Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing (19 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I let you down.’ There was a pause. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s something I want to say. I don’t want you to think I’m saying it to excuse myself. It’s just something I felt last night when it was all going arse-up.’

Gemma waited.

‘I reckon they were waiting for me, the pricks that attacked me. I got the feeling I was set up. How else would someone know I’d be there with a camera? You know yourself our equipment can’t be seen through tinted windows. Especially when it’s dark. They
knew
I’d be there.’

Gemma considered Mike’s words. Maybe he was just trying to avoid responsibility. But what if it were the truth? Her blood ran cold. Someone knowing where Mike would be. Someone coming after her in a lane, someone breathing on her phone. Someone posting violent sexual email. Virtual reality stepping out from the shadows into the real world where she lived.

‘But that’s impossible,’ she said. ‘How could someone know?’

She rang off and remained sitting where she was. The wind had blown up outside and rattled the windows. She thought about what Mike had said. Maybe it was true or maybe he was just imagining it to assuage his discomfort at being sprung.

Gemma searched around for a plausible rationalisation. After all, Belinda Swann’s father was a senior police officer himself: he’d expect this sort of move from the defence. Maybe he had his own people on his daughter. He could know what to look for in the traffic. Counter-surveillance could be quite simple; just a matter of getting a mate to tail you, to see if anyone else was doing the same. Maybe her attacker, the cyberstalker, Mike’s attacker and even the breather were just a series of unfortunate, but random events.

She was limping to her bedroom to get a warmer jumper when she heard another sound outside. She grabbed a coat instead, pulled it on and hobbled to the window. Everything seemed more threatening now that she was handicapped. The sound seemed to be coming from the northern side of her place, outside her bedroom. She listened. She could hear rustlings and movements that were not just the windows shaking under the gusts from the south. There was definitely someone out there. She put the window up a little, grateful for the strong wrought-iron lace bars that protected her.

‘Who is it?’ she yelled outside. ‘What do you want?’

The sounds stopped and Gemma started to feel foolish. No one answered. Maybe it was just the creator of Disneyland Pompeii next door pottering about, adding more sentimental goddesses to his pantheon. But the sounds she’d heard were not the sort a confident householder makes and it was already dark. This was a creeper. A stealth fiend. Something touched her leg and she jumped, biting back a scream. It was Taxi’s whiskers as he checked her ankle. Right, she thought, angered by the sudden fright. I’m not putting up with this.

Gemma grabbed her long black torch which could double as a handy weapon and limped through the lounge area, pulling the sliding doors unlocked, stepping out onto the timber deck. The wind moaned in the recesses of the building and the heavy sea rolled beneath her, driven by salted gusts of wind. A tendril of the jasmine she’d planted near the rail of the deck whipped into her eye painfully, causing her to blink and swear. The bushes near the end of the garden showed dimly in the light from the room behind her. She saw movement to one side, as if someone or something was hiding in there. She remembered the curious disturbance she’d noted a few days before under the window of the office. Cautiously, keeping her weight as far as possible on her good leg, she stepped down onto the winter grass, following the torchlight ahead of her like the holy grail. She followed its beam to the edge of the garden where the stunted masses of coprosma and native heath formed a natural boundary. Below this rugged vegetation was the incline to the rocks.

She hobbled closer to the dense coprosma bush, frowning in concentration, shining the torchlight on something that looked like paper or fabric under the bushes. With hesitant steps, and keeping her eyes peeled for any peripheral movement, Gemma approached, flicking the torch sideways to take in the total scene, making sure she wasn’t missing anything. She thought she could hear the tiniest sound. Something breathing. Maybe an animal. There were possums about, she knew, but possums didn’t behave like this. She peered closer. Now she could see padded fabric, newspaper. Litter. Don’t tell me, she thought with relief. It’s a poor bloody dero’s nest. It’s not some dirty stalker, it’s a fringe-dweller sleeping rough along the coastline, using people’s hoses and taps and outside showers. She recalled the hollowed-out area she’d found earlier under her office window behind the bushes. Now she gingerly prodded at what she realised was the corner of a dirty sleeping bag with the toe of her injured foot. Still wary, she prodded harder.

‘Come on, mate,’ she said in her old police voice, getting a good grip on the heavy torch. ‘Wakey wakey. You’ll have to move along. You can’t stay here.’

