fluffy toys to gang bangs in one hyperlink. You brought the third girl back safely.’

  ‘But it wasn’t me, Naomi. I was only part of an investigating team.’

  ‘Mum always used to say you were very special.’

  Gemma felt awkward. ‘It was kind of your mother to say that. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Hugo?’ she asked.

  Naomi hadn’t. ‘That pig Scott Brissett has ordered a twosome tomorrow,’ she said ‘for him and his partner. Two girls so they can play out his sick fantasy.’

  They’re celebrating, thought Gemma. Brissett and Kodaly have to lie low for the moment so they’re getting their sex in a more usual way until all this blows over.

  ‘But I can’t get anyone to go with me,’ Naomi went on. ‘Rob’s turned me down. She says no way is she going to service either of those two. None of the girls want to do it.’

  Gemma found herself blinking as she put the phone down; her eyes were sticky and irritated. Everything felt alien and hostile around her, including her own body. This must be what exhaustion can do to a person, she thought. She had a bath, hoping it would relax her for an early night, but she found herself jumping at every sound and wished the Ratbag would come home. She unlocked the gun safe, unpacking the Glock again and assembling it.

  It was difficult to settle down for the night. She kept thinking of Tasmin’s last moments, and Naomi’s phrase ‘from fluffy toys to gang bangs’ kept resounding through her head, the words compulsively repeating, like an unwanted melody. But finally, with the weapon under her pillow and the cat heavy on her feet, she slept.

  Gemma spent most of the next morning tidying away the completed cases. Then she made up a cheque for Sandra Samuels and hoped it would cover part of next month’s rent for the youth refuge. She could send Hugo there, she thought, if ever he turned up on her doorstep again.

  After lunch, the phone rang. Melissa Grey. ‘You want the long version or the short version?’ Melissa asked after the initial pleasantries.

  ‘A summary will do,’ said Gemma. She focused her attention on what Melissa was saying.

  ‘That block of land where we found the multiple remains—that we thought was a body dump site?’

  ‘It was, really,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Raymond Gardiner owns it,’ Melissa said.

  ‘So the Forever Diamonds scammers had a nice convenient place to dispose of the cremated remains,’ said Gemma. ‘And the little boxes they come in.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Melissa. ‘Those small grave sites we found were where they stashed them. But they didn’t know that they were burying them in a dry creek bed. So when the rain came, it washed most of the boxes out. They emptied their contents over a wide area—and the rest you know.’ She paused. ‘It didn’t take Francie Suskievicz too long to work out that she was dealing with cremated remains.’

  ‘Mr Gardiner thought “cremains” sounded nicer,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Gardiner’s going to be locked up for a long time,’ said Melissa.

  ‘Good,’ said Gemma. She told Melissa about Mr Dowling’s predicament.

  ‘I know about him,’ said Melissa. ‘Paradigm Laboratories contacted us requesting the crematorium box that had his wife’s remains in it. We couldn’t actually release it to them, but we got clearance for someone from Paradigm to come over. Apparently they were able to get enough material from inside the plastic box to get a match for him.’

  ‘So how does my client go about getting back what’s left of his wife’s remains?’

  ‘I’ll deliver them myself,’ said Melissa. ‘Soon as we can. Just tell me where and when. Always looking for an hour or two off the job.’

  Angie phoned in the late afternoon. ‘Trevor’s missus put him in hospital last night,’ she said. ‘I had to come back and save him.’ Gemma had forgotten Angie’s planned revenge. ‘We were at Graingers, just starting to get it on. Trevor thought I was using the love-cuffs on him—they come apart with a little pressure. But I cuffed him with the real thing instead; clipped him to the bed. I was wearing my mistress of discipline outfit and I stripped him. It was when I was taking his jocks off that his wife walked in. She was so shocked that I was able to just grab my coat and walk out. But I could hear it from downstairs. I’d forgotten the whip. I was too worried that she might be carrying her pistol.’
Angie paused. ‘I even felt sorry for the lying bastard.’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about Tasmin,’ said Gemma. ‘One of the gang must have hit her in the face. She had blood in her mouth.’

  ‘It was a sport for them,’ said Angie.

  Gemma recalled Sandra’s statement about how she’d been hunted and chased down—almost to the kill. Sporting men.

  ‘You’ll feel better when I tell you there is some justice in this world,’ Angie continued. ‘Your old perv—’

  ‘Hey, he’s not my old perv!’ Gemma interrupted, thinking with a shudder of Alistair Forde.

  ‘He’s made a statement identifying the man he saw outside Amy’s window that night. Bruno G-for-Gross. Forde was on the blower within minutes of Bruno’s televised press release. Naturally, G-for’s denying it.’

  ‘I worked out that the man outside Amy’s window must have been Bruno,’ said Gemma. ‘Jim Buisman took him off the original investigation because of his relationship with Amy Bernhard—which caused the whole investigation to fall over. There was no proper follow-up, no handover to anyone competent.’

  She thought of the journalist who’d written the Mandate piece, Amanda Quirk. This could be a big feature in a weekend magazine—the incompetence that had led to the deaths of two young girls. Sometimes, she thought, it seemed as if the media ran the police. Crime and sport: the two things that sell newspapers.

  Gemma had a sudden realisation that made her sit up straight. ‘Angie! That’s it!’ she said. ‘You said it—it was a sport to them! And they gave each other trophies! Naomi saw them. You saw them when you went to his place. GBS! Gang bang sport! Or gang bang squad!’ She remembered the phrase from the banner of the hyperlink to the Black Diamond Room. ‘That’s what those initials stand for. He named his cruiser after his sport!’