Siren by Tara Moss

his mother had been fighting? It was antisocial, to say the least.
    ‘He’s a teenager.’
    Mak nodded, and made another note. LOOK FOR A DIARY
    ‘You know, Kevin recommended you very highly,’ Glenise said, quite to Mak’s surprise. She looked up from her notes.
    ‘Kevin?’
    ‘You did such a good job with Tobias that I hoped you could help me,’ Glenise added.
    Mak twitched at the mention of the boy’s name, and the fingers of her right hand gripped the seam of her jeans, nails curling up to stab the stitches. Kevin was the name of Tobias’s father.
    Tobias? How would she know anything about Tobias and Kevin?
    ‘You know Tobias Murphy?’ Mak asked calmly, managing a decent act of masking the impact of the connection.
    ‘Oh, the Murphys are a lovely family. They moved in down the street earlier this year.’
    Mak felt a rush of uneasy adrenaline surge through her.
    Okay, you now have my attention.
    Sixteen-year-old Tobias Murphy had been wrongly arrested for his cousin’s murder. It was all part of the same complex andsordid investigation that led Mak to uncover Damien Cavanagh’s involvement in the suspicious death of an underage girl. Mak’s investigation resulted in Tobias being cleared of any wrongdoing, even if she did not quite manage to bring the Cavanagh heir to justice, or cause much more than a ripple in the wealthy Cavanagh family’s privileged, important lives. She often wondered how Tobias was doing after being released from police custody and reunited with his biological father. The thought that he had so narrowly avoided spending his life imprisoned for something he was innocent of sent Mak’s thoughts quickly into territory Marian would not approve of. Injustice had a way of invigorating her. Of course the case had long since departed her professional domain. She had been sternly and repeatedly warned to be sensible and steer clear of any further involvement for her own good, perhaps even her own safety.
    Mak was smart, but not always sensible.
    This was the connection Marian Wendell had been hesitant to mention. The Cavanagh case was the reason for her recommendation. Mak had sensed that her boss was holding something back.
    ‘Are Adam and Tobias friends?’ Makedde asked with deceptive calm.
    ‘Oh, I think they’ve got to know each other a bit.’
    The two boys would be a couple of years apart by Mak’s calculation.
    ‘Have you spoken to Tobias about Adam’s disappearance?’
    ‘Not personally,’ Glenise said. ‘I’ve not seen him around lately. I spoke with Kevin about it, of course, and that was when he recommended you.’
    It was natural enough for Tobias’s father to recommend Makedde’s services. He had not been her client, but theoutcome of her investigation had been good for the Murphys, and it was not as if the average person knew a lot of private investigators. Mak had thought the door knocking in this case would be depressingly ho-hum. Adam might best be located by speaking to a lot of his friends, associates and neighbours, as more often than not someone somewhere knew something, and it was only a matter of time and perseverance. But perhaps while speaking to the Murphy family she could gently find out if they knew anything she didn’t about the Cavanaghs, and where the case against the scion of one of Australia’s most powerful families had stalled…

CHAPTER 7
    His motel room was cheap.
    The young man stood in its centre, clothed only in his underpants, and glared at the locked door with disdain. A truck drove by on the nearby road. He heard some stranger cough. He would not sleep well here. He had not slept well for days, and tonight there would be no respite: of that he felt certain. The faint smell of deodoriser and stale smoke permeated the thin walls, the carpet and the papery sheets he did not look forward to sleeping between. This was in no way a step up from the caravan outside.
    In three strides he traversed his tiny quarters to the spartan bathroom. At