by Tara Moss
‘Adam doesn’t drink, smoke or do drugs,’ Glenise said confidently, almost challenging Mak to contradict her.
A nineteen-year-old who never even drank a beer would indeed be a rare find, Mak thought. She was about to ask another question when Adam’s mother abruptly got up from the couch and walked away. Mak wasn’t sure if she was too upset to go on and was leaving to compose herself, or if she had just remembered something.
‘Just a moment,’ the woman murmured as an afterthought in the doorway before disappearing from view.
Mak waited dutifully on the loveseat. She took the opportunity to quickly jot down some notes, before taking stock of her surroundings. There was an older-style tube TV against one wall, increasingly rare even in lower-middle-class households. There was a model ship on the hearth, of the type Mak’s dad had once been interested in constructing. Perhaps John had made it before his fatal elevator ride. Landscape prints adorned the walls. Glenise had lots of books stacked on her shelves, and rows of family photographs propped up in frames on every surface. Mak got up to take a closer look.
Well, hello there.
On the mantelpiece were pictures of family milestones that one might expect—graduation, birthdays, school presentations —and images from other gatherings. There was also a striking photograph of a well-built young man reclining on a sandy beach with his shirt off, skin glowing, his hair sun-kissed and wavy. It could have been an advertisement for something luxurious like cologne, so handsome was the young man.
Adam Hart?
‘That was taken in Noosa two months ago,’ came a voice behind her. Glenise had returned with a notebook in her hand. ‘He’s sweet, isn’t he?’ She hovered in the doorway then disappeared into the kitchen without another word.
There was a rattling of dishes and the whine of water coming to the boil. After a few moments, Mrs Hart returned with a pot, some biscuits and glasses of water on a large lacquered tray. She put her notebook on the seat next to her, and poured Makedde some tea that flowed from the spout the colour of molasses. You’ll be up for hours,Mak predicted.
‘Thank you. That’s very kind,’ she replied graciously. She took her place on the lonely loveseat again, and picked up her pen and notepad. ‘May I have that photograph to copy?’
‘Yes.’ Glenise nodded and closed her eyes for a moment.
‘Adam looks quite athletic. Does he play much sport?’ This was more than a way of simply building rapport. Mak needed to find out whom she could canvass about his disappearance. Team-mates? Classmates? Friends? Neighbours?
‘Oh, no. Nothing like that. I tried to get him interested in joining some clubs but he’s not very social.’
Does ‘not very social’ mean ‘depressed’?Mak wondered.
Glenise explained that Adam had not played organised sport since early in high school, and that he was not in touch with any of his school friends now. He was a natural athlete, she said, but never used his gifts. His only nod to athleticism was his cycling, which he appeared to do mostly to get to university and back. It kept him fit, and meant he didn’t feel the need for a car. Again Mak wished he had a car or something equally traceable. His bike was missing, which meant that whatever happened to him, he appeared to have at least left the house voluntarily. But that didn’t mean he was voluntarily staying away. Am I going to be knocking on doors all bloody day, with nothing else to go on?
‘If you could provide me with a description and a serial number for the bike, that would be helpful.’ It would be something. Mak took a sip of tea. It tasted as strong as it looked. ‘I have a few more questions,’ she continued, her pen poised.
Glenise nodded distractedly, her fingers unconsciously straying to her notebook.
‘Has your son ever run away before?’
‘No!’ Glenise declared, fully alert now, her hands forming fists. ‘He hasn’t run away. He’s a good kid.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘Not that he’s always been an angel. But if I find out he’s run away…’ She trailed off and her fists tightened, a wellspring of anger becoming apparent. ‘If he’s run away I’ll take him straight to the police! A night in jail would teach him a lesson!’
This sudden change in tone was jarring.
‘I understand you must be very concerned about him,’ Mak said soothingly, ‘but it’s not illegal to run away—if that’s what he’s done. He’s nineteen for starters, so technically he can go where he pleases.’
Glenise appeared momentarily stumped by this obvious fact, and reddened.
If Adam ended up in the hands of the correctional authorities, Mak doubted it would give him the kind of lesson his mother hoped for. Jails were often nothing more than a school for delinquents to learn how to become better delinquents.
‘I didn’t mean that literally,’ Glenise explained. ‘Of course I would never want my son in jail.’
‘Of course,’ Mak agreed. She waited a moment for the older woman to regain her composure before continuing. ‘Does Adam have any tattoos, piercings or other identifying marks?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Does he have a mobile phone?’
‘Yes. I haven’t found it.’
‘Passport?’
At this Glenise frowned for a moment.
‘I checked, and it’s still where I always keep it.’
So no travel plans.
‘His wallet?’
Glenise shook her head.
‘Does he have a credit or debit card we might be able to trace?’
‘He had a credit card for a while, but he couldn’t keep up the payments, so I made him cancel it. He’s on a family card now. A MasterCard.’
Okay, that’s something.
‘Has he been using it?’
Again, a shake of the head.
‘So you haven’t noticed any unusual activity on it? No purchases you can’t recall making?’
‘No.’
Mak pressed on. ‘It would be helpful if you could give me a full list of Adam’s friends, as many as you can think of, even if there are a hundred of them.’
