Siren

by Tara Moss

  But for now, with the trailer softly bumping along the freeway in the sunshine, and his lover in his arms, it seemed the world had opened to him. Loneliness was impossible. Dread was far behind.

  He was finally free, just as he had always wished. He was Kerouac, an adventurer, living his dreams. ‘What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies,’ Kerouac wrote.

  These are the days that make you a man, Adam thought.

  A man.

  CHAPTER 23

  At three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the self-made billionaire Jack Cavanagh sat in his opulent fourteenth-floor office, leaning back from his mahogany desk, his arms folded.

  Cobwebs.

  Through pale eyes he stared out floor-to-ceiling windows at the picture postcard view. The Sydney skies were sunbaked blue, charcoal clouds looming in the far distance. By evening there would be rain. Despite its changing colours, the view had become a thing of routine. It no longer impressed him. Very little did impress him, he realised. He felt removed from every triumph, viewing his domain of success through a narrow aperture, a child looking through a tiny pinhole in a cardboard box so he would not burn his eyes in the fire of an eclipse.

  Cobwebs and tar.

  In his quieter moments, Jack had begun to sense that his heart was slowly filling with cobwebs and tar, and that it would soon stop functioning completely.

  A man known for his drive and business sense, Jack found these intimations of fragility terrifying. He didn’t know what to do about them, or about the fact that the past year seemed to have aged him ten. No one but his personal physician dared to voice the obvious, but the stress was showing. Jack had dark circles under his eyes that no longer disappeared by mid-morning, or even midafternoon. He had lost more hair than he should, more than his father had at his age. He had lost fitness, strength, energy, sexdrive. His penis hung limply between his legs, as useless as an unintended extension of skin. His wife said nothing. He sometimes seemed almost catatonic, his mind too occupied to allow him either rest or activity. Dr Harris had warned him about his stress levels, blood pressure, cholesterol. He had not yet told his wife, Beverley, about the Cipramil he had to take each morning—take it on time, don’t miss a dose. He kept the antidepressant drugs and their prescription in a locked office drawer, where they would never have to concern her. He didn’t like the idea of the pills, and in a fit of defiance he had gone cold turkey two months earlier, throwing them out completely. He had been hit with a frightening combination of sleep terrors and three days of unrelenting light-headedness—the world moving, moving, and after each turn his body stopping while his brain still travelled—before getting the prescription filled again in a blind panic. He had since given in to the drug with a sense of defeat hitherto foreign to him. He had not told Dr Harris about his sensation of cobwebs and tar. It made no sense, and would make even less sense if voiced and acknowledged. Nonetheless, there it was. A sensation as real as any other he had known.

  The fingers of Jack’s right hand touched the shirt pocket over his heart, absent-mindedly.

  It was barely three o’clock, and already he felt something like a heavy sleep weighing against his bones. Forty-eight hours earlier, he had still been at his Palm Beach abode, where he and Beverley had spent an extended weekend relaxing in the shade of palms, enjoying fresh seafood prepared by their chef, not needing to say anything, not needing to discuss the problems of their world. He had felt momentarily refreshed by these snippets of life reminding him what it must have once been like to feel something that approximated peace. Jack longed to return to those moments. It was unfathomable to him now, but there had been a time when his Sunday evenings had seen him race back from Palm Beach to this very office to get a head start on the week. Now he wondered where he had found the energy or drive. He wondered how everything could have changed so deeply.

  There was a knock.

  ‘Yes?’ Jack replied firmly, sitting up.

  Joy entered. ‘Mr Cavanagh, it’s Mr White on line one. Will you take the call?’

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment, a renewed heaviness descending on him at the mention of the name. Perhaps he had felt Mr White’s proximity before the call had even been made.

  ‘Thank you, Joy,’ he said to his loyal secretary without looking at her. He never kept eye contact with Joy when The American was mentioned.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Cavanagh. I’ll put him through right away,’ he heard her say. Her footsteps retreated, and gently the door of his office was shut. He was alone.

  The American.

