Covet (7 page)

‘Are you okay?’ Loulou asked.

‘I don’t know, Loulou,’ Mak said, fighting a sour lump in her throat. She felt unbalanced by the sight of Andy, the knowledge of all they had shared and endured. She had so few people she could speak frankly with. ‘Um, Loulou, I was um…wondering—’

‘You
are
going to have me glued to your side through this trial,’ Loulou cut in. ‘It would be my pleasure to be there for you. I would consider it an honour.’ Her bright lips curved into a giant smile. ‘I know you too well, Mak. That whole “I can do this on my own” thing doesn’t work with me.’

‘Oh no, I don’t need anyone to hold my hand—’

‘Of course you don’t. But you don’t have a choice. You are my friend and I am going to be there for you all the way. That’s what friends do.’

Mak hung her head and laughed.

‘When are you on trial…I mean,
at
the trial,’ Loulou corrected herself, though she was probably right the first time. ‘When’s our first appearance?’

Makedde chuckled again. ‘Our appearance? If only it were a sitcom. Let’s see…I take the stand in…’ she checked her watch, ‘…seventeen hours.’

‘That’s it. I’m taking you out and getting you completely pissed.’

‘My, what a healthy alternative to sitting in my hotel room with my head in my hands. Loulou, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Come on…just one then.’

At one in the morning the night before his trial for the crimes of murder, assault and abduction, Ed Brown sat curled against the bars of his cell with a lover’s smile across his face. His hair was combed and scented, his prison-issue clothes straightened as respectably as he could manage. His woman had to walk her rounds, but when she came back they would discuss the plans some more. The seed he had planted so many weeks before was beginning to blossom into a beautiful flower. Plans were devised. Progress had been made.

Whispers now.

She was back, smiling, running a cool hand against his as he gripped the cell bars. He noticed a strange bulge under her shirtsleeve that wasn’t there before.

‘What’s that?’ he asked her, mostly out of mock concern and politeness.

‘Oh nothing. It’s a bandage. Just a scrape.’

‘I will kiss it better.’

She blushed and wrinkled her nose affectionately. ‘Oh Ed…’

Ed Brown gazed into the face of the night-shift guard, seeing only the glorious freedom the plain woman would soon bring him, and the access that freedom would give. Access to Makedde Vanderwall, whom he would see again in only eight hours, and counting. He would look into her face from across the courtroom, and she would know she was destined to be his. And then, finally, he would have her to himself, the way he had always been meant to.

Makedde.

I’m coming.

It is our destiny.

Detective Andy Flynn sat facing the window, blinking at the world outside.

The city buzzed with energy below, lights still glowing in windows and people moving through the streets despite the late hour. His apartment provided a good view of Darlinghurst. Cassandra had left him most of her assets. She had been divorcing him at the time of her murder but hadn’t got around to updating her will. It seemed a cruel irony that he would find himself sitting alone in an apartment bought, in part, with her money. In the end she’d hated him so much it would have pained her to think that she would end up leaving him everything.

‘I feel like a police widow already, and you aren’t even dead.’

The modern apartment, though a sensible investment, had thus far given him little happiness.

The rough handshake of Jack Daniels greeted him again, the liquid growing smooth and mellow on his tongue, slipping down his throat and warming his hollow belly. Andy placed the bottle carelessly against the cushion of the sofa, his fingers
sticky. He rubbed his eyes. He wouldn’t cry, didn’t want to. Men don’t cry. Men pick up a bottle and move on.

Seeing Makedde had shattered him.

He had never imagined it would be like this. Here she was, back in Sydney. Finally the waters and continents of the world no longer divided them. But he had stuffed up. He had stuffed up with Cassandra. And then he had met Mak, and she was lost to him too. He’d had his brief moment, and wasted it.

What had she said?
‘I see AA did you a lot of good.’

Yeah, sure.
He wrapped his fingers around the sticky rim and brought the lip of the bottle to his mouth again. There it was, satisfying, dulling. It took the edge off, that was all. Not an addiction—a friend.

There was a time when Makedde had gazed at him with passion and admiration. There was a time when he had even looked at himself with some pride. And now, in this apartment, with his friend the bottle in his hand, he found himself rejected by the only woman he’d probably ever truly loved, and holding the only thing he’d flatly promised himself that he would reject.

She’ll be sleeping now, Andy, not wasting a single thought on you.

He looked to the bottle by his side.

You know you won’t be able to stop drinking if you don’t throw it out now.

