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  He’ll be so surprised.

  ‘Andy…’

  She gave him a hug, her body grateful for the contact. At six foot four, he was one of the few whom she could literally look up to—a quality she found intoxicating, for although she was just over six foot tall herself, he towered over her barefoot.

  She tilted her face up to his. ‘How were things today?’ she asked. Mak couldn’t wait to show him the dining room. He wouldn’t believe it—the candles, the effort.

  ‘Yeah, good, thanks,’ he muttered. ‘You know…I’m looking forward to getting stuck into it.’ There had always been one hitch or another—a lack of funding, a change of politics, a shift of focus in the Federal Police—but now Andy was finally getting traction with the project he had long pushed for: a top-notch national unit dedicated to solving violent serial crime, Andy’s speciality. It would be based in Canberra, the national capital, and aligned with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s program at their academy in Quantico, Virginia. He would do a three-month stint at the academy in preparation, starting in a few days. Andy would take on major national violent serial crime cases, help train up new profilers and oversee their work in the field. It was a far more exciting and senior position. It was what he had always dreamed of.

  ‘Well, relax, take your coat off…’ Mak began.

  But Andy frowned. ‘There was a shooting at Pyrmont where the old Water Police station used to be,’ he stated abruptly, sounding harried. ‘Sorry, but I gotta run. Just changing my shirt.’

  Mak’s smile faltered as her romantic plans came to an abrupt halt. ‘Oh.’ A little knot formed in her stomach.

  Andy grabbed his tie in one hand and loosened it. ‘I’ve got crap all over it,’ he said, pulling back his jacket to show brown and red stains along the front of the pale blue shirt. ‘This kid has gone and decapitated himself on a fence, running away from Deller. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Oh.’ She took leave of his chest as she realised it was most probably the kid’s blood that had stained the shirt.

  Andy’s eyes moved this way and that, recalling something that frustrated him, his mouth caught in a tight frown. ‘He was only wanted for questioning.’

  Not any more, Mak thought darkly.

  Retreating a couple of steps down the hall, Mak managed to flick the dining room door closed with one foot, blocking the view of the candlelit dinner set up inside. She didn’t want him seeing what she had attempted—not like this. Thankfully Andy failed to notice her actions. He was wrestling with his shirt buttons instead.

  Beep.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  It was the sound of the microwave finishing in the kitchen. Mak had reheated the pasta for dinner. She thought she’d nuked it for a minute, but maybe she had hit ten…It would be like rubber now.

  ‘What was what? I didn’t hear anything,’ she lied.

  He shook his head. ‘Well, this bloody kid tried to jump a fence or something and caught his neck on some cable. I have to help them sort everything out. I’m sorry, Mak, I won’t be long. Just a couple of more hours.’

  There goes dinner.

  Mak nodded. ‘Oh, that’s bad luck,’ she said, pretending to arrange her motorcycle jacket and helmet on the hall table. ‘Is that still your job now? I mean…you leave on Saturday…’

  ‘Jimmy wanted me to help out. I know all the boys and…you know.’

  She did know—too well.

  ‘Do you have time for a bite or anything?’ she said, even though she was sure the answer would be no.

  Andy paused. ‘I’m sorry, Mak. Jimmy’s waiting outside. We’ve gotta go.’

  She nodded again, her thoughts a swirl of black clouds.

  ‘Oh…dammit.’ Recognition flitted across his face. ‘Oh, Mak, I’m sorry about dinner. I should have called ahead.’

  Yes, you should have. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be back in a couple of hours at the most. Sorry, Mak.’

  ‘That’s fine. No problem. I know it’s important,’ she said.

  Andy moved past her and up the staircase to the bedroom they shared, while she remained planted in the hallway, secretly livid.

  Mak had called him earlier in the day to confirm their dinner date at seven. It was just a normal weekday—not a weekend or a holiday, or a full moon when everyone ran out and started killing one another. It was a simple, boring Thursday night, so why would he have not called once he knew he couldn’t make it? Why couldn’t he have let her know before she made an ass of herself waiting around and trying to play bloody Martha Stewart? He had forgotten completely, and had no doubt also forgotten their discussion about why spending some time together was important at the moment. They only had two days left, and America was a long way away. If she couldn’t afford to visit him there, they would not see each other for three whole months.

