Spiking the Girl (2 page)

‘If you can give me cash,’ Gemma continued, ‘I’ll make it GST inclusive.’

Daria left the room and returned with twenty fifty-dollar bills which Gemma tucked in her wallet.

‘We’ll also put a covert camera in your bedroom, just to be—’

‘But that’s what he wanted to do!’ Daria took a backwards step, nearly knocking her untouched coffee over in her distress. ‘He expected me to behave like some whore, like some prostitute in a porn movie! He wanted to make videos of me and his disgusting filthy behaviour.’

She bent down and moved the coffee cup to a safer spot, then looked at Gemma and her breathing calmed a little as she gathered herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, the dark hollows in her face deepening. ‘I know that’s not what you meant. I didn’t mean to say all that.’

‘Okay,’ said Gemma, finally breaking an awkward silence. ‘Before I go, I’d like to look around. Check the layout of the house, see the exits and entrances.’

She went outside, Daria following, and they walked right round the house as Gemma checked the windows. They were all screened and locked, except for the front ones, which were grilled. Gemma searched for any scrapes or tool marks on any of the frames but they were all quite dusty and untouched.

‘He must have a key,’ Gemma repeated, turning back to her companion.

Daria shook her head. ‘He hasn’t.’

‘Perhaps he got in once and was able to get hold of one? Had it copied, got it back without you noticing?’

Daria Reynolds stared at her. Again, Gemma wondered about her new client’s grasp on reality. Then Daria slowly turned her gaze towards the back garden, squinting against the bright sunlight. The spooky moment passed.

Gemma finished her examination of the outside of the house and they went back inside. She followed Daria down the narrow hall, away from the smoky front room. She went into the two bedrooms, both of them with locked windows; the first smelled like the spare room and needed a good airing. The second, the erstwhile marital bedroom, was similarly decked out with icons and statues, although the candles in here had all burned out.

Gemma glanced at the bedroom ceiling, thinking about where she or Spinner might put the spycam. ‘Do you have smoke detectors?’ she asked, unable to see any. Daria shook her head.

‘Don’t you think all these naked flames everywhere could be a bit dangerous?’

Daria stared hard at her again, then took a step forward. ‘I know what’s dangerous.’ Her tiny voice contrasted with the way she’d closed in, invading Gemma’s space.

Gemma stepped back, deliberately putting distance between them. Daria immediately closed up the gap. ‘Now, Miss Lincoln, I have a question for
you
. Is it true that your mother was murdered?’

Gemma’s shock must have showed on her face because Daria Reynolds’s expression changed. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. Believe me, I wouldn’t be asking you this if it weren’t important. You must understand that.’

‘Important?’ Gemma rallied. ‘To whom?’

‘It’s important to me.’ She paused. ‘If it’s true.’

‘What can my personal circumstances possibly have to do with your situation?’ said Gemma, suddenly angry.

‘I don’t mean to pry or distress you. It is important for me. That’s all I can say at this stage. It is true, isn’t it?’

Gemma remained silent but Daria Reynolds took her confusion for affirmation. ‘So would you please light this candle and walk through the house with me?’

Gemma’s initial reaction was to refuse. But the soft beseeching so obvious in Daria’s huge eyes touched Gemma. The best thing to do was humour her, do the job she wanted and send her a large bill.

Gemma took the long white candle passed to her, inclined it to be lit and followed her new client through the house, proceeding in and out of the remaining rooms. She’d worked in a lot of weird places, Gemma thought, but never in a million years did she think she’d be wandering round a stranger’s house with a lit candle in her hand.

‘Thank you,’ Daria whispered when they’d finished. ‘I also want someone to watch the place at night.’

‘You want physical surveillance as well as cameras?’

‘Yes.’

‘That will be very expensive.’

Daria Reynolds handed Gemma a key from under a vase in the hallway. ‘You can throw the key back through the window grille when you’ve finished. And as for expensive, I don’t really care.’

‘We’ll get cameras installed in the back and front gardens,’ said Gemma. ‘And in the bedroom. When would be convenient?’

‘How about now?’

