Assassin

by Tara Moss

  ‘Unless he knew she couldn’t ID him for some reason,’ Dana suggested.

  A dark alley at night. A broken nose.

  ‘It’s by no means unheard of,’ Kelley said.

  Dana crossed her legs. ‘There’s been nothing similar in the past three years?’ she said.

  Kelley shook his head. ‘Not that we know of.’

  ‘Did Dayle move for a while? Maybe to visit the friend overseas?’

  ‘He didn’t leave the country.’

  And they knew he hadn’t done time. Yet it would be uncharacteristic for that type of offender to stop for so long. Sexual sadists were notorious recidivists. That left another disturbing possibility. He has advanced, Andy thought. If Dayle was guilty, he might have got better at covering his tracks. A startlingly high percentage of rapes went unreported and perhaps after being brought in for questioning he’d moved on to another MO that couldn’t be so easily linked to Plotsky and Graney. Until Victoria Hempsey.

  ‘So, maybe this John Dayle fits your profile,’ Kelley said. ‘But we don’t have anything on him.’

  ‘Do we bring him in for questioning? Or do you think he’ll get spooked?’ Dana asked.

  Andy frowned. The man they’d spoken to was excited by the visit from the police. Nervous, yes. But would he get spooked? ‘I want a warrant as soon as possible to search his house before he gets rid of any possible evidence. Clothing belonging to the victim … or shoes. The sooner we get in there the better.’

  Kelley rubbed his chin. ‘Until we can establish what belongings may be missing, and unless someone has seen Dayle with those belongings, no magistrate will go for it, Flynn. Dayle has no priors. We have no successful link to the sexual assaults, if they are even related to the murder. He’s her neighbour, that’s it. You’ve got to get me more than that.’

  Andy recalled the feeling he’d had in the narrow semi. He wanted to search it, but Kelley was right. While he might have reasonable grounds to suspect Dayle’s home had evidence linking him to Hempsey’s murder, he had to have reasonable grounds to believe it, in order for the application to be successful. As it was, a magistrate would be unlikely to allow it, and a second application could be more difficult to get approved once one had already been rejected.

  ‘And if we get a DNA match with the homicide case to the semen samples taken from the two rape cases, we won’t have anything to convince a magistrate unless we can cast doubt on the alibi for the Plotsky case,’ Dana suggested. ‘This John Dayle didn’t give a sample three years ago, correct?’

  Kelley shook his head. ‘He wasn’t charged, so no.’

  As with all offenders charged with a serious indictable offence carrying five or more years imprisonment, Dayle, if it had got that far, would have been fingerprinted and a buccal swab would have been taken.

  ‘And there was no court order?’ Dana asked. Sometimes investigators were successful in obtaining court orders to make a suspect give a sample.

  Again, Kelley shook his head. ‘Not after the identification debacle. Let’s get hold of this alibi of his and check the story again.’

  ‘I recommend you put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance ASAP,’ Andy urged. ‘If this is the man who attacked Plotsky and Graney and he’s escalated to murder, he’s highly dangerous and may attack again at any time. Killing a neighbour is reckless,’ he reasoned. ‘We can’t be sure there will be a cooling-off period. And though we were as careful as we could be this afternoon, a second police visit might have spooked him — he may try to dispose of evidence. If he does, we have to catch him in the act.’

  Kelley leaned his elbows on his desk and rubbed his temples. He clearly didn’t want to waste limited police resources tailing the wrong guy. He looked up. ‘You like him for it?’ he asked Andy, with his hard, direct gaze.

  Andy did not hesitate. ‘Yeah. I like him for it.’

  Kelley nodded. ‘All right. I’ll get a surveillance team on him ASAP. We’ll see if we can catch him with any of the victim’s possessions. Catch him acting suspiciously.’

  It was far too early to show their hand. If Dayle was their man, they would need to handle each step of the investigation carefully. There could be no mistakes.

  ‘Will you present for the strike force on Monday morning, first thing? Will that give you enough time?’

