by Tara Moss
If that car bumped her wheel, she would be lost.
I need traffic. I can lose him in traffic.
Mak made for the main streets of Bondi Junction, where the trains and buses connected, and hordes of people would be driving to and from the city.
Come on…come on…
She emerged from the rows of houses onto a straight stretch of main road and pulled the throttle back. She geared up to third, to fourth, to fifth. She was doing 140 kilometres an hour, the wind pounding against her. The vibration of the bike was frightening at that speed, the heat of it. If she hit anything, any stone or bump, she would lose control and die on impact. But still she had the steadiness to go faster. And she had to. In the side mirrors she could see that he was right behind her. She sped up to 150. She’d never clocked 150 before on her bike. Never. She’d never wanted to get booked for speeding, but now she hoped for it. She wanted sirens. She wanted help. Anyone. Anything. Please.
The lights of Bondi Junction were rapidly approaching, the tall buildings and shopping centre coming into view. She was nearly there. Traffic is backed up at any time of day there, and he would get stuck. He had to get stuck, and she could weave through where he couldn’t and speed past to safety. Surely this man wouldn’t try anything too rash. She had to get him in public. Then he would have to back off.
He was wearing a goddamned mask for goodness’ sake. He has to back off. Someone would surely see him and call the cops.
Please won’t someone call the cops?
Mak raced through the intersection and into Bondi Junction, past the giant complex of department stores and into the traffic.
And then she saw it.
The truck.
The sick taste of metal rose in her throat as a giant eighteen-wheeler pulled out right in front of her. She braked hard, tyres slipping, losing speed—but not fast enough. She felt her back wheel wobble, wobble again, and she was skidding—still fast, far too fast—and she saw herself sailing straight towards her death as if in slow motion. She was going to die on impact.
Oh God, help me…
Mak lay the bike sideways and felt her body hit the pavement. There was terrible vibration, heat and noise…
And then nothing.
CHAPTER 53
Makedde Vanderwall could not feel anything.
She could hear noise—voices—but she could not speak. She wanted so badly to get up and get off the road, away from the traffic, but her body was slow to respond. Her eyes flickered open, and she saw the tops of the streetlamps. She was face up, her body straight and arms folded as if she was ready for the luge. Strangely, she did not feel any pain. She could not feel anything except the heat of friction, and her body’s odd, stubborn refusal to get up.
Get up!
Mak sat up and her head swam. How much time had passed? Where was the man who had broken into the house? The man with the knife?
She looked around, vision blurry.
Just get up!
With great effort she rose to her feet and took a step. Her body crumpled beneath her, and she went to her knees.
‘Hey! Don’t move! An ambulance is on its way!’
Mak had no idea where the voice was coming from. She saw that people were around her, people with shocked faces. Everyone was standing back, afraid to touch her. She could see the massive truck she had slid underneath. It sat inert in the roadway, the cab door open and traffic backed up behind it. The driver would have thought he’d killed her.
Get the police, Mak wanted to say. Her mouth still wouldn’t work.
‘Hey, just relax. Just relax. Take it easy. Don’t move…’
Mak ignored the words and got to her feet again. She swayed but stayed upright, and looked frantically for signs of the black car that had chased her from the house. Where is he? She wanted to see more clearly.
She needed to get somewhere safe.
Mak moved herself forwards, the feeling coming back too slowly as adrenaline dissipated a bit. She was okay. She would get through this. She had already been through worse. She was strong. There was no siren yet. Not much time would have passed, then. He could be somewhere nearby. She should hide.
Mak made for the protection of the doorway to a massive bank building, everyone still staring but standing back, afraid to get near. She pushed her back into the corner, looking around for the car.
Oh.
Mak spotted her motorcycle and her heart sank. There was no way she would be riding it out of this mess. It was wrapped around a telephone pole on one side of the far intersection, still running, the engine screeching. Smoke rose up from the exhaust. She must have still been doing at least sixty when she went into the slide and her beloved BMW had continued on its course right into the pole.
Despite the fact that she clearly had more important issues to worry about, she couldn’t help but feel pained at the sight of the mangled machine. She wanted to tell someone to get to the kill switch but it hardly mattered now. Her voice wouldn’t come. The feeling in her body was too distant to be real. But she was okay. She was alive.
Bang.
Her motorbike shut itself off with a thump, going silent.
Stunned, Mak looked at herself and noticed the shredded surface of her clothing, examining her leathers with renewed admiration. Those leathers had saved her skin—literally. There were grey patches of worn suede left at the contact points from her slide, as if someone had gone at the dyed leather with a cheese grater. That could have been her flesh.
Yes!
Makedde could hear sirens. She was not even sure of the direction; the sound came up out of nowhere and filled her ears with its shrill but welcome cry, and she felt safe again. Her body sank back into the pavement in the doorway, still numb. Mak curled up on the ground.
She closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 54
Detective Jimmy Cassimatis strode down the corridors, his heart in his throat.
