This could be an excellent opportunity, thought Gemma.
Sister Gretel had silently appeared. ‘Come this way,’ she said. She must have been somewhere close by all the time, Gemma realised, listening.
A little spooked, Gemma allowed Gretel to lead her to a small room off the central assembly area.
‘You’ll need to disrobe,’ said Gretel, modestly turning away.
‘Why on earth?’ Gemma demanded, deeply suspicious.
‘You need to put all worldly things aside,’ said Gretel. ‘Putting off the flesh and putting on the spirit. You’ll find a gown to cover your nakedness, specially designed and blessed for the purpose, hanging behind the door. I’ll return in a few minutes.’
To cover your nakedness, Gemma mentally repeated the biblical phrase. This was very weird, she thought. But if it gave her access to Grace . . . She’d been in weirder circumstances than these.
Shivering a little in the chilly room, Gemma took off her outer garments, keeping only her underwear on, then slipped the flimsy white muslin robe behind the door over her head.
Gretel returned and frowned. ‘Everything but the robe has to come off.’
Gemma felt herself rebelling, but bit back her words. Silently, under Gretel’s watchful eyes, she removed her bra and knickers then replaced the robe. Grace must have undergone this too, she thought.
‘Now,’ said Gretel briskly, ‘all Yeshwa needs is something personal of yours.’
Like my credit card, Gemma thought.
‘That sounds easy,’ she said, looking through her briefcase and finding an exhausted lipstick. ‘What about this?’
‘That would be perfect,’ said Gretel.
‘What happens now?’ Gemma asked, taken aback. ‘I’m getting cold.’
Gretel gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Follow me,’ she said.
Gemma followed her out of the small room back into the large assembly area. It had been darkened now so that only a few pinpoints of overhead lighting remained, like distant stars.
‘Wait here. The session will begin in a few minutes. Just empty your mind.’
Yeah, right, thought Gemma. Here she was naked, just about, shivering and wearing some sort of nightie, waiting for a meeting with an archangel.
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ Gemma said. ‘I’ve never met an archangel before.’
‘The ritual is very simple,’ Gretel explained. ‘You will be covered by the sigils of the angels –’
‘Sigils?’
‘Every angel and archangel has a signature, known as a sigil – a form of divine writing. Please wait.’
Gretel was suddenly gone and in the doorway stood an apparition. A tall, white-robed figure, face completely hidden under an impassive mask of gold, approached. Was it Stark? Gemma was unsure as no hair showed under the long veil. Behind the masked figure walked another, which she recognised as the spare figure of Gretel, now also gowned and masked, carrying a long piece of fabric covered with odd curling glyphs: short, transecting tendrils with knobs at the ends, in gold, reminding Gemma of scientific models of atoms.
Silently, the two figures approached, the tall one indicating that Gemma should sit on a carved chair.
Gemma fought back the desire to laugh hysterically. The charade felt so theatrical, so contrived. She strove to find some spiritual uplift in it and failed.
She sat while Gretel draped the lengths of gold-printed fabric over her, obscuring her vision. The material was sheer enough for her to discern shadows and she was aware of movement overhead, as someone made circular passes around the top of her head. A low, droning sound arose from some hidden speakers, similar to the sound of chanting Tibetan monks.
‘Archangel Reziel!’ Yeshwa’s voice invoked. ‘Be present among us! In the name of the most high, the many and the few, I command you!’
This command was repeated twice more, in a rising voice, and at the same time the growling chant of the monks became louder and louder until Gemma’s ears were ringing with it. The desire to giggle passed, replaced with anxiety and childhood memories of strange pagan practices as depicted by Hollywood.
The circular passes around her head moved lower. Now she sensed the movements at mid-face level. It took all her willpower not to pull the gold-painted shroud away and jump up. Grace must have gone through this ritual, Gemma told herself again.
She sensed stillness as the movements of the figures beyond her veil ceased.
Instead, she heard a strange voice intone, ‘I am here. I declare myself to be present. I am Archangel Reziel.’
