Assassin (27 page)

What are you doing here, Dana?

Young Federal Agent Dana Harrison sat on the stool with a drink in her hand, nursing a crick on the left-hand side of her neck. She used her left hand to change gears in her old RAV4 and the gearbox was sticky — after three hours of driving it had given her a headache.

She was in Sydney, which in itself was not so unusual for her, but in a way she still wasn’t sure what she was doing at this bar, with her dark hair worn in curls at her shoulders, and the only pair of stiletto shoes she owned on her feet. She was off duty and she could do what she wanted to, she supposed. This, it seemed, was what she most wanted to do.

You fucked up. You fucked up with Flynn
, she thought.

She was still embarrassed by the exchange. Why did she have to ask him for that drink? Why? It had been a stupid slip. She hadn’t meant it to come across so unprofessionally. She’d thought it would sound casual, but it hadn’t. She could tell by the look on his face the moment the words had left her lips, and she’d wished she could take it back. There was
sexual tension between them. She hadn’t accepted that until it was too late. She should have noticed how much she wanted him to like her. She’d wanted it a bit too much. What kind of psychologist was she if she couldn’t even see these obvious things in herself?

She and Flynn had barely spoken on the drive back to Canberra. And now she was back here, alone.

What are you doing, Dana?

On the drive up she had told herself it had been too long since she’d come to Sydney to see her interstate friends. Too long since her last visit. She’d needed to get some distance from work, after the awkward exchanges with Andrew Flynn, a man she admired, and yes, found attractive, in a hard, brooding way. But as she’d checked in to her hotel, and dressed and hailed a taxi to Surry Hills, she’d had to face her true intentions, the idea she’d been toying with since she’d slipped into the driver’s seat of her car. And now she sat on the bar stool, restless and coiled, and feeling an unfamiliar, seething rage. And she knew why she’d come to this bar where she knew no one.

No one except a man named John Dayle.

Someone has to keep an eye on him.

The surveillance team had been pulled, not because of lack of suspicion but lack of resources. Lack of resources, of all things. And he’d quite possibly murdered that poor woman. Tortured her. Done unspeakable things to her. It was a nightmare. She had not joined the cops to be useless. She could not just sit in her flat in Canberra waiting to hear news.
No.
If Dayle came and acted suspiciously, she could do something about it, at least. Maybe even help crack the case. Maybe even help someone, which was why she’d joined the
police in the first place. Maybe even get herself noticed for all the right reasons. Not just for the scholarship but for what counted. The real work.

She was tough enough for this.

Mak heard a key in the lock. She’d been in wait for John Dayle for over an hour now, sitting at the base of the staircase in his narrow, filthy terrace, rage coiled in her. Luther’s Glock tingled at her lower back.

Quiet as a shadow, Mak stood up on the bottom stair and leaned her back to the wall, listening as the front door creaked open. She heard a single set of footsteps, an unintelligible muttering and the click of the door as it shut. Again, he didn’t throw the dead bolt. There was something like the rustle of bags and the main light came on, illuminating the filthy lounge room. She heard the thud of rubber-soled shoes — one step, two — and a shocked yelp of surprise as the man fell forwards, tripping on the thin fishing wire she’d set up to catch him. He landed on his knees and palms, something spilling heavily on the wooden floor with a thud. Mak emerged in a swift blur and pushed herself on top of him, seizing his wrists and pulling them behind his back. In seconds the cuffs were on him and she had him flipped over and wriggling on the floor at her feet, the gleaming scalpel at his face.

And then Makedde Vanderwall saw that he was not alone. She took her eyes off Dayle to see that he had carried with him a young woman in a skirt and stiletto shoes. She was on the floor next to him. She wasn’t speaking.

‘Holy shit! What the fuck?’ the man said, legs flailing. He was pale and insubstantial and he smelled like old sweat.

‘I wouldn’t move if I were you. Tell me your name,’ she said.

‘What?’

She pressed the scalpel blade to the skin of his unwashed cheek. ‘Your name.’

‘John. John Dayle.’

So she had the right man. And Andy had picked it. Mak’s eyes flickered to the woman again. Her eyelids moved. She made a groaning sound. She was alive. Was she drunk, or …?

‘We need to chat.’ Mak pulled Dayle up by his T-shirt with a yank and led him to the computer chair she’d brought down from upstairs. She spun the chair around. ‘Sit down.’

