Siren

by Tara Moss

  ‘And stay away from those other people too,’ Marian added when Mak was halfway down the hall. ‘They are no business of yours…’

  The Cavanaghs.

  Don’t worry about that, Mak thought as she stepped into the hall.

  And wondered.

  CHAPTER 4

  Four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines propelled a hulking A380 Airbus through clear skies far above the Indian Ocean.

  Inside the aircraft, over four hundred passengers slept soundly with their blindfolds, travel socks and trays of food, imagining through twitches of sleep their touchdown in Australia. At the front of the plane, one man sat awake and alone in his first-class suite, head bent solemnly. His shoulders were nearly too wide for the fold-down bed, his size forever an issue, and for the moment he sat up in his seat with his eyes closed, awake and pensive. His muscled and knotted form felt even heavier than usual, his neck as stiff as steel. A light but constant headache had plagued him since boarding at Heathrow. Though he was in his late thirties, and considered himself worldly, he was wrestling with his first experience of true grief.

  Luther Hand had lost his mother.

  He would soon be arriving in Sydney, a place of personal significance. It was the place of Luther’s birth, the place of his transformation from boy to man, and man to killer. He had all but left Australia behind him since, reducing it to little more than a fragment of a humble hidden past he did not discuss and avoided reflecting upon. His failures were there, the realities of his humble beginnings were there, and now, with his mother gone, he would have no reason to return. The last of his real past would have turned to ashes, slipping forever into the unknown; the only woman who ever loved him, gone. His trusted contact in Sydney had been the one to inform him of his loss. Even he had not known Luther’s true relationship to Cathy Davis—only that Luther left money for her every month. According to his contact, she had returned to her Redfern apartment with her groceries, and tripped on her porch, cracking her skull open on a garden gnome. The thought filled Luther with anguish and a sense of regret and failure.

  His mother had not yet turned sixty, but had suffered the health of someone much older. She had lived hard in her youth. Luck had been a stranger to her.

  Mum.

  Sydney was also the location of Luther’s only failed contract of the past six years, and the circumstances and target of that failed job came to the forefront of his thoughts as he prepared for arrival. The target had been, of all things, a beautiful woman. He had underestimated her resourcefulness and luck. She did not know him and had never seen his face, but he knew her well, and regarded her with special interest. The enigma of the one hit who had escaped him seemed to loom profoundly as the plane hurtled towards the geographical place of their encounters, where it had been his job to follow her and, later, to kill her. They had scuffled in a darkened hall, a messy exchange. And he had soon after witnessed her crash her motorcycle to what should have been her death: a clean kill for his client, attributable to mere accident, no one to blame, no investigation. But this unusual woman had survived.

  She had broken Luther’s nose with her motorcycle helmet. He had not bothered to have it fixed.

  Makedde Vanderwall.

  Luther wondered where she was now, and if ever chance would have their paths cross again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jimmy Cassimatis was gnawing anxiously on the end of a warm Mars bar, and gripping a styrofoam cup of coffee, postponing the inevitable. That morning a couple of boring cases were sitting on the detective senior constable’s desk—a burglary at some rich guy’s house in Macleay Street; a fatal hit-and-run. But the visit he was about to make was in relation to an older case.

  A death knock.

  Not one person in the department liked to be stuck with a death knock. There was no gratification in informing a member of the public that their loved one was dead. And Jimmy, who for all his long years in the department regularly pulled the short straw, was two blocks from the address where he would have to tell a Madeline O’Connor that her missing husband, Warwick, was dead. And this death knock was going to be particularly ugly. There had been somewhat of a bungle in forensics.

  Skata. Fucking forensic fuck-ups…

  With that death knock but minutes away, Detective Cassimatis was more than happy for the distraction of this phone call from his mate and former police partner, Senior Sergeant Andrew Flynn.

