by Tara Moss
And then, to her shock, the man deliberately stomped his foot down on her mobile. She heard pieces of the phone crunch and scatter in the hall.
Oh!
Sickening adrenaline rushed through her as the realisation hit.
He is with them. He knows there is a dead girl in the next room.
Meaghan could see by the look in this man’s eyes that there was no room for outrage. He knew perfectly well what he was doing, and what was happening behind that closed bedroom door—and he also knew that she knew. Meaghan was now very much afraid. She knew the significance of what she had been recording. Though she still couldn’t recall the name of the shirtless man in the room, she knew that he was important, that he was famous, and that he was in a room with a dead underaged girl. And she’d seen it. Meaghan had watched enough movies to know that people were killed for knowing less.
The blond man grabbed her forcefully by the shoulders with both hands while Meaghan panicked inside.
‘Don’t you know it’s not polite to spy?’
She was hauled down the corridor away from the bedroom door, with her shattered phone lying in pieces on the hallway floor, the only evidence of what she had seen now destroyed. Shocked by the stranger’s aggression and looking for any chance to escape, Meaghan was being half dragged, half carried away down one corridor to the next, before being pushed through a doorway into a cold, dark space.
It was a garage. The lights flickered and came on with a hum. Meaghan’s eyes widened. The garage housed several luxury automobiles: a Jag, a BMW four-wheel drive and what she thought was a Ferrari or Lamborghini or something. She didn’t know cars well, but she knew an expensive car when she saw it. These people were very, very rich.
‘Are you going to calm down now?’ the man said.
She stood rigid, unsure of what would happen next.
I just saw a dead girl. A dead girl…
‘No one is going to hurt you,’ he said, palms extended as if to offer a truce. Under the present circumstances, though, she wasn’t so sure she believed him. ‘Now just get in. Please…’ He opened the passenger-side door of the four-wheel drive and signalled for her to step in.
She stood her ground.
‘Relax, babe. I’m only driving you home,’ he said, and smiled for the first time, his teeth dazzling.
‘But my shoes are at the pool,’ she protested and looked down at her feet. ‘I took them off earlier. It will take me two seconds to get them.’
He didn’t go for it.
‘Get in the car,’ he said.
Groobelaar was asleep upstairs—too far to run to—and she certainly couldn’t cry out and be heard with all that dance music pounding through the house. And this man was blocking the door to the garage. He was much bigger than her, and certainly far stronger. There was no way she would make it past him.
With reluctance, Meaghan did as the stranger said and got in, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest. I should never have let him get me in the car. This is bad. This is really bad. She was strapped in and the door closed. A flurry of scenarios buzzed through her mind: What if I leap out as we leave the drive, and flee into the neighbouring yards? Would he come after me if I did?
The man adjusted the seat back on his side and leaned over to the glove box to get the keys, brushing briefly against her bare legs.
‘Okay, where am I taking you?’
The statement had been so without malice that she wasn’t sure what she should say. ‘Um, near the Cross,’ she managed, as if acting like everything was fine would make it so. She would get him to drop her a few blocks away from her apartment, she decided, and sprint the rest of the way home. She wanted to get as far away from that house and that dead girl as possible, and she would tell Groobelaar all about it tomorrow, and he would see to it that things were taken care of. He had such a mad crush on her that he would do anything she said, she was sure of it.
The man pressed a remote-control unit that sat in the centre console, and the broad garage door lifted, exposing darkness and a light rain, which must only have just started. It was very early in the morning. Soon the sun would peek over the horizon and this horrible night would be through. She wished it would end soon. She wished she had never accepted Groobelaar’s invitation to come as his guest.
In silence, the man drove them out of the garage and into the wet streets while Meaghan fretted, wondering where he would take her and what would become of the poor dead girl. They had driven for perhaps ten minutes before he spoke.
‘Are you thirsty?’
