Fall (21 page)

‘So she was kidnapped, hooded, beaten with a stick. Maybe a bit of experimental strangling. Maybe. It's a bit of a stretch, Hooky.'

‘Look at the date of death, though. This is the Park Strangler's first victim,' Amy said. ‘If you look at the whole picture,
it fits with what we know of the killer's tactics now, now that she's further along in her training. I think she hooded Jill's face for the same reason she now beats the face beyond recognition. Because she's trying to disguise the victim from herself, allow the victim to be whoever she is fantasising she's killing.'

Again, the visualisation of the killer as female. The recognition of the facial injuries as a type of revenge fantasy. Both Eden and Amy had marked the killings as the work of a woman on a woman, a living out of some attack that could, for whatever reason, not take place in reality.

‘This is what I reckon. She started with an instrument to inflict her wounds,' Amy said. ‘But it didn't suit the fantasy. It didn't feel right, and it killed the victim before she had a chance to get really personal – to strangle her. The hood wasn't right either. It interrupted the original fantasy. It was distracting. So when she got to Ivana Lyon she dumped the weapon and the hood and she was going at it bare handed.'

It made sense. There's plenty of research into violent fantasies that become realities. As homicide detectives, it's our job to keep updated on it all, to read the thick intellectual bile that comes out of university psychology departments trying to tell us in too many words why murderers do what they do. Violent fantasies can come from plenty of places, but most often they're the result of some kind of trauma. A person experiences a terrible trauma, either sudden or prolonged, and begins to relive the trauma over and over as a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. The trauma goes around and around and around in her mind, becoming more and more tangible every time it's revisited. Sometimes it can be the result of something as innocuous as living through an earthquake. The re-visualising of the earthquake becomes so real
that sufferers swear they feel the ground shaking beneath them. Kids who were sexually abused can feel their abuser's hands on them. War vets have auditory hallucinations of gunfire, mates crying for help. It takes a lot of therapy to get yourself out of it. It took fast and hard therapy to make sure I didn't become gun-shy when Eden's brother Eric shot me. If you recognise the potential of a trauma when it happens, and immediately treat it, you can sometimes stave off the effects of PTSD.

Very rarely, sufferers of a traumatic event begin to add on to the revisualisation of the traumatic event. The child abusers see themselves being abused, and they extend the abuse out, turn and twist the fantasy until they become abusers themselves. The victim of workplace bullying revisits the bullying and adds himself calmly taking an AK-47 out from under his desk to the fantasy, blowing his colleagues away one by one. The fantasy, an involuntary thing, starts becoming voluntary. Enjoyable.

Ted Bundy mused in one of his last interviews before his execution that it was violent pornography, viewed very young, that had made him what he was. He hadn't realised it at the time, but his young, innocent mind had been violated by what he'd seen, and the reliving of the violence through the torture and killing of his victims was just the natural progression of his childhood trauma. I don't know about that. Bundy was an arrogant man, full of excuses. But the theory was popular. Violence breeding violence.

What had happened to the Sydney Parks Strangler? Who was she killing when she killed these girls?

‘Where'd we find this victim?'

‘Bradfield Park, Kirribilli,' Hooky said. ‘She was under an old blanket, up against one of the bridge walls. People thought
she was just a homeless person. Curled on her side, foetal position. It was three days before the smell was enough to start bothering people. Night-time boot camp groups had been exercising and jogging around the park, not a hundred metres from where she lay.'

‘Completely covered up?'

‘Yeah.'

It went with the theory that this was the killer's first victim. Ivana had been partly covered and hidden near bushes. Minerva had been more obvious again. The killer was getting bolder. Starting to ‘come out' to us. Reveal herself to her audience.

‘Was she in exercise gear?'

‘Tracksuit.'

‘Shit.' I felt the muscles gather at the base of my skull, preparing for the headache of a lifetime. ‘Shit. Fuck. Balls.'

