Siren

by Tara Moss

  That famous scream seemed hollow now, unconvincing, a pale imitation of the shriek that emanated from the deepest part of him, shredding the passages along which it passed, from his burning lungs to the melting hole that had once been his beautiful mouth.

  CHAPTER 1

  To Makedde Vanderwall, the clear asphalt curves of the Federal Highway were a most welcome sight.

  With her slender, leather-gloved hand, she gripped the throttle of her motorcycle, the road opening before her unsullied by snarls of traffic. Despite being weighed down by more than the usual amount of supplies, woman and motorcycle cut briskly through the air as one creature, bringing with them a satisfyingly thunderous roar. Mak had fitted her motorcycle with aftermarket pipes, and their throaty tones still excited her, no matter how many times she turned the key. It was a clear February day for her ride; the blue Australian summer sky nearly cloudless. Mak hoped that was a good omen. She needed a good omen. She had ruminated on the implications of this particular ride for many long nights, and now that she was finally making the journey, she wished only for greater certainty about her decision, and for greater luck in her future.

  With adrenaline pumping from the strong coffee she’d downed to counter lack of sleep, Makedde followed the highway as it arced past Lake George, an ancient basin known by indigenous Australians as Werriwa, meaning ‘bad water’. It emptied and filled in cycles, and had taken many a life through drowning when its waters were full. But today it looked to be bone dry, and it again occurred to Mak that Australia was a place of extremes. Certainly her life in Australia had been consistent with the theme.

  No more extremes. No more bad luck.

  When Makedde rode her motorcycle there was little room for meandering thoughts, which was precisely why she favoured it. There was much she didn’t care to think about. She’d spent far too much time on painful debate, argument and the endless weighing of options. Now was a time for action.

  Sharp corner, gear down, drift right, look through the turn, lean…

  Makedde—or Mak, as her friends called her—executed the turn confidently, and anyone observing the young woman could not have guessed that she had not so long ago survived a stunning motorcycle crash. Her previous bike had been totalled. She was lucky to be alive. But her late mother had been fond of the old adage about ‘getting back on the horse’, and so Makedde had wasted no time. Her new horse was a 900cc Triumph Scrambler. At least she had given up riding twitchy sports bikes that did wheelies at intersections and required her to hunch over the petrol tank like a spider on a windshield. She now preferred what her father called ‘those handsome British bikes’. Her particular handsome bike was a retro model, with knobby tires, plenty of chrome, a long flat seat and upright handle bars. It had no shortage of guts or beauty, and when she had ordered new leathers—the old ones having practically disintegrated in the crash—she had chosen black with an old-style sports stripe through the jacket, something Steve McQueen would have approved of. In fact, she would have looked just right burning down the Federal Highway wearing goggles and with a white scarf trailing behind her.

  Mak’s thick dirty-blonde hair wrestled free of its ponytail and blew back into tangles at her shoulders, having escaped from her stiff jacket collar. Somewhere across her consciousness danced a brief thought for the wild mess of knots she could anticipate when she dismounted in Sydney. Within her helmet, a stiff current of air came through the vents, by turns refreshing and stinging. She squinted as a speeding truck passed her, turning the air momentarily gritty and foul. It pulled her into its wake before she hunkered down and steered back into position, a touch of moisture running from her eyes to sweep back across her temples. Moisture. Not tears. And then the road was clear again.

  Big trucks like those had once frightened her. Now, very little did.

  The addiction to riding was closely linked with the sensation of complete freedom, and that palpable liberation seemed appropriate as Canberra fell away behind her, along with another of her failed romances. Makedde rode with a few valuables, her toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes quite literally strapped to her back, the rest of her belongings packed in boxes and headed for storage. It was only a four-hour ride, but this particular four hours had been a long time coming, and her sense of direction was even clearer now that she could negotiate it, smell it, ride it.

  New beginnings, Makedde Vanderwall told herself, staying focused on the road.New beginnings…

  Hours later, with the sun low in the sky on a warm Sunday evening, Makedde was exhausted, dishevelled, and smiling.