To her dismay, she heard the sound of crying. Her dismay turned quickly to irritation. ‘Come on,’ she said, more harshly than she’d intended. ‘I don’t need this. It’s freezing and I’ve got things to do. Up and off my property. Go and have a good cry somewhere else. Now.’ She leaned over and picked up a corner of the sleeping bag, pulling at it. Suddenly it gave way as whoever was huddled on it rolled off and ran away. Gemma fell clumsily backwards trying to protect her injured leg, putting an arm out to break her fall, ending up in a tangled heap. The torch went flying. In the silence she could hear the surf crashing below. She groped around for the torch, cursing under her breath. She could hear whoever it was running and falling and sliding down the incline. The slope was treacherous in the dark. Even Taxi had fallen and got himself pinned down there some years ago, vanishing for days. Gemma found the torch and grabbed it, hurrying as best she could to the edge.

‘Come back! Don’t try and climb down there in the dark. You’ll fall!’

The torch beam lit up a scrabbling figure dressed in dirty jeans and anorak with tousled dark hair. ‘Come on,’ she repeated, remembering one of Aunt Merle’s injunctions from a life time ago: no matter whether you can help or not, any situation is always improved by putting on the kettle. ‘Come back,’ she called into the wind, ‘and I’ll make you a cup of tea!’

Beneath her, the figure straightened up. Impossible to tell whether it was male or female, but at least the frantic and dangerous slide had stopped. Gemma shone her torch full on the upturned face, twenty metres below. She gasped. Under the grubby layers of clothing and heavy eyebrows a white face stared back at her. Both the face and the body were longer and thinner than she remembered. But there was no forgetting that face.

It was the Ratbag.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked as he half crawled back up the slope, rocks and pebbles sliding under
his worn sneakers. She stood at the top of the cliff, shining the torch so that he had a path of light to follow. In a few minutes he’d managed to scramble to the top, worm through the bushes and stand silently in front of her. She racked her brain for his real name. She knew it was the same as a famous nineteenth-century French novelist. She discarded Emile and Gustave. Hugo, that was it.

‘Hugo! What do you think you’re doing here?’

He stood there shivering and Gemma realised how cold she was.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said. He followed her meekly back over the timber deck and in through the sliding doors. ‘You gave me a terrible fright,’ she said.

‘I was really scared you’d shoot me,’ were his first words.

She took a good look at him. ‘I don’t shoot people much.’

Under an old maroon anorak were a jumper and jeans that looked as if they’d never been washed.

She ushered him into the kitchen while she put the kettle on and poured herself a brandy. Now they were inside, she could smell him, the mousey odour of unwashed boy.

He looked at the kettle. ‘I don’t like tea.’

‘What about hot chocolate?’ she asked, dimly remembering a packet she’d noticed on one of her rarely visited shelves. He nodded and she started looking for it.

‘Look, Hugo,’ she said, ‘why don’t you go and have a shower?’ She remembered his favourite food. ‘And while you do that, I’ll make the hot chocolate and order a pizza for you. Then, when you’re feeling fresher, you’d better tell me what’s going on.’

She saw the relief and the gratitude in his face and he disappeared into the bathroom. She remembered the distressed little kid of a couple of years ago, almost in tears about the injured falcon he’d nursed in a cardboard box. She ordered the pizza and poured herself another brandy, the shower going as she searched her room, trying to find something the Ratbag might wear. She finally settled on an old brown jumper that wasn’t too girlie, some black trackies and a pair of Steve’s socks. That, she decided, would have to do.

The phone rang just as she was finding a towel for the Ratbag. She knocked on the bathroom door and shoved it and the clothes into the room, then hobbled to answer the phone, hoping it would be Steve, conjured up by his socks. That sort of thing often happened. But it was Angie.

‘You’re still working?’ Gemma was impressed.

‘I’ve got the autopsy report on Shelly, Gemster. I knew you’d want to know asap.’

Gemma listened while Angie skim-read it and her anger grew that anyone would treat another human being the way someone had treated Shelly. It was the same grim picture—knock-out blows with a heavy instrument, something that left an odd-shaped weal on the skin. Gemma’s blood ran cold.
That’s on my skin, too.
She shivered.
Those plaited marks
—
It’s him.
She put her hand on her left ribs, and felt the tenderness.

‘Angie .
 
.
 
.’ she started.

‘What?’

‘Oh .
 
.
 
. it’s nothing. Go on.’

Even though it was important evidence, she couldn’t bring herself to admit it just now. The thought of going down to the morgue and having her flank compared with the blackening bruises on her friend’s body was just too awful. Tomorrow, she told herself. Instead, she listened to the horrible catalogue of injuries: bashing, biting and finally rape and death. Gemma recalled Shelly in her golden aspect, slinking down the staircase, all platinum and smiles, available at an hourly rate. Just like me, she thought.

‘Thanks, Angie. Fax it to me, will you? Something’s come up.’ She was about to hang up when the Ratbag’s presence reminded her of something. ‘What’s happening with Naomi?’ she asked, thinking of Shelly’s fifteen-year-old daughter.