  Andy had wondered if he would simply type up a report, or if he could speak face to face with the team. This was a good development. It was better this way.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll be ready.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Weary passengers poured off the aeroplane in sloppy lines, gripping their possessions and their passports, hair askew and perfume overloaded to mask unpleasant body odours earned by hours trapped in small chairs, thousands of kilometres above the ground in an airless cabin, eating reheated food. They walked quietly, some in a hurry, others lazily, but each too tired for talk. Announcements came and went over the PA system, and toilets flushed and sinks filled and drained in the washrooms. Some passengers gravitated towards the bright lights and advertising of the duty-free aisles, pulling out their wallets.

  Mak’s mouth was dry and her eyes filmy. Her legs felt tight and there was the dull ache of dehydration behind her eyes. Wearing the clothes she’d bought at Heathrow with Luther’s cash — a black Burberry trench coat, jeans and black boots — she joined the hundreds of travellers filling the arrivals area, anxiously shifting from swollen foot to swollen foot. There had been no direct flights from Barcelona, and she’d been wait-listed literally at the last minute, getting to the airport hours after killing the nameless assassin in the bushes. She’d come with little more than money, her new passport, Luther’s laptop and the clothes on her back. Mak had ended up on an even more roundabout route than necessary — Barcelona to Paris to London to Helsinki to Singapore to Sydney. She thought it best not to count the hours it had taken. She’d paid for a return business-class fare, in cash, much to the amazement of the woman at the ticket desk in Barcelona, so it could have been much, much worse. Mak intended to enjoy Luther’s money. She’d more than earned it.

  She felt peculiarly numb as she waited in line, returning to the country that had all but ruined her since she’d first visited it, roughly five years previously, for modelling work. It was a trip she’d naïvely looked forward to at the time. Her friend Cat was modelling in Sydney and really loving ‘the life’ — the beaches, the parties. But Mak had arrived to Cat’s empty apartment and everything had been spectacularly, nightmarishly wrong. Sure, Mak had found sun and work and love in Australia — the things she supposed she’d hoped to — but first and foremost she’d found heartbreak and violence and death. Yet something, or someone, had always kept her coming back.

  Of course, never in her wildest nightmares had she thought she’d come back like this.

  As someone else.

  ‘Passport.’

  The customs officer looked grim at this early hour. It was before seven in the morning, local time. Mak stepped forwards and slid her business-class boarding pass, visitor’s entry card and passport across to the customs officer. Two of the female officer’s tanned male colleagues were joking around behind her, and one of them broke from their hushed banter to check Mak out in a blatantly flirtatious manner. Mak smiled at him and then looked to her feet, twisting a lock of dyed hair around her finger. I’m newly single. I’m in Australia to have a good time. I hear the men are really something, she hoped her body language said. I’m not committing any kind of crime. I’m not remotely dangerous.

  The woman before her remained stony-faced. ‘Purpose of your visit?’

  ‘Holiday,’ Mak said brightly, but not too brightly. ‘I have friends here. Two weeks and then New Zealand before I go home.’ The lies came with surprising ease, as did the subtle Spanish accent. The assertion about friends, at least, was true. Not that she would likely see them. She adjusted Bogey’s glasses awkwardly with her index finger and smiled again. The officer probably pegged her for the a
rty type, living on a trust fund. Though Mak was thirty, she’d listed ‘student’ as her occupation. The officer lifted the new passport up and looked from the photo to Mak and back again, then swiped the passport through a machine and typed something into her keyboard. Mak felt a line of tension coil in her. Now was the moment. That passport had proved very expensive already. It had cost her thousands in Luther’s blood money and very nearly her life. Or had it been a coincidence that she’d picked it up and been followed?

  What would this passport cost her now?

  Then, like a small miracle, the po-faced officer stamped the fresh Euro passport of a dark-haired, blue-eyed Spanish national, and wished Maria Cruz a pleasant holiday.

  ‘Um, thank you,’ Mak said.

  She avoided the lines at the baggage carousel, dragging the carry-on bag she’d also purchased at Heathrow, and walked out into the bright chaos of the Sydney morning.

  The deed she’d found in Luther’s name, on his laptop, was for an address in Sydney’s inner south. It did not take long to get there by taxi from the airport.

