Spiking the Girl

by Lord, Gabrielle

  The forensic anthropologist approached them, her gloved fingers bagging what looked like greyish stones.

  ‘Francie Suskievicz,’ she said, introducing herself, her blue eyes soft but shrewd at the same time behind her glasses.

  Angie noted it down, checking the spelling. ‘What’ve you got?’ she asked.

  ‘A lot of teeth.’ Francie waved another plastic bag towards them. ‘And this looks like part of a female pelvis. The rest is too fragmented and charred.’ She shook the bagged teeth. ‘At first, I thought it might have been an ancient burial ground. But several of the teeth had amalgam fillings, so it’s definitely more recent. Seems to extend from that ridge over there,’ she said, pointing, ‘to where those trees start.’

  That was a big crime scene, Gemma thought. A roughly cleared area about the size of a football field, rising to a ridge at one end, straggly eucalypts along one side, the road on the other.

  Angie took the bagged piece of bone and shook it, looking at it from another angle. ‘How many involved?’

  Francie pulled a face. ‘Can’t really say. Not at this stage. I’ve already got enough teeth to indicate several people. Depending on how many more I find, it’s quite possibly a lot more.’

  Gemma peered more closely at the bone fragment Angie was holding. It was astounding that Francie could tell what part of the body it was from, let alone the gender.

  Angie passed it back to Francie and shielded her squinting eyes with a hand. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked.

  Francie shrugged. Now that her face was relaxed, Gemma could see she was a pretty woman, younger than she’d thought. ‘I don’t know what to think. Looks like someone’s burned several, possibly five or six, bodies somewhere then buried the remains here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m going to be here for some time. This whole area is going to have to be sieved.’

  Angie pulled two business cards from her briefcase and gave one each to Melissa and Francie. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘Parramatta Homicide called me and I came out here, but there’s not much I can do right now. Once this place is marked out and you know what you’ve got, let me know and I’ll take it from there.’

  She gestured to Gemma and the two of them walked back to the car.

  ‘No way I’m spending days sieving dirt,’ said Angie. ‘I could just see Francie going to her car and passing a few around. I leave that to the youngsters these days.’

  She opened the car and switched on the air conditioning, leaning over the top of the door while the interior cooled down.

  Gemma opened her door and climbed in. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been in the crime scene field. I’d forgotten all the fun of the heat and the flies. And the stink.’

  ‘This lot is way past stink,’ said Angie, also climbing in and slamming the door. She swung the car around. ‘Let’s get back to town. They’d have picked up Romero by now.’

  They drove in silence a while and Gemma took the liberty of finding a nostalgia station on the radio. ‘This is the end, my friend,’ Jim Morrison warned. Gemma looked out the window to distract herself from thinking of Steve.

  They were just on the outskirts of the city when Angie’s mobile rang. She fumbled for the earpiece, listening intently. ‘Great work, Tracey,’ she said finally, ringing off and Gemma waited expectantly.

  ‘Okay,’ said Angie, turning to her. ‘Tracey Lee and her lot are going through the laptop you found in the garage. There’s a whole lot of images of Amy in her bedroom.’

  ‘Romero was the peeper?’ Gemma said, surprised.

  Angie shook her head. ‘He didn’t have to go out peeping. Amy was a webcam girl. And so was her friend Tasmin Summers. We found evidence of an archived website. Those girls were sending their bedrooms all around cyberspace. Tracey’s copying all the details for me. She’s got Tasmin’s laptop too. Dangerous stuff for schoolkids.’

  ‘You remember how naive we were at sixteen?’ Gemma said.

  ‘I was doing a man’s work on the farm at sixteen, running a family,’ said Angie, ‘and studying. Dad had long gone and Mum was doing her best. I didn’t do naive.’

  ‘What I’m saying,’ said Gemma, ‘is the whole world had access to Amy and Tasmin.’

  ‘You said it. School banners on the walls, uniforms. You wouldn’t have to be supercop to work out who and where those girls were. They were practically handing out their addresses.’

