Assassin (31 page)

Makedde Vanderwall leaned in to the intercom. ‘Sanctum Mobile Massage.’

She waited outside the large wooden door of the Palm Beach home of Jack and Beverley Cavanagh, clutching a mobile massage bed and folded towels, purse tucked over her shoulder. Behind her, the Mazda hatchback was neatly parked, the words
SANCTUM MASSAGE
printed in big letters along the side.

It’s now or never.

There was an audible buzz as the door released and Mak pushed it open, smiling sweetly. A bodyguard dressed in dark denim and a black polo shirt was waiting on the other side, iPod earphones dangling down his neck. His bulging biceps were tanned and his face was pockmarked and brown. Above his collar was the barest suggestion of a neck. Ropey, oversized thighs were visible beneath the slightly strained edges of his khaki shorts, which were similar in style to her own, but looked entirely different. He appeared younger than she was — perhaps in his early to mid-twenties. He wore his gun
in a bare holster — a semi-automatic handgun Mak guessed was a Czech CZ 75 or one of its many copies. She’d seen him during her recon. He was bigger up close.

‘Sanctum Mobile Massage for Mr Cavanagh. Beverley sent me,’ Mak said, with just the faintest hint of flirtation in her voice. She tilted her head to one side and looked up into his broad face, smiling.

He took a step towards her and looked her over.

Behind Mak’s cheerful demeanour, panic went through her like an electric shock. At over six feet tall, she was no wraith, but this creature dwarfed her, thanks to some scary genetics and an obvious dedication to steroids. Frankly, he was intimidating. She’d seen this guy come and go and she’d eventually accepted that he would be there. If she’d paid better attention to Pete Don’s lessons in her private investigator course, if she hadn’t been in such a hurry, perhaps she’d have been able to find a window when he was not there, but she hadn’t. She would be murdered in a matter of days if she didn’t do something now: she was certain of it. She could not rely on the police. She could not rely on a public outcry to bring the Cavanaghs to heel. The time to wait was over, she’d decided. This was the time for extreme measures. She had no choice.

And there was certainly no turning back now.

The guard looked her up and down. Mak had scrubbed her face free of makeup, except for some pencil to darken her naturally blonde brows. She wore her freshly shorn hair under a white baseball cap emblazoned with the Sanctum logo, and she was clothed in her new shorts and white sneakers, along with an unzipped black fleece vest and white, short-sleeved polo shirt, both stolen from the spa and bearing the same logo. The top showed off her newly muscled arms, which seemed
insubstantial next to his. As a final touch she’d worn Bogey’s black-rimmed glasses — a part of her physical transformation, but also a talisman of sorts. It seemed fitting to wear something of Bogey’s as she faced the man responsible for his murder.

For a moment Mak wondered what the guard might say, but he only nodded and closed the door behind her. He didn’t offer to help carry her towels or the folded massage bed, and she felt small next to him as she followed him through the stunning, open-plan beach house. It had dark polished timber floors and was decorated with stylishly minimalistic modern furniture and abstract oil paintings in muted tones. When they reached the base of a timber staircase the guard asked her to wait. He climbed the stairs and disappeared.

She was in.

Jack Cavanagh’s beach house was soundless and tranquil. Sliding floor-to-ceiling glass doors at the back were pulled open to the beautiful outdoors, giving the effect of a living area that extended all the way to the water’s edge. There were no fences or walls to obstruct the idyllic, panoramic view. There wasn’t even a garden, she had noted in her earlier reconnaissance. The house opened onto a lush green lawn and stretch of white beach with a small jetty. A boat was moored there, bobbing up and down with the placid tide — the Cavanaghs’ house was on the western beach, facing into Broken Bay, not on the ocean coast. The vessel was sleek and wood-panelled and it shone on the glittering water. Mak knew nothing about boats, but she didn’t need to know about such things to see that this was a very expensive one indeed. She could hear the water lapping gently at Jack Cavanagh’s beautiful boat, and a bubble of rage surfaced at the sound of it, the sight of that white, pristine shore.

Mak suppressed her rage. She had to remain emotionless to do what she had to do.

So this is a view worth killing for
, she thought calmly.

