Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing (22 page)

Back in her car, Gemma stowed her camera back out of sight and left a message for Sean Wright to ring her. She
felt angry with herself for letting Patricia Greengate get away. Losing visual connection like that was the problem. With her injured leg she just hadn’t been quite fast enough to keep her target in her sights. ‘
Hollywood nights, those Hollywood nights
’, sang the radio and she switched it off, irritated by a song that was usually among her favourites.

Her phone rang and she answered it, hoping it would be Sean. But it was a young woman’s voice. Sean was at the morgue, she was told, waiting for the PM doctor’s report on Benjamin Glass.

‘Thanks,’ said Gemma. ‘Who am I talking to?’

‘Melissa,’ came the reply and Gemma remembered the smart young photographer at the fire scene, unloading cameras, quietly taking shots, going about her business without any fuss.

‘Melissa,’ she said, ‘we’ve met. At the Benjamin Glass fire scene.’

‘I know,’ said the other. ‘That’s why I’m ringing you. You remember I did the photography for Physical Evidence, for the three high temperature accelerant fires.’

Gemma waited.

‘Sean Wright won’t tell you this, but I want you to know he found cat hairs at all three HTA sites.’

‘But Sean said there was no trace of a cat,’ said Gemma, starting to wonder why her erstwhile colleague might have lied to her.

‘That’s right,’ said Melissa. ‘But we always have a problem establishing an outer perimeter for fire scenes.’

Gemma remembered the difficulties of taping off a crime scene: where does it start? finish? how to decide how wide to tape?

‘It was only at the widest perimeters we found the animal hairs.’

‘But you said
cat
hair,’ Gemma reminded her.

‘The results only just came back, the animal experts are so overworked. I thought you’d want to know this.’

‘Thanks, Melissa,’ said Gemma, wondering why the photographer had bothered to inform her.

‘Sean Wright is a total prick,’ said Melissa, and Gemma wondered no more.

She put the phone down, frowning. Cat hairs at all three HTA fire scenes? An absurd image came to her—a wicked feline arsonist with a checked face.

•

She drove to Glebe through the heavy traffic, still trying to fit the cat hairs into a crime scenario that made sense. Finally she decided that they were irrelevant. Cat hairs would be found at almost every crime scene, given the nature of cats. She brought her attention back to the fact that she’d lost Patricia Greengate. I’ll have to start again, she thought to herself, hoping her weird client wasn’t in too much of a hurry. I might even offer him a reduced rate, she thought, feeling badly about losing the target.

She parked in one of the streets behind the buildings of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, walking to the back door and pressing an intercom buzzer for entry. She announced her name and was let in. Straightaway she could hear Sean’s laugh. He was approaching along a narrow hallway holding a large manila envelope and flirting with a short girl beside him.

Gemma hurried towards him, hand outstretched, cheesy grin in place. ‘Sean,’ she said. ‘I hoped I’d find you here. I’ve got something you’ll be very interested to see.’

He smiled his superior smile and the girl ducked sideways into one of the rooms and disappeared. ‘What might that be?’ he asked.

‘Come in here,’ she said, indicating a small grey and pink sitting room nearby with kitchen facilities. She ducked her head around the corner to check that it was empty.

Sean followed her in. ‘The lab rang through the DNA result,’ he said. ‘The crispy we found in the foundations was definitely part of the late Benjamin Glass.’

‘That certainly makes things simpler,’ she said.

‘Not necessarily,’ he said patronisingly. ‘In this case it actually makes things much more complex.’

Gemma imagined Sean in years to come, boring the pants off people, with his pathetic little power games. But she’d dealt with him in the past and instead of letting her irritation show her eyelids were almost batting as she sweetly asked, ‘How is that, Sean?’

‘I only found a partial body at the crime scene,’ he said. ‘You saw what the fire had done. The only reason we found anything of him was because he’d fallen through into the cellar section of the building when the buildings collapsed. Otherwise it would have been incinerated too. Just a section of the sacrum, the doctor told me. But it was enough.’

Gemma waited, trying to keep a pleasant expression on her face.

