Surrender Read Free Page A

whine of displeasure when he realised he wasn’t coming with me but then settled down for a nap. Wolf is much better at waiting than I am.
    Gemma lives alone in a two-storeyed wooden house, squeezed between two impressive turn-of-the-century villas perched on the slopes of Mt Victoria. The way Gemma’s place has been built, just forward of and on a rise above the houses either side, makes it appear to be leaning into the wind like the prow of a ship. An assortment of men’s work and tramping boots lay scattered in the porch at the front door. Either Gemma was making the most of her suspension and having a lot of fun at home this morning or she’d put the boots there to ward off would-be burglars. Although I hoped for her sake it was the former, I was pretty confident it was the latter.
    Gemma opened the door on the first ring. She looked untidy, weary, bad tempered and emotionally bruised. That was fine. She’s looked like that all the time I’ve known her. When she saw it was me, her mouth contorted into a great big toothpaste commercial of a smile, only on Gemma it looked more like a photo from a medical text of facial deformities.
    ‘It’s okay. Sean’s told me everything,’ I said quickly.
    The smile was replaced by her normal scowl.
    ‘Thank Christ for that. Come in,’ she said, turning her back on me and heading into the house.
    I followed her through the hall to the back, picking my waythrough a maze of stacked magazines, odd pieces of discarded furniture, and what looked like a pile of broken toys. The toys were a strange addition because not only does Gemma not have kids, but I’d known her to recoil from them.
    I’d ask about the toys some other time. It was unlikely I’d get a satisfactory answer from her anyway. Despite, or maybe because of, her slender frame and delicate features, Gemma comes from the ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ school of women. She’s one of the guys. It’s pretty hard to be anything else if you’re a female cop.
    I manoeuvred the jug around a sink full of dirty dishes, filled it and plugged it in. Gemma never offers coffee so I knew this was the only way I’d get one. She’d wedged herself between two piles of books on her sofa and was studying me.
    ‘So does it lay any ghosts? Make you feel better knowing you were right?’
    I ran a couple of cups under the tap before answering. I knew there wouldn’t be any clean ones in the cupboard. I’ve known Gem for about five years but there are still things about her I can’t reconcile. She has one of the most disciplined, ordered minds I’ve ever known, yet she lives in total domestic chaos.
    I thought about her question — in fact I’d been thinking of pretty much nothing else since Sean’s visit.
    ‘No. It doesn’t lay anything at all,’ I said. ‘Certainly not the ghosts.’
    Gem wouldn’t lie to me, but she wouldn’t necessarily tell me all the truth either.
    ‘Snow did it, Diane. You can trust me on that,’ she said, giving me that direct, eye-contact look they teach new recruits to use on juries but which in Gem’s case comes naturally.
    I sat at the table on the one chair not piled with junk. It put meat an odd angle to her and I had to twist my neck around to meet her gaze. It made me feel at a disadvantage. She didn’t seem to notice, but with Gem it’s always hard to tell.
    ‘Any idea why he did it?’ I asked.
    She walked to the steaming jug, keeping her back to me. I saw her shoulders shrug, the delicate blades like the promise of wings beneath her thin cotton shirt.
    ‘I gave up years ago trying to figure out why scumbags do things. As they say, that way lies madness. Why do they burn little kids’ legs with cigarettes? Beat the crap out of some poor kid delivering pizzas for a living? Rape little old ladies? Who knows why they do anything. Who the fuck wants to know?’ She poured water on to the instant coffee, spilling a fair bit on the bench and ignoring it.
    ‘He didn’t give