Death by Beauty (15 page)

Throughout the next day Gemma’s mind kept turning to fearful thoughts about Mischa’s safety. She’d tried to contact her all
morning without success. She was also unsettled by the complex and dangerous situation in which Steve was floundering. She
couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding – increased by the evidence of the rose bush – that there was something else she should
be doing but she couldn’t think what it might be. Added to all that she thought of Rafi, and worried about the prowler coming
so close to where he sleeps at night.

Late in the afternoon her mobile rang.

It took her a few seconds to register what Angie was saying. ‘It’s Janet Chancy. Her body’s been found.’

Gemma braced. She realised she’d been expecting this. No longer just missing, Janet was dead. The finality of Angie’s announcement
further darkened the day.

Gemma tried to ignore her racing heart and focus on what Angie was saying. This required her full attention.

‘Janet? Where?’

‘Near Kadogil Lagoon. Not far from where her car was found. The boss told me to get out there, so I’m going now. I want to
have a bit of a look before the homicide detectives arrive later.’

‘Let me have the details?’ Gemma asked.

‘Only if you promise me you’ll stay in your car,’ said Angie. ‘No, better I come and get you. That way I can keep you on a
leash. I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.

‘Okay. I’ll see if Kit can pick up Rafi.’

Kadogil Lagoon was a new housing estate about fifteen kilometres south of Sapphire Springs Spa. Angie drove with intense concentration,
answering Gemma’s questions as best she could. ‘They didn’t tell me much. A birdwatcher found her.’

‘Birdwatcher?’

‘There actually
is
a lagoon there. It used to be much bigger, but there’s still some wetlands around it. The birdwatcher’s in a state of shock,
poor bloke. The uniforms from Kadogil are there, holding the fort and waiting for our guys to arrive with the forensics people.’

Gemma nodded, thinking hard. ‘You’ve got a directory somewhere?’ she asked.

‘GPS,’ said Angie. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Sure I have. But I want to see a map to work out how far Kadogil Lagoon is from the quarry where Rachel Starr was found.’

‘You’re thinking it’s the same guy?’

Gemma shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

She flicked through the directory until she found what she wanted, then pinched the pages between her fingers so that
she could look from one map to the other. She was aware that her hands were shaking a little. ‘It’s not all that far, Angie.
About nine kilometres by the back roads.’

‘Are you okay?’ Angie asked. ‘I’m picking up distinct distress flares. It’s a while since you were so close to a crime scene.’

‘It’s not only that,’ Gemma admitted. ‘There are a couple of things. First of all, I knew Janet. We weren’t close friends
but we met up occasionally. Also, someone’s been hanging round my place, standing in the bushes outside our bedroom window.’

‘Get them on camera.’

‘We will – if they come back. The other thing is … I went over to Steve’s place. He’s in a really bad way. He’s talking about
leaving the country.’

‘Holy shit. It’s that bad?’

‘He reckons it’s just a matter of time before he’s arrested, Ange. It’s stacked against him. There’s got to be a way to make
Litchfield and Fayed withdraw those allegations.’

‘And face fresh charges? Perjury and conspiring to pervert the course of justice? There’s no way they’re going to change their
story now.’

‘We’ve got to find something they fear more than jail.’

‘That being?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m working on it.’

‘Who would be hanging round your place?’

Gemma shrugged. ‘Could be someone from the Litchfield team. But we’ve got it covered now.’

As they drove down the Kadogil Lagoon turn-off, Gemma saw a police vehicle parked just off the road, and Angie pulled in behind
it. Gemma jumped out before Angie could protest and noticed that the land sloped away, allowing a distant view
of the cityscape and a long sweep of horizon to the north-east. Straggly eucalypts grew along the roadside, and a small fenced
lookout area with a fireplace and a table and benches had been built just beyond the road not far from where the police vehicle
had parked. Gemma went to the lookout. At the bottom of the slope, a woman’s figure lay crumpled on the bare ground, a dark
stain surrounding the upper body. Around her were the scattered contents of a large handbag.

Angie joined her. ‘I guess that’s what we’ve come to see,’ she said tersely before returning to the boot of her car and pulling
out a Tyvek space suit and blue plastic booties. She stepped into the suit, zipped it up then pushed her feet into the booties.
She took out a box of disposable gloves and wiggled her fingers into a pair, then grabbed her camera and headed off to join
the two uniformed cops, calling back to Gemma: ‘I’m going to introduce myself and then try to get in to take a look before
the crime-scene people get here and tape it all off. As for you, get back into the car and stay put, Gems. There are some
binoculars in the back on the floor.’

Gemma watched while Angie introduced herself to the two uniformed officers, her auburn head gleaming above the white space-suit
hood. They seemed in no hurry to leave after the conversation with Angie, despite the fact that someone more senior was on
the spot now. But a radio call from their car had them reluctantly driving away, leaving her in charge.

