Joss remembered his grandmother's face when she'd first seen Tatts, but to her credit, she'd welcomed his friends, preparing them sandwiches and juice to eat in the garden by the pool. She'd provided them with tennis racquets and left them alone to spend the day together. Joss had known that inviting them was a mistake from the moment they arrived. Tatts had pulled out a joint as soon as she left. But it was when he'd caught Esterhase with his grandfather's camera in his jacket that Joss told them to leave. He'd never felt so alone. He was no longer one of them, but he didn't want to be a Sandhurst boy.
He got off the bus on Military Road and walked the last couple of blocks to the house. Aged, overhanging trees kept most of the rain off his shoulders, and he breathed in the smell of the wet road, remembering cold, damp afternoons and the welcoming warmth of home. Smiling, he put his hands into his pockets.
His fingers brushed against the knife.
The light left his eyes as he walked up the path of his grandparents' house.
The nurse stepped back and let him in without a smile. He'd seen her here before, but couldn't remember her name. She didn't offer it. She was one of a rotating shift of healthcare workers from an agency paid for through his grandparents' estate.
His mum looked just as she had for the past twenty years. She was sitting by the wide bay window in the main loungeroom, rocking slightly. She looked up when he came in. Her mouth stopped working for just a moment before her tongue continued its rhythmic exploration of her teeth and lips, endlessly pushing in and out of her mouth. Tardive dyskinesia, caused by three decades of antipsychotic medication – no wonder she hadn't wanted to take the shit, he thought for the thousandth time, bending to catch her head with a kiss as she rocked.
He pulled a heavy armchair over next to hers, and sat down. One of the kinder nurses, Kathy Lin, had told him that his mother liked to be touched, to have her arm stroked, her hair brushed. He watched the rocking slow as he communicated with his mother in the only way they had left. He talked to her, the usual one-way conversation, and wondered what she heard, what she took in, just as he always had.
When it was time for her medication, Joss left her with the nurse and the production line of pills and went upstairs to his old bedroom. When he'd left home, his grandmother had not changed his room. There had been no need: there were far more rooms than she could use in the house, and she knew how important stability, the absence of change, were to Joss.
He knew the house now technically belonged to him, but he thought of it as his mother's. He knew he'd never live here again.
He dropped onto his old bed with a pain in his throat; it felt like he'd swallowed an apple, whole. The skin on his mother's arms was almost see-through now, soft like tissue. Her eyes were lifeless; he almost missed the madness that used to shine behind them. At least there'd been energy there.
The rain plashed quietly on the windowsill outside.
At last he rose from the bed and walked over to the cupboard in his room. He'd lived here for more than a year before he'd found the door on the inside wall of the cupboard that opened to a smaller, hidden cavity. Over the years, the space had held liquor, poor report cards, and once or twice a bag of pot. Now his old school backpack filled the space completely. He took the bag back to the bed and opened it. From inside his old pencil case, he unfolded a faded newspaper page. Smiling up at him from the top half of the page was Fuzzy, dressed in school uniform, curly hair completely out of control.
Teenager's Throat Cut! screamed the text below the picture.
12
ISOBEL THOUGHT ABOUT Joss as she scribbled shorthand. Her direct boss was updating the senior partners on their world domination progress since the last monthly meeting. His account was longwinded, as always. When he finally sat, she stretched her cramping fingers and peered through the rain at the bridge.
From the boardroom on the twenty-third floor, Sydney Harbour was typically a gaudy showgirl, but this morning she seemed to have gathered her shawls around her to hide. The mist rendered the wide window a mirror, and Isobel caught her boss, Bob Shields, staring at her in the glass as she watched the rain. She dropped her eyes back to her notepad and held her pen as a pointer, pretending to read over the notes she had taken.
