Assassin (26 page)

Fantastic.

Thankfully, the toilets were the opposite direction from the waiting room and she didn’t have to walk past the man who might have already recognised her. She did what she had to, undisturbed, and when she returned minutes later the doctor did another test, right in front of Mak, using a dropper. The test she used operated no differently from the one Mak had taken herself. After perhaps thirty seconds the double blue line showed and Mak felt her stomach tighten.

‘You are pregnant. Congratulations,’ the doctor said.

Mak smiled in response, but felt shaky. The doctor must have noticed it.

‘Is this the news you were hoping for?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t …’ Mak wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence.
I wasn’t planning a baby. I was on birth control. I wasn’t thinking this was possible.
It was a surprise, yes, but now that it appeared she really was pregnant and it wasn’t some error, she found she was hopeful. And worried.

‘I took a major fall. Do you think I’m still … that the baby is okay?’ Her eyes stung, and the room started to blur. Tears had welled up again. She realised she wanted the baby. Really wanted it to be okay.

The doctor offered her a box of tissues. ‘I see. Is that how you hurt your wrist?’

‘Yes.’ Mak noticed it was visibly red and swollen.

‘Have you experienced any pain or bleeding?’

‘Bleeding? No. Nothing like that.’

‘Good. The foetus is quite well padded in there. You’d be surprised. How did you fall exactly?’

Being chased by cops.
‘How do you mean?’

‘Backwards, onto your wrist?’

‘Essentially.’

‘Let’s take a look.’ Mak extended her arm and Dr Green examined the swollen wrist. ‘It will be fine,’ she announced. ‘Nothing broken. Some ice will help with any bruising. Was there any blow to the stomach?’ she asked.

To the stomach?
Mak shook her head.

‘If you weren’t too badly hurt yourself, it’s very likely everything is fine. An ultrasound will be able to tell us more.’ She opened a drawer and got out a slip of paper. It was a form of some kind and she began filling it out. ‘Now, when was your period due?’

‘I don’t know actually. I’ve never really kept track of things
like that. I know that sounds silly.’ Her face grew warm. ‘It’s been a pretty, um, hectic few months.’ She swallowed.

‘The ultrasound will tell us how many weeks you are and they should be able to check that everything is normal. Call them today and hopefully they will be able to get you in in the next week or two. They tend to be quite busy this time of year. Do take it easy the next few days and, if you have any bleeding at all, call me immediately. We have an after-hours number.’

Mak accepted the referral.

‘Are you okay?’ The doctor was watching her.

Mak managed a smile. ‘I’m okay. I just have a terrible headache,’ she said. The headache was real, but certainly the least of her problems. She didn’t know if she could wait a week to learn how far along she was. Where would she be in a week? Truthfully, she didn’t know if she would live that long.

‘You can take paracetamol for it. Panadol is fine. No aspirin,’ Dr Green said, and it took a moment for Mak to realise what she meant.

‘Oh yes. Of course.’ Not all medications were safe. ‘You think … that I might be okay if there is no bleeding?’ Mak ventured.

The woman smiled gently. ‘Yes. I’m sure you’ll be fine.’

She stood and thanked the doctor, holding the referral she doubted she would use.

The doctor smiled again and then tilted her head. ‘Have you been here before?’ she asked. ‘It’s just that you do look familiar.’

Mak felt a rush of adrenaline. ‘I get that a lot,’ she said. ‘There’s an actress on
Home and Away
, you know the one? We look a bit alike. It’s not me. I’m not her …’

The doctor squinted. ‘No, I don’t think that’s it.’

‘Thanks again,’ Mak said and hurried out.

She paid and left, relieved the man from the waiting room was no longer there. She rushed out into the sunlight, her sunglasses hiding fresh tears.

What kind of world was this? What kind of world would she be bringing a child into?

Bradley Hunt sat in the office of his commander, who looked tense. It was easy to see why. On his desk were copies of the
Tribune
and
Daily Telegraph
.

‘Did I say no press?’ he said and pushed the papers across his desk towards Hunt.

‘I was as surprised as anyone,’ Hunt said and swallowed. He needed the commander on side, for a couple more years, anyway. ‘I guess news travels.’

‘This makes us look bad. At least no one is quoted.’

Hunt nodded.

The commander watched him so keenly he felt the urge to push his chair back. ‘I saw your report,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you take me through it again?’

