During the ensuing silence, Gemma tried to make sense of that. It was quite likely, she thought, that Findlay knew something about his brother that his mother wouldn’t have approved of. He might know all about his dead brother’s mistress. So if Bryson was having an affair and old Mrs Finn found out, she might well have decided to punish her sinful son.
‘We’re talking about the same house at Killara?’ Gemma asked, picturing the rambling, spacious home, its established gardens and the gate in the back fence to the bush track leading to the picnic area half a kilometre away.
Natalie nodded. ‘It’s a very valuable property,’ she said. ‘It’s a huge triple block – there’s an overgrown tennis court on the eastern side and extensive gardens on the western side of the building. All a jungle now, but it used to be a local showpiece. Old Mrs Finn used to live there with Findlay and Bettina until she moved into a retirement unit some years ago.’
If the murders were about the estate, wouldn’t it make more sense to murder Findlay rather than Bryson, mused Gemma. Perhaps the killer had made a mistake and shot the wrong brother. Contract killers had made that sort of error before, Gemma knew.
‘How many people would have known about the gate in the back fence of the property?’ Gemma asked.
‘The old gate?’ Natalie seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘Someone has used the gate quite recently,’ Gemma said. ‘Although the lock is rusted on, it’s been pushed open on the hinges side.’
‘I’d forgotten it was there,’ said Natalie. ‘I can’t imagine anyone knowing about it. Who wasn’t in the family, I mean.’
‘You knew about it though,’ said Angie.
Natalie’s mobile rang and she answered it quickly. The other women fell silent, knowing from Natalie’s demeanour that she was speaking with the hospital. Natalie finished the call and put the mobile in her bag.
‘I’m going to have to go. The doctors have detected a slow leak of fluid into Donny’s skull. It needs draining. He’s on his way to the theatre now. And I want to be there when they bring him out. But before I go, I want you to see this.’
She dipped into her smart leather bag and, from an envelope, pulled out an enlarged colour photograph.
‘This is how we were before all this happened. I want you to see Bryson and Donny, and Bettina, the way they were. Not the way they look in these.’ She indicated the pile of crime scene shots.
She wants to honour the dead, thought Gemma. She wants to show us something important to her. She moved closer to see the large print better.
It showed a family gathering at Bryson and Natalie’s, with an elderly woman Gemma presumed was the late mother-in-law seated in the middle of the group. To the left of the old lady stood Bettina, pretty in white linen and her Venetian glass necklace; Bryson on the right, stylish in casual slacks and polo top. Natalie stood in the centre, behind Mrs Finn, with her arms around her two children, a beautiful young girl, Jade, and Donovan, grinning hugely and holding up a peculiar half-dinosaur, half-human figure. Natalie’s voice was barely audible as she spoke. ‘This is how I want to remember them.’
Gemma was about to straighten up, when something about Bettina’s necklace made her stare closer. In this photograph, the individual beads of the necklace showed very clearly, glistening against the skin of Bettina’s neck, the gold leaf within their depths showing as a soft radiance. Something was wrong. She reached towards the photograph. ‘May I?’ she asked politely before picking it up.
Gemma took another good look at the beads, then handed the photograph back. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s a precious record. And you’re right. This is how we should remember them.’
Natalie put the photograph away, picked up her bag and went to the door.
‘We’re all thinking of young Donovan,’ said Jaki, her voice trembling. In that moment, she looked pale and ill, compressing her lips after she’d spoken as if she was trying to contain tears. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fighting just as hard as he can. He’s young and strong,’ she added.
Natalie paused at the doorway. ‘I never thought anything like this would happen in my family,’ she said. ‘Now I can never say sorry to Bryson. For what I did. Never.’
‘What do you mean?’ Angie asked.
Natalie blinked her red-rimmed eyes. ‘I mean my anger with him. The way I threw him out of the house. Now it all seems so unimportant.’ Her voice trembled as she continued. ‘Life is so precious. And so suddenly all over.’
While Angie escorted Natalie to the lift, Gemma picked up the crime scene photographs once more.
