Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing (21 page)

‘Has the wife been informed?’

‘They had to go round and ask her for her husband’s personal items to provide the DNA reference sample.’

‘Angie, you’re a major babe.’

‘Put it on paper, honey. I might need it one day.’

Gemma rang off. She went into her bedroom and took the sneakers off, unwrapping the bandage from her ankle. She tried standing on it. It hurt, but it held out. She decided against a new bandage, replaced the sneakers and went back to the lounge room and stood in the doorway. The Ratbag was slumped on the lounge, staring at the blank TV screen.

‘Hugo,’ she said, ‘I’m going out again now. But we’re going to have to sort this out. By the time I get back, I want you to have remembered your phone number. I don’t want to have a fight about it.’

He was hunched over, not looking at her, the picture of misery. She felt bad leaving him like this. She took a little time to scan and copy the contents of the envelope she’d found in Benjamin Glass’s safe. Then she drove back to Vaucluse.

•

Minkie, wearing a long-sleeved red velvet body suit under her black trousers and large rubies on each ear, opened the front door and stepped back to let her in. Once in the grand drawing room, Gemma placed her briefcase on the marble-topped table. Minkie, rubies glinting, glanced first at her, then at the briefcase, as if it might have a bomb in it.

‘The police were here,’ she said nervously. ‘They’ve found’—she made a funny little sound like a miaow—‘
remains.
’ She fiddled with one of the rubies. ‘Can you believe it? Remains! After that inferno?’ She waited for a reply, but Gemma said nothing. ‘That young detective,’ Minkie continued, ‘the smart one, took some of Benjamin’s personal things. His toothbrush, hairbrush, things like that.’ She looked as if she were about to burst into tears. ‘They said they needed them for a DNA match.’ Gemma saw her straighten up and compose her face. ‘Who the hell else do they think it would be in that house?’

‘It’s standard procedure,’ said Gemma. ‘The coroner must be satisfied as to the identity of the deceased. Nothing can be presumed.’ God, she thought to herself, I’m sounding like a cop.

‘What happens now?’ Minkie asked. ‘I mean, what will they do with the remains?’

‘Didn’t Sean Wright tell you?’

‘He said something about tests and the morgue. I wasn’t really paying attention to the details. I was shocked. It’s one thing to know that no one could have survived that fire, it’s another thing to have it become really true.’ She turned away, fishing a tissue from her red velvet sleeve.

‘The pathologist will make an examination and determine the cause of death.’

‘Good Christ! I could tell him that!’ Minkie’s voice balanced on the edge between anger and hysteria. ‘A six-year-old child could tell him that!’

‘Again,’ Gemma said, ‘it’s a requirement of the coroner. I know it must sound a bit odd.’

Minkie looked as if she might have something to say about that, but then she noticed Gemma glance down at her briefcase and she was suddenly focused on it too. ‘What have you got in there?’ she asked.

She’s really frightened, Gemma thought. She’s not the cool customer I first met. This is what it must look like, Gemma realised, when a control freak starts to come unstuck. She opened the case and took out the decks of cards, the scalpel and the envelope containing the original photographs.

‘These are the things I found in your husband’s safe at his place of work,’ said Gemma.

Minkie was startled. ‘You found the safe?’

‘Why? Couldn’t you?’ Gemma couldn’t resist asking.

‘I didn’t even try,’ said the other. ‘That’s why I obtained your services.’

So you tell me, Gemma thought.

‘What have you got?’ Minkie peered at the objects.

‘Two more card decks similar to those I found here,’ she said, indicating the drawers where the cards had been. ‘It’s my belief,’ said Gemma, picking up the scalpel, ‘that your husband used the sharp point of this instrument to prick out the tiny etched petals on the backs of the cards for his use.’ Then she picked up the large envelope. ‘But I’m much more concerned about these photographs.’ She paused, proffering the envelope. ‘What can you tell me about them?’

Slowly, Minkie put her hand out to take the envelope. She opened the flap and pulled out the three photos. Gemma heard the shocked inhalation of breath as she saw the first one. Then the pallor and the sudden redness of Minkie’s face as she stared at each photo in turn.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said finally, throwing the photos down onto the marble table. ‘I can’t believe you found this .
 
.
 
. this .
 
.
 
.
trash
’—she paused, distressed—‘in my husband’s safe.’

‘I can assure you I did,’ said Gemma. ‘And we need to talk about it.’ The saintly philanthropist image was well and truly undone now.

‘If you did, so what?’ Minkie was rallying fast. She jabbed a contemptuous finger at the three photos. ‘A lot of men use pornography. I just didn’t think Benjamin was like that.’ She sniffed.

‘I don’t perceive these photographs as pornography, Minkie,’ Gemma said carefully. ‘To my mind, these suggest the sorts of shots a man takes of his girlfriend. If you look at this one, I think you’ll see for yourself that your husband took them.’

Minkie suddenly started sobbing, flinging herself around, away from the strewn photographs. Is this an act, Gemma asked herself, or is it real shock and anger? It was very convincing.

