Siren (26 page)

But she didn’t die. Fate brought her here instead.

Luther had never been an attractive man. His physical size was imposing, his features beaten up. He’d already once had his nose straightened in Bangkok by a surgeon who owed him a favour. After Mak broke it with her motorcycle helmet, it had the shape of a crooked potato. He had not bothered to fix it. He had been reminded of Makedde Vanderwall every time he had looked at his face since.

Makedde.

She was shackled, hungry, helpless. Still, her presence—in his care—both fascinated and troubled him. How could all of these occurrences be coincidence? How could one woman have eluded him? Why did she keep crossing his path? What was her role in his life fated to be?

Now here she was, more mythological creature than woman. She had escaped his clutches too many times. No one else in his career had ever done that.

Mak cocked her head to one side, appearing more curious than fearful. ‘I do remember you. Hello,’ she said.

And no woman had ever looked at him with that curious gleam in her eye. Not fear. Just curiosity.

Does she know me?

Bogey stepped out of the taxi on the slanted and narrow Rue Cardinal Lemoine with his mobile phone in one hand and his suitcase in the other. He had been holding his phone the entire journey, hoping it would ring.

Mak is in trouble. She must be in trouble…

He placed his case on the kerb and handed the driver a fistful of euros, barely paying attention to the counting of the notes. Makedde had given him instructions to take the Metro from Gare du Nord to the hotel, but she was still not answering his calls, and he had wanted to get to her as soon as he could, and in his worry had run to the taxi stand and grabbed the first available car. He had been so relieved to be in Paris, and closer to her, and on the way to her hotel, that he didn’t care about the added expense. He had called her from the plane, and from Heathrow, and since arriving on the Eurostar he had called again twice, and left her further text messages, sure that she would call him any moment to explain that she had been struggling with the kind of difficulties that plague travellers abroad with a frequency explained only by
Murphy’s Law—a misplaced number, a stolen wallet, a lost phone or wiped SIM card; something to explain the silence.

So far there had been nothing.

His brow knitted with worry, Bogey stepped from the street through a large doorway to the charming cobblestone courtyard of the Hotel des Grandes Écoles, where a three-storey pastoral cottage welcomed him. He took only a moment to register the beauty of it, before making his way up a series of steps to the door. He found himself in a small lobby where a young woman with silken brunette hair pulled into a neat ponytail was talking on the phone in quick French. She did not look up when he entered. Bogey placed his suitcase in front of the wooden desk and looked around worriedly. He could not see Makedde. Hopefully she was in her room waiting for him, and there was nothing amiss. Perhaps she was playing a joke on him. He wouldn’t put it past her to play some sort of joke. Her humour was at times left-of-centre, even morbid.

‘
Parlez-vous Anglais
?’ he asked, when the receptionist placed the phone back in the receiver.

She raised her eyes and appraised him and his jet-black hair and ripped jeans with a look of frank curiosity. ‘
Oui, monsieur
,’ she replied. ‘How may I help you?’

‘I’m Humphrey Mortimer, here for Makedde Vanderwall. She is staying with you.’

‘You would like to call one of our guests,’ she said more than asked, and pushed a house phone across the desk towards him.

‘Well, I am to stay in her room.’ He held up his suitcase. Makedde had said he could stay with her. ‘May I have a key and drop my suitcase off?’

She paused. ‘
Monsieur
, I cannot give you the key to a guest’s room.’

The tiredness from his long flight from Australia, then the train under the Channel, came crashing over him. He took a breath. ‘Is there a note for me, perhaps? My name is Humphrey Mortimer, or it could be for Bogey Mortimer.’

‘Bogey?’ she said with a little smile, pronouncing it
Bow-Gay
.

‘Yes. Is there a message for a Mr Mortimer, or a Bogey?’

She shifted some papers around on the reception desk. ‘
Non.
’

‘Okay, I would like to call the guest, Makedde Vanderwall, please.’

She gestured to the phone and he raised the receiver to his ear. ‘I’ll put you through.’

There were a number of clicks and tones, making it sound as if the system had not been upgraded since France first installed telephone lines. He held the phone tensely until it had rung in her room twelve times.

‘The guest is not in,’ the receptionist said.

He hung up and took a step back, wondering what to do. The dread he had felt since the flight had increased to a sharper, more focused alarm. He asked again for the room key, and when she refused he felt defeated. ‘I will wait for her,’ he said simply.

