‘I ran the plates. Car is registered to an Andrew Flynn. A homicide detective.’
‘I see. And is the front gate closed?’
‘Yes.’
The walls protecting the Cavanagh home were tall and could not easily be scaled, and the front gate too was large and impenetrable. This police officer could not enter without a search warrant; The American would see to it that they didn’t get one. If the cop rang the doorbell, The American would advise that they not answer.
‘Okay. The client is at home,’ The American said. ‘Keep an eye on that car. I will let him know—’
‘Wait,’ Stone said, interrupting him. ‘The car is moving again. He’s driving off. No…not he, a
she.
There is a blonde woman driving.’
‘Not the detective?’ he said, puzzled.
‘Not unless he is crouched down in the vehicle next to her. It is a woman and it looks like she is alone.’
‘What is she doing now?’ The American asked.
‘She’s at the end of the street now. I think she’s leaving.’
‘Follow her.’
Mak sat low in the passenger seat of Andy’s red Honda.
From the information she could glean, Damien Cavanagh still lived with his parents in their luxurious Darling Point home, even though he was almost thirty years old. He could probably stay there indefinitely, never needing to think about getting a job. In contrast, Mak had moved out at fifteen to head overseas and start working as a model. Would she have been his type, at fifteen? Would she have been naive enough to go to a party like the ones he threw?
As Mak had discovered, the Cavanagh house was flanked by impenetrable stone walls. She could not even see the house itself from the street, and she would not have been able to scale the walls. Perhaps she could see more from the water side? Mak didn’t own a boat, but she could rent one.
There is nothing you can do tonight. And remember, he’s not even on your client’s list.
But Simon Aston was on the list.
She was going to observe Simon’s house and, once the coast was clear, she wanted to get inside and plant a bug. But it could be a long wait before she found her moment. In the meantime she sat in Andy’s car with the lights and engine off, and in the passenger seat, as if the driver was about to return. Few people took much notice of a woman waiting on the passenger side of a car. Mak sat low so that the car would look empty to a casual passer-by.
She watched and waited. This was when people fell asleep on surveillance, Pete Don had warned her. And she could see how it could happen—it was like watching grass grow.
Finally the living room light went off, and a few seconds later an outside light flickered on, illuminating the driveway. A man was exiting the house.
It was Simon.
Mak perked up.
There you are.
It was certainly him, although his hair was slightly longer than in the photos she’d seen. He was good-looking and fit, with handsome features, although there appeared to be something along his chin—stitches and a cut.
He was alone. The house was dark inside; it should be empty. She watched as he locked his front door, looked both ways and walked to his van.
Only people who are scared or guilty look both ways when leaving their house.
Simon started up his van and drove away.
Where are you going at eight o’clock on this fine evening?
she wondered.
When he was around the corner, Mak jumped into the driver’s side of the Honda and followed him, cautiously dogging him a block behind. She followed him all the way into Bondi, to the main strip of restaurants on Campbell Parade. Was he meeting with someone? Was it relevant to the case?
Simon parked.
Mak coasted past the roundabout and watched as he made an order at a pizza place, alone.
He’s getting takeaway.
This was Mak’s opportunity. She drove back to the Tamarama house as fast as she could, knowing she had only perhaps fifteen minutes to get safely inside and plant the bug.
God, I hope this works.
Mak parked in the same spot as before, pulled on a pair of leather gloves and scurried across the street. She didn’t want to end up like Ferris Hetherington, with her driver’s licence stuck in the door, so she had a set of lock picks—a rake and a piece of spring steel—to manipulate pin tumbler locks of the type found on most back doors of residential homes. She had done some rehearsals of picking locks, but not much practice in the field.
This was her moment to give it a try.
She hoped Simon hadn’t employed any deadlocks, or her plan would be shot. And she hoped those tumbler locks had only a few pins.
She had worked with up to five pins in a security lock. The more pins to line up properly with the lock pick tools, the trickier it was to pick.