He didn’t. He just stood in front of her, panicking, his red-rimmed eyes flitting about the room as he tried to decide what to do. With a single shove she pushed him into the chair, and the metal of the cuffs clacked on the hard plastic of the seat. Mak pulled the rope out and looped it around his puny chest and arms, tying it over until it was nice and tight and she was good and satisfied. She tied the ends off at the back in a neat square knot. His legs were free, but that didn’t seem to be a problem.

‘There we are,’ she said, standing before him.

‘What the fuck is this?!’ he shouted, and she calmly leaned in and moved the scalpel under his nose. She shook her head
silently from side to side and he grew quiet again, his breathing rapid. Mak saw a glimpse of her own reflection in the blade and it was something from a nightmare — a grinning creature with shorn hair and white teeth, and death shining in its eyes. She retracted the blade.

‘What did you do to her? Did you drug her?’

He looked away and swallowed.

‘Roofies? Rohypnol?’

He didn’t answer. She pushed the scalpel against the sensitive flesh of his nostril.

‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘I slipped her a roofie, okay? Big deal.’

Mak licked her lips and took a deep breath. She was so angry. So angry. She needed to stay calm, to think. Mak left Dayle tied to the chair and she crossed the small room to kneel by the woman’s side. She was attractive and healthy, with dark hair. Her breathing and her heartbeat were regular.

What could Mak do?

She realised she was still holding Dayle’s horrible scalpel, so she put it down, put her arms around the barely conscious woman’s torso and lifted her up. It took her a moment to balance the weight of her, then she carried the petite woman across to Dayle’s couch and lay her down on her side to make sure that her airway was clear. She would have to sleep it off and when she woke, it was likely that she wouldn’t remember anything that had happened after the drug was slipped to her. It was the infamous ‘date rape’ drug. Mak wondered how often Dayle had used it.

‘It’s okay. You are safe now,’ Mak whispered to the woman, unsure if she could be heard. The eyes fluttered and closed again. Her breathing was slow and heavy, but she was okay.

Mak returned to Dayle, who had gone very quiet. ‘So, you are a rapist. And a killer now, too. Congratulations.’

He opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out.

‘You know, John, you are nothing like him.’

‘What? Who?’ He struggled in his binds again, the initial shock of the situation starting to wear off.

She leaned in again, letting the sharp tip of his scalpel sit just inside his nostril once more. ‘The Stiletto Killer,’ she said.

‘The …? I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, quivering and seeming to grow yet smaller.

Mak smiled. ‘He was much smarter than you. And much, much tidier.’ She looked around the flat disapprovingly. ‘He was a neat-freak actually. And quite precise about everything he did. He’d never do something quite so stupid as kill his own neighbour.’

‘Kill my …? Uh, uh … Ms Hempsey? No! I … I … couldn’t do that.’

He was a terrible liar. And Mak had nothing left for him but rage and impatience.

She flicked the scalpel blade and his nose opened up, blood spilling down his face. He cried out and she put a finger to his lips to hush him, his blood staining her latex gloves. He quickly shut up again.

‘Every time you lie to me, I cut you,’ she told him.

In addition to having his rope, knife and scalpel ready, she had placed a few key items she’d found in his bedroom on the staircase, ready for their discussion. Now she left him struggling uselessly in the binds as she plucked the first item from the stairs. When she returned he’d kicked the chair over, but she righted it again with ease.

‘Okay. Why don’t you tell me about this?’ She held up a
clipping about Ms Hempsey’s death. It was a small article from several pages into a
Tribune
, published the previous week. Mak had read it online after the discussion with Andy.

‘It’s … it’s just a news clipping.’

‘Of?’

‘My neighbour died recently,’ he said cautiously.

‘Died? No. She didn’t die. She was raped and murdered,’ Mak corrected him.

He nodded and looked to his knees. By now he would know that she’d looked under his bed and found the other clippings. They’d all been in the same box.

‘So, did you enjoy your correspondence with Ed Brown?’ Mak said. She smiled joylessly and held up a well-worn letter from the Stiletto Killer. His handwriting repulsed her. His words, even more so.

John Dayle looked at it with wide eyes, but said nothing.

‘You must have found him quite inspiring,’ she said, without a trace of emotion in her voice. ‘He seemed to really appreciate your letters. What does he call you here?’ She unfolded one of the pages. ‘
My comrade.
Comrade? Interesting choice of words.’ Dayle said nothing. She supposed the correspondence would have been read by the warden. It was a wonder that it hadn’t pegged Dayle as a person of interest to the police. Then again, a lot of prisoners received letters. Especially high-profile prisoners.

