‘Why?’
Because someone wants me under constant surveillance, she thought. Immediately, the pencilled note of warning, all but forgotten in the excitement of recent events, filled her mind again. ‘Someone’s watching me.’ She didn’t want to think why.
‘We need to switch the lights off,’ she hissed. ‘And the TV. Make it look like we’re going to bed.’ She switched off both, then dropped to all fours.
‘But how will we find the spycam without light?’
Gemma crept into the bedroom and came back with her torch. ‘We’ll find it.’ If it’s the last thing I do, she thought. Then shivered at the expression she’d just used.
She felt weak and helpless. ‘Where’s my mobile?’ she whispered.
Hugo skittered across the floor like a huge crab and snatched it off the dining table. He brought it to her and she dialled Mike’s number but her call went straight through to voice mail. ‘Mike,’ she said. ‘I’ve been going out live to someone. From the lounge room. I need to find the camera. Can you come over when you get this message?’
‘But what if Mike put in the camera?’ Hugo’s question jolted her.
‘Why would he?’
Hugo shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But men spy on women, don’t they? There’s this place in Macleay Street where there are peepholes drilled in the walls. Gerda told me.’
Gemma dismissed the idea. Mike had been an employee and colleague for over a year now. She trusted him like she trusted Spinner. Despite her bad behaviour towards him, she felt there was no way she could have misread him for so long. And why would he be wanting to watch her? He could check up on her any time in the normal run of his work.
She wished hopelessly that she had Mike or Spinner’s electronic know-how. There would be a way, she knew, to tune in to the frequency that the unknown observer was using and use it to work back along his own signal until she found him. But she didn’t have that expertise here with her right now.
‘Let’s find the little sucker,’ said Hugo, crawling near her. Taxi, picking up the fearful urgency in the room fled, and hid under the lounge. ‘Who do you think did it?’
Hugo’s question brought her to earth. That should have been her very first thought. She was more exhausted than she’d realised.
‘Someone, some time, who has been in this flat. Someone who had the chance to install a tiny camera lens. It only takes a few minutes if you know what you’re doing.’
She reviewed all the people who’d been here. It didn’t narrow the field. Spinner, Mike, Sandra Samuels, Angie. It couldn’t be any of them, surely?
‘The only people who’ve been in here are my friends. Or a client.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Hugo. ‘You’ve forgotten someone.’
‘Who? You?’ The idea of Hugo being suborned by an enemy of hers was unbelievable.
‘No, not me.’ The boy’s voice was reasonable and steady. ‘You’re forgetting the television technician guy and the gasman.’
She was. She thought about them. The TV guy had been here a couple of times before, but the gasman was a complete stranger—a quiet, seemingly competent tradesman. He’d gone about his business. He’d run out of fittings. She’d had to explain to Hugo what a bayonet was. He was going to come back. He’d never come back.
The gasman had never come back because he’d achieved his objective.
‘I know where it’ll be,’ she said.
They crouched together to examine the bayonet fitting, Gemma holding her torch in her cupped hand so as not to reveal what they were doing. There it was, innocently fixed inside the housing for the gas pipe, a small beady eye transmitting the events of the room with a wide-angled lens to whomever and wherever it was required.
‘There’ll be a van,’ she said to Hugo. ‘If they’re watching right now, they’ll have seen that I’ve found their camera. Chances are they don’t watch all the time. It’s about the most boring job in the world.’ She’d done it often enough in her past; sitting in a nondescript vehicle, watching nothing happening on a small screen.
‘Let’s go up to the road and have a look for it now,’ Hugo suggested. ‘We could creep up on them and wham!’
‘Let’s not,’ she said. ‘Not without reinforcements. Not without a whole lot of wham.’
‘But we could do it together. You’ve got the Glock.’
She sat on the floor, out of the spycam’s field of view. God, she thought, I’m not thinking. Spinner’s on a job just down the road. She groped for her mobile again.
