Free Shattered by Gabrielle Lord

you’ve had some sleep. ’
    Gemma wondered if Natalie meant what she’d said, or would even later remember asking her to investigate the shootings. At least she could ask a question now. ‘What did you mean when you spoke of a note, Natalie?’ she gently probed. ‘When we first came in?’
    ‘Something one of the police asked me about. They said something about a note. But I couldn’t help them. They said Bryson had a note in his pocket.’
    •
    As they went down in the lift, Gemma could feel the weakness in her legs. The time she’d spent with Natalie Finn had drained her, using up a lot of her own largely depleted reservoir of emotional energy. While her heart had been touched by Natalie’s pain, Gemma was relieved to be out of the hospital and its environment of human suffering.
    Yet the Finn family had become important to her now. Not only because of Natalie’s request, which she intended to clarify as soon as Natalie was less distraught. The murder of adults is vicious enough, she thought, but to shoot a little kid like that, in cold blood and leave him dying, is something evil. Gemma’s own sense of justice had been injured; the photograph of the bright young boy, Donovan Finn, had touched her as well.
    Hastily dropped in East Sydney by Angie, with a promise she’d call soon, Gemma hurried back to her car and climbed in, taking some time to write out her notes more fully. In that outpouring of pain, Natalie had relayed vital information. Findlay Finn, Gemma printed, then underscored the name. She’d need to talk to Bryson Finn’s artistic brother. And when Natalie had regained more composure, Gemma thought, she’d reinterview her, ask her what her suspicions might be. Angie’s earlier request that Gemma become a registered informant was starting to make sense. With the unwritten contract between Natalie Finn and herself, she was now very much a part of this investigation .   .   .

 
Five
    Gemma’s next stop was a small lane behind Bayswater Road, where Gerda the trannie lived in a unit in a white-painted block of four with bijoux balconies surrounding narrow French doors. The ground-floor balconies had been completely caged in and the main entrance was barely set back from the street. Gemma pressed the intercom and after speaking to the deep-voiced Gerda, pushed the front door open and walked up the flight of stairs to where one of the doors was already opening.
    Gerda, all six feet of her, eyebrows plucked into two new moons over shrewd black eyes surrounded by lashings of mascara and kohl, sized Gemma up with an appraising look.
    ‘Come in, come in to the humble home,’ she said. ‘I feel I know you already. Young Hugo admires you, I know.’
    ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ said Gemma. ‘You were very kind to Hugo.’
    ‘He’s such a lad, that one,’ said Gerda, flinging her luxurious jet-black hair back from her face as she closed the door. ‘He was getting into all sorts of dangerous company.’
    Over the years, Gemma had been inside many homes and she was often astonished at the huge variety of furnishings that human beings found comforting or beautiful. Lavender air-freshener and the smell of stale cigarettes mingled in the air, even though the glass-panelled door to the tiny balcony stood wide open and sunlight streamed in and glowed on the carpet. Fat couches and armchairs, ottomans and rugs in various ruddy hues and a low glass-topped coffee table took up all the available floor space. It was obvious that Gerda had a passion for that particular shade of purplish red known as cyclamen.
    ‘Do sit down, dear,’ said Gerda, sounding like a friendly aunt. ‘I’d offer to make you a coffee but I’ve just run out. In fact, I was on my way out to go shopping when you buzzed.’
    Gemma sat on one of the cyclamen armchairs, placing her briefcase on the dark red carpet, almost invisible because of the amount of furniture crammed into the room. Glamour shots of Gerda in her