Gemma watched while Daria Reynolds hurried to her small silver Honda and drove away. It’s as if she suddenly doesn’t care anymore, Gemma thought. As if my visit here today was all that’s necessary to sort out a stalking ex-husband. If only, Gemma thought. I’d be a rich woman.

She went back to her car and picked up the radio, calling Spinner. ‘Tracker Three. Copy, please.’

The sound of her number one operative’s voice was calming. Spinner was a gem—her most treasured business asset. It was hard work being a surveillance operative, out on the road all day. His particular talent lay in his silent patience, his capacity to sit, hour after hour if necessary, waiting for a cheat to slip up, to forget to adopt the limp, just once, on the way to get the newspaper, or forget the bad back and start building a swimming pool. Spinner would be there with his zoom camera, shooting his damning footage, getting it all down for the insurance companies’ assessors. His contemporaneous notes were clean, clear and concise, despite his truncated education—or maybe because of that. Gemma was blessed to have him on the payroll. Good road operatives were hard to find—and even harder to keep. Since last year’s collapse of her business, Spinner was her only full-time employee, with Mike Moody, ex-Federal policeman and in-house IT manager, now just working part-time—as the need arose and her finances permitted.

Gemma told Spinner what she wanted.

‘I’ll meet you there,’ he said after she’d filled him in and given him the address. ‘And give you the files of the jobs I’ve finished. You can take them back with you to the office. Save me driving over later on.’

Gemma rehoused the radio then checked the street up and down. It looked innocuous, incapable of hiding evil or danger, just a pleasant suburban morning streetscape. So why this beating of her heart? This crawling of her scalp?

Gemma took a deep breath, before pulling her laptop out and taking it back inside Daria’s house. Balancing the computer on her knees, she transferred the scrawled notes she’d just written into her electronic file: the date, time, address, the weather, their conversation, everything necessary to ground her report as far as possible in reality.

When she’d saved her notes, she folded the laptop lid down and gazed sightlessly through the window. This time yesterday everything had been fine with Steve. She’d gradually been getting closer to letting go of her jealousy and pain around his infidelity. But when he talked about the possibility of them buying a bigger place together, those issues had suddenly loomed large again. The argument had flared. Now it didn’t matter if she had all the time in the world.

Her mobile rang and she dived for it, eager for distraction from her sad thoughts.

‘Miss Lincoln?’ A frail, female voice. ‘It’s Rowena Wylde here. Do you remember me?’

It took Gemma a few seconds to cut through the shock. Remember her? Of course she recognised who her caller was—psychiatrist Dr Rowena Wylde, her late father’s colleague and mistress, whom she’d briefly met some years ago.

‘I haven’t got much time,’ the woman continued. ‘In fact, Miss Lincoln, I’m dying.’

Gemma made some sort of murmuring noise, rallying as fast as she could. It’s not often people say that straight out, she thought.

‘There’s something you should know,’ Dr Wylde continued. ‘You and your sister. Something I must tell you. It concerns your father—your family.’

Gemma was surprised at the depth of the feelings this woman’s words aroused in her; she wanted to protect, defend, her family, her mother—the mother she barely remembered.

‘What could you possibly tell me about my family?’

‘Something that you need to know. Something I should have told you a long time ago.’

‘And what might that be?’ Despite herself, Gemma was intrigued.

‘Please,’ Rowena Wylde’s voice was already weaker now, ‘please visit me. It’s not the sort of information that should be delivered over the phone.’

Extremely curious now, Gemma agreed and, after reacquainting herself with the psychiatrist’s address and telephone number, made a time for later in the week.

Once she’d rung off, she continued to sit, pen frozen in her hand. What could it be, she wondered? Was it something about their father? Their mother? Perhaps it was information relating to their father’s imprisonment or their mother’s murder.

Yesterday, she’d felt her world swerve off its axis, unbalanced by the absence of Steve. Now she had Daria Reynolds’s ex-husband and Rowena Wylde’s phone call to deal with. She noticed that one of the candles on the mantelpiece still guttered, sending up a column of black smoke. She went to pinch it out and saw that it stood in front of the image of an angel, all in black with huge dark wings. Gemma squashed the tiny flame, noticing the writing at the bottom of the picture. Asrael, Angel of Death, she read. She shivered.