‘Beats me how they know which end is up,’ Sean said, in a rare moment of humility. He paused deliberately again and only the knowledge that she had a red-hot clue in the form of a photograph of a lace-gloved naked blonde in her briefcase that Sean didn’t know about kept Gemma calm. She adopted a look of rapt attention, and waited.

‘But there was enough tissue apparently,’ he went on, ‘to reveal extremely high levels of carboxyhaemoglobin.’

‘And what’s that?’ Gemma asked, sweet as pie.

‘And as well, there was no vital reaction to the effects of the fire,’ he continued, ignoring her question.

Gemma at least understood this one. ‘He was dead before the fire,’ she translated. ‘So it
was
murder?’

‘He was dead all right,’ said Sean smugly. ‘He’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning
before
the fire.’

‘And so it can’t be suicide,’ Gemma said recalling the brilliant flashes she’d seen on the video of the inferno. ‘Unless he somehow sets up a timer with the HTAs and kills himself with carbon monoxide.’

‘Except for the fact that there was no trace of carbon monoxide anywhere at the fire scene except concentrated in the tissues of the late Mr Glass,’ said Sean. ‘So how could he have done that?’

‘Surely the fire would have destroyed any residues?’ she said.

Sean lifted his shoulders and pulled a face. ‘It’s got to have come from somewhere, and in concentrations high enough to be lethal.’

Gemma went to the sink and poured herself some water using one of a stack of polyfoam disposable cups. This investigation was getting weirder by the minute. Benjamin Glass dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Someone activating the house alarm, then swiftly switching it off and setting a fire with a rare accelerant that took the evidence with it but, at the same time, drew attention to itself and the dead man at its centre. Had Minkie or Anthony Love, or both of them together, somehow gassed him in his car, dragged him into the house, panicked and forgotten to deactivate the alarm, then set up HTA fuel for ignition a short time later? It was too complicated. Why not just push him off the headland? Or knock him on the head? Or gas him and leave him in the car? It would be much simpler to make it look accidental or to simulate a suicide. Why then draw attention to the whole incident by making a fire with an accelerant so unique, so spectacular, that it would create immense speculation and interest? Nothing about this case made any sense at all. And yet the investigator in her knew that although the facts she could already see ran through a wall that made them invisible or went underground, they were there all right, as real and as solid as she was, just waiting for her to discover them and make the right connections. People never do things without reasons, she knew.

‘I’ll tell you something I’ve come to see about this job,’ said Sean. Here we go again, thought Gemma, restraining her desire to say
please don’t.

‘What we think we don’t know about a case is too often staring us right in the face but we can’t see it. And why’s that?—because it’s so big and obvious.’

Gemma looked up at him and this time didn’t have to feign interest. Someone had gone to an enormous amount of trouble for the sake of this death. At this, a clear light suddenly shone into the murky conjectures that so far had only teased her. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Sean, you’re dead right.’ A line of enquiry so clear, so obvious, that it was embarrassing not to have considered it before, had suddenly opened up with Sean’s words. Gemma couldn’t wait to get away and research it.

‘Hey!’ said Sean, thrilled at her response. ‘How about a proper drink?’

His question barely registered with her as she tried to work out where to start chasing up her new idea. The university, she thought. Academic records. ‘Uh?’ She swung back to him, aware he’d just issued an invitation. She flashed him one of her best smiles. ‘Another time, Sean. The cat. What about the cat?’ She waited to see what he’d say.

‘We didn’t find any cat,’ he said. ‘But if all we’ve got left of an adult male is a small piece of rump we can’t expect there’d be anything left of a cat, now could we?’

If he was disappointed about her not accepting his invitation for a drink, Gemma thought, he didn’t let it show. Probably puts it on any female from fifteen to fifty. ‘I’d give a lot to know if that cat was in the holiday house or not,’ she said.

‘I went to Benjamin Glass’s factory,’ he said, ‘and found cat hair all through his office and a nice photo of the damn thing. Funny patchy chequerboard face.’

‘I heard there were cat hairs found at all three fire scenes,’ she said with relish.

‘Oh that,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s got to be the
same
cat to mean anything,’ he reminded her. ‘Benjamin Glass’s cat. What is it with you and that cat anyway?’ he asked.

Gemma smiled. ‘Don’t you remember your lectures on Fraud Indicators?’ she asked. ‘Go and dig up your old notes and read the bit about arson and the family pet.’

