Spiking the Girl (31 page)

‘The use of cling wrap is a crime?’ Kodaly was enjoying himself.

‘When it’s part of a cocaine packaging operation, yes,’ said Angie. ‘You deal in prohibited substances here, don’t you?’

Kodaly spread his hands. ‘What can I say, Sergeant?’ he begged. ‘I run a nightclub. That’s what I do. I don’t know what you’re going on about. Plastic? Criminal cling wrap? Really.’

Angie and Gemma stood outside near the Forensic Services station wagon. Crime Scene had arrived and were working inside. Meanwhile, while outside, a small crowd of people—those who hadn’t vanished at the arrival of the first car—hung around on the footpath.

‘You should have told me about this Eddie character! I felt like a fool in there. I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about!’ said Angie, angry eyes flashing.

‘Sorry, Ange. I forgot to pass it on to you. It slipped my mind.’

‘Slipped your mind? This isn’t the Royal Commission. This is a murder investigation!’

‘There’s been a lot going on.’

‘You reckon you’ve had a lot going on! What about me?’ Angie walked a little distance away, trying to recover her poise.

Gemma followed. ‘Where is she?’ she said. ‘That girl is being held somewhere against her will. Scared, terrified. Or worse.’

‘We’ll find her. If they’ve moved her, someone must have seen something. I’ll get the local boys to do a doorknock along the street.’ Angie threw her mobile into her car. ‘Bloody fucking hell!’ She opened the door and slammed it. ‘That was a waste of time. All we’ve done is put them on notice. We didn’t find a damn thing that was helpful.’

‘It won’t take you long to get the partner’s name,’ Gemma reminded her.

‘But they know now that we’ll be searching and that gives them a chance to reorganise, regroup. If they’re holding Claudia somewhere, it gives them the chance to move her,’ said Angie.

If Claudia was already dead it didn’t matter how long it took them to track down the elusive sleeping partner. Gemma didn’t want to think about that. ‘I was so sure she’d be there,’ she said.

Another unmarked car skidded to a halt on the opposite side of the road and Bruno, one ear heavily bandaged, jumped out of it and raced across the road, dodging traffic.

‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded of Angie. ‘Why wasn’t I told about this?’ Then he caught sight of Gemma. ‘What the fuck is she doing here?’

Angie started to explain, but he cut her off.

‘This is deliberate white-anting! Why wasn’t I informed about this raid?’

‘You were off sick!’

‘I was back today. It’s on the day roster! I should have been informed!’

‘Claudia Page emailed an image of a room in this club and a message saying she was being held here. We went to the boss and got moving as fast as possible. I didn’t have time to look at any roster! You’re never around anyway!’

‘Out of order, Sergeant!’

‘I don’t believe you’ve been sick!’ Angie yelled, coming up, toe to toe. ‘I’ll bet you’re moonlighting!’

Bruno looked startled but rallied fast. ‘You’d better back that up, Sergeant. That’s a serious allegation!’

‘You’re never bloody here when you’re needed!’

‘I’m putting you on paper, McDonald!’

‘You do that, you bastard, and I’ll make it my business to find out why Jim Buisman took you off the original investigation! And wherever your second job is, they’d better be happy with you, because by the time I’m finished with you it’ll be the only job you’ll have!’

‘Angie,’ said Gemma as a crowd gathered, ‘this is not getting anywhere. Leave it.’

Bruno swung on Gemma. ‘And as for you, you bloody interfering bitch—’

‘Chill, Bruno,’ said Gemma. ‘Or you’ll bust your bandages or your infected ear.’ Toes clutched tight and with racing heart, she practised professional poise. Every fibre of her body wanted to let him have it; instead, keeping her voice low and steady, she continued. ‘Claudia Page contacted me. Not the police, certainly not you! She sent breakthrough information to me! I’ve got more right to be here than you!’

Bruno seethed a moment longer. Then he hurried back to his car, slammed the door closed and wound down the window. ‘So help me God,’ he yelled out, ‘you’ll never get your PI licence renewed again! Never! That’s a fucking promise!’

He screeched off, causing the nearby pedestrians to scatter.

Angie and Gemma retreated into a coffee lounge for an informal debrief. In the cool, dark interior, a television screen flickered with a program no one was watching. Angie threw herself into a chair. ‘That prick! I can negotiate with psychopaths but not someone like Bruno Gross!’

