The Mak Collection (69 page)

It was past eleven when Andy found himself face to face with Makedde in the hotel lobby, the rest of the group preparing to disperse after dinner.

‘I think Gerry’s in love with you,’ he said, smiling at her and wishing she would smile back.

Makedde didn’t laugh. Her arms were folded and her mouth was held tight. It devastated Andy to see just how unresponsive she was. If he didn’t know better he would think that he was a complete stranger to her.

‘Really,’ she finally replied, incredulous and seeming somewhat less tipsy than he was. ‘I see AA did you a lot of good.’

Oh, right to the bone every time.

‘The odd social drink, nothing more,’ he snapped. ‘You’re no teetotaller yourself.’

‘Not exactly. That’s true.’

Makedde looked past him to the others leaving the hotel. Jimmy was on his way home to his wife, Angie, and the kids. He waved goodbye, glaring in Andy’s direction before walking out the glass door.
Don’t you do anything stupid, Andy
, the look said. Gerry was headed for his car in the hotel parking lot, which he would no doubt drive home to a lonely apartment somewhere in the city, or wherever single solicitors went to lay their heads. Karen Mahoney had gone to use the ladies room, or the ‘sand box’ as she called it, and would probably be back any minute.

‘So, are you okay, Andy?’ Makedde asked. Her tone was flat and there was still no trace of a smile on her soft lips. ‘Is everything going well for you? Life good?’

My ex-wife was murdered, I almost lost my job over you and now you are finally here and you couldn’t be farther from me. What do you think?
‘Been better,’ he replied. ‘But yeah, I’m fine.’

‘Good. Me too,’ she said, and looked at the floor. He couldn’t read her. Damn, he couldn’t read her at all.

Mahoney appeared behind them. ‘Hey? How is everyone?’ Her red Irish curls quivered like springs. She was well aware of the past relationship between Mak and Andy. She had been there when the two first met at the La Perouse crime scene, before Andy’s whole life was turned upside down, and Makedde’s too, he supposed. Mahoney was probably trying her best to keep everything civil in case some emotional battle broke out between them, but Andy wished she’d go away and leave them alone. He wished Mak would invite him for another drink and a chance to talk, maybe invite him to her room the way she would have only a few months ago.

‘We’re fine, Karen,’ Mak said. ‘I should be going.’

‘Yup, getting late for a Tuesday night. Give me a call if you need anything, okay? Even just to chat or get together for a coffee.’

‘Okay, Karen. Thanks.’

Mak said goodnight and strolled off in the direction of the elevators, and Andy watched her walk away, his heart sinking like a stone in his chest. Before he had a chance to chase after her, Mahoney grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him towards the hotel exit, sensing his mood, and perhaps his blood–alcohol level.

‘I’m driving you home. Come on,’ she said. Andy was too befuddled to protest, and he allowed himself to be dragged away. He found he didn’t
have much fight in him now that Makedde had looked through him as if he were an apparition.

Mak…

He had gone and broken the golden rule, he had mixed business with pleasure and he was still paying for it. It had been an accident at first, but quickly became more than that. Much more. In Andy’s defence, when they first found themselves in each other’s arms he was being dragged through an ugly divorce and Mak was a beautiful unattached young woman peripheral to the Stiletto Murders investigation. But then, of course, she had become much more important to the case—and to him. It had become a Class A fuck-up in every sense. If his superiors had not been so happy that the high-profile case had been resolved, he might have lost his job over the affair. As it was, he’d been kicked off the investigation, temporarily suspended, reinstated and then promoted in a way, thanks to successfully solving the murders and putting Ed Brown into custody.

What if they’d met under different circumstances? Would things have worked out more smoothly? Was Makedde yet another sacrifice for his career? Like Cassandra?

‘You’re never home any more, honey. I feel like I’m widowed.’

He had already sacrificed so much.

Why’d he have to care about Makedde so goddamn much when she clearly had finished with him?

And Ed’s defence team would just be getting started.

