Hit (6 page)

The centre of activity was a garbage dumpster in the lane. The crime-scene team was already there in Hazmat suits, collecting evidence. Just behind the dumpster, the body of a young woman lay decomposing. A photographer’s flash illuminated the victim. Her bare legs were splayed out, dappled with rot and filth. She appeared to be naked except for a hot-pink garter belt around her hips. It looked to Andy like a sexual homicide.

‘No ID as yet,’ Detective Peterson said. ‘I’ve checked on the garbage runs. Last pick-up was Sunday. She must have been dumped after that.’

‘Has anyone touched her?’ Andy asked. It didn’t matter how many times they were briefed on crime-scene procedure, there was always a risk of someone—usually a rookie—contaminating something. This victim looked tampered with.

‘No one touched her until the team arrived. They’ve lifted garbage off her, that’s it.’

Dammit.
Perhaps no one had known he was on his way. Andy would examine the crime-scene photographs; hopefully there was adequate coverage of her original position, as found.

‘She’s still
in situ
, apart from the garbage,’ Peterson continued.

‘Who found her?’ said Andy.

The girl had been discovered by a homeless man as he scrounged through the heaps of cardboard next to the dumpster to find something worth keeping, perhaps as shelter. The man, who called himself Barney, was occupying a couple of constables with his rambling account of the discovery.

‘…my wife, she don’t see me no more…’

‘Yes, Barney,’ the constable pressed. ‘But tell us again about how you found the body.’

Barney’s eyes rolled back and popped forwards again. He had a long beard and deeply lined skin. ‘I was jus’ looking round. I thought I smelled somethin’. I thought it might be rotten fruit. I thought I could find somethin’ to eat.’

Andy grimaced. He would let the constables deal with Barney.

‘
Skata
,’ Jimmy offered. ‘She’s ripe, all right.’

The autopsy would give a better idea of the time of death, but Andy guessed that the remains were a couple of days old, perhaps accelerated by the weather. He covered his mouth and nose with one hand and moved closer to her. The girl looked Asian, and young, though given the state of the body it was difficult to tell whether she was in her teens or twenties. He noticed lacerations around her wrists. She had been tied up, but there were no binds on her now.

Andy wondered what could have happened for her to end up in a back lane like this, becoming his last gruesome case as part of the team he had worked with for so many years.

Simon Aston walked across one of the vast living rooms of the Cavanagh house, his sneakers treading on a giant, cream fur rug that stretched metres across the hardwood floor. Through the glass doors that opened out to the harbour, Damien was laid out on a sun lounge, wearing silk shorts as he baked himself on the balcony. An exotic silk robe hung over the lounge at his back and a newspaper lay in sections beside him.

‘So, man, how are you?’ said Simon.

Despite Damien’s relaxed surroundings, he didn’t seem settled. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced than usual. He looked up when Simon approached, but said nothing.

‘Yo,’ Simon said, ‘I brought you a coffee from your favourite. Double shot.’

Damien snatched it without thanking him. ‘This new maid makes shit coffee,’ he murmured.

Simon nodded and pulled up a lounge next to his friend. ‘So, how are plans for the party coming?’

‘I dunno,’ Damien said dismissively and looked out at the water. He sipped the coffee from its cardboard cup.

Simon took a furtive glance at his watch; it was approaching eleven. He wanted to call Warwick O’Connor well before one o’clock, just to be on the safe side. It would be best if he knew whether or not he would have any cash to negotiate with before he called. In Simon’s experience, cash had a great way of solving problems. In fact, he couldn’t think of any problem that money couldn’t solve. It just depended on how much you had to throw at it.

‘Look, buddy, I hate to bring it up,’ he said nervously, now wringing his hands. ‘But, uh, I’m going to need a bit more money to wrap this thing up.’

Damien looked over at him. ‘Is it that guy Lee?’

‘No, Lee is fine.’

‘So what is it, then?’ he said with audible impatience.

One million dollars. I want an answer by tomorrow at one, or I’ll contact the big man myself…

Simon couldn’t tell Damien about the trouble with Warwick. There was no way he could tell Damien that some lowlife wanted one million dollars of his money and was threatening to blackmail his father. What if it was seen as Simon’s fault? He would quickly become persona non grata, not just with the Cavanaghs but the whole of Sydney’s A-list.

