The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt

by Mark Mupotsa-Russell

Genres: Military Thrillers; Terrorism & Assassination Thrillers

Synopsis

I met my husband on the same day I committed my very last murder. There's a joke in there somewhere, about ending two men's lives.'
Olivia Hodges used to do horrible things - back when she worked for a Spanish crime syndicate - but she fled that life and moved home to Australia, building a family in the hippie, hipster community of the Dandenong Ranges.

When a small-time criminal gang brings tragedy to her family, superstitious Olivia believes it's the universe demanding payment for her crimes. She wants revenge, but has to get it without adding to her karmic debt. So she creates situations where these bad men get themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed - all while trying to mislead the cops long enough to finish what she started.

Release date: August 27, 2024

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter one

I think I’m missing a piece inside. Something crucially human. I’m not sure when I lost it – Spain, probably – but I can feel the hole it left behind, like a pulled tooth.

Whatever it is, everyone else at school pickup still has theirs. All these glossy wonder-mums, cramming a passive-aggressive lecture into Oh, hiiiiii. The child-development junkies, shoving tracking apps in each other’s faces. Sad divorced dads, desperate to get this one task right, and busy and important patriarchs, honking from the back of the queue. They’re thinking about normal things. Their kids, jobs, bills, yoga classes, infidelities and functional alcoholism.

I’m thinking this car is a two-tonne hunk of crumple zones, mere ankle pressure away from being a weapon.

And that Jaideep does this every day.

‘Can you remind me to email Holly Thorpe? Everyone has to make diversity cupcakes for Monday and she’s got the good recipe.’

I follow his eyes to Holly’s activewear-coated arse as she crunches across the hot gravel, headed for the school. ‘Are the cupcakes diverse or does money from selling them go to a diverse cause?’

‘Each kid does their icing … in the national colours … of a country they can trace their roots to,’ Jai says, his Canadian accent rising for each new detail, making it clear the project is over-complicated. ‘Then they swap cakes with another kid and celebrate their differences.’

‘Eating racism?’

‘“With gluten-free, wholemeal and vegan options, please.”’

‘It’s the Hills. I’m surprised they don’t make you cleanse our oven with a healing crystal.’

‘Daddy, they made cakes on Play School,’ Leena says from her car seat.

‘That’s right, honey. Big Ted’s looked yummier than Little Ted’s, didn’t it?’

Jai and I have an unspoken agreement to never discuss it being strange for him, or even noteworthy, that he’s the girls’ primary carer. He’s the first to say: Nothing I do would be impressive if Olivia had a penis.

The school bell trills and Jai sits up expectantly. Pavlov’s parent. Children spill from the gates like loose marbles. ‘Here she is.’

Edith runs along the fence-line, elbows and knees pumping as the weight of her backpack throws her in a squiggle. Her cheeks are flushed with the February heat and sweat plasters her fringe to her forehead, beneath a drooping flower crown. I lean back to open her door. ‘Hi, darling.’ A whiff of squashed grass from games on the oval, oranges from her afternoon tea.

‘Gooooood afternoon, m’lady Edith,’ Jai says, affecting his English butler accent.

Edith and Leena giggle. ‘Gooooood afternoon, m’lady Daddy,’ says Edith.

Jai’s hand goes to his mouth. ‘But, I say, madam. I am a gentleman.’

‘Lady, lady, lady!’ Leena and Edith cackle with laughter.

‘Belt, please, Edith,’ I say.

‘Lady!’

‘Lady!’

‘Ra-ther.’

‘Come on, belt, please. Mummy’s running late.’

‘But I want to show you my drawing.’

‘Later, honey.’

‘Listen to Mummy, girls. You know the deal. We don’t go quick …’

‘Till the belt goes click!’ they chorus.

