Feeding the Demons (20 page)

‘And?’ Gemma said in a clipped angry voice, pretending she didn’t care at all.

‘And I saw what was there.’

‘Tell me!’

Kit turned to her sister. ‘His eyes were full of fear.’

‘Fear! What could
he
possibly fear?’ Gemma turned the wheel hard. ‘He’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Now he’s off and running with another project. What could he fear?’

They drove in silence until Gemma turned into Kit’s street and pulled over outside her place.

‘Do you want to come in?’ Kit asked her, but Gemma shook her head.

‘I’m too pissed off,’ she said. ‘I’d be awful company. I’ll call later when I’ve calmed down.’

‘Okay,’ said Kit, and Gemma barely acknowledged her sister, swinging back out onto the road again and taking off.

There was still no Taxi waiting for her near the front door, nearly tripping her as she came inside. She flung her coat and keys on the hall table, grabbed a fruit juice from an almost empty fridge, cursed when she realised she’d have to go shopping in a major way soon, and took the drink out onto the deck. It was a perfect spring day with fluffy white clouds in a light blue sky over a deep blue sea. She sat scowling at the horizon until something dawned in her mind. For behaviour to change, she remembered, reality has to change. Just as something had changed in the killer’s life to change his MO, something had changed in her father’s life and whatever it was, its reflection had caused him to make a complete about-face. She almost rang Kit but decided she’d try working this one out by herself. Under all the agitation in her mind, the memory of Steve’s rejection of her stung and she suspected that this was a contributing factor to the emotional turbulence concerning her father. She wanted to pick up Taxi and squeeze his lovely, comforting plumpness, make him grunt. She tossed the remains of the fruit juice over the rails into the garden and went into her office, hearing the two-way crackle into life.

‘Tracker Two to base, copy please.’

She pressed the two-way and spoke. ‘Yes, Noel, go ahead.’

‘I’ve got the works on that driver who’s been stealing fuel,’ said Noel. ‘He came in at three bloody am this morning. I’ve got it all on video, so will you ring the insurance people and organise a private viewing?’

‘We’ll need to bring the cops in on this,’ she said.

‘Bob Blackett at Parramatta detectives.’ Gemma grabbed a pen and scribbled down the number that Noel gave her. ‘He knows all about it. The cops have had their eye on this bloke for a while.’ Gemma underlined the Parramatta detective’s name on her notepad.

‘That means,’ said Gemma, ‘that you’ll have to stay on him.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Noel. ‘It’s all part of the job. If it’s not sitting on this bunny it’s another one. Oh,’ he said, ‘I’ve picked up the cameras we’ll need for the Cross Weld job. When do you want to do that?’

Gemma glanced at her diary and slammed it shut. ‘What about this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’ll phone him and tell him.’

It was good, she thought, to have plenty to be getting on with. It took her mind off the deep disappointment and bewilderment about her father, the sadness about Steve. And the growing fear that this time Taxi was gone for good.

But it didn’t work for long, and after a little while she found herself connected to the Internet, punching in the phone number on the little scrap of dirty paper from Steve’s wheelie bin. She had a program, Ozziefone, that worked like a back-to-front phone book. ‘Number not listed’ said her screen. Damn, she thought. A silent number. The next step would cost her over a hundred dollars
and
was illegal, but in a world where information is worth money, corruption is inevitable; in certain cases, she liked to think, almost necessary. She made another phone call to the man she called her ‘Communications Adviser’ and passed the unlisted number over to him. She arranged to meet him at the Duke of Marlborough that night.

Kit sat in the kitchen, working on her letter to Will. ‘My dear son’, she’d written.

This letter is to tell you how deeply I regret the way I wasn’t available to you when you were growing up and especially during those difficult early adolescent years. I thought that feeding you and washing your clothes, fussing about your school grades, arguing with you, nagging you about homework and discussing books with you was relationship. I’ve learned a lot over the last few years since you went away and I’ve learned that real relationship is
acceptance of the other
. I was always pushing you, wanting you to ‘do well’. I couldn’t accept you the way you were. No wonder kids suicide. I know from my own experience with your father how dreadful it must have been for you to have no one you could talk to—really talk to. And no one who could listen to you. One day, maybe you will trust me enough to tell me how it was for you. I regret this failing of mine more deeply than I can say and I ask for your forgiveness. I love you dearly.

