The Mak Collection (177 page)

The lights were dimming, the evening’s performance about to continue.

Out of the darkness, a warm red glow seeped through the curtains and spread across the crowd. The old theatrical curtains were pulled back to reveal a band dressed in old-fashioned tuxedos, bringing to mind another era. The drummer, a woman with close-cropped hair, wore an amusing 1920s-style moustache. Her drum kit declared: LE THÉÂTRE DES HORREURS.

Mak was terribly curious about the content of the show, but this was much more than a night of bizarre theatre for her. The real action, she hoped, would be backstage or in the audience itself. Where would Adam Hart be? In the dressing rooms? In the audience? Or would she need to follow one of the performers after the show to find him? Her first order of business was to get herself backstage. Neither the vaudeville troupe nor the venue appeared particularly high-budget or security-conscious. Mak felt her skills would be more than up to the task. As two eerily similar-looking burlesque artists slinked onto the stage holding signs that declared LE THEATRE DES HORREURS and THE THEATRE OF HORRORS respectively, Mak stood up and began to make her way to the back of the theatre.

‘Madame?’

It was an usher, wearing a cross look, evidently displeased by her impolitely timed exit.

Mak held her stomach, as if in agony. ‘
Où est la toilette
?’ she asked with an urgency that implied food poisoning.

With a sneer, he pointed her in the right direction, and she followed the signs towards the washrooms. At the end of a dark corridor were the facilities—unisex in the oldfashioned
French style. And on the other side, a door marked ACCÉS INTERDIT.

Prohibited access.

Mak grinned slightly, and pushed the door open…

Time for the hard decisions, Jack.

Jack Cavanagh sat across from The American, who waited patiently for instructions. Jack took his time, staring out his hard-earned office window, reflecting.

His career had already been an accomplished one by any standard, but he feared slowing down. Slowing would necessarily involve handing over the reins to someone else. He had long hoped control of the business would stay in the family. But it was clear that handing the Cavanagh empire on to his 31-year-old son, Damien, would be extremely problematic, despite his Wharton education and all his grooming for the position. Damien was his only child. What could Jack do? The shareholders would jump ship before Damien even got the chance to drive the whole thing into the ground himself.

Cobwebs and tar.

Jack Cavanagh had built his influential empire from the ground up, and had imagined that by retirement age he’d be able to enjoy a certain satisfaction at what he had built. He
knew what it was to work hard. He was the son of a janitor, not a mogul. He had watched his father toil excruciatingly long hours to save for his education. His father had been a smart man, but a man without opportunities. Jack had wanted to make his father proud.

Somewhere along the way, the dream went wrong.

Cobwebs…

‘Jack…?’ The American prompted.

He looked at The American with his mouth turned down, his guts uneasy. ‘I need you to…’ His voice quavered. He tried again. ‘Yes. We need Mr Hand. We need Ms Vanderwall gone.’

She was a problem. She had followed his son, and was agitating her police friends. And now, finally, she was out of the country. She had to stay gone.

Mr White, The American, nodded in response. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

Across the globe, in Algiers, Madame Q sat before a bank of computers ranged across an antique French oak table. An assortment of flowers arranged with expert aesthetic skill filled the crystal vase next to her. The Mediterranean Sea spread out before her, hot African sun beating on the white-painted windowsill.

It was from this tranquil North African location that she conducted her business through a careful web of contacts on a digital network fuelled by need, greed, power and secrecy. Madame Q was an agent of death for cash. For the right price she was able to facilitate hits for wealthy corporations and individuals. She was not interested in politics. She did not deal with governments. Ideals did not concern her. Ideals were best left out of it.

A message came in, from one of her Australian clients, Mr White.

REQUEST. SINGLE. LOCATION PARIS. HAND AVAILABLE?

Before she had a chance to reply that her agent Luther Hand would be available for the usual fee, another message arrived with an electronic beep. It was from the colleague who called himself Rob.

INTERPOL, was all it said.

Madame Q frowned. She knew what this meant. For some weeks she’d been receiving warnings that an Interpol net might be closing around her operation. So it seemed it was true?

