by Alan Carter
‘Yeah, fucking shame. That will only get him a slap on the wrist. I’ve lodged the Reckless report but I need some Dirty to really nail the bastard.’
‘Sorry I can’t help you there.’
Hutchens grunted. ‘What about your time with him in Gangs? Any whispers?’
As far as Cato was concerned, DS Graham was guilty of little more than being a Hutchens clone. ‘Nothing untoward.’
‘Untoward? What kind of a fucking word is that?’ Hutchens chucked his pen across the desk in a hissy fit. ‘Go and park yourself at your computer. Have a look at DS Graham’s history. See if you can spot anything “untoward”.’
‘No. You want him, you chase him.’
‘You promised you’d be a team player when I took you back.’
‘I’ve never not been a team player. I took everybody’s fall last time, remember?’
‘Pretty please? Mate? Just a quick scroll. I wouldn’t be asking this if I didn’t have reasonable grounds.’
‘So share them.’
‘I inquired about Graham further up the food chain. They all blanked me. It’s a sure sign, mate.’
‘So there’s no evidence to back up your spurious claims but you see that as proof?’
‘Instinct. Look Cato I really need you to help me out here.’ A pause and a manipulative grin. ‘Go on, you know you want to.’
Cato could feel himself folding. ‘Why me?’
‘You’ve worked with him and you see patterns others don’t. Maybe it’s those crosswords you do. You’ve got the gift, mate.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I need it for Internals by first thing Monday.’
And it was now Friday, late arvo. ‘So you want me in on the weekend?’
Hutchens looked pained. ‘You’ve had over a week off and it’s only desk work.’
A week and a bit off for a stabbing, maybe he could get himself shot, and swing a fortnight? Cato remembered he had Jake coming for an overnighter. ‘I can’t do anything until Sunday, got the boy over.’
‘Sure, buddy. Family’s important. Sunday’s fine. Long as you deliver.’
Playing the family card hadn’t done the trick. Cato tried to think of another way out of this thankless task. ‘Won’t my browsing trigger alarms in the system?’
Hutchens scribbled something on a yellow post-it. ‘My access code, your eyes only.’
Cato slipped the post-it into his shirt pocket. As Miss Grabowski, his old piano teacher, used to whisper in his ear as her hand guided his over the arpeggio: God moves in mysterious ways.
Lara felt energised. Graham had gone home to his family and it didn’t bother her one bit. They’d fucked each other’s brains out and she was ravenous. She scanned the fridge and freezer for signs of nourishment and settled on frozen lasagne. Not her usual attention to dietary balance but what the hell. She popped it in the microwave.
She needed to get back to being a cop. Graham had eased her mind about Santo Rosetti: it didn’t look like she was on his radar. She’d queried why Colin was so upbeat and optimistic under the circumstances.
‘Circumstances?’
‘Hutchens. Disciplinary proceedings.’
‘Sideshow.’ Another one of his enigmatic smirks.
‘Tell me. I can see you’re dying to.’
‘Gangs have been upping the ante on the Trans. In the last few days the gooks have lost half a kilo in a car stop, had a meth lab blown up, and had one of their dealers hospitalised in a home invasion.’
‘Your doing?’
‘Not directly: courtesy of a few leaks to traffic division and the Apaches. I always like to have a Plan B.’
‘How does that help, apart from making you feel a whole lot better?’
‘Piss them off enough, they’ll make a mistake.’
She recalled Hutchens’ interest in how much contact Tran and Graham might have had. ‘It’s personal with you, isn’t it?’
‘Hmmm?’
‘You seem to put a whole lot more energy into nailing the Trans than you do any of the other gangs out there.’
‘It helps to go to work with a spring in your step.’
The microwave beeped. Lara scraped the steaming food onto a plate. So who killed Santo Rosetti and why? If Jimmy Tran was theoretically clear, for now anyway, then Dieudonne was the key. The African had shown himself to be erratic or at least unable to walk away from provocation: getting involved in fights in Fremantle cafes, drawing attention to himself at the fireworks on Australia Day, stabbing Cato. Yet the murder of Santo was anything but erratic. The cubicle door had remained locked from the inside, meaning the killer was calm and calculating enough to climb over the partition leaving behind a deliberately confusing scene. Was Dieudonne, the former child soldier, that smart? Or was he only obeying orders? Maybe the trail still led back to Jimmy Tran after all.