The tears came as she signed ‘Mum’ and folded it up in an envelope, writing his name in block letters on the front. Then she propped it up near the shopping list she’d made for herself. She was going to drive up to Arcadia to buy water lilies for the pond, punnets of white petunias to plant in the garden and large terracotta pots for lavender cuttings she’d been striking. She wanted to make her father a large pot of flowering annuals, maybe white and lemon petunias, to add colour to the shadowy patio outside his small bedroom window at Glebe.

The huge and surprising fact of his newly revealed innocence seemed to illuminate everything around her; she would need time to allow the new information to settle into her mind. At the moment, it agitated and excited her in a way she couldn’t have anticipated, like some new love affair. A heavy burden had lifted from her. Her body felt lighter. Suddenly, her heart was saying, I have a father. A father who wasn’t any good at the job, but nevertheless is the father life has given me, and a man who has been treated with great injustice. Where does this leave me? What do I need to do about it? She rang Alexander and made a time to see him. She even wanted to call Gerald but checked the impulse. She could feel energy swirling through her feet, fizzing through her blood like effervescence. Finishing old business like this, acknowledging her part in her son’s messy life, acknowledging the effect her father’s innocence was having on her, created new energy, completions led to new beginnings, all these things, she knew, enhanced the flow of life itself. She would buy ricotta cheese and black cherries and make a pie to share with her father.

•

Next morning, Gemma woke to the alarm at a quarter to five, and was on the road twenty minutes later. Oh Taxi, my darling old piece of pudding, where are you? I’ll start a pet security firm in your honour. I’ll locate missing animals for grieving owners. I’ll charge them heaps and they’ll be happy to pay. The thought brought her no joy at all.

At this hour, driving in Sydney was a breeze; no congestion on any of the major arteries. She’d had a vodka with the Communications Adviser, and when she shouted him and paid with a new hundred dollar bill, she gave him the change as well. In return, he’d passed her an envelope with an anonymous slip of paper in it and an address in Artarmon. Now she was driving across the Harbour Bridge and the east was streaked with apricot and lavender skies, the same tones reflecting in a choppy sea.

Gemma screwed up the piece of paper with the address and threw it out the car window. Don’t do this, one part of her mind told another. Leave it be.

At 5.35 am, she turned into Fleming Avenue, a long, tree-lined street in leafy, quiet Artarmon. A man walking a little dog looked up as her lights swung past him and she drove the length of the street, finding 112 almost at the end. She turned the corner past the address and, further down the road, did a U-turn to retrace her route, parking across the road several houses down from the target house. Magpies warbled from the trees and she leaned back, taking a deep breath. The day was lightening visibly all around her now and she saw a man leaving the house next to 112, walk to his car, get in and turn the windscreen wipers on to smooth away the heavy dew. As the wipers cut two clean interlocking arcs on his windscreen, Gemma sat up and leaned forward because someone was coming out of 112. It wasn’t Steve, but a nuggety, well-built man who walked like a cop. He also got in a car and started the engine. Then he looked over at her car and Gemma shrank as he suddenly made direct eye contact. She averted her glance, pretending to rummage in the glovebox, willing him to go. After what seemed a long moment, she heard the sound of his car pulling away, heard him do a U-turn almost in front of her. To get a better look at her? If he was a cop, he might have developed the sixth sense that told him the woman in the car over the road was out of place.

Gemma ducked right down, leaning over to pick up a nonexistent something from the floor of the passenger seat side. When she was sure he’d gone, she straightened up. She was rattled. She started the car and drove away quickly. What if he’d seen her? What if he told Steve a woman of her description had been sitting off this place? She felt the hot flush of shame cover her face and neck. This is pathetic, she thought to herself. I’m a highly skilled professional woman behaving like a bloody stalker. Then she relaxed. Men look at women. It’s part of life. It’s all right, she told herself. I’m getting paranoid. She swung the car onto the Pacific Highway and drove home.