Eleven o’clock on Tuesday night, past lights out, and the dark corridors of Long Bay Correctional Centre were peaceful in the wing where those in solitary confinement lay their heads. As peaceful as could be, at least. Robbie Thompson, the convicted paedophile, flinched in his sleep, and ‘Dirty’ Victor Malmstrom mumbled incoherently, conversing in his dreams with someone safe from his violence—for now at least. Luigi Valleto, an underworld price on his head, tossed and turned, racked with insomnia. Half-a-dozen other men dozed quietly in the darkness of their cells, snuggled into the canvas sheets that prevented suicide.

But not Ed Brown.

In his small dark cell, the killer who had not seen physical freedom for eighteen months was wide-awake and deeply immersed in a fantasy of recollection and sadistic desire. He recalled the pinnacle of his free life to date, the moment when he’d had in his possession a young woman he had devoted his time and energy to ensnaring. A woman he believed, from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, must be his.

Yes. Perfect.

‘Perfect,’ he whispered so softly that not even Pete Stevens, who was walking past on his rounds, could hear him.

In his fantasy Ed saw his supplies spread out over the table, as they had been eighteen months before. Supplies he had ‘borrowed’ from his workplace—the morgue.

Scalpel.

Shiny new enterotome with its bulb-ended blade and fierce inverted point.

Toothed forceps.

Rib-cutters laid out like pruning shears.

All of the autopsy instruments were sharp and clean, glistening in the light like a child’s toys at Christmas.

She will be my finest work, my finest possession.

Deep within his fantasy, Ed could see her clearly. He could vividly recall the scent of the young woman’s fear, the texture of her fair skin, the look of absolute terror in her blue-green eyes when she realised that she could not break her binds, could not escape him.

‘Perfect…oh yes…yes…’

The sweet smell of sweat and fear. The smell of blood. Ready for consumption. Ready for dissection.

Under the canvas blanket Ed stroked himself, causing the cot to quietly shake. He could feel his pleasure rise, his heart beating faster.

Mine!

But just as he moved to finish his final act of possession, the fantasy shattered. There was
interference. Things were no longer under his control. His visions of mastery and power faded to nothing, and all that he could see was that cop’s face.

Andrew bloody Flynn.

Ed gasped, overwhelmed by his frustration. A warm tear strayed from the corner of his eye. Even now he could almost feel the searing pain in his shoulder where the bullet had entered his body, signalling his defeat.

The end of his perfect moment.

The end of his freedom.

Nooooo! Mother!

It was predestined, he believed, and no passing of time could change destiny. The defeat had to be temporary. It had to be. And now Ed had a plan that would give him the second chance he needed to fulfil his destiny. That thought was the only thing that kept him going in this foul, stinking place.

She will be mine. My perfect number ten. It’s destiny.

Ed pulled a small, ragged newspaper photo of Makedde Vanderwall out from behind the unframed black-and-white snap showing his mother in her younger days. He kept Mak’s picture taped flat against the back. The corrections officers wouldn’t let him have a photo frame in his cell: too many sharp points. And his original photo of Makedde and her model friend Catherine—
Me and Mak making it big in Munich!
scrawled on the back—was forever taken from him as police evidence. They wouldn’t let him have it back,
which secretly made him furious. But he had this news clipping. He had cut her face out and it was good. Anyone could see the resemblance was remarkable, particularly in grainy black-and-white newsprint.

Mother. Makedde. Mother. Makedde. Mother.

He enjoyed the sight of her for a few minutes, and then carefully taped the clipping back into place. In less than an hour the night-shift woman would begin her rounds, and Ed would give her the final instructions that would see him free in mere days. Everything was progressing better than he could have hoped. Yes, it was destiny. It had to be.

I’m coming for you, Makedde.

At nine on Wednesday morning, Makedde Vanderwall took a seat in the chambers of William Bartel, Queen’s Counsel, and did her best to appear confident and emotionally prepared for what she would have to endure in the Supreme Court in the following days. She was adept at the art of conveying composure in testing circumstances—delivering a lecture at university, grinning and bearing it in a designer swimsuit on a freezing winter coastline, being briefed on what to expect of the multiple-murder trial that had already changed her life forever. Whatever ludicrous extremes life demanded, she could handle them…she hoped. Her life had been laced with plenty of surprises so far, and she saw no sign that the trend was set to end.

