“I understand the circumstances are unusual.”
And they were unusual. Not only was Mak the victim’s closest link and witness to the discovery of the body, but she was also staying in the deceased’s flat.
“Are you dusting?”
“Yes.”
The flat would soon be a mess. Black carbon fingerprinting powder was difficult to remove. Lanconide was used on the darker surfaces and was equally stubborn but less obvious because it was white. Mak had seen it at crime scenes, but never thought she would have to lay her head in a room invaded by its stain. She watched uneasily as a uniformed forensic cop stopped in front of the collage of magazine photos and began videotaping. His head tilted back as he captured Catherine’s stolen ambitions on video.
Makedde felt her eyes glaze over, and suddenly Detective Flynn’s hand was at her elbow, keeping her steady. “Here, sit down.” He led her to the couch. She hadn’t realised how weak she felt.
“I’m fine, really,” she said unconvincingly as she sat down. “Do I have to be here for the search? I’m not sure I want to be.”
“Generally we prefer it, so that there are no…
misunderstandings
.”
“Well I’m not planning on suing anyone for looking through my underwear, and there is nothing of value here.” She didn’t want to witness a search from such an intimate standpoint, and was relieved when Flynn suggested she sit at a café next door until they were done.
“It shouldn’t take too long. The flat is small,” he said. “Would you like someone to sit with you?”
“No,” she snapped back a little too quickly. “I, uh…really need to be alone.”
Makedde walked straight to the door without glancing back at the searching detectives as they went about their work. She negotiated the stairs with care, recognising that she was numb with shock and her senses were unstable. When she hit the street door and stepped outside, the winter wind greeted her with a strong slap of cold reality.
The Sunday paper offered Makedde no condolences. There was no comforting escape into a pleasantly challenging crossword, or interesting but passionless read about the life of a celebrity or politician. Instead she was immediately confronted by a shocking front page headline:
MODEL SLAIN
. This sensitive title was accompanied by a photo of Catherine, with the morbid caption,
Catherine Gerber, third victim of brutal murder in Sydney this month
. In the picture, Catherine’s fine features oozed glamorous detachment. She appeared blissfully unaware of her fate.
Mak wondered if Book agency had offered the photograph to the press, and if Catherine would have liked it. She looked beautiful, and no doubt every reader’s eye was drawn to her haunting image on this bleak Sunday morning. She folded the paper in half and put it on top of the bedside chest of drawers with Catherine’s picture facing down. Mak no longer felt up to reading the paper. She no longer felt up to doing anything.
The persistent odour of death lingered in her
nostrils. She sniffed in little breaths of air, and there it was, the pure, morbid reek of decomposing flesh. Makedde raised a bare forearm and inhaled the smell of her own skin.
Death.
Death in her pores.
Uninvited tears threatened to flow as she leapt from the bed and ran to the bathroom, her breath hard and fast. She was letting things get to her, losing control. She had to fight it.
Calmly now.
Calmly.
She squeezed mint toothpaste onto her index finger and forced it up one nostril and then the other; a trick she’d learnt from a pathologist years ago. The smell of a cadaver can cling to nose hairs, making everything smell of the deceased. She washed it out, and the fresh, toothpaste fragrance remained. Breathing in a mint-scented world, she left the bathroom and walked straight to the small fridge in the kitchen. She removed a large slab of marzipan chocolate, the wrapper crinkling as she pulled back a corner. She paused guiltily, salivating and stressed, and put it back in the fridge, slamming the door.
Don’t do it
. Mak turned and started to walk away from the kitchen and then turned back and dove for the fridge again. In an instant the wrapper was off, her blood soaring in a sugar ecstasy.
Mak turned her attention to the old television set sitting across from her. The small box begged for her to flick it on, so she did, and her ears were immediately accosted by the loud volume. The ancient remote control was the size of a brick, and was running out of batteries. It took several tries to reduce the volume. A smiling newscaster loudly reminded her that on this day in 1969, before she was even conceived, the first man walked on the moon. They cut from the smiling newscaster to old footage of a space-suit bloated Neil Armstrong triumphantly touching down on the moon’s dusty surface.
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Man-kind.
The two words seemed perversely mismatched.
