'Why're you acting like that?'
Instead of answering, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a package.
'I don't want it,' Jill said, backing away, shaking her head.
'I got you something.'
'I said I don't want it.'
He stood there, self-conscious, his hand stretched out. Jill knew she was being childish and cruel, but she felt unable to be gracious. She hated surprises. She hated endings. The rock in her chest pushed its way up towards her throat. Why couldn't things stay the same for just a while in her life?
The tissue-paper wrapping of the parcel rustled as Scotty's hand shook a little. Jill hugged her arms around her waist to stop herself moving towards him. She wanted to hold him, or punch him.
'You look like a wanker,' she said.
'This wasn't how I saw this going, Jackson. Shouldn't you be squealing and hugging me right now?'
'Oh give it here then,' she muttered. 'I don't squeal.'
Jill knew that when she moved from Maroubra police station she and Scotty would remain friends, but it wouldn't be the same when they were no longer working together every day. This gift symbolised something ending. She kept her eyes on his hand and took the package.
'What is it?' she asked.
Scotty just waited.
Jill picked carefully at the ribbon holding the package together, hoping to delay this. Her fingers became more forceful when the bow knotted, and finally she scrabbled at the tissue.
'Careful,' he said.
The soft paper fell away, and in her hand sat a heavy pendant on a chain. It looked old: a butterfly, studded with yellow and amber stones, its wings licks of green glass. It perched atop a small clear circle, studded around with the same glowing stones. Jill drew in a breath and stared at Scotty.
'It's a, um, magnifying glass,' he said. 'And a butterfly. It's meant to mean that you're beautiful and smart.' He said the last part in a rush, his eyes on the floor.
'You did not make that up.' Jill was incredulous.
'Nah,' he agreed, grinning, 'My sister did. It's nice though, eh?'
'Yeah. Ta. Now let's get the rest of this crap into the car so we've still got some weekend left.' Her cheeks hot, she shoved the necklace into the pocket of her boardshorts, grabbed a box and left the room.
Favouring her foot, a box under each arm, Jill stood in the hallway outside her unit, leaning her head against the door.
'Need a hand there, Jill?'
Mrs Williamson from next door. Jill had lived here for two years and had learned her neighbour's name only in the past three months. Another change.
'Thanks, no. I'm right, Margaret,' said Jill, putting the boxes down and fishing in her bag for her keys.
This was the final trip. Scotty had hauled the majority of her belongings up in one load. It would have taken her at least three trips. He'd left her reluctantly, but she'd known he'd bail when she told him she wasn't interested in lunch. It took a lot of food to keep Scotty going.
She pushed the boxes inside with her good foot, and dumped her bag next to the others inside the front door. She scowled at their intrusion in her otherwise uncluttered apartment. Grabbing a remote from the dining table, she buzzed open the motorised blinds, and walked straight onto the balcony, slipping through before the blinds were fully open. She tasted the smell of the sea.
Her niece, Lily, last time she'd visited, had said the white-capped waves looked like cream on blue jelly.
Maroubra beach was a carnival today. Spring rendered Sydneysiders a little manic, the warm breezes blowing in some kind of magic – promises of holidays, Christmas, pool parties, heat. It seemed there were babies everywhere, and in every park, pairs of ducks hovered around ducklings struggling through the grass.
However, with the rise in the temperature came a corresponding increase in violence. The new season's energy triggered hysteria in some. Sunshine on the weekend was as good an excuse as any to crack a beer at ten a.m., instead of waiting until four. In homes without air-conditioning, tempers were tinder, the heat combustible, alcohol fuel. The flames ignited when the residents realised that the promises whispered on the winds of spring would not be kept.
At least they've given me a couple of days before starting the new job, Jill thought, moving back into the unit, her eyes blinking, adjusting from the sun on the balcony. Time to try to get used to everything. She didn't think she'd ever even been to Liverpool, although she'd seen the signs off the motorway when travelling out to her parents' home in Camden. Liverpool was fifty minutes' drive southwest from Maroubra, Scotty reckoned. For the first time, a departmental vehicle was parked in the small garage under her unit block. She'd had to sell her old gym-set to get it in.
