Assassin

by Tara Moss

  Something was on his mind.

  ‘Go on,’ Andy prodded.

  Jimmy took a breath and exhaled loudly through his nose. He seemed to consider his words carefully. ‘Has there been any word on … her?’

  Makedde.

  Andy’s chest tightened at the mention of her and that thing in his chest squirmed. He shook his head. ‘Not a damn thing.’

  ‘I fucking hate to ask, you know, but Jesus. You still hearing from her dad?’

  Andy nodded.

  ‘Skata. And he hasn’t heard anything from her?’

  They both knew what that meant. It meant she was likely dead. What other explanation could there be, two months on? Why stay in Europe? Why do a runner on a hotel and disappear? Unless Makedde hadn’t planned it. Unless Jack Cavanagh was responsible. Before the news from Inspector Kelley, Andy had spent much of the morning making discreet enquiries about the case against Jack and Damien, a case that seemed to be going nowhere.

  ‘Have you closed the murder of that Thai girl?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Dumpster Girl?’ Jimmy said.

  That was the unfortunate nickname she’d been stuck with, having been discovered in a reeking dumpster in Sydney, discarded like yesterday’s trash. After a few promising leads she was still a Jane Doe, unidentified, despite having a very unusual tattoo. The police didn’t know much about her, except that she was of Thai descent and had entered the country thanks to a questionable couple with links to sex trafficking, who had since been murdered. She had been sexually active and no older than fifteen. Probably somewhat younger.

  ‘Hunt seems satisfied that her overdose was the fault of Simon Aston, that mate of Damien Cavanagh. He says he is convinced that the Cavanaghs knew nothing about her.’

  ‘You don’t seem convinced.’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Jimmy slammed a fist into the table, and their glasses rattled. ‘If he was anyone except Damien Cavanagh, he’d have been brought in for questioning. He’d have been a strong fucking suspect, let me tell you. You know what his reputation is like. Everyone knows he goes for the young ones. He’s a fucked-up, privileged trust-fund psychopath. That’s what he is. And she was maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, and she died in their fucking house, that fuck-off expensive waterfront mansion of theirs. What do you think she was doing there? An illegal immigrant like that? If she was some rich Australian family’s pretty white daughter, maybe somebody out there would give a shit, but no one does.’

  Jimmy was practically frothing. He was usually laid-back, to a fault. In over a decade of knowing him, Andy doubted he’d seen him so furious about anything before. Somewhere along the track, this case had awakened something in him.

  ‘As it is, Simon Aston has been pegged for it,’ he continued. ‘It can’t be proved, of course, but Hunt doesn’t want to look further. Simon didn’t exactly seem like a stand-up guy, true, but if he was still alive, I’m sure he’d have had a thing or two to say about it.’

  Dead men could not defend themselves.

  ‘And it doesn’t explain the video of Damien with her. A video that went missing somehow. It all stinks.’

  Andy had been there for the very early stages of the murder investigation, before he left for Canberra. Then Inspector Hunt had taken over. ‘You sound like you don’t have much faith in your detective inspector,’ he said.

  Jimmy’s face darkened. ‘Yeah, well, you hear right.’

  ‘You think he was somehow involved in making the video disappear?’

  His friend pushed himself back a touch. ‘I’m not saying anything. It’s just …’ He hesitated. ‘Skata. I don’t know.’

  Andy recalled Hunt throwing up at the Stiletto Killer’s flat when they’d found the trophies he had kept in his closet and under his bed. The grisly Polaroids. The body parts. Hunt had shown signs of unearned arrogance even as a constable and those tendencies had worsened. Andy had never warmed to him. In some ways he was surprised the man had been made inspector in the recent reshuffle, but apparently the powers that be liked him. All this meant Jimmy was never going to like Hunt, of course. He was sly and politic — everything Jimmy was not. And Andy’s friend, though a good cop, would be a senior constable until the day he died. He was his own worst enemy. Andy had seen it time and time again.

