Assassin

by Tara Moss

  And then Makedde Vanderwall saw that he was not alone. She took her eyes off Dayle to see that he had carried with him a young woman in a skirt and stiletto shoes. She was on the floor next to him. She wasn’t speaking.

  ‘Holy shit! What the fuck?’ the man said, legs flailing. He was pale and insubstantial and he smelled like old sweat.

  ‘I wouldn’t move if I were you. Tell me your name,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  She pressed the scalpel blade to the skin of his unwashed cheek. ‘Your name.’

  ‘John. John Dayle.’

  So she had the right man. And Andy had picked it. Mak’s eyes flickered to the woman again. Her eyelids moved. She made a groaning sound. She was alive. Was she drunk, or …?

  ‘We need to chat.’ Mak pulled Dayle up by his T-shirt with a yank and led him to the computer chair she’d brought down from upstairs. She spun the chair around. ‘Sit down.’

  He didn’t. He just stood in front of her, panicking, his red-rimmed eyes flitting about the room as he tried to decide what to do. With a single shove she pushed him into the chair, and the metal of the cuffs clacked on the hard plastic of the seat. Mak pulled the rope out and looped it around his puny chest and arms, tying it over until it was nice and tight and she was good and satisfied. She tied the ends off at the back in a neat square knot. His legs were free, but that didn’t seem to be a problem.

  ‘There we are,’ she said, standing before him.

  ‘What the fuck is this?!’ he shouted, and she calmly leaned in and moved the scalpel under his nose. She shook her head silently from side to side and he grew quiet again, his breathing rapid. Mak saw a glimpse of her own reflection in the blade and it was something from a nightmare — a grinning creature with shorn hair and white teeth, and death shining in its eyes. She retracted the blade.

  ‘What did you do to her? Did you drug her?’

  He looked away and swallowed.

  ‘Roofies? Rohypnol?’

  He didn’t answer. She pushed the scalpel against the sensitive flesh of his nostril.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘I slipped her a roofie, okay? Big deal.’

  Mak licked her lips and took a deep breath. She was so angry. So angry. She needed to stay calm, to think. Mak left Dayle tied to the chair and she crossed the small room to kneel by the woman’s side. She was attractive and healthy, with dark hair. Her breathing and her heartbeat were regular.

  What could Mak do?

  She realised she was still holding Dayle’s horrible scalpel, so she put it down, put her arms around the barely conscious woman’s torso and lifted her up. It took her a moment to balance the weight of her, then she carried the petite woman across to Dayle’s couch and lay her down on her side to make sure that her airway was clear. She would have to sleep it off and when she woke, it was likely that she wouldn’t remember anything that had happened after the drug was slipped to her. It was the infamous ‘date rape’ drug. Mak wondered how often Dayle had used it.

  ‘It’s okay. You are safe now,’ Mak whispered to the woman, unsure if she could be heard. The eyes fluttered and closed again. Her breathing was slow and heavy, but she was okay.

  Mak returned to Dayle, who had gone very quiet. ‘So, you are a rapist. And a killer now, too. Congratulations.’

  He opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out.

  ‘You know, John, you are nothing like him.’

  ‘What? Who?’ He struggled in his binds again, the initial shock of the situation starting to wear off.

  She leaned in again, letting the sharp tip of his scalpel sit just inside his nostril once more. ‘The Stiletto Killer,’ she said.

  ‘The …? I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, quivering and seeming to grow yet smaller.

  Mak smiled. ‘He was much smarter than you. And much, much tidier.’ She looked around the flat disapprovingly. ‘He was a neat-freak actually. And quite precise about everything he did. He’d never do something quite so stupid as kill his own neighbour.’

  ‘Kill my …? Uh, uh … Ms Hempsey? No! I … I … couldn’t do that.’

  He was a terrible liar. And Mak had nothing left for him but rage and impatience.

  She flicked the scalpel blade and his nose opened up, blood spilling down his face. He cried out and she put a finger to his lips to hush him, his blood staining her latex gloves. He quickly shut up again.

