The Mak Collection

by Tara Moss

  ‘People?’

  ‘It seems that the media may have been tipped off about your arrival. Some Qantas ground staff have been organised to escort you through a more convenient exit.’

  ‘Really? Why thank you. That’s very kind.’ The media? ‘Oh,’ Mak added, remembering that the police had organised an airport pick-up, ‘I have some people waiting for me—’

  ‘That’s okay, Miss Vanderwall. They have been informed also. It’s all organised.’ The steward nodded and smiled politely, as if to say, I know everything. ‘Hey, are you feeling okay?’

  Mak felt a little ill. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied.

  The steward patted her arm in a familiar way, and leaned closer, cocking her head to one side, the lips held tight, eyes wide. She was bubbling over with unspoken questions, waiting for any sign that she could go ahead and start probing. She hovered for a few moments and when Mak failed to confide any deliciously gruesome details she said, ‘Well…good luck. I hope you enjoy your stay,’ and stood to leave.

  Enjoy your stay?

  Mak couldn’t help but feel queasy imagining that she had spent almost thirteen hours on this plane without even considering the possibility that everyone around her might know who she was, what had happened to her and why she was there.

  Creepy.

  ‘Um, can you help me with something?’ Mak asked, just as the steward turned to walk away.

  ‘Sure, what can I get you?’

  ‘Do you know the name of the cyclone that devastated Darwin in 1974?’

  ‘Sorry?’ The drawn lips formed a confused pout.

  ‘Never mind. It’s not important.’ Mak hated being posed a question and not knowing the answer, no matter how irrelevant. ‘Thanks for letting me know about the, uh…welcome party.’

  The steward smiled sweetly and disappeared up the aisle.

  Makedde yawned and stretched her sore muscles, her mind frantically running over the possibilities of what might be in store. There had been plenty of headlines back when the killings were still taking place and Sydney was in the grip of its fear and fascination with the Stiletto Murders, but she had hoped the trial would not attract the same amount of interest. Perhaps her hopes were in vain, if the steward’s news was anything to go by. That wasn’t a comforting thought. She couldn’t stand the idea of seeing poor Catherine’s beautiful face in the papers again, with the caption ‘Slaughtered’, ‘Murdered’ or simply ‘Victim’ underneath.

  Mak adjusted her watch to Tuesday, 5.55 a.m., Sydney time, and rubbed some gritty sleep out of her eyes. Yuck. She craned her neck to see the Opera House come into view as the plane dipped its giant wing and banked left. The sky was a brilliant azure, the blue reflected in a vast expanse of Australian waters below. But the dazzling sight only added to her queasiness, thanks to those not-so-fond memories of her last trip.

  Surely the worst was over?

  Mak strapped herself in and prepared to arrive in Sydney.

  You’ll soon find out.

  Detective Senior Sergeant Andrew Flynn leaned against the far wall of Arrivals Gate C at Sydney International Airport, holding some flowers in his hand and his heart in his throat. His tall, rough-and-tumble handsomeness drew an admiring glance from an attractive blonde at the Hertz car rental desk. He failed to notice her, lost as he was in a battle with his own thoughts.

  Ditch the flowers.

  No, women like flowers.

  You look like an idiot. Ditch ’em.

  Barely five minutes after buying them, he chucked the small bouquet of mixed flowers—he didn’t know what they were—into a nearby bin. He resumed his position, leaning with his back to the far wall close to the sliding doors of the main exit, and crossed his arms. Andy felt much better without the silly bouquet. It had been a stupid impulse, not his style at all. The truth was, his normally steady nerves were getting a working over this morning and he worried that he might be in danger of doing something he would regret later. A fax had come in overnight that threatened in not-so-subtle terms to jeopardise some of the vital funding of the new New South Wales Profiling Unit, of which he was set to be a major player once it was up and running. Fuck. But he knew that wasn’t the only thing responsible for his mood. Or even the main thing responsible for it.

  Makedde Vanderwall was arriving from Canada this morning, any minute now. Andy wasn’t quite sure what to expect from her or their relationship, if that was the right word for what they had. She is one of those unpredictable types, he thought. Then again, weren’t all women? He hadn’t been able to sleep so he figured he might as well come to the airport and try to be useful, but he didn’t feel so good as he stood there anticipating her arrival. The midnight Jack Daniels run probably hadn’t helped his condition.

