by Tara Moss
His mother—and Patrice—had been right about him being a teetotaller. He made mention of it in his diaries. He didn’t smoke or do drugs either, and he felt alienated amongst those who did, particularly Patrice, his former girlfriend, whom he mentioned in several entries. From his diary it was clear that he could see the end long before Patrice broke it off with him, and he had tried to stop the inevitable. He complained that she accused him of being ‘uncool’ and a wimp.
Naturally, Mak had focused much of her attention on the most recent pages—the ones leading up to the missing pages. And she had hit the jackpot.
I took Mum’s pearls today and Grandad’s gold watch. I feel ashamed, but at least Grandad won’t miss it. Maybe he would even be happy for me? I’ll need it for money, perhaps, though I hope not to have to part with it. Still, I need to be prepared. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I don’t know what I’ll do for work. I don’t know if I’ll ever come home.
Adam was a runaway, as she had sensed. And he had stolen from his mother to fund his adventure. She would be mighty displeased. Or maybe she’d already known? If Mrs Hart wanted Mak to be able to do her job, she was going to have to start opening up about who her son really was.
It was too late to phone anyone, so Mak sent a text to one man she knew could help.
HI PETE. I NEED A LOOK AT SECOND HAND DEALERS BOOK. STOLEN PEARLS AND GOLD WATCH. ANY HELP? M
To Mak’s surprise, she got a reply only a minute later.
Oh shit, I woke him.
LUNCH AT 12? USUAL SPOT?
Oh no, not the usual spot, was her first thought. Pete had no palate.
YES. MY SHOUT. THANKS, she replied.
If it was Adam who had ripped out his final diary entries, why had he not ripped out this admission of theft, Mak wondered.
Unless he had not been the one to rip the pages out at all.
CHAPTER 28
It was five minutes past three in the morning when Luther Hand slipped into the quiet lobby of the sprawling Top Hotel Praha.
He scanned the vast reception desk and over-lit lobby area from under a grey ponytailed wig and the brim of a black fedora. His round glasses, with clear, non-prescription lenses, served only to alter his appearance. A tired-looking brunette receptionist worked the desk in an unattractive burgundy uniform. She was talking on the phone in the hushed tones of what sounded like a private call, and took no notice of him as he traversed the lobby. Through a small forest of potted plants, he noted a businessman sitting across from a woman who looked too finely dressed to be with him, both perched clumsily on curved leather seats, leaning in to one another. They appeared to have emerged from the hotel’s casino, and were now debating whether the evening’s festivities should conclude in a hotel room upstairs. Luther was all but unseen, and certainly unnoticed, as he made his way across the shiny, tile-patterned floor to the bank of elevators.
When the first elevator door opened, he noted that he was not alone. An older man stepped back against the elevator wall to let Luther enter. Hopefully, this would not pose any problems later. Luther could wait for another elevator, but knew he could just as easily encounter someone else. He had already been seen.
The doors slid shut as Luther pressed the eleventh-floor button, the trapped air smelling lightly of spirits, sweat and deodoriser. A circle of red already glowed around the number eight on the panel of buttons. The carriage began to ascend with the muffled sound of shifting gears and cables. His companion stared straight ahead like a wax figure, gripping his briefcase as if it held his life. Perhaps it did; nothing would ever surprise Luther.
People avoided looking at Luther Hand, and this man was no exception. Luther had cut an imposing figure since he was as a young boy, and he had become used to this effect. He was unusually tall—a full 30 centimetres taller than this stranger—and broadly built. It was also clear there was something amiss about his face. The surgery he had endured at a clinic in Kuala Lumpur some years before to try to correct his facial irregularities had not been altogether successful. His face was stretched, and his acne scars still visible. Even if one did not take in the detail, his disturbing presence was felt, the misshapen proportions of his face sensed in the peripheral vision. A type of human survival instinct made people avoid catching his eye. Professionally speaking, that was beneficial to all involved.
Recently though, Luther had privately begun to wonder if he was a man at all. Perhaps he was some kind of ghost.
When the doors opened for the eighth floor, the other passenger slipped out like water. Luther caught a glimpse of him slowing near his door and fumbling for his key, then the doors closed and pulled the stranger from view. The elevator opened again on the eleventh floor, but Luther did not exit there. He travelled to the sixteenth floor before stepping out of the lift into a warmly lit corridor extending to his left almost to vanishing point.
Room 1602.
The hallway was empty, the guests tucked into their rented beds, sleeping soundly on bleached sheets that had enveloped a hundred other strangers. Luther turned right and walked several paces, nearing the east wing. Arrived at his destination, he listened briefly at the door. Room 1602 was quiet within. He pulled on his leather gloves, and checked his supplies with a speedy precision that barely required movement.
The keycard he had been provided with slid into the lock with ease, the mechanism opening with a faint whir. Within seconds Luther was inside the dark room, with the door shut behind him. The air was stifling. He knew the layout, and in the inky blackness moved straight to the king-sized bed near the window, where his two marks slept. They would barely have had time to register the noise of the door, let alone comprehend the light shining in their faces. Luther held his pocket torch in one hand and a Czech-made CZ-83 with its reshaped trigger guard and a long cylindrical silencer in the other. The man’s tired eyes opened to a squint, confused. Luther quickly confirmed the identity of the man as his primary mark, pressed the end of the silencer to his forehead and pulled the trigger.
