Covet (23 page)

By eight-thirty in the morning on Tuesday Makedde was already wandering through the Central District of Hong Kong, feeling remarkably positive and relaxed. She gawked at the sights around her.

The giant Bank of Hong Kong building loomed above her, extending higher than the rest of the impressive concrete towers that crowded the sky in all directions. Puffs of cloud reflected in thousands of office windows spread over blocks and blocks of dense urban jungle. So many millions of people on one island. Mak had the peculiar sensation of wading through a solid, chest-high sea of strangers as she moved along the bustling streets. But of course she was the stranger. Her towering height and Western features stuck out like sore thumbs, but she was politely ignored for the most part.

Sparkling designer shops with impressive window displays beckoned from all directions: Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, Christian Dior. Like most models, Mak wore their clothes in photo studios and on catwalks but
couldn’t afford to buy them. It was fun to window shop, though, and dream.

Spotting the ubiquitous green signage of a Starbucks across the road, Mak had to laugh. Starbucks had popped up everywhere in the world, as McDonald’s had done decades before. She shook her head and thought of her meeting with Loulou in Sydney. And of Andy.

She hadn’t called him.

And what will you say when you do?

She was tempted to get in touch, though they seemed destined to be apart. The thought of letting him go made her sadder than she was willing to accept.

‘Copy watch! Copy watch!’ someone cried out. She spun around, startled. It was a tall Indian man with a stack of photocopied brochures. He tried to press one into her hand. ‘Rolex?’

‘No thank you,’ she replied, and moved away from him, crossing the street with the flow of pedestrian traffic. A young girl in pigtails and neon space boots pointed at Mak and said something excitedly to her friend. Who knew what they thought of the gargantuan lumbering white woman with the big blonde head? If she were them, she would laugh too.

‘Faith Hill! Faith Hill! Photo! Photo!’

What?

The girl with the pigtails ran up to her. She and her friend had the Tokyo punk look, and Mak wondered if they were visitors as well.

‘Faith Hill!’ the girl said again, clearly excited.

‘Oh, um…sorry, I’m not Faith Hill,’ Mak replied.

Her statement didn’t register. The glowing smiles and excited giggles did not wane. Mak thought momentarily of telling them her real name to prove that she was not the tall blonde country singer they sought, but thought better of it. If they didn’t speak English, the words ‘Makedde Vanderwall’ wouldn’t help.

‘Photo!’ The girl with the pigtails nodded eagerly. ‘Photo!’

Now a shiny compact digital camera had been produced, no larger than a cigarette lighter, and the girls looked around for someone to take their photo.
Fine.
Mak posed beside the giggling duo, who she guessed were no older than thirteen, while a grim-faced businessman stopped to take the photo for them and exchange some quick words in Cantonese. Once the girls had their picture, they took off, still excited.

‘You’re not Faith Hill,’ the man said in flawless English.

‘I know,’ Mak replied, and stood on the street alone.

Lisa Milgate-Harpin knocked on the front door of Ben’s house with one hand, and held her mobile phone to her ear with the other. Her face was set in a frown, eyes narrowed.

There was still no answer at either the door or the phone.

This, she had decided, would be the last time she would attempt civility with him. Ben was being rude and unreasonable, not even returning her calls or bothering to make any attempt to cooperate. He was obviously trying to avoid a divorce by simply not responding to her. It was an irritatingly immature attitude, another item to add to her list of things she could not forgive Ben for.

That’s it. I’m coming in.

Lisa stuck her key into the door. It still fitted. After everything, he had not changed the locks. She was hardly surprised. Changing the locks would take effort, something Ben was not adept at. Lisa turned the key and the door opened with a creak. There was no sound inside the house. Lisa gave a quick glance over her shoulder, as if expecting to see her soon-to-be ex-husband approaching
behind her, but there was no one on the drive, no curious neighbour watching from the safety of their manicured lawn. Lisa quickly shut the door behind her.

‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Helloooooooooooooo?’

With an unexpected rush of triumph, she climbed the stairs. She had not entirely anticipated that she would come inside, or that her key would still work, but now that she was in the house it felt good. There had been no car in the drive this time, and she had noticed a couple of days’ mail in the letterbox by the door. So he had finally taken a holiday, had he? Ben Harpin had been the disappointing kind of husband who thought that an episode of
The Simpsons
was as good as a night out at an expensive restaurant, and a spot of smelly fishing with his mates was more fun than a luxury cruise. Come to think of it, he was probably fishing now. The bastard might have said something to her if he was planning a trip. Maybe she should call his mate Brad and see if he was with him. It would have been nice if Ben had left a message for her somewhere so she didn’t have to waste all this time.

Nevertheless, Ben’s absence was a blessing. If he wasn’t going to return her calls, then she owed him nothing. While she was at the house, she would pick up the cappuccino machine. He couldn’t stop her, and really, it was hers. So what if Heinrich had a perfectly good Krups? It had been Lisa’s decision to put the Gaggia cappuccino maker on the wedding gift registry, therefore it was hers. Ben had
not done any of the research. He probably didn’t even know how to use it.