  ‘Well if it isn’t the big shot,’ Jimmy drawled into his mobile phone. ‘I wondered if I’d hear from you this year…’

  Jimmy hadn’t heard from Andy in weeks, not counting an amusing postcard sent from the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, the town just outside the FBI Academy where he’d been holed up in some kind of exchange program with the FBI. The postcard pictured a smiling blonde pin-up straddling an aircraft gun, Hanoi-Jane-style, wearing nothing but a pair of brief stars-and-stripes hotpants with two superimposed red stars demurely covering her impressive DD bare breasts at the nipple. Just the kind of postcard Jimmy appreciated. WISH YOU WERE HERE, the caption said. Well, that was exactly what Jimmy wished. Especially now. He kept the postcard in the squad car glove compartment, and occasionally referred to it using an improvised double entendre or two in an attempt to induce some personality in his new police partner, Rhys. She could blow me…away…with those weapons of mass destruction. So far, these attempts had not worked.

  ‘Mate, it is so good to hear from you,’ he said, meaning every word.

  ‘I can’t talk long,’ Andy interrupted him. ‘I’m just on the highway…’ The phone was crackly and Jimmy cupped his ear with one meaty hand to better hear his friend’s voice. It was the same hand that was holding the Mars bar, and a bit of melted chocolate smeared his neck like a wound. ‘Any chance I can crash at your place tonight?’ Andy was asking.

  Jimmy had made the words out fairly clearly over the din of traffic and static, but he was mighty surprised to hear them. ‘Of course, mate. Of course. You’re always welcome at our house. I’ll let the missus know.’ She would spew at him about the late notice, but she liked Andy, so he hoped she wouldn’t whinge too hard. ‘It can be a bit loud with the little ones, but you are most welcome.’

  Jimmy was delighted he would see his friend and former partner in person again after so many months, but he was confused. Andy had moved on to a bigger job. It was Federal. He was now an important figure at the serial crime unit in Canberra and consulting on big investigations. If he was coming to Sydney, why was he driving? Why wasn’t he flying in business class? Why wasn’t he being put up at some fancy hotel?

  ‘Crashing at my place? They pull your budget already?’ Jimmy joked. ‘I knew they’d eventually figure out you got no talent.’ He could say it confidently because it was so very far from the truth. Andy Flynn had cracked some of the biggest and most famous cases in Australia in recent years. And he had paid a heavy price for it, too.

  ‘Jimmy, Mak left. She was gone when I got back. She said she’d be gone, but…I didn’t think she’d really do it.’

  Skata.

  ‘Oh mate, that sucks dogs’ balls.’

  In Jimmy’s eyes, Makedde Vanderwall was pretty cool for a chick. Plus she was a former Sports Illustrated cover model, for godsake. But she was a handful. Andy seemed only to like the stubborn ones. His ex-wife, Cassandra, had been full of fire, too. Theirs had been a tumultuous relationship, to say the least. And Jimmy had thought he and his wife had some serious fights.

  ‘I’ll be round to drop my bag off in a few hours,’ Andy explained. ‘Thanks, mate. I’m driving…I gotta get off the phone.’

  ‘Yeah, it won’t do for the police to pull you over. See you when you get here.’

  Jimmy hung up and frowned. They’d split again? It seemed like yesterday that the two were in love all over again, and she was moving to Canberra to set up house with him.

  Jimmy resumed interest in his Mars bar and before long it was nothing but a sticky wrapper. Rhys had been drinking some energ
y drink, and he chucked the empty can in the bin. He was the type who liked to spend time in the gym. He liked getting ‘ripped’. Jimmy didn’t understand him. They drove the two blocks to the O’Connor house, and Jimmy felt especially heavy as they walked up the drive. He was worried about Andy, and he was almost as worried about this death knock.

  After several raps on the door, they were faced with a scowling woman in her late thirties. Her hair was askew, and a bit greasy through a grey part. She stood her ground in the doorway, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip. ‘Whaddya want?’

  ‘Are you Madeline O’Connor?’

  ‘Who’s askin’?’ When she spoke, the cigarette wiggled slightly. Her arms were crossed, and a deep crease divided her forehead into hemispheres.

  Skata. ‘I’m Detective Cassimatis, and this is Detective Morrison,’ Jimmy explained with an unusual level of patience. ‘May we come in?’

