Siren

by Tara Moss

  Running…running…

  A bead of acrid sweat rolled down his temple.

  With distaste, the man watched the bead of sweat move down Santer’s face. Santer did not realise it, but he was not alone.

  The sweat was puzzling to the man who stood silently over the snoring, sweating, murmuring Santer. The room was not particularly warm; in fact, it was winter in Burgundy, and the old farmhouse felt like an icebox, not a sweatbox. It had been no colder in Russia, his last stop.

  Santer let out a grating snore, and at this Mr Hand squinted.

  Luther Hand had found him easily. One of the things he specialised in was finding people. And what he did to the people he found paid very handsomely. For five or six figures, Mr Hand—Luther, or ‘The hands of Lucifer’ as he was sometimes called—would remove from the food chain any politician, policeman, dignitary or despot, witness, waitress or lover, troublesome competition or troublesome colleague his client nominated. He was what the industry called a ‘cleaner’. He cleaned up problems for anyone with pockets deep enough to pay for his services. His job was simply to follow instructions, and to remain invisible. As a cleaner—a hitman—he was adept at delivering death using knives, axes, blunt instruments, rope, poison and chemicals. He had fine firearm skills at close and middle range. His sniper skills were excellent. He had successfully staged fatal drownings, robberies, suicides and accidents, and had also arranged terminations where the hit appeared precisely what it was—to make a point. He was a flexible and near flawless operator, unfussed by codes that restricted others to eliminating only male targets, or members of particular ‘organisations’. He did not belong to any crime family. He had no loyalties. He did business, and that was all it was. He was professional, unattached and virtually untraceable, and anyone on his list, whether man, woman or child, would be dispatched efficiently, and according to any special instructions. With these attributes, Luther Hand had gained a reputation over six years as a valuable and successful component of the international crime community.

  Generally, Hand was one or two closely guarded steps removed from the client he served. They never met him, and it was not his job to ask why the names ended up on his list. More often than not, he received background on the individual mark, but he did not require reasons for the call upon his services. This mark was different, however. Santer had pissed off an impressive number of ruthless people, and had come to the attention of more than a few members of Luther’s trade. If it had not been Luther, it would have been someone else cutting his throat that night.

  Luther adjusted his latex gloves, gripped Santer’s floppy chin in one steady hand, and drew the sharpened blade of a hunting knife across his neck from his right ear to his left. The mark was so drunk that his body barely flinched at the intrusion of the blade. There was a gurgling sound as the trachea opened up and air rushed out. In seconds, torrents of blood flowed from the wound and down his chest. The cut was deep, and the skin sagged as it hung open, giving the dead man the look of a fleshy jack-o’-lantern, head thrown back against the couch cushions, a giant, oversized red smile slick across his neck. Luther briefly thought of pulling the tongue through the wound to create a ‘Colombian Neck-Tie’, as it was called. But he didn’t see any reason to bother with such flashy creations. It was not in his instructions, and if he did everything properly, there should never be anyone to witness his handiwork with this mark. Instead, he set to work transferring the body to the garage for the next vital stage. Mr Santer needed to disappear, something he had not so successfully achieved in his living moments, and so Luther’s work was not over yet. He spent the next hour focused on the task of dismembering the mark over thick sheets of plastic in the garage next to his new car, a maroon BMW, with bright yellow British plates. It, too, would need to disappear. When the body was dissected into enough pieces—eighteen in all—it fitted into a chest. Luther locked it and by torchlight buried it in the back garden amongst the dead flowers.

  It was early morning when Luther stripped the BMW of its books, plates and valuables, and drove it to nearby Vézelay. The black-market dealer was waiting for him at the edge of town at six. He was Italian and Luther had dealt with him before. He counted the notes carefully. The transaction was quick, and in minutes Luther had ten thousand euros in cash. The serial numbers would be filed off Santer’s car, the paint changed, perhaps even the interior. Untraceable, the new car would be resold to an Italian businessman for four times what Luther was paid for it, still somewhat less than its retail value. He returned to the farmhouse and gathered up the valuables Santer had fled with. They were best hidden on the property for now. It would not do to travel with such easily traceable items. He replaced the dust covers in their original positions, cleaned up the blood and superficial evidence of recent activity, and closed the place up.