Gemma found the binoculars and started up Angie’s car, nudging it as close as she could to the edge of the lookout, swearing
at the bumps. She opened the door, stepped out and leaned against the bonnet. From here she could better see down into the
large hollow beneath the lookout. She focused the binoculars
on the broken figure lying on the ground some twenty metres away. To her surprise and relief, Gemma saw that Janet’s face,
which was slightly turned towards her, seemed unmarked. She leaned forward, focusing on the lower body, which also seemed
intact, Janet’s straight skirt curving across her undamaged hips. And there had been no attempt to stage a secondary crime
scene, like setting up a car crash or a jump from a cliff.

Gemma lowered the binoculars, frowning. This was different. Was it a different killer? Or had he perhaps been interrupted
before he could complete his grisly work?

As Angie slowly circled the scene, recording it with her video camera, Gemma raised the binoculars again to take in the area
surrounding the body, noting the lipstick, pens and pencils that had spilled out from the handbag. There was something unreal
about the body, the way it was lying there, surrounded by these intimate objects, with the pool of blood blackening as time
went by and the light of the late afternoon turned to dusk. Gemma recalled Janet’s vivacity and tears stung her eyes as she
thought of all that energy reduced to this. Her sadness quickly changed to anger. We’ll get you, she thought. You won’t get
away with this.

A short while later, alerted by the sound of an approaching vehicle, Gemma turned to see the large Forensics Services Group
van pull up.

She watched as Angie climbed back up to meet them, and was half listening to their conversation, unable to focus clearly on
anything except Janet Chancy’s body. Had the killer been lurking at the lookout hoping for a victim? Had Janet stepped out
of her car to enjoy the view and been set upon by the same person who was murdering women in the most violent manner? Was
he brazen enough to carry out his attack in broad daylight?

Or had the killer murdered Janet somewhere else and then driven here to dump her body over the edge of the lookout? Gemma
considered the distance from the road and the infrequent traffic that it carried. Because of the relative seclusion of the
lookout, many metres off the main road, the odds were good that a person could get away with it unobserved. Gemma also had
to keep her mind open to the possibility that Janet’s murder was not related to the others. She had to be ready to consider
everything.

‘Better go down and take a look,’ she heard the woman from Forensics say. ‘Thanks for covering this, Angie. We’ve been run
off our feet in the last twenty-four. See you.’ Moments later, fitted out in their space suits, holding their crime-scene
kit bags and carrying the heavy generator to run powerful lighting through the night, the two Sydney detectives slowly made
their way down the slope.

Angie stripped off her gloves and stepped out of her space suit, while Gemma opened the car door and stepped in.

‘I’m glad I could hand that one over,’ Angie said, getting in too. ‘Ray and Fiona can have all that with my pleasure. It looks
like she’s been there a while. Her wallet was there with about fifty dollars in cash, plus her press card and driver’s licence.
Everything had fallen out of her bag. I recorded it all so we can have a closer look.’

‘There didn’t appear to be any savage injuries,’ Gemma said. ‘I wonder if she was killed somewhere else and brought here.
She was seen leaving Sapphire Springs a bit after eleven last Monday morning and she hasn’t got very far along the road back
to the city.’

‘Ted Ackland will tell us more when he’s seen her and we get a more accurate time of death. This one feels different from
the other killings.’

‘We’ll have to go back to Sapphire Springs,’ said Gemma, ‘and speak with everyone who met up with Janet. She must have talked
to some of the medical people there to get her story. Maybe she got into the secret area somehow. Maybe that’s what she was
so excited about.’

When Angie dropped Gemma home she passed her the camera. ‘Have a look at the footage I took. I won’t have a chance until I
get into the office. I’m going home to have an early night. The crime-scene people will have the official footage, but you
might pick up something helpful.’

‘Okay. And Angie, about the other case, the vampire attacks … I’ve found a third girl, a sex worker, who conforms to the pattern:
a minor assault involving a puncture of the skin, and then a week later she was attacked again, except that she managed to
get away from the second assault – and she recognised the guy. He was the one who’d carried out the first “vampire” attack.
I reckon she’d have been the third murder victim if she hadn’t got away.’

‘Hell, Gems. We need to speak with her. She can ID this offender.’

‘She’s left town. She’s spooked. And who can blame her?’

There was a silence. ‘I’ll see if I can get more information about where she might have gone,’ said Gemma, making no attempt
to get out of the car.

‘Okay,’ said Angie. ‘Spit it out. What’s going on with you? There’s something you haven’t told me. I can tell when you’re
worried, Gemster.’

‘I told you how I went round to Steve’s place. Angie, I haven’t
even
begun
to let go of him. It was just the same between us as it always was. The whole of the last year just slipped away.’

‘You didn’t!’

‘No, no,’ said Gemma, shaking her head. ‘We didn’t. Nothing like that.’

Angie gave her a hard look, then gazed out the window before speaking. ‘You have to let Steve go, Gemma. He’s made his choices.
He’s a grown-up. He has to live with the consequences.’

‘Angie, that’s not fair. He’s been falsely accused.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘Steve wouldn’t lie to me about this.’

‘Maybe not. You’ve got another life now.’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘Listen to me, lecturing you about an unsuitable man. Oh boy,
what a joke.’

Suddenly she grew very serious. ‘Gems, you’ve moved on. Steve couldn’t come with you. You’ve got to let him go.’