Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing

by Lord, Gabrielle

  ‘Where’s the canister?’ Angie asked.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Gemma. She paused, thinking back. ‘There was much more to it than the sex worker and client relationship.’

  ‘There’s always more to it,’ said Angie. She shrugged. ‘Humans are funny critters.’

  ‘So I’m discovering,’ said Gemma. ‘I didn’t know you worked with Mike Moody last year.’

  ‘Who?’ Angie looked genuinely puzzled.

  Gemma filled her in and Angie nodded.

  ‘Hardly remember him,’ she said. ‘It was one of those joint operations. People coming and going. I think I only spoke to him once.’

  Two grubby-looking creatures with dreadlocks, wild facial hair and torn jeans walked past Gemma and Angie through the security gates, surrounded by a stench of engine oil, flashing ID as they went.

  ‘Will you look at them?’Angie said.

  ‘Drug Squad?’ Gemma asked. Angie nodded.

  Gemma said goodbye and walked out of the building, remembering the old days when she’d worked there when anyone could walk in and out almost unchallenged.

  On her way back to the car, she decided to double the account she would finally present to the widow Glass. After all, Minkie had had her running around in circles. Gemma drove home, worked out the amount, then thought of the insurance pay-out coming to Minkie and tripled it. It came to a tidy sum. She put it in an envelope with her business card and posted it.

  •

  Now, she sat perched uneasily on a stool in the operatives’ office, watching Mike as he sat hunched in front of his laptop.

  ‘Ouch!’ she exclaimed, as the pain in her lower rib reminded her not to lean against the desk. Still, it felt good taking action like this, even if she didn’t fully understand what Mike was doing. Her knowledge of electronics was limited and she knew how much she relied on the expertise of the operatives she employed and felt grateful that Mike knew what he was doing. Now, as she looked at him, she wondered how she could ever have thought he was a spy.

  ‘Mike,’ she started to say, ‘I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I’ve been very concerned about Steve—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, as he started up a program. ‘You’ve been under diabolical stress lately.’ He turned to her and flashed his white-toothed grin. ‘I’m feeling lucky that I got out alive. You looked very serious with that Glock.’

  ‘I was serious,’ she said. ‘It looked like you were the man in the frame.’

  Mike turned back to his keyboard and screen. ‘The more intelligence we can get on Fayed, the better for Steve,’ Mike continued. ‘If something’s gone wrong, this way we’ve got a good chance of finding out what it is.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I did a complete RF sweep of all the frequencies in Fayed’s area,’ he said, indicating the laptop. ‘And what I’m doing now is running a merge program so I can analyse what I’ve grabbed from the air around Fayed’s joint.’ He tapped the side of the screen, busy at its work. ‘I’ve got a searchable data base on a CD-Rom with the details of every licensed transmission in the area. That way, we can eliminate all the transmissions we expect to see. Then I’ll see what’s left. The exception report will show me the ones we don’t know about. Anything that shouldn’t be there could prove to be very interesting.’ He saw Gemma’s face and paused.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘what I’m going to do is what any analyst does—take a sample, put it on a slide and see what we’ve got. Or, in this case, see what’s floating around in the airwaves.’

  ‘Okay, Mike,’ she said.

  ‘And I found an Optus micro cell up a telegraph pole about twenty metres from his castle. I picked up beacon signals from that and, would you believe, I found an extra little something—a low output transmission? That’s very interesting.’

  ‘I didn’t notice any micro cell on a telegraph pole,’ she said ‘and I’ve cruised past his place.’

  ‘You don’t see what you’re not looking for,’ said Mike.

  That, at least, she understood.

  ‘Optus and Telstra both utilise telegraph poles for their networks. At the higher frequencies,’ he continued, ‘height is might. For very short range, you need to be in the line of sight for transmission.’

  ‘Mike, I’m the one losing transmission,’ Gemma said.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you don’t need to know all that. Basically what I’m saying is that I picked up a signal that could belong to a Federal agency.’

