by Alan Carter
‘I’m going to see the fucker tomorrow, wring the bastard’s neck,’ said Hutchens grimly. ‘If he thinks this is the way to get what he wants, he’s dreaming.’
‘What does he want?’ said Cato.
‘Twenty minutes in the showers with a big rough boyfriend to focus his mind, that’s what.’
‘What do you want me to do with the report? I haven’t got much room to move. Too many witnesses.’ Excuses excuses; so much for Cato’s solemn vow of truth, integrity and no more pooper-scoopers.
‘Fuck the report. What’s wrong with the truth? Shellie consented to the terms of the search because she’ll do anything to find her daughter. Not my fault Wellard’s a prick. Write that, write whatever you like.’ Hutchens gave him a funny look. ‘You worry about the paperwork too much, Cato, you’re turning into a bureaucrat. I hired you to be a copper.’
‘Sorry sir, I do my best.’
‘Instinct, mate, that’s what it’s all about.’
‘I’ll remember that. Thanks, sir.’
‘What’s all this “sir” shit? We’re not on parade. You taking the piss?’
‘Never.’
‘Good. Go and see Shellie. Get her squared away.’
The phone went and Hutchens grabbed it. A moment of murmuring and his frown dissolved. ‘Fucking beauty. See you in ten, Lara.’
‘Good news?’ said Cato.
‘Too right.’ Hutchens beamed. ‘Body in the dunny at the Birdcage, blood all over the place.’
3
‘So let’s get this straight. Johnny-boy’s doing his number twos, door locked, and somebody slits his throat. That right?’ DI Hutchens was staring at Lara, waiting for a response.
‘The pants were undone, sir, but not pulled down. He hadn’t got as far as that.’
A cordon tape had been strung around the outside of the nightclub. The lanky funereal Duncan Goldflam and his forensics team were already at work. Metal stepping plates led to the locus and some bloody footprints and other items of interest had been isolated, photographed and numbered. The place was lit up like a film set, distorted shadows played across the wall.
‘So where does our assassin come from? The gap under the door? Over the top of the partition? Up through the bowl?’
‘Too early to speculate, sir.’
‘Come on, Lara, that’s what we’re paid for. I was just telling Cato here, we’re forgetting how to be coppers.’
Cato Kwong had sidled up to within earshot. Lara gave him a friendly nod and a smile. It was all part of the unspoken and uneasy truce. He had unravelled her work on the Jim Buckley case in Hopetoun and taken what should have been a first homicide scalp away from her. Lara had used all the tricks in the book: planting evidence, manipulating witnesses, burying any contradictions. None of it had fooled Cato bloody Kwong.
‘Once forensic’s finished the preliminaries we’ll be able to speculate more freely, sir.’
‘Hmmm. And no name yet, that right?’
‘Not yet.’ It was a lie. She’d recognised him the moment she peered over the toilet partition. She still hadn’t worked out the possible implications of her previous dealings with him: until she did she was keeping quiet.
Hutchens turned to Cato. ‘What do you reckon, then?’
Cato acknowledged Lara’s presence with a wink. ‘All very interesting, boss.’
Lara studied his expression but it was inscrutable.
There was nothing so tawdry as a nightclub in daytime, mused Cato as he drove away from the Birdcage. An inquisitive throng of onlookers had gathered at the crime-tape perimeter: licking ice-creams, sipping cold drinks and coffees, taking pictures with their phones. Murder: the latest Freo tourist attraction. Supposedly it was Cato’s job to collate witness statements. God knows how many people passed through the place last night. He’d get on with tracking them down as soon as he’d run this little errand for DI Hutchens.
Shellie Petkovic lived in a Homeswest state housing duplex just off Lefroy Road, near the high school. There were stained mattresses and rusty half-bikes out on the verge but council collection day was still a few months off. Hers was a corner unit, distinguished from the others by a homemade mosaic number on the wall, wind chimes, and a crystal rainbow-catcher dangling in the window. Music, of sorts, doofed from the neighbour’s place. Cato rapped on the security flywire. The air was still and there was no shade in the midday street. Shellie unsnicked the latch and, without a word, disappeared to the shadows inside. Cato followed. The house smelled of cat: there was a plump tabby curled up on an armchair. Shellie had retreated to the couch. Despite the heat she was beneath a doona, watching him.
