Shattered (13 page)

Gemma took another good look at the beads, then handed the photograph back. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s a precious record. And you’re right. This is how we should remember them.’

Natalie put the photograph away, picked up her bag and went to the door.

‘We’re all thinking of young Donovan,’ said Jaki, her voice trembling. In that moment, she looked pale and ill, compressing her lips after she’d spoken as if she was trying to contain tears. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fighting just as hard as he can. He’s young and strong,’ she added.

Natalie paused at the doorway. ‘I never thought anything like this would happen in my family,’ she said. ‘Now I can never say sorry to Bryson. For what I did. Never.’

‘What do you mean?’ Angie asked.

Natalie blinked her red-rimmed eyes. ‘I mean my anger with him. The way I threw him out of the house. Now it all seems so unimportant.’ Her voice trembled as she continued. ‘Life is so precious. And so suddenly all over.’

While Angie escorted Natalie to the lift, Gemma picked up the crime scene photographs once more.

‘I hope you’re not still feeling bad about standing us up the other night,’ she said to Jaki. ‘You sounded so distressed on the phone.’

‘I’d had a hellish day,’ Jaki said. ‘This fluey thing, and I was exhausted and then .
 
.
 
. when I realised I’d totally forgotten my celebration dinner .
 
.
 
.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Gemma. ‘We’ll make it up sometime. When you’re feeling better.’ She examined the sprawled bodies, the dark red pools surrounding them, the palm-frond bloodstains on the wall of the staircase indicating the haemorrhage that had nearly claimed the life of a little boy.

Jaki’s mobile rang and as she answered it, Angie returned.

‘Suspicious death at Moore Park,’ Jaki told them as she repocketed her mobile. ‘They need someone from ballistics to attend.’

‘Jaki! No way! You’re not to go,’ Angie ordered. ‘Get someone else to cover it. Go home and get to bed! Don’t even think about attending. You look like death warmed up.’

‘You do, Jaki. Take some time off,’ Gemma said. ‘And I’m really sorry about your cat.’

Jaki looked from one of them to the other, her lips trembling in her pale face. ‘It’s the job. It’s really been getting to me lately. I keep thinking of that little kid, running down the stairs and then .
 
.
 
.’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Get that new fellow – the transfer from the Northern Beaches,’ said Angie.

‘Hayden? Hayden David?’

‘That’s right. Why can’t he do it?’

‘He’s not experienced enough,’ said Jaki. ‘He hasn’t got his certificate yet.’

‘When did that ever stop anyone round here?’ asked Angie, her eyes turning heavenwards in disbelief. ‘Experience is what you pick up on the job. He can do this one. Do him good.’

‘Jaki,’ said Gemma, ‘you said something else happened, as well as the cat, that upset you. Someone’s idea of a joke?’

Jaki looked away. ‘I got a sort of anonymous .
 
.
 
. letter,’ she said. ‘But really, I don’t want to discuss it right now.’

These women with things they don’t want to talk about, thought Gemma, remembering Natalie and the painting of Jason and his bride.

‘Paulette can go to that suspicious death,’ decided Angie. ‘I was impressed at the steady way she worked the other night, and Sean said she handled the Lindfield scene really professionally.’ Angie pointed through the glass wall of her office. ‘Look. There she is now, back from her job. I’ll catch her before she leaves again.’

Angie opened the door of her office and called out.

Paulette, a statuesque brunette, whose work overalls couldn’t quite disguise an exceptional figure, but whose severe hairstyle – long locks pulled back tight into a clip – did nothing to enhance her face, responded. Clutching a large paper physical evidence bag in one hand and some shopping in the other, she came over to join them. She didn’t look very pleased at the interruption, Gemma noted, her thin-lipped expression tightening. However, she put her packages down and fished out a tiny notepad and pencil, listening to Jaki, jotting down details of the new job. Paulette’s strong face, although marred by too-heavy use of lipstick and foundation, was in marked contrast to Jaki’s pallor and tremulous mouth. Paulette hadn’t lost her eagerness and keenness, enthusiasm and idealism – yet. Gemma thought she even detected a slightly contemptuous glance from the junior examiner. Stick around, kid, Gemma thought. You’ll lose your shine in a few years.

‘After I’ve locked this stuff away and grabbed something to eat,’ said Paulette, picking up her bags, ‘I could attend.’

