Spiking the Girl (12 page)

She couldn’t remember feeling this degree of desire for ages. She pressed against Mike’s strong body, yearning to get closer, her hand closed over his crotch, cupping his penis. Heat haze and Mike’s mouth close to her ear.

‘Come on, Gemma. Not here,’ he said.

But she wilfully struggled for his belt. ‘I want to liberate you.’ She thought that was very funny. ‘But I can’t find your buckle.’

She tried swinging herself over to get on top of him. But she bumped her knee into the steering wheel, the other grazing painfully against the clasp of her evening bag, forcing it open, spilling the mobile and coins over the passenger seat.

He indicated the flat but she was too fired up. ‘No, let’s do it here,’ she breathed into his ear. Again, she swivelled on her right knee, struggling to get her left leg over to straddle him. But there was something unyielding under her right knee as she moved. Damn it, she thought. If it was the evening bag, she’d break the bloody thing, although right now she hardly cared. She moved her knee off it and stopped worrying about whether or not she might be breaking anything because now she was in position, kneeling over Mike, with only the fabric of her knickers and his jeans between them. Finally, she unzipped him and his cock sprang out to meet her.

‘I can’t wait!’ she said. ‘I want you inside me.’ She pulled her knickers out of the way and started to lower herself onto him. At the same time, Mike began to press himself home. Words formed in her head of how good this felt but she was past speaking them. The softness of his kiss contrasted with the hardness of his erection. Gemma gasped, thinking she might die of pleasure. Through her rising excitement came another sound. A voice. A very familiar voice.

‘Gemma? Gemma?’ Gemma froze. It was Steve.

‘Shit!’ Mike hissed. ‘He’s on the bloody phone!’

Gemma’s desire and Mike’s cock fell away.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Steve’s disembodied voice. ‘Did you call me just so I could hear you screwing another man?’

She scrambled off Mike, almost kneeing him in the face, adjusting her clothing, struggling to find the mobile.

‘Steve? I didn’t mean to ring. I must have pressed your number by accident.’

The effects of the drinks evaporated. Now Gemma’s mind was horribly focused. Steve was on the phone and he’d heard everything since she’d knelt on her mobile. Beside her, Mike zipped himself up, rebuckled his belt.

‘It’s not like that,’ she said, feeling honest because now it certainly wasn’t like that. ‘It’s just Mike here with me. We’re back from a job. We were having a chat and I must have pressed your number by mistake.’

She heard him click off before she’d finished and she switched the mobile off. Clutching it, she swore, leaning forward. She felt the biggest fool in the world. She’d practically tried to ravish Mike, and meanwhile God knows how long Steve had been on the line. This was the worst thing to have happened. Beside her, Mike stared straight ahead. She’d insulted him as well, belittled him with her dishonesty. He’d heard her make him part of a pathetic, cowardly lie.

‘I’d better go,’ she said, wishing she’d done so about six minutes ago.

‘Yes.’ He still didn’t look at her. ‘I think that’s the best idea.’

Gemma got out of the car on legs that would barely hold her up, clutching her evening bag and the sandals. She felt nauseous. All the vodka sloshed together in the pit of her stomach and drained down into her shaky legs. Suddenly the diamanté sandals seemed pitiful and ridiculous.

Managing to get down the steps and through the front garden, Gemma grabbed at the mail on autopilot. She heard Mike’s car pull away as the outside light came on and she fumbled her door open. Staggering in, she dumped the letters and the sandals on the hall table.

‘God,’ she said out loud, falling on the blue leather lounge. ‘That was so pathetic!’ How could she make what had just happened somehow unhappen? She didn’t know what part of it was worse: her attempt on Mike or the fact that Steve had heard her practically having sex with another man.

Taxi clicked across the floorboards and jumped on her stomach, settling down in a ball. His warm weight was a comfort once the nausea eased. She stayed there for a while, nursing her misery. Despite the amount of alcohol in her system, sleep was out of the question. Soon, probably tomorrow or the next day, she would have to face Mike again. How could she have hurt both him and Steve in one fell swoop?

Gemma bowed over and hung her head between her knees before rallying and making some Milo, then sat staring sightlessly at an English comedy. Eventually, she took half a Mogadon and went to bed.

