Death by Beauty (11 page)

‘Yes,’ said Dr Evans. ‘Very sad. But of course there was no connection …’

As they made their farewells, Dr Evans accompanied them to the orchid-festooned entrance, clicking along in her high heels.

‘Do please come back,’ she said. ‘We have some wonderful early spring deals going that you might be interested in. In fact,
allow me to make you a gift of a spa day, normally priced at $450. I’m sure that one of you young women would like to take
that up some time, preferably in the next twelve months?’ With that, Dr Evans summoned the receptionist who shortly returned
with a beautifully engraved pink and gold complimentary gift voucher for ‘Heaven For a Day’.

On the way back to Angie’s car, Gemma, idly toying with the gift voucher, said, ‘Dr Evans seemed angry with Mrs van Leyden.
She couldn’t get her back to her room quickly enough.’

‘I noticed that, too,’ said Angie. ‘And did you see how she made that comment about there being no connection between Magda
Simmonds’ suicide and Sapphire Springs Spa?’

‘Sure did,’ said Gemma, ‘which would indicate that in her mind at least, there
is
such a connection.’

‘Mmm. I wondered what was going on between Dr Evans and Mrs van Leyden. She’ll sure present a challenge for the surgeons.
Although now they’ve got DiNAH … Hello?’ Her voice swiftly changed as she answered a call. ‘Oh, hi Ted. I’m fine. I’m about
an hour and a half away. In fact, I’m just about to drive back to the city.’

There was a pause while Angie listened. She nodded goodbye to Lizzie who was walking across the lawn, presumably after assisting
Mrs van Leyden back to her room.

‘I can make time for that, Ted. Be there in about two hours. Will you still be there? Okay.’

She noticed Gemma’s inquiring glance.

‘That was Ted Ackland,’ Angie said as they reached her car. ‘He briefed our team the other day. Wants to talk to me on the
quiet. He wouldn’t say what it was about over the phone.’

Angie unlocked the door and got in and Gemma swung herself into the passenger seat.

‘He has something to show me, too,’ said Angie. ‘So, Gems, how do you feel about a nice trip to the morgue?’

Angie parked in a back street behind Parramatta Road and they made their way around to the foyer of the squat dark building
that housed the morgue. Gemma had called Kit on the way, and she was happy to pick up Rafi and look after him until Gemma
had finished.

‘Ted Ackland is expecting us,’ Angie told the receptionist. ‘Detective Sergeant Angie McDonald and Gemma Lincoln.’

The receptionist noted their names and called Dr Ackland. ‘He’ll be here in a minute or two,’ she said with a smile. ‘Take
a seat.’

Ted Ackland came out through the security door behind the reception desk, hand outstretched to greet them.

‘Sure, I remember Gemma,’ he said to Angie’s question, shaking her hand, ‘from the old days when you were in the job. Come
through.’

He led them along the corridors, through a small museum where organs hung in formaldehyde, until they came to his
office – a generous space filled with a table, a couple of chairs and stacks of files.

‘I called your boss earlier today,’ said Ted as they sat around the small table. ‘And he said I should brief you, Angie. Inspector
Gross is very busy with administration matters, apparently.’

‘That sounds like Inspector Gross,’ said Angie, with a tight smile. ‘Always busy with administration matters.’ She paused.
‘You said on the phone that you wanted to talk about the murders of Rachel Starr and Marie-Louise Palier?’

Ted Ackland nodded. ‘I’m not quite sure how to put this. But I’ve been uneasy about these two cases for some time now. Angie,
you must understand that I have to be very careful in my work. Anything I write down in a report has to be based on scientific
fact. But I wanted to tell you this in case it’s helpful to your investigations. As you already know,’ he said, pulling out
several large glossy black-and-white photographs from a folder, ‘the facial and skull injuries of those two young women were
catastrophic, as were the injuries to their pelvises, particularly the sacroiliac area. And someone had gone to a great deal
of trouble in each case not only to mop up any possible trace evidence, but also to set up a scenario that would create confusion
about the original cause of death as well as hide the original crime scene.’

Gemma looked at Angie, wondering what Ted was getting at.

‘I had to ask myself – as I’m sure you have, Angie – why would someone go to all that bother? Not only is it difficult, but
it’s also dangerous – at any stage in the set-up of the “accident”, the perpetrator could have been interrupted. At the disused
quarry and near The Gap.’

‘I get all that, Ted,’ said Angie. ‘What are you saying?’

He seemed reluctant to speak, but finally he began again. ‘With that sort of tissue damage, extreme trauma with tissue pulverisation,
it’s hard to be sure of what I’m about to suggest. However, I’ve been in this game a long time and I’ve learned to trust my
gut feelings. With this sort of catastrophic damage, it might be hard to prove but there are some things I just couldn’t find.’

