by Candice Fox
Phone companies were going to decorate the start and finish lines with ridiculous foam mascots, and fitness companies had plans to slap ball caps on potential new members as they trotted by. High fives and big smiles. There was going to be a minute’s silence before the starting gun to mark the victims who had inspired the run.
Caroline Eckhart and the City of Sydney had turned three brutal killings into what would probably end up an annual fitness wankfest with all the associated sweat, glory and plastic participation medals.
I sighed. This was going to be a nightmare.
Our colleagues swirled around us, distant birds fluttering, trying to stay out of Eden’s orbit as they worked through the panic of police planning over the festival. She’d always frightened them. They didn’t know why. Her brother had been the real terror in the hearts of the Drug Squad cops and beat cops and forensics experts in the office, but they still endured real nerves around Eden even when the shark in the tank was well dead. They weren’t sure what kind of creature Eden was, but they didn’t like the look of her spikes. Only I knew how poisonous she really was.
‘So,’ I said eventually, gesturing to the map. Eden looked at me for a moment.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re the one with the killer instincts. How would you do it?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ she said flatly.
‘Are you still upset with me over the Trumper Park thing?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I corrected.
‘I have no emotions about the Trumper Park thing. Emotion right now would be a hindrance to our planning.’
‘You’re upset with me about the Trumper Park thing,’ I nodded. ‘You’re upset that for a moment I suggested that you might be one type of killer, while really you’re another. You’ve actually got your sook on about the variety of serial killer you are.’
She closed her eyes and chewed her lips. Seemed to be restraining herself from reaching over and strangling me that very second. Strangely, I didn’t get the flushed cheeks and clenching stomach I usually felt when I tiptoed into dangerous territory with Eden. Maybe I was finally getting over my fear of her. Or more likely, I was being lulled into a false sense of security. I knew mixed into it somewhere was a real anger at her, an anger that was growing, a reaction to the physical and mental barrier she presented in my journey to wellness.
Jesus. I rubbed my eyes. I was being seduced by the support group bullshit.
‘You’ll get over this,’ Eden said, still scanning the map. ‘Anger is a part of grief.’
‘I’m not angry You’re angry!’
‘You’re angry. Why else would you be taking pathetic pot shots at me about my night-time activities?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Because your night-time activities are what I have devoted my life to putting a stop to?’
‘Devoted your life. Please. It was cop or council worker, Frank. Let’s be realistic.’
‘You’re right. I’ll just get over it.’
‘If you had any idea what kind of killer I am, you’d be well over it,’ she snapped suddenly, turning her blank, snake eyes on me. ‘It’s killers like me who keep the predator count down, you absolutely clueless fool of a man.’
I felt my cheeks flush. Ah, there it was. The old terror.
‘You want to know why the Glebe morgue isn’t stuffed full of more Martinas?’ she asked, eyes wide. ‘Because of killers like me.’
Eden tapped her chest violently, left white dots beneath her collarbone that faded before my eyes. I’d touched her. It was kind of cathartic, getting her all worked up. Sharing the ache and the upset.
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ I said.
‘That’s because you’re an idiot,’ she seethed. She yanked her cap straight. ‘People like you see the world through a … a pinhole. You have no idea that there are so very many different types of evil. You’re blind. Blind.’
‘Those four up in Byron. Were they …? I mean you’re saying you hunt … evil people.’
‘I’m done talking about this.’
‘Were they bad people? The young couple, too? Is that why you do it? Did Benjamin Annous and his crew do someth–’
I realised that I was holding Eden’s arm, trying to pin her, to force her to answer my questions. She wrenched herself free. I became aware that people were assembling all around us.
Eden slipped off the table and walked to the map. Our colleagues were reluctant to meet eyes with her. They stared at the ceiling, the map, their shoes. Eden took a blue marker from the edge of the partition on which the map was pinned.
