Siren

by Tara Moss

  Mak had no intention of letting him get his way, whatever it was he had in mind.

  She breathed deeply and looked around her with a gaze sharpened by anger at the injustice of her predicament. Wine bottles, cognac, wood, stone, drain in the floor, wood staircase, bare light bulb, cuff and chain on right ankle…It was with determined clarity that she juggled the elements in her head, over and over, seeing which ones could go together, which ones could affect her position, could be combined, could be used for something. This peculiar perspicuity was a familiar state of being for Mak, having emerged from horror a handful of times in her life already. You are the clear-headed one when things go wrong, the one for whom the world decelerates to slow motion once the gun is drawn, the car is veering off to impact, the exchange turns violent. She had a strange clarity in those moments, her adrenaline running like a constant beam of focus, static-free. Was that why terrible things kept happening to her? Because she was able to take it? Was that why she was a psycho-magnet? It was a survival mechanism that some people possessed, that ability to sever all emotional connections for a time, suspending grief and confusion so they might better find a way out of danger. It was common in fire-fighters, paramedics, surgeons, highranking soldiers…

  And psychopaths. She had met those.

  Can you feel it? Can you feel Thanatos pulling at you, urging you to return to the soil?

  This was life or death, and there was no time for selfdoubt. There was no time to wonder how she could be so unlucky. Self-pity would get her nowhere, and whatever the reason for her ability to keep panic at bay, Makedde would take advantage of her cool head to do whatever was necessary to escape from this place.

  There was a bowl beside her, half filled with water. It was a plastic cat’s bowl, sitting low and open on the cold stone floor, with little feline pawprints painted around the circumference along with the name MINETTE. A few splashes of water were drying on the stone floor around it. Desperately thirsty, she had already drunk from it.

  Drink, her body told her.

  Mak eyed the water dish, and with a defeated sigh crawled across the mattress until her chin was at the edge. She tipped it up with her hands and licked at the dish like an animal, relieved at the sensation of the moisture on her tongue and trickling down her throat.

  Relief.

  It was while she was in this position, her coat pulled halfway up her back, and her legs kicking out, that the door at the top of the stairs opened again.

  Mak froze.

  She thought to suddenly right herself, so that the man who’d imprisoned her would not have the satisfaction of seeing her in such a humiliating position, but it was too late. He was already looking at her. Calm, and taking a deep breath to further steady herself, Mak rolled over and sat up. A droplet of water rolled from her mouth to her chin. She wiped it away, and strained her ears for outside noise—traffic, voices, anything. So far, she had heard nothing but a single set of footsteps and the creaking of floorboards. One man.

  Fucking arsehole.

  Her dirty-blonde hair hung over her eyes, and she shook her head to flick the hair out of her line of vision.

  There he is.

  The man walked down the creaking stairs towards her, the same man she remembered, and his appearance was as menacing in life as it had been in her nightmarish and confused recollections. To her alarm, she found that he appeared every bit as large as she had remembered. She guessed him to be closing in on two metres in height and weighing in at around 115 kilos. This was the man who could well be acting alone to imprison her here. But why? Perhaps he was waiting for something? But what? Again, he wasn’t wearing a mask, and now that Mak was fully cognisant, she took note of his features, which were at best irregular. She recognised in him the hallmarks of facial surgery. Perhaps he had been in a fight and had tried to correct some scarring, but that hardly made sense, considering that his nose was crooked from a break. Had he been injured in the ring? He had perhaps been a boxer, or a fighter? She imagined that his very appearance would have aroused considerable fear in his opponents. Why the facial surgery? Was it reconstructive? Was he vain? Insecure?

  The Eiffel Tower.

  In an instant the recognition hit. This man had been at the top of the Eiffel Tower on the viewing platform. He had been in the same small elevator as she was, on both the way up and down. She recalled the immensity of him, and the strange features of his face.

  He had followed her.

  Who are you?

