Spiking the Girl (3 page)

Gemma bit into a pastry, still starving. ‘Steve got angry,’ she continued. ‘I got furious. He walked.’

‘Hey!’ Spinner interrupted. ‘We’re on!’

On the laptop’s small screen, Daria Reynolds’s double bed and the dressing table beyond it could be seen. Then the screen changed as feed from the cameras at the front and back of the house rotated with the internal view. Anyone approaching the house from any direction would be captured on video. Anyone in the bedroom would be picked up by the camera in the clock radio.

Satisfied with the reception from Daria Reynolds’s room, Spinner packed up his receiver, laptop and handycam while Gemma flicked through the completed cases.

‘I’ve never seen you like this,’ Spinner said. ‘Your colour’s lousy.’

Suddenly his radio crackled. ‘Tracker Two here. Copy, please.’

‘Copy, Mike,’ Spinner responded. ‘What’s up?’

The static behind Mike’s voice made him a little hard to hear. ‘I’m trying to contact Gemma. She’s off the air.’

‘She’s here with me. Stand by.’ Spinner handed Gemma the radio.

‘Mike?’

‘I’ve just had a call from a Mr Bertram Dowling. Wants to make an appointment with you.’

‘My diary’s on my desk. Try and fit him in tomorrow morning.’

Spinner rehoused the radio.

Gemma’s mobile rang and she switched it over to voice mail. Just a few moments, please, she thought, without being online to the whole world.

‘I’m sad, Spinner,’ she said. ‘My heart hasn’t accepted the news about Steve.’ She felt like crying and covered her face with her hands. She felt Spinner gently take them away.

‘Look,’ he said to her, still holding her hands, ‘I’m sure you could salvage things. Don’t ever lose hope.’

‘Don’t you dare go religious on me!’ she warned.

‘I wasn’t going to.’ He sounded hurt. ‘Remember I’m your friend as well as an employee. I know you. I know Steve.’ He relinquished her hands. ‘Have you ever thought,’ he asked ‘that maybe your attitude’s pushed Steve away?’

‘Me push him away? How do you work that out?’ Now she felt irritated.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Spinner. ‘I’m sorry. I was out of place.’

‘I’ve got to get going,’ she said, still unreasonably angry with him.

She climbed out of the Rodeo and headed for her own car. Spinner gunned his engine and did a U-turn. As she sat in her car the reality of the break-up with Steve hit her like a dumper at Maroubra. The anger left her and suddenly she felt like howling.

•

An hour later, red-eyed but with fresh lipstick, Gemma drove through the grand entrance to Netherleigh Park Ladies’ College, past the letters carved in gold on the tall sandstone pillars of the wrought-iron gates. The main building was set back from the road and Gemma drove slowly past what had once been rolling lawns and playing fields but was now built up with modern additions. Behind her, the constant roar of the traffic dimmed to a distant hum, absorbed by greenery and dark, ancient Moreton Bay figs. The winding driveway ended at a magnificent Georgian mansion, the original building, now overshadowed by additional wings.

Gemma parked her car in a visitors’ bay and got out. Groups of girls in the distinctive light blue, green and mauve tartan of the school uniform chatted in groups and, as she mounted the steps towards the main door with its ‘Office’ sign, she could hear someone practising piano scales very fast, up and down, the major scale followed by the minor and melodic minor. If only I could play like that, Gemma thought. She’d done no practice this week and Mrs Snellgrove would give that disappointed little smile and shake her de Beauvoir-scarfed head. Attending to more business started working its magic, her thoughts quickly switching from Steve and the curiosity arising from the phone call of a dying woman.

At the office, a woman with a pure white elf lock peered at the ID Gemma showed through the sliding window.

‘Gemma Lincoln. Here to see Miss de Berigny. She’s expecting me.’

The elf lock beckoned to a passing senior girl. ‘Tiffany,’ she said. ‘Please take Ms Lincoln to Miss de Berigny’s office.’

Tiffany didn’t look thrilled at this, but she nodded and Gemma followed the willowy teenager up the grand staircase to the second floor.

‘What’s on the next floor?’ Gemma asked, noticing the staircase rose to yet another level.

‘Dormitories,’ said Tiffany. ‘For the country boarders.’

Gemma followed Tiffany along the hall, past other offices and rooms. The piano scales sounded much closer now.