  ‘Are you back on the booze, Andy?’

  ‘Oh no, Inspector Kelley, don’t worry about that…’

  He looked at his watch: 6.20 a.m. It was bloody early, but it could have been midnight or one in the morning to him, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if it weren’t for the light outside. No sleep. He looked around for someone brandishing one of those chauffeur’s cards with Makedde’s name on it, but it seemed there was no one to collect her. He thought someone had organised for Senior Constable Mahoney to pick her up from the airport, but he hadn’t seen her or anyone else who was familiar. None of his colleagues were milling around, which was a relief because he would never live down the bouquet thing if they’d seen it.

  The sliding glass doors beside him opened with a waft of crisp air and yet another TV crew walked in, surveying the crowd. Now there was a handful of photographers assembled in the arrivals area, and crews from both Channels Nine and Seven. Who were they there to see? Ian Thorpe maybe? He was reportedly coming back from overseas soon. Brett Lee or Shane Warne perhaps? Or one of those Los Angeles-based Aussie actresses he could never remember the names of?

  Andy unfolded his arms and put his hands in his pockets. He looked over at the gift shop. Perfumes. Cards. Chocolates. Flowers. Should he buy her something? Would that be assuming too much? Yes it would be. Just leave it.

  Some travellers finally began to appear through the arrivals gate. He saw a tired-looking tanned couple with backpacks and an older woman pushing a trolley overflowing with baggage. A young man with a huge Canadian flag sticker plastered to his suitcase followed, rubbing his eyes and looking anxiously at the sea of faces. Mak probably wouldn’t be too much longer.

  She hadn’t returned his last few calls, and he hadn’t told her he would be at the airport to greet her. They’d left off their long-distance relationship on a kind of odd note, that much was true. There had been a lot of phone calls since he’d returned to Sydney from his extended work trip to Canada six months earlier. At first everything seemed fine. Then about two months ago she’d said that she thought they should see other people. She’d said that long-distance relationships never really worked and they shouldn’t put too much pressure on themselves. Of course he’d agreed. What else was he supposed to say? But then he’d gone ahead and followed through. It had only been a weekend fling, really. A nurse. Carol was her name. A nice girl, but not really his type. Or rather, she wasn’t Makedde.

  It hadn’t taken long for him to realise he had done the wrong thing. And now there was this stand-off. What was he supposed to do? It had been her idea after all. Why would she say something like that if she didn’t really mean it?

  Women. Were they even the same species? Andy thought it ironic that he could map the psychological processes of the worst kinds of serial killers and rapists, but he still couldn’t figure out what made the opposite sex tick. They truly were a mystery to him.

  A tall, attractive blonde appeared through the arrivals gate in jeans and a zip-up top, her suitcase bearing another of those ubiquitous red and white Canadian flags. Andy stood up straight and looked at her, his heart beating a little faster. But it was not Makedde. He noticed the film crews and photographers edging forward excitedly. And then, without a sin
gle flash bulb going off, they shuffled back into place, clearly disappointed.

  And that’s when it dawned on him.

  Oh shit. They know she’s coming back this morning. How the fuck did they find out?

  He panicked.

  Andy didn’t want Mak to be met with a flurry of invasive questions about the murder trial straight after a twenty-hour trip from Canada. Some welcome that would be. There seemed to be someone tipping off the media lately. Perhaps it was one of the new constables? Never trust an underpaid cop. Andy ran through scenarios in his head, ways he could help her avoid the throng. It would be tough enough for her to face it outside the Supreme Court in a few days, but she didn’t need to deal with this now.

  He approached airport security.

  ‘Good morning,’ Andy said to a sleepy young uniformed guard. He flashed his badge discreetly and asked to be taken into the customs area.

  ‘No problem, detective,’ the young man replied, looking somewhat more awake. ‘Come with me.’

  He hoped he wasn’t too late.

