The Mak Collection (94 page)

‘You know those weird hours that Ed was keeping?’ Mahoney said.

He nodded.

‘Last night I got to thinking that maybe it was on purpose, that he was actually wanting to be awake for those hours because of this guard. Like they had some kind of friendship going.’

‘We’ll talk after the briefing,’ Andy said.

‘But what if she knows something? Apart from Ed’s mother, the pickings are pretty slim for someone who he would talk to. We need to find her. Maybe there’s some clue at her apartment. We don’t have enough for a warrant, do we?’

‘There is a small thing called “reasonable suspicion” that they may have told you about at the academy, Mahoney.’

As with the warrant for Mrs Brown’s apartment, they would need to be able to convince a magistrate via an affidavit sworn on oath that they had reasonable suspicion or grounds to believe there was evidence in Suzie’s apartment to connect her to the escape. Without that, they could not search her premises for the ‘fruits of the crime’, detonators, chemicals, wiring, nitrate and so on.

‘We’ll talk about it after the briefing,’ he repeated.

‘I just feel that we need to find this woman.’

‘I agree with you, Mahoney,’ Andy finally told her, and Mahoney’s expression changed. ‘Suzie Harpin may very well be important. Let’s hope she
turns up soon. Just don’t get so fixated on this woman we want to question that you can’t see any other leads. You could get “linkage blindness” and not be able to see other suspects or patterns here. Now get your arse over there for the briefing.’

Mahoney left and Andy prepared the last of his notes. He had presented his notes on Ed Brown once before, when they were hunting down the killer the first time. Back then, they didn’t have his name, only the remains of his victims and crime scenes as clues. Now they knew almost everything about him, except the most vital thing…where he was.

Detective Flynn stood at the front of the room, feeling more alive than he had for days. In a way, he was in his element.

‘Thank you for your dedication to this case,’ he began, looking over the faces of the task force. ‘In your notes,’ he said, referring to the pages of references they had each been given, ‘you have a full description of the subject’s profile and particulars, and the details of his previous nine known murders, and his recent escape from custody.’

He swallowed hard. He couldn’t believe that Jimmy wasn’t there. Andy realised he had never done one of these briefings without him in the room.

‘We have a serious time crisis here. It won’t take Ed Brown very long to work up the confidence to begin killing again. Let’s remember that the
moment his murders started getting written up in the papers, he began picking off victims with a higher profile. He will want to rub in his escape, and I am hoping that this may be part of his downfall. Let’s not allow him to take any more lives before we catch him.’

Mahoney, who sat closest to the front, appeared deep in thought. He knew she was fixated on the guard.

‘This killer will do what he can to embarrass the police, and any individuals who attempt to get in his way,’ Andy continued. ‘As many of you are aware, I was singled out personally when I was in charge of the case. He attempted to discredit me and throw the investigation itself into turmoil by framing me for the murder of my ex-wife, Cassandra Flynn.’

Some shifted uncomfortably in their seats. It was a hard topic to bring up, but it was true and it was relevant. Andy knew that his police work was the direct impetus for Cassandra’s brutal murder. She had been nothing more than a tool for Ed to get at Andy. His ex-wife would never have been targeted had he not been on the case. This case had cost him so much, he could not bear to add up the loss.

‘Ed Brown does his research,’ Andy said, bringing the danger home. ‘He knows who we are. He knows who our loved ones are. We have to consider that he may have ways of finding out how much we know. He is a psychopath with a high IQ, cunning, and adept at manipulating any situation to his benefit. His escape shows a great ability to con
his way out of tough situations. Let’s not underestimate him.

‘As you all know, we are watching Mrs Brown very carefully. The phone intercept has not yet picked up any calls from Ed, but we are hopeful. I’m also hopeful our search warrant will come in the next few hours. But there is also a new person of interest that I want to introduce you to.’

Andy took a stack of files off the top of the desk at the front, and asked that a copy be handed to each officer. Mahoney’s eyes widened as she received her file with a photo of the guard stapled to the front.