He pushed the photographs towards them. Mercifully, in black and white it was not quite as confronting.

‘What sort of things?’ asked Gemma.

‘In both cases, certain tissue was missing – I couldn’t account for it. If that sounds vague, I’ll try to explain. Parts of
the iliac crest appear to be missing in both women. And I couldn’t find any nasal tissue. That type of tissue has a different
quality to, say, lip tissue, which, by the way, also seemed to be missing. You must understand that the facial epidermis was
shockingly damaged. But even so, I would have expected to find some recognisable sections of it – even if not intact. And
in the case of Marie-Louise Palier, I also found that part of the mandible was missing.’

‘Mandible?’ asked Angie. ‘The jawbone?’

Ted nodded.

Angie and Gemma looked at him and then at each other as the implications of his words sank in.

‘It’s possible that there was some post-mortem damage caused by animals,’ Ted continued, ‘but I really couldn’t say that there
was any evidence of that. Rodents leave distinctive teeth marks. There had been quite a bit of insect damage. Some very early
maggot stages of various flies, and Rachel Starr’s body had been exposed for some time, but even so …’

‘Things are missing? You think he takes body parts?’ said Gemma, feeling sick with disgust.

Ted’s heavy eyebrows came together in a troubled frown. He started to say something and then stopped.

‘Is that what you’re saying, Ted?’ Angie urged. ‘That he takes trophies? Souvenirs from the women’s features? Maybe even parts
of bone?’

Ted compressed his lips and nodded again, but this time almost imperceptibly. ‘Possibly. But I believe he uses acid to destroy
facial tissue.’

It took Gemma a second or two to process this information. ‘He really wants to rub them out,’ she said.

‘The sort of damage I’m seeing is the sort you get with strong acids, such as sulphuric or nitric. But I can’t say which one
was used because the bodies have been thoroughly washed down. And I’m really reporting an absence. You know how cautious we
tend to be with our findings. We can’t overstate them. There could be other explanations, but the most likely one is that
the faces are completely destroyed before the bodies are dumped. I thought I should mention this because it might be helpful
when you bring someone in.’

Angie’s face wrinkled in distaste. ‘This is one sick individual.’

Ted’s phone rang and he answered it.

‘Sorry, ladies,’ he said, standing up. ‘I was hoping we could have a cup of tea and talk further, but I’ve got a crime scene
to attend.’

‘Acid,’ said Gemma as she and Angie walked to the car. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

Gemma shivered. What sort of human being prowls around, looking for bits of people to steal then throws acid onto what’s left?

‘Right,’ said Angie when Gemma answered her phone the next morning. ‘We’ve already had some responses to that newspaper piece.
Three women have rung in. Also, I’m interviewing Rachel Starr’s partner at ten o’clock. There’s something I need to check
with her.’

Gemma glanced at her watch. She’d need enough time to pack up Rafi’s bag and take him to daycare once he had finished his
breakfast. It is not easy, she thought, to run a security business and be a mother to Rafi, or to make time for Mike. ‘I can
come along and take notes.’

‘Mmm. Maybe. Or you could chase up the women who’ve rung in. At least in the first instance.’

‘I will. But count me in on the Starr girlfriend interview. I might need to hear what she has to say.’

‘I’ll pick you up about nine-thirty. Be ready.’

Stacey Major opened the door of the small semi-detached house in the inner city and ushered Gemma and Angie along a narrow
hall musty with incense smoke. It opened into a living room, which had been turned into a shrine for the late Rachel Starr.
Photographs of the dead woman with flowers and candles shining in front of them stood on shelves and tables. Stacey, a short,
sad-faced woman in her thirties, stood awkwardly as Gemma and Angie looked around at the pictures of the beautiful girl.

‘I miss her terribly,’ she said, slumping into a chair and indicating that the other two should sit down. Her brown eyes were
congested with tears. ‘Sometimes I hear her – I swear it – I hear her calling me from another room. But of course there’s
no one there.’ Her voice faltered and she pressed her lips in a firm line against the tears. ‘And I don’t understand why you’re
here again. I’ve already told the police everything I know.’

‘Stacey,’ Angie started gently, ‘I know this must be painful for you. But sometimes when we feel we’re getting nowhere in
a case, this is what we do. We go back to the beginning. We start all over again. We go over everything. We re-read witness
statements, we talk to the people we’ve spoken to before, because we find that sometimes later memories come up, triggered
by those first interviews. I have your statement here and I want to ask you a little more about something you’ve written.’

‘Okay, I guess,’ said Stacey, pulling out a pink handkerchief from the pocket of her jeans.

‘My assistant, Gemma, will be noting down any details you can add, no matter how unimportant you might think they are. Okay?’

Stacey nodded, screwing up the handkerchief and pressing it against her mouth. ‘You’ve got to find out who did this. You’ve
got to get him.’