She placed her supplies on the floor and scanned her surroundings, spotting interior motion sensors for an alarm system, and taking in the potential escape points at her disposal. No surprises. The configurations were as she had imagined. Yes, she’d been a little rushed in the end, but truthfully, she felt she was as prepared as she could be considering the pressing time constraint of knowing that every hour she waited could bring the moment an assassin found her and ended her. Why wait for death, when she could bring it, could control some small part of the violence that was inevitable?

Mak heard footsteps approach. She straightened, standing with her feet shoulder-width apart, her fingers laced behind her back. With this stance came new stillness. She felt strangely compact and dense on her feet, ferocity waiting inside her like a coiled snake. Luther’s nine-millimetre Glock semi-automatic itched at her lower back. It felt hot, as if she might have already discharged it. She couldn’t take the loose-fitting black zip-up fleece off, or the shape of it would show. The weapon was just there, fitted with its silencer. Within seconds she could have it in her hands.

The guard appeared. He was alone. His gun was still holstered.

‘You can set up here,’ the huge man said simply, pointing to the living area. ‘Stereo’s there,’ he added, gesturing to a high-end entertainment system in a glass cabinet along the wall.

Stereo?

Ah, yes, for relaxation music.

She hadn’t thought to bring any. Perhaps there’d been a CD case full of Enya in the boot of the car, along with the massage bed. If so she hadn’t noticed it. But noise could be a good idea, she supposed, all things considered.

Mak smiled. ‘Thanks.’ She batted her naked lashes from beneath the glasses Bogey wore when he was murdered.

The guard turned and wandered back to the front half of the house, leaving her alone again. Nothing in his face had betrayed an awareness of who she was. Nothing in his demeanour had given her any sense of there being a problem. So, Jack Cavanagh was not all that paranoid about his personal safety, it seemed. Not like Mak herself was. Perhaps Jack felt invincible, she reflected. Privilege could do that. Or perhaps the sheer madness of her plan also held the key to its success? Why would she come to him? Why, except to die?

Mak kneeled by the stereo and flicked the dial until she found a station playing jazz. A new track started and a smooth announcer’s voice came on briefly over the sound of piano. ‘And now a little Miles Davis.’ The announcer went on to say she would play the full track, running for nine minutes and twenty-two seconds. ‘“So What”, from the 1959 album
Kind of Blue …
’

Mak placed her handbag on a waist-level shelf of the entertainment unit and turned the keyhole camera in the direction of the room. It was already recording. With some awkwardness she unfolded the massage bed and clicked the legs into place. She carefully laid a towel across the top and rolled one into a neat ball, placing it near the end. That’s how they did it, wasn’t it? She wished she had Bogey to guide her, to make it look more convincing. He’d worked as a masseur
briefly, he’d told her. He’d worked as a coffin maker, too, and he’d played in a band, all before being needlessly slaughtered before the age of thirty. Because of Mak. Because of Jack Cavanagh.

For Bogey. For my baby
, she thought as the sound of Miles Davis’s trumpet filled the room.

She listened and waited.

Finally, a single set of footsteps could be heard on the wooden staircase. She turned in the direction of the staircase, saw at a glance that it was Jack Cavanagh, and she gave a little nod of acknowledgement to him. He was instantly recognisable from the many photographs she’d seen of him in the press, though she thought he seemed smaller. He was shorter than Mak, and he wore a Ralph Lauren T-shirt and neatly pressed denim jeans.

Her heart did not speed up. She did not flinch. She was steady.

Without meeting Jack Cavanagh’s eyes, Mak said, ‘Please disrobe down to your underwear and make yourself comfortable on the table, face down.’ She turned away from him, hands laced behind her, and stepped up to the edge of the folding glass doors. They were open, the panels folded up, and she could see his reflection in the angles of glass, illuminated by a beam of sunlight. He wasn’t disrobing, she noticed. He wasn’t even moving.

Fuck.

‘You say my wife sent you?’

She turned but kept her head down as she spoke. ‘Beverley — Mrs Cavanagh sent me. Is now not a good time?’

He hesitated. ‘I thought you were coming on Sunday?’ he said.

‘Perhaps it was meant as a surprise? They just told me to say that Beverley sent me. I can certainly come back at a later time.’

