by Alan Carter
Lara’s approach was far from noiseless. With every step she crunched broken glass or kicked a can. She became aware of a strong smell of putrefaction. She flicked on her torch. A large black plastic bag of rubbish had split and flies hovered around chicken bones. She came to the back door and nudged it with her foot. It was open.
‘Ah sick, eh, she’s got a Glock.’
‘Hey sis, what you doin’? No blackfellas for you to shoot in there.’
The hot-chip teenagers had followed her over the road and were standing out front by the fence finishing up their snack. Lara kept her voice low, level, and not unfriendly. ‘Guys, do you reckon you could go back over the road? Wouldn’t want you getting hurt.’
‘Nah, here’s good. Front row seats. Who you after?’
One of his mates jostled him. ‘We know who you after, bro. You in love with the lady monarch.’ They hooted.
Lara ignored them and went inside.
The first room was the kitchen. Her torch swept over the walls, more graffiti; Lance the Dog wasn’t well regarded in here either. A smell of piss and shit and something else. A bathroom and toilet: a dripping cistern, linoleum sticking to her feet. Lara advanced down the black hallway. At each door she stopped and scanned the room with her flashlight and her gun. Two bedrooms, empty, more opinions on Lance, and what looked like human faeces in the corner. That other smell getting stronger.
Two more rooms to go. The first smaller, a child’s bedroom, surprisingly clean compared to the rest of the house. Her torchlight played across a mattress, sleeping bag, pillow, a bottle of water and a small wooden crucifix leaning against the wall. Three books neatly stacked: a Bible, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and a Harry Potter. There was a noise behind her.
Lara whipped around but there was nobody there.
Somebody grabbed her ankle. She yelped and dropped her torch. Its light found Fagin with blood spouting from his neck and face.
Fagin died on the way to hospital. He had lost too much blood from the gashes in his neck. That was the smell she hadn’t been able to identify among the others: the cloying perfume of the slaughterhouse. As the body bag closed over Fagin’s face, Lara thought she saw a kind of serenity that had not been there since primary school. Since before his father started coming into his bedroom at night. DI Hutchens turned up, took one look at her and told her to go home. Under the shower she couldn’t rid herself of the smell of piss and shit and blood or the sight of Fagin by dropped torchlight. When Colin Graham buzzed the intercom from outside she ignored him and stayed beneath the jets of steaming water.
20
Friday, February 5th.
Cato was at his office desk early. Today it was not expected to get over 34°C and there was the promise of a proper sea breeze by noon. The handful of fires that had flared, died, and flared again around the metropolitan area over the last fortnight were finally out or under control. He wondered why neither his boss nor Lara Sumich were in yet. Was it that death in Willagee he’d heard about on the news that morning? The body count seemed to be way up this summer. It tended to happen in heatwaves. Maybe the slight break in the weather would bring relief there too.
Cato clicked a couple of keys and summoned Wellard’s records from the system: he’d been convicted of assaults, usually against women, drugs charges, some burglaries, and at least two reported rapes. One rape victim had been left so traumatised by the level of violence and degradation inflicted on her that she attempted suicide within three months. In her statement she recalled Wellard threatening her: ‘You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today, darling. The last one never woke up.’
If that meant what it seemed to mean, at least one more body was out there somewhere. This was at least ten years before Briony Petkovic and Caroline Penny. The comment had been followed up by police in a subsequent interview with Wellard but not pursued any further. He couldn’t be linked to any of the missing persons who might fit the bill. He’d served blocks of a few months here and there for the lesser offences and three years each, concurrent, for the rapes.
A psych report, commissioned while on remand at Hakea awaiting sentencing for the Caroline Penny murder, noted Wellard’s disturbing lack of remorse or empathy and a highly manipulative personality. No shit. It had been signed by a Dr Marissa Jenkins. Cato tried phoning the number and was told she had since left the department and handed her caseload to a colleague.
‘Any forwarding contact?’
‘She’s backpacking in South America.’