‘Dunno. I’ll find out.’

Gemma rang off. She stood near the phone, thinking of the odd-shaped weals. He would have killed me, she thought. It could have been me instead of Shelly. Except I was ready for him.

•

The Ratbag wolfed down two-thirds of the family-sized pizza she picked up for him when she took delivery of her chicken curry. When he’d slowed up a bit, she poured him a glass of orange juice, made herself some coffee and settled down on the lounge opposite him as comfortably as she could, her leg propped up on the low table to one side of the lounge. Taxi had run to hide under the cedar sideboard and she could just see the tip of a nose and the odd whisker in the shadow underneath.

‘What happened to your leg?’ he asked.

Gemma looked down at her bandaged foot. ‘I was on a job,’ she said, ‘and the offender jumped me.’ He wasn’t going to change the subject like that, she thought. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘It’s payback time. I got your pizza. I answered your question. Now it’s your turn. What are you doing here?’

The Ratbag looked much sweeter now, with his long hair slicked back and her old jumper hanging off him. But there were dark circles around his eyes and his mouth seemed thinner than she remembered.

‘I’ve left school,’ he said. ‘And come to Sydney to live.’

‘But Hugo, you can’t do that!’

‘Heaps of kids do.’ His insouciance was almost convincing.

Gemma frowned. ‘You can’t be any older than twelve—thirteen—max. Kids have to go to school. It’s the law. Don’t give me that bullshit.’

‘But plenty of kids do it anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ve been hanging with them.’

‘I can see that,’ said Gemma. ‘You’ve been living on the streets, haven’t you?’

‘I had a job.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Just helping around this sort of club. You know, running messages, that sort of thing. Helping this bloke. He gave me fifty dollars.’

‘He didn’t try anything on, did he?’ she asked, alarmed.

There was a pause. ‘One bloke did, but I ran away.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

He shook his head. ‘I told you. I ran away. He didn’t touch me.’

‘When did you leave Melbourne?’ she asked after a moment.

‘A while ago.’ He was vague. Gemma persisted. ‘A week ago,’ he said.

‘Oh my God! Have you rung your mother?’

He paused before shaking his head.

Gemma leaned forward. ‘Hugo,’ she said, ‘you must ring her.’

He blinked at her, the steady, considered gaze of a much younger child. ‘I saw you in that boatshed making those statues,’ he said. ‘What are they supposed to be?’

Gemma felt stung at his question. ‘They’re lions,’ she said.

‘They look more like dogs,’ he said. ‘Freaky-looking dogs.’

‘You must ring your mother,’ Gemma persisted. ‘She’ll be sick with worry.’ The Ratbag suddenly looked very sad, pausing in his attack on the second last slice of pizza in his odd way.

‘No she won’t.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘She sort of kicked me out, really.’

‘What do you mean?’

The Ratbag pulled at a piece of stretchy cheese until it broke, then he lifted the remainder of the slice to his mouth. Gemma had to wait while he chewed and swallowed it.

‘I wanted to go and visit Dad. And she wouldn’t let me. Dad’s got me every second weekend.’ His voice became almost a whisper as if he didn’t want to hear his own words. ‘But he’s only been able to come down twice since the divorce.’ Then his voice picked up as the loyal child defended his father. ‘He’s very, very busy,’ Hugo explained. ‘He’s the general manager for the whole of New South Wales for his business. He hasn’t got much time because he’s in charge of everyone in the company.’ Pain and pride showed in his eyes before he looked away.

‘Sure,’ said Gemma. ‘Go on.’

‘One night we had a fight and she was screaming at me. She told me that Dad doesn’t want me. She even said .
 
.
 
.’ his voice faltered and he looked away, not wanting Gemma to see the tears that had welled ‘.
 
.
 
. that she didn’t want me either. That having me was the worst mistake of her whole life. That she could have been someone if she didn’t have me to look after all the time.’ He paused and collected himself. ‘So I ran away. I knew the only reason Dad didn’t visit me was because she’d made us move to Melbourne and he didn’t have the time. But then—’ He stopped.

‘Go on.’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Gemma had a fair idea of what had happened. She spoke softly. ‘You went round to your father’s place and he didn’t want you to stay with him, did he?’ she asked.

For a second, it looked as if Hugo was about to cry, then she saw him set his jaw. ‘He rang Mum. And he took me into town and put me on the Melbourne bus.’ The Ratbag looked away again and for a second Gemma hated his father. ‘But I sneaked off and got a refund.’

‘Oh Hugo,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

‘Can I live here?’ he pleaded. ‘With you?’ He saw her shocked face.
‘Please?’

Despite the seriousness of the situation, he was only a little boy and Gemma was moved. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you can stay here tonight. But tomorrow we’re going to have to sort something out. Okay?’

