Getting Warmer

by Alan Carter

  The interview with the nurse offered a few clues about Dieudonne’s modus. He’d obviously worked out that the monitors would give a warning if he disconnected himself so he’d tricked them into turning the machinery off with a succession of false alarms. Conferring with DS Meldrum who, despite his reputation as a plodding clockwatcher, had shown himself to be meticulous in his questioning of the second officer, it was clear that Dieudonne had seized the moment while one of them had disappeared to the vending machines. He’d snuck up from behind and plunged a biro into Murtagh’s neck. The nurse had told Cato she thought she recognised the metallic casing as one of the type favoured by Dieudonne’s assigned registrar, Dr Jayawardene.

  ‘Metal’s best,’ she said. ‘A Bic would probably splinter on impact.’

  Preliminary examination of CCTV covering all floors, lifts, and the hospital entrance suggested that Dieudonne had coolly walked out the building waving a pack of cigarettes taken from DC Murtagh as a pretence that he was just going out to join the smokers. Nobody batted an eyelid. Thirty seconds later the alarm sounded but by that time he had disappeared into the dark streets.

  Cato left Meldrum and Goldflam to wrap up things at the crime scene and headed back to the office just a couple of hundred metres around the corner. The night was balmy with a soft breeze floating in from the east. Police cars and vans whizzed off in various directions, some with lights and sirens to signify their urgency. He came to the roundabout with its statue of footy legend John Gerovich reaching high for the ball. Cato stopped: his stomach was on fire and sweat beaded his forehead. The horizon tilted, the ground turned liquid. He leaned against the entrance to the Freo Markets, vomited a yellow spray and slid down the wall to lie with his cheek against the cool footpath. Cato closed his eyes, wishing for sleep, for death, for any kind of release. When he opened them again he saw a pair of feet. Not his own.

  About a dozen squad cars ringed the perimeter of Beacy Primary, some had trained their spotlights onto the school grounds. The school was on a hill overlooking South Freo and the Indian Ocean: inky-black in the middle of the night except for the winking green and red navigation lights of the Gage Roads shipping channel. The TRG van pulled up at the main school entrance on Hale Street. There were a series of single-storey buildings arranged in quadrangles at two levels with the second further down the hill adjacent to a covered assembly and playground area. Dave the TRG man found a sergeant and asked him what was going on.

  ‘Report from a local resident of somebody sneaking around the school buildings. Came in about twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Dark skinned. Carrying a stick or possible weapon of some kind.’

  Dave put on his helmet and brought the night vision goggles down over his eyes. He cocked his machine gun and his comrades did the same. Lara checked her Glock again. Dave raised a forefinger.

  ‘Not this time ... Lara.’

  The TRG spread out and moved down the hill making manly hand signals to each other. There was a noise coming from an alcove near the school library. The ninjas closed in on the source. A quick scuffle of boots, a thump, a yelp and a splintering sound. They emerged with their quarry a minute later. Lara recognised him immediately: it was Clarrie, the didgeridoo player from Fagin’s funeral. He was handcuffed and bewildered, and his didge was in two pieces.

  ‘Can’t a bloke get a bit of sleep in peace? Wadjela nazi arseholes.’

  ‘Shut it,’ said Dave.

  ‘Fucking monarch,’ said Clarrie.

  ‘Looks a bit crook, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, he does, doesn’t he?’ said a second pair of boots. Cato couldn’t bring himself to lift his head and see who all these talking feet belonged to. Everything was blurred, the world tossing and turning, his stomach on fire.

  ‘Let’s get him in the car.’

  ‘You take him; my back’s stuffed. I’ll get the doors.’

  Cato felt himself lifted and carried like a small child. Except that the breath on his face was not that of his father or mother but of somebody who smoked a lot of mull and had a taste for bourbon and coke. Cato was within about fifty metres of the back gates of the cop shop. If anybody was there and looked out of one of those office windows on the first floor they could see him. See this, whatever it was. A car door opened. Cato tried to protest but when he opened his mouth all he did was spew again.

  ‘Aw shit. D’ya have to do that, mate?’