Boff.
The sound of the shot was muffled, flat, final.
There was a small noise from the woman in the bed, like that of a yawning bird, as she flinched and began to come awake. ‘Hmmm?’
Boff.
Her hands clenched slightly, then released. Her head lolled to one side. She became still. A shot to the brain was a quick way to extinguish life.
Luther briefly pondered whether the man had seen the end coming, and whether or not he had let on to his wife that something was amiss—his wife, who now lay lifeless on the hotel bed like an angel in a growing halo of blood. He gently closed her eyelids. She was attractive, pale and feminine. The blood contrasted blackly against the white of her nightdress. She looked peaceful, Luther thought.
Someone in her husband’s agency had clearly wanted to simplify the employee structure. He had outstayed his welcome and his usefulness.
When will I outstay mine?
Lately his mind had become infected with such thoughts. They were fleeting, but unhelpful. He did not have the time or need to ponder such things. It was not his job to ask why names ended up on his list, what their stories were, whether what he was doing was morally right or reprehensible, or why both the man and his wife were on his list. And so he quickly pocketed the couple’s wallets and passports, turned up the heat on the thermostat, then gave the room one last thorough check, stopping only a moment to admire the quiet violence he had effected.
He left the man’s eyes open. Small specks of blood across his cheek picked up the colour of the blood vessels. They were already glassy and dull.
Luther flicked off his torch, and listened at the door with one ear that had been unwillingly trimmed at the top by the blade of a scalpel. It was quiet in the hallway, and confirming as much through the peephole, he slipped back into the corridor.
Barely five minutes had elapsed.
He left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and exited the hotel the way he had come. The re
ceptionist had not finished her conversation. The couple on the couch had not finished their negotiations.
In the enormous Top Hotel Praha, the occupants of room 1602 would not be discovered for at least ten hours. The warm room would aid in their decomposition, and make the time of death harder to pinpoint. Despite the fictions peddled by forensic television shows, science could not yet fix the time of death more accurately than within the range of a few hours. When the slaughtered couple was found, there would perhaps be speculation that they’d been robbed, but any experienced investigator would see that they had been executed. Burglars did not shoot point-blank to the forehead while their victims slept. Burglars needed to be disturbed in order to kill.
Luther’s client had wanted to make a statement.
That’s the way it was. Some wanted death to appear accidental. Some wanted ostentatious acts of violence.
Whatever they wanted, Mr Hand could deliver. He slipped back into the Prague night, invisible, not really a man, a ghost.
When he returned to his accommodation, a blank message was waiting from Madame Q. He replied with the agreed single word: COMPLETE.
It was time to head back to Mumbai. He had a couple of days off. Maybe he could find someone to spend his time off with? Perhaps Ms Rosalay had a new girl who would not merely shake with fear in his presence.
CHAPTER 29
‘So, you are missing a string of pearls? And a gold watch?
Makedde was walking quickly through downtown traffic, dodging and weaving through business-suited commuters, a full head taller than most. The streets were slick after a brief summer shower, and the footpaths seemed more chaotic than usual; a discordant symphony of rustling umbrellas and briefcases, mobile phone conversations, footsteps and car horns.
Over the din of the lunch rush, Glenise Hart seemed flabbergasted by the discovery that her things were missing. ‘Well, yes. The pearls and watch are gone. I didn’t realise. I…don’t understand. How did you know?’
Adam had written of many things in his diary—his desire to escape the mundane life his late father wanted for him; an attraction to one of his female teachers; the ‘life-changing’ meeting with a mysterious new woman; and his guilty conscience about stealing from his mother to fund his new life. Mak told Mrs Hart only as much as necessary for the moment, not wishing to upset the shocked woman further.
‘Well…the pearls are just…money. But the watch is important. It was my father’s,’ Mrs Hart explained. ‘Oh, I am so upset about this.’
‘I’ll do my best to get the items back, but I can’t give you any guarantees. I’ll need full descriptions, if you can provide them. If Adam tries to hock anything, we may be able to locate him. If I were you, I’d check for anything else of value that might be missing. Gold bracelets, diamonds, even small stereos, anything transportable by bike.’
‘Oh, I really don’t want Adam to get into any trouble with the authorities,’ Mrs Hart wailed.
‘Of course not.’
‘I’ve built up a little nest egg since the insurance settlement. Makedde, I could give you a bonus if you bring him back safely. I really need him home.’
‘Don’t worry about that; I promise you I’ll do my best to get Adam back for you and keep the cops away.’
Keep your nest egg, she thought. You’ll need it for the therapy.
Mak hung up, feeling bad for Glenise, and the death of her illusions about her son.
