Assassin (4 page)

‘This afternoon Cameron Goldsworthy bailed me up. He said he’d heard things. He accused me of bullying Makedde Vanderwall. He mentioned her disappearance.’

The American considered this with a blink and a barely perceptible nod of his head. ‘Goldsworthy is a bold personality,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He does like to stir up trouble. There have been no new threats and nothing in the papers for four weeks. Private speculation is unavoidable, though, I’m afraid. Did he say anything concrete that concerned you?’

Jack shook his head.

‘Rumours then.’

‘Rumours could be enough to lose this deal outright,’ Jack complained, though within himself he knew the contract was lost.

‘Has Damien contacted you?’ Mr White asked.

Jack shook his head again.

Like Beverley, Jack’s wayward son, Damien, was not in the country, but not because he was holidaying with his mother. The last Jack had heard, his son was in Monaco and frankly Jack didn’t want to think about what he was doing there. Damien had been advised not to leave the country, but he hadn’t been told by a judge, and so off he’d gone. Damien was a loose cannon if ever he was and worrying about him took all of Jack’s spare time and quite a bit which was not spare. At sixty-nine, he’d wanted to hand the mantle to his only child, his only son. It wasn’t to be, it seemed.

‘Are there any updates?’

The American shook his head. ‘Your son is still in Monaco, but it looks as though he may come home. I’ll alert you if he makes any firm plans. In the meantime, we’re keeping an eye on him.’

Jack was torn between wanting his son home and wanting him to stay away, where he was less likely to cause further scandal.

‘And Vanderwall?’

‘There has been no sign of her, but we are looking into every possibility.’

What could the silence on Makedde Vanderwall mean?
Jack wondered. He was nervous that someone knew more than he did. Was she dead? Was she alive? She was supposed to have been killed in Paris, well out of the way of public scrutiny in Australia, but increasingly it appeared that might not have gone according to plan. There’d been no body found. That was good, he supposed. But Luther Hand, a man whom Jack had agonised over giving the green light to, had reportedly sent word that his mission was complete and then disappeared without asking for his remaining funds. Why would he not want the money? Jack didn’t like it. There was too much that didn’t make sense. He worried, too, that the police could be making connections. Connections that would be hard to shake off. His influence could only protect him for so long.

‘Where would Cameron Goldsworthy hear about Vanderwall?’ Jack said, though the question was rhetorical. He took a deep, ragged breath. ‘It’s not good. It’s not good …’

‘The Staples piece was not published internationally, but I’m afraid it was widely read,’ The American said. And it was still on the
Tribune
’s internet site, Jack knew. Apparently nothing could be done about that.

‘He’s not planning anything else?’

‘Richard Staples has moved on to other stories for the moment. He’s currently researching a piece about the live-export trade in Indonesia,’ Mr White said. Staples was now being monitored.

‘Keep watching him. He … I just can’t have him print another piece like that. And still no one has asked for the
second half of the funds?’ Jack said of the apparently botched attempt to have Makedde killed.

The American nodded. This information was nothing new, but it did not ease Jack’s sense of being trapped. He wondered who was whispering about him, what was being said, what would happen next. And an unsettling image came into his mind again. An image that had been recurring in his nightmares. It was the image of a dinosaur sinking deeper and deeper into blackness. Into tar.

It’s closing in. The blackness.

The American studied him quietly for a while, saying nothing. ‘If Vanderwall is alive and sets a foot in this country, we will know,’ he finally offered. ‘She won’t trouble you again.’

‘I want … I want proof. I don’t care how,’ Jack Cavanagh said. ‘I want proof she is dead.’

‘Women kill, too.’

All eyes turned to Agent Dana Harrison, the youngest member of the fledgling SVCP unit. The small group of criminal profilers was seated in the incident room on metal chairs, the whiteboard before them still grimly adorned. Their post-lunch caffeine had worn off and, until Harrison’s comment, it had looked like their discussions would fall back into circular patterns of argument.

Agent Harrison sat forwards in her chair. She’d worn her brown hair down this afternoon, Agent Andy Flynn noticed, and now she tucked a lock behind her ear.

