Covet (11 page)

‘My place is just half a block that way,’ Senior Constable Karen Mahoney said.

She pointed out the window of her beat-up Datsun in the direction of a slightly decrepit-looking block of flats. Karen and Makedde had spent the past ten minutes speeding around the back roads of the infamous Kings Cross. Makedde, strapped into the passenger seat, white-knuckling on the fast corners, was convinced that they must surely be turning into the wrong side of the road at every intersection. Kings Cross, once renowned as the domain of red-light entrepreneurialism and questionable ‘massage parlours’, had over the years attracted a slew of trendy bars and restaurants, not to mention a lot of tourists. It was home turf for Karen, so it featured heavily in her Sydney refresher tour for Mak.

After her unexpectedly unsettling phone call to her father, Mak was happy to get out of the hotel room and blow off some steam. Karen was turning out to be excellent company, even if her driving made Mak’s teeth chatter.

‘Yesterday must have been a huge relief for you,’ the young flame-haired senior constable said, gazing intently at Mak as she spun the steering wheel deftly with one hand.

‘Yes…a relief.’

Since the conversation with her father, Mak’s mind had been ticking over furiously. She had not yet broached the subject with Karen. Nor had she spilled the beans on what had happened between her and Andy, though she figured that, like most women, Karen could probably tell. The effect of good, drought-breaking sex was as obvious as a new haircut.

‘I can’t believe that he confessed in court,’ Mahoney said. ‘It sure took me off guard.’

‘Yeah. I heard that…uh…there were some leads to do with the case that are being followed up today. Do you know anything about that?’ Mak asked, fishing.

‘Come on. You don’t really want to talk about that right now, do you?’ Karen replied. She smiled. ‘But it’s true they might be investigating those other admissions. Nothing for you to worry about. If you like I’ll see if I can find out something this afternoon when I get to work, but it’s still a boys’ club sometimes, Mak. I don’t think I hear half of what’s really going on. Hey, see that place?’ She pointed again, this time at a balcony area attached to a hotel. ‘Hugo’s Lounge. Twenty-dollar martinis. The nightlife is really on fire though. These strips along here and on Oxford Street in Darlinghurst have the most
amazing
bars. Something for everyone.’

Mak smiled to herself. Karen had successfully changed the subject.

‘You won’t believe this, but I came here with Loulou one night on my last trip to Australia.’

‘Oh, now that I
can
believe.’

Mak realised that with her mullet and her fishnets, Loulou looked like a Kings Cross wild child. She seemed to have got on quite well with Karen. Perhaps they had struck up a friendship? ‘No, I mean I came to one of these dodgy back-alley places to a photo studio,’ she explained.

‘You’re kidding me. For work?’

‘Not exactly,’ Mak said. ‘Let’s just say I was young and stupid and more than a little frustrated with the way Catherine’s case was being handled. I thought I knew it all. I figured I’d try and make myself useful by sussing out this sleazy photographer who I thought might have had some contact with her. Loulou was my back-up, waiting outside for me.’

They had rehearsed an emergency scenario in which Loulou would burst in, make a kafuffle pretending to be Mak’s jealous lesbian lover and drag her away to safety. As it played out, Mak had got into an altercation with the photographer and escaped on her own, no back-up required.

‘Are you for real!’ Karen squealed. ‘Why you little amateur detective, you! Wait…I remember this!’ Her jaw hung open, recognition spreading across her face. Mak wished she would pay more attention to the road. Karen seemed to be engaging with Mak far more than she was with the traffic. ‘That was you?’ Karen asked. She threw her hands up. ‘Of
course
it was you. Rick Filles, right?’ Now she fell over the steering wheel, laughing. ‘Oh shit, that is too funny. They sent
me
in there. It was useless. Imagine
me
trying to pass myself off as a model!’

Mak had never put two and two together before. Karen Mahoney was the one they had sent in unsuccessfully to check out Rick Filles before Mak had got the crazy idea to go and do it herself. It was hard to imagine now.