  The man stood in front of her, and Mak worked to swallow her fear and panic. She sat cross-legged on the mattress and tried a smile. It was a measured smile, not out of place, just a pleasant face to begin an interaction between strangers. She had to think of this as an opportunity for interaction. Getting angry was not going to make him let her go. Screaming would get her nowhere until she heard the movement of other people in the building. No, she would have to reason with this man, she would have to understand him. She had to figure him out. She had a PhD, didn’t she? All those years of study that she was not really using, perhaps they weren’t for nothing. Perhaps. Even as she thought it, she worried about the feebleness of psychological methods when pitted against a man-mountain intent on keeping her in captivity and…well, she didn’t know what else he intended, but he surely felt that what he had in mind would not be something she would co-operate with. But until she could get him to uncuff her ankle at least, she was not going anywhere. For one dark moment she wondered if she would sever her foot if she had to, if she had the knife to do it.

  Yes.

  Mak looked up at the man, steady. She kept her mouth fixed in its small smile, her head level to appear nonthreatening, as if the simple fact of her captivity was not enough.

  ‘Thank you for the water,’ she said, gesturing to the bowl. Her voice was croaky. ‘I was very thirsty,’ she ventured.

  He didn’t respond.

  Don’t try too hard at first. You don’t want him to think you’re being manipulative. He might get angry at you and do something.

  The huge man was no longer looking at her. His eyes were wandering around the space—the mattress, the blankets, the bowl, the floor.

  What is he looking for?

  ‘My name is Makedde,’ she told him. ‘Makedde Vanderwall.’ There was no point in being anything but honest about her name, and it was good to identify herself, to let this man know she was a personality, a human. She hoped she could build up some rapport so that it would be more difficult for him to dehumanise her later. And if there was someone he was holding her for—a second party, a friend, a client, a partner—perhaps she could get him to side with her. There had to be a reason he hadn’t hurt her yet. She hoped the reason might set her free.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him gently, as if this were a normal exchange in polite company. ‘May I ask?’

  His eyes moved to her again, but he didn’t respond.

  ‘I don’t mean to be any trouble, but I’m very hungry. Is there anything I can eat? I can pay for the food. There was some money in my coat. Or I can make it myself, whatever is easiest for you. I can make something for both of us if you like. I don’t want to be any trouble.’

  Makedde felt disgust run through her at the sound of her pleading, the reality of her pathetic situation. Daddy, I’m hungry. Please can I have some dinner? She felt like she was six years old.

  ‘I remember you,’ she said, hoping to forge a bond.

  At this the man reacted visibly. He backed up a pace and a kaleidoscope of emotions rippled across his uneven features. She could not be sure what he was thinking. Had she said something that would help or hinder her?

  ‘Yes, I remember you,’ she repeated. The elevator. She remembered now.

  Does she recognise me?

  Could she?

  Had Makedde felt his eyes on her back when he’d seen her undress in the apartment in Sydney? Was there any way that she could have known it was him hiding there, watching her? Did she know that it was h
e who’d been wearing the balaclava and had been sent to kill her, he whom she had smashed in the face with her motorcycle helmet, he who had—with a broken nose—pursued her on her motorcycle through the streets of Sydney. He had watched her come off her bike with mixed feelings. He had been sent to kill her, and she looked like she would not survive the fall. It would be a positive result for his client. And yet, he was aware of something else. How unsatisfying it would be to have her gone, and even to have her death escape him, to have it come accidentally, dealt by fate.

  But she didn’t die. Fate brought her here instead.

  Luther had never been an attractive man. His physical size was imposing, his features beaten up. He’d already once had his nose straightened in Bangkok by a surgeon who owed him a favour. After Mak broke it with her motorcycle helmet, it had the shape of a crooked potato. He had not bothered to fix it. He had been reminded of Makedde Vanderwall every time he had looked at his face since.

  Makedde.

  She was shackled, hungry, helpless. Still, her presence—in his care—both fascinated and troubled him. How could all of these occurrences be coincidence? How could one woman have eluded him? Why did she keep crossing his path? What was her role in his life fated to be?

  Now here she was, more mythological creature than woman. She had escaped his clutches too many times. No one else in his career had ever done that.