  She had arrived.

  With a relaxed roll of the throttle she pulled into a suburban lane in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, an area of warehouse conversions, and rows of terraces and brick apartment buildings with wheelie bins lined up at the kerb. She flicked her visor up and geared down, looking left and right to pinpoint the address she sought.

  Loulou’s place. Here it is.

  Loulou was an eccentric makeup artist friend she had met in Sydney back when she was working as a fashion model. She was letting Mak stay in her apartment while she and her on-off muso boyfriend Drayson rocked out at a music festival in Byron Bay, and Mak planned to crash there for a couple of weeks while she looked for her own place. She hoped that finding a one-bedroom rental would not prove to be too tedious.

  Mak pulled up to the kerb and cut the engine, flicked the stiff kickstand into position and set the heavy bike on its support. At over 180 centimetres, she swung her long limbs off the bike in one smooth and practised move, like a roundhouse kick. Grabbing hold of her full-face helmet with both hands, she tugged it off, leaving red imprints across her face in patterns like warrior paint. A mild breeze felt cool against her perspiring skin.

  Mak could imagine her friend’s feverish dialogue—Darling! Sweetie! It’s so good to see you! But she was alone. Even without a welcoming party, Mak really was happy to be back. She had not realised how isolated she had been without her girlfriends, and being back in familiar Sydney reminded her of the friendships she had put on hold. ‘I knew you wouldn’t last long in Canberra, sweetie,’ Loulou had announced on the phone when Mak told her. Perhaps she was right, but Mak had winced at her friend’s comment regardless, wondering if it had been so obvious that her relationship with Andy had run its course before she had even made the move. Before her arrival, Mak had not spent time in Canberra—an ordered and visually stunning city filled with sensibly dressed public servants, overwhelmed by the presence of Parliament. All people and things had seemed unnaturally tidy to Mak, as if it were a Utopian catalogue.

  Mak looked around her. There was nothing Utopian about this.

  She loaded herself up with her backpack and overflowing panniers and walked towards the concrete steps of the industrial-looking apartment block, fishing the keys out of Loulou’s mailbox and letting herself in. The interior hallways of the building were all polished white concrete and tall ceilings. It was stylishly lit, and struck Mak as slightly eerie in its minimalism. Mak made her way down the echoing concrete corridor on the ground floor, in search of Apartment 101. The scent of curry permeated the hallway. Someone was cooking Indian. She found the door of Loulou’s apartment towards the back of the building, and let herself in. There were more polished concrete floors inside, covered with shaggy pink throw rugs. Exactly Loulou’s kind of décor. There were movie posters adorning the walls: Moulin Rouge, La Femme Nikita.

  Mak carefully put down her stuff on the floor with a strained groan, then dialled her friend to let her know she had arrived safely.

  ‘You made it!’ were Loulou’s first words.

  ‘Hi, Loulou. Thanks for letting me stay.’ Her words echoed strangely through the apartment.

  ‘Sorry I’m not there, darling. I can’t wait to see you in a couple of weeks!’

  But if you were here, I wouldn’t have a bed.

  ‘That’s okay. I’m glad I can stay. Have fun in Byron. I’m happy things are going w
ell for you two,’ she said of Loulou’s romance with Drayson.

  Drayson had been the latest of Loulou’s greasy-haired musician boyfriends when Mak had moved to Canberra. A week after meeting him, Loulou had packed up for Melbourne to cohabit with him, but her relocation had lasted just one tumultuous month, even worse than Mak’s failure in Canberra. Loulou had lost her previous apartment thanks to that impulsive move, but had found this one after a short stint on a friend’s floor. The break-up had been followed by on-and-off interstate couplings since, and things looked to have well and truly picked up again.

  ‘I always kinda liked Drayson. He doesn’t say much, but he seems sweet,’ Mak admitted, although she always felt he was a bit more stoned than was helpful. ‘I like the way he looks at you.’

