Covet (21 page)

Makedde Vanderwall gazed with quiet excitement out of the window at a new and foreign world.

Hong Kong.

The nine-hour flight from Sydney had been the red-eye dash, and Mak felt gritty and unrested. But it was a shiny new world outside, and she had already begun taking it in while she stretched her legs and circled her wrists to rid herself of what she called the ‘economy cramps’. The remarkably clean and efficient airport express shuttled her towards central Hong Kong at breakneck pace, travelling through a stunning, yet somehow eerie dawn landscape. The city was awash with light morning mist, painting everything in pale watercolour tones. It clung to the expanse of water off the shoreline, and the inland was pierced by grey apartment buildings stretching as far as she could see, like Lego blocks stacked one upon another, and side by side by side by side, each with hundreds of identical square windows and identical square air-conditioning units. Every window held the outlook of another life, yet the only hint of individuality was in the various plants hanging off
the tiny sills and in the infinite variety of trousers, shirts and stockings that hung limply from makeshift clotheslines.

Mak began to get a sense of the lives of the seven million residents of the city of Hong Kong. They clearly did not live with the same sense of space that she knew. Everything was big in North America, she reflected: big cars, big houses, big people—but not here. She looked seawards again, and the mist began to clear. The water was speckled with hundreds of fishing trawlers, cargo ships and the occasional traditional Chinese junk, dwarfed by the modern freighters anchored nearby. An even denser city area was visible in the ghostly distance.

Makedde planned to stay in Hong Kong one week, hopefully a prosperous week, before catching a flight home. If everything went well, she might get more work after the Ely Garner show. She would be rooming in the area called Mid Levels in a models’ apartment organised by her agency. She would pay her modest rent after Tuesday’s catwalk show. That suited her fine. She only hoped there weren’t too many other models there. Models’ apartments were usually cramped, and sometimes uncomfortable, depending on the personalities present.

Makedde had not travelled to Asia before, because for many years there were limited modelling possibilities for very tall models like herself, and now the prospect of exploring its famed gateway was a welcome escape. It distanced her from all that she wished to forget, took her
away from all the death that seemed to stalk her. To every face, she would be a stranger, inconsequential and without scandal. Her eyes would rest on each sight anew, and nothing would remind her of horrors past.

And after a week of being a no-name foreigner Mak would be ready to return to Canada and face the fall-out of what had happened in Sydney. Her father would no doubt still be steaming. She would try to play it down for the sake of his health, but she doubted she could keep anything from him considering his contacts.

Oh Dad, please try and take it easy…

‘Just promise me you’ll try to take it easy.’

Andy stood up immediately, glad to be out of the hot seat.

‘Detective Flynn…’ Dr Fox gave him a raised eyebrow when he didn’t respond.

‘I will. I will take it easy,’ he said.

If he had given in the night before, the outcome of the evaluation would have been less than favourable, he knew. After his pre-trial jitters, there was nothing left to drink in the house, not even mouthwash. And he had successfully tossed away the Jack Daniels he’d bought in Double Bay. That had not been easy, nor had resisting the urge to jump in his car and find the nearest bottle shop. But he’d done it. That was something. That was a step. And here he was, clean for his evaluation, and Dr Fox had no reason to believe the alcohol was a problem any more.

‘And lay off the booze,’ she said. ‘You won’t have any liver in a few years if you don’t cut back.’

He nodded sheepishly.

Dr Louise Fox wasn’t bad, for a shrink. She would do the right thing by Andy, he was sure.
Now Kelley would have to let him take on the case.

‘Promise me you’ll keep tabs on yourself. We can’t have you disappearing on a drinking binge like you did when your wife—’

‘Thank you. I got it.’

‘Don’t underestimate—’

‘I got it, I got it,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Louise. I appreciate it.’

‘No problem,’ she said, and shook her head. She waved a hand in his direction. ‘Go on, get out of here.’

Andy was relieved. Evaluations and counselling were standard procedure after a critical incident or death, but they were always nerve-racking nonetheless. And if the guys found out somehow that you had to go back for another session you never heard the end of it. Jimmy, for one, had never failed to pester the crap out of anyone seeing the police psychologist, making loony faces and constantly quoting lines from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
…‘If that’s what being crazy is, then I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko.’

Jimmy.

Dammit Jimmy.

The best thing Andy could do was throw himself into his job, and for the moment try to forget about Jimmy and Mak. Having work to focus on was a godsend. After all, what else did he have now apart from work? If he stayed clear-headed and used all he’d trained for, Andy could crack the case, and
that’s exactly what he intended to do. He was going to hunt Ed down and bring him in. That was it.