  Mak cocked her head to one side, appearing more curious than fearful. ‘I do remember you. Hello,’ she said.

  And no woman had ever looked at him with that curious gleam in her eye. Not fear. Just curiosity.

  Does she know me?

  CHAPTER 52

  Bogey stepped out of the taxi on the slanted and narrow Rue Cardinal Lemoine with his mobile phone in one hand and his suitcase in the other. He had been holding his phone the entire journey, hoping it would ring.

  Mak is in trouble. She must be in trouble…

  He placed his case on the kerb and handed the driver a fistful of euros, barely paying attention to the counting of the notes. Makedde had given him instructions to take the Metro from Gare du Nord to the hotel, but she was still not answering his calls, and he had wanted to get to her as soon as he could, and in his worry had run to the taxi stand and grabbed the first available car. He had been so relieved to be in Paris, and closer to her, and on the way to her hotel, that he didn’t care about the added expense. He had called her from the plane, and from Heathrow, and since arriving on the Eurostar he had called again twice, and left her further text messages, sure that she would call him any moment to explain that she had been struggling with the kind of difficulties that plague travellers abroad with a frequency explained only by Murphy’s Law—a misplaced number, a stolen wallet, a lost phone or wiped SIM card; something to explain the silence.

  So far there had been nothing.

  His brow knitted with worry, Bogey stepped from the street through a large doorway to the charming cobblestone courtyard of the Hotel des Grandes Écoles, where a three-storey pastoral cottage welcomed him. He took only a moment to register the beauty of it, before making his way up a series of steps to the door. He found himself in a small lobby where a young woman with silken brunette hair pulled into a neat ponytail was talking on the phone in quick French. She did not look up when he entered. Bogey placed his suitcase in front of the wooden desk and looked around worriedly. He could not see Makedde. Hopefully she was in her room waiting for him, and there was nothing amiss. Perhaps she was playing a joke on him. He wouldn’t put it past her to play some sort of joke. Her humour was at times left-of-centre, even morbid.

  ‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ he asked, when the receptionist placed the phone back in the receiver.

  She raised her eyes and appraised him and his jet-black hair and ripped jeans with a look of frank curiosity. ‘Oui, monsieur,’ she replied. ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘I’m Humphrey Mortimer, here for Makedde Vanderwall. She is staying with you.’

  ‘You would like to call one of our guests,’ she said more than asked, and pushed a house phone across the desk towards him.

  ‘Well, I am to stay in her room.’ He held up his suitcase. Makedde had said he could stay with her. ‘May I have a key and drop my suitcase off?’

  She paused. ‘Monsieur, I cannot give you the key to a guest’s room.’

  The tiredness from his long flight from Australia, then the train under the Channel, came crashing over him. He took a breath. ‘Is there a note for me, perhaps? My name is Humphrey Mortimer, or it could be for Bogey Mortimer.’

  ‘Bogey?’ she said with a little smile, pronouncing it Bow-Gay.

  ‘Yes. Is there a message for a Mr Mortimer, or a Bogey?’

  She shifted some papers around on the reception desk. ‘Non.’

  ‘Okay, I would like to call the guest, Makedde Vanderwall, please.’

  She gestured to the phone and he raised the receiver to his ear. ‘I’ll put you through.’

  There were a number of clicks and tones, making it sound as if the system had not been upgraded since France first installed telephone lines. He held the phone tensely until it had rung in her room twelve times.

  ‘The guest is not in,’ the receptionist said.

  He hung up and took a step back, wondering what to do. The dread he had felt since the flight had increased to a sharper, more focused alarm. He asked again for the room key, and when she refused he felt defeated. ‘I will wait for her,’ he said simply.

  Desperate for a shower and a rest, Bogey made his way back to the courtyard of the Hotel des Grandes Écoles in a fog of worry and weariness. He positioned himself at one of the cold outdoor café-style tables, beneath a closed striped umbrella. A light snow drifted in tranquil poetry before melting on the cobblestones. He let it land on him and melt, while he tried to think of what to do. Outside the large doors of the courtyard, the Latin Quarter buzzed with university students, shop owners and tourists. Hopefully, somewhere nearby, Mak was okay.