They laughed uncontrollably until Karen had to pull over to the side of the road in tears. After much guffawing, the two finally settled down.

‘Karen,’ Mak said, coming over serious. ‘I’m thinking of postponing my flight.’

‘I thought you might be.’

‘I’m that transparent, am I?’

Karen just smiled. ‘Maybe. So come on, where are we going for lunch?’

‘This is your jurisdiction. It’s your call.’

‘There’s a famous place just around the corner, Beef and Bourbon, or Beefsteak something. I can never remember what it’s called. It’s been refurbished recently. It’s better than it sounds. Trust me.’

‘Deal,’ Mak agreed.

They pulled off down the road again, turning back onto the main strip. Makedde was familiar with the bright neon signage:
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS! Open 24 Hours!
Some things never changed. Sex shops. Newsagents. Backpacker hostels. Her eyes passed over the window of a modest little café among a cluster of sushi and karaoke bars and she did a double take.

‘Hey!’ Makedde pointed across the road, beaming. ‘That’s Andy!’

‘Speak of the devil,’ Karen said, slowing the car.

‘How can this city be so small? This happened before with Loulou at Starbucks. Can we stop for a sec?’

‘Sure.’ Karen pulled into a parking space. ‘Fifteen-minute parking,’ she warned. ‘Should I find a different spot?’

‘No probs. I just want to say a quick…’

Makedde’s words trailed off.

It was Andy Flynn alright. Unmistakable. He was sitting at a table right in the window of the café. But he wasn’t alone. Mak took a few steps across the street towards him, and as she watched, Andy Flynn, the man she had been making love to only hours before, the man she was thinking of postponing her flight home for, the man she had opened her heart to one more time, leaned across the table and embraced an attractive young blonde. Right there. As she watched. It was clear that Andy and the woman were more than friends. Makedde stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the road. A car barely swerved in time to avoid her. Karen snatched her arm and dragged her to the side of the street.

‘What’s gotten into you?’ Karen began, but then she too saw Andy and the woman. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said simply. ‘Carol.’

‘What?’

‘It’s Carol. The nurse.’

Makedde felt a wave of nausea race up through her body from her toes to her scalp and back down
again. A sour lump formed in her throat. She wanted to retch.

He’s still with Carol…

‘Oops,’ she managed to say with a mouth that felt stiff and awkward. She tried not to betray the true depth of her pain, but she knew Karen would see straight through it. She tried a smile on, but it didn’t fit, and she ended up wearing a confused frown as she retreated mechanically towards Karen’s car. She had to look at her feet and concentrate on her steps
…one step…two steps…

‘Oh, Mak…’ she could hear Karen saying. The policewoman was watching her face closely, much the same way she had the first time they met, with Catherine dead and bloody in the grass nearby, and Mak sitting with a styrofoam cup of coffee in a state of numbing shock, surrounded by police cars. Karen was shaking her head now. ‘Oh, Mak…’

If Karen didn’t already know what had happened between Mak and Andy after dinner the night before, she could no doubt guess now from the shattered look on Makedde’s face. It was obvious that something intimate had gone on between them, something that had led Mak to thoughts of commitment, a relationship. This was not the same Makedde who had been so cool with Andy for the first few days. This Mak had been blatantly love-struck.

Until now.

Do you never learn?

Karen was speaking, saying kind things, understanding things, but Mak was no longer listening.

‘Come on, let’s get this show on the road,’ Jimmy Cassimatis grumbled. They were barely out of the gates and he was already impatient.

