It was the kind of place where women put on makeup to go jogging, and sometimes the men too. The buildings were built close to the beach. Rust crept everywhere. Brush turkeys ran to escape electric scooters as they raced along the path, their riders listening to motivational podcasts.

I'd vaguely heard of the client's husband; he'd made a lot of money from some new type of silicon chip. She told me her husband's dog had gone missing, but that wasn't why she'd called me.

'Someone's stolen my identity,' she said.

Money was vanishing from her account, including ATM transactions. Weird things were turning up that she hadn't ordered.

'What kind of things?'

'Clothes mostly. Nothing I'd ever wear.'

Agitated, the client paced and stared at her ocean view. She didn't touch her herbal tea. There were no photos. Everything was beige.

'It's not just the bank. I'm getting parking and speeding fines when I haven't been driving. My medical insurer rang to query a bunch of expenses I didn't know anything about.'

'Have you spoken to the police?'

'Yes of course. They were useless. The bank has stopped everything, but whoever it is has my new numbers. Maybe they've cloned the card somehow.'

There wasn't much to go on, but I noticed most of the ATM activity was happening at three branches less than 50 km away, between 2 and 3am, maxing out the daily withdrawal limit.

After a week of stakeouts, pizza and cold coffee, I showed her the photos with the datestamps and asked her to crosscheck the times with her transaction records. She stopped at a picture of a hooded figure leading a sausage dog on a lead.

'That's Fiona!'

'Who is?'

'My husband's dog. He gave her my name. Thought it was funny.'

The bank record tallied with the ATM's timestamp, but the bank's video turned out to be inconclusive. The mystery woman was wearing large dark glasses and the hood covered her other features. My client stared hard at the picture, but said she didn't recognise her.

The bank account was held jointly with her husband.

'Can I talk to him?'

'He's in Saudi Arabia.'

'Email? Phone?'

'I don't want to involve him.'

'Well how many cards are attached to that account?'

Something in the woman's face hardened. 'It doesn't matter. I'm permanently closing that account. Thank you for your help. I'll take it from here.'

Take it where? But she settled my bill, including expenses, and that seemed to be it, until a week later, when I saw a familiar hooded figure in big glasses helping a sausage dog into a white Lexus with a ladder on the roof. It was just after midnight, and I was on my own time.

Curious, I followed the car, staying well back.

The woman pulled up on a road parallel to the freeway and lit a cigarette. Leaving the sausage dog in the car, she unclipped the ladder from the roof in a practised movement, and quickly moved through the undergrowth between the two roads.

She put the ladder under a brightly lit billboard advertising army recruitment and scaled it quickly, reaching the platform. 'Fuck the colony!' she painted in dripping red letters, as cars passing on the freeway honked.

Within a minute, she had the ladder back on the car and was driving off. After a few blocks, something spooked her, and she accelerated, squealing round the turns. Then she was gone.

I ran the rego of the Lexus, but the plates didn't match the vehicle, and there was no accompanying record.

Next morning, I rang my former client and told her what I'd seen. 'I drive a white Lexus,' she said. 'But it's here in the car park. There's no roof rack and I don't own a ladder.'

She gave me the car's rego. I ran it while she talked – it matched the RMS record.

'What do you want me to do?'

'Nothing,' said the woman.

'Don't you want to know what's going on?'

'No,' she said. 'I can't deal with this now. Please don't ring me again.'

A couple of weeks later, I was on another job on a crowded city street when I saw a hooded woman walking a sausage dog on the other side of the street. She was at a soft drink vending machine. By the time I made it through the traffic, she was gone.

The payment slots of the vending machine were gummed up with some kind of goo, which was still dripping. 'OUT OF ORDER' flashed the screen.

I recognised the red paint scrawl on other advertising signs around the city. 'Fuck technology!' said one over a mobile phone ad. 'Fuck patriarchy!' said the words over a fatherly-looking real estate agent advertising his services. 'Fuck God!' said a scrawl on an ad for a Christian school.

Unable to let the case go, I broke into the parking lot of the apartment complex where my former client lived, and found her white Lexus. I put a tracker on it, and waited.

Every night, after midnight, the white Lexus went on adventures around the city, always returning before dawn. I built up a map of its movements and cross-checked it with petty crime locations provided by a mate who still worked in the force.

The hooded figure was a one-woman crime spree. There was a secluded park where she seemed to pause at the start and end of each night's activities.

'Any leads?' my mate asked.

'I'm working on it.'

The next time I rang my former client, the message went straight to voicemail. After a couple of days, I tried again. This time a male voice answered. It was the husband. I explained who I was.

'She's disappeared,' he said. 'Police detectives are involved. We have no need of your services.'

When I checked the tracker, it showed a city police station location. My heart quickened. Would I be in the frame? My mate in the force confirmed they'd found it when searching for evidence relating to the disappearance of my former client.

'Don't worry, they couldn't trace it to you,' he said. 'Are you involved?'

'Not like that,' I said. 'If I find anything, you'll be the first to know.'

I went in deep on my former client. No siblings, no former husbands. Not even a parking ticket until twelve months ago, when the red lights went off in all directions. Identity theft, okay, but what about the dog? Something didn't add up.

After midnight I sat in my car, just down the street from my former client's apartment block, pondering the possibilities, when I saw a white Lexus leaving the car park. It was too dark to see the driver.

I followed it, until the car lost me at a traffic light.

Cursing myself, I spent the next few hours cruising fruitlessly until I had an idea. I went to the park where the tracker had shown the car repeatedly stopping before.

When I got there it was dark and shadowy, but something was glinting in the moonlight.

I pulled off and killed my lights, continuing on foot.

A hooded figure was crouching behind a white Lexus, switching the plates. A dog barked as I got closer.

I switched on my phone torch, but the hooded figure continued undeterred. The barking dog was sausage shaped.

A baseball bat lay on the ground beside the hooded figure. She picked it up and stood up as the barking dog came closer.

The hooded figure turned to face me, pocketing the screwdriver with a practised movement.

I recognised the face of my former client, but there was no recognition in her eyes. 'Who the fuck are you?' she demanded.

The sausage dog barked furiously at me.

'Fiona?' I tried. The dog stopped barking and wagged its tail.

'Never heard of her,' said the woman. She swung the bat at my head, and everything went black.

***

I wrote this story in July 2025. Art created with Midjourney AI.

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