Ishtar Read online

  “Klaus Bartoch,” Steve reads, fingering the discovered wallet. “Colourful name. Drivers license, Hunters Hill. Not likely to be a prostitute, then.”

  “Maybe he was visiting a prostitute. Maybe the killer has moved on from prostitutes.”

  “Yeah. Maybe she’s looking for a more sensitive lover,” Steve says. “Could be my chance.”

  “You don’t want anything to do with this bitch,” Adrienne says.

  Steve gives her a quizzical look. “It was a joke.”

  Klaus Bartoch lies in a shallow indent in the sand. He looks like a human puddle, his mouth long and stretched revealing a bloated tongue and powdered teeth. His eyes swim like uncooked yolks. Judging by his driving license, he was always ugly. This, however, is a cut above. In the winter sun he stinks like rotting hamburger.

  “That’s how they found him,” one of the local cops tells Adrienne. “By the smell. A couple, cleaning up after their dog...”

  He doesn’t go on; he doesn’t have to. Adrienne wonders herself whether there’s any reason to go on, whether the goddess has just got them beat hands down. Maybe they should leave her to it and get out of the way.

  There’s another group gathered around the body.

  “Who’s that?” Adrienne asks the cop.

  “Anti-terrorist team.”

  “Terrorist?”

  “Yeah,” says the cop. “They think it might be chemical weapons.”

  “On non-events like Klaus, here?” Steve asks. “He’s nobody.”

  “I know he’s not much to look at,” says the cop eyeing the mess of Bartoch in the sand. “But he could be target practice.”

  The anti-terrorists are plain, wouldn’t-stand-out-in-a-crowd types, but they’re the focus of attention as they don gloves and begin to poke and pinch at the body on the beach.

  ****

  Adrienne gets a phone call from an unknown number.

  “It’s Chapel. Nina gave me your number.” On the phone, his voice is clipped and snide. There’s noise in the background, and at first Adrienne thinks it’s the TV. But she soon realises it’s sobbing.

  “What’s going on?” she asks.

  “I got something for you.”

  She’s caught between frustration and politeness. She wants to tell Chapel to take his know-it-all tone and stick it where it’s likely to do the most damage. It’s an immature response and she knows it, so instead she asks him to explain on the phone. He refuses. There’s someone she needs to meet, he tells her. “Someone who might’ve met your killer.”

  That clinches it.

  “Clean this up, would you?” she says to the local constabulary.

  “Any idea how?” the cop asks.

  He dips the toe of his boot into the puddle of Klaus Bartoch and the body wobbles like badly set jelly.

  “I’ll leave it to your imagination,” Adrienne replies.

  Then they’re back in the car and on their way south. Steve sticks to the coast, even though it probably takes longer. Not because of the distance, because of the traffic. There are plenty of tourists taking the scenic routes around the city. While he drives, Adrienne watches the ocean. It’s late on a bright winter day, but even now the beaches are busy with sun-worshippers. The sand glows dully and the water is a deep blue-green, waves breaking on the white sand. It’s so picturesque the cynic in her is momentarily silenced.

  “So, you haven’t heard from Grace?” Steve asks.

  Adrienne starts. “No, I told you.” She pauses, then adds, “What makes you ask?”

  Steve gestures at the ocean. “Just that she used to say she was going to be a journalist overseas. You know, she really emphasised the overseas thing.”

  “Yeah, she did. She did become a journo, though. At some point.”

  Her name appears in the national papers sometimes, so Adrienne figures she’s still alive, still out there someplace. She doesn’t think much about her sister. More, she thinks about what it’s meant to her own life, the decision to stay local.

  “Why’s his name Chapel, anyhow?” says Steve, changing the subject. He pronounces it ‘sha-pel’, not ‘cha-pel’, the way Chapel did. “I mean, it’s a place of worship, right? But he’s got all these bullshit stories about transference and spirits...doesn’t sound like something you’d believe if you attended a chapel.”

  “I suspect,” Adrienne says, making it up as she goes along, “it’s meant to be ironic.”

