The Mak Collection

by Tara Moss

  Andy could not believe what he was seeing. ‘You are joking. You actually lock away your Mars bars?’

  ‘You don’t have kids. You wouldn’t understand.’ Jimmy unwrapped a corner and took a bite. ‘What Hunt said was that she “better not start stirring shit up again” or something to that effect.’ He was speaking with his mouth full. ‘He meant the Cavanaghs.’ Jimmy sat and the chair creaked under his weight.

  ‘Can we not talk about her right now?’

  Jimmy frowned. There was an awkward pause.

  ‘I had a beauty come through this morning. You know that burglary down in Macleay Street?’

  ‘No,’ Andy answered flatly.

  ‘Well, some rich prick got his fancy house robbed on the weekend, and apparently there was hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels and shit there. “Woe is me, I only have five million dollars left,” and all that. Hunt was all over it, pushing everyone to make the guy who did the place. And guess who gets to look a genius this week?’ He grinned proudly and raised his hand.

  ‘Um, you.’

  ‘I found a pair of leather gloves in the yard, discarded. And yup, they found the index finger and thumb on the right glove matched prints in the house, and inside the gloves were a couple of full handprints, with perfectly usable fingerprints. What a moron for tossing the gloves at the crime scene. And for using hand cream before he put his gloves on. Skata. He must’ve been some kind of metrosexual robber.’

  ‘They just don’t make criminals like they used to,’ Andy said darkly. He felt bad about it, but he was not in the mood for Jimmy’s humour, and he was no good at pretending.

  Jimmy was silent for a while. Andy wished he could have been more enthusiastic for him. His mate really did need a professional break like that. How many robbers use hand cream? Prints had been lifted from inside gloves before, but it was still fairly rare. It had never worked in any of his cases.

  ‘Anyway, I just came for coffee and to see how you doin’.’

  ‘Thanks, Jimmy.’

  Nearly fifteen minutes passed, with Jimmy staring at the newspaper and Andy staring into the bottom of a second bad cup of instant coffee.

  ‘So,’ Jimmy finally said. ‘You bang her, or what?’

  Andy gave him a look that froze him.

  ‘No, mate,’ Andy finally said, pushing his cup away. ‘It looks like she’s banging someone else already.’

  CHAPTER 19

  The grounds of the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park Crematorium were hot and still. At eleven o’clock the February morning sun was already vicious, casting crisp shadows and bright rays across the pale Art Deco chapel in which a small service was underway.

  Three people occupied the little chapel, one of them in a coffin.

  At a modest podium, a pastor read a passage from Psalm 23. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…’

  The pews were empty save for a solitary hulking figure, hunched at the shoulders. The killer Luther Hand sat alone in a dark suit, his hat held in his scarred hands. His head was bowed, his eyes closed. He was not sure if he had ever in his life cried, and as such he was slightly perplexed by the moisture collecting in the corners of his eyes. Tears? His tears? His eyes had seen violence; violence committed by his own hands, and by others; violence done to tear at and scar his own face, his head, his oversized body, which lived on like a battered monolith. But tears? His eyes had not been blurred by tears.

  ‘We say goodbye to Cathy Davis today, knowing that she is in a better place…’

  Luther’s grief at losing his parent and only living relative was compounded by the enforced distance he had kept from her in the decade before her death. He had long ago made a professional decision that kept him from having her—or anyone else—intimately involved in his life, and as he prospered in his lethal trade, he had disappeared from her completely. She had believed him dead, and from a distance he had watched her grieve for him. At first he had felt it a small sacrifice, but he had soon grown to be tormented by it. With the nature of Luther’s work, it had been safest that Cathy Davis knew nothing of him, and that they had no ties. He would never have forgiven himself if something had happened to her because of him.

  Sooner or later, the loved ones of killers met a horrible end. Luther knew that.

  And there was one other reason he had disappeared from her life. Perhaps it was even the real reason. Cathy Davis would know, in one glance, what her son had become.

  The phone in his pocket bore a message from one of his main agents, Madame Q.

  PRAGUE. DOUBLE. 24 HOURS.

  It was another contract. He had accepted it not minutes after arriving in Sydney.