  Bob White was a former head of FBI headquarters in California, and since retiring had worked in the private sector. He had been on retainer with Jack for the past seven years, since Cavanagh Incorporated had been threatened by the kidnapping of a top-level executive in the Middle East. He was a confidential asset to the company. If Mr White was involved, things were serious. It had not been a good twelve months for the Cavanagh family, so Mr White, The American, had been busy.

  A red light flashed for line one. Jack took a breath and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Bob.’

  ‘Good day, Jack.’ The American was one of the few people who called Jack by his first name. Perhaps it was due to the intimacy of their dealings that this seemed natural. ‘I have news on the matter from last year.’

  Jack felt the tightness in his chest increase a fraction. Cobwebs. Tar.

  Damien.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Jack told him.

  ‘Our security discovered a motorcyclist idling outside the gates of your Darling Point home on Sunday night,’ The American began. ‘It seemed suspicious, so they took down the registration plate number as a precaution. It was an ACT registration, in the name of Makedde Vanderwall.’

  Vanderwall.

  ‘The private investigator woman?’ he blurted with indignation. Jack knew her well, although they had never met. She had nearly been the cause of his son’s complete, irrevocable downfall, and the ruination of the Cavanagh name. He had been relieved when she had moved away from Sydney. It was a great disappointment to discover that her relocation might have been temporary.

  ‘Should I be concerned?’ he asked. ‘What was she doing there?’

  ‘The motorcyclist parked across the street for a time, looking at the house. That was it. She did not approach. We have no reason to believe that there’s anything to be concerned about at this stage, but if it was indeed Vanderwall, then why she would be hanging around your street on her motorcycle, I couldn’t say.’

  Jack remembered her motorcycle crash the year before. He’d have thought she’d have given that up by now. He couldn’t figure the woman out. What did she want from him? He couldn’t figure out how to make her go away, without resorting to the types of decisions he was now struggling with. More of the same. More death.

  ‘This morning Makedde Vanderwall visited the Murphy boy. The one who was released from jail,’ Mr White went on.

  Jack felt his panic rising. ‘I can’t have her snooping around,’ he said, finding a surprising spark of strength in his anger. A minor return to himself. He was frustrated that she could still cause him trouble, frustrated by what she’d forced him to do.

  ‘She won’t. We’ll be keeping an eye on this.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said, nodding to himself. ‘We have to. Follow her. You know my concerns about letting this issue grab headlines again.’ There had been a rather embarrassing front page featuring Makedde Vanderwall running barefoot in an evening gown from the Cavanaghs’ palatial home, where his son’s extravagant birthday party was being held. There had been talk that she was running from an attacker, which the family naturally denied by way of their legal counsel.

  But the attacker had been real enough.

  He was a man who went by the name of Luther Hand. Hand had
been employed by The American to clean up some messy problems for Jack. He had wisely declined to escalate the situation at his client’s property. Nonetheless, it had got out of control, thanks to the photographs taken by paparazzi as Vanderwall fled. The photographers had been there to snap arriving celebrity guests and dignitaries, and they instead ended up with a surprise front-page story. The whole incident was a disaster. It had taken some time to get things to die down. But they had. Jack had made sure there were no repeats of the dangerous party antics that had started the debacle in the first place. He had done what had to be done, and for a while it looked like things might eventually return to normal. But nothing was normal. Not for Jack, anyway.

  This news of the woman’s return to Sydney was alarming. This was unfinished business.

  ‘Bob, I don’t want any trouble from her,’ Jack reiterated, again finding some minor rekindling of his old spark. ‘What can we do about her?’

  ‘So long as she’s in Australia we’re limited. Anything that happens to her could easily arouse suspicion.’

  Makedde had become publicly linked with the Cavanaghs’ troubles. She was bad publicity for the Cavanaghs and their businesses. It would certainly not look good if something happened to her. It was still too soon after the events, still too high-profile. The American was right.

  ‘No, we can’t have that,’ Jack agreed. ‘What are our options? Can we scare her back to Canada, or out of the state?’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ White said.