‘Nothing,’ Simon lied. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s just a little extra to cover all the bases.’

Surely Warwick was bluffing. Surely he wouldn’t really contact Jack Cavanagh himself? He doesn’t have the balls, does he?

Damien dropped a hand over the side of the lounge, the cup of coffee dangling. He let go, and it dropped the few inches to the floor and fell on its side. Simon dived in to right it again, but the remaining coffee had spilled.

‘Leave it,’ Damien said and turned his head. ‘Estelle!’ He began fumbling through the pockets of the silk robe for his cigarettes. ‘Did Lee say anything?’ he asked, still searching. ‘Estelle!’ he yelled again. ‘
Where the fuck are my cigarettes?
’

Estelle instantaneously appeared with a packet and placed it in Damien’s open hand. She was the new maid; lithe, pale and beautiful, with cascading locks of raven hair tied in a loose ponytail at her nape. Her eyes were huge and doelike. Estelle was gorgeous and French. Only the Cavanaghs would have a French maid who was actually French, probably to try to appear more cultured. They went through a maid once or twice a year it seemed. Damien drove the ugly ones away, and messed with the pretty ones. He wondered if Damien had fucked her already or not, or if he’d be okay with him making a try.

Damien put a cigarette in his lips and Estelle lit it. In a flash she had mopped up the coffee and disappeared again.

Simon watched the exchange with fascination. ‘Lee’s fine. It’s nothing,’ he continued, getting the conversation back on track. Time was ticking on. ‘He doesn’t have a problem at all. It’s just a bit of extra dough to smooth things out.’

Even if he was foolish enough to ask for it, Simon knew that Damien didn’t have access to a million dollars. Not liquid, anyway. His father, Jack, controlled the family fortune, and what Damien himself actually had in his name was a mere drop in the ocean compared to his mighty father’s personal wealth, or compared to what Cavanagh Incorporated was worth, with all its various interests. Simon wouldn’t dream of getting them to cough up a cool mill for the likes of Warwick O’Connor. That would be outrageous, a rip-off, and probably the end of his friendship with Damien. Anyway, O’Connor was probably bluffing about what he knew.

Simon was sure that if he could meet with him face to face and show him what another twenty grand in cash looked like, he would stop his quibbling and take the money. Warwick was no big-timer; all that cash was bound to look good to him. And then this thing would be over…

‘I want a new personal trainer,’ Damien said out of the blue, pinching one of his oiled-up browned biceps.

‘You look good, man,’ Simon told him, though he didn’t really think so. His friend was already starting to look a bit drug ravaged. Besides,
Damien never worked hard enough to get the muscles he wanted. He had a slim build and he was slightly concave chested. There wasn’t much to him. He’d gone through four or five trainers in the past year but always ended up dumping them. He’d sacked his last trainer, Dave, two weeks before. Simon wondered why Damien bothered with training at all, when he obviously didn’t like being told what to do.

‘Who’s that guy Will keeps talking about?’
Will Smith.
‘The guy who got him in shape for that film?’ Damien asked. ‘You know the one?’

‘I dunno. I’ll ask him.’

Damien dragged on his cigarette and watched the boats. ‘How much do you need for this thing to go away?’ he said.

‘Thirty-five,’ Simon found himself saying. He’d planned to ask for twenty, but he’d decided that he needed the extra fifteen for his own spending money. He was broke again after the last party. It could get expensive being a friend of the rich.

Damien nodded. ‘I’ll organise it.’

‘It would be good if I could have it, uh…soon.’

Damien seemed unperturbed by the demand. He dragged on his cigarette. ‘I think we’ve got that in the safe.’

Simon was quietly relieved. If Damien hurried, Simon might still have time to get to Warwick with some tempting cash at one o’clock.

Damien flicked the waistband of his black silk shorts, making a snapping sound. ‘Do you like these?’ The waistband announced that they were a Prada design.

‘They look good on you, man. Super cool,’ Simon told him, nodding.