‘I’m sorry to have to be the one who shows you this, but if we’re going to work together, you’ve got to tell me anything you know about this woman.’ Gemma picked one of the photos up. Kneeling in the middle of an unmade bed, in a room dominated by a huge nude portrait of herself, a good-looking blonde woman, wearing nothing except a smouldering half-smile and black lace gloves, stared straight into the camera. Her hair, like the bed, was tousled. She was gorgeous. About my age, Gemma thought ruefully, but with a hell of a lot more of everything.

Minkie blew her nose. ‘Why do you say he knew her?’ she cried. ‘Maybe he just liked these sorts of photographs. Maybe she’s a professional model.’

It was, Gemma thought, a variation on the usual denials she heard when she showed people a truth they found unpalatable. Gemma studied the first picture again. Beside the woman on the bed was a cupboard with its door angled open and inside the door was a long mirror. In the mirror, Gemma could see the grainy outline of the portly, naked photographer holding the camera. She pointed a finger at the figure.

‘There’s the photographer,’ she said. ‘Do you know that man?’

Minkie snatched the photo from her and stared at it a long moment. ‘The bastard,’ she said. ‘The filthy stinking two-faced bastard!’

‘Is it your husband?’ Gemma persisted.

Minkie flung the photograph away from her, stamping away to the window. ‘My husband!’ she said. ‘My
late
husband. My bastard of a husband. My fucking
dead
bastard of a husband!’

Gemma watched the drama. If this was how Minkie reacted to a mere photo, what would she have done if she’d stumbled upon the lovers? But would she behave like this if she’d had time to rehearse it? Surely she’d be composed and not let me see what looks like completely spontaneous naked fury and humiliation.

‘The
bastard
,’ Minkie repeated. ‘Having me find out like
this.
’

Gemma had heard that or similar lines so many times from her clients that she wished she’d developed her own line in comforting them more successfully.

‘There is no nice way,’ she said finally. ‘It’s always going to be hurtful.’ She turned her attention back to the case in hand. ‘Do you know this woman?’ she asked after a pause.

‘Of course I don’t!’ Minkie snapped. ‘I have no idea who she is. And I don’t want to know.’ She threw herself down on the lounge, her face bitten with rage. ‘Oh!’ she wailed, ‘I’m just so angry! If he wasn’t already dead, I could kill him!’ She shot a look at Gemma. Her features were hard and compressed. ‘Does that shock you? What am I supposed to say?’ she challenged her. ‘Right this moment, I’m glad he’s dead.’

True love, Gemma thought. Ain’t it grand? The minute he plays hide the sausage with someone else, love flies out the window and we want his heart in a box. What would
she
feel like if she found out Steve had been sleeping with another woman? Steve sleeping over at another woman’s house, even if she was fat and fifty, did make her feel some sort of jealousy.

‘Minkie,’ she said to the woman who was still sitting hunched with rage, ‘you’re going to have to accept that your husband had two big secrets. And either of them could provide a motive for murder. Taken together, it doesn’t look good. So I have to ask you this: did you know your husband had a girlfriend?’

She saw something move across Minkie’s face, but instead of answering the question, there was another, noisier outburst.

‘God,’ Minkie said, jumping up, ‘it’s only going to make things worse for me.’ She swung around like a caged panther. ‘
Shit!
’ she screamed, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do!’

‘What’s going to make things worse for you?’ Gemma asked.

Minkie swung round, eyes narrowed to a mean green blaze. ‘This!
Her!
That slut! Now it’s going to look like I killed him because I was jealous of some little tart!’

‘And did you? Were you?’ Gemma pressed.

‘Of course I didn’t! I didn’t even know of her existence until you came barging in here with those damn photographs.’

‘I didn’t barge, Minkie,’ Gemma said mildly. ‘I’m investigating your husband’s suspected murder. At 
your
invitation.’

Minkie went over to a marble-topped credenza and upended a glass, pouring herself a brandy. She was putting the stopper back in place when she remembered Gemma.

‘Do you want one?’ she asked rather ungraciously.

Gemma thought it was past time she went, so she declined, gathered up the photographs and put them away. Then she took out the scanned copies and passed them to Minkie who was sipping brandy neat and screwing up her nose in distaste.

‘I want you to start asking around,’ she said. ‘Find out if anyone knows who this woman is.’

Minkie looked at the copies. ‘How many people are going to see these?’ she said. ‘How many copies are there?’

‘Only the ones in your hand,’ Gemma reassured her. ‘I made them myself.’

‘How humiliating!’ she cried. ‘Who am I supposed to ask?’

‘Ask his friends, his staff at work,’ Gemma suggested, impatient to be gone. ‘Rosalie Luscombe may know something.’

Minkie threw her a look of disgust, then finished the brandy.

It was often the way, Gemma thought, with the wife and the secretary, the other woman in each other’s lives. The androgynous Rosalie Luscombe had referred to her boss’s wife as ‘
that woman
’, Gemma remembered.