In a push of self-preservation Andy snatched up the bottle, still half full, and walked it to the garbage
bin in the kitchen. He opened the lid and slammed the bottle home amongst the messy remains of his Chinese takeaway dinner and a few cracked eggshells.

There. You did it.

It was too late to call his partner, Jimmy. He was at home with his wife and kids. Angie wouldn’t appreciate a call at this hour. Andy had not returned Carol’s calls, so he was home alone. His infatuation with Makedde left him uninterested in any other woman’s company. In fact, some part of him knew that he was sitting alone by the phone hoping against hope that she would call.

Makedde.

It was too late to go anywhere, the night before the trial. It was too late to distract himself. It was just too late. Through eyes blurred with alcohol and some kind of irritating water he would not accept as tears, Andy refocused his attention on the garbage bin.

Within twenty minutes, the bottle of Jack

Daniels was back in his hand. He didn’t even bother to rinse the eggshells and slime off the sides before eagerly tasting it again.

It was not an addiction, it was a friend.

‘Want my pants?’

‘Excuse me?’ Mak tried to shoo the man away with her hand, knocked over an empty shot glass instead, and watched as it rolled as if in slow
motion off the table to land at the edge of the dance floor. Miraculously, it did not break.

‘Want to dance?’ the stranger repeated. This time Makedde heard him correctly. The music was loud, and so was the buzzing in her head. To say she felt vague would be an understatement.

‘No thanks,’ she managed to say.

The young man courteously bent down, picked up her glass and put it back on the table.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘No, no. No more. Please…’

‘Come on, dance with me,’ the man smiled. Her bold suitor was young and attractive—dark hair, dark skin, almond eyes and well-formed arms in rolled-up shirtsleeves. But Makedde was not interested in engaging with him, just as she had not been interested in anyone all evening. She was busy trying to numb the dread in her heart and she had no time to open it up for anyone else, not even for a simple spin on the dance floor. Loulou had already called her a party-pooper three times during the evening, and she was probably right. Getting plastered had not helped at all.

Loulou appeared unexpectedly from behind her and grabbed the young man’s wrist. ‘I’ll dance with you,’ she exclaimed. ‘Come with me.’

The young man’s face registered shock as bright-haired Loulou dragged him back into the throbbing mass of dancers. Wednesday was salsa night at the Arthouse Bar. Who knew? Certainly not Mak, who couldn’t salsa to save her life. Learning some Latin dance was on the end of a long ‘must do before I
die’ list, along with learning to fly a helicopter, scuba dive and speak Cantonese. Her coordination in her current state would not be the most graceful, so this was hardly the time to start lessons.

Loulou and her handsome prey disappeared amongst the twirling bodies, her colourful mullet occasionally visible through a parting of dancers. Mak was alone with her empty glass.

The Arthouse Bar had some of the best mojitos Mak had ever tasted. And the most lethal. Two of those and a few shots of the pornographically named Cock Sucking Cowboys, which Loulou insisted she have, and Mak was pretty well blotto. Unfortunately, the alcohol had started to magnify her mood, rather than numb it, and her worries and loneliness seemed more intense than before.

Mak shook her head in an attempt to clear it.

Her thoughts swung randomly from memory to memory, evoking flashes of things she did not want to recall, stirred up and brought to the surface like crud from the bottom of an old jar. She saw Catherine streaked with blood in the tall grasses, she imagined putting her broken body back together again. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, you’ll be fine Cat, just fine…’ She saw Andy beneath her, slick with sweat, exciting and warm, and she saw him walking away to his departure gate, turning to wave, smiling.

Gotta pee.

Makedde forced herself up and half shuffled, half staggered away from the dance floor into the nearby corridor. She searched for a sign to lead her
to the toilets. Instead, she found herself facing a public telephone.

Don’t…

Within seconds she had somehow managed to slide some coins in and dial Andy’s mobile number. She heard it ring once, twice. She leaned hard against the wall to support herself, phone receiver jammed up against her ear.

‘Hey, I wondered where you’d got to!’

Mak jumped. The receiver swung away. It was Loulou.

Loulou hung up the phone. She must have read Mak’s pathetic expression. ‘No, sweetheart. Never drink and dial.’

‘Busted.’ Mak lowered her head and crossed her arms, utterly embarrassed. She felt deflated and empty, her thoughts dark and confused. Her eyes could no longer focus.

‘Call him tomorrow, but not now, sweetie. Just trust me on this one.’

‘I know, but tomorrow I’ll be on trial.’ It came out in an awful slur. ‘I’ll be on trial, Loulou…’

‘No, honey, you are not going to be on trial. Ed Brown will be on trial, and you will nail his arse. Come on, girlfriend, I’m takin’ you home.’