Gemma hurried out to her car, calling Kit’s number on the way. She wanted to talk to her about Rowena Wylde’s
call but her sister wasn’t answering, replaced by the warm words of her voice mail inviting a message. Probably with a client, Gemma thought, glancing at her watch. Her sister ran a busy psychotherapy practice and was often difficult to catch on the phone. Gemma left a message and slid into her car, putting the mobile back in its travelling holder near the radio. She needed food, suddenly hungry. She decided to head off and find something to eat with Spinner when he arrived.

She switched on the ignition and pulled out, almost collecting an oncoming car. The blaring horn and screech of brakes shocked her into immobility and the driver of the car sped past, swearing.

When she’d calmed down, she drove to a nearby shop and bought some pastries and a drink, then returned to Daria Reynolds’s place, letting herself in with the key Daria had given her. She left the white paper bag of pastries on the table, then walked right through the house again, eerier now with its owner absent. The place stank of stale incense and smoke and she hoped Spinner wouldn’t be too much longer. This was the sort of empty time she didn’t want right now.

She sat down with a fraud investigation magazine she kept in her briefcase for quiet moments, nibbling on a pastry, looking through an article on high-resolution micro cameras. One in particular took her fancy, so compact it fitted into the top of a functional pen.

She heard the distinctive sound of Spinner’s white Rodeo ute pulling up outside, reminding her of the early days, when they were the only two workers in her business. Putting the magazine down on the table, she looked out the window. Today Spinner was ‘Fletcher Bros Plumbing’. He had several magnetic signs that he could slap along the length of the utility, and hanging in the operatives’ office were various tradesmen and courier outfits—Spinner’s ‘dress-up’ clothes.

She watched him as he got out, knowing that if anyone rang Fletcher Bros Plumbing they’d get Spinner’s friend Darren Fletcher, who was, Gemma knew from experience, a good plumber. Spinner did a quick check round the front of the house, then started up the path. She felt a surge of affection for her colleague, aka Bede MacNamara, the wiry little ex-jockey who’d got too heavy for the gallopers.

She opened the door for him and he walked in looking tired and sad, his wizened face more furrowed. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘Incense,’ Gemma said. ‘This client burns a lot of it.’

He peered closer. ‘Is that thing around your neck supposed to be like that, or is something missing?’

Gemma looked down at the pendant. It had been a gift from Steve in happier days: plaited silver serpents encircling what was now an empty oval. She lifted the heavy dark silver chain from which it hung. ‘There used to be a very handsome polished onyx in it,’ she said. ‘But I lost it up at Nelson Bay a couple of days ago.’

Spinner pulled a couple of folders out of his bag. ‘This report is ready to go back to the insurers,’ he said, handing her a file. ‘I need to process the video and I can do that when I come over to the office next.’

Road operatives like Spinner were rarely in the office. Their workplaces were the roads, businesses and houses they did surveillance on. They dropped in only to collect more briefs or carry out the clerical work they needed to do.

Spinner found a place in the living room to put his kit and the remaining folders under his arm before looking up and seeing the collection of icons and statues. ‘Stone the bloody crows.’ Because he wouldn’t swear, Spinner was forced to fall back on expressions from earlier, simpler times when he was riding gallopers round country training tracks. Gemma found it a disarming habit. But only when she was in a good mood. ‘What the hell are all these?’ he continued.

‘I thought you’d know. You’re the God-botherer in this turn-out,’ she said.

He looked around the room, spotting the fraud investigation magazine. ‘Anything interesting in that?’

She shrugged. ‘Couple of good investigations from the US. And a feature on those cute little micro digital cameras,’ she said, heading down the hallway.

Spinner snatched up his bag from the table, shaking his head as he followed her to the master bedroom. ‘Those James Bond things,’ he said, ‘they’re only bloody gimmicks. I don’t know why anyone would buy them. They’re bloody expensive, too.’

‘I want one,’ said Gemma. ‘One of those tiny cameras is something we should have in our stock.’

‘Hey,’ said her ace agent, looking into her face when she turned to explain the job to him. ‘What’s up?’

Spinner’s knockabout, good-bloke manner hid an extremely sharp mind. For a fleeting second, Gemma wondered if she could talk to Spinner about Rowena Wylde’s phone call. No, she decided. This was family business—she’d speak to Kit first.