‘What was that?’ hissed Hugo.
‘What was what?’ Gemma froze.
‘I heard something.’
The torchlight from the floor threw weird shadows on his face. Gemma looked past him to the CCTV. The front garden area showed nothing but darkness. But the automatic front garden light hadn’t come on. Maybe the halogen tube needed changing. Or maybe it had been sabotaged. Thankfully, there was no way an intruder could get past the grille on the front door, not without oxy equipment.
‘If anyone was going to come in here,’ she said, ‘they’d either have to come up the cliff from the sea or come through the roof.’
‘But the sound didn’t come from outside.’
Hugo raised his eyes to the ceiling and that’s when she got it. There wasn’t a van anywhere down the street. There was no need for a van.
‘It came from up there,’ Hugo continued.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered. Upstairs was a new tenant whom she’d never laid eyes on. Someone whose flickering late-night TV she’d seen on several occasions lately through the shroud-like curtains. She jumped in fear when her mobile rang but snatched it up.
‘It’s me,’ said Mike. ‘Got your message. I’m on my way.’
‘Mike—’ she started, but he’d called off. She put the mobile down and that was when the fear really kicked in. What if Mike is part of it, a voice in her mind questioned? It wasn’t the first time she’d been betrayed by an employee. What if his arrival was the signal? Open the door to Mike and in rushes Death, disguised as a trusted colleague.
‘Is he coming now?’ Hugo asked.
She picked up the phone again, to tell him to stand by, when it rang again.
‘Boss? You’re awake?’
‘Spinner! I am so glad to hear your voice.’
‘What are you transmitting at the moment? What have you got running?’
‘You’ve found it too!’
‘I got bored sitting off that house in Bronte. I decided to do a sweep of the area—see what’s going on. After I’d sorted through the usual stuff, there was this other signal that intrigued me. When I pinpointed it, it was at your place. What is it?’
‘There’s a spycam in my living room.’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’ll drive around and take a look. They’ve got to be somewhere nearby.’
‘No, Spinner. Not nearby. They’re here. They’re in the flat upstairs!’
‘Stand by. I’m on my way.’
The cavalry is on its way, she thought. But now her mind was spinning out, betraying her in every direction. What if Spinner had been lying to her? Taking on that new Mandate client just so he could be in the area and keep her under constant surveillance? But why? It didn’t make sense. Unless he was in league with someone else. Someone who wanted her dead. This was awful. Suspecting everyone; realising that underneath it all she trusted no one.
‘Hugo,’ she said. ‘This reminds me of last year.’
‘That night we were down on the beach,’ he said. ‘And that man was trying to get us.’ In the torchlight, his face filled with fear. ‘You don’t think he’s come back, do you? He could climb up from the sea.’
Until he said that, she hadn’t even considered the possible return of last year’s
cyberstalker. Now, suddenly, every hateful hostility was possible. Coming from all directions. Even familiar faces being pulled away, revealing themselves as masks covering something evil. Last she’d seen of him had been at sea. It wasn’t possible he should return.
‘No one can get in here,’ Hugo reminded her. ‘You told me that. We’re safe in here.’
Despite the two colleagues heading her way, Gemma felt trapped. Just waiting. What if he was getting down through the ceiling as they sat here? She heard a car pulling in on the road above. Mike?
‘Just don’t let anyone in,’ said Hugo. ‘Ring Angie!’
‘She’s gone away!’
She ran to the bedroom and checked on the Glock under the second pillow on her bed. She came out to rejoin Hugo. Help was on the way. All she had to do was let Mike and Spinner come in and deal with whoever was upstairs. Maybe, said the treacherous voice in Gemma’s mind, maybe that’s just what they want. To make her believe that she’s safe if she stays put. Then what? An earthmover through the plate glass of the sliding doors to the deck? Don’t be so stupid, she scolded herself. She wasn’t living in a Hollywood blockbuster.
