Death by Beauty

by Lord, Gabrielle

  ‘You sound surprised,’ said Nicole sharply. ‘Didn’t you think a sex worker could draw something like that?’

  ‘I’m surprised that anyone can draw something like that,’ said Gemma, propping the portrait up on a chair.

  ‘I wanted to make a record of her, before the ice destroys her. She’s kind of a friend.’

  ‘I hope you do something with this talent,’ said Gemma. ‘There’s an art school not far from here,’ she added, thinking of Rachel Starr. ‘You might think of enrolling there.’

  ‘And starve in a garret? No thanks.’ Nicole made a face, then at the sound of footsteps she stood up, ditched the cigarette, fluffed up her hair and walked down the hallway to greet a man who was on his way in. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘Something I can do for you today?’

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Gemma, following her. ‘Thanks for your help, Nicole. If you see her or if she calls you, please give her my details. I understand she’s scared and running. But we can help her.’

  Nicole nodded and turned back to the potential client.

  As Gemma walked past the man, a casually dressed guy in his fifties, he gave her an appraising stare.

  Gemma hurried out.

  She sat in her car for a while, gathering her thoughts. This was the third case of an assault being followed up a week later – except in this case, the girl had got away.

  That’s three that conform to this pattern, Gemma thought. And one that doesn’t. What is going on here? Why was the first assault on Annabel Carr not followed up by a second? What did the other three have that Annabel Carr didn’t have? Or was that the wrong question? Did Carr have something the other three didn’t? Something that kept the killer away? If she could find the answer to these questions, Gemma knew she would be on the way to solving these crimes.

  She leaned back in the seat, oblivious to her surroundings. A warning voice from the back of her mind sounded. Mischa, she thought. I must check up on Mischa in case there’s a second attack on her.

  She pulled out her phone and was relieved when Mischa answered. After talking briefly, Gemma drove to her Kensington address.

  It was a quiet, suburban street and a solid house from the fifties set back from a small lawn at the front and a crazy-paved footpath curving around the side. The windows were standard up-and-down old sash types, and there were no security grilles.

  Gemma parked out the front then walked around the side and knocked on the door, noticing how easily the two amber glass panels on either side of it could be kicked in. Mischa opened the door and invited Gemma in.

  ‘I was on my way home from work when you rang,’ she said. Gemma noticed the tiny gold arrow brooch now decorating the lapel of the navy jacket hanging from the door handle.

  ‘Has Angie McDonald called you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Just wondering. I don’t generally do this for all my clients, but I wanted to see how secure your place is. Ever thought about getting grilles on the windows?’

  ‘Not really. We’ve got locks on them.’

  Mischa explained that she rented the house with two other women. One of the girls was away a lot for her job, the other worked as a registered nurse at the Prince of Wales Hospital doing shift work.

  ‘I’m often alone,’ she said, in answer to Gemma’s questions. ‘Until the – the incident – I didn’t mind. Now I’m really nervous. I’ve pretty much stopped going out at night. I’m still waiting to have that second test. I don’t even know if I’m HIV positive or not. It’s no way to live.’

  Gemma nodded with sympathy as Mischa took her on a guided tour of the place. In every room they visited, Gemma became more concerned as she saw easy points of entry, from windows at waist level that anyone could just step through, to a dodgy looking addition at the back of the house for the laundry and a second toilet. It was built of light masonry and looked as if a few good kicks would bring the whole thing down. If the vampire decided to attack Mischa again, he’d have no difficulty getting inside.

  ‘Mischa,’ said Gemma, gently, ‘I don’t want to frighten you, but is there somewhere you could stay for a little while? This house isn’t secure at all. It’s realistic to be concerned,’ she said calmly, noticing the fear in the woman’s face. ‘Let’s do what’s necessary to keep you safe.’

  ‘You’re thinking he might come back again?’

  ‘It’s definitely a possibility,’ said Gemma. ‘The offender had plenty of time to go through your bag and find your address and phone number and where you work.’

