Assassin

by Tara Moss

  Once they were alone again, Cameron leaned on the rail and casually offered his lit cigar to Jack, who shook his head. Cameron took a leisurely puff and the aromatic smoke drifted past Jack’s nose.

  ‘I hear Beverley is in Europe,’ Cameron finally said. ‘Lovely woman, Beverley. She’s been very loyal, hasn’t she?’

  Jack nodded, sensing something disagreeable in the tone of the haughty British accent. Beverley had decided to take a sudden holiday to Europe without him. They hadn’t spoken much in the previous three weeks. It was not a welcome subject.

  Cameron paused and took another puff. ‘Weren’t you signing some big transport deal here? Some kind of a bullet train thing between … where was it now?’

  ‘Between Sydney and Melbourne.’

  ‘Yes. That’s it.’

  ‘It’s still happening,’ Jack said quietly, though there’d been complications.

  ‘I see.’ There was another long pause. Cameron took another drag of his cigar. ‘You know, I’ve heard some interesting things about you lately.’

  Jack’s chest tightened. ‘You have, have you?’

  ‘I have,’ Cameron replied. He took another puff and let the smoke out slowly, drifting on the salty air. ‘Very disturbing rumours. I’m sure they’re not true, but if they were …’ He shook his head. ‘Well, I’d be very disappointed. Something about you bullying a young private investigator. A woman.’

  ‘You hear wrong,’ Jack snapped.

  ‘She was at that party you threw for Damien, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t invite her.’

  ‘Ah, but she was there.’

  The Vanderwall woman’s exit from the party had been caught on camera. It was undeniable.

  ‘In fact, I think I may have seen her,’ Cameron went on. ‘Blonde, yes? Attractive thing. An ex-model if I am right. About the same age as my Sarah.’ This eldest daughter from his first marriage was also the approximate age of his new wife. ‘Now she’s missing.’ Cameron nodded to himself. ‘Seems a shame, doesn’t it? She sounds like an interesting woman. I bet she’d have a lot to say.’

  Jack turned suddenly, forgetting his flute. It snapped at the stem and he found himself holding the narrow bowl of the broken champagne glass for a moment before tossing it into the dark waves below.

  ‘Shame,’ Cameron repeated, noting the broken glass, or perhaps referring to something else entirely.

  Jack faced his unwanted interrogator and crossed his arms. There were many things he wanted to say, but the fact was, Cameron was worth significantly more than Jack. He was rarely so overmatched, and the experience was deeply uncomfortable and unfamiliar. There were few people, perhaps no one in Australia, who would challenge Jack in this way, who would dare to taunt him as Cameron was. What was he getting at? Jack could feel his face becoming hot.

  ‘Yes. This PI woman,’ Cameron Goldsworthy continued between puffs. ‘I do hope she’s okay. I’m sure you’re terribly concerned about her wellbeing — helping the police with their enquiries.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ Jack blurted.

  ‘Why? Should I be?’

  Jack Cavanagh resisted the urge to raise his voice, to defend his position, to explain that Makedde Vanderwall was a nuisance, a nobody, a pest threatening to ruin everything his father had built and Jack himself had worked so hard to hold on to for his entire lifetime. He had not wanted to go after Mak or the others who had threatened him. He had been pushed into it. She wouldn’t leave him and his family alone. She’d threatened his reputation, his livelihood and his son’s promising future. Jack was protecting his family. Anyone would do that, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t Cameron himself do what was necessary to defend himself and his loved ones? What if his precious Sarah found herself with the wrong crowd, got herself into a bit of trouble? What if some stranger, even a young woman, tried to bring his whole empire down? He’d had no choice, dammit. No choice.

  It was clear that the rumours about Mak Vanderwall had been circulating amongst his peers. And how could he defend himself? He could not.

  ‘Excuse me. I have to go,’ Jack said and, with nothing further to say, he left Cameron Goldsworthy and the irritating, smug look on his face. He demanded the deck hand order a water taxi to take him to shore. He’d call the host later and explain that he wasn’t feeling well.