  All that was no longer Andy’s problem. Andy had enough problems of his own.

  ‘You just can’t tell,’ Jimmy said awkwardly. He tilted his head and screwed up his face, eyes averted. ‘You know, Mak. She’s always bloody hard to pin down. Maybe she’ll just … show up one day.’

  And maybe I will have another, Andy decided.

  He pushed his chair out, stood, opened the door and ventured into Jimmy’s living room. He fixed them both a second drink.

  He made it strong.

  Andy Flynn finally woke with his phone alarm screaming at him in ever louder digital tones, his head foggy and sore — the familiar sensation of a hangover. He was in a stiff hotel bed at the Rydges World Square, a short drive to the scene of the Hempsey murder in Surry Hills, but a fair distance from the new police headquarters, where they were due to visit Inspector Kelley. He was distantly aware that he’d hit the snooze button several times, and now only had fifteen minutes to make his way downstairs.

  At seven-forty-six he stepped out of the lift to find Dana waiting in the lobby mezzanine area, sitting in a chair beside a wall of convex glass. She was dressed in a plain, dark suit and flat shoes, her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She was on time. Good.

  ‘Morning,’ Andy muttered as he approached.

  Dana looked up from the newspaper and quickly stood to greet him.

  ‘Good morning, Agent Flynn,’ she said, mentioning nothing of his appearance, which he knew from brief inspection in the mirror involved prominent eye bags. His hair was still a bit damp and he doubted his quick work with the electric razor had been entirely successful. He felt seedy.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ he asked her.

  She nodded.

  ‘I haven’t,’ he said, and her face dropped.

  ‘No? Well then. Let’s get breakfast,’ she suggested.

  ‘There’s not much time. I’ll eat in the car while you drive. Have you been to HQ?’

  She frowned. ‘Here? No.’

  ‘I’ll direct you,’ he said and handed her the keys to his Honda, to her evident surprise. Part of him wondered if he was still a little tipsy from Jimmy’s. Inevitably, he’d stayed too late.

  The drive to Parramatta involved battling traffic, something Agent Harrison proved adept at. She accelerated at every available opportunity while Andy sat strapped into his own passenger seat, consuming a passable takeaway breakfast wrap and strong coffee. He found he was glad he’d worn a dark shirt and tie that wouldn’t highlight any spills.

  ‘… that some of the mutilation of the foot is related to the damage to the hands. I think the victim was defending herself with her hands when the blunt object was used, but these cuts to the feet …’ Agent Harrison was saying as they flew through yet another intersection.

  ‘You are not convinced that they are all defensive wounds?’ Andy replied, his eyes pinned to the road. He’d had the same thought about the injuries.

  ‘Some, yes. It looks likely her ankles were bound, but if so I think she broke free somehow. She kicked out at him. Maybe he even let her believe she might get away? The killer hit her again, kept her down. The toe, though, is different.’

  Kelley had sent a disturbing sequence of photographs from the crime scene. The body told its own story. The wounds were unique. The photographs showed a bloody nub where the victim’s big right toe should have been. The other wounds could be defensive, but the toe itself? No, Andy just couldn’t see how that could be the result of a struggle. More like intentional torture building up to the severed toe. Everything about it made him uneasy. It was a bit too familiar. Perhaps that was the same reason Kelley had brought him in.

  ‘I suspect the post-mortem will confirm that all th
ese wounds were inflicted before death. I suspect she was conscious, too, and he wanted it that way. This was all about power for him,’ Harrison said. She spun the wheel and accelerated again.

  Yes, it was about power, Andy thought.

  And sadism.

  Andy Flynn looked up at the tall, almost monolithic face of the NSW police headquarters building and frowned. The coffee had helped clear his head, or at least focus it, but he found himself wrestling with an ill-defined anxiety. Perhaps it was because he missed his work with homicide. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t been back to Sydney since Mak had left for Paris and gone missing.

  Perhaps he just needed more caffeine.