  ‘Every time you lie to me, I cut you,’ she told him.

  In addition to having his rope, knife and scalpel ready, she had placed a few key items she’d found in his bedroom on the staircase, ready for their discussion. Now she left him struggling uselessly in the binds as she plucked the first item from the stairs. When she returned he’d kicked the chair over, but she righted it again with ease.

  ‘Okay. Why don’t you tell me about this?’ She held up a clipping about Ms Hempsey’s death. It was a small article from several pages into a Tribune, published the previous week. Mak had read it online after the discussion with Andy.

  ‘It’s … it’s just a news clipping.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘My neighbour died recently,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Died? No. She didn’t die. She was raped and murdered,’ Mak corrected him.

  He nodded and looked to his knees. By now he would know that she’d looked under his bed and found the other clippings. They’d all been in the same box.

  ‘So, did you enjoy your correspondence with Ed Brown?’ Mak said. She smiled joylessly and held up a well-worn letter from the Stiletto Killer. His handwriting repulsed her. His words, even more so.

  John Dayle looked at it with wide eyes, but said nothing.

  ‘You must have found him quite inspiring,’ she said, without a trace of emotion in her voice. ‘He seemed to really appreciate your letters. What does he call you here?’ She unfolded one of the pages. ‘My comrade. Comrade? Interesting choice of words.’ Dayle said nothing. She supposed the correspondence would have been read by the warden. It was a wonder that it hadn’t pegged Dayle as a person of interest to the police. Then again, a lot of prisoners received letters. Especially high-profile prisoners.

  ‘Anything you want to tell me about your correspondence?’ He kept his head down, saying nothing. ‘No? Okay, let’s move on then.’

  She calmly placed the letters on the floor, displaying them in a semicircle, and she walked to the staircase and returned with the jar, the final damning piece of evidence. Floating in the sloppy formalin was a severed toe, the nail painted with red polish. Mak had been sick when she’d first discovered it. She’d thrown up in Dayle’s filthy bathroom, vomiting what little food she’d managed to keep down earlier. Now she only felt rage.

  ‘And what about this?’

  On seeing it in her hands, John arched backwards and struggled again, trying to get away. He screamed and she put a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound.

  ‘Now, John, we don’t want company, do we? You don’t want company, do you? You and your souvenir from Ms Hempsey would make quite a sight.’

  She removed her hand and he watched her with wide eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Me? I’m Makedde Vanderwall. I thought you might have recognised me by now. Oh, it’s the hair, isn’t it?’ She ran a hand over her short locks, feeling the weightlessness, the tingling sensitivity of her scalp. He only stared, but she could see in his eyes that he knew who she was now. His mind struggled to piece it together. Her here, in his terrace. And she was sure by now he suspected he was going to die.

  ‘Now, I’m going to have to gag you for this next bit,’ she explained and placed his red ball gag in his mouth. She tightened the straps around the back of his head, then picked up the hammer.

  ‘Ed Brown used to bludgeon his victims with a common household hammer. Like this one I found under your bed, wrapped in plastic. He didn’t like them to die that way. He liked to keep them alive while he did horrible things to them.’ She looked at the h
ammer inquisitively. ‘Doesn’t look like you cleaned it terribly well. The police would like this, I think.’

  He tried to speak, but with the gag, not much came out.

  ‘Now, I’m a reasonable woman, John. I don’t want to bludgeon you to death. I don’t want to rape you, torture you, do to you what you did to poor Victoria Hempsey. So I’ll give you another option. Would you like another option, John?’

  He nodded emphatically.

  She pulled the knife out and waved it in front of him. ‘I can either bludgeon you to death, or you can just cut your own throat, now, with your knife and have it over with.’

  He struggled and started to cry, his face turning red.

  ‘Don’t be like that, John. You’ll get no sympathy from me. You killed that woman — you made her suffer horribly — for no other reason than because you wanted to, and now you are going to die here, tonight. Be grateful you have a choice at all. Victoria didn’t have a choice. Ed Brown’s victims didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice.

