by Tara Moss
Karen just smiled. ‘Maybe. So come on, where are we going for lunch?’
‘This is your jurisdiction. It’s your call.’
‘There’s a famous place just around the corner, Beef and Bourbon, or Beefsteak something. I can never remember what it’s called. It’s been refurbished recently. It’s better than it sounds. Trust me.’
‘Deal,’ Mak agreed.
They pulled off down the road again, turning back onto the main strip. Makedde was familiar with the bright neon signage: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS! Open 24 Hours! Some things never changed. Sex shops. Newsagents. Backpacker hostels. Her eyes passed over the window of a modest little café among a cluster of sushi and karaoke bars and she did a double take.
‘Hey!’ Makedde pointed across the road, beaming. ‘That’s Andy!’
‘Speak of the devil,’ Karen said, slowing the car.
‘How can this city be so small? This happened before with Loulou at Starbucks. Can we stop for a sec?’
‘Sure.’ Karen pulled into a parking space. ‘Fifteen-minute parking,’ she warned. ‘Should I find a different spot?’
‘No probs. I just want to say a quick…’
Makedde’s words trailed off.
It was Andy Flynn alright. Unmistakable. He was sitting at a table right in the window of the café. But he wasn’t alone. Mak took a few steps across the street towards him, and as she watched, Andy Flynn, the man she had been making love to only hours before, the man she was thinking of postponing her flight home for, the man she had opened her heart to one more time, leaned across the table and embraced an attractive young blonde. Right there. As she watched. It was clear that Andy and the woman were more than friends. Makedde stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the road. A car barely swerved in time to avoid her. Karen snatched her arm and dragged her to the side of the street.
‘What’s gotten into you?’ Karen began, but then she too saw Andy and the woman. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said simply. ‘Carol.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Carol. The nurse.’
Makedde felt a wave of nausea race up through her body from her toes to her scalp and back down again. A sour lump formed in her throat. She wanted to retch.
He’s still with Carol…
‘Oops,’ she managed to say with a mouth that felt stiff and awkward. She tried not to betray the true depth of her pain, but she knew Karen would see straight through it. She tried a smile on, but it didn’t fit, and she ended up wearing a confused frown as she retreated mechanically towards Karen’s car. She had to look at her feet and concentrate on her steps …one step…two steps…
‘Oh, Mak…’ she could hear Karen saying. The policewoman was watching her face closely, much the same way she had the first time they met, with Catherine dead and bloody in the grass nearby, and Mak sitting with a styrofoam cup of coffee in a state of numbing shock, surrounded by police cars. Karen was shaking her head now. ‘Oh, Mak…’
If Karen didn’t already know what had happened between Mak and Andy after dinner the night before, she could no doubt guess now from the shattered look on Makedde’s face. It was obvious that something intimate had gone on between them, something that had led Mak to thoughts of commitment, a relationship. This was not the same Makedde who had been so cool with Andy for the first few days. This Mak had been blatantly love-struck.
Until now.
Do you never learn?
Karen was speaking, saying kind things, understanding things, but Mak was no longer listening.
CHAPTER 19
‘Come on, let’s get this show on the road,’ Jimmy Cassimatis grumbled. They were barely out of the gates and he was already impatient.
The unmarked car slowly made its way down the driveway out of Long Bay Gaol to Anzac Parade as per Ed’s instructions. Jimmy was in the passenger seat with Ed Brown directly behind him, an arrangement that left Jimmy feeling curiously ill at ease even though the prisoner was safely cuffed at both wrists and ankles. Hoosier was at the steering wheel. Senior Sergeant Lewis was beside Ed in the back, behind the driver. Jimmy couldn’t help but admire the Senior Sergeant’s dedication to his job. With his rank, he would have normally sat up front. But no. He wanted to take Ed around personally. That was a good call. An unmarked forensic van edged along behind them, ready to dig and examine and bring someone’s decomposed remains home. Behind them the audiovisual unit had their own truck, complete with soundman and camera operator to record Ed’s directions and the exhumations. Jimmy knew that Lewis had fought for the fourth car, another unmarked vehicle with two more police officers that was cruising behind the audiovisual van. There were always grumbles about using up manpower, but Senior Sergeant Lewis had managed to get it done, thanks mostly to Ed’s profile. Vast teams of helicopters, armoured cars, sharpshooting snipers and SWAT squads were only dispatched in big American movies; in real life the average multiple killer usually had only a few officers with him on an excursion like this. Any more than four vehicles and they may as well announce themselves as some kind of cavalcade.