21
Saturday, February 6th.
There was a knock at the door. Cato had been awake since before six: restless and disgruntled, fretting about his son and the job – in that order. That was progress at least. He shuffled to the door and opened it. Constable Quiet-and-Dangerous and his mate from the Madge Poisoning Squad.
‘Morning, sir.’
Cato held out his wrists in handcuff-me mode. ‘Fair cop.’
‘Very funny, sir. May we come inside?’
Cato ushered them in. ‘Has there been a development?’
‘Of sorts.’
Cato gave Q-and-D the expectant look he was expecting.
‘The vet confirms that there were traces of meat-like substance and poison in the dog’s stomach.’
‘Really?’
‘However, as yet we have been unable to identify the poison or the origin of the meat.’
‘There’s a few shops around here. Did you check the IGA? Woolies?’
‘There appear to be a number of disgruntled neighbours,’ said Constable Quiet-and-Dangerous, ‘of which you seem to have been the most vocal and most forensically aware.’
Forensically aware. What was this, Criminal Minds? ‘And?’
‘And you remain a key person of interest.’
Somebody’s been reading the Ace Detective’s Manual, thought Cato. Chapter Nine – Pressure the Prime Suspect into a Fatal Mistake. ‘What do these other disgruntled neighbours say? Any of them have foul deeds in mind?’
‘That’s confidential.’
Cato showed them both to the front door. ‘Keep me posted guys. Cracking this case could be your ticket into the Ds.’
‘Particularly if there’s a sudden vacancy,’ said Constable Q-and-D, settling his uniform cap back on his head and squinting into the sunshine.
‘What do you think?’
Lara had just finished outlining her theory to Colin Graham. She’d taken him away from his weekend of domestic bliss. They had an hour, that’s all, he’d said tersely. She’d laid out the Dieudonne– Jimmy Tran scenario over a coffee at The Blue Duck at Cottesloe, halfway between their Floreat and Fremantle homes. The sea sparkled flat and blue and children frolicked where a great white had taken a morning swimmer a few years back. The cafe was full, everybody summer-casual and most of them expensively so. There was enough of a busy breakfast hubbub to mask the details of their conversation. ‘Col?’ she pressed. ‘Thoughts?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But we can’t go back to Jimmy without some knockout evidence.’
‘He still hasn’t explained what his semen was doing in Santo’s mouth.’
‘So they’re good friends. It’s a nice bit of gossip but it doesn’t give us anything to hang Jimmy with.’
‘They were intimate. That night.’
‘Tran doesn’t deny that. He’s a well-known pillow-biter. Word around the traps is that he likes his couriers to give him blowjobs and pretend they like him. It’s his special little way of exerting control.’
‘A hell of a way to maintain cover.’ Lara wondered what Mr and Mrs Rosetti would make of that aspect of their son’s job de
scription. ‘But we’ve now narrowed the window of their likely encounter down to a specified time in the Birdcage.’
‘Jimmy said he was there for a couple of hours. It’s still a big window between blowjob and murder.’
An old woman at the next table gave them a look, half-disapproving, half-inquisitive. Lara dropped her voice further. ‘But the photo you showed me on that mobile from the club, Santo with his arm around Jimmy’s shoulder. I noted the time it was taken. That was less than half an hour before Jimmy said he left the club.’
‘And?’
‘And while I’ve done a quick trawl, we haven’t gone through all those phones properly looking for the African yet: or the CCTV for that matter. Our focus has been Santo and the Trans. We should be looking at who Dieudonne is tied up with.’
‘So all we need is some footage of Jimmy Tran ordering the African to kill Santo and hey presto.’ Graham smiled mockingly.
‘A week ago you would have been hot to trot on anything that pointed you in Jimmy Tran’s direction. Now you’re as sceptical as DI Hutchens. What happened, Col?’
Graham drained his coffee. ‘Hutchens is trying to have me sacked, I’ve had a gutful of Jimmy Tran, and I prefer to be called Colin, not Col.’ He gathered his things. ‘Family commitments. Sorry.’