The difference between three victims and two in a homicide case might not seem like much on the surface of it, but in the public eye, it's huge. The first murder stirs people. The second unsettles them further. It's at this point that people can hang on to the hope that there isn't a serial killer on the loose – that in fact there's no connection between the two victims and any link police might be pointing to could be a fluke. They don't alter their behaviour. Sometimes, it doesn't even make front-page news – particularly if there's an election or a terrorist attack or some other major event. But whenever a link can be made between three homicide victims, killed separately, that's the signal for a media firestorm. For the public panic. For the condemnation of the lead detectives and their lack of progress, no matter how much progress has been made. The fact that Jill Noble was victim number one and we hadn't been right onto it was equally bad news.

I zipped up Jill's body bag and closed the freezer as though by containing Jill's body I could contain what it meant. ‘This is on the down-low until further notice, Hook.' I pointed at her face so she knew I was serious. She shrugged.

‘Good luck keeping this under wraps,' Hooky said. ‘You know. I know. Carrie at the desk knows. The victim's family will talk to the media, and they'll know.'

‘We can try,' I said. I took out my phone and called Eden.

 

As I was putting my keys into the door of my car I heard Caroline Eckhart's voice behind me. For a moment, I had to take stock of where I was. Turning and seeing her there, outside the low brown brick building that housed the morgue, was bizarre. There were no cameras in tow, but she was still wearing that running gear – the midnight-black Catwoman suit and blazing lime-green shoes. She had her hands in the front pockets of a shimmering black windcheater and I could see the outline of her knuckles and a phone. I wondered if she was recording me.

‘Frank,' she said. ‘Can we talk?'

‘No,' I said. ‘No, thanks. I think I've had enough front pages.'

I unlocked the car and gestured to Amy. She didn't get in. Unlike kids to want to be right where the drama is.

‘I just want to talk.'

‘There'll be no talking, witch. Begone!' I waved my arm. ‘You have no power here!'

Hooky sniggered and got into the car.

‘Why has George Hacker been released from custody?'

‘Who?'

‘George Hacker.' Caroline widened her eyes, scoffed theatrically, as though working up a crowd that hadn't arrived yet. ‘The one and only lead your people have had on the Strangler so far.'

‘Try to keep up. George Hacker is nothing but a creep. He's not the … Strangler. God, it even hurts me to say the word. George can barely tie his own shoelaces. But speaking of being a creep, did you know that the legal definition of stalking in New South Wales includes one or more acts of unwanted following, or a similar intimidatory behaviour, such as the unwanted loitering near, watching or approaching a person? I looked that up last night, in case this happened again.' I pointed to her, to myself. ‘Impressive, aren't I?'

I could see Caroline's camera crew getting out of their cars on the corner. They'd struggled to find parking spaces, and she'd taken the opportunity to snag me before I drove away. I got into the car and started it up.

‘Why are you visiting the morgue today, Frank?' She tapped on my window. ‘Are Ivana and Minerva here?'

As I drove away, I felt my stomach sinking. Ivana and Minerva were still at the police morgue. If Caroline went and started hassling Carrie at the reception desk, her journalist buddies might be able to wrangle out of the woman which lab we'd visited and who was there. There was nothing I could legally do to stop them. News of a third victim would be on the television by the evening.

‘Who is that chick?' Amy sneered.

‘Nobody,' I said. ‘She's a dead-set nobody.'

Hades thought the dog would probably die. He wasn't sure, with dogs. As a child, living in a brothel in the backstreets of Darlinghurst, he'd had plenty of birds die in his hands from running into windows, being buffeted by cars, being shoved out of nests too young. A bird got a funny look to it when its organs began to slowly shut down – seemed dazed, somehow, as though its quick little mind was elsewhere. When he lifted the tiny heads by the beak and they began to slowly sink down into their feathered chests, that's when he knew it was over. The child Hades had always consoled himself that he at least gave them warm and pleasant deaths in small boxes in the greenhouse, tucked under the work bench, where the wild cats that roamed Darlinghurst couldn't get them.