‘I hope you’re not still feeling bad about standing us up the other night,’ she said to Jaki. ‘You sounded so distressed on the phone.’
‘I’d had a hellish day,’ Jaki said. ‘This fluey thing, and I was exhausted and then . . . when I realised I’d totally forgotten my celebration dinner . . .’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Gemma. ‘We’ll make it up sometime. When you’re feeling better.’ She examined the sprawled bodies, the dark red pools surrounding them, the palm-frond bloodstains on the wall of the staircase indicating the haemorrhage that had nearly claimed the life of a little boy.
Jaki’s mobile rang and as she answered it, Angie returned.
‘Suspicious death at Moore Park,’ Jaki told them as she repocketed her mobile. ‘They need someone from ballistics to attend.’
‘Jaki! No way! You’re not to go,’ Angie ordered. ‘Get someone else to cover it. Go home and get to bed! Don’t even think about attending. You look like death warmed up.’
‘You do, Jaki. Take some time off,’ Gemma said. ‘And I’m really sorry about your cat.’
Jaki looked from one of them to the other, her lips trembling in her pale face. ‘It’s the job. It’s really been getting to me lately. I keep thinking of that little kid, running down the stairs and then . . .’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Get that new fellow – the transfer from the Northern Beaches,’ said Angie.
‘Hayden? Hayden David?’
‘That’s right. Why can’t he do it?’
‘He’s not experienced enough,’ said Jaki. ‘He hasn’t got his certificate yet.’
‘When did that ever stop anyone round here?’ asked Angie, her eyes turning heavenwards in disbelief. ‘Experience is what you pick up on the job. He can do this one. Do him good.’
‘Jaki,’ said Gemma, ‘you said something else happened, as well as the cat, that upset you. Someone’s idea of a joke?’
Jaki looked away. ‘I got a sort of anonymous . . . letter,’ she said. ‘But really, I don’t want to discuss it right now.’
These women with things they don’t want to talk about, thought Gemma, remembering Natalie and the painting of Jason and his bride.
‘Paulette can go to that suspicious death,’ decided Angie. ‘I was impressed at the steady way she worked the other night, and Sean said she handled the Lindfield scene really professionally.’ Angie pointed through the glass wall of her office. ‘Look. There she is now, back from her job. I’ll catch her before she leaves again.’
Angie opened the door of her office and called out.
Paulette, a statuesque brunette, whose work overalls couldn’t quite disguise an exceptional figure, but whose severe hairstyle – long locks pulled back tight into a clip – did nothing to enhance her face, responded. Clutching a large paper physical evidence bag in one hand and some shopping in the other, she came over to join them. She didn’t look very pleased at the interruption, Gemma noted, her thin-lipped expression tightening. However, she put her packages down and fished out a tiny notepad and pencil, listening to Jaki, jotting down details of the new job. Paulette’s strong face, although marred by too-heavy use of lipstick and foundation, was in marked contrast to Jaki’s pallor and tremulous mo
uth. Paulette hadn’t lost her eagerness and keenness, enthusiasm and idealism – yet. Gemma thought she even detected a slightly contemptuous glance from the junior examiner. Stick around, kid, Gemma thought. You’ll lose your shine in a few years.
‘After I’ve locked this stuff away and grabbed something to eat,’ said Paulette, picking up her bags, ‘I could attend.’
‘Great,’ said Angie. She turned her attention to Jaki once Paulette had left. ‘As for you,’ she ordered, pointing a finger at her young friend, ‘bed, Constable. Go home now. Enjoy your new flat. If you can.’ She turned to Gemma. ‘The lucky woman has moved into this gorgeous place overlooking Coogee Beach.’
‘Oh?’ said Gemma. ‘Whereabouts?’
As Jaki described the building in Dudley Street with its Spanish tiles and graceful entrance area, Gemma recognised it. ‘I know that building,’ she said. ‘Santiago. I looked at a place there before I bought at Phoenix Bay.’
Gemma stood back to allow Jaki through the door. As Angie picked up her briefcase and keys to join them, she noticed a shopping bag under the desk.