  ‘Oh, Mak. He is soooooo good in bed,’ Loulou confessed. ‘He does this amazing thing with his tongue—’

  ‘Hello!’ Mak jumped in. ‘I don’t think I need this information, but thank you. Especially as I am newly single, unless you have forgotten already.’

  ‘Here he is…Oh, I’m being dragged away…’ There were muffled sounds, and something that sounded like sucking. ‘Darling…make yourself at home. Love you!’

  The call ended.

  Mak shook her head and smiled.

  She set about taking in her temporary surroundings.

  The apartment was tight, but with the tall ceiling it was more than liveable. Through large windows she could see an unkempt communal garden out the back, overwhelmed by low-lying branches, overgrown weeds and dry grass. The kitchen-cum-living room was an open space with a TV, coffee table, furry couch and a couple of stools pushed against the kitchen counter. There was more than the recommended amount of pink.

  Mak moved down the short hallway that led to two doors, and pushed the right one open to find a small bedroom with a double bed, and a window looking out to the garden. A closet was bursting with Loulou’s colourful outfits. She was a woman for whom neon, fishnets and all manner of synthetic fabrics were forever in fashion. Mak spotted men’s shirts in one corner and a rockabilly-style jacket hanging on the closet doorhandle. There was a pair of men’s pointy black shoes next to the bed. It looked like Drayson had been spending a bit of time at the apartment.

  She stepped back into the hall and pushed the opposite door open. It was a bathroom of plain white tile, small enough that Mak guessed it would be possible to shower, use the toilet and brush one’s teeth in the sink simultaneously.

  Two weeks. Well, you’d better make yourself at home.

  She returned to the bedroom, and looked the room up and down before piling Drayson’s things in one corner and hers in another. There was no hanging space left in the closet, but Mak had brought only two small panniers of clothing, which amounted to little more than some T-shirts, jeans, a suit jacket and skirt, two LBDs—little black dresses—and her briefcase. She hung her nicer things carefully from the window fastener before peeling off her leathers with a sense of relief, and heading for the shower cubicle.

  Mak was eager to scrub off the seven months and 288 kilometres.

  You did it. You aren’t going back.

  An hour later, Mak found herself frowning in Loulou’s living room, a cooling cup of tea in her hand. A few feet away, her bike leathers were depressingly sprawled over a plastic chair, in the form of a deflated man. She could hear echoing footsteps in rooms and hallways on floors above. A dog barked outside. Her mobile phone was ringing on the coffee table.

  She ignored it.

  How many moves in the past five years? Four? Five? How many more in the next five years?she wondered.

  She was getting tired of her life being perpetually uprooted. This time she had packed her things in a flustered rush once she’d made the final decision to leave. She’d tried to get everything done before there was a confrontation with her lover upon his return from overseas. She didn’t want a fight. She didn’t want any more fighting.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Mak listened to her phone’s persistent cricket-like cry with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. It might have been her Sydney friend Karen Mahoney, a cop, checking in on her recent relocation. But it might be her ex-lover, Detective Senior Sergeant Andrew Flynn, who had just touched down in Australia after his latest stint at the Quantico FBI Academy. Andy was the man she had temporarily moved to Canberra to be with and precisely the one person she didn’t want a call from.

  No more fighting.

  It rang and rang, and when finally she capitulated, it had rung out. With strained breath, Mak flipped the phone open to check, and at the sight of the name on the display, a little knot formed in her stomach.

  Andy.

  There would be no comfort there. Not now and never again. Mak closed her mobile phone, put it back gently on the coffee table and tried not to look at it. She tried not to imagine what she would say if she called him back. She tried not to imagine him—tall, dark-haired and masculine—arriving at the door and kissing her deeply.

  Fuck.

  He was back after a three-week trip, and part of her missed him. She had known it wouldn’t be easy. Not at first. This was something she had to do, and anything worth doing was hard, wasn’t it?