  ‘You’re going to force me to have an affair, Andy,’ she’d joked. Half joked.

  She wasn’t about to remind him of their discussion now, not in the state the two of them were in: her angry and him stressed. It would come out all wrong, anyway. He had the scene of a fatality to attend to; who cared if his girlfriend had cooked her first meal in history? What did it matter? It didn’t.

  Feeling the razor-sharp clarity that always consumed her when she was annoyed, Mak walked towards the front door and stepped out into the darkening evening. A stiff summer breeze tossed her dress around, the clouds above turning purple and gold with the last of the setting sun.

  A police cruiser waited at the kerb with Andy’s longtime police partner, Detective Senior Constable Jimmy Cassimatis, in the passenger seat. Where Andy was tall, lean and strong, Jimmy was fuzzy and rounded like a man-sized teddy bear or football mascot. He was a man perpetually eating and finding excuses to look at, or talk about, women’s anatomy. On this occasion he appeared to be doing both.

  Eyes narrow with coiled tension, Mak walked down the path towards him, dress floating, hands on hips.

  ‘Hello, Jimmy,’ she said, and came towards the window of the cruiser.

  He started, dropping a magazine in his lap and spilling a bag of salty chips. Flustered, he shoved the publication down by his side and out of view, but not before Mak caught an eyeful of fleshy amateur photographs on the pages. She saw the words HORNBAG NEXT DOOR CONTEST printed above someone’s labia and smile. SEND YOUR PHOTO IN AND WIN $50!

  Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.

  ‘Skata. You shouldn’t go sneaking up on me like that,’ Jimmy squeaked awkwardly.

  ‘Catching up on world news while you’re waiting?’

  He nodded, his face turning crimson.

  Mak leaned straight into the window, her blonde mane falling forwards, deliberately hovering above him as he sat helplessly strapped into the car seat, sinking ever lower.

  ‘So what are the latest presidential polls?’ Mak asked, her tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘Is Bush in or out?’

  Jimmy coughed.

  ‘Out of favour, then? Hmm, yes, it would seem so,’ she replied with mock thoughtfulness and placed an arm on the top of the car. ‘You boys had a rough one today by the sound of it.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, clearly uncomfortable.

  Mak was well aware that she could make Jimmy Cassimatis nervous, and she had years ago decided that it was the best way to deal with him. They’d had a rocky relationship from the start. Four-and-a-half years ago, when Mak had only just met Andy and he was little more than the detective in charge of her friend’s murder case, Jimmy had tracked down a photo of 22-year-old Makedde in a bikini—complete with golden tan and heaving breasts—from a back issue of Sports Illustrated, and had posted it on a very public evidence board in police headquarters. He had even gone to the effort of circling her private areas in a bright felt-tip pen, as one sometimes did with crime-scene photographs. The entire Homicide Squad had seen it. Years on, not much had changed between them.

  A cursory inspection of the car revealed Freddo Fr
og chocolate wrappers and an empty KFC carton in addition to the toppled bag of salt and vinegar chips. ‘Dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh, lunch.’

  Jimmy had not improved his health habits one iota, despite his doctor’s warnings and a near-fatal stroke that had left one side of his face with a slight droop that seemed only to add to his hangdog expression. Perhaps he believed that the blood-thinning Warfarin medication he was taking had been provided merely to support his desired cuisine preferences. There was probably little that his long-suffering wife, Angie, could say to teach her old dog new tricks.

  ‘What do you think of Andy’s new job?’ Mak asked him.

  Jimmy frowned. She could see that he didn’t like losing his old police partner to a new position. ‘He’s a lucky sonofabitch.’

  ‘Yeah, it will be good for his career.’

  It was a return visit—he had trained as a profiler there as part of their international program.

  Mak changed the subject. ‘So is Deller under a bit of pressure now?’

  ‘Cos of the runner? I dunno. Don’t think so.