  Minutes later, when Andy was told that the witness he sought was already being escorted to her hotel, he felt he masked his disappointment fairly well. He didn’t punch a wall, or even let out a string of expletives, although those responses crossed his mind. He simply said, ‘Good work. Carry on,’ and quietly exited the airport where he’d just wasted ninety minutes. He couldn’t have been farther out of the loop if he tried.

  Fucking fool.

  By the time he got back to his apartment it was past eight, leaving just enough time for a couple of fried eggs and another wrestle with his desire for a shot of Jack Daniels before he headed to work and forced Makedde Vanderwall safely out of his mind…for a few hours at least. Then there would be the unavoidable briefing over dinner with Hartwell and the gang.

  Andy would have to get his act together and keep it professional in front of his colleagues. They all had a trial to prepare for and it was of great importance that everything ran as smoothly as possible. There was no room for emotional baggage. This was a big one, and the nation was watching.

  It was two days till show time.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘I don’t think you realise how beautiful you are,’ he whispered. ‘There is a flower inside you just waiting to blossom.’

  She blushed and tilted her head, leaning against the wall of the corridor with her hands by her sides, as open as a book.

  ‘I mean it. You are beautiful.’

  ‘Shhh. I am not. Cut it out,’ she protested, but she was smiling. ‘Stevens is coming any minute,’ she warned.

  Ed Brown leaned a little closer to the bars. ‘I can’t wait until we’re together,’ he whispered. ‘I think about it every day in here.’

  ‘Oooh,’ she cooed and glanced at him lovingly, another warm smile creeping across her face. But then she turned and looked up the prison corridor, and her body language changed completely. She stiffened. ‘Stevens. How are you?’ she called out in a dull, professional tone.

  He could hear footsteps approaching his cell and Ed retreated to the corner of his cot. In seconds Stevens appeared. He was a solid and imposing six foot four, with arms like a gorilla’s and a chip on his shoulder. Probably a police academy reject, Ed decided. Stevens worked the day shifts in these protected quarters of Long Bay Correctional Centre, noon till midnight. He was one of the reasons Ed Brown had taken to keeping a nocturnal schedule—anything to spend more time with her and avoid the long boring hours with Stevens hovering outside the cell, bereft of any usefulness or even decent conversation. Now Ed slept from five in the afternoon until midnight when the shifts changed, and his woman came back. The lights out didn’t bother him. His lawyer had made sure he could have his own reading lamp and TV on any time he wished, as long as he was courteous about the volume. And Ed was always courteous.

  ‘What on earth do you two find to talk about?’ Stevens sniffed, running a hand across his shaved head, which was covered in a curious road map of rough scars.

  Oh, but you don’t realise we have so very much in common, Ed thought with a barely detectable grin.

  ‘Gotta do something to pass the time,’ the night-shift woman replied.

  That was true. Unlike in the movies, most prison guards did not go out of their way to make life miserable for those they supervised. The guard had to be there, the prisoner had to be there—in Ed’s case he was still on remand for his upcoming murder trial, now less than forty-eight hours away—so they coexisted as pleasantly as they could manage. No point in making life any more difficult than it already was. There were plenty of conversations had, and friendship, of a sort, was not unusual between guards and some of the more compliant, long-term inmates. So on the surface, Ed’s late-night gabbing sessions with the night-shift guard were not odd. It was the subject of their discussions that was unusual, but that remained their little secret.

  ‘See ya tomorrow.’

  Relieved from her twelve-hour shift, Ed’s budding ally walked away without looking back. Ed could hear her keys jangling as she disappeared, the sound a kind of music in his ears.

  It had taken almost thirteen months, but Ed Brown had found his target. She was perfect—a hardened and unattractive woman, no husband, no children and no social life to speak of, a lonely corrections officer who privately longed to be swept off her feet by a romantic suitor. She had been as tough as nails at first, as one would expect, but just as Ed had anticipated, the hard surface had melted with patience and the right touch. Deliberation and equanimity were some of Ed’s great strengths. In due course she had cracked like an egg for him, all gooey and messed up in the centre.

  Perfect.

  ‘Excuse me, Pete?’ Ed politely addressed Stevens. ‘Could you please turn that there on for me? The uh…TV?’