‘Men like Bruno are always going to be there,’ Gemma said, as much for her own sake as for her friend. ‘And they’ll always underestimate you because you’re a smart, good-looking woman. And then, when they realise they’ve done that, instead of you going up in their estimation, they’ll just hate you more, because you’ve shown them up again for the mediocre arseholes they are.’

‘I hope he doesn’t make your life impossible,’ Angie said. ‘I don’t know how much influence he might have.’

‘I don’t want to have to change my career just now,’ said Gemma. ‘What’s our next move?’ she asked. Then she noticed something on the television. ‘There’s that shark again.’ She’d seen it in the earlier newsflash, being taken to the Aquarium.

‘What shark?’

‘
A white pointer shark
,’ the newsreader announced, ‘
taken to the Sydney Aquarium for veterinary attention has proved costly. The shark smashed its way through a holding tank and bit a large chunk out of a display item in its enclosure before vomiting the contents of its stomach. Veterinarians finally had to sedate the shark with a tranquilliser. And a warning
,’ the newsreader added, ‘
this report contains images from an amateur video that may distress some viewers
.’

Gemma leaned forward to see the items in the cloudy water surrounding the doped-up shark—the artificial coral with a huge bite mark through it, the front half of a dog, a partly inflated sex doll, and a diver’s weight belt. She grabbed Angie’s arm. ‘Look at what’s attached to that belt. See what’s round it?’

The heavy belt lay along the bottom of the enclosure and from it a length of cord trailed in the water. Angie, still stewing over the fight with Bruno, took a moment to comprehend.

‘Quick!’ said Gemma. ‘Ring the Aquarium. Tell them under no circumstances must they discard anything from that shark’s belly.’

Angie downed the other half of her coffee and was already out of her seat and pulling out her mobile.

Less than an hour later Gemma and Angie, along with one of the marine biologists and the assistant manager of the Aquarium, watched while Nicole from Crime Scene turned the heavy belt and attached cord over in her gloved hands. ‘This end looks like it’s been cut,’ she said, indicating the end tied to the belt, ‘with a very sharp knife. But if you look at this end,’ she pointed to the trailing end, ‘there’s fraying. This doesn’t look like a knife’s been used on it.’

‘Could it have been bitten?’ Gemma asked.

Nicole carefully bagged and labelled the green and white Vectran cord. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Mr Roper will give it the once-over.’ A systematic search of the rest of the debris from the shark’s belly had failed to turn up anything else of interest. ‘Looks like the belt was used to weigh something down,’ said Nicole. ‘Maybe that dog’s corpse?’

With these words, an idea flashed into Gemma’s mind. ‘Ring Dr Chang,’ she suggested. ‘Ask her if those post-mortem injuries on Tasmin’s wrist could have been made by the drag of a heavy object.’

Angie pulled out her phone. ‘You’re thinking the shark went for the wrong end of the rope?’

‘Imagine it,’ said Gemma. ‘There’s this nice body drifting down through the depths, with a diver’s belt for weight, and the white pointer snaps the line in half but swallows the wrong end.’

‘They don’t have good eyesight,’ said the marine biologist.

‘And huge forces tug as the shark bites down on the cord, causing those injuries on the dead girl’s wrist.’

For a moment, this new information seemed like a breakthrough. But then Gemma thought of all the places along the coast from where a body could be disposed. All it needed was a dark night, and over the cliff or off the bridge with the body and the diver’s belt.

‘We really haven’t learned anything new,’ said Angie. ‘Except for a plausible explanation of that post-mortem tear in Tasmin’s wrist. The Australian Oceanographic Data Centre supplied an assessment of conditions for the period Tasmin was missing,’ she added, ‘and the best they could offer was that she could have been put in the water anywhere between Port Jackson and Botany Bay.’

‘Any result on the positive semen swabs?’

‘We have to wait till the lab lets us know.’

‘I am so over men,’ said Angie on the drive back. ‘The only thing that’s keeping me going is what’s going to happen to that bastard, Trevor Dawson, at Graingers. If it all goes according to plan, he’ll be stripped down and just about to get stuck into it when Mrs Trevor,’ she threw a glance at Gemma, ‘for whom, by the way, I have nothing but sympathy, walks in.’

‘I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall.’

‘It’s not going to be pretty.’ She checked the rear-vision mirror. ‘Melissa Grey told me Mrs Trevor shot her first husband eight years ago. She was never even charged. Claimed it was an accident.’

‘Maybe it was,’ said Gemma.

Angie snorted. ‘Melissa said the investigating team found a target in her basement with his photograph and nine beautifully grouped head shots.’