  ‘I guess I could go home, to Mum’s place for a while, but …’

  Gemma waited.

  ‘But she would want to know why I wanted to stay with her. And she’d be really worried if I told her.’

  ‘I’m sure you can think of a plausible reason. Like the lease running out. You don’t have to tell her what happened if you don’t want to.’ Gemma paused.

  ‘Even if you put grilles on the windows, the front and back doors can’t be secured properly. It would be best if you found another place to live. Just until we lock this guy up for a long, long time.’

  ‘What about my housemates?’ Mischa asked. ‘Are they in danger too?’

  Gemma didn’t reply.

  ‘Of course, it’s me he’s after,’ said the frightened girl. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Go and stay with your mother. Or stay at a friend’s place.’

  Is this the best I can do for these women? Gemma thought, as they finished viewing the house and returned to the front hall, tell them to run and hide?

  ‘Please think about staying somewhere else,’ she repeated, as she was leaving.

  Back in her car she saw she’d missed two calls, both from Delphine Tolmacheff.

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asked, ringing back.

  ‘I hope so. Angelo wants to know why I’m away. I told him I’m on a mercy dash – visiting an old friend who’s had a bad diagnosis. I think he believes me. Have you found anything yet? I can’t come home until he’s been put away somewhere.’

  ‘As soon as I find something, you’ll be the first to know,’ Gemma promised.

  As that call ended, another one came through from Mike. ‘Just letting you know I’ve picked up Rafi and we’re making spinach-and-ricotta pie for dinner. Rafi’s a great little cook.’

  ‘Thanks, Mike. I shouldn’t be much longer.’

  She rang off, planning to drive straight home but intead she found herself dialling another number. He answered almost immediately.

  ‘Steve, it’s me. You at home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to come round. I need to talk to you.’

  CHAPTER 15

  When Steve let her in, his eyes darted left and right, barely glancing at her before pulling her inside and closing the door. Together in the narrow hallway of his flat, it seemed natural that they should hold each other. Gemma felt tears start and gritted her jaw to stop them. They stood like this for minutes before breaking apart to walk into his living room. A bottle of scotch and a half-drunk whisky-and-water stood on the table near the window. Gemma noticed that the indoor plants – most of which she’d given him – were dying from lack of water. Several photographs that Steve had taken years ago and enlarged, hung on the walls. One showed dolphins playing in the surf near Port Stephens; she remembered that blue-and-gold day clearly, the turquoise swell with the dolphins breaking through the glassy waves in a shower of diamond drops, and Steve’s excitement as he photographed them. Beside this enlargement was an elaborate black wrought-iron sconce with branching arms for candles, which Gemma had bought him from a trash-and-treasure sale years ago. Three dusty candles stood not quite straight in their holders.

  She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle, returning to water the dry pots. Steve watched her in silence until she placed the empty kettle on the coffee table near the bookcase.

  ‘Angie said you called her, Steve. What’s happening?’

  ‘
I’m done for, Gemma,’ he said, not looking at her, instead staring ahead at the bookcase. ‘It’s the end of the line for me. I’ll end up in jail down at Mittagong, with all the corrupt cops, working in the vegie garden and watching my back.’ He spat out the last few words with contempt. ‘They’ve been talking to everyone who ever worked with me, and that includes people who hate my guts and who are remembering all sorts of things I’m supposed to have done – or failed to do. Whatever makes me look even worse.’ He turned around and she was shocked again at how exhausted and despairing he looked.

  ‘Steve, I—’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do, Gems. Nothing anyone can do. I’ve heard a whisper of what I’m up against – a whole lot of corrupt activities that make a pattern until the big one: taking fifteen thousand dollars from Fayed.’ He flung his arms out in anger. ‘Hell, I fucking wish I had! At least I might be able to make a down payment on some decent legal support!’

  He slumped on the old brown leather lounge, head in hands, and Gemma crouched down by his side, putting her arms around him and rocking him like she would a distressed child.

