The Shadow Maker

by Robert Sims

  ‘You slay me, Van Hassel. You’re great for amusement value. If you’d accepted my invitation, there’d have been no need to interrupt your massage. We should try being friends.’

  ‘That’s about as likely as you getting a conscience.’

  ‘You never know, we could make it happen,’ he laughed. ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll massage your crotch!’

  With that, he swept out of the door, which slid shut behind him.

  Rita breathed out heavily, slumping against the wall.

  A moment later the masseuse appeared. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Those men wouldn’t let me in.’

  ‘I’ve been better,’ Rita replied.

  ‘Do you still want your massage?’

  ‘Somehow I’m not in the mood.’

  Rita was dressed, the holstered gun on her hip, workout bag over her shoulder, when a plain-clothes detective from Proctor’s Taskforce Nero wandered into the gym.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Being threatened by Kavella,’ she answered tartly.

  ‘Oh, that explains it,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t work out why he and his entourage would visit a gym on their way to a gangland summit.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘While you were hanging around outside I was lying there naked with that psycho breathing in my face! I want to talk to Proctor, now!’

  The officer nodded, called Jim Proctor on his mobile and handed it to Rita.

  ‘I’m having a fun Saturday,’ she told him. ‘So far I’ve been threatened twice - once by Kavella and once by one of his hitmen

  - and all on my day off.’

  ‘What did Kavella want?’ asked Proctor.

  ‘To find out how I knew about the Delos Club.’

  ‘And you told him?’

  ‘A line of bullshit about a crime lab hack and my suspicions of a VPN.’

  ‘He swallowed it?’

  ‘Yes, and now he wants us to be friends,’ Rita sighed. ‘That’s even scarier than being enemies.’

  ‘You’ve done well again,’ Proctor told her. ‘But I’m ordering some security for you. Tonight there’ll be a patrol car stationed outside your house.’

  ‘I had second thoughts after I suggested we meet here,’ said Huxley.

  ‘It occurred to me that tearooms on the beach sounds old-fashioned.

  I don’t want you to think I’m a fogey.’

  ‘It’s a perfect choice,’ Rita reassured him. ‘After the sort of day I’ve had, this is just what I need. Low-key and civilised.’

  They were sitting at a table beneath white umbrellas on the teahouse decking with a view of the bay. A strand of tea-trees and coast banksia lined the beach, sand gleaming in the sunshine, waves flopping onto the shore, mothers and toddlers paddling in the shallows. Pelicans were propped along an off-shore reef. Out on the blue expanse of water yachts were rolling with the swell, sails billowing.

  ‘So why are you stressed out?’ he asked. ‘Bad day at the barricades?’

  Rita gave him an indulgent smile. ‘You wouldn’t want to know.’

  Huxley shrugged. He looked completely at ease with the beach setting in his safari shirt, baggy shorts and thongs, limbs tanned, face naturally handsome in the sunlight. Rita was wearing a denim skirt, strappy sandals and a white scoop top that wasn’t too sexy, her face glowing, her skin scented with expensive perfume. But she was still on edge from the confrontation at the gym.

  ‘Get it off your chest,’ said Huxley.

  ‘No, really. I don’t want to spoil this afternoon.’

  ‘If you felt there was something you couldn’t tell me, that would spoil it.’

  Rita gave him a searching look. ‘I don’t want to shock you.’

  ‘I think I can take it.’

  ‘Well, let’s order first - though I feel like I’m living on coffee.’

  ‘Then we’ll share an afternoon cream tea,’ he suggested. ‘Scones, jam and a pot of Earl Grey.’

  ‘Very traditional.’

  After ordering at the counter, he sat down again. ‘So what’s upset you?’ he asked.

  ‘Work’s become a bit full-on,’ she said, frowning. ‘I’ve got involved in an operation against one of the biggest scumbags in the city.

  What makes it worse is that he’s someone who already hates my guts. This morning I was threatened by one of his thugs, just before you phoned me.’