  It was a beautiful area, he reflected.

  Remote.

  Luther might like to return to such a place, if ever he found someone to share time with. Perhaps he could send his mother to a place like this. There would be many cottages and farmhouses in the area, all of them affordable to a man of Luther’s means. But he couldn’t be sure his mother would even recognise him. Or accept him. She lived in Australia, where he had grown up. She had not seen him in years. But she would like a place like this, wouldn’t she? She had been on his mind a lot lately.

  Luther stepped out into the fresh air, showered, cleaned and satisfied with his work. Without a tip-off, Santer would not likely be found for some time. There was no one alive who’d be the least bit interested in getting in touch with the authorities regarding his absence. Scotland Yard would be left to their own devices, having to search every one of Santer’s nine properties that stretched from the Bahamas to the English countryside. He doubted they would care that much. And if they did, and if he was found, no one would be very surprised that he had met a grisly end. He’d certainly seemed to be asking for it.

  The client would be pleased to know that Santer had taken a permanent vacation. He would let his agent, Madame Q, know the job was done. With something like the contentedness of job satisfaction, Luther turned on his phone and sent the agreed message to signal the success of another job.

  COMPLETE.

  He had a message waiting on his phone, and it was not from Madame Q, but from a hired contact in Australia.

  At the sight of the name, his countenance changed. His throat tightened.

  URGENT NEWS ABOUT CATHY DAVIS, the message said. CALL ME.

  CHAPTER 3

  Running…she was running as fast as she physically could. Running…muscles burning…I must save her!

  Mak wore a uniform, a police uniform, but it was too big for her and the arms and legs were long like an unbound straitjacket, cuffs dragging across the ground of her dreamscape, tripping up her feet. It was her father’s police uniform. ‘Mom!’ she tried to say, and the word came out like her own name, and bounced from the edges of the surreally lit corridor, echoing back into her ears again and again, fading. MAK…Mak…mak…mak…Room 101. She had arrived. Mak broke into the hospital room, door flying off its hinges in a flash of splinters. Inside, the room looked like a bedroom in a cabin. It was familiar. Horrible. A hospital bed stood at its centre. Her mother, Jane, was strapped to the bed, wrapped in tubes that moved in and out of her nose and mouth and twined themselves around her limbs. She was still alive. For a too-brief moment Mak felt a weight lifted. She was in her mother’s presence. Jane Vanderwall. Mom. But there was another figure in the room. A man stood over her mother with a scalpel. He did not hold it as a surgeon would; he held it like an icepick, ready to drive it down.I must stop him! Mak was just in time, and she tried to get the gun, but her arms were useless. The straitjacket was tied, and she wriggled uselessly like a worm, wrestling with herself, frustrated, impotent.

  A strange moan escaped her lips, and the man with the scalpel turned to look at her.

  He was grinning blood.

  Mak knew his face. It was Dam
ien Cavanagh.

  Mak woke on Loulou’s mattress with a gasp, exposed and short of breath. At some point during the previous hours of restless sleep—shifting in the dark and missing the distant sensation of a warm male body next to her—she had remembered that the boxer shorts she wore had once belonged to Andy, and had tossed them aside as if they were cursed. Now her naked body was slick with a sickly sweat, sheets pushed down and twisted around her ankles. Her heart pulsed like a drum.

  Mom.

  Makedde folded her knees up to her chest.

  Damien Cavanagh.

  She turned on her left side.

  Andy.

  Now she was face down, body positioned like a rock-climber, one knee up near her chest and the other straight, a hand extended to touch the cool wall.

  A shiver.