So they had extra manpower, they were taking precautions, they had time and Lewis was obviously taking a special interest. That was good. And while it shitted Jimmy that Andy wasn’t there, he understood Kelley’s reasons and practically had to agree with him. As professional as his partner was, in the case of Ed Brown things had become very personal indeed. It was probably for the best that he was not sitting in the car with the man. It was only an exhumation, not a day of investigation. Andy’s profiling expertise would not come into play.
The only problem as Jimmy saw it was that they were fundamentally handicapped by the conditions of the deal that had been struck with Ed’s defence. The prisoner would show them the way as they went—and he wasn’t going to say a peep otherwise. That was the deal. While it certainly wouldn’t be the first time such an arrangement had been made, it pissed Jimmy off no end. Ed’s hotshot lawyer could talk all he wanted about doing favours and having rights, but Jimmy thought this show-and-tell shit was sick. Ed would get off on it for years.
A brunette teenager.
A young woman with black hair.
That was all Ed would offer about the young women he had killed. He didn’t know the women’s names, their families, their backgrounds. He didn’t care. They had never been ‘people’ to him, only something to be used and tossed away. The vague descriptions of the victims that he had given matched several women listed in the missing persons reports for the area four years prior, which Ed had indicated was the approximate time frame. Now it was a matter of bringing them home and matching up dental records and any DNA they could get their hands on.
They drove slowly along Anzac Parade. ‘Where to?’ Hoosier asked.
There was a long pause while the prisoner considered his response. ‘Could you, ah…please keep following Anzac Parade this way?’ A tilt of his ginger head. ‘Yeah…this way please.’
Ed’s voice was distinctive and high-pitched. It never failed to give Jimmy the creeps. He’d heard it in his dreams periodically over the previous eighteen months, Angie having to wake him up to tell him he was having another nightmare, digging an elbow into his ribs: ‘Honey, you’re talking in your sleep again.’ Perhaps that was why having Ed sit right behind him in the car set him on edge. Jimmy knew he had to play the usual game—make them relax, make them like you, make them feel comfortable and they’ll tell you everything—but he was not for one minute relaxed himself. He had been with Andy when they arrested Ed Brown during his assault on Makedde Vanderwall and that scene had joined the ranks of those which had burned themselves irreversibly into Jimmy’s memory—the infant in the car crash at Wollongong, his first fatal domestic, his first floater. There was a special spot for Ed Brown in Jimmy’s nightmares. And now the guy was sitting right behind him.
Does he even recognise me?
‘Can you do any better than that for us, Ed? Can you give us a location?’ Jimmy pried.
‘I’ll show you. Sorry,’
Ed Brown said meekly.
Sorry my arse, Jimmy thought. Sorry my frickin’ arse.
‘Please go on, go on driving, ah, and I will show you.’
They had passed the University of New South Wales and the National Institute of Dramatic Art and they were still driving.
‘Where next?’
‘Please, ah…keep on.’
Ed seemed so damned submissive. Is he on some kind of meds? The guards had not said anything about that but maybe it was standard procedure over at Long Bay for freaks like him. Was Ed really as meek as he appeared? It was doubtful. Jimmy’s father had a saying: ‘If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t know a thing.’ The Cassimatis men did not have great intellect or status or charm, but they did have street smarts. Jimmy had been blessed with good instincts—maybe not about women, or politics, or what was required at a polite dinner party, but good instincts for the work. That made him a good cop. Although he wouldn’t admit it publicly, he knew damn well that he knew nothing about Ed. And in that one way, he was probably the smartest cop in the car.
‘Okay, ah, turn right here please. Ah, I think this is the way.’
That fucking voice.
‘Ah, yes, right turn at the next lights.’
