Spiking the Girl

by Lord, Gabrielle

  ‘Sure,’ said her friend, keeping her voice sweet. ‘I can do that. Gotta fly. See you then. Graingers? Baby, I can’t wait.’ Gemma stared as Angie slowly put her mobile back on her belt. ‘And it’s going to get a whole lot hotter, you arsehole.’

  Angie twisted round to the back seat again and pulled a small package out from under the files in one of the kit bags. She tore it open, took out a video cassette and glanced at the label. ‘It’s Tasmin Summers. From the SOCO video guys.’ She looked up and down the street. ‘Take it with you and have a look.’ She put the cassette in the glove box. ‘What’s Trevor’s wife like?’

  ‘Huh?’ Gemma was taken by surprise. ‘Where did that come from? I hardly saw her.’

  ‘Come on, you know. Pretend you’re giving an eyewitness account.’

  Gemma took a deep breath. ‘Five foot four. Brown hair, fair skin, slim to medium build, about fifty-three kilos. She was wearing a blue patterned shirt with white jeans.’

  Angie grunted. ‘And the kids?’

  ‘They looked like kids! Ange, give me a break. It was only a few seconds. I was shocked. I didn’t take it all in.’

  Angie gave her a look then glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get back. You look after those files now.’

  •

  At home Gemma found the Ratbag watching television.

  ‘You need to get your Sky channels fixed,’ he said. ‘You should be able to pick up two more and they’re just not working. I can’t fix them.’ He showed her the ones he meant. ‘That should be the sport channel,’ he said. ‘And this one, I’m not sure.’ The screen jumped in horizontal jagged striations. ‘It’s just a mess.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll call the technician,’ she said. ‘But now I need to watch a video,’ she said. After some serious grizzling, he eventually obliged and switched the remote for her.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Gemma wasn’t at all sure that the Ratbag should view what she was sliding into the housing of her VCR. ‘It’s a tape of Spinner’s church choir,’ she said ‘singing old-time favourites. “Tea for Two”, “Doggie in the Window”—that sort of fun thing. I think you’d really enjoy it.’

  He stared at her then rolled himself up into a standing position. ‘I am so out of here!’ he said.

  ‘You don’t want to sing along?’

  ‘See ya,’ he called as he went out the door and she settled down to watch.

  After the official introduction, the footage showed blue water and, floating like a piece of driftwood, a partly submerged body. Gemma fast-forwarded, past the pale corpse on the deck of the water-police launch, hurrying the action forward until the body lay on the stainless steel table. The crime scene video’s remorseless shots slowly panned over and around Tasmin Summers’s slender body, her pale hands graceful in death, the ghostly pallor of the skin as if the sea had drained her of all trace of colour, the tiny diamond stud still shining at her navel, ending in a close-up on her sweet face, white and waxy. Her image shimmered frozen on the screen. Gemma felt a sense of loss; the world was the poorer for this girl’s death.

  She studied the close-up of the narrow wrist showing the green and white cord still attached, the deep abrasion to the skin beneath. Gemma peered more closely. Had the rope done that skin damage or had it been inflicted by a weapon? Had Tasmin tried to pull away and the cord had cut into her? The pathologist might be able to throw some light on it. She stopped the tape, took it out of the VCR and rehoused it, snapping the cover together.

  Sitting at the dining table, she started to read her way through the VMO folders in the bags, flicking through the ones that didn’t conform to what she sought. She traced the criminal records of violent offenders, following their development from brutal childhoods to brutalising juvenile institutions and from thence to further escalating and predictable attacks on other human beings. These were only halted with increasingly growing terms of imprisonment. There were also some victim statements, occasionally with certificates of analysis from the Division of Analytic Laboratories attached. Some were accompanied by packeted crime scene samples of physical evidence.

