Spiking the Girl (27 page)

She tried to distract herself with television then went to Mike’s laptop, switched it on, logged on and waited. Into view came the interior of Mrs Dunlop’s living room. She could see the small figure, dwarfed by the large armchair, either dozing or watching the television screen. Nothing doing there. No animals in view. It was late but Gemma wasn’t sleepy. She went round switching lights off.

In the morning, Gemma was again checking on the Annie Dunlop feed when Angie rang. ‘It’s panic stations around
here,’ she said. Claudia Page had not come home that night and Damien Wilcox was also still missing. ‘Claudia must have been feeling like the last clay pigeon in the box.’

Gemma, her eyes still on the laptop screen with the view of Mrs Dunlop’s flat, thought of something else. ‘Has anything been done about the warning of that contract out on me?’

‘You know how it is. G-for-Gross is still off with his goddam ear. I took it to the big boss,’ said Angie.

‘And?’

‘And he said leave it with him. He’d take appropriate action.’

Gemma hadn’t expected anything more.

Mike arrived and she let him in, thinking it was getting easier every time and soon relations between them would be normal again.

‘Forever Diamonds is still looking for a receptionist,’ he said. ‘I went past last night and they’ve added “urgent” to the sign.’

‘They know my face,’ said Gemma. ‘Otherwise I’d do it myself. I’ll have to pay another professional to go in there.’ She gathered up the completed jobs that Spinner had left in folders in the out tray on his desk. ‘But I’ll need to talk to Mr Dowling first before incurring such an extra expense.’

She was about to go to her own office when something caught her eye—a movement in the monochrome picture on the laptop screen. In Mrs Dunlop’s flat, something low and ill-defined was definitely moving. Gemma peered closer, trying to work out what it was. Had it just been a breeze lifting the skirts of the big square armchair? The lighting wasn’t very good but she would have sworn she’d seen something that was separate from the chair move and vanish down the side hidden from the camera. ‘Damn,’ she muttered.

With one eye on the screen, she called Mrs Dunlop. No one answered. Gemma put the phone down.

‘What?’ Mike swivelled round on his chair.

‘I thought I saw something move in Mrs Dunlop’s flat.’

‘Her animal?’

They both stared at the screen, but nothing moved in the grainy picture.

‘I did see something. On the other side of that big armchair of hers.’

Again, they stood and watched the time-lapse frames. Nothing.

‘I’m going over there,’ said Gemma. ‘There is definitely something in that woman’s flat.’

‘Didn’t her daughters say they’d searched the place thoroughly?’ Mike said.

‘They did,’ she said. ‘But I haven’t.’

Gemma grabbed her bag, camera and notebook.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Mike said. ‘One to search, one to record.’

With all the pressures she was under right now, it felt good to have Mike’s support. ‘You’re on,’ she said.

Mrs Dunlop didn’t seem in the least surprised when they arrived at her place. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you’ve seen that animal on your camera, have you?’

‘Maybe,’ said Gemma. ‘What we plan to do, with your permission, is a full-scale search.’

‘It was at me again last night,’ said the old lady. ‘I could feel it tickling my legs. It’s a big creature, whatever it is.’

‘Peripheral neuritis,’ Mike whispered to Gemma as Mrs Dunlop made her way to the tiny kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘Nerve damage. Sometimes people get pins and needles in their extremities. It could feel as if something was touching her legs.’

They divided up the small rooms, starting floor to mid-height in the bedroom, checking under everything, the undersides of all the fittings and the contents of every drawer and container, turning the brilliant beam of Mike’s flashlight into any ill-lit areas. It was a fairly recent building with plain square rooms, easy to search. Then they moved higher, from mid-height right up to the ceiling—searching through built-in wardrobes, shelves, furnishings and the storage cupboards.

When they’d cleared the bedroom Mrs Dunlop brought the tray of tea things out and put them on the table near her big square armchair.

Mike and Gemma searched the bathroom, a tiny space with a small, partly opened window. Gemma stood in the bath to open it fully and peered out. She was looking down into a narrow walkway that ran between Mrs Dunlop’s building and the block of flats next door. There was nothing down there except a grille-covered drain near the basement wall. No cover of any sort for an animal to hide in. She looked either side. Again, nothing, no balconies or footholds. Just the external pipes of the plumbing.

She pulled the window down to the level it had been at and climbed out of the bath to check the tiny cabinet, closing its mirrored door when she’d finished.

