Assassin

by Tara Moss

  It was filled with neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills contained by rubber bands. She guessed there was at least fifty thousand Australian dollars there.

  CHAPTER 12

  The American stood in his client’s lounge room, his polished leather shoes reflecting the copious sunlight in the space. It was Easter Sunday morning and Jack Cavanagh was at his weekend home in the northern suburb of Palm Beach, wearing a robe and towelling his hair off after a swim. The house was minimalist and open plan, with light pouring in through shimmering skylights and an expanse of glass sliding doors, some of which were pulled open, allowing a fresh, salty breeze to come in from the beach. Metres away, waves lapped gently at white sands.

  ‘Bob, are you sure you wouldn’t like Roberto to make you a coffee?’ Jack offered again. ‘He’s an excellent barista.’

  ‘No,’ The American said. He had come because he had news.

  Jack Cavanagh nodded. ‘Let’s go to my study.’

  They left the personal chef to make preparations for Jack’s lunch, and Jack led him to the hall and up a timber staircase. They passed the quiet second-floor bedrooms and at the end of the hall arrived at Jack’s study, which was furnished with a carved wooden desk, a couple of leather armchairs and a tall bookcase stocked with the biographies of prominent businessmen and politicians. A surrealist Brett Whiteley painting, recently purchased at auction, adorned the wall, and a floor-to-ceiling window overlooked a pristine stretch of beach.

  ‘Your son is flying to Australia. He should be in the country by tomorrow,’ The American told his client, once the door was closed.

  Jack Cavanagh was about to sit, but now he paused. His son’s return would be good news in some respects, but public appearances would need to be managed very carefully. Jack frowned, then took a seat and gestured for White to do the same. The American folded himself into the chair neatly, the morning sunlight illuminating his smooth, calm face. Behind Jack, the waves continued to roll in and out, in and out.

  Mr White kept his face devoid of emotion when he added, ‘Also, we have a lead on Makedde Vanderwall.’

  He watched his client inhale sharply. ‘Where? In Paris? Alive?’

  ‘Alive in Spain,’ he said. ‘But I can’t confirm yet whether the information is good.’

  A Barcelona man, Javier Rafel, wanted money for a tip on a woman matching Makedde’s description, only with dark hair. He said he did not know where she was, but had the new name she was travelling under.

  ‘If she’s alive …’ Jack said and trailed off. The blood had visibly drained from his face.

  What he didn’t need to say was that if she was alive, Mak Vanderwall could have some kind of proof that the killer who had come after her, Luther Hand, had been sent on behalf of Jack Cavanagh. It would be disastrous for Cavanagh Incorporated. And for Mr White and his professional interests.

  ‘The information comes from a man specialising in false ID and counterfeit bonds. The woman he thinks is Makedde Vanderwall purchased a false passport from him. He’ll give us the name on the passport if we pay.’

  ‘Do it,’ Jack demanded without hesitation.

  ‘You should know this man is outside my usual network. His credentials are not excellent,’ he said. ‘But he has convinced me it is her.’

  Mr White produced a facsimile of a passport photograph. It appeared to show an unsmiling Makedde Vanderwall with dark hair. Javier Rafel seemed to have been in contact with precisely the woman they’d been looking for. With the name on her passport The American could use his considerable contacts and Jack’s financial resources to trace her. The moment Vanderwall used the passport at a border, a bank, a hotel, they’d have her.

  Jack examined the image. ‘Pay him what he wants.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Makedde Vanderwall slid the plastic key card into the door and it unlocked.

  She stepped into the entry to the serviced apartment, awkwardly cradling the heavy metal toolbox. She pulled her case inside and closed the door behind her, shutting out the car park and outside world. The toolbox was wrapped in a towel belonging, it would seem, to the deceased mother of the man who had tried to kill her in Paris. His laptop was in its padded satchel in her carry-on bag, at her feet.

  These were all of her possessions. And this impersonal apartment would be home, for the moment, at least.