‘Sounds like cops’ gossip to me.’

‘Deadset it’s true.’

‘You’re a devil woman, Angie.’

‘Only when I’m treated bad. Basically I’m just a sweet country girl.’

‘You can take the girl out of the country,’ Gemma started quoting.

‘Right. But you can’t take the—’

Their old two-hander was interrupted by Angie’s phone. She plugged in her earpiece, grunted and then rang off.

‘That was Julie,’ she said. ‘They’ve been given a couple of extra people. She and Sean are going through ASIC files—trying to get names for the owners of Deliverance. The sleeping partner.’

‘What do we do next?’ Gemma repeated her unanswered question from the coffee lounge.

‘The usual doorknocks, talk to our integrated corporate resources. Keep on the track of that sleeping partner, the ex-bodyguard Eddie, anything they might know about the club. And once I have something official to go on, once Sandra Samuels talks to me, I’ll go and have a chat with the footie legend. Once we’ve done
that
,’ she continued, ‘we sit and wait. That’s always the hardest time of an investigation.’

Gemma knew what she meant.

‘Do you think Claudia is still alive?’

Angie didn’t answer.

•

Next morning Gemma checked in with Angie but there was still no news on Claudia Page. ‘I slept in here surrounded by VMO files,’ said Angie. ‘No wonder I had nightmares. If I was the boss and I had the resources,’ she went on, ‘I’d get Deliverance put on around-the-clock surveillance.’

‘If the public and the press make enough fuss you just might get them. They’ve already put extra people on the ASIC search,’ she said, remembering Julie’s call. ‘When Spinner gets back from the country,’ she continued, ‘the three of us here could manage a bit of surveillance. Build up some mosaic intelligence.’

‘You’ve got your own business to consider,’ said Angie. ‘You can’t afford to take time off that.’

‘I feel responsible. Claudia went missing while I was talking to her,’ said Gemma, feeling helpless.

Angie yawned. ‘Your friend Sandra Samuels still hasn’t contacted me.’

‘She will,’ said Gemma, and rang off.

She opened her emails, hoping against hope that there was something from Claudia. There wasn’t. As she logged off, the radio came to life. It was Spinner, on his way home.

‘Spinner! Base here. Good to hear from you. How’s it all going?’

‘I’ve got some information about Mr Romero that I know will interest you. Not to mention some pretty interesting video footage of the man whose sex life is finished.’

‘What’s the information on Romero?’ She couldn’t have cared less about Mr Pepper just then.

‘I got the name of someone who’d been a student at Bathurst High during Romero’s last year there and pretended I was his brother. I heard the same thing from three different people. About Mr Romero.’

Gemma pulled out the Romero file and grabbed a pen. ‘Okay. Go.’

‘Mr Romero didn’t leave the public system because of the workload. He left Bathurst High because of an inappropriate relationship with an under-age student.’ Spinner paused. ‘In fact, they ran away together.’

Gotcha! thought Gemma. ‘You’re sure of this?’

‘You bet. There’s no doubt at all. One of the people I spoke to was on the staff at the same time. He’s going to look up the records and get back to me with the girl’s name. She was only fourteen.’

‘Spinner, you really are my ace roadie.’

‘Just doing my job, Boss,’ he replied, but Gemma could hear he was pleased. ‘I should be there in an hour or so.’

The TV technician arrived to sort out the poor reception on the Sky channels. Gemma trusted him from his earlier visits and left him to it, going back into her office to try to call Beatrice de Berigny. Again, all she heard was the cool voice mail instructions. She rang the school office. Miss de Berigny was temporarily out of town, and out of touch, she was told. The secretary promised to pass on Gemma’s message if and when the former principal phoned the college. Apart from that, she said regretfully, there was little she could do.

When Gemma went through to the kichen to make a snack, the technician was running through the channels, tuning them. ‘I’ve got them all looking good except one,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure why there’s a problem with it. Are you transmitting anything around here?’

Gemma shook her head.

‘There’s some sort of interference happening. I’ll have to come back later with some gear and try and track it down.’

•

Although Gemma felt she was now getting somewhere with two of her cases, it was still hard to settle to work. The memory of Claudia in that mausoleum of a house, the girl’s guilt and shame about the way she’d covered up her friends’ disappearances and her helplessness to make it all better, had touched Gemma deeply. She went over and over the last few minutes with Claudia, desperate for a clue. Damn it. She should have been sharper.