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Pete smiled. ‘Looking to do some shopping, are you?’

Mak grinned back, but her lips were sealed. The only thing to do when she was angry was to get to work.

Mak arrived at the terrace and parked her black bike next to Andy’s little red Honda. She was going to have to borrow it again—not that he’d care. She needed a car for what she was planning to do.

She put a call in to Pete’s contact Sergei. ‘Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. I know you’re probably closing soon.’

‘Yep.’

‘I have something urgent. I just need a couple of items. How’s your stock at the moment?’

‘Pretty good,’ he responded.

‘Can I swing past?’

There was not much of a pause. Sergei’s cash register was always willing to accept payment.

When Mak pulled up at the daggy little doorway on Parramatta Road with the shop sign that said
SPY WORLD
—complete with a cartoon symbol of big eyes doing a suspicious sideways glance—Sergei was just opening the door for her.

‘So what can I help you with this afternoon, Miss Vanderwall?’

Sergei never called anyone by his or her first name. He was a lanky Russian immigrant with a heavy accent, a number-one buzz cut and a remarkable talent for being able to turn just about any basic household item—photo albums, cans of soup, desk clocks, light switches, thermostats—into surveillance devices. He could probably implant a tiny camera into your dentures if you wanted it.

‘Ah, I am just looking for the usual, Sergei. Throwaways. Nothing too fancy.’

Mak followed him through the doorway and up a staircase to the first floor. Inside his shop were glass display cases filled with every type of surveillance equipment Mak could hope for, and then some.

‘So what do you need?’

‘A couple of taps.’ Phone tappers.

Sergei disappeared into the back room to get them for her while she perused some of his keyhole camera handiwork longingly. One day she wanted to be on a job where she needed one of his infamous button cameras. The camera was a tiny keyhole lens positioned in the centre hole of
a regular jacket button. The video images it could capture were as clear as day, and it fed all of the footage into a receiver Mak could carry in a small purse. It was a brilliant piece of craftsmanship. It even came with extra matching buttons so the jacket would look uniform. It would take a highly trained—and suspicious—eye to spot the miniature lens. There was a similar set-up available in the head of a screw, which could be fitted to any wall or device. It too came with extra screws to match the doorway or wall the lens was fitted to. It was a tight surveillance unit with high quality reception, and it was
very
expensive. Mak couldn’t afford it unless a client was picking up the tab, and in this case there was no way to warrant filming anyone’s activities. Not yet, anyway. Nonetheless, she drooled over the items in the glass cases as if they were rare and precious jewels.

Sergei returned with the phone tappers, which were basically small double clamps to be attached to a phone line and fed back via transmitter. The recording device only kicked in when the line became active, so it recorded only conversation, never dead air.

He also appeared to be holding something behind his back. Mak was alarmed.

‘Sergei, what are you—’

‘I thought you might want to have a look at these,’ he said, and triumphantly passed her a pair of dark sunglasses.

‘You didn’t!’ she squealed, noticing that the glasses were a large Jackie O–style shape.

Sergei smiled, clearly pleased with himself.

She tried the glasses on. ‘These are brilliant. Utterly brilliant!’ She pulled her hair back and examined the range on them. ‘Wow.’

With carefully applied airbrushed mirror paint, Sergei had turned a pair of designer sunglasses into spyglasses. On the outside the glasses looked completely normal, but on the inside of the lens the outer corner was mirrored so that the wearer could actually see behind themselves. Mak was very impressed with the work.

‘I can’t believe you did this.’

‘Well, you said they would be nice if they were designer shape.’

Sergei carried some cheap ready-made ones that were somewhat lacking in style. Obviously he had taken her comments about them to heart.

‘Well, obviously I will have to take those beauties.’ She placed them on the counter with the tappers.

Sergei was practically glowing with pride. ‘How is the phone going?’

‘Brilliant, thanks. Works a charm. I got to use it in an insurance sting last month.’

The phone he had sold her was a fake mobile fitted with a small lens in the top, where infrared usually went. Mak could place it on a table pointed in the direction she wanted to film, or hold it in her hand and pretend to be checking messages, all
the while clearly recording everything her subject was doing. The resolution was incredible.

She’d only used the phone once so far, but the insurance company had been very impressed with her work. She had filmed one of their suspicious worker’s compensation beneficiaries bowling at the local alley, even though his claim stated that his back injury prevented him from lifting anything. Yeah, right.

Mak paused, thinking of what else she might need. Sergei had a lot of tempting equipment that she couldn’t afford.

‘Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot—do you have a double adapter in stock at the moment?’