  Before her was a carpeted staircase leading upwards and at the sight she shrugged off the burden of her few belongings, placing the toolbox on the landing at her feet. She took the DO NOT DISTURB sign off the inside door handle and placed it outside the door, then shut the door again and locked it. With that done Mak took a breath and leaned against the wall. It was cold at her back. She had paid for one week in advance, in cash. Without a credit card the receptionist had insisted on recording her passport details for ID, so she was glad she’d had one on hand. It was increasingly hard to live without a credit card, she reflected. She’d have to organise one for Ms Cruz.

  Ms Cruz, your new home awaits.

  Mak unbuttoned her trench coat and kneeled on the small landing to unwrap the pastel pink towel hiding Luther’s dirty box of tricks. On instinct she reached for the smallest and most familiar of the weapons — a compact model Glock. She fitted the magazine with nine-millimetre rounds, loaded it and stuck the gun into the waistband of her jeans.

  Just in case, she thought.

  She straightened and padded casually up the carpeted stairs. The townhouse was quite spacious for one person. There was a full-sized kitchen near the top of the stairs and a large living room with a flat-screen television on a low-slung entertainment unit, a modern, pale beige lounge and a bookshelf that was empty save for a few brochures and tourist maps. Beyond the living room were two smallish bedrooms and a full bathroom, accessible from both. She walked through each room, checking window latches and seeing that the only decent entry and exit point was the door at the base of the stairs, where she had come in. There were none of those pesky connecting doors that would make her vulnerable to the serviced units on either side. No spots where the ground outside came near the windows. It would be hard to climb up, but if she really needed to, she could jump out without breaking a leg — if she landed right. That was good. Nearly everything in the place was a shade of white, as was the current fashion of interior design, it seemed. The space appeared comfortable but lifeless. Her shoulders dropped.

  Home sweet home.

  At the sight of the neatly made queen-sized bed, adorned with large, inviting, fluffed-up pillows, every one of her more than thirty hours of travel weighed on her at once.

  Fifteen minutes later Mak was fast asleep, the Glock within reach.

  CHAPTER 14

  It was about ten o’clock in the evening local time on Easter Sunday and still sometime in the afternoon in Barcelona as Makedde Vanderwall cracked a packet of two-minute noodles into a boiling pot on the stovetop. Outside, the skies had opened up, pummelling the dark Sydney streets with heavy droplets of rain, breaking the surprisingly oppressive humidity. In the next room, the television nattered away on low volume. Mak had slept a few hours and then forced herself to wake for a proper meal and an attempt at time adjustment. If she got to bed again at midnight, she might wake at a normal hour.

  Andy Flynn was on her mind.

  Sometimes she still saw him in her dreams, still felt the weight of their time together. There’d once been a powerful attraction between them, such passion, but through a time of terrible upheaval. If they hadn’t met at a crime scene, could things have been different? If he hadn’t been recovering from a brutal divorce? If they hadn’t both been nursing their own private wounds, would they have been able to avoid wounding each other? When she’d moved to Canberra to be with him they’d lived like a married couple, and that closeness seemed to cause him to close off, to shut her out, and make him reach for the bottle once more. The scars of his failed marriage to Cassandra had seemed too deep. Knowing what he’d been through, she couldn’t blame him. How must i
t have felt when the Stiletto Killer murdered Cassandra to get at him? To try to set him up? To toy with his mind and his career? What was it like to carry that with you? That sense of being responsible for someone’s murder?

  Mak understood now, after Bogey.

  No, she couldn’t blame Andy. Things had been made impossible for them. Their relationship had crumbled, become tense. He’d been upset about her ongoing battle with the Cavanaghs and she’d ended the relationship for good reason. It had been a relief in some ways when she’d ended it.

  And then she’d fallen in love with Bogey, so quickly and to such …

  In Europe everything had been unfamiliar. But here in Sydney, in this impersonal serviced apartment, and with the comfort of her dearest friends and her former lover so painfully close, it seemed to Mak that her isolation was complete. Already the pull to her friends proved a temptation. Without her old mobile phone or address book she didn’t have Karen Mahoney’s number, or Loulou’s or Andy’s, but she could get them easily enough. The question of whether she could reach her friends was easy, but the question of whether she should reach them was something else altogether. Could she afford to bring her former boss Marian into this? Karen?

