Table of Contents
Praise for Voodoo Doll
Praise for Vodka Doesn't Freeze
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
About the Author
Praise for Voodoo Doll
'Clinical psychologist turned thriller writer Leah Giarratano brings a wealth of professional experience to her art . . . a page-turner, note-worthy for its expert characterisation and often chilling psychological veracity.'
The Age
'Voodoo Doll is more chiller than thriller. It's cleverly plotted and crackles along at an electric pace. I'm sure Giarratano has a growing fan base and it's great to see local talent getting an outing.'
Good Reading
'This is a seriously good read. Giarratano is taking on the big guns, and winning.'
MX Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney
'I suspect a series. Bring it on.'
Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald
'Voodoo Doll is the follow-up novel to the best-selling debut, Vodka Doesn't Freeze, and it's an absolute cracker . . . So lock all your doors, snuggle up under your doona and get ready for a thriller that you won't be able to put down.'
Newcastle Herald
'Plumbing the depths of her experience . . . Giarratano's writing has an air of authenticity missing from the work of her peers. Creepy, nasty and oddly compelling, it's definitely not light reading.'
GQ Australia
Praise for Vodka Doesn't Freeze
'There's a true-crime relentlessness about Vodka Doesn't Freeze that suggests it's been written from the heart by someone who really cares deeply about child abuse.'
Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald
'Giarratano writes with a style that immediately grabs and holds your attention, diving unerringly to the heart of each scene and describing it in full, no-nonsense detail. Her characters are filled with flaws that beg to be examined more closely and she satisfies this need, laying bare the good and the bad in equal measure.'
www.crimedownunder.com
'Particularly nasty crime fiction that threatens to keep you awake at night can always be dismissed with that hoary old chestnut "It's only make-believe" . . . No such comfort with a debut book by Leah Giarratano.'
Lucy Clark, Sunday Telegraph
Voodoo
Doll
LEAH GIARRATANO
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Voodoo Doll
ePub ISBN 9781864715408
Kindle ISBN 9781864718041
Voodoo Doll, although inspired by real Australian crimes, is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Bantam book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au
First published in Australia and New Zealand by Bantam in 2008
This edition published by Bantam in 2009
Copyright © Leah Giarratano 2008
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Giarratano, Leah.
Voodoo doll.
ISBN: 9781863255899
A823.4
Cover illustration by Superstock
Cover design by blacksheep-uk.com
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia
For Joshua and the rabbit:
we forever run together through
every page of this book.
Thanks to our Aussie diggers – our defence forces
and emergency services. When it feels like nobody
cares, remember there are millions of us in silent salute.
'. . . in a real dark night of the soul, it is always
three o'clock in the morning . . .'
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
Prologue
FACE MASHED INTO the carpet, Joss concentrated on breathing. If he kept his chin tucked into his neck, it reduced some of the pressure from the boot pressing down onto his cheek. Swallowing was out – his bottom lip was crushed flat against the rug, preventing him from closing his mouth. He let some more saliva trickle out; a wet patch had already formed under his cheek.
He angled his eyes to the left. He'd seen only three of them, all in balaclavas – the gorilla now standing on his head, the small, wiry one guarding the front entrance, and the fuckwit terrorising the women in the loungeroom. But he knew there were four: he could hear the screams of his host, Andy Wu, coming from the back of the house. Each scream was preceded by a dull thwack, a sound Joss already knew he would never forget.
He searched for an option; knew he had none. Not yet anyway. He tried to ignore the point of the machete, inches from his forehead, and focused again on his breathing.
Andy's wails were fading. From the room next door, Joss heard his wife, Isobel, her voice trying for calm, reasoning. Andy's wife, Lucy, was moaning, a low, animal keening. He'd heard nothing from the children upstairs. They had to still be asleep. God, he thought, please let them stay asleep.
All sounds suddenly stopped.
A pair of black combat boots appeared in the doorway and walked towards Joss. Each step upon the polished floorboards left a red imprint. Horrified, mesmerised, Joss watched the boots draw closer. They stopped in front of his face. The blood on the boots filled all of his senses. He could taste it.
'Watches, wallets, phones, jewellery. Get them all.' Boots spoke to the
man above Joss.
The gorilla removed his foot from Joss's face. 'Did he open the safe?'
'Now what do you think?' Boots answered. 'We're ready to go. Go and make sure everything's okay in there.'