He nodded. She remembered Will at that age, lost and neglected while Kit and her ex-husband made a battleground of Will’s home in their marital fight to the death.

‘Why can’t I live here?’ he said. ‘I’m used to it here. I could go back to my old school. My friends will remember me. I’ll get a job and give you some money. I’ve got a lot of clothes back in Melbourne. I could get them. You wouldn’t have to spend anything.’

He picked up the last piece of pizza and then put it down again. ‘I don’t eat very much food.’

Gemma didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; his plaintive words had touched her heart.

‘Hugo, we’ve got to be sensible about this. It’s not because of money or how much food you might eat. It’s more complicated than that.’

He gave her the look that kids do when they know they’ve lost the fight before it’s even started.

‘I’m not set up to be a foster mother,’ she said. ‘It’s not in my’—she groped for a word—‘plans.’

Hugo bowed his head and she touched the damp hair.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘you’re a great kid and I like you. But you’re someone else’s kid. You can’t just leave home and live with me.’ She couldn’t bear to look at him.

‘I’ll make up the lounge bed for you,’ she said. ‘You can have Taxi for company.’

Half an hour later, he was lying along the lounge. Gemma had banned the filthy sleeping bag from the house and piled up spare blankets and her fake fur coat over him.

‘Do you sometimes see my falcon around?’

‘Sure,’ she lied, remembering the bird the Ratbag had found injured and kept safe until it was healed.

‘You’d know him, because he was darker under his wings. The others were lighter.’

The phone rang and Gemma grabbed it, glad for the breathing space the interruption offered her.

‘Steve!’ she said, pleased to hear his voice.

‘I can’t speak long,’ he said. ‘The target’s bought it. I’m in! The deal goes down in the next twenty-four hours. Everything’s in place. Then I can come home and stay home for a while.’

‘Steve,’ she said, ‘I know who you’re dealing with. Please be very careful.’

‘You know me,’ he said. ‘Old Cautious himself. I used to jump off my billycart when it went too fast.’

‘If he finds out you’re a cop,’ she said, ‘and set him up. You’ve heard what he does.’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘We’ll celebrate when I come home. Buy a nice bottle of the Widow.’

And he rang off. Gemma put the phone down. She didn’t like Steve saying that. Usually he went for the Bolly on special occasions. ‘Widow’ was not a word that she wanted to hear just now.

•

Next morning, her leg felt less tender and she could put more weight on it. In the shower, she was pleased to see that the purple-black bruising around her ribs was changing into the green stage around the edges. Gemma made breakfast for herself, trying to keep the clatter to a minimum but it didn’t seem to matter—the Ratbag was dead to the world on the lounge under a pile of blankets. Taxi blinked balefully at the stranger on his favourite bed and she fed him the last of his fish dinner. She scribbled a note:
‘Had to go out. If you hear people coming and going at the front of the house, don’t be worried. It’s just my staff. I’ll be back later today and we’ll work out what we’re going to do with you. Help yourself to whatever. Love, Gemma
.
’
She tiptoed in and propped the note on the table beside the lounge with a glass of orange juice.

She went into her bedroom and pulled out her red suit and cream blouse and, while shivering in her underwear, she turned to see the bruising on the left side of her back. Standing sideways in front of the mirror, she was shocked by what she saw. Although the marks on her ribs weren’t too bad, it was a different story on her back: dark purple bruises in an ugly wave pattern, becoming deeper towards the centre of her back. God, she thought, he hit me hard. She recalled the moment of impact, and looked closely at her neck. There was a blurred bruise on one side. A wave of disgust and fear made her rush to dress. She hated the fact that he’d left his mark on her like a brand, a mark of possession. The mark of the beast, she thought, as she hurried to button her blouse. The sea and the sky were grey and overcast and the southerly still knocked around the eaves and the windows so she gritted her teeth and hurriedly pulled a cream cashmere vest over the blouse. She looked reasonably good, she thought, until the feet—sneakers were the only shoes she could wear comfortably over her strapped-up ankle. You might have marked me, she addressed her unknown assailant silently, but I’ve sure as hell marked you. With some satisfaction she recalled the crunch as her knee connected with his head and imagined the damage she’d inflicted on him. She applied a bright red lipstick and checked that her hair was in order.

Gemma closed the door to her living area behind her and checked that both offices were reasonably tidy before taking the Peter Greengate file from her desk and opening it, studying the photograph of Patricia Greengate, wondering what sort of woman she was, with her snaky jewellery. She gathered up her camera, her laptop and her notebook, shoving them all in a big carry bag. Tonight, I’m going to follow you, ma’am, she told the photograph. See what you’re getting up to. But first, I’ve got a search to do.