The Mak Collection (140 page)

‘And you had your handbag stolen.’ Marian narrowed her eyes. ‘That’s bad luck.’

‘Yeah,’ Mak said. ‘There’s a lot of bad luck going around at the moment, isn’t there? Does Groobelaar know about this?’ She gestured to the office.

‘He’s been informed. He didn’t seem as upset as I feared he would be. He knows his confidentiality
is still protected, so he’s fine.’ Marian never kept client names or billing details with case files. All the information was encrypted in her system. If someone had stolen the file it would not have shown any direct link to the client, but it would still have a load of information on the people who were being investigated.

And now I’m probably out of a gig. After all that.

‘Did he cancel the job?’ Mak asked, dreading losing out on all the income for the assignment.

‘No. It’s still yours, unless you want to quit.’

Mak had never quit anything in her life, let alone when it got interesting.

‘I’m no quitter,’ she said. ‘If there was an intruder here, you must have got them on tape?’

Marian was tight with security, and she had a surveillance system installed. There was a keyhole camera hidden in the front door, one in the waiting room and a third in her office.

‘No, the cameras didn’t get anything. They disabled them. The system calls Pete when someone disables any of the cameras. By the time he got here, they were gone.’

Pete specialised in the surveillance and security side of investigations. His previous work as an undercover police officer gave him a good background for it. It was the first time Mak had twigged that Pete had actually installed Marian’s surveillance system. Was that such a good idea if he was a competitor?

‘I have to say, nothing looks disturbed,’ Mak commented. ‘Why are you checking for bugs?’

‘We found one under the desk,’ Pete said.

Shit.
‘Really?’

‘This was professional, not a random burglary, there is no doubt about that,’ he continued. ‘There are a few files missing, including your current case, so I would recommend you be careful. It could be that someone doesn’t want you poking around.’

Mak thought about that possibility. There were four known people central to her assignment thus far. The first was the client, who, as far as Mak could see, had no reason at all to steal the information he was already paying to have provided to him. The second was the victim, who was dead before Mak even got involved. The third, Tobias Murphy, was in jail. The fourth key person was Simon Aston.

Simon Bloody Try-Sexual Aston…Or even Damien Cavanagh himself?

‘Tell me something: are the other stolen files for current cases?’ Mak asked.

‘No. Not that we’ve found so far. Only yours. Which makes me think that the other files were taken to make it look less obvious.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Mak said.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Mak, I hate to ask you this but I need to know something. I need you to answer this truthfully.’

‘Okay.’

‘Have you said anything about the specifics on this case to your boyfriend or any other cop?’

Mak paused, trying to think of the implications. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Well, I passed on that video, like I told you.’ She’d worded Marian up on her arrival back in Sydney. ‘I thought the police needed to have it. It might show a girl’s death. But as it didn’t show Meaghan Wallace, it probably isn’t related to our investigation work anyway.’

Or is it?

‘I’ve confidentially spoken about some aspects of the case to a police officer friend who I trust,’ Mak continued, ‘but not the client’s details or anything sensitive—just my feelings on the murder and the kid they have as a suspect. I have some niggling doubt that the boy is guilty.’ She and Karen had spoken about a lot of things on the way from the airport, but nothing that Mak felt compromised her investigation—to the contrary.

Marian nodded thoughtfully. ‘So you haven’t mentioned Groobelaar to anyone?’

‘I would never do that.’

‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t. I am sorry I had to ask.’

‘That’s okay.’ Marian would no doubt be feeling violated and suspicious, knowing that someone had penetrated her security. ‘Wait a second…’ Mak clicked to her meaning. ‘Are you
saying that you think the cops might have done this?’

‘All I know is, this was very professional,’ Marian said. ‘If all this was done to find out about your assignment, then you really need to be careful. Don’t do anything that might compromise your position, or lose you your licence.’

Mak nodded. She was partial to bending the rules, but she rarely flat-out broke them. However, in light of what had just happened, Mak had some ideas that didn’t quite fit into the
Private Investigators Act
of 1999.