The moment Edith settles, I pull onto the tree-lined road, cutting in front of a tradie’s ute. He blasts his horn and I wave an apology, imagining him snarling, Fucking soccer mum. Our four-wheel drive is a cherry-red Mazda that’s proven to be a magnet for road rage. We nicknamed her ‘Jessica Rabbit’, after her big red bum and the odd impulses she inspires in men. We let the girls name our other vehicle, a blue Corolla hatch, and couldn’t talk them out of ‘Brum-Brum’. Brum-Brum is being serviced, hence us in one car.

‘No one needs to pee? Because we’re going to the city.’

The girls say no. Jai frowns but I ignore it, eyeing the dashboard clock. Twenty-five minutes to Knox Shopping Centre then at least thirty to my office in Clifton Hill, traffic-dependent. So damn late. I focus on our winding descent, getting that faint, turtle-poking-from-its-shell feeling I have anytime I leave the Dandenong Ranges, aka the Hills.

For decades, this remote clump of outer eastern suburbs has been a refuge for Melbourne’s urban misfits. Not quite hippies. Not quite survivalists. Not even hipsters. But somewhere on that Venn diagram, you’ll find a Hills resident standing beside their multistorey chicken coop, in bare feet and a knitted hat. The thick forests and single-lane roads may get scarier each year, as climate change makes bushfires, storms and blackouts fiercer and more frequent, but it’s a place that lets you be. These trees have seen my kind for a hundred and fifty years, and others for millennia more. They’re happy to let me hide and breathe.

‘I’ll drop you at the restaurant bit if that’s okay?’ I say. ‘You won’t miss the start?’

‘It won’t properly start till four-thirty,’ Jai says. ‘But where will you park?’

There is weight to this statement. I’ve forgotten something and he’s throwing me a lifeline. I push on hesitantly. ‘I wasn’t going to park. You remember I’ve got the launch?’

‘Can we listen to “Silly Sammy Sausage”, Daddy?’

‘Yeah, Snosage Sam, Daddy!’

Jai bluetooths the song, which he already had queued up on Spotify. Tinny, repetitive music peals from the speakers. ‘What about Edie?’ he says.

Whatever I’ve forgotten, he’s now sure I’ve missed it, but is changing tack. Letting me dig out and expand my grave. ‘I’m not abandoning our children, Jai. I’ll drop them at the office and Barbara will watch them while I’m at the restaurant. It’s the sister venue to that place we had the amazing smoked mozzarella. Lo Stivale? Everything’s sorted.’

‘My love—’

‘What, Jai? What is it?’

‘Edith’s shoes?’

I think Fuck, but I say, ‘Shit.’

I previously agreed to take Edith to buy ballet slippers for class tomorrow. She’s been the only kid in joggers for weeks and Jai’s jokes about our poor little orphan girl, dancing for her supper, are getting more pointed.

‘Mummy, you said the S-word.’

‘Edie, remember how we talked about words adults can use, but kids can’t?’ says Jai.

‘It just means poo, though.’

Leena laughs. ‘Poo poo, poo poo.’

‘Edie, don’t be silly, please,’ I say.

‘Leena did it too!’

Jai shakes his head. ‘You said you’d do this one. You said you wanted to.’

‘I know! But then there was all this interest in the app, and we’ve had media requests, so the developers want something more quote-unquote “baller”. We’ve invited dozens more people and switched to champagne and canapés, but I don’t know the function space upstairs, so wanted to check it out.’ I exhale. ‘Would you have time, before your thing?’

I know it’s a mistake the second I ask.

‘Well, no, actually. And anyway, then what? I won’t be able to watch her, I’ll be playing.’

In his late teens, Jai was highly ranked among Canadian gamers. This was before e-sports were huge, and the most he won was a couple of free trips to Japan. Still, he likes attending events to ‘witness the next generation’. I think he also likes playing the part of positive elder role model.

‘We’ll just have to get the shoes another time, then.’

‘When, Liv? There is no other time.’

‘I want pink shoes, Mummy. You can get white or brown or pink. And you get to put ribbons on them if you want. But I want pink with ribbons.’

‘I want pink ribbons too!’ says Leena.

