Voodoo Doll jj-2 Read online

Local Area Commander Lawrence Last this morning announced the establishment of a taskforce to capture the gang believed responsible for at least five brutal home invasions over the past two months.

  'The violence is escalating,' commented Superintendent Last, 'and our priority is to catch these offenders as quickly as possible.'

  Superintendent Last admitted that police have few leads as to the identity of the crime gang, who clothe themselves completely in black, wearing full-face balaclavas.

  For the residents of Sydney's west, the decision to dedicate an investigations team to the invasions is welcome, but overdue.

  'We can't sleep at night,' commented Kay, a Bonnyrigg resident, who did not wish to be further identified. 'I bet they'd have caught these people by now if this was happening on the North Shore.'

  Jill realised she could barely see the newsprint in the gathering afternoon gloom. She snapped on a light and stretched her neck. Too tight. How long had it been since she'd last worked out? No more than a couple of days, surely?

  Until five months ago, she had hardly missed a day's training since she was fifteen. When she'd taken her holiday, however, she'd given herself a break from her punishing weights and kickboxing routine. Trouble was, when she'd come home, she'd found it surprisingly difficult to start up her routine again. She really should get back into it right now. But she was hungry, she realised, and she needed a shower. She rubbed her hands, grubby from the clean-up, across her stomach, then stripped off her tee-shirt and walked into her bedroom.

  When she dropped her boardshorts to the floor, the butterfly pendant dropped from the pocket and skidded across the granite floor tiles; it hid somewhere under her bed. She frowned in its direction, tempted to leave it there. Eventually, she bent to retrieve it, suddenly worried for the glass and stones. She held it up to the light, where it spun in her hand. Perfect. Nothing like her. Where would she ever wear this? She rarely wore jewellery, lived in tee-shirts and jeans whenever possible.

  She held it to her throat in the mirror, scowled at the dainty prisms juxtaposed against the scales-of-justice tattoo on her shoulder, and the scars on her nipples, inflicted before she'd even developed breasts. She'd give it to Lily.

  She knew she wouldn't.

  She mentally relived Scotty watching her accept the pendant, his whole body a question. Already, she regretted her brusque acceptance of his gift. She wished she could explain to him that kindness from others felt like a threat. She'd like to have told him that her fleeting feelings of warmth towards him were blasted ice-solid before she could even identify them. Although she was beginning to realise that these defence reactions might now be unnecessary in her life, she could no more control them than articulate them. It only made it harder that Scotty seemed to know these things without her having to say anything.

  Jill tucked the pendant into her underwear drawer, nestled it in. She shook her head and walked naked into her bathroom.

  2

  JOSS SLICED THE last crust from Charlie's Vegemite sandwich and wrapped it carefully in cling film until the bread could no longer be seen through the swathes of plastic. It occurred to him that his little girl might never be able to get her lunch out of the wrapping. He smiled, warmth spreading in his chest as he imagined her conscientiously trying.

  'Someone will help her at preschool,' he told the sandwich, as he tucked it with a mandarin into her yellow lunchbox. He snapped the box closed, and as he'd been privately doing since she started school, asked the smiling sun on the front to keep his little girl safe. He smoothed the tape upon which her name was printed in Isobel's neat writing. Charlie Rymill. Her mother's surname. Good.

  Joss had always hated his name. Throughout his thirty-four years, his first and last names had jockeyed for the position of most despised. For the first thirteen years of his life, his first name had held a slight degree of street cred, associated in some way with hashish, but he kept his double-barrelled shocker of a last name to himself whenever possible. No one was going to run in fear from Joss Preston-Jones for godsakes.

  At thirteen, when the voices had told his mother to throw herself in front of a car, Joss's grandparents had put him in a private school. There, 'Preston-Jones' was completely unremarkable, but 'Joss' had earned him more than one bashing. After school, he'd joined the infantry corps. Within a couple of months, his peers had learned not to exploit the many opportunities to ridicule either name. He had a reputation for never knowing when to stop in a fight.