Instead, she worried about her husband. This morning she'd felt the return of the impenetrable emotional barrier he'd brought home with him from Rwanda. For eighteen months after his return from deployment, Isobel had felt she was living with a different man, a soulless robot who ate and drank – a lot – but had no ability to relate as a human. She'd missed her best friend. But then when the barrier had eventually started to come down, she'd almost wanted it back. Joss had spent months alternating between angry tyrant and melancholy drunk. Isobel had used humour and reason, patience and sex to forge brief moments of connection with the man she'd married. But with Charlie's birth she finally felt him come fully home to her. She'd woken from her first sleep after the eleven-hour labour to find him leaning over her. One look in his eyes had told her.
'I missed you,' she'd said. 'Where've you been?'
'You've only been asleep an hour,' he'd smiled, smoothing her hair from her face, his mouth almost touching hers. 'I've been here the whole time.'
'Yeah? Anyway, welcome back.'
But this morning he was a soldier again: his body in the kitchen, his mind guarding the wire. She wondered whether he was correct about the man at Andy's. She prayed he was just being paranoid. That monster couldn't be the guy he'd grown up with. Could he? She flipped a page in her notebook and stared at the name. Henry Nguyen.
Finally, the meeting was drawing to a close. Isobel forced herself to remain seated until the first of the group left the boardroom before joining the others making their way through the doors. She swallowed her impatience as the two men ahead of her stalled in the doorway to make a final inane joke, the more junior of the two throwing his head back and braying falsely. She'd almost reached the end of the corridor when she felt a hand touch the small of her back.
'You seem a little distracted today, Isobel,' Bob Shields said, close to her ear. 'I'm not giving you too much work to do, am I?'
Isobel kept walking, aiming for the bright hallway flanked by offices outside the boardroom. She worked hard to keep plenty of people around when she talked to her boss.
'Well, yes, as a matter of fact,' she smiled, facing him, her back to the wall. 'I think I'll go to lunch.' It was 10.30 a.m. She strode purposefully in the direction of her office.
Shields's loud laughter followed her. 'I expect the Donatio report on my desk this afternoon,' he called to her back.
She waved her arm in reply. She wasn't sure how much longer she could bear working for that sleaze. She'd known about Shields's reputation for wandering hands before she started working for him – everyone knew – but that didn't make it any easier dealing with the man. She knew she could take it to antidiscrimination, but she wasn't ready to give up working in the legal industry just yet. Though he wasn't her direct line manager, Andy Wu looked out for her, and would assign her duties that kept her away from Shields whenever he could. She shuddered, remembering the last time she'd seen Andy, and wondered how the hell Lucy was bearing up. She and Joss should go out to visit her soon, she thought guiltily, but they had to get on top of this new threat first.
At last she reached her office, shut the door, and began the searches that made her services so highly prized round here. It wasn't the Donatio file she was working on, though. The name she typed into her search engines was Nguyen.
As always, she started wide and worked her way inwards. The Vietnamese name was one of the most common, and the programs hauled in thousands of hits. She narrowed the fields continually, honing in on his approximate age, geographic location, the nickname 'Cutter', and other small details she'd gathered from Joss. She roughly sifted court reports, quickly discarding mismatches and corralling possibilities to explore more carefully later. She downloaded Freedom of Information applications
for credit reports, lease agreements, criminal record history, insurance claims, motor registrations, phone contracts, Medicare and Centrelink records. For the average person, these applications could take months to process, but there were back-entrances for certain groups: finance and insurance institutions, various welfare departments, lawyers acting on behalf of their clients. For her job, Isobel had carefully cultivated contacts with some of the most powerful people in the country – the clerks who held the records to personal information.
She started to dial.
13
JILL FELT LOST in the sterile corridors of the Liverpool police complex. Constructed perhaps twenty years ago, it sat next to the busy courthouse and the mostly deserted public library. An attempt had been made at a contemporary construction, but the bright modern art, glass and stainless steel were at once too slick for the Liverpool streets and too tacky for good taste. A twenty-year coating of grime didn't help. Her boots squeaked over shiny floors as she made her way to the foyer, where she'd agreed to meet her new partner.
