It was clear evasion.
‘I see,’ Mak said. She frowned as her mind ran through scenarios. ‘So…she asked for me…’ She paused, hoping for more, but her boss was not biting. The old ‘finish my sentence for me’ trick was one that a surprising number of people fell for, but Marian, of course, could not be so easily led. Mak decided to drop the subject for the moment. ‘Are there any known risk factors associated with this boy? Depression? Drug use?’
‘Mrs Hart described him as introverted, but was adamant he was not suicidal. And thankfully he hasn’t shown up in a hospital emergency room or at the bottom of The Gap.’
The Gap.
Sydney’s most notorious suicide spot. ‘She insists he would never do drugs, and she thinks he doesn’t even drink.’ Marian relayed this last bit of information with a touch of incredulity. Few parents would want to imagine their child experimenting, but that hardly meant that drugs or alcohol weren’t factors. One thing that private investigation work illuminated was the staggering amount of deception within families. It was frightening what parents did not know.
‘What do we know so far?’ Mak prompted.
Marian’s eyes closed again. ‘His pushbike is missing, as is his wallet.’
Bike. Wallet. Frankly, this sounds like a very boring case,
Mak thought.
‘I don’t suppose his toothbrush is also missing…’ Mak added cheekily.
‘This one’s not necessarily that easy.’
But it probably is.
‘Does he own a car?’
‘No car. No licence.’
There would likely be no listed property for someone his age, and with no car to trace it looked like Mak was going to
have to do a lot of door knocking. ‘I assume a formal report has been filed with the police already?’ she said.
‘Yes. Apparently Mrs Hart reported it last week.’
‘Right.’ Mak wondered if the police had any good leads, and who she might casually ask about it. Not Andy, that was for sure, and his former police partner Jimmy Cassimatis would probably not be of much help either. Thankfully, she had other friends in the force, if it became necessary.
Marian pushed the file across to Mak. ‘Your instructions and info.’ She leaned back in her chair and let out a tiny, elegant sigh. ‘Somehow I can’t imagine the cops committing much time to this. Twenty-two people go missing in this state every day. This boy is not underage, not high-risk. He has no record. He hasn’t been caught up in any crimes or foul play in the past.’
Marian was right, of course.
‘I’ve arranged for you to see Mrs Hart around three.’
‘Thanks.’ Mak wished she felt more enthusiastic. She needed the money, but the idea of door knocking to find an errant nineteen-year-old seemed like pretty dull stuff.
‘Do you have a car?’ her boss asked.
A car would be more convenient for transport than her beloved motorcycle, and certainly would be a more realistic option for any surveillance that might eventuate. Private investigation work often involved sitting patiently with tightly crossed legs in a car with the lights off and the window rolled down.
‘No car.’
‘I’ll get Sarah to organise one.’ Her assistant.
‘Nothing too bright this time, please.’
The last rental the agency had organised had been bright orange, which was not a colour particularly good for blending
in. Magnum PI’s red Ferrari would never have been good for blending in either, but that was television for you.
Mak became aware that Marian was watching her face carefully.
‘You’re a good investigator, despite the reservations you have about it.’
She opened her mouth to defend herself, but said nothing. She would not bother trying to deny it.
‘Be thorough with your notes and procedures in case this one turns out to be a criminal matter,’ Marian cautioned her, perhaps sensing Mak’s confidence that Adam Hart was a standard runaway. ‘I hope this kid’s all right, but…we don’t know that yet.’
Makedde stood. ‘I will.’
‘And try to stay away from
him.’ Andy.
‘You gave him his second chance already. It’s time for you to move on.’
She smiled. Only Marian would be so bold as to offer personal advice to someone as stubborn as Mak. Mak performed a mock salute in response and left Marian to her files.
‘And stay away from those other people too,’ Marian added when Mak was halfway down the hall. ‘They are no business of yours…’
The Cavanaghs.
Don’t worry about that,
Mak thought as she stepped into the hall.
And wondered.
Four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines propelled a hulking A380 Airbus through clear skies far above the Indian Ocean.