Damien sighed at Simon’s comment, and gave a sneer at them. ‘I dunno…’

And with that, the subject had been changed.

At twelve-thirty Makedde Vanderwall’s mobile phone rang. She turned
The Monster Show
by David J Skal face down and snatched the phone off the coffee table. She’d spent the morning reading through a psychology journal on advancements in the experimental treatment of violent psychopathic inmates in Canada and had eventually moved on to lighter fare—and different monsters.

‘Hello?’ she answered.

‘Are you still in bed?’ The familiar voice was accusing.

‘No. It’s the afternoon. Do you think I am out every night until six?’

‘If I were your age, I would be. And I would enjoy it, too.’ The voice belonged to Makedde’s sometime employer, Marian Wendell.

Mak chuckled.

Marian was quickly down to business. ‘I have something for you if you want it. The client just left my office. Are you available?’

‘Yup.’ Mak sat up.

‘You would be needed all week,’ Marian warned.

‘Even better.’

A meaty job was just what Mak wanted to sink her teeth into. A lot of jobs could be knocked over in a few days—a full week’s work would be her longest assignment to date. Normally it was Marian’s more experienced investigators who got the bigger gigs.

‘The job starts today. What time can you get here?’ Marian asked.

‘Give me thirty minutes.’

Mak didn’t bother asking what the assignment was. If Marian was throwing a job her way, she would take it without hesitation—particularly if it was a full week’s work. She needed the money.

After a lightning-fast shower and basic grooming, Mak was primed and on the road in her motorcycle leathers within fifteen minutes. The quickest way to get anywhere in Sydney was on two wheels, and Mak’s horny 1200cc bike was her transportation mode of choice since her move to the city. Thanks to her bike, the astronomical price of car parking was an expense she rarely had to contend with; and with soaring petrol prices, the economy of her bike was even more appealing by the day. On the occasions that she grudgingly borrowed Andy’s car for work, she found herself spotting gaps in the traffic and wanting to accelerate through—a physical impossibility on four wheels.

Of course, a scooter might be equally practical for the city, but it had never been an option for Mak. A particularly infantile pleasure of hers was to pull up to scooter-riding men at the traffic lights and smile at them from the vantage point of her big BMW bike.

Vroom.

Now Mak’s tall, naked K1200R tore up the roads towards busy Bondi Junction and passed the standard daily traffic jams with an ease possible only on two wheels. With time to spare, she stopped her bike on the kerb outside Marian’s office, flicked it into neutral, placed it gently on its kickstand and shut the warm engine off. She grabbed her backpack and made her way inside the building.

Marian Wendell’s office was on the second floor of a three-storey block that Mak imagined might have been glamorous when Marian had first bought up in 1975. It had all the hallmarks of an ill-conceived mid-seventies architectural vision that now left it looking like a rundown concrete box. The colour scheme was brown and weak yellow; the token ground-floor lobby had wood veneer panelling where wallpaper would otherwise be; and the fixtures were decidedly tired. But rather than offend Mak’s aesthetic sensibilities, she felt the place had atmosphere. Mak used her favourite word of the Australian vernacular when describing the building; it was ‘daggy’—dishevelled, uncool, but rich with
character. Thanks to the colourful history of Marian Wendell’s private investigation agency, a lot of exciting cases had passed through those doors, and Mak thought she could sense it in the walls.

If only the wood veneer could talk.

She made her way up in the slow-moving elevator, ready to take on her new assignment, helmet and backpack in hand. When she stepped out onto the off-green and yellow carpet of the second-floor hallway, she found that she was not alone. A small bespectacled man a few feet down the hall stiffened at her presence and gave her a long unfriendly look before disappearing into the shared bathrooms at the end of the hall.

Well, hello to you, too
, she thought, slightly perplexed by his aggressive glare. He looked like one of the stiffs who worked in the accountancy practice across the hall. Mak realised that when she came to and from work on her bike she probably looked more like a motorbike courier—or maybe even a member of a bikie gang—than a young investigator with a PhD to boot. And some people just had issues with motorcyclists. On one amusing occasion Mak had decided to do some banking on the way home, and a man on a bench seated outside the bank had been utterly convinced that she was about to stage a hold-up before leaping onto her bike and speeding off. He’d been so relieved when she had calmly
emerged with her helmet in hand and put her bank slip away that he actually told her what he’d thought she was going to do.