‘Steve and me,’ she said, deciding to tell him one of the reasons for her agitation. ‘We’ve separated.’ She tried to maintain a steady voice. ‘And it’s final.’

Spinner threw his carry bag onto the double bed. ‘That’s sad,’ he said. ‘Me and Rose are in the same boat. Or not in the same boat. We’re just not getting along anymore.’

‘What are you two fighting about?’ Gemma knew that arguments between couples could be about anything. It didn’t seem to matter what the subject matter was—its only function to be a carrier of the hostility.

Spinner looked uncomfortable. ‘Religion.’

Gemma heard something rustling outside and glanced through a gap in the curtains. A dust devil materialised, spun up the path a little way, then dissipated. She couldn’t say ‘I told you so’, but the thought of charismatic fundamentalist Spinner and exotic Greek Orthodox Rose Georgiou trying to get it together over holy communion just didn’t work.

‘Rose is at me all the time to convert,’ Spinner was saying. ‘Become Greek Orthodox. She says if I can’t do that for her, then I don’t love her.’

‘Can’t you just go along with it? What’s the difference between one lot of religious business and another?’

Spinner shuddered. ‘Are you serious? Orthodox! They’re even worse than Catholics!’

Nobody could be worse than Catholics, Gemma thought.

She crossed to the big window and wrenched the curtains right back, letting light into the room. Spinner looked around, avoiding the further clutter of saints and angels standing on the dressing table.

‘What are we here for?’ he asked.

‘An ex who won’t take no for an answer.’ Gemma pointed to the central light fitting in the bedroom. ‘We could spike that light.’

‘Boss, you’ve been off the road too long. Don’t you want the potential of live feed all the time?’

Gemma was rattled. She had forgotten the need for constant current. If Spinner wired up the spycam in the light fitting, power would only be available when the light was switched on.

‘I’ll use that,’ said Spinner, pointing to a small black clock radio on the right-hand bedside table. ‘As well as the power being on all the time, the spycam can be easily integrated.’

Gemma filled Spinner in with more details about the Reynolds case while he squatted by his bag, sorting through cabling, pliers and other tools until he found the package containing the small camera, which, with all its fittings, was about the size of a bottle top. He held it up to her. ‘We’ll never need anything smaller than this.’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘We’ll install motion-activated hook-up for the outside. Back and front. Then we’ve got the place covered. And that way you can check in at any time with your GPRS mobile. It’ll email stills to your laptop if you want that.’

Gemma had recently upgraded to a general packet radio service phone which meant she was always logged on to the network and internet connection.

‘She wants physical surveillance, too,’ said Gemma. ‘Best if you pick it up on your laptop. You’ll be the one sitting out there.’ She pointed to the street.

Spinner set about his business, installing the necessary equipment, hiding the tiny camera lenses near the eaves outside.

‘I’m presuming,’ he said, when he came inside again and squatted beside the bedside table, ‘that there’s no pressure here? That we haven’t got a tight schedule?’

I have been off the road too long, Gemma thought. Vincent Reynolds could walk in any time and bust them doing this. ‘Daria only mentioned nocturnal visits.’ It sounded lame.

‘What is he? Some sort of fruit bat?’ Spinner said, removing the backing of the small clock radio unit and peering inside. ‘That’s good,’ he added. ‘I can connect the voltage regulator there and splice in the power wires. Pass me those little pliers.’

Gemma did so, then glanced out the window again, remembering how she’d nearly died a couple of years ago because someone had wired up a light fitting the wrong way. Past the rustling leaves of the ginger plant outside the window, all was quiet on the street. The few Indian mynahs picked at a plastic bag on the nature strip.

‘Now, pass me the drill. No, the cordless one, please.’

He drilled a tiny hole in the plastic, fitted the spycam into position with the microphone, taping it securely inside the housing. ‘There. How does that look?’ he said, putting the clock radio back down on the bedside table.

Gemma stood back to look at it. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t know it was there if I hadn’t seen you do it. It just looks like the button for some other function.’

‘Yeah,’ said Spinner. ‘The perv function.’

