‘That is when you hired Warwick O’Connor to kill the girl.’
Simon nodded sheepishly. ‘It wasn’t all my idea or anything.’
‘I understand,’ Hunt lied. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Aston.’ Hunt stood up. ‘We will have further questions for you. In the meantime, you are free to go. Just don’t leave the state.’
‘Really? I’m free to go?’ He seemed surprised.
Simon Aston failed to notice that the red light of the video recorder had not been on. His statements did not exist, and Sergeant Hunt had made sure no one else heard what he had to say about Damien Cavanagh’s involvement.
As far as he was concerned, Simon had killed the girl and covered it up. And he had acted alone.
Simon Aston drove home to the Tamarama house in a state of numb shock. His senses were overwhelmed, his life turned upside down.
He had cooperated with Detective Hunt. Simon had told him everything he knew, and he had hardly believed his good fortune when he was allowed to go. He would cooperate all the way, and they would see that it wasn’t his fault. He’d had to do the things that he did. He was not the guilty one.
Anyone else would have done the same.
Simon expected that he might not hear from Damien again for a little while. Damien had told Simon that he was being sent away to join his fiancée in Paris for an indefinite amount of time, and that his father had cut him off from his allowance and personal accounts. No money to party with. No money for his vices. Jack Cavanagh would control Damien’s spending and activities, and had threatened to make him work to earn every dollar. For a time, at least. Simon hoped that Damien’s punishment didn’t
last long. Perhaps he would get a call—maybe in two weeks, maybe in two months—and then things would return to normal. Simon didn’t know how long he could survive without Damien in his life—without those important connections and his money, he had nothing.
When the heat is off, Damien will call me. We’ll be friends again…
Simon rubbed his eyes; he was tired. He hadn’t slept a wink since the big party, and barely a few hours since he’d hired Warwick and everything had gone wrong. It had been such a stressful time. So stressful. He walked up the staircase and drifted into his kitchen. He looked through the pantry.
Kahlua.
He cracked the bottle open and had a drink, straight up. It would take the edge off. He desperately needed it.
I need to sleep now.
He took another drink, this time bigger. A rush of alcohol went to his brain. He desperately needed to relax.
What?
There was a noise from the other room. A thump, and the tinkle of crystal. Puzzled, Simon put down the Kahlua and walked out of the kitchen.
He didn’t see it coming.
Luther Hand was quick and quiet.
He had looped the rope around the crystal chandelier, and now in a flash he slipped the noose around the neck of Simon Aston and pulled the knot tight.
‘What?’ Simon choked in bewilderment just before he was wrenched straight off his feet by Luther’s mighty strength.
Simon was pulled violently forwards, and as the rope went slack for a moment, he fell to his knees at the top of the stairs, spluttering and gasping for air. Luther moved forwards and looped the rope around the banister for better leverage. The next pull dragged Simon off the edge of the carpet and out over the two-storey staircase. He struggled in the air, thrashing this way and that, his hands grasping feebly at his neck to loosen the noose. Luther tied the rope off on the banister railing at just the right length, and waited.
Thump.
Thump.
Simon’s legs kicked out at the walls, desperately searching for a foothold.
He didn’t struggle for long.
Soon, his head slumped forwards, his tongue protruding.
This hit gave Luther Hand a certain bittersweet satisfaction. He had killed a large number of people in his career, many of whom he had no opinion about whatsoever, and some of whom he
had even liked. But this man was a parasite. An irritation. Luther had been very pleased to get the call from his American-accented client to say that Simon Aston was now on the list. He’d been hoping that would happen.
Luther cocked his head to one side and watched Simon swing from the rope on the chandelier.
Good.
Luther liked him much better dead.
The witnesses were taken care of now. Simon Aston would not be telling any more tales about the Cavanagh son now that he hung from his noose, a perfect guilty suicide. The video was in police hands but nothing would be done about it. It would not be seen by any court. Simon Aston would get the blame. Dead men don’t talk.