  Since the home invasion at Andy Wu's, Joss had never been more thankful that Isobel had retained her own surname when they'd married, and that they'd given it to Charlie. Those psychos had never learned her full name – Isobel tossing her handbag into the boot of the car before heading into Andy's place for dinner had meant that the offenders had no ID for either of them.

  Well, nothing formal.

  The worry tape in his mind took up where it had left off before he fell asleep the night before.

  Then his girls walked into the kitchen.

  Shiny was the first word that came to mind. Charlie's golden hair shone, her four-year-old skin was translucent. She had on a yellow dress – favourite colour – and red shoes. A couple of weeks before, she'd begun to insist she could dress herself.

  Charlie launched herself into his arms.

  'We're late again, Daddy!' She sounded thrilled. She pretty much always sounded that way.

  'Well, you're just going to have to drive fast then,' he said to her beaming face. He turned her around in his arms and deposited her in a chair at the table.

  'Go and get dressed, babe,' said Isobel, trailing her fingertips carefully over his bruised face as she passed. 'I'll take over here.' She smoothed a dark lock of hair into place. Damn he loved her wearing that suit.

  Joss groaned and headed towards the stairs.

  It'd been ten years, and he still couldn't get used to wearing a suit. When he'd become a civilian again in ninety-seven, he'd thought he would never find a job. Do your twenty years, everyone told him. Get an army pension and take a while to make your next move. It wasn't a bad suggestion. But then again, no one but Isobel and his former commanding officers knew about his medical discharge on psychiatric grounds. People thought his tour of Rwanda had changed him; they had no idea how much.

  Turned out, though, that his skills were in high demand in civvy street. The ability to lead, proven discipline and analytical expertise – he'd had a choice of jobs. He'd taken a role as fraud investigator for an insurance company, because he thought it sounded boring and he wouldn't have to work in a team. He'd kept these motivations out of his comments in the job interview.

  He walked quickly past the mirror, avoiding catching a glimpse of his black eye. The intern at the hospital had told him that they could operate on the cheekbone, insert a screw. Nerve damage was a risk, though. Joss figured his cheek had healed okay the last time he'd fractured it, in Rwanda. He shook his head a little to disperse the memory. Forget surgery, he'd told the doctor. Well, you probably should avoid breaking it again, the specialist had returned dryly.

  Downstairs, he got Isobel to do his tie. Six years of private-school uniform had made him an expert at tying knots, but each morning saw him feigning helplessness to his wife. Isobel, amused and frustrated, especially when they were late, like today, would expertly tie the knot, kiss him on the mouth. For two minutes, every morning during this ritual, he breathed her in. A couple of times he'd undone the tie, turned back to her with a look of shocked innocence, like, how did that happen?

  Not today, though. They really were late.

  As soon as the car turned the corner, carrying Charlie to preschool and Isobel to her office in North Sydney, Joss was again lost in images of the robbery. Isobel had wanted him to take some time off, get some counselling, let his face heal. But the last thing he needed was to sit around with nothing to do but think. She knew him well enough to let it go.

  Preparing for work last night, he'd presented Isobel with some scenari
os to explain his black eye to the other insurance assessors: a water-skiing accident, a fistfight with his mother-in-law; caught up in the latest home invasion? He thought he'd go with Isobel's suggestion in the end: I fell off a ladder, painting the house.

  He joined the queue for the bus into the city. Usually, he liked catching the bus, people-watching, the relaxed pace of it. It made more sense than getting a lift with Isobel on her way to work, and there was plenty to distract him from his memories of the past: Balmain looked nothing like Rwanda.

  Since the thing at Andy Wu's, however, his mind had hardly visited Africa at all.

  Those eyes. He'd never have believed you could recognise someone you hadn't seen in twenty-three years just from two eyes staring out of a balaclava. But he had.

  Henry Nguyen. Cutter.

  Until his first tour of duty, until the Kibeho massacre in Rwanda, Joss's nightmares had all been about the last day he'd seen Cutter.