Meaghan nodded, puzzled by his unexpected thoughtfulness. Her lips were so dry. She’d drunk too much champagne and it always made her feel like this. She desperately craved a glass of water.
‘Have a sip. You look parched,’ he said, and passed her a plain bottle of water from beside him. The seal was already broken. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, urging her to drink. ‘See, I’m not going to hurt you. Drink it. You’ll feel much better.’
She unscrewed the cap, which opened easily, and took a small swig from the bottle. The water was flat. It tasted a bit salty.
‘Go on,’ he urged her.
She took another sip.
‘Good girl. Now, that’s better, isn’t it?’
Meaghan did feel a touch better for a moment. Her parched lips were grateful for the liquid, and at least this stranger was no longer jumping down her throat like he had been in the hallway. She wanted him to stay calm. Maybe he really would let her get home. Maybe.
And then the spike hit.
Oh fuck…oh my God…oh fuck…
A pure, beautiful euphoria overwhelmed
Meaghan’s senses. She took a deep breath and let
her head fall against the seat, chin tilted skywards.
She let out a shocked moan, the pleasure taking
her by surprise.
‘Good girl. Now, where am I taking you?’
She straightened her head and looked at him. There was something in the water…something in the water. Whatever it was, it had worked fast. Her head was not just in the car but up and up and going, floating, floating everywhere. She felt extremely tipsy, or like she had taken ecstasy, and yet neither: this was something else. Everything felt wonderful: her bare feet on the carpet of the car; the seat under her hands. She fell into a state of profound relaxation. Any alarm or distress she had experienced was so remote now that it no longer mattered. It was okay. He was a new and trustworthy friend. There was nothing to fear.
‘Come on, babe—where am I taking you? Where do you live?’ her new friend asked, his voice now sounding so much more friendly in her ears.
‘Oh, Potts Point,’ she explained, giving him her full address. He responded with a warm smile and she giggled slowly, awash with safety and contentedness. ‘I feel so good.’
‘Good girl,’ he said to her. ‘Now, what’s your name?’
‘Meaghan Wallace. My mum calls me Meg.’
‘Good. And who brought you to the party tonight, Meaghan?’
‘Uh…my boss, Robert Groobelaar. He’s asleep in the living room.’
He touched her knee with one hand. His fingertips felt nice. ‘And what do you do for Mr Groobelaar?’
‘I’m his PA,’ she said, feeling so happy to be able to be there, talking with this handsome man who was so nice.
‘Lucky Robert. See, we’re all friends here. We can be honest with one another. Now, tell me what you remember.’
She fell silent. There was something she didn’t want to talk about, something that was bad, but the roads drifted past in beautiful soft tones, the car was warm and lovely, and she felt good. Meaghan had been drugged and she knew it, but for some reason it didn’t bother her. Nothing bothered her.
‘Come on now. Just between friends,’ he continued. ‘What do you think you saw?’ He patted her knee again as he kept driving. When she looked over at him he flashed her the most handsome smile. A friendly smile.
‘There was a…dead girl
back in that room,’ she said, smiling because everything seemed okay now. ‘She was like twelve or something, and she was wearing make-up and everything, and I think she was dead.’ Meaghan felt no fear or inhibition. It was all right to say it.
He shook his head. ‘No, no, no. I don’t know where you got that idea. You did not see a dead girl. Don’t be crazy. There was just a little accident, that’s all, but everyone is fine.’
She nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Good girl. You just had a bit too much to drink, so I have to drive you home, that’s all.’
She looked out the car window and could see familiar streets. He was driving in the right direction to take her home. They were turning onto her street.
‘It’s that one,’ she blurted.
‘Which one?’ he asked.
‘That one, with the pink paint.’
‘Okay.’ He pulled up right out the front. ‘I’ll walk you up to make sure you get home safely,’ he said.