‘I’m meant to ask how you’re going but I can see for myself,’ said Cato.
‘Yeah? What do you see?’
‘Somebody who’s had a gutful.’
‘And?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks. Can you see yourself out?’
He was dismissed but her gaze never left him. Shellie’s eyes were a striking blue-grey; in this context they were intense and unforgiving. Her dark hair was spiked, matted and craving attention. On the mantelpiece was a framed photo of a younger smiling Shellie and a little girl wearing a pink tutu and fairy wings.
‘My boss needs to know where you sit with all this ... business.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you going to take it any further?’
‘Tell your boss it’s none of his bloody business.’
‘Okay.’ Cato wrote his mobile number on a card and left it on the table. ‘Anything I can do, just call.’
‘How’s your head?’
He fingered the lump and smiled. ‘A mere flesh wound.’
‘Pity you got in the way. I could have finished the bastard off.’
‘How are you going with the witnesses?’
Lara Sumich had perched herself on the corner of Cato’s desk. She sipped a glass of water and held the coolness of it against her neck where her shirt buttons began. Over the course of the day her brown ponytail had wilted in the heat.
Cato studied his computer screen. ‘The cleaner and bar staff are in hand. The doormen are being chased up. The punters? Upwards of two hundred of them. Thursday night is Retro ’80s night apparently.’
‘The 80s? What music did they have then?’
‘Men at Work, Spandau Ballet, Madonna, that kind of stuff.’
‘I was probably a bit busy with my Barbie dolls.’
He’d walked into that one. There was, at most, a ten-year age gap between them but Cato felt like a Neolithic relic.
‘A lot of the punters are students from Notre Dame, Murdoch, plus some backpackers and Thursday-night regulars. So between the club membership list, the unis, the hostels and the CCTV, we should be able to round most of them up, eventually.’ He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘You’ve got the CCTV, is that right?’
‘Yeah, I’m just checking something out, I’ll chuck it your way later this arvo.’
‘Thanks.’ Cato returned his attention to the computer. ‘Lucky you were on the scene so quickly.’
‘There’d been an assault complaint. I was following it up.’
‘Any connection?’
‘No, not as far as I can tell.’
‘Any ID on the victim?’
‘Not yet, no.’ Lara finished her water and stood. Cato caught a waft of that expensive scent she used. ‘Squad meeting at five,’ she said. ‘See you there.’
‘His name is Santo Rosetti. Thirty-two. Current address: his parents’ place in Spearwood. Previous for drug possession and dealing: mull, eckies, methamphetamines, special K, the usual.’ Lara surveyed the crowded room; all attention was on her. DI Hutchens had made it clear he was in charge but that she could run the day-to-day. She updated them on developments. Santo’s bloody wallet had been fished out of a builder’s skip that afternoon. Any cash was gone but various cards remained, Medicare and driver’s licence included. Now there was official iden
tification through proper investigative channels, it made life a bit easier for Lara. She didn’t need to own up to knowing him. ‘Known associates, linked in with the Apaches but also flirts with the Tran brothers out of Baldivis.’
‘Sounds like a dickhead sandwich,’ muttered Hutchens.
‘Certainly living dangerously,’ Lara said. ‘I assume Gangs and Major Crime will want to be in on this one, boss?’
‘Over my dead body,’ said Hutchens. There was a murmur of approval from the assembled throng. They wanted first crack at it. Hutchens gifted them a smile, the benign dictator. ‘I’ll work out the parameters with Major Crime. Cato, you go liaison on Gangs. They know you. Keep them sweet, keep them ignorant, keep them away.’
Lara kept her murderous thoughts to herself. Kwong was the last person she needed in that position. Hutchens looked at her like he could read her mind.
‘Are we any closer to working out how they got to him behind closed doors?’