‘Great,’ said Angie. She turned her attention to Jaki once Paulette had left. ‘As for you,’ she ordered, pointing a finger at her young friend, ‘bed, Constable. Go home now. Enjoy your new flat. If you can.’ She turned to Gemma. ‘The lucky woman has moved into this gorgeous place overlooking Coogee Beach.’

‘Oh?’ said Gemma. ‘Whereabouts?’

As Jaki described the building in Dudley Street with its Spanish tiles and graceful entrance area, Gemma recognised it. ‘I know that building,’ she said. ‘Santiago. I looked at a place there before I bought at Phoenix Bay.’

Gemma stood back to allow Jaki through the door. As Angie picked up her briefcase and keys to join them, she noticed a shopping bag under the desk.

‘This must be Paulette’s,’ said Angie, peering into the bag. ‘It’s her new shoes. I know she wanted them for tonight.’

‘She only lives over at Waverley,’ said Jaki. ‘I could drop them at her place on my way home. It’s not far out of my way.’

‘Give me the address and I can do that,’ said Gemma. ‘No need for you to go out of your way. Not in your condition.’

Angie scribbled the address down for her and Gemma took the shopping bag and followed the others out of Angie’s office. On the way to the lifts, she glanced at a photograph of a head-on collision stuck to the partition of a desk. The driver’s body protruded through the shattered windscreen, his head horribly flattened on the crumpled chassis. Life is precious, Gemma thought, as Natalie’s words resonated in her mind. And so quickly over. One minute that driver had been talking and laughing and driving along. The next minute, he had been catapulted into death. Beside the image was a photograph of a tiny baby, abandoned by its mother in a toilet. Gemma felt tears prick her eyes as she turned away from the photographs. The woman who did that must have been desperate, Gemma thought. Probably only a kid herself.

She thought of her own baby, ticking away in the tiny floating capsule inside her. This might well be her only chance at motherhood, as Heather Pike had suggested. She couldn’t throw this chance away. So many women missed out through no fault of their own.

The neglected nymph posing in the centre of the dead fountain at Findlay Finn’s house arose in her mind. Water no longer flowed from her jar to splash into the pool at her feet; she stood alone and abandoned, her blind eyes staring at the surrounding overgrown gardens. A thrill of fear and excitement shivered through Gemma as she recognised that life had thrown this amazing possibility her way. It was completely unexpected, it was completely inconvenient, and yet .
 
.
 
. all she had to do was catch it and run with it. Life was forcing her into a position where she had to choose.

Jaki had left them and only she and Angie stepped outside into the windy day, blinking at the grit that hit their faces, hurrying down the wide steps onto Goulburn Street.

Tiny flame-shaped buds were spearing out from the bare limbs of the plane trees along the footpath. Despite her own past, she did have it in her to be a mother. It was eminently possible. Just as Gemma thought this, a snowy pigeon, one of the dozens that roosted on the window ledges above, flew almost to her feet, and she stooped, believing for a moment that she could cradle the perfect creature. But as she moved her hands to touch it, the bird spread its wings in a blindingly white flash against the clear sky, rising vertically like some pious image of the Holy Spirit from childhood memory.

Gemma squinted to stare after it as it flew into the blue sky, disappearing over the buildings opposite. She felt her spirits lift with the pigeon’s flight. Behind her, the huge grey concrete fortress towered. People came and went up the steps, vanishing inside. The wind blew a discarded newspaper so that it danced in an eddy around the middle of the road. Life is precious, Gemma repeated. And in that second, despite the incongruity of her surroundings, the mental scales tipped finally in the direction of the baby. Still uplifted by the soaring bird, she grabbed Angie’s arm.

‘Angie,’ she cried. ‘I’m going to do it! I’m going to have this baby! I can do it!’

For a split second, Angie looked bewildered. Then she threw her arms and her briefcase around Gemma, kissing and hugging her in an enthusiastic embrace.

‘Gemster, of course you can! Of course!’

Angie stepped back, blinking.

‘You’re crying!’ said Gemma.

‘Nah. Just some grit in my eyes. Damn wind. I’m buying a bottle of champagne and some luxury nibbles and coming over to your place at lunchtime to make a toast to you. And the baby.’

Suddenly serious, Gemma asked, ‘And we’ve got to talk about you and Trevor Dawson.’

Angie looked away, squinting against the gritty wind.

‘Did you notice anything about Bettina’s necklace in the family photograph?’ Gemma asked.

Angie frowned. ‘Only that it was intact.’

‘They were all perfectly round beads. There was no big heart-shaped bead in the middle. Or anywhere.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I looked very carefully. Ask Natalie for another look and you’ll see for yourself.’