Hunt had to be very careful now. He had to be very careful what he said, how he acted. A lot was riding on the way this all panned out. ‘Our intel was good,’ he began. ‘She did show and she was armed. There were a couple of uniforms in the area, so they came as backup. I suspected she was dangerous.’

‘You suspected she was dangerous, but you sent Jimmy in alone?’

He hesitated. ‘We felt it was best to send Jimmy in alone, so she wasn’t spooked. They have been on friendly terms in the past, when she was dating Andrew Flynn, the former —’

‘I know who Flynn is,’ the commander cut in impatiently.

Hunt paused. ‘We certainly didn’t, um, see this coming. I could not have imagined she would shoot him. I guess we underestimated her.’

‘I’d say that much is certain.’

Hunt absorbed the verbal jab without comment. ‘I was just outside the entrance, listening,’ he went on. ‘Jimmy went in and tried to get her to come in peacefully, but they got into an argument. She resisted and pulled a firearm. She shot Detective Cassimatis before any of us could do anything. I went after her, but she ran up some stairs and jumped out a window.’

‘And where were these backup officers, uh, Granger and Wosley?’ He glanced at the report and back again.

‘I had them near the entrance, in case she tried to escape. One of them called for assistance and the other helped me give chase, but like I said, she ran up into the building, to some kind of mezzanine level, and then leaped out. We lost her. I didn’t predict she would jump out the window, sir. It was quite a drop.’

‘And she couldn’t be found in the area?’

He shook his head. ‘From the way she was dressed, we are guessing she had a motorcycle or scooter nearby. I heard a bike. I think that was how she got away.’

‘And you didn’t get a numberplate, a model or make? Nothing?’

‘No, sir. She just vanished,’ he said weakly.

‘People do not vanish.’

‘Yes, sir. She’s armed and dangerous. As I’ve said, we’ve checked with customs. She didn’t come into the country legitimately.’

‘Has Mr Cavanagh been made aware of what occurred?’

‘I think he should be warned. She could be going after him.’ He’d recommended a bodyguard for Jack Cavanagh — a friend of one of his cousins — as a way of getting into the inner circle, but Cavanagh had organised someone else. The commander did not know about that exchange, of course. It wouldn’t look good to be too involved when an investigation was underway into Cavanagh’s dealings. Not that that investigation was going to get anywhere. Neither would Mak. When the smoke cleared, Hunt felt sure he would be generously rewarded.

The commander clenched his jaw, eyes unreadable. ‘You’ll have whatever resources you need to bring her in. There can’t be any more mistakes. Get this woman.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hunt said.

Makedde Vanderwall stopped at a payphone in Kings Cross. Her hand hovered around the keypad.

Dammit. What’s the point?

Richard Staples had ratted her out. Or he’d been intercepted. They’d probably had him watched since his feature on them was first published, she realised. They were probably trying to find ways to discredit him, take away the threat to them his interest caused. Their tentacles were far reaching. She wondered if Richard was in actual danger as well? What would the Cavanaghs do to him if he tried to write about them again? Would he find himself out of a job or worse? Would he have an accident? Did he sense he was in danger?

And now that Mak was on the front of the paper her time was numbered, no matter how many disguises she used and wigs she bought.

Enough.

She had a disturbing thought. She’d been careful, but what if they could trace her iPhone? She still hadn’t got rid of it.

Instinctively, she cracked it against the edge of the metal phone box. She smashed it again and stepped out of the booth, head down, and dumped the damaged phone in the garbage bin, where it sat on top of discarded fast-food trays and Coke bottles before sliding down and disappearing. She had the footage of Jimmy’s shooting in online storage and could easily download it at an internet café: it wasn’t worth the risk to keep the phone. Especially now. Especially now that she had another reason to live.

Mak spotted a punkish young woman, a backpacker, and followed her. She was at least five foot eleven and perhaps twenty-five. Even features. Blue eyes.

She would have to do.

The door was opened for her with a small key with a rusted edge. The room inside was the colour of faded photographs. It smelled of salt air and faintly of smoke, and had a small seventies kitchenette, a sagging double bed, a television with an old cathode-ray tube and a single window with a view of the dark waters of Palm Beach. Mak pulled her boots off and walked across the multicoloured carpet to inspect the bathroom, feeling the remnants of sand under her feet.