  When Jack reached the fourteenth floor of his city office his secretary of many years, Joy Fregon, was absorbed in the work at her desk. She appeared surprised to see him back, but she said nothing about his abrupt departure from what should have been a relaxing afternoon on the water.

  ‘I want no calls, no disturbances at all until Mr White gets here,’ Jack insisted. He could barely contain his sense of panic.

  At the mention of White’s name her eyes flickered with recognition. ‘Yes, Mr Cavanagh,’ she said.

  He shut his door.

  Sitting forwards tensely in his leather chair behind a massive mahogany desk hundreds of metres over the bustling Sydney business district, Jack Cavanagh fought an unsettling feeling of being trapped.

  There had been times when this office was respite enough, when he’d toiled night and day here with the fever of ambition and been satisfied amongst the proud sporting memorabilia and the artworks he’d earned with hard work and business acumen — including a painting from Sidney Nolan’s famous Ned Kelly series that had set Jack back over five million dollars. Seeing it, owning it, knowing he’d captured it had made him proud. The more you have the more you stand to lose, perhaps. Perhaps that was why the sight of its bold colours and iconic imagery didn’t thrill him now, only made him feel worse. Or perhaps it was that another of his coveted art collection had played a role in identifying his Point Piper family home as the scene of a crime.

  Yes. Jack’s art collection had cost him in more ways than he could have imagined.

  It’s all closing in. Closing in …

  The scandal that had started with his son Damien’s questionable friends and nocturnal activities, and had spun off into countless other problems, like falling dominoes, had already cost Jack one of the biggest deals in Australian history, it seemed. The historic high-speed train system between Sydney and Melbourne, the one that Cameron Goldsworthy had mentioned, had been in the making for some time. Cavanagh Incorporated had been close to winning the contract. It had been all but officially signed when talks were put on hold. Financial shake-ups in government infrastructure were cited as the reason. Austerity measures were in place around the world, there was no doubt about that, but Australia had fared better than most countries, reliant as it was on commodity sales in the strong Asian financial markets rather than the troubled US and European markets. Financial concerns were not the real reason, he felt sure of it now. Recent speculation in the media had taken its toll on those negotiations, just as unfavourable gossip appeared to have made its way around the world, damaging Jack’s reputation in ways he could not repair.

  The blackness. It’s closing in …

  A feature piece one month earlier by respected investigative journalist for the Tribune, Richard Staples, had been the latest and most direct hit to Jack’s standing. Staples’s article had been the first to openly question Jack’s behaviour, and was the first to publicly mention him in relation to Vanderwall’s disappearance in Europe. He hadn’t blamed Jack for the disappearance — not directly — but he didn’t have to. The previous clashes between Vanderwall and the Cavanaghs were well known. Staples and the Tribune had been very careful with their implications. There was nothing Cavanagh could sue for. But it had looked bad. It had looked very bad indeed.

  After Staples’s story was published Beverley had departed suddenly for a holiday. Even before she’d left, their home life had become tense with all the conversations they were not having. Their troubled son. The rumours. The business deals on hold. And though his son had, for now, successfully sidestepped any blame for the girl’s death, there was still speculation about an ongoing police investigation. And
Cameron Goldsworthy’s jibe about his marital problems had smarted most because it hinted at an unspoken truth. The events of the previous year had begun to fester. It was a cancer eating away at every part of Jack’s life. His own wife had started to suspect him. He felt it. Jack’s family was crumbling. Not that anyone but the likes of Cameron Goldsworthy would dare mention it. Not yet. Perhaps Jack should avoid social outings for a while. Avoid others who might be whispering about him, and privately gloating about his impending downfall …

  There came a gentle knock on the closed door of his office, breaking Jack from his dark contemplations. Joy, his secretary, popped her head around the door.

  ‘Mr Cavanagh, Mr White is here,’ she told him.

  Jack nodded. Joy’s brow was pinched. She looked concerned, but said nothing further. She’d looked concerned a lot lately — of course, Jack had been taking a lot of meetings with Mr White lately. One did not take meetings with Mr White unless things were serious.