‘Anything you want to tell me about your correspondence?’ He kept his head down, saying nothing. ‘No? Okay, let’s move on then.’

She calmly placed the letters on the floor, displaying them in a semicircle, and she walked to the staircase and returned with the jar, the final damning piece of evidence. Floating in
the sloppy formalin was a severed toe, the nail painted with red polish. Mak had been sick when she’d first discovered it. She’d thrown up in Dayle’s filthy bathroom, vomiting what little food she’d managed to keep down earlier. Now she only felt rage.

‘And what about this?’

On seeing it in her hands, John arched backwards and struggled again, trying to get away. He screamed and she put a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound.

‘Now, John, we don’t want company, do we? You don’t want company, do you? You and your souvenir from Ms Hempsey would make quite a sight.’

She removed her hand and he watched her with wide eyes.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Me? I’m Makedde Vanderwall. I thought you might have recognised me by now. Oh, it’s the hair, isn’t it?’ She ran a hand over her short locks, feeling the weightlessness, the tingling sensitivity of her scalp. He only stared, but she could see in his eyes that he knew who she was now. His mind struggled to piece it together. Her here, in his terrace. And she was sure by now he suspected he was going to die.

‘Now, I’m going to have to gag you for this next bit,’ she explained and placed his red ball gag in his mouth. She tightened the straps around the back of his head, then picked up the hammer.

‘Ed Brown used to bludgeon his victims with a common household hammer. Like this one I found under your bed, wrapped in plastic. He didn’t like them to die that way. He liked to keep them alive while he did horrible things to them.’ She looked at the hammer inquisitively. ‘Doesn’t look like you cleaned it terribly well. The police would like this, I think.’

He tried to speak, but with the gag, not much came out.

‘Now, I’m a reasonable woman, John. I don’t want to bludgeon you to death. I don’t want to rape you, torture you, do to you what you did to poor Victoria Hempsey. So I’ll give you another option. Would you like another option, John?’

He nodded emphatically.

She pulled the knife out and waved it in front of him. ‘I can either bludgeon you to death, or you can just cut your own throat, now, with your knife and have it over with.’

He struggled and started to cry, his face turning red.

‘Don’t be like that, John. You’ll get no sympathy from me. You killed that woman — you made her suffer horribly — for no other reason than because you wanted to, and now you are going to die here, tonight. Be grateful you have a choice at all. Victoria didn’t have a choice. Ed Brown’s victims didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice.

‘So what will it be, John?’

Makedde removed the gag and let him drink from a bottle of vodka from the freezer, holding it to his lips for him. Once he said he was ready, she untied him and gave him the knife. Under her watchful eye and the sight of Luther’s compact Glock, she witnessed him slit his throat. It took him three tries, hesitating again and again before he got a deep cut. It was not an easy way to go. You had to really mean it. She made sure he meant it.

It took longer for him to die than she’d hoped. But she was patient. To her amazement and dismay, she didn’t feel a thing, watching the man kill himself. Not a thing.

Mak arranged the clippings and artifacts around him — a shrine of horrors. The knife had fallen from his hand and she left it where it lay. The hammer and scalpel were lined up at
his feet with the formaldehyde jar, like the ones found in Ed Brown’s flat and widely reported in the papers at the time of the Stiletto Murders. Victoria Hempsey’s killer was himself the grim centrepiece. On the couch was the woman who would have been his next victim. She would wake to a terrible shock, but hopefully that would be in a hospital, not here, with this gruesome display in front of her. No, Mak had no choice. She had to call for medical help for this woman. Her hands still cased in latex gloves, Mak dragged Dayle’s phone over to the couch and put the receiver in the unconscious woman’s hand. She dialled Triple 0 and when the operator answered, said nothing.

Mak left the terrace unlocked and stepped out into the dark, rainy streets of Surry Hills.

She walked to the nearest payphone and again dialled Triple 0. ‘I saw a man drag an unconscious woman into his terrace on Davoren Lane,’ she said, using the Spanish accent she’d been working on. ‘He was white male, around thirty years old, wearing a red baseball cap. I think she was drugged. I am really concerned for her safety.’ Mak refused to give a name, but gave Dayle’s address and hung up. Once Dayle and the woman were discovered, that recording would be played and replayed many times, she knew.

She hoped she was not recognisable. Or perhaps by then it wouldn’t matter.

Benumbed, Mak left the payphone booth, and climbed on her waiting motorbike.

And she rode for hours.

To forget.