Assassin (6 page)

Her face hardened. Luther’s notes indicated this was his local counterfeit passport contact. From what she’d seen of Luther’s collection of passports, the work was excellent. Or perhaps Javier handled the business end of things and someone else made the goods? Could those fat fingers really produce so exacting a product? Either way, she was sure this was the man, and she needed ID.

Mak didn’t want to be taken for a pushover. ‘Twelve. Four now, eight later. That’s all.’

‘Fifteen is my price.’

‘Fine. I’ll have my money back now.’ She turned and moved to leave. She’d stand at his counter until he came round. She didn’t like this airless room.

Javier touched her elbow and nodded his confirmation. ‘Two days,’ he said. He appeared to think for a moment. ‘Come on Friday around five. The shop will be closed. I will be here.’

She handed him an envelope containing her unsmiling passport photographs. They wouldn’t let her wear the glasses in the image. She’d not been surprised, though she preferred the morphing effect of the spectacles. Without them she felt she looked just a little bit too much like Makedde Vanderwall.

‘Friday,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll bring the rest then.’

They had a deal.

Business completed for now, she stepped out onto the dirty street and took a deep breath. Two days was even faster than she’d hoped. Only two days and she would have her own identity. She could travel. She could check in to any hotel. She would be so much more unhampered. Mak wondered what had kept her from taking this step before.

Two days …

Javier Rafel could not believe his luck. Grinning at the thought of all the money he would soon make, he picked up the phone and made a call.

The Cassimatis family lived in a single-level red-brick home in Merrylands, in Sydney’s west. Every centimetre of the eight-hundred-square-metre lot served a purpose. There was the house itself, fully packed with six family members, the single guest room overflowing with stored toys and rarely used gym equipment. And there was the driveway, bumper to bumper with his-and-hers family cars, and the small yard adorned with a basketball hoop, two bicycles, two tricycles, a leaf-filled inflatable kids’ pool — currently out of use — and several pieces of weather-worn sporting equipment. On any given day the cars and bicycles and footsteps of varying size came and went at regular intervals, and the lights inside burned through half the night.

Tonight the family was joined around the large, circular kitchen table by their guest, Agent Andy Flynn, finishing a late dinner of steak, potatoes and peas sautéed in lashings of pepper, salt and garlic. The eldest of the four children, Dominique, was the first to leave the table after clearing his plate, followed closely by the others old enough to walk, and Jimmy, who tactlessly explained that he had to piss.

Andy found himself at the table alone with Jimmy’s wife, Angie Cassimatis, and the youngest boy, Edmond, who watched the profiler with eyes the colour of dark chocolate, drool wetting his gap-toothed mouth.

‘More water?’ Angie offered. She was a tough matriarch in the traditional Greek mould. She ran the household with a firm hand, got the kids to church on time and could often be found — dark cascades of curls piled on her head — cooking and designating chores like a sergeant. Somehow, with four children, she’d also found time to complete her training as a nurse.

Andy shook his head. ‘Thanks, Angie. That was lovely.’ He hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in a while. He’d forgotten that full, wholesome feeling.

Angie got up and began to load dirty plates into the dishwasher with one hand while supporting the smallest Cassimatis over her shoulder. Edmond continued mutely to watch Andy from his elevated outlook, mouth open. He was sleepy.

‘Let me do that,’ Andy protested and pushed his chair out.

‘Sit!’ she demanded, pointing a finger. ‘You are a guest here. I won’t have you clearing the dishes.’

This was a regular pattern whenever Andy visited, which hadn’t been terribly often since he’d moved interstate. He knew Angie didn’t take kindly to guests trying to help out. In time the toddler began to fuss and Angie abandoned the dishes and excused herself from the kitchen to make her way to the closest couch. ‘Sure I can’t get you anything more? Ice cream, maybe?’ she asked across the room, and in seconds she had undone her top and pulled Edmond to her breast.

‘No, I’m fine. Thanks, Angie.’

A soft smile spread across her face and a kind of peace seemed to settle on the house as the boy fed. Though Angie seemed unbothered by the company, Andy became self-conscious looking in her direction. He began to concentrate on the bottom of his water glass, wondering if he would ever become a father. The responsibility of parenting scared him more than a little. Maybe that was why he kept fucking things up. Despite having been married once, he’d resisted ‘settling down’.

A toilet flushed and Jimmy returned to stand in the kitchen doorway, leaning his bulk against the frame. He was built like a teddy bear, all stomach and grin. He’d put on a few kilos since Andy had seen him last. If Andy’s Achilles heel was his drink, Jimmy’s was anything deep-fried, or made with chocolate. Or both. Doctors had warned him to cut back for the sake of his health, but he’d obviously been ignoring that advice lately. ‘Mate, wanna go somewhere for a beer?’ Jimmy asked, rubbing his hands together.