Joss felt the attention of the man in the boots shift downwards. His head free, Joss was able to incline his face upwards a little. When his eyes reached the dripping machete above him, he dropped them back to the carpet.
A boot nudged his shoulder.
'That your wife in there? Isobel? Is that her name?'
Joss considered the weave in the rug beneath his face.
The boot cracked into his head. Joss felt his left cheekbone snap.
'Nah,' Joss managed, pain gyrating through his head. 'Met her here tonight.'
'Nice.'
'Um, thanks?'
'Smartarse, aren't you?'
Shit, Joss thought. 'Look. I just want this over.' He rode a wave of pain with each word he spoke. 'We just want to be safe. You came here for money.' He kept his eyes down; this guy was just waiting for a reason.
'Hmm. So give me your wallet, phone and watch.'
Sixteen minutes earlier, Joss had been helping Andy Wu, his wife's boss, clear away the remains of the barbecued dinner Andy had served them in his courtyard. The Wus' two children and his own little angel had been carried upstairs, leaden weights, sound asleep.
When Andy, on his way back into the kitchen, had dropped a ceramic platter onto the concrete, the crack was like a gunshot, and Joss had automatically hit the ground, rolling off the path. Reactions like that usually embarrassed the fuck out of him. Tonight, it had given him ten seconds to take in the sight of Lucy Wu with a fifty-centimetre blade held to her throat, a black mask behind her emerging like a piece of the night. Joss had scrabbled through his pockets. With an awkward twist of his arm, he had managed to throw his wallet into the bush behind him.
Lucy's eyes had bulged, silently screaming. While the intruder had motioned Andy to his knees, Joss had carefully taken his mobile phone from his shirt pocket and palmed it. He had been about to throw it to join his wallet when another pair of eyes and a glint of steel materialised in the night. Joss had dropped the phone onto the lawn. When he'd stood, signalled to rise by the machete, he had stepped on the mobile, and pressed it lightly with his toe into the night-wet grass.
Now, face down on the floor, he carefully lifted his wrist to show his watch to the man above him. Moving slowly, he unclipped the heavy silver band and lay the watch next to him on the floor.
'I don't carry a wallet,' Joss said.
'Sure you do.'
'I don't need one. I've got a company card. I didn't bring a wallet tonight.'
'Your phone then.' The voice was flinty.
Joss felt the man above him tensing. From the corner of his eye, he saw the blade leaving his line of vision. This guy was not going to accept that Joss had nothing at all on him; he was going to use this as an excuse for more blood. Joss inwardly tightened, preparing himself to roll.
'Công an!'
Joss knew the Vietnamese words from his childhood – police, danger! It came from the skinny one at the front door.
He heard the man above him exhale. He sounded disappointed. His voice flat, Boots directed the other men. 'Out the back.'
To Joss, he said, 'None of you will move from this house for thirty minutes. I may not have your ID, smartarse, but I can find you through these people. If you go to the cops we will be back.' He paused. 'Hell, maybe I'll come find you anyway.'
Anger overriding his training, Joss could not stop himself from raising his face to meet the man's eyes.
All the air left the room when their eyes locked. A millisecond later, Joss prayed he had been able to mask his shock of instant recognition, but he knew the intruder would have heard his gasp, seen his pupils dilate.
The man above him laughed when Joss dropped his eyes back to the ground.
Over the roar of blood in his ears, he barely heard the men leave the house. He hoped that the man in the boots would take his reaction for fear; that he hadn't noticed the nonverbal cues that indicated recall, identification.
The problem was, Joss could recognise those cues, and his hammering heart told him he'd seen them mirrored in the other man's face.
1
'GODDAMN IT!' JILL Jackson's toe caught the edge of a metal filing cabinet. She hurled the half-packed archive box across the room, coloured manila folders and white sheets of paper trailing an arc through the air behind it. 'Ow. Shit. Ow!' Clutching her bare foot, she hopped through the room, her face a warning.
Scotty knew better than to say anything, but his eyes danced.
Jill dropped into a chair, cradling her foot. 'I think I broke my fucking toe.' She rocked backwards and forwards in her seat, biting her bottom lip and grimacing.
Scotty waited a few moments then approached cautiously. 'Give us a look.'
'Don't touch it! It's broken!' Jill waved her hand in front of her, motioning him away.