  “I think it’s a variation on a stage name,” Steve says after a while. “Like, Chapel by day, Schapelle by night, maybe?”

  Adrienne chuckles at the idea of the tiny Indonesian man naming himself after a famous Australian drug mule doing time in a Balinese prison.

  “I like it,” she says.

  ****

  When they get to where they’re going, it’s a redbrick apartment block in Coogee. Same as every other redbrick in Coogee. Plain on the outside, plain on the inside, but with a sea breeze Adrienne would kill for.

  The door is open and Adrienne can hear sobbing, the same as on the phone. She enters in a crouch.

  Inside, Chapel is sitting on a lounge beside the crier. It’s a man, round as a beach ball, his jeans hooked high on his convulsing belly. He rests his head in his hand, elbow on the arm of the lounge, face averted.

  Chapel is sitting with his legs crossed, looking blandly at his own nails. He catches sight of Adrienne and Steve as they enter. “Detectives.”

  He looks glad to see them, but probably because he’s bored with the crying.

  “What’s the problem?” Adrienne asks.

  The sobbing man finally looks up. His fat face is contorted, almost a caricature of grief. He looks at the detectives without comprehension.

  “This is Timothy,” says Chapel. “He nearly died today.”

  Timothy looks to be late forties, hair short and shot with grey.

  Adrienne lowers herself to a chair. She can tell this is going to take a while. “What happened, Timothy?”

  The story Timothy tells doesn’t win Adrienne over quickly.

  “I met her last night. Well, early morning. I think it was four or five in the a.m.” His voice is thick with tears and he keeps clearing his throat.

  “Who?” she asks.

  Timothy hesitates. “She said her name was Ishtar.”

  “You mean, like the goddess?” Steve exchanges a look with Adrienne.

  Timothy brightens with relief. “Yeah. Just like the goddess.”

  “What can you tell us about her?” Adrienne asks.

  Timothy shrugs. He gives a description of a tiny, dark-haired woman shaped like a ballerina, but with a fierce slant to her eyes and mouth. She’s beautiful, he insists, shaking his head in wonder. He describes, in detail, the brief dress she was wearing and the armload of jewellery — cuffs on her upper arms, bracelets, rings on every finger, long earrings to her shoulders. He even describes the mix of silver and gold, the eight thin strands of necklace she wore. Adrienne wonders if Timothy works in the trade. Perhaps he’s a jeweller. Perhaps he’s a kleptomaniac. Maybe she should take a look around the apartment.

  “You were in a nightclub?” she prompts.

  Timothy nods. “The Pitt. On Pitt Street. But then we came back here.”

  “She was here?” Adrienne’s ears prick up. She glances about the room, halfway expecting to see her.

  “What happened?” Steve asks.

  “We talked,” Timothy shrugs.

  “About?” Steve again.

  Here Timothy pauses, confused. After the detailed visual recollection of her jewellery, his memory isn’t working so good.

  “She said...she was going to make an example of me,” he says. “I thought she meant...sexually.”

  Adrienne nods, as if this is the most obvious interpretation.

  “She wanted to hear about the women I’d known,” says Timothy. “She kept asking me to admit what I’d done.”

  “And what had you done?” Adrienne asks.

  “Nothing!
I’ve never done anything.”

  “You must have done something, right?” Adrienne presses. “She must’ve been a friend of someone you did something to, someone you screwed over?”

  Chapel cuts in. “Wait until you hear the rest of the story.”

  He’s calm, a man in his element. He smiles at Adrienne, maybe figuring she’s struggling. He has that whole I-was-right-you-were-wrong look going on. Pretty soon, she’s going to ask him what any of this has to do with transference, and he’s going to have to admit this is a whole different bucket of crazy.

  Timothy returns to the story. Ishtar kept pressing him, kept trying to get him to admit what he’d done, asking about the women in his life. Adrienne notes that down, ‘women’.

  “She told me she’d kill me.” The tears start rolling down Timothy’s face again. “She said she’d break every bone in my body.”

  “What did you do?” Adrienne prompts blandly.