  Squinting behind sunglasses, Makedde watched the small, red-brick apartment block come into view. His was the lower left-hand side of what looked like four flats. Fresh white, looping graffiti decorated a section under a main, barred window. A thin strip of lawn at the front was overgrown with weeds and decorated with a For Sale sign, currently falling at a slight angle. It looked unoccupied.

  Luther was off-loading the place. Or he had been.

  Mak had the taxi slow as she passed it, taking in the details. The suburb of Redfern was becoming gentrified, but not this street, it seemed. She wouldn’t be staying here. With its run-down feel and broken guttering, the apartment block was surprisingly out of sync with Luther’s sleek Barcelona abode. There was even a series of small pot plants on the narrow porch, and a damp sofa with coiled springs escaping the tatty, flowered fabric. It seemed impossible that he would have lived here. No, she wouldn’t overnight here. But she had to check it out.

  With her chest feeling tight, she got the taxi driver to pull up a block away. She paid him and got out, feeling slightly conspicuous dragging the rectangular carry-on bag on its tiny wheels over the rough asphalt. The wheels made an awful noise as she walked down the sidewalk towards the address and she quickly decided to fold the handles on the bag and carry it. She was surprised, when she did, by just how noticeably stronger she was. Mind you, this was perhaps the lightest she’d ever packed. A few items of clothing, a book and a laptop. And a lot of traveller’s cheques and cash hidden in every pocket. This was all Maria Cruz owned, Mak supposed, and it struck her as odd that she could comfortably carry it all with one arm. Of course there were the things of Luther’s she’d kept stashed in Barcelona. She hadn’t been foolish enough to bring the jewellery she’d found in his car through several international airports. The pieces were large and unusual, and she presumed they were stolen. Nor had she brought his Glock. Though now that she was exposed on this Sydney street, she felt naked without it.

  Don’t panic. No one is watching you.

  The house next to the square block of flats looked equally still and lifeless, so she walked straight up to it, opened the squeaky iron gate at the front and ducked around the back, picking her way over dry, patchy grass. She stood her bag at the base of a dividing fence in the backyard and stepped onto it to get a glimpse of Luther’s yard. It held some empty laundry lines, a turned-over bucket and similarly uneven, yellowing lawn. Against the back steps was a garden gnome sitting on its side, next to a pink, broken ornament of some kind. The scene was domestic. Neglected. Curiously female. There was no evidence that anyone had been there in recent weeks. Mak got down, took a breath, then pulled herself up with one arm with a new-found ease and hauled her case over the fence. She gently dropped it on the grass on the opposite side before pulling herself over. Her shoulder muscles felt strong, steady.

  Mak landed on the other side and walked to the back door of the downstairs flat, where she went through every key on Luther’s key ring twice. Nothing fit. It wouldn’t be so easy as it had been in Barcelona. It took her a maddening four and a half minutes to pick the simple lock — it felt like much longer — and once the door opened she braced herself. No alarm. Good. She shuttled her things to the internal laundry she’d got access to and took a quick tour of the whole flat, much as her father would have done when he was still a cop, back to the wall, looking both ways. Listening. Of course all this effort was unnecessary: the place was empty and she was safe. She closed the back door.

  Weird.

  A woman had been living here. An older woman. The closets were empty and there were no pictures — perhaps the real-estate agent had removed them? — but though the air was stale, it still held the unmistakeable scent of faux lavender and bleach. And everything was a bit … pastel. Pale pink carpets, flowered wallpaper weathered with age and peeling at the edges. Sad little outdated couches in previously cheery patterns. A Victorian reproduction rocking chair upholstered with balding berry velvet. An elderly woman. Living alone. And then she died. Mak frowned. Had Luther been renting it out? she wondered. He seemed quite rich from the spoils of his bloodshed, but she didn’t see why he wouldn’t also be a landlord. Perhaps an agent handled everything — sent the money to an account somewhere. Anonymous and easy. But why would he buy this place? Surely there would be better investments. Had he lived here at some point? That seemed impossible. It clearly wasn’t where he stayed when he was in town, so it had to serve another purpose. He, like Mak, probably did not like to bring illegal, easily detected weapons through airport security checkpoints. He’d have them waiting on the other side. It was her hope that he had them waiting here.