It was a far cry from the luxurious hotel she’d enjoyed. Small but adequate. The tiles around the bath were highlighted with
green-tinged grout. Mak popped her head around the wall and smiled. ‘I’ll take it!’

The landlady — an elderly woman who’d already put her hair in curlers when Mak showed up, answering the ad — looked delighted. Even more so when Mak provided her with the first week’s rent in cash, not that she planned to be there that long. It had a private entrance from the rear. She was promised privacy and a place to garage her motorbike. That was enough.

Mak didn’t own a lot of things. What clothing she had she hung on wire hangers in the tiny upright closet. She stepped into the bathroom and sized herself up in the mirror.

It was certainly too late for witness protection, not that she had ever seriously considered it an option. Now it was clear there was nowhere left for her to turn, and with her face on the front page of the most read newspaper in Sydney, it wouldn’t take long for a well-meaning member of the public to recognise her and dob her in, if an enterprising killer didn’t get to her and her unborn baby first. She doubted she would survive police custody while Cavanagh had corrupt cops in his pockets. She doubted she could survive being on the run much longer.

As she saw it, she only had one option left.

In the aged patina of the bathroom mirror she looked substantially different from the woman on the front of the paper, but not different enough. She picked up a pair of scissors and ripped them out of the plastic pack. She gave them a trial snip and grabbed a section of her thick hair. After years spent as a model she’d learned about makeup, but she’d never really learned how to cut hair. A hairdresser, she was not. She pulled a section up and snipped, watching with
strange fascination as it fell into the basin. The second piece was easier. She snipped and snipped, locks of dark hair falling to the basin, to her feet.

When she was done Makedde looked at the driver’s licence she’d stolen, then back at her reflection. ‘Hello, Kristi,’ she said.

Mak found herself on Davoren Lane.

It was a narrow, grey two-level terrace, barely four metres wide. It would have been built in Victorian days, but the ironwork was gone. No plants in the barred windows. No welcome mat. Mak knocked on the front door, a smile pasted on her features. When no one answered she held her ear to the timber for a moment, looked both ways down the narrow lane and resolved to pick the lock. It was an old five-pin tumbler — easy. She quickly let herself in and closed the door behind her.

She flicked a switch and a bare light bulb illuminated the space. She frowned. It was tiny. A real dive. Scratched and patchy paint job. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, wiped her prints off the light switch and door with the corner of her shirt, and looked around. The lounge room contained a threadbare couch and a bunch of sagging cardboard boxes, stacked up. They were dusty and looked like they’d been there for years, perhaps from the move. She walked through an open doorway to discover a small kitchen. It was no larger than the one in the flat she’d decided to rent, only it was walled in. She
literally could not turn around. It was depressing, and she left it immediately. There was a steep staircase a few feet inside the front door and now Mak crept up the steps to examine the upstairs. She found herself in a living room with another threadbare couch, this one heaped with unwashed clothes. Boxes of DVDs. A small flat-screen television. A makeshift office in the corner.

The terrace was a one bedroom. She could see the bed from where she stood. She moved towards the cluttered and cramped desk in the far corner of the room. It had a standard office computer chair tucked under it. An old nineties PC sat in the centre, surrounded by stacks of papers and magazines:
Australian Hunter Magazine
,
ASJ — Australian Shooters Journal
,
Australian & New Zealand Handgun
. Mak sifted through the stacks and picked up a piece of unopened mail.

Mr John Dayle.
Bingo.

Plastic slat blinds hung over the window above the desk. She pulled them back and saw, leaning in the window, a framed photograph of a skinny man in his early twenties, proudly holding a caught fish. ‘Hello, John Dayle,’ Mak said quietly and coughed.
God, it’s dusty.
The photo looked as old as the computer.

Dayle had left some bags and clothes heaped on the floor. Some shirts were on hangers and some tossed on the couch. Looked like he didn’t have a closet, or he didn’t use it. His bed was a twin and unmade, she noticed. The bedroom door was ajar and now Mak reluctantly walked into the room, leaned over the side table and lifted the slats off the window — again the slats were so dusty she covered her mouth with the crook of one elbow to avoid sneezing. Peering out into the darkness between the terraces, Mak tried to get a sense of the man
who inhabited this sad little space. This John Dayle seemed lonely, untidy and far from rich. And he might come back at any time, she reminded herself. Mak let the slats down, paused and lifted them again, eyes brighter. This window had a view of the same small courtyard the one over the computer did. The courtyard appeared to belong to the house behind. She squinted, tilted her head. She hadn’t noticed it before.