He frowned. ‘Are you new there? What accent is that exactly?’

Mak looked up and smiled, and despite her changed appearance, despite Bogey’s spectacles, the uniform, the hair, the recognition hit him with a jolt. His face contorted.

Okay, it’s going to be like that.

‘Good. You recognise me,’ Mak said immediately. ‘That makes this simpler.’

He gave a worried glance behind him, but the guard was nowhere to be seen.

‘Don’t call him back. Let’s just have a chat first, okay?’ She held both palms in the air. ‘I’m here to tell you to call them off. I no longer care what you’ve done. I’m not after you or your family. Just call off your people and I promise I will leave you alone.’

Jack Cavanagh didn’t speak or move. Now that she was really looking at him, she noticed he looked a little unwell beneath his tan. There were bags under his pale blue eyes. He looked much older than the photographs she’d seen.

Seconds ticked by. ‘You’re mad to come here,’ he finally said.

Yes, I am.
‘Mad is a good word,’ she agreed. ‘Mad, yes, but willing to let things go.’

‘Oh?’

She knew she would not have long. The guard would be back to check on things, and then she’d have to deal with all that bulk and that semi-automatic of his. ‘Please leave me be now, Mr Cavanagh. Promise me you will leave me alone and
I will leave here, no harm done.’ Mak felt a strange flutter in her stomach, and for a moment her composure wavered. There it was, her reason for taking this drastic step. The reason she could wait no longer. She felt an unexpected sting in her eyes as they threatened to well up. With significant effort she suppressed the ill-timed swell of emotion. This was not the time or place to wonder if the flicker of life in her belly would survive her troubles to one day be safely born, or if that child would be born in a prison, or to a life on the run.

Jack watched her carefully.

‘Please,’ Mak continued, managing a steady voice. ‘Leave me alone and I will leave you alone. I am pregnant. I want to live. On my mother’s grave I promise I will leave you alone forever.’ She raised her palms again, as if to show she wasn’t armed. For a moment the gun in the small of her back no longer itched. She felt ill, imagining she might have used it. She wanted so badly to be human again, to have this all go away. She wanted to see his humanity. She wanted to see that he wasn’t to blame. That it was all a mistake. A misunderstanding.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Jack Cavanagh said and rubbed his nose. He shifted on his feet. He looked to her stomach and back to her face.

Liar.

A line of rage bubbled up and her hopeful emotions left her as quickly as they had arrived. She took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘Yes, you do, Mr Cavanagh. I can see that you do. But I wonder if you do know that I was already gone? That I wasn’t ever going to return to this country? If you, or your advisors, had not sent men to kill me, I would not be in your living room right now. I don’t want to be
here, believe me. And I’ll be happy to leave here and never, ever return if you can ensure my safety.’

‘So you come here under false pretences, posing as a masseuse? You know I could have you shot. I’d be well within my rights.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ she countered. ‘But I do know that this is the only way I could speak to you face to face. Maybe you really aren’t so callous about human life, Jack? Maybe you didn’t mean to unleash all this violence? If you are telling the truth, and you really don’t know about the contract on my head — which I seriously doubt — I fear your advisors are doing things you are not aware of.’

Cavanagh folded his arms. His eyes narrowed. ‘Have you got a wire on or something? Is that what this is?’

She shook her head, pulled the unzipped fleece back and lifted the white polo shirt a touch to reveal a stretch of her stomach. As it happened, she wasn’t wearing a wire, but the bag she’d brought with her was recording everything in that living room, all for naught if he did not admit anything. After everything, a clear, indisputably authentic video of the Cavanagh patriarch admitting his own guilt might finally be enough to push the case against him over the line, to erode his corrupt power and see him properly investigated. Especially if it was posted online.

‘I guess it doesn’t matter if you are. They’ll take it off you,’ he said.

They.
The people who protected Jack. The people who killed Jimmy for nothing. The people responsible for killing Bogey.

‘I don’t want to die. You don’t have to have me killed. I will leave you alone,’ she reiterated. ‘Please call your security man, The American, and tell him to leave me alone.’

Inside, she was growing impatient. But she had to do this right, had to say the words.