Marian had told Mak many times that there were no coincidences. Perhaps she was right. Mak’s handbag had been stolen, Marian’s office bugged, and the police had not even called her about the video. But Mak still resisted the idea that the cops might have actually stolen files from Marian’s office without a warrant and bugged the place. The implications would be unnecessarily ugly.

Nonetheless, things were getting weird.

If there were no coincidences, then someone knew about Mak’s investigation and didn’t like it one bit. She was planning on staying a little quieter about the rest of her investigation now. Especially this next part. Having Marian’s office
broken into was exactly the sort of thing a guilty person did to find out what others knew about their activities. But who was it? Robert Groobelaar had no reason at all to steal his file, Tobias was in jail, and on Mak’s radar that only left Simon Aston and his rich buddy. That was where Mak planned to concentrate her efforts until she got some answers.

‘We have a cop outside the house.’

The American frowned. There shouldn’t be any police bothering the Cavanaghs. Not now. Not ever. It was his job to see that they didn’t.

‘It’s a red Honda,’ his security man Stone continued. ‘He drove past slowly, twice, with his lights off. Now he is down the block with the engine running. I’m not sure if he is planning to come in or what.’

This could be troublesome.

‘Name?’ he asked.

‘I ran the plates. Car is registered to an Andrew Flynn. A homicide detective.’

‘I see. And is the front gate closed?’

‘Yes.’

The walls protecting the Cavanagh home were tall and could not easily be scaled, and the front gate too was large and impenetrable. This police officer could not enter without a search warrant; The American would see to it that they didn’t get one. If the cop rang the doorbell, The American would advise that they not answer.

‘Okay. The client is at home,’ The American said. ‘Keep an eye on that car. I will let him know—’

‘Wait,’ Stone said, interrupting him. ‘The car is moving again. He’s driving off. No…not he, a
she.
There is a blonde woman driving.’

‘Not the detective?’ he said, puzzled.

‘Not unless he is crouched down in the vehicle next to her. It is a woman and it looks like she is alone.’

‘What is she doing now?’ The American asked.

‘She’s at the end of the street now. I think she’s leaving.’

‘Follow her.’

Mak sat low in the passenger seat of Andy’s red Honda.

From the information she could glean, Damien Cavanagh still lived with his parents in their luxurious Darling Point home, even though he was almost thirty years old. He could probably stay there indefinitely, never needing to think about getting a job. In contrast, Mak had moved out at fifteen to head overseas and start working as a model. Would she have been his type, at fifteen? Would she have been naive enough to go to a party like the ones he threw?

As Mak had discovered, the Cavanagh house was flanked by impenetrable stone walls. She could not even see the house itself from the street, and she would not have been able to scale the walls. Perhaps she could see more from the water side? Mak didn’t own a boat, but she could rent one.

There is nothing you can do tonight. And remember, he’s not even on your client’s list.

But Simon Aston was on the list.

She was going to observe Simon’s house and, once the coast was clear, she wanted to get inside and plant a bug. But it could be a long wait before she found her moment. In the meantime she sat in Andy’s car with the lights and engine off, and in the passenger seat, as if the driver was about to return. Few people took much notice of a woman waiting on the passenger side of a car. Mak sat low so that the car would look empty to a casual passer-by.

She watched and waited. This was when people fell asleep on surveillance, Pete Don had warned her. And she could see how it could happen—it was like watching grass grow.

Finally the living room light went off, and a few seconds later an outside light flickered on, illuminating the driveway. A man was exiting the house.

It was Simon.

Mak perked up.
There you are.

It was certainly him, although his hair was slightly longer than in the photos she’d seen. He was good-looking and fit, with handsome features, although there appeared to be something along his chin—stitches and a cut.

He was alone. The house was dark inside; it should be empty. She watched as he locked his front door, looked both ways and walked to his van.
Only people who are scared or guilty look both ways when leaving their house.

Simon started up his van and drove away.

Where are you going at eight o’clock on this fine evening?
she wondered.

When he was around the corner, Mak jumped into the driver’s side of the Honda and followed him, cautiously dogging him a block behind. She followed him all the way into Bondi, to the main strip of restaurants on Campbell Parade. Was he meeting with someone? Was it relevant to the case?

Simon parked.

Mak coasted past the roundabout and watched as he made an order at a pizza place, alone.

He’s getting takeaway.

This was Mak’s opportunity. She drove back to the Tamarama house as fast as she could, knowing she had only perhaps fifteen minutes to get safely inside and plant the bug.

God, I hope this works.

Mak parked in the same spot as before, pulled on a pair of leather gloves and scurried across the street. She didn’t want to end up like Ferris Hetherington, with her driver’s licence stuck in the door, so she had a set of lock picks—a rake and a piece of spring steel—to manipulate pin tumbler locks of the type found on most back doors of residential homes. She had done some rehearsals of picking locks, but not much practice in the field.