  ‘So Romero got those images quite legitimately?’ Gemma said. ‘Damn. I thought we had him cold. This makes everything far more complicated.’ She thought of something. ‘How come that webcam was never found in Amy’s bedroom when the first investigation was on?’

  Angie turned to her. ‘Did you see it when you looked through her room the other day?’

  Gemma shook her head. ‘There was only a big old computer there. But I wasn’t doing a search. I was there to get a sense of the girl. Getting to know her.’

  ‘How could the original investigation have missed that Amy and her bedroom were online?’

  They both turned to each other, speaking in unison. ‘Bloody Bruno!’

  ‘Bruno missed finding an old lady in her flat when I was still in the job,’ Gemma recalled, winding the window down because Angie had switched off the air conditioning. ‘Mind you, the place was a bit of a mess. And she’d been dead for a while.’

  ‘Somewhere in Amy Bernhard’s room there’s a laptop and a camera,’ said Angie. Gemma recalled the big velvet cushions decorated with the suits of playing cards, the patriotic teddy bear wearing his flag.

  ‘Soon as I get back in town,’ said Angie, ‘I’m turning that girl’s room upside down until I find it.’ She paused. ‘And talking to the boss about widening the search for Tasmin Summers.’

  ‘Count me in,’ said Gemma. ‘You know you’ll need a hand.’

  The city loomed ahead, and an aeroplane disappeared behind the buildings towards the south.

  ‘Bruno’s got to be moonlighting,’ Angie finally said.

  ‘Yeah. I was thinking the same. Or maybe he’s having an affair.’

  Angie threw her head back in mock horror. ‘A woman would have sex with him?’

  Gemma was stung.

  Angie flashed her a wicked grin. ‘He sure hasn’t got approval for a second job, because I’ve already asked.’

  ‘That wouldn’t stop Bruno. He could be doing VIP protection.’

  Angie considered. ‘God help the VIPs.’

  ‘I toyed with the idea of tailing him,’ admitted Gemma. ‘Seeing what he does, where he goes. Then, when I’ve got some dirt on him, maybe he could be helpful.’

  ‘Helpful? Bruno?’ Angie gave Gemma a look then leaned back in her seat, stretching her arms on the steering wheel. ‘I asked him about that memo—the one from Jim Buisman taking him off the earlier investigation.’

  ‘And?’ Gemma prompted.

  ‘And he hit the roof. Accused me of trying to dig up dirt on him. I told him to stop being so paranoid, that he’d given me the memo himself accidentally mixed up in the case notes. That shut him up.’

  ‘But did he say why he’d been removed?’

  ‘Reckoned it was a personal thing. They didn’t see eye to eye over certain things is how he put it. I told him I thought him and old Jim Boozeman saw eye to eye over everything. Including a schooner or ten down at the Kensington Club.’

  ‘If I had the time,’ said Gemma, ‘I’d keep an eye on him. Maybe there is some dirt to dig.’

  She took the warning note out of her briefcase and waved it. ‘Speaking of dirt—I got this in the mail. I’ve sealed it up and I don’t want to open it again.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something I want you to pass on to the analytic lab. See what they can get off it. I’d get Lance at Paradigm to do it except I know they’re up to their e
yeballs in work.’

  ‘Why? What is it? Death threat or something?’ Angie said, grinning. The grin faded as Gemma spoke.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is. Anonymous tip-off. There’s a contract out on me.’

  ‘On you? You’re not the type!’ exclaimed Angie.

  Gemma reached over and slid the sealed envelope into Angie’s slim bag on the back seat.

  ‘So what exactly did it say?’

  ‘There is a contract out on your life,’ Gemma quoted. ‘Watch your back.’

  ‘Who do you suspect?’

  Gemma shrugged. ‘There’s no one I can think of.’

  ‘What about last year? The way your files were outed? And you had some trouble with that one fellow,’ said Angie, making a fast right-hand turn.

  ‘Some trouble? Ange, the bastard tried to kill me!’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Maybe you’ve offended someone else?’