‘All day we’ve been saying “he”, but
women kill, too
,’ Harrison argued. ‘Think of Katherine Knight.’

Katherine Knight.
The woman from Aberdeen in NSW had stabbed to death, decapitated and skinned her former de facto partner, cooking parts of his body and hanging his skin from a meat hook. It was an unusual case on many levels, not least for the post-mortem treatment of the body and the gender of the killer. She had been found at the scene, sleeping off
the drugs and violence of the night before, passed out on the blood-soaked bed. The mother of four was now doing time at Silverwater as the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life without parole. Likewise, Omaima Nelson, the US – Egyptian former model who killed, cut up and cooked her new husband, frying some of his body parts in oil, had no hope of parole.

Yes, women could kill.

‘She attacked her partner after sex. She had him in a vulnerable position. If the Berrima case is linked to this one, our perp could be a woman and these men could have been lured by her,’ Harrison concluded.

Andy smiled to himself. Dana was bright and challenging. On this one, though, his instincts told him she was wrong.

‘And the DNA traces found on the body?’ Patel said.

‘It could have been from another encounter, as Agent Flynn said. Unlikely, but possible.’

‘I guess we shouldn’t rule out any possibility at this stage, no matter how unlikely,’ Patel replied and shrugged. ‘Until we work up a more complete profile I recommend we focus on the unique pattern of wounds. As I said this morning, the marks don’t fit with mutilation intended to obscure victim identification. In my opinion it suggests trophies. Or anthropophagy,’ Patel offered.

‘Cannibalism,’ Dana Harrison said and nodded. ‘Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish both consumed the flesh of their victims.’ Unlike Knight and Nelson, whose cannibalistic tastes were in question, Dahmer and Fish proved to have eaten large parts of their victims.

‘In this instance we have an adult male victim,’ Andy said. ‘Thoughts?’

‘Dahmer was a homosexual who suffered severe mental illness,’ Patel commented. ‘He felt he could conquer loneliness by consuming his victims so they could never leave him. Is our killer mentally ill then?’

‘Have to be, really,’ Gerard muttered unhelpfully.

‘Dahmer chose easy victims. They were from a lower socio-economic group. Our man — or woman — chooses tougher targets,’ Harrison said, ignoring Gerard and poring over the file. She was really relishing the role, Andy could see. ‘Worthington was what, a strong, fit, successful small-business owner? Hardly easy pickings. To succeed the killer must be high functioning,’ she argued.

Andy watched his group, their interactions, their arguments. His mobile phone vibrated.

Mak.

His mind went immediately back to his conversation with Les Vanderwall that morning, though it was unlikely he would call again so soon.

He checked the number.

This one couldn’t wait.

‘Carry on,’ he announced to the room and left his protégés to continue their discussions. He walked the bright hall and let himself into his office, closed the door, took a seat. His hand dropped down to hover near the lower drawer for a moment, a quick shot of whisky his first instinct, but he pulled it back. He’d had far too much to drink the night before and was still suffering for it. He had to work harder to keep himself under control. Since Mak had gone missing, he was finding it hard.

Andy dialled his former boss from the landline.

‘Inspector Kelley, it’s Flynn. Sorry I missed your call.’

Detective Inspector Roderick Kelley had been Andy’s boss and mentor when he was working homicide for state police in NSW. Andy admired him enormously and after a few high-profile cases, most notably the Stiletto Killer case, Andy had earned Kelley’s much-sought-for respect. In the most recent policing reshuffle, which included police headquarters moving to Parramatta, Kelley had been quietly offered the position of commander of the homicide squad. Andy knew he declined the position and the pay rise it would bring mostly because he preferred working cases with his team and despised the politics of the higher levels of policing. According to Andy’s good friend and former police partner Detective Senior Constable Jimmy Cassimatis, Kelley was the only detective inspector in the new building to have his own office. It was clear that his old boss remained something of a legend within the NSW police. Without his recommendations Andy suspected he would not have been able to get the SVCP unit up at all.

