Spiking the Girl (10 page)

‘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?’

‘He’s back with bloody bells on now,’ said Angie.

‘No wonder you’re worried,’ said Gemma. ‘With Bruno G-for-Gross supervising and Sean Wright as a team member.’

‘Exactly,’ said Angie. ‘I need all the help I can get. Most days, we’ve got a third of our people away. Sick leave, court attendances.’

‘I’ve noticed something in the witness statements that I want you to see,’ Gemma said. ‘Go have your shower and I’ll dig it out.’

While Angie showered, Gemma brought out the relevant statements and the phrases she’d underlined and placed them in a pile for Angie to look at. Then she read the autopsy report Angie had brought with her. Positive ID had been obtained via the gold chain recognised by Amy’s mother and further confirmed by the dead girl’s dentist.

Gemma flicked through the detailed weights and measurements until she came to the summing up. From the skeletonisation of the body, the post-mortem doctor believed that Amy had died very shortly after she’d disappeared. Some of the smallest bones were missing, probably through the action of scavenging animals. There were no visible signs of violence on the bones, the report stated, the only injuries being post-mortem. Rats had chewed through the blade of the left scapular, the tiny crescent-shaped bite marks were clear in the photographs. No obvious signs of violence, Gemma reflected, meant no ante-mortem breaks and none of the linear marks on bones that would indicate penetrating knife wounds. She recalled something one of the scientists had said to her years ago: ‘Absence of evidence doesn’t mean that evidence is absent’, meaning it could just be harder to discern. The green and white nylon cord told an ominous story. Amy had been restrained. Gemma looked closer at the photos of the small length of cord that had been attached to the girl’s right wrist. She spent some time with the tight close-up of the knot but it looked like a common reef knot. Nothing interesting there. She studied the pictures of the patterned vinyl—quarry-tile-type squares in soft terracotta.

Gemma was putting the report back into its envelope when Angie suddenly appeared, enveloped in a mist of steam, perfume and excitement and looking superb in her glamorous underwear. She slipped a clingy, slinky top over her head before pulling up her skirt and twisting to zip it up.

‘What do you think, girlfriend?’ she said, giving Gemma a flirtatious look.

Gemma smiled. ‘Trevor is a lucky man.’

Angie plugged in the hair-dryer and dried her new haircut into a glossy curtain.

‘We’re meeting for lunch and staying at Graingers at the Rocks. Trev has to leave early in the morning. I’m on call tomorrow but I’m hoping to get some more shopping done. There’s a gorgeous jewellery place down there, not far from the cop shop. Lovely gemstones.’

‘Amy’s body just lay there, under a pile of vinyl only a few metres away from a busy highway, for a year.’

‘There’s no pedestrian access,’ Angie explained, straightening up and switching the dryer off at the mains. ‘Okay. How does that look?’

‘See for yourself,’ said Gemma, indicating the mirror on the wall opposite the dining table. ‘Very, very gorgeous.’

Angie stood in front of it, patting and fluffing her hair, turning her head from side to side. ‘The piece of land she was found on is part of a Water Board easement. There’s no reason for anyone to ever go there. Unless, of course, they wanted to dump a body. The grass and weeds were almost up to my waist when we went out there.’

Gemma tapped the envelope containing the post-mortem report. ‘Thanks for this. Any joy with that vinyl or the nylon cord?’

‘We’ve sent photos off to all the manufacturers. Should hear back from the makers soon, I hope.’

‘And the knot?’

‘That’s gone to our knot man,’ Angie said then started laughing.

‘What?’

‘His name. You’ll never believe it. Mr Colin Roper.’

‘Remember Sergeant Basham?’

Angie laughed again. ‘He bashed ’em all right.’

‘Talking of mean bastards,’ Gemma said, ‘I’d really like to know why G-for-Gross was taken off the investigation when Amy first disappeared last year.’

Angie turned from the mirror. ‘You think he’d say something.’

‘You were involved in it at the same time. I thought you’d have noticed his unique presence.’

