Manhunt
by
CANTA LIBRE BOOKS
Brisbane, Australia.
SMASHWORDS EDITION
This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Jack Holbrook
The author asserts his moral rights to the content of this book.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
1
To be corrupted is to find yourself tempted into a pleasure you should not enjoy, to want that pleasure again and again, no matter how wicked it is. To be corrupted is to discover yourself.
That’s how it was when Robert Harper met Cara. It was obvious from the beginning that she was trouble.
As soon as Kerrie introduced them, in the pub that night, Cara latched onto Robert. Kerrie was his friend Brian’s girlfriend. Cara was Kerrie’s younger brother’s girlfriend. Apart from that tortuous kind of relationship, there is no way Robert would ever have met a girl like that. They were just too different.
Robert didn’t know what she saw in him—or, rather, he didn’t at the time—but he was flattered: flattered and scared. Robert knew he was a pretty ordinary sort of bloke and, being over thirty and single, he was starting to look and feel a bit sad. He didn’t know what his friend Brian saw in him either. He knew he was not much fun to be with. He thought of himself as Brian’s charity case. He supposed Brian felt sorry for him because he didn’t have any other friends. Brian was unaware of how much Robert hated him for that. But Robert still went to the pub with Brian and he liked to smile at him and think how much he hated him for being so patronising.
Robert was thinking about Cara. Cara was beautiful: tall and slender, with full breasts and a round, high behind. She had the kind of face Robert had only seen on magazine covers, with big, pouty lips and huge eyes. She dressed with a dramatic confidence that meant she could get away with anything. It was the confidence that was really scary. She was only nineteen, yet she just did and said whatever she felt like, as if she was scared of nothing and nobody.
It was intimidating, Robert felt.
Robert never knew what to make of girls. Of course, his mother thought he was obsessed with them. He remembered getting one of the worst beatings she ever gave him the day she found that copy of Playboy under his bed. She called him some terrible names that day too and said she was going to purge him of his impure and evil thoughts. Robert was so scared—not of her, of course—but of the badness that was inside him. She put him in the stair cupboard for hours afterwards and he didn't get a bite to eat until bedtime. Not that Robert thought his mother was an ogre or anything. He told someone about her beating him once and they made such a terrible fuss Robert wished he'd kept his mouth shut. No. She was a wonderful, loving woman who was deeply religious and did the best she could with a son who was a trial to her. He always tried not to think about girls but he had often been weak and he had often abused himself. He knew he was sinful and he knew he should keep himself pure but sometimes, when he was around women—especially beautiful, tarty ones like Cara—he couldn’t keep the lust from his mind and he became a slave to his sinful nature. That's why beautiful women scared Robert. He was not scared of the girls themselves, of course, but of the unwelcome feelings they aroused in him.
They talked a lot on that first evening, he and Cara. That is, he talked a lot. She just kept prodding Robert with questions, challenging him to justify his existence. And he, embarrassed by all the attention while her similarly young, surly boyfriend sat watching them, kept on blathering so that she wouldn’t lose interest and go away. He reckoned that he had her for a few hours that evening and would never see her again and he wanted to make the most of it. He was painfully aware of how pathetic he was. He dreaded to think what his mother would have made of it.
Anyway, he was wrong, because he saw her again just a few days later.
He was in the mall, shopping. It was Saturday and he usually wandered into town and bought food and whatever else he might need. He like to take his time over it, do some window-shopping, have a coffee and cake in his favourite café, look through the second-hand books in Fernshaw’s.
He saw her in a record shop. He’d gone in to browse. He vaguely wanted a particular Mozart piano sonata and he thought he’d see if it was there. He was heading for the bit at the back of the store, where they put the stuff that only geeks like Robert would be interested in, pushing his way through the busy aisles full of popular music, when he saw her at the till, queuing to pay for something. His first instinct was to just hurry past and hope she didn’t spot him but he didn’t. He went up to her and said, “What are you buying?” as though they were old friends.
It turned out to be some awful noisy stuff by a band Robert had never heard of but he sounded as interested as he could. She seemed to see straight through him. She almost laughed at him for being such a creep. He could see the sneer forming on her beautiful lips. Yet she stayed with Robert when they left the shop and they spent the whole afternoon together, just walking around the town and talking.
He took her home to his place. He was amazed that she came with him. He supposed she’d have run a mile if she knew how much he fancied her. But he was wrong about that, too.
“So,” she said, and her voice was challenging yet strangely coquettish. As she spoke, she walked up to Robert, stood so close to him that he could feel the heat from her body. She moved around him, provocatively, yet didn't touch him. “Here we are.” She smiled a wicked smile. “You’ve lured her back to your place, this girl—this child almost—that you’ve been lusting after so badly.” He didn’t like the way this was going and yet his heart was pounding and his breathing was shallow as he watched her, mesmerised. “You want to touch her. You want to feel her breasts.” She put her hands behind her back, pushing her breasts out at Robert. “She’s so young and firm and supple. You think about holding her, pressing her against you, your hands on her buttocks, your lips crushing her lips.” She was right, he couldn’t think of anything else but taking her and ravaging her. “You want her,” she whispered, her lips brushing his cheek. “You need her. You must have her.” Her beautiful face and body filled his gaze, filled his whole world, and he had to have her. He had to.
