‘What about Donovan?’ Gemma asked, stalling. ‘You even tried to murder a little kid!’
Paulette’s voice wavered. ‘He got in the way.’
‘And what about Bettina? What had she done to you?’
‘Same,’ Paulette snarled, defiant again.
Like me, Gemma thought, as Paulette waved the Glock again. In the way.
‘Keep moving. Right through the kitchen. Out the back door. Then down to the garage.’
‘I’m not alone,’ said Gemma. ‘Unlike you were that day. I’m working two out. My partner will be here any minute.’
‘Sure. Get moving.’
‘It was you who wrote that note found in Bryson’s pocket. You called him a bastard because not only was he getting rid of you, he was also replacing you.’
‘Miss Know-It-All. But you’re stuffed now,’ said Paulette. ‘Move!’
Gemma made her way through the rainy overgrown backyard towards the garage. A light came on at their passing.
Where the hell was Mike?
‘Push that door open,’ Paulette said, and Gemma saw that two cement steps led down to a door in the garden end of the garage.
She pretended to fumble the door, her mind desperately seeking a way out of this. There was no way Paulette could drive and keep her under control. She would have to immobilise Gemma. She’d either be knocked unconscious. Or worse. Paulette had nothing to lose.
‘Hurry up!’
‘I can’t open the door,’ said Gemma.
‘Just push it! It sticks sometimes.’
The door gave suddenly and Gemma stumbled through. Barely inside, and before the door was completely opened into the garage, Gemma swung back on it, slamming it shut with all her strength.
She heard Paulette curse and stumble and fall backwards. Gemma wrenched open the door, spearing herself into the stumbling figure who still had control of the weapon, barely aware of the driving rain or the shock when her shoulder hit the ground, trying to pin Paulette’s firing arm with her own body weight, struggling to apply a carotid come-along hold on the thrashing woman. But Paulette was wise to that, younger and stronger, and her training was more up to date. She deftly twisted aside, using her free arm to aim a vicious jab underneath Gemma’s nose. Instinctively, Gemma pulled back, but in so doing lost her advantage. Paulette squirmed free from beneath her.
Gemma thought she heard a sound from the back lane. Maybe Mike had arrived. Outmanoeuvred, outgunned and unable to match the younger woman’s physical strength, Gemma threw herself on top of Paulette, trying to buy time to improve her position, trying to get hold of the Glock. But it was hopeless. Paulette viciously grabbed her by the throat, applying the very hold Gemma had been struggling to use. Gemma screamed, the sudden agony blinding her. Then she felt the hard barrel of the silencer pressing against the side of her head.
‘Don’t shoot,’ Gemma whispered.
Paulette slowly stood up, raising the pistol in the rain.
This is it, Gemma thought, as Paulette deliberately took aim. ‘I’m sorry, baby,’ she whispered.
Just for a second, Paulette’s gaze lost its focus, then her eyes dropped to Gemma’s stomach. Her hand holding the Glock trembled.
‘Okay, that’s enough! Drop it!’
Gemma heard Angie behind her, sensed her pistol trained on Paulette. ‘I swear to God I’ll shoot you, Paulette!’
For a second, Paulette stood undecided. Then she slowly lowered the Glock, letting it slip to the ground. Warily, Angie moved forward to kick it back towards Gemma and Gemma pounced on it. Sirens screamed on the street outside.
Gemma was too adrenaline-charged to say anything. She sat back on her heels, clutching Paulette’s weapon, watching in stunned silence as Angie was joined by two other detectives and Paulette was cuffed and escorted back to the house.
Angie ran to her side, squatting beside her. ‘You okay?’
Gemma nodded.
From somewhere, she heard Mike’s voice, the thudding of his feet through the rain and the roaring of her own blood. Painfully, she straightened up to see him hurtling towards her. She tried to stand but her legs were shaking.
‘What happened?’ asked Mike, grabbing her as she swayed.
‘Okay, Gemster. It’s okay. You’re safe. We got her.’
‘You’re going to have to explain to me,’ said Mike, holding Gemma tightly in the back of Angie’s car, ‘why the hell you went in there by yourself.’
‘Are you sure about doing the statement now?’ Angie asked, turning from the front seat. The second police car remained outside Paulette’s house and already the place was being cordoned off.
‘Please,’ said Gemma. ‘I must do it now. Get it over and done with.’
The shaking that had started at her knees had spread through her entire body, so that she felt as if the fluid in every one of her billions of cells was shivering.
‘Are you cold?’ Mike asked.
She nodded and he moved her closer into his solid warmth.
Gemma closed her eyes against the tears.