  ‘So what will it be, John?’

  Makedde removed the gag and let him drink from a bottle of vodka from the freezer, holding it to his lips for him. Once he said he was ready, she untied him and gave him the knife. Under her watchful eye and the sight of Luther’s compact Glock, she witnessed him slit his throat. It took him three tries, hesitating again and again before he got a deep cut. It was not an easy way to go. You had to really mean it. She made sure he meant it.

  It took longer for him to die than she’d hoped. But she was patient. To her amazement and dismay, she didn’t feel a thing, watching the man kill himself. Not a thing.

  Mak arranged the clippings and artifacts around him — a shrine of horrors. The knife had fallen from his hand and she left it where it lay. The hammer and scalpel were lined up at his feet with the formaldehyde jar, like the ones found in Ed Brown’s flat and widely reported in the papers at the time of the Stiletto Murders. Victoria Hempsey’s killer was himself the grim centrepiece. On the couch was the woman who would have been his next victim. She would wake to a terrible shock, but hopefully that would be in a hospital, not here, with this gruesome display in front of her. No, Mak had no choice. She had to call for medical help for this woman. Her hands still cased in latex gloves, Mak dragged Dayle’s phone over to the couch and put the receiver in the unconscious woman’s hand. She dialled Triple 0 and when the operator answered, said nothing.

  Mak left the terrace unlocked and stepped out into the dark, rainy streets of Surry Hills.

  She walked to the nearest payphone and again dialled Triple 0. ‘I saw a man drag an unconscious woman into his terrace on Davoren Lane,’ she said, using the Spanish accent she’d been working on. ‘He was white male, around thirty years old, wearing a red baseball cap. I think she was drugged. I am really concerned for her safety.’ Mak refused to give a name, but gave Dayle’s address and hung up. Once Dayle and the woman were discovered, that recording would be played and replayed many times, she knew.

  She hoped she was not recognisable. Or perhaps by then it wouldn’t matter.

  Benumbed, Mak left the payphone booth, and climbed on her waiting motorbike.

  And she rode for hours.

  To forget.

  CHAPTER 39

  Early Friday morning, Andy’s phone rang. It’s Jimmy, was his first thought on coming violently into wakefulness.

  He sat up and brought his mobile to his ear. ‘Flynn,’ he croaked.

  ‘How fast can you get to Davoren Lane?’ Inspector Kelley asked him abruptly.

  Davoren Lane?

  Andy looked at the hotel clock. It was five-thirty. ‘By six,’ he said, with a mouth that had instantly been drained of all moisture. ‘Another victim?’

  ‘Just get here,’ Kelley said sharply and hung up.

  When Andy pulled into Davoren Lane there was no question where the action was. John Dayle’s terrace was cordoned off with police tape and the whole narrow alley was crawling with cops. He recognised two of them instantly: Mak’s friend Detective Karen Mahoney — and Agent Dana Harrison.

  Andy parked his car carelessly just beyond the action and stepped out, confused by what he was seeing, his AFP badge displayed for the benefit of a constable who waved him through as he ducked under the barrier. Andy’s eyes were fixed on Dana’s slumped figure. She turned her head slightly and he caught a glimpse of her puffy face in the early morning light. His heart constricted. Had she been crying? Oddly, she was wearing clothing that seemed not to fit. Denim jeans and a sports jacket, both too big? What the hell was she doing in Sydney? Doing here?

  Detective Mahoney had an arm around her. She seemed to be comforting her.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Andy blurted, feeling himself panic. He strode towards them, and Karen met his eyes with a look that told him to cool it. ‘What’s going on?’ he said, looking from her to Harrison.

  Dana flicked her bloodshot eyes in his direction and then quickly looked to her feet. She appeared as white as paper. ‘Sorry, Andy,’ she said, and before he could ask her why she was there and what she was sorry for, Inspector Kelley emerged from the terrace.