With a cry of anguish, Robert grabbed her with more violence than he knew was in him and kissed her wildly. She didn’t hold him or kiss him back but she didn’t resist either. “Yes!” she hissed in his ear as he tore at her clothes, inflamed beyond reason by her passivity. “Take her. Strip her. Use her!” He pushed and grappled her to the floor as he groped her, roughly and carelessly. He knew he could do whatever he wanted to her and all he wanted was to ravish her. He was in a kind of sexual rage and his head was spinning with the urgency of his need. She started saying “No! No!” in a kind of whimper and pushing feebly against him but, even if he’d believed her—which he didn’t!—he couldn’t have stopped himself. Her body, half naked in a tangle of torn and dishevelled clothes, was his to possess and, with a roar, he entered her and pounded himself into her in a frenzy, over and over, as she sobbed and struggled helplessly beneath him.
When it was over, he seemed suddenly to come to his senses. Shocked by what he’d just done, he got off her in a hurry and scrabbled away from her across the floor until he fetched up against the sofa. He was terrified that, somehow, he’d misunderstood her, that he’d gone too far, that he’d really…
He stared at her lovely body, stretched across his floor, unable, even then, not to want her. Her face was away from him and she was panting in great gasps. He began to formulate apologies, excuses, dreading the confrontation, the accusation. At length, she turned her head towards Robert, the rest of her still limp. Her eyes were wide and she looked shocked. He cringed inside, waiting for it to come. Then a smile spread across her face and she said, “That was incredible! What a rush!”
He gaped at her, confused and disoriented by the giant emotions tumbling through him. She came over to Robert and grabbed him. “God you were fantastic!” she panted. “I knew you’d be fantastic! I knew it!” She was touching Robert, feeling him, pawing him and, for the first time it occurred to Robert to resent the way she had used him. “I could see it in you, all that pent up anger, all that seething rage. It’s there now. I can see it all bottled up in you.” She giggled and patted his head. “Poor little baby.”
He grabbed her wrists and thrust her away from him. “Stop that!” For all her imposing presence, he realised she was actually very slight.
At his sudden outburst, her eyes widened with delight. “Oh yes,” she said. “Again.” And to his amazement, he kissed her. Still holding her wrists, he pulled her to him and kissed her lovely mouth. She pulled away and called Robert a bastard and twisted in his grip but he didn’t let go, even though it must be hurting her.
“Keep still you little bitch,” he growled at her and forced her back down to the ground. This time she fought harder but he still had his way.
When she left, some hours later, he was dazed. He sat for ages on the sofa, staring at the wall. Evening came and the room darkened to gloom all around him. He could hardly believe what he’d done, how savagely and violently he’d behaved. It was the kind of behaviour that would normally repel him. Sinful, wicked behaviour. Yet in some deep, dark way, he had enjoyed it more than anything else in his life. In that still and silent room, a battle raged inside Robert. It was a battle between good and evil and it scared him because what he wanted with all his heart was for the evil side to win so that he could do what he’d just done again and again.
Without noticing it, he must have curled up on the sofa and slipped into sleep. When he woke in the morning, cold and stiff, the horrors of the night before seemed to have gone. He was still shocked by his behaviour but he could dismiss it now as a strange aberration, induced by that weird and beautiful girl. She had seduced him somehow and led him to places he had never wanted to go. He resolved never to let himself be involved with her again. If he could, he would never see her again. He knelt by the bed and prayed to Jesus to give him strength but memory flashes of the sex they’d had plagued him. He kept seeing her body writhing beneath his. He kept re-experiencing a desire that had also, somehow, been a furious anger.
An aberration. Not himself. He should avoid her. Stay away.
On the Monday, he went to work and at times it seemed as if nothing had happened. People asked Robert if he’d had a good weekend and he said yeah, not bad. At lunchtime he sat in the park with a sandwich, the way he often did. It was a cool day and there were lots of people about. He watched the girls going to and fro as he normally would but this time it wasn’t just with vague feelings of desire. This time, as a slim young thing walked by, he caught himself thinking about how weak and vulnerable she was. He imagined her struggling in his grasp, her body twisting and writhing as she tried to escape but the motions, so erotically sensuous, just making him want her more.
He stopped in a panic. What was he doing? This was madness! He shouldn’t think these thoughts! He was not a … Even in his own mind, he couldn’t say it. He thought maybe he should talk to somebody but who could he possibly say such things to? In the end, he decided there was just one person.
She was more than half an hour late by the time she rang his bell. He rushed to the door and threw it open, so wound up he was going to shout at her for messing him about like that. But when he saw her he was so stunned he couldn’t speak. She was standing there grinning at him wearing some kind of fantasy school uniform—even down to the white socks and round-toed shoes—and looking so pleased with herself, twisting side to side with her hands behind her back.
“What the Hell are you doing?” he cried, dragging her inside so the neighbours wouldn’t see.
“You like it don’t you?”
“No I bloody don’t!” Her white blouse was so taught her breasts strained against the buttons and her grey pleated skirt was indecently short. How could he not like it? A kind of constriction on his chest was making it hard to breath. Oh Jesus, help me!
She pouted at Robert and moved closer.
“We - we’ve got to talk,” he stammered.
She took his hands and put them on her breasts. He couldn’t move them away. She seemed breathless herself now and her pout became a sneer. “You bastards, you’re all the same,” she hissed, massaging her breasts with his hands. He didn’t care what she was saying any more. His head was spinning and he couldn’t think of anything but the heady, dark pleasure of tearing her clothes off and forcing her to submit to him.