  Killer.

  Luther had become a killer, and his mother would have known it, just looking at him—the fine weave of his suit, his watch, his car, his scarred face, his hands. His eyes. He spent much of his life in transit, a global citizen with no real country, no loyalties, no ties. The men and women he killed trailed behind him like ghosts.

  His mother would have seen them.

  The pastor continued with Ecclesiastes. ‘…A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth…’

  The day of death.

  Luther’s mother had not been religious, and he was not raised to be familiar with the Bible. For all his close proximity to death he had never heard such a sentiment before. Certainly he had been there at the end of many people’s lives, but none of them had seemed desirous of their end. The pastor’s words meant little to him. They offered no comfort. They did not reflect any reality he knew. He had lost the one woman who loved him, the only person who loved him, the only woman who knew his name. What help could words be?

  Australia now seemed to encapsulate not only his humble beginnings, but all of his failures. With his mother now gone, there was no reason for him to return.

  The music rose to a crescendo, and with only the pastor—a stranger—and Luther to watch, the curtains were closed on the alcove at the front of the room, and the coffin was rolled into a cremation chamber that would burn his mother at over 750 degrees, reducing to a few kilos of bone fragment and ash the body that had borne Luther Hand thirty-seven years before.

  CHAPTER 20

  ‘Loulou, I was practically naked,’ Makedde Vanderwall explained, her phone in one hand and a bag of takeaway Thai food in the other. ‘I was naked!’ Her voice echoed through the hallway of Loulou’s apartment building.

  ‘Darling, that doesn’t sound like it was all bad. I thought you liked Bogey.’

  ‘Are you stoned or something? Come on, Loulou,’ Makedde said, exasperated and fumbling with the keys. ‘I knew you’d try something like this. He’s a nice guy, yes, but you should have told me. You should have told him.’ Loulou was notoriously fun-loving and vague, but Mak was amazed that she could not win this simple point. ‘What if I had beaned him with a frying pan before realising who he was? You know what I’m like. It could have been a disaster. We could have both spent the night in emergency.’

  Mak put the keys in the door. ‘Anyway, it’s fine now. I think he’s just going to sleep on the couch till he leaves for Melbourne. Look, I should go. He could be home. And I’ve got Karen coming over for a quick lunch catch-up. I’ll say hi to her for you. Just keep enjoying Byron, and remind me to kill you when you get back…’

  ‘Love you, sweetheart!’

  ‘Ugh. You too.’ She hung up and shook her head.

  Loulou.

  Mak let herself into the apartment and the door clicked shut behind her. It was the middle of the day, and the apartment was light with sunbeams. The garden looked green and overgrown beyond the windows. It was quiet.

  ‘Bogey?’

  There was no answer.

  The couch was tidy, the cushions neat, and there was no sign of the doona or Bo
gey’s things. For a moment her chest tightened with the thought he had gone back to Melbourne already, or found another place to stay. She had bought a bit of extra Thai in case he was home. It had been nice of him to cook her breakfast. Their meeting had embarrassed her, but she didn’t want him to leave.

  Ten minutes later there was a buzzing at the door panel, and soon Mak heard her friend make her way down the echoing hallway to Loulou’s door. Mak opened it with a smile.

  ‘Karen, it’s so great to see you.’

  The women embraced.

  Karen looked, and felt, thin. She was a detective constable working homicide, and Mak had first met her at the gruesome crime scene of her friend Catherine Gerber’s murder years ago, when she’d first arrived in Australia—the same crime scene where she’d met Andy, whom Karen had been working with. It looked liked work had been tough for the curly-haired redhead lately.

  ‘I have to say a big congratulations to you again on your promotion to detective. That’s really brilliant,’ Mak told her.

  ‘Thanks.’ Karen had worked hard to earn it, particularly being one of the younger officers in the department.

  ‘Come in, come in. I got us some Thai.’

  Twenty minutes later, Loulou’s small living room was strewn with dirty dishes, napkins, flimsy wooden chopsticks, and plastic tubs reddened in splatters with remnants of sweet chilli sauce. Karen and Mak were curled up in opposite corners of the comfortable furry sofa, finishing the last of their lunch.