Mak had chosen a sporty bike, but she might as well have a long beard and a Harley.

‘Boo,’ she said under her breath, but the freaked-out accountant couldn’t hear her. She left the man to his paranoia and, with a faint rustle of leather on leather, stepped through the door of Marian’s office, on which was written:

MARIAN WENDELL AND ASSOCIATES PROFESSIONAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

A bell chimed to alert Marian that she had a visitor. A closed-circuit camera would confirm Mak’s identity to her boss as she walked in.

‘Be with you soon, Mak,’ came Marian’s booming voice from down the hallway.

‘Okay,’ Mak called back, and took a seat in the waiting room.

She made herself comfortable, taking her stiff leather jacket off and looking for something to read. She sifted through a couple of newspapers and a selection of out-of-date magazines in a stack on a glass coffee table in the waiting area.
The Australian Women’s Weekly, New Woman, Woman’s Day, National Geographic, Cleo
—the plethora of women’s titles was there for Marian’s strong female client base, the women who came to her with problems of errant husbands or
suspicious work practices and wanted a ‘private dick without the dick’, as Marian put it. Having read each of the old magazines twice over on previous visits to the office, Mak found a copy of the previous day’s
Australian
newspaper and perused it instead, speed reading articles on business and federal politics, the sale of Telstra, troops in the Middle East and handshaking on plans for a bullet train between Sydney and Melbourne.

After a couple of minutes Marian stepped out of her office and waved Mak in.

The infamous Marian Wendell was a woman of perhaps sixty-five years, and birdlike in size compared to Makedde’s Amazonian stature. She had big auburn hair that almost seemed to dwarf her features, and a penchant for expensive, glamorous clothing. She had been a very attractive woman in her youth, as evidenced by photos on a filing cabinet, and in her later years she still took great pride in her appearance and presentation. Marian’s hair was always meticulously dyed and styled and her make-up flawless; and, though a bit outdated, her wardrobe was flattering and well maintained. Marian had a handsome office—a practical space cluttered with neat files, but also a soothing space, with the distinctly feminine touches of a ceramic aromatherapy oil burner on the wide working desk, along with a crystal vase that was always stocked with yellow roses, and a romantic-looking Art Deco statue of a nymph on a
square display table taking pride of place in the room. Behind it, an Aboriginal dot painting of muted earthy tones depicted a giant serpent of the Dreamtime. Another wall was entirely covered by an impressively jumbled floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. From one tall window there was a view of the Sydney cityscape. Not a postcard of the Opera House exactly, but an impressive view nonetheless. It was a far cry from the dark, masculine quarters of a Philip Marlowe or a Mike Hammer.

‘This guy in the hallway freaked out when he saw me step out of the elevator. I think he figured you’re doing work for bikie gangs now.’

Marian laughed.

Mak was used to being misunderstood. The expression ‘looks are deceiving’ was not the exception but the rule for her. Marian, at least, thought it helped her protégée to look past the appearances of others to see their true nature. Perhaps that was right.

‘You are my secret weapon,’ Marian said, clearly pleased with her new agent. ‘Mrs Anderson was very happy with the result. Her husband was so embarrassed at being caught out that he’s agreed to half of her demands already.’

‘I am glad she was pleased,’ Mak replied.

When it came to domestic jobs, not all clients were happy with an investigator’s results. The truth could hurt—
a lot.
Which was one of the many reasons Marian discouraged marital jobs from male clients. A woman might see evidence
of her husband rooting the secretary and respond by getting a good lawyer, while a man might respond to the same situation by getting himself a good baseball bat, and then there were serious domestic violence issues to contend with on top of everything else. It was that ugly side of the business that gave it a bad name, depending on the way the operator handled it.