As before, when he took her, he was filled with some kind of passion that could have been mindless, animal lust, or it could have been pure, blind fury, or maybe both. He had to have her. He had to. But at the same time, he wanted to hurt her. He wanted her to suffer for what she was doing to him. So he hit her, even while he was inside her, doing it. He slapped her face so hard her lip bled. She shouted at him and cursed him, spitting blood onto her heaving white breasts. She seemed genuinely angry and he just thought, “Good!” He told her to shut her mouth and grabbed her by the throat so she couldn’t talk while he finished hammering himself into her. He came with a mighty roar, like a lion—like a god!—and collapsed onto her.
They lay like that for ages as he slowly calmed down and his fury ebbed away. Then he got off her and sat against the sofa looking at her sprawled and beautiful body. As before, she didn’t move and her face was turned away from him. This time, though, he felt no alarm. Somehow, he’d come to a decision. He’d decided he liked what they did together. He liked what he felt with her, this new and powerful creature inside himself she had awakened. He felt alive. He felt life coursing through his veins. He wanted to ravage her again. He wanted to ravage others too. All of them. All those beautiful stuck-up bitches he’d lived in awe of for so long. Now they were going to find out who had the real power!
“Come here, bitch!” he snarled. He was elated, euphoric. He was a god of sex. He could do anything to this creature. She was his.
She didn’t move. More damned teasing! He reached over roughly and grabbed her face pulling it around to face him. Her head moved without any resistance at all. Her eyes, when he saw them, were open but they were looking past him, blankly. She seemed totally lifeless. And with a surge of horror, he realised that’s what she was! Totally lifeless. Dead. Dead. Dead!
He leapt back from her as if he’d been stung and daren’t go near her again for a long, terrible time. How could she be dead? How could she die? Then he remembered his hand on her throat. Her throat was blotched red. He could see red finger marks on the white skin. Bruises. How could he have held her that tightly? It didn’t make sense. Yet he knew he’d done it. He knew that in that moment of exultation, he could have done anything, that he hadn’t cared if she’d lived or died. God’s punishment, he thought. God’s punishment on both of them.
Automatically, he began tidying her up. He arranged her limbs. He straightened her hair and the clothes she still had on. There was a rug on the floor nearby and he rolled her onto it, then rolled her up in it. It was a relief for her not to be there anymore, just a rolled-up rug. He looked at his watch. It was only seven pm. It seemed incredible that it could be so early.
He sat down on the floor for a moment, suddenly tired, and he noticed that his hands were shaking. Shock, he thought, vaguely. Delayed shock from having just murdered someone. He should get rid of the body, he thought, but he couldn’t move.
When he looked at his watch again, it was ten thirty pm. He couldn’t understand where the time had gone but his hands were no longer trembling. He got to his feet, feeling wobbly, and went to the garage through the connecting door from the house. No-one would see. He opened the boot of his car and went back. It was so hard to pick up her body in the rug that he almost gave up. Part of Robert wanted to give up, to just sit there on the floor with Cara until the police came. But another part told him that was stupid, that he should just dump the body and no-one would ever connect them. Why would they?
He drove with her in the boot all night, looking for the right place. He left the city and went way, way out into the bush. It was almost dawn by the time he found somewhere, he was on a dirt road in the hills and he stopped beside a small trail leading off into the trees. He brought a torch and hefted Cara over his shoulder, still in her rug. Then he set off down the trail. After a while, he turned off the trail and struggled through the brush for a few minutes. Then, at last, he rolled her out of the rug and down a steep slope where she quickly disappeared among the wattle and banksias.
He didn't know why he did any of it. He didn't know why he just didn't call the police and admit that there had been a terrible accident. He suppose it was because a part of Robert felt the whole thing was so unfair. She'd made him do it. She'd teased him and provoked him and driven him to behave quite unlike himself. She'd encouraged his violence. She'd wanted it. Why should his life be ruined because of her sick desires? Then again, another part of Robert, the new part she'd stirred up in him, was proud of what he'd done, was pleased with how dominant and powerful he'd been. He had been completely irresistible. He'd taken that beautiful woman and possessed her, used her for his sexual gratification and cast her spent body aside afterwards. This part of Robert, the glorious new Robert, saw things, saw women, in a different way. It was as if he'd found a key that had unlocked the door to astounding new pleasures. So he wasn't about to have it slammed in his face before he'd even begun to explore them.
Anyway, who would ever suspect that it was Robert that killed Cara?
Instead of going to bed and sleeping for a week like he wanted to, he cleaned himself up and went to work as usual. He went to work all week, just being himself. They didn't even find the body until Friday and, he had to say, the feeling that he had, quite literally, got away with murder, was indescribably thrilling.
2
“Here’s one you’ll like. A nice, juicy murder.”
Alexandra Bertolissio looked up from the case notes she was reading. Her boss, Detective Sergeant Trevor Reid, was standing over her with a piece of paper in his hand. The grin on his gaunt face told her he thought he’d just made some kind of a joke. “I don’t like murder, Trevor, and I’ve never seen one that I’d call ‘nice’. Is that for me?”
Reid put the paper down on her desk. Just one piece of paper, she thought. That meant no-one had started any of the many processes involved in setting up the investigation yet. That’s why he’s giving it to me. It’s his case but he wants me to do all the paperwork.
“Uniform just called it in,” he said as she scanned the sheet. “Young woman found in the bush out west. Been there a few days it says.”
Oh great, she thought, eyes pecked out by birds, fingers chewed off by rats, body reeking to high heaven. She’d seen it—and smelled it—too often before.
“I want you to get stuck into this, set up the investigation team, get a file together, you know the routine.”
Alexandra knew alright. All of this was Reid’s job. She didn’t have the rank, even though she had the skills and experience. How long had she been a detective constable now? How much longer would she go on doing Reid’s job for him? “I’ll get right onto it,” she said. “Of course, you’ll approve my overtime for the weekend?” It was Friday morning and she knew she’d be on this sixteen hours a day for at least the next few days. So did Reid.