As she lowered the volume further she noticed that beneath the blaring noise the phone had been ringing. She answered it with a deceptively chirpy, “Hello?”
Click.
The dial tone resumed.
Mak stared into the earpiece for a moment and then hung it up. How rude. She turned her eyes to the quiet television again and was horrified to see Catherine’s face staring back at her. Panic rose in her, a cold sweat breaking out over her body. In an instant the remote was in her hands and she was pressing the
off button. It wouldn’t work. The television image panned across the front doors of Book Model Agency, and then lingered on the crime-scene tape around the tall and trampled grass. Makedde pressed the off button repeatedly.
Dammit! Turn off!
Finally the set obeyed and the image flickered away.
Heart pounding and eyes rimmed with stubborn tears, she lay down on the bed and stared at the cracked paint on the ceiling, breathing deeply, trying to relax.
Think of something else, anything but Catherine.
As a child she had stared for hours at the stucco ceiling in her room, wondering what it would be like if the world was upside down, and people walked on ceilings, stepping over chandeliers and smoke detectors, and reaching up to turn on kitchen taps that would send water flowing straight into their mouths. She tried to return to that life, to let pleasant fantasy captivate her, but she could not.
I need a friend. I need someone to live through this year with me.
Makedde opened her wallet and pulled out a few crinkled photographs. She examined each one lovingly, and when she found the one she wanted, she slowly smoothed it out, carefully bending the corners back into shape. Cat had the duplicate photo, and she had
inscribed this one with the optimistic inscription,
Me ’n’ Mak making it big in Munich!
She studied the smiling faces of Catherine and herself posing in Marienplatz. Cat looked so young. With watery eyes Mak studied her own face in the mirror across from her bed. The woman in her reflection looked much older than in the photograph.
There was a time when Mak and Catherine would sit before a mirror and play with make-up for hours. Makedde had a model’s kit overflowing with shimmering colours and powders. She taught Cat how to apply it; a sweep of charcoal here, a slick of lip gloss there. She would play with dramatic eyeliner and deep red lips. Brigitte Bardot eyes, or Madonna’s frosted lips. Everything looked great on Cat’s thirteen-year-old complexion. Everything. She had such a beautiful, even-featured face. The same face that would six years later stare back at Makedde from a morgue tray; tortured and wasted.
Tomorrow she would pack up Catherine’s things and rip down the collage of magazine photos. But she would keep a picture of her friend in a special part of the room; the photo of them together in Munich, perhaps. That was the normal, rational thing to do. Wasn’t it? A sane photo of happier times, to honour her friend. She would have to make the flat her own, because she would stay in Sydney for a while; as long as it took for the police to find Catherine’s killer.
She remembered a couple of recent postcards and letters from Cat that she had stashed in her suitcase. One of them had been written from the Bondi address. Perhaps she wrote it while seated in exactly the same spot. Indulging her sense of loss, Mak walked to the smaller of her two suitcases and removed the correspondence from a zippered pocket on the outside. Her heart ached at the sight of the familiar, cheerful handwriting.
Dear Mak,
Greetings from down unda! It’s almost July. Soon you’ll be hanging out with me with the kookaburras and the Aussie babes. Even their winter is sunny, like a Canadian spring, I swear. Fabulous! I can’t wait till you are here.
I’m happy to be nearer to the love of my life. He is busy, and for the moment our love is still a secret, but he isn’t continents away now. He’s such a great guy, and classy too. You’ll adore him. It won’t be a secret for much longer. You’ll meet him soon. We’ll laugh about all this mysteriousness!
Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of the clandestine lover. Why did this man need to be a secret? She had assumed he was married and that Catherine would eventually get smart and break off the relationship. But she never did. For the past year she had foolishly pined for the elusive Romeo.
With rage slowly building within her, Makedde imagined the words he must have used to keep her
hanging on—“
I’ll divorce my wife and marry you, I promise. But she couldn’t go through a divorce right now. Not yet. I love you, and soon we’ll be together always. Just wait a bit longer.
” How many times had those words been spoken throughout the history of illicit relationships?