  ‘We can’t have any unwanted attention right now, Bob. I thought you said you had a contact in the police force keeping an eye on her?’

  ‘We do. We’ll make sure she stays away,’ White assured him. ‘Jack, we can handle this. We’ll protect against the possibility of any interest in the press.’

  ‘You have my faith, Bob.’

  Jack paid The American an enormous sum to look after his interests, and to protect him from the knowledge of the grim specifics that task sometimes entailed. Legally, the less he knew the better. Over the years and through a number of crises, there had been very few occasions when Jack had been disappointed with The American’s work. He was exceptionally experienced and well connected. Jack knew of no one better qualified.

  ‘I can’t afford to have bad press right now,’ he reiterated. ‘The merger is nearly signed off.’ Mr White would already know this.

  The conversation complete, Jack Cavanagh hung up the receiver and looked out at the blue sky once more. It had not regained any of its wonder in the interim.

  Cobwebs and tar.

  Cobwebs and tar.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘Marian Wendell and Associates, Marian speaking.’

  Mak smiled. She imagined her boss sitting at her desk, composed, elegant and dealing with files full of sleaziness. What a woman.

  ‘Hey, it’s Mak.’

  ‘I was wondering when you’d check in next,’ Marian responded. ‘Things moving along?’

  At an age when a lot of people were retiring, Marian was working harder than most 25-year-olds. And she had the energy for it. She had probably already combed through paperwork on the current investigations, and called her agents for updates. She liked to keep on top of everything happening in her agency, and she rarely missed a trick.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been busy Face-wasting,’ Mak joked. ‘You can not only poke people, but super-poke them!’

  Nothing. Not even a faint chuckle. And because Marian was a bit of a Luddite, there was a chance she might not even know what Facebook was, let alone Face-wasting, Mak realised.

  ‘There’s a social website called Facebook,’ Mak patiently explained. ‘It’s so popular that it’s already passé. It has a poke game thing. Never mind. Anyway, I found Adam Hart on it, and I’ll try to contact him that way. Perhaps he’ll respond. He’s nineteen after all. A lot of younger people use it.’

  ‘Oh. Good.’ Marian sounded unsure.

  Mak flipped her laptop open and went through her notes, getting more serious. ‘I met with Ms Hart on Monday afternoon,’ Mak told her boss. ‘I had a good look through Adam’s room, but I didn’t find much. I have to say his room seems awfully clean, even for a neat freak. Damn, that is a neat house. His mother said the police didn’t take anything, and she didn’t clean it up, so…well, it was pretty sparse in there and I wonder if perhaps he knew he was leaving. My guts tell me he’s a runaway,’ Mak admitted. ‘He could easily have shimmied down the drainpipe outside his bedroom window. He’s probably been doing that for years before finally taking off.’

  There was a pause. ‘You know, it’s poor form to make up your mind when you don’t have the evidence. It makes for narrow-minded investigating.’

  Ouch.

  Mak knew that. She had been told many times. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Good girl. What else can you tell me?’

  Good girl.

  Mak shook her head. From anyone else’s lips, it would sound like pure condescension, but she knew that Marian took her on in a way that went beyond the usual expected professional relationship. This was something a motherly figure might say to a favourite child. Mak found she’d missed Marian’s interest in her.

  ‘Well, I found a trick coin in his room, and a poster for the Jim Rose Circus. I believe he may have an interest in magic and performance. I know it’s not much, but I’m checking out the local magic shops to see if he was a member or a regular customer or something.’

  Marian seemed less impressed with that lead. ‘What else?’ she said simply.

  Mak had something more concrete to reveal. She had spoken to Mrs Hart again and determined the identity of the woman Tobias had mentioned. Her name was Patrice, and she had agreed to see Mak.

  ‘Apparently he took off once before, with a girlfriend of the time named Patrice. I’ll be meeting with her later. I’m talking to neighbours. Someone will know something. Also, I could use a little extra cash if anything else comes up in the meantime, Marian. You know, any of those other types of cases I could help out with,’ she said.

