Death by Beauty (5 page)

Later that day, Angie returned alone and they settled on the couch.

‘So, what did you make of Mischa’s story, Gemster?’

‘I’m not sure, except that she was attacked by someone who for some reason likes to wear vampire teeth. To make it easy not
to believe the victim, I suppose. What do
you
make of it?’

‘I’m not sure either. I’ve never come across anything quite like this. There’s only one puncture mark.’

‘And … a real vampire should leave two?’ joked Gemma.

‘Just thinking out loud, smartypants. She is a gorgeous looking girl, isn’t she?’

‘Sure is.’

‘You know she’s already had plastic surgery? She told me all about it in the car. She said everybody’s doing it now.’

‘But, Angie, she only looks about seventeen!’

‘It’s true. She spent a few days out at Sapphire Springs, “touching up” she told me. She thought her nose wasn’t quite perfect.’

Gemma heard Kit at the door and let her in, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. With her dark hair swept back from her oval
face and her pale skin she looked like their mother; the opposite of Gemma’s tawniness. She greeted Angie and made herself
comfortable in an armchair while Gemma made coffee for the three of them and brought it in with a plate of biscuits.

As Angie briefed her about Mischa, Kit listened without interruption, frowning in concentration.

‘Vampire teeth? Puncture marks?’

‘Puncture
mark
,’ said Angie. ‘Only one. What do you think might have been going on, Kit?’

‘Something injected?’ Gemma suggested. ‘Or taken out?’

Kit thought for a while. ‘It’s a big production. And I’m not just talking about the teeth. This girl is really groomed. Lots
of bait put out about champagne labels and racing carnivals. The photographic colour chart, hours of chatting, a hotel room
booked, the vampire-teeth routine. It’s not just some random assault in a dark alley. This is a full production, smooth and
polished. He’s done it before.’

She put her coffee mug down and reached for a biscuit.

‘I think he’s a humorist,’ said Kit after a thoughtful pause. ‘A jokester. He’s doing a job of some sort … but he likes to
dress it up a lot. He likes to use props.’

‘There’s something else I want to talk to you about, Kit,’ said Angie. ‘Yesterday we had a briefing from the senior pathologist
Ted Ackland and I’ve copied the crime-scene footage onto my laptop. I need your assessment. But before we look at it, I’ll
give you the run-down on the cases.’

Gemma grabbed her notebook as Angie continued. ‘Rachel Starr, the first victim, was studying for an Arts degree at Sydney
Uni and working as a part-time artist’s model. According to her friends, she was a diligent student and popular in her circle.
She had a reputation as a very good life model, punctual and reliable. She worked hard and earned enough money to pay for
most of her university expenses.’

‘I read that she was killed in a car crash,’ said Kit, ‘but the suggestion was that she was dead prior to that.’

‘Ted Ackland called me after he’d done the post-mortem. He said there’d been no vital reactions to the injuries caused by
the car crash and she’d been dead for some time prior to the crash. Within minutes of an injury to a living body, there are
changes as enzymes and proteins rally to start the healing process. No such changes were found at autopsy.’

‘So, someone killed her,’ Gemma said, ‘then went to the trouble of putting her in a car and then crashing it. Why?’

‘Good question. I was hoping you could help me out with that, Kit?’

‘I don’t have any quick answers, Angie,’ said Kit, shrugging. ‘Your instincts are usually sound. Do you think someone in the
life-drawing classes might have targeted her? And then set up the car crash to cover their tracks?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ said Angie. ‘We’ll be talking to the teachers at the art schools – she worked at three different places
– and chasing up anyone they might have noticed taking more interest in the model than is strictly necessary for drawing purposes.
The car she was found in had been stolen a couple of days prior to the incident.’

‘Boyfriend?’ Gemma asked.

‘Girlfriend,’ said Angie. ‘At this stage, she’s not a suspect. She dropped Rachel off at the inner-city art school where her
first job was, and then went on to her own job – night shift at a nursing home. She was at work all night and her alibi is
tight. She became worried when she got home at about half-past seven in the morning to find that Rachel wasn’t there. We contacted
the art school, and they confirmed that Rachel worked there from seven-thirty to nine o’clock. After that she was supposed
to walk to her next job – only a few blocks down from Oxford Street. She never arrived. The local residents have been interviewed
and nobody heard or saw anything. There’s a Seven-Eleven on the corner just before the place she was heading for, and their
CCTV security video shows Rachel walking confidently east down the street towards the art school, which was about 175 metres
away. And that’s the last time she was seen alive. Then she’s found smashed up in a head-on collision with the stone walls
of a quarry fifty kilometres from the CBD.’