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Oh, for godsake, Andy! Leave me be!

  Exasperated, Mak picked up her mobile phone and again checked the caller ID. To her surprise, it was an unlisted number. She sat cross-legged on the furry couch and gathered herself before answering, suspicious that her former lover might be calling from another number so she would answer him, and have to listen to his limp explanations.

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was tentative.

  ‘Mak Vanderwall?’ came a familiar drawl. Only her friends knew her as ‘Mak’. It was not Loulou. It didn’t sound like Karen.

  Mak paused, unable to exactly place the voice. Her eyes went to the windowsill, where a wind-up toy hula girl stood at rest, arms raised above her head in wait for the next opportunity to dance. ‘Yes, this is Mak.’

  ‘It didn’t quite sound like you,’ the familiar woman’s voice purred.

  Marian Wendell!

  ‘Oh, God, you scared me. How are you? I got in not even…’ she looked at her watch ‘…not even two hours ago.’

  Marian Wendell ran a private investigation agency. Mak had done some PI work for her the previous year, and by the time she’d left there had been a little too much focus in the local papers on one particular investigation of Mak’s. She now wondered if perhaps she had followed Andy Flynn to another city as much to try to save the relationship as to distance herself from the investigation and the controversy it caused.

  ‘I was going to call you tomorrow…’ Mak continued guiltily.

  Marian had a new assignment for her, and right on time, too. Apparently, the client had asked for her specifically.

  Makedde had previously plied her height and natural good looks in the modelling industry, catwalking around the world to pay her way through her PhD in forensic psychology. Now that she finally had her doctorate, she found it ironic that she wasn’t even working in the field, which wasn’t to say that psychology couldn’t be useful in this new trade. Her involvement in private detective work had begun innocuously enough, with a bit of banal administrative stuff for Marian’s agency, but the next thing Mak knew she was getting her Certificate III in Investigative Services and becoming one of Marian’s part-time investigators. Every step she took towards starting her psychology practice seemed impeded in some way, yet investigations pulled her in like a magnet. It was not the occupation she had chosen, but it sure seemed to keep choosing her. Certainly the casual psych tutoring she had picked up at the Australian National University in Canberra had not encouraged her to find similar academic work in Sydney. Teaching a semester of ‘Introduction to Methodological Design and Statistics’ to first-year students was excruciatingly tedious, and not very helpful for her pocketbook.

&
nbsp; ‘Nine-thirty in my office.’

  ‘Nine-thirty? Okay,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Uh, Marian, who is this client who asked for me?’

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning. It’s good to have you back.’

  Mak hung up the phone and ran a hand through her mane of long dark-blonde hair, her fingers catching in a tangle at the ends.

  Back to investigations.

  CHAPTER 2

  With considerable haste, Mr Nicholas Santer departed from his palatial London home at the hour of five a.m. while his wife of seventeen years slept soundly in her own bedroom, on her own floor, in a separate wing of the house. He had packed several valuable items from his private safe including £20 000 in hundred-pound notes, his father’s medals and watch, and a small Rembrandt ink sketch no larger than his fist, which he hoped to sell on the black market.

  He had not bothered to say goodbye.

  Nearly twenty-four hours and over 1000 kilometres later he was snoring in a rustic farmhouse south of the town of Vézelay, France, his dreams assisted by a now empty bottle of fine cognac. As the bottle from his impressive cellar had been steadily drained, so also his worries and strain had dissipated, along with the feeling in his limbs, his lips, his face. He was tingling and warm by the time he nodded off, stretched out on a couch he barely remembered buying years before, surrounded by white dust covers, a half-unpacked case and an overflowing ashtray of cigarette butts that he could no longer see through the blur across his eyes. His 52-year-old body slumped in inebriated rest, but even in his dreams his mind was active with worry. He imagined himself in a huge wine barrel, running like a mouse on a wheel, a heavy briefcase of money in his hand. In his nightmare everything depended on him running and never stopping.