Jane and Jake rolled up just as Constable Quiet-and-Dangerous left.
‘Work?’ said Jane, glancing at the departing cop car and handing Cato an overnight bag. There was no disguising the coolness in her voice even if her expression seemed serenely neutral. Her hair had been cropped and styled. Her clothes seemed more fitting. The new job and new boyfriend suited her. Cato felt a pang of loss.
‘Of sorts.’ Jake sidled up and Cato caressed the top of his head. ‘How was your week?’
‘Good,’ said Jake.
‘Great,’ said Cato. They waved Jane off. ‘Same time tomorrow.’
Jake slung his things into the spare bedroom and they settled out back with a cold Milo and a pot of coffee. Cato tried to study his son without seeming to.
‘What’s been happening with you, then?’ he said breezily.
‘Nuthin’ much.’
‘School going okay?’
‘Yep.’
‘How you getting on with Simon?’
‘Fine.’
‘Mum?’
‘Everything’s fine. What’s with the questions?’ A scowl and a slurp of Milo.
A tactical retreat was in order. ‘So, what do you fancy doing today? Beach? Pool? Movies?’
A flick of the hand towards Cato’s gut. ‘You can’t do much with your injury.’
‘Movies then?’
‘Okay.’
Two or three hours in air conditioning sounded just the job. They settled on yet another Marvel superhero movie and when they came out later they both agreed it kind of sucked.
Lara spent Saturday afternoon trailing around shops south of the river that had sleeping bags, pillows and bedding for sale. To try to narrow it down she kept to within about a ten-kilometre radius of Fremantle on the assumption that Dieudonne was still on foot or public transport. It was pretty loose as deductive reasoning goes, but you had to start somewhere.
She flashed pics of him and left them with storeowners in a succession of soulless suburban shopping precincts but her expectations were low. If he really was a murder suspect and this was a proper manhunt, then the area should have been saturated with uniforms, public transport CCTV would have been trawled, et cetera, et cetera. But it seemed to be a low priority. Was it because his victims were a drug pusher and a dero? So the drug pusher had been an undercover cop and the dero was actually the son of a District Court judge, but those facts remained taboo. Nobody wanted to go there for various reasons: Santo Rosetti was possibly poking his nose into dirty cop business and the powers-that-be wouldn’t have wanted a secretive intelligence unit opened up to public scrutiny. Santo’s parents had been visited by HQ brass to ensure they helped keep a lid on who he really was. Meanwhile Jeremy Dixon had played Fagin to a band of child thieves who plagued the suburbs. Lara could almost see HQ’s point: there were better places to focus public attention and limited resources.
‘Yeah, he was in here yesterday.’
‘What?’
The shop manager, a heavy-set woman covered in bling, prodded the picture of Dieudonne. Her badge said Francesca. ‘Him.’
‘You sure?’ Lara pushed the photo closer.
‘Yeah. Never forget a bod. He was ripped, love. Bit short, but ripped.’
It was a leisure and camping superstore on Leach Highway in Melville. Lara checked the walls and ceiling. ‘CCTV?’
‘Yeah, we got it. What’s he done?’
Lara ignored the question. ‘When was he here? What did he buy?’
‘Yesterday afternoon, nearly closing. A sleeping bag. I said to him, “What, just for you, all alone?” He could have come home and shared my waterbed. Hubby’s not back from the mine until next week. We could have made beautiful waves together.’ She laughed like a sewer. ‘So what’s he done, then?’
‘He’s wanted for questioning in relation to a number of serious crimes. If he comes in again would you call me?’ Lara handed her a card. ‘Meantime, maybe I could have a look at the CCTV?’
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know, huh? My kind of man.’
You don’t know the half of it, thought Lara.
For dinner, Cato and Jake had fish and chips from the shop around the corner on South Terrace. They even tried a carton of mushy peas for the novelty value.
‘Doesn’t taste so bad,’ said Cato. ‘Kind of like warm green mud.’
‘Looks like snot,’ said Jake wrinkling his face in disgust.