‘Preliminary blood spatter suggests he most likely died in the cubicle.’ Lara glanced over at Duncan Goldflam and he nodded assent. ‘So the killer must have been in there with him, invited or uninvited, and then left over the top of the partition.’
‘Why the pantomime? Why not just do him and leave the easy way?’
‘Deliberately trying to confuse us, sir, bit of a distraction?’
‘Good girl.’
Lara gave a neutral nod instead of sticking her fingers down her throat. ‘So, we’re focusing on witnesses and the CCTV and we’ll be looking for any solid connections to the Apaches or the Trans among those who were there. And we’re still looking for a murder weapon.’
‘I think you’ll find it’s a fucking big sharp knife,’ said DI Hutchens. ‘Weekend leave cancelled, the overtime’s on me; see you in the morning, folks.’
Cato had grabbed a pad thai at the food markets along the street from the office. It was still early enough in the evening to get a table outside. He was doodling over a cryptic crossword from a West that had been abandoned in the police canteen. The front-page headline gave a running total of how many asylum-seekers and how many boats had showed up in the last twelve months. That was the state of play these days: the refugee convention distilled down to its pure mathematical essence.
Cato was getting nowhere with the cryptic. Nautical practice for figuring out the fatalities. Four and nine. There was an ‘a’ three letters in. Boat something? The sea breeze had finally arrived and mingled with the sweat and suncream, hot concrete, car fumes, and spicy aromas from the food hall. Cato had fixed up a meeting with a DS from Gangs later that evening. The trawl on Birdcage punters was beginning to show results and a team had been established to interview them and follow up more names as they emerged. Mobile phones would be temporarily sequestered from the clubbers in case they held any helpful pictures from the big night out. Lara hadn’t passed over the CCTV yet, he’d remind her when he got back to the office.
His TO DO list was taking on a life of its own: witnesses, footage, Gangs liaison, keeping tabs on Shellie Petkovic. He could still feel those eyes on him. He wondered how she made it from one day to the next; joining your fate with a man like Gordon Wellard and seeing your own daughter infected by his poison. Knowing he’s the one who has taken her and won’t give her back. Knowing it’s nothing more than a joke to him. And knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. Cato couldn’t fathom how he might feel if somebody had done that to his son. The charade in the bush had disgusted him. Cato studied the faces of his fellow diners and tried to recall what it was like to live a day without thoughts of shallow bush graves or blood-drenched toilet cubicles. Blank. He looked down at the crossword again and this time he saw it. Nautical practice for figuring out the fatalities. He clicked his biro: Dead Reckoning.
Cato clamped the remaining noodles onto his chopsticks, swallowed, and headed back to the office.
4
Cato had been through the CCTV footage twice and seen nothing that pricked his attention apart from a blurry scuffle on the edge of the dance floor that fizzled out in thirty seconds. Santo Rosetti appeared at various points, talking to people, drinking, dancing – badly. No menacing Apache bikers or Vietnamese gangsters joined him for a bop to ‘Land Down Under’. Cato handed the disks over to a dogsbody for more concentrated scrutiny and to organise photo printouts on any punters not yet identified and rounded up.
‘Cato. Return of the Jedi. How was Stock Squad?’
‘No great chop,’ said Cato. They shook hands. ‘Dirty Harry: long time no see.’
It was Detective Sergeant Colin Graham: Gangs, or ‘Organised Crime’ as it said under his name on the TV news. Regular media exposure agreed with him. He’d lost about ten kilos in the eight years since he and Cato had worked together. The hair was carefully groomed to appear unkempt and he looked nearer to thirty-five than the forty-five he really was. They wandered over to the kitchen where Cato clicked on the kettle and spooned some Colombian into a plunger. ‘Milk and one?’
‘Black and none.’ Graham patted his flat stomach. ‘Need to keep the gut down. New wife, Tania, doesn’t take any nonsense.’
‘Congratulations. It suits you.’
‘I know, I’m a lucky man. How about you? I heard you and Jane split.’
Cato shrugged. ‘The statistics were against us.’
‘Shame, I liked her.’
‘Yeah, me too.’ Cato changed the subject. ‘Still in Como?’