“Just send me the paperwork and I’ll sign it,” he said, heading for his own desk, already leaving her to get on with it. “There should be plenty for everyone on this case.”
It wasn’t too hard to identify the victim, even though there was no handbag or purse. Fortunately, she’d been found lying on one hand so it had escaped being chewed up. Even more fortunately, her prints were on record. The young woman had been Caroline Kakanis. She had lived in a smart inner city suburb with her parents who had filed a missing persons report four days ago. Caroline was nineteen and, according to police records was a bit of a wild young woman. No-one seemed to have done much about the missing persons report and Alexandra could understand why. Caroline had been old enough to leave home and do whatever she liked and, with a record of petty theft, causing an affray and minor drug offences, everyone had assumed that that’s just what she had done.
She had been found wearing a school uniform, although, her mother explained, Caroline had left school when she was sixteen. “Not that she wasn’t bright.” Neither of her parents could understand it. The blouse had been ripped as had her panties. Her bra had not been removed but had been pushed up off her breasts. There was evidence of forced sexual intercourse as well as bruises on her arms, face and neck. The pathologist’s opinion, pending a full post mortem examination, was that Caroline had been raped and then strangled by a strong man. Unusually, he had strangled her with just one hand.
Alexandra pinned up Caroline’s photos in the incident room—two of her as they had found her, dishevelled and mutilated at the bottom of a shallow gully, and one her mother had taken out of a frame and handed to Alexandra of Caroline in a party dress looking very young and very beautiful. Alexandra had copies made of that one so that when the door-to-door interviews started, the officers involved could show them around. A girl as strikingly attractive as Caroline Kakanis, dressed in that tarty schoolgirl outfit could hardly go around the city without being noticed. Then she wrote “sex games?” and “prostitute?” on the whiteboard—dark avenues that would need exploring.
That evening, the murder was on the news and the phones started ringing.
Alexandra went home exhausted. She’d worked until ten o’clock, setting up and organising the investigation, with Sergeant Reid dropping in from time to time to “get an update” and tell her she was doing a great job. He dropped in around seven with a half-dozen pizzas in cardboard boxes and got a cheer from the team. The team wasn’t especially large yet but large enough to demolish six pizzas.
Reid had also gone with her that afternoon to talk to the parents and to take them to the morgue to identify the body. He’d done all the talking, of course. It was his investigation. It had been awful listening to Mrs Kakanis sobbing over her daughter and trying to explain how, despite all appearances, she had been a good girl really.
She and Reid also paid a call on Caroline’s boyfriend, a scrawny young man called Barry Williams. He wore a black T-shirt with messages of anger and violence but he was a quiet, sulky type who was confused and shocked at what had happened. “I just thought she’d run off with some bloke,” he told them. “She always was a stupid cow.” Back at the office, Alexandra wrote “Barry Williams - jealousy?” on the whiteboard.
Now all Alexandra wanted was a glass of white wine, a good book and sleep. She kicked off her shoes, took off her gun, poured herself a chardonnay from a bottle in the fridge, picked up Wuthering Heights from her bedside table and curled into a big, battered armchair. The phone was on the side-table beside the armchair and, before she finally settled, she checked for messages. There was just one: from her sister, Melinda. It went, “Hi, Lexie, it’s Mel. Call me when you get in. OK? Love you.”
For a moment, Alexandra toyed with the idea of returning the call but only for a moment. It was Friday night and Mel would definitely not be home. Anyway, whatever Mel wanted could wait. Alexandra needed to unwind and relax and talking to her sister was not going to help.
She opened her book firmly and focused on the lines but no meaning was coming from them so, after a while, she looked away again. She realised she was angry—coiled tight inside—and couldn’t understand it.
Alexandra slept badly. She woke at three thirty worrying about the case, remembering things she should do in the morning. She wrote them on a pad beside her bed, placed there especially for such times. Then she worried about everything else she could worry about but particularly about the call from her sister that she had ignored. She wrote 'Call Mel !!!' on the pad and then read for another hour before finally getting back to sleep.
Reid was already in the office when Alexandra arrived. He was reading through the notes she had left him the night before. She checked with the outgoing night shift. No new developments. On her agenda for the morning was a set of interviews with people Caroline had known and met in the past few days. Among the reports of calls from the public, there was the usual mixed bag of cranks and timewasters with a sprinkling of people who were genuinely trying to be helpful. There were two that put Caroline in a particular suburb between six and six thirty. Her mother thought she had heard Caroline leave the house at around five-thirty and she could easily have got there in time.
"I think we should concentrate our efforts there," she told Reid, showing him the reports. "I think we should knock on every door in the area and ask people if they've seen her." Reid looked up at her sceptically. "It's the best lead we've got, Trevor."
"OK. Get it organised," he said, his tone agreeing that there wasn't much else to go on at this stage. His big hand gave her back the sheaf of paper. To Alexandra the gesture seemed symbolic. It was as if he was handing her back control of the investigation. And she resented it bitterly.
She went out mid-morning and spoke to Caroline's parents again. Debbie Kakanis was a tall, elegant woman, clearly the source of Caroline's looks. Even in her grief, she had a kind of dignity that was as much due to her physique and her high cheek bones as it was to her character. Nick Kakanis was plump and sleek, a salesman for a computer company, not unattractive but shallow to the core. Alexandra ony had to ask one or two questions to realise neither of them knew much about their daughter. They didn't know her friends, they didn't know where she went of an evening and they certainly didn't know why she'd dress up as a schoolgirl. They'd written her off, Alexandra realised, and had just been waiting for her to leave home so they wouldn't have to worry about her anymore. Perhaps, she thought, they were secretly relieved that she was dead.