  No.

  I would put them at risk. I would put myself at further risk.

  They were better off without her.

  She’d made the decision again and again. No matter how she moved the pieces around, the conclusion was the same. She had to try to remain invisible until it was safe. But how to make it safe? What were the correct steps? Increasingly, Luther’s laptop seemed like the key. She had to get it to Andy — the only person she could safely entrust it to. She’d have to deliver it directly into his hands — which would bring so many other issues with it.

  Mak tested the noodles with her fork. They gave under the pressure of the prongs, and she pulled one strand out of the bubbling water to taste it. Dinner was nearly ready. It wasn’t much on nutrition, she knew, but it was not news to her that she was hopeless — and hopelessly impatient — when it came to all things domestic. She half suspected she would have succumbed to scurvy if not for the convenience of the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria near Luther’s apartment.

  What was that?

  Mak had pulled a small packet of seasoning from the plastic wrappings, prepared to drop the contents in, and now she paused. Below the sound of heavy rainfall against the window and the murmurs of a car commercial in the next room, she thought she heard a sound on the staircase.

  Something is wrong.

  Instinctively, she dropped the packet of seasoning, grabbed the pot of water from the stove, shut the kitchen light off and crouched behind the white cupboard, her back against the wall and her heart hammering. After a beat, when she found herself cowering in the blackness of the unfamiliar kitchen, she very nearly laughed aloud. Even though she’d tried to prepare for it for weeks, the incident on the outskirts of Barcelona had shaken her deeply. Her nerves had not really recovered. Now she was flinching at shadows, at creaking floors. Ludicrous.

  It’s the building settling. It’s your new neighbours.

  But there was a second creak and a figure appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted in the kitchen doorway and casting a shadow across the kitchen linoleum. In the shadow, she could make out the unmistakeable shape of a gun in the figure’s right hand, extended like Pinocchio’s nose by a silencer. Her own gun, Luther’s compact Glock, was in the living room. The filthy toolbox with the disassembled sniper rifle was there, too. Too far. She’d kept a gun at her side in Europe for weeks and now she was in Sydney, closer than ever to those who wanted her dead, and she’d left her gun out of reach.

  There was a moment of motionless silence as the sickening reality hit home — They know where I am. Somehow they know — and Mak sprang up from her position and threw the hot contents of the pot at the figure, aiming at the face and head. Her intruder — a blond, black-clad Caucasian man — screamed and instinctively brought his gloved hands to his face, where hot noodles had attached themselves on his scalded skin. She swung the pot with as much force as she had, but her attacker ducked at the last second, the pot glancing off his head and the momentum throwing her past him in an awkward stumble. His gun dropped. As it hit the carpet, she fell to the ground and grabbed it, scrambling backwards on her hands and feet. She looked down at the loaded weapon for a beat and was kicked hard under the chin with blunt force.

  ‘AAAAGHHHHH!’ she cried, her jaw seeming to disconnect from her face. She crawled backwards down the steps, moaning, half sliding, as her attacker swung around in arcs at the top of the stairs, brandishing something gleaming and sharp.

  She still had his gun. She found the trigger.

  From this angle the light from the staircase illuminated the assassin fully as he stood at the top of the steps, his face crimson with fresh burns, eyes closed to slits. He had pulled a knife from his belt and he had it in a reverse grip, stabbing at the air violently with one hand, the other reaching out.

  Oh God, she thought. He’s blinded. Kill him. Do it now.

  She aimed true, but foolishly closed her eyes just as she pulled the trigger.

  There was a muffled thump, and a recoil that pushed her left elbow off the stair she’d been leaning on. When she opened her eyes again her attacker was down. Mak scrambled to her feet, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, and stood over him. She trained his gun at his swollen face, but there was no need. His throat gaped from the bullet that had torn it open. There was an audible gurgle and splutter as he coughed blood and it spewed from the corners of his mouth. Soon his chest stopped moving. Slowly, a pool of darkness began to spread out into the carpet.