‘Mate, would you like something to eat, maybe? A meat pie or anything? Want us to stop and get you something?’ Hoosier piped up.
Jimmy wanted to smack him.
Over the years he’d bought plenty of guys beers and meat pies and chips and God knows what else to get them comfortable and compliant. Standard procedure, really. But this was not the guy to play that shit with. Jimmy did not give one ounce of piss about making Ed Brown comfortable. There would be no sucking up to this guy on his watch. He could show them where to dig and then he could go back to his little cell and rot in there forever.
Lewis, who was in charge of the show, said nothing.
‘Let’s just drive, shall we?’ Jimmy suggested. He folded his arms and looked out the window.
Ed led them along some back roads, winding this way and that, pausing once in a while to get his bearings and then speaking up weakly in that creepy girlie voice of his. Jimmy wondered again if he was just yanking their chain. He was tempted to call Andy to tell him that the whole deal was a heap of shit just to make them look like idiots.
And then the words were finally spoken.
‘This is the spot,’ Ed declared.
They stopped the car. The forensic van stopped. The audiovisual van stopped. The other unmarked car stopped behind them. ‘We’re here,’ Hoosier announced on the two-way.
‘Which spot?’
Ed nodded toward a petrol station across the road.
Jimmy blinked. ‘That is a petrol station,’ he said, stating the obvious in case no one else had noticed.
‘Ed, are you saying that you buried the girl’s body at a petrol station?’ Hoosier asked, gentle as ever.
‘Ah, this is it. Ah, yeah,’ came the high-pitched voice. ‘That ahh…that wasn’t there four years ago. Ahh, empty lot. This space was empty. I buried the girl near a tree, right there.’ He pointed in the direction of the pumps. ‘Yeah, this is the intersection. I know it was here. This is the spot. Yeah, ah ha.’
‘Skata! You’ve got to be kidding me.’ Jimmy slammed his palms against the dashboard. ‘This is a fuckin’ joke.’
‘Hold on, Cassimatis.’ Lewis got out of the car, and stood a few metres away. He looked to Ed waiting in the car, and then looked back at the garage with a frown, probably trying to decide what to do.
‘Ed, are you sure this is the spot? You know we can’t be of much help if you aren’t telling the truth.’
‘I am telling the truth. I…ah…ah, it was here. Yeah. She is buried here.’ Ed gestured near the pumps. His hands were still cuffed, so he could not point. ‘There were trees and brush there before. Ahh. Brunette girl. Young. Yeah. I buried her pretty deep.’
‘Okay,’ Lewis said, tense with restraint, standing alongside the car. ‘You are sure it is this exact spot, on this corner?’
Ed nodded.
‘Sir, do you want to take him out of the car and see what he can point out?’ Hoosier asked.
Going through the rigmarole of leading him around the garage in his cuffs to point vaguely at some areas of concrete was pointless, and would attract precisely the kind of attention that Kelley wanted to avoid.
‘Well, we can’t go digging up a petrol station now, can we?’
And with that, Lewis got back in and slammed the door. Hoosier drove them back towards Long Bay, the other vehicles trailing behind them. Jimmy could feel Lewis seething. It was one thing to demand that much manpower, it was quite another to go through all that and come back empty-handed.
They had to check out Ed’s story before they went any further. Lewis would be extremely disappointed.
‘Back to the Bay,’ Jimmy said into the two-way.
Barely a word was spoken on the drive.
CHAPTER 20
Detective Andy Flynn sat at his desk at Central Homicide, pushing papers around restlessly. His coat was tossed across the back of his chair. His sleeves were rolled up for no task in particular. Since he’d returned from his short coffee meeting he’d been stuck with distinctly unexciting paperwork. The seconds ticked by like hours. As if to amplify his sense of isolation, the office was almost empty. Most of the guys were still on lunch, and a chosen few of his colleagues were over at Long Bay where Andy wanted to be, tying up the tail end of the Stiletto Murders debacle they would all be happy to have behind them.
