Vodka doesn't freeze jj-1 Page 7

  Twice she'd gone to her large stainless steel refrigerator and rested her head against the cool exterior, her fingers on the freezer's handle.

  'Open it,' the white-eyed girl had called inside her head. 'Make it stop. Please.'

  Jill knew that if she'd opened the freezer at that point she would have remained standing there barefoot in her underwear until she'd drained the 750ml bottle of vodka that was hidden right at the back. The bottle had been unopened in her freezer for ten years, moving house with her three times. Her sister, Cassie, forced by their father to help her move once, had found the bottle and cracked the seal.

  'Well, the night's not a total loss, then,' she'd giggled, holding the bottle aloft, while with her other hand she'd removed a carton of grapefruit juice from the fridge. 'Who'd-a-thought you'd have vodka in the house, sis?' she said, kicking the fridge door shut with her foot.

  In one gliding move, Jill had removed the bottle from Cassie's hand, opened the freezer door and returned it, before her sister had even fully registered what was happening. Cassie had looked down at her empty hand.

  'Hey!' she'd sounded shaken. 'What was that? Don't do that karate shit on me.' She flicked her hair back from her face. 'God you're weird, Jill. If we're not allowed to drink in your temple, why do you keep that bottle here?'

  Jill couldn't explain it, but she knew that if she had one sip of the colourless liquid, her carefully maintained world would slide into the abyss. She wouldn't be able to stop herself a second time.

  Now, sitting in the foam at the edge of the ocean, Jill wiped her surf-wet hands across her face, tasting salt. She'd had little sleep, but she had a lot to do today and needed to get going. She stripped to her bikini and ignored the surfers' calls as she strode out into the waves, letting the fizzing water wake her fully.

  Twenty minutes later, she jogged out of the water, smiling. 'I'm just not seeing it, J. I really don't see how she could've killed three men. Not like that, anyway.' Scotty and Jill were on their way to speak with the last group of parents who could have had an interest in seeing David Carter dead – the last group they were aware of, anyway. 'I mean, that MO is not really the way that women kill men.'

  Jill sighed and stared ahead, eyes on the road. Scotty had voiced her own doubts about Mercy being involved in the murders. She took one hand from the wheel and rubbed at some skin peeling from her sunburnt nose. She knew that female serial murderers were rare, and that those who existed usually used poison or a firearm.

  'I know. I know that. But, Scotty, the three deaths have got to be connected, and she's linked in some way to all three,' she said. 'And to be honest, no, I don't really think she killed them, but there's something really odd about her lately, you know? She seems… well, a bit cracked.'

  Scotty turned sideways to view Jill's tanned profile. Her white-blonde hair looked tousled, not as in place as usual. He took in her set jaw and the cold sore on her lower lip. He turned his eyes back to the road when he caught his own face staring back at him through the mirrored lenses of her aviator sunglasses.

  'What?' she asked, voice flat.

  'Nothing,' he said, and then paused. 'It's just that you're looking a bit tightly wound yourself lately. You're not sleeping well again, are you?'

  Silence from the driver's seat.

  'Are you eating, Jill?'

  She focused on the road.

  'Right. Well. Anyway,' said Scotty, giving up, looking down at some notes in a folder on his lap. 'Let's go through what we know about these cases. If we're going to convince Andreessen that they're connected, we're going to have to find more to go on.

  'Okay – George Manzi, AKA George Marks,' he continued, 'found in a car with another guy on Elizabeth Bay Road at the back of the Cross.'

  'The other guy they found with him – do they know his name yet?' Jill asked, changing lanes to take the right turn that led to Bondi Junction.

  'Yep. Jamaal Mahmoud, found unconscious in the back seat, single blow to the back of the head. He's still recovering – they've got him in the Brain Injury Unit over at Prince of Wales.' 'What'd you say his name was?' A bubble of recognition floated up from the tangle of thoughts in Jill's mind. 'Mahmoud. Jamaal Mahmoud.'