‘What sort of trace evidence did you get from the car?’ asked Gemma, scribbling in her notebook.

‘Julie Cooper did that job. The report from the analysis was a big fat zero.’

Gemma stiffened at Julie Cooper’s name. The young police officer had been briefly engaged to Steve after he and Gemma broke
up last year. The sound of her name still stung. If Julie hadn’t lied about being pregnant, Gemma thought, there’d have been
no engagement. And maybe …

Angie continued, ‘I think “forensically stripped” was the term the analyst used.’

These words brought Gemma’s mind back to the job. ‘Forensically stripped?’

‘That’s right. It was as if the body and the clothing had been
put through a washing machine. The only DNA they got was Rachel Starr’s.’

‘So, he really cleans up after himself,’ Gemma said.

‘Ted says he hasn’t released all the information from his report yet. But he’ll tell me more when I go and see him.’

After a pause, Gemma added, ‘We’ll have to talk to Rachel’s family and friends too.’

Angie leaned forward, grinning. ‘Gemster, I love it when you talk about “we”. I can feel my workload easing already. Family
and friends have been interviewed. I can tell you now that we didn’t uncover anything that throws any light on Rachel’s murder.
So, I was thinking along the lines of a jealous student discovering that the object of their artistic infatuation would never
be interested in them. That was until Marie-Louise Palier was found washed up on a beach with similar pelvis and head injuries.
Her handbag and shoes were found at the top of the cliff nearby and it was presumed she’d jumped. Again, Ted Ackland came
to the conclusion that she’d been dead before she jumped …’ Angie cleared her throat before continuing. ‘Sorry, that was a
joke going round the Forensic Services team. Of course, it could be someone doing a copycat – killing first, then setting
up a theatrical death scene – hoping that the first murderer will also pick up the tab for the second one.’

‘Or the same person, hoping to cover the original cause of death,’ Kit said.

‘And because of the time in the water,’ Gemma asked, ‘I guess there’s not much in the way of forensic information?’

‘Correct,’ said Angie, as Gemma added these details to her notes.

‘And the original cause of death in these two cases?’ Gemma continued, looking up again.

Angie referred to her laptop, perched on her knees. ‘Catastrophic head injuries,’ she said, ‘as well as massive damage to
the lumbar areas. So, back to the story on the second murder. Marie-Louise left her office in George Street in the city at
six-thirty. She met up with her boyfriend in a cafe at Bondi, had a coffee with him and then headed towards her apartment
at North Bondi on foot about an hour later. That was about eight-thirty.’

‘And the boyfriend?’ asked Kit.

‘He went to the gym not far from the cafe and then home. He says he offered Marie-Louise a lift but she said she liked the
walk. She disappeared somewhere between the cafe and her apartment about two kilometres away. There’s no evidence that she
arrived home that night. The mail was still in the letterbox and the breakfast things were still in the sink. Like Rachel
Starr, she just vanished off the street. Her bag and shoes were found hidden under some bushes near the cliff edge at The
Gap. Nothing was missing. We did a re-enactment with a police woman wearing similar clothes, and several locals contacted
us saying they’d seen Marie-Louise walking along Campbell Parade, but then she seems to have become invisible. Nobody saw
her with anyone or getting into a cab or a car or onto a bus. The CCTV coverage doesn’t quite extend all the way to the turn-off
to her street, so it’s no help in this instance.’

‘What about the boyfriend?’ asked Gemma. ‘He was the last person to see her alive.’

‘Mmm. I’m not sure about him. One of the reasons I’m telling you all this, Gemma, is because I’m hoping you’ll give me a hand
with some of the follow-up. Unofficially, of course. Like a second informal interview with him. He might be more relaxed with
you. He says he went to the gym, and a couple of people say they remember him being there but they’re not sure of the time.’

‘Okay. I wonder if he’ll talk to me,’ said Gemma, giving up all hope of easing slowly back into work.