‘And you must have seen the article in the paper. I thought you’d be unhappy about it, bringing up that whole trial again.’

‘What article? What paper?’ Mak felt her big toe start to itch, exactly where the microsurgeon had sewn it back on. ‘Why would there be an article about that? The trial was over two years ago. More. It was nearly three years ago, wasn’t it?’

‘I dunno, Mak. But your face is in the paper today. There’s a copy in the waiting room. It says you are working for me as a private investigator. It kinda makes it sound like you can’t get a job as a shrink. I think someone planted it. Someone is out for you, Mak.’

Mak felt her face flush. She ran out to the waiting room and grabbed the paper, Marian and Pete following close behind. She had to flip through several pages before she found it.

STILETTO MURDER VICTIM
’
S SECRET LIFE IN SYDNEY

Surviving Stiletto Murder victim, Canadian model Makede Van der Wall, has secretly returned to live with her detective boyfriend in Sydney, despite the horrors of her brutal rape and abduction here five years ago. The Stiletto Killer—the most prolific and violent killer in Australian history…

Mak didn’t think she could read on, but she did. She found the part Marian was talking about:

…despite being a trained psychologist, Van der Wall had not been able to find work. She has been secretly working for Marian Wendell Private Investigations, where perhaps her past is less likely to be questioned.

Secret life? What secret?
Mak stared at the article disbelievingly, a quiet rage building in her. They made her sound like some kind of freak.

‘How can they write that? They even spelled my name wrong. Who writes this shit?’

How can a few days turn so bad?

‘It’s bile, Mak. Don’t pay it any attention,’ Marian said calmly.

Why now? Why me?

‘Don’t take it too harshly. No one believes those rags anyway.’

‘Well, you bought a copy, didn’t you?’ Mak countered. And so did hundreds of thousands of other people who read it daily.

Marian shrugged.

‘I think you might be right. Someone is trying to discredit me,’ Mak said as calmly as she could.
And I think I might know who that someone is.
She turned to Pete. ‘Is your mate Sergei working at the moment?’ Mak asked him.

Pete smiled. ‘Looking to do some shopping, are you?’

Mak grinned back, but her lips were sealed. The only thing to do when she was angry was to get to work.

Mak arrived at the terrace and parked her black bike next to Andy’s little red Honda. She was going to have to borrow it again—not that he’d care. She needed a car for what she was planning to do.

She put a call in to Pete’s contact Sergei. ‘Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. I know you’re probably closing soon.’

‘Yep.’

‘I have something urgent. I just need a couple of items. How’s your stock at the moment?’

‘Pretty good,’ he responded.

‘Can I swing past?’

There was not much of a pause. Sergei’s cash register was always willing to accept payment.

When Mak pulled up at the daggy little doorway on Parramatta Road with the shop sign that said
SPY WORLD
—complete with a cartoon symbol of big eyes doing a suspicious sideways glance—Sergei was just opening the door for her.

‘So what can I help you with this afternoon, Miss Vanderwall?’

Sergei never called anyone by his or her first name. He was a lanky Russian immigrant with a heavy accent, a number-one buzz cut and a remarkable talent for being able to turn just about any basic household item—photo albums, cans of soup, desk clocks, light switches, thermostats—into surveillance devices. He could probably implant a tiny camera into your dentures if you wanted it.

‘Ah, I am just looking for the usual, Sergei. Throwaways. Nothing too fancy.’

Mak followed him through the doorway and up a staircase to the first floor. Inside his shop were glass display cases filled with every type of surveillance equipment Mak could hope for, and then some.

‘So what do you need?’

‘A couple of taps.’ Phone tappers.