‘He…he saved my life…’

‘Come on.’

Loulou put Mak’s limp arm around her neck and led her out.

‘Hey!’ came a voice behind them. It was the boy Loulou had been dancing with. He was covered in sweat and he followed them out like a puppy dog.

‘Call me,’ Loulou said, and pressed a business card into his hand. ‘But not tonight.’

He nodded, mouth open.

Loulou took Mak in a taxi back to her hotel, let her heave her unfortunate guts out in the toilet and then put her to bed. And like the kind of sister Mak wished she had, Loulou stayed the few remaining hours of the night in the double bed with her so that Mak wouldn’t be alone. At seven in the morning Loulou woke her up before going home to quickly change. Gerry Hartwell would be picking them up just after eight.

It was already the day of the trial.

The Supreme Court in Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, has the unmistakable aura of neglect. Rusty gates open to a once-grand circular drive, flanked by parking signs peeling paint. The increasingly dilapidated sandstone structure is no longer proud, ignored as it is by the sex shops and trendy cafés that have sprouted all around it. Junkies shoot up around the corner, and rent boys sell their human wares down the block at night, along ‘the Wall’. Despite the wealth of popular nightclubs that have set up shop nearby, the pain and desperation of the streets has not really faded since the time of the convicts and the gallows. It is simply a different kind of pain now, and this new world does not spare much thought for Justice with her blindfold. She has become all but invisible.

Justice is not only blind
, Andy Flynn thought, looking at the courthouse long overdue for a refurbish.
She’s tired and she wants to go home.

Across the road on the steps of the Sacred Heart church, a homeless man with a matted beard watched the flow of traffic from behind his shopping trolley. No doubt he wondered what all
the fuss was about. Outside broadcast vans and news crews filled the courthouse parking lot, and journalists jostled for position to be the first with a scoop on day one of the Stiletto Murders trial.

Andy crossed the street towards the court, his partner, Jimmy, close behind him.

‘Look at the trash this trial brings. They should put Ed up for public hanging after this. I could make millions selling tickets.’

Andy didn’t respond to Jimmy’s comment, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it had been like in the days of public hangings in Darlinghurst. Would the satisfaction of seeing Ed Brown die with a noose around his neck be enough to help Andy forget that he had aimed to kill him and had missed?

Security officers passed them through the X-ray machines, nodding their hellos.

‘Andy…’

‘Hey Jimmy…’

The boys were getting a workout today. The normally sedate courtroom five, which dealt day in, day out with a depressing roster of domestic violence, assault, bar brawls turned lethal and the like, had come alive with the rare buzz of public interest and was already packed out. Today, the dry, slow-moving wheels of justice promised so much more than usual: it was day one of the most anticipated murder trial Andy had seen, and the show was about to begin.

Law students, reporters and morbid tourists of all kinds had come to watch as it unfolded in all its
grim detail. Today would feature the opening remarks of the prosecution and defence. It was the day the Crown would outline its case against the man accused of murdering nine young women, and try to ensure the jury’s favour from the start by putting their star witness on the stand—Ed Brown’s only surviving victim, Makedde Vanderwall. But Andy would not be able to watch her testimony. As a witness himself, he would not be admitted to the courtroom until he took the stand. Even though he was the senior detective who made the arrest, the ‘informant’ in legal parlance, he would not be the first called to give evidence, and he could not watch the testimony of others in case he was swayed in his recollections by what the other witnesses said.

Andy was shut out, a familiar feeling in recent years. He waited tensely for the brief moment he would be able to give Makedde a nod of support before she walked into the courtroom. And that was all he could do. Just nod. The feeling of impotence did not sit well with him.

‘Fifty bucks says they question her today about whether or not you porked her.’

‘Jimmy!’ Andy rubbed his temples. ‘My head hurts.’

‘Come on. Betcha fifty!’

Andy covered his ears.

‘Wow you went hard last night,’ Jimmy finally said, realising how fragile his partner was.

‘Yeah.’

Andy’s brain ached from his late-night session with his mate Jack Daniels. He had managed to cut
it short by tossing the bottle in the garbage again, but only after downing a full three-quarters of it. And that had been a chaser for a couple of seemingly benign beers from his fridge. So far, that was one battle he didn’t seem to be winning. He would have to do better the night before he was called to the stand, or his binges could spell serious trouble for him once again. He probably would not be called to give evidence for another few days, after Makedde took the stand and endured the intense examination and cross-examination process. The prosecution was bringing out the big guns first for emotional impact: the only first-hand account of Ed’s demented violence in this horrifying case. Mak’s testimony would be pivotal in hitting home the human cost of what the man had done to his victims.