‘This must be Paulette’s,’ said Angie, peering into the bag. ‘It’s her new shoes. I know she wanted them for tonight.’
‘She only lives over at Waverley,’ said Jaki. ‘I could drop them at her place on my way home. It’s not far out of my way.’
‘Give me the address and I can do that,’ said Gemma. ‘No need for you to go out of your way. Not in your condition.’
Angie scribbled the address down for her and Gemma took the shopping bag and followed the others out of Angie’s office. On the way to the lifts, she glanced at a photograph of a head-on collision stuck to the partition of a desk. The driver’s body protruded through the shattered windscreen, his head horribly flattened on the crumpled chassis. Life is precious, Gemma thought, as Natalie’s words resonated in her mind. And so quickly over. One minute that driver had been talking and laughing and driving along. The next minute, he had been catapulted into death. Beside the image was a photograph of a tiny baby, abandoned by its mother in a toilet. Gemma felt tears prick her eyes as she turned away from the photographs. The woman who did that must have been desperate, Gemma thought. Probably only a kid herself.
She thought of her own baby, ticking away in the tiny floating capsule inside her. This might well be her only chance at motherhood, as Heather Pike had suggested. She couldn’t throw this chance away. So many women missed out through no fault of their own.
The neglected nymph posing in the centre of the dead fountain at Findlay Finn’s house arose in her mind. Water no longer flowed from her jar to splash into the pool at her feet; she stood alone and abandoned, her blind eyes staring at the surrounding overgrown gardens. A thrill of fear and excitement shivered through Gemma as she recognised that life had thrown this amazing possibility her way. It was completely unexpected, it was completely inconvenient, and yet . . . all she had to do was catch it and run with it. Life was forcing her into a position where she had to choose.
Jaki had left them and only she and Angie stepped outside into the windy day, blinking at the grit that hit their faces, hurrying down the wide steps onto Goulburn Street.
Tiny flame-shaped buds were spearing out from the bare limbs of the plane trees along the footpath. Despite her own past, she did have it in her to be a mother. It was eminently possible. Just as Gemma thought this, a snowy pigeon, one of the dozens that roosted on the window ledges above, flew almost to her feet, and she stooped, believing for a moment that she could cradle the perfect creature. But as she moved her hands to touch it, the bird spread its wings in a blindingly white flash against the clear sky, rising vertically like some pious image of the Holy Spirit from childhood memory.
Gemma squinted to stare after it as it flew into the blue sky, disappearing over the buildings opposite. She felt her spirits lift with the pigeon’s flight. Behind her, the huge grey concrete fortress towered. People came and went up the steps, vanishing inside. The wind blew a discarded newspaper so that it danced in an eddy around the middle of the road. Life is precious, Gemma repeated. And in that second, despite the incongruity of her surroundings, the mental scales tipped finally in the direction of the baby. Still uplifted by the soaring bird, she grabbed Angie’s arm.
‘Angie,’ she cried. ‘I’m going to do it! I’m going to have this baby! I can do it!’
For a split second, Angie looked bewildered. Then she threw her arms and her briefcase around Gemma, kissing and hugging her in an enthusiastic embrace.
‘Gemster, of course you can! Of course!’
Angie stepped back, blinking.
‘You’re crying!’ said Gemma.
‘Nah. Just some grit in my eyes. Damn wind. I’m buying a bottle of champagne and some luxury nibbles and coming over to your place at lunchtime to make a toast to you. And the baby.’
Suddenly serious, Gemma asked, ‘And we’ve got to talk about you and Trevor Dawson.’
Angie looked away, squinting against the gritty wind.
‘Did you notice anything about Bettina’s necklace in the family photograph?’ Gemma asked.
Angie frowned. ‘Only that it was intact.’
‘They were all perfectly round beads. There was no big heart-shaped bead in the middle. Or anywhere.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I looked very carefully. Ask Natalie for another look and you’ll see for yourself.’
‘Then where the hell did that large one come from?’ Angie said thoughtfully.