  Ed was careful to show servitude and an exaggerated lack of intelligence when he spoke to people like Stevens. It made them assume he was dumb and obedient, his apparent meekness inflating them with false feelings of superiority and security that could be used against them. In many ways Ed could still be mistaken for the pale, bespectacled kid who had been knuckle-bait every lunch hour in school, the wimpy boy with no friends, no pocket money, no clean clothes. But that was a deception. Ed had since found his power, and he was eager to regain the freedom to exercise it.

  Stevens flicked the TV on for him. It faced Ed’s cell from the safety of the prison corridor.

  ‘Thank you so very much. I do so appreciate it.’

  As was his routine, Ed would go to sleep after watching the news and the daytime TV shows, his last bit of homework for the day. ‘I don’t know how you can watch that shit,’ Stevens had once said. Ed had only smiled in response.

  Put your stilettos on, Makedde.

  I’m coming for you…

  CHAPTER 5

  Makedde sat straight up, jolted awake by a nightmare that faded as soon as she opened her eyes. Her heart pounded like a hammer in her chest.

  What…?

  Oh yes…you are safe…Sydney hotel room, courtesy of the Crown. You closed your eyes for a moment, that’s all, she recalled. Another nightmare. Should she enter it in her book? For over a year Mak had used a small notebook, a dream diary of sorts, to try to keep track of her strange nightmares and broken sleeping patterns. She had suffered from insomnia after the events of the last Sydney trip, and back in Vancouver, Dr Ann Morgan, now her father’s girlfriend, had used Makedde’s notes to help her decipher some of those nightmares. One rather telling dream revolved around Mak wearing her father’s uniform and watching helplessly as Ed Brown killed her mother in the same fashion he had almost killed Mak herself—with a scalpel.

  This time Makedde couldn’t remember her dream so she simply entered the date and the word ‘Nightmare?’ in her notebook. Her jaw ached and she felt an unhappy twinge in her neck. She had probably been grinding her teeth during her doze. After the stress of the past two years it was amazing she had any canines left at all. Mak stretched
her sore jaw muscles, opening and closing her mouth in a series of painful yawns. She rolled across the unfamiliar bed in search of a clock, the tangled hotel sheets wrapping her weary limbs like a shroud.

  You’ve got to get yourself up, girl.

  Mak planned to have a quick stroll around the city to stretch her legs and acclimatise herself before her seven o’clock date with some of the prosecution team. She was dreading it, picturing it in her imagination as some kind of ‘Welcome to Sydney where your Worst Nightmares Come True’ dinner. Will Andy be there? Do I care? She untangled herself from the sheets—her T-shirt seemed to have put itself on backwards—and rolled the rest of the way over to the bedside table. The glowing red digits of the hotel clock were bad news: 6.01 p.m. You’ve got to be kidding! She’d passed out for at least five hours. So much for the stroll. So much for getting a decent sleep tonight. She had just enough time to bathe and change, and try to snap herself out of her malaise before facing the team in charge of Catherine’s post-mortem justice.

  That’s it, Mak. You have nothing to do now except take the witness stand. There is nothing left to focus on. Just this trial. Just him. Facing HIM in that big bloody courtroom.

  Facing Ed Brown and being forced to recall every last painful detail of the things he had done to her would be hard, she knew, but getting the guilty verdict that would lock him up forever should be a given, shouldn’t it? It’s not as if there were any question of Ed Brown’s guilt. After all, he had been caught red-handed during his attack on her. Both Andy and his police partner, Jimmy Cassimatis, had walked in on the scene. Andy shot Ed right then and there, though not accurately enough for Mak’s liking. A criminal could hardly be guiltier than that. How would his defence team even attempt to defend an indefensible position?

  Another look at the clock. She needed to catch her father before he went to sleep. Hmmm…After six in the evening here would be nineteen hours ago in British Columbia, making it just after eleven at night in Victoria. It was almost too late to call home but she decided to ring anyway, even if it meant waking someone up. She had promised to call and let them know she had arrived safely, and though it was late she knew the chances were good that her worried father was not going to pack it in for the night until he heard from her. She imagined him wide-awake in his office, sorting paperwork he didn’t really need to be working on at that hour, or perhaps doing a crossword, surrounded by his dusty police caps and service awards, relics from his days as detective inspector.