Gemma froze. Had a third party entered the room or was this some sort of ventriloquism on the part of Yeshwa?
‘I pronounce this being to whom you have brought me to be of a superior kind – a being of great quality. Only a little purging is required before she can join in all our mysteries.’
The movements beyond Gemma’s veil started again and the mention of ‘purging’ alarmed her. She was aware of the close physical presence of one of the figures; Yeshwa – she was sure it was Yeshwa – was moving against her, pressing his body into hers. She was about to protest when she felt hard fingers probing around her breasts.
‘Get away from me!’ she roared, jumping up, pushing Yeshwa backwards, her hands powered by the instinctive force of her entire body. Ripping the veil from her face, she saw Yeshwa struggling on the floor, entangled in his draperies, muffled curses coming from behind his mask, now slightly askew, so that it seemed to sneer at her with malevolence.
Gemma pushed past Gretel and ran to the small anteroom, scooped up her belongings, raced back through the large central area and out onto the verandah. Heading for the flyscreen door, she ran down the steps towards her car, doubling back a few metres to retrieve a fallen shoe. She unlocked the car, threw in the clothes and scrambled in. It wasn’t until she tried to put the key in the ignition that she realised she was shaking. The grotesque manner in which Stark had groped her, the formal, theatrical setting of the assault on her body, made it all somehow sickeningly worse. She snatched up her jacket and put it over the thin gown she’d been given and started the car. As she reversed down the driveway, she saw Gretel, no longer wearing her angel outfit, running across the front of the house towards the kneeling woman, who’d paused in her weeding to look at Gemma’s car.
Gemma braked and watched as Gretel grasped the weeding woman’s arm, jerked her to her feet and hurried her towards the side entrance. But just before starting up the steps, the woman paused and turned, looking back towards Gemma. Her face beneath the scarf was pale and her tawny hair, where it was not hidden by the scarf, was almost exactly the same colour as Gemma’s; the woman’s jawline identical to that of Dr Archie Chisholm, their philandering father. Stunned, Gemma switched off the ignition. She leaned out the car window and her gaze locked with that of the woman being hustled inside by Gretel. In that split second, Gemma saw something that frightened her.
Thirteen
It was quite a few minutes before Gemma thought to pull off the road. Shakily, she dragged her jeans back on, and, screwing up the flimsy gown Gretel had given her, threw it into the back of the car, replacing it with her shirt and jacket. She sat in the relative silence of the bushland, aware of cars occasionally whizzing past. When she’d calmed down, she rang Angie.
‘Indecent assault,’ said Angie as she listened. ‘Report the bastard!’
‘He’ll deny it. Say it was accidental. Say I’m imagining things, trying to make trouble for him. But I’m determined now to get Grace out of there. I saw her, Angie. I swear it was Grace. She looked drugged. Or spaced out or something. God knows what else goes on there.’
‘Gemster, she’s free and white and over twenty-one. You can’t save people from themselves. If your sister has made a decision to join The Group, maybe she’s happy with the grope or whatever
goes on.’
‘Angie, what if she’s not? You know how these groups operate. They foster dependency, they cut people off from their normal networks. Grace may not even have any money.’ Gemma realised she was almost in tears.
‘Take it easy, hon,’ said Angie. ‘You’ve got to look after yourself.’
‘Things are getting to me lately,’ said Gemma. ‘I get tearful over things that wouldn’t have bothered me before. Once I would have just decked someone like Stark.’
‘From what you told me,’ said Angie, ‘I thought that’s exactly what you did.’
‘I mean decked. Really knocked him down,’ Gemma explained. ‘Not just shoved him away. Hang on.’
She fished a tissue out of her bag and blew her nose. ‘I’ve been in far worse situations than this and laughed them off. Now, some dickhead goes the grope and I fall over. I wonder if it’s the pregnancy making me so sensitive – or if it’s something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘I catch myself wondering what it’s all about. My life, I mean. I’m just making enough money to get by as it is. God knows how I’m going to manage with a baby, despite Mr Howard’s dollars.’ She sighed before continuing. ‘Every day I get up and do the same old things. When I was younger, I used to wonder how to make a life for myself.’