‘Then where the hell did that large one come from?’ Angie said thoughtfully.

Angie’s question kept ringing through Gemma’s mind as she drove home. Natalie said Bryson had bought several similar Venetian glass items. There was no guarantee the killer had carried the broken heart away unknowingly. The damaged bead could have been lost earlier in the grounds by some other family member. It could have fallen off a keyring, a necklet or a bracelet.

It was possible that someone else, completely unconnected to the murders, had lost it there.

Gemma picked up the mail on her way down the stone steps to her flat. Bills. She mentally reviewed the meeting at Angie’s office, puzzled by some of Jaki’s remarks. How could a letter be ‘sort of’ anonymous? Either something was anonymous or it was from a known recipient.

Inside, she called out to the Ratbag but there was no answer. Her desk phone rang; it was Spinner. He rang often, hoping to hear that his services were needed.

‘Sorry, Spinner,’ she said. ‘I’m handling it all myself. Don’t know how I’ll be going in six months time though.’

She could see Spinner’s grin through the wires.

‘Great! You’re going to have the baby! You’ll be a great mum. And I’ll bet Steve will come round. Once he’s got over the shock. I know a lot of men who couldn’t give a rats about the idea of having a baby, but once they get that little warm bundle in their arms, it’s a different story.’

Gemma smiled, trying to imagine her dogged colleague, with his funny, wizened face and stunted body, tenderly nursing a baby.

‘I could be a sort of stand-in, when Steve is away,’ Spinner went on.

‘He sure is away at the moment,’ Gemma said. ‘Terminally away. It’s all over, Steve and me, as far as he’s concerned.’

She reassured Spinner that she would call on him should she need help, either professionally or in ‘managing her confinement’ as Spinner quaintly put it, then rang off. Looking through the bills, she realised she’d forgotton to drop off Paulette Heath’s shoes. She glanced at her watch – she had time to get to Waverley and back before Angie arrived.

•

She found Paulette’s place, a tiny semi at the end of a row of six, seriously run-down but obviously being renovated in stages. Gemma cranked the old-fashioned door bell and waited. Probably Paulette wasn’t home yet from the Moore Park job. She was about to turn away and look for a safe place round the back to stow the shoes when she heard footsteps coming down the hall and Paulette let her in. She wore a tight-fitting low-cut jumper with a short skirt and boots.

‘Hi, Paulette,’ said Gemma, extending the shopping bag, unable to suppress her envy at the woman’s striking figure. ‘Angie said you’d be needing these. You left them in her office.’

‘So that’s where they were,’ said Paulette. ‘Come in, come in.’

Gemma followed her through the narrow hallway, glimpsing the messy bedroom on her right reflected in the mirror of a heavily carved wardrobe, before Paulette hastily closed the door, then into the main room, noticing the elaborate CCTV security system with its screen split four ways, covering back and front entrances as well as the garage and side lane. Cop’s paranoia, just like her own.

‘Can I get you a coffee?’ said Paulette. ‘I’m just back from that job at Moore Park. Shoulda seen the dead’un. I nearly fainted when I walked in.’

She was chatty, needing to debrief, thought Gemma.

‘I’ll have something cold,’ she said, and Paulette went to a small fridge next to a lounge chair.

‘Renovations,’ she explained. ‘My kitchen doesn’t really exist at the moment. You don’t drink coffee?’

Gemma smiled. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

It was the first time she’d said this. Until that moment, she’d merely been ‘pregnant’.

Paulette passed her a small bottle of orange juice while she pulled the ring from a can of Coke. She upended it and swallowed hard. ‘That’s better. This guy had been dead about a week, lying on his bed. One of those old rooming houses. He wasn’t in too bad shape, considering the amount of time. But his head – God. The uniforms called me in thinking it was some sort of horrendous murder. Poor bastard had been skinned. Or rather his face was. There’s this big red skull grinning at me. Then I went outside where one of the uniforms was emptying a tin of dog food on the concrete for the dead guy’s starving dog who’d been locked inside. There’s your perpetrator, I said. The dog had licked all the skin off his master’s face. A baby, eh?’

Gemma almost finished the orange juice in one go; she hadn’t realised how thirsty she’d been.

‘Surprised he was allowed to have a dog in one of those places,’ she said.

‘Bloody thing hadn’t eaten for a week – except for its owner’s nose.’ Paulette laughed. ‘The fleshy bits, anyway.’