When she got there, she felt terrible, with no stomach to do anything let alone work. She put coffee on and leaned on the sink, staring out the window at the bushes and tree ferns that grew there. Now that her father had changed his mind and there was no great cause to channel emotional and physical energy into, a huge emptiness yawned within her. Everyone lets me down, even my bloody cat. Here I am, she thought, unable to make a lasting relationship with a man, and I’ve somehow attracted a vicious killer into my life and become involved in an investigation without even being a cop any more. I’ve risked the friendship with my sister in an effort to change history and save a man who turns out not to want to be saved after all. And so what do I do? Instead of getting on with my life I sit off the hiding place of a man who has made it very plain he doesn’t want to see me again, spying on his house like some obsessed school girl.

She jumped when the phone rang. Kit said she was going out for the day and would drop the letter she’d written to Will in Gemma’s post box. Her sister had barely hung up when the two-way came to life.

‘Tracker Three to base, copy please.’

‘Come in, Spinner,’ she said.

‘I’ve just been talking to Rose Georgiou,’ he said. ‘Oh boy. All she’d say was that the video was “satisfactory”. She’d been crying. She’s a really nice lady.’

‘And you’re a really good surveillance operator,’ Gemma said. ‘Don’t forget that.’

‘I guess we won’t be hearing any more from her,’ said Spinner.

No sooner had she signed off than the phone rang. It was Angie, her voice sharp with tension. ‘Come straight in,’ she said. ‘The killer has made contact by phone to the Perrault house.’

‘
What
?’ said Gemma. ‘I’m on my way.’ She switched the answering machine on and left the house. On the drive, she had to admit that horrible as it was, she was relieved that this new development on the Bianca Perrault case displaced her sense of disappointment and loss.

•

When she arrived at the Strike Force room, carefully closing the door behind her, Angie was addressing the group round the table. On the wall hung a map of the southeastern suburbs, Maroubra and Coogee, with the two crime scenes circled. ‘A caller rang early this morning,’ Angie was saying, nodding at her friend as Gemma took a seat. Opposite, Bruno ignored her while Colin, Garry Copeland and Sandy Mac acknowledged her presence. ‘The caller asked for Amy,’ Angie said. ‘Mrs Perrault thought at first it was some family friend, but when she asked who it was calling, the man said she should know, he was a blood relation. It was the way he said “blood relation” that made her realise who it was.’

Gemma felt her own run cold at the phrase. She thought of two dead women and her own slashed clothes.

‘That’s when she demanded to know who it was again and he hung up. The poor woman was in a terrible state. Garry thinks that this indicates not only that he’s been watching the family, but that he feels he’s somehow part of it,’ said Angie, looking over at Garry.

He nodded to her, picked up his cue and took over. ‘This sort of contact is unusual,’ said the psychiatrist, ‘but not unheard of in this sort of crime. He’ll be taking a very lively interest in the investigation. So when you get out there, remember to brief anyone involved to keep an ear out for any person asking a lot of questions. I don’t mean the usual sort of everyday curiosity questioning that we all cop in this job. But anyone who seems overly interested.’ He looked back down at his notes again. ‘We’ve also had several helpful leads from the FACE print and these are being followed up.’

Angie took over again. ‘We’ve organised a tap on the line and the Perrault house is under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Mrs Perrault and Amy have gone into hiding at a relative’s house and Mr Perrault is staying on at the family residence with police personnel in case there’re more calls. If he’s smart, he’ll know that we’re keeping an eye on things.’

‘He’s smart, all right,’ said Garry. ‘Smart, manipulative, arsey. Just because someone is a homicidal maniac, don’t think for a moment he’s stupid. A majority of the killers of this type turn out to have high IQs.’ He let that sink in and then continued. ‘The fact that he’s contacted the parents of the girl he’s murdered makes him a bit different from the norm. It indicates that part of him wants to be a member of this family. I think he admires them in some way, might even know them, might have worked for them. In his sick way, he’s longing for acceptance and love.’