‘Nice,’ said Cato.
‘After what she’d been through, I’d be out of here too.’
‘Really?’ said Cato, sensing a loose tongue. ‘Why’s that?’
‘She took extended leave not long after dealing with some guy in prison. Messed her head up big time. Nightmares. Heebie-jeebies. The lot. He was a complete psycho freak apparently.’
Guess who?
As Cato had already gleaned, Wellard was a nasty piece of work at least until around the mid-1990s when he came under the benevolent guiding hand of one Detective Senior Constable Michael Hutchens. Then clean as a whistle for the next decade or so before he went all funny again, killing his girlfriend Caroline Penny and earning a mention in connection with the earlier disappearance of his teenage stepdaughter Briony Petkovic. So did Wellard go into hibernation for those years when he disappeared off the database? The man’s violent, controlling temper was a matter of record; it seemed implausible that he’d managed to simply switch it off between 1996 and around 2005. There were a number of options: he stayed good, he changed his name, he left the state, or he had someone watching over him – a guardian angel.
One way to track Wellard’s movements during that ‘down time’ was to follow Hutchens’ career over that same period and look for traces. Accessing such information from the system, if it allowed Cato to at all, would leave a trail that Hutchens would no doubt sniff. It was a dangerous step, the career-ending kind. Cato’s hand hovered over the keyboard.
‘How’s the gut?’
DI Hutchens’ voice was right beside his ear. The jolt sent a spasm through Cato’s midriff. ‘On the mend,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Back on the case I see?’ Hutchens pointed over Cato’s shoulder at the screen and tutted disapprovingly. ‘But we don’t need Wellard’s résumé to know he’s a sick fuck. Check your inbox, lots of lovely Safer Streets stats for you to massage instead.’
Lara Sumich crossed Cato’s line of vision: ashen, dark-eyed, slumped shoulders. He’d never seen her like that before.
Hutchens put a finger to his lips and shook his head at Cato. Don’t go there.
‘The joker who put you in hospital has been at it again,’ he said.
‘The African?’ said Cato.
‘Dieudonne’s his name.’
‘Willagee?’
‘That’s the one. He slit some dero’s throat and Lara found the guy. Turns out she knew him.’
‘Nasty.’
Lara returned from the kitchen with a cup of something and sat at her desk without acknowledging either of them.
‘While I think about it, I also want you to look into any links between that pig we found and the death of Mr Papadakis.’
‘Pig?’ said Cato, absorbing the news that Dieudonne was still out there doing bad stuff with a knife.
‘That nail-gun thing I mentioned to you. Get the files out, compare and contrast.’ Hutchens shook his head. ‘Three dead in as many days. Is it me or is the world going to hell in a handbasket?’
Cato held off poking around in DI Hutchens’ past life. He wanted to keep his job for now. There was something concrete and settling about being back at work. Desks, phones, paperwork, bureaucracy: the paraphernalia of the institution. He had never expected to find comfort in all that stuff. Safer Streets. Cato wandered over to Detective Constable Thornton’s desk and pulled up a chair. The young man smelled like he’d just come off a big night and, with his hand shaking, took gulps from a two-litre bot
tle of Coke.
‘Chris, looking good.’
‘Oh, you’re back,’ he said, as if Cato had been on holiday instead of stabbed.
‘Fine. Thanks for asking. How’s Safer Streets shaping up, mate?’
‘Boring as bat shit.’ The voice was high, nasal, and carried an inflection of being smarter than everyone else. Obviously Thornton was too good for this and it was only a matter of time before everybody recognised it. ‘Did you get the latest stats? I cc’d them to the DI and you.’
‘How about you talk me through it?’
Give him his due; the boy had the jargon down pat. He was indeed destined for higher office – maybe Policy or OHS. Thornton droned on with his analysis and recommendations for the key points of an action plan to be presented at the next task force meeting. Cato tuned out and observed the comings and goings in the office. Whenever he did reconnect to the high-pitched whine he felt the urge to slap his neck for a non-existent mozzie.