  “I didn’t...I was powerless. Paralysed. I couldn’t move unless she told me to. She made me...take off my clothes.” The sobs return, his belly rolling under the onslaught of tears. “She was going to kill me!”

  Adrienne’s impatience rises. “Why didn’t she?”

  Timothy wipes his face with his bare hands, smearing the tears all over his cheeks and chin. “Because I don’t have a penis yet.”

  It takes Adrienne a moment to calculate the statement.

  “You’re transsexual?” she asks.

  Timothy nods. “Well, in three weeks—”

  “She thought you were a man?”

  “I am a man,” says Timothy, his voice soft. “I’m just a man waiting for an operation.”

  “But she didn’t kill you because you...I mean, she said because you...?”

  She looks to Steve for help, but he’s wearing his own bewildered expression.

  “She said she wouldn’t kill a woman who hadn’t wronged her,” Timothy says. “She said I could be the witness, the one to remember her. She said after what she had planned, no one would forget her. But I would be the first.”

  Adrienne’s blood goes cold. She takes a breath and asks the question she has to; “I guess she didn’t tell you what she had planned?”

  Timothy shakes his head. “Something about an army.”

  “An army?” Steve finds his voice at last.

  “She said,” Timothy’s sobs have stopped, “she’s going to raise Hell.”

  ****

  They leave Timothy to his renewed crying and head outside. Darkness has fallen and the sea breeze has become icy.

  “What do you make of that?” Steve asks.

  Adrienne doesn’t answer. The whole thing is too weird and too stupid, and she’s tired. The sting has gone out of her hand where the burn has faded to skin tones, but only just. It feels raw and so does she.

  Chapel comes up behind them while they’re getting into the car. “Can you give me a lift?”

  “Where to?” Steve asks.

  “Away from here,” Chapel says. “Can’t stand the southern suburbs.”

  Adrienne’s about to refuse, but Steve gestures him into the car.

  They head back. The beaches are still busy, sand almost blue in the rising moonlight. Most of the crowd is simply cruising the promenades, making their way to local cafes and restaurants. Adrienne thinks Steve might turn west and go inland, but he continues up the coastal roads. A reverse of the trip they made south.

  “Who the hell is Ishtar, anyhow?” Steve asks. “Greek?”

  “Mesopotamian,” Chapel corrects him. “Goddess of love and war.”

  “Did you put him up to this?” Adrienne asks.

  “No.” Chapel’s tone is surprised. “If anything, what he’s saying proves me wrong, too.”

  “Yeah, I was going to point out your body-hopping transference theory just got all shot to hell.”

  Chapel grunts. “Some bitch goddess out for revenge instead. Who knew?”

  “Sure. It’s a tiny woman with supernatural powers running about killing men and raising an army,” Adrienne summarises.

  Steve mutters, “What’s she need an army for? She’s doing fine on her own.”

  “Maybe it’s too slow for her,” Adrienne speculates. “You know, killing people one by one.”

  Steve casts her a look. “You buying this?”

  Adrienne doesn’t answer. She cranes around to look at Chapel. He’s playing with his phone, tapping the screen and chewing on his lip. “So what about this army?”

  “I’ll have to look it up,” Chapel murmurs.

  “Great. Okay, so get back to me when you do.”

  “No, I mean now. I’m just searching for a free network. But of course in a moving vehicle...never mind. Aha, here’s something.”

  He reads out a biography of Ishtar that he’s found online. Goddess of love. When she descended to Hell, all sex on earth stopped. She passed through seven gates, each time obeying the ancient law that required her to remove a piece of clothing. When she reached Hell she was naked, and she was hung on hooks for centuries. Goddess of war. She avenged herself on her lovers. One, Tammuz, she sent to the underworld for half a year every year when she found him screwing his sister.

  “That’s sweet,” says Adrienne.

  “Maybe that’s why she started with prostitutes,” Steve says. “They’re not going to ask about those big old meat hook marks in her skin, the ones from Hell’s kitchen.”

  “Nothing about an army?” Adrienne asks.

  “Not so far,” Chapel confirms.