Another hour and Spinner had checked that everything was working, turning the power back on while Gemma, inside, adjusted the green digits on the clock radio according to her watch. She checked to make sure the radio functioned, catching the end of the news: ‘
.
 
.
 
. alleging that Scott Brissett sexually assaulted her twenty years ago. Brissett has denied the allegations, saying they are a tissue of lies and that he will be taking legal advice on the matter
.’

Gemma switched it off and gave Spinner the thumbs-up at the window, then went outside, taking the white paper bag of pastries. She locked the house and threw the key back through the grille in the window. Back in her car, she gathered up the file for one of the new jobs that she wanted to discuss with Spinner. Then she joined him in the white Rodeo, putting the pastries on the console between the seats while Spinner opened his laptop. Sitting here with Spinner reminded her of her early days as a surveillance operative, living, breathing, eating, even peeing on the job in the back of a van.

‘Let’s check it one more time,’ he said and started running through the program.

‘Who’s Scott Brissett?’ Gemma asked. ‘The name’s vaguely familiar.’

‘Vaguely familiar?’ Spinner looked at her in disbelief. ‘Boss, where have you been?’

Gemma shrugged apologetically.

‘Scott Brissett,’ Spinner continued, ‘was a Wallaby and a Waratah legend. He’s on television all the time. He’s just become the corporate face of the Boofhead Cup.’

Gemma knew from overhearing previous discussions between Spinner and Mike that the Boyleford Cup was an international rugby play-off, second only to the World Rugby Cup. ‘You know that sporting heroes aren’t my strongest point,’ she said. She recalled a recent television news item and a weathered sportsman speaking with a group of French players. ‘Is he that good-looking guy in the ad with a scar through one eyebrow? Late forties?’

Spinner nodded. ‘That’s him. Some GPS kid split his face open in his school years in competition footie.’

Spinner adjusted his receiver and laptop and looked up with satisfaction. ‘It’s all working well,’ he said. ‘And that reminds me. You and Stevie-boy will be right as rain. You two are an institution.’

Gemma shook her head. ‘Not this time.’

‘How did the fight start?’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Sure it matters. It’s where the conflict lies.’

She thought about the origins of the fight. ‘Steve started talking about us getting a place together.’

‘And?’ Spinner prompted as the silence lengthened.

Gemma shrugged, feeling uneasy. ‘It started me thinking. About all sorts of things. Lorraine Litchfield for one.’

‘The crim’s widow? The blonde bombshell whose weapon of choice was a Colt M1911?’ Spinner’s words were tinged with respect.

Hot anger and shame arose as Gemma remembered a scene involving Steve, the widow Litchfield and the wrong end of that same Colt.

‘She put me through hell,’ said Gemma, recalling the overstuffed room, the looming gun and the other woman’s overpowering scent. ‘I can’t forget that he slept with her,’ she said.

Spinner made as if to speak.

‘Don’t even think about it!’ said Gemma. ‘I don’t want to hear any bullshit about what an undercover cop might have to do. Don’t give me that line of duty crap!’

Gemma thought she would never forget the one and only time she’d met stunningly beautiful Lorraine Litchfield, nor her terror and complete humiliation at the hands of the jealous woman who’d waved the heavy weapon around and forced Steve at gunpoint to choose between the two of them. ‘
Baby
,’ Steve had said, indicating the mirror in which the three of them were reflected ‘
There’s no contest. Look at you. Look at her
.’ Slowly, Lorraine had lowered the Colt. And Gemma had wanted to die.

She tried to counter this memory with another: the sweet scene some days later at the hospital, where Steve had made it very clear to Lorraine that he loved Gemma, and Lorraine’s enraged response had been, ‘
You’re dead, bitch!’.
But that memory wasn’t enough and it was too painful to stay in the past. Gemma forced herself back into the present.

‘Steve said he’s tired of being punished by me about something that meant nothing to him. He brought up how I’d endangered him last year. I let him have it about Lorraine Litchfield. Things went from bad to worse.’

She shrugged, trying to minimise the pain of their fight. It was painful, too, to acknowledge that the memory of Lorraine Litchfield still exerted such a grip. Even though she’d completely disappeared from their lives like the thirteenth fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.