You can do it.
Once inside, the radio frequency bug disguised as a double adapter would work well in his home office, if he had one, or even in his bedroom. If he was already using a double adaptor in one of those areas, as many people did, she would simply switch it over and he would never know. The only way to even tell the difference was that the bugged adaptor had a slightly heavier weight. In every other way it was identical to the adaptors most people had scattered through their homes. She would not have to retrieve it when she was done, as it was unlikely to be found and could not be traced back to her. A day or two of sitting in the car a block away, tuned into the right radio frequency, and Mak would know everything Simon was cooking up. And she might even be able to confirm whether he had set up the handbag-snatching or the break-in at Marian’s office. Not that she could prove it in a court of law, of course. Because everything she was about to do was quite illegal.
Four minutes later she was still struggling with the lock on Simon’s back door.
Fucking thing!
Mak counted not five but seven pins in the tumbler lock. And she was running out of time. She had perhaps five minutes left to get inside
and plant the device before Simon was due back with his pizza. She could attach the phone taps later, if it was safe, but that was even trickier work.
Dammit!
All of the windows and doors had been locked shut—she had checked first. His back door seemed the best option. It was shielded from the road and the neighbours’ windows. But here she was, with a flashlight in her mouth, working the pins of the lock with her tools, and it was slow going. It had taken her four full minutes already and she wanted to shake her hands out, it was such fiddly work. Her fingers were going numb. An expert would have got through a seven-pin lock in sixty seconds.
Note to self: practise, practise, practise.
To Mak’s surprise, there was the sound of a loud car horn on the street right out front. It startled her, making her drop her tools.
Dammit! Now I have to start all over again.
The horn went again.
What the…?
Staying low, Mak crept around to the corner of the house and peered out onto the street.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered under her breath.
The cops.
A police cruiser was parked just behind the red Honda. One uniformed officer sat in the cruiser, and the other leaned against the door of Andy’s car. She’d left the window down to get
fresh air while she’d waited, and he had obviously reached into the car and honked the horn. She felt herself panic. As she wasn’t a locksmith, just being in possession of lock pick tools like this could be considered a criminal offence. Not to mention the phone taps.
‘Miss Vanderwall?’ came a voice.
Shit. They know I’m here. Have they been watching me the whole time?
Mak stashed her tools under a row of shrubs at the back of the house, brushed some dirt off her hands, straightened her clothes and walked out onto the street.
‘Good evening, officers, how are you?’
‘Can I see your licence, please?’
‘Um, sure.’
She opened the car door, found her wallet and produced her driver’s licence.
The officer looked it over while his partner stayed in the car behind, watching.
‘Not using your motorbike this evening, Miss Vanderwall?’
‘No. I just thought I’d sit and watch the waves for a while. It’s a beautiful view here, don’t you think?’ she commented, and smiled. She leaned her hip against the side of the car and flicked her hair behind one shoulder.
He didn’t give her even the slightest smile in return.
‘And your private investigator’s licence.’
Oh, this is bullshit.
‘Certainly,’ she said.
Mak dug around in her wallet and produced the licence. She would never offer it up without being asked, but these guys knew everything about her already, it seemed. Someone had given them a word-up. She handed it to him and the officer peered down his nose at it.
‘Is there some problem, officer?’
‘What were you doing on that property?’
‘Which one?’
‘Pardon?’ he said.
‘I just saw a wombat, I think, and I went to find it. I’m not sure which property it went onto. Over there somewhere…’ She pointed across the street.
‘You said you were doing what?’
‘I thought I saw a wombat run into the hedges and I went to check it out.’
‘And why would you go looking for a wombat?’ he asked her incredulously.
‘I’m from Canada, you see, and we don’t have wombats there. They are interesting little creatures, aren’t they? It’s still legal to enjoy the splendour and wildlife of this city, isn’t it?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he mumbled. ‘Well, Miss Vanderwall, I suggest that you do your nature loving somewhere else.’