‘No. I won’t.’ said Minkie. ‘It’s undignified.’

‘So’s being charged with murder,’ said Gemma a little too smartly. She hadn’t noticed anything very dignified in the woman’s reactions of the last few minutes.

‘Put yourself in my situation,’ Minkie said, working up to her topic, ‘me, the wife, going round with a photograph of that tart—asking people to tell me who she is. How would
you
feel? It’s unthinkable.’

‘It’s in your interests to find this woman,’ Gemma said. ‘Once the police know about her, we lose the advantage of surprising her. I’m obliged by law to pass on this evidence. I could be liable if I don’t within a reasonable amount of time.’

‘Not the police too?’ said Minkie. ‘I can’t stand the thought of them feeling sorry for me.’

Was Minkie protesting too much, Gemma wondered. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘feeling sorry for people isn’t part of police procedure.’

The conversation had come to an end and Minkie let her out of the house in silence. This time Gemma managed the path with only the slightest limp. The sense of foreboding that had surrounded her lately returned, haunting her with a sense of unformed dread. She shook it off once she was on the street, but still she couldn’t keep herself from looking around, checking every car, making sure she wasn’t the target of the insurance company’s operative sitting off the Montreau-Glass mansion across the road, checking up on Minkie and her visitors, writing Gemma up in a report right this very moment. It was a cool, overcast day and something about the greyness of the light infected Gemma’s mood. She crossed the road, walking right up to the T-intersection and back down the other side. All the parked vehicles were empty. No one was sitting alone pretending to read a newspaper, a street directory, or even napping. But that certainly didn’t discount someone, somewhere, with high-powered binos and a camera like her own, watching. Waiting. She thought of cyber-creep and his promise of seeing her sometime soon. She shivered and scrambled into her car. Angie’s suggestion of the semi-automatic Glock 27 seemed more and more like a good idea.

•

She drove straight to the address Peter Greengate had given her, stopping to pick up a newspaper and two sausage rolls at her favourite cake shop, hoping that the fix of fatty pastry would lift her spirits. She drove slowly past the Greengate’s marital home, a pretty Federation-style cottage with a paved front yard and geraniums hanging in baskets from the verandah roof, turned at the end of the street and came back, parking on the side opposite the cottage. ‘
High! Voltage! Rock and Roll!
’ screamed her radio and she automatically sang along. According to her husband, Patricia Greengate should be leaving the house soon. Gemma ate the sausage rolls and read, her eyes constantly moving above the top of the newspaper, checking the front door behind the geraniums.

•

An hour later, she was recalling all the reasons why she didn’t go out on the road anymore. The boredom and discomfort of sitting for long periods in parked cars, was making her edgy. The sausage rolls were now a regrettable lump of indigestion and she wriggled in her seat, trying to make herself more comfortable. She’d read the newspaper from front to back. She checked her Telstra shares in the finance pages and swore, then glanced at her watch. A slight sound caught her attention. Patricia Greengate was leaving the house with a shopping bag, a romantic vision in long skirt and misty shawls as she turned around from locking the door, silver jewellery shining in the light. No snakes today. Gemma waited, fingers on the ignition keys, while the woman got into her white Honda and drove off. Gemma took off after her. In a few minutes, the Honda reached Bondi Junction train station. As Patricia Greengate signalled the right-hand turn into the free parking area, Gemma considered her options. If she couldn’t find a parking place she might lose her target. Luckily she noticed a one hour spot on the road and quickly took it. Stuffing the video camera into her large carry bag, she jumped out to run across the road into the parking area. It took her a few minutes to locate the Honda in the middle section. Gemma looked around and saw Patricia Greengate moving towards the incline to the station. She hurried after her quarry, and when she got to the bottom and looked around, she saw the woman turn a corner and disappear. Gemma walked as fast as she could with her injured ankle and arrived at the same corner only a few seconds later. She looked around. Mrs Greengate had vanished. Impossible. She must be on one of the platforms. Gemma limped rapidly to check but it was soon apparent the woman wasn’t up there. There was only one platform for waiting passengers to the city because the Eastern suburbs line terminated here. Gemma retraced her steps, cursing. Maybe Patricia Greengate was surveillance savvy and had just walked right through the station area and out the other side. Gemma ran through and came out on the other side. But nowhere could she see the figure in the misty trailing shawls. Then she noticed the toilets. She must be in the loo, Gemma thought, hanging back. She waited for some minutes. Two women came out of the Ladies, a mother and daughter from the look of them, but apart from a non-descript man with an airline bag who left the nearby Gents, absolutely no one else had need of the facilities. Gemma waited and waited. She eventually went into the women’s toilet to check it out. She looked in every cubicle. There was no one there. Nor was there any other exit. She’d lost her quarry. The simplest follow and she’d stuffed up. She hurried back out and checked the City platform again. The only people there were two backpackers, poring over a map. Gemma sighed. Her leg was aching and she’d lost her target. She still had the Ratbag to deal with when she got home. It had not been a good day.