‘Jai, I’m sorry, but I really can’t do it. There’s barely time to get to the office then Port Melbourne in traffic. It just slipped my mind. With work and everything—’ Too late I stop myself. Another strategic error.

‘You think I don’t have stuff on?’

‘I should have remembered. I’m sorry.’

‘You think I’m not busy?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. You know I didn’t.’

‘Tonight is, like, the one thing I get that’s mine. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask for.’ His voice has that singsong quality that’s so much worse than yelling, mostly because it makes me want to slap him.

‘No one’s taking it away from you.’

‘I realise your work is more time sensitive than my event, but I still think—’

‘Everything you do is just as important. You know I believe that.’

‘Do you, though?’

I stomp the accelerator to pass an old van with a sun-peeled ‘Earthcore 2016’ festival sticker, beating it to the end of the short overtaking section. I check the rear-view to see if I’ve pissed them off too and catch Leena’s stunned Mummy and Daddy are fighting face.

I wonder what her anxiety will latch on to. Will she always associate this road with conflict? Or will it be the smell of used yoghurt pouches? Years from now, will she be driving along with her fiancé, hear a reggaetón remix of ‘Silly Sammy Sausage’ and hurl herself from the moving vehicle?

‘I’m very sorry, Jai,’ I say, enunciating each word for Leena’s benefit, modelling the strength it takes to admit fault. ‘I was being inconsiderate.’

To Jai – not part of the mirror exchange – I sound condescending. ‘There’s always a launch, or a meeting,’ he says through his teeth. ‘There’s always going to be one. We need to find a way for my stuff to be a priority too.’

I twist my grip on the steering wheel until the leather squeaks.

‘Daddy, what’s “priority”?’

‘It means “important”.’

~

I drop Jai at the mall’s café strip. He says, ‘I love you all,’ as he closes the door with purposeful gentleness.

The second we’re back in traffic, I dial Vanessa, putting her on speaker. ‘I’ve got the girls,’ I say, pre-empting her sailor’s mouth.

‘Hey, munchkins.’

‘Nessie!’

‘Do I get to see you both later?’

‘Yeeeeeessss.’

‘Liv, don’t stress. The thank-you baskets for Coleman and Pierce look amazing. There was a stuff-up when they gave us two standards instead of Coleman’s vegetarian option, but I threatened to turn their loved ones into pancetta and the replacement arrived within the hour. Ummm, what else? Venue’s set up. Staff look profesh. I’d go so far as to say we are A-okay.’

‘Really jazzed to hear the enthusiasm, Ness.’

‘Oh God. What do you need?’

‘First, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I’ve ruined everything.’

‘Okay …’

‘I forgot I need to buy Edie these ballet shoes, or we’ll get poverty-shamed. But Jai has this gaming thing, and the changes to the launch shrunk my timeframes.’

‘You want Barbara to take her shopping.’

‘Well …’

‘She can’t hear you, I’m at the venue.’

‘You know I love the Barbs, but she’s kind of old. If they ran away or anything?’

Heavy silence on the other end.

‘Is there any way I can drop them at the office with Barbara, you pick them up and take them for the shoes, then come back to the launch after?’

‘Oh, fuck,’ says Vanessa, then, ‘Whoops. Truck, muck, buck, cluck. I heard if you rhyme it quickly, they can’t tell which was the bad word.’

‘Fuck muck, fuck muck, fuck muck.’

‘I think that ship has sailed, Ness. I’m so sorry to do this to you. I’d go myself but I think it’s important Gerard sees my face when he arrives.’

‘No, yep, of course. Not your fault, it’s just a shiiiii—naughty situation.’

‘I’m genuinely sorry.’

‘I can be there in, like, forty?’

‘You are an actual lifesaver. I’ll send you details. And, just so you know, there’s a Bollinger in my desk I was going to give you for everything you did to make tonight happen. Take it as a thank-you for the shoes and I’ll grab you another.’

‘Don’t be surprised if it’s mysteriously empty when I get to the launch.’