Like all of us, Gemma thought. Except we go after it in different ways.

‘What sort of police personnel have you got?’ she whispered to Angie.

‘Christine Saunders. And Peter Kozinski for the time being,’ her friend said. ‘But he’ll have to come off later. We need him to help Colin with collating all the info we’re getting.’

Gemma nodded, satisfied. She knew the two officers involved; Christine was a trained police negotiator.

‘If he rings again,’ Angie said under her breath, ‘she’s going to say she’s Mrs Perrault’s sister and do what a good negotiator does.’

‘Remind me what a good negotiator does,’ said Gemma.

‘Listens very carefully, naturally,’ said Angie. ‘Restates anything the caller says to make sure she’s got it right, and sees if she can get him to reveal anything more about himself and his agenda. That way, he’s sure he’s getting a sympathetic hearing.’

‘That’s nice for him,’ Gemma whispered.

‘It’s not to be nice for him,’ added Angie. ‘It’s to encourage him into more contact because the more contact we have, the more likely we are to be able to nail the psycho bastard.’

‘What about the surveillance? Who’s minding Mrs Perrault and Amy?’

‘We are,’ said Angie. ‘This investigation is becoming political. Did you see the Commissioner on the
7:30 Report
last night?’ Her voice became even lower. ‘You’ve got good operators.’

‘The best,’ said Gemma, thinking of sturdy Noel and nosy Spinner.

‘I want you to do some hours for me,’ said Angie. ‘Officially. Not just girlfriend favours. On the payroll on contract. Mates’ rates?’

‘I could use the business,’ Gemma said, always mindful of the overdraft. ‘Mates’ rates,’ she agreed.

‘It also indicates how removed from reality our man is because of the way he goes about trying to get this, Garry continued. That’s why we’re going through everyone who might have come into contact with the family and the girls. People who might have done odd jobs at the house; tradesmen, gardeners, that sort of thing. Mr Perrault has given us a list of names and you’ll all be getting a copy of that and the breakdown of who’s going out to talk to who. Plus I’ve printed out the profile description just to remind you all.’ He tapped a pile of stapled sheets of paper. ‘Please take one and read it carefully. For those who can’t read we’re looking for a male in his late twenties to early thirties. Possibly briefly and unsuccessfully married. More usually single. Lives either alone or with his parents. Can’t get on with people. He’ll have the sort of criminal record oriented toward sex and violence. Obscene phone calls, possibly rapes and other assaults. He’ll have a great interest in killing things. Hunting, shooting. That sort of thing. A gun collection. Knives. He’s a local to the southeastern suburbs or has lived there for some period of his life. If you turn up anyone like that who’s also done some work around the place for the Perraults, we’ll be extremely interested in having a serious chat with him. We’re keeping an eye on one of the respondents to the first Scan questionnaire. Some of his answers were interestingly ambiguous.’

‘What’s his name?’

Garry consulted his notes. ‘I don’t have it here,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you with it.’

‘What about the ritual with the clothing? Where does that fit in?’ Gemma asked.

Garry sighed. ‘That’s the bit I’m not too sure about. I can only imagine it as part of his private psychopathology. When we catch him, I’m looking forward to hearing about that. He’s the sort of bloke who seems harmless and a bit pathetic on the surface. It’s likely that he’s overweight or unattractive. Because of the way he pounces. He’s got no confidence about picking up women in bars or social settings. He could be drinking heavily now. Maybe neglecting to shave. Might have done a geographical and moved house. But he probably won’t go too far while this investigation is on because he wants to keep an eye on that. He’ll keep newspaper clippings, and any other references to the killings. This is his fifteen minutes of fame. He’ll have a collection of sadistic pornography and he’ll be talking about the killings and theorising about them to anyone who’ll listen.’