Spiking the Girl

by Lord, Gabrielle

She put a hand to her bruised throat. ‘I’ll survive.’ Her voice was a croak. ‘Especially what?’

  Mike seemed about to answer her, but changed his mind. She asked him to bring her a couple of painkillers from the bathroom cabinet because her head was starting to ache. He put the kettle on and made a cup of tea for the two of them.

  Gemma went to bed with Mike still hovering around. Finally, he made a bed on the floor using cushions from the lounge, pillows and a cotton throw.

  Gemma lay awake for a while before the drugs kicked in, listening to the sound of the sea coming straight through where the sliding door used to be. It was nice having Mike out there, she thought, recalling the feel of his arms around her. And Hugo, sprawled on the lounge with Taxi cat. Her little family, she thought, and then slept.

  She woke with the sun high in the sky and wondered for a split second why she felt so terrible. It wasn’t just the ache in her head and throat and the dryness caused by the opiate. Her whole body was nauseated. She lay still for a few moments, reviewing the events of last night. Resentment and hatred, Gemma saw, had almost caused her death. She couldn’t help realising that her own lack of forgiveness for Steve had destroyed their relationship. She and the widow Litchfield had something in common.

  This understanding, unpleasant though it was, energised her and she jumped out of bed, throwing her dressing gown around her and hurrying to her office. Mike had risen and was already in the operatives’ office and she greeted him as she passed. Sitting at her desk, she pulled out a piece of paper then sat for a few moments in thought. She picked up her pen.

  Dear Steve, she wrote, I’m so sorry that I destroyed our relationship —our friendship—with my inability to forgive you. I miss you so much. One day, I hope you can forgive me too. I will never stop loving you. Gemma.

  Quickly, so she wouldn’t change her mind, and with tears in her eyes, she sealed, stamped and addressed it, slipping it into her briefcase to post later in the day.

  She made tea and toast and Mike came down and ate with her out on the timber deck, Gemma wincing as she swallowed.

  Later in the morning, and wearing the scarf Spinner had given her to disguise the bruising, Gemma greeted Hugo’s mother, pretending bad laryngitis—which, in a way, was true. Gemma watched the lanky kid and his mother disappearing up the steps to the road and felt a pang in her heart. She slowly tidied up, finding bits of Hugo that she put in a box. He’d left a card and a ten-dollar bill under the kitty jar in the kitchen and she realised she’d actually miss him.

  Finally, she went back to her office. This was her work and her life. To mount investigations against the cheats. To bring a little justice to an unjust world.

  There was a voice mail message for her from Angie that she must have slept through. ‘I had to let you know—the forensic dentist got a perfect fit from Tasmin Summers’s teeth and the bite mark on Scott Brissett’s penis. The guys told me that when he was shown your snapshots, he stopped fighting. And,’ she added, ‘all the knots he’d tied—apart from the correct nautical lashings—were thief knots.’

  Gemma was about to hang up, but the message wasn’t quite finished. ‘Julie said to tell you that the big thug who tried to kill you is Kenny Rataroa. He’s telling everything he knows about Lorraine Litchfield. He was carrying her mobile number. She’d sent one of her other thugs, Murray Boyle, to do the job but, according to Kenny the Rat, Murray had become reluctant to do the job. Watching you day and night like that, he’d got to like you.’

  Murray Boyle—Lorraine’s henchman who’d forced her to the floor of a car last year and called her ‘girlie’. Murray of the Hawaiian shirt whose heart hadn’t been black enough for murder. Who’d even tried to warn her with his pencilled note.

  ‘Kenny told us Murray got even more reluctant when Hugo kept coming and going. He’d started bonding with the two of you. Some sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome. Told Kenny he couldn’t do it, but he was too scared of Lorraine. He knew what she was like. Anyway, the Litchfield woman had to call on Kenny Rataroa. The only thing he’s ever bonded to is cash. You did well, Gemster. I’ll see you before Christmas. Message ends.’ Gemma smiled, despite the pain in her throat.