  “Killed her lovers,” says Steve. “It’d fit.”

  “You believe this stuff yet?” Adrienne asks.

  Steve shrugs. “What’s it matter what I believe? If she believes it, if she thinks she’s a vengeful goddess—”

  “Doesn’t explain how she’s killing them,” Adrienne interjects.

  “You guys are reaching,” says Chapel. “You keep making up more and more complicated explanations when the real one’s simple. She’s really Ishtar. She’s really killing people with her goddess powers. And she’s probably really raising an army.”

  Adrienne is about to give him an earful, but he interrupts. “Oh, you’re not going to like this.” He leans forward with his phone held out, screen angled towards Adrienne. “Some manuscript they found a couple years back, from a washerwoman, would you believe. Wouldn’t think those bitches could write.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Ishtar has an army all right. An army of stillborns.”

  “I knew it,” Steve mutters.

  “Gula made them. They’re hibernating in caves all over Mesopotamia, waiting for Ishtar to call them into service,” Chapel says.

  “I’m not even sure where Mesopotamia is,” says Steve, “but it’s not here, and I’m glad. Plus—” he jerks a thumb at the dark ocean to his right, “we got an entire ocean between us and there. Being the world’s biggest island never looked so good.”

  “I wouldn’t get too complacent.” There’s a new vigour in Chapel’s voice. “Ishtar made it here.”

  “Unless she’s buying her stillborns plane tickets, I don’t see it happening,” Steve says.

  Adrienne cuts them off. “Will you two just shut the hell up!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They drop Chapel at Hyde Park in the centre of town. Before he gets out of the car, he says, “I’ve got another lead for you.”

  He gives them a postal address for something he’s come across online, a cult dedicated to ‘confining the powers of the goddess of destruction’. The Lord of Lords, the cult calls itself.

  “This is for a post office,” Adrienne says.

  “So? Aren’t you the police?” Chapel says.

  After he leaves, Adrienne mutters, “What in hell are we meant to do with this?”

  Steve shrugs. It’s getting on to dinner time, Adrienne knows. His wife is probably waiting at home.

  She sighs. “May as well check it out.”

  They’re back near C
hinatown, so Adrienne phones in with the address while Steve goes for food. Then they eat hot dumplings with their fingers and wait for the database to cough up a name. Steve keeps glancing at his watch and muttering about calling his wife.

  “Belongs to a Mark Davis,” says the voice over the radio.

  They’re given an address. Steve drives one-handed, blowing on a pork dumpling while he navigates the traffic.

  They cross the bridge into the north of Sydney and pull up outside an art deco one-storey house in Mosman. The man who opens the door looks like he’s just home from an office job. He has brown hair and a bad suit. He’s at that certain age when the body begins to trade muscle for fat.

  “Mark Davis?” Steve asks.

  Davis eyes them carefully until Adrienne pulls out a badge, then he looks surprised. “Has something happened?”

  “What would’ve happened?” Adrienne asks.

  Davis goes from surprise to confusion to consternation in a second. “Come in, then.”

  Inside the house is neat, too neat, and plain. Like Davis himself.

  “We’re here to ask you about the Lord of Lords, Mr. Davis,” says Steve.

  “Please, call me Marduk.”

  Adrienne hesitates. Great. More nutjobs with crazy names. “Is that your name?”

  “It’s my chosen name,” Davis replies.

  “Not your legal name?”

  Davis raises an eyebrow. “You still think the state has the right to legalise names? You think that’s their call? Plato said—”

  “I’m sure he did, Mr. Davis,” Adrienne cuts him off.

  Davis sits on his faux-leather couch and glares.

  Steve taps away on his phone for a minute. “Marduk. Champion of the gods,” he gives Davis an impressed look. “Nice.”

  “Modest, too.” Adrienne takes up a position in the doorway. “What does your organisation do, Mr. Davis?”

  “We teach the right of the individual—”

  “So you identify with who? Socialist Alliance?”

  “Oh, no. We don’t propose to build a relationship with one of the bigger parties—”

  “Don’t like playing with the other kids?” Adrienne interrupts.