‘You know wine-drunk-Vanessa is my favourite Vanessa. Love you.’

‘Yes, you fuuu-riggan do.’

I breathe. I still need to rush but as the tyres hit the M3’s smooth surface, some of the tension releases from my shoulders. The four lanes let me swerve among the thickening traffic, giving the illusion of momentum even if my progress is slow.

I feel guilty I’ve got away with it. Again. I stuffed up – forgot, failed, didn’t care enough – but through emotional blackmail and sheer rat cunning, others will step in to cover my arse. Vanessa will take it in stride, rearranging the million-point to-do list I gave her for the launch. Barbara will nod sagely, grab my hand in both of hers and offer me a cup of tea because I look stressed. I deserve the heavens to crash down around me. But they won’t.

The ease with which I absorb people into my chaos, without consequence, reinforces a theory of mine: That I am, in fact, a demon.

The year before I got pregnant with Edith, I lost a baby at eleven weeks. Even as the sadness tore me up, some part of me felt this was right and just. The spotting then bleeding, the rush to the hospital. The suck-me-into-my-navel dread. The whole time a little voice inside whispered, Of course.

After my examination, I was shifted from a bed in the ward to a chair in an office. In that blank, clinical room, a nurse braced her hands on her knees and told me what I already knew. What I’d felt hours ago.

As the news bent me double, Jai hugged me, his angle awkward from the chair beside me. His sobs shook me like electric shocks.

The voice elaborated, Of course you did this.

It didn’t matter how common people said it was in first pregnancies. Other women’s miscarriages were a statistic, mine was retribution. Comeuppance. My sins had caught up with me. The vengeful ghosts of my many victims, crawling inside to literally throttle the life out of me.

I was so sure of this, a year later, when embryo-Edith first appeared – tiny cells clustering as if clearing their throat – I didn’t trust the tests. As I pushed through trimesters, I’d spend hours, hand on abdomen, face melting with exhaustion, but never sleeping. Ruminating on the evil I’d done. Waiting for the punchline. I was an unholy vessel, after all. Anything this wonderful meant something proportionally horrible was on its way.

It got so bad, every belly flutter became an ill omen. When I threw up from morning sickness, I thought of The Exorcist. Cravings for juicy burgers and lamb chops became demands for blood sacrifice. Viewing a sonogram, most parents are thankful for ten fingers and toes – I was just glad she didn’t have a tail.

Then, Edie was born.

She was the first thing I got away with.

My evil had dissolved in Jai’s good to create something better than both of us. Something perfect and fine. From the moment they placed Edith on my chest, sticky with fluids, our umbilical connection draining clear, I knew she was an angel.

Those first few nights, I’d lie in the dark, cheeks hurting from secret smiles as I listened to her gurgles, chirps and whimpers. Her tiny lungs and lips finding the shape of every sound she’d make in life. I still didn’t sleep, but now it was because I couldn’t miss anything. Like that first time she looked at me. Big dark eyes not seeing a colostrum-smelling blob, but seeing me. Her mum. From here on, we were locked together. We could be pulled apart, and it would stretch and hurt, but we could never be separated.

Edith’s personality emerged like a polaroid developing. She was sweet and kind, but disappoint her and you’d be dead to her for hours. The first time she laughed, it widened my bones. I got a rush every time I walked in the door to Mummy’s home! Like I was Santa Claus and all the presents. She was wonderfully weird. Obsessed with tree bark, and oversized pillows, and her puffy blue jacket, and sand (but not dirt), and puddles, and baby chick feathers.

Then Leena came three years later and it happened again, just as strong. Because Leena was lovely, too, but also fearless. Her obsessions were furry blankets, and shadows, and her rainbow gumboots, and also puddles, and snakes (snakes!), and everything Edith did.