‘I would, but I’ve got an early morning,’ Andy replied. He pushed his chair out again and started to stand. ‘I’ll help finish the washing up —’

‘No, no,’ Angie protested from the living room, though he’d hoped she wouldn’t hear him. ‘Don’t touch a thing. You’re a guest here,’ she said, though when Edmond complained she turned back to murmur sweet nothings and stroke his fine hair.

‘A nightcap then,’ Jimmy suggested. Before Andy could protest, Jimmy left him to cross to the liquor cabinet in the living room, where he poured them both a Johnnie Walker. He knew Andy would be unlikely to resist his favourite drop.

It would be rude to say no, Andy supposed. He hadn’t seen his closest friend in a while.

‘Get you anything, hon?’ Jimmy asked his wife as he walked past her, balancing the overfilled drinks. Angie shook her head and continued to run delicate fingers over their youngest child’s hair as Jimmy bent to kiss her on the forehead. Andy watched the exchange with a flicker of sadness. The breakdown of his own brief marriage to Cassandra didn’t have to taint his relationships forever. Some people simply were not suited. He could have tried harder with Mak. He could have been more open. He could have taken a real chance. She wouldn’t have left him then. She wouldn’t have gone to Paris …

Jimmy returned to the kitchen and closed the door for privacy, clearly relishing the chance to talk. ‘I thought you’d never come by again, you dick. How about my boy?! Beautiful kid, isn’t he? You haven’t seen him since he was, what? Six months?’ Jimmy had sent photos, but Andy hadn’t found time to visit. ‘He just had his first birthday. They grow so fast.’

‘You do have a great family,’ Andy told him sincerely.

‘Four sons!’ he exclaimed and flexed a flabby bicep. ‘Who’d have thought?’

They clinked their glasses, brought them to their lips and tipped them back. As ever, the whisky tasted good. Possibly a little too good. Andy felt his shoulders drop. This was a good idea, he decided. He’d been too tightly wound.

‘So how are things with the … S-C-V-P?’

‘SVCP,’ Andy corrected him.

Jimmy made a face. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine. Unless you factor in that I trained in an area that’s rapidly losing credibility.’

‘
Skata.
Is it that bad?’ He’d obviously heard some recent controversy.

‘Depends on who you ask, I guess,’ Andy replied. ‘Criminal profiling has taken a public beating lately. It hasn’t helped my case, that much is certain.’

Over the years Andy had strongly associated himself with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) and Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). He’d spent a lot of time in Quantico, learning the FBI methods of profiling pioneered by Robert K Ressler and John Douglas in the seventies. It wasn’t what he’d joined the police force to do, all those years earlier, but it was what unfolded for him, especially after apprehending the Stiletto Killer. Andy proved adept at homing in on the hardest killers to catch — the loners, the ones who killed randomly, who killed strangers, the sadistic ones or the psychopathic ones or the crazy ones who kept on killing until they were stopped. And the FBI program was the most promising. Now, years on, he’d staked his career on it and he could see those foundations crumbling before his eyes. There’d been some damning research released, most notably by a team of psychologists at the University of Liverpool, concluding that the FBI’s celebrated methods were worthless or worse, in some cases actually impeding investigations by sending officers after the wrong suspects. And there’d been a big piece in
The New Yorker
recently, criticising John Douglas, and James Brussel before him, essentially comparing the famed profilers to astrologers and psychics. Charlatans even.

Twenty odd years after the FBI’s criminal profiling methods reached critical popularity with
The Silence of the Lambs
, Andy had finally established himself as Australia’s top profiler exactly when the world decided they didn’t want one. What were the chances?

‘Fuck, man, I’m sorry,’ Jimmy said and meant it. ‘It’s not like anyone can fault what you’ve done, however you did it.’
He might not understand Andy’s process, exactly, but he was sincere. Jimmy knew how much his friend had sacrificed, personally and professionally. ‘I mean, you are the one who figured out Ed Brown. And that other fucker. That rapist.’

‘At the SVCP we use a combination of profiling methods, but …’ Andy trailed off.
But it doesn’t seem to matter. The future of the unit is uncertain.

My future is uncertain
, Andy thought.

Their conversation paused. They sipped from their drinks. The air felt heavy.

‘So what about this murder in Surry Hills?’ Jimmy began. ‘You think it’s a serial? That he’ll do it again?’

Andy nodded. ‘Given the opportunity, yes.’ That was the fear. Any kind of domestic murder was a tragedy, but with a killing like this there was the very real danger that it would happen again, possibly soon, after a cooling-off period of unknown duration. Crimes like this were rare, and driven by intensely sadistic compulsions, not by the more normal motivations of greed or jealousy. Andy believed the murder of Ms Hempsey was not the result of a personal relationship, and clearly that was Inspector Kelley’s suspicion, otherwise he would not have been called in.

