The Mak Collection (125 page)

Mak grinned, but she didn’t know how to respond. Was he trying to flatter her? Because if he was, it was working. She felt a slight blush coming on.

‘Wow! You are 250 in dog years!’ Donkey blurted insensitively, breaking Mak’s train of thought.

She smiled despite him. ‘You mean 210, if I catch your drift,’ she retorted. ‘But no. I think that if I was to put it in numbers, models are actually closer to one-and-a-half years for every human year, not seven. Yes. I think that’s probably it,’ she decided. ‘A fifteen-year-old model
presents like a twenty-two-year-old. A twenty-year-old is a bit like a thirty-year-old, and so on.’

Maroon frowned. ‘That’s a scary theory.’

‘Not quite scientific,’ Mak said, ‘but I think it might have merit.’

‘That’s it. I hate fashion magazines,’ Maroon said bitterly. ‘They are a man’s conspiracy to keep women preoccupied with their appearance so that they can’t do anything more significant that might upset the status quo.’

‘That’s a good theory to a point, but everything I’ve seen tells me that women fuel fashion magazines, not men,’ Mak challenged. ‘Most men would rather look at any sexy woman than the androgenous teens modelling expensive couture in
Vogue.
They like pin-up curves or toned athleticism, neither of which particularly feature in fashion mags. It’s not about men. If it were, the models in men’s and women’s magazines would be the same shape. In my experience, most guys hardly care what a woman is dressed in or if she wears her hair in the latest style, so long as she is somewhat sexually attractive and, on a subconscious level, fertile-looking to them. Women tend to be much harder on other women than men are. There is a whole language of body shape, clothing styles and attitude for women.’

‘That totally sucks. We should be able to be ourselves.’

‘And no one is stopping us. When I see a fourteen-year-old in a skin-care ad I find it
farcical, not threatening. But I do wish sometimes that those magazines would allow their models to age. Look at Christie Brinkley—she’s gorgeous. And there must be lesser-known women out there who could be modelling into their forties, fifties and onwards, too.’

‘A lot of women have more character with age,’ Bogey said, putting in his two cents’ worth as he returned to the table to pick up the last of the cutlery.

What would Andy’s response be in a similar situation? He would probably stay out of it, knowing that emotions ran high among women when it came to body image. But Mak smiled at Bogey’s well-chosen comment, feeling she had found a co-conspirator at the table in this Elvis man who seemed far too sensitive to be a friend of a guy named Donkey.

Maroon still had some anger to vent. ‘Yeah, how come men are allowed to grow old and have “character”, when a woman just gets “wrinkles”?’

Donkey looked bored. ‘Just as long as they’re hot, go naked,’ he said.

Mak was no longer in the spirit of their little debate. She had other things on her mind.

Speaking of body images…

‘Hey, guys, sorry to change the subject, but does anyone know where Lonsdale Street is?’

‘Lonsdale Street? Sure,’ Maroon answered. ‘That’s where all the barristers and strip clubs are.
It’s about fifteen minutes by car. Is that where your hotel is?’

Strip clubs and barristers…an interesting mix.

‘No, it’s just a work thing.’

‘Mak’s a private eye,’ Loulou said proudly, making Mak sound like she should be wearing a fedora and smoking a cigarette. ‘Are you on trial?’

Mak smiled and shook her head. ‘Nah. I’m not on trial.’
Not this time.

She had been briefed in her investigators course on how to handle giving evidence in the witness box if the situation came up. Mak could probably have used some of those pointers when she’d taken the witness box in the Stiletto Murder trial. Perhaps that would have kept the tears from rolling down her cheeks while she was asked to recall every last gruesome detail of her abduction and attack. Most likely she wouldn’t need to get back in a witness box again until she was practising in psychology. That was, unless she got herself mixed up in something really messy with her investigation work.

‘I’m sorry to eat and run, but I do have to get going.’ Mak stood up. ‘It was really nice to meet you all. Thanks for dinner.’

‘Oh, sweetie! Stay for another drink!’ Loulou cried, clearly not wanting to let her friend go.

‘I have to go, really. It’s a school night for me. I have a big day ahead tomorrow.’