  Bogey did not want to believe that Makedde would forget his visit, but the alternative reasons for her silence were even worse. He sent her a carefully worded text message.

  HI MAK. AT HOTEL AND CAN’T FIND YOU. PLEASE CALL AND LET ME KNOW YOU ARE OKAY EVEN IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ME. PLEASE CALL. BOGEY

  CHAPTER 53

  On the morning of the third day, Luther Hand woke to sunlight gleaming on the rolling hills of the Burgundy countryside.

  The farmhouse he had made his own was south of the town of Vézelay, on the edge of the Monts du Morvan, the ‘Black Mountains’ of the Celts of old. Now that the weather had cleared, Luther could see expanses of green fields, vineyards and forest undulating towards the horizon, where low granite slopes and plateaux were set against a cloudspotted blue sky, shrouded in places by a thinning wreath of mist. He could just make out the spires of the Romanesque basilica of Sainte-Madeleine in Vézelay rising above the distant treetops, and catch glimpses of the trail of old buildings sloping down the hill below the church. This was one of the most remote locations in central France, about three hours’ drive from Paris, and he had chosen it both for its isolation and its familiarity. Luther had recently eliminated the fleeing London financier, Nicholas Santer, in this very stretch of land. Luther had tracked Mr Santer here with ease, at the leastcared-for and most remote of his many European properties. He had been fast asleep as Luther sliced his throat open—the wound had gaped like the smile of a jack-o’-lantern, Luther recalled—before neatly dismembering him and locking the remains into a small crate buried beneath a garden of fragrant lavender. His body had not yet been found, and the investigation into his whereabouts had not been particularly heartfelt. Evidently the man’s wife had discovered that her missing husband’s will allotted a large portion of his fortune to the mother of his bastard child. She would rather her husband continue his ‘extended vacation’ while she lived comfortably with unfettered access to his millions. Luther was generally unaware of and happier without su
ch intimate knowledge of his targets’ affairs and the crumbling world their pathetic lives left behind. From one corner of the rundown property he could see the bright hedge of lavender several hundred metres away, bordering the Santer holding. It always brought to mind for a moment that grinning red jack-o’-lantern the London banker had become.

  Luther had known he would return to the area, though he had not thought it would be so soon. He didn’t know that it would be with Makedde Vanderwall.

  The grounds surrounding his small farmhouse were lush green with winter rainfall. An old car in the gravel drive appeared to have been sacrificed to wet weather and rust. As he had anticipated, there had not been any foot traffic in the immediate area over the previous two days. No cars. No one to disturb him. A semi-feral calico cat was flicking its tail and preparing to lunge at a rodent alongside the house. Otherwise the world was quiet and still.

  Luther looked across at the clock as the hand clicked to the hour. It was still early, just seven in the morning.

  Today.

  You have work to do today.

  With the effort required of a man whose shoulders were unusually broad, Luther rolled over. The old double bed creaked under the weight of him. As with most European beds, its dimensions were unsuitable, and his feet dangled over the end. A soft beam of sunlight fell across him as he lay still once more, and for a time he didn’t move out of it. The winter rays felt pleasantly warm on his skin. He found he liked the sensation. Luther did not care for the sun in Mumbai, where he kept a scarcely used apartment in Colaba, a place he’d begun avoiding in favour of his recently acquired flat in Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona, about eight hours south-west of where he was now. As in his native Australia, the sun in India bit. The air there was excessively dirty too, polluted with fumes and grit. But here, the sky seemed to have a soft green glow. The sun was gentle. Luther did not spend much time in natural daylight. His work involved a lot of movement at night, a lot of time in planes, hotels, always moving. He was rarely in one place for even a week, such were the demands of his chosen occupation. He did not often spend a week in the French countryside. He did not lie about in a small bed enjoying the morning sun through dusty windowpanes.