She returned to Mr White’s request, and responded quickly. CONFIRM. SECURE FUNDS BY THIS AFTERNOON.

She would have to get the funds as fast as possible in case she got another update from Rob and needed to vacate her office in Algiers in short order.

Madame Q would set Luther up for the job, and hold as much of the money as possible. If the Interpol threat was real, Luther would be left to his own devices.

VANDERWALL.

Mr White’s reply was a name, not a code. Madame Q paused. She swallowed, her mouth feeling dry. This was a reference to a previous job, an assignment that had become complicated.

HALF RATE was her offer. Tense, she waited for a response. Half rate was still substantial; the client was wealthy and she hoped she could retain them after the dust had settled.

CONFIRMED. FUNDS DELIVERED ONE HOUR.

Mak pushed the door open and found herself in an unlit area backstage at the little theatre in Cité Chaptal.

Yes…

She had worn her favoured rubber-soled boots, and they did not betray her presence as she moved furtively through the darkness in near silence, passing the ghostly shapes of unused sets and lighting equipment, covered with filthy white sheets. There was a skerrick of light ahead, and Mak moved towards it. She could hear the performance taking place only metres away onstage.

She had to find the dressing rooms.

Where are you, Adam?

Mak rounded a corner and stopped in her tracks.

Shit. Caught out.

She had stumbled upon a young man. The two locked eyes. Her heart leaped into her throat, but Makedde soon realised that he was even more alarmed to see her than she was at being discovered by him. He had been leaning over a
props table, and when he heard her, he whirled, and nearly knocked over a rack of clothing.

Adam?

The man she had startled was perhaps thirty, and much darker than Adam. The nose was different. This man was handsome in his own way as well, she thought, but there was a hardness about him, especially in his eyes, which were dramatically lined with kohl. He had none of the freshness she’d seen in the photographs of Adam. Even with dyed hair, this could not be him.
Dammit.
For a second there, she had thought it could actually be that easy. How foolish of her to imagine that she could solve the mystery of Adam Hart’s disappearance by spotting him backstage on her first night in Paris.

The moment lingered strangely, neither speaking.

‘
Pardon…
’ Mak said, and flashed her best disarming smile.

The man—who was not Adam—continued staring at her with something like suspicion, even fear, and it dawned on her that his alarm had to do with his being interrupted during some type of sensitive moment. His manner was strangely furtive: he gripped something in his hand and walked slowly backwards, a look of naked guilt in his expression. Mak stole a glance at his fingers, but could not make out what he was holding.

‘
Parlez-vous Anglais
?’ she asked clumsily, in her most nonthreatening tone.

Rather than grilling her—the impostor—on her reason for being backstage, the man scampered away, and a piece of clothing fell off a hanger where he had been standing. A white doctor’s coat. His reaction struck her as so odd that she stood confused for a time, before hanging the coat up on the props
rack again. Next to it was a satin dressing gown, and a suit jacket, both with the curiously worn air of stage costumes.

Mak paused, unsure what to make of the kohl-eyed man’s response. Would he bring reinforcements to boot her out?

Arslan is mad.

Lucien the illusionist sat before a mirror, practising his magic close-up, tilting the mirror at every possible angle to see what the most observant audience member could. He would be onstage for his next routine in twenty minutes.

‘
Oui
,’ he whispered to himself in an occasional chant of approval as he deftly moved the coin from finger to finger.

Lucien needed to keep his hands soft and nimble. The techniques of sleight of hand required daily practice, and he had grown to look forward to this peculiar ritual of his, and taken to practising this way in times of stress. The concentration it involved took him away from the petty rivalries that inevitably sprang up amongst the ‘family’ of the troupe, the problems of money and sex and the horrors of the unknown. The future. In his act he could pretend to predict the future but in reality he had no such insight. He did not know where they would end up. He did not know what would become of him if the troupe disbanded. He did not know his future. What he knew was that he could do this:
pinch drops, French drops, the Downs coin roll—his coins rolling down each hand effortlessly, bobbing up and down like ponies on a carousel. Precise. Perfect. Total control.

As a child he had discovered magic. It was the only thing about him that had ever held his mother’s attention. And when she went away, it was his escape from loneliness.