‘You have to stay over here next time, though,
okay? Promise me?’ Loulou urged. ‘We have a guest bedroom and it would be all yours.
Pleeeease?
’

Mak was amazed at how quickly Drayson and Loulou had shacked up together, and how quickly her friend was using the word ‘we’—‘
We
have a guest bedroom’. Loulou’s kamikaze relationship style was probably not the most successful, but still, Mak had to admire her openness. It took Mak much longer to trust anyone. Maybe it took her too long.

‘Okay,’ Mak agreed with some reluctance. ‘Next time I promise I’ll stay. But now I have to go.’

‘I have to head home, too,’ came a voice. It was Bogey. He had put on his leather jacket, having already cleaned up the kitchen while Loulou, Drayson and Maroon were busy drinking. He didn’t even live there and he cooked and cleaned the place.
Wow.
‘I have a project that needs delivering in two days,’ he explained, grabbing a big set of keys off the hall table. ‘I haven’t even begun the staining yet.’

‘Ohhh, now everyone is leaving!’ Loulou cried, obviously upset that the evening was coming to an end so soon.

‘I’m staying,’ Donkey muttered. ‘You’ve got more beer, right?’

Bogey and Mak descended the five flights of stairs in uncomfortable silence.

‘Would you like a lift?’ he asked as they reached street-level.

Oh boy.

Mak thought it might be safer, temptation-wise, to say no, but she didn’t have a car—and, in truth, she wanted to find out more about him.

‘Yeah. That would be great,’ she answered, not looking in his direction. ‘Is Lonsdale Street too far out of your way?’

‘No problem at all.’

If she had been single she would not have been able to resist asking him for a drink somewhere before she went off to work. But she was not single: she was what the Australian Immigration Department referred to as a ‘de facto spouse’. A spouse of any description was someone who was far from unattached and, furthermore, she was attached to a high-ranking homicide detective. Her live-in boyfriend had barely left the country.

A ride made sense, though.

When they reached the open street she saw that Bogey drove an immaculately restored late-sixties blue convertible Mustang. Not quite the enormous Cadillac she’d imagined, but close enough. And it was awfully close in body shape and appearance to Zhora, her beloved turquoise 1967 Dodge Dart Swinger, which she had reluctantly sold when she’d moved from Canada
to Australia. With the Australian roads geared to driving on the opposite side, it would have been an unnecessarily expensive and complicated proposition to ship it down and mutilate it for local driving.
Ah, Zhora.
Mak missed her. She had named her car after the ill-fated snake-carrying replicant in
Blade Runner.
She named all her vehicles. Her bike was
Theroux.

‘I’m sorry for boring you with those stories,’ Bogey said. ‘I don’t know why they made me tell you all that stuff.’

‘I found it interesting. Really. I’ve never met a coffin maker before.’

‘And I’ve never met a PI.’

Mak smiled as he opened the passenger-side door for her. She got in and buckled up, the seat making a soft hiss under her weight. The seats were leather—and beautifully kept—not like her Zhora, whose vinyl bucket seats had been in terrible shape from the day she bought her. Mak had never got around to fixing her up properly. But this man clearly loved his car, and was happy to sink time and money into restoring it.

‘Where to on Lonsdale Street?’ he asked as he started the engine. The car purred.

Mak told him the address and he looked puzzled.

‘I didn’t know there was a hotel around there,’ he said.

‘There isn’t.’

It took Luther Hand little time to track down the house in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills.

He arrived wearing black from glove to boot, blending into the shadows as he moved. He was more than ready to get the assignment under way, and he had in his kill kit one additional item specific to the job.

A hatchet.

Luther did not ring the doorbell. He picked the lock and slipped inside, and within seconds he had sped up the stairs and entered the hallway. Everything was as his instructions had said: the number of steps, the layout of the building. The office of Lee Lin Tan was two doors to the left at the top of the stairs, but even before he reached it, a man appeared in the doorway before him. He had been heard.

Luther recognised the man from his driver’s licence photo. ‘Lee Lin Tan,’ Luther said.

There was recognition.

‘Are you Lee Lin Tan?’ Luther demanded again. He wanted an answer.

