Assassin (8 page)

There it was again, the Stiletto Killer reference Jimmy had mentioned. Andy frowned. Agent Harrison watched him, also no doubt making the connection.

And the toe. The perp cut off the same toe, didn’t he?
Andy thought.
Yes. The big right toe. The same one the Stiletto Killer severed before you found Mak in that awful cabin. The one the surgeons reattached.

‘I didn’t see anything in the file about Victoria Hempsey having shoes taken. Do we suspect he stole them?’ Andy managed in a deceptively neutral voice.

‘She was attacked in her flat. It’s impossible to know what she had been wearing or what might be missing,’ Kelley replied. ‘She was found barefoot.’

Andy had certainly noticed.

‘The second reported case was twelve or so months later. Victim, Yvette Graney. Again, she left a bar alone to get a taxi
and was dragged into an alley, this time off Crown Street in Surry Hills.’

‘That’s near Ms Hempsey’s house,’ Harrison ventured.

‘Yes. Graney was tied up, beaten and raped. The attacker broke her nose, pummelled her till she was black and blue. Again, no witnesses. He took her shoes, but this time he took her purse and jacket as well. She wasn’t left tied up like the previous case, but she said he’d used handcuffs during the attack. The two cases were linked by DNA, so we know our perp is the same. Full details are in the database.’

‘There were no good suspects at the time?’

Kelley shook his head. ‘Nothing that stuck. You remember Deller?’

Andy did. He was an officer Andy had worked with at one time.

‘He handled the Plotsky and Graney cases. He might be able to tell you more. He moved to Tasmania with his wife last year. I’ve got his details for you.’

Andy nodded.

Kelley looked from Andy to Dana, and something hard flickered behind his eyes. ‘You two go to the Hempsey place. Tell me what you think. This fucking bastard … Sorry,’ he said, looking to Dana.

‘He’s a fucking bastard, sir,’ she fired back without hesitation.

Kelley nodded, relaxing. ‘This bastard tortured the woman. It wasn’t enough to rape her and kill her. You’ve got all the access you want for Strike Force Pawn. Anything that helps close this one fast.’

Strike Force Pawn.
The names were computer generated and some of them were odd, Andy thought.

‘I have arranged your access to Eagle Eye,’ Kelley continued. The
Eagle i
investigational management system. It was a police database where all the resources, statements, victimology, investigation log and exhibits for the strike force were electronically filed. He would be able to see everything related to the case and each update as it was uploaded.

Andy took the details and thanked him.

Kelley led them out of his office. ‘You know Detective Mahoney? She’ll take you through the scene.’

Karen Mahoney was waiting, and the sight of her gave Andy an unexpected kick in the guts.

She was a close friend of Mak’s.

‘Hi, Andy,’ she said and put out her freckled hand. She was in her late twenties or early thirties. Her corkscrew red hair was tied back into a clip, and there was something changed about her face, Andy thought. Something in the eyes. The past two months appeared to have taken a toll. They shook hands, eyes locked on to one another for a brief moment. A flicker behind the eyes was enough to communicate their shared grief about Mak.

‘You guys wanna go in your own car?’ Mahoney asked, releasing Andy’s hand.

He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

The late Victoria Hempsey had owned an attractive 1880s Victorian terrace on a tree-lined street in Surry Hills, just a block from a small grassy park with children’s play swings. It had recently been painted slate grey to contrast with the white filigree ironwork garlanding the entrance and the shallow upper balcony. The front door was a mere two steps from the footpath and, as on each of the row of terraces to either side,
the lower windows were barred like a prison’s. Although the trendy bars, boutiques and eateries of Crown Street were a short walk away, the area was no stranger to police attention, housing as it did a dramatic cross-section of residents from families and well-to-do creatives to drug addicts and ‘troubled youths’.

Today a tall, fair-haired junior police officer was installed on the quiet street at the front of Victoria Hempsey’s terrace, guarding the scene of the homicide to preserve the chain of evidence.