Desperate for a shower and a rest, Bogey made his way back to the courtyard of the Hotel des Grandes Écoles in a fog of worry and weariness. He positioned himself at one of the cold outdoor café-style tables, beneath a closed striped umbrella. A light snow drifted in tranquil poetry before melting on the cobblestones. He let it land on him and melt,
while he tried to think of what to do. Outside the large doors of the courtyard, the Latin Quarter buzzed with university students, shop owners and tourists. Hopefully, somewhere nearby, Mak was okay.

Bogey did not want to believe that Makedde would forget his visit, but the alternative reasons for her silence were even worse. He sent her a carefully worded text message.

HI MAK. AT HOTEL AND CAN’T FIND YOU. PLEASE CALL AND LET ME KNOW YOU ARE OKAY EVEN IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ME. PLEASE CALL. BOGEY

On the morning of the third day, Luther Hand woke to sunlight gleaming on the rolling hills of the Burgundy countryside.

The farmhouse he had made his own was south of the town of Vézelay, on the edge of the Monts du Morvan, the ‘Black Mountains’ of the Celts of old. Now that the weather had cleared, Luther could see expanses of green fields, vineyards and forest undulating towards the horizon, where low granite slopes and plateaux were set against a cloudspotted blue sky, shrouded in places by a thinning wreath of mist. He could just make out the spires of the Romanesque basilica of Sainte-Madeleine in Vézelay rising above the distant treetops, and catch glimpses of the trail of old buildings sloping down the hill below the church. This was one of the most remote locations in central France, about three hours’ drive from Paris, and he had chosen it both for its isolation and its familiarity. Luther had recently eliminated the fleeing London financier, Nicholas Santer, in this very stretch of land. Luther had tracked Mr Santer here with ease, at the leastcared-for
and most remote of his many European properties. He had been fast asleep as Luther sliced his throat open—the wound had gaped like the smile of a jack-o’-lantern, Luther recalled—before neatly dismembering him and locking the remains into a small crate buried beneath a garden of fragrant lavender. His body had not yet been found, and the investigation into his whereabouts had not been particularly heartfelt. Evidently the man’s wife had discovered that her missing husband’s will allotted a large portion of his fortune to the mother of his bastard child. She would rather her husband continue his ‘extended vacation’ while she lived comfortably with unfettered access to his millions. Luther was generally unaware of and happier without such intimate knowledge of his targets’ affairs and the crumbling world their pathetic lives left behind. From one corner of the rundown property he could see the bright hedge of lavender several hundred metres away, bordering the Santer holding. It always brought to mind for a moment that grinning red jack-o’-lantern the London banker had become.

Luther had known he would return to the area, though he had not thought it would be so soon. He didn’t know that it would be with Makedde Vanderwall.

The grounds surrounding his small farmhouse were lush green with winter rainfall. An old car in the gravel drive appeared to have been sacrificed to wet weather and rust. As he had anticipated, there had not been any foot traffic in the immediate area over the previous two days. No cars. No one to disturb him. A semi-feral calico cat was flicking its tail and preparing to lunge at a rodent alongside the house. Otherwise the world was quiet and still.

Luther looked across at the clock as the hand clicked to the hour. It was still early, just seven in the morning.

Today.

You have work to do today.

With the effort required of a man whose shoulders were unusually broad, Luther rolled over. The old double bed creaked under the weight of him. As with most European beds, its dimensions were unsuitable, and his feet dangled over the end. A soft beam of sunlight fell across him as he lay still once more, and for a time he didn’t move out of it. The winter rays felt pleasantly warm on his skin. He found he liked the sensation. Luther did not care for the sun in Mumbai, where he kept a scarcely used apartment in Colaba, a place he’d begun avoiding in favour of his recently acquired flat in Plaça de Catalunya, Barcelona, about eight hours south-west of where he was now. As in his native Australia, the sun in India bit. The air there was excessively dirty too, polluted with fumes and grit. But here, the sky seemed to have a soft green glow. The sun was gentle. Luther did not spend much time in natural daylight. His work involved a lot of movement at night, a lot of time in planes, hotels, always moving. He was rarely in one place for even a week, such were the demands of his chosen occupation. He did not often spend a week in the French countryside. He did not lie about in a small bed enjoying the morning sun through dusty windowpanes.

For a stretch of time Luther lay with the sun draped over his skin, feeling strange.