The ringing of her mobile dragged Gemma out of bottomless sleep. She made a few lunges for it, pushing Taxi out
of the way.

‘Hullo?’ She struggled to wake up through the storm of a splitting headache and the full awfulness of last night’s memories. The front seat of Mike’s car. Steve on her mobile. She flinched again and not only because the woman on the line was screaming in her ear.

‘You were supposed to help me! He’s just been here! Where were you? You went through the house with me! I paid you! You were supposed to stop him!’

Gemma sat up in bed. It was actually a relief to have an angry client to deal with. It kept her mind off the cringing embarrassment that welled up and spilled over whenever she thought of last night. ‘Mrs Reynolds, Daria. Please calm down.’ She glanced at her watch. It wasn’t yet five in the morning and the east was lightening in a streak above the sea. ‘I’ll contact my operative and see what he’s got on video.’

‘I don’t need video! I need you to be there! You were supposed to stop this from ever happening again!’

‘Daria, listen to me. Our brief was to get evidence of your ex-husband getting into your house. My operative wasn’t instructed to act against him. He can’t do that. We have to be very careful about that sort of thing. The police—’

‘The police! They’re useless and so are you! I thought you were the right person, but you failed me!’

This was going nowhere. As decently as she could, Gemma said goodbye and rang off. The phone immediately rang again and she switched it over to voice mail. She threw herself back on the bed. What was the woman going on about? The right person indeed. The right idiot, thought Gemma, reliving last night’s atrocious embarrassment. How different it all looked in the clean white light of early morning without a belly full of booze. There was no way back to sleep—her mind was racing with regret and frustration. It was only 5 a.m. and she couldn’t deal with this without strong coffee and a shower. Her head throbbing, she made up a cocktail of vitamins and aspirin, swallowing it down with water and fighting a gag reflex for a few seconds after.

By the time she’d come out from the shower with clean hair, a glowing body and coffee aroma filling the air, the sun was shining radiant gold light over a brilliant blue ocean. She poured herself a coffee and went down the hall to her office. She was going to have to contact Mike, she knew. Apologise. But there was nothing she could do about Steve. The pain in her heart wasn’t the sort that analgesics could touch.

Once she had some of her brain cells firing, she radioed Spinner. ‘Base here, Tracker Three. Copy, please.’

Spinner’s radio crackled into life. ‘Copy, Boss.’

‘I’ve just fielded a hysterical phone call from Daria Reynolds,’ Gemma said. ‘I’m surprised you couldn’t hear it from where you are. Which is?’

‘Across the road from her place. I saw the lights go on half an hour ago.’

‘That’s about when she was abusing me! Yelling at me that her ex got in again.’

There was silence on the radio, just the occasional crackling of the frequency and the distant distortions of other voices as an aircraft flew in, breaking the curfew.

‘What? No one came near the place,’ said Spinner. ‘I’ve been here since about nine last night. I can tell you everything that moved in this street since.’

‘That’s not what she’s saying. You should’ve heard her.’

‘The woman’s a nutter. Probably got the horrors. All those idols in the house. Think about it—how the hell could anyone get in? She’s got technical surveillance everywhere and me sitting out here wasting my life as well. She’s got more money than sense.’

‘You sure you didn’t doze? It’s easy enough to do.’ Any surveillance operative knew that a moment’s inattention could be the moment the target moves. And usually was. Even an ace worker like Spinner might have had a lapse from pristine vigilance. There’s a first time for everything, Gemma thought.

‘I did not doze.’ Spinner’s voice sounded hurt. ‘And even if I did, which I bloody didn’t, those external cameras are movement-activated. They automatically film anything that moves and I’m alerted via the laptop. And all the cameras are live.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Gemma.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘if it’ll relieve your mind, I’ll review everything captured on the memory and ring back. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

She called off and went back to the living room, sprawling on the blue leather armchair. Taxi had clawed holes all up one side, so that it looked like a sieve. He didn’t care that she’d paid over three thousand dollars for it and the matching lounge. To him, it was just a top scratching post. She checked the message on her voice mail. It was more of the same from Daria Reynolds. The way she phrased her complaints made the event sound like Gemma’s fault. As if she didn’t feel bad enough already. It was definitely past time to talk to Diane Hayworth at Waverley police, Gemma decided, the officer whose card she’d seen at Daria’s place.