Inside the aircraft, over four hundred passengers slept soundly with their blindfolds, travel socks and trays of food, imagining through twitches of sleep their touchdown in Australia. At the front of the plane, one man sat awake and alone in his first-class suite, head bent solemnly. His shoulders were nearly too wide for the fold-down bed, his size forever an issue, and for the moment he sat up in his seat with his eyes closed, awake and pensive. His muscled and knotted form felt even heavier than usual, his neck as stiff as steel. A light but constant headache had plagued him since boarding at Heathrow. Though he was in his late thirties, and considered himself worldly, he was wrestling with his first experience of true grief.
Luther Hand had lost his mother.
He would soon be arriving in Sydney, a place of personal significance. It was the place of Luther’s birth, the place of his transformation from boy to man, and man to killer. He had all
but left Australia behind him since, reducing it to little more than a fragment of a humble hidden past he did not discuss and avoided reflecting upon. His failures were there, the realities of his humble beginnings were there, and now, with his mother gone, he would have no reason to return. The last of his real past would have turned to ashes, slipping forever into the unknown; the only woman who ever loved him, gone. His trusted contact in Sydney had been the one to inform him of his loss. Even he had not known Luther’s true relationship to Cathy Davis—only that Luther left money for her every month. According to his contact, she had returned to her Redfern apartment with her groceries, and tripped on her porch, cracking her skull open on a garden gnome. The thought filled Luther with anguish and a sense of regret and failure.
His mother had not yet turned sixty, but had suffered the health of someone much older. She had lived hard in her youth. Luck had been a stranger to her.
Mum.
Sydney was also the location of Luther’s only failed contract of the past six years, and the circumstances and target of that failed job came to the forefront of his thoughts as he prepared for arrival. The target had been, of all things, a beautiful woman. He had underestimated her resourcefulness and luck. She did not know him and had never seen his face, but he knew her well, and regarded her with special interest. The enigma of the one hit who had escaped him seemed to loom profoundly as the plane hurtled towards the geographical place of their encounters, where it had been his job to follow her and, later, to kill her. They had scuffled in a darkened hall, a messy exchange. And he had soon after
witnessed her crash her motorcycle to what should have been her death: a clean kill for his client, attributable to mere accident, no one to blame, no investigation. But this unusual woman had survived.
She had broken Luther’s nose with her motorcycle helmet. He had not bothered to have it fixed.
Makedde Vanderwall.
Luther wondered where she was now, and if ever chance would have their paths cross again.
Jimmy Cassimatis was gnawing anxiously on the end of a warm Mars bar, and gripping a styrofoam cup of coffee, postponing the inevitable. That morning a couple of boring cases were sitting on the detective senior constable’s desk—a burglary at some rich guy’s house in Macleay Street; a fatal hit-and-run. But the visit he was about to make was in relation to an older case.
A death knock.
Not one person in the department liked to be stuck with a death knock. There was no gratification in informing a member of the public that their loved one was dead. And Jimmy, who for all his long years in the department regularly pulled the short straw, was two blocks from the address where he would have to tell a Madeline O’Connor that her missing husband, Warwick, was dead. And this death knock was going to be particularly ugly. There had been somewhat of a bungle in forensics.
Skata. Fucking forensic fuck-ups…
With that death knock but minutes away, Detective Cassimatis was more than happy for the distraction of this
phone call from his mate and former police partner, Senior Sergeant Andrew Flynn.
‘Well if it isn’t the big shot,’ Jimmy drawled into his mobile phone. ‘I wondered if I’d hear from you this
year…’
Jimmy hadn’t heard from Andy in weeks, not counting an amusing postcard sent from the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, the town just outside the FBI Academy where he’d been holed up in some kind of exchange program with the FBI. The postcard pictured a smiling blonde pin-up straddling an aircraft gun, Hanoi-Jane-style, wearing nothing but a pair of brief stars-and-stripes hotpants with two superimposed red stars demurely covering her impressive DD bare breasts at the nipple. Just the kind of postcard Jimmy appreciated. WISH YOU WERE HERE, the caption said. Well, that was exactly what Jimmy wished. Especially now. He kept the postcard in the squad car glove compartment, and occasionally referred to it using an improvised double entendre or two in an attempt to induce some personality in his new police partner, Rhys.