  ‘You should know,’ she said drily. Mike laughed.

  ‘But what’s the point of gathering in police intelligence?’ she asked. ‘So far, the police have been spectacularly unsuccessful in touching George Fayed.’

  ‘Gemma, I’m interested in the police operation because it gives us a way in.’

  ‘A way in where?’ she asked.

  ‘You know from other situations that the best way to go is to use assets already in place.’

  She nodded. It was classic strategy.

  Mike turned his attention back to the screen. ‘See there?’ he said, indicating wave-like patterns. ‘That shows us what’s going on in the lower frequencies. Nothing very exciting. Remote controls for things like televisions, signals from babies’ sleep monitors, garage doors, that sort of thing. But if you have a look here, at 5.6 gigahertz—’

  ‘5.6?’ she repeated. ‘That sounds familiar.’

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘It’s the surveillance operation we were talking about. You remember how police operations are always stymied by the Listening Devices Act? And how they grizzle about that. All they can do is pick up pieces of mosaic intelligence—watch whatever address it is that interests them, make a note of who comes and goes, check out the visitors, track them back to where they come from, check out rego plates. Slowly gather the bits that make up a picture of what goes on in and around the place.’

  Gemma nodded. She remembered diagrams on white boards, flow charts that demonstrated criminal connections. ‘I’ve been through all that,’ she said.

  ‘I want to do something a bit cleverer than police surveillance,’ said Mike. He closed down his program. ‘I did a few things last night,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a van and I’ve found a garage we can rent not far away from Fayed’s place. We don’t want to be on the street.’

  He jumped up and grabbed his coat. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s do our job.’

  •

  A short while later, Gemma huddled with Mike in the back of the borrowed van, watching him as he went to work.

  ‘What we can do first,’ he said to her, ‘is pick up the police surveillance frequency modulations.’

  ‘But you said you were going to do something smarter than that.’

  She wondered if he’d even heard her.

  ‘When I was doing my analysis of this set-up here,’ said Mike, ‘I picked up another signal in the 1–10 megahertz, very weak and close to the noise floor.’

  ‘And?’ she asked.

  ‘I detected the “noise” of closed circuit television screens.’

  ‘George Fayed has CCT inside and outside his place,’ said Gemma. Things were getting interesting now, she thought.

  Mike nodded. ‘And with the right equipment and know-how, receivers can also act as transmitters. Receivers are transmitters are receivers are transmitters . . .’

  ‘You mean, his closed circuit system could work the other way and transmit out to us?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Mike.

  Gemma felt a wave of hope lift her spirits. ‘We can see inside Fayed’s place right here?’ She indicated Mike’s screen.

  ‘All I have to do is find the cables,’ said Mike. ‘Once I find the cables, we’re in. We can piggyback in on the police surveillance frequency. I’ve just g
ot to make sure there’s zero interference with the Optus system.’

  If we can see inside Fayed’s house, Gemma thought, and if Steve’s there, I might be able to help him. And redeem myself for my earlier behaviour.

  •

  Gemma waited in the cramped van, the only sound the soft chattering of Mike’s keyboard as he worked.

  ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘It’s time to get off the street. Let’s go and take cover.’

  They climbed into the front of the van and drove away from Fayed’s corner and around into a tree-lined street running at a right-angle to it. Before they parked in the rented garage Gemma glanced up at the sky. It was dark with a threatening storm and the oppressive coldness chilled her to the bone.

  An hour later, she was in the back of the van again, more cramped up than before, watching Mike’s fingers manipulate the arcane figures and symbols that appeared on his screen.

  ‘The Feds are using a broadband, frequency agile transmitter,’ Mike said, ‘capable of four video channels.’

  Gemma grunted. Her body was seething; the inaction was frustrating.

  ‘Mike,’ she said, ‘I’m going crazy just sitting here. I need to be out there doing something.’

