Assassin

by Tara Moss

  Andy wanted to punch the café wall. With some effort he kept himself in check. His temper wouldn’t help anything. His temper had been part of the problem. He wanted to be angry with Makedde, but the truth was he had found solace in Carol’s bed when they’d broken up years before, soon after Mak had left him the first time. He hadn’t been able to really consider being with someone after she went missing in Paris, though. He’d not been seriously tempted by Dana’s attraction to him, though she was beautiful and independent and smart as hell, and she looked at him like he was someone. He just couldn’t do it. But still, how could he judge? He couldn’t blame Mak if she’d found someone to help her forget. God knows there would have been a lot of offers.

  But it hurt. It really goddamn hurt.

  Mak was leaning against the wall, arms and legs folded tightly. He glanced down at her belly beneath the singlet. It looked flat. He hadn’t noticed a baby bump when they’d made love. But she had seemed different — in so many ways that were beyond the physical.

  ‘You’ve been to a doctor? You’re sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said flatly and pulled away from him a touch.

  A thin waiter emerged with two plastic menus. ‘Breakfast?’

  ‘Just … um, two lattes,’ Andy responded, flicking his eyes to Mak to see if she had something else in mind. She kept her eyes on the tabletop and didn’t open her mouth. The young man disappeared. He didn’t bother to wipe down the sticky table.

  ‘Why tell me now?’ Andy asked. ‘Here?’

  ‘You don’t like seeing me?’

  ‘Of course I do. Jesus, the other night was …’ It had been amazing. ‘I’d hoped you would be there when I woke up. Where’d you go? It drives me nuts not to have a way to reach you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. You have no idea …’

  How much I love you.

  Mak crossed her legs the other way, leather creaking. She pulled one boot-shod foot up under the table. She didn’t take the aviators off and he wished he could see her eyes.

  ‘Have you ever been to Spain, Andy?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you ever been to Spain?’ she asked again in a neutral voice.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘There’s a great little village called Peratallada, not too far from the Costa Brava. Tiny population. It’s a medieval town. Everything carved in stone. I stayed there when I was driving down from France. It’s trapped in the twelfth century, Andy. Just beautiful. You’d love it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ She pulled those aviators down a touch and he could see that her gorgeous blue-green eyes were bloodshot. They slid over the crowd around them and then settled on his, seeming brighter than usual. ‘Are you happy, Andy?’

  He was blind-sided. ‘Happy? Happy about you being wanted for shooting my partner? That you were on the front page of the paper and everyone’s looking for you?’ He felt the anger rise in him. He was supposed to arrest her. His job was to arrest her. And she was asking him if he was happy?

  ‘No, I mean, are you happy? Because I’m not,’ she continued. ‘I don’t want any more of this. If I never see another dead body in my life, if I don’t see any more blood, if I’m never chased or stalked again, I’ll be happy.’

  He reached out instinctively for her hand and took it in his. It felt cold. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been through all this, Mak.’ With his other hand he ran his fingers over his hair. ‘Fucking hell. How did everything get so crazy? What are you going to do? What are we going to do?’

  Mak smiled, though her eyes were strange. Not cold, exactly, but distant. She pushed the glasses up her nose again and pulled back. ‘The assassin who tried to kill me in Paris had money. A lot of money. Yes, blood money, but I’m no martyr, as it turns out. I’ve had enough of doing the right thing. I have a chance at freedom, Andy. One chance. I’m going to enjoy what I can of life now.’ She nodded to herself as if she still needed convincing. ‘What about you?’ she asked him.

  ‘What about me?’ Andy replied, flummoxed.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me?’

  His chest tightened.

  ‘No promises, no vows, just a chance. But only if we leave all this. We can change our lives, change our names, be anyone we want to be.’ She looked around furtively. ‘I don’t want to be Mak any more.’

  Andy thought of how much he’d always wanted her. He thought of all the things that had got in their way. He thought of her on the beach at La Perouse when they’d first met — her devastated by the murder of her friend, him the detective in charge. And he thought of her now. Wanted. And he couldn’t help her. Couldn’t arrest her. Couldn’t. What did that make him?