‘Absolutely, sir.’ He held the door open for her and she stepped into her car. ‘You have a good night, officers.’
‘We’ll tell your boyfriend at Quantico that you say hi.’
‘Oh, yes. Thanks. Do that.’
Fuck!
She drove home with her tail between her legs.
On Wednesday Mak sat curled by the bedroom window, deep in contemplation. It was too soon after her run-in with the cops to pay another visit to Simon’s house, and Karen swore she had passed on the video to Sergeant Hunt but he had not called. Amy wasn’t calling either.
Waiting, waiting…
Mak wasn’t sure how to move forwards yet, but she wasn’t about to give up. Something was going on, and she was determined to figure out what.
A near-empty jar of crunchy peanut butter sat between her bare feet, the lid tossed aside. Her shoulder rested against the cool glass of the window, her skin soaking up the fading rays of golden light as the sun began to set. Absentmindedly she licked a dollop of peanut butter off the end of a dessertspoon, her blue-green eyes lazily scanning the street, her mind wrestling with her concerns. The embarrassing incident the night before had really made her feel like a fool. What would have happened if she’d
been caught breaking in? They must have known she was there. Was she being watched?
Of course you are being watched.
But by whom exactly?
On top of Mak’s concerns about the case, she had considerable worries about her own life. She was feeling increasingly out of place in this terrace of Andy’s. She had been so put out by his call that she hadn’t called him back. Should she just call it quits and take that Justice Department job back in Canada? Was that what he wanted? And what if she waited for him and they moved to Canberra together when he got back? Would she leave her work for Marian and never be an investigator again? The thought made her sad.
And what about my friends? What about Bogey?
Movement directed Makedde’s attention to the first-storey windowsill directly across the street. It was the neighbour’s tabby cat curling up in the last of the day’s sunlight, much like Mak.
What do you think, kitty?
Impatient, she dialled Marian again.
‘Marian, um, I was wondering if you’ve heard back from the client about the boat expense?’ She didn’t have the money to rent a boat to spy on the Cavanaghs herself. She had to clear it.
‘He said no. He’s not interested in the Cavanaghs, he said. Stick to Simon Aston.’
Mak nodded. ‘I thought so.’
When she hung up, disappointed but not surprised, her mobile phone rang in her hand.
I could rent a kayak and use a long lens…
‘Makedde speaking,’ Mak answered.
‘Um, Mak? This is Larry Moon.’
‘Hi, Larry. How are you?’ she said, sitting upright.
‘Amy’s missing.’
‘What do you mean by “missing”?’ Mak jumped up and scrambled for a piece of paper. She had been afraid something might have happened to Amy. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘It’s been a couple of days.’
She nodded to herself. ‘She’s not at her house?’
‘No. She isn’t answering her door. I tell you, she wouldn’t leave here without saying something to me. She never left my house alone—she was too scared. And now she’s gone—with the front gate wide open and not a word from her. No, it doesn’t seem right to me.’
‘Have you reported this to the police?’
‘I have quite a few cop buddies who come to my club. They knew she was staying with me. I told them what happened. They said they’d do what they can, but she won’t be listed as missing for a while yet.’
‘Of course.’ He wasn’t a spouse; she wasn’t officially living with him. There was little the cops could do if she went walkabout. Perhaps Amy had left him for someone else? It was possible. They certainly didn’t seem like a match to last. But still, in light of the video, Mak thought the worst.
‘She left things here,’ Larry went on. ‘All of her clothes.’
That was odd. Even if she had left him it was unlikely that she would leave without packing her things, unless she was in a big hurry—or unless something altogether different had happened. Perhaps Larry was not being totally honest about the circumstances of her departure? Perhaps they’d had a fight and she had stormed out? Or was it something sinister? Amy had seemed paranoid when they met up at Leo’s. Maybe she had been correct to be afraid?