  ‘I’ve already spoken with you guys.’

  She had.

  ‘There has been a development. We’d like to come in, Mrs O’Connor.’

  At this the woman stepped back from the door, and gestured down a hallway towards a small kitchen. She moved past them and pulled a chair out for herself with a screech, sat and leaned heavily on her elbows. An ashtray made a pungent centrepiece on the table, and she tapped her cigarette against the rim, building a greater pile of grey ash. With thinly veiled hostility, she waited for what they had to say. Rhys and Jimmy pulled chairs out for themselves and sat down.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news, Mrs O’Connor,’ Jimmy said.

  This was the part he hated the most. The look on people’s faces when they first discovered that their husbands/wives/children / parents would never be coming home again.

  Mrs O’Connor put her cigarette out, crushing it in the ashtray, where it joined its discarded twins, twisted like white corpses in the ash.

  ‘Your husband, Warwick O’Connor, is dead. We are sorry for your loss.’

  Madeline swallowed. Her lip trembled slightly. ‘When?’ she asked. Her hand reached out for the crumpled cigarette, and then retreated.

  ‘His body was discovered in his burned-out vehicle,’ Rhys said, joining in. ‘He was identified yesterday from dental records.’

  ‘In his car? That was him in his car this whole time?’ she cried.

  Her husband’s burned-out car had been discovered seven months earlier in a massive shipping yard. They had been able to establish ownership through the serial numbers and registration, but the badly burned and decomposed human remains found in the trunk could not be so easily identified. The only hope had been a dental match on the corpse’s teeth. As Mr O’Connor was missing, and it was reasonable to fear that it might be his body in the car, the match should have been made months earlier. However, O’Connor’s teeth had been inexplicably ‘misplaced’ for over six months. Jimmy had no idea how.

  ‘That body! It took you seven months to find out it was my honey! Seven fucking months!’ she screamed, enraged. Her eyes bulged, moist and on the edge of tears.

  ‘We do apologise, Mrs O’Connor. We understand this must be difficult for you—’

  ‘Difficult! He was murdered and you took seven months to identify him!’

  Her words hung in the air.

  ‘In these circumstances, a positive identification can take a great deal of time.’

  Jimmy had seen the car, and the charred corpse in the trunk. What remained of Mr O’Connor could probably fit in Mrs O’Connor’s ashtray. His eyes drifted to the smouldering mess, and, seeing images of burned bone fragments and teeth, he quickly looked away. She wouldn’t need to cremate him.

  ‘We are sorry for your loss, Mrs O’Connor,’ he repeated.

  Her husband had been no hero. The police knew of Warwick O’Connor long before his burned-out car—and corpse—turned up. He had been a run-of-the-mill thug. And around the time of his disappearance he had been implicated in the violent stabbing of a young woman named Meaghan Wallace. But now he was dead, and his wife was understandably angry about the circumstances of his identification.

  ‘Fucking pigs,’ Madeline bellowed.

  Nice.

  Under different circumstances, Jimmy might have snapped back. But he couldn’t. It was a death knock so he was on extra-good behaviour, something somewhat foreign to him.

  ‘Is there perhaps someone you could call?’ Rhys suggested. ‘Any friends or family who might be able to come over—’

  ‘Fuck off, pigs!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of my house!’

  ‘We’ll leave you to your grieving, Mrs O’Connor,’Jimmy said, managing a lacquered composure in the face of her insults.

  They left the widow cursing and crying into a fresh cigarette.

  CHAPTER 6

  Andy Flynn sounded like he was standing in a stadium being circled by revved-up monster trucks.

  Makedde held her phone to her ear, frowning. She regretted having answered the call, but she could not bear the thought of ignoring him any more. Somewhere she heard diesel brakes. She cupped the phone more tightly.

  ‘How are you?’ her ex continued, sounding distracted. ‘Look, I’m just near Goulburn.’

  ‘Um, Goulburn?’ she repeated, not quite masking her alarm.

  Goulburn was a small city in south-eastern New South Wales, nestled between Canberra and Sydney. Her ex had no relatives there. Unless some serial killer had recently been busy in Goulburn and he had been sent there to do a profile, there was only one reason Mak could think of for him to be there.