  ‘If you want me — us — come find us,’ Mak said and smiled gently. Her hand strayed to her small belly. Fugitive and lover. And mother? He didn’t know what to make of the woman he was looking at, a woman who now kept a gun on her at all times, who set up clandestine meetings and secret cameras, and disguised herself to walk the streets.

  Mak leaned in, pressed herself against him, and he felt the crush of her swelling breasts — the one sign of her pregnancy he might have noticed — and he felt her strong, thin arms around him, and he wanted her again. God, he wanted her. He wanted both of them. He didn’t care if it wasn’t his child. For a moment that hurt no longer seemed to matter. She ran her hands over his back and the rough stubble of his face, and gave him a brief, devastating kiss with a mouth as sweet as strawberries, then she just stood, turned and walked out of the café. Andy resisted reaching out to her as she went. He didn’t follow. He didn’t call out. He just sat and watched with a feeling of terrible conflict and helplessness as she walked off into the shifting crowd of Oxford Street pedestrians. In seconds he’d lost sight of her.

  A minute later the thin waiter returned to the table with two lattes.

  Andy, shell-shocked, said nothing.

  He leaned heavily on his elbows and sipped his coffee. It tasted tart. He fished in his pocket idly, wondering what to do, checked his phone and sat up. There was an SMS from Angie. He hadn’t heard it come in. It was an hour old. Where had that hour gone?

  COME TO HOSPITAL was all it said.

  His heart constricted.

  Andy threw a ten-dollar bill on the table and rushed out.

  Andy only needed to see their faces to know.

  Jimmy’s family stood in the hospital corridor. His wife, Angie, was flanked by her mother and three of her sons who stood, as it happened, in order of height, ages diminishing. The youngest, Edmond, was cradled in his grandmother’s arms, limbs dangling, evidently asleep. Andy walked towards them and Angie opened her arms. He shut his eyes tightly as she gripped him and convulsed with tears, body warm, the grief clinging, infectious.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered and kissed her forehead.

  No. No …

  Jimmy had had close calls before and somehow he’d always made it through. He’d smoked and drunk and eaten to excess at every opportunity. He’d been reckless. He’d been selfless and selfish and a cheat and an honest, loyal fool. Was this it, here in this hospital — the end? It seemed impossible.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked, to the top of Angie’s hair.

  She pulled back, and he saw the anger in her pain. ‘You can get the — excuse me — but bitch who shot him.’

  He cringed. Now Jimmy was dead and Mak, of all people, the woman he’d just seen, the woman who might be pregnant with his child, was wanted as Jimmy’s killer. A cop killer. Cops looked after their own. Every police officer in the country would want to see her go down. If convicted of his murder, she would get mandatory life imprisonment. He wondered what Angie had been told, and by whom.

  ‘We’ll get whoever is responsible for this, I promise you,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘I’ll see to it that Jimmy gets his justice.’ He kissed her gently again on the forehead. ‘We don’t know who did this or why, but we will.
We’ll get his killer, I promise you.’

  He left his ex-partner’s grieving family in the presence of hospital staff and went in search of a doctor who could give him answers. That was the only way forwards. Answers. Action. After fifteen frustrating minutes he was put onto the right person — Dr Richard Hutton, a short, tidy man with greying hair and the scent of disinfectant about him.

  ‘I’d like to speak to you for a moment about your patient Mr Cassimatis,’ Andy told him.

  ‘Are you family?’ He was a bit cagey. A dead cop. Questions.

  Andy showed his ID. ‘Agent Andrew Flynn, Australian Federal Police. And a close friend of the deceased.’

  Dr Hutton hesitated, then shook Andy’s hand. He had the cleanest, most elegant hands Andy had seen on a man. He could have been a pianist. ‘All right. Come with me. I have a few minutes before I’m needed,’ the doctor told him.

  Andy followed him down the corridor and into a small office. He closed the door behind them and the blinds across the office window rattled. The doctor sat on the edge of a small desk, arms folded. ‘I assure you we did everything we could. He came in with a chest wound. He’d lost a lot of blood —’

  ‘He was on blood thinners,’ Andy cut in, standing against the closed door. ‘He had AF.’ Atrial fibrillation.