‘I promise we’ll do everything possible,’ Angie said. ‘But just to help me get more of an idea about the sort of person Rachel
was, will you tell me a bit more about your life together? Your routines, the things you did. The places you went.’

‘Our life was pretty quiet, really. I do night shift at the nursing home, and Rachel – Rachel used to do three different life
modelling jobs and sometimes waitressing over the weekends at the cafe on the corner. We’d go to the movies a couple of times
a month. Have dinner with friends at their place or here. Sometimes we’d go out for a meal. But the mortgage here takes up
a lot of our finances every month.’ She paused, lowering the handkerchief. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to manage alone, with
the payments and everything.’

‘Did Rachel complain about anything going on at any of her jobs? Or the art students she posed for?’

‘The police asked me that earlier. No. There was never anything like that. Or if there was, Rachel never talked to me about
it.’

‘You mention an incident in your statement,’ said Angie, flashing a look at Gemma. ‘You say here: “I can’t think of anyone
who would want to hurt Rachel. The only time she’s ever been involved in anything violent was when some guy pushed her over
near Bondi Beach a week before she was murdered.” Can you tell us more about what happened?’

‘It was an incident down near the beach in the week before she …’ Stacey’s voice petered out. ‘It was really unpleasant.’

‘Tell us about it, Stacey,’ Angie said gently.

‘We were walking along the promenade at Bondi one evening. Rachel was walking a bit behind me, dawdling, when I heard a scuffle
and Rachel screaming. I turned round to see what had happened and there was poor Rachel, sprawled on the ground
and someone – some guy – running away. The bastard had deliberately pushed her over! We tried to go after him, but we saw
him jumping into a car and he drove off really fast. Rachel had grazed her hands badly in the fall and she’d also hurt her
shoulder. When we got home, she was still complaining about her shoulder. I had a look at it and I could see a bruise starting
to form. At first I thought the mongrel had punched her so hard in the back that he’d bruised her. Then I looked more closely.
There was some kind of puncture mark in the middle of the bruised area – like he’d hit her with something sharp. It was very
upsetting, but we didn’t report it. We just put it down to some random act of craziness.’

Gemma sat up straight, the buzz of adrenaline surging through her system. This was the third in a series of minor assaults
all involving puncture of the skin.

‘Can you tell us anything – anything at all,’ asked Gemma, ‘about the guy who pushed Rachel over?’

‘Not really,’ said Stacey. ‘All I can say is that it was a man – I can’t even remember what he was wearing. I don’t know what
sort of car he drove. I wasn’t taking things in very well at that stage.’

‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ asked Angie.

Stacey shook her head. ‘That’s it,’ she said, after a moment.

‘We’ll be in touch again if we need to,’ said Angie, as she and Gemma stood. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Stacey. Thank you.
We’ll see ourselves out.’

As they returned to the car, Angie said, ‘Are we just looking at some nasty coincidences, or am I starting to see a pattern
here?’

Gemma raised an eyebrow. ‘Three assaults on young women. And now two of those young women are dead.’

‘My thoughts exactly. Your place?’ Angie asked, starting up the car.

‘Let’s drop by Kit’s place first.’

Gemma and Angie came in via the rickety wooden gate that opened into the small garden and led to the back steps.

‘Something smells good,’ Gemma said as she walked into the kitchen.

‘I’m making scones,’ said Kit, pushing a tray with ten freshly baked scones towards her. ‘Want one? What have you been up
to?’

‘We’ve had a busy morning so far,’ said Angie. ‘Gemma is helping me with some of the paperwork connected to the murders we
spoke of earlier.’

Kit nodded, pulling off oven mitts and going to the fridge to get butter.

‘Ted Ackland gave us some disturbing information,’ Angie added. ‘Not only does this killer violently demolish their faces,
he also uses acid to complete the job.’

‘Acid?’ Kit paused with the fridge door open. ‘If he doubly disfigures them,’ she said, ‘that could be the explanation. He’s
ashamed of what he’s done. He sees what taking his souvenirs – if that’s what he’s after – does to the human face and body,
and he can’t stand it, so he sets up a scene that he hopes will hide what he’s done. Acid, then a set-up car crash or falling
on rocks from a great height. He’s trying to destroy what’s left after his mutilations so that no one ever knows what he’s
done.’

‘You’re suggesting he goes ballistic,’ said Angie.

‘Kit, that could be it,’ said Gemma. ‘Or he could be quite methodical afterwards, going about setting up his false death
scenes. He obviously has somewhere he can work undisturbed. Remember, he washes the bodies too.’

‘Okay,’ said Angie, reaching for a scone, ‘when we’ve got a suspect, we’d better make sure we search the freezer. And the
meat tray.’

The half-swallowed scone in Gemma’s mouth suddenly became unpalatable.