  ‘Steve, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘There must be something we can do.’

  ‘There’s one thing I’m seriously considering.’

  Gemma said nothing, just tightened her hold on him.

  ‘I’m not supposed to know anything about this – it’s been hell just going to work as if everything was normal, trying not to notice the looks on the faces of the people who have already been interviewed about me and sworn to secrecy about it; the way they look away from me, the way they avoid me in the meal room. I haven’t had any decent work for weeks. The stuff I’ve been given to do, you wouldn’t give to a sixteen-year-old work-experience kid. Every hour I’m waiting for the hand on my shoulder and the arrest warrant.’

  ‘You said there is something you’re considering …’ she asked, dreading his answer.

  ‘It’s not suicide, if that’s what you’re wondering. Although I know of enough poor bastards who’ve gone down that road. Gems, I’m thinking of getting out. Before my name goes on a watch list.’

  ‘Leaving the police?’

  ‘Leaving the country.’

  ‘But you can’t!’

  ‘Why not? My passport’s in order. I’ve got a credit card. I’m not on a watch list. Yet.’

  ‘But where would you go? What would you do?’

  ‘Do what a lot of other men have done. Go to Vietnam, or Bali. Maybe Java. I know a guy who runs a bar in Surabaya. I can always get work there.’

  ‘Surabaya? No way. You’ve got to stay and fight this. You can’t run away,’ she said, taking her arms away from around him and trying to read his face.

  ‘Gemma, if it was a fair fight, I would stay. But the fix is in. I’m already guilty. All the evidence points that way. There’s no way out.’

  ‘But Fayed has to withdraw the false allegations. And so does Litchfield. That’s all it would take to blow this away.’

  ‘Oh sure. As if,’ he spat bitterly. ‘This is their golden moment. God knows what Lorraine has told Fayed about me. No doubt I’m a woman-beater and a rock spider. There’s no way they’ll throw away this chance to get me.’

  ‘We’ve got to find a way of forcing them to withdraw the allegations – finding something they fear more than jail.’

  Steve held his head in his hands, and then wearily straightened up to face her. ‘Gemma, I’ve made a total stuff-up of my life. Here I am; in another few years I’ll be fifty. What have I got to show for it? A ten-year-old Holden station wagon and a very small amount of equity in this lousy one-bedroom apartment full of dead plants. I stuffed things up with you and now there’s a little boy who doesn’t know me and who’ll grow up without knowing his real father. I’ve played up, I’ve lived the hard-working, hard-drinking party life. I devoted way too much energy to the job. And now, after a quarter of a century locking up bad guys, I’m about to join them for something I didn’t do. Like they always say, TJF.’

  TJF, she thought. The job’s fucked.

  ‘And they’re right,’ Steve continued. ‘And I’m fucked too. I’ve made a mess of everything.’

  ‘Steve, I used to think that of my life. For a while. Then when I realised I was pregnant with Rafi, and before I found out about you and Julie Cooper, I used to hope that the three of us could become a family. It was that thought and Angie’s good advice that stopped me from having a termination. I was pretty low at that time, though, thinking how hard life as a single mum was going to be. I don’t feel like that anymore. Things have turned out well for me and Mike. Good things can still happen for you. Even if it’s not with me and Rafi as a family. You can have all the access to Rafi you want.’

  ‘I don’t want my son visiting me in prison,’ Steve spat.

  ‘Let’s find a way out of this,’ she begged. ‘Between all of us – me, Spinner and maybe even Mike – we can help you beat this. I’ve got these deep connections now with my son and my sister and my friends – and Mike,’ she added. ‘You’re so alone with all this unless you let us help you.’

  After a silence he looked up and said, ‘Gemma, I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking the last few days and if all this hadn’t blown up in my face, I could almost imagine myself asking you if there was a chance, if it wasn’t too late for the three of us … You, me and Rafi.’

  She couldn’t answer, her eyes searching his haggard, despairing face.

  Don’t do this, Steve. Don’t. It’s too late, too late, beat her heart.