  ‘I’ve checked with the morgues,’ Mak said, continuing the brainstorming over her missing nineteen-year-old. She was more familiar with such places than most. Her detective inspector father had first taken her to a morgue for father-daughter bonding when she was twelve. ‘No one of his description is listed at the hospitals either. I don’t know where he is, but I doubt he’s lying under a stiff white sheet anywhere. It seems to me that he shimmied down that drainpipe and ran away, but I guess I can’t be sure. It would be pretty awful for his mum. I don’t think she has anyone else.’

  Makedde pushed a lonely prawn around a cooling bed of flat noodles, feeling the weight of her own loneliness, despite the company of her friend. ‘And if he’s not okay, I don’t want to be the one to tell Mrs Hart that her son dropped the wrong acid and has turned up as a John Doe somewhere,’ she continued. ‘God knows that happens enough.’

  ‘I thought he didn’t do drugs?’ Karen piped up.

  ‘Exactly.’

  She took a sip of cold water. It moved down nearly to the base of her belly. She had not eaten enough. She would have to be careful not to lose too much weight on what Loulou called the ‘Divorce Diet’. Perhaps this was the reason for Karen’s weight loss?

  ‘Any men on the scene, Karen?’

  ‘Like romance? No.’

  They continued eating.

  ‘Sorry about the shop talk, but…you know the case I did last time in Sydney? And the homicide scene you attended?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ Karen replied, flashing her customary wry smile. ‘It was front-page news there for a while…’

  ‘Well, remember that poor street kid, Tobias Murphy, wrongly arrested for the stabbing? Guess what? Tobias is living down the street from my new client. Tobias’s dad recommended me.’

  Karen digested her words. ‘Really?’ She sounded unimpressed. Perhaps, like Marian, Karen wasn’t happy about the connection.

  ‘I met Tobias this morning. He’s out of rehab and living with his dad and stepmum. It’s a happy ending for him, considering he nearly ended up in prison for life,’ Mak continued. She strongly suspected that the Cavanagh family was to blame, and resented them still being out there, free and privileged and able to do what they pleased. But she had cleared Tobias. She had done that much.

  ‘It was amazing what you did with that case, Mak. It really was,’ Karen told her.

  Makedde stared down at the table, and her regrets returned. ‘I think we both know the bad guys didn’t get caught.’

  A frustrated look twisted Karen’s features. ‘Mak…’

  ‘No, seriously. We both know the Cavanaghs were involved,’ Mak insisted. ‘Enough bullshit with this thing.’

  ‘There was a full confession from that Aston guy. Case closed.’ Simon Aston had been Damien Cavanagh’s right-hand man for a time.

  ‘We both know that Damien Cavanagh was there when that girl died, and she was underage for godsake, and it sure seemed like they had been pretty intimate with each other…yet he was never even formally questioned? Come on, we both know that isn’t right.’ Mak was angry. ‘He’s a monster.’

  The problem was money. The Cavanagh family was so powerful, they could evidently protect their son from anything. There had even been video footage placing the Cavanagh heir at the scene. Sure, it was grainy, but Mak had seen it. It was him. The Cavanagh family’s heir, right there.

  ‘Maybe you saw Aston in the video, not Cavanagh?’ Karen suggested. Simon Aston had supposedly confessed to the killing, and was shortly afterwards found hanging from a chandelier in an apparent suicide. To Mak, he seemed a little too conveniently dead. He would have known a lot about Damien.

  ‘Simon Aston was blond,’ Mak pointed out. ‘And built. The guy in the video looked exactly like Damien Cavanagh. Dark hair, slim build. He had his shirt off for Christsake; there was no mixing them up.’

  Karen seemed a little less sure of her position. ‘Well, I haven’t seen the footage, but they’ve looked at it and decided it’s not Damien Cavanagh. We’ve talked about this before, and I really don’t think—’

  ‘Who are they?’

  Karen furrowed her brow. ‘What?’