  After a moment Robert White, known by some as ‘The American’, walked into the room with his head tilted slightly down. He made some polite comment to Joy, closed the door behind him and moved towards the desk. White cut a fit but unassuming figure, wearing a sports jacket and pressed slacks. His grey hair was neatly combed and his shoes did not make a sound. He always moved in a very precise manner. He was economical in his movements, Jack had noticed. White was ex-FBI. He was a consultant of sorts. He dealt with security issues for Jack.

  Jack stood to greet him and the two men shook hands and exchanged courtesies. ‘Bob, thanks for coming. We have an issue,’ Jack said and sat.

  The American folded himself into the chair opposite Jack, leather creaking. He waited.

  ‘This afternoon Cameron Goldsworthy bailed me up. He said he’d heard things. He accused me of bullying Makedde Vanderwall. He mentioned her disappearance.’

  The American considered this with a blink and a barely perceptible nod of his head. ‘Goldsworthy is a bold personality,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He does like to stir up trouble. There have been no new threats and nothing in the papers for four weeks. Private speculation is unavoidable, though, I’m afraid. Did he say anything concrete that concerned you?’

  Jack shook his head.

  ‘Rumours then.’

  ‘Rumours could be enough to lose this deal outright,’ Jack complained, though within himself he knew the contract was lost.

  ‘Has Damien contacted you?’ Mr White asked.

  Jack shook his head again.

  Like Beverley, Jack’s wayward son, Damien, was not in the country, but not because he was holidaying with his mother. The last Jack had heard, his son was in Monaco and frankly Jack didn’t want to think about what he was doing there. Damien had been advised not to leave the country, but he hadn’t been told by a judge, and so off he’d gone. Damien was a loose cannon if ever he was and worrying about him took all of Jack’s spare time and quite a bit which was not spare. At sixty-nine, he’d wanted to hand the mantle to his only child, his only son. It wasn’t to be, it seemed.

  ‘Are there any updates?’

  The American shook his head. ‘Your son is still in Monaco, but it looks as though he may come home. I’ll alert you if he makes any firm plans. In the meantime, we’re keeping an eye on him.’

  Jack was torn between wanting his son home and wanting him to stay away, where he was less likely to cause further scandal.

  ‘And Vanderwall?’

  ‘There has been no sign of her, but we are looking into every possibility.’

  What could the silence on Makedde Vanderwall mean? Jack wondered. He was nervous that someone knew more than he did. Was she dead? Was she alive? She was supposed to have been killed in Paris, well out of the way of public scrutiny in Australia, but increasingly it appeared that might not have gone according to plan. There’d been no body found. That was good, he supposed. But Luther Hand, a man whom Jack had agonised over giving the green light to, had reportedly sent word that his mission was complete and then disappeared without asking for his remaining funds. Why would he not want the money? Jack didn’t like it. There was too much that didn’t make sense. He worried, too, that the police could be making connections. Connections that would be hard to shake off. His influence could only protect him for so long.

  ‘Where would Cameron Goldsworthy hear about Vanderwall?’ Jack said, though the question was rhetorical. He took a deep, ragged breath. ‘It’s not good. It’s not good …’

  ‘The Staples piece was not published internationally, but I’m afraid it was widely read,’ The American said. And it was still on the Tribune’s internet site, Jack knew. Apparently nothing could be done about that.

  ‘He’s not planning anything else?’

  ‘Richard Staples has moved on to other stories for the moment. He’s currently researching a piece about the live-export trade in Indonesia,’ Mr White said. Staples was now being monitored.

  ‘Keep watching him. He … I just can’t have him print another piece like that. And still no one has asked for the second half of the funds?’ Jack said of the apparently botched attempt to have Makedde killed.

  The American nodded. This information was nothing new, but it did not ease Jack’s sense of being trapped. He wondered who was whispering about him, what was being said, what would happen next. And an unsettling image came into his mind again. An image that had been recurring in his nightmares. It was the image of a dinosaur sinking deeper and deeper into blackness. Into tar.

  It’s closing in. The blackness.