  ‘That was a stupid thing to say,’ Steve said. ‘I already know the answer. Of course it’s too bloody late.’

  Gemma didn’t know how it happened but seconds later she and Steve were in a tight embrace on the couch, gasping for breath after a long kiss. She jumped up, her head spinning. ‘I have to go,’ she said, panicked and elated. ‘Please don’t do anything crazy. Let me think about this. We can find a way through this. Steve, please don’t give up. Please. For your sake. For Rafi’s sake.’

  On an impulse, she pulled out her wallet, slipping out the photograph of Rafi that she carried with her everywhere. It showed him looking surprised and alert, his huge eyes wide above his broad smile and his hair sticking up in soft punky peaks. ‘Here, take this.’

  Steve took the photograph and stared at it, and suddenly his face fell and Gemma thought he was going to cry. Instead, he composed himself, and propped the photograph up against the bookcase. ‘What a great little guy,’ he whispered, looking at it. ‘He deserves a much better father than me.’

  ‘Please, Steve, don’t give up. We’ll think of something.’

  He was silent. She stood up and took a last look at him, sitting on the couch, rubbing a hand over his thick untidy hair, his sad, tired eyes following her as she hurried out of the room, down the narrow hall to the front door, closing it firmly behind her, her heart still racing and an unvoiced howl starting to unwind deep within her breast.

  Mike was busy in his office when she got home. ‘I put Rafi down to sleep, he was exhausted. But he’ll probably only be down for ten minutes,’ he said as she walked past the doorway. ‘And I’m nearly done in here.’

  ‘Okay, Mike. Thanks.’

  She was grateful for some space to compose herself. She needed to be alone for a little while. She needed to get her pulse under control. She needed to get Steve’s situation out of her mind. She needed to get Steve out of her heart.

  Sometime later, Mike walked into the room. ‘Have you been gardening lately?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Come outside. There’s something I want to show you.’

  She followed him out to the rose bush under the bedroom window, bare now except for tiny swellings along its length, ready for bud burst.

  ‘Take a look at that,’ Mike said.

  One rose cane had been freshly snapped and was hanging from the bush. Gemma looked from it to the soil underneath. There were signs of disturbanc
e, flattening, unevenness. She stepped back in alarm. ‘I haven’t been near that rose for weeks. Someone’s been here. Outside our window.’

  ‘We’ll set up a camera – catch whoever it is.’

  ‘Taxi heard something the other night. He was on full alert when I came out to the kitchen.’

  Gemma turned to see that their neighbour Elaine Curtis, a fragile woman in her fifties, whose shiny hair always fell in a perfect bob, had come outside. ‘Elaine,’ she called, ‘this might sound a funny question but have you been over here in the garden?’

  ‘Me?’ Elaine looked puzzled. ‘No. Of course not. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Someone’s been here,’ said Mike.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ she said, drawing closer. ‘A prowler?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Gemma, ‘but please don’t be worried. We’re going to set up a camera.’

  ‘Good idea. I don’t like the thought of someone creeping around. We don’t want that sort of thing.’

  After Gemma had tucked Rafi in for the night, she helped Mike rig a security camera on the wall adjacent to their bedroom window, angled to cover it and the surrounding area. She tested it, then went into her office, sat down and took a deep breath. At least now she’d get to see whoever had been lurking around her home.

  She pulled up her notes and focused her attention on the assault on Brie. If the girl hadn’t been able to slip out of her attacker’s grasp when he returned, would she now be lying somewhere with her head and pelvis destroyed? Under the names and comments about the other women, she added: ‘Brie – “vampire” attack. One week later he comes back but she gets away.’

  What the hell was going on with this killer? I should have been more direct with Mischa, she thought. Should have told her what had happened to the others.

  She picked up her phone and rang Mischa’s number, but it rang out. She left a message, hoping Mischa had moved to her mother’s place, uneasy with the uncertainty, haunted by the images of the two earlier victims.