  Cato folded onto the back seat and gagged.

  ‘We got a bucket?’ The voice came from the front seat.

  ‘Don’t sweat. We’ll just hose the whole lot out afterwards.’ Cato didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Now floor it before some bastard sees us.’

  30

  Friday, February 12th. Early morning.

  DI Hutchens had summoned a squad meet in the Incident Room for 4a.m. All across Fremantle and surrounding suburbs, doors were being knocked, dogs were straining at leashes, the chopper and plane circled, and police vehicles chased shadows in the hunt for Dieudonne. Lara had persuaded Darth Dave to let Clarrie go and reluctantly he’d agreed.

  ‘Not a good night to be sleeping under the stars, mate,’ she’d said. ‘See if you can find a friend.’

  ‘What about me didge?’ Clarrie had said, holding up the two splintered halves.

  She’d given him her business card. ‘Come and see me about it in a few days. Bit busy right now.’

  Hutchens asked Duncan Goldflam to summarise his findings to the assembled throng. There was a tense hush as Goldflam described the details of the attack and the emergency first aid on DC Murtagh.

  ‘Because of the heavy finger pressure put on the artery to stop the blood, he lost supply to the brain. Result – a stroke. They don’t know yet whether that damage is permanent.’ Goldflam’s mouth was a thin, angry line.

  Murtagh’s mobile was missing and Dieudonne was the prime suspect for that too: it had been added to the signal trace list. Goldflam sat back down, shoulders slumped, eyes bloodshot.

  All the CCTV in the vicinity, public and private, was being examined for any signs of Dieudonne. His photo would be in the morning paper, on news websites, and his description on the radio. As usual, a fair percentage of the reported sightings were a massive waste of time and resources but they couldn’t afford to ignore any of them. They came from jittery geriatrics, attention-seekers, nutters, and grudge-bearers.

  ‘Daylight in another hour,’ said Hutchens checking his watch. ‘It’ll be harder for him to hide then. Drink lots of coffee, matchsticks under the eyelids, we keep at it until we find him.’

  Lara’s mobile vibrated. A text from Colin Graham:

  meet me in hungry jacks.

  The meeting was breaking up. Lara was summoned to Hutchens’ office with a raising of the managerial eyebrow.

  ‘Got a job for me, boss?’ said Lara.

  ‘Twist arms, look under rocks, that kind of thing. Use your instincts, think laterally, and keep me posted. Speaking of which, you seen Cato anywhere?’

  ‘Drink this.’

  It tasted like water with soluble aspirin. Cato drank it and hoped it would stay down. He tried opening his eyes and was surprised to find the dizziness and nausea had subsided. All he needed now was for the pain to go away. The room was small and sparsely furnished with a cheap pine three-piece, a glass-topped coffee table stained with smears and cup rings. There was the bitter tang of cigarettes and ashtrays although no immediate evidence of the presence of either. It was like they’d made an attempt to tidy up before he dropped round; like students for a rental inspection.

  There were two of them: by their voices, the same ones who’d picked him up. They occupied the armchairs either side of him and nursed a mug of something each while Cato was curled on the sofa with a rug smelling of his vomit. They looked like they came from the same gene pool as Kenny and Danny, the bikies from Casuarina. One had a goatee and the other wore a stud in his left eyebrow. Goatee took a sip from his mug and studied hi
m. Eyebrow Stud cleaned his nails with a fork: at his feet, a battered and oil-stained sports holdall.

  ‘Where am I?’ said Cato.

  Goatee plucked a stray hair off his tongue and shifted in his seat like his back was bothering him. ‘Myaree.’

  A nondescript suburb east of Fremantle: Cato was none the wiser.

  Through vertical blinds that may once have been cream-coloured, Cato could discern a gradually brightening sky and hear the birdsong that heralded a new day. He wondered if it was to be his last. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Goatee.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘All in good time.’

  Cato tried discreetly to feel if his phone was anywhere on him.

  ‘This what you’re after?’ Goatee fished Cato’s mobile out of a pocket. He put it on the coffee table. ‘You’ve got four messages and four missed calls: all from Hutchens. Your boss, right?’