Sitting in a creaky antique chair in front of Bartel’s massive wooden table, Makedde willed herself not to fidget. She cast her eyes over the modest prints on the QC’s walls and the impressive view of Sydney from his eleventh-storey windows. Mak had not enjoyed her first night in the beautiful city. Her body clock was still
set to Vancouver time and her nap the previous afternoon had sentenced her to a long restless night in her hotel room, wracked with relentless worry.

‘I trust you arrived safely,’ Bartel said.

‘Oh, yes. Thank you.’

The prosecutor was a tall, thin man with a light moustache and beard peppered with silver. He wore an old-fashioned red tie and a navy pinstripe suit that seemed to exaggerate his vertical stretch. The suit seemed as old as the dusty books on his shelves. After referring to some papers, he peered at her with a pleasant smile and intelligent eyes that she imagined would not miss a thing.

‘I understand you are studying forensic psychology?’

‘Yes. If I can ever finish my thesis, I might actually be able to use what I’ve learned.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I think everyone feels like that at some point. I almost quit law school on a couple of occasions. If it were easy everyone would be doing it.’

‘You’re probably right.’ Once all this was over, Mak planned to concentrate on her PhD, and if all went well she would be practising as a clinical forensic psychologist in British Columbia in a couple more years. There certainly had been a lot of distractions lately, but she had come too far to give up, and she was set on reaching her goal.

‘What is the subject of your thesis?’

‘Variables affecting the reliability of eyewitness testimony.’

He nodded. ‘Our eyes can deceive us, can’t they?’

‘And our memories.’

It was remarkable just how much eyewitness accounts could differ, Mak mused. Human nature leads us to colour facts with our own notions, prejudices and perspectives. And human memory, that fragile and ever-changing instrument, could not be fully trusted, as Mak was discovering. She panicked for a moment trying to clearly recall her mother’s face. It was somehow blurry and intangible. Only two years after Jane’s death from multiple myeloma, all Mak could see of her mother’s face was what she knew from photographs.

Her eyes…were they green or blue?

There was a knock on the door and the solicitor Gerry Hartwell arrived bearing steaming styrofoam cups from the coffee shop downstairs. He took a seat near Makedde, handing over her skim milk latte with an eager smile. He was wearing the suit from the night before, but with a pink tie that brought out the ruddiness of his pimply complexion. Though an accomplished, well-regarded solicitor, he brought to mind an obedient lapdog in the eminent barrister’s presence, all ‘yes sir’, ‘thank you sir’, and bowed head.

Sipping his cappuccino, Bartel refocused their attention on the trial. ‘Makedde, I will be calling you as the first witness tomorrow.’

‘Oh…yes,’ Mak responded, somewhat awkwardly.

‘Does that bother you?’

‘Not at all. I was told that was what to expect. I didn’t mean to sound surprised.’

Bartel continued. ‘I have been considering the issue of live-feed video testimony. My instructor,’ he motioned to Hartwell, ‘mentioned that you had concerns about the presence of the accused in the courtroom.’

‘Well, I…yes.’
Ed Brown. In the very same room. Tomorrow.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she managed.

‘That is not an unusual issue in cases in which the crime is of an intimate nature.’

Tied naked to a bed and sprayed down with some kind of weird disinfectant is pretty bloody intimate
, Mak thought.

‘It can be an intimidating experience for many. However, Makedde, my feeling is that the trial would be better served by your physical presence in the courtroom in front of the jurors.’

She had considered this. ‘I thought you might say that.’

‘So unless you feel very strongly about it and you wish to press for that request, I would prefer that we have you in the witness box throughout your testimony.’

‘Okay,’ Mak agreed, without giving it any more thought. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to nail him.’

‘I appreciate your attitude. Frankly, I feel the same way. This individual is an aggressive fetishist and a sexual sadist. Very dangerous indeed. Fortunately, we don’t come across guys like this all that often. Not of his calibre.’

How fortunate.

Makedde reflected on just how colossally bad her luck seemed to have been in recent years. Then again, she was still alive. She had all her limbs and digits—barely. Things could have been much worse for her.