by Tara Moss
But not Ed Brown.
In his small dark cell, the killer who had not seen physical freedom for eighteen months was wide-awake and deeply immersed in a fantasy of recollection and sadistic desire. He recalled the pinnacle of his free life to date, the moment when he’d had in his possession a young woman he had devoted his time and energy to ensnaring. A woman he believed, from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, must be his.
Yes. Perfect.
‘Perfect,’ he whispered so softly that not even Pete Stevens, who was walking past on his rounds, could hear him.
In his fantasy Ed saw his supplies spread out over the table, as they had been eighteen months before. Supplies he had ‘borrowed’ from his workplace—the morgue.
Scalpel.
Shiny new enterotome with its bulb-ended blade and fierce inverted point.
Toothed forceps.
Rib-cutters laid out like pruning shears.
All of the autopsy instruments were sharp and clean, glistening in the light like a child’s toys at Christmas.
She will be my finest work, my finest possession.
Deep within his fantasy, Ed could see her clearly. He could vividly recall the scent of the young woman’s fear, the texture of her fair skin, the look of absolute terror in her blue-green eyes when she realised that she could not break her binds, could not escape him.
‘Perfect…oh yes…yes…’
The sweet smell of sweat and fear. The smell of blood. Ready for consumption. Ready for dissection.
Under the canvas blanket Ed stroked himself, causing the cot to quietly shake. He could feel his pleasure rise, his heart beating faster.
Mine!
But just as he moved to finish his final act of possession, the fantasy shattered. There was interference. Things were no longer under his control. His visions of mastery and power faded to nothing, and all that he could see was that cop’s face.
Andrew bloody Flynn.
Ed gasped, overwhelmed by his frustration. A warm tear strayed from the corner of his eye. Even now he could almost feel the searing pain in his shoulder where the bullet had entered his body, signalling his defeat.
The end of his perfect moment.
The end of his freedom.
Nooooo! Mother!
It was predestined, he believed, and no passing of time could change destiny. The defeat had to be temporary. It had to be. And now Ed had a plan that would give him the second chance he needed to fulfil his destiny. That thought was the only thing that kept him going in this foul, stinking place.
She will be mine. My perfect number ten. It’s destiny.
Ed pulled a small, ragged newspaper photo of Makedde Vanderwall out from behind the unframed black-and-white snap showing his mother in her younger days. He kept Mak’s picture taped flat against the back. The corrections officers wouldn’t let him have a photo frame in his cell: too many sharp points. And his original photo of Makedde and her model friend Catherine—Me and Mak making it big in Munich! scrawled on the back—was forever taken from him as police evidence. They wouldn’t let him have it back, which secretly made him furious. But he had this news clipping. He had cut her face out and it was good. Anyone could see the resemblance was remarkable, particularly in grainy black-and-white newsprint.
Mother. Makedde. Mother. Makedde. Mother.
He enjoyed the sight of her for a few minutes, and then carefully taped the clipping back into place. In less than an hour the night-shift woman would begin her rounds, and Ed would give her the final instructions that would see him free in mere days. Everything was progressing better than he could have hoped. Yes, it was destiny. It had to be.
I’m coming for you, Makedde.
CHAPTER 7
At nine on Wednesday morning, Makedde Vanderwall took a seat in the chambers of William Bartel, Queen’s Counsel, and did her best to appear confident and emotionally prepared for what she would have to endure in the Supreme Court in the following days. She was adept at the art of conveying composure in testing circumstances—delivering a lecture at university, grinning and bearing it in a designer swimsuit on a freezing winter coastline, being briefed on what to expect of the multiple-murder trial that had already changed her life forever. Whatever ludicrous extremes life demanded, she could handle them…she hoped. Her life had been laced with plenty of surprises so far, and she saw no sign that the trend was set to end.