‘This, ladies and gentlemen, is Suzie Harpin. She is the night-shift guard for Ed’s protected quarters at Long Bay. Thirty-nine years of age. Single. No children. Parents are deceased. She has one brother, who we have thus far had no success in contacting. By all reports she is a loner, and she grew quite close to Ed during his time there. She requested leave around the time of Ed’s escape, and has not been seen since.

‘This woman is wanted for immediate questioning.’

‘Hello?’

Lisa Milgate-Harpin looked up in the direction of the noise and frowned. She moved along the hallway.

‘Is someone there?’ she called.

She had been sure the house was empty, but there had been a noise in the kitchen. There it was again. A loud bang.

‘Hello?’ she repeated with apprehension. She reached into her purse and took out her keys, gripping them like a weapon.

Bang.

She stepped into the kitchen, her arm extended, and saw with relief that the window was wide open. The venetian blinds were catching the wind and banging against the window frame.

She exhaled and lowered her arm.

Now she was here she would get the Gaggia, and a few odds and ends like the Alessi corkscrew. Ben was out fishing with his mates, and she was tiptoeing around the house, freaking out at every little noise. Christ, he was a bastard. She would take
what she wanted and he could get stuffed if he didn’t like it!

Then Lisa saw something that made her freeze.

She paused mid-step, her eyes riveted to the bloody mess in the kitchen sink, just below the open window.

Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God!

She screamed.

It was a severed arm. A man’s arm, cut off at the shoulder.

The stairs creaked under her feet. Loud disco music drifted up from the bar downstairs. A couple could be heard grunting next door, a bed squeaking. Suzie Harpin climbed the stairs of a run-down apartment complex in the Wan Chai district with a plastic bag of Chinese takeaway in her hand. She was prepared for a confrontation, if it came to that. Her face was set in a frown. She positively hated the apartment that her boyfriend, Ed, had rented for them with her money. She hated this place called Wan Chai. In less than a day she already hated Hong Kong. Why did they have to come here?
Why?
Suzie could never be happy here, she knew that already.

Wan Chai seemed to be a red-light district. Strip clubs and girlie bars lined the main streets, and there were tourists everywhere, mostly men. Suzie guessed it was the type of place people who lived a safe distance away visited to do lewd and unsavoury things in anonymity. Ed had explained that it was the best cheap and fully furnished apartment he could find on such short notice, in an area where people were conveniently slack about formalities
like identification, home addresses, credit cards. But surely anything had to be better than this? Suzie couldn’t believe they had left the comforts of the love nest she had made for them in Sydney to come to this irretrievably hideous hellhole. They would have been so much happier if they had stayed; it had been a terrible choice for them to leave her beautiful, cosy house. Suzie felt she was taking a huge step backwards after working so hard to finally get somewhere. She had worked so
hard.

She put her key in the door and turned the handle. It creaked. The plastic bag she was carrying caught on one of the rusty, loose screws that kept the door handle in place. She untangled it with a grimace. She entered the apartment and found Ed sitting at the kitchen table, just as she imagined he would be. He looked sombre. He didn’t jump up to greet her. There was no ‘Welcome home sweetheart, I’ve missed you!’, no ‘Honey, you’re home!’.

‘Hello darling,’ Suzie said, closing the door behind her and locking the bolt.

There was that smell again. Stale cigarette smoke. Despite the noise from outside Suzie had kept the windows open all day, but it did little to help the odour. Now it was simply loud
and
smoky.

‘Sweetheart, where have you been all day?’ she asked.

‘I came home and you weren’t here,’ he replied in an unfriendly tone. He didn’t even look up at her.

Suzie walked into the kitchen area and spread the takeaway out on the counter—sweet and sour
pork, noodles, some kind of soup. As she watched, his eyes went to the food and then back up to her face.

‘I just went out to get some food,’ she lied, quietly seething. ‘I didn’t know when you were going to come back. I got enough food for both of us, just in case. Would you like some, darling?’