‘Flynn,’ the inspector replied, typically economical of speech. ‘The Hempsey murder we discussed last night …’

They’d spoken late, Andy recalled, though truthfully he didn’t remember the conversation well. He’d been several hours into staring at the bottom of a whisky tumbler, which increasingly filled and emptied each evening like a tide pool after the sun set. Andy frowned and searched for the details as Kelley had presented them on the phone.
Single homicide. A woman in her thirties. The staging of the body suggested sexual sadism.
Andy had suggested that it was unlikely to be a first offence, considering the description of the wounds.

‘We’ve found a couple of incidents in the area that fit the pattern you asked me to look for,’ Kelley told him. ‘Two
sexual assault cold cases, both also in the Surry Hills and Strawberry Hills area. I think we could benefit from your perspective … the perspective of your unit. How soon can you get here?’

Andy felt a rush of adrenaline. ‘Three or four hours by car,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Is the scene still secure? I’d like to see everything in situ.’

‘The body is at Glebe now.’ The well-known ‘city’ morgue. ‘But forensics are still going through. I’ll see to it they don’t release the house to the family until you’re finished. Come to my office first thing in the morning. And, also … I’ve been on the phone with Berrima. If you want to send a man over to look at the cold case there, they’ll be receptive.’

Andy nodded to himself. Kelley was on side. ‘That’s good news.’ Certainly it was if the Berrima case
did
turn out to be linked to the Worthington homicide. ‘I have someone in mind. And I’ll be bringing another member of the team for Sydney,’ Andy added before signing off.

‘I’ll see you and your man then,’ Kelley said and hung up.

Andy leaned back in his chair. This was a small breakthrough. Within police departments there was still some resistance to using profilers and when it was deemed necessary they often farmed out the role to academics who had never seen action, or even American FBI profilers who were flown in to assist in key international cases. A lot of state police still felt a certain bitterness when the AFP tangled with their cases, even as consultants. The new SVCP unit was not well funded or well understood by others in the law enforcement community. It was a program in its infancy — a program designed to keep resources within the police departments. Despite this undeniable advantage, it had been hard to get up and it would be far too easy to have
the funding pulled. For it to work, old habits needed to change. This was part of that change, he hoped.

Andy put in a call to Berrima to arrange the details of his unit’s involvement. When he returned to the incident room he found his profilers were still discussing the Worthington case. He let the team continue for a few minutes while he considered his strategy.

‘The Berrima case does have several parallels,’ Harrison was saying. Andy watched her, letting her finish her comments before announcing his news. ‘… and not only the wounds.’ When she finished speaking she turned and looked at him, and she saw the anticipation in his face. And once she did all the faces in the room turned to Andy, too. They waited for him to speak.

‘I’ve been on the phone with New South Wales,’ he announced. ‘Patel, I’m sending you to Berrima to look at the cold case. I’m working on getting you to Benalla to examine the Worthington crime scene as well, but Victoria has been slower to come on board. If the cases are linked, you’ll need to present a solid case to argue it. It crossed borders so be particularly mindful. No one wants to claim a serial killer.’

There was a subdued feeling of triumph in the room and Patel seemed pleased to have been chosen for the Worthington case. ‘That’s good news. When do I travel?’

‘They’re expecting you tomorrow. And Harrison,’ Andy continued, looking to Dana, ‘we will travel to Sydney this afternoon. There is a homicide there they’d like us to take a look at.’

He hadn’t actually seen Agent Harrison smile before, he realised, but now the corners of her mouth turned up.

‘We’re being let out of the cage?’

‘We’re being let out of the cage,’ Andy confirmed.

Agent Flynn found himself in the driver’s seat of his Honda, outside Agent Harrison’s flat, looking at his watch. It was past four. If she didn’t take long, they might beat the worst of the rush-hour traffic getting out of Canberra. He’d hastily packed for one night, maybe two. Kelley had sent through preliminary details on the Hempsey homicide and information on the sexual assaults that might be linked to the case, and now Andy looked down at his laptop, which was propped open awkwardly on his thighs, heating up at the base. The crime-scene images were as disturbing as Kelley had led him to believe.