Sitting in a creaky antique chair in front of Bartel’s massive wooden table, Makedde willed herself not to fidget. She cast her eyes over the modest prints on the QC’s walls and the impressive view of Sydney from his eleventh-storey windows. Mak had not enjoyed her first night in the beautiful city. Her body clock was still set to Vancouver time and her nap the previous afternoon had sentenced her to a long restless night in her hotel room, wracked with relentless worry.
‘I trust you arrived safely,’ Bartel said.
‘Oh, yes. Thank you.’
The prosecutor was a tall, thin man with a light moustache and beard peppered with silver. He wore an old-fashioned red tie and a navy pinstripe suit that seemed to exaggerate his vertical stretch. The suit seemed as old as the dusty books on his shelves. After referring to some papers, he peered at her with a pleasant smile and intelligent eyes that she imagined would not miss a thing.
‘I understand you are studying forensic psychology?’
‘Yes. If I can ever finish my thesis, I might actually be able to use what I’ve learned.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, I think everyone feels like that at some point. I almost quit law school on a couple of occasions. If it were easy everyone would be doing it.’
‘You’re probably right.’ Once all this was over, Mak planned to concentrate on her PhD, and if all went well she would be practising as a clinical forensic psychologist in British Columbia in a couple more years. There certainly had been a lot of distractions lately, but she had come too far to give up, and she was set on reaching her goal.
‘What is the subject of your thesis?’
‘Variables affecting the reliability of eyewitness testimony.’
He nodded. ‘Our eyes can deceive us, can’t they?’
‘And our memories.’
It was remarkable just how much eyewitness accounts could differ, Mak mused. Human nature leads us to colour facts with our own notions, prejudices and perspectives. And human memory, that fragile and ever-changing instrument, could not be fully trusted, as Mak was discovering. She panicked for a moment trying to clearly recall her mother’s face. It was somehow blurry and intangible. Only two years after Jane’s death from multiple myeloma, all Mak could see of her mother’s face was what she knew from photographs.
Her eyes…were they green or blue?
There was a knock on the door and the solicitor Gerry Hartwell arrived bearing steaming styrofoam cups from the coffee shop downstairs. He took a seat near Makedde, handing over her skim milk latte with an eager smile. He was wearing the suit from the night before, but with a pink tie that brought out the ruddiness of his pimply complexion. Though an accomplished, well-regarded solicitor, he brought to mind an obedient lapdog in the eminent barrister’s presence, all ‘yes sir’, ‘thank you sir’, and bowed head.
Sipping his cappuccino, Bartel refocused their attention on the trial. ‘Makedde, I will be calling you as the first witness tomorrow.’
‘Oh…yes,’ Mak responded, somewhat awkwardly.
‘Does that bother you?’
‘Not at all. I was told that was what to expect. I didn’t mean to sound surprised.’
Bartel continued. ‘I have been considering the issue of live-feed video testimony. My instructor,’ he motioned to Hartwell, ‘mentioned that you had concerns about the presence of the accused in the courtroom.’
‘Well, I…yes.’ Ed Brown. In the very same room. Tomorrow. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she managed.
‘That is not an unusual issue in cases in which the crime is of an intimate nature.’
Tied na
ked to a bed and sprayed down with some kind of weird disinfectant is pretty bloody intimate, Mak thought.
‘It can be an intimidating experience for many. However, Makedde, my feeling is that the trial would be better served by your physical presence in the courtroom in front of the jurors.’
She had considered this. ‘I thought you might say that.’
‘So unless you feel very strongly about it and you wish to press for that request, I would prefer that we have you in the witness box throughout your testimony.’
‘Okay,’ Mak agreed, without giving it any more thought. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to nail him.’
‘I appreciate your attitude. Frankly, I feel the same way. This individual is an aggressive fetishist and a sexual sadist. Very dangerous indeed. Fortunately, we don’t come across guys like this all that often. Not of his calibre.’
How fortunate.