It’s the victim’s home
, Mak thought suddenly as she spotted the crime-scene tape across the back doors, rippling slightly in the moonlit breeze. It was a view of his murdered neighbour’s courtyard, and her back windows. She wondered if he’d watched her often.

Mak shivered.

Well, let’s see if Andy’s right about you, John
, she thought and let the slats down. The Glock felt reassuring against the small of her back as she flicked on the light of the small bedside table lamp and got on her knees. Her gloved hand wandered across the filthy carpet under his bed like an inquisitive spider, moving carefully around tangled fishing line, a rod and reel, crumpled tissues and several well-fingered magazines. She squinted at the magazines, lip curled in distaste, and flipped each one open to search for notes or photographs. Nothing. Mak pushed aside a revolting pair of dirty men’s underwear and pulled out two black rectangular boxes. She tilted her chin, opened the first one. What she saw made her eyes narrow. A pair of standard-issue handcuffs, easy enough to buy online. She examined them with her gloved hands, feeling the weight and checking for the telltale quick release latch of novelty cuffs. No. These were the real deal. Also in the box was a length of climbing rope, looped neatly and tied off with a piece of string. A clean hunting knife sat in its
leather sheath looking new and unused. A mouth gag with a red ball. It was an intriguing series of items to have stored together, she thought, and when she pulled the last item out her mind began to pull unwanted memories to the surface.
A scalpel.
Why would this man have a scalpel? That’s what it was, wasn’t it? Mak placed the steel blade on the carpet, eyeing it with suspicion as if it might move on its own, and opened the second box, pulling back a folded handkerchief, the significance of which escaped her.

And beneath the handkerchief she saw.

The clippings.

With a sickening jolt of recognition she found herself looking at the familiar face of Ed Brown, the ‘Stiletto Killer’, in grainy newsprint.

After a moment of shocked stillness, she dug deeper into the box and pulled out layers and layers of clippings.
SYDNEY SERIAL KILLER, POLICE CLUELESS
, one headline shouted.
STILETTO KILLER STRIKES — BECKY ROSS MURDERED
, another said. She read one more:
SOAP STAR MURDERED Television star Becky Ross, who went missing after the launch of her own fashion label on Thursday, was found murdered in Centennial Park yesterday …

Words and images of Ed Brown’s horrendous crimes, lovingly collected and pored over. It was all in there. And amongst it all was a picture of Makedde’s closest friend, Cat Gerber, smiling innocently in a flattering dress. She was the reason Mak had first visited this country. Cat had always raved about Sydney. And then Mak had found her dismembered amongst the tall, swaying grasses of La Perouse beach on the day of her first modelling job in Australia — the day she met Detective Andy Flynn.

CANADIAN MODEL — THIRD VICTIM OF STILETTO KILLER
, the headline above Cat’s face said.

Makedde lifted the image tenderly, took in her friend’s face in the tiny dots of newsprint and felt a tear escape her.
Cat.
It had been more than five years since she’d laid eyes on her friend. Mak took a breath, turned the clipping over and placed it face down on the carpet. And there in the box beneath her slain friend’s image was one of Makedde herself.

MODEL WITNESS FLEES TO HONG KONG
.

It was a blurry photograph of Mak boarding a flight to Hong Kong, only one of many more clippings relating to the Stiletto Killer case. Some showed Andy, hand out in front of the lens, trying to shield himself from the flash glare. Many showed Ed’s victims, all attractive women, some models, the earliest victims allegedly prostitutes. Mak had nearly joined their number. What she’d suffered at the hands of Ed Brown was unthinkably horrific. He’d tied her up, he’d …

No.

She pushed the memories firmly out of her conscious mind, but her toe began to tingle right where Ed Brown had severed it with his scalpel and the microsurgeons had expertly sewn it back on. It sometimes did that — tingled when she was distressed. Seeing these clippings made her sick inside. They made her angry. But Ed Brown wasn’t going to hurt her any more. He was dead now and Mak was alive — the only known survivor of his twisted obsession.

And this fucking guy idolises him
, she thought, the clippings laid out around her like puzzle pieces.

John Dayle idolises the Stiletto Killer. He wants to be him and he used his neighbour to practise …