‘Floreat. Tan wanted to be near her folks.’
‘Expensive?’ A nod. ‘Nice bowling club I hear.’
‘You should check out the library sometime. Awesome.’ Graham looked at his watch. ‘So, Santo Rosetti, what happened?’
‘Somebody slit his throat last night.’
‘Leads?’
Cato studied his former colleague: did Graham, as usual, already know the answers to the questions he was choosing to ask? ‘We’re looking at the Apaches or the Trans. Apparently he was playing for both sides and not the sharpest knife in the drawer.’
‘One way of putting it.’
‘How much do you know about him? Any helpful hints?’
Graham poked his head out the door of the kitchen, checking who might be in earshot. ‘Between you and me, you might want to tread carefully on this one.’
‘Always do. Why this time?’
‘Santo’s one of ours.’
‘How do you mean? Informer?’
‘He was a UC, Cato. One of ours.’
Cato got home just before midnight. On the corner, the South Beach Hotel – which everyone still called the Davilak despite the makeover – was closing up. Cato lived in what the real estate agents cheerfully called a ‘cosy worker’s cottage’ at the park end of the street, five minutes walk from South Beach. It was a poky little one-and-a-half bedroom place he’d bought for sixty grand long before he met Jane. He’d kept it and rented it out during their marriage. Had he already, even in those early days, seen it as a potential bolthole? He’d moved back in after the split. He knew he’d be battling to find something like that within cooee of Freo for less than half a million these days.
Cosy it might be, but with the neighbours only a metre away through fibro walls he knew they wouldn’t appreciate any music, even classical, at this time of night. He could use the headphones but he was feeling too irritable and claustrophobic. Another stinking night: he really should bite the bullet and invest in air conditioning but every year he managed not to. The Fremantle Doctor, the revitalising sea breeze, was often in by midday. These heatwaves usually didn’t last, he reasoned, and he couldn’t bring himself to shell out wads of cash for something he might only use ten, maybe fifteen, days a year. How else to relax and try to sleep? Crossword? He’d left it in the office.
Dead reckoning. According to DS Colin Graham, only a handful of people knew Santo Rosetti was an undercover cop. Cato shed his clothes, doused himself under a cold shower, flicked the fan to number three, and lay on the bed. Had Rosett
i’s cover been blown? A nightclub toilet is a fairly public place for an underworld-style hit but the pantomime with the locked cubicle door didn’t add up. As DI Hutchens had noted, the usual gangland MO would be to just leave the victim on display and send a clear message or, even better, take him out bush and make him disappear. Cato also couldn’t shake the feeling that Lara Sumich knew more than she was letting on. Her presence at the club on another, seemingly trivial, matter was one hell of a coincidence.
He could feel himself nodding off. Great. Finally. That’s when Madge, next door’s Jack Russell, started up. She had a high-pitched demanding yap – she was used to getting her way. Whenever Cato brought up the subject of Madge’s night-time barking with her owners they looked at him like maybe they should be wearing a necklace of garlic and waving a crucifix at him. A non-believer: somebody who, gasp, wasn’t really that into dogs. Cato pulled his pillow over his head and fantasised about meatballs laced with Ratsak. He was an ace detective after all: if he couldn’t dream up the perfect murder, who could? The thought calmed him to sleep.
Cato’s mobile buzzed on the bedside table. Caller ID: unknown. He squinted at the time on the screen. Six ten.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me, Shellie.’
Cato sat up. ‘Shellie? Everything okay?’
‘No.’
‘What’s going on?’
Her voice cracked. ‘Why can’t he just leave me alone?’
5
Saturday, January 23rd. Early morning.
Ten minutes later Cato was at Shellie’s place. The sun was up and the easterly was still cool. Some dawn strollers headed down Lefroy hill to the beach with their dogs and babies. Shellie was standing at the door when he rolled up: she was wrapped in a dressing gown, her eyes red and puffy. When he walked over she leaned into him and started crying. Her hand uncurled to reveal a small heart, moulded silvery alloy, on a cheap silver chain.