Makedde reflected on just how colossally bad her luck seemed to have been in recent years. Then again, she was still alive. She had all her limbs and digits—barely. Things could have been much worse for her.
As if on cue, the big toe of her right foot began to tingle, exactly where the micro-surgeon had sewn it back on eighteen months earlier. At first, after the surgery, it had been numb and there was some doubt as to whether she would ever regain feeling in it. But now there was a worse problem, this irritating itch that drove her to distraction. It only ever seemed to itch when she thought about how the wound had been inflicted. Ed Brown had severed her toe with a scalpel during his bizarre ritualistic assault. He had no doubt planned to keep her toes—together with those of his other victims—in the formaldehyde jar that had been found in his bedroom. She wondered how Ed’s defence would try to talk their way around that piece of evidence.
‘You might not have been aware in Canada that there is considerable interest in the trial both here and in the UK,’ Bartel continued.
‘The UK?’
‘Because of Rebecca Ross, one of the last victims. She was in a soap opera. Neighbours, I believe. It’s quite popular over there.’
Great.
The responsibility of justice in this case was not just for Catherine, or for what Mak had endured herself, but for eight other women who had lost their lives to Ed’s sadistic obsession. That responsibility weighed heavily on Mak.
‘We will do our best to protect you as you come in and out of the courts. Remember you are not required to speak to the media. In fact I would prefer it if you did not, at least until the trial is over.’
‘I understand.’ She wanted to get back to the issue of the trial itself. ‘Can I ask, did the defence push to have the cases tried separately?’
‘Yes they did. But they didn’t succeed.’
Good, Makedde thought. A defence team sometimes tries to obtain separate trials for each individual crime, making it harder for the prosecution to prove its case. The accused might win a couple of the trials because of lack of evidence or due to an unshakeable alibi, and in subsequent trials the defence team can then say, ‘But your Honour, the same man must have committed all these crimes and our defendant has already proved that he did not commit a number of them, so he could not possibly have committed this one.’ It had been done before. It was highly unlikely that any defence team could pull off a stunt like that with the wealth of evidence stacked up against Ed Brown, but still, they would try anything. With the cases tried together, a great deal of damning evidence would be seen by the one jury, and if the prosecution could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Ed had murdered one or more of the victims, that should not affect the case in respect of the others. That, at least, was positive news.
‘And the insanity plea? Do you think they will try that?’ Mak pried. It was a strong rumour.
‘It is possible. The law stipulates, of course, that we must make full disclosure of our case—and how we will be presenting it—to the defence before the trial begins. But Mr Brown’s team does not need to disclose anything to us in advance. They only need to give us notice if they plan to call new expert witnesses in order that we may have our own experts on hand to refute the defence evidence. Other than that, they could have almost anything up their sleeves. And Mr Granger, well, he usually has a few good tricks at his disposal.’
Mak knew there would be a forensic psychologist on hand for the prosecution to state the Crown’s case that Ed was a psychopath, not insane, and thereby shouldn’t be able to plead not guilty on the grounds of insanity. He had known what he was doing to his victims—and knew it was wrong. He was warped and evil, but not legally mad.
Her toe began to itch harder and she bent down to pull off her shoe and scratch it.
‘Are you unwell?’ Bartel asked.
Mak felt herself blush. She didn’t want to flash her scarred bare foot but it was impossible to ignore the itch. ‘You can call it psychosomatic, but my toe itches when I, um…when I think about all this.’
‘Good. We’ll use that,’ he said, to her surprise. ‘Does the toe operate fully now? Is your walking or exercise ever impaired?’ He was taking notes.
‘Not any more.’
He seemed almost disappointed. Perhaps he’d pictured her hobbling up to the witness box, a twenty-seven-year-old woman using a cane. Effective.
‘Can I ask another question?’ Mak said.
‘Of course.’