‘You just get up in the morning and you do it,’ said Angie. ‘Life happens to you.’
‘That works for a while,’ Gemma agreed. ‘I joined the police because it seemed like a different and interesting career with good money to start – and that worked for a while. Then I set up my own business – and that worked for a while. Now I’ve got this baby coming . . . I guess what I’m fearing is that it’ll work – for a while.’ Gemma paused a moment. ‘I see now that I’ve always used goals to pull myself along, to make it worthwhile getting up in the morning. But I can’t be using this baby as some sort of carrot to drag me through the rest of my life. That wouldn’t be fair to the baby, Angie; that would mean the baby is carrying something that’s mine. Once this baby comes, I won’t be able to work. At least not for a while. How am I going to pay the bills?’
She rang off, frowning. Where in hell had all that come from?
•
An hour later, just as she was about to turn left off the freeway for the northern suburbs of Sydney, her mobile rang.
It was a few moments before she could identify Natalie, because of the high-pitched edge to her voice.
‘I’ll be there as fast as I can, Natalie. Just hang on. Okay?’
•
Natalie, her face blotchy with crying, opened the door of her house and let Gemma in. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long she’s been gone. I didn’t know where else to turn.’
Gemma followed Natalie past the living room and down the hallway towards the rear of the house and a closed door with a hand-lettered sign stuck on it: ‘Jade’s room: Keep out.’ Natalie pushed the door open and Gemma entered the room.
‘I came in here just a while ago and this is what I found. Here. Read it for yourself.’
Gemma took the envelope from Natalie’s shaking hands. It wasn’t addressed to anyone and she pulled out the note and read it.
‘I can’t stand being here a moment longer,’ Jade had written. ‘And you know why. Don’t go looking for me because I won’t come back. It’s time I left. Goodbye.’
Gemma looked up from her reading. ‘What does she mean: “you know why”?’ she asked.
‘No idea,’ said Natalie quickly.
‘When did you find this?’
‘Just before I rang you. When I came home from the hospital. It was lying on the bed. She’s only taken an overnight bag. She’s got a few hundred dollars saved in her account. God knows what she intends to do. She’s a child! Where will she go?’ Natalie sank onto the unmade bed. ‘I can’t believe what’s happening to my family. It’s like living in a nightmare. I know I should have tried harder to talk to Jade about what’s happened. But I’ve been so preoccupied with Donny, and she’s been so difficult the last couple of months. Whenever I tried to talk to her, to be with her, she wouldn’t let me.’
‘I’ll do what I can to find her and bring her home safely,’ said Gemma, touched by Natalie’s grief, sitting beside her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. ‘I know this is a dreadful time for your family. Have you any idea where she might go?’
Natalie shook her head. ‘No one’s heard from her. I tried my mother in case Jade had gone over to her place, but Mum hasn’t seen her for weeks.’
‘What about school friends?’
‘I’ve already rung them. She has two close friends but she hasn’t spoken to them for ages, they said. And she hasn’t been going to school lately anyway. The girls have no idea where she might be.’
‘Does she have a boyfriend?’ Gemma asked, looking around the room, picking up what she could about the runaway, letting the decor and artefacts speak about the missing girl.
‘No,’ said Natalie.
Framed school awards indicated that Jade was a conscientious and creative student. Her art and craft work were in evidence, and Gemma’s attention was taken by a beautiful piece of embroidery, the attached certificate revealing that it was part of Jade’s School Certificate art prac. It depicted the prince trying Cinderella’s glass slipper on her dainty foot, done in silks and other fine fabrics, the glass slipper made of delicate beadwork. She noticed, too, that gold and crystal Venetian glass drops, similar to those that formed the necklace Bettina Finn had worn, had been worked into the collage. Bryson Finn had clearly given his daughter Venetian glass gifts too. Gemma thought of something.
