Covet

by Tara Moss

  It was he who had told her about the psychopath test. He was still in her thoughts, and now in her view as well.

  Loulou stared, mouth open. ‘Oh my gawd, how freaky. He must be coming or going from work. Police headquarters is on the other side of the park on College Street, I think. Are you guys talking, or what? Last time you emailed me everything seemed to be going okay. You totally had the hots for him.’

  Mak was too shaken by the vision of him to answer her friend. As she watched, the light turned green and her former lover drove away, disappearing into a sea of rush hour traffic heading towards Kings Cross. He was still driving the shiny red Honda. It had been his late ex-wife’s car. Mak remembered they had still been fighting over it when Cassandra was murdered. Now that Mak was in Sydney, there seemed to be no avoiding Andy. It was uncanny. They had skipped the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ conversation and jumped straight to being complete strangers, despite passing each other constantly. That optimistic kiss goodbye at the airport in Canada had led to this. Mak could hardly believe it.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Loulou asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Loulou,’ Mak said, fighting a sour lump in her throat. She felt unbalanced by the sight of Andy, the knowledge of all they had shared and endured. She had so few people she could speak frankly with. ‘Um, Loulou, I was um…wondering—’

  ‘You are going to have me glued to your side through this trial,’ Loulou cut in. ‘It would be my pleasure to be there for you. I would consider it an honour.’ Her bright lips curved into a giant smile. ‘I know you too well, Mak. That whole “I can do this on my own” thing doesn’t work with me.’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t need anyone to hold my hand—’

  ‘Of course you don’t. But you don’t have a choice. You are my friend and I am going to be there for you all the way. That’s what friends do.’

  Mak hung her head and laughed.

  ‘When are you on trial…I mean, at the trial,’ Loulou corrected herself, though she was probably right the first time. ‘When’s our first appearance?’

  Makedde chuckled again. ‘Our appearance? If only it were a sitcom. Let’s see…I take the stand in…’ she checked her watch, ‘…seventeen hours.’

  ‘That’s it. I’m taking you out and getting you completely pissed.’

  ‘My, what a healthy alternative to sitting in my hotel room with my head in my hands. Loulou, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Come on…just one then.’

  CHAPTER 10

  At one in the morning the night before his trial for the crimes of murder, assault and abduction, Ed Brown sat curled against the bars of his cell with a lover’s smile across his face. His hair was combed and scented, his prison-issue clothes straightened as respectably as he could manage. His woman had to walk her rounds, but when she came back they would discuss the plans some more. The seed he had planted so many weeks before was beginning to blossom into a beautiful flower. Plans were devised. Progress had been made.

  Whispers now.

  She was back, smiling, running a cool hand against his as he gripped the cell bars. He noticed a strange bulge under her shirtsleeve that wasn’t there before.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked her, mostly out of mock concern and politeness.

  ‘Oh nothing. It’s a bandage. Just a scrape.’

  ‘I will kiss it better.’

  She blushed and wrinkled her nose affectionately. ‘Oh Ed…’

  Ed Brown gazed into the face of the night-shift guard, seeing only the glorious freedom the plain woman would soon bring him, and the access that freedom would give. Access to Makedde Vanderwall, whom he would see again in only eight hours, and counting. He would look into her face from across the courtroom, and she would know she was destined to be his. And then, finally, he would have her to himself, the way he had always been meant to.

  Makedde.

  I’m coming.

  It is our destiny.

  CHAPTER 11

  Detective Andy Flynn sat facing the window, blinking at the world outside.

  The city buzzed with energy below, lights still glowing in windows and people moving through the streets despite the late hour. His apartment provided a good view of Darlinghurst. Cassandra had left him most of her assets. She had been divorcing him at the time of her murder but hadn’t got around to updating her will. It seemed a cruel irony that he would find himself sitting alone in an apartment bought, in part, with her money. In the end she’d hated him so much it would have pained her to think that she would end up leaving him everything.

  ‘I feel like a police widow already, and you aren’t even dead.’