The boyfriend, Barry, was more helpful. He gave her a list of names and places. As for the uniform; "Well, she was kinky like that. She liked to dress up and stuff."
"Did she dress up for you?"
Barry squirmed. "Yeah, sometimes. She kept on at me to tie her up and all that? You know?"
"And did you?"
"Sometimes. I thought it was stupid."
"And did you hit her?"
"What?"
"You know, when she was tied up. Did you spank her, maybe? Or use a whip?"
More squirming. "Only what she said to do. I never liked it much. I couldn't see the point."
"Did she ever get anyone else to hit her? Someone who might have enjoyed it more?"
Barry was sullen and angry after his embarrassing confessions. "I don't know what she got up to. I was going to break up with her. She was driving me crazy. She probably had a dozen blokes on the side. She was a bloody nympho."
3
Robert called his friend Brian when he heard the news and pretended to be shocked. He didn't know why. He thought, maybe, he just wanted to talk about it. They went to the pub and Kerrie joined them. She was upset and she said the police had been to see her brother. He remembered Cara’s surly young boyfriend. Kerrie said a woman detective had questioned him that afternoon. He listened with interest but he was more interested in watching Kerrie.
Kerrie was a good looking woman, a little overweight but buxom and shapely. He'd always fancied her in a secretive, guilty sort of way. Now he looked at her with new appreciation. He realised how angry it made him the way she exposed her breasts so much and how tight her skirts always were around that big, round arse. What the hell did she think she was doing, teasing and tempting him like that, all the time pretending she didn't want Robert to want her? She needed to be taught the consequences of what she was doing to him. And, of course, that's what she really wanted anyway. He knew now it was what they all wanted. As she maundered on about poor Cara and how devastated her little brother was, he thought about tearing her blouse open, ripping her skirt off, making her kneel down for him and beg to be allowed to pleasure him. He started making plans for how he could get her alone. He'd call her at work, tell her some cock-and-bull story and get her to come to his house. There he'd force her to submit to him. Brian was a total wimp. Once she'd seen what a real man could do for her, she'd only want Robert. All it would take was one, devastating demonstration of his power to subjugate her and she would be his slave forever.
He was so aroused by his fantasies that he couldn't just sit there yapping with them. He made some excuse and left. He needed to be out in the air, away from distractions, so he could plan his triumph over the succulent Kerrie. He walked though the dark streets in a wonderful reverie, thinking of all the things he would do to Kerrie and all the many ways she would find to please her new master. He went into another pub and ordered a beer. He looked around the bar at the women drinking there and imagined each of them bound and gagged, struggling and squirming while he used their bodies until, gradually, reluctantly, each of them surrendered to their true desires and became his willing slave.
He could hardly contain himself. He was a new man and the whole world looked different to him now. His beautiful Cara had shown Robert his true nature. She had sacrificed her young life to bring Robert to total self-awareness. Now there was no going back. The spineless, empty creature he had been was contemptible to him. Now he had become what a man should be, a being of power and might and complete sexual mastery. He could do what he liked now. All those women he had timidly cow-towed to in his larval stage were now nothing more than helpless prey to be hunted for sport.
He was in a kind of fever. He was crackling with energy. When he left the pub he prowled the streets, looking for victims. He saw plenty of women and most of them were giving off the signals he now recognised so clearly. But all of them were in groups or with men. He searched all night but didn't find a single victim.
He went to bed frustrated and angry. He needed another like Cara. He had to have one and soon. It would mean stalking and trapping one and she would be scared and would fight him and resist him but he knew she would come round in the end and be desperate for him and thank him for showing her true pleasure.
For a while he marvelled at how far outside the law he had placed himself and how much further he intended to go. Yet he knew they couldn't touch him. Robert knew there was almost nothing to connect him to Cara and certainly no motive that anybody would even begin to grasp. As long as he was clever and kept it like that, he could do anything he liked and the police would never come near him. He'd heard of serial killers who'd gone for years, decades, without being caught. Not that that's what he was, or would be. Nothing as crude as that. He was going to bring unbearable pleasure to his victims. So much that they would gladly give their lives if that was what his own pleasure demanded of them.
As for God, he could only believe that this was part of His plan for Robert. He imagined Him up in Heaven, with Jesus at His right hand and both were smiling down at Robert, glad that he had seen his true destiny at last. It was a warm and humbling feeling to be so loved by God and he thanked his Mother in a silent prayer for her guidance and teaching.
4
The next day, as soon as she had a spare minute, Alexandra called her sister.
"Lexie? What time is it?"
"It's half-past ten, Mel. Have you just woken up?" Alexandra just couldn't help letting disapproval into her voice, even though she knew it would wind Mel up. There was a short silence. "You called me yesterday."
"Yes. Lexie, I need a favour." Inwardly, Alexandra groaned. "I've got this friend coming to see me, Piotr, he's a musician, a violinist in some big Russian orchestra or something. You met him once, at Sherri's party." Alexandra remembered a party she'd been dragged along to, down by the waterfront, in a house the size of police headquarters. Beautiful women and beautiful men had posed and preened and talked too loudly. They each wanted to tell her—and everyone else around them—about their latest 'project' which was, typically, something to do with spending huge amounts of money to create dubious entertainments. Alexandra had amused herself, when anyone asked her what 'project' she was working on, by saying; "I'm a detective in the police force. Don't tell anyone but I'm here undercover. We've been tipped off that there may be people here with cocaine. There could be a big raid later." She liked to think that the queues for the toilets were less to do with the champagne being guzzled than with people wanting to flush their coke before the bust went down. She couldn't remember a Russian violinist called Piotr though.