Andy is going to shit himself…
When he reached the room, Makedde was sitting up in her hospital bed with a pen and a pad of paper, scribbling something. She looked up. ‘Hey, Jimmy,’ she said casually while he gaped at her. He felt a flood of relief. She looked like she might actually be all right. She was in one piece.
‘Skata! Thank Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, Jimmy. I’m fine,’ she assured him.
Her face was pale, her eyes bloodshot, and there was a light, clammy sweat on her brow, but she appeared to have all her limbs. He’d expected much worse.
‘Did you break anything? Any gravel rash?’
‘No breaks. I don’t feel so hot but…’
Jimmy thought he’d seen everything, but this he couldn’t believe. ‘You slid under an eighteen-wheel Mac truck. Ironic,’ he said. ‘Mak goes under a Mac.’
‘You have no idea how lucky I am, Jimmy. There was someone at the house. He tried to stab me, and then he chased me down. Those leathers saved me twice tonight,’ Mak said.
‘I’ve seen some of those guys come in here,’ Jimmy warned her. ‘The ambulance looks clean but their insides look like a milkshake.’
Mak raised an eyebrow.
Can’t you ever say the right thing, he berated himself.
To his relief, she smiled. ‘No milkshakes here. I think…’
‘You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,’ he tried to reassure her after his gaffe.
Andy is going to completely go out of his head.
She put her pad of paper down. ‘Jimmy, have you seen that video I handed in to Hunt?’
‘What video?’
Her face went even paler. ‘What video! The one of the murdered girl. I gave it to Karen and she passed it on to Hunt.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she protested. ‘Why would she lie to me?’
No one had told Jimmy about a video.
‘You were with Andy at the autopsy, weren’t you? The Dumpster Girl? Well, I think the video shows her death.
’
Ah.
Since Hunt had taken on the case, and Andy had left to pursue his career break, Jimmy had been feeling out of the loop. It was as if Hunt didn’t even want him around.
‘Jimmy, I don’t think I’m nuts, but I believe this is all related. Someone stole my handbag. Someone went through my employer’s office and now there’s someone at the house,’ Mak told him. ‘It is about this case. I know it. All that can’t be coincidence. Maybe this guy who came after me is the same guy who killed Meaghan?’
From everything Jimmy knew, the case against Tobias Murphy was a strong one. Andy had told him about Mak’s theory, but he was doubtful that her feelings about his innocence were warranted. He didn’t want to encourage her thinking, but perhaps now was not the time to talk about all that, or how everyone knew that she’d been pulled up snooping around some guy’s house in Tamarama.
He held his tongue.
‘They sent a unit over to check for signs of forced entry.’
‘He was wearing gloves,’ she said, her eyes faraway. ‘Damn. They probably won’t get prints.’
‘It’s okay, they’ll get him. Tell me what happened,’ he prompted her.
‘I’ve been writing down a description of the car and the man, and everything else I remember, so that I don’t forget anything. I didn’t get a full licence plate but it was a black sedan with plate FST something.’
‘Okay,’ he said, and jotted the information in his notebook. He was proud of her. Not many would remember important details like that after an accident. She was all right, for a girl.
‘I came home late after dinner with Karen—’
‘Mahoney?’
‘Yeah. And when I arrived at the terrace I just felt that something was wrong,’ she explained. ‘This guy was in the house. He sprang at me. He was huge. He must have been several inches taller than me. Six foot six maybe?’
‘So you saw him?’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said with a flicker in her eye. ‘I saw him, but the bastard had a mask on. I didn’t see his face. I think I gave him a broken nose, though.’
Amazing, she is. Andy doesn’t know what he has in this girl.
‘He came at me with a knife and it nicked my leathers but didn’t penetrate. Like I said, they saved me twice tonight. I took off…I just got right back on my bike and rode off, thinking he would stay in the house and get what he wanted, and would probably be gone by the time the cavalry arrived. But the bastard followed. He followed. He not only followed me but he practically tried to run me off the road. I’m sure that was what he was trying to do.’
Jimmy was perplexed. Why would a burglar follow their victim? Why, if everything he wanted to steal was in the house?
‘I was speeding. He was going to bump me off my bike. I don’t remember much else except that a truck came up and I couldn’t stop in time. I braked and started sliding. That was it.’
‘Well, let’s get a doctor in here to see if you are okay.’
‘They are waiting on X-rays, I think.’
She reached a hand out and he approached her, awkwardly. They had never been on the best terms, he knew.
Mak squeezed his hand. She looked at him with bloodshot eyes. ‘Jimmy, I need your help.’
CHAPTER 55
‘Oh my God. I’m so glad she’s okay,’ Detective Karen Mahoney marvelled.
Karen had thought the worst when she was told what had happened. When she’d seen Mak leave for home, she had no idea she’d see her again so soon, and in such terrible circumstances.
‘Yeah, she doesn’t look bad for someone who went under a truck,’ Jimmy quipped with his usual blokey sensitivity.
‘She’ll be feeling it tomorrow, I’m sure.’
They had left Mak to rest for a while, and Karen took the elevator with Jimmy down from Mak’s floor to the hospital cafeteria on the ground floor. It was a sterile and unwelcoming place, most of the tables empty. They got two Styrofoam cups of drip coffee, and she watched in awe as Jimmy drowned his in milk and sugar.