‘Agents Flynn and Harrison, this is Constable Hans Reichhold. One of our finest,’ Mahoney said and elbowed him gently.

The constable cracked only the slightest smile and logged their names and time of entry on his notepad. He’d been waiting for them. They would likely be the last ones through before forensics finished up, cleaning services came and the premises was released to Ms Hempsey’s bereaved family.

Mahoney ducked under crime-scene tape marking the outer perimeter and stepped up to the front door. ‘Forensics are basically done processing the scene. They’ll be back in an hour to take everything,’ she said. She bent under a second tape and stepped over the threshold of the terrace, followed by Flynn and Harrison. She closed the door behind them.

Though the body was gone, they were being given uninterrupted time, at least.

Andy nodded. He paused to take in the entry.

‘Not a bad place,’ Harrison said, walking through.

Inside, the terrace had high ceilings and white walls adorned with colourful, unsigned paintings, perhaps do-it-yourself or bought from the local markets. A large, chocolate
leather couch was covered in multicoloured throws. Art books were stacked on the floor. Cut flowers had begun wilting in a glass vase on a low, wooden coffee table, next to expensive photography books. Hempsey had been working for a small ad agency, Andy recalled. The rear of the terrace had been renovated to open onto a small, terracotta-tiled courtyard, decorated with pot plants and a small, modern fountain. A wicker sun lounge. Balinese carvings. Tibetan flags. Ferns and hydrangeas. It was an inner-city oasis.

Andy walked around a circular wooden kitchen table set with shells and garden flowers in jam jars, his interest caught by a corkboard decorated with cards and photographs stuck with pins. He stood before it, looking from image to image. Here he could see the elements of the victim’s life that had brought her the most joy. The grin of a young niece. An older couple posing before the Eiffel Tower. A gathering of women holding beer mugs at a resort in Bali, skin tanned and glossy. One image seemed to bring her to life most: Ms Hempsey in a white gown embellished with tiny beads and ribbons of lace, her eyes nearly shut with the strength of a bright, toothy laugh. The arms of her late husband circled her waist, the two of them caught in a moment of joy, bathed in orbs of sunspots.
Victoria Hempsey.
A daughter. An aunt. A sister. A wife. She had been widowed at only thirty-two. Her late husband, Peter Groth, had died in an automobile accident eighteen months earlier, in the path of a drunk driver running a red light on a Thursday night in Newtown.

The pair had shared the unlucky gene.

Andy turned from the corkboard to see that Mahoney was leaning in the entryway, letting them make their observations uninterrupted. Agent Harrison was staring at the heavily
bloodstained hardwood floor near the back windows. She looked a little pale.

‘You been to a lot of crime scenes?’ he asked Harrison quietly, walking over and stepping clear of the yellow plastic cards, like upright Scrabble tiles, marking out the exhibits of interest — smears of blood, the smudgy remnants of fingerprinting powder, the place where discarded panties had been discovered.

Agent Harrison shook her head. ‘He tied her up here on the floor, near the window,’ she said. ‘That’s not very private.’

The room was familiar from the crime-scene photographs, but it always looked different live. Andy squinted, looking from the dark stains to the large window, recalling the position of the body, the state of her when she’d been found after some bastard had assaulted her and bled her out.

Andy opened the doors that led onto the walled courtyard, and stood in the doorway as the humid Sydney air hit him like a cloud. Harrison walked past him to step outside. He followed, watching her. She took a deep breath and looked around, adjusting her ponytail with an efficient, distinctly feminine movement of her delicate hands. The fountain was turned off. Weeds crept up between the terracotta tiles. The air was still. Andy looked up. The back of the terraces in the next street encroached onto the little courtyard, throwing the rear half into shade. Windows peered down on them.

‘Did I remember that the curtains were open?’ Harrison asked.