"Look, it's a bit of a mess," Mel went on. "Piotr thinks I adore him and he's really, really sweet, only I never thought I'd see him again. You know. What with him being Russian and everything. But now he's over here on a concert tour and he wants to see me and, well, you know how things are between Douggie and me at the moment and I can't cope with any more complications."
"What do you want me to do about it, Mel? You've spent half your life telling me to keep out of your love life. So why are you telling me this particular sordid story?"
"Look, if you don't want to help, just say so."
"I don't want to help."
"He's only here for two nights, Monday and Tuesday. I'm not asking much."
"I'm busy. There's a big case on. Caroline Kakanis."
"Who?"
"It was on the news. It doesn't matter. What exactly is it you want me to do, Mel?"
"Just take him out on Monday. Keep him amused. Tell him I'm out of town. I couldn't bear to think of him all alone in his hotel, in a strange country and pining for me."
"You're joking!"
"And then, if you hit it off, you might keep him company on Tuesday as well. He's ever so sweet, honest. You'll like him. And he's great company. Very charming."
Alexandra cut her off, firmly. "Mel, it's a ridiculous idea. Just tell the poor bloke the truth and let him find his own amusement." Of all the stupid, idiotic, childish, hare-brained...
"Lexie!" Mel wailed. "You can't just abandon me like this!"
"I've told you. I'm busy."
Alexandra spent the afternoon visiting the pubs and clubs on the list she got from Caroline's boyfriend. The pubs were uniformly low and the clubs were infinitely worse. At every one she went to, the staff knew Caroline.
"Yeah, darl, she's a member."
Alexandra looked away from the grizzled and scarred face of the club manager and took in the decor. "When was the last time you saw her?" The club was called The Pit and that just about described it. The walls were black, the ceiling was black; stage, bar and carpet, all black. Only the red plush seats and the huge posters of women undergoing various kinds of torture gave any respite. A handful of scaffolds dotted the big, empty room with chains attached—no doubt, thought Alexandra, so that people could be shackled to them. This was the third such club she’d visited today. Before now, she hadn’t known they existed.
“Buggered if I know. Last week? Week before? She’s not a regular.” The manager looked wiry and mean. He wore a studded leather jacket over a T-shirt that was ripped.
“So how come you remember her?”
“It was on the news, darl. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“What was she like?”
The manager seemed to be getting bored. “I dunno. Just another crazy bitch. The place is full of them. Better looking than most.” He looked at her, thoughtfully. “I couldn’t interest you in a free membership could I? You’re so… small. A lot of our members would go for that.” He laughed. “You never know, you might meet the man of your dreams. Or the woman, maybe.”
Alexandra bit down the urge to tell him what she thought of his offer. “Did Caroline Kakanis meet the man of her dreams here?”
The manager smiled. “The Pit is all about fulfilling dreams, darl.”
“Don’t get all poetical, just answer the question. Did Miss Kakanis come here with anyone in particular? Did she come here to meet someone?”
Now he really was bored. “Yeah, there was a particular bloke she used to come with. Don’t know his name.” Then he thought of something to amuse himself again. “Come back tonight and I’ll point him out for you.”
“What does he look like?”
“I dunno. Big bloke.”
“What makes you think he’ll be in tonight?”
“You never know. Anyway, it’ll give you a chance to see what it’s like. Maybe you’ll like it.”
Alexandra forced a smile. “Tell you what. If you see him tonight, or any night, you just give me a call.” She handed him her card. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” She was glad to turn and walk away from the man’s insolent, leering expression.
It was another late night by the time she had brought Reid and the others up to speed and written up her notes. Reid's boss, Detective Inspector Adams was hanging about, asking questions and giving out helpful suggestions. He didn't exactly say it but he implied that insufficient progress was being made. There was another message from Mel on her voicemail begging her to see poor dear Piotr on Monday. Alexandra called back and left her own message saying "No!"
Sunday was quiet. The uniform guys were working their way through an entire suburb, house by house, and Alexandra was trying to find people that had been mentioned by landlords and club owners who may or may not have been friends of Caroline's and who may or may not even be real. Reid came in for part of the day, "Just to see that everything was going smoothly." Alexandra asked him what Inspector Adams expected from them. She had lain awake half the night worrying that she was doing something wrong or missing something important.
"Don't worry about Gomez," Reid had said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He called the DI 'Gomez' because of a putative resemblance between him and his namesake from a TV show. Alexandra had watched the show once out of curiosity but could see no resemblance. Even the DI's surname, Adams, was not spelled the same as the 'Addams' in the show. Most of Reid's humour was like that, she thought. Totally spurious. "You're doing a great job, Al," Reid said and slapped her shoulder to encourage her. It was also typical of him that he had to use a masculine-sounding diminutive for her name. Sharon Thompson, the only other female detective on his team, he called 'Tommo'. Even the Chief Constable's beautiful personal assistant, whom he fancied in a hopeless and embarrassing way, he called 'Terry', short for Theresa.