‘So what do you reckon?’
Cato realised that Thornton was talking to him. ‘I think you’re doing a great job, Chris, and I’m going to recommend to the DI that you see it through.’
‘Arsehole.’
‘You don’t get it, mate. This is just the kind of bullshit that gets people fast-tracked. That’s why the boss had me on it first.’ Cato winced and touched his wound lightly. ‘But ever since this I just don’t have that, that...’
‘Vim?’ said Thornton, stifling a Coke belch.
‘Exactly.’ Cato winked at him. ‘Losers and plodders see boring bat shit; winners seize the moment.’
‘Yeah,’ Thornton straightened in his seat and took another galvanising swig. ‘Yeah, right.’
Cato waved at Thornton’s computer screen. ‘Meantime, got another job for you.’
‘What?’
‘Nail-gun injuries. Check all the hospitals in the state. Any unusual nail-gun injuries in the past, say, six months to a year?’
‘What’s an unusual nail-gun injury?’
‘Multiple, in a pattern, up the spine.’
‘Jesus.’
Lara Sumich had used the traumatic circumstances of the last twenty-four hours as her reason to go home by late morning and DI Hutchens didn’t argue the point. She felt washed-out but on edge. She jumped at sudden noises, desk drawers slamming, phones ringing. Her concentration was cactus. Colin Graham was either the first or last person she wanted to see right now. But there he was downstairs at her door, looking suitably concerned into the security camera, and she was the one who’d made the arrangement in the first place. She buzzed him up.
She’d planned to confront him about the horrific and needless death of Mr Papadakis, to question him about the real aim of Santo Rosetti’s undercover investigations, to tell him she’d had enough. Instead she just held onto him as he stood on the threshold; her face buried in his chest, breathing in his smell. Then she was tugging at Graham’s belt buckle and his shirt. He responded, matching her urgency. They went straight to the bedroom and fucked: she straddling him, taking control, if only this one last time. When she finally came she brought with her all the tears left unshed this past week. Then she slept.
When Lara woke Colin was already alert and watching her. ‘What time is it?’ she yawned.
‘Just gone three.’
‘How long have you been awake?’
‘Not long.’ His left hand absently stroked her breast, his wedding ring grazing her nipple.
‘You haven’t told me much about your wife.’
He smiled. ‘She’s none of your business.’
Fair enough. Lara decided to move onto the things that mattered. She left out the recriminations over Papadakis: that would be dealt with by any disciplinary proceedings.
‘What was Santo investigating?’
Graham shifted position, lying on his back, hands behind his head. ‘Drugs, bikies, Trans, low-lifes. The usual.’
‘Jimmy Tran got jumpy when I reminded him of the bugged conversation: Christos saying Santo was headed for a meeting with Jimmy the night he died.’
‘Did he explain himself?’
‘No. Was Santo really going to meet Jimmy or did you just get Christos to say that as a wind-up?’
A tilt of the head. ‘You give me more credit than I deserve. No, I didn’t plant it and I don’t know what the meet was about.’
‘Who else might know, apart from Jimmy?’
‘Lots of questions, your pillow talk isn’t as romantic as it used to be. I wasn’t Santo’s handler, Lara, I was part of a management team that assessed what he brought to us. I wasn’t in on the detail of his day-to-day operations.’
‘Who was?’
‘That’s probably above your pay grade.’
She could feel herself getting annoyed. ‘We have to be able to trust each other, don’t we Colin?’ A benevolent smirk but he was keeping his mouth shut. She tried another tack. ‘Nothing else on the agenda?’
‘Like what?’
Lara hesitated. From here on in she would be drawing attention to her own misdemeanours, offering up her weaknesses for Graham to exploit, even further. Her fingers played across his stomach. ‘Was Santo looking at any of his own side?’
Graham brought one of his hands from behind his head and rested it on the nape of her neck. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘He was one of my informants. My dealings with him were ... unorthodox.’
‘Your informant? You never knew he was UC?’