They took a seat in the corner with their backs to the wall.
Jimmy wasn’t his usual affable self. He was probably shaken by what had happened to Mak, too.
‘Tell me about this video,’ he said. ‘No one told me nothin’ ‘bout it.’
Karen was shocked. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. What is it?’
He really doesn’t know.
Karen explained the video, what was on it, who it appeared to show and how Mak had handed it over. They’d done a CCR check and confirmed that it was from the mobile phone of Amy Camilleri, just as Mak had suspected. That was two days ago, and now the word from Melbourne was that Amy Camilleri was nowhere to be found.
‘She’s missing?’
Karen nodded solemnly.
‘Hunt hasn’t brought Mak in for questioning about it?’
Karen nodded again.
‘Skata,’ he swore in his native Greek.
‘Exactly.’
‘Look, I’m no good at this political bullshit. I don’t pay no attention, but I gotta say that since Andy left for the US, things have gone weird, don’t you think?’ he said.
Weird was one way of putting it. ‘How do you mean, exactly?’
‘I say someone’s trying to discredit his girlfriend, you know, with the kinda work she does, the modelling, her history…’
‘What? What do you mean, her history?’ Karen asked, offended at the idea.
Did he mean the newspaper article, or was there more?
‘You know…’ Jimmy seemed uncomfortable with what he had to say. ‘Her tendency to always be on the radar of some psycho.’
Karen felt her anger boil. ‘I’m not going to defend my friend when she hasn’t done anything wrong. She handed in that video because it was the right thing to do. Fuck Hunt if he hasn’t seen fit to follow it up properly. I don’t know what his problem is. And it’s not a crime to be a victim of crime. It took a lot of courage for her to get on the stand and convict Ed Brown. Her testimony was half the case.’
Without her, the Stiletto Murderer might never have been brought to trial.
‘I know, I know. Don’t go lookin’ at me,’ Jimmy shrugged. ‘I’m not sayin’ I agree or nothin’. I just gotta tell you some stuff I been hearing. I told ya, since Andy left it ain’t the same in there.’
He looked really uncomfortable—downright sheepish. Karen wondered what the hell was going on.
‘You know she got busted tryin’ to break into the house of some guy named Simon Aston?’
‘What?’ Karen was shocked.
‘I know. Apparently she was trying to break in. They just let her off.’
‘Who let her off?’
‘A couple of connies in the area.’
Oh, really?…
CHAPTER 56
‘The item has been leaked,’ The American said.
Luther gripped the phone and gritted his teeth with displeasure.
This was not the news he wanted. The video his client had asked him to obtain was in the hands of the police. He felt his rage bubbling up—self-directed rage.
He had failed.
‘She made it?’ He had to know.
‘Yes.’
So Makedde Vanderwall survived the motorcycle crash. Dying in a crash would have been perfect for his client, but somehow he felt strangely relieved that she’d survived. Perhaps because that meant he could get up close and personal with her one more time. He had another chance to do it right.
‘We have to be cautious now,’ the American voice said. ‘I’m doing what I can with the police, but the focus has shifted our way.’
Luther nodded. He understood that they were now under suspicion. It had become riskier.
‘She is the girlfriend of a cop, you understand. We need to be very careful.’
Luther listened.
‘Top priority, we need her silenced, but carefully. It can’t look deliberate. This one is tricky. We can’t screw this up.’
He would get started right away on a new plan.
CHAPTER 57
Mak found herself drifting in and out of sleep for the next few days. She needed a lot of rest, more than she had expected. The nurses had warned her that this would be the case. She might have all her limbs, but her body had some recovering to do. She dreamed of the horrible, shadowy creature who had begun to haunt her again, except now he was shadowy because he wore a black mask, and the blood that filled everything came from his nose.
On Saturday afternoon the doorbell disturbed her.
Mak rolled over, feeling heavy on the sheets. She was in Andy’s terrace, in their bedroom. A thin trail of her own drool was cool on the pillow. Oddly, she felt as if she’d been tied to a Tilt-A-Whirl for hours, and needed stillness, but she urged herself up. She wiped her mouth, embarrassed, crawled into a robe and went to answer the door.
No more sleeping…there are things to do…things to solve…
The terrace smelled of flowers. The bed was flanked by bouquets of red and white roses, one of which she remembered receiving, and one she didn’t. Andy had called every day to check on her, and every day his roses arrived, she knew that much. She wondered how long he would keep it up. He had not yet mentioned their odd conversation on Monday. There had been a lot of other odd things since then.
Mak was walking, though stiffly. Her body felt heavy, but it was working. She was already at the bottom of the stairs when she remembered she was not alone.
‘How are you feeling?’
It was Constable Sykes.
‘Oh, Anne. Sorry, I forgot you were here for a moment,’ Mak said. ‘I must look like Frankenstein’s bride or something.’
With evidence of the break-in into their home, and the suspicious circumstances, Andy had insisted on installing Sykes at the terrace. Mak had for once not protested about the added security. Not this time.