  What she meant was domestic cases. With her model looks, Mak was well suited to getting up close and personal with straying husbands. Being hit on in bars had always been something of a regular nuisance for Mak. In the end she tended to avoid bars and clubs as much as possible. It was funny that now she’d finally found a way to get paid for being hassled. Marian liked to call her the agency’s ‘Secret Weapon’ because of her unique suitability for closing such cases with one step of her stilettoed foot. Mak had a special red silk designer dress she liked to use for such jobs. Not too revealing, not too obvious, but with just enough leg to give an air of ‘Are you Mr Right Now?’ to a man looking for precisely that. It was just right for the upmarket bars where married businessmen liked to get a few drinks in and try their luck for a one-night stand. She had successfully given her room key to a few husbands—the rule was they had to approach her first—only to have them arrive to be confronted by their wife, and/or their wife’s lawyer. It was ugly stuff, yes. But Mak rationalised that it was best for these enquiring wives to have their suspicions checked out before they broke up with their husbands over nothing, or their spouses came home with something more sinister than lipstick on their collar. Like a paternity suit, or HIV.

  ‘Ah, my Secret Weapon is back.’ Marian sounded pleased. ‘There’s nothing around at the moment, but you’ll be the first one I call if any stray husbands need getting caught. Things might pick up on Valentine’s Day.’

  Valentine’s Day. Of course. How depressing.

  Now Mak sat up straight and prepared herself for her real news. ‘By the way,’ she added, as casually as she could, ‘you won’t believe this. But Adam Hart’s mother knows Tobias and his family. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence? They live on the same block. Adam and Tobias are more or less friends.’

  There was a pause as Marian absorbed that little bombshell.

  ‘You know,’ Mak continued. ‘Tobias. The street kid who was wrongly
arrested for the murder of that PA, Meaghan Wallace, last year? Well, he’s no longer a street kid. He’s out of rehab and living with his father on the same street as our Adam Hart. It’s such a small world, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I knew the connection,’ her boss admitted. ‘Mrs Hart asked for you, and told me that Tobias’s father had recommended you.’

  Mak smiled. And you hoped I wouldn’t find out…so I wouldn’t start thinking about the Cavanaghs again. Well, it’s too late.

  ‘I met with Tobias, and he was helpful. He’s the one who told me that Adam took off once before, to be with Patrice.’

  ‘You met with Tobias Murphy?’

  ‘I’m canvassing Adam’s friends and neighbours,’ Mak said with confidence.

  ‘Mak…you are going to be sensible, aren’t you?’ Marian said. Her tone was grave.

  ‘When have you known me to be anything but sensible?’

  Her boss did not respond.

  Pete Don, in a lecture in Makedde’s Certificate III course in Investigative Services, had confirmed that ‘new technology and trends’ could be surprisingly helpful tools in an investigator’s arsenal.

  At the time, Mak had thought it funny coming from him.

  Pete was a rather gruff ex-undercover drug squad officer turned private investigator, who’d been beaten so badly in his former post that he had no cartilage left in his nose. It sat in the centre of his face like a formless mound of putty with nostrils. This guy was not someone Mak could imagine slowing down from catching the bad guys, the cheaters and the insurance fraudsters for long enough to even acknowledge the existence of something like a computer. And yet he had stood in front of the class and explained the importance of Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, as if he were a sixteen-year-old emo. And he had been right. It was amazing how many people could be tracked down by something as simple and accessible as a search engine. Once in a while even dead men turned up looking remarkable well, as in the famous case of John Darwin, who faked his ‘death by canoe misadventure’ in 2002, resulting in a massive-scale sea search, and later had his wife, Anne, claim on his life insurance. A member of the public typed ‘John’, ‘Anne’ and ‘Panama’ into Google Images, and found of picture of the couple posing together in a shot taken four years after his passing. They got six years imprisonment for their trouble. It seemed that nearly every person in the Western world now made an imprint somewhere on the web—whether they wanted to or not.