‘Don’t call me a victim, Andy. I’m a survivor, not a victim…please don’t ever call me that
…’

Andy’s heart twisted in his chest at the thought of her, and how intimate they had been when she had spoken those words. Things were different now.

‘Did you see Ed’s ma?’

Ed Brown’s mother. Yes, Andy had spotted her too. ‘The lovely Mrs Brown,’ he replied.

Her date with the court had prompted Mrs Brown to dress somewhat more conservatively than usual. The white rolls of flesh that had been proudly on display in the past were now covered in a drab navy suit that fitted her like a potato sack. The wardrobe was different, but the scowl she wore was apparently a permanent one, and had not faded in
intensity since last they’d seen her. She was by all accounts a bitter, difficult woman, a disposition earned from years spent working the streets before a house fire sentenced her to a wheelchair-bound existence. What did she think of her son? Andy wondered. And would she see him differently by the time this trial was through? Would it finally bring home to her what he had done?

‘Hello, Detective Flynn.’

Andy looked up with a start.

Damn.

It was the ubiquitous Pat Goodacre, arguably the most tenacious reporter in Sydney. He’d expected she would show. Her presence was both good and bad. She would report the facts more accurately than most, but she would get
all
the facts, and that could be worrying.

‘Pat, how are you?’ Andy said cautiously.

‘Yeah, you chased any pretty ambulances lately?’ Jimmy added, ever the diplomat. He sat with his arms crossed, practically sneering in the journalist’s face.

‘You should get a muzzle for your dog,’ Pat replied, not even sparing a glance at him. Her pleasant features seemed to sharpen, her eyes narrowed. ‘The staff at the hotel say you don’t tip so well, Andy. I was wondering if you have any comment on their service.’

Pat was clearly having a bit of a fish around.

‘You don’t have anything, Pat.’

‘The Westin has always been good to me,’ she said.

‘You’ve got nothing.’

‘The Hyatt?’

Andy remained silent.

‘Where is Miss Vanderwall staying?’ she finally asked outright. ‘Come on Andy, we’re friends. There’s a lot of international media on this one. Someone’s going to get the scoop. You know I’ll do the right thing by you.’

Andy looked at his watch in an intentionally exaggerated motion. It was almost ten-thirty.

‘You wouldn’t want to lose your seat, Pat.’

She left them. The real show would be starting any minute. She would deal with him later, he felt sure.

Ed Brown would be on his way from the cells by now, about to take his place in the dock. The courtroom spectators would finally get a real live glimpse of the man who was allegedly Sydney’s Stiletto Killer. Would he measure up to their expectations? Would he appear monstrous, or merely human, just a man like any other?

If convicted on all charges, Ed Brown would sit in history’s books as one of the most prolific serial killers in Australia.

‘Miss Vanderwall?’

Makedde’s heart flew up into her throat at the sound of her name. She had been waiting for it, but it still gave her a fright. The opening remarks seemed to take forever, and now, after an hour or more of quiet fidgeting, she had been called.

Mak took a deep breath. ‘Uh, yes.’ She stood up, and put the wrinkled copy of the
Australian Women’s Weekly
she had been pretending to read back on the chair. She had been too nervous to concentrate.

The tipstaff who had come to collect her was clothed in a dapper grey uniform, gold crowns polished proudly on his lapels. He looked a gentlemanly type in his fifties, his mouth firm, but his eyes friendly.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he said quietly.

With a pleasant but formal demeanour, like some kind of butler for the great courts, he led Mak from the room where she had been waiting and out into a hallway. The tall door of the courtroom was opened for her.

‘Mak…’

Her breath caught in her throat. It was Andy. He sat with Jimmy on a bench outside the court. His eyes looked bloodshot.

‘Good luck,’ Andy called softly to her. Detective Cassimatis nodded in silent support. She nodded back, barely able to think. The tipstaff urged her on, and without further delay she stepped inside.

Oh God.

The courtroom was much smaller than she had anticipated, but much more crowded too. Her entrance was met with collective silence. All eyes were on her, and most of those who stared made no attempt to pretend they were doing otherwise. Spectators, journalists and jurors looked her up and down. She’d worn a black pantsuit, her long hair pulled back behind her shoulders, and she could
feel the instant judgement of her appearance, her apparel, her hairstyle. The room momentarily exploded in excited murmurs. An artist began sketching her likeness. Court reporters scribbled in shorthand.

