by Alan Carter
One of the sharks seemed to be shaking the seal in its jaws, like a puppy with an old sock. Finally it let go and the seal flew a few feet through the air, landing with a soft plop at the water