Gemma put the plastic bottle down, feeling suddenly queasy. ‘I’d better go,’ she said.

‘You know Angie McDonald well, I hear,’ said Paulette.

‘That’s right.’

‘And Jaki Hunter.’

Gemma nodded.

‘What’s Jaki like?’

‘You don’t know her well? Don’t you work together?’ Gemma asked.

‘I’ve only been there a few months. Transferred out of my last job. Kicked out, really.’

‘How so?’

‘You know how it is. How long have you known Jaki?’

‘Quite a while,’ said Gemma. ‘She’s a smart woman. Got her ballistics certification just recently. You’re lucky to be joining that team.’

Paulette grunted. ‘Hope so. Don’t want to be transferred out again.’

‘Enjoy your shoes,’ said Gemma, moving towards the door. ‘Hope your kitchen’s finished soon.’

‘Yeah. Sorry about the mess. How old’s Jaki?’

Gemma frowned. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘I mean, she’s already got her expert’s certificate, but she looks pretty young still. That’s what I want to do too. Hey, good luck with the pregnancy.’

•

Back home, her spirits still buoyant with her decision to have the baby, Gemma discovered that the Ratbag wasn’t in evidence, and he’d actually folded his blankets and sheets and stowed them behind one of the blue leather armchairs. Hugo was becoming a little more civilised, she thought. She thought of his neglectful parents, who didn’t seem to care where he was, as long as he wasn’t troubling either of them; of the heavy pressures on Maddison Carr, who’d run away from the stifling, pressure-cooker life her father, Dr Carr, had unwittingly described. ‘My daughter has everything she needs for a perfectly normal and happy adolescence,’ he had told Gemma. ‘She’s top in all her subjects, she’s also taken on French, the piano and swimming. She knows what’s expected of her. She’s had the best education money can buy.’

Then her thoughts turned to the unhappiness of Jade Finn. Another young girl whose world had been turned upside down. No wonder she was being difficult – her father murdered, her little brother fighting to live, her mother totally preoccupied. Gemma counted her blessings. Even her pregnancy had ceased being merely an object for concern and anxiety; it was now a huge potential. Steve still loves you, Angie had said. Maybe he’d be happy about the baby. Maybe he would give her just one more chance.

She was hungry, waiting for Angie’s arrival, and for once the thought of food didn’t turn her stomach. Together with the pure white bird that had landed almost at her feet, this too seemed like a good omen. Inside her body, a tiny being was throbbing away, expanding and growing into a real baby, a real person. Gemma placed her hand on her belly. In less than six months, a new human being would come into the world. As she gazed at the snowy fair-weather cumulus piling on top of the edge of the sea, she was filled with awe and wonder.

Her whole being sighed with relief. She’d stopped fighting it. She’d even said the words out loud to Paulette. She was going to have a baby.

•

Gemma and Angie sat outside in the winter sunshine and ate bagels with salad and Portuguese chicken. Gemma sipped a little of the champagne Angie had brought with her. She gazed out at a powder blue sky and junior navy sea. Pigeons flew overhead, heading for the rocky ledges that fell away to the softly surging breakers below.

‘If there’s any random breathtesting this arvo,’ said Angie, ‘I’ll race to the showers and refuse to come out.’ She downed a glass and sat back, blinking. ‘Congratulations, Gemster. I still can’t believe it! You, my best girlfriend, becoming a mother. Me, I’m not likely to ever have a baby.’

‘Which reminds me,’ said Gemma. ‘I want to hear about Trevor.’

A shadow fell across Angie’s face. ‘Trevor,’ she sighed, about to top up Gemma’s glass until Gemma put a hand over it. She refilled her own instead. ‘Life doesn’t always go according to plan.’

‘What are you going to do about him?’ asked Gemma.

Angie shook her head. ‘Don’t know. I just never seem to get the right bloke. They all turn out to be duds. Most of the other women at work are married with children. But he
has
left his wife and he’s contacted me again. He
must
be interested.’

‘Interested in you or interested in a woman who’ll look after him?’

Angie shrugged.

‘Ange, I’m no champion at picking stable, appropriate men. I still seem to be in love with an unpredictable man who goes haring off I don’t know where half the time, and when he does turn up, he’s only in transit.’

Angie sighed. ‘Sounds an awful lot like Trevor.’

Gemma looked out to where a small, white-sailed boat was tranquilly ploughing through the sea, then brought her attention back to Angie. ‘That’s our problem,’ she said. ‘Kit’s always telling me I make choices that don’t actually support what I really want.’