Makedde remained stony-faced as she walked down an aisle past the seated crowd to the witness box at the front of the court. She coughed quietly. Her hands felt clammy. She hoped she was ready.

‘Please state your full name,’ the tipstaff said.

‘Makedde Vanderwall.’

‘And your occupation?’

‘Psychology student and fashion model.’

‘Raise the Bible in your right hand and repeat after me,’ he continued. She raised the Bible. ‘I swear by almighty God that the evidence I give in this case shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ She repeated the words.

‘You may be seated.’

Don’t look at him. Don’t do it.

Mak knew everyone was watching her, including the sober-looking judge and her associate, but only one set of eyes disturbed her. She could feel
his
eyes burrowing into her, she could feel Ed’s stare as his gaze moved over her face, her neck, her bare hands. The sensation made her want to scream. She concentrated on taking in her surroundings instead. There was the stenographer waiting to record her every word, the tipstaff taking his seat, the twelve-person jury, all watching her, binders and pencils poised, each with a thick book of evidentiary material in front of them—photos of crime scenes,
images of mutilation and murder. Pictures of Makedde’s injuries would be among them. And of poor Catherine left lifeless in the tall grass.

The thin, distinguished-looking figure of William Bartel, QC, approached her. He looked different with his wig and gown. His expression was one of grave sincerity, but Mak detected a barely perceptible wink of encouragement as he ran through the formalities and moved into the examination-in-chief.

‘Miss Vanderwall, did you know a young woman by the name of Catherine Gerber?’

‘Cat? Yes, she was my best friend. She was from my home town and I helped her get into the modelling business.’

‘And did you travel to Australia to see her?’

‘Yes. About eighteen months ago I flew to Sydney to stay with her and do some modelling work.’

‘And what happened?’

Mak measured her words carefully. She didn’t want to cry in front of all these strangers. There was no way she was going to let herself cry. She feared that once she began, she would be unable to stop.

‘I arrived in Sydney and Catherine wasn’t at the airport to meet me, which surprised me. It wasn’t like her at all. I went to the address she had given me and no one answered there. Eventually I got a key from the model agent who’d organised the apartment and let myself in.’

‘I see. And what happened next? Did you see your friend Catherine Gerber?’

‘Well it was clear that she was staying in the apartment, her stuff was there, and there were phone messages for her. She hadn’t left a note or anything for me to explain where she was, and I became concerned that something might have happened to her. Then I had a photo shoot the next day at the beach at La Perouse…and that’s when I found her body in the grass.’

There was another collective intake of breath in the courtroom.

Oh, Cat.

Ed was still watching her. She could feel it. She was sure of it now. She wasn’t going to look at him. He could stare all he wanted but she was not going to acknowledge his presence.

‘Were you asked to make a formal identification of the body?’ Bartel asked.

‘Yes. The next day Detective Flynn asked me to meet with him at the Glebe morgue to identify her body. I was the only one available who really knew her.’

‘And was it your friend?’

‘Yes. It was Catherine. And at the morgue, that was where I first saw Ed Brown. He was the morgue attendant.’

Bartel leaned forward across the bar table. He didn’t look at Makedde in the witness box, but aimed his question towards the judge and jury, as if trying to impress something upon them. ‘Did the defendant, Mr Brown, say anything to you at that first meeting?’

‘Yes. Something about how I could touch her if I wanted to, and that he had saved some of her hair if I wanted it.’

There were mutterings of disgust from the public gallery.

‘I suppose I was pretty emotional and I didn’t think much of it at the time,’ Mak went on. ‘Sometimes families ask for things. I was the closest she probably had to family. But later it did strike me as odd.’

He got off on that
, she wanted to say.
Ed got off on my seeing her dead body, his handiwork, while he stood there and offered a lock of her hair…

It was well into the afternoon before Bartel began questioning Makedde about her abduction at the hands of Ed Brown. And it was this questioning in front of the crowd of strangers and reporters,
in front of Ed
, that she knew she would find extremely challenging. She didn’t even dare think ahead to her cross-examination by the formidable Phillip Granger, that would commence all too soon, perhaps tomorrow. Recalling the facts required a difficult journey into places in her memory that she did not want to travel to. Ed had planned to kill her—
to do even worse than simply kill her
—and he would have done just what he pleased if Andy had not intervened and saved her from becoming Ed’s tenth unfortunate victim. In the end, injured and bound as she was, she had been unable to
successfully fend for herself. That was the truth. For someone as fiercely independent as Mak, the reality of that vulnerable state was very hard to accept.