‘Give me that key!’ she said. ‘Did you help yourself to that?’
He handed it back and walked down the hall after her, then helped her pick up the pieces of broken plate. ‘You’ve gone real white,’ he said.
She stood there, swallowing hard. Then just made it to the bathroom, flinging up the toilet lid and hurling into it. Hugo followed at a distance, standing about in a useless way while she washed her face and teeth, and cleaned up the splashes.
‘You’re crook,’ he observed helpfully as she came out of the bathroom. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’
They sat at the dining table next to the sideboard and while Gemma chewed on some dry toast, the Ratbag ate his way through several days’ worth of planned meals.
‘I want some answers, Hugo,’ Gemma said. ‘You told me that this Eddie was after you because he thought you’d ripped off drugs. But I don’t believe you. There’s no way a dealer would let a courier take the drugs and the money together at the same time.’
The Ratbag looked away.
‘So, Hugo. Tell me. What really happened?’
The boy looked around then up, pretending to find something of interest on the ceiling.
‘I’m waiting, Hugo. I can wait all day.’ God, she thought, where do these horrible lines come from?
‘You can’t really wait all day,’ he said.
‘How come you had that money?’ she demanded.
He twisted in the chair. ‘I told the clients that the system had changed. That they had to give me the correct money from now on instead of doing electronic transfers.’
‘And they believed you?’
Hugo looked hurt. ‘I said Eddie didn’t want to use the credit system anymore and made up a real good story about how the cops were watching bank transactions. That scared them. I told them it was cash only now. I made heaps.’
‘But it didn’t take long for Eddie to hear about it, did it?’ Something like that, she thought, would only have been good for a few hours.
‘Yeah. He found out pretty quick.’
Sometimes, Gemma thought, it’s tough being thirty years younger than the person you’re trying to hoodwink. ‘So you really ripped Eddie off?’
‘But he was dealing drugs! He’s a crim!’
‘And you’re not?’
‘No way! I’m just … just sort of getting money off him. I wasn’t hurting anyone.’
‘Hugo, when you steal from people, someone is always hurt.’ She paused. Even if, she was thinking, it’s only a boy of thirteen.
‘But how was I hurting anyone? I was bringing them what they wanted.’
The kid should be a lawyer, she thought. Or a Jesuit.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Interrogation over. We’ll leave the moral discussion for another time. Do you want a milkshake or something to drink with that?’
‘A milkshake would be way cool.’
Gemma went into the kitchen and made him a milkshake, using plenty of the new ice-cream she’d bought. When she got back, Hugo seemed more relaxed.
‘I talked to Dad again,’ he said. ‘He says I can live with him next year. He’s promised.’
‘Does your mother know that?’ she said.
‘She’s cool with it. But she says I’ve got to go back and finish the year at school—there’s not that much left of it.’ He made a face.
‘Where have you been? I was worried about you.’
He shrugged. ‘Here and there. I stayed with Gerda.’
He’d mentioned that name before, Gemma recalled. ‘So who’s this Gerda?’
‘She’s a trannie,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘She’s saving for the op.’
Whatever schooling the Ratbag might be missing out on, Gemma thought, he was sure getting a liberal education.
‘And I got something for you,’ he added.
‘What? Something you’ve pinched? Bought with your ill-gotten gains?’
The Ratbag shook his head. ‘I got Eddie’s full name for you.’
Gemma grabbed her mobile. ‘Go!’
‘Eddie Borg.’ He pulled out a scrap of paper and pushed it towards her.
She dialled Angie with the news. ‘He’s already being questioned,’ said Angie. ‘Sean got a break from your Greek mate at Indigo Ice.’
While Gemma cleared the table Hugo pulled the copy of Claudia Page’s emailed jpeg image towards him. ‘What’s this?’ he said, flicking the edge of the paper.
‘It’s a picture someone sent me—someone who’s missing,’ said Gemma. ‘I thought I knew where she’d sent it from. But I didn’t.’
Hugo looked at her curiously. She knew she wasn’t making sense. He picked it up and studied it. ‘That tray,’ he said, pointing to the top of the drinks trolley in the image. ‘It’s got the same little railings on it, like yours. And the bottles have the same big bums.’
Gemma glanced over and saw that it was so. Something like electricity shot through her body. ‘Holy shit! Hugo! Of course it has!’
‘Has what? What are you talking about?’
‘Has little rails!’
He stared at her as she snatched up her mobile, dialling Angie again..
‘Tell Sean,’ Gemma said. ‘Or go in yourself. Tell Sean to say to Eddie that you know about the boat! The cruiser!’