At the Police Centre, Angie found a vacant interview room. As Gemma sat down, she became aware of the growing pain in her shoulder. It had built to a steady throb, and with Mike’s help she carefully removed her jacket and undid the first few buttons of her shirt, slipping the sleeve off the shoulder.
‘Holy hell, girl! What have you done?’ Angie asked.
A massive red and purple haematoma from the impact of hitting the cement in the struggle with Paulette was spreading outwards and upwards around her shoulder.
‘That looks nasty,’ said Mike. ‘Can you move everything?’
‘I think so.’
‘We should take you down for an X-ray,’ he went on.
‘Let’s get this over with first,’ said Gemma.
In the interview room, Mike sat close by while Gemma made her statement about the incident in Paulette’s backyard. The shaking had calmed down until it was nothing more than a cellular tremor, and Angie had borrowed a greatcoat from some giant. Gemma, wrapped up like a baby, sipping sweet milky tea from a plastic cup, described the actions that had led to the confrontation with Bryson and Bettina Finn’s murderer.
Later, when Mike drove her home, all she wanted was a bath and Vegemite toast. She lay in the steaming bath, nursing her injured shoulder, and for the first time in many hours, started to warm up.
Mike tucked her into bed like a little girl, leaving her for a while to catch up with some work, then slipping in beside her much later. It was good to wake in the night and feel his warmth.
•
Next morning, Angie rang. ‘Feel like a celebration breakfast?’ she asked. ‘Jaki wants to thank you in person.’
Angie and Jaki arrived not long after, Jaki bearing a beautifully wrapped parcel and Angie a large box of croissants and a pink iced cake. But Hugo had gone back to Melbourne, and Mike, after taking one look at the pink cake, secretly dropped it in the kitchen tidy.
The four of them sat on the timber deck in the early sunshine of a perfect pre-spring day with the coffee percolator steaming in the middle. Gemma unwrapped the gift from Jaki – a hand-sewn patchwork bunny rug.
‘I want to know,’ said Angie, pouring herself a second cup, ‘how you knew about the Anschutz.’
Gemma smiled. ‘I’ve got Julie Cooper to thank for that. Because once I started trying to blame her – and that was only out of jealous hurt – I was pointing in the right direction. It had to be a crime scene person. Someone who was in fairly close contact with Jaki. And who was also burning with jealous rage. She’d been supplanted as Bryson Finn’s protégé by Jaki. Remember, Paulette had transferred into Sydney crime scene only a few months ago. She was the woman who made the phone calls to the Finn household, enraged that she’d been replaced by Jaki and determined to shake things up. Bryson had given her a piece of Venetian glass jewellery before giving her the shove. Sean Wright told me Paulette had been working at Manly prior to her Sydney transfer. He also told me she’d been
suddenly
transferred out. Paulette confirmed that last night. My guess is Bryson had discovered the Fayed connection – that Paulette had been as good as married to Benny Fayed at one stage. He was a womaniser who did his homework.’
‘Oh God,’ said Jaki, ‘I had no idea he was like that.’
‘He was
very
like that,’ said Angie. ‘We thought he’d settled down a bit. He’d just got smarter.’
Gemma reached towards the water jug but Mike pre-empted her, picking it up and pouring a glass for her.
‘Paulette Heath felt the same anger as Jade Finn – that the man who was central to their lives had given the same gift to several people,’ Gemma went on. ‘I started thinking of the security door to the exhibits area being propped open, and thought that it would be possible to take a weapon from there and return it. That idea made me think of an even simpler way of “losing” a murder weapon – using it
again
on the way from another crime scene. Paulette was working one out that day. She simply didn’t bag the Lindfield Anschutz until she’d used it herself at Killara.’
‘Okay,’ said Mike, ‘so you were working on the idea that the killer could be a crime scene person. But why fit up Jaki? Wouldn’t it have been easier to make it look like a family murder? Given all the bad blood in that particular family?’
‘This was vengeance,’ said Gemma. ‘Vengeance for infidelity. Bryson was probably discussing this mess with Bettina. He couldn’t really talk it over with anyone else.’
‘So by fitting up Jaki, she gets both of them punished,’ said Mike.
‘She told me how she used discarded items full of Jaki’s DNA. I didn’t ask her about your customised gloves, Jaki. But my guess is they were a great asset.’
‘How?’ Jaki asked, puzzled.
‘They stand out,’ said Gemma, ‘and they’re easily retrieved when the waste at a scene is bagged up – those light blue gloves would be very obvious. Paulette had only to whip them out and, making sure she was gloved herself, carefully turn them inside out and wear them over her own gloves. That way, she’d be touching everything with Jaki’s hands.’