  At age thirteen, two days after the last time he had seen Cutter, Joss and his mum were out the front of Fairfield shopping centre, waiting to cross the road. His mum had told him that they had a meeting scheduled with Jesus. His whole life she'd been telling him stuff like that. He was eight before he realised that people didn't really come into their house each night to poison their food; he'd stayed up one night to check. So, when she wanted to take him to talk to Jesus, the only thing he was worried about was that she didn't start the meeting right there on the pavement in front of Franklins. But she'd grabbed his hand and run into the street. He'd pulled away.

  How could he have pulled away?

  He used to get so embarrassed when she showed up at the school, wasted, falling asleep in the principal's office. Or when she'd accuse him of being Satan's messenger in front of his friends, screaming into his face, froth on her lips.

  Is that why he'd let go of her hand?

  Thing is, he knew deep down that he couldn't have known she would run into the path of a car. But a little voice inside asked, couldn't you have guessed? Maybe you knew she was going to do it? Why did you let go of her hand?

  His mother had survived, but she'd been scheduled to a psych hospital, and Joss's grandparents had stepped in. He'd moved from Cabramatta to Mosman, changed schools, and had never seen Cutter or any of the others since.

  Until Andy's house, the previous Saturday night.

  Joss knew Cutter would not have been overjoyed to renew their acquaintance. The feeling was mutual. But that was not the problem.

  If Cutter figured out that Joss had recognised him, Cutter would come and find him.

  He had to.

  Andy Wu would never walk again, and Joss could put Cutter away.

  3

  THE FEELINGS STARTED the day before, and built until he cut. And if something went wrong, if things didn't go like he planned, it hurt. Bad.

  When he was a kid, Henry Nguyen would manage the feelings by slicing his forearms; carving crosses and snakes into his skin. Only when he'd cut to screaming point would the sexual tension ease. The kids who could watch him called him Cutter. The kids who couldn't, never spoke to him at all, kept their heads down when he walked past.

  Nowadays, there was nothing he could inflict on himself to stop the feelings. He'd long moved on from that. Blood was still an aphrodisiac, but now he only started feeling normal again when others screamed.

  Just lately, though, he hadn't been feeling right until the screaming stopped.

  Guns had never done it for him. The pissweak and petrified had brought him plenty over the years, but he'd passed them on again. What do guns get you? Moments of respect, and then you've got to do something. Shoot, or move on. Shoot, and it's all over. Move on and well, what the fuck good was that?

  Tonight was different, though. The hit planned for Capitol Hill was on a gun collector. A suburban Rambo getting through his midlife crisis with a new Harley and a shooting-range membership. Word was, he was cashed up, and had a nine-piece collection. Licensed and locked down, of course, but Cutter was looking forward to cracking the safe.

  Persuading the owner to open it for him.

  His men felt they needed the guns. Tried to tell him only guns could get them through doors now, only guns could convince people to open up and shut up. He saw them look away while he was working. He knew they didn't have his love for the knife.

  He didn't understand this about his crew. In fact, he'd given up trying to figure people out when he was in kindergarten. He knew there was a deficit in his makeup. Empathy. He had figured out what it was supposed to be, understood the concept, he just couldn't find the switch to turn it on. He figured it was the same as colourblindness. Some people have it. Some people don't.

  Some counsellor clown had tried to teach him empathy once – try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, think how they might be feeling. Best counselling he'd ever had. Helped him imagine just what might hurt the most. He'd used the tip several times to hone his technique over the years.

  Tonight, the feeling became maddening while he was putting on his fatigues, packing his bag. Lacing his boots, his groin burned so much he wanted to screech. Last couple of times, when the screaming had stopped, he'd been surprised to catch himself howling. He laughed aloud when he thought of the other guys' faces.

  Cutter's laugh came out a shriek.

  4

  IT TOOK TEN full seconds for Joss to realise that the face was Isobel's, not Fuzzy's; that she was alive, not drowning in her own blood; and that he was screaming, clutching at his throat.

  'Babe, it's okay.' She reached to still his hands.

  It's fucking not. 'I know. I'm sorry. Another nightmare.' The sheets stuck to his legs. He shuddered involuntarily as his heart decelerated.