The unmarked car slowly made its way down the driveway out of Long Bay Gaol to Anzac Parade as per Ed’s instructions. Jimmy was in the passenger seat with Ed Brown directly behind him, an arrangement that left Jimmy feeling curiously ill at ease even though the prisoner was safely cuffed at both wrists and ankles. Hoosier was at the steering wheel. Senior Sergeant Lewis was beside Ed in the back, behind the driver. Jimmy couldn’t help but admire the Senior Sergeant’s dedication to his job. With his rank, he would have normally sat up front. But no. He wanted to take Ed around personally. That was a good call. An unmarked forensic van edged along behind them, ready to dig and examine and bring someone’s decomposed remains home. Behind them the audiovisual unit had their own truck, complete with soundman and camera operator to record Ed’s directions and the exhumations. Jimmy knew that Lewis had fought for the fourth car, another unmarked vehicle with
two more police officers that was cruising behind the audiovisual van. There were always grumbles about using up manpower, but Senior Sergeant Lewis had managed to get it done, thanks mostly to Ed’s profile. Vast teams of helicopters, armoured cars, sharpshooting snipers and SWAT squads were only dispatched in big American movies; in real life the average multiple killer usually had only a few officers with him on an excursion like this. Any more than four vehicles and they may as well announce themselves as some kind of cavalcade.

So they had extra manpower, they were taking precautions, they had time and Lewis was obviously taking a special interest. That was good. And while it shitted Jimmy that Andy wasn’t there, he understood Kelley’s reasons and practically had to agree with him. As professional as his partner was, in the case of Ed Brown things had become very personal indeed. It was probably for the best that he was not sitting in the car with the man. It was only an exhumation, not a day of investigation. Andy’s profiling expertise would not come into play.

The only problem as Jimmy saw it was that they were fundamentally handicapped by the conditions of the deal that had been struck with Ed’s defence. The prisoner would show them the way
as they went
—and he wasn’t going to say a peep otherwise. That was the deal. While it certainly wouldn’t be the first time such an arrangement had been made, it pissed Jimmy off no end. Ed’s hotshot lawyer could talk all he wanted about doing favours and having rights, but Jimmy thought this show-and-tell
shit was sick. Ed would get off on it for years.

A brunette teenager.

A young woman with black hair.

That was all Ed would offer about the young women he had killed. He didn’t know the women’s names, their families, their backgrounds. He didn’t care. They had never been ‘people’ to him, only something to be used and tossed away. The vague descriptions of the victims that he had given matched several women listed in the missing persons reports for the area four years prior, which Ed had indicated was the approximate time frame. Now it was a matter of bringing them home and matching up dental records and any DNA they could get their hands on.

They drove slowly along Anzac Parade. ‘Where to?’ Hoosier asked.

There was a long pause while the prisoner considered his response. ‘Could you, ah…please keep following Anzac Parade this way?’ A tilt of his ginger head. ‘Yeah…this way please.’

Ed’s voice was distinctive and high-pitched. It never failed to give Jimmy the creeps. He’d heard it in his dreams periodically over the previous eighteen months, Angie having to wake him up to tell him he was having another nightmare, digging an elbow into his ribs:
‘Honey, you’re talking in your sleep again.’
Perhaps that was why having Ed sit right behind him in the car set him on edge. Jimmy knew he had to play the usual game—
make them relax, make them like you, make them feel comfortable
and they’ll tell you everything
—but he was not for one minute relaxed himself. He had been with Andy when they arrested Ed Brown during his assault on Makedde Vanderwall and that scene had joined the ranks of those which had burned themselves irreversibly into Jimmy’s memory—the infant in the car crash at Wollongong, his first fatal domestic, his first floater. There was a special spot for Ed Brown in Jimmy’s nightmares. And now the guy was sitting right behind him.

Does he even recognise me?

‘Can you do any better than that for us, Ed? Can you give us a location?’ Jimmy pried.

‘I’ll show you. Sorry,’ Ed Brown said meekly.

Sorry my arse
, Jimmy thought.
Sorry my frickin’ arse.

‘Please go on, go on driving, ah, and I will show you.’

They had passed the University of New South Wales and the National Institute of Dramatic Art and they were still driving.

‘Where next?’

‘Please, ah…keep on.’