‘What boat?’
‘Do a rego check. Not vehicles. Boats.’
Gemma recalled the painting Angie had mentioned—alongside the nude portrait of Brissett’s dark-haired wife—his other trophy: the luxury cruiser. She hurried on, before Angie could interrupt.
‘I’ll take bets Amy and Tasmin were taken to a boat.’ She explained the implication of Hugo’s observation about the decanters and the drinks trolley. ‘That’s where Claudia sent her last picture from. That’s where you’ll find the other Black Diamond Room. And Claudia Page.’
Hours later, with the water police going after Brissett’s cruiser, Angie and Gemma, wired with caffeine and
adrenaline, waited at water police headquarters. Outside, gulls wheeled around the high spotlights, flashing brilliant white before vanishing into outer darkness.
Through the open door of the office, they could hear the radioed voices. Along the horizon, the dark purple ocean separated from the sky. Low-lying cloud shone red-gold as sea and sky lightened. Red sky at dawning, Gemma remembered, is a warning.
She and Angie sat over more coffee.
‘It was Hugo,’ Gemma explained. ‘The Ratbag. He noticed the railings and the wide bases of the decanters on the drinks trolley and then all the things that I’d been trying to put together just went snap! You told me about Brissett’s two trophies in his lounge room. Remember, next to the nude portrait of his wife there was a photograph of a big cruiser? And Tasmin’s body was dumped at sea, weighed down with something that you’d find on a boat—the diver’s belt. Colin Roper’s report said that cord was used in kite-flying and fishing.’
A car pulled up nearby. It was Claudia’s mother.
By the time the sun was well clear of the sea, Claudia, doped and disoriented, but alive and wrapped in a rug by the police, was brought ashore and restored to her mother.
‘We’ll talk to her later,’ said Angie. ‘When she’s come down from whatever’s in her system.’
On the nearby wharf, the Forensic Services station wagon pulled up with a couple of Crime Scene people.
‘What’s the name of Brissett’s boat?’ Gemma asked one of the water police.
‘Just initials,’ he said. ‘GBS.’
She turned to Angie. ‘But his initials are SGB. Why the mix-up?’
‘Might be some maritime reference. We’ve got him, that’s the main thing.’
‘GBS!’ Gemma suddenly remembered. ‘They’re the initials Naomi noticed. On the trophies.’
Gemma went home and found Ratbag watching television with Taxi snuggled on his lap, the remains of a pizza on a plate on the floor.
She tried to have a nap, but after lying restless for half an hour or so, she went back to work in her office. Claudia would identify Scott Brissett and the police would lay charges. It was going to be all right. She checked the latest news on the internet. There was a photo of Bruno in his shiny uniform, preening himself at a press conference as if he’d single-handedly saved Claudia Page. Under his cap she could see the plaster over his left ear lobe. What was the matter with his ear lobe, she wondered. An idea suggested itself to her and she was about to ring Angie with it when her mobile rang.
The noise of traffic made it hard to hear who her caller was until she recognised Angie’s voice. ‘I’m in the public phone down the street,’ Angie explained. ‘Bruno was looking for the VMO files and wants to know why some of them are missing from the pile he gave me. For God’s sake, bring in anything you’ve still got at your place now. I’ll meet you downstairs.’
Gemma grabbed her keys, stuffed the last remaining files into her briefcase and pulled Taxi off Hugo. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Want to do some PI work?’
He was immediately awake and interested. ‘What’s it worth?’ he asked.
‘Your continued board and lodgings here,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘I want you to ID someone.’
‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Anyone I know?’
She gave him a look.
‘Only joking,’ he said.
They climbed into her car and she switched the radio on and flicked through the stations. ‘
The police told him they had physical evidence linking him to the crime and then it turned out they didn’t!
’ said the talkback guru. ‘
What is the matter with the New South Wales police? We need a return to old-fashioned policing. Kicking the butts of hoodlums, not harassing innocent family men
.’ The footie legend was working his media contacts hard, pulling in favours, lobbying for his case.
At Strawberry Hills, Gemma parked in a side street and hurried to the old post office building with Hugo beside her.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘Just to the corner here,’ she said.
As they approached the building, Angie was already waiting, white-faced, lips in a tight line. Gemma tried not to betray her shock. She’d never seen Angie looking so tense and strung-out.
Angie hurried over and Gemma held out her briefcase. ‘Everything’s in there,’ she said.
‘Can you wait round a bit?’ Angie asked, taking the briefcase. ‘I’ll get this stuff back upstairs—before Bruno notices—and come straight down again.’