Andy had his mobile phone in front of him awaiting an update from Jimmy. So far there had been no word on what was happening. Where would Ed lead them? What would they find? It ate at Andy’s nerves to be left out of the loop on anything, worst of all this case. It smacked of history repeating itself. This time Andy wasn’t a suspect, as he had been eighteen months earlier, when his ex-wife Cassandra had been murdered. Now he was merely a suspect for unchecked temper. It was an improvement, but still excruciating.
Come on, Jimmy, call me.
He thought about calling Makedde just to hear her voice. He planned to take her out to dinner when he was finished at work. Which restaurant should they go to? Nothing he could afford would really measure up to the previous night’s meal at Bondi Beach, but no matter. Despite being a model, Makedde was no prima donna.
Come on, Jimmy, give me some news.
Andy had one less problem to think about, at least. The meeting with Carol had gone better than he had hoped. He had been as friendly and honest as he could, and there were no tears or long faces from her when he announced that he couldn’t see her any more. Carol had offered nothing but uncomplicated friendliness and good cheer. She had never given him reason to expect anything different from her, but still, she was a woman and women were unpredictable. The seemingly sane, level-headed types threw wine over you at dinner without any notice, and the edgy ones who always seemed ready to crack shook hands and were happy to ‘just be friends’. Andy had decided long ago that there was no system for figuring out the opposite sex. Forget all that ‘women are from Venus, men are from Mars’ crap. Andy’s theory held that the sexes were probably several galaxies apart.
He felt he had done the right thing by breaking the news to Carol in person. He was giving it another try with Mak and all other bets were off. He couldn’t afford any more complications. Considering the rocky path he and Mak had already travelled, there was not a lot of margin for error now. Especially if he wanted to convince her to stay with him in Australia.
Andy was relieved when the phone rang. He jumped on it eagerly, anticipating Jimmy with some news.
‘Flynn,’ he answered.
‘You’re an arsehole,’ came a voice on the other end.
‘What?’ It was not Jimmy’s voice, but a woman’s. Andy was confused.
‘I said, YOU ARE AN ARSEHOLE,’ the voice repeated as Andy sat stunned.
‘Mahoney, is that you?’<
br />
What the hell did Mahoney think she was doing talking to him like that? One minute she was a shy rookie straight out of the academy, and now she was mouthing off at him! Who the hell did she think she was—Jimmy?
‘You bet it’s me, Andy,’ Mahoney said. ‘Tell me one thing, why didn’t you just say that you and Carol were still an item?’
‘Whoa, whoa. Hold on…Excuse me?’ He looked around to see if anyone could overhear the conversation. He was still alone. ‘We’re not.’
‘Really? Well take a guess what I’ve been doing?’ she said. ‘I’ve been spending time with your girlfriend, taking her for lunch, showing her the sights. A nice little tour around Kings Cross. And who do you think we saw in Kings Cross?’ She kept emphasising the words, as if they would give him some clue as to what the hell she was on about. They didn’t.
‘Who might we have seen in Kings Cross, in a café, kissing his pretty nurse friend? Hmmm?’
‘Oh, shit!’ Andy exclaimed, finally grasping what Mahoney was getting at. He scrambled to recall every move he and Carol might have made and how a bystander might have perceived things.
We didn’t actually kiss, did we? When on earth would we have kissed?
‘Oh shit is right, Andy. Mak seemed a tad put out, shall I say.’
‘Oh, Christ—’
‘Even he’s not going to be able to help you with this one.’
‘It wasn’t even like that!’ he protested.
‘Whatever, Mick Jagger. I just thought I’d let you know.’
‘That’s not how it was.’
‘Okay, Robbie Williams, Sam Newman, Casanova—’
‘Will you shut up?’
‘When we saw you and Carol you were all over each other in the window of that café and you should have seen the look on Makedde’s face. You’d think someone had died. Friend to friend here, I’ve gotta say I never picked you for throwing away the only good chick you had a chance with. Excuse me for saying that you are stupid, Andy, but Andy, you are stupid.’
‘Carol and I were not all over each other,’ he said, genuinely confused. ‘We might have hugged goodbye at the most. She probably gave me a peck on the cheek; I can’t even remember. I was telling her that I couldn’t see her again. I was trying to do the right thing…’ He trailed off, realisation hitting him.