‘The victim is gone, but everything else should be unchanged,’ he told her, observing that the curtains, which were a light cream colour and made of some kind of gauzy fabric, were tied back on one side and pulled partially back
on the other. He hoped to hell nothing had been altered. Forensics had left their mark. He could see the smudgy residue of white Lanconide and dark carbon fingerprinting powders on various surfaces. The murder weapon, or weapons, had not been left at the scene, but several sets of latent prints not belonging to the victim had been recovered. And the crucial DNA — the semen. It would take another two or three days to be analysed.

‘The curtains were open?’ he shouted to Mahoney.

The detective sauntered over and leaned in the doorway. ‘Yeah, they were open,’ she replied. ‘ISRAPS will take another few days, but I’ve got video.’ ISRAPS, the Interactive Scene Recording and Presentation System, allowed for a three-hundred-sixty-degree, high-definition view of the crime scene, with the ability to zoom in and out on any details. It was a new visual technology, like something out of
Blade Runner.
It could take a week to process.

‘Got a copy of the video for you.’ Mahoney handed the DVD disc to Andy with a cheeky smile, as though it were a box of chocolates. They closed the outer door and came inside. Andy propped his laptop open on the coffee table and slid the disc into the side. Harrison hovered nearby.

‘Shall I?’ Detective Mahoney said and pressed ‘play’ on Andy’s laptop. She fast-forwarded to the footage of Victoria Hempsey’s body at the scene, recorded to show what the officers had found. He asked her to freeze the frame.

Victoria.

What he saw was a stark contrast to the vital, smiling woman on the corkboard. What the video showed was lifeless flesh — abused, tortured and utterly dehumanised. Exposed. Staged for maximum humiliation and shock. The perpetrator
had arranged her dead, naked body with the legs open, the arms pulled behind her back to thrust her bare chest upwards. Bra pulled down. Undies torn open and thrown to one side. There were ligature marks around her ankles and wrists, though the attacker had taken the ties off her ankles to pose her for whoever was to later discover her — her sister, who would need a lot of therapy to deal with what she’d seen. The blood on the floor was heavy because the killer had beaten and tortured his victim before her death. Her face was puffy and bruised, one eye nearly swollen over. Victoria had suffered numerous superficial cuts and the loss of an entire toe, which was not consistent with the defensive wounds on her hands and feet. At some point she had broken free of her killer, but she hadn’t got away. He’d hit her repeatedly with some blunt object and got her back down.

And she did not get to her feet again.

There had been no forced entry to the terrace. It was possible Victoria knew her killer.

Andy stood quietly, watching as Mahoney fast-forwarded again, stopping at various points of interest in the crime-scene video. Harrison asked her to stop and rewind a few times, taking notes. Once they’d covered the entire scene and the body of the deceased was being bagged — paper bags and rolls of tape wrapped around her hands and head to preserve any evidence — he’d had enough, though that final disturbing visual stayed in his mind. Her vulnerable body, faceless.

Harrison had her arms tightly crossed, he noticed.

Andy left the two women to make his way back to the courtyard, pushing the door open and squinting at the sunlight. This time the humid air felt like a relief. Felt necessary. After some time Agent Harrison joined him.

‘Do you think the killer wanted to be discovered? Got a thrill from the risk?’ Harrison suggested, gazing back through the glass at the bloody floor inside.

Andy shook his head. ‘He didn’t want to be caught. He wanted his work to be
seen
. He may have even pulled the curtains back before he departed, to show off.’

She frowned, her brow pinching.

No, Victoria Hempsey’s killer was not in the least bit ashamed of what he’d done. He didn’t want to be caught. He didn’t want to be stopped. And given the opportunity, he would do it again. Andy turned from the bloodstains visible through the glass and peered up at the windows behind them, pointing with one finger. ‘I want to speak with every one of those neighbours. Today.’

Fausto Martinez Villanueva took a seat at the Café de l’Opera at a small round table near the window. The old establishment was a showcase of neo-classical architecture and 1920s art nouveau. The glass-and-wood exterior was formed of soft curves, and the interior featured swirling motifs and the figures of elegant nineteenth-century women with long dresses and parasols etched into decorative mirrors surrounded by star-shaped studs.