Meaghan opened the door before he could get around to her side of the car, and she fell out clumsily onto the pavement, grazing her knee. Strangely it didn’t hurt, though she could see that the rough concrete had drawn blood. She stayed on all fours for a while, laughing at her own inability to walk. It seemed terribly amusing.
‘Oopsy daisy. Let me help you,’ the man said, assisting her to stand.
Meaghan realised that she could not control her body, could not get her limbs to hold her up, but it didn’t seem so bad. The nice man picked her up in a fireman’s lift and carried her, and she felt calm and relaxed in his arms. Her heartbeat was slowing, things were turning vague. She felt sleep approaching like a cool and welcome blanket of darkness, moving over her from the toes up. Now the blanket of sleep moved higher, slowing her organs as it passed over her torso with its cold quiet. Higher now and covering her face until she couldn’t see, and all the sounds around her faded into a quiet buzzing.
‘Get some beauty sleep, babe,’ a distant voice said, and Meaghan Wallace drifted away.
CHAPTER 1
At seven o’clock on Thursday evening, Makedde Vanderwall stood in the kitchen of the terrace house she shared with her Australian boyfriend, holding a freshly minted celebrity cookbook in her hand and trying not to feel out of place.
Dammit, I suck at this.
Attempts at domesticity were awkward for the Canadian. Makedde—or Mak, as her friends called her—knew her way around a cookbook and a kitchen like Archbishop George Pell knew his way around the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras—which is to say, not at all. Her total lack of culinary skills was a source of great amusement for her friends, and buying cookbooks for her had become a running gag: The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook, the Donna Hay cookbooks, Cooking for Idiots. Mak’s friend Detective Karen Mahoney had recently purchased this latest one for her, and Mak was determined to prepare the pasta dish on page 135 to surprise her live-in lover. It was only pasta, after all. How hard could it be?
With something short of confidence, Mak watched the potful of pre-prepared pasta sauce bubble on the stove. The empty jar she’d poured it from sat upturned on the counter nearby, a smear of red sauce oozing out. The penne should be ready by now, she figured. She wrapped her hand loosely in a tea towel and grabbed the handle of the boiling pot on the stove.
‘Ouch! Dammit!’
In a flash she had pulled her hand back and licked the pad of her index finger. A burn. She nursed her finger, and gingerly poured the penne into the sieve with her unburned hand, cursing.
‘Bloody dangerous things, kitchens…’
Though domestically handicapped, Mak had skills in other areas of her life. She had finished her forensic psychology PhD back in her native country a mere eighteen months earlier, scoring very well with her thesis on the variables affecting eyewitness testimony. The topic was something she’d ended up having far too much first-hand experience with, by becoming an intimate witness to the sadistic acts of her friend Catherine’s deranged murderer. At times Mak thought she might never finish her PhD, but she had refused to let her personal dramas stop her just short of her dream. Sure, most of the other students were nearly a decade younger, but she had finally done it.
Then Mak had bitten the bullet and moved to Sydney to be with her boyfriend, Andy, shortly after. At twenty-nine, it seemed that a more-or-less normal life was finally within her reach. A new country. A new beginning.
Isn’t it an unwritten rule that everyone is supposed to have their life in order before they turn thirty?
Mak still had a chance at it—if she worked fast. Maybe then her father would stop giving her those doubtful looks, and her happily married and once again pregnant sister, Theresa, would stop gloating all the time.
Hmmm.
She inspected the pasta in the sieve; it didn’t look right. Mak glanced at the picture in the book, and then at her efforts, and screwed up her face with disapproval. Her meal looked white and soggy, each piece of penne limply oozing against its neighbour. Had she overcooked it? She didn’t know. It was all so much more complicated than instant noodles.
I suck at this.