She went to the curtains and hesitated. She had a strong desire to pull them back, to confront her absurd fear of the earthmover crashing through, show herself how completely stupid she was being, see for herself how nothing moved out there except the stringy bushes at the edge of the cliff. And yet, some atavistic fear immobilised her. She stood irresolute a few seconds, then grabbed the curtains, spreading them wide.
The world exploded. Hugo’s scream and the crash of glass breaking. A shower of knives and her own shriek of shock and terror as the looming figure hurtled through the shattering plate glass. Gemma jumped away from him, but stumbled against the edge of the dining table and went down, banging the back of her head sharply on the corner. Before she could regain her feet, he was on top of her, pressing down hard over her lower face and upper body so that she could hardly breathe. His breath stank in her nostrils. Terror charged her body. She kicked out, stifled screams forced backwards into her own throat by the painful blocking of her mouth. The screams rang inside the turmoil of her own head. He’d pinned her right arm awkwardly, painfully, beneath her own body; her left arm tried to engage with him. She flailed, intent on trying to breathe. From somewhere, Hugo’s yelling reminded her she needed to live. Desperately, she tried to see who her assailant was, but just as he’d been too close up against the glass for her to see him on the deck, he was now far too close to her face. Memories flooded as the pressure built in her skull. It was the smell that did it. Peppermint and body odour. The big Polynesian from Deliverance. The stench of body odour and her own terror triggered another memory—the scent of Dior’s Poison. She knew now who it was who wanted her dead. You’re dead, bitch! she’d screamed at Gemma last year.
Gemma went limp at the realisation. Lorraine Litchfield. And the grip on her throat loosened sufficiently for her to get a lungful of air. ‘Hugo!’ she screamed. ‘Help me!’ The hands closed hard around her neck again. A terrible pressure was bearing down on her throat, her chest. Her ears were filled with explosive humming, then there was a crashing sound and tearing pain. She felt as if her head was being pushed into the floorboards, crushed into the darkness under the floor. Then suddenly, the pressure was gone and pain flooded in after the numbness of shock.
In the corner, either dead or unconscious, lay the huge Polynesian who’d stood in her way at Deliverance and signed for the bodgy courier delivery. With huge, raking gulps, Gemma got some air into her lungs, the oxygen feeling as if it had to be dragged over knives to get down there.
‘It’s okay, we’ll lift you,’ said Mike. ‘Just relax.’
With Spinner on the other arm, they gently supported her, lifting her over towards the couch. She tried to help by walking, but when she went to stand her legs were jelly. She was aware that someone had turned the lights back on but she could only see as if through a narrow tube, still blind with shock.
‘Sit here,’ said Spinner, guiding her back onto the cushions.
‘Just take it easy,’ said Mike. ‘Get your breath. Don’t try and talk.’
‘Hugo?’ she gasped.
‘He’s here.’
She raised her head and looked up at them. She wanted to say thank you but words were impossible. Hugo went over to the decanters and turned up four glasses, then he emptied the brandy bottle with four generous serves. She wanted to say, ‘You mustn’t drink that’, but it seemed a silly thing to even think, let alone say. She sat there, trembling, holding onto a very large brandy, her three friends around her.
Nineteen
Before the ambulance took the Polynesian away, Mike pulled on a pair of gloves and checked him for ID. All he found was a set of keys, a substantial wad of cash and a mobile phone number on a piece of paper.
Gemma, Mike and Spinner went upstairs to the vacant flat with the keys. None of them fitted.
‘How’s he been getting in and out then?’ Gemma asked, puzzled.
‘Who wants to do the lock thing?’ Spinner asked, squinting at it. ‘It’s one of those old-fashioned ones.’
‘There’s an easier way,’ said Mike, and he shouldered then kicked the door, breaking it down.
Inside, they found the monitor with its view of Gemma’s living room, now very still and showing only Hugo, overdosed with brandy, sleeping with Taxi on the lounge. The interim lease agreement, with its credit card payment, lay with other bits of paper, including a small spiral notebook. Gemma tried to decipher the signature on the credit card receipt but had no luck.