A waiter approached his table, wearing a formal black bow tie, vest and pants, and crisp white shirt.

‘
Café solo
,’ he said.

‘
Si, senyor
,’ the waiter replied and disappeared.

Fausto looked at his watch. It was still a little under one hour before Javier Rafel was due to arrive at his shop on nearby Carrer de l’Hospital. There was still time. He sipped his coffee slowly, watching the crowds pass on La Rambla. The shops were closed for the public holiday, but the tourists were out in full force, with their backpacks and cameras and bad T-shirts,
the street vendors selling them expensive sodas and Gaudí postcards. The McDonald’s was overflowing, he noticed.

Discreetly, Fausto popped two Adderall with the final sip of his coffee, and then ordered a second
café solo
from the waiter. The hit of adrenaline pulsed through him, wiring him for the work ahead. This familiar habit gave him the necessary edge, and he needed the energy after making the drive from Seville to Barcelona in just under ten hours. Flying in would have incurred certain risks. It was better that no one could confirm he was in town. He did not wish to be traced by tickets or credit cards or anything else that would place him in Barcelona on this day. Not with his business here.

His business was a woman.

Though still young, Fausto had ended twenty-one lives. But he had not killed a woman before. The traditionalist in him resisted the idea — or perhaps it was the romantic in him? — but the sheer weight of Euros at stake more than ameliorated his guilt. Everyone died. It was a fact of living. This woman was a person like any other. An adult and therefore fair game. The only difference was that by the end of the day she would be dead and Fausto would be considerably the richer for it. Anyone with that high a price on her head was going to get hit by someone. It may as well be him.

Fausto, like many in the game, had noticed the half-million-Euro offering for her neat execution. But where to find her? Weeks had passed, and he had almost forgotten about her when Javier Rafel contacted him. The well-known counterfeiter wanted a twenty per cent finder’s fee for his troubles, which was steep considering he wasn’t risking anything. But that still left four hundred K for an afternoon’s work. Well worth the long drive.

The woman, Makedde Vanderwall, was due to return to Javier Rafel’s shop for her passport at five. The fat counterfeiter had asked that she not be harassed until she left his shop. No doubt he wanted the payment for his work before she was taken. When she exited the shop, there would be plenty to distract her from Fausto’s presence in the crowd. The timing of her visit to Javier’s shop had been carefully chosen.

When she emerged, Fausto would be ready.

‘Bogey,’ Makedde Vanderwall whispered.

Bogey.

Mak rolled over and breathed in Bogey’s dark, musky hair. She kissed his ambrosial mouth — the sculpted cupid’s bow of the upper lip and sensual fullness of his pillow-like lower lip. His candied tongue. His warm skin, illustrated with ink in lines and shapes to trace with an appreciative finger.

Yes.

Her lover was returned to her, in her arms and in her mouth and inside her. And even from within layers of her sleep the familiarity of his touch brought a tear to Makedde’s tightly shut eyes.

Bogey Mortimer.

She tilted her face to the white ceiling, arched her back. Her fingers caressed the clean bed sheets, fingertip to cotton. Shafts of sunlight lit her body as she pulled the sheets from her thighs, feeling his touch, or at least a touch she felt was his.

And then like every dream of him for the past two months, her tears of joy at Bogey’s return transformed swiftly to tears of horror. This was a brutal evolution of the subconscious, an inevitable nightmare that was somewhat more vivid and detailed than the brief erotic dream that had preceded it. A
recent memory replayed perennially in the hours when her conscious mind let go: Bogey’s lips were cold and Makedde kissed them with finality, despair, revulsion. His body was no longer responsive, sensual and warm. It was heavy and exanimate, a bundle of flesh and bone, reeking of death and the pungent stench of rotting flowers. She was no longer in her lover’s bed: she was alone with him in the French countryside, struggling to pull his heavy corpse up by the arms to the edge of the shallow grave she’d dug for him. Shaking, fingers raw, she gave one last effort and got him over the edge.