The only good thing about Sunday was that Alexandra found some more people to interview. It seemed that Barry and Caroline had been out recently with some people: Barry's sister, Kerrie Williams, Kerrie's boyfriend, Brian something-or-other (who, according to Barry, was a complete dickhead), and some friend of Brian's that Barry couldn't remember the name of (but who was an even bigger dickhead). She laid everything she had out on the whiteboard under headings such as; "Motive", "Opportunity" and "Means". It didn't amount to much. There was no clear motive, just the fact that Caroline had associated with some strange and possibly dangerous people. She didn't seem to have had any enemies and, in fact, seemed to be well-enough liked—except, perhaps by her boyfriend, Barry. If it wasn't for the fact that Barry had been with three of his friends all that afternoon and evening, he would have been Alexandra's prime suspect. Her parents gave each other an alibi for the evening in question, so that left the crowd of unsavoury types she hung around with at her seedy clubs. Alexandra had so far failed to track down a single one of Caroline's friends from that circle, partly because Caroline kept no address book, or computerised contacts list, nor even programmed phone numbers into her mobile phone. Her mother said it was because Caroline had a wonderful memory and didn't need to write things like that down. Alexandra wondered if there might be some other reason for not committing names and addresses to paper or electronic media.
Alexandra went home early on Sunday so she could drop in on her sister to see if she could talk sense to her. Mel's unit was just a walk away from the police station and, as the evening wasn't too hot, Alexandra enjoyed a slow and relaxing stroll through the almost-empty, darkening streets. She rang the bell and waited. Mel always took forever to answer the door. Alexandra imagined her as she had often seen her, unhurriedly finishing whatever she was doing, slowly getting up and sauntering over to the intercom, perhaps taking a detour as something distracted her. Alexandra would have dropped everything at once and hurried over to see who it was, concerned that they'd go away, or that they'd feel she'd been rude and kept them waiting. Mel's attitude was that if people were so keen to see her, they'd hang on and, anyway, most people who turn up on your doorstep are people you'd rather not see anyway.
Eventually, with a cry of "Lexie!" she buzzed her in so she could climb the stair to her door.
They performed a small ritual hug-and-kiss routine, Alexandra tense about the coming confrontation and Mel tense because she suspected what was coming.
"What can I get you?" Mel asked, retreating to the kitchen, where a group of bottles stood.
"Nothing, thanks. It's a bit early."
"Always the reproach," said Mel, just marking it, not really resenting it. She'd come to expect a kind of running criticism from her older sister. She knew there was never any hope that Alexandra would ever approve of her lifestyle. As long as it was kept low-key and didn't involve any actual demands for her to change, she could accept it for what it actually was, the concern of an overly-protective and loving sister.
She poured herself a glass of wine and rejoined Alexandra, grinning. "I suppose you've come to lecture me about Piotr and how I shouldn't try to be nice to my friends."
Alexandra couldn't help smiling. "Something like that." They both laughed. "Well, honestly, Mel. You don't half come up with some idiotic schemes."
Mel folded herself into an expensive armchair, her long limbs moving with easy elegance. Alexandra watched her beautiful sister with an habitual pride.
Mel spoke first. "So tell me about this awful case that's keeping you so busy that you can't help poor Piotr."
"You know I can't," although she would have loved to talk about it to someone, "But I can bitch about the office politics if you like."
Mel sipped her wine and smiled. "Go for it. I love a good bitch session."
And as Alexandra reeled off her list of complaints against Reid and Adams and the rest of the male-dominated hierarchy, she realised it actually was making her feel better. In fact, she realised it was this that she had really come round to see Mel for, that it was this gnawing resentment against her bosses that was fuelling the anger that had been burning inside her for days now. Dumping all that work and responsibility on her shoulders was just the last in a long series of misdemeanours they were guilty of. "And if I'm good enough to lead a murder investigation—not in name, of course, but in fact—then why aren't I good enough to get the promotions? Because promotions go to great, idle jocks like Reid, that's why. So they can all enjoy their mindless cricket stories together and make god-awful, sexist jokes about the secretaries. We couldn't have a 'girlie' up there among them, spoiling their fun."
Mel was laughing and Alexandra realised she was ranting and laughed at herself too. Then Mel joined in with anecdotes about men she'd worked with and before long they were competing to see who had known the most hideous and conceited man. The two of them hadn't had so much fun together for years and, as the realisation dawned on them, a kind of self-consciousness descended like a cloud and the fun ebbed away and left them.
"We should do this more often," said Alexandra as she was leaving, already feeling the distances between them growing again but happy to have had even that brief interlude of closeness.
Alexandra lay awake in bed that night thinking about the bitterness she felt and wondering about it. She wasn't an ambitious woman. She knew she wouldn't like a management job. She knew that she loved the intellectual challenge of solving puzzles—a hair, a partial footprint in the sand, an inconsistency in a statement and she would piece together the story of a crime, finding the thread that tied them all together and made sense of all the fragments of evidence. She knew she was good at it and she took pride in her achievements. She made a difference. Her job mattered. She didn't want to spend her days working out duty rosters and signing leave requests. Her talents would be wasted and she would hate herself for it. So what was all this anger inside her? Why all this resentment?
On Monday morning, she woke in with the questions still unanswered but went to work feeling better.
It didn't last long. Reid was in Adams' office when she arrived and he emerged five minutes later looking like he was ready to do murder himself. He saw Alexandra watching him and walked over to her desk. "Any new developments?" he asked curtly.
Alexandra was defensive. "I've just got in."
Reid looked at his watch and Alexandra's temper suddenly flared. "What the hell is this? If you've got some complaint about the hours I keep..."
But Reid cut across her. "We need a result on the Kakanis case. My head's on the block and so is yours. Gomez has just chewed off my left bollock and he'll have the right one too if we don't make an arrest soon."