Cato turned away briefly and when he faced Jake again he had a smear of mushy peas under his nostrils. ‘Got a hankie?’
‘Aw yuck.’ Jake collapsed into giggles.
They cleared away the chip papers. Jake lay on the couch reading an Artemis Fowl while Cato sat before the piano. He chose a Satie, Gnossienes. It was soothing yet he was aware that something melancholic had settled over the two of them. Towards the end of the piece Cato became aware of a squeak and a muted sob behind him. Jake was crying. He went over, sat beside him, hugged him close.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on.’ A shake of the head buried into his side. Jake’s shudders gradually subsided. He whispered something. ‘What was that, mate?’
‘I want our family back.’
Cato felt his heart break. He searched for some words. ‘I know you do, bub, but your mum and I can’t live together anymore.’ What was the other thing you were always meant to say in these situations? ‘But you know that we both love you, don’t you?’
No response.
Cato lifted his son’s face to look into his eyes. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’
Jake nodded and looked away, unconvinced. He reached a hand towards Cato’s knife wound. ‘Are you gunna die?’
Cato hugged him close again. ‘Not for a long time.’
22
Sunday, February 7th. Midmorning.
The City of Fremantle sits within the Aboriginal cultural region of Beeliar. Its Noongar name is Walyalup, the place of crying, and the local people are called Whadjuk. The Whadjuk used to hold their funeral rites here: the deceased would be buried in the sand dunes and the singing and mourning would start so that the dead could go on their next journey into the spirit world. Jake had told Cato all about it last night after another hug, a reviving Milo, and a ‘Chopsticks’ duet on the piano. It had been part of his research for some homework – ‘My Town’. So Fremantle had always been a place for crying and funerals. It figured, thought Cato, particularly the last few weeks.
Cato was glad to have the office to himself. He was also unexpectedly glad to have some work to occupy him. Jane had picked up Jake, and Cato found a moment to give her a potted version of what passed between them. Relief softened her features,
filled her eyes.
‘I thought it was about Simon.’
‘Not specifically, no. He just wants what he can’t have and he thought if he said that, then the sky would fall in.’
‘Poor little bugger.’
‘Yep.’
She’d given Cato a hug and left. It was the first connection and warmth between them in many months. He realised he’d missed it. He couldn’t deliver on what Jake wanted but at least he now knew that his son still liked snot jokes. Cato was beginning to feel like a parent again for the first time in a long while.
Shellie Petkovic crowded into his thoughts: she’d had parenthood brutally snatched away from her. Cato switched on his computer. He flipped open his wallet and plucked out the post-it with Hutchens’ access code. It was meant to authorise him to dig the dirt on Colin Graham on his boss’s behalf but it would also enable him to tiptoe through Hutchens’ own career without tripping any alarms in the system. Cato could now check, one last time, if there was anything in the Hutchens–Wellard relationship that might help him make more sense of the undercurrents in this case.
He navigated his way in. The file recorded, in dry terse prose, Hutchens’ rise through the ranks from police academy, through time on the streets in uniform, country postings, various investigation branches as a detective, and his early successes and promotions in the Armed Robbery Squad under Andy Crouch. These, according to Crouch, were the early days of Hutchens’ dealings with Gordon Francis Wellard. Were those early successes and promotions due to him being a good cop under a good mentor like Crouch? Or did luck come in the form of Wellard and, if so, at what price?
Case one. Four TAB hold-ups during a wintry fortnight in July, the perp wielding a sawn-off to relieve the bookies of over half a million in total. During the fourth hold-up, in the northern suburb of Balcatta, the duty manager decides to have a go and gets the gun barrel shoved in his teeth. He shits himself before being clubbed senseless. After a tip-off, Hutchens, Crouch and a heavily armed team lie in wait for the fifth TAB hold-up in Malaga. After an exchange of fire they nab their man. He is wheeled away on a stretcher with gunshot wounds to the upper legs. Detective Constable Michael Hutchens is commended for his bravery in confronting the armed gunman and acting quickly to protect the safety of the public and his colleagues. A coded reference number was given for the informant but when Cato tried to access the name he was denied. So even Hutchens was locked out of that level of the system. Cato wrote the reference number down and pressed on.