She dropped him and he hit the dirt below her with a dull thud, and did not flinch.

Bogey.

Mak did not know how long she stood there, weeping, her fingers bleeding. She’d wrapped herself in her lover’s leather jacket to battle the chill night air, but it was little comfort. The jacket was speckled with his blood. Mak had thought she’d finally gone mad, holding herself against the dawn light and watching his inert body in that dirty hole. His legs twisted. His chest unmoving. How long had she stood there, transfixed with horror? He was a young man, dead before thirty. And why? Because he’d loved Mak, if only for a short time. She’d loved him. In a way it was her fault. She’d encouraged him to visit her in Europe. But how could she have known what would unfold? Bogey deserved better than to be killed by a brutal stranger and buried in a makeshift grave, his loved ones cursed never to know what had become of him. He deserved better, but there it was. The world cared nothing for justice.

In her nightmares, it was all the same. Mak buried him again and again. There was his body, cold and vulnerable in death.
There was the grave, the smell of fresh dirt. It was Bogey in there, and yet it was not. And now with the first shovelful of dirt that fell she felt herself pull away, back to the cellar where she’d spent so many cold days and nights alone, wondering about her own death, reduced to drinking water from a cat’s bowl and trying, like a dog, to break the chain that bound her.

The cellar where she had given too much of herself in order to survive.

The cellar that had changed her forever.

Always, her dreams brought her back to that unspeakable place. The grating metal cuff was around her ankle once more, the damned cuff of a convict or circus animal. In her fevered sleep she reached down and tried to soothe the torn flesh of her ankle beneath the unyielding metal of the cuff, some small part of her still naïvely hoping for a saviour — hoping that Bogey would find her.

Not knowing he was already dead.

Makedde Vanderwall woke from her siesta feeling disoriented and unrested. She remembered snatches of her nightmare, and she tried to block them out. The memories were not welcome.

The sun was high. An hour had passed, perhaps two. Through the metal slats over the window, streams of sunlight had come to rest on the bed where the sheets were twisted around her. Her bare legs were exposed, warm and sunlit. After only a short time in Spain Mak had recalled the importance of the traditional afternoon rest. Many businesses closed in the afternoons for the siesta. The locals took their evening meals very late. The many children’s parks in every suburb were still full at nine, and it was not uncommon to see locals walking prams well after sundown, hours after North American and
Australian children would have been put to bed. Darkness was good for her anonymity and she embraced the early hours here, and the late ones. It was better to get into the rhythm of the locals, when she could. And sometimes, if she was lucky, she was spared her more vicious nightmares during the daily rest.

But not today.

Mak looked at the clock and noted that her alarm was set to go off in only one minute. She switched it off, sat up and stretched. This was an important afternoon and she’d wanted to be calm and rested. If she was not entirely rested, at least she could do her best to be calm. Mak made her way to the kitchen to flick on the cappuccino machine, which gurgled and hissed as it began to warm up. In the bathroom she brushed her teeth and rubbed damp fingertips over her eyelids, where mascara had streaked during her nap. Her eyes were red, as if she might have been crying.

She needed that coffee.

The counterfeiter, Javier Rafel, had asked her to come to his shop at five. As she prepared her afternoon coffee, determined to go about each step with equanimity — grinding the beans, packing the grip firmly, steaming the milk — she realised once again that her impending return to his shop filled her with anxiety. She had not felt comfortable in the man’s presence, but she supposed that was hardly surprising. He did, after all, create false documents for a living. He was criminal by trade and Mak was the daughter of a cop. Given her upbringing, she could be forgiven for finding the exchange uncomfortable. There was something else as well, she suspected, some other level of dread pushing at the edges of her subconscious, but it did not bear examination. She simply had to go to him and get her passport. She didn’t have to like the man.