  'I made an appointment with Dr Sherif yesterday,' said Isobel.

  'I'm not going to a counsellor.'

  'It's tentative. I thought we could see how we felt in the morning.'

  He said nothing, climbed out of bed.

  'What time is it?' he asked from the window, checking the perimeter.

  'One. And we've got a visitor.'

  He spun; Charlie stood in the doorway, the nose of her yellow dinosaur bumping against her bare feet, its tail in her fist. Her lower lip pouted.

  'You shouted,' she said.

  'Sorry, baby, Daddy had a bad dream.'

  He gathered her up, hot and moist with sleep, and tucked her into their bed, curled in the nest her mother had made of her arms and legs in the bed.

  He left the room, knowing he'd not sleep again that night.

  He patrolled the house. Over the past two nights, he'd spent more time doing that at night than sleeping. He kept to the deepest shadows in Charlie's room, away from the pool of soft blue light that glowed from the nightlight near her bed. The window was secure. His pulse started with a car engine, but he quickly recognised the vehicle. The Wilkinson kid next door. Got work last Christmas as a baker. His mum got up this time every morning to take him to work.

  His mind returned to the night at Andy's. The sights, sounds and smells walked with him through his quiet house. Thwack. Aaarrgh.

  He chewed at the skin around his thumbnail as he descended the stairs to continue his reconnaissance. Guilt gnawed at his gut. He should've told the police everything straight away, but he had frozen at that point when giving his statement. He knew that if he gave them Cutter, the cops would stick a microscope up his arse. Would want to know everything: how he knew him. He couldn't give them that. Telling the police would mean telling Isobel, and she knew nothing of Cutter. Joss had to make sure it stayed that way.

  He looked around the newly renovated kitchen. Charlie's finger-paintings covered the gleaming stainless steel that had added a grand to the cost of the refrigerator. He couldn't lose Charlie, Isobel. He'd made it out of that life; he couldn't go back to that world.

  Maybe it wasn't Cutter, he tried to tell himself. It might not have been him at Andy's at all. Shock can do that to you. Cause you to make mistake
s. Shit, it had been twenty years since he'd seen him.

  He rubbed at his face and winced; a stab of pain from his cheek started a headache that he knew would last all day.

  He felt Cutter's eyes follow him as he continued his patrol.

  5

  FINDING THE RIGHT house was not easy. It's true there were a million McMansions around these days, usually with a BMW or Range Rover in the garage, but most of them were mortgaged to the hilt. Cutter and his crew had learned that most of these owners didn't have a spare dollar to save their lives.

  Some of the fibro houses in Cabramatta were another thing altogether. One family had thirty grand under the bed for fucksakes. Cutter couldn't believe that Mouse, one of his crew, had given up his own aunty on that one. But when he'd cut off the aunty's thumbs to help her calm herself down a little, Esterhase had had to take Mouse out the back. See, you could never figure people out. Why did he put his aunty in it in the first place?

  Cutter liked the garage entry best. Kept everyone real quiet until they were all inside. You had to know the house a little: look for one with an internal entry from the garage through to the house. Good thing Esterhase did furniture deliveries for his day job – he got to see these things. Then, wait near the garage, slip in with the car when they come home, and stay quiet till the door goes down. Let them get out of the car. Then they're all yours until morning. Do anything you want, go anywhere you need to go.

  Nosy neighbours could be a problem. He tried to stay away from townhouses – connecting walls. It was true they had done one townhouse, and no one had come running. But they'd had to use duct tape to keep her quiet. Cutter preferred it when there was a little screaming room. Houses that backed onto a reserve, a school, an industrial estate; those that had a high brick fence, a busy road, a pool in the yard, just a bit of space around were best.

  When Esterhase showed him the house with the guns at Capitol Hill, he'd been in heaven. The Capitol Hill estate was all two- to five-acre blocks. Double brick castles. Pool houses, guest wings. Still a new development, there were vacant blocks everywhere, next to half-finished houses, skeletal in the night. He'd be back for this place. Shit. Maybe he'd do another two here.