  Mike, busy with frequency modulations and demodulations, translating these from one electronic ‘language’ to another, barely looked up, just nodded and kept working. She started to uncurl, feeling pins and needles shoot down one leg. Outside, the storm was building, coming closer and she could see the effects of its interference from time to time, shivering Mike’s screen. There was a silent brilliant flash and Gemma nearly jumped out of her skin as the thunderclap broke right over the roof. The figures on Mike’s screen convulsed and disappeared, returning seconds later.

  ‘Hey! Look.’ Mike said, utterly absorbed. A picture appeared on Mike’s laptop and Gemma noticed his forehead gleaming with sweat in the bluish light of the screen. ‘Picture and sound.’

  ‘What is it?’ She leaned forward to peer at the images on the screen in front of her. She saw the opulent, heavy furnishings of a bedroom as they flicked into view for a few seconds. Then the picture changed. Now she was looking down past a giant chandelier into some sort of reception room with grandiose gilt furniture. ‘What am I looking at?’ she asked. The screen flickered and the picture switched to a living room with heavy Italianate furnishings.

  ‘We’re in!’ Mike said, clapping his hands together. ‘Welcome to Casa Fayed’s closed circuit television home movies.’ Despite the chill of their surroundings, Mike wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, wincing as he touched the stitches over his brow.

  Gemma held her breath as she stared into an ornate dining room, complete with long baronial table, carved chairs and heavy curtains. Twisted pillars featured beside the entrance. The decor was reminiscent, Gemma thought, of Hollywood biblical epics, circa 1960. The picture switched to a view of the kitchen where two handsome strong-featured women, possibly Fayed’s wife and mother, Gemma thought, busied themselves.

  ‘He’s got internal cameras everywhere,’ said Mike. ‘We can see what he can see now.’

  Gemma leaned forward in excitement, her worries momentarily forgotten, as the screen changed yet again. They had access to a series of dress circle views into the house of the drug lord. Marble and gilt bathrooms, storerooms, a generator room, external and internal corridors, all were covered in the system of rotating closed circuit television angles. Anywhere an assassin might conceivably hide himself, Gemma thought, Fayed has cameras to make sure it can’t happen. Even the laundry, and what looked like a drying room, where sheets and towels hung. A generous lap pool, sauna and gym area took up half of one level. It was like a small city in there, Gemma thought, with all the services anyone could reasonably want. She sat transfixed, staring into the secret world of the drug lord.

  ‘Smile, George Fayed,’ she said. ‘You’re on reality TV.’

  ‘He’d have a control room in there somewhere,’ said Mike and as he spoke, as if by magic the heart of the security system itself was revealed on the screen: a small room with banks of monitors and a heavily geared security man who lounged beneath them, glancing up from time to time to survey the screens, each one showing a section of the huge fortress. After watching the repetitive rotation several times, Gemma started to get an idea of the layout of the house.

  ‘Looks like the whole ground level is mostly a service area,’ said Mike, ‘car park and air conditioning and a mechanic’s work area. He’s even got his own machine shop.’

  Gemma noticed the machining tools, vices, lathes, and benches crowded with tools and spare parts. Room after room, in orderly rotation appeared on the screen. Then it changed to a murky darkness.

  ‘What’s that?’ Gemma asked.

  Mike peered closer at slow-moving coloured shapes, blobs of green, yellow and blue, with occasional red centres.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mike, frowning. ‘Looks like the images you get with ultraviolet light.’

  ‘Maybe his solarium?’ she ventured.

  Mike shook his head, doing what he could to improve the picture on his screen, using his zoom and focus to try and make more sense of the moving shapes, but the images became even more incomprehensible at such close quarters. Another frame change and a huge coloured shape loomed through the murk on the screen, reminding Gemma of a predator swerving through dark water. Then it was gone.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ she asked.