'Oh, you'll be right, Jackson,' he said doubtfully, watching darkness already suffusing the white skin on the top of Jill's foot.
She looked up at the man towering above her, and to her horror, her eyes filled with tears.
'Oh come on, Jill, it's going to be okay.' Scotty reached out to touch her, then stopped. He moved his hand up to run it through his hair, then finally shoved it in his pocket.
'It's not.'
'Are we still talking about your toe?'
'I don't want to go.' She swiped viciously at a tear before it spilled from her lashes.
'It's a big promotion, Jackson. Think of the pay rise. Shit, I wish it was me going.'
'No you don't. And I don't care about the money. I was just starting to feel . . . ' She wanted to say 'safe', but Jill didn't disclose that sort of thing so easily, even to her partner, who was closer to her than her own brother.
'Yeah, I know,' said Scotty. 'But what else can you do? Anyway, it's only a secondment. You'll probably be back here with me and Elvis and the gang in a couple of months.'
They both knew that was unlikely. Job rotations within the New South Wales Police Force were not often reversed, and Jill's new seniority meant there would be little scope for her to easily rejoin the Maroubra detectives.
They stared at one another for a moment. Then silently they resumed packing.
It was a Sunday in late September, and the first day in five months that the temperature had climbed above thirty degrees. Jill and Scotty both wore thongs, crusty with sand from the beach down the road. The morning sun glowing through the dirty windows managed to paint even the dung-coloured walls of the detectives' office in an optimistic light; dust motes danced in the sunbeams. It was gorgeous out there. No way would anyone be in here unless they had to be. Jill needed to pack up, but Scotty didn't have to be there.
Jill swallowed the sob in her throat. She had never cried so much as over the past few months, which surprised her, given that she hadn't felt this secure for twenty years. The previous April, she'd ended the life of the man who had abducted and raped her at the age of twelve, and since then the dread that had nested in her gut had diminished significantly.
The past months had not all been tear-filled, though. Jill had also found herself laughing more than before, and on waking, some days, she had experienced sensations that had taken her a full morning to identify: spontaneity, joy, hope.
And then she'd been promoted. Again. Her rapid rise through the force had never previously thrilled or dismayed her. She'd accepted accolades with the same numbness with which she ignored the jibes of those she passed over. Twelve years ago, coinciding with her graduation from the academy, the force had implemented a merit-over-seniority promotion system. Many rising through the ranks had found the harassment and abuse of the dinosaurs being left behind too much to bear, but Jill thought little of it. She had not been wounded by the rumours – that she gave the best head in Sydney; that she had a cousin sleeping with the commissione
r; that she was the token female, advanced only for political reasons. The lies never breached the Teflon cocoon she had spun around herself in adolescence.
But it felt different now. Since the death of the man who had abducted her, she was beginning to feel again. She'd even been on a holiday. For most people, a trip away signalled nothing of major importance, but it had been Jill's first trip away. It was a vacation from her fear and rigidity.
But a new job meant a new partner, and a new partner would mean new risks. The next team would want her to socialise, drink with them. Of course, her reputation for avoiding such activities would have preceded her, but cops always liked to find out these things for themselves. Her armour felt rusty: she wasn't sure she could fit into it anymore.
'So where are they basing the taskforce?' Scotty asked her.
'Liverpool.'
'No shit.' It was hardly the eastern suburbs. 'So you're going to bust the home invasion gang too now? You going to leave some of these crews for the rest of us?'
Jill had once busted an outlaw motorcycle group cooking meth down the coast. It was how she'd made sergeant. With the recent clean-out of a local paedophile ring, her superiors had acknowledged her gang experience with this secondment.
'Yeah, well if you blokes would get off your arses, I wouldn't have to do it all for you,' she said, smiling as Scotty feigned being shot through the heart. They'd closed the paedophile case together.
She sighed and put the lid on the last archive box.
'Looks like we're pretty much done here.' Scotty's voice sounded tight. He'd caught her change in mood. It was time to leave.
Jill tested her sore foot on the floor; it took her weight. It seemed her toe was just bruised. She glanced sideways at Scotty, feeling suddenly awkward.
'Thanks for helping, Scott.'
'Yeah, no worries.' He brushed his sandy fringe from his eyes and shifted from one foot to the other, staring at her. It seemed like he had something else to say.
'What?' said Jill.
'What?' he replied.
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