  He didn’t tell the kid to bolt off and try to leap

  over a wire barricade. He told him to stop.’ Jimmy shifted in his seat. ‘What about you? You still playing PI?’ He said the words tauntingly, clearly looking for some subject to give him the upper hand.

  ‘Playing’ PI.

  Mak smiled mischievously, trying not to show her annoyance with his tone. ‘Why? Do you need some help with something?’

  He smiled smugly. ‘Hey, has Andy told you about Ferris Hetherington, the ex-cop?’

  He had. Many times. Mak was aware that her work with Marian was causing some minor friction with Andy, but she loved her new-found freedom far too much to dwell on any negative attitudes he and his colleagues might have towards private investigators and their trade. What she did was legal and professional, and it had a place. People needed the services Marian’s agency provided, and those who were coming to her for the wrong reasons—to get some professional help to stalk an ex or to spy on a rival business—were quickly vetted out. Marian was an excellent judge of character, and so long as her clients didn’t lie to her—about the things that counted, anyway—and they fell within her basic amoral–moral guidelines, the judging stopped there.

  ‘Ferris,’ Jimmy said, ‘quit his real job to start a private investigation agency. He tried to break into a room at the Westin—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Mak broke in. ‘Ferris tried to pick the lock on the hotel room door with his driver’s licence, and it got stuck in the door.’ Hard to talk your way out of that.

  ‘You heard the story, then?’

  Mak continued the story, verbatim, the way she’d heard it from Andy a dozen times since she started working for Marian. ‘He got arrested for breaking and entering, lost his licence and went broke after six months. Fascinating story, Jimmy, but one I’ve heard before. Oh, Pete says hi, by the way,’ she countered.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Tell him I say hi.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘He’s a good man, Pete.’

  Pete Don was ex-undercover Drug Squad. He had quit the force to start an investigation agency after being outed in a freak intelligence bungle that saw him nearly killed by a major organised crime syndicate. The entire police force had a quiet respect for him, and Mak knew damned well that he had, on occasion, done work for various cops, even though it was not something she discussed with him. Pete was one of Marian’s friendly rivals, and he had been a lecturer in Mak’s investigator course.

  Mak heard footsteps and turned. Andy had changed into a fresh shirt and was walking towards her.

  ‘Sorry about dinner,’ he said and kissed her on the mouth. ‘I hope you didn’t prepare anything.’

  She licked her lips when he pulled away. ‘Me? Are you kidding? Ha!’ She let out an exaggerated laugh as he moved around the car and got in the driver’s seat.

  Jimmy laughed as well, but more genuinely. ‘Fat chance!’ He knew Mak wasn’t the cooking type. His wife, meanwhile, prepared hearty, home-cooked, three-course meals on a nightly basis.

  ‘We’ll go out tomorrow night, I promise,’ Andy said. He seemed sincere about it. ‘I’ll take you somewhere nice.’

  So we can celebrate our last night.

  She smiled. ‘Consider that a deal.’

  ‘I’ll be home in a couple of hours.’

  ‘See ya, boys,’ Mak replied and stepped back from the cruiser.

  They drove off.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said to the quiet street.

  Mak stood for a moment with her arms crossed, feeling the breeze whip around her. She felt a long way from home, and she had begun to question the wisdom of the choices that had taken her so far away. Looking back, she could see how it had happened, step by inevitable step. The years had mapped out a roller-coaster of emotions and difficult decisions, and now she was here in Sydney, Australia, so far from her birthplace. In her dreams, things had run a lot more smoothly. In her dreams, she and Andy shared normal, simple domestic bliss—although one that didn’t involve her doing any cooking. In her dreams she had not abandoned her widowed father in the country of her birth.

  ‘It will work itself out,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘It always does.’

  She loved Andy. Where there was love, there was a way, right?

  Mak walked back inside and locked the door behind her. She snatched her backpack off the bench and strode through the open doorway of the dining room, throwing the pack on the table in front of the empty plates. It skidded along the oak and knocked over a candle, spilling a teaspoon of white wax on the surface of the wood.

  Wait.

  She had closed the dining room door after Andy arrived home, but the door was now open…So Andy had seen the dining table laid out.

  Great. That’s just great.