Gemma did a couple of hours in her office, clearing email, sorting and finalising several accounts. She neatly bound the surveillance reports that she or Mike or Spinner had done together with any video evidence ready to be given to the clients, along with the bill. She totalled up what she could expect in the next few weeks and it wasn’t as much as she’d hoped. The thought of approaching the bank again made her heart sink. She reviewed her job sheet. There was plenty to be getting on with and no time to waste, she told herself sternly. She cleared her desk, cleared her throat and rang Waverley police station, asking to speak to Diane Hayworth. She wanted to gather as much intelligence as she could on Daria Reynolds and her ex.

‘She’ll be in later. Can I take a message?’ came the reply.

Gemma said who she was, and asked if Diane Hayworth could ring her as soon as convenient and glanced at her watch. Heading down the hall to see whether any of the mail she’d dumped on the table last night contained cheques, she picked up the diamanté sandals as well, stopping when she heard a sound. Someone was moving around in the top apartment. Gemma went outside and looked up. The For Lease sign was no longer there. Please don’t let it be Mike, she thought, clutching the sandals and feeling sick. She couldn’t bear that. But surely he’d have mentioned it again if he were about to move in?

Back inside, Gemma glanced at her desk diary and realised she had a couple of hours to fill before her meeting with Eric Stokes, president of Fathers for Family and Marriage. She retrieved her car, reparked it closer to the city then caught the bus into the State Library, continuing her search through the microfilm stocks of old newspapers.

After an hour of useless searching, her mobile rang and, aware of the disapproving glances around her, she hastily gathered up her belongings and took the call out to the foyer.

‘We’ve got to talk about last night, Gemma,’ said Mike, taking the initiative. She should have rung first, Gemma realised. Now she’d have to cop this one sweet.

‘Mike,’ she started, ‘I was completely out of order. I’d had three cocktails in a very short time. I’m not making excuses, just letting you know the reason for my behaviour. I’m really sorry that I made such a fool of myself. And that I did it with you, of all people. A valued workmate.’ Feeling the blood burning in her cheeks and her heart pounding in her ears, she glanced around the foyer, sure that everyone was listening to her.

‘It wasn’t all you,’ he said. ‘I made the first move. And I was a willing party from there. I should have escorted you to the door and said goodnight. Not sat in the car with you, singing old songs.’

‘It’s not the singing old songs that worries me.’

There was a long silence during which she remembered, with excruciating clarity, the moves she’d made. ‘We need to talk about this face to face,’ she said eventually. ‘Meanwhile, can I ask a work-related question?’ She’d just remembered her scribbled note about Mrs Dunlop’s webcam.

‘Try me,’ he said, sounding miserable.

‘Can you check the connection at Mrs Dunlop’s? I tried to view her place last night and got zilch.’ She paused. ‘You remember her and her animal?’

‘I’ll have a look. It was working fine last time I checked.’

She said goodbye and rang off. A lot of things were working fine before, she thought as she started the walk back to her car.

•

Eric Stokes lived in a dark-brick block of flats in Potts Point. Gemma found the flat number she was looking for and brought all her attention to the job ahead of her, putting aside as much as she could of the previous night’s embarrassing memories. She went down some steps and along a crazy-tiled path littered with junk mail and the occasional unclaimed bill until she came to the front door and pressed his flat number. He buzzed her in and she walked through a foyer carpeted in faded red. A large container of dusty plastic flowers stood on a table in front of a segmented mirror from the fifties.

Gemma took a deep breath and knocked on Eric Stokes’s door. She heard his heavy tread and the door opened.

Stokes wasn’t much taller than Gemma. He was wearing black jeans and a checked shirt. With a thick moustache, longish hair and a furrowed face, he reminded her of a hard-drinking, hard-living country and western singer.

‘Come in, Miss Lincoln,’ he said, shaking her hand with a grip that was unforgiving. ‘Excuse the mess.’