‘That is so Kit! What the hell does it mean?’

‘She reckons there’s a disconnection between what I want and what I
do
in order to get what I want. Like you and Trevor. And, I have to say, like me and Steve. You say you want marriage and kids, but you hang out with men who don’t. Or can’t. Or are doing all that with someone else.’

‘What about Steve?’ Angie asked.

‘He’s never wanted kids. Told me he could never see himself as a married man with a family.’

‘So there’s not much point in hankering after him then,’ said Angie, with an odd expression that Gemma couldn’t read.

‘Do you think Trevor wants to do it all again?’ Gemma asked.

Angie shook her head.

‘Okay, then,’ said Gemma. ‘Then what do you think he wants?’

‘I’ve agreed to meet him again, that’s all,’ said Angie. ‘And have a drink. I’ve promised not to take my whip.’

Angie gathered up her jacket and briefcase and Gemma walked with her to the front garden.

‘I’ll come over later. Maybe after tea,’ said Angie. ‘And we can go through those cartons from Bryson Finn’s flat.’

Just as Angie was leaving, Gemma asked, ‘Is Paulette gay?’

Angie paused, her puzzled frown quickly changing to a grin. ‘I don’t think so. Why? You’re not interested, are you?’

‘She seemed very interested in Jaki. Asked me a lot of questions. But it could have just been professional. Jaki would be a great example to anyone new in the job.’

•

After Angie had left, Gemma went to her office and opened the envelope Angie had given her containing information about The Group. A photocopied flyer advertising the organisation was on the top. ‘Mr Sheridan Stark, channeller of Archangel Reziel, Angel of the Secret Regions and Supreme Mysteries,’ Gemma read, ‘will help you discover your true vocation. Maximise your potential!’

Gemma wondered if Grace was maximising her potential up there on the Central Coast. A session with an archangel might be just what she needed herself. More seriously, it could serve to connect her with Grace. She looked up through the window and saw Hugo coming down the steps from the road two at a time.

‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door for him. ‘You do seem to come and go a bit.’

‘Dad rang,’ he said. ‘I had to go back and help him with moving some stuff. Are you going somewhere?’

‘In a little while. I’m driving up to the Central Coast. And no, you can’t come.’

Hugo pulled out a packet of circular orange objects, covered in salt and spices. ‘Want one?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’ll mind the house for you. Okay?’

Gemma changed into a shirt and jeans for the journey to Gosford. When she came to button the shirt, she realised that the top button was straining. She checked in the mirror. It was acceptable, although she was showing more cleavage than she cared to when working. She grabbed a comfortable brown wool jacket and scarf, her briefcase and notebook, and, leaving the Ratbag happily set up with cable TV, headed out the door.

•

On the outskirts of Gosford, she stopped at a café for a cup of tea and raisin toast and found the roads on her map to take her to the property called Cana.

As she drove through the countryside, still green from coastal rainfall, Gemma started to feel apprehensive about what she was doing. What if Grace interpreted Gemma’s visit as an unwanted intrusion into her life? She had said quite clearly she didn’t want contact, that she was making a life that did not include Gemma or Kit.

It was impossible to miss Cana because of the large billboard near the entrance to the property. ‘Trade your anxiety for God’s certainty’ it said in big letters surrounded by smiling, happy faces. Behind these, golden rays shone from a huge angel holding seven golden candlesticks, a horizontal ‘8’ – a symbol of eternity – floating above him.

Gemma took a deep breath, said, ‘G’day Reziel’, and drove over the cattle grid and up the dirt road to the farmhouse. Cana was set on rolling farmland and several horses looked up from their grazing as she passed. As she approached the house, she pulled out her video camera and filmed the building and its surroundings. A kneeling woman was weeding a large rose bed in front of the house, and hens picked around a garden that ran along the northern length of the long, low homestead surrounded by a verandah. Another sign, on the right-hand side of the house, indicated Reception, an arrow pointing towards the back of the place. Gemma put her camera down and drove slowly towards the arrow, then got out, struck by the quietness of the afternoon. The birds were silent and only the lightest breeze lifted the leaves of a nearby pepper tree. In the deep peace of the moment, she experienced an odd sense of dislocation and for a second wondered where she was and what she was doing. Then she followed the direction of the arrow, passing a collection of vegetable beds and herbs in pots until she came to a fly-screened door in the middle of the long enclosed verandah.