There was a weak nod.

Luther gripped the hatchet and swung, not quite taking Lee’s head straight off in the first blow. A spray of blood spread out across the doorway behind him, pooling and beginning to run along the paint. Lee gripped his neck as he went down, blood spilling through his fingers. It had been an effective first blow.

Good.

Luther stood over Lee Lin Tan as the man crawled pathetically along the hallway carpet, perhaps trying for the stairs and the front door, choking and gurgling on his own blood. Incredibly, he managed to lift himself up to a half-standing position against the wall, shaking with shock.

Luther swung again, this time precisely.

He took off the man’s left arm at the shoulder joint, and the dismembered arm fell to the carpet with a sickly thump. Lee’s eyes lost focus and he fell back against the corridor wall, leaving a bloody handprint and a downward streak across the wall. His head fell forwards and his last breath was expelled from his body with one final gurgle.

There was a scream.

Luther spun around in the direction of the noise, ready. He had been warned that Mrs Tan might be present.

A woman burst into the hallway. She had a shotgun in her hands and raised it unsteadily, her awkward grip on the trigger revealing her lack
of experience with the weapon. Her dark eyes drifted to the sight of her husband in bloody pieces in the hallway, and she let out an even more high-pitched scream, dropping the gun to her side, the butt slipping and hitting the carpet. Luther moved towards her and she retreated in a panicked run to the office, a ramshackle room with a desk and shelves, and a threadbare couch that looked like it had been doubling as someone’s bed. She tried to close the door before he reached it, and failed, so she backed herself into a corner by an open drawer, whimpering and crying hysterically.

She tried to hide her face under the overhang of the heavy open wooden drawer.

Luther strode forwards, pulled the drawer straight out of the cabinet and tossed it behind him with a crash, then grabbed the woman by the hair in one hand and raised her to her feet. He swung the hatchet. It took her head clean off, and her body dropped to the floor underneath it, leaving the head dangling in his hand, her tangled hair like Medusa and her serpents.

Luther dropped the head next to her body and looked around.

He squinted. The drawer he had flung across the room had been full of passports—Filipino, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian. The passports and documents were spread all around the room.

Voices.

More witnesses.

Luther left the office and made his way down the hall with the crimson-soaked hatchet in his hand, ready for a methodical search for witnesses if necessary. There were voices beyond one of the doors.

He flung it open.

Inside were women—at least a dozen of them, some wearing silk slips, some in jeans and bra tops. They huddled in fear at the sight of him filling their doorway holding the dripping hatchet. A few of the women mumbled in unfamiliar languages through hot tears, but not one of them screamed. They were too terrified.

Witnesses. A dozen of them.

He noticed there were bars on the window. The beds were few, but it was clear they had all been living together in that wretched room.

Luther stepped back into the hallway and closed the door again. As soon as he did, the voices began again, the low and quivering tones of frightened women who did not know what was going on. Still, no one screamed.

He considered his options.

These women were no threat to his client. They would not talk. And even if they did have anything to say about a man in black with a balaclava and a hatchet, they would be deported before they testified.

Luther walked back along the corridor to the office, picked up several of the passports and
returned to the door. He opened the bedroom door and left the passports in a pile.

He stepped over the body of Lee Lin Tan on the way out, and left the Surry Hills house with the front door wide open.

‘I never did ask…what’s your instrument?’

The city centre was only about fifteen minutes from the Elwood apartment, and the trip seemed to go by too quickly for Mak, who was enjoying the former coffin-maker’s intriguing company. They had driven most of the way caught up in small talk about Bogey’s experiences in Drayson’s band.

‘Guitar,’ Bogey replied, his eyes on the road.

My God, he is Elvis
, Mak thought. She smiled mischievously, and he turned in her direction in time to catch her expression.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing.’

The streets were quiet as they cruised through the central business district of Melbourne, a concrete jungle of metal and glass where the buildings were tall and modern, and the streets were nearly empty at this late hour. The suits that crowded the footpaths during the weekdays had dispersed to their various suburbs to rest in
closets for the weekend, starched and pressed for their Monday meetings.