Twelve
Angie’s question kept ringing through Gemma’s mind as she drove home. Natalie said Bryson had bought several similar Venetian glass items. There was no guarantee the killer had carried the broken heart away unknowingly. The damaged bead could have been lost earlier in the grounds by some other family member. It could have fallen off a keyring, a necklet or a bracelet.
It was possible that someone else, completely unconnected to the murders, had lost it there.
Gemma picked up the mail on her way down the stone steps to her flat. Bills. She mentally reviewed the meeting at Angie’s office, puzzled by some of Jaki’s remarks. How could a letter be ‘sort of’ anonymous? Either something was anonymous or it was from a known recipient.
Inside, she called out to the Ratbag but there was no answer. Her desk phone rang; it was Spinner. He rang often, hoping to hear that his services were needed.
‘Sorry, Spinner,’ she said. ‘I’m handling it all myself. Don’t know how I’ll be going in six months time though.’
She could see Spinner’s grin through the wires.
‘Great! You’re going to have the baby! You’ll be a great mum. And I’ll bet Steve will come round. Once he’s got over the shock. I know a lot of men who couldn’t give a rats about the idea of having a baby, but once they get that little warm bundle in their arms, it’s a different story.’
Gemma smiled, trying to imagine her dogged colleague, with his funny, wizened face and stunted body, tenderly nursing a baby.
‘I could be a sort of stand-in, when Steve is away,’ Spinner went on.
‘He sure is away at the moment,’ Gemma said. ‘Terminally away. It’s all over, Steve and me, as far as he’s concerned.’
She reassured Spinner that she would call on him should she need help, either professionally or in ‘managing her confinement’ as Spinner quaintly put it, then rang off. Looking through the bills, she realised she’d forgotton to drop off Paulette Heath’s shoes. She glanced at her watch – she had time to get to Waverley and back before Angie arrived.
•
She found Paulette’s place, a tiny semi at the end of a row of six, seriously run-down but obviously being renovated in stages. Gemma cranked the old-fashioned door bell and waited. Probably Paulette wasn’t home yet from the Moore Park job. She was about to turn away a
nd look for a safe place round the back to stow the shoes when she heard footsteps coming down the hall and Paulette let her in. She wore a tight-fitting low-cut jumper with a short skirt and boots.
‘Hi, Paulette,’ said Gemma, extending the shopping bag, unable to suppress her envy at the woman’s striking figure. ‘Angie said you’d be needing these. You left them in her office.’
‘So that’s where they were,’ said Paulette. ‘Come in, come in.’
Gemma followed her through the narrow hallway, glimpsing the messy bedroom on her right reflected in the mirror of a heavily carved wardrobe, before Paulette hastily closed the door, then into the main room, noticing the elaborate CCTV security system with its screen split four ways, covering back and front entrances as well as the garage and side lane. Cop’s paranoia, just like her own.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ said Paulette. ‘I’m just back from that job at Moore Park. Shoulda seen the dead’un. I nearly fainted when I walked in.’
She was chatty, needing to debrief, thought Gemma.
‘I’ll have something cold,’ she said, and Paulette went to a small fridge next to a lounge chair.
‘Renovations,’ she explained. ‘My kitchen doesn’t really exist at the moment. You don’t drink coffee?’
Gemma smiled. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’
It was the first time she’d said this. Until that moment, she’d merely been ‘pregnant’.
Paulette passed her a small bottle of orange juice while she pulled the ring from a can of Coke. She upended it and swallowed hard. ‘That’s better. This guy had been dead about a week, lying on his bed. One of those old rooming houses. He wasn’t in too bad shape, considering the amount of time. But his head – God. The uniforms called me in thinking it was some sort of horrendous murder. Poor bastard had been skinned. Or rather his face was. There’s this big red skull grinning at me. Then I went outside where one of the uniforms was emptying a tin of dog food on the concrete for the dead guy’s starving dog who’d been locked inside. There’s your perpetrator, I said. The dog had licked all the skin off his master’s face. A baby, eh?’
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