I don’t deserve them, even when they’re less than perfect. Like right now, when they’re whining about being hungry, despite the snacks right in front of them (But I don’t want those ones today!). Rattling doorhandles against child-locks the moment I park. Squirming so much I can’t unclip their car seats. Trying to break free of holding my hands. One pulling towards the park up the road as the other crosses and uncrosses her legs, yelling about needing to pee, So really bad, Mummy. Wrangling them up the external stairs leading to my office. Dragging one, carrying the other, who’s scrunching her crotch with her free hand as the toilet situation approaches critical mass. Stepping back in the stairwell to let a tall Black man pass. Smiling apologetically for the noise. Recognising his face and realising he isn’t moving down the stairs at all. He’s waiting. For me.

Body chilling. Air driving from my lungs. Edith squealing, ‘Ow, Mummy, you’re hurting me.’

The man stepping forward. ‘Hello, Annaliese.’

This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is what I deserve.

Chapter two

I met Jai on the same day I committed my very last murder. There’s a joke in there somewhere, about ending two men’s lives.

Booze made Nathan the Accountant chatty. He cornered me at Dante’s party and gave me his whole life story, as if getting it off his chest. ‘I was an artist first. Art school, the whole shebang. Lot of teachers praising my work too. My, um, oeuvre. But then over here were all these pretty zeroes twinkling.’ Apparently Nathan dropped out to steer the European expansion of his father’s accounting firm. ‘Yep. Yep. I sold my soul to the Devil.’

He was outgoing and had kept his looks into middle age, if you could ignore the fake tan. I might have been up for it. But it creeped me out the way he stared at me. Covetously, like a drug he’d been offered. And though he told his story with a wink, he was too drunk to hide his bitterness.

Honestly my first thought was: The Devil overpaid for you.

In this fantasy deal for his soul, Nathan gets an obscene salary and keys to the Madrid office, and Hell gets … what? The satisfaction of suppressing this dude’s ‘art’?

I don’t think so. If Satan exists, He’s a capitalist. Souls aren’t bought outright, they’re mortgaged. Leveraged. Afterpaid. It’s the interest that gets you.

And in truth, Nathan kept paying, every day of every year, after selling out. All that easy money making him reckless. His only creative outlet, his job.

He got creative, alright. Not cooking the books entirely, but warming them. Taking on clients he should have avoided. Going to their mobster parties and drinking too much whisky. Joking about financial irregularities he helped conceal.

Watching cold eyes narrow.

Nathan couldn’t trace the direct line between art school and the Scotch sweats he woke in. The panicked flight from his house, leaving wife and daughter behind. Driving all night through cobblestone hamlets with three-storey Zara outlets. Flopping into bed at some quaint B&B. The old kind, not through an app. Because Nathan was careful.

Not careful enough to use an ATM in a different town, though.

The bill for Nathan’s soul wasn’t settled until he woke to the lock’s faint click. Felt the sheet tighten across his chest like a rope.

Because the real price was my hand on his mouth. My razor pressing his Adam’s apple. His blood spraying the pillow.

Hey, that does look like art.

~

I burned the body, our clothes, shoes, the bed linen and any accompanying fibres in an industrial pottery kiln. The old potter had kind eyes and a furrowed smile and I couldn’t imagine how he’d got mixed up in this. Did his kindness switch off?

The razor I bleached and threw in a storm drain. I made it back to Madrid before the panic attack set in. My vision greying and skin turning clammy. I threw up in a flower bed outside Dante’s café.

The café entrance was shadowed by vines on a backstreet less than two blocks from Plaza Mayor. Stepping inside was always disorientating. Those old wooden rooms held history and romance – you could imagine Dalí shagging Hemingway against that very staircase – yet the furniture was tacky aluminium. And though delicious spiced and umami smells wafted from the kitchen, the food itself was bland.

Dante did this on purpose to keep customers down; his style was impeccable and the chef had a Michelin star.

I was ushered to a chair across from his desk in the darkened back room. Dante was a stocky man but hunched his shoulders more than necessary, as if the walls could barely contain him. He thumbed his bottom lip. ‘You took quicker than I thought.’