  ‘So that’s what was nasty in your coffee.’

  ‘Yes, I threw it over him.’ She sighed. ‘That wasn’t the end of it, though. After my workout I was lying on the massage table, covered only by a towel, when the scumbag himself walked in - not just to intimidate me, but to threaten me with rape, right there in the gym, and there was nothing I could have done to stop him. I was mentally preparing for the worst, and I’ve never felt so helpless.’ She stopped, bowing her head, tears running down her cheeks.

  Huxley reached over and held her hand. ‘Tell me his name,’

  he said.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of bullies, only of letting them go unchecked.’

  ‘It’s not your job, it’s police work.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re a good man. I don’t want you involved in any way at all.’

  ‘Don’t you realise I already am? I care about you, so anything that puts you in harm’s way involves me.’

  She looked up at him with a tear-stained smile. ‘I can’t tell you his name. It would be in breach of an undercover police operation.’

  She squeezed both his hands. ‘Don’t worry. He’s another step nearer twenty years in jail, the net’s closing on him.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Huxley, his face creased with concern.

  ‘But if you ever need somewhere safe to stay my place is always available. It’s only an hour away, up in the hills near Olinda. No one will find you there.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘And I feel better now I’ve got that off my chest.’

  ‘Good. And just in time for our cream tea.’

  The waitress delivered a tray with a teapot, cups and food. As they served themselves with scones and clotted cream, Huxley pouring from the teapot, Rita asked about his family background. ‘All I know about your personal life is you were conceived in Venice.’

  Huxley laughed.

  ‘That’s the only exotic thing there is to know. My parents were part-time teachers and part-time hippies. As an infant they dragged me around Europe, California, Nepal - places I can’t remember - and settled down as soon as I reached school age. So my upbringing was suburban and predictable: school, university, academic career.’

  ‘Girlfriends?’

  ‘I’ve had a few flings,’ he answered. ‘But not so fast. Your turn.’

  ‘Fair enough. I was born in Amsterdam then spent my early childhood among Dutch expats in Java. My parents split up when I was seven and I moved to Australia after my mother remarried.

  Then much like you it was school, uni and career.’

  ‘Why the police?’

  ‘Family connection. My stepfather’s a forensic toxicologist.’

  ‘And your natural father?’

  ‘I don’t think about him so much these days.’ She toyed with a teaspoon. ‘He’s an executive with a pharmaceutical firm. We lived in Jakarta after he was posted there. He walked out on the family for a Javanese girl. Up till then he’d doted on me, but from that moment my life changed.’

  ‘And it’s still with you.’

  ‘Watch it, professor. You’re treading on my turf, trying to psych me out,’ she said, smiling. ‘What about your parents? Are they into science?’

  ‘No, English Lit, both of them. They’re still baffled by my passion for cyberpunk. As a kid they tried to wean me off P.K. Dick and William Gibson but I’m still hooked. And now I get to play around with all that subversive stuff in a computer lab.’

  ‘Cyberpunk?’ said Rita dubiously. ‘That’s how you see your field of expertise
?’

  ‘Yes, a paradigm shift in what’s real - liberating and dangerous at the same time. I love it.’

  ‘That explains why you’re different.’

  ‘Different, how?’

  ‘You’re not a conventional academic, you’re a digital rebel.’

  ‘I suppose I am. You think I should add the title to my faculty door?’

  They both laughed.

  As they sipped their tea, the conversation turned to lighter subjects

  - movies, music, sport.

  Afterwards they took a walk along the beach trail.

  They stood at the point, watching a container ship wallowing in the distance.

  ‘If I didn’t have a formal dinner tonight, I’d ask you out,’ said Huxley.

  ‘What about next Saturday?’ Rita asked.

  ‘I’ve got to do a presentation at the Windsor Hotel for a state government think tank. But I’m booked into one of the suites, so we could share some free champagne.’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ she said.

  He walked her back to her car.