  'Jamaal…'

  'Yep. A hooker found them last Sunday morning. Manzi was in the driver's seat, but he wasn't doing much driving when he died.' Scotty read from the notes in his lap – he had an updated version of the file Jill had read a couple of days ago. 'His pants were round his ankles. You reckon he was getting serviced by the killer?'

  'Mmm. Maybe, but what would Mahmoud have been doing?'

  'Watching? Waiting for his turn? Who knows?'

  Jill was distracted. Where had she heard that name?

  'Harris and Jardine found no sign that entry to the vehicle had been forced, or even that they'd fought the attacker off,' Scotty told her. 'They've guessed that Manzi and Mahmoud let the killer into the car with them. Also says here that Mahmoud was probably drugged. Hospital tests found Special K in his system, but too much of it for just a night on the town. It could've been an accidental OD, but they reckon that amount would've knocked anyone out.'

  This information was new to Jill. The man in the back seat had not yet been identified when she'd read the file. So maybe the killer had drugged Mahmoud. Why? It would make sense to wait for the drug to take effect on the man in the back seat before striking – it would be difficult to fight two men off within the confines of a car. Eight holes had been punched through Manzi's skull with a claw hammer, the left side of his temple caving in completely; the killer would have been covered in blood and brains. The killer had then struck the man in the back seat. This awkward position, or a passer-by, had probably saved his life. He'd been hit just once.

  A car horn sounded behind them, and Jill noticed that the lights were green. She accelerated forward.

  'Jamaal!' she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. 'What if it's the same Jamaal?'

  Earlier that morning she had briefly told Scotty about her visit with Honey. He'd asked first thing about the girl who'd come in to report a rape. Half the squad room – the male half – had told him about her. Now Jill filled him in a little more on Honey's past, telling him about Mr Sebastian and his driver Jamaal and their private parties in Auburn.

  'We gotta turn left back there, Jill – where are you going? I told you I should've driven.'

  Jill cursed and pulled into a driveway. She'd have to do a U-turn.

  She decided that tomorrow she was going to see Honey. It couldn't hurt to take her on a visit to the Prince of Wales Hospital, check out the patients in the Brain Injury Unit. Jill shaved her legs in the bath that evening. She knew she was too thin, but she felt vaguely pleased with the muscles of her thighs, stomach, arms. At least her body felt strong. She rested her head against the back of the bath, let the steam relax her. Interviewing the Kaplans that afternoon had been awful.

  The glare of the late summer day had respectfully kept its distance from verdant Woollahra. Red brick and sandstone mansions rested sedately in the shade of huge Moreton Bay fig trees. Jill had removed her sunglasses at the last moment when they made their way up the flower-lined path of the Kaplans' three-storey home.

  Carly Kaplan was eight, and captain of her softball team, when she begged her mother for horse-riding lessons at Centennial Park. Her parents, Marie and William, gave in quickly, using the two hours each Sunday morning to take a walk and have coffee in the park while their daughter rode, under the instruction of a man who'd advertised in an Eastern Suburbs community newspaper. When Carly had wanted to quit the lessons five weeks later, however, William had put his foot down.

  'We've paid for six months,' he'd told her, 'and you can't just go from one activity to another without seeing things through.' He told Jill and Scotty hollowly that he'd been determined not to let their children take their life of privilege for granted.

  Marie Kaplan had been alarmed by her daughter's change in demeanour that year, but because Ca
rly had seemed to lose enthusiasm for most things, she had not honed in on the riding lessons as the source of her misery. Besides, she'd tried to reason with herself later, Carly's best friend, Brianna, also took the lessons, and the girls were out in the fresh air. It had seemed the right thing to do to encourage her to continue.

  But the girls hadn't spent all of their time in the fresh air. Their instructor, David Carter, had told them that he had to take some photos for their horse-riding licences. Marie and William learned years later that Carter had taken the girls into a disused cricket stand in the grounds of the park. Under the isolated bleachers he'd encouraged them to dress in their riding clothes and later fairy outfits, snapping away as they changed and posed, giggling, in the costumes.