Thirty minutes later, dressed in a sleeveless hoodie and jeans, with large sunglasses covering her eyes, Mak strode down the broad, sunlit promenade of La Rambla, bobbing and weaving between visiting tourists. The air was filled with the sounds of honking cars and chatter in Catalan, Spanish, Italian, French and occasional snatches of British English. The shops along La Rambla on either side were closed, their grubby, graffitied metal shutters locked down, providing a somewhat less aesthetic than usual view of the famous thoroughfare. But the city seemed much busier than usual. The long weekend had brought hordes of visitors from all over Europe. Had this been America, she suspected the obligations of a key religious public holiday could not hope to outweigh the capitalist possibilities of so many keen visitors. The shops would have been open from dawn to dusk for the influx of holiday cash.

Though the shops and markets were closed, the restaurants were overflowing, and the tatty stalls along the promenade were operating, still selling their cheap bags with
BARCELONA!
written on every square inch, their plastic flamenco dancers, their fridge magnets and their rolls of postcards and greeting cards plastered with images of Gaudí’s most photogenic work: Park Güell, Casa Mila, Casa Batiló, Palau Güell, Colònia Güell. Her eyes fell on a striking image of his famous church, the Sagrada Família, with its towering spires and exterior that seemed to melt, or rise from the ground like alien stalagmites, a building as iconic and controversial as any in the world, started in 1882 and still unfinished more than eight decades after its creator’s death.

She blinked.

When she’d been ill, Bogey had given her a card with an image of the Sagrada Família on the front. They’d talked about Gaudí in their short time together. Bogey was very interested in design. He had never been to Barcelona or seen the celebrated Sagrada Família but wanted very much to go. They’d wanted to see it together. After Paris.

It was the same card, she realised. That man was selling the same card Bogey had given her.

Makedde looked away and continued walking, head down, grateful for the sunglasses that shielded her eyes from the crowd. The lenses slowly filled with tears as she walked. She’d dared to sit in the park in front of the Sagrada Família one evening as the sun set, two weeks after first arriving in Barcelona and breaking into Luther’s apartment. She’d sat on the bench until the sky was black. Alone. Numb. Unable to process all that had happened.

Bogey is dead. That life is over now.

Mak walked on, and as she approached the intersection of Carrer de l’Hospital she noticed chequered blue-and-white police cars and uniformed officers blocking the way. The street that ran along La Rambla on this side was free of vehicles. That was unusual. The traffic normally ran both ways, a single lane travelling south to the port on the west side of La Rambla and one running north on the east. This side was blocked off. Now she came around the corner of the street and paused. She lifted the sunglasses from her cheeks, wiped under her eyes and put the glasses back on again.

What is this?

Crowds of people filled the sidewalks on both sides of the single-lane street, packed shoulder to shoulder, several deep. Excited faces. Bodies shifting from foot to foot. There was
a palpable anticipation in the air. Many people had cameras slung around their necks. They held their backpacks and purses protectively at their stomachs to avoid the prying fingers of pickpockets, or perhaps simply because of the crush. Small children sat on shoulders. The balconies of the apartments and hostels on either side were four or five storeys high and filled with spectators.

Good Friday.
There would be some kind of Semana Santa — Holy Week — parade, she guessed.

It took some effort to weave her way through the thick crowd, past the closed shops. She passed the old church she’d seen before, but saw no indication of what was drawing people to the area. They were not filing in to pray, but were instead standing outside, watching for something, or someone.

When Mak arrived at Javier’s shop she found the metal shutter half shut. She ducked under it and straightened in the shadows on the other side, then stepped over his well-worn step, feeling tense. Inside, Javier was waiting for her. He spotted her and put down the silver spoon he was polishing.

‘You have the money?’ he said gruffly.

Mak stood in the centre of the small, cluttered pawnshop. With the shutter partially closed it was dark. It felt even more claustrophobic than before.

She nodded to him. ‘
Si.
I have your money.’

Javier left the counter heaped with someone’s discarded silverware to pull the shutter down outside his door yet further. Watching him shut her in caused her stomach to twist, and she wondered fleetingly if they were alone in the shop.