Jill squatted down with the boxes on the floor. Where did all this stuff come from? Newspaper cuttings, personal files, downloaded articles related to past cases: these could all go, she decided. None of this information had been important enough to leave with the departmental files. She sat cross-legged with the paperwork, creating a pile she could take back down to the garage, to drop off later at her parents' home to be burned. She stopped when she came across a framed photograph. Jerome Sanders and his family smiled up at her. Jerome's mum had sent this, with two dozen roses, last May after Jill had rescued him from the same man who'd abducted her two decades earlier. She moved the photo over to a small pile of things she would keep. With a sigh, she flipped onto the same pile the clippings related to the current Sydney home invasion spree. In its clear, sealed folder, this morning's newspaper article landed face up.
Police Establish Home Invasion Taskforce
Doctors at Liverpool Hospital advise that the latest victim of the crime gang terrorising residents of the western suburbs remains in a serious, but stable, condition. The 52-year-old Green Valley man suffered massive injuries to both his legs during the vicious knife attack yesterday evening. His family remains at his bedside.
Local Area Commander Lawrence Last this morning announced the establishment of a taskforce to capture the gang believed responsible for at least five brutal home invasions over the past two months.
'The violence is escalating,' commented Superintendent Last, 'and our priority is to catch these offenders as quickly as possible.'
Superintendent Last admitted that police have few leads as to the identity of the crime gang, who clothe themselves completely in black, wearing full-face balaclavas.
For the residents of Sydney's west, the decision to dedicate an investigations team to the invasions is welcome, but overdue.
'We can't sleep at night,' commented Kay, a Bonnyrigg resident, who did not wish to be further identified. 'I bet they'd have caught these people by now if this was happening on the North Shore.'
Jill realised she could barely see the newsprint in the gathering afternoon gloom. She snapped on a light and stretched her neck. Too tight. How long had it been since she'd last worked out? No more than a couple of days, surely?
Until five months ago, she had hardly missed a day's training since she was fifteen. When she'd taken her holiday, however, she'd given herself a break from her punishing weights and kickboxing routine. Trouble was, when she'd come home, she'd found it surprisingly difficult to start up her routine again. She really should get back into it right now. But she was hungry, she realised, and she needed a shower. She rubbed her hands, grubby from the clean-up, across her stomach, then stripped off her tee-shirt and walked into her bedroom.
When she dropped her boardshorts to the floor, the butterfly pendant dropped from the pocket and skidded across the granite floor tiles; it hid somewhere under her bed. She frowned in its direction, tempted to leave it there. Eventually, she bent to retrieve it, suddenly worried for the glass and stones. She held it up to the light, where it spun in her hand. Perfect. Nothing like her. Where would she ever wear this? She rarely wore jewellery, lived in tee-shirts and jeans whenever possible.
She held it to her throat in the mirror, scowled at the dainty prisms juxtaposed against t
he scales-of-justice tattoo on her shoulder, and the scars on her nipples, inflicted before she'd even developed breasts. She'd give it to Lily.
She knew she wouldn't.
She mentally relived Scotty watching her accept the pendant, his whole body a question. Already, she regretted her brusque acceptance of his gift. She wished she could explain to him that kindness from others felt like a threat. She'd like to have told him that her fleeting feelings of warmth towards him were blasted ice-solid before she could even identify them. Although she was beginning to realise that these defence reactions might now be unnecessary in her life, she could no more control them than articulate them. It only made it harder that Scotty seemed to know these things without her having to say anything.
Jill tucked the pendant into her underwear drawer, nestled it in. She shook her head and walked naked into her bathroom.