  Gemma thought of the confidential jobs made public last year. It was quite possible that she’d mortally offended more than one vengeful person.

  ‘I’ll see what the scientific fellows make of it,’ said Angie, settling down in the right-hand lane. ‘So are you taking it seriously? You should.’

  ‘Of course I am,’ said Gemma ‘I’m watching my back.’

  ‘You should probably make it official.’

  ‘What? Tell the police?’ said Gemma.

  ‘You’re hurting my feelings,’ Angie retorted.

  ‘What the hell could “official” do that I can’t?’

  ‘Then we’ve got a record of it—’

  ‘When I’m dead that’ll be a great comfort!’

  Gemma stared sightlessly at the houses, the traffic, the glare off the enamel and chrome of the cars ahead. Above, she heard a jet whining closer.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Make it official.’

  Ten

  Angie phoned ahead as they neared Lauren Bernhard’s house to warn of their arrival, treating her gently. Then, with Lauren standing in the doorway, Gemma and Angie made a thorough and systematic search of Amy Bernhard’s bedroom, starting at floor level and moving slowly higher. Barely had they begun on the lower middle grid of the room when, well hidden at the bottom of the big box of clothes and old toys, Angie found a small black laptop wrapped in a shawl and the webcam hidden in a teddy bear.

  Lauren Bernhard’s dismay was obvious as she moved closer to inspect what Angie had discovered. ‘I didn’t know she had one of those. How could she afford something like that?’ Lauren looked from Gemma to Angie. ‘How could she have been running that from my house and me not know anything about it?’

  ‘The cost of running the webcam wouldn’t show up on your accounts,’ Angie explained, ‘because you’re on broadband.’

  ‘I thought access to the net would be helpful to her studies.’ Lauren’s voice was a whisper. ‘Instead she was broadcasting her life, her bedroom, to the whole wide world!’ Her voice rose in anger and distress. ‘I can’t believe this! I knew nothing about it!’

  ‘We’ll need to take the laptop.’ Angie’s voice was gentle. ‘We’ll get it back to you as soon as the technical people have checked it out.’

  ‘Is there someone you can ring?’ Gemma suggested, not liking to leave Amy’s mother so clearly distraught. ‘Someone who could come over and be with you for a while? It might be better for you not to be alone.’

  Lauren Bernhard’s face clenched. ‘What good would that do? They’d have to go again.’ She picked up the teddy bear, which had hidden the webcam and its cable and put it back on the shelf again, redraping the Eureka flag. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘alone is how I am.’

  The two of them climbed back into Angie’s car, Gemma carefully stowing Amy Bernhard’s laptop onto the floor behind her seat. ‘The day of the laptops,’ she said. As she spoke, Angie’s mobile rang.

  ‘Bruno?’ Angie turned to Gemma and winked. ‘What a surprise! We were just talking about you.’ Gemma saw the smile on her face fade. ‘Leave the copy on my desk, please.’

  Finally she rang off and started the car. ‘Two things,’ she said. ‘He’s still off work—just dropped in to leave his medical certificate. The call was to tell me the full PM report is in on Amy Bernhard.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It gives us nothing that we didn’t already know from the prelim report.’ She paused. ‘But the best bit is,’ she grinned at Gemma, ‘that Bruno’s just discovered that both Amy and Tasmin seem to have had websites. And webcams! He’s going to look into it.’

  •

  Angie stopped outside Gemma’s place. ‘Keep the visitor’s badge,’ she said. ‘You never know when it might come in handy.’ Gemma started to get out of the car. ‘And get Spinner to keep an eye on your cute arse,’ Angie added, leaning over.

  ‘I’ve done that already.’ But, Gemma realised, he couldn’t be there all the time.

  She hurried down the steps to her front garden, letting herself in as Angie sped away. She found the Ratbag still tangled up in sheets on her lounge, watching television. She walked over and switched it off. Hugo threw the sheet over his head and lay back, a shrouded mummy, but Gemma dragged it off him.

  ‘Hugo. We’re going to have to do some serious talking. About your future.’ She sniffed the air. ‘You’ve been smoking dope!’