"Well we can't just go out and arrest people, can we? We need some evidence that they've committed a crime first. And you know as well as I do that we don't even have a reasonable suspect yet."
"And you know as well as Gomez does that if we haven't solved the case within the first five days, the chances are we never will. So stop arguing with me and get me some suspects, alright?"
Maybe if you and Adams got off your fat arses and did some detective work, we could be making more progress, she thought, but kept her mouth shut. Instead, she said, "Right. Suspects." Then she turned away from him and fixed her attention on her notes. A moment later, he left and, with a sigh, she began to calm down. He was right, of course, the investigation was getting nowhere and the trail was getting cold. She was too wound up to think about what she was reading so she got up and went down to forensics to rattle their cage. They'd had the crime scene and the body for three full days now and she was in no mood to take any excuses for not having a report on her desk.
"We're entitled to the occasional weekend off you know." It was Dr Pinker, a sour-faced stick-woman whose skills may have been excellent but whose attitude would have made a 1970's trades union boss look cooperative and helpful. Alexandra asked her again if they had found anything that would help. "We're short-handed as it is," was Dr Pinker's next volley.
"Anything you could tell us would be invaluable," Alexandra pleaded.
"This is extremely irregular," countered Pinker. "People usually wait until we deliver our report."
God damn you, you shrivelled-up old shrew, there are people dying out there. There is a killer on the loose who murdered a young woman with his bare hands. Pinker might have been an alien life form for all Alexandra could understand her attitude but she knew that insulting her would only lead to further entrenchment.
"Please," she said. "I know this is not proper procedure but we are desperate and we need your help."
Satisfied she had finally reduced Alexandra to an appropriate state of supplication, Dr Pinker relaxed and became magnanimous. She took hold of the mouse on her desk and, with a few clicks, pulled the report onto her screen. "There isn't much. Definitely murdered elsewhere and then driven to the site where the body was found. The site was dry with a gravel surface, so no footprints worth having. No tyre tracks either, although we can probably say it was a vehicle about the size of a family saloon or small van that delivered the body." Alexandra imagined the lines of police officers working their way step by step across the rough ground out there, finding nothing. "She had had intercourse shortly before she died. We have various kinds of body tissue samples from the killer. No problem with DNA. There were signs of restraint and a struggle, also just before death, and she was definitely strangled, one handed, no good prints. The body was wrapped in a cheap, acrylic, short-pile carpet or rug, shortly after death. Nothing special about it except it was blue. And that's all there is."
Alexandra was scribbling down notes. "How long after death was the body dumped?"
"Impossible to say. Probably within twelve hours."
"What was the man's hair colour?"
Dr Pinker scrolled through the report with a sigh. Her magnanimity was wearing thin. "Black—near as damn it—no signs of grey."
"Race?"
Pinker closed the report and sat back. "Sorry, you'll have to wait for us to finish the report."
"Couldn't you guess? This is important."
The woman's attitude was back now in full. "We don't guess, Detective. We do the lab work—which takes time—and we ascertain the facts." She smiled a nasty smile. "We leave the guessing to you people."
Alexandra was pretty sure she wouldn't get any more out of Pinker so she put her notebook away. "When will I get the report?"
"We might have it completed by tomorrow."
Fine. Let's hope no-one else dies in the meantime.
"Thank you. You've been very helpful."
Alexandra wrote the few new facts on her crowded whiteboard when she got back to the incident room. "Black hair—probably under forty." "Blue, short-pile, acrylic rug." "Saloon or small van." "Body dumped within 12 hours of death." It wasn't much but it felt like a small step forward.
On her desk was a new pile of reports of unsolicited calls from members of the public. One of them was from a man who had seen a car near where the body was found at about two a.m. on the night of the murder. Keen to be on the move and out of the office, Alexandra requisitioned a pool car and drove out to see him. It was a long drive and an inefficient use of time but it gave her the opportunity to get over her irritation.
The man, a farm labourer, had had a row with his wife and had stormed out. He had been out on the road in his ute, driving around because it was after midnight and he had nowhere to go. He'd parked on Six Mile Road to have a cigarette and get his thoughts together. While he was there, he'd seen a car go by and he'd thought it was funny because that road didn't go anywhere in particular. Then he saw it come back about half an hour later and he'd wondered if some poor bugger was lost. No, he hadn't seen the registration number. No, he wasn't sure what type of car it was but it was a saloon car, for sure. No, he didn't remember the colour. It might have been blue. It was dark. No, he couldn't be absolutely sure it was the same car he saw going both ways. He'd been with his family all day and had left his house at about half-past midnight. He went back just after he'd seen the car the second time and was with his wife again, apologising for being such a pig-headed old fool by two-thirty.
It was mid-afternoon by the time Alexandra got back to the office and the phone rang almost as soon as she got to her desk.
"Is that Detective Bertolissio?"
"Speaking. Who's this?" But Alexandra had already recognised the voice of the manager of The Pit.
"That man you were looking for, darl. He's here now."
"Thank you. I'll be right over. Don't let him leave."
"Yeah, right," the man said and hung up.
Alexandra went to Reid and told him the news. He was on his feet immediately, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. "Let's go," he said, cheerfully. They took the lift to the car park and Reid drove them in his big Mitsubishi.
The Pit was dark and dingy—so dark, it took a moment to adjust, coming in from the bright afternoon sun. A handful of people were in the club. Three at the bar and two men at one of the tables having an intense conversation. Alexandra looked across at the manager behind the bar who made a discrete gesture towards the table, at the man furthest from the door. Reid and Alexandra went straight up to the man and showed him their warrant cards.