‘Sure,’ said Gemma. ‘Then I’ll run you home.’
‘I thought you said you wanted me to ID someone,’ Hugo said.
‘I do,’ Gemma reassured him. ‘But we need to call him down here.’
Angie was turning to go when the door opened and Bruno stepped out. Angie stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of him.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Sergeant?’ he said. ‘You won’t find those missing files down here.’
‘I’ve got work to do,’ said Angie.
Bruno looked from Angie to Gemma and then back at Angie again. His gaze dropped to the briefcase she was carrying. He lunged forward and jerked a folder out of it.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘A VMO file,’ said Angie. ‘I’m scanning them into the system. It’s a job you were supposed to be doing.’
‘
She’s
had them, hasn’t she!’ Bruno said in triumph, thrusting the file in Gemma’s direction. ‘You’ll go a row for this, McDonald. Unauthorised access to official documents. You are dead!’ His pager beeped, but the smile of satisfaction remained on his face while he dug it out and attended to it, striding away as he spoke.
‘Come on, Hugo,’ Gemma said, tugging on his arm. He was staring after Bruno as if he were a ghost. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I know him!’ He swung round to Gemma. ‘He’s the guy with the diamond ear stud! From the club!’
Bruno looked up from the pager as Gemma hauled Hugo away.
‘That’s the man I was telling you about,’ Hugo continued. ‘The cop! See? I was right! He
is
a cop!’
‘Shut up, Hugo,’ Gemma said, pulling him down the street.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Use your brains,’ she said. She was thinking of a whistleblower girlfriend, knocked down one dark night by an accelerating unmarked police car as she crossed the road to her house. She hurried Hugo across the street and they stood near Baccarole, waiting for Angie.
‘I thought you said you wanted me to ID someone?’ Hugo said.
‘You just did, Hugo.’
She looked up to see Angie hurrying towards them. ‘You look terrible,’ Gemma said.
‘I haven’t had breakfast. Or dinner last night,’ said Angie. ‘I need a sugar hit. Right now.’
They ordered iced chocolates that came with piles of whipped cream on top and a long spoon. Angie stirred hers without paying much attention to it.
‘Hugo reckons Bruno spent a lot of time at Deliverance,’ said Gemma. ‘Wearing a diamond ear stud.’
‘There’s no crime in that,’ said Angie. ‘Apart from how twentieth century diamond ear studs are. Even cops are allowed to party.’
‘But he was always there, talking to Eddie,’ said Hugo. ‘They were mates. He was there heaps.’
‘Okay,’ said Gemma to Angie. ‘What happened exactly?’
‘Not much to say really. The boss hauled me in because when he checked the VMO files I’d signed for, some were missing.’ She put her mouth around the straw, took a sip, then stirred the ice-cream around. ‘It’s so picky and mean. Things are always bloody missing. Especially when they’re needed. They’re gunning for me.’
‘What do you think?’ Gemma asked.
‘You mean
who
do I think? Bruno would have dobbed me for sure.’ She squashed the pile of cream flatter. ‘With me out of the way, he can run the investigation any way he wants.’
‘Deliverance’s way?’ Gemma asked.
‘Any way at all.’
‘Do you think he’s connected to Scott Brissett?’
Angie plopped backwards in her chair and sighed. ‘Looks like most of Sydney is connected to Scott bloody Brissett.’
Hugo sat staring from one to the other.
‘Everything was starting to move with the investigation into the girls’ murders,’ Angie said. ‘We showed Eddie Borg the positive matches we’d got when we matched his DNA sample against CrimTrac’s database. Three serious matters attracting very long gaol sentences. I promised him if he helped us with the Netherleigh Park investigation, we’d help him. He looked at the charges we could bring against him and he just went to water. All this bullshit about honour among thieves!’ Angie’s words came out with a sharp laugh of contempt. ‘He dobbed his crim mates in good and proper. Reckoned that Amy Bernhard’s death had been an “accident”.’ She put her spoon down and looked across at Gemma. ‘I suggested “manslaughter” might be more accurate. Filling a young kid up with alcohol and opiates and then using her like a sex doll is not going to do anything for her health and wellbeing.’
‘Gerda’s got a sex doll,’ said Hugo.
Angie frowned at him then looked at Gemma. ‘Who the hell is Gerda?’
Gemma shrugged.
‘Eddie’s admitted that he formed an association with Amy through the club,’ Angie continued. ‘But he couldn’t get anywhere with her because she was involved with someone else—some guy who was obsessed with her. Eddie suspected it might have been Brissett himself. Brissett had been giving her money and making promises and she was dying to start work as a model.’