  Mike peered more closely at the screen, then shook his head. ‘Buggered if I know,’ he said. ‘They’re heat images, but I don’t know what that is. It’s possible it’s some sort of machinery.’

  Now another room came into view, equally dark and mysterious. ‘Might have better luck with this one.’ He focused his attention and skill on the screen.

  ‘This room is totally dark,’ said Gemma. Almost as she spoke, someone must have switched the light on because the room on Mike’s screen jumped into perfect illumination and focus. A man lay unconscious on a bed. Gemma gasped, then covered her mouth with her hands to stop herself from screaming out loud. It was Steve. For what seemed like minutes, Gemma froze. She hunched, mouth covered, staring at the inert figure on the screen. Then, as suddenly, the image vanished.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she said, her voice a harsh whispered scream.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ came Mike’s calm voice beside her. ‘It’s just the light being switched off again. Listen. This is a good result. We know for sure now where Steve is.’

  ‘He’s injured, I know it,’ she said. ‘Why is he unconscious?’

  ‘He might be sleeping,’ he suggested.

  Gemma tried to stand up, knocking her head, the tears already in her eyes springing onto her cheeks. ‘I’ve got to get him out of there,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get Steve.’

  Mike’s hand on her arm steadied her. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘Take a few deep breaths.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It’s my fault he’s in there. I did something really stupid and now Steve is—’ She stopped. ‘God, Mike. What if he’s dead?’

  ‘People don’t switch lights on to check a dead man,’ said Mike. ‘And they wouldn’t be keeping a body there. Anywhere else, but not in Fayed’s private home. If Steve were dead, he’d be at the bottom of the Gap, not here.’

  It was true, and Gemma knew it.

  ‘We’ve got to get him out of there,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get an SPG team together. Raid the place and get him out.’ She was hardly watching the procession of images on Mike’s screen, all she could think of was Steve lying there, unconscious, vulnerable.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘I’ll call Ian Lovelock. And Angie. Between the two of them, they can organise a big party. We can give them the layout of Fayed’s place now.’ She indicated the rotating pictur
es on Mike’s screen. ‘We get in there and we get Steve out.’ Her mind was racing. She was aware of her heart beating hard against her ribs.

  Mike shook his head. ‘Better we contact Fayed and we deal. He gives us Steve, or—’

  ‘Or what?’ she asked. ‘We threaten a joint raid. Tear his fortress down and find—’

  ‘What?’ Mike asked.

  ‘That dark room we saw. It might be a store room.’

  ‘No way he’d keep anything at his house, Gemma. That’s for the lieutenants.’

  He was right. God knows how they could compel George Fayed to do anything.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m copying the video feed,’ he said. ‘This way, we can build up a map of the place.’

  Gemma’s mobile rang. It was Angie.

  ‘Angie,’ she said, ‘we’ve got into George Fayed’s place. Steve’s in there. Mike’s piggybacked in on Fayed’s own closed circuit security system. Tell Ian Lovelock if he doesn’t already know.’

  ‘Great,’ said her friend. ‘Police intelligence will love that. Make some copies for us. Send them over anonymously. The Drug Squad boys will wet their pants over it.’

  ‘Tell her I’m sending it electronically asap,’ said Mike. ‘Then she can deliver it to Lovelock.’

  ‘What about Steve?’ said Gemma, after passing on Mike’s message.

  ‘That depends on the Drug Squad,’ said Angie. ‘What they decide.’

  ‘Where’s Ian Lovelock?’

  ‘Could be anywhere,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll pass on the information right now. Give us a couple of hours to look at the pictures.’

  ‘We might not have a couple of hours,’ Gemma said, thinking of Steve lying in the dark in the drug lord’s fortress.

  ‘They’ll have to do a quick target appraisal. I’ll get back to you. Oh,’ she added, ‘I nearly forgot why I rang you. Ric Loader got a perfect match from the assault on Robyn Warburton with the DNA from those attacks from the late ’80s and early ’90s.’