  Get out of here, now.

  The Cavanaghs had her new name and had already traced it here to this complex — to this townhouse. Somehow, it had taken them less than a day. She had no time to consider how they’d found her. Not now. Mak strapped two thick travel wallets around her waist, filled with the cash she kept on her, and the false passport she’d bought in Barcelona but was already, apparently, useless to her. She gathered the few items of clothing she now had and toiletries she could shove into plastic bags. Hastily, she took a hand towel and wiped the apartment down for fingerprints, trying to recall the areas she’d touched in her hours there. Then she pulled on her trench coat and stood over the dead body at the top of the staircase. She steeled herself. Come on. Don’t be a coward now.

  She got on her knees and patted the stranger down. His body felt firm beneath her palms, warm but lifeless. The tags were cut out of his clothing. She found no wallet. No identification. No business cards, no notes, no car keys, no phone, no clue as to who specifically had sent him — an agent, or Jack Cavanagh himself? But she did find a spare magazine of ammunition for his weapon. A lot of ammo to kill one civilian, she thought. She shoved the knife and ammunition in with her toiletries and stood up again. There was no way to stage the death to look like a suicide. The stranger who had come for her had fresh burns on his face and the bullet had gone through his throat and out the other side. Mak knew that suicides didn’t scald themselves before taking a gun to their throats, not dressed in black clothing without tags, in a dwelling they had no business being in. Mak didn’t bother to try to retrieve the bullet. Her prints would not be on it, and ballistics could not link her to it. After a moment of indecision she wiped the gun down and left it with the body. If she used it again, it could link her to this dead man. And besides, she had Luther’s Glock to protect her in future. She didn’t plan on letting it leave her side again.

  Mak took one last look around the apartment, including under the bed for stray garments and in the bed sheets and bathroom drains for hair, turned the television off so that it wouldn’t bother the neighbours and, satisfied she could do no more to distance herself from the crime scene, gathered Luther’s toolbox and her small carry-on bag, stuffed messily with her things and the all-important laptop she’d risked her life to get to Australia
. She stepped over the assassin’s body, careful not to tread in the growing pool of blood, and made her way down the staircase to the front door.

  Luther’s gun was tucked in the small of her back and now she placed her things on the landing, turned the lights off, took a beat to allow her eyes to adjust, and opened the door, gun drawn. Nothing moved. The parking lot seemed motionless, except for rain hitting the glittering asphalt. She could hear cars on the main road just above the din of raindrops. She waited a beat, then dashed out of the front of the building in a crouch, hiding behind the first car, scanning the area again and then running again with a speed and strength she didn’t know she possessed. Once she was a couple of blocks away, she broke into a grassy family yard and ran for the shadowy shelter of a back porch. She slid across the ground and came to a stop under the tall verandah, and sat on the damp ground with her back to the house. Utterly soaked, she slunk down and rested her head on the toolbox, her breathing rapid. Above her, in a safe and warm living room, a television was playing the very same channel she’d been watching perhaps fifteen minutes earlier, thinking she was safe.

  Slowly now. Slowly. Just breathe …

  A tear escaped.

  Then another.

  The cover of Ms Cruz was now useless to her. She had to go deeper. And she had to stop Jack Cavanagh before he got to her again.

  CHAPTER 15

  Agent Andrew Flynn sat in his hotel room in World Square, looking over case notes on scraps of paper, and searching on his laptop for anything further he could find online about Victoria Hempsey, John Dayle and Plotsky and Graney. Nearly everyone left an electronic footprint, but thus far nothing he found proved valuable. He’d been upgraded to a ‘suite’ for his final night, though that seemed only to mean that there was a small sitting area, currently inhabited by Agent Dana Harrison, who seemed not to like sitting on chairs. She’d spent most of the previous two hours cross-legged on the floor with her iPad and the files from the case, her suit jacket hung over a chair. From time to time he watched her flick her fingers across the screen of the mysterious device and swiftly type on a keypad he could not see. He still liked written notes. Watching her made him feel old.