  The modern apartment, though a sensible investment, had thus far given him little happiness.

  The rough handshake of Jack Daniels greeted him again, the liquid growing smooth and mellow on his tongue, slipping down his throat and warming his hollow belly. Andy placed the bottle carelessly against the cushion of the sofa, his fingers sticky. He rubbed his eyes. He wouldn’t cry, didn’t want to. Men don’t cry. Men pick up a bottle and move on.

  Seeing Makedde had shattered him.

  He had never imagined it would be like this. Here she was, back in Sydney. Finally the waters and continents of the world no longer divided them. But he had stuffed up. He had stuffed up with Cassandra. And then he had met Mak, and she was lost to him too. He’d had his brief moment, and wasted it.

  What had she said? ‘I see AA did you a lot of good.’

  Yeah, sure. He wrapped his fingers around the sticky rim and brought the lip of the bottle to his mouth again. There it was, satisfying, dulling. It took the edge off, that was all. Not an addiction—a friend.

  There was a time when Makedde had gazed at him with passion and admiration. There was a time when he had even looked at himself with some pride. And now, in this apartment, with his friend the bottle in his hand, he found himself rejected by the only woman he’d probably ever truly loved, and holding the only thing he’d flatly promised himself that he would reject.

  She’ll be sleeping now, Andy, not wasting a single thought on you.

  He looked to the bottle by his side.

  You know you won’t be able to stop drinking if you don’t throw it out now.

  In a push of self-preservation Andy snatched up the bottle, still half full, and walked it to the garbage bin in the kitchen. He opened the lid and slammed the bottle home amongst the messy remains of his Chinese takeaway dinner and a few cracked eggshells.

  There. You did it.

  It was too late to call his partner, Jimmy. He was at home with his wife and kids. Angie wouldn’t appreciate a call at this hour. Andy had not returned Carol’s calls, so he was home alone. His infatuation with Makedde left him uninterested in any other woman’s company. In fact, some part of him knew that he was sitting alone by the phone hoping against hope that she would call.

  Makedde.

  It was too late to go anywhere, the night before the trial. It was too late to distract himself. It was just too late. Through eyes blurred with alcohol and some kind of irritating water he would not accept as tears, Andy refocused his attention on the garbage bin.

  Within twenty minutes, the bottle of Jack

  Daniels was back in his hand. He didn’t even bother to rinse the eggshells and slime off the sides before eagerly tasting it again.

  It was not an addiction, it was a friend.

  ‘Want my pants?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Mak tried to shoo the man away with her hand, knocked over an empty shot glass instead, and watched as it rolled as if in slow motion off the table to land at the edge of the dance floor. Miraculously, it did not break.

  ‘Want to dance?’ the stranger repeated. This time Makedde heard him correctly. The music was loud, and so was the buzzing in her head. To say she felt vague would be an understatement.

  ‘No thanks,’ she managed to say.

  The young man courteously bent down, picked up her glass and put it back on the tab
le.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘No, no. No more. Please…’

  ‘Come on, dance with me,’ the man smiled. Her bold suitor was young and attractive—dark hair, dark skin, almond eyes and well-formed arms in rolled-up shirtsleeves. But Makedde was not interested in engaging with him, just as she had not been interested in anyone all evening. She was busy trying to numb the dread in her heart and she had no time to open it up for anyone else, not even for a simple spin on the dance floor. Loulou had already called her a party-pooper three times during the evening, and she was probably right. Getting plastered had not helped at all.

  Loulou appeared unexpectedly from behind her and grabbed the young man’s wrist. ‘I’ll dance with you,’ she exclaimed. ‘Come with me.’

  The young man’s face registered shock as bright-haired Loulou dragged him back into the throbbing mass of dancers. Wednesday was salsa night at the Arthouse Bar. Who knew? Certainly not Mak, who couldn’t salsa to save her life. Learning some Latin dance was on the end of a long ‘must do before I die’ list, along with learning to fly a helicopter, scuba dive and speak Cantonese. Her coordination in her current state would not be the most graceful, so this was hardly the time to start lessons.