  Harrison cleared her throat. Andy binned his empty coffee cup and strode up the steps into the grand glass-fronted entrance of the building, passing plain-clothed officers with chequered lanyards and swing tags and a row of colourful police recruitment posters. Target a Great Career, one poster declared, with a SWAT team member in full gear, pointing the muzzle of his gun. Harrison was at his side, matching him stride for stride, her footsteps echoing on the pale flagstones as they made their way through revolving doors and into the cool lobby to the reception desk. He noticed her take in the slick, spacious design, the high ceiling, the columns and six modern, oversized hanging lights with a kind of surprise. Andy often thought the place presented more like an upmarket hotel than a police headquarters — only with a metal detector.

  ‘Federal Agents Harrison and Flynn,’ Andy announced at the desk. They showed their IDs and a uniformed officer made a call to Kelley. He pushed the registration book towards them and they signed in and were given passes.

  ‘Eighth floor. Head on up.’

  Andy fed his laptop case and phone through the metal detector and Harrison pulled a thin object from her handbag and presented it before pushing her things through. It was an iPad or one of those tablet things, he guessed. They gathered their gear and ascended the quiet escalator in silence. Once they were at the bank of elevators, Harrison remarked, ‘This was where you worked?’

  Andy shook his head. ‘I spent most of my career with the homicide squad at the old headquarters. It was nothing like this.’ The College Street headquarters had been a relic. This new building was showy and open plan. Large meeting areas. Courtyards. Sleek designer furniture. In addition to the homicide squad, it also held the headquarters for the NSW firearm, sex crimes, drug, fraud, property, robbery and serious crime squads, amongst others. It presented a professional face. Something corporate.

  He pressed ‘up’ and an elevator greeted them.

  Soon they were pushing through glass doors into the open-plan office of state homicide. It was quiet. Tranquil even. An empty office meant a busy squad. Many of the detectives were already out on cases and not at their desks, and those who were there tapped away at computers. The desks were modern, each L-shaped and holding a matching black computer. Grey carpets. White walls with red accents on doors and polished glass dividers. Large windows overlooked Lancer military barracks and the nearby Westfield. Strings of numbers hung down in neat rows along the ceiling, over desks, denoting the extension for each detective. It had the feeling of a library or accountancy firm, until you looked closer.

  A whiteboard on one wall listed case information divided amongst six ‘Teams’ and ‘Unsolved’ — the unsolved homicide squad. Andy noticed that someone had drawn a rudimentary Santa Claus and a bug-eyed puppy in red erasable felt pen across the bottom of the board, at toddler height. Someone’s children had visited, doubtless unaware of the grim significance of the various homicide teams’ careful scrawls above.

  ‘Andy, mate. How are you feeling this morning?’ Jimmy had sauntered over, fresh from the kitchen. He held a black coffee in one hand and a glazed donut in the other, and looked as worse for wear as Andy felt. The hangover seemed not to dampen his mood, though. He eyed Agent Harrison and did a salacious eyebrow wiggle, as subtle as Benny Hill. ‘Who’s the babe?’ he whispered, not quite quietly enough, Andy feared.

  Andy cast an anxious glance her way and was relieved to see that Agent Harrison was talking with some of the homicide squad members, introducing herself. Hopefully she hadn’t heard.

  ‘Sorry, yeah, not supposed to talk about them that way. Right,’ Jimmy persisted and took a sip of his coffee. ‘I get it. But she’s a bit of a hottie, come on. Look at her.’

  Andy managed a smile. ‘Her name is Dana Harrison. Agent Harrison to you. She’s a PhD, Jimmy. She’ll make an excellent profiler.’

  ‘So are you …?’ He stuck his index finger out and made a gesture for intercourse, using the donut.

  ‘No,’ Andy answered quickly. Normally he didn’t feel quite so sensitive about Jimmy’s crude jokes and remarks, he realised. ‘No. She’s part of my unit,’ he clarified.

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Shame really, because —’

  ‘Jimmy.’