Ten hours after answering her text message, the private investigator Pete Don was waiting for Makedde at his usual table, a corner spot in a McDonald’s on George Street in Sydney’s CBD. Mak had hated the restaurants ever since her class had toured the kitchen areas and freezer of the local McDonald’s in her home town in Canada during a school excursion when she was twelve. The uncooked fries had looked to her exactly like the white severed fingers she’d seen at the morgue with her dad days earlier, and the frozen McNuggets like something worse. The association had stayed.
Mak strode in, not looking at the food the customers were shovelling in. She slid onto the yellow plastic seat opposite her friend and former tutor at the Australian Security Academy. ‘Hi, Pete. It’s great to see you. It’s been what, eight months or something?’
‘Too long.’
‘I’m so sorry I woke you up with that text last night.’
‘No worries, Mak. I never sleep at night,’ he teased, leaning across the table to look at her.
‘Sorry if I look a bit baggy, but unlike you, I actually need sleep.’ She’d stayed up until four, and her body wasn’t overly happy about it. She had something like a caffeine hangover, her brain throbbing dimly behind blurry eyes. ‘I thought you’d get my text in the morning.’
He smiled. ‘It ain’t so bad being woken up by you.’ He sipped at a coffee in a styrofoam cup with a golden ‘M’ branded across it. ‘Anyway, how’s my most promising student faring in her new career?’ he asked.
My new career. God, this is my career, isn’t it? I am never going to end up a practising psychologist.
‘Any psychos chasing you?’ he only half joked.
‘No. Not lately. Pete, do you still have contact with someone in the pawnshop records? The second-hand dealers book thing?’
‘You got some stolen property issues? Yeah, I know a guy.’
‘Any chance he could look out for something for me? A gold watch and some pearls?’
‘Sure. But there are lots of watches and pearls that go to Cash Converters every day.’
‘The pearls are choker-length, single-strand, white: fairly non-descript, I’d say. But the watch has an engraving.’ She slid a note across the table with Mrs Hart’s description:
Jill & John. Amor Vincit Omnia.
‘A wedding watch. Good,’ he said. ‘I can have him keep an eye out. No guarantees of course.’
Pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers had to register all goods pawned or sold. Each dealers register listed the time, the date, name and address of the person bringing the goods in, a description of the goods and the price paid, and could be perused by the police on demand. People had to produce ID to pawn goods. So if the watch or pearls showed up, they could help locate Adam, and a stop order would be put on them so they couldn’t be sold. A lot of thieves pawned goods using false IDs and hoped that no one was paying attention to the second-hand dealers register.
‘I owe you, Pete. If this watch or necklace pop up it might help me break this case. The kid’s name is Adam Hart. He doesn’t have a driver’s licence or passport, so if he tries to sell the stuff he’d have to use some other ID. Or get someone else to do it.’
‘Ah, tough case with nothing to track him.’ Pete stuck out his lower lip. ‘I saw one place that thought a library card would do. Not quite legal.’
‘Exactly. He’d probably try to use something like that.’ She stood up. ‘Okay, what am I getting you for lunch?’
He lit up. ‘Deluxe Brekkie Roll, a hashbrown and hotcakes. And another coffee.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Breakfast? You are one hungry PI.’
‘That’s me. Been doing all-nighters watching some babe who’s supposed to be doing the nasty with her real estate agent.’
‘Oh, the world is a romantic place, isn’t it?’
Mak came back a few minutes later with a tray steaming with food. She had ordered herself some pretty average-looking raisin toast and a bottle of water.
‘Thanks, Mak. Not eating?’
Mak smiled and picked at her toast. ‘Pete, did you ever think about…getting them back?’
He looked up from his hotcakes. ‘Getting what back?’
‘You know. The ones who did that to your face.’
The word was that Pete had spent a long time in hospital after the beating he’d received on getting made during an undercover assignment back when he was still a cop. He had been left for dead, and barely got out of the hospital alive.
‘What, you don’t like it?’ he joked, wiggling his free-form nose around lik
e the foot of a rubber chicken. ‘It’s not sexy?’
Mak put her toast down and stared into his eyes. ‘Really.’ She was serious.
‘Look, the thought occurred to me, but I didn’t act on it. I knew better than to act on that impulse because it would have been a really, really bad idea. I let justice take its course. Two of the top guys are dead, shot by rival gang members, and another three are in the pen. That’s justice enough.’
‘And what if justice hadn’t been done?’ she pressed.
He took a mouthful and only half chewed it before speaking. ‘Makedde,’ he mumbled, ‘I would be very careful where those thoughts lead you.’
‘Who said anything about me? I was asking about you.’
Pete knew better, and she could tell. While he tucked into a hashbrown the shape of a flattened kidney, Mak cut to the chase. ‘Have you seen Damien Cavanagh around since he got back?’
‘We don’t exactly hang in the same crowd,’ was Pete’s reply between chews. A bit of grease slicked his lips.
‘I’d never insult you like that, Pete,’ she said, and smiled. ‘But to be serious for a moment, his presence doesn’t go unnoticed round the clubs. He still enjoys slumming it, doesn’t he? The strip joints in the Cross? Surely he hasn’t given that up? And that black Diablo isn’t the kind of car that blends into the background.’