  On hands and knees, balancing on chairs or pacing the small rooms, Mak spent the next half-hour scouring every corner of the sad two-bedroom unit. She gave herself splinters pulling at floorboards. She lifted up faded pink carpet, and pushed and pulled at parts of the cramped, tile-cracked bathroom she would not have otherwise wanted to touch. There were no hidden panels, no surprises in the closets. The mouldy kitchen cupboards contained silverware and cheap dishes and no hidden drawers as the apartment had in Barcelona. But though the cupboards held no handy weapons, some had been carelessly stuffed with letters and photographs, no doubt hastily tucked away by a real-estate agent. Mak examined one framed photo from the stack. The glass was cracked.

  In the photo was a matronly woman wearing a floral-printed dress and standing next to a tall, rough-looking teenage boy dressed in denim. Beneath a baseball cap the boy’s face was vaguely familiar. Mak cocked her head to one side. She squinted.

  Luther.

  Her stomach dropped. Luther. Luther Hand. Bogey’s killer. As a boy. To her surprise she felt she might be ill. She raced to the small bathroom and dry-heaved over the open toilet bowl. Eventually the feeling passed and she sat on her heels, breathless.

  His mother lived here.

  Feeling a creeping sense of unease, Mak replaced the photographs, more sure than ever that Luther’s own mother had lived in the flat. And died here, too. Though she had searched with some determination, she could find nothing solid that would help her. Luther would have had to keep some kind of stash in Australia, wouldn’t he? Perhaps his mother had not known about his work. Of course. He would need his hidey-hole to be accessible from the outside. Without further delay she took the torch from the kitchen and walked outside.

  All was quiet. Sun brightened the tiny yard and the sad unused laundry lines and forgotten garden. She scanned the outside of the building, where sunlit brick dropped off into shadow. There was a small wooden door, only sixty or seventy centimetres high, built into the brick to the side of the back step. Access to the underside of the flat. Mak pulled her trench coat off, left it on the step and got on her hands and knees in the dirt and dry, yellowed grass. She pulled the door open, breaking cobwebs and causing insects to scuttle about. She switched the torch on and shone the light from side to si
de, spotting wooden beams and foundations, and sagging cardboard boxes a few metres inside. More cobwebs.

  Excellent.

  She crawled across the earth floor, dirt grinding into her palms and the knees of her jeans, her lip curled up at the objectionable stench of rat droppings and damp. She passed a coil of rusted wire and an abandoned coat hanger before arriving at the first cardboard box. It held forgotten books and papers, too water-damaged for either reading or making a fire. Another cardboard box was empty, and one was heaped with more discarded hangers. She shone the light around again, seeing the square of sunlight at the other end of the building, where she’d come in, and wishing she could step back out onto the lawn. Not yet.

  And then something caught her eye — a metal handle sticking up in the dirt near the foundations to the left of where she sat, reflecting as a small rectangle as she swung the beam over it. With a forearm and the crook of her elbow, Mak pushed the hair out of her eyes and continued, pushing aside cobwebs and shuffling on hands and knees to where the metal shone in the torchlight. The earth here was loosely packed. She put the light on its side and dug down with bare fingers, parting the dirt with her hands.

  Hello.

  Something metal. Something buried.

  Ten minutes later Mak emerged feet first into the yard, dragging a large, locked metal toolbox, covered in dirt. She hit the fresh air with a grateful sigh, and pulled the box up to the back step. The knees of her jeans were stained dark brown and her fingers felt raw. She went inside to wash her hands in the basin and splash fresh water on her face. And then she pulled out Luther’s key ring and fixed her eyes on the smallest key. The one with the rusted edge.

  She sat next to the box and tried it.

  Bingo.

  She unlocked the metal box with a squeak of unoiled hinges. Inside was a waterproof container housing two handguns, some items she identified as the parts of a disassembled sniper rifle, various types of ammunition and a fake Australian passport Mak would find sadly useless. Beneath it was a plastic bag. She lifted it out and her heart skipped.