Andy hunkered down at his desk and read for the second time the stack of transcripts of Ed Brown’s mother being interviewed after her son’s escape. Employing what he had learned about statement analysis from his time at the FBI academy at Quantico, Virginia, he went over every word for inconsistencies or unusual phrasing that might reveal that she had been deceptive or was withholding information. So far, he was uninspired. The main things that jumped out from the interview were that Mrs Brown was a woman who hated the police and hated authority, and, most alarmingly, that she was probably more upset that her son was acting without her involvement than she was about the heinous nature of his crimes. But Andy already knew what she was like from the first time he had met her. What he wanted to know now was whether she knew something important that she wasn’t telling them. He could not yet be certain.

Assuming that Ed needed an accomplice to plant the homemade bomb that aided in his escape, the conundrum for Andy Flynn was who it could possibly have been. Ed was a distinctly unpopular guy, not a charmer like Bundy or a first-class manipulator like Manson. Ed was smart enough, but socially challenged, and his speech
problems and diminutive frame wouldn’t have helped in his dealings with others. Andy was sure that Ed Brown had few, if any, old friends to speak of, and he wasn’t the type who would be able to make new friends easily. Who would possibly stick their neck out for him? What kind of person could he threaten, pay off or entice to come to his aid? And if his escape was not organised before he went into remand, how were the arrangements made from within the confines of the high-security prison?

So Ed’s peculiar relationship with his mother was the focus of Andy’s enquiries. Despite evidence of severe neglect in Ed’s childhood during Mrs Brown’s years as a single mother and drug-affected prostitute, and despite the fact that young Ed may have lit the fire that led to his mother losing her legs, Mrs Brown was probably the closest person to him in the world. The two were strangely co-dependent.

She was Andy’s prime suspect for helping Ed escape. Though her disability meant that she could not possibly have planted the bomb herself, she might very well have had a hand in its making, and found someone to hide it in Banks Battery. If anyone knew something of Ed’s whereabouts, it would have to be her.

Ed Brown and his mother made up one hell of a family unit. Ed had been living at home when he was arrested, and his mum hadn’t moved house since, despite the violent Polaroids, fetish magazines, severed toes and scraps of human flesh that had been found in her son’s bedroom. Any
normal parent would not be able to live in a home where her son had kept victims’ body parts and souvenirs of murder and mutilation, let alone sleep at night in close proximity. But Mrs Brown was evidently a unique woman. She seemed unfazed by the nature of her son’s crimes and the evidence against him. That would set off alarm bells for any detective. Her apartment was under surveillance twenty-four hours a day now.

Unfortunately, Ed had not yet gone home to his mother.

Andy turned to say something to his partner.

‘What was that…?’ He stopped. His throat tightened. It was so damned automatic to expect Jimmy to be there. It was like trying to reach for something and remembering that you didn’t have any arms. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

‘Hey, Andy.’

Startled, Andy opened his eyes and found Karen Mahoney standing over him.

‘You okay?’

He nodded.

‘How was the shrink?’ she asked.

‘Dr Fox gave me the all clear.’

‘I figured as much.’

‘And how was Long Bay?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, good,’ she said. ‘We reinterviewed all the staff who had contact with Ed. They are adamant that he didn’t have any connections with any of the other prisoners. He had been isolated for his own protection from the start. As we thought.’

‘Yeah.’ Linking Ed to a cellmate who had recently been released was the kind of brilliant lead they had hoped for, but they had already known that the possibility was beyond remote. ‘And visits?’

‘Records say his mum visited once a fortnight religiously.’

‘What about the nose man, uh…George Fowler, the building superintendent?’

Andy had sensed from the first time he met George Fowler that he was not simply the superintendent of the apartment block where the Browns lived; he was intimately involved with Ed’s mother and was very protective of her. Their body language spoke of an illicit affair, despite Fowler’s ongoing marriage. That made him a suspect in aiding Ed’s escape. How much would he do for Mrs Brown and her son? Fowler had been endowed with an unusually large nose, which had reddened and swelled with drink and age. It now resembled a rotting tomato. Hence his nickname within the task force: Nose Man.

‘He usually came with her. Other than them, it was strictly lawyers and shrinks.’

‘Popular guy.’

‘Tell me about it. We’ve scrutinised all the prison officers, the records, visits, times, dates…His mum still seems the best suspect. And this Fowler guy.’ Mahoney put her hands on her hips and flicked her head to the side to get a red curl out of her eyes. ‘Anything juicy in the transcripts?’

‘So far, nothing I didn’t pick up originally,’ Andy said, disappointed.

‘What are you looking for again? How does that work?’

‘Statement analysis is fairly simple. You’re already familiar with body language and interviewing techniques, Mahoney. Statement analysis with transcripts like these allows you to remove the words themselves from all of the other influences in the interview to see if they reveal more than the interviewee intended. In this case, we already know that Mrs Brown is hostile and uncooperative from her previous actions.’

‘Yeah, she’s a
bee-atch
,’ Mahoney said.

He laughed.

‘Looking at this statement, I have no doubt that she would not be bothered by guilt if she helped Ed escape custody. She would happily lie if she felt like it. What I’m trying to discover through statement analysis is whether or not that is the case, or if she knows more about his escape than she has told us.’