Ed seemed so damned submissive.
Is he on some kind of meds?
The guards had not said anything about that but maybe it was standard procedure over at Long Bay for freaks like him. Was Ed really as meek as he appeared? It was doubtful. Jimmy’s father had a saying: ‘If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t know a thing.’ The Cassimatis men did not have great intellect or status or charm, but they did have street smarts. Jimmy had been
blessed with good instincts—maybe not about women, or politics, or what was required at a polite dinner party, but good instincts for the work. That made him a good cop. Although he wouldn’t admit it publicly, he knew damn well that he knew nothing about Ed. And in that one way, he was probably the smartest cop in the car.

‘Okay, ah, turn right here please. Ah, I think this is the way.’

That fucking voice.

‘Ah, yes, right turn at the next lights.’

‘Mate, would you like something to eat, maybe? A meat pie or anything? Want us to stop and get you something?’ Hoosier piped up.

Jimmy wanted to smack him.

Over the years he’d bought plenty of guys beers and meat pies and chips and God knows what else to get them comfortable and compliant. Standard procedure, really. But this was not the guy to play that shit with. Jimmy did not give one ounce of piss about making Ed Brown comfortable. There would be no sucking up to this guy on his watch. He could show them where to dig and then he could go back to his little cell and rot in there forever.

Lewis, who was in charge of the show, said nothing.

‘Let’s just drive, shall we?’ Jimmy suggested. He folded his arms and looked out the window.

Ed led them along some back roads, winding this way and that, pausing once in a while to get his bearings and then speaking up weakly in that creepy girlie voice of his. Jimmy wondered again if
he was just yanking their chain. He was tempted to call Andy to tell him that the whole deal was a heap of shit just to make them look like idiots.

And then the words were finally spoken.

‘This is the spot,’ Ed declared.

They stopped the car. The forensic van stopped. The audiovisual van stopped. The other unmarked car stopped behind them. ‘We’re here,’ Hoosier announced on the two-way.

‘Which spot?’

Ed nodded toward a petrol station across the road.

Jimmy blinked. ‘That is a
petrol station
,’ he said, stating the obvious in case no one else had noticed.

‘Ed, are you saying that you buried the girl’s body at a petrol station?’ Hoosier asked, gentle as ever.

‘Ah, this is it. Ah, yeah,’ came the high-pitched voice. ‘That ahh…that wasn’t there four years ago. Ahh, empty lot. This space was empty. I buried the girl near a tree, right there.’ He pointed in the direction of the pumps. ‘Yeah, this is the intersection. I know it was here. This is the spot. Yeah, ah ha.’

‘
Skata!
You’ve got to be kidding me.’ Jimmy slammed his palms against the dashboard. ‘This is a fuckin’ joke.’

‘Hold on, Cassimatis.’ Lewis got out of the car, and stood a few metres away. He looked to Ed waiting in the car, and then looked back at the garage with a frown, probably trying to decide what to do.

‘Ed, are you sure this is the spot? You know we can’t be of much help if you aren’t telling the truth.’

‘I am telling the truth. I…ah…ah, it was here. Yeah. She is buried here.’ Ed gestured near the pumps. His hands were still cuffed, so he could not point. ‘There were trees and brush there before. Ahh. Brunette girl. Young. Yeah. I buried her pretty deep.’

‘Okay,’ Lewis said, tense with restraint, standing alongside the car. ‘You are sure it is this exact spot, on this corner?’

Ed nodded.

‘Sir, do you want to take him out of the car and see what he can point out?’ Hoosier asked.

Going through the rigmarole of leading him around the garage in his cuffs to point vaguely at some areas of concrete was pointless, and would attract precisely the kind of attention that Kelley wanted to avoid.

‘Well, we can’t go digging up a petrol station now, can we?’

And with that, Lewis got back in and slammed the door. Hoosier drove them back towards Long Bay, the other vehicles trailing behind them. Jimmy could feel Lewis seething. It was one thing to demand that much manpower, it was quite another to go through all that and come back empty-handed.

They had to check out Ed’s story before they went any further. Lewis would be extremely disappointed.

‘Back to the Bay,’ Jimmy said into the two-way.

Barely a word was spoken on the drive.