  Her head was abuzz with thoughts of her failed romance, and the failed, dangerous case she had been involved with before leaving Sydney. Andy. She shifted and sighed. The Cavanaghs. Mak finally rose, and paced the small bedroom a few times, then returned to bed, stretching herself across the mattress like a starfish, her long limbs reaching from corner to corner. Loulou’s alarm clock glowed the early hour of 4.53 a.m., which seemed painfully uncivilised. There was nothing helpful about being awake at this time. She was not being productive, and she would feel horrible in the morning for her meeting with Marian.

  Close your eyes.

  Sleep.

  But her mind was too active. Sleep would not come.

  There was one sure-fire way to clear her mind, and it did not involve staring at the ceiling. At a quarter past five Mak crept into the basement garage of the apartment building, where she’d shifted her Triumph after unpacking. She was clothed in a full set of dark leathers, helmet in hand.

  This is the way to reacquaint myself with Sydney.

  She threw the silver cover off her bike and put the key in the ignition, pulled the choke out and started it up, filling the garage with a thunderous roar and the fumes of her exhaust. After a short while she pushed the choke back in, and the engine began idling nicely. It was satisfyingly loud. She belatedly hoped she hadn’t woken anyone on the lower floors. She zipped up her black leather motorcycle jacket to the collar, pulled her helmet on and flicked the visor closed. Now warm, the bike rolled off the kickstand willingly.

  Ah, Sydney streets at night…It had been a while.

  After midnight the city streets opened up. It was a motorcyclist’s dream: the city without cars, the roads welcoming and free, the occasional headlights in the far distance on long roads. Freedom.

  She pulled out of the garage and headed in the direction of the CBD. It was, as she’d expected, a corporate ghost town. The buildings in the central city were modern rectangular monoliths—many forty or fifty floors apiece—their windows now but dimly lit. Streetlamps lined empty footpaths where businesspeople would begin gathering again in a couple of hours. Mak ripped across the bitumen on her sleek machine, crossing white lines at will, leaning into corners, the wheels gripping the road as if they had claws. George Street, Elizabeth Street, Macquarie…She circled near the giant white shells of Utzon’s Opera House, beautifully lit up, as an icon ought to be at any hour. A security man stepped out of his booth to peer at her. With a roll of the throttle she was back up the road, then passing the wharves of Woolloomooloo, boats bobbing up and down, water shimmering in moonlight. She slowed through Kings Cross, still abuzz with groups of revellers at that late hour. Neon lights glowed, spruikers invited groups of men into their strip clubs, and revellers exited nightclubs to stagger home via the kebab shop. A thin woman in very high shoes and an even higher hem swayed and beckoned to passers-by. Mak flicked her visor up to take in the sights and sounds, then kept on her way.

  Gradually her tension disappeared into the play of throttle and gears, the sound of her engine and the feeling of the wind through her helmet. Makedde sped through the dark streets, content in her concentration. She found a good pace down Kings Cross Road, and made a little detour to Kellett Street, where, she’d read, a bloody showdown of razors and guns had occurred in 1929 between the rival gangs of underworld queens Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine. Prostitution. Prohibitionera booze.Tonight, a few scantily clad women with hard faces loitered about neon doorways. No blood on the streets. She turned her bike and headed out past Rushcutters Bay Park, picking up pace again. Her bike flew along the streets, not planning her path, and when she reached the hill on New South Head Road she geared down.

  Go on.

  Darling Point. She was being pulled towards it. And there could only be one reason for that. She turned onto Darling Point Road, passing the former home of Nicole Kidman, and the gate where a bug had notoriously been discovered, supposedly planted by a paparazzi photographer to monitor the movie star’s comings and goings. Mak rode slowly past the homes of Sydney’s sleeping multi-millionaires, and before long she saw the familiar high stone wall and gates of the Cavanagh house. She geared down to second, then to first, her bike purring between her legs.

  The Cavanaghs.

  The Cavanaghs were one of the most powerful, rich and influential families in Australia. And they had ended up being the focus of Mak’s last investigation. Her failed investigation.