  ‘I’ll be in Sydney in a couple of hours,’ he confirmed.

  Mak’s stomach shrank to a small fist. He was taking a pit stop in Goulburn because he was coming to see her. This would be the confrontation she had been avoiding. ‘I see,’ she replied, trying not to encourage whatever he had in mind. She was not ready to see him, and she knew it. She wanted to settle in first. She wanted to get her strength back.

  ‘I need time.’

  ‘We haven’t seen each other in three weeks,’ he snapped back.

  There followed an excruciating silence: him not asking to see her, and not asking her to come back, let alone convincing her in some romantic manner that she was mistaken in leaving him. She had become used to silences like those in recent months.

  ‘I…’ he began, and his voice dissolved into static.

  Mak’s ambitious effort to move to Canberra and make a home with her on-and-off lover had been a disaster, by any measure. In the more than five years they’d known each other, it seemed that every time they made a serious commitment it triggered yet another breakdown in communication; he would hit the bottle or bury himself in work even more than usual, or worst of all, they would begin having flat-out hideous fights on a weekly basis. Moving in together in a new city had always been destined to be too much for them. To his credit, Andy had reasons for difficulties with commitment. His wife, Cassandra, had left him, and their bitter divorce battle had been interrupted when she was slain—a murder that in part seemed to be aimed at getting to Andy, who was the profiler tracking the killer responsible for a string of previous violent murders. Mak did not even need to be a psychologist to understand that such things were not easy to get over. For all his brilliant abilities in the field, Andy was riddled with issues of guilt and personal failure. The fact they had launched into their affair shortly before Cassandra was murdered probably did not help things. It was as if their union had been hardwired for problems from inception.

  After much soul-searching and one final fight that somehow felt more emotionally devastating than all the other fights combined, Mak had come to the conclusion that their problems weren’t ones she could fix. It simply wasn’t going to work, and she had to get on with her life. It would not be easy at first. She had known that.

  And here it was, not being easy.

  ‘Andy, I thought we agreed that we both needed some time to heal.’ She spoke with a steady voice. The difficulty was that she sensed she still l
oved him, perhaps even desperately at times. But they simply didn’t work, she reminded herself. She didn’t need to get pulled back into all that tumultuous emotional impossibility. Too much had gone wrong, and she no longer believed it could be made right. The last thing she needed was to see more of him while she was vulnerable and they were both still hurting. It was hard doing the right thing as it was. Already, his attempt to come to see her gave her a dangerous glimmer of hope for some romantic reunion that she didn’t even want. She just needed to stay away from him for a while, until such emotional traps were no longer so potent.

  ‘…Sydney…you…’ His voice was crackly, his words making no sense.

  ‘What was that? You’re breaking up,’ she replied, annoyed.

  ‘The re–p–tion is bad–this stretch–o–road. I—’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Oh come on!’ she shouted to the cramped bedroom, and pocketed her phone, tense. She paced back and forth, feeling ready to punch something.

  Don’t get sucked back in…Don’t…

  In a week she would feel better. In a month she might even feel okay, she told herself. This feeling is temporary. There was no need to be dramatic. Break-ups were never easy at the best of times, and when exactly was the best of times, anyway? She could easily find more jobs with Marian, and she could probably get herself a date or two if she wanted the distraction. She had things to do. She was thirty, she had her PhD and there were no excuses. For much of the past year she had been foolishly focused on saving the last of their floundering relationship. She was not going to spend any more energy on that losing battle.

  Mak resisted the urge to call her ex-lover back.

  She had a rental to pick up, and background information to check on her case. That Andy was on his way to Sydney made no difference to that.

  Mak had work to do.

  It was right on three o’clock as Mak Vanderwall arrived in St Ives, a middle-class suburb on Sydney’s leafy North Shore. She pulled up in a rented dark blue sedan outside a pleasant faux-Tudor two-storey house, the home of Mrs Hart and her missing son. Mak walked towards the house with her full briefcase of tricks.