  She checked her emails and her heart sank when she saw how many there were. She deleted one after the other, barely glancing at the summaries before hitting the delete button. But she stopped, shocked, as one name registered. Grace Kingston.

  Gemma felt faint with excitement. Grace. Her sister had found the ICQ message! With shaking fingers, she undeleted and the message opened up.

  Dear Gemma, I’ll be coming to Sydney next week and will ring you to set up a meeting. I’m looking forward to meeting a member of my father’s family. Is that you? Sincerely, Grace Kingston.

  Gemma stood up, dazed. She walked around her office not seeing anything for a moment, vaguely aware of Mike sitting at the desk in the office opposite. Then she picked up her phone and rang Kit.

  ‘Why can’t you talk properly?’ Kit asked.

  ‘Lost my voice,’ Gemma lied. She’d tell Kit about what happened later, when she could face it all. Instead, she told her about the email from Grace. There was a long silence.

  ‘Are you going to reply?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gemma croaked. ‘Yes. I am.’

  She went to the hall table and opened the drawer. The photograph of her father smiled up at her. Would Grace want to know what her father looked like? If she did, Gemma would give her the photograph. But she’d have to tell Grace everything about their father and mother, what had happened. She closed the drawer over her father—their father’s—cocky smile.

  She went back to her office, aware of Mike across the hall. She would have to make a decision about him, she realised. Either take him up on it or let him go. She felt the beginnings of excitement. A new phase. A new sister. The possibility of a new man.

  Yet the nausea, forgotten in the excitement of their sister’s email, reasserted itself. She’d been about to sit down at her desk again, but instead she headed back out the door.

  Mike was standing in the doorway of the other office, a file in his hand. ‘I need to ask you something about this,’ he said. Then he looked closer. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘The half-sister I didn’t even know we had has just emailed me. And I think I’m going to be sick. Again.’

  He followed her careening run down the hall. Gemma just made it to the bathroom. There wasn’t much to come up, just the toast and tea. Afterwards, she washed her mouth and face and cleaned her teeth again, and came out, the hair round her face dripping.

  Mike stood in the the entrance to her private world. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet, Gemma?’ he asked.

  •

  An hour later, after posting the letter to Steve and a visit to the pharmacy, Gemma was back in the bathroom, staring at the kit. She dipped the lower end of it in urine, as instructed. According to the directions and diagrams on the side of the box, a small dark oval would appear in the centre of the sensitised strip if the test were positive. If she wasn’t pregnant, no oval shape would appear and the sensitised strip would simply remain as it was—a long, straight pink band. She stared. The pink band remained blank.

  Her mobile rang and she hurried up to the office to answer it. It was the glazier. He was running late, he said, and apologised, but he’d definitely be there within the hour to replace the glass in the sliding doors. She still had the strip in her hand and Mike turned round at his desk, an enquiring expression on his face.

  Gemma shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. It was just the nausea of overload. Too much going on, poor sleep, a lethal attack, a new sister. Stress and more stress. She headed back towards the bathroom to throw the test strip away and wash her hands.

  But she didn’t make it. Something out at sea caught her attention and, still clutching the blank test strip, she stepped on
to the deck into the bright sunshine. There was a churning on the surface of the ocean quite close to her and a flock of gulls wheeled in a synchronised swirl. Must be a huge shoal of fish, she thought. As she watched in wonder, the sea broke open and shiny black shapes curved out of the waves like a child’s delighted scribble, over and over, stitching themselves through the water. There must have been more than a hundred dolphins. Almost as suddenly they vanished, pulled under by some secret dolphin command, and the sea closed over them, resuming its dark blue chop.

  Gemma looked down at the strip in her hand. Her eyes widened and her lips formed the same oval shape as the positive reaction now clearly visible on the sensitised pink band.

  ‘Oh!’ said Gemma. ‘Oh!’