  Frowning, she imagined them sleeping soundly on Egyptian cotton sheets in their safe, luxurious abode while others took the blame for the deaths of those who got in their way. The Cavanagh heir, Damien, still lived in his parents’ palatial home. Born into all that money, he wouldn’t have to worry about things like rent, like making a living, abiding the law…

  His powerful father protected him, and it seemed there was little anyone could do about it.

  Perhaps.

  Makedde drifted in slow circles with the engine purring low, and then braked directly across the street from the front gates of the property. She could not see the house over the stone walls, but she knew it well. She had bluffed her way inside Damien Cavanagh’s swanky thirtieth birthday party there shortly before everything had spilled onto the front pages of the papers, and before her departure to Canberra for doomed love and temporary escape. To fake her way in, all it had taken was some cubic zirconia, a chauffeur-driven luxury car and a couture gown with a distractingly high split. It had probably helped that she could still pass herself off as a supermodel if she needed to; she would use those looks where necessary while she still had them. Looking the part had worked to get her in, but had also got her spotted by the wrong people among those hundreds of rich and influential guests—people who wanted her dead. The fireworks, the expensive champagne, the long corridors bedecked with priceless artwork—it had been the opulence she had expected, and more. But it was no better than a very salubrious crime scene, and that birthday party had feted a sick young man who’d managed to successfully avoid being charged with sex crimes, drug possession, murder and perverting the course of justice. Few, if any, of the guests could have known that, of course.

  Mak knew.

  There was a lot Mak knew.

  ‘These are very powerful people, Mak. You can’t just go accusing them of murder.’

  Andy, her cop ex-boyfriend, had defended the way the police were handling the case. That was ridiculous. How much evidence did the police need?

  The Cavanaghs were protected, and not just by the high walls surrounding their luxurious home. They had their power, their influence and their teams of lawyers and spin doctors. Mak would like nothing more than to bring them down. She just wished there was a way.

  Something will come, something…Something will slip…

  They could not be impenetrable forever.

  Mak snapped her visor shut and sped home through the dark Sydney streets, feeling no greater pull to the arms of Morpheus than she’d had before she’d left.

  Hours later, Mak was on a bus bound for Marian’s office, eyes puffy, stifling a yawn.

  She crossed and uncrossed her legs impatiently, tugged on her pencil skirt so it would cover her kneecaps, and tapped
her pointy stiletto absent-mindedly. Instead of reading her paperback, she was fidgeting with her nails, staring blankly out the window, wrestling with the adaptations necessary for her new life.

  Her prime reason for staying in Australia was no longer a going concern, but she was not sure she wanted to return to Canada, the country of her birth. And she was about to be drawn back into PI work, despite her intention to become a forensic psychologist. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind for her life, but she’d always been adaptable enough to use the opportunities that came her way.Maybe just a few jobs with Marian and I’ll apply for that job at Long Bay Correctional, and make a career for myself there? Mak didn’t yet have enough money saved to open her own practice, a situation her stint in Canberra had not improved. That meant scraping together some extra cash working for Marian, or going back to her old model agency to try to drum up some catwalk or photographic jobs. But imagining walking into Book Model Agency gave her a rush of insecurity. Modelling was increasingly unlikely work for her, she knew. Despite the politically correct sound bites of those in the fashion industry, models over twenty-five were not in demand unless they were already famous brands, like Kate Moss or Elle Macpherson. In Australia Mak might arguably be infamous in some circles, but she was certainly not famous. Being snapped on the courthouse steps was not exactly good for one’s portfolio.

  Ugh. Body odour.

  Someone’s smell drifted up to her nostrils and Mak rubbed her nose.Terrible.She had opted to take public transport so she could wear something businesslike for her reintroduction to Marian Wendell, instead of her tomboyish motorcycle leathers. Already she wondered why it had seemed important to dress up. Marian knew her well enough. Perhaps after her hiatus she wanted to feel like she was ‘going to work’, the way normal people did.