Lisa was almost at the top of the stairs when she sensed that something was amiss. Perfume? The house smelled strangely of lavender.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

The house responded with eerie silence. Lisa walked into the living room and her jaw fell open.

What is this?

The biggest shock for Ben’s wife was that the house was spotlessly neat. Ben was not a tidy man, left to his own devices. And there was an empty birdcage in the centre of the room. Since when did Ben have the faintest interest in birds, or pets of any kind? But that wasn’t all. The place had been more or less redecorated. There were knick-knacks and photo frames everywhere. Lisa walked across the living room to take a closer look at a woman’s photo on the mantelpiece.
No way
, she thought with disbelief. Does Ben have a
girlfriend
? Wait…she recognised the face. It was photo of Ben’s sister, Suzie, but she looked different, somehow. She was wearing make-up and smiling for a change. Lisa inspected another photo, puzzled, then put it down and backed away. Who was that—the soapie actor Ronn Moss? Then there was a cut-out of some television wedding in a heart-shaped pewter frame. A stack of wedding magazines. What was all this stuff? There was heart-shaped crap everywhere, and that horrible lavender smell.

Is he
living
with someone? Is he
engaged
to someone?

Lisa headed for the bedroom. She stopped at an awful streak on the carpet in the hallway, like red paint.
So he’d managed to ruin the damn carpet?
She shook her head with disgust. It would have to be recarpeted before it was sold. How much would that cost?

I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for that. He can forget it.

The master bedroom was completely different to how she’d left it. And the bed was neatly made. Very unlike Ben. There were more of the frilly knick-knacks everywhere, and there was make-up on the dresser, alongside more photos of Ben’s damn sister. Lisa went for the closet and was shocked to find that it was nearly cleared out, with only some women’s clothes on hangers and a handful of Ben’s old clothes shoved to one side. She fingered an ugly flower-print blouse, confused at its presence in what used to be her closet space. Lisa walked to the guest bedroom and checked that out too. The bed had been slept in, but it too was neatly made. There was a stack of newspapers in one corner with a pair of scissors and some blank paper. More wedding magazines. It looked like someone had been making cuttings.

Lisa walked back into the hall in a daze, stepping over the stain.

How completely weird…

Had Suzie moved in with Ben? If so, things in the family had certainly changed. Last she knew those two barely got along. The Harpins had not been the closest family even at the best of times.
His sister had not come to their wedding, saying that she had to work that day, which had seemed a poor excuse. Ben and Suzie only saw each other a few times a year—Christmas and birthdays. And didn’t she have her own place near the prison where she worked? Was she trying to move in on Ben’s money now that Lisa had left? There was always something odd about that Suzie. It wouldn’t surprise Lisa at all if she was getting greedy about the house.

Lisa stood in the living room feeling increasingly uneasy.

Why would he let her move in?

Come to think of it, it was more like Ben didn’t even live there any more. Where was all his stuff?

Tuesday afternoon, and Ed had been loose for a full three days.

It had been seventy-two terrifying hours of waiting for a fresh body to turn up with Ed’s signature all over it. So far they had not found any unfortunate young woman who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. So far…

‘He still hasn’t shown,’ Detective Flynn confirmed.

Senior Constable Karen Mahoney grimaced. The detective-in-training was buzzing around Andy’s desk, unable to take her mind off the case.

Disappointingly, Ed Brown had not yet made contact with his mother, at least that they knew of. The telephone intercepts had not yet been fruitful. If she was the one who had helped her son escape, they were being very cautious about contact now. The warrant to search Mrs Brown’s apartment was taking more time—a common source of frustration. They needed to search the apartment for letters, notes or other information that might help to solve the puzzle and reveal any escape plans, or even better, suspicious traces of fertilizer, nitrates or
even something more exotic that might have used to make the bomb. An exciting phone call picked up through the telephone intercepts would have helped their cause considerably, but in Andy’s eyes they still had enough for reasonable suspicion. As usual, the wheels of justice seemed to move far too slowly. The warrant would be issued imminently, Andy hoped.

And then there was the other lead Andy had. They would need some more evidence to move forward on that one…

‘When’s the briefing?’

‘In ten. You’d better get your arse over there.’

Andy was about to brief the task force on the Ed Brown escape. He was not heading the case as he had when they were first trying to track the killer down, but at least he was a part of the team to bring him back in. He knew all too well that if he had lost it and gone off the rails, he wouldn’t be part of anything. He was grateful for the opportunity. If he had been put on forced leave, he would never have forgiven himself.

‘Andy, she’s still not answering any calls.’

‘The guard, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’

He already knew that. Tracking Suzie Harpin down was proving hard, suspiciously so. Was she staying with friends? Family? A boyfriend no one knows about? Everyone seemed certain that she was single. She had a small apartment near the prison and by all accounts seemed to live for her work. She had not taken sick leave or holidays in
years. Why now? There was something there that wasn’t right. Something…

‘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.’