2
JOSS SLICED THE last crust from Charlie's Vegemite sandwich and wrapped it carefully in cling film until the bread could no longer be seen through the swathes of plastic. It occurred to him that his little girl might never be able to get her lunch out of the wrapping. He smiled, warmth spreading in his chest as he imagined her conscientiously trying.
'Someone will help her at preschool,' he told the sandwich, as he tucked it with a mandarin into her yellow lunchbox. He snapped the box closed, and as he'd been privately doing since she started school, asked the smiling sun on the front to keep his little girl safe. He smoothed the tape upon which her name was printed in Isobel's neat writing. Charlie Rymill. Her mother's surname. Good.
Joss had always hated his name. Throughout his thirty-four years, his first and last names had jockeyed for the position of most despised. For the first thirteen years of his life, his first name had held a slight degree of street cred, associated in some way with hashish, but he kept his double-barrelled shocker of a last name to himself whenever possible. No one was going to run in fear from Joss Preston-Jones for godsakes.
At thirteen, when the voices had told his mother to throw herself in front of a car, Joss's grandparents had put him in a private school. There, 'Preston-Jones' was completely unremarkable, but 'Joss' had earned him more than one bashing. After school, he'd joined the infantry corps. Within a couple of months, his peers had learned not to exploit the many opportunities to ridicule either name. He had a reputation for never knowing when to stop in a fight.
Since the home invasion at Andy Wu's, Joss had never been more thankful that Isobel had retained her own surname when they'd married, and that they'd given it to Charlie. Those psychos had never learned her full name – Isobel tossing her handbag into the boot of the car before heading into Andy's place for dinner had meant that the offenders had no ID for either of them.
Well, nothing formal.
The worry tape in his mind took up where it had left off before he fell asleep the night before.
Then his girls walked into the kitchen.
Shiny was the first word that came to mind. Charlie's golden hair shone, her four-year-old skin was translucent. She had on a yellow dress – favourite colour – and red shoes. A couple of weeks before, she'd begun to insist she could dress herself.
Charlie launched herself into his arms.
'We're late again, Daddy!' She sounded thrilled. She pretty much always sounded that way.
'Well, you're just going to have to drive fast then,' he said to her beaming face. He turned her around in his arms and deposited her in a chair at the table.
'Go and get dressed, babe,' said Isobel, trailing her fingertips carefully over his bruised face as she passed. 'I'll take over here.' She smoothed a dark lock of hair into place. Damn he loved her wearing that suit.
Joss groaned and headed towards the stairs.
It'd been ten years, and he still couldn't get used to wearing a suit. When he'd become a civilian again in ninety-seven, he'd thought he would never find a job. Do your twenty years, everyone told him. Get an army pension and take a while to make your next move. It wasn't a bad suggestion. But then again, no one but Isobel and his former commanding officers knew about his medical discharge on psychiatric grounds. People thought his tour of Rwanda had changed him; they had no idea how much.
Turned out, though, that his skills were in high demand in civvy street. The ability to lead, proven discipline and analytical expertise – he'd had a choice of jobs. He'd taken a role as fraud investigator for an insurance company, because he thought it sounded boring and he wouldn't have to work in a team. He'd kept these motivations out of his comments in the job interview.
He walked quickly past the mirror, avoiding catching a glimpse of his black eye. The intern at the hospital had told him that they could operate on the cheekbone, insert a screw. Nerve damage was a risk, though. Joss figured his cheek had healed okay the last time he'd fractured it, in Rwanda. He shook his head a little to disperse the memory. Forget surgery, he'd told the doctor. Well, you probably should avoid breaking it again, the specialist had returned dryly.
Downstairs, he got Isobel to do his tie. Six years of private-school uniform had made him an expert at tying knots, but each morning saw him feigning helplessness to his wife. Isobel, amused and frustrated, especially when they were late, like today, would expertly tie the knot, kiss him on the mouth. For two minutes, every morning during this ritual, he breathed her in. A couple of times he'd undone the tie, turned back to her with a look of shocked innocence, like, how did that happen?
Not today, though. They really were late.