Sergei disappeared into the back room to get them for her while she perused some of his keyhole camera handiwork longingly. One day she wanted to be on a job where she needed one of his infamous button cameras. The camera was a tiny keyhole lens positioned in the centre hole of
a regular jacket button. The video images it could capture were as clear as day, and it fed all of the footage into a receiver Mak could carry in a small purse. It was a brilliant piece of craftsmanship. It even came with extra matching buttons so the jacket would look uniform. It would take a highly trained—and suspicious—eye to spot the miniature lens. There was a similar set-up available in the head of a screw, which could be fitted to any wall or device. It too came with extra screws to match the doorway or wall the lens was fitted to. It was a tight surveillance unit with high quality reception, and it was
very
expensive. Mak couldn’t afford it unless a client was picking up the tab, and in this case there was no way to warrant filming anyone’s activities. Not yet, anyway. Nonetheless, she drooled over the items in the glass cases as if they were rare and precious jewels.

Sergei returned with the phone tappers, which were basically small double clamps to be attached to a phone line and fed back via transmitter. The recording device only kicked in when the line became active, so it recorded only conversation, never dead air.

He also appeared to be holding something behind his back. Mak was alarmed.

‘Sergei, what are you—’

‘I thought you might want to have a look at these,’ he said, and triumphantly passed her a pair of dark sunglasses.

‘You didn’t!’ she squealed, noticing that the glasses were a large Jackie O–style shape.

Sergei smiled, clearly pleased with himself.

She tried the glasses on. ‘These are brilliant. Utterly brilliant!’ She pulled her hair back and examined the range on them. ‘Wow.’

With carefully applied airbrushed mirror paint, Sergei had turned a pair of designer sunglasses into spyglasses. On the outside the glasses looked completely normal, but on the inside of the lens the outer corner was mirrored so that the wearer could actually see behind themselves. Mak was very impressed with the work.

‘I can’t believe you did this.’

‘Well, you said they would be nice if they were designer shape.’

Sergei carried some cheap ready-made ones that were somewhat lacking in style. Obviously he had taken her comments about them to heart.

‘Well, obviously I will have to take those beauties.’ She placed them on the counter with the tappers.

Sergei was practically glowing with pride. ‘How is the phone going?’

‘Brilliant, thanks. Works a charm. I got to use it in an insurance sting last month.’

The phone he had sold her was a fake mobile fitted with a small lens in the top, where infrared usually went. Mak could place it on a table pointed in the direction she wanted to film, or hold it in her hand and pretend to be checking messages, all
the while clearly recording everything her subject was doing. The resolution was incredible.

She’d only used the phone once so far, but the insurance company had been very impressed with her work. She had filmed one of their suspicious worker’s compensation beneficiaries bowling at the local alley, even though his claim stated that his back injury prevented him from lifting anything. Yeah, right.

Mak paused, thinking of what else she might need. Sergei had a lot of tempting equipment that she couldn’t afford.

‘Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot—do you have a double adapter in stock at the moment?’

Marian had told Mak many times that there were no coincidences. Perhaps she was right. Mak’s handbag had been stolen, Marian’s office bugged, and the police had not even called her about the video. But Mak still resisted the idea that the cops might have actually stolen files from Marian’s office without a warrant and bugged the place. The implications would be unnecessarily ugly.

Nonetheless, things were getting weird.

If there were no coincidences, then someone knew about Mak’s investigation and didn’t like it one bit. She was planning on staying a little quieter about the rest of her investigation now. Especially this next part. Having Marian’s office
broken into was exactly the sort of thing a guilty person did to find out what others knew about their activities. But who was it? Robert Groobelaar had no reason at all to steal his file, Tobias was in jail, and on Mak’s radar that only left Simon Aston and his rich buddy. That was where Mak planned to concentrate her efforts until she got some answers.

‘We have a cop outside the house.’

The American frowned. There shouldn’t be any police bothering the Cavanaghs. Not now. Not ever. It was his job to see that they didn’t.

‘It’s a red Honda,’ his security man Stone continued. ‘He drove past slowly, twice, with his lights off. Now he is down the block with the engine running. I’m not sure if he is planning to come in or what.’

This could be troublesome.

‘Name?’ he asked.