  Gemma continued turning over pages of statements and reports. Glancing at her watch, she was surprised to find she’d been almost an hour going through the first kit bag. She put the files back and then unloaded half the contents of the other, larger bag. She flicked through, discarding the male on male outrages, eyes tuned to violent sexual assaults. She went through numerous of these, nothing sparking a connection until she came to a plastic sleeve, dated and labelled in faded type which didn’t seem to be attached to any of the offenders’ files. She looked closer and saw why. It was a victim statement, containing photographs and what looked like a packet of old physical evidence in a crime scene envelope. She peered into it and decided not to get too close—she could see what looked like the remnants of an article of clothing, a floral fabric streaked almost black with old blood. Gemma left it well alone, slipping the envelope back into the sleeve. From the looks of things, this case had never been solved. She flicked through the photographic images of the shocking injuries occasioned by violent rape then backtracked to the date of the case: November 1983. Was this one of the violent rapes Jim Buisman had mentioned? Gemma started reading from the attached witness statement, skimming through the beginning, becoming more involved as the horrifying scenes played themselves out in her imagination.

  My name is Sandra Maree Samuels and my date of birth is 26 March 1968. I live with my mother and little brother at 10 Yarramalong Avenue, Campbelltown. I am in Year 10 at Hillsdale High. I met John at a party given by my girlfriend’s brother and I went out with him on two occasions. On the second occasion, I had sex with him. I thought of him as my boyfriend so that when he suggested we meet some of his friends at a party next time we went out, I felt real happy that he wanted to introduce me to his mates. On 18 November, we went to the Picton show, then we drove to a house where he picked up four of his friends. I don’t know where the house was. I had to sit on the knee of the man in the front seat because there wasn’t enough room in the back. I wasn’t too happy about this. I don’t think John was his real name because one of the others called him by another name a couple of times and he got very annoyed at this and told him to shut up. We drove to some place out near the railway station and parked a bit off the road where John ordered me to have sex with all his friends. I said no I wouldn’t and weren’t we supposed to be going to a party and he said this was the party. I started crying and John yelled at me to shut up and called me a stupid fucking slut. He said that I knew what was going on and I should stop pretending I didn’t. Then the one whose knee I’d been sitting on dragged me out of the car and started pulling my clothes off. I screamed and struggled and he bashed me in the face and I fell over. I couldn’t stop crying so John turned the car radio up real loud. Then the first one pulled my knickers down and raped me and so did the others. I was begging John to help me and asking him why was he doing this to me but he just kept calling me a stupid slut who knew what she had coming to her. He told the others to hurry up. They were all screaming and yelling at me, calling me names, saying I was a filthy bitch and that if I hadn’t wanted sex why was I here? They kept telling me I’d agreed to be here with them and to shut up and just do what they wanted.

  After they’d finished I hoped John would take me home, but he tried to rape me too. He couldn’t get hard and shouted at me that I was a frigid bitch and it was my fault that he couldn’t have sex with me. I tried to get up but the first one kicked me down again and then I heard a car pull up and three more men got out. I realised they were going to rape me too and I tried to get away but they caught me and two of them started bashing me. I think this was when my jaw and the fingers on my right hand got broken. The other three men then raped me. They all started drinking and I was able to crawl back to the car. I tried to find my clothes but I couldn’t see prope
rly and all I could find was my scarf on the back seat. I was bleeding from the rapes. I cleaned myself up as much as I could with the scarf. Then the one whose lap I’d had to sit on in the car saw me moving around and yelled at me. Then John came over and tied my wrists with the scarf so that I couldn’t do anything. I just stayed there and sat in the car.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. I knew I should be trying to get away but I didn’t have any strength left and I was in such pain. I was scared I’d bleed to death. Even though the car radio was on I could still hear them talking about getting rid of me. They were planning to kill me. This made me so frightened that I managed to start the car even though I don’t know how to drive very well and my wrists were tied together and the fingers on my right hand were swollen and didn’t work properly. The men tried to run after me but I put my foot down and was able to drive back onto the road. I hit one of the men with the side of the car and ran over him. I got back on the highway and that’s when I was involved in the accident with the other car and the police found me and took me to the hospital. At first they thought I’d been injured in the accident but then I was able to tell them what had happened to me.