  Face grey, eyes dead, William Kaplan told Jill and Scotty that even when Brianna had quit the lessons he had insisted that Carly see out the six-month contract with the riding instructor. His wife stared at the carpet as he spoke.

  Under the bleachers one week, David Carter had convinced Carly that he could kill her mother any time he wanted to. He told Carly where Marie Kaplan shopped, the name of her best friend and their next-door neighbour. He knew where Carly's mum swam three mornings a week, and that she volunteered at the school canteen twice a month. If Carly ever told anyone what they did under here, he'd told her, he would kill her mother before anyone could do anything to save her. And it would be all Carly's fault.

  Her parents recounted how Carly's marks had declined steadily from that year. She showed no respect at school any more, especially for male teachers, and she became a nightmare at home – harassing her sisters constantly and lashing out in fury when chastised by her parents. Their formerly quiet home was constantly ringing with the sound of Carly swearing and slamming doors. When Carly was eleven, Marie Kaplan found cigarettes in her daughter's backpack. At thirteen, Marie and William had been called to Carly's new high school, enduring an hour with an excruciatingly embarrassed principal who finally choked out that Carly had been caught having sex behind the gymnasium. Later that month they were back at the school to take her home, suspended for arriving back to class drunk after recess; vomit in her hair. School counsellors and changing schools twice hadn't helped at all.

  It wasn't until Carly's fourteenth birthday, after yet another screaming row, that Marie and William Kaplan had found out what David Carter had done to their child. A sobbing Marie told Jill and Scotty how she had walked into the bathroom to find Carly slimy with her own blood, razorblade in hand, carving at her thighs. In the emergency department at midnight she and Carly's father had learned that their daughter had been self-mutilating for two years, and that this was a commonly observed behaviour in child sexual abuse victims.

  Jill understood too well that a door to a nightmare world had opened that night at the hospital; Marie and William Kaplan walked in, and had never really come out. They learned that Carter had raped their eight-year-old child once a week for four months while they'd been walking in the park. They'd driven her there, taken her home – forced her to keep going when she'd asked to stop. William Kaplan held himself more accountable for the abuse than the man who'd actually committed these crimes. In her deepest heart, Marie blamed him too. They became strangers in the same house.

  Over the next six months, Carly had made a one-hundred page police statement that required the most explicit, exhaustive minutiae of every encounter she'd had with Carter. Carly had come home from each appointment with the police beyond exhausted, her stomach cramping, unable to sleep. She missed weeks of school at a time, beset by nightmares and bouts of tearfulness and anxiety attacks. She'd had to tell the same story to doctors, counsellors, and the Department of Public Prosecutions over the remainder of the year.

  Marie told them quietly that Carter had finally been arrested and charged. Carly had prepared herself for the agony of going through the details again in court. The matter was deferred every time it was listed, and the process continued for two years. The case had finally gone ahead last month. The court found Carter not guilty and he was acquitted.

  Jill and Scotty already knew that Marie had not been fast enough to stop Carly bleeding to death in the bath. In the living room in Woollahra, Jill had watched Marie mentally replaying the bathroom scene. She knew that movie would be screening the rest of her life.

  15

  After her bath, Jill stood on her balcony in boxer shorts and a singlet, watching the beachside afternoon becoming evening. She loved the sounds and smells of the ocean, and watching the cars and the people below left her with a sense of community. This connection from a distance was as close as she got to being neighbourly.

  The sunset bled into the horizon, and a chill breeze puckered Jill's bath-warm skin. She hugged her arms, unable to rid her mind of Marie Kaplan's thousand-mile stare.

  Time to cook, gotta eat, she told herself firmly. She stepped back into her living room, relishing the thick carpet under her toes.

  From a rack next to her lounge, she selected a glossy food magazine and walked with it into the kitchen. Her mum had bought her the rack, and the twenty or so magazines had been home-delivered monthly via the subscription she'd also bought. Jill smiled. More than one way to tell your daughter to eat properly, she thought.