  ‘They have looked at the video and decided it’s not him. Who are they?’ Makedde demanded, getting worked up once more over the police handling of the case, and now in front of a police officer, a member of that clique. She and Andy had already fought over the issue many times. Was it to have the same detrimental effect on her friendship with Karen? ‘Who has looked at the video?’ Mak went on, unable to stop herself. ‘Because Andy hasn’t seen it. You haven’t seen it. Andy said that Jimmy hasn’t seen it, either. So exactly who has seen it?’

  ‘Well, Hunt, for starters,’ was her friend’s reply. ‘He was on the case.’

  ‘Ah, Hunt,’ Mak said with a hint of incredulity. She raised an eyebrow.

  Detective Hunt was Karen’s senior. He was politically minded and intent on climbing the ranks. Mak did not like him, or trust him. And like many who wanted to make it in Sydney, he apparently mingled with the Cavanaghs.

  ‘Okay. But others would have seen it too.’ Karen screwed up her face. ‘You know, Hunt knows you’re back, and he mentioned it to me this morning like I would be impressed that he knew.’ Karen seemed a little disturbed by the fact, in light of Mak’s comments. ‘I think you should just drop this stuff. Be careful. The Cavanaghs probably haven’t forgotten about you,’ she warned.

  Well, that’s mutual then.

  Mak knew she was complaining about something Karen had no power over, but she could not help but continue to plead her case. ‘So the death took place in the Cavanagh home, as I managed to prove by getting in there myself, because no one else would try. And there is a man on the video with the dead girl, and he looks exactly like Damien Cavanagh. And he has never been formally questioned? Never a person of interest? Nothing?’

  Silence descended on the small apartment. Mak was seething over the injustice and Karen had crawled into her own thoughts. The air was icy.

  ‘Time takes a cigarette. Puts it in your mouth…’

  The strains of David Bowie’s ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’ drifted across the courtyard, and with the tension temporarily allayed, Karen spoke. ‘That murder was one of the more horrible ones I’ve seen.’

  Karen had been part of the team called to the scene when Meaghan Wallace was found slashed to death in her apartment. The victim had struggled valiantly with her attacker, and Karen had been confronted with blood strea
ked across the walls, the furniture, and soaked into the carpet. Stabbings were notoriously messy, and television shows did not accurately capture the graphic horror of real-life crimes. It was Makedde’s strong belief that Meaghan Wallace—who was Tobias Murphy’s cousin—had been killed in this horrible manner simply because she witnessed the Cavanagh heir up to no good, and the family was afraid she would go to the police. The witnessing of one death had led to the other. It was a hit.

  ‘Karen, I don’t want to put any heat on you, but—’

  ‘Then don’t.’ Karen glared at her with glistening green eyes, the intensity of which gave Mak pause.

  She soon regained herself. ‘Come on. You used to be a lot more fun with this stuff.’

  Nothing. Not even a smirk in response.

  ‘Look, if you just happen to find yourself tying up loose ends with the old Wallace case…’ she dared to continue ‘…and the Cavanagh stuff—’

  ‘Don’t even start.’ Again, the look was intense.

  ‘All I’m saying is that there might be something obvious that’s been overlooked, and if you were to find it, it could be amazing. It would be great for your career.’

  ‘Don’t come back to town and immediately start stirring up shit, Mak.’

  Mak pulled a fingertip across her pouting lower lip, signifying that she would say nothing more on the subject. For now.

  Karen folded her arms. ‘Come on, enough talking about work and crap. I want to know. Have you spoken to him?’

  Him.

  ‘Why won’t you speak to him?’ Karen’s voice was a touch accusatory. She had not even given Mak time to answer. Her red curls trembled like snakes ready to strike.

  ‘We have spoken,’ Mak said, feeling unreasonably defensive. ‘Actually, we’ve spoken a great deal. We both just need a little space right now. And I don’t particularly want to talk about it.’

  Karen was adept at interviewing, but with Mak she had met her match. Karen knew Andy well, but she was a loyal friend to Mak, and in this break-up she had to try to be Switzerland. It was not always easy to tread the thin line of impartiality in such matters. Mak sympathised with that. Still, she did not want to discuss her love life with anyone for the moment. She didn’t want advice. She didn’t want a shoulder to cry on. She just didn’t want to talk about it.