  Instead of getting in she leant against the bodywork, put her hands on his shoulders, drew him towards her and kissed him on the mouth. His arms went around her and the kiss became more intense, his body pressed against hers, his hands sliding to the back of her hips.

  At last they separated.

  He opened his mouth to speak but she put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Till next time,’ she said teasingly, as she got into her car.

  She smiled as she drove off, blowing him a kiss as she headed north along the beach road.

  That night Rita went to bed in a positive mood, despite the encounter with Kavella. And she had no trouble drifting off, thanks to an additional sense of security - in the shape of an armed police officer sitting in a patrol car outside her front gate.

  The compulsion was on him again, the demon in his belly. It was time to cruise the night.

  Once he was out on the empty roads he felt the thrill of the chase. But as a precaution he avoided the seafront and the area around the casino. The police were alert to those because of the two she-devils he’d already put out of action. This time he decided on an ethnic precinct - the Indochinese enclave that filled parts of the old industrial suburbs. He drove past the crumbling shell of a brewery and empty warehouses waiting for redevelopment. There were derelict factories with brick chimney stacks. Industrial sites due to be auctioned. Graffiti scrawled on walls and hoardings: elvis lives, fuck capitalism. The roads and pavements were deserted.

  No one about. Just the lonely glare of the street lamps.

  He emerged onto the main road and drove past Vietnamese restaurants and takeaways. From an all-night cafe he could hear the voices of Vietnamese women chatting. He pulled over to the kerb and waited. Within minutes one of them was tapping on his window.

  She was young and obvious. They agreed on a price - one hundred dollars, bondage included. She got in and they drove past tower blocks and turned into a street of little wooden houses with corrugated iron fences. She told him where to park then led him to her front door. As he stood on the step he looked at her tiny strip of garden.

  It was full of weeds, with a berry bush that had collapsed for lack of pruning, and a rusted iron birdbath with rusted iron birds perched on the rim.

  Once inside it felt like a familiar hunting ground, another interior with female trappings. There were oriental dolls and lanterns, silk tapestries, and by the bedroom mirror a clutter of cosmetics.

  After he gave her the money, she asked him if he wanted a drink.

  He said yes, and she came back with a bottle of clear spirit. She filled a shot glass and handed it to him. He swallowed it in one gulp and coughed hard as it burnt his throat. She gave a dry laugh and set about attaching black leather straps with metal buckles to the bedposts. Then, at his request, she lit four lanterns, arranged them by the bed and switched off the overhead lights, leaving the room full of shadows and a soft, flickering glow. He nodded with satisfaction, stripped and put on his bronze mask. He was back in the cave.

  She asked him about the mask, listened to his odd answer and promptly took off her clothes. Her body was slim and petite, almost boyish, with small round breasts and large dark nipples. She massaged his penis until it was hard. As she reached for a condom he felt that familiar rush of ferocity. He picked up the liquor bottle and smacked it against her skull. She fell back onto the bed, her eyes staring at him and her lips quivering, but making no sound. He fastened the buckles around her wrists and ankles, then spread her legs wider and penetrated her with brute force. The pleasure was over too quickly for him.

  Her lips were still moving soundlessly as he went looking for a surgical tool. He found a sharp carving knife in a metal sheath on her draining board. He came back with it and knelt over her prostrate body. With one hand he forced her mouth wide open and with the other he thrust the blade down into her throat. He pushed it deep, twisting and cutting, until he’d severed her tongue by the root. He held it in his hand, looking at it, then dropped it on the floor with the knife. Feeling much calmer now, he dressed and left.

  As he got back in his car a figure approached along the pavement

  - another young Vietnamese woman. She glanced at him but he ducked his head and drove off. In his rear-vision mirror he saw her enter the house he’d just left. Good timing. The thought of her imminent discovery pleased him. It also showed his luck was holding.

  He’d scored his point and left his mark. It was another victory in the battle.

  Rita received a phone call from Strickland at first light.

  ‘We’ve got another victim, and forensics have matched the prints to the Hacker’s,’ he said. ‘This time he’s cut her tongue out.’