Arslan is mad
, he thought again.

His half-brother had always been prone to madness. His twin, Yelena, was quiet and lacked confidence, but Arslan had enough boldness and aggression for all of them combined. It was because of their mother. It was her fault that he was that way. They all knew.

French drops, pinch drops…

The show would go on, as it always did. For a while there would be an extra member of the family. And then he, Lucien predicted, he would be gone. Perhaps.

The show will go on…

Lucien dropped his coin. He scowled. A stranger was backstage; an attractive blonde. She did not belong here. He stood and approached her.

‘
Pardon, monsieur.
I was just looking for the ladies room, and I seem to have got myself all lost…’ Makedde lied, shrugging her shoulders playfully.

Damn.

This isn’t Adam, either
, she thought, faced with a slender man swathed in a Victorian coat who stood glaring at her, clearly unfriendly. He looked somewhat like the man she had startled only moments before: dark, handsome, exotic; he even wore the same black kohl around his eyes. But this man was not about to scamper away. Mak recognised him from
photographs on the troupe’s website. He was the resident magician, Lucien. She had disturbed his rehearsal, and he appeared plenty angry about it.

‘I am lost,’ she lied again, shrugged and tried to push past him, palms in the air in a gesture of peace.

He grabbed her elbow.

‘Hey!’ She thought to kick out, to scream…

Just then, there was the sound of the quick clicking of heels, and two petite burlesque dancers appeared, rushing through the narrow backstage corridor clad in corsets, fishnets, small top hats and platinum-blonde wigs. They looked like twins. When they saw the magician holding Mak’s elbow, their eyes became wide.

‘Hi,’ Mak said, and smiled broadly, acting the role of dumb tourist. ‘I like your outfits.’

‘
Qui est-elle
?’ they asked Lucien in unison, stopping.
Who is she?

Mak had to think fast. If she drew too much attention to herself, or her search for Adam Hart, she could send him into hiding. ‘
Toilette
?’ she asked, and giggled, pointing her finger this way and that, indicating that she needed directions.

Together, the dancers pointed back the way she had come.

Mak took the opportunity to flee the magician’s grasp. She left the eclectic trio with their mouths open, hands on hips, as she made her way back to the doorway through which she had entered.

Dammit.

Crestfallen, Makedde returned to her seat. She felt a wave of jetlag wash over her. She needed to stay awake through the remaining performances, but it could get tough. She’d been
running on adrenaline since arriving, and now that she had not located Adam backstage, nor spotted him in the watching crowd, the tiredness took hold of her. Perhaps he was not even at the theatre, she thought.
Bugger.
That meant she would need to wait at the stage door in the winter cold, possibly for hours, just to be sure. And again the next night, and the next, until she had some luck.

She had barely missed him in Brisbane and, for all her attempts to contact him online, Adam remained beyond her reach. According to Tobias, he was not responding to anyone. Mak had to reason with him in person if she was to bring him home.

Onstage the burlesque dancers entered, parading before the curtain with placards which announced the next item in the program.

The Final Kiss.

Mak perked up a touch. She recognised this as the play that had been suggested as the sick inspiration for the acid attack in the alley outside the theatre five years before. It was somewhat surprising to her that the troupe continued to perform that particular play, all things considered, although the piece did have a revered place in the Grand Guignol tradition.
Le Baiser dans la Nuit
, or
The Final Kiss
, was considered a Grand Guignol classic, the plot inspired by the infamous acid attacks dubbed ‘
crimes passionels
’ that took place in Paris in the early 1900s. The combination of shocking violence, sordid affairs and jilted lovers made the acid attacks front-page fodder, perhaps in the same way the Stiletto Murders in Sydney had managed to grab sensational media attention in
Australia. The heinous nature of those crimes and the beauty of the female victims, some of whom were models and actresses, fascinated the public. It seemed there would always be an insatiable appetite for beautiful victims cruelly cut down.
Schadenfreude
. The original version of
The Final Kiss
, Mak knew from the troupe’s website, had a central character who was a glamorous model, though the plot was more complicated than simply that of victim and perpetrator. The beauty, in fact, was shown to be a beast.