The urge to vomit was back and I kept my sentences short. ‘Couldn’t do the second one. Cops on the accountant’s car. Saw me dump the weapon. I lost them, but you should get someone else to finish.’

Dante steepled his fingers. Waited for his silence to take effect.

I imagined him practising this look in the mirror. I used to smoke pot with Valeria, our leggy contact for Bolivia, and we had a running gag about crime bosses learning these skills at corporate retreats: Well, that about covers Silent Menace, who can tell me the Three Ts of Turf Expansion?

Then Bolivia tried to slip fifty kilos of pre-cut into a shipment of raw, so Dante had Valeria beaten to death on video as … not a warning. A tax, maybe?

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You can have the accountant for free.’

His door guys were new and too close on my shoulder. The bald one opened his jacket slightly, asking: May I shoot this foreigner bitch, firing a gun, on your property, in the middle of the day, when customers saw her enter, after which we’ll have to clean up the mess? Newbies often being chosen for enthusiasm over intellect.

Dante shook his head.

He picked a scampi from his plate, sucked the fried garlic and salt off and bit in with the shell still on. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I believe you, my darling.’ He licked the oil from his fingers. ‘If someone asked, I would guess there weren’t any cops. You know I hear things. I hear no one sees you around anymore. Except after jobs. After a job, you are in every bar in the city.’

‘Australians drink differently. We don’t know how to sip.’

Dante sipped his vermouth. ‘Maybe. But if someone asked, I would say you lost your stomach for the work.’ His cheeks puffed with a suppressed burp. ‘I’ve seen it happen. To the women more than men, but it happens.’

‘That’s not what this is.’

‘It is not as bad as you think, though, darling. It’s like, what’ —he rolled his hand— ‘montaña rusa?’

‘Roller-coaster.’

‘Fucking roller-coaster, yes. You kill a human the first time, you’re scared. Of course you are, it’s a big thing! You go to do it again, you ask, Will it be so hard? And it is, but for not so long. Then each time forward you feel other things. Sorry, angry, guilty. Excited sometimes. Eventually, it’s a job. Something on the list for today.’ He wagged a lecturing finger. ‘But some people go back. They think and think. People line up in their dreams, maybe? Faces in pain begging, “Why? No. Please.”’

He looked for confirmation. My limbs felt stuck to the chair.

‘I just don’t want you to think you are alone, Annaliese. I have felt these things too. Not a lot, but I know. And do you know why I’m telling you?’

He paused for an answer, enjoying himself. I shook my head.

‘I’m telling you because Dante knows the cure. The secret, my darling, is the next few jobs, you pick people who really deserve it. They have done things that offend you personally. So you burn something. Cut something off. Nose, ears, tits, whatever. Remind yourself how good it feels to settle a debt.’ He paused again to ensure I understood his threat, veiled as it was in cling wrap. ‘Your mind will change back.’

My relationship with Dante was a balancing act. He desired me, because he desired every woman in his orbit. But his ego needed me to want him too. Or at least to fake it. Most women played this part because they knew what he was: a violent, vindictive man who employed an army of violent, eager criminals.

He couldn’t pressure me, though. If I refused, he’d look weak – Dante’s world was full of gossiping jackals – and if I gave in, I’d show I was too soft to be effective in my job.

He’d still fuck me one day, of course. Dante denied himself nothing. But knowing it would burn everything down? That gave the act of self-control a tantric sweetness.

Until now.

I tried to swallow bile without showing it. ‘I told you, the cops were watching. But if you think I’ve got this problem, I’d be no good to you anyway. Just as likely to use the wrong end of the gun.’

He didn’t laugh. ‘My Annaliese, you are trying to make me say nice things about you. And, okay, you are good at this work. You have skills useful to me. Not unique, perhaps, but rare. A Spanish policeman suspects a Spanish woman of anything. But an Aussie?’

‘There are other foreigners—’

‘Most importantly, you are here in front of me. In my debt. I own you.’ He smiled, waiting ag. . .