  ‘Correct. When the atrium,’ the doctor gestured to the left-hand side of his chest, ‘the top two chambers of the heart — fibrillate, they do not expel all the blood into the ventricles with each beat. Unfortunately, blood-thinning medication, like the Warfarin your friend was on, is not good when there is an injury like he had. They got him here fast, but he had already lost a lot of blood. We used FFP — um, fresh frozen plasma — and Vitamin K to reverse the effects of the Warfarin. The initial surgery was successful. Unfortunately, he developed a haemothorax, post-op. We performed a thoracotomy this morning, to drain the haematoma and find the source of the bleeding, but he suffered a myocardial infarction.’

  Andy grimly took all of it in. Myocardial infarction. Jimmy had suffered a heart attack. It wasn’t his first.

  ‘Unfortunately, anticoagulants are contraindicated under the circumstances,’ Dr Hutton explained. ‘Giving them might have saved his heart from ongoing damage, but he risked bleeding to death in the process. We tried to open the heart artery with a stent, but the damage to the heart, along with the strain from the gunshot wound and the ongoing bleeding, were too much. We did everything we could.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor.’ Andy took a breath. ‘Can I ask about Jimmy’s initial wounds?’

  ‘The gunshot wound?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It missed his heart and major organs. The police have all that information already.’

  Andy shifted from foot to foot. ‘Was there an exit wound?’

  ‘I think so. I did not perform the initial surgery,’ Dr Hutton explained.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He was brought to the hospital mortuary. I think he’s being transferred to Glebe now.’ The Department of Forensic Medicine. ‘Perhaps they will be able to help you with any further questions you have.’

  Andy thanked the doctor for his time and set out for the city morgue.

  Mak dismounted her Speed Triple in the residential cul-de-sac, propped it onto its kickstand, flipped her tinted visor up and looked around.

  There was a late-model Mercedes parked down the road and a family wagon in the driveway of the house across the street, but otherwise the area was empty on this weekday afternoon. Through the mesh of family homes along the shore, boats bobbed up and down on the blue waters of Pittwater. Beyond a low picket fence, a child’s tricycle lay on its side, resting on green, neatly mowed lawn. A row of bare roses was lined up along the fence, the heads clipped off, thorns sitting up like tiny knives. Next door, though, the lawn was slightly overgrown, the fence broken in one spot. A little less cared for. No high-maintenance rose garden. A holiday rental, perhaps? This was as good a place as any. She pulled her helmet off and slung the canvas bag and purse off her shoulder. It felt good to get her motorcycle jacket off. She left it slumped over her helmet on the kerb for a moment, the stiff leather arms slowly deflating in the sun.

  Mak stood in her tank top and leather pants, a line of sweat snaking down from her temple. She put her aviators on.

  This is the day.

  She gave another swift glance over her shoulder, paused for a second of contemplation, then hopped the picket fence and crouched behind a tall, unkempt shrub to strip off her pants. She put on a pair of new khaki shorts and simple white sneakers, and stuffed her motorcycle leathers, helmet and wig into the canvas bag, zipped it up and shoved it under the bush where it could not be easily seen. She stood and ran her fingers through her freshly shorn, spiky hair. A breeze tingled against her legs, and she could feel herself begin to cool. Patting herself down, she found a swing tag on the back pocket of her shorts and a price tag on the bottom of her sneakers. She pulled them off. Satisfied, she threw her leather handbag over her bare shoulder and set out on the walk towards the nearby strip mall, back up on the main road.

  Twenty minutes later Makedde had reached her destination, and she watched, strangely wide-eyed, as two mums with strollers walked past, caught up in conversation, bags of groceries hanging off every available surface and children sleeping soundly with their tiny, floppy legs hanging out into the sun. For a moment Mak tried unsuccessfully to imagine their roles reversed. Her with the pram. Them with this plan.

  She couldn’t quite imagine it.

  Mak had never been very domestic, but then, not all mothers were. Mothers were criminals, too. Killers even.

