Hit by Tara Moss Page A

activities should I be discussing with a man too cowardly to even tell me his name?’ Jack demanded angrily. Though he was listening carefully, he did not recognise the man’s voice. However, he thought he detected a very slight Irish accent mixed with his typical Australian sounds.
    There was no response.
    Jack waited through a few seconds of silence. ‘I am hanging up the phone now—’
    ‘I don’t think you should do that, Jack ,’ came the voice on the line.
    Jack didn’t much care for the tone, or the address. Apart from family, very few people called Cavanagh senior ‘Jack’. In fact, every single person who worked for him called him ‘Mr Cavanagh’. Even Joy, who had worked for him for thirty-one years, did not presume to call him by his first name.
    ‘I’m waiting,’ Jack said.
    ‘I’ll cut to the chase. I have an incriminating video of your son with an underaged girl who is now in the morgue. You won’t want anyone else seeing this footage. All it will take is two million dollars to make me happy and I will forget all about it. Me and this problem will go away,’ the stranger said. ‘Two million dollars is cheap as chips for a man of your means.’
    Jack took in the information with a mixture of scepticism and concern. His son was a disappointment, but this might be beneath even Damien’s capabilities.
    ‘Why should I believe you?’ Jack asked the man coolly.
    ‘Ask your son if he has anything to hide,’ was the ominous response. ‘I’ll give you until this time tomorrow to think about it. If you don’t meet the price, I know I will get plenty from the media for it. They will like this story, I think.’
    ‘That’s enough,’ said the older man. ‘How will I contact you?’
    ‘You won’t.’
    He hung up in Jack Cavanagh’s ear.
    Jack held the phone out from his head, then placed it slowly back in its cradle. He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and extracted a rolled Cuban cigar from a small box, cut the tip and lit it. The cigar had been intended for celebrating the transportation contract, but now he needed it to think. For ten minutes Jack sat in his leather chair with his arms crossed, intermittently puffing on the Cuban and watching the clouds outside his high window. When he was done collecting his thoughts, he pulled his private phone over and dialled.
    ‘Hello, Bob? It’s Jack. I was wondering if you might swing by my office…’

CHAPTER 10
    ‘It’s the only time I feel alive …’
    At four forty-nine on Friday afternoon, Makedde Vanderwall sat in her living room across from Loulou’s friend Brenda Bale, listening to the complicated, flame-haired woman wrestle with psychological self-examination. Mak shifted on the sofa, wearing the plain black pantsuit she used on such occasions—a kind of psychologist’s uniform, she thought. Her thoughts drifted a little: Andy’s trip; his new job; her dad’s new life in Canada with his girlfriend, Ann; Loulou’s crazy infatuation with yet another muso.
    The terrace house Mak and Andy shared was old—built in the early 1900s—and it sometimes had a faint musty smell that Mak couldn’t escape. She watched the sunlight that came through the old bay window. The sun’s rays moved subtly, striking objects and casting shadows; everything changing, the world in flux.
    ‘…like I wouldn’t even exist without it.’
    Mak nodded and waited for Brenda to continue.
    This was their ninth session, but Mak was not at all confident that their hours together had been effective. The main problem was that Mak was a forensic psychologist—and not even a practising one—and she did not specialise in this sort of work. The kind of therapy-based sessions that Brenda required were more suited to a clinical psychologist like her father’s girlfriend, Dr Ann Morgan, or perhaps even the famed sex therapist Dr Ruth.
    ‘You exist right now, Brenda. You are here. You are alive,’ Mak responded, stating the all-important obvious.
    ‘I know,