‘People will be safe in big groups.’ She rolled her shoulders, shrugging off our argument, and started marking the four running paths on the map with savage gestures. ‘So at the start of each run, when they’re all together, there’s little chance anyone will get snatched.’
She took a pink marker and coloured in the four paths running from the start line. The first few kilometres north, before the paths split. The bridge south.
‘They’ll also be under the watchful gaze of spectators at each finish line,’ Eden continued. ‘The parks will be flooded with people. They’ll all be on the lookout for a white van. So we can assume the risk there is low too.’
Eden drew a big pink circle around all four parks. I felt the tightness in my chest easing as she stood back and revealed the four paths, each now slashed by pink marks.
‘Along these paths, the danger zones will be unlit areas with discreet vehicle access. The runners will spread out as they go up hills and around corners. We can cross off these denser areas, where the killer won’t want to be caught on CCTV in shopfronts and petrol stations. There are also the traffic cameras and bridges where spectators will assemble to watch the runners. So considering all that, these are the primary zones we should man heavily.’
Eden coloured in eight blocks of roadway, three of them on the path belonging to the marathoners.
‘The marathon runners are the bulk of our concern, obviously,’ she said, following the path with the butt of her pen as she looped around the beach at La Perouse. ‘They’ve got the farthest to go. There are fewer of them. They’ll be under a lot more physical strain than the other runners, so they’ll be an easier target for an abduction.
‘A lot of these areas out here on the marathon route, especially near the prison, are bushy. There are side roads down through Port Botany where a van could easily be lost. All this, here, behind Hillsdale, this is all industrial. Perfect place to stop and get the job done, dump the body and keep moving. The runners should be safe again by the time they head back up the coast. The backpackers in Coogee and Bondi will be out in force to cheer them on. So we’ll have to have a heavy police presence all the way from Kingsford to Chifley.’
Gina from the front desk appeared in my peripheral vision, a welcome mirage in an emerald green dress ending right above her spotless knees and immaculate calves. She stood beckoning me with a single finger beside a short, scruffy Italian-looking guy. The young man was holding sheets of photocopied paper. I went over while Eden continued directing the station staff.
‘Another tip for you.’ Gina did a little flourish, gesturing to the Italian kid. Gina was sick of the tips – every crackpot and conspiracy theorist from Milperra to Madrid had called or visited the station to voice their thoughts on the killer, and Gina was the one cataloguing them all. Some of them genuinely offered useless tidbits – overheard boasts at the local pub, neighbours acting strangely, white vans by the handful – and some of them were just the ramblings of lonely old men who spent too much time Googling in public libraries. Gina was holding it together but her eyes were tired and her jaw muscles twitched.
I put my hand out for the Italian kid and he shuffled his papers to one hand, pumped with a callused palm. Backpacker. Fingers hardened from fruit picking, scraping scum off pots in the back of kitchens, cleaning houses. He hadn’t shaved in a while and when he had it had been a half-effor
t. The sunglasses hanging off his neck were a three-dollar job.
‘I am Ruben Esposito.’
‘How you going, Mr Esposito?’
Gina left us, and the young man handed me a flier for the running festival, printed from the internet on a dodgy printer. Caroline Eckhart smiled up at me, arms folded, brandishing those carved stone biceps. I felt flabby and angry at the sight of her.
‘This … woman,’ Ruben struggled. Looked at the ceiling, licked his lips, carefully remembered what was probably dozens of boring English language lessons. ‘The festival-e. My boss is … ossessionato. Errr. My boss is ob-sess.’
‘This is your boss?’ I pointed at the picture of Caroline, stabbed her face with my finger a little too hard so that the paper crumpled.
‘No. No. No. My boss,’ he spread his hands on his chest, ‘is ob-sess with this woman.’ He stabbed her face as well.
‘Your boss is obsessed with Caroline Eckhart?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s nice.’ I shrugged sharply, looked back at the gathering around Eden, wondering what I was missing. ‘I’ve kind of got a big serial killer case going on here though.’
‘I think,’ Ruben struggled, ‘my boss … is … serial killer.’