  ‘Yeah. He’ll have people out looking for me by now.’

  Goatee and Eyebrow Stud shared an amused look. ‘From the radio traffic sounds like they’re a bit preoccupied.’ Goatee took another sip from his mug.

  The aspirin was starting to take effect, it must have been industrial strength or homemade. Cato was beginning to feel well enough to care whether he lived or died. He had an image of Jake in his mind and an unbearable sadness choked him. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again he felt the sting of tears.

  Eyebrow Stud stopped scraping his fingernails and wiped something off the end of his fork. ‘I think we should put him out of his misery.’

  He unzipped the holdall at his feet and pulled out a nail gun.

  For just after 6a.m. on a weekday morning, Hungry Jacks was doing a brisk trade. Police dragnets were obviously good for business. Colin Graham was seated next to a window looking out on Essex Street and the old redbrick TAFE building. He was halfway through a breakfast wrap when Lara joined him.

  ‘You eaten?’ he said.

  ‘Not hungry.’

  Graham looked fresh, clean-shaven and bright-eyed. He looked like he’d slept properly in the last twenty-four hours. He took another bite. ‘You look a bit weary.’

  ‘Got a lot on right now.’

  ‘Any leads?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if we had.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘What do you want from me, Colin?’ His laid-back, centre-of-the-universe, sense-of-entitlement thing was pushing her buttons this morning.

  ‘Hutchens got you doing anything in particular?’

  ‘No, he’s leaving me to my own devices.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like the control-freak Hutchens I know.’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  ‘Tetchy. Maybe we can hang out together for a few hours?’

  ‘Not a good time, Colin. I want to catch this bloke.’ She rose to leave. Graham put his hand over hers.

  ‘I might be able to help you with that.’

  ‘How?’

  He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and crumpled it into a ball. ‘I know things other people don’t. Trust me.’ He took a set of keys from his pocket and pressed unlock. The lights flashed on a police-pool Commodore parked outside. ‘Hop in.’

  ‘Two bits of information.’ Eyebrow Stud laid the nail gun on the coffee table.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Cato tried to keep his voice steady.

  Goatee grinned. ‘Not from you. For you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have two bits of information for you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Eyebrow Stud nodded at Goatee. ‘Go on, show him.’

  Goatee stood up, wincing as his back spasmed. He lifted his shirt to reveal a hairy beer gut. Then he turned around.

  ‘Wow,’ said Cato.

  There was a line of five puncture wounds down the left side of Goatee’s spine. Cato had seen those kinds of wounds before. Goatee dropped his shirt and sat down again. ‘A run-in with the Trans, middle of last year. I’d been out on the piss and was on my way home, alone. They picked me up, shoved a gun in my mouth, and took me for a ride down to Baldivis.’

  ‘Sounds a bit direct to me,’ said Cato. ‘Good way of starting a war. That wouldn’t be good for business.’

  Goatee appraised Cato. ‘Looks like you’re perking up and getting that brain of yours ticking over. I heard you were a bit of a deep thinker.’

  ‘Yeah? Who from?’

  Goatee ignored the question. ‘I don’t know why they did it. Maybe they were bored or stoned. Maybe they’re just psycho, or fucking idiots. Either way I’m glad they stopped and I’m glad they weren’t on target: a millimetre here or there and I’d be stuck in a wheelchair now.’

  ‘Why did they stop?’

  ‘Jimmy came home. Shouted at them in Vietnamese. He’s a bit smarter than the others.’

  Cato recalled the hospital nail-gun reports. Goatee’s injuries didn’t feature. ‘Who fixed you up?’

  ‘Bloke in private practice. On a retainer. Confidentiality guaranteed.’

  That figured. ‘Why haven’t you sorted it out your own way?’

  ‘We did. A few weeks later we threw one of their boys off the pedestrian overpass at Leederville.’

  Nice. ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  Goatee shifted in his seat and grunted. ‘Your job. Arrest the prick and take his nail gun off him.’

  ‘Mickey Nguyen’s already dead. Burnt to a crisp.’

  ‘Who said it was Mickey?’