‘Someone’s a good pianist,’ said Gemma, as much to break the silence as anything else.

Tiffany flashed her a look. ‘Claudia’s good at everything,’ she said in a voice edged with anger. ‘Some people have all the luck.’

They turned a corner and her guide indicated a door on Gemma’s right. Before Gemma could thank her, the girl had darted back round the corner and vanished. Gemma knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ said a high-pitched voice. ‘Just push it.’

Gemma did so and found herself in a large, bright north-facing room where two tall French windows overlooked the driveway and the dark green masses of fig trees. The principal advanced, her hand outstretched in welcome, a wide red smile showing perfect white teeth, dark hair glossy in a French roll.

‘Miss Lincoln. Beatrice de Berigny. Thank you so much for agreeing to come.’

The two women shook hands, and Gemma sat in the proffered leather chair. After the gothic, incense-filled Reynolds place, this room with its well-appointed academic furnishings seemed another universe. Yet something was stirring Gemma’s instincts in a negative way.

Miss de Berigny smoothed her black skirt over her knees as she sat on the other side of the colonial cedar desk, laptop in front of her. With slightly too much ivory foundation, dark red lipstick and pencilled eyes, Madame de Berigny’s face had more than a suggestion of a mask, thought Gemma.

‘I’ve been told you’re the right person for this job,’ the principal was saying, shrewd eyes glittering under the almost invisible brows. In the gaps between her words, distant chromatic minor scales reached impossible velocity. ‘Detective Sergeant Angie McDonald recommended you,’ Miss de Berigny continued. ‘You know her?’

‘For many years,’ Gemma said. ‘We worked together when I was in the police service.’

‘You are no doubt aware of the dreadful incident that befell our school last year. The disappearance,’ she could barely say the word, ‘of one of our most promising students.’ She hesitated. ‘It is still unsolved. Although the police claim everything possible is being done.’

Gemma recalled reading about Netherleigh Park in the newspapers and nodded. She remembered it didn’t seem likely the girl had run away. Her bank accounts had remained untouched.

‘As you can imagine, it’s had a very bad effect on the school,’ Beatrice de Berigny was saying. ‘Far worse, in fact, than I would have thought likely. Morale is low. Enrolments are down for next year and we’ve lost several students already. Other parents are talking of taking their daughters away.’

Gemma remained silent, her eyes flicking over the desk’s polished surface.

‘It’s so unfair,’ the principal said. ‘And illogical. The school had nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance.’

That remains to be seen, thought Gemma, and said, ‘Please tell me what happened.’

‘One of our Year 10 students, Amy Bernhard, disappeared one morning. One minute she was here with her friends in the school grounds, next minute .
 
.
 
.’ The principal made an expressive gesture with her hands. ‘Vanished into thin air.’

Gemma noticed that when Beatrice de Berigny smiled, the upper part of her face, especially her eyes, remained unmoved.

‘Miss Lincoln, if the parents knew that the school had initiated an investigation of its own, it would surely encourage them to recover their faith in us. It would indicate that we are prepared to go to any lengths towards solving this case. And preventing anything like this from ever happening again.’

Gemma wondered what she could do or find that the police wouldn’t have covered already. ‘Do you have any sense of what might have happened to Amy?’

Miss de Berigny looked across to the large French windows. ‘I have a feeling that it wasn’t family problems. Although I do know there were issues with her stepfather.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Two failed marriages,’ she said. ‘It must be hard for a young girl growing up with all that going on.’ Again, she hesitated, then lowered her voice. ‘But what troubles me are the rumours. Nothing of substance. But they don’t go away.’

‘Rumours about what?’ Gemma was intrigued. ‘And from where?’

‘That’s just the problem—no one knows. A couple of teachers told me that some of the girls told them that Amy and her friends had a secret. Something they alluded to—you know the way girls tease each other. “We know something you don’t know” sort of thing.’

‘But you have no idea what this secret might have been?’ Gemma asked.

Miss de Berigny shook her gleaming head. ‘When I asked Tasmin and Claudia, they said they’d only been teasing. That there was no secret.’

‘And you believed them?’

Miss de Berigny looked hard at Gemma. ‘I had to. I had nothing to go on. Nothing to support my questions. As I said, it was all rumour. You can’t imagine how rumours develop and flourish in this sort of environment. Three hundred girls and their hormones.’