Urgent curiosity and a sense of purpose pushed Makedde’s sadness aside. She pulled Detective Flynn’s card out of her wallet and dialled his mobile number. She had forgotten to tell the police about Catherine’s affair. What if it was important? She would tell Flynn what little she knew about the unnamed paramour. No…she would come to see him in person and let him see the letters. That would convince him to follow the lead.
After a few rings, he answered.
“Detective Flynn, this is Makedde Vanderwall.”
“Hello, Miss Vanderwall. How can I help you?”
“You said I should call if I had any further information. I know it’s Sunday, but I was wondering if I could come down. I have something that might interest you.”
“It’s all right, I’m coming in later anyway. Is 4 p.m. at Homicide all right?”
“Four is fine.”
“See you then.”
Knowing that he was working on Catherine’s case on a Sunday reassured her a little. She was glad she
would have a chance to talk with him about it in person. Looking out the window, she noticed for the first time the blue, cloudless day. She decided to go for a walk along the beach and compare her little life and its tragedies against the immensity of nature. It always made her problems seem insignificant.
Makedde dressed in faded jeans, her favourite Betty Page T-shirt, a warm navy jumper and comfortable walking shoes. With her mind racing to recall every detail of the relationship that Catherine had ever eluded to, she set off on her walk.
Faint sunlight filtered through closed red curtains, turning the room to midnight crimson. Exposed by rumpled bedsheets, his sweat-soaked skin glistened in the unearthly blood-glow. A weak, incomprehensible noise escaped his throat as his fingertip made contact with shiny, black leather. Eyes shut, he lovingly fondled the shoe, stroking the long, thin heel, with its sharp, well-worn point. He traced his fingers gently down the length of the leather sole, his breath quickening.
Her toes.
With agonising deliberation he fingered the thin ankle strap, pausing at its small, metal buckle to press his finger onto the sharp edge.
Her ankles
.
He watched with grotesque pleasure as it pierced the skin, a tiny droplet of blood trickling down his finger.
Whore.
Rolling onto his bare belly he ground the stiffness of his groin hard into the bed and pulled the shoe to
his face, deeply inhaling its sharp odour. His exposed buttocks writhed and jerked with spasmodic gesticulations.
Hunger built within him. Frustration, anger, violence and pleasure coursed through his veins.
Bound flesh.
Blood.
Scenes replayed; every stroke, every cut remembered. But each time less powerful, less fulfilling. He needed more, much more. He thrust the shoe down towards the source of his release and his climax filled the stiletto with a spew of milky vexation.
More.
Hours later, Makedde waited patiently outside the office at Central Homicide, distantly aware of suggestive stares from several young, bored detectives. She was not in the mood. Knowing that the uni-student look rarely helped her to be taken seriously, she had changed out of her jeans into something slightly less casual. She wore her tailor-made, slim black pants; a well travelled favourite that she had specially made to fit her. She paired them with a crisp white man’s shirt she’d bought on King’s Road in London, and a cashmere jacket from New York, a comfortable and versatile classic.
Time ticked by. She checked her watch. It was 4.15 p.m. Fifteen minutes later she was still waiting. Flynn was obviously busy.
An argument taking place in the next room diverted her attention. Raised voices spat through the walls, growing louder and louder, too loud to ignore. The words were hard to make out, but the tone was unmistakably emotional. It had the whiff of a nasty
lover’s quarrel, and Mak felt embarrassed at her unintended eavesdropping.
Then a woman’s voice broke clearly through the walls. “I guess the living are second-rate in your book! I’m over it!” This outburst was punctuated by a thunderous crash inside the room. Several detectives looked up, alarmed. Another crash. It sounded like something big was being smashed repeatedly against a wall. A young man leapt from his chair and ran towards the door, and was nearly hit in the face when it opened unexpectedly. A beautiful, petite, dark-haired woman emerged, her face flushed. She turned back towards the room and bitterly exclaimed, “You’re pathetic!” before striding proudly past the desks. Her head was held high as she ignored the silent looks from the detectives. Wearing a smart-looking suit and a very nasty frown, she made straight for the elevator, arms folded across her chest. As she was swallowed up by the closing doors, she gave the men a sneering, superior look. She seemed quite in tact, so clearly it wasn’t her who had been hurled against the wall.