‘So what about the husband? The boyfriend? He in the clear?’

Apparently Victoria Hempsey’s boyfriend hadn’t been on the scene long. He was an IT guy. No record. On the night of the murder he was with five colleagues at a popular restaurant in the city.

‘The husband died some time back. So far, Kelley doesn’t like the new boyfriend for it,’ Andy explained. ‘We’ll see. His alibi is good. Kelley did dig up a couple of sexual assaults that
might be related. It could give us more to go on, if we’re lucky. Do you remember a rape in Strawberry Hills years ago? The woman who was tied up? It was quite a brutal attack.’

Jimmy nodded. ‘The one where her shoes were stolen and we all thought it was the Stiletto Killer come back to haunt us?’

Andy flinched.

‘So this might be the same guy who did the rape?’ Jimmy continued, frowning and rubbing his lower lip with the side of one hand.

‘Could be. The same guy struck again a year later,’ he said of the Graney assault.

Jimmy nodded to himself, paused and nursed his drink. ‘Sick bastard. You got DNA?’

‘They found semen on the victim. They’re running it for a match to the DNA from the rape cases to see if there is a link,’ Andy explained. ‘Maybe they’ll get their results tomorrow, but it could take a few more days.’

It wasn’t like
CSI
, on which you could get DNA and solve a case in thirty minutes, minus commercials.

‘Sick fuckers,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ll never understand where these arseholes come from.’ He tilted his head and finished most of his glass, the ice clicking against his teeth. ‘Another?’ he offered.

To his own surprise, Andy still found himself resisting. He wanted to be sharp for Inspector Kelley in the morning. And for Dana, he realised. ‘No, thanks,’ he managed, though he knew he sounded weak. His friend raised an eyebrow, then went quiet for a while, rolling his empty tumbler from side to side on the tabletop, making wet crescents.

Something was on his mind.

‘Go on,’ Andy prodded.

Jimmy took a breath and exhaled loudly through his nose. He seemed to consider his words carefully. ‘Has there been any word on …
her
?’

Makedde.

Andy’s chest tightened at the mention of her and that thing in his chest squirmed. He shook his head. ‘Not a damn thing.’

‘I fucking hate to ask, you know, but
Jesus
. You still hearing from her dad?’

Andy nodded.

‘
Skata.
And he hasn’t heard anything from her?’

They both knew what that meant. It meant she was likely dead. What other explanation could there be, two months on? Why stay in Europe? Why do a runner on a hotel and disappear? Unless Makedde hadn’t planned it. Unless Jack Cavanagh was responsible. Before the news from Inspector Kelley, Andy had spent much of the morning making discreet enquiries about the case against Jack and Damien, a case that seemed to be going nowhere.

‘Have you closed the murder of that Thai girl?’ Andy asked.

‘Dumpster Girl?’ Jimmy said.

That was the unfortunate nickname she’d been stuck with, having been discovered in a reeking dumpster in Sydney, discarded like yesterday’s trash. After a few promising leads she was still a Jane Doe, unidentified, despite having a very unusual tattoo. The police didn’t know much about her, except that she was of Thai descent and had entered the country thanks to a questionable couple with links to sex trafficking, who had since been murdered. She had been sexually active and no older than fifteen. Probably somewhat younger.

‘Hunt seems satisfied that her overdose was the fault of
Simon Aston, that mate of Damien Cavanagh. He says he is convinced that the Cavanaghs knew nothing about her.’

‘You don’t seem convinced.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Jimmy slammed a fist into the table, and their glasses rattled. ‘If he was
anyone
except Damien Cavanagh, he’d have been brought in for questioning. He’d have been a strong fucking suspect, let me tell you. You know what his reputation is like. Everyone knows he goes for the young ones. He’s a fucked-up, privileged trust-fund psychopath. That’s what he is. And she was maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, and she died
in their fucking house
, that fuck-off expensive waterfront mansion of theirs. What do you think she was doing there? An illegal immigrant like that? If she was some rich Australian family’s pretty white daughter, maybe somebody out there would give a shit, but no one does.’

Jimmy was practically frothing. He was usually laid-back, to a fault. In over a decade of knowing him, Andy doubted he’d seen him so furious about anything before. Somewhere along the track, this case had awakened something in him.

‘As it is, Simon Aston has been pegged for it,’ he continued. ‘It can’t be proved, of course, but Hunt doesn’t want to look further. Simon didn’t exactly seem like a stand-up guy, true, but if he was still alive, I’m sure he’d have had a thing or two to say about it.’

Dead men could not defend themselves.

‘And it doesn’t explain the video of Damien with her. A video that went missing somehow. It all stinks.’