‘That was only after Amy had been missing for months. I got the feeling the case had been neglected because of understaffing. Bruno definitely wasn’t involved by the time I was on it.’

Angie put the envelope with the post-mortem report back into her briefcase. ‘You said you’d spotted something in the witness statements?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘Take another look at this.’ She pushed the copies of the witness statements across the table. She’d marked the relevant bits with bright pink highlighter.

Angie read through them a couple of times. ‘That’s interesting.’ She pushed them back. ‘I’ll let you follow that up. And then you can brief me. I’m flat-strap at the moment trying to push for more resources. We’ve got one lousy computer between the five of us. Julie Cooper and Sean are supposed to be assisting us—when they’ve got the time away from their stuff at Child Protection. We’ve got the use of one car. And Bruno’s supervising. Which means not doing a goddamn thing if he can avoid it. But you can bet he’ll be there as soon as a press conference is called, preening his bloody tail feathers.’ She shot Gemma a cheeky look. ‘I hope he was better in the cot than he is in the job.’

Gemma grabbed the dryer, switched it on and chased Angie round the room.

•

After sending her friend off prepared for an afternoon and night of love, Gemma spent far too much time doing her BAS statement—already overdue—and cursing John Howard and all those who’d believed his claims of ‘simpler tax-paying’.

Next, she called the number Lauren Bernhard had given her for her first ex-husband. But Amy’s father wasn’t answering so she left a message with her number. Then she called Eric Stokes, Amy Bernhard’s stepfather, who answered straightaway.

‘Fathers for Family and Marriage. How can I help you?’

‘Eric Stokes?’

‘And you are?’

‘Gemma Lincoln. I’m an investigator working on behalf of Netherleigh Park for Beatrice de Berigny. I’d like to make an appointment to speak to you about your stepdaughter, Amy.’

He’d know by now, she thought. But just in case, she hadn’t said ‘late stepdaughter’.

There was a short silence. ‘I can make time for you tomorrow,’ he said.

Gemma arranged a time and put the mobile down. It was telling, she thought, that he’d said nothing about his stepdaughter. Nothing at all.

She took her car into the city, found a spot in a parking station and started the search for her half-sister at the State Library, viewing microfilm. It was a slow, painful business finding the Births, Deaths and Marriages section, then slowly scrolling through them. She found a couple of Chisholms but the mother’s name wasn’t the Kingston she was searching for. And the babies were male. After what felt like hours, she looked up, her neck stiff. She stretched, wishing she had enough money to delegate this boring job to someone else. But she needed Spinner and Mike out on the road if she was going to rebuild her business. She’d have to do a lot more of the boring jobs herself until things picked up.

She was up to March of the
Daily Telegraph
’s listings when she looked at her watch again. Around her, people searched or scribbled, heads down, absorbed in their own quests. Maybe this is a wild goose chase, she thought. Maybe Beverley Kingston never advertised the birth. After all, the baby wasn’t ‘legitimate’.

She walked out onto the steps. It was a glorious late afternoon—a cloudless, pearly sky and the trees of the Botanical Gardens an intense dark green on black across the road. A couple of very early bats flapped overhead and a sudden wave of fear took her breath away. She took some deep breaths and remembered her trainer’s words about SA, situational awareness. She took stock of the people striding or driving past. None seemed to have the slightest interest in her. Her mobile buzzed and she dug it out, grateful for the distraction. It was Andrew Bernhard, Amy’s father, returning her message.

‘I’m in Sydney and free right now,’ he said. They agreed to meet in half an hour in a café near the hotel where Bernhard was staying in the Cross.

Gemma returned to the Domain parking station, the haunted feeling hastening her steps. As she pulled out in her car, she checked her rear-vision mirror. No white Ford appeared. She drove up to the Cross and found a parking spot near Darlinghurst police station.

She quickly spotted a man in the café talking on his mobile in the corner seat as Andrew Bernhard. She dawdled outside for a few moments, pretending to examine the cakes in the window while she checked him out. He was a handsome, heavy-built man in his late forties, well-dressed and completely focused on his telephone conversation. Gemma watched a little longer then went inside, heading straight for his table.