But he hadn't been close with dogs, not since he'd been pushed into a pit with two of them as a ten-or eleven-year-old and had his forearms stripped near to the bone by their ravenous teeth. He'd ended up killing the two huge beasts with his bare hands, a public feat that would strike almost super natural fear into the city during his reign as criminal king of Sydney. Lord of the Underworld. Hades wasn't afraid of dogs, far from it. But now and then when he saw one in the tip's wilder parts, he remembered that night in the pit.
Dingo-dog hybrids had provided a natural alarm system at Utulla for many years and kept the stray cat and fox numbers down. But Hades didn't tempt them towards the house, as he sometimes did with the possums that clambered around his sculptures. It was better that the hounds stayed out there, in the dark.

Those night creatures were a far cry from the dog in Hades' kitchen. It was a cross also, but had some more prestigious breeds in it. It had the burned gold colour of a Weimaraner, with the sad, delicate look of a whippet. The pink nose was a mystery. It was an expensive dog, probably had a stupid ‘innovation' breed name. Whipparaner. Weimarippet. The expense, the youth of the thing. There were the bills and notes in the trash – the garbage had come from an expensive area. The callousness had stunned the vengeful tip workers who discovered the thing in the bag.

Hades could understand rich people starving a dog. Rich or poor, he'd seen people do all kinds of things in his time. Cruelty had nothing to do with money, and lots to do with selfishness, carelessness, irresponsibility. The dog had probably been forgotten a series of times, accidentally at first, and then half-deliberately out of sheer laziness, spite, punishment for the chewed-up shoes or the pissed-on couch. The thing was probably very cute as a newborn but in time failed to naturally assume the behaviour of dogs that were professionally trained. Refused to sit. Didn't answer to its name. It was punished, left behind while its owners worked, took drugs, travelled, stayed over with friends. Three days turned into four. Bored and looking for sustenance, the thing had probably trashed the house a few too many times, had its living areas reduced to a small laundry room where the
sound system drowned out its wailing. And then suddenly, one day, without any real warning, the dog went from skinny to dying. Visibly, undeniably, shockingly dying – beyond what a vet could fix without having to report the animal's condition. The dog was binned. A broken toy.

Hades sat looking at the thing in the basket at the foot of the couch – or what he could see of it, the snout jutting from the wicker rim in case any more slices of soft red roast beef came floating by as they sometimes did. He also fed it with syringes full of water or milk with honey. The dog was still eating, but that meant nothing. Birds ate right up until the moment the light faded from their eyes. Hades was certain that activity was a good predictor of the animal's chances, and the dog hadn't moved in two days, not so much as shifted its position in the basket. Hades hadn't seen its full body, in fact, since the moment he first picked it up. That wasn't good. If the thing had been a horse, he'd have shot it by now. When horses lie down, they stay down.

Hades knew his tip workers had the address of the people who owned the dog. He knew there was nothing he could do to stop them enacting their vengeance. Whoever they were, they would probably venture out to a nightclub or a restaurant over the weekend, and a couple of big dirty men smelling faintly of garbage would bash them up. There would be no reason given. No words said.

Hades could warn his workers against it. Tell them vengeance was hardly ever worth the trouble taken to apply it. It was a lesson he'd learned with difficulty as a young man.

But they wouldn't listen, so he wouldn't bother. Young, angry men listened to no one.

The old man turned at the sound of the fire alarm bell above the front door. A car had entered the tip grounds. He glanced at the collection of clocks at the entrance to the hall. There were fifteen clocks of differing sizes and styles, cuckoo clocks and stainless-steel postmodern clocks, plastic clocks and an old bedside alarm clock hung by a string. Averaging their times, Hades guessed it was about seven. He hoped his evening visitor wasn't Eden. She only came unannounced these days when something was wrong.