This was her moment to give it a try.

She hoped Simon hadn’t employed any deadlocks, or her plan would be shot. And she hoped those tumbler locks had only a few pins.
She had worked with up to five pins in a security lock. The more pins to line up properly with the lock pick tools, the trickier it was to pick.

You can do it.

Once inside, the radio frequency bug disguised as a double adapter would work well in his home office, if he had one, or even in his bedroom. If he was already using a double adaptor in one of those areas, as many people did, she would simply switch it over and he would never know. The only way to even tell the difference was that the bugged adaptor had a slightly heavier weight. In every other way it was identical to the adaptors most people had scattered through their homes. She would not have to retrieve it when she was done, as it was unlikely to be found and could not be traced back to her. A day or two of sitting in the car a block away, tuned into the right radio frequency, and Mak would know everything Simon was cooking up. And she might even be able to confirm whether he had set up the handbag-snatching or the break-in at Marian’s office. Not that she could prove it in a court of law, of course. Because everything she was about to do was quite illegal.

Four minutes later she was still struggling with the lock on Simon’s back door.

Fucking thing!

Mak counted not five but seven pins in the tumbler lock. And she was running out of time. She had perhaps five minutes left to get inside
and plant the device before Simon was due back with his pizza. She could attach the phone taps later, if it was safe, but that was even trickier work.

Dammit!

All of the windows and doors had been locked shut—she had checked first. His back door seemed the best option. It was shielded from the road and the neighbours’ windows. But here she was, with a flashlight in her mouth, working the pins of the lock with her tools, and it was slow going. It had taken her four full minutes already and she wanted to shake her hands out, it was such fiddly work. Her fingers were going numb. An expert would have got through a seven-pin lock in sixty seconds.

Note to self: practise, practise, practise.

To Mak’s surprise, there was the sound of a loud car horn on the street right out front. It startled her, making her drop her tools.

Dammit! Now I have to start all over again.

The horn went again.

What the…?

Staying low, Mak crept around to the corner of the house and peered out onto the street.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered under her breath.

The cops.

A police cruiser was parked just behind the red Honda. One uniformed officer sat in the cruiser, and the other leaned against the door of Andy’s car. She’d left the window down to get
fresh air while she’d waited, and he had obviously reached into the car and honked the horn. She felt herself panic. As she wasn’t a locksmith, just being in possession of lock pick tools like this could be considered a criminal offence. Not to mention the phone taps.

‘Miss Vanderwall?’ came a voice.

Shit. They know I’m here. Have they been watching me the whole time?

Mak stashed her tools under a row of shrubs at the back of the house, brushed some dirt off her hands, straightened her clothes and walked out onto the street.

‘Good evening, officers, how are you?’

‘Can I see your licence, please?’

‘Um, sure.’

She opened the car door, found her wallet and produced her driver’s licence.

The officer looked it over while his partner stayed in the car behind, watching.

‘Not using your motorbike this evening, Miss Vanderwall?’

‘No. I just thought I’d sit and watch the waves for a while. It’s a beautiful view here, don’t you think?’ she commented, and smiled. She leaned her hip against the side of the car and flicked her hair behind one shoulder.

He didn’t give her even the slightest smile in return.

‘And your private investigator’s licence.’

Oh, this is bullshit.

‘Certainly,’ she said.

Mak dug around in her wallet and produced the licence. She would never offer it up without being asked, but these guys knew everything about her already, it seemed. Someone had given them a word-up. She handed it to him and the officer peered down his nose at it.

‘Is there some problem, officer?’

‘What were you doing on that property?’

‘Which one?’

‘Pardon?’ he said.

‘I just saw a wombat, I think, and I went to find it. I’m not sure which property it went onto. Over there somewhere…’ She pointed across the street.

‘You said you were doing what?’

‘I thought I saw a wombat run into the hedges and I went to check it out.’

‘And why would you go looking for a wombat?’ he asked her incredulously.

‘I’m from Canada, you see, and we don’t have wombats there. They are interesting little creatures, aren’t they? It’s still legal to enjoy the splendour and wildlife of this city, isn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh,’ he mumbled. ‘Well, Miss Vanderwall, I suggest that you do your nature loving somewhere else.’

‘Absolutely, sir.’ He held the door open for her and she stepped into her car. ‘You have a good night, officers.’

‘We’ll tell your boyfriend at Quantico that you say hi.’

‘Oh, yes. Thanks. Do that.’

Fuck!

She drove home with her tail between her legs.