  Gemma found she’d been holding her breath while she read. She looked at the photograph of the girl’s blackened face, swollen like some grotesque rubber monster mask.

  She took a break to collect herself and made a coffee. She felt she was floundering in an ocean of possibilities. Instead of this investigation narrowing down into clear focus, as it had seemed when she’d discovered Mr Romero’s hidden telescope, Gemma felt that now it had expanded like the galaxy. It was just too big and she desperately needed some good hard physical evidence. So far, all she had was a fancy piece of exotic rope tied in a thief knot.

  Maybe she was making her life even more difficult by reading all these VMO files. She leaned back in her seat, looking at the piled-up folders covering the surface of her dining table. She’d just have to keep slogging away, hoping like hell that something connected.

  She turned her attention back to the rape from twenty years ago and the old-fashioned typed case notes of the detective in charge. There was an addendum stapled to the girl’s statement: NFA. No further action. There had been no follow-up. No more to the investigation than the initial statement and photographic records. ‘Unable to follow up,’ Gemma read. ‘Victim left the hospital suddenly—no forwarding address.’ Beneath this information someone else had added, ‘Hospital staff say girl left when a man was admitted to the hospital.’

  Gemma was about to pull the rest of the files out of the second bag, when a familiar name signing off an opinion at the bottom of a certificate made her look again. It was Colin Roper’s signature. This must have been one of his earliest cases. She read the forensic knot man’s findings. As she read, she jumped up out of her seat, feeling the elation of the hunter at the first sight of the prey. This was the reason she’d been reading through these files. Two events, separated by over twenty years, suddenly fused together.

  She grabbed her mobile. ‘Angie!’ she said. ‘Ring me. I’ve found something.’

  She paced, waiting till her friend left the building and called from a public phone.

  The second her mobile rang, she pounced on it. ‘Angie! Listen to this! It’s one of the cases Jim Buisman was talking about!’ She started reading aloud from Colin Roper’s report. ‘The knot is similar in shape and form to the reef knot except that the working ends come out on opposite sides of the knot. The difference between this and the reef knot is not at all obvious to an observer.’

  ‘What are you reading from?’

  ‘A victim statement that was in among the VMO files.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Angie’s voice was impatient. ‘But who? Which VMO should I go out and drag in?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gemma. ‘That’s the problem. Looks like charges were never laid. This is from a 1983 rape case. Colin Roper’s talking about the knot that was tied around this girl’s wrists. This is one of the thief-knot cases! At last, a definite connection.’

  ‘What’s the name of the girl?’ Angie asked.

  ‘Sandra Maree Samuels,’ said Gemma, who’d noted it down. ‘Date of birth: 26 March, 1968.’

  ‘I think we should trace her,’ said Angie.

  ‘You bet,’ said Gemma. ‘Colin Roper will be interested to hear about this.’

  ‘But you know what the experts are like,’ Angie reminded her. ‘Even if we get the offender, he’s never going to say in court “these knots were tied by the same hands”. He’ll only say something like “this knot is indistinguishable from that knot”.

  ‘Works for me,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Let’s hope it works for a jury,’ said Angie. ‘But I’m jumping the gun.’ She paused. ‘Why the long delay between knots? If it’s the same rapist-killer, or bunch of them, why the long period of time between crimes?’

  ‘Ivan Milat didn’t murder during the years he was in a stable relationship with a woman,’ Gemma reminded her.

  ‘And our thief-knot rapist might have been inside for the last twenty years for other violent crimes. Men like that tend to spend a fair amount of time as guests of Her Majesty.’ There was a silence on the line. ‘Now suddenly he shows up again. I’ll check with COPS to see if any of our more recent VMOs were released just prior to Amy’s disappearance. And I’ll ring Colin Roper,’ said Angie. ‘And get back to you.’