As soon as the car turned the corner, carrying Charlie to preschool and Isobel to her office in North Sydney, Joss was again lost in images of the robbery. Isobel had wanted him to take some time off, get some counselling, let his face heal. But the last thing he needed was to sit around with nothing to do but think. She knew him well enough to let it go.
Preparing for work last night, he'd presented Isobel with some scenarios to explain his black eye to the other insurance assessors: a water-skiing accident, a fistfight with his mother-in-law; caught up in the latest home invasion? He thought he'd go with Isobel's suggestion in the end: I fell off a ladder, painting the house.
He joined the queue for the bus into the city. Usually, he liked catching the bus, people-watching, the relaxed pace of it. It made more sense than getting a lift with Isobel on her way to work, and there was plenty to distract him from his memories of the past: Balmain looked nothing like Rwanda.
Since the thing at Andy Wu's, however, his mind had hardly visited Africa at all.
Those eyes. He'd never have believed you could recognise someone you hadn't seen in twenty-three years just from two eyes staring out of a balaclava. But he had.
Henry Nguyen. Cutter.
Until his first tour of duty, until the Kibeho massacre in Rwanda, Joss's nightmares had all been about the last day he'd seen Cutter.
At age thirteen, two days after the last time he had seen Cutter, Joss and his mum were out the front of Fairfield shopping centre, waiting to cross the road. His mum had told him that they had a meeting scheduled with Jesus. His whole life she'd been telling him stuff like that. He was eight before he realised that people didn't really come into their house each night to poison their food; he'd stayed up one night to check. So, when she wanted to take him to talk to Jesus, the only thing he was worried about was that she didn't start the meeting right there on the pavement in front of Franklins. But she'd grabbed his hand and run into the street. He'd pulled away.
How could he have pulled away?
He used to get so embarrassed when she showed up at the school, wasted, falling asleep in the principal's office. Or when she'd accuse him of being Satan's messenger in front of his friends, screaming into his face, froth on her lips.
Is that why he'd let go of her hand?
Thing is, he knew deep down that he couldn't have known she would run into the path of a car. But a little voice inside asked, couldn't you have guessed? Maybe you knew she was going to do it? Why did yo
u let go of her hand?
His mother had survived, but she'd been scheduled to a psych hospital, and Joss's grandparents had stepped in. He'd moved from Cabramatta to Mosman, changed schools, and had never seen Cutter or any of the others since.
Until Andy's house, the previous Saturday night.
Joss knew Cutter would not have been overjoyed to renew their acquaintance. The feeling was mutual. But that was not the problem.
If Cutter figured out that Joss had recognised him, Cutter would come and find him.
He had to.
Andy Wu would never walk again, and Joss could put Cutter away.
3
THE FEELINGS STARTED the day before, and built until he cut. And if something went wrong, if things didn't go like he planned, it hurt. Bad.
When he was a kid, Henry Nguyen would manage the feelings by slicing his forearms; carving crosses and snakes into his skin. Only when he'd cut to screaming point would the sexual tension ease. The kids who could watch him called him Cutter. The kids who couldn't, never spoke to him at all, kept their heads down when he walked past.
Nowadays, there was nothing he could inflict on himself to stop the feelings. He'd long moved on from that. Blood was still an aphrodisiac, but now he only started feeling normal again when others screamed.
Just lately, though, he hadn't been feeling right until the screaming stopped.
Guns had never done it for him. The pissweak and petrified had brought him plenty over the years, but he'd passed them on again. What do guns get you? Moments of respect, and then you've got to do something. Shoot, or move on. Shoot, and it's all over. Move on and well, what the fuck good was that?
Tonight was different, though. The hit planned for Capitol Hill was on a gun collector. A suburban Rambo getting through his midlife crisis with a new Harley and a shooting-range membership. Word was, he was cashed up, and had a nine-piece collection. Licensed and locked down, of course, but Cutter was looking forward to cracking the safe.
Voodoo Doll Page 2