  ‘So?’ he said, careless.

  ‘So not in my house, sport. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m serious, Hugo. This is a business I’m running here. And if I’m ever going to employ you, I’ll need you to have a clear mind. I don’t want some brainfucked dopehead on my staff.’

  He nodded, impressed by her language. ‘Okay. What’s to eat?’

  She sent him up to the shops to buy a barbecued chicken for a late lunch, and rang Kit. After bringing her up to date with everything except the warning note about the contract, she told her sister about Hugo.

  ‘He seems to always end up at your place,’ Kit said. ‘He must really like you.’

  For the first time, the idea pleased Gemma. Maybe the kid could stay for a few days. It would be a distraction from her heartache about Steve and her fear concerning the threatened contract. And it was nice to have some company. ‘His parents won’t be too impressed,’ she said.

  ‘Have you found out any more about our half-sister?’

  Gemma thought a moment. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

  ‘Because,’ Kit continued, ‘I was thinking that your music teacher of the Paddington Historical Walks Society might be just the right person to ask about the Kingston family of Hargreaves Street.’

  ‘Kit, I’m not so sure about it now. That’s what I wanted to talk about.’ She heard the Ratbag arriving back. ‘I have to go. I’ll call you later.’

  They both wolfed down chicken with fresh rolls and salad at the dining table—it was too hot outside on the deck. Taxi nagged around, jumping up on the table and generally being annoying, until Gemma had to lock him in her bedroom so they could eat in peace.

  Outside, a flock of rock pigeons flew past, disappearing beneath the level of the cliffs. Gemma remembered the Ratbag’s earlier devotion to a small injured falcon. She recalled his intensity, his perpetual frown and expression of bewilderment, still evident in his face now.

  ‘Hugo,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided that you can stay here for a couple of days.’

  The worried frown lifted. Not a smile exactly, but a brightening of his features.

  ‘But you must try to sort things out with your parents,’ she continued. ‘You can’t just keep arriving on my doorstep every year. You’re not a migrating bird.’

  ‘I like it here. I liked living here when me and Mum lived next door. You’re cool.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  The
Ratbag was demolishing the rest of the chicken so she salvaged a bit for Taxi’s dinner. Then she cleared the table and he helped stack the dishes in the dishwasher, trying to be as good as good can be.

  ‘How much money have you got with you, Hugo?’

  He pulled fistfuls out of his pockets. ‘I had about three hundred. But I spent some.’

  ‘I hope Eddie No Name decides not to come after you for that amount.’ She watched while he stashed the money back in his pockets. ‘First thing, I want you to ring your mother and tell her that you’re safe. You can tell her you’re quite welcome here for a couple of days, but that something has to be sorted out,’ she said, handing him the phone.

  ‘Would you talk to her?’

  Gemma shook her head. His faith in her was touching and she wished she had Kit’s wisdom.

  Reluctantly, he picked up the phone. It rang for a while and she saw his whole face change when someone answered. ‘Hi, Mum. It’s me,’ he said, then listened for what seemed like minutes to the heated response from his distant mother, looking pained but resigned. His deep frown was back along with the puzzlement.

  Gemma had the feeling he’d heard it all before. Finally, he passed the phone to her. ‘She wants to talk to you.’

  Gemma took it.

  ‘Is it true?’ Hugo’s mother asked. ‘He can stay there for a few days?’

  ‘Yes. I’m happy to have him,’ Gemma replied.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. He’s a very difficult child. We have to sort something out,’ Hugo’s mother continued. ‘Something that Hugo is happy about.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll ring his father and we’ll work something out. And thank you for offering Hugo hospitality,’ she added.

  That sounds rather grand, Gemma thought, ringing off. Is that what she’d done? But there wasn’t time to feel pleased with herself. She had to deal with one of her clients. She turned to the Ratbag. ‘I have to go out for a couple of hours, Hugo.’

  ‘Get some decent food, will you?’ he said, waving a twenty-dollar bill at her.

  ‘Pizza?’ she said, taking it. He nodded.