Ms Hempsey had been bound and gagged. She had cuts all over her body.

You tortured her.

And you liked it.

He frowned, closed the computer and took a breath. He pulled out his phone and dialled Jimmy Cassimatis, his former police partner of over nine years. He hadn’t visited for a while.

‘Cassimatis,’ Jimmy answered.

‘Jimmy. How are you?’

‘Well, if it isn’t the Golden Boy,’ he replied mockingly, recognising his friend’s voice. ‘How am I? I’m working with a pack of fucking arseholes. That’s how I am. You? How are things in the ivory tower?’

Andy laughed. ‘No ivory here. And no tower. And Inspector Kelley is not an arsehole.’

‘Not Kelley. Jesus, I’d love to still be working with Kelley. No,
Hunt
is the arsehole. If I had to deal with Kelley all day, it would be a fucking holiday,’ Jimmy explained.

Andy doubted that.

‘This guy’s fucking arrogance is driving me batshit.’ He’d made inspector and Jimmy was shifted under him. ‘Honestly, he’s been inspector for two seconds and he acts like he fucking owns everyone.’

Andy had heard that Hunt was after Kelley’s job and now that he’d made inspector he was already gunning for a promotion to commander, too. He’d risen in the ranks with unprecedented speed since Andy’s departure.

‘Well, I’d be happy to swap with you,’ Andy lied.

That had perhaps been true only the day before, but now that the unit was finally getting some traction and he would soon be on the road with Harrison, he felt differently. Still, he did miss working homicide, particularly under Kelley. And he missed spending more time on the street, getting his hands dirty.

‘Yeah, right. You don’t have to deal with psychos any more; you only have to talk about them,’ Jimmy complained.

‘Is that what they’re saying? Look, I might be able to swing a visit.’

‘Thank Christ. Angie was starting to think you’d forgotten us.’

Andy shifted in his seat. He looked to the door again. Dana was nowhere to be seen. ‘You know the Hempsey murder? The young woman in Surry Hills?’ he said.

‘Yeah. Ugly thing that is.’

‘It’s come my way. I’m headed to Sydney now. We’ll be going over it with Kelley in the morning. Looks like a potential serial crime to me,’ Andy explained.

‘A serial killer?
Skata
. As if Sydney hasn’t had enough of those.’

The shadow of the Stiletto Killer could still be felt. As
with so many high-profile serial-killer cases, the newspapers rehashed the details any time a major crime was mentioned. Worried parents were still known to warn their daughters not to go out at night in high-heeled shoes, as if that could protect them.

‘Want to stay with us?’ Jimmy asked. ‘How about dinner tonight? Angie will be offended if you say no.’

‘Tonight? I don’t know.’ He was already across most of what Kelley had sent, he supposed. The crime scene was still being analysed. ‘Yeah, okay. Yes to dinner, anyway. But I’ll be staying at a hotel in the city.’ He’d stayed at the Cassimatis home plenty of times. Angie was an excellent host, but with four children in the place it wasn’t somewhere to stay for work.

Movement caught his eye and Andy noticed Harrison emerge from her flat with a duffle bag slung over her shoulder. ‘I should go,’ he said and looked to the hands of his watch again. The drive would take about three hours. Maybe less if they were lucky. ‘See you seven-thirty — eight? Is that too late?’

‘Sweet. After dinner we can lose the kids and have a beer,’ Jimmy said and hung up.

Andy leaned across and opened the passenger side. Agent Harrison had changed for the drive, and now she wore a brown leather jacket over a white cotton shirt and slim-fitting denim jeans. She slid inside, bringing with her the scent of her perfume, and when she turned and smiled at Andy, clutching her duffle bag in her lap, there was no denying to himself that he found her beautiful.

As soon as he realised it, his instinct was to keep her at a professional distance.

‘Put that in the back,’ he said more gruffly than he’d intended, and that lovely, rare smile faded. ‘Can you read okay in the car?’ he asked.

She nodded.

He looked out the windshield and turned the key in the ignition.