‘No.’
A chuckle. ‘So how do you mean, “unorthodox”?’
In for a penny. ‘Bullying, threats, manipulation, blind eyes here, raid tip-offs there, favours against rivals. That sort of thing.’
His hand stroked her neck. ‘Standard MO for a good detective, I’d have thought. I don’t think you’ve got too much to worry about. Like I’ve said before, Lara, you’d go down well in Gangs.’
She felt a warm flush of relief. ‘I was getting worried. He’d given me a big tip about some trucks off the Nullarbor that went nowhere. I wondered if he had me down as dirty when they rocked up empty.’
Graham rolled on top of her and she spread herself to accommodate him. He placed a finger over her mouth. ‘Shush now,’ he said.
Midafternoon, Cato strolled over for a very late lunch at the food hall. He felt vulnerable among the crowds, harbouring an unreasonable fear that some stranger was going to walk up and punch him hard on his knife wound. One bit of good news had come through by phone late-morning; test results showed he was free of hep C and any other potential nasties from sharing a dagger with Santo Rosetti. Things were looking up.
Cato found a free table and sat down with a seafood laksa. Adjacent to him a stocky young woman in nurse blues stood to leave, abandoning her half-read West. Cato leaned across and swiped it. The headline worried about the impact of a threatened mining tax on the fragile livelihoods of the state’s billionaires. The Forbes rich-listers reckoned a combination of over-taxing, union bullies, and high wage demands would lead to them shifting operations to Africa where they knew how to do business. Two dollars a day they reckoned. The Premier was a tad alarmed and promised to see what he could do.
On one of the inside pages it was reported that the couple hospitalised after the recent drug-debt home invasion in Willagee had lost the child they were expecting. Cato phoned Karina.
‘I’m sorry about Crystal and the baby.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is she going to be okay?’
‘Probably, but she won’t be having any more kids. Found out anything yet?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Lot on your plate I expect. Don’t worry about it, what’s the point anyway?’
The connection died. Cato had once again lost his appetite and the crossword blurred in front of him.
Ant lies at odds with tease. Nine letters.
His phone buzzed. It was Hutchens. ‘Where are you?’
‘The markets, having lunch.’
‘You do know I’m on restricted duties. Injury and all that?’
‘Yeah, yeah don’t worry it’s a fairy desk job.’
‘What’s the urgency?’
‘I’ve got a deadline and I’m your boss.’
Cato’s laksa was starting to congeal. Coming back to work so soon wasn’t the best idea he’d had lately. ‘Give me ten minutes.’
He killed his phone and tapped the pen against his teeth. The crossword came back into focus. Ant lies at odds with tease, an anagram. Ant lies at. Tantalise.
Cato went to sit in the naughty chair but DI Hutchens got him to close the door first.
‘Tell me what you know about your mate Colin Graham.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want some dirt on him.’
‘Not sure that’s appropriate. Sir.’
Hutchens squinted menacingly. ‘What do you mean?’
Cato didn’t flinch. ‘Facts and evidence. Hearsay won’t get the result you’re after.’
Hutchens coughed. ‘Intelligence. Not the same thing.’
Cato sighed. ‘I’m out of the loop with what’s been happening with DS Graham, both currently and in the years since I last worked with him. If you want my professional opinion on a colleague you’ll have to fill me in a bit more. Even then I reserve the right to keep my opinions to myself.’
‘Alright. I think Graham is dirty. I think he’s trying to take over my job. And I think he’s fucking Lara Sumich.’
‘Which of those do you want to nail him for?’
‘Unfortunately only one of them is a disciplinary issue so we’ll proceed with “dirty”.’ Hutchens filled Cato in on what had been happening: the Jimmy Tran fixation even when alternative evidence, such as the knife in Cato’s gut, suggested otherwise. The Papadakis fiasco. ‘And to cap it all he’s a smug prick.’
‘Reckless, yes, but I haven’t heard or seen anything to suggest he’s dirty.’