  She crossed the road and headed towards the entrance of Sanctum Spa, a one-level building at the end of the small strip mall, next to a half-empty car park. The glass display front was decorated with hanging white baubles and crystals, along with ads for a line of French beauty products, each featuring the same beautiful young model stretched across white sand and covered only with pearl-like white stones. Discover a New You, the ads invited.

  Mak stepped inside the spa and was immediately hit with cool, air-conditioned air, dreamy instrumental music and the scent of jasmine coming from an aromatherapy oil burner. The shift was jarring.

  ‘Welcome to Sanctum Spa. How may I help you?’ the receptionist said primly, looking Mak up and down and taking in her appearance. The austere woman had the prescribed ponytail and neat white uniform of the modern spa. Thankfully, nothing in her demeanour indicated that she recognised in the brunette before her the blonde socialite cop shooter from the front of the paper.

  ‘What kind of treatments do you have available?’ Mak asked. She took in the small water fountain and plush white lounges. Treatment rooms stretched down a hallway, each labelled with a different name on the door — Calm, Relax, Refresh …

  ‘We have a variety of masseuses available for relaxation, deep-tissue, Swedish, Hawaiian and hot-stone massage. We also do facials, manicures and pedicures.’

  Mak picked up a brochure and flipped through it idly, aware that with her bare nails, tomboyish attire and DIY haircut, she might seem an unlikely patron. ‘I’d like to book in for a massage next week. Would that be possible? Something deep tissue. The masseuse has to be really good. Really strong. And do you do oxygen facials?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the receptionist said earnestly. ‘I’ll just see who is available.’

  ‘May I use your ladies’ room?’ Mak asked.

  ‘Of course. It’s just that way.’ She pointed down the hallway distractedly. ‘Fifth door on the right.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Mak walked off in the direction the receptionist had indicated.

  She passed the doors of the treatment rooms and the bathroom and stopped. She looked both ways, saw the security camera in the corner of the ceiling and decided she didn’t care. A lot of shops now had security cameras, yet no one checked the tapes unless there was an incident, and shops commonly used the same tape over and over, recording
over one day with footage of the next. By the time anyone thought to look, it would likely be too late.

  Mak tried an unmarked cupboard, found that it was open and scanned the shelves.

  Perfect.

  She swiftly stuffed what she needed into her handbag — a uniform cap, vest and polo shirt — and walked back to the front, her bag a touch overfilled. Mak leaned on the counter, smiling. The receptionist was still checking her computer.

  ‘I can give you Penelope on Thursday, two p.m. for the massage.’ She stared at the screen for another minute. ‘Emily can do your facial afterwards,’ she concluded.

  ‘That’s great. Thank you.’

  ‘We need a deposit to secure the booking,’ the woman said, smiling and giving no sign that she knew what Mak had just done.

  For her part Makedde smiled in return, wondering fleetingly if that was always the policy, or if there was something about her that seemed suspicious. ‘I can pay with cash if you like.’ How ironic that this woman might be worried Mak would flake on a spa appointment.

  Mak was given a receipt and appointment card. She thanked the woman and walked undisturbed onto the sunny sidewalk, pleased with her haul and knowing she would never be back. She made her way to the beach shop a few stores down to buy some white towels, then turned left and made for the car park, balancing her bags of purchases. She spotted the vehicle she wanted and approached it, checking casually to see if anyone was watching her. Unobserved, she took out a mangled coat hanger, twisted it around into a wire hook and lowered it down between the window and the car door, manoeuvring it until it caught the lock.

  There.

  She pulled the locking mechanism up and the door obediently unlocked for her. She threw her bags in the back and got in.

  CHAPTER 41

  Andy parked on Arundel Street directly outside the Mortuary Office of the Department of Forensic Medicine in Glebe, the biggest mortuary in the southern hemisphere, his heart thudding with urgency. He’d sped there, and now he pushed his way inside and pressed his badge against the wall of glass at reception. It, too, was bulletproof, he knew. Not everyone was happy with autopsy results. Some relatives got quite tetchy, in fact.