  With little feeling of occasion, Mak poured a glass of the Merlot and swigged it down like grape juice. Grumbling to herself, she then dished up a couple of ladles’ worth of the penne from the microwave. Her cooking had not gained any appeal in the interim, sadly. The little pasta pieces looked suspiciously like tyre tread. She brought one forkful to her lips. She tasted. She lowered her fork. Then she took her bowl back to the kitchen and slid the starchy contents into the bin.

  Mak poured herself a bowl of cereal instead, and she ate it by candlelight while she flipped through the real estate listings in the Wentworth Courier, in search of affordable office space for her psychology practice. Thus far there was little that was affordable in any suburbs she might conceivably wish to work from. It would come with time, she hoped. She had to try to be patient.

  And if you move to Canberra when Andy gets back, you’ll have to start looking all over again…

  She polished off her unsatisfying bowl of cereal—which tasted at odds with the wine—and she called Karen Mahoney to tell her how unsuccessful her attempt at pasta had been.

  Karen didn’t answer. She, like Mak’s boyfriend, was working overtime on this particular Thursday night.

  What a waste.

  Detective Constable Karen Mahoney stood at the feet of a recently deceased young woman, observing the scene of her death, police notepad and pen in hand. It was a Thursday night, and Karen had just been looking forward to going home when the call came in to the Homicide Squad. Now she found herself in this sad one-bedroom apartment, taking in every bit of information she could to piece together what had happened.

  About an hour earlier, nearby Kings Cross Police Station had received two complaints from separate neighbours about the sounds of a violent argument. When they sent a couple of connies over, the boys had found much more than the expected domestic disagreement. The tenant, a young woman, had received multiple stab wounds to the chest. The officers said she was already dead when they arrived.

  An as-yet-unidentified young man was also in the apartment at the time, seeming to be disoriented, and holding in his hand a blood-drenched knife—the obvious mur
der weapon. He had not attempted to flee. The young man was now in police custody, being interviewed. He had track marks on his arms: a junkie. It looked like a drug-fuelled burglary gone wrong. Perhaps she had surprised him while he was stealing from her, or perhaps he had made an unsuccessful attempt at rape.

  What a horrible way to die.

  The victim was clothed in blue jeans and a pale blue top, now marred excessively with blood that a mere sixty minutes before had been coursing through her veins. She wore a pair of white socks but no shoes, suggesting she had been relaxing at home when attacked. Karen noticed blood on the victim’s hands, and what might have been defence wounds. Her arms and legs were splayed, platinum-blonde hair swept messily across her forehead. Since the moment of death, the victim’s body had been cooling one or two degrees per hour, and her skin had already begun to turn waxy and pale, giving her the appearance of a smooth mannequin.

  What a damned waste.

  Karen, who had made detective recently, had seen a few crimes like this. Such scenes did not exactly reinforce the idealistic views of human nature she had entertained in her days as a rookie cop, especially as she had learned that the majority of violent crimes were committed by those known intimately to the victims—lovers, family, friends. So much for the ties that bind. And she’d seen complete strangers kill one another over something as petty as jewellery or cash, even a pair of running shoes. Or drugs.

  Crime-scene investigators moved around the apartment like busy worker bees, going about the painstaking ritual of collecting microscopic forensic evidence. A photographer recorded the body from various angles and then moved on to concentrate on other minute details, his flash illuminating the rooms.

  Karen crouched near the victim and peered at her face through a mess of pale, blood-streaked hair. She had been pretty. Karen noticed that the victim wore no wedding band or rings; her only jewellery was a pair of stud earrings with the two distinctive linked letter C’s of the company Chanel. There did not appear to be any lacerations above the neck, the concentration of wounds being to the chest. Her attacker had missed her heart, leaving time for her to suffer. Crimson handprints traced a fatal struggle around the room, leaving blood across the coffee-table legs and top, an area of white-painted wall and the floor. A stack of magazines had slid off the table; picture frames were on their sides. One frame containing a photo of a middle-aged couple—probably her parents—lay on the floor in a spray of broken glass. It appeared that the struggle might have lasted some time before the stab wounds ended the woman’s life.