  ‘Don’t forget!’

  ‘And your old perv—you were right about Alistair Forde. He’s done time. He’s in the system all right, but with his surname spelled differently.’

  ‘What sort of form?’

  ‘Three convictions for indecent behaviour.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Gemma said. ‘No way could he see out the window and down into the area outside Amy Bernhard’s house from where he said he was. Reckoned he was standing on a table to change a light globe. He was standing on a table all right, but at the window, so he could get a good eyeful into Amy’s bedroom. And that table was a fixture by the window although he said he’d just shifted it there.’

  ‘But he still could’ve seen someone in the bushes outside Amy’s room. Even if he was standing on a table having a wank.’

  ‘I’m not saying there wasn’t a prowler that night,’ said Gemma. ‘Forde reckons he chased him over the back fence. But his prior convictions put him in the picture.’

  ‘Let’s go visit him.’

  Twelve

  Opening his front door, Alistair Forde cringed when Angie flashed her ID. He gave Gemma a filthy look. ‘What are you doing back here? I answered all your questions. I reported that prowler to help the police! Now you’re treating me like I’m the intruder. Why are you hounding me like this?’

  ‘This is just a polite invitation,’ said Angie. ‘For a quiet chat.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About perving on girls through their bedroom windows. Standing on tables to get a better look. That sort of thing.’

  Forde’s face reddened. ‘But I explained about the table! It was only by the window so I could vacuum the carpet.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ said Gemma. ‘You climbed on that table all the time to see into Amy Bernhard’s bedroom. I could see the deep indentations the table legs had left on the carpet.’

  His face suffused more darkly. ‘It’s the bloody last time I’ll do anything to help the police. If this is how it’s going to be used against me!’

  ‘We just want to be sure of a couple of things,’ said Angie, smiling.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong!’

  He was still saying much the same twenty minutes later. ‘I only looked. Why are you making such a fuss about it?’ He looked desperately first at Gemma, leaning against the wall in the corner, then at Angie opposite him.

  To rattle you, sport, thought Gemma, to take you o
ut of your comfort zone. To impress upon you that you could be in serious trouble. That way, you might be more inclined to tell us if you know anything.

  ‘There’s no harm in looking, and anyway,’ he said, ‘there hasn’t been anything to look at for a year.’

  ‘So you’ve been peeping on other young girls, have you?’ Angie asked. ‘Like Tasmin Summers? Did you go round to her place too?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  This time his perplexity seemed genuine. Recalling the mansion in Rose Bay—the steep formal gardens, the well-protected grounds—Gemma had to concede it would be hard for someone like Alistair Forde to do his number in such a place.

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ Angie said calmly, ‘about your bid to be helpful. The way you reported a prowler outside Amy’s window last year.’

  ‘I won’t bother again,’ he muttered. ‘Last time I’ll ever try and be helpful.’

  Angie ignored him, continuing, ‘Because what we’ve found in the past is that the person who reports something concerning a murder is often the real offender.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Alistair with self-righteous smugness. ‘It was well before that girl got herself into any sort of trouble.’

  ‘I think you saw through Amy’s window.’ Gemma moved in closer, menacing him. ‘You decided to get her all for yourself, didn’t you.’

  Alistair’s eyes widened in shock and the blood fled from his face. With his hunched shoulders and the dry scaly skin around his eyes, he reminded Gemma of some old reptile checking its environment from under a ledge.

  ‘You think I’m making it up?’ Alistair cried. ‘I tell you—I saw that man! He was crouched down in the bushes on Halloween night. And when I went down to see what he was up to, off he went, over my back fence! And that’s the truth. I’ll swear on my mother’s grave!’

  Gemma continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Amy would’ve trusted you. You could easily pull up and offer her a lift and she’d hop in with you.’