Makedde Vanderwall was no longer on the list. She was considered too well connected to the police, and too high-profile a target to do anything about. For the moment, anyway. The Sunday papers had been covered in photos of her spectacularly fleeing the Cavanagh house, running down the driveway in her gown, barefoot. Simon Aston—the out-of-control con man who had duped the innocent Cavanaghs, and had now ended his own life, suffocated by guilt—had threatened her at the party with an illegally purchased gun.
The loose ends were neatly tied up.
The assignment is complete.
‘Come on, Andy, this is a joke!’
‘Mak…’
‘Why is Damien Cavanagh not under arrest? Why has he been allowed to leave the country? There is video evidence of him standing over that dead girl, and her hairs were found in that bedroom in their house. I saw it with my own eyes! Anyone else in that position would be arrested by now.’
‘Mak, calm down,’ Andy said, his voice sounding distant on the phone. ‘Sometimes these things aren’t so simple. It takes time,’ he said.
It’s not right. It’s just not right.
Simon Aston looked responsible for killing the Dumpster Girl at the Cavanagh house, possibly by accident, and later hiring a hit man to kill Meaghan Wallace for having witnessed it. Simon was being blamed for everything, and now that he had committed suicide, no one would hear his side of the story.
Amy had been so certain that Damien had been involved and now, sadly, she had turned up
dead herself. Another suicide. She had been found with an overdose of drugs in her system, lying on her kitchen floor, decomposing; a puppy sat whimpering next to her, evidently a gift from a lover. And Simon had got drunk and hanged himself from a chandelier.
Now no one was alive to point the finger at the Cavanaghs. It was all very convenient. And the higher powers in the police force certainly did not seem keen to pursue any potential link between Damien Cavanagh, the overdose of the Thai girl, and the Meaghan Wallace hit. The hairs found at the Cavanagh house had perfectly matched those of the Dumpster Girl. How was that not enough to warrant further inquiry?
Through their very highly paid lawyer, the Cavanagh family had expressed ‘great concern and regret that anything untoward might have taken place in their home’ without their knowledge. The late Simon Aston had been a friend, but not a close friend. Certainly no one had known the extent of his activities until it was too late. The Cavanagh son, Damien, did not know of his friend’s illegal activities, their lawyer claimed. Questioning anyone who may have been present at the party that night would no doubt be a long process, and probably a fruitless one. The case was dead in the water.
It’s not right.
It was little wonder that Mak’s client, Robert Groobelaar, had been so paranoid about his
confidentiality. If the Cavanaghs found out he had started an investigation of his own, who knows what they might have done to him or his business to shut him down?
Makedde shook her head with disgust and frustration.
The one upside was that young Tobias Murphy had been cleared of the murder, thanks to Simon Aston’s apparent confession to Detective Hunt that he had hired a thug named Warwick O’Connor to do the hit. O’Connor had not yet been tracked down. Tobias had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, coming to his cousin for money on that Thursday night, as he did every fortnight. Though he had been through a terrible loss and no one could replace his sympathetic cousin, his being arrested had quite possibly saved his life. He was now in a rehabilitation program, finally getting the help he needed, and just as importantly, he was back in communication with his biological father, Kevin, and was going to live with him and his new family.
‘Just think of what could have happened,’ Mak said, watching the quiet street outside the terrace, the phone cradled between her ear and shoulder. ‘That poor kid was going to go to jail for a murder he didn’t commit.’
Clearly, for reasons she could not come to terms with, Sergeant Hunt and the police were not going at Damien Cavanagh with both
barrels. They’d never done more than pussyfoot around.
‘Don’t be so quick to blame the police, Mak,’ Andy told her, defending his colleagues from afar. ‘It’s not always so simple, you know. No one has been able to prove that it’s Damien in that video.’
Mak shook her head.
Bullshit.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to fly back? Just for a few days?’ he asked.
‘No, I insist. I have plenty here to keep me busy. In fact, I’ve never been so busy in my life.’
Robert Groobelaar had been more than satisfied with the amount of information she had uncovered; in particular, that Meaghan Wallace had not been having an affair with Simon Aston. That seemed to have put his mind at ease. Another happy customer. And there was something else: several new cases had come in for her since the nasty article about her had been in the paper. The phone was practically ringing off the hook for her services.