  Kelley waved Andy over. ‘Flynn. I need you over here.’ His eyes went from Andy to Dana and back again. ‘Now, please.’

  Disoriented by Dana’s presence, Andy walked towards Dayle’s threshold, where Kelley pulled him to one side of the entrance. ‘Please tell me you don’t know anything about this,’ he said quietly before they went inside.

  ‘About what? What the fuck is going on? What is Agent Harrison doing here?’

  Kelley watched him. ‘So you don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t know what?’ Andy thought he might punch the brick wall.

  ‘Dayle is dead,’ Kelley explained.

  All things considered, the news was welcome. ‘What happened? Why is Harrison here?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Your agent is talking us through everything she remembers, which isn’t much. She was found here, unconscious, after a call to Triple 0 last night.’

  Andy’s face froze for a moment, gaping.

  ‘She was taken to St Vincent’s.’

  St Vincent’s. His mind flashed to Jimmy and for a moment he tried unsuccessfully to piece together what had happened to Jimmy and what he was seeing now.

  ‘She was released half an hour ago,’ Kelley continued. ‘She says she’s fine. They did a rape kit and thankfully found no obvious evidence of any sexual assault. They kept her clothing to be tested, anyway. Blood tests haven’t come back, but it looks like she may have been drugged.’

  Holy fucking hell.

  Andy had to work hard to keep himself calm. ‘I don’t … understand. What was she doing here? Did he track her down? He drugged her?’

  ‘Your agent spent the evening at the White Cockatoo, Flynn. She was spotted being dragged here afterwards, according to an anonymous call.’

  Andy’s mind scrambled to make the connection, and when it hit, it felt like a kick to the stomach. He recalled how Dana had reacted when she’d heard the surveillance team had been called away. How livid she’d been. Her reaction had given him pause, but he couldn’t have imagined she would do something like this. Just exactly what had she done?

  ‘This is the scene of a suspicious death now. Though it appears your agent was drugged — was a victim here — technically she will need to be cleared as a suspect.’

  Andy’s head swam.

  Kelley caught Andy’s eye and spoke in a low, steady voice. ‘You were right about Dayle. He’s our guy. There’s no question now. Your agent has been through a lot, so whatever her reasons for being at the White Cockatoo, take it easy on her, okay?’

  Andy nodded. ‘Show me what we have.’

  Kelley turned his back and stepped inside the terrace. Andy followed. ‘You’ve been in here before, yes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They walked along the short hallway, past the base of a steep staircase, and stopped. Dayle was in front of them, surroun
ded by a small milieu of officers recording the scene. He was seated in his computer chair in the middle of the small lounge room. There was a lot of blood, all in the one area, soaking Dayle’s T-shirt, his pants, his shoes. There was a crimson pool under the chair.

  His face was slack, eyes open, looking upwards.

  The weapon, a knife, was on the floor, his right hand dangling above it. Thousands of Australians took their own lives each year, and many more attempted it, but it took a certain amount of dedication to open your own throat with a blade. It happened practically every year, even in Sydney, but it was quite rare compared with hangings, fatal jumps and intentional overdoses. Quite rare. Investigators had to consider it suspicious until fingerprints were taken and the angle of the cuts closely analysed. A quick glance told Andy that at least there had been no real struggle. No blood had hit the walls.

  But the way Dayle had seemingly topped himself wasn’t the most interesting part. The most interesting part was the display that surrounded his blood-soaked figure. In a semicircle around his thin corpse was a visual confession of his crimes. Weapons. A gag. News clippings. Souvenirs. Andy stepped towards the corpse and its grim accessories and bent to look at what was there, hands folded behind his back.

  Yes. By all accounts Dayle appeared to be their man. And rather than be arrested he did … this?

  ‘So what do we know so far? Dayle was at the bar. He brought Harrison here and then …?’ Andy trailed off. ‘Intended to assault her but had a fit of remorse? Changed his mind about attacking her and instead attacked himself? Or maybe he’d intended her to witness his suicide? He recognised her from the police canvass and knew it was over?’