A rabbit bounded past the window, and suddenly Luther had the feeling that he was unravelling. He sat up and tried to shake it off.

That’s it. You need to finish this. Finish it by sundown and fly out. Madame Q will have new assignments for you.

He had not heard back from his agent. That was unusual.

Luther was beginning to feel peculiarly disconnected from the outside world.

‘Drayson, it’s Bogey. Have you heard anything from Mak? Has Loulou heard from her?’

Through the phone, Humphrey Mortimer could hear loud guitars, and the noise of a crowd. Drayson and Loulou would still be in party mode.

There was a long pause before a reply. ‘Mak? No, man. What’s up with her?’ He didn’t wait for Bogey to explain. ‘The festival was rockin’. You should have come with us.’

Bogey passed a sign indicating
Musée Minéralogique
and
Rue Jussieu
, neither of which felt helpful. Nothing about his surroundings was familiar or comforting, and the unexplained absence of the woman he had flown so far to see was a continuing shock to his strung-out nerves.

‘Drayson,
listen to me
,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m in Paris, and I’m supposed to be meeting Mak here. I can’t find her.’

The music took over the line momentarily and then faded back when Drayson spoke. ‘Oh, man, that sucks. You mean Paris, Europe?’

‘Yes. Paris, France. This is serious. I think something has happened to Makedde. She didn’t check out of her hotel room. She is just missing.’

Static.

Bogey stopped on the street. The air was cold and unwelcoming, his leather jacket, wool sweater and scarf not enough to offset the penetrating winter chill. French men and women passed without making eye contact, busy on their way to familiar places in a familiar routine Bogey was not part of. He did not speak the language. He did not know whom to ask for help, or what to say.
My maybe girlfriend hasn’t shown up?

‘Dude, I can barely hear you. I’ll pass you to Loulou.’

There were the sounds of shuffling and more static. Bogey felt so tense he thought he might explode.

‘Bogey? Oh, darling, you should have been there! The bands were awesome!’

As he heard these words, he saw a waiter coming towards him enquiringly. He was so distracted he had blundered into the outdoor area of a café. He turned away from the establishment, and the man, and walked the other way, shivering, cupping the phone to his ear. He had not eaten since he’d arrived, he realised. It would not be helping his mental state.

‘Loulou,’ he pleaded. ‘Where’s Mak? Have you heard from her?’

‘Isn’t she at my place?’

God, she doesn’t even know?

‘She came to Paris for an assignment,’ he explained.

There was a pause. ‘Yeah. I think she said something about that. She isn’t back yet?’

Hopeless. This is hopeless.

‘Do you have the number for her friend…Mahoney? The cop?’ he asked.

‘Hang on.’ Even the notoriously scatterbrained Loulou seemed to realise from his voice that something must be wrong. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

Distantly, Mak was aware of a stabbing pain in her lower back, like a sword impaling her lumbar region and extending out her abdomen.

God help me.

She stood, arranged her coat and a blanket around herself, and began her ritual walk. In a grim semicircle, she shuffled across the cold floor of the cellar in her dirty socks, one leg weighed down by the heavy cuff, its chain sliding across stone with an eerie rattle. The stabbing pains in her back continued, joined by the ache of knee and elbow joints, and the throb of her head. She tried to keep the pain distant. She needed her head to be clear to think of a way out, and giving in to pain would not help. She tried to imagine the streets of Paris just beyond the walls of her cellar prison. Perhaps she was not so far away from her hotel? Perhaps she was just across from the Catacombs, and hundreds of people were passing on the streets only metres above her. If she could convince her strange captor to take off her cuff, she could flee. She would be up that set of creaking stairs in a flash, out into the day, and
into the crowds, absorbed into the movement and life and chaos of Paris. She would be carried to safety by well-meaning Parisians. She would be saved.

You will not be saved.

Mak had to save herself. Somehow.

Back and forth she moved, pacing bleakly in her bonds, cold and on the edge of hunger. She passed her chamberpot, her water dish, her plate speckled with breadcrumbs. She was alone with her quiet fury, disconnected from normality, dignity, common decency, and even from fear. Perhaps fear, like breath, was rationed out, and it was only very few who ran out of one before the other. Yet here she was, alive, breathing, and absolved of fear, like a soldier after too many battles.