Jaki shook her head as if to clear it. ‘That’s diabolical.’
‘Maybe. But it was a dead easy way to do what she needed to do. Paulette had been plotting and planning her vengeance for some time. She saw her chance and simply took an exhibit from one crime scene, the Lindfield shooting, and used it at another. She’d been waiting for this perfect moment. She told me she’d been stalking the superintendent, although she didn’t use that term. Bryson Finn was a dead man the moment he got in the way – as she might see it – of her dream of love with him. I saw the rage she’s capable of when someone thwarts her. The Anschutz and its ammunition were perfect. She could use her faithless lover’s own pet weapon to murder him. The silencer, I imagine, she carried with her. Just in case. She probably had a range of them, suitable for handguns and rifles. She had one on the Glock last night.’
‘And Bettina?’ Angie asked.
Gemma looked out to the horizon, gleaming under a perfect sky. The rain had freshened her garden so that even the hardy native bushes seemed greener and thicker than usual.
‘Paulette may have thought that Bryson was renewing his interest in Bettina. Or it may be that she just got in the way.’
‘I wonder what she thought when she saw the necklace around Bettina’s neck,’ Jaki said. ‘That probably confirmed her suspicions. That he handed out these baubles to his harem.’
‘And the blood on Jaki’s overalls?’ Angie asked.
‘That’s easy,’ said Gemma. ‘Paulette simply “borrowed” Jaki’s work overalls. Wore them to Lindfield, and was still wearing them when she tracked the superintendent to Killara. She knew he was there, took her car around to the picnic grounds, hurried through the bushland, screwed the silencer on, went to the house – which she was familiar with from previous trysts with her lover.’ Jaki made a muffled sound but Gemma continued, ‘Shot her victims and drove back to the Police Centre. Poor little Donny just got in the way. The murder weapon she’d used was all nicely bagged up and would go straight into the exhibits room awaiting destruction. It would never be needed as evidence in a court room because the guy who shot his wife had already put up his hand.’
She paused. ‘I had this weird experience when I was at the clinic. I’d had a pre-med injection and I was drifting in this dreamy, trance-like state when I remembered Paulette wearing really heavy make-up.’
‘Heavy make-up?’ Angie said. ‘Normally she wears no make-up at all. Maybe just some lipstick.’
‘But two days after the shootings,’ Gemma said, ‘when I first met her at the Police Centre, she was wearing thick foundation.’
‘Yes,’ said Angie, ‘her face would have been peppered with tiny glass fragments. She might even have had little red marks on her skin. She wasn’t taking any chances.’
‘And all along we were wasting time and energy chasing people like Findlay and Natalie and then finally charging Jaki,’ said Angie. She reached her hand across the table. ‘Sorry, Jaki. No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘You were just doing your job,’ said Jaki, ‘according to the evidence trail. But you seemed pretty eager to believe it was me.’
Gemma looked at the two women, wondering if their friendship would survive this. Maybe it would, given time. At least there had been no malice involved.
‘I’m using standard-issue gloves from now on,’ said Jaki. ‘I can’t believe someone could hate so much, and devote so much attention to destruction.’
Gemma thought of the little boy Paulette had nearly killed and whose life would be forever damaged by the woman’s vengeful hatred. She’d visit him again, she thought. She shared something with Donny – a kinship of family grief.
‘I want Paulette Heath to live a very long life, day after day, month after month, year after year,’ she declared. ‘Contemplating what she’s done. Until she’s a very old woman.’
Angie laughed. ‘Talking of old women’, she said. ‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten to pass on to you. We checked Lottie Lander out. The mystery woman Findlay Finn visited? She’s quite famous actually. She’s got a painting in the Sydney art gallery. She’s about one hundred and ten and still teaches art to favoured students – Findlay Finn being one of them.
•
After her friends and Mike had gone, Gemma tidied her desk. She threw away Darren the escort’s number, thinking that in a day or two she’d ring Natalie Finn, find out how things were between her and her daughter. She looked at the calendar – in a few more weeks Kit would be home. What a lot they’d have to talk about. Gemma stood at the window of her office, looking up at the stone steps leading to the road. Then she saw that the little spider had made a delicate web between two curving ginger plant leaves. He’d found a place to land. She thought briefly of the two dead youngsters, Romeo and Juliet. Life is so fragile; it must be handled with care.
Her desk phone rang and she picked it up.
‘I’m coming up to Sydney tomorrow,’ Grace said. ‘I have an appointment with a lawyer. I was hoping I could stay with you a night or two?’
‘As long as you like!’ Gemma replied, smiling.