I looked at the young man’s eyes. Wondered if he was stoned. He looked worn. He’d snatched my words ‘serial killer’ right out of the air. It didn’t sound to me like he knew what they meant, but that he was parroting them back to me to hold my attention. ‘My boss is … eh, I am afraid. The girls. The running girls?’
He pointed at Caroline. I glanced at the other sheets of paper. There was a news story on the Sydney Parks Strangler and another older clipping about a high-profile surgical bungle, something right out of the gossip columns. Plastic surgery. Caroline Eckhart. Obsessions. I didn’t have time for this.
I placed the papers on top of each other and folded them.
‘I’ll check this out when I get a minute.’
‘Ehhh, she –’
‘You’ve done great, mate.’ I slapped Ruben on the shoulder. ‘Really great. I’m going to take this information and add it to our run sheet. If you go back down to reception, Gina will give you an event number, and you’ll be able to ring the station and check how your information is going. Graci. Graci, mate.’
‘I –’
‘Reception,’ I pointed. ‘Recepciano!’
I went back to the desk. Eden was just wrapping up. She turned to the crowd. Eyes all around me averted again, the way they do when someone cries in public, avoiding the humiliation, ignoring the hurt. There were no questions and the flock of frightened birds that had become my colleagues eventually dispersed. She sat down beside me, looking at the map. I sensed again that strange discomfort in her, the nervousness or the edginess that told me instinctively that something was wrong with her lately, that it wasn’t just my slowly blossoming discontent with what she was, not just her slowly healing bones, but something much deeper disturbing her, keeping her up at night. I wavered between resenting her and wanting to help. Found myself bumping her shoulder with my own, the way I used to, the way she’d always hated me doing, making her sway, reach out and steady herself with a hand on the desk.
‘Ready for the hunt?’ I asked. She gave a little quarter-smile.
‘Let the games begin,’ she said.
A target on the move is the easiest to con. Hooky knew that Ella Preston left the house every evening at half past five, leaving herself a short twenty minutes to grab the 989 to Bondi, four minutes to walk down the hill, another four minutes to unload her stuff in the staff common room, wash her face, apply her make-up and get to work. Give or take a couple of minutes, she was always ready for the after-work customers to start flooding off the buses and in through the wide open doors, for the surf bums to come wandering up the hill in their bruised and warped thongs, spraying sand over the black rubber flooring like stars.
When she popped open her front door, Hooky was there in the hallway, looking at her phone, a black leather folio of printed real estate rental fliers clutched tightly against the chest of her bright red blazer. She made a delicate little noise of surprise and dropped the folio, adjusted her fine red glasses in embarrassment.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ she gushed. ‘You scared the life out of me.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Ella laughed, bending down and dragging the pages into a pile.
‘It’s my fault. I was listening very carefully,’ Hooky grinned. ‘I’m trying to get in touch with Mr David? I called and I thought I heard his phone ringing inside. God, I’m so stressed. Too much coffee. Too much coffee today.’
Finding out who owned the apartment across from Imogen’s had been as easy as rifling through the mailboxes. Sometimes Hooky felt bored with the game. Wanted a challenge. She might have picked Imogen’s lock. She might have lifted Frank’s keys from his pocket when she lifted his phone to get Imogen’s number. But tracking down Ella, hacking her phone, looking at her shifts, making sure she’d be in a rush out the door, putting on her real estate agent’s uniform … It was all probably very unnecessary. But people don’t play games because they’re easy. They play them because they’re fun.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know that guy.’ Ella watched as Amy tried to squash the papers back into the folder with her phone pinned between her cheek and shoulder. ‘Did you have an appointment, or …’
‘Yes, we did,’ Hooky sighed dramatically. ‘This is my day though. This is so completely my day. I had thirteen people turn up to an auction this morning – all gawkers. My printer is broken and the café next door is turning into one of those two-dollar shops with the recording playing all the time – you know the ones –’
‘Sports socks, six packs, two dollars only. Yeah, I know. How awful.’ Ella glanced at her watch.