Dying was the right word, Gemma thought.
‘But when he asked her if it was Brissett,’ Angie went on, ‘Amy laughed at the idea. Said the guy who had the hots for her wasn’t
that
old.’
‘When you’re sixteen,’ Gemma said, ‘anyone over twenty-five is over the hill.’
‘She’d been told the sex video would help her commercially,’ Angie added.
‘That’s Sydney for you,’ said Gemma. ‘So is that what happened to Tasmin too?’
Angie looked out the door onto the street. ‘That was straight-out murder. Eddie told Tasmin what had happened to Amy one night when he was drunk and the poor kid was horrified. Threatened to tell. But Brissett talked her out of it when he heard what had happened. He convinced her that it had simply been a tragic accident, too much partying. Too much fun. That nothing could bring Amy back so why should Tasmin ruin a potentially brilliant career because of a dreadful accident?’ Angie brought her attention back to her iced chocolate. ‘Though Tasmin seemed convinced by this, Brissett couldn’t take the chance that she might change her mind. He knew that Claudia knew about him and Tasmin and if she and Claudia got together they’d be very convincing witnesses against him—if it ever came to that.’ Angie sipped her drink. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘Brissett picked Tasmin up on her way to school. He knew she liked to run the five clicks.’
‘Tasmin had a crush on some “old” man in his forties, according to Claudia,’ said Gemma.
‘Sure sounds like Brissett,’ said Angie.
‘And Tasmin would go willingly in a car with him.’ Gemma stirred her long spoon around, scraping cream from the sides of the tall glass. ‘But how did they get hold of Claudia?’ she continued. ‘There’s no way she’d go with Brissett. She was already wary as hell, scared they’d come after her.’
‘Through Eddie,’ Angie said. ‘He contacted Damien Wilcox, telling him that he had information about Tasmin’s death. Said he was a friend of Tasmin’s trying to find out what happened to her. That he needed proof of Brissett’s association with her. Apparently, Claudia had a photograph of Tasmin and Brissett that Tasmin asked her to keep because she didn’t want her mother to find it.’
‘Claudia said that,’ Gemma recalled. ‘She was frightened that Brissett could come after her. She said Tasmin had given her something to mind.’ She remembered the remorseful, guilty young girl who had carried a huge burden in isolation. ‘And then Damien rang Claudia,’ she said, ‘when I was there. I thought she was talking to her boyfriend. She must have got the photograph and left the house to meet him.’
‘The two of them went to meet Eddie,’ Angie continued, ‘and gave him the photograph, thinking it would prove Brissett’s involvement in Tasmin’s disappearance. But instead, Brissett gets back the photo and, at the same time, takes Claudia hostage.’
Gemma thought about this. ‘But why? Wouldn’t it have been better to leave things be, rather than risk creating the storm he must have known would break out over Claudia’s disappearance?’
‘My gut feeling is that Brissett believes he’s invincible. That he can do what he likes,’ Angie said. ‘I’ve met it a couple of times before in some of the big crims, especially the ones with good connections. He wants a girl, he takes her. And nobody can do anything about it. My bet is, he feels there’s nothing he can’t get away with. Did I tell you he’s employing Piers Magnus at Magnus Projections to work on his image?’ She mixed a dark layer of chocolate at the bottom of her glass into the remaining milk. ‘And if he’s got Bruno onside, who knows? He may get away with it.’
‘Do you really think that?’ Gemma asked. ‘That Bruno is a dud?’
Angie scraped the cream off the sides of the glass into the chocolate milk. ‘Can’t be sure. Incompetence and stupidity aren’t criminal matters—unfortunately. Corruption is. Often, they can look the same from the outside.’
‘So Damien is bashed and dumped,’ Gemma said, ‘and Claudia’s taken out to the
GBS
.’
‘That’s what happened,’ said Angie. ‘Claudia had her wits about her and stashed her mobile in one of her shoes.’
Gemma imagined the scene. ‘She’s left alone for a moment and that’s when she fired off those images of the other Black Diamond Room and whoever it was interrupting her. And emailed it to me. Before they snatched the mobile away from her.’
Angie nodded. ‘She told her mother she didn’t even realise she was on a boat. She said she was half in and out of it. She doesn’t remember transmitting those images or calling you.’
‘That’s weird,’ said Hugo.
‘It can happen,’ said Angie, ‘with the sort of drug mix they’d given her. Victims of drug-assisted sexual assault often report amnesiac episodes. She and Damien had had a couple of drinks with Eddie. God knows what she had in her system.’