‘Thanks, Gemma,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll send you his details and a copy of his statement when I get back to the office. I found
him a difficult character. He was evasive and unhelpful. Maybe you’ll get something useful out of him.’

Angie turned her laptop around so Kit and Gemma could see it and brought up the crime-scene footage.

‘This is the first crime scene. Rachel Starr.’

She fast-forwarded through the establishing shots of the bushland near the quarry, long since overgrown and disused, finally
pausing the screen on a stony cliff wall.

‘The quarry hasn’t been used for over twenty years. There’s still a road up there that’s passable. We’re looking at people
who would know about its existence – forestry workers, anyone once employed at the quarry who might have had a connection
to Rachel. The killer must have driven up there with her body in the car, then transferred her to the driver’s seat, wedged
the accelerator and jumped out before it crashed into the stone walls.’

‘Dangerous way to set something up. What if he hadn’t got out in time?’ asked Gemma.

‘And that could be the reason why the killer – if it is the same killer – dropped the second body into the sea,’ said Angie,
nodding. ‘A safer option. It also saved him the trouble of washing down everything.’

The camera panned closer to what looked like a pile of car parts and tyres in a corner of the quarry. Slowly, the pile revealed
itself to be a crumpled car body, distorted out of all shape, one
door hanging open. As the camera moved to the driver’s side, Gemma could not stop her gasp of horror at the state of what
had once been a human head, now inextricably embedded in twisted wreckage, the upper body partly impaled on the steering column,
the lower body invisibly wedged under the dashboard. Angie froze the screen. ‘Now I want you to have a look at Rachel Starr
as she was.’

Gemma was pleased to avert her eyes from the horrible mess on the laptop screen to the photograph Angie passed her. Rachel
Starr had been a delicately beautiful young woman, with refined features, a patrician nose, rosy skin and fine, fair hair.
Gemma made herself look at the mashed-up flesh and bone on the screen again and then back at the photograph. The word that
came to mind was ‘desecration’.

‘Sacrilege,’ said Kit, voicing her sister’s feelings. ‘The destruction of the temple. Whoever did this is destroying the female
– her face, her beauty.’

‘The other one was horribly similar,’ said Angie, turning off the footage and opening another file. ‘Okay. Crime scene two.
Marie-Louise Palier. I’ve got a few stills from that one. First, this was Marie-Louise before she washed up on the beach.’

Another beautiful girl gazed out serenely from her portrait. She was wearing her mortar board tilted at an impish angle, and
holding the scroll of her degree, her evening dress glittering under the dark graduate robe; glossy chestnut-brown hair framed
her face and her steady grey eyes shone through dark lashes.

‘Now take a look at these.’

Angie passed three photographs to Gemma, who studied them and then handed them to Kit. The first one showed an object lying
at an angle at the water’s edge; the second photograph was
closer and showed a woman’s body, dressed except for shoes; her head, oddly shaped, was turned away from the viewer.

Gemma stared unblinking at the third photograph and then silently passed it to Kit. This time it was Kit who gasped. ‘He’s
done it again. Totally destroyed her. This guy is very, very dangerous.’

‘Until I saw these and realised they were almost identical,’ said Gemma, indicating the photographs on the screen, ‘I was
playing with the idea that it was a copycat, but … these photographs have never been released, have they?’

‘No, nor have we said anything about the massive damage to the lower bodies of both these women.’

‘So no one could have known how to copy the first one,’ said Gemma, ‘except whoever did it.’

‘What exactly are the other injuries to the lower bodies?’ Kit asked, as Gemma lay the three photographs down on the coffee
table. ‘You’d think that if he was destroying the woman he’d also attack other uniquely female parts, like breasts and the
genital area? Is that what’s happened here?’

‘That’s the odd thing,’ said Angie. ‘And that’s what the pathologist and a lot of the senior police were saying: that when
you get this sort of facial destruction, there’s often violence inflicted on other parts of the body. But in both cases, the
women were fully dressed. We believe the killer had put the clothes back on the bodies, after cleaning them to remove all
traces of foreign genetic material. Rachel even had one shoe still on. The pelvic injuries involve the hips rather than the
genitals. In Marie-Louise’s case, there’d been some damage caused by fish, but not enough to account for the destruction of
the head and the hip bones. And no signs of sexual interference.’