Mrs Dunlop poured three cups of tea and sat herself down in her ancient armchair. She looked tiny in it, dwarfed by its huge, old-fashioned structure.

Gemma and Mike checked the small kitchen, searching every nook and cranny, pulling the fridge out, checking the stove and its housing, the cupboards and shelves.

‘Here’s an ant,’ said Mike, pointing to one that was wandering near the windowsill. ‘That’s the biggest animal in here so far.’

They started the systematic search of the lounge room while Mrs Dunlop watched them from her chair. Gemma turned her attention to the section behind the old lady, pulling out an art deco cocktail cabinet filled with photographs of Mrs Dunlop’s grandchildren. It didn’t take long.

‘There’s nothing here,’ Mike said, shaking his head, talking over Mrs Dunlop’s head to Gemma who was standing behind the armchair.

‘I’m not deaf!’ said Mrs Dunlop, catching him at it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But really, Mrs Dunlop, there’s nothing in here except us three.’

Gemma put her hand on the back of the armchair and looked down at the top of the old lady’s grey hair, feeling sad. Now, she thought, they’ll take her away from her familiar surroundings and put her in some nursing home where she won’t know her way around and where she’ll die among strangers. Then she felt something and stepped back, curious. Her fingers had found a frayed hole, the size of a man’s fist, in the fabric stretched across the back of the old chair. She looked more closely at the grimy ring around the edges of the hole. It put her in mind of the dirty grease marks left along rat runs, yet there hadn’t been the slightest sign of rats or vermin in the place—no droppings or chewed edges of any kind.

‘Mike,’ she said. ‘Just bring the flashlight over here, will you?’

He handed the powerful light to her and, switching it on, she shone it through the hole in the back of the lounge chair. She peered in. The beam of light revealed springs and cotton-waste padding.

Something moved and it wasn’t Mrs Dunlop stirring. Gemma jumped back.

‘There’s something in there!’

Mike frowned. ‘Let’s see.’

Gemma handed him the torch.

‘What is it?’ Mrs Dunlop struggled to stand up. ‘What are you whispering about?’

‘We want to have a look inside your armchair,’ said Mike. ‘We think there might be something inside it.’

Mrs Dunlop stood to one side while Mike and Gemma slowly turned the armchair upside down.

‘It’s very heavy,’ said Gemma.

‘They knew how to build things in the old days,’ said Mrs Dunlop, straining to see what they were doing.

Now that they had the armchair on its head, the heavy canvas that covered the bottom of the frame was in clear view. It was stained and Gemma drew back from the smell. Something rattled inside, sounding like old dry bones.

‘What the hell is it?’ said Gemma.

‘I think we need to have a real good look in there,’ said Mike, turning to the old lady. ‘Mrs Dunlop, I want to take this chair outside and—’

‘Mike! Look! It’s coming out!’

Gemma’s shout made him let go of the armchair and it tipped over. As it did, the stained canvas bottom tore right open, revealing the pulsing coils of a huge python that was sliding out of the hole in the back of the chair, flowing along the carpet and heading for the bedroom.

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Mike, looking round for some way to catch the snake.

The python flowed into the bedroom and Gemma sprang to shut the door after it.

‘What was it?’ asked Mrs Dunlop, hearing the excitement and aware of something moving low along her carpet.

Gemma and Mike noticed for the first time the pile of debris and bones that had spilled out of the rotted canvas bottom of the chair. Gemma poked at a small flat skull with the end of the torch—needle-sharp carnivore’s teeth, huge round eye-sockets, then fine vertebrae.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Pusskin.’

•

After Mrs Snellgrove had taken her mother to stay at her place for a while and WIRES had taken the python, Gemma and Mike dismantled the camera installation and headed for home.

‘That’s one case wrapped,’ said Mike. But it brought Gemma no satisfaction. All she could think of was Claudia Page. She’d let the girl down. Claudia had tried to help her and she’d failed her completely. I will find you, Gemma vowed. I swear it.

‘What would you do if you were Claudia Page’s boyfriend,’ she asked, turning to Mike, ‘and you were scared for your girlfriend’s life?’

‘I’d be a hero,’ said Mike. ‘I’d run away with her and hide out somewhere.’

‘Where do you think they’d go?’

Mike shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Friends, rellies. It’s a big country.’

‘And all we’ve got is a thief knot,’ she said.

Mike asked the question she’d been trying to avoid. ‘What if they haven’t run away? What if they’ve been taken?’