  Loulou and her handsome prey disappeared amongst the twirling bodies, her colourful mullet occasionally visible through a parting of dancers. Mak was alone with her empty glass.

  The Arthouse Bar had some of the best mojitos Mak had ever tasted. And the most lethal. Two of those and a few shots of the pornographically named Cock Sucking Cowboys, which Loulou insisted she have, and Mak was pretty well blotto. Unfortunately, the alcohol had started to magnify her mood, rather than numb it, and her worries and loneliness seemed more intense than before.

  Mak shook her head in an attempt to clear it.

  Her thoughts swung randomly from memory to memory, evoking flashes of things she did not want to recall, stirred up and brought to the surface like crud from the bottom of an old jar. She saw Catherine streaked with blood in the tall grasses, she imagined putting her broken body back together again. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, you’ll be fine Cat, just fine…’ She saw Andy beneath her, slick with sweat, exciting and warm, and she saw him walking away to his departure gate, turning to wave, smiling.

  Gotta pee.

  Makedde forced herself up and half shuffled, half staggered away from the dance floor into the nearby corridor. She searched for a sign to lead her to the toilets. Instead, she found herself facing a public telephone.

  Don’t…

  Within seconds she had somehow managed to slide some coins in and dial Andy’s mobile number. She heard it ring once, twice. She leaned hard against the wall to support herself, phone receiver jammed up against her ear.

  ‘Hey, I wondered where you’d got to!’

  Mak jumped. The receiver swung away. It was Loulou.

  Loulou hung up the phone. She must have read Mak’s pathetic expression. ‘No, sweetheart. Never drink and dial.’

  ‘Busted.’ Mak lowered her head and crossed her arms, utterly embarrassed. She felt deflated and empty, her thoughts dark and confused. Her eyes could no longer focus.

  ‘Call him tomorrow, but not now, sweetie. Just trust me on this one.’

  ‘I know, but tomorrow I’ll be on trial.’ It came out in an awful slur. ‘I’ll be on trial, Loulou…’

  ‘No, honey, you are not going to be on trial. Ed Brown will be on trial, and you will nail his arse. Come on, girlfriend, I’m takin’ you home.’

  ‘He…he saved my life…’

  ‘Come on.’

  Loulou put Mak’s limp arm around her neck and led her out.

  ‘Hey!’ came a voice behind them. It was the boy Loulou had been dancing with. He was covered in sweat and he followed them out like a puppy dog.

  ‘Call me,’ Loulou said, and pressed a business card into his hand. ‘But not tonight.’

  He nodded, mouth open.

  Loulou took Mak in a taxi back to her hotel, let her heave her unfortunate guts out in the toilet and then put her to bed. And like the kind of sister Mak wished she had, Loulou stayed the few remaining hours of the night in the double bed with her so that Mak wouldn’t be alone. At seven in the morning Loulou woke her up before going home to quickly change. Gerry Hartwell would be picking them up just after eight.

  It was already the day of the trial.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Supreme Court in Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, has the unmistakable aura of neglect. Rusty gates open to a once-grand circular drive, flanked by parking signs peeling paint. The increasingly dilapidated sandstone structure is no longer proud, ignored as it is by the sex shops and trendy cafés that have sprouted all around it. Junkies shoot up around the corner, and rent boys sell their human wares down the block at night, along ‘the Wall’. Despite the wealth of popular nightclubs that have set up shop nearby, the pain and desperation of the streets has not really faded since the time of the convicts and the gallows. It is simply a different kind of pain now, and this new world does not spare much thought for Justice with her blindfold. She has become all but invisible.

  Justice is not only blind, Andy Flynn thought, looking at the courthouse long overdue for a refurbish. She’s tired and she wants to go home.