She could blow me…away…with those weapons of mass destruction.
So far, these attempts had not worked.
‘Mate, it is so good to hear from you,’ he said, meaning every word.
‘I can’t talk long,’ Andy interrupted him. ‘I’m just on the highway…’ The phone was crackly and Jimmy cupped his ear with one meaty hand to better hear his friend’s voice. It was the same hand that was holding the Mars bar, and a bit of melted chocolate smeared his neck like a wound. ‘Any chance I can crash at your place tonight?’ Andy was asking.
Jimmy had made the words out fairly clearly over the din of traffic and static, but he was mighty surprised to hear them. ‘Of course, mate. Of course. You’re always welcome at our
house. I’ll let the missus know.’ She would spew at him about the late notice, but she liked Andy, so he hoped she wouldn’t whinge too hard. ‘It can be a bit loud with the little ones, but you are most welcome.’
Jimmy was delighted he would see his friend and former partner in person again after so many months, but he was confused. Andy had moved on to a bigger job. It was Federal. He was now an important figure at the serial crime unit in Canberra and consulting on big investigations. If he was coming to Sydney, why was he driving? Why wasn’t he flying in business class? Why wasn’t he being put up at some fancy hotel?
‘Crashing at my place? They pull your budget already?’ Jimmy joked. ‘I knew they’d eventually figure out you got no talent.’ He could say it confidently because it was so very far from the truth. Andy Flynn had cracked some of the biggest and most famous cases in Australia in recent years. And he had paid a heavy price for it, too.
‘Jimmy, Mak left. She was gone when I got back. She said she’d be gone, but…I didn’t think she’d really do it.’
Skata.
‘Oh mate, that sucks dogs’ balls.’
In Jimmy’s eyes, Makedde Vanderwall was pretty cool for a chick. Plus she was a former
Sports Illustrated
cover model, for godsake. But she was a handful. Andy seemed only to like the stubborn ones. His ex-wife, Cassandra, had been full of fire, too. Theirs had been a tumultuous relationship, to say the least. And Jimmy had thought he and his wife had some serious fights.
‘I’ll be round to drop my bag off in a few hours,’ Andy explained. ‘Thanks, mate. I’m driving…I gotta get off the phone.’
‘Yeah, it won’t do for the police to pull you over. See you when you get here.’
Jimmy hung up and frowned. They’d split again? It seemed like yesterday that the two were in love all over again, and she was moving to Canberra to set up house with him.
Jimmy resumed interest in his Mars bar and before long it was nothing but a sticky wrapper. Rhys had been drinking some energy drink, and he chucked the empty can in the bin. He was the type who liked to spend time in the gym. He liked getting ‘ripped’. Jimmy didn’t understand him. They drove the two blocks to the O’Connor house, and Jimmy felt especially heavy as they walked up the drive. He was worried about Andy, and he was almost as worried about this death knock.
After several raps on the door, they were faced with a scowling woman in her late thirties. Her hair was askew, and a bit greasy through a grey part. She stood her ground in the doorway, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip. ‘Whaddya want?’
‘Are you Madeline O’Connor?’
‘Who’s askin’?’ When she spoke, the cigarette wiggled slightly. Her arms were crossed, and a deep crease divided her forehead into hemispheres.
Skata.
‘I’m Detective Cassimatis, and this is Detective Morrison,’ Jimmy explained with an unusual level of patience. ‘May we come in?’
‘I’ve already spoken with you guys.’
She had.
‘There has been a development. We’d like to come in, Mrs O’Connor.’
At this the woman stepped back from the door, and gestured down a hallway towards a small kitchen. She moved
past them and pulled a chair out for herself with a screech, sat and leaned heavily on her elbows. An ashtray made a pungent centrepiece on the table, and she tapped her cigarette against the rim, building a greater pile of grey ash. With thinly veiled hostility, she waited for what they had to say. Rhys and Jimmy pulled chairs out for themselves and sat down.
‘I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news, Mrs O’Connor,’ Jimmy said.
This was the part he hated the most. The look on people’s faces when they first discovered that their
husbands/wives/children / parents
would never be coming home again.