Mak might never be a chef, but her boss thought she was showing promise at her part-time job. She had stumbled onto a lucrative side-gig working for Marian Wendell, the infamous Sydney private investigator—much to the chagrin of her boyfriend and her father, both of them cops. But Mak needed work. Once she had quit her fifteen-year middle-of-the-road modelling career, she couldn’t just sit on her butt and hope for a windfall. After answering an advertisement for a part-time research job, she had hit it off with Marian and become intrigued by the work of her investigation agency. At Marian’s urging, Mak had even successfully completed her Certificate III in Investigative Services, the basic licensing requirement for professional investigators.
The work was helping her save up the money she needed to open her own psychology practice, and, what’s more, she was enjoying it. Certainly she found it a lot more engaging than her previous rent-paying job as a fashion model, a career that had taken her on photo shoots around the globe but was ultimately unsatisfying. The jobs Marian put her to were varied: running background checks, checking public records, photographing and conducting basic surveillance, and more. One of her easiest jobs to date had taken place only the evening before, when she had been paid a handsome $500 cheque for a mere ninety minutes of work, to chat up the sleazy husband of one of Marian’s clients and see if he would follow her back to a hotel room for sex if she propositioned him. He had come to the room, all right—only Mak hadn’t been there when he had. His wife had been waiting at the door. The long-suffering spouse got her money’s worth of truth; Mak got paid handsomely to do nothing more than pretend to flirt with a stranger in a bar for an hour and enjoy tax-deductible cocktails; and her employer, Ms Wendell, was impressed once more with the attractive new secret weapon her agency could provide for hire.
Five hundred dollars to chat with some idiot. That even beat some modelling gigs for pay. Why would she want to stand around a boring studio all day, being told what to wear and how to pose, when she could command decent cash and be right in the thick of it, using her brain and her instincts on her own terms? Besides, she had been hit on by many a sleazebag in her life—at least now she was getting paid for it.
Her wallet lined with a fresh pay cheque, and feeling positive, Mak had sped home from Marian’s office on her motorbike, stopping by the supermarket for supplies first. She had stripped out of her overheated leathers, showered, and changed into a light, easy summer dress in anticipation of dinner with her boyfriend. Her leathers now lay dishevelled in the entry hall and shopping bags were strewn over the kitchen countertop. With the few extra bucks in her pocket she’d even bought a nice Merlot.
Mak looked at the time. It was nearly seven-thirty. He was late. She wasn’t sure what to do with the soggy pasta to keep it warm. Should she microwave it?
At eight-fifteen, Mak heard a car pull up outside.
Fo
otsteps.
A key in the front door.
Andy. Finally.
She hurriedly zapped the pasta in the microwave, laid out the salad and made her way down the hall, pausing to lean in the hallway, attempting to look cool.
Detective Senior Sergeant Andy Flynn stepped inside the terrace they shared, fussing with his keys, and at first failing to look up and see Mak in her carefully nonchalant stance. Her eyes took him in greedily, nonetheless.
Andy wore his usual plain-clothes uniform of suit and tie. He was older than Mak by a few years, his short-cropped hair still dark and full. He had an unrefined, masculine appeal she had found maddeningly attractive since day one of their tempestuous union—the strong frame, the square jaw, the generous mouth and imperfect features, the scar on his chin—and, of course, that irresistible Aussie accent. It had probably also helped that he always wore a piece and some handcuffs under his jacket—a kind of fetish of Makedde’s.
But though she was pleased to see Andy awake and upright, Mak had to admit that he looked tired. His deep green eyes were underlined with dark circles, his jaw darkened with stubble. Perhaps the years of police work and the inevitable overtime were taking their toll. He was dedicated to his work, so it was hardly surprising that this dinner would be the first they had shared in ages. Despite moving to Australia just over a year earlier to become what the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs rather unromantically termed a ‘de facto spouse’, she and Andy had not seen nearly enough of each other of late. And, to make things worse, he was about to head overseas for a while.
Now the table was set and the candles lit, the Merlot freshly opened and ready to pour. This was not just some penne: this was a peace offering, albeit a soggy one.