  Across the road on the steps of the Sacred Heart church, a homeless man with a matted beard watched the flow of traffic from behind his shopping trolley. No doubt he wondered what all the fuss was about. Outside broadcast vans and news crews filled the courthouse parking lot, and journalists jostled for position to be the first with a scoop on day one of the Stiletto Murders trial.

  Andy crossed the street towards the court, his partner, Jimmy, close behind him.

  ‘Look at the trash this trial brings. They should put Ed up for public hanging after this. I could make millions selling tickets.’

  Andy didn’t respond to Jimmy’s comment, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it had been like in the days of public hangings in Darlinghurst. Would the satisfaction of seeing Ed Brown die with a noose around his neck be enough to help Andy forget that he had aimed to kill him and had missed?

  Security officers passed them through the X-ray machines, nodding their hellos.

  ‘Andy…’

  ‘Hey Jimmy…’

  The boys were getting a workout today. The normally sedate courtroom five, which dealt day in, day out with a depressing roster of domestic violence, assault, bar brawls turned lethal and the like, had come alive with the rare buzz of public interest and was already packed out. Today, the dry, slow-moving wheels of justice promised so much more than usual: it was day one of the most anticipated murder trial Andy had seen, and the show was about to begin.

  Law students, reporters and morbid tourists of all kinds had come to watch as it unfolded in all its grim detail. Today would feature the opening remarks of the prosecution and defence. It was the day the Crown would outline its case against the man accused of murdering nine young women, and try to ensure the jury’s favour from the start by putting their star witness on the stand—Ed Brown’s only surviving victim, Makedde Vanderwall. But Andy would not be able to watch her testimony. As a witness himself, he would not be admitted to the courtroom until he took the stand. Even though he was the senior detective who made the arrest, the ‘informant’ in legal parlance, he would not be the first called to give evidence, and he could not watch the testimony of others in case he was swayed in his recollections by what the other witnesses said.

  Andy was shut out, a familiar feeling in recent years. He waited tensely for the brief moment he would be able to give Makedde a nod of support before she walked into the courtroom. And that was all he could do. Just nod. The feeling of impotence did not sit well with him.

  ‘Fifty bucks says they question her today about whether or not you porked her.’

  ‘Jimmy!’ Andy rubbed his temples. ‘My head hurts.’

  ‘Come on. Betcha fifty!’

  Andy c
overed his ears.

  ‘Wow you went hard last night,’ Jimmy finally said, realising how fragile his partner was.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Andy’s brain ached from his late-night session with his mate Jack Daniels. He had managed to cut it short by tossing the bottle in the garbage again, but only after downing a full three-quarters of it. And that had been a chaser for a couple of seemingly benign beers from his fridge. So far, that was one battle he didn’t seem to be winning. He would have to do better the night before he was called to the stand, or his binges could spell serious trouble for him once again. He probably would not be called to give evidence for another few days, after Makedde took the stand and endured the intense examination and cross-examination process. The prosecution was bringing out the big guns first for emotional impact: the only first-hand account of Ed’s demented violence in this horrifying case. Mak’s testimony would be pivotal in hitting home the human cost of what the man had done to his victims.

  ‘Don’t call me a victim, Andy. I’m a survivor, not a victim…please don’t ever call me that…’

  Andy’s heart twisted in his chest at the thought of her, and how intimate they had been when she had spoken those words. Things were different now.

  ‘Did you see Ed’s ma?’

  Ed Brown’s mother. Yes, Andy had spotted her too. ‘The lovely Mrs Brown,’ he replied.

  Her date with the court had prompted Mrs Brown to dress somewhat more conservatively than usual. The white rolls of flesh that had been proudly on display in the past were now covered in a drab navy suit that fitted her like a potato sack. The wardrobe was different, but the scowl she wore was apparently a permanent one, and had not faded in intensity since last they’d seen her. She was by all accounts a bitter, difficult woman, a disposition earned from years spent working the streets before a house fire sentenced her to a wheelchair-bound existence. What did she think of her son? Andy wondered. And would she see him differently by the time this trial was through? Would it finally bring home to her what he had done?