In fact, Suzie had followed Ed’s every move from the moment he had left the apartment that afternoon. Ed had camped out near a model agency called Wang Models Hong Kong for more than three hours until they closed up and everyone went home. He had then followed a couple of the young women from the agency to a restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong, a place swarming with expats from around the world, particularly Englishmen, Americans and Australians, as far as Suzie could tell. There he had drunk beer and watched the girls from across a steep, cobblestoned alley. The whole time Suzie had thought about confronting him. But she was interested to see what her boyfriend would do next. Eventually he had headed back to Wan Chai, not having even spoken to the girls from the model agency. He didn’t notice Suzie tailing him, barely a block behind. Suzie had bought the takeaway just before following him back inside the apartment. She wanted an excuse to have gone out.

‘Oh,’ Ed replied, uninterested. He didn’t bother to explain where he had been. Did he really believe she had spent all afternoon and evening pining for him in that sleazy little apartment? He actually believed she would sit around and wait for him while he went looking for that girl?

That girl.
Makedde Vanderwall.

Suzie had seen the headline too. She knew what was going on.

M
ODEL
W
ITNESS FLEES TO
H
ONG
K
ONG
.

‘In Asia we could afford to live like kings on the money we have,’ Ed had said only a few days before. ‘We can get married there, no questions asked.’ But she knew the reason he wanted to be in Hong Kong. He wanted to be there because of that girl.

I’m no fool, mister.

Suzie knew she needed to be patient. If the only way for them to move forward was to get this girl, so be it. She was willing to be patient, even help out if she could. She wanted Makedde Vanderwall off the face of the earth as much as he did. But what about his lying? Ed’s lack of honesty caused her pain. And his behaviour was changing. She was beginning to see that this might not turn into the romance that she had imagined. She’d had such high hopes. Every once in a while she would get a glimpse of her dream man—he would become sweet and affectionate, but then he would switch. He ran hot and cold, worse than the taps in this awful, run-down, stinking apartment.

He hasn’t proposed yet. When will he propose?

She hoped he wasn’t another of her disappointing loves. There was Michael when she was just fourteen, he was experienced and exciting, but it turned out he already had a fiancée. And the next year brought sweaty evenings spent in the back of Colin Garrison’s creaking car, and news
that she had become pregnant. Suzie was sure it would be a beautiful baby girl, that her daughter Rose was in her belly waiting to be born. But
he
didn’t want her. Colin made Suzie kill her, and as soon as the abortion was done, he too was gone. She’d since focused her attentions away from wicked men. She got her first bird when her parents were still alive and she was living at home, and she called him Rose after her daughter. He didn’t sing like he was supposed to, and after six weeks Suzie stopped feeding him. The next one was a female. She lasted a little longer.

When Suzie met Ed, he was in a cage of sorts, and now that he was out he was not living up to his promise. Like the new little peachface Rose she had bought the day before Ed came. It sang beautifully in the store, but when she got it home it wasn’t the same. She was glad she had returned it and got her money back, though in truth she hadn’t known what else to do with it once Ed had convinced her she had to go away. But it wasn’t good enough anyway. When their feathers grew dull and the singing stopped, she knew they would soon be gone. Would it be the same with Ed? Was he growing dull?

‘Darling, would you like something to eat?’ Suzie persisted.

He didn’t respond. She served him some soup anyway, and sat across from him at the table. She noticed that he had some tourist maps in front of him. There were areas circled in red felt pen. Ed picked up his spoon and ate his soup quietly. Not
even a thank you! Not even a sorry for being gone all day!

Be reasonable, Suzie. Be patient.

Although Suzie knew that she had to make allowances for Ed, disappointment was seeping into her bones like acid. Her head was filling slowly with dark thoughts until she felt she could barely breathe. Ed was
not
giving her the love and attention she deserved. Suzie had freed him. She had taken leave from work, just as he’d suggested. She had taken almost all of her money out of her savings, just like he asked, and then charged two flights to her credit card that she couldn’t afford. And what about the house she had made for them, and what she had done to get it? She deserved something in return, dammit! She deserved his devotion.