Gemma wrote the words ‘rumours of a secret’ and circled them with a big question mark.

‘It’s a year now and there’s been no trace of Amy Bernhard. Her mother still hopes,’ said Miss de Berigny. Gemma felt a sudden pang. ‘But the police are overworked,’ the principal continued, ‘and new crimes tend to push old ones out of the picture. Sergeant McDonald felt you’d be the best person for this sort of investigation.’

Miss de Berigny folded her hands gracefully in front of her on the desk. ‘The school committee also thinks that obtaining your services is a good idea. Would you be willing to undertake such an investigation on the school’s behalf?’

Gemma hardly had to consider. ‘I can do that,’ she said.

Miss de Berigny smiled, her eyes joining the rest of her face. ‘May I ask how one goes about this? I know nothing of these sorts of things.’

‘I’d go over the police case notes,’ said Gemma, her mind racing ahead and wondering how in hell she’d get hold of those, given that she was dealing with an ongoing investigation. ‘I’d check out witness statements, re-interview people where it looks interesting—’

‘What do you mean “re-interview where it looks interesting”?’ said Beatrice de Berigny, her interruption taking Gemma by surprise. ‘Well, with witness statements, for instance, the police are so stretched that sometimes alibis aren’t properly followed up. I’d want to check out that sort of thing,’ said Gemma.

‘Oh? Is that likely—that alibis might not have been checked properly?’

The principal’s friendly smile had vanished and her mouth was now set in an anxious line.

Suddenly, Gemma recognised she was encountering resistance. ‘If there’s a problem with any of this, Miss de Berigny, we need to talk about it now, so we both understand what’s required from the other. Otherwise we won’t have a deal.’

The principal hesitated, putting a gold pen back into its jade holder and fiddling instead with the cover of her black diary. ‘It’s just that some of my staff might not like being re-interviewed or having their alibis and statements questioned. Being forced to go through it all again might make them very uncomfortable.’

Abduction and possible murder
is
uncomfortable, Gemma almost said. Instead, she tried reassurance. ‘I would handle things as delicately as possible. I’m sure they’d understand.’

‘What I’m trying to say,’ said the principal, ‘is that perhaps you wouldn’t have to go to extremes. You could just do a little bit of work on the case here and there, fit it around your existing work. You must be very busy. So that you’d officially be on the case, but there wouldn’t be the need for it to take up a great deal of your time. After all, it is in police hands.’

Gemma raised an eyebrow, deciding to tackle this head-on. ‘Are you saying you want me to give the
impression
that I’m investigating Amy Bernhard’s disappearance rather than actually doing so?’

Beatrice de Berigny looked shocked. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘That’s not what I meant at all. I just meant that seeing as it’s all been done before, there wouldn’t be the same sort of need as in the first investigation.’ Under the ivory foundation, Gemma noticed the woman’s skin reddening. Bullseye, Gemma congratulated herself. You got it in one, girl. ‘I’m sorry if I gave that impression, Miss Lincoln.’

‘Gemma,’ said Gemma, pulling out her brochure and placing it on the polished cedar surface. Despite the ambiguous manner of her client, this could be a good job, with good contacts. Certainly the income would be welcome. ‘This is a list of my hourly rates,’ she said. ‘You should be aware that something like this is going to take a lot of time and it’s going to cost real money.’

‘We’ll find the money, Gemma,’ said the principal, taking out a gold credit card. ‘Would a one-thousand-dollar deposit be acceptable?’

Gemma processed the payment, noting the principal’s signature, and passed back the credit card. With this and the money from Daria Reynolds, she could pay the phone bill and do some shopping. Even though she had no appetite just now, a fridge full of good things and a nice chilled bottle or two could only do her good. Maybe she’d buy a new lipstick.

Miss de Berigny opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a business card. ‘This is Amy’s mother’s address,’ she said, writing an address on the back. ‘I’ve spoken to Lauren Bernhard and she’s happy to talk to you. She will have details that might be helpful.’

Gemma thanked her and took the card, noticing the intricate flourishes of gold and green illumination decorating the ‘B’s of the principal’s name.

‘I’d also like the names of Amy’s closest friends,’ Gemma said. ‘And it would be good if you could mention to their families that I’ll be having a chat with them. With their permission, of course.’