It was a woman approaching. Hades could hear that much from the difficulty of her heels on the gravel. He didn't get up. Beside him on the tabletop, as always, lay a pistol, concealed in the glossy fold of some magazine or another. Hades shifted the magazine a little closer and turned his coffee cup handle towards himself, sloshing the cooling brown liquid in its base.

A short silhouette appeared against the diamond wire of the screen door. Hades took his glasses from beside his cup. The visitor rapped.

‘It's open,' he called.

The woman approached with a smile. This puzzled Hades. Unexpected clients were usually shaking and blood-spattered, still wired from the drug pick-up gone wrong or long-awaited gang hit or botched robbery that had brought them there. Unexpected clients came to him in every variety of panic, some crying and begging for advice, some with a mere clenched jaw to indicate the turmoil within. The woman came down the hall and stood behind the chair opposite Hades, not offering her hand, which was also odd, her eyes half-hidden in the shadow of thick chocolate brown bangs, concealed further by black-rimmed glasses. Hades smiled. Was this Eden's hunter?

‘Heinrich Archer.' The woman finally offered her hand. ‘I'm Bridget Faulkner.'

The name was fake. She was too heavy on the ‘d' in Bridget and the ‘l' in Faulkner to have said it a hundred thousand times over the span of a life. Fake names were best kept phonetically simple. She wasn't a practised liar, or if she was, she was nervous – had overthought her moves. Hades felt the first tingles of apprehension, and not a little excitement, on the nape of his leathery old neck, the hackles rising on an ageing wolf.

‘I'm so sorry about the hour.'

‘Please, Ms Faulkner,' Hades smiled, ‘it's been years since I've been able to boast of lady visitors in the night hours. How can I help you?'

She laughed, wiggled uncomfortably a little at not having been offered a chair. Hades gestured to the seat across from him, and she took it with a sigh of relief.

‘I'm a journalist with the
Herald
,' she said. ‘I'm trying to round up a few sources for a feature on Kings Cross in the late 1970s. I was wondering if you could help? I understand you sometimes speak to journalists … about your time there.'

This woman was a very poor impersonator, Hades thought. He'd met enough journalists to know their tics, their little insecurities. Where was the notebook? Where was the recorder? Every journalist Hades had met had an elaborate title that set them apart from the other guppies in the crowded tank. Head Crime Correspondent. Assistant Lifestyle Features Editor. Government Policies Analyst. Where was all the pomp and ceremony? Hades reminded himself not to be too disarmed. It was possible Ms Faulkner, whoever she was, was a fool, or took Hades himself for a fool. Her glance towards the folded
magazine beside him suggested the latter. How long would it be before this half-baked imposter got to her real purpose? Hades thought that now she'd spied the gun under the magazine, the pretty little woman would want to work fast.

‘Oh dear, ancient history,' Hades smiled. ‘Aren't you
Herald
people done with that yet? I thought there was a Cross piece just last year around this time.'

‘Well, you know. It never loses its interest. We're trying to bolster intrigue for a couple of upcoming TV series.'

‘Yes, I've seen snippets of some of those shows. Very dramatic. I only wish the times themselves had been so exciting. So effortlessly profitable.'

She laughed, put her hands on the table, seemed in need of something. Hades took his coffee cup.

‘Can I offer you a drink, Ms Faulkner? Coffee? Tea?'

‘Oh no, thank you.'

‘Mind if I get myself one?'

‘Go ahead.' She had a pleasant, if crooked, smile. Her mouth was dry, the painted lips sticking to her teeth, making noises as they came unstuck. Lying either took a lot of practice, or it was natural – came with the biology of sociopaths and psychopaths and babies born with enough violence-induced chemicals in their systems to have that ability ingrained in their survival mechanisms. Hades went to the counter, turned his back to the woman, almost felt her eyeing the gun before her. He took another weapon from inside a ceramic pot marked ‘Tea'. Flicked the switch on the kettle.