Oh, the irony.
Mak was sure that the Cavanaghs, or whoever had planted that article, had done so to discredit her investigation work and maybe lose her the case. Few could have anticipated it having the opposite effect. Apparently her particular brand of infamy and experience could be an asset in the profession.
Mak sat up when she saw Bogey’s gleaming
blue convertible pull up outside the house. The top was down. She watched Loulou with her exploding hairdo bound out of the passenger seat and run up towards the house. Bogey slowly opened the driver’s side door and stood up. He wore slim black jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. She watched him with interest, her heart speeding up a touch.
‘It looks like I may be back in four months or so,’ Andy said.
‘So they have extended your stay? That’s good, isn’t it?’ Mak suspected that now he was at Quantico, Andy was seeing new opportunities for his career. He would probably be there for much longer than he first thought. Perhaps he was trying to break it to her gently.
‘Yes,’ Andy admitted. ‘Hopefully not for too long…’
‘No, no, it’s good,’ Mak insisted. ‘I’m proud of you, Andy. You need to do this. It will be great for your career.’
‘You’re not mad at me because of what I said before?’ Andy said.
‘That conversation seems like another lifetime. Don’t worry, I’m not mad at you, Andy. What will be will be.’
There was a long pause.
It had not yet been a fortnight since his departure, but Mak realised that it felt like much longer. ‘I’ll call you later,’ she said. ‘Loulou and Bogey are at the door. Don’t worry about me,
Andy. Just take care of yourself, okay? I’m proud of you.’
Whatever happened, she
was
proud of him. And maybe of herself, too. Mak wasn’t sure where things would lead, but for the moment at least, she would happily take the ride and find out. Things had a way of working themselves out.
She hung up the phone and made her way to the door. When she opened it, she was smothered by Loulou’s hugs.
‘We’ve got Gatorade, cold presses, chicken soup, and enough DVDs for a movie marathon! Karen said she’ll stop by after her shift, too. We won’t have to leave the house for days.’
Mak laughed.
So much for recovering in private.
She was glad of it, though.
Humphrey Mortimer closed the trunk and walked up to the house, smiling gently and holding bags of groceries.
‘Loulou, you are the best,’ Mak told her, and held the door open for them both.
Cathy Davis emerged from her Redfern flat. She held her purse in one hand and an empty cloth shopping bag in the other, ready to run her errands for the day. A slew of carefully clipped grocery coupons bulged from the hip pocket of her long apricot cardigan, the elbows of which she had recently mended with wool a touch too
orange to match the rest. She carefully locked her door, shut the torn flyscreen and made her way across the small porch.
I need milk, a packet of gravy, three eggs, one potato, one carrot and one onion
, she thought, counting up the items she planned to buy with her coupons and coins to sustain her for another few days.
She stopped.
There was a package on her doorstep.
How odd.
She could not remember the last time anyone had sent her a package of any kind. All she ever received were bills and the humble government cheques that kept her going. Slowly, she stooped to pick up the parcel, thinking it was surely for one of her neighbours. But it was not. A card taped to the top said,
TO
:
CATHY DAVIS
.
Cathy carried it to the bench on her porch and took a seat, moving aside some filthy newspapers that had floated down and lodged in the corners of the wooden boards.
With some effort, she slid a fingernail through the tape that held the box closed. She pulled the lid back and peered inside.
The box was filled with money.
Lots of it.
It looked like Monopoly money to Cathy Davis, who was fifty-nine and had not been employed since she was in her forties. Even back when the cheques that came were bigger than what the Government saw fit to pay her now, she
had never seen money like this. Ever. The bills were wrapped together in elastic bands. She looked at them quizzically, not sure if they were real.
There must have been hundreds of dollars in the box—no, thousands.
Mrs Davis looked around, bewildered. Who would do such a thing?
Overhead, a 747 jetted through the clear sky and Cathy’s son, Luther, settled into his trip to Mumbai. He hoped to return to Australia one day when the time was right. He had unfinished business in Sydney. Business with his mother—and with a woman named Makedde Vanderwall.