  She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘Yes, but still unconscious. I thought you might want to join me at the crime scene.’

  ‘I will. As soon as I’ve got dressed and poured a coffee down my throat. Give me the address.’

  As Rita made her way through the forensic science officers in her plastic suit, she could see the crime scene was a parallel of the previous two. The same type of scenario was there again, with the buckled leather straps, the lanterns and the blood-stained knife.

  ‘Not my idea of a quiet Sunday morning,’ greeted Strickland, unshaven with a blast of nicotine on his breath, ‘picking through the debris of another bondage mutilation. And what’s with the soft lighting?’

  ‘The Hacker needs his imitation cave,’ Rita explained, ‘with a prisoner in the shadows before he inflicts the symbolic wounds.’

  There was blood on the bed, on the floor, and a spray of it on the silk tapestries.

  Rita bent down to a chalk circle around a stain on the floor, next to the circled carving knife.

  ‘What was here?’ she asked.

  ‘The severed tongue,’ said Strickland. ‘And if that’s symbolic, even I can see a common theme in his three attacks: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Or am I way off beam?’

  ‘It’s possible you’re right,’ Rita said, ‘but do you really think he’ll stop at three?’

  Strickland shook his head, ‘No. So what’s his next mutilation?’

  ‘When he wounds his victims it’s an act of sense deprivation, so he’ll target another sense organ,’ said Rita. ‘And that makes him consistent with Plato, who argued that our senses are obstacles to perceiving the real world. The Hacker has taken the point literally.’

  ‘We’re back into mad philosopher territory,’ Strickland said with a groan.

  Rita noticed an unopened condom on the floor.

  ‘He gets angry if they try to take control,’ she observed, squatting down to peer at a liquor bottle lying on its side. It had already been dusted for prints, and there were traces of blood and hair on its surface.

  ‘Is this what he used to subdue her?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably,’ said Strickland. ‘Th
e doctors say her injuries include a blow to the head. My guess is she gave him a drink,’ he pointed to a glass, ‘after which he bashed her with the bottle, bound her, raped her and cut out her tongue. I think the only reason she survived was thanks to a friend turning up almost immediately afterwards. By the way, that second girl could be a witness.’

  ‘She saw the Hacker?’

  ‘No, but she saw a car drive off - and it wasn’t an MX-5, it was a black ute. Hopefully the victim will be able to confirm it once she’s conscious.’ Strickland shook his head. ‘By switching cars, this psycho may have outsmarted himself. It gives us something to cross-reference.’

  ‘The more I see of his work, the less I’m inclined to consider him a psychopath,’ said Rita, standing up and opening her notebook.

  ‘It’s as if he goes in organised and comes out disorganised, almost as though he carries in one fantasy, then impulsively acts out another.

  I think we’re dealing with a delusional offender.’

  ‘Sorry, but I’m missing the subtle distinction,’ growled Strickland, heading for the door on his way to another cigarette. ‘I don’t see how it helps if the Hacker’s cracking up.’

  It was late afternoon before Rita could question the victim in hospital.

  The girl’s eyes stared at her, full of terrible fear and incomprehension.

  Padding protruded from her mouth. Surgical dressing was taped to her skull where the blow had split the skin and stunned her.

  Emergency surgery had gone as far as possible to repair the physical trauma to her throat and larynx, and stitch up the damage to her wounded lips. But microsurgery to reattach the tongue had been ruled out; it was beyond repair. The psychological trauma would never heal.

  Her name was Hei Vuong . She printed it on a pad. Her friend, who’d saved her life, sat beside the hospital bed, clutching her hand.

  Strickland stood in the background, hands in pockets. A police artist waited with him. A doctor kept watch on them all.

  Rita asked the questions patiently, and watched as the young woman wrote down the answers. It was a slow, painful process.

  ‘What did he look like?’ asked Rita.

  Normal guy, wrote the girl. Smooth, handsome face.

  ‘What about his hair?’