‘How is it that someone like Ed Brown can inspire an advocate like Phillip Granger to put his hand up for the case? Who is this guy? Have you met him before?’ There was a distinctly cutting tone in her voice that took Makedde herself by surprise. She hadn’t intended to sound so bitter.
‘Oh, yes, I know Mr Granger very well,’ Bartel replied. ‘He is a first-class advocate, one of the most respected in Australia. He’s been practising since the sixties and is adept at handling high-profile cases like this one.’ He shuffled a few papers around on his desk, his face grim. ‘What you have to remember, Makedde, is that a man is on trial for extremely serious crimes here. For justice to be served, he must receive the best possible representation. That is the way the system works. It’s not personal, it’s legal. Mr Granger will try to find an alternate explanation for the killings, and he will present it. In the end, once the rival theories are presented to the judge and jury, justice prevails. It’s not the defender’s job to judge his client, only to represent him as best as he is able. And it’s not my job to judge either. It may not be a perfect system, but it is the one we have, and I have dedicated my life to being part of it.’
Mak nodded, feeling embarrassed to have inspired such a defence of the legal system. She knew he was right, but it was hard not to feel angry that Ed Brown, sadistic and heartless killer of her friend Catherine and so many others, would get his day in court represented by the best. The killer’s defence would try to make the jury believe that Ed was insane, or that the forensic evidence against him was inconclusive, that Makedde was a poor witness, that Detective Jimmy Cassimatis was a bad cop, that Detective Andrew Flynn had acted unprofessionally and had a personal prejudice in the case that made him unreliable. It was not only Ed Brown on trial, but all those who had brought him to justice. That’s how the system worked, Mak reflected ruefully. A detective inspector’s daughter could not be naïve about these things. She knew too much.
It was the trial she had dreaded for a year and a half.
And it would all begin tomorrow.
CHAPTER 8
Suzie Harpin sat at her kitchen table in fuzzy slippers and a pair of fleecy spotted pyjamas with a soft lace collar. She had the remains of a TV dinner growing cold on one side of the table and the Yellow Pages open in front of her to page 499, ‘Carpet—Carpet &/or Furniture Cleaning and Protection’. A steam cleaner should do the trick, she thought. There had to be someone who would hire one out, without demanding his or her own people do the work. She couldn’t have anyone coming to the house and poking around, that was for sure.
A good clean and it will be presentable. Suzie f
rowned momentarily, thinking of the stains Ben had made on the hall carpet. Just a good clean, she tried to reassure herself. She did not have much experience with such things.
It was two in the afternoon, and Suzie was home from another long but enjoyable shift. She had needed a couple of pots of drip coffee to keep herself going at work, and now she was looking forward to the welcoming comfort of her fold-out bed. She hadn’t got any proper sleep since Monday, what with so many important errands to attend to, and she had spent a lot of her time off fixing up her new house. Now she would sleep like a baby.
The curtains in her Malabar apartment were pulled closed, as always. If she opened them she would only have a stark view of the tall barbed wire fences of Long Bay Correctional Centre, right outside the door of her apartment complex. The closed curtains were how she managed to trick her body into sleeping during the day.
Suzie surveyed her humble abode unenthusiastically. Her pet bird was silent in the centre of the room, a dark cloth thrown over the cage for much the same purpose as her own closed curtains. Some daisies spread limply from the top of a glass vase on the kitchen table, needing to be thrown out. Her discarded prison guard uniform lay untidily over one of the chairs. She had never been the homemaker type before, never houseproud at all, but now the shabby apartment seemed beneath her. The dim single room, with its fold-out bed and kitchen nook, seemed bleak and claustrophobic. She never had much enjoyed coming home to it. It was just a room to sleep and eat in. But soon she would have somewhere else, somewhere so much better. The thought lifted her heart.
Despite a small space heater that blew warm air against her ankles, the sparsely furnished apartment was cold and Suzie had fastened the buttons of her pyjamas high on her strong neck. She managed a small smile. Her thoughts would keep her warm.