‘I never took notes,’ he said. ‘Didn’t need to. Waste of time.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Gemma. ‘So I’ll tell
you
something for a change. One strong indication of arson is the discovery that the family pet just happened to be staying somewhere else at the time of the fire. The arsonist arranges a sleep over for Fido to make sure he’s not killed or injured in the blaze.’

Sean shrugged his shoulders as if discounting what Gemma was telling him.

‘I hear the widow’s paying you to investigate the fire. You’d better be careful of that woman. I bet she didn’t brief you that a yellow BMW was reported near the Nelson Bay house around the time of the fire. I did my homework. That’s what Minkie Montreau drives.’

‘Who reported it?’ said Gemma, frowning.

‘The policeman’s best pal,’ said Sean. ‘Mr Anonymous Tipoff. Anyway, what are you doing here? Who have you come to see?’

His dominating manner was back in full force and in that instant, Gemma decided to give herself another twenty-four hours before handing over Ms Black Lace Gloves.

‘You,’ she said sweetly. ‘I was told you were here. I just wanted to keep you informed. On account of auld lang syne. I found a couple of things in a safe at Benjamin Glass’s factory office. Obviously no one from your team had found it.’ Sean looked extremely pissed off at that, but before he could say anything, Gemma continued quickly. ‘I was acting on the instructions of Minkie Montreau. She wanted me to search the place thoroughly because she knew there was a safe but not where it was. I found a key hidden in his office at home.’

Sean’s face was compressed with anger.

‘Look,’ she said, trying to placate him, ‘I had all the advantages. I’m working for the wife. I was invited in first.’ If you guys had taken these fires more seriously from the beginning, she felt like saying, I doubt if I’d even be here.

‘That’s no excuse,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to remind you that your licence depends on you cooperating with the police whenever appropriate. You don’t want a suspension.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ she said, handing over the decks of cards and the scalpel.

From down the hall, she could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner moving closer. I’ll hand over the rest tomorrow, she decided. After I’ve visited Sydney University. She brought her attention back to the present.

‘Did the PM doctor say any more about the autopsy results on Shelly?’ she asked, changing the subject.

Sean put the cards and scalpel back into the plastic bag, and slid them together into the large envelope he carried. ‘The bruises on her body match the injuries we photographed on Robyn Warburton. The doc thinks it’s probably a chain that he wraps round his fist. To give him more clout.’

Clout all right. Gemma shuddered. She remembered the terrible blow to her flank and how the bruises were getting darker under her silk blouse. Just thinking about it made her aware of how sore her ribs were.

‘What’s up?’ Sean asked, noticing her wince.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘My war injuries playing up.’

‘You should let us do our job, Gemma,’ he said in his patronising way. ‘Just follow your insurance fraudsters and stay out of trouble. Little girls get hurt when they try playing with the big boys.’

‘If the big boys were doing their job properly,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I wouldn’t have even been there that night.’ She flashed him a wide smile to undercut the criticism. The noise of the vacuum down the hall became louder and the cleaner came in, wrestling with a very noisy industrial-strength machine. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ Gemma said over the sound. She felt only marginally guilty about the photographs still in her briefcase.

At the door, Gemma turned to him. ‘I’ll ring you soon,’ she said. ‘We’ll have that drink.’ He opened the door for her and she hurried outside.

•

It was an unsettled evening and a light rain had fallen while she was inside. Parramatta Road was streaked with water, oil stains and the lurid reflections of red, white and green lights. To get to her car from the main entrance, she had to turn off the comforting busyness of Parramatta Road and into a darker Glebe street. She walked as briskly as possible, aware of her limp, yet as ready for action as she could be, her mind trying to make sense of a case that just seemed to get wilder and crazier by the moment. A card cheat, high temperature accelerants, a blonde with black lace gloves, a missing cat. And now carbon monoxide in lethal concentrations in the pathetic bit of tissue left after a conflagration like the fires of hell. Not to mention an anonymous tipoff that put a car similar to that driven by the dead man’s widow at the fire scene. She stopped by her car, and stared up at the new moon, just visible through thin cloud. Her side was really painful now and she had to ease herself gently into the driver’s seat.