It was strange that life would bring her chronic trouble that seemed never to fade, no matter the skills she learned, no matter the introspection she indulged in. She thought of Arslan, she thought of the Cavanaghs, the Stiletto Killer, those who wished her ill. She shared the earth with dangerous people. Mak had received so much unwanted attention over the years that she could in an instant switch from being relaxed to a hyper-alert survival mode. Her father, the retired Detective Inspector Les Vanderwall, had nicknamed her ‘The Hawk’ for her tendency to survey her surroundings with coplike attention to potential danger. She found it uncomfortable to sit anywhere except the ‘Clint Chair’ in a restaurant or any public venue. The Clint Chair was the seating position that let her keep her back to the wall, an eye on entrances and exits, and preferably had a view of the activity at the cash register as well; it was named thus because it was the seat Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry would choose.

If Mak did have good instincts, as Marian claimed, then they had certainly been hard won through many dangers and challenges. But where were those instincts when she was down in the Catacombs?

Perhaps you were in love
, she thought.
With Bogey.

She wondered if she would ever see him again.

The door.

Mak halted her pacing at the sound of the door opening at the top of the stairs.

Footsteps.

Here he comes.

Luther was not feeling right.

He had not eliminated the mark, Makedde Vanderwall. ‘
The mark.
’ That was what she was. Nothing more. He would have to kill her. The contract demanded it, and he was a professional. Deviating from the job was when people made mistakes, and he was not one to make mistakes. True, Makedde’s strength and beauty had fascinated him once but he had carefully reined in his unprofessional desires.

Not Makedde, ‘the mark’. She is only a mark.

He still had not heard from Madame Q. He felt a strange sense of disconnection. Never before had a woman looked at him,
really looked
at his face, and not looked away quickly, struck with fear or revulsion. He could see in Makedde’s eyes that she was not afraid of him.

He moved to her, noticing that she did not flinch. She licked her sensuous lips, and continued to gaze at him in a way that puzzled him. It was not a look of fear, or even loathing. But neither could it be called friendly. She
watched
him, impassive.

‘Could I have a cigarette? I’m really desperate for a smoke,’ she said.

He frowned for a moment. He hadn’t known she was a smoker. Luther shook his head.

‘Shame. I could use one.’ Again, her tone lacked fear.

There was a prolonged moment of silence.

‘You’ve killed before, haven’t you?’ she finally asked. ‘I can tell. It’s a look we all have.’ She cocked her head. ‘We’re alike, you and I. I killed a man once. With a shotgun. It was bloody, and violent. A mess. But you know what, I kind of
liked
it. It bothered me for a while that I found it satisfying to blow another human being’s head off like that, but you know, he deserved it and I’m okay with that now.’

Luther did not know how to respond. She had certainly seemed skilled when he had attacked her in that hallway in Australia. But he had been wearing a balaclava; she couldn’t know it was him. Why was she telling him this?

‘You’re a hitman, right?’ She was guessing, but his expression told her that she was on the right track. ‘You are. Do you like it? Is it…satisfying?’

Luther did not know how to answer. Yes, sometimes the job gave him satisfaction, but mostly it was work. He did not care about it so much any more. He did not notice the killing the way he once had.

‘I want you to teach me. I want to do what you do,’ she said.

No you don’t.

‘Really. I’ve been thinking. You know, I can’t go back to Australia. You know that. If it isn’t you, it will be someone else. They will be sure to get rid of me on the off-chance that I inconvenience them. You work for the Cavanaghs, don’t you? You’re working as a hitman for them?’

Such information was often kept from him. Everything with Madame Q was separated, boxed off. No one knew who else was involved in a job. No one could tell. And yet, he had known it was them. Few could afford his fees. He had never dealt with any of the Cavanagh family, but he had been summoned to their house previously to deal with Makedde, and he had known it was they who had set this assignment in motion.

‘You know they’ve been caught up in an investigation into an international crime syndicate? In Queensland. They were on some database. You might well be on that database too.’

He flinched.

‘I can’t go back there, and I doubt you can either,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure they already think I’m dead, and it wouldn’t be hard for you to convince them that I am. That’s the only way. If they think I’m alive they’ll just send someone else.’

He started, and backed away from her. What was she suggesting? That she become his apprentice?

He needed to leave. He had to be out of her presence before he did something he would regret. He turned and disappeared up the staircase.

‘I’m lonely down here by myself,’ he heard Makedde say as he shut the cellar door fast.

He locked the padlock and leaned against the door, feeling a rare panic.