Even the most respected PIs found themselves on the occasional infidelity case, though many of the big agencies denied it and discouraged such jobs in favour of corporate clients. However, infidelity was the bread-and-butter work. The three full pages of ads for Investigators in the Yellow Pages were a testament to the popularity of marital mistrust:

DO YOU NEED PROOF OF INFIDELITY
?

IS YOUR PARTNER CHEATING
???
DON
’
T BE THE LAST TO KNOW
.

To her many female clients, some of whom were likely soon to be divorced, Marian represented not only a ‘private dick without the dick’ but a necessary role model at a time when the clients needed a reminder that successful singledom was possible. Marian had been widowed some twenty years and yet she was happily solo and successful. A photo of her late second husband, Reg, still sat in a frame on the filing cabinet. As Marian had confided in Mak, Reg had been a much older man who was her ‘soul mate’. He had respected her independence, her business acumen
and her decision to never bear children; she clearly felt no need to replace him. Marian spoke of Reg often. She never talked of her first husband, however, and Mak guessed it had not ended amicably. Perhaps one of those desperate-sounding ads for AAAA CHEATERS Investigation Agency—the ‘AAAA’ ensuring the first listing in the phone book—was what had given Marian the idea of becoming a private investigator in the first place. Maybe she had taken it upon herself to bust the kind of bastard she had first married?

‘Sit down, honey,’ Marian said. ‘This is a good one. Top rates.’

Top rates for Mak meant $80 an hour for research and $100 an hour for field work. The job paid well, though not as well as some of her modelling gigs had, of course.

Mak’s special ‘entrapment’ rate for luring errant husbands to hotel rooms was much higher because of her close proximity to the target—and her particularly good qualifications for the job. So far she had a 100 per cent success rate in the handful of such jobs she had completed. Had Mrs Anderson’s glowing report spurred Marian into giving Mak this new job? Or was it just that none of her more experienced investigators was available?

Mak took a seat. Her black leather pants squeaked faintly as she crossed her legs.

Marian had a couple of notes in front of her but she didn’t look at them. She closed her eyes as
she spoke, recalling the meeting with her formidable memory. ‘The client is Mr Robert Groobelaar, a real estate agent, originally from South Africa. He has a company called Trident Real Estate. His personal assistant was found murdered in her apartment last night. A young girl. Good-looking.’ Marian pushed a glossy photo across the desk. It showed a smiling girl with a pale blonde bob that fell just below her jaw.

Wow. A murder case.

Mak felt a weird mix of sadness and a rush of excitement. This was more than the usual domestic dispute or corporate espionage case. She pulled a large notepad out of her backpack and wrote down the details.
Trident Real Estate. Robert Groobelaar…

‘Her name?’

Marian closed her eyes again. ‘Meaghan Wallace—he says she was unmarried, no children, twenty-three years of age,’ she explained. ‘She worked for him for about the past six months. I’ll get my contacts to run off a file for you with her stats.’

Mak wrote it all down. ‘Okay.’

‘The police have a suspect in custody. The client wants to know everything you can get on him.’

‘No problem.’ A few background checks would not take a lot of time. Marian had great contacts she could rely on to get leads on up-to-date information. A fair number of Marian’s
investigations were to find missing persons—runaway teenagers, AWOL spouses, deadbeat dads, that sort of thing. Record checks on any vehicles, leases, mortgages or change-of-address applications in their names were invaluable in revealing not only a person’s whereabouts but a lot about their lifestyle and habits as well. If this subject was in jail already, though, Mak couldn’t see how she would be needed for more than two or three days of work at the most. Given Marian’s magical and somewhat mysterious contacts, there would be little for her to do.

‘The client wants a complete report on the suspect’s background, and what the case is against him.’

Ah. The case against him.
Was Mak expected to lean on her police contacts to learn about the case?

‘Do you know the kind of outcome he is searching for?’ Mak said. ‘Perhaps to get the information he feels the police don’t have, or aren’t telling him?’

Marian looked up. ‘I would say so,’ she said. ‘He wants everything you can get.’

So he feels dissatisfied by the way the police are approaching the investigation…

Mak shifted awkwardly in her chair. ‘Um, Marian, I didn’t get the job because I have police contacts, did I?’

‘You got the job because you are turning into a good investigator,’ Marian said.