‘There won’t be a hundred.’
Thank God. ‘That’s fine,’ Mak said. ‘Just give me a list of all his regular contacts, when you are able. I know it may take a while, but it would be very helpful. Most of these sorts of cases are solved that way. Often, someone knows something. A romantic partner might know a great deal, for instance. Is Adam involved with anyone?’ Makedde asked. ‘A girlfriend, or…?’ She left her query open.
‘He isn’t seeing anyone.’ The reply was swift.
‘No one that you know of then?’
‘No.’ Glenise was definite.
Mak frowned slightly. Was there something Adam’s mother was uncomfortable with? ‘No recent partners?’
She shook her head.
Mak felt her client shrinking away, and decided to move on to another subject. ‘Now, if you can, I’d like to hear your view of things. You last saw Adam on Tuesday at dinnertime, I understand. Is that correct? What was he wearing?’
Glenise surprised her by opening her notebook up about halfway through. It was not a notebook at all, Mak saw, but a diary. The year was embossed on the cover. She had sprung up and left Mak alone so she could fetch her diary. This was a good sign, even if the timing seemed odd. Glenise was the meticulous type. This could be helpful.
‘He was wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt and jeans,’ Mrs Hart recited, as if reading from a textbook. ‘He came home from uni, and then said he was going to eat in his room. He took his dinner upstairs. He wasn’t there in the morning.’ She paused and, when she spoke again, Mrs Hart sounded as if she was barely keeping her emotions at bay. ‘He didn’t come down for breakfast, and he wasn’t in his room.’ She referred again to the pages before her. ‘At seven-fifteen a.m. I discovered he was missing,’ she said dolefully.
So he could have left any time that night.
‘You sure keep a thorough diary,’ Mak commented.
‘Always,’ Glenise replied w
ith a touch of pride.
‘Does Adam keep a diary as well?’
Glenise frowned. ‘No. I don’t know. Well, he used to…’
‘Did he often eat alone in his room?’ This had struck Mak as odd; did it mean he and his mother had been fighting? It was antisocial, to say the least.
‘He’s a teenager.’
Mak nodded, and made another note. LOOK FOR A DIARY
‘You know, Kevin recommended you very highly,’ Glenise said, quite to Mak’s surprise. She looked up from her notes.
‘Kevin?’
‘You did such a good job with Tobias that I hoped you could help me,’ Glenise added.
Mak twitched at the mention of the boy’s name, and the fingers of her right hand gripped the seam of her jeans, nails curling up to stab the stitches. Kevin was the name of Tobias’s father.
Tobias? How would she know anything about Tobias and Kevin?
‘You know Tobias Murphy?’ Mak asked calmly, managing a decent act of masking the impact of the connection.
‘Oh, the Murphys are a lovely family. They moved in down the street earlier this year.’
Mak felt a rush of uneasy adrenaline surge through her.
Okay, you now have my attention.
Sixteen-year-old Tobias Murphy had been wrongly arrested for his cousin’s murder. It was all part of the same complex and sordid investigation that led Mak to uncover Damien Cavanagh’s involvement in the suspicious death of an underage girl. Mak’s investigation resulted in Tobias being cleared of any wrongdoing, even if she did not quite manage to bring the Cavanagh heir to justice, or cause much more than a ripple in the wealthy Cavanagh family’s privileged, important lives. She often wondered how Tobias was doing after being released from police custody and reunited with his biological father. The thought that he had so narrowly avoided spending his life imprisoned for something he was innocent of sent Mak’s thoughts quickly into territory Marian would not approve of. Injustice had a way of invigorating her. Of course the case had long since departed her professional domain. She had been sternly and repeatedly warned to be sensible and steer clear of any further involvement for her own good, perhaps even her own safety.
Mak was smart, but not always sensible.
This was the connection Marian Wendell had been hesitant to mention. The Cavanagh case was the reason for her recommendation. Mak had sensed that her boss was holding something back.
‘Are Adam and Tobias friends?’ Makedde asked with deceptive calm.
‘Oh, I think they’ve got to know each other a bit.’
The two boys would be a couple of years apart by Mak’s calculation.
‘Have you spoken to Tobias about Adam’s disappearance?’
‘Not personally,’ Glenise said. ‘I’ve not seen him around lately. I spoke with Kevin about it, of course, and that was when he recommended you.’
It was natural enough for Tobias’s father to recommend Makedde’s services. He had not been her client, but the outcome of her investigation had been good for the Murphys, and it was not as if the average person knew a lot of private investigators. Mak had thought the door knocking in this case would be depressingly ho-hum. Adam might best be located by speaking to a lot of his friends, associates and neighbours, as more often than not someone somewhere knew something, and it was only a matter of time and perseverance. But perhaps while speaking to the Murphy family she could gently find out if they knew anything she didn’t about the Cavanaghs, and where the case against the scion of one of Australia’s most powerful families had stalled…
CHAPTER 7
His motel room was cheap.