  Hmm. Poached chicken breast with rocket pesto. Easy, and she had everything she needed. She pulled produce from the refrigerator, lulled by the rituals of cooking.

  A glass of wine would work well right now, said the white-eyed girl in her mind. Jill tuned her out.

  She thought about Jamaal.

  She knew that the inspector would be reluctant to let her take Honey out to the hospital. Mahmoud was a witness in the Manzi case, ostensibly not related to the Carter killing, but the cases had to be connected. Besides, she had to know if he was the same man who had ensnared Honey a decade ago. Was he still in business? Was Mr Sebastian still around? Somehow, these questions seemed far more important than who had killed David Carter. Convincing Honey to come along to the hospital hadn't been easy. She'd been sullen when Jill had shown up at her door the next evening. She was dressed in low, low-rider jeans and a pink halterneck top that left the creamy skin of her back completely exposed; her acid-green contact lenses glinted like gaudy beads, still freaking Jill out a little.

  'I'm going out tonight. A girl's gotta work.' But Honey moved backwards to allow Jill into the flat.

  Jill stayed where she was. That place was too small.

  'Come on, Honey. I'll get you back here by nine, I promise. You wouldn't have left before then anyway,' Jill wheedled. 'We can grab something to eat. What do you want to eat? I'm paying.'

  Honey stood silent in the doorway a few moments longer, her eyes giving nothing away; then she turned and walked back inside.

  'Shit,' Jill muttered, moving to leave.

  'God! Give me a minute,' Honey stood in the doorway again.

  She threw Jill her handbag, juggling her keys and a canary-yellow cowboy hat while she locked the door. 'I want Lebanese food.' The corridors of the Brain Injury Unit of the Prince of Wales Hospital were haunted by the relatives of patients who fought for life behind the doors that flanked it. Their wraith-like presence contrasted with the bright efficiency of the hospital staff manoeuvring around them. Jill needed to show her badge twice before the Nursing Unit Manager gave them permission to visit Jamaal Mahmoud, the nurse's eyes on Honey the whole time they talked.

  'He's popular tonight,' the woman commented, finally returning to her notes. 'He's just down the hall,' she said, scribbling a number on a piece of notepaper and handing it to Jill.

  Honey and Jill made their way through the disinfected corridors and looked for Jamaal's room. Even if this is the same guy, thought Jill, what does that mean? What am I going to do about it? She decided that she was just following a potential lead in the triple murder investigation, but she was more interested in finding out any connection between the three men in life than in their deaths. If their deaths were connected, could t
hey have been part of some sort of group? Were there more of these guys out there? Her breathing quickened when she saw the room number ahead of her.

  Jill had been hoping that she and Honey could just identify the man in the bed unobserved, but, as the nurse had intimated, he had visitors. Through the open doorway she could see a heavy-set man in a dark suit.

  Before she could suggest they hold back, Honey had sauntered straight into the room.

  'Honey, hang on a sec…' She trailed off as Honey, smiling, offered the suited man her cheek to kiss.

  'Mr Sebastian, this is a friend of mine, Jill.' She still smiled broadly. 'We're here visiting her aunt, and she came up with me to see how Jamaal was going.' The man in the bed stared flatly at the wall, not even turning towards them at the sound of his name.

  Honey seemed to have taken charge of the encounter, and although her eyes gave little away, glistening madly, her body language seemed to imply that Jill was to remain in the background. This was fortunate, as Jill could not have said a word if her life depended on it. What the fuck was going on here? Mr Sebastian – the man who had drugged and pimped Honey into child prostitution. Jill had no idea he was still part of Honey's life.

  'Jill, is it?' Mr Sebastian extended a large, manicured hand. 'It's always nice to meet Honey's friends.'

  He didn't introduce the other man in the room, a hulking tattooed figure with Mediterranean features, wearing sweatpants and a singlet. The contrast between the men could not have been more stark – Sebastian in his sixties, carefully groomed and tailored, offering an urbane smile; the other maybe early thirties, battle-scarred, staring flatly at nothing in particular. Jill thought maybe she'd seen him before.