  The American studied him quietly for a while, saying nothing. ‘If Vanderwall is alive and sets a foot in this country, we will know,’ he finally offered. ‘She won’t trouble you again.’

  ‘I want … I want proof. I don’t care how,’ Jack Cavanagh said. ‘I want proof she is dead.’

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘Women kill, too.’

  All eyes turned to Agent Dana Harrison, the youngest member of the fledgling SVCP unit. The small group of criminal profilers was seated in the incident room on metal chairs, the whiteboard before them still grimly adorned. Their post-lunch caffeine had worn off and, until Harrison’s comment, it had looked like their discussions would fall back into circular patterns of argument.

  Agent Harrison sat forwards in her chair. She’d worn her brown hair down this afternoon, Agent Andy Flynn noticed, and now she tucked a lock behind her ear.

  ‘All day we’ve been saying “he”, but women kill, too,’ Harrison argued. ‘Think of Katherine Knight.’

  Katherine Knight. The woman from Aberdeen in NSW had stabbed to death, decapitated and skinned her former de facto partner, cooking parts of his body and hanging his skin from a meat hook. It was an unusual case on many levels, not least for the post-mortem treatment of the body and the gender of the killer. She had been found at the scene, sleeping off the drugs and violence of the night before, passed out on the blood-soaked bed. The mother of four was now doing time at Silverwater as the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life without parole. Likewise, Omaima Nelson, the US – Egyptian former model who killed, cut up and cooked her new husband, frying some of his body parts in oil, had no hope of parole.

  Yes, women could kill.

  ‘She attacked her partner after sex. She had him in a vulnerable position. If the Berrima case is linked to this one, our perp could be a woman and these men could have been lured by her,’ Harrison concluded.

  Andy smiled to himself. Dana was bright and challenging. On this one, though, his instincts told him she was wrong.

  ‘And the DNA traces found on the body?’ Patel said.

  ‘It could have been from another encounter, as Agent Flynn said. Unlikely, but possible.’

  ‘I guess we shouldn’t rule out any possibility at this stage, no matter how unlikely,’ Patel replied and shrugged. ‘Until we work up a more complete profile I recommend we focus on the unique pattern of wounds. As I said this morning, the marks don’t fit with mutil
ation intended to obscure victim identification. In my opinion it suggests trophies. Or anthropophagy,’ Patel offered.

  ‘Cannibalism,’ Dana Harrison said and nodded. ‘Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish both consumed the flesh of their victims.’ Unlike Knight and Nelson, whose cannibalistic tastes were in question, Dahmer and Fish proved to have eaten large parts of their victims.

  ‘In this instance we have an adult male victim,’ Andy said. ‘Thoughts?’

  ‘Dahmer was a homosexual who suffered severe mental illness,’ Patel commented. ‘He felt he could conquer loneliness by consuming his victims so they could never leave him. Is our killer mentally ill then?’

  ‘Have to be, really,’ Gerard muttered unhelpfully.

  ‘Dahmer chose easy victims. They were from a lower socio-economic group. Our man — or woman — chooses tougher targets,’ Harrison said, ignoring Gerard and poring over the file. She was really relishing the role, Andy could see. ‘Worthington was what, a strong, fit, successful small-business owner? Hardly easy pickings. To succeed the killer must be high functioning,’ she argued.

  Andy watched his group, their interactions, their arguments. His mobile phone vibrated.

  Mak.

  His mind went immediately back to his conversation with Les Vanderwall that morning, though it was unlikely he would call again so soon.

  He checked the number.

  This one couldn’t wait.

  ‘Carry on,’ he announced to the room and left his protégés to continue their discussions. He walked the bright hall and let himself into his office, closed the door, took a seat. His hand dropped down to hover near the lower drawer for a moment, a quick shot of whisky his first instinct, but he pulled it back. He’d had far too much to drink the night before and was still suffering for it. He had to work harder to keep himself under control. Since Mak had gone missing, he was finding it hard.

  Andy dialled his former boss from the landline.

  ‘Inspector Kelley, it’s Flynn. Sorry I missed your call.’