  They were heading down the coast road past the McMansions at Port Coogee and towards the shipyard at Henderson. Carnac and Garden Islands floated on a sheet of blue glass: ahead of them, the smokestacks of Kwinana. Lara caught the acrid ammonia tang from the alumina refinery.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Following my nose,’ said Graham.

  The police radio chatter indicated no let-up in the false sightings and wild-goose chases. ‘I don’t think Dieudonne would have got this far on foot without being spotted. We’re a good fifteen k out of Freo now.’

  ‘I’ve got a hot tip.’

  Lara had a growing sense of unease. Was she just overtired? Something nagged at her memory. The phone call she’d taken from him around 1.30 just before they got to Beacy Primary.

  So Gangs have been called in?

  Not yet as far as I know, but I’m sure we’ll be happy to make up the numbers.

  ‘Did Gangs get called in?’

  Graham shrugged. ‘Makes sense.’

  Either they did or they didn’t. Either he was in this officially or he wasn’t.

  ‘You still suspended?’ Lara tried to make the question seem casual and conversational.

  ‘All hands on deck. Why?’

  The answer was quick, airy, and she was pretty confident it was a lie. It triggered an avalanche of half-memories and misgivings: Dieudonne turning up at her apartment the same night that Graham piked out citing a sick kid, the insistence on pursuing the Trans even though there was compelling evidence pointing at Dieudonne.

  ‘I was just wondering. There was a news-media blackout: so how did you know what was going on when you phoned me?’

  ‘Grapevine. Jungle drums. Twitter. You know what it’s like.’

  That noise she’d heard in the background of his phone call, supposedly from home. She knew now. It wasn’t the washing machine, it was a hovering helicopter, like the ones over Freo looking for Dieudonne. Graham hadn’t been at home when he phoned her; he’d been just around the corner.

  ‘Dieudonne called you, didn’t he? You helped him escape.’

  ‘What was the other thing?’

  Cato was still digesting the implications of the first tip-off but he wanted to get this over with and get the hell out of there. He knew now they weren’t going to harm him, not this time anyway. They intended to use him. The real agenda behind these pearls of information was anybody’s guess but he’d worry about that later. The pain relief was wearing of
f: he was beginning to feel feverish and nauseous again and the wound was back in full throb.

  ‘Wellard,’ said Eyebrow Stud.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘We didn’t stab the prick. All we meant to do was give him a good kicking.’

  ‘Why?’

  Eyebrow Stud shrugged. ‘He gave Kenny a funny look. Who cares?’

  ‘You said, “all we meant to do”. So it was planned?’

  ‘Bit hard to be spontaneous in there, mate. Course it was planned. But the plan was assault, not murder. We’re not that stupid.’

  Cato kept his thoughts to himself. ‘That’s out of my hands. The paperwork’s being prepared and will be sent to the prosecutor.’

  ‘Kenny and Danny don’t mind doing the extra time for assault, that’s fine, but not the stabbing.’ Eyebrow Stud leaned in, sharing his mull breath with Cato. ‘Shellie’s been through a lot, I know that. You’re close to her, she trusts you. Tell her and her boyfriend they need to put our boys in the clear.’

  ‘Or?’

  Eyebrow Stud picked up the nail gun and tapped Cato on the knee with it. ‘Or somebody is going to get hurt, very badly.’ He frowned at Cato. ‘Speaking of which, we better get you to a hospital, mate.’

  Lara now knew where they were headed. Her gun was on the back seat in the holster clip. She’d removed it for comfort, as you do, when you’re set for an hour or two in the car searching for a killer. As you do when you’re with people you think you can trust.

  The look on Graham’s face said she shouldn’t make any sudden movements. But could he stop her? His focus was driving. Her right hand drifted towards the seat belt buckle. Out of nowhere his elbow crunched into her nose. The pain was blinding. He had her now by the back of the head and was ramming her face against the dashboard. She felt her nose break. She struggled but his grip was more powerful than she’d expected. Lara lashed out with her right hand trying to find his face, his eyes. He pulled over to the side of the road and placed a gun muzzle in her ear.