Gemma followed him into a room that stank of ashtrays and where bookshelves along all available wall space overflowed with untidy files and binders. A large desk at the end of the room was also piled high. ‘I’m president of the FFM association as you probably know. At the moment, we haven’t got a secretary or a treasurer and I’m doing everything.’

‘I’m here to talk about Amy,’ said Gemma, watching him closely. ‘I won’t take any more of your time than is necessary.’

He removed a pile of folders from an old armchair. ‘Take a seat,’ he said.

Gemma perched on the edge of the chair, not wanting to sink into it—it was far too low to be comfortable. Around her, photographs of her host in family groups or posing with his rifle over various dead animals caught her attention. Looking more closely, she saw that the photographs showed Stokes with two different family groups. It seemed Eric Stokes had been on a second marriage too.

‘Fire away,’ he said.

Gemma looked back at him from the photographs. ‘Could you describe your relationship with Amy Bernhard?’

He perched on a stool near the desk, pulling out a packet of cigarettes and offering her one. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked with a smile that wasn’t very convincing. Gemma shook her head. He lit up and cocked one leg horizontally across the other. Now she could see he was wearing riding boots. You are a cowboy, Eric Stokes, she thought. A rootin’, shootin’ cowboy with two marriages, a lot of dead animals and a smoking habit.

‘Amy wasn’t an easy kid to get along with,’ he finally said. ‘She never really accepted me.’

‘It must be hard for a young girl when her father’s place is taken by a stranger.’

He didn’t like that. ‘I was a better father to her than her real father. At least I was there.’

Gemma realised she’d have to tread very carefully. This was a man, she reminded herself, who’d been dismissed as unsatisfactory by two women already. ‘Did Amy appreciate the fact that you were there?’

He didn’t answer straightaway but inhaled on the cigarette and looked away.

‘I don’t think she ever saw the real me,’ he said eventually. ‘She was just pissed off all the time. That I’d taken the place of her father. Nothing I did was good enough.’ He paused. ‘It was hard. I tried to be there for her.’

‘How did you do that?’

Again, the long pause. Was he reflecting so as to answer truthfully, or spending time creating answers that he thought she’d like to hear?

‘I talked with her about things. Tried to get the right values into her. But it was no use. Her mother had no control. No discipline. See, the trouble with the kids of today is that they don’t have any discipline. In my day, you didn’t dare speak to adults the way kids do today. We were taught respect. We got a boot up the arse if we didn’t.’

Gemma tried to imagine Eric Stokes being of any use whatever to a young girl and failed in the attempt.

‘I hear you still go there to the house? That you and your friends spend time—’ She caught herself just in time from saying ‘hanging round’ and finished, ‘outside your ex-wife’s house.’

‘We vigil,’ he said. ‘We hold our vigils to bring attention to the destruction of the sanctity of marriage in this society. We’re men who’ve been cut out of the lives of our women and children.’ The way he said the last phrase made Gemma think of covered wagons and the Wild West. Was that how Eric Stokes saw marriage and family?

‘Mr Stokes, I’m here because you are a person who was connected to Amy at one stage. Do you have any idea who or what might have caused her disappearance?’

Stokes picked up a framed photograph that had been lying face down on his crowded desk. He passed it to her. ‘Look at this. This picture says it all. We were all getting along fine,’ he said.

I don’t think so, Gemma thought, as she studied the picture. Lauren and Eric had their arms around each other, but Amy was standing apart from both of them, a lost little girl, glaring at the photographer. Gemma studied her. Had her own face worn that look as a teenager, she wondered. She passed the photograph back. ‘I’m surprised the police didn’t take a statement from you.’

‘They wanted one. I was away pig-shooting near Bourke when Amy disappeared and when I got back they expected me to go down to the police station and make a statement. As if I’d had something to do with it.’ He paused. ‘I told them I had better things to do with my time than waste it hanging round police stations and if they wanted a statement from me, they could damn well come to my place and get it.’ He almost spat with contempt. ‘Naturally, no one ever came round to pick it up.’

‘So you’ve done a statement?’ said Gemma. Angie would be interested to hear that.

‘Of course I have. I don’t have anything to hide. I wrote it out myself. But no one bothered to get it from me.’