Gabriel leaned on the customer service counter. His face appeared serious, but the dark-haired girl behind the barrier inclined towards him, laughing, her fingers twisting a lock of her glossy hair. The girl turned a flushed face and narrowed eyes towards Jill as she approached. Jill felt those eyes on her until they left the building.
A small crowd waited for their turn in front of the court building to their left. Cigarette smoke hung in a pall above them. A couple of ill-looking trees, hopelessly under-equipped to transform the toxins back into oxygen, drooped over the footpath. Two or three man-boys pulled irritably at bright-coloured ties, standing next to resigned parents. Several men in cheap, shiny suits bared tennis socks and skinny ankles. Some of them clustered together, comparing gaol cred, making deals. Others stood too close to their woman, who would today reverse the Apprehended Violence Order protecting her from him; would insist that she would not press charges over the assault that had left her hospitalised and her kids in the care of the state.
Jill and Gabriel passed the courthouse, closely observed by most of those waiting outside, studiously ignoring the news crew on the footpath opposite. She imagined they would do anything to be able to sit in while she and Gabriel interviewed the daughter of the man murdered yesterday. Jill took a deep breath when a breeze momentarily freshened the air. The sun was out on their side of the street; it was another hot day.
Gabriel half-turned to her. 'So, nice place out here,' he said.
She smiled wryly.
'I don't think we'll have much luck with Donna Moser today,' he said next. 'It sounds like the hospital kept her sedated all day yesterday.'
'Worth a shot,' said Jill.
They walked in silence for a while, nearing the sprawling Westfield shopping centre, which had recently undergone major renovations. Its shiny commercial happiness contrasted with the customers and staff who waited at the lights to enter it.
Jill's thoughts turned back to the interview yesterday with Justine Rice. 'I wonder whether Donna was sexually assaulted as well. She's not a great deal older than Justine.'
'It's possible,' Gabriel said. 'But I doubt it. The scenarios are too different. At the Moser house the perp got all his sexual gratification from the torture and the kill.'
'Freak,' she said. They turned off the main street and the huge hospital complex came into sight. 'The violence has escalated so dramatically. It's a wonder we haven't come across this guy before. It's possible he's done a lot of time inside. We should probably look into violent sexual assaults in prison.'
'Good idea. There is some kind of sexual sadism going on, even if we've only seen it expressed in an overt sexual act with the Rice girl.' He stood aside to let a woman with a stroller pass them on the narrow footpath.
When he caught up, he continued.
'Traditional sexual assault doesn't have to take place for these people to get off. Think about it. In a sick way, stabbing flesh simulates the sex act.'
'Yeah, I've heard of that. What do they call it?' Jill felt sweat at her hairline.
'Piquerism. It's a paraphilia common to sexual sadists. Jack the Ripper was a piquerist. And you know what's typical with these guys?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'They also often stab themselves in some way. When they caught the serial killer Albert Fish, an X-ray showed he had more than two dozen needles inserted into his groin. They're sick mothers, I tell you. When I was training, I got called to transport a stiff from this small hospital in the sticks. Bloke had been brought in about ten times previously with self-inflicted stab wounds to the stomach. Would never tell the surgeons what he did it for. When he realised he wasn't going to make it this last time, he told them why he did it.'
Jill looked up at him as she walked.
'He told them,' he continued, 'that he believed he had vaginal tissue in his stomach. When he whacked off, he'd stab his gut to reach the tissue, effectively fucking himself.'
Oh, for God's sake. Jill stared into the gutter, waiting to cross at the lights. Of course she knew they were dealing with a monster in this case, but it was hard to fathom the depravity of a human who could not only deliberately inflict pain upon himself and another, but also become sexually aroused by the suffering. Inevitably, with such thoughts, her own traumatic memories shuddered into view, haltingly illuminated, as though by a fluorescent light stuttering to life. Screaming in the basement for the sexual pleasure of two men. Why did any aberrance surprise her?