She asked him to deviate at New South Head Road and they drove to the Cross, Gemma refreshing her memory from her notebook about the youth refuge where Sandra Samuels worked.

Situated in one of the back streets, opposite the rear of the church across the road, the refuge seemed to be little more than a long hangar with a small kitchen area at one end, some plastic tables and chairs, a partitioned room where sleeping bags and foam mattresses were piled and, next to it, a small office area. In a corner, a television flashed with the sound turned down and the scent of roses sweetened the spare surroundings. A young man sat at a table reading. Gemma immediately thought of the Ratbag, but couldn’t picture him settling for a church-run refuge.

‘I’m looking for Sandra Samuels,’ said Gemma, approaching the youth. He cocked his head on one side, indicating an ear and shaking his head. He can’t hear, Gemma realised. She pulled out her pen and wrote the name ‘Sandra Samuels’ with a big question mark beside it in the margin of a discarded newspaper. Again, the youth shrugged. She was about to go and ask at the church when a slight woman in her thirties appeared at the door.

‘Looking for someone?’ she called, her head lifted in an enquiring, even aggressive way.

‘I think I’m looking for you,’ Gemma said, turning her attention to the woman and showing her ID, ‘if you’re Sandra Samuels.’

‘What do you want?’ said the woman, immediately defensive as Gemma dropped her gaze to confirm the name tag in a plastic sleeve clipped onto Sandra’s T-shirt. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Gemma Lincoln and I need your help,’ she said.

Sandra flashed Gemma a hard look. ‘People like you don’t need my help.’ She glanced across the room at the reading youth. ‘We’re due to be kicked out of this place unless we can find next month’s rent.’

‘A young girl called Claudia Page has gone missing,’ Gemma pressed on. ‘Her two best friends went the same way. They’re both dead and I’ve been employed by the college they attended to investigate.’

‘I read about those girls.’ Her manner softened a little. ‘But how can I help you with that?’

Gemma searched for a gentle way to bring the gang rapes of twenty years ago into the conversation. ‘When you were a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl,’ she said, ‘you were involved in a very serious incident.’

The change in Sandra was electric. Before Gemma could say another word, the woman had grabbed her arm. ‘Get out of here!’ she said, eyes blazing, her whole body shaking. ‘Just get out of here right now!’

Gemma pulled her arm away from the other woman’s grip. ‘I need to know the answers to some questions, Sandra. This young girl could be in terrible danger. She needs your help! My help! She—’

‘I said, get out! Now!’ Sandra’s voice had hardened. ‘Or I’ll get you charged for trespass.’

Gemma backed away. This was not going well. ‘Okay, okay,’ she said, hands up in a placatory position. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve distressed you.’

She managed to pull one of her business cards out of her briefcase and tried to give it to the woman. But she wouldn’t take it and it fell to the floor.

‘Please,’ Gemma begged. ‘I can understand that you’d be reluctant to revisit those memories—’

But it was as if she no longer existed. Sandra Samuels had turned her back and hurried away, almost breaking into a run. Gemma heard a door slam. Interview terminated. She picked up her business card and took it over to the table where the youth was still lost in his book, leaving it propped up against the vase of roses.

Slowly, she walked back to where Mike waited in the car. He saw her face as she slid in beside him. She shook her head.

•

Back in her office, Gemma tried ringing Mr Dowling to discuss hiring the services of an outside undercover operator but he wasn’t answering his phone.

She gathered up the folder in which she’d put the expenses incurred so far by Daria Reynolds, plus the summaries and charges for the long hours spent watching the Reynolds’s house for a phantom who never came, and went outside to her car. At the top of the steps leading up to the roadway, she turned and saw the new tenant had finally put up plain white curtains. She hoped they meant the tenant would be a plain, quiet soul.

She climbed into her car and rang Angie. ‘Any news yet on Claudia?’

‘Negative,’ Angie said. ‘But Francie rang me to say they’d found a pile of polystyrene boxes near where all those bone fragments and teeth turned up. That’s news.’

The curious case of the multiple remains didn’t interest Gemma right now. ‘All I can think of is Claudia Page,’ she said.

‘Today’s papers are already on the case,’ said Angie. ‘Listen to this front page:
Murder College: Third girl vanishes!
And the
Herald
is almost as hysterical.
Police always too late says neighbour
.’ Gemma could hear newspapers rustling at the other end of the line. ‘And guess what?’ Angie continued. ‘The principal of Netherleigh Park Ladies’ College has resigned.’