‘Did Bryson give Jade a Venetian glass heart?’
‘I think so. I know he gave her a necklace just like Bettina’s, only with smaller beads. She dismantled it for that embroidery piece. You can see the beads there.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Gemma said, forgetting for a moment the drama of the situation. ‘She has a real gift.’ Another question occurred to her. ‘What did Bryson buy for you?’
Natalie frowned. ‘Why on earth do you want to know that?’
‘Just curious.’
‘It was a necklace, with bigger beads than Bettina’s, but much the same gold leaf and crystal effect.’
‘I’d like to see it,’ said Gemma.
‘Not now, Gemma. I don’t even know where I put it. It’s probably still in a box somewhere.’
‘Another time.’ Gemma smiled, bringing her focus back to the teenage girl’s bedroom.
The phone rang and Natalie left the room, leaving Gemma to look around. It was messy, with books lying open on the carpet and magazines in crooked piles. School banners and certificates cluttered the wall space and the small, heart-shaped dressing table was covered with lipsticks, cosmetic pencils and creams for pimples.
Gemma searched for a diary to no avail. But there was a mobile phone number tucked into the mirror and she noted it down.
‘I hoped that might have been Jade on the phone.’ Natalie gripped her tissue hard so that her knuckles showed white. ‘What about her father’s funeral? And Bettina’s? Is she going to come to them? I’ll never forgive her for this, for what she’s putting me through.’
‘She’s not thinking straight,’ said Gemma. ‘Call Angie. Get the police involved. She’s probably regretting what she’s done already.’
‘I’ve rung Angie, straight after I rang you,’ said Natalie. ‘But you know what the police are like. There’s nothing they can really do about runaway kids.’
‘I’ll call in everyone and everything I know,’ said Gemma. ‘I’ll find her for you, Natalie.’
On the doorstep, Gemma turned to Natalie.
‘Where was Jade the night of the murders?’
‘Jade? Here, of course. In h
er room. As far as I know. I tried to ring her from the hospital, but she never answers the phone, not even her mobile, if she knows it’s me.’
Sitting in her car outside, Gemma made some quick notes. The night of the shootings, Natalie was at work, Donny was with Bettina, and Jade – at least according to her mother – was at home. Alone.
Taking out the mobile number she’d found on Jade’s mirror, Gemma rang it. ‘I’m busy right now,’ said a breathy, professionally sexy woman’s voice, ‘but don’t worry, your turn will come, and Bambi will take you to heaven. Leave your number and I’ll get back to you.’ Gemma rang off. This was a job for one of her male operatives.
She put her notes away. Now she wasn’t feeling so confident about the promise she’d made to Natalie. How would Natalie feel if she knew her daughter had a sex worker’s mobile number in her bedroom? Another thought struck her: what if Jade and Bambi were one and the same?
She had the names and telephone numbers of Jade’s close friends, as well as a selection of fairly recent photographs of the girl. She’d start there, she decided, as soon as she got home. Next line of inquiry would be Gerda, Naomi and Karen Lucky, the streetwise sex workers liaison officer.
•
‘Hugo,’ Gemma said, back at her flat. ‘What makes kids leave home? Remind me.’
Hugo took a deep breath. ‘Because it seems better somewhere else,’ he said. ‘Because they have a feeling that no one cares about them.’
‘What if you knew something really bad about your mother,’ Gemma asked. ‘Would you leave home?’
‘Bad like what?’
‘Bad like she’d murdered your father.’
Hugo considered. ‘Maybe he deserved to be murdered.’
‘That wasn’t really the answer I was looking for, Hugo. Forget I asked you. I guess there are lots of reasons.’
Rather than buy take-away she made them some pasta for dinner, then went into her office and called Jade’s two closest girlfriends. The first didn’t answer and the second, Alison, said yes, she’d noticed a difference in her friend over the last couple of months.
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