Jill lifted her eyes from the ground. Gabriel stood slightly ahead of her. Unshaven again, with his hands in the pockets of his dark cargos, today he wore a light blue tee-shirt. The trucker cap sat low on his forehead. A marked police car passed them, and Gabriel lifted his chin towards the driver in acknowledgement. She saw the gesture returned.
He spoke again, eyes on the hospital across the road. 'The violence is highly addictive,' he said. 'And it has to escalate to satiate their desires. The other thing. . .' He paused, blinking in the sun. 'They never stop until they're caught or dead.'
The nursing unit manager walked Jill and Gabriel towards Donna Moser's room, but warned them that they probably wouldn't be able to get her to speak clearly. The only time the girl had awoken during the night, the nurse told them, she'd become hysterical, waking the whole floor with her screams. They'd sedated her again, and when the psych registrar had visited this morning, he'd authorised another intravenous dose of Valium. A general medical unit was the wrong place for her, in the nurse's opinion.
'Some family friends have arranged to have her moved out of here as soon as possible,' she said softly as she ushered them into the victim's room.
Jill looked down at the young woman sleeping in the bed. She would have guessed her age at maybe sixteen or seventeen, rather than the twenty years Jill knew to be correct. Other than her very white face and some pale shadows under her eyes, Donna appeared unharmed. They waited while the nurse tried gently to rouse her, calling her name, smoothing her hair back from her face. The young woman's eyelids fluttered, but the drugs pulled her back under.
Jill gestured to the nurse to let it go. I wouldn't want to face the world either, Jill thought. She moved one of the heavy bouquets of flowers on the nightstand to leave a card by the girl's bed, and she and Gabriel made their way out of the hospital.
Back on the street, Jill moved towards the pedestrian crossing, but Gabriel pointed in the other direction. She shrugged and followed.
'We'll have to find out where she's moved to when they discharge her,' said Jill, falling into step next to him. 'I'll follow it up.'
He nodded.
Their new direction led them past a large park. Specialists' buildings occupied the other side of the road.
'I didn't expect her to look so young,' she said.
When Gabriel again didn't answer, she stared up at him, slightly annoyed, but then noticed that he seemed focused on something ahead. She followed his line of vision. Action exploded immediately ahead of them. A yo
uth wrenched at the handbag of a middle-aged woman as she stood at the side of a vehicle a few metres away. The woman screamed, and Jill tensed to move, but Gabriel held her arm and signalled her to follow him. He stepped off the footpath and into the park. Within seconds, the offender had ripped the bag from the woman's grasp and run straight into the park. Jill stood back slightly, aware she could give chase if she needed to, but that was Delahunt's call. Let's see what he's got, she thought.
Gabriel didn't identify himself as the youth ran towards them; in fact, he seemed to make barely any preparatory move at all. At the last moment, as the offender bolted towards them, he turned side-on and swung his arm out into the runner's path at throat-height.
The kid hit the ground hard.
'Get your hands flat on the ground,' Jill yelled, moving quickly towards the youth, now sprawled on his back. 'Face down,' she instructed him.
She followed procedure, but there was really little need. The kid was sucking air, eyes closed in pain. Kicking the bag away, she rolled him over and cuffed his hands behind his back. He was still breathing hard, but managed a couple of hoarse 'motherfuckers'. She kept her hands on the cuffs and looked around at the crowd that was gathering. Gabriel's eyes danced as he watched.
'Up,' Jill ordered, hauling on the handcuffs, and the kid got quickly to his feet, pulled upwards by the pressure. Gabriel had his radio out, but she could already see a uniformed foot patrol running towards them, and a marked car, sirens on, arriving at the scene. Jill had heard that there were several snatch and grabs a day in Liverpool, and units typically responded quickly.
On their way over to the car, Gabriel spoke.
'Door job,' he said, looking at the perp. His smile was huge.
Voodoo Doll Page 8