Mahoney pulled up a chair. ‘I know you’ve told me this stuff before but can you give me an example? What’s the pronoun thing again?’

Andy flipped through the statement on his desk. ‘So far I have less than I was hoping for. But here’s an interesting answer.’ He pointed to one of the early pages of the transcript. ‘She is asked here whether she would phone the police if her son contacted her, and she says, “We’d do the right thing.”’

Mahoney nodded vaguely, unsure of the significance.

Andy explained. ‘There are two main things going on here. The first is the use of the pronoun “we”. She is not personalising her answer. She says “we” and yet the question was asked of her, and she was not accompanied by anyone else during the interview. She should have said “I”. People use “we” when they are trying to distance themselves from what they are saying. The other time people use “we” is when they are feeling kinship with someone, consciously or subconsciously. In cases of false rape allegations, for instance, investigators may become suspicious if the alleged victim refers to herself and the alleged rapist as “we”. An actual victim would not refer to her attacker using such an intimate pronoun.’

Mahoney nodded, impressed.

‘In this case,’ he pointed to the page, ‘it indicates that Mrs Brown probably thinks of George Fowler as a partner of sorts, and she is trying to fob her answer off on him by saying “we” even when he isn’t there. The other important thing here is that she did not in fact answer the question. She says, “We’d do the right thing,” but what is the right thing in her mind? For us to be confident that she would call us if her son contacted her, she would have to have answered either with a simple “yes”, or said something like, “I will tell you if I hear anything from him.”’

Karen ventured an opinion. ‘Her saying “we” could mean that she and Nose Man have somehow collaborated with respect to Ed already? That when it comes to her son, she and Nose Man stand together?’

‘You’re on the right track, Mahoney. I can give you another classic example that you’ve probably heard before. When pressed in an interview, someone might say, “I am trying to be as honest as possible.” That sounds like they are cooperating, doesn’t it?’ Andy waited for Karen to jump in with reasons of why it didn’t. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘What do I think about that statement? Well, um…’

‘Well, for starters,’ Andy explained, ‘the person who says that is not saying that they are being honest. They are saying that they are “trying” to be honest. The “trying” implies failure. The “as possible” implies a limitation to the amount of honesty they are willing to give.’

Karen nodded.

‘And that, Mahoney, is the end of today’s lesson. Now tell me something. There’s got to be some new lead that you picked up at Long Bay while I was busy having my head shrunk. Come on, what were your impressions?’ he pressed.

She bit her lip and rolled her eyes skywards as she tried to recall the details. ‘No one had anything much new to say. They all seem pretty relieved that the responsibility of the escape doesn’t lie on their own shoulders, frankly. I can’t say as I blame them.’

‘What about the ones who had the most contact with him? They had to have opinions. Did they see anything coming? Were they suspicious that his mother was up to something? Was he up at odd hours planning?’

They’d found very little in his cell, which was a disappointment. No bomb-making plans, no nothing. Ed had been careful. Too damned careful.

Mahoney did some mugging again. She chewed the inside of her lip. ‘Well, actually, something that one of the guards said sort of surprised me,’ she finally offered.

Andy’s ears pricked up. ‘That’s what I want to hear. What was it?’

‘One of the guards said that Ed slept really weird hours, like five to midnight or something. So yeah, he actually was up at odd times during the night.’ She flipped open her notepad and flicked through the pages.

‘Five in the afternoon till midnight?’

Ed had worked the night shift at the Glebe morgue before he was fired for stealing autopsy tools. Perhaps he was accustomed to being a night dweller? Nevertheless, they were odd hours to keep. Andy couldn’t rule out that it could be significant.

‘That’s what this guy said,’ Karen explained. ‘Pete Stevens works the shift from noon to midnight. Ed would go off to sleep right after his meal. Stevens didn’t mind; it made his job easier,’ he said.

Andy could imagine.

‘He said Suzie Harpin was around for most of Ed’s waking hours. He said they seemed to get on.’

‘Get on?’ Andy asked. ‘They’re the words he used, “seemed to get on”?’

‘Uh, I think so.’ She checked her notes. ‘Yeah.’

Andy sifted through his file of interview transcripts. ‘What was the name? Harpin?’

‘Ms Suzie Harpin.’

‘Here she is.’ Andy pulled her information and statement from his file. ‘Thirty-nine years old, single, never married, no children. Been working in corrections for most of her adult life…’

He silently skimmed through her statement.

‘What about his old work? Did he have friends at Glebe morgue?’ Mahoney asked.

‘Wait a sec,’ Andy said, raising a hand. He ignored her question and reread a section of the interview:

DET. HUNT: Did you notice anything suspicious?

HARPIN: Not really, no.

DET. HUNT: Not really?

HARPIN: I mean no.

DET. HUNT: I understand you had some conversations with Ed Brown during some of your shifts?

HARPIN: Oh. We kept odd hours.

DET. HUNT: How do you mean?

HARPIN: I mean to say, I worked the night shift. Everyone else was asleep.