‘I’ll take bets,’ said Mike, ‘that the paper trail will lead straight back to Lorraine Litchfield. Not to mention what that big hulk might have to tell us. Conspiracy to murder is a nasty charge.’
Gemma poked at the notebook, flipping through its pages with a pen. She found a page with a list of starters at Rosehill and the instruction, Ring beautician. ‘She wrote that note,’ she said. ‘On the page before this one.’ She remembered the beautiful young woman, full of hateful jealousy. ‘She couldn’t forgive me because Steve chose me.’ For a while, at least, she thought sadly. ‘But why would she send me a warning? If you’re going to murder someone, why alert them? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’ll ring your sister,’ said Spinner. ‘You need her to come over. Look after you a bit.’
Gemma nodded. ‘In a minute,’ she said.
Spinner, after being reassured there was nothing more he could do, said goodnight.
‘I’ll stay, Gemma,’ said Mike. ‘Hugo and I can sort out the sleeping arrangements.’
‘But something’s not right,’ she said. ‘Why did he wait until tonight to do it?’ Her voice was a rasping whisper, still too painful to push too much energy through her voice box. ‘He’s been up here for days. He could have crashed through any time. Why tonight? And why doesn’t he have a key to the place?’ She started looking around the flat. ‘Lorraine came here one night. I could smell her perfume from downstairs.’
Gemma picked up one of the glasses in the sink. The lipstick ring was obvious. With the tip of her pen, she lifted the lid of the kitchen tidy and poked through the rubbish. Then she went into the bedroom. A Hawaiian shirt lay on one bed. Gemma had a flash of memory—the man in the white Ford who’d followed her at the car park. A colourful blur with dark hair, she recalled. Not the bleached hair or massive bulk of the Polynesian. She thought of the man who’d abducted her last year, forcing her to go to Lorraine Litchfield’s place where Steve had rejected her at gunpoint and Lorraine had lowered the Colt, smiling at Gemma’s humiliations.
‘I don’t think the Polynesian has been living up here,’ she said.
‘Then who the hell has?’ Mike asked.
•
Later, Mike sorted through the shards with gloved hands and picked up a larg
e section. He examined it closely. ‘He used a glass cutter,’ he said, ‘and then just tapped it in. The whole plate fell inside. You’re lucky you didn’t sever something important.’
‘I’ve never been so scared in my life,’ Gemma whispered. ‘I pulled open the curtains and he seemed to fly through the glass.’
Mike reached for her then and took her in his arms. ‘Gemma,’ he whispered. ‘Gemma.’
She stayed there for a few seconds, but pulled away from him.
His arms fell to his sides. ‘I’ve wanted to do that,’ he said, ‘from the first moment I saw you.’
‘It’s not the right time,’ she said, turning away, surprised to find that in this moment her heart ached for Steve.
Mike peered more closely at her. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet!’
Gemma bolted then, and just made it to the bathroom and the toilet, hurling out the fear and terror of the night, the lack of food and too much brandy. When she’d finished, she washed her face and cleaned her teeth, smoothing her hair back. She looked at herself in the mirror. Dark purple-red marks marred the skin of her throat and the sides of her neck and there was a grazing bruise starting to swell and shine over her eyebrow. She hadn’t even felt that one. The back of her head was tender where she’d gone down against the corner of the dining table.
She made her way back to the living room where Mike had finished clearing the glass away. ‘I’ll keep it for the cops,’ he said. ‘They might get prints off it.’ He straightened up and put a parcel of glass on the table. ‘Feel better now?’
She shook her head and sank into the lounge. Hugo, as shocked children sometimes do, still lay heavily asleep next to tightly curled-up Taxi cat.
‘After an assault like that,’ Mike said ‘you should get yourself checked out. Especially—’ He broke off.
Spiking the Girl Page 37