The young man stood in its centre, clothed only in his underpants, and glared at the locked door with disdain. A truck drove by on the nearby road. He heard some stranger cough. He would not sleep well here. He had not slept well for days, and tonight there would be no respite: of that he felt certain. The faint smell of deodoriser and stale smoke permeated the thin walls, the carpet and the papery sheets he did not look forward to sleeping between. This was in no way a step up from the caravan outside.
In three strides he traversed his tiny quarters to the spartan bathroom. At least the mirror was large, the corners of it fading away to a non-reflective grey. He stared himself down with a dark, unhappy gaze. There was a crease between his brows that displeased him. Even when he tried his best to relax his forehead, his frown remained like an ineradicable watermark. He leaned in until he was centimetres from the glass, staring at his reflection, obsessively tracking the undesired lines beginning to form on his fine face that once had been so smooth. He noted each new sign of age with acute anxiety: the creases that extended from the sides of his nose to the corners of his lips like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s doll; the lines that fanned out from his eyes like spider’s legs; the hairline that others denied was slowly, irreversibly receding. He cursed the fact he had not acquired a single one of the youthful genes that should have been his birthright.
One red apple.
One piece of rye toast. No butter.
One tin of tomato soup.
One pinch of salt, but only a pinch.
Salt made him retain water. He couldn’t afford that. He studiously avoided animal products, too much sodium, cholesterol, oil.
Twice a day he was in the habit of carefully tallying his intake. It kept him in line. It meant he did not make mistakes.
For a moment the young man stood side-on to the mirror and studied his unclothed shape. His sinewy muscles were keeping well, the skin on his chest still taut, tanned and smooth. He sucked his stomach in until it pulled back against his ribcage, giving him the narrow waist he was praised for. He was once told it was his low body fat that made him appear older than his years. Nonsense.
‘Ebanatyi pidaraz,’ he cursed under his breath, words he would never say aloud in front of his family.
Being constantly uprooted like this made him edgy. He felt unbalanced, discombobulated, alone. The travelling made him weary. He felt older than his years, that was true. He felt old.
Bijou…Bijou…Bijou…
She had taken another lover. Why? She was getting on in age now herself, though no one seemed to guess it. She was still beautiful, still the star attraction of the troupe, their driving force. She possessed him like no other ever could. It mattered not that he was rejected from her bed for now. She was inside him. Inside him. Inside him. And he inside her…
And she was not going to get him out.
Still fixated on his reflection, he reached blindly around the edge of the basin until he found what he wanted. He raised his black eyeliner pencil to his face. A little unsteadily, he drew its sharpened point across the seam of his lashes, giving him the lined eyes of a sinewy jungle cat.
Bijou.
This new boy might be in her bed now, but things could change. He could make things change. He would never be far away.
And he would be watching. Waiting…
CHAPTER 8
‘Hi, you’ve reached Mak. Please leave a message…’
Andy Flynn hung up his phone without saying a word. He felt the urge to throw the thing against the wall and break it into small, useless pieces. He was back in Australia, in Sydney again, a short distance from Makedde, and still they were at an impasse. She knew he was in town and yet she was not answering his calls.
Fuck it.
He looked across at the neatly stacked turquoise towels at the foot of the single bed he was perched on, and suddenly felt an extreme tiredness. He had driven from Quantico, Virginia, to Washington, then flown from Washington to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Sydney, and Sydney to Canberra. He had arrived home to find that his live-in girlfriend had done precisely what she’d said she would. She had moved out. The house had been neat and empty. She had not left a note.
And then he had driven here. He could be forgiven for feeling weary.
Beyond the door, Andy could hear the chaotic, comforting sounds of family. Only the family was not hi
s own, but that of his former police partner. The Cassimatis marriage had survived Jimmy’s long hours in squad cars, his absences, and even the unveiling of his infidelities. Andy’s own marriage had survived precisely nothing. And his wife, Cassandra, had not even survived their bitter divorce. She had been sliced up by the Stiletto Killer like some kind of sick present, as a cat would leave a dead bird at the end of the bed. It was precisely because Andy was working the case that the killer had gone for her. It was Andy’s fault that Cassandra was dead. He had not joined the police force to be the cause of murder. And after all that hell, he had really thought he could make it work with Makedde—if he could make it with anyone. She was not bothered by the morbidness of his work as a profiler of violent serial criminals. Her father was a retired cop. She understood the job, the hours. Sure, she had been a model for many years, but she wasn’t precious or self-absorbed. They really had something, but it had gone wrong yet again.
To make it worse, they had fought over professional issues as well as personal.
The Cavanaghs.
They had not seen eye to eye on what had transpired in Mak’s last Sydney assignment, and she had been bitter at his lack of support.
If only she knew his real reasons, things might have been different.
Sorry, Mak. Sorry.
Andy looked listlessly round Jimmy’s spare bedroom and tried to gather his thoughts. The room appeared to be used for storage of anything that didn’t fit elsewhere. There were a few cardboard boxes along one wall, a television that looked like it didn’t work, and, taking up precious space, a home gym. It was hilarious to Andy to imagine his former police partner even knowing what such a thing was. The man was perpetually out of shape and overweight, and his doctor had him on blood thinners. Still, there it was, complete with bench press and various pulleys.