  Jimmy shut up, hopefully satisfied that he’d ridden Andy for long enough. ‘I’m just messin’ with you. Geez, when’d you get so uptight? Fuck, things must be tense in Canberra.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all Andy said.

  He felt eyes on him. Odd. Someone vaguely familiar was watching his arrival mutely from behind a coffee cup.

  Detective Inspector Bradley Hunt.

  He turned and faced him. Hunt was blond and had an oversized chin he tended to hold a little too high. Yes, that was him. ‘Inspector,’ Andy said and nodded in Hunt’s direction.

  ‘Agent.’

  There was a palpable tension between the two men. And Jimmy had instantly vanished when Hunt appeared, Andy noticed. Perhaps he didn’t want to appear to be socialising. After a moment he reappeared at his overly cluttered desk, put his coffee cup down and took a seat. Andy thought he seemed anxious, but then he turned and made rude gestures at Hunt’s back, middle finger extended.

  Fuck.

  Andy’s former police partner had always lacked a sense of the politic. He worked hard, knew investigative work, was bright in his way, but he didn’t exactly possess what one could call ‘leadership qualities’. Andy didn’t react to Jimmy’s crude humour, or Hunt’s odd gaze, though he was intrigued. Was there something personal between Jimmy and Hunt that he didn’t know about?

  ‘Congratulations on your promotion,’ Andy said and offered a closed smile.

  ‘And you.’

  Andy excused himself to find Agent Harrison. She had stopped a few feet outside Inspector Kelley’s door, which was next to the commander’s. Kelley had a rare office in HQ, earned after nearly four decades in the force. In a way he was one of the last of the old breed still standing, and something of a legend.

  Kelley’s door was ajar. He was on the phone, talking in grave, familiar tones. When he hung up, Andy knocked.

  ‘Flynn. Come on in. Bring your guy,’ Kelley said, not yet noticing that Andy’s ‘guy’ was not quite that.

  They stepped inside and closed the door. Andy hadn’t seen his former boss for well over six months. Detective Inspector Kelley was a lean, tall man with the posture and hard fitness of a soldier. He stood momentarily to acknowledge his AFP visitors, his hands laced behind his back and sleeves rolled up to show muscled forearms. His silver hair had turned that little bit whiter, but the slate-grey eyes were as sharp as ever. He never seems to age, Andy thought, he only grows harder.

  Kelley’s office walls were adorned with certificates. Bachelor of Policing. A certificate from the Humane Society. Diplomas from Charles Sturt University. Alphabetised black binders were set up in rows along his shelves, next to filing cabinets. Across one wall on a low shelf were several framed images. One was of a young boy whose face Andy recognised. It was an unsolved homicide case Kelley still hadn’t dropped. Most officers had one — a case that haunted them until retirement, and beyond.

  ‘Please, sit down.’

  ‘Inspector Kelley, this is Agent Dana Harrison. Harrison has an MA in Psych and PhD in Forensic Psych. She studied with David Canter in the UK. She’s part of
our SVCP unit,’ Andy said, by way of introduction.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,’ Harrison told Kelley, crossing her legs and sitting forwards. Kelley didn’t offer his hand and she didn’t push the issue by offering hers.

  The inspector gave her a quick appraisal and a respectful nod of acknowledgement, and quickly got down to business. ‘Thank you both for coming. As you’ve seen, we have one of your sadists on our hands,’ he said.

  Your sadists. Already, they were Andy’s.

  ‘We’ve got two serious unsolved sexual assaults that fit the pattern you suggested,’ Kelley continued and slid the complete files across.

  ‘Plotsky and Graney,’ Andy said.

  Kelley tapped the first of the two folders. ‘The Plotsky case is four years old. Kim Plotsky left her local pub in Strawberry Hills, alone, to walk home. She says she was pulled down into an alley, beaten and raped by a stranger. Locals heard her cries for help. She was found with her arms still bound, with a broken nose. She’d been drinking heavily and couldn’t give any description except that her attacker was white. The rapist stole her shoes.’

  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.’