‘It must have been a long road from what we know about your time as a crime lord to suburban family man,' Ms Faulkner said gently. Hades poured the water into his cup, watched the black grinds shrink and dissolve.

‘People grow. They change,' Hades said.

‘You're in your twilight years, if you don't mind me saying,' the woman continued. ‘When you were the age your daughter is now, you had a stranglehold on Sydney. You had bikies and drug dealers and hitmen in terror of you. Eden, on the other hand, is a police officer. Her brother was too. What an interesting turn of events.'

‘Indeed,' Hades said.

‘She must have been a very different child to the one you were.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that.'

‘What was Eden like as a child?' Ms Faulkner asked.

Hades turned. Put a hand on the counter near the gun. In the other, he held his coffee. The woman calling herself Bridget Faulkner had turned in her chair, one foot out as though ready to spring to her feet. One hand was on the table. Did she know that Hades knew who she was, what she was – a threat to his child, to himself, to everything he had built? Could she see in his eyes now that, if it came down to it, he would never let anything destroy that, that he was prepared to make his front door the last door this woman would ever step through alive? Did she see the fierce paternal fury of a lion in him? Or did she just figure him for a tired old man, someone whose befuddlement at questions about Eden's first false years would tick boxes on her stupid little quest for the truth. Hades looked at his coffee.

‘It was very stupid of you to come here alone, Ms Faulkner,' he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he registered the slightest twitch in her body, a sort of electric pulse as his words coursed through her. The veils were dropped.

‘What if I'm not alone?'

‘Oh, you are,' Hades said gently. ‘We both know you are.'

‘I just want answers.'

‘You want money.'

‘Why did you kill the Tanners?' Bridget said. Her jaw twitched repetitively as her back teeth ground with terror. ‘Why did you take their children?'

Hades licked his lower lip. Gripping the edge of the counter, he put his coffee down.

‘Does Eden know who she is?' Bridget asked.

The man and the woman paused, looked at each other across the yawning silence. The howl of one of the tip dogs seemed to mark the abandoning of civilities. Hades reached for his gun. As he did, Bridget's hand slipped beneath the magazine and clumsily brought the pistol's aim around to him.

Hades fired with his eyes open. The woman fired with her eyes closed, an accidental gesture, her terror at the sound of Hades' blast making her entire body clench. Her gun blasted out the window behind him. Her sharp, squinting cower at the sound turned her head away from his aim, caused his bullet to shunt into the wall by her ear. She gathered her resolve and tried to fire again without drawing the hammer back, clicked helplessly, then dropped the gun. She tried to run and he lunged, his weapon slipping from his fingers. He heard his own yelp of agony as old wounds awakened, his ancient body unused to panicked action. They struggled for the pistol on the counter, sent it clattering into the sink. She grabbed the coffee cup, broke it over him, splashed boiling water on his arms, hands, chest, her own hands. She growled. Frightened. Angry with herself.

Hades swiped at her with one arm as he went down and knocked her away from the sink. On his hands and knees, a figure shifted past him, bright and fast like a flicker of light.

The old man had never heard such a noise. The high, squealing bark of an animal giving itself over to the violence in its heart. The dog flew at the woman in the kitchen, frenzied, jaws snapping with rage. Hades turned and watched it back the woman into the wall, watched it chase her into the darkness before the door.

He barely heard the door open and close, the car beyond. The woman gone, the dog gave her a few warning barks from behind the screen, then erupted into terrified squealing, skittering back to Hades, cowering with its head tucked completely between its front legs and tail almost invisible between its hind quarters, wagging against its belly. The dog's eyes were remorseful slits, its ears flat against its skull, bracing for a blow. Have I done the right thing? The dog squealed its strange apologies, fell dramatically on its front paws beside him, surrendered.

‘Good dog,' Hades panted, trying to unlock his clenched fists. The animal licked his arm, shoulder, ear, whimpering with delight at his words. ‘Good dog.'