‘Well, now I’m supposed to be taking photos of Mr David’s apartment and he’s not here.’ Hooky threw her hands up, or tried to, managing one full extension and one lopsided flap of her left hand, the gigantic folder pinned by an elbow into her hip. ‘Oh, it’s hopeless. Hopeless. This flat’s got to go on the website tonight, for god’s sake.’
‘Man,’ Ella looked at her watch again, ‘that sucks.’
‘I’ve got parties interested in China.’ Hooky rubbed her brow. ‘Urgh. God. If they go with the Mosman property instead of this one –’
‘Um, I’m really sorry for you. I’ve got to go, though, so …’ Ella started walking away.
‘If only there was some way.’ Hooky turned to the door at the end of the hall, Mr David’s apartment, diagonally across from Ella’s door. She watched Ella watching the door out of the corner of her eye, as though the girl expected it to fly open at any minute and reveal Mr David in all his glory, relieving the problem of the pretty real estate agent in the hall in time for Ella to catch the bus. Ella chewed her lip, continued backing away towards the mailboxes.
‘Damn it.’ Hooky tried to keep her tone sorrowful, to not blow her cover by letting her exasperation at Ella’s retreating steps creep through. She gestured to the door across from Mr David’s apartment, the door next to Ella’s. ‘Shit. I’m so close.’
‘I’m really sorry. I hope he comes back.’ Ella turned and grabbed the handle of the glass door to the foyer. Hooky bit her tongue. Hard. Ella was slipping away. It was time to bring out the big guns. She sobbed just once, loudly, her face buried in her fist. She heard Ella pop open the door, but not the creak as the glass swung open.
Hooky sobbed again.
‘Oh. Um. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Hooky gave a pathetic, crooked smile, shuffled the folders in her arms and searched her pockets for a tissue. ‘Long day, that’s all. I just wish it was over.’
‘I wish I could help,’ Ella said.
You can, you idiot, Hooky thought.
‘Hang on,’ Ella half-turned.
‘Yes?’ Hooky held her breath.
‘Mr David’s apartment and Imogen’s should be mirro
r images of each other,’ Ella said. She pointed to the door next to her own. Number five. ‘You could take pictures of Imogen’s apartment. It’s just for like, a preview, right? You’ll have the layout all correct. Just reverse the photos.’
Ella smiled at her own genius. Hooky felt the colour returning to her face.
‘That’s brilliant!’
‘Well, you know …’
‘Who’s Imogen?’ Hooky blinked.
‘She’s a doctor,’ Ella said, walking back into the hall. ‘She’s my neighbour, in number five there. Is she home?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hooky lied. She let hope saturate her voice. She rapped on the door to number five. There was silence. ‘Would she have keys to number four?’
‘No. Well, I don’t think so. I don’t know. But I’ve got keys to Imogen’s place. She gave me one once after she locked herself out. You could –’ Ella paused. Appreciated Hooky for a moment. Seemed to decide she was trustworthy. Hooky tried to look sweet. ‘Yeah, I mean. We’ll be quick, right?’
Ella swung her backpack off her shoulder, unzipped the front pocket.
‘You’ve got keys?’ Hooky covered her mouth, maybe too dramatically. She’d have to work on that one. ‘That’s fantastic.’
‘All the apartments are exactly the same, so Imogen’s corner apartment will be the same as David’s. We’ll go in and you can snap a few shots and then we’ll be out.’
‘That’d be perfect.’ Hooky clapped her hands awkwardly, gripped the folder before it could slide again. ‘Oh you’re the best. You’re an absolute lifesaver. You sure Imogen wouldn’t mind?’
‘She’ll be alright,’ Ella said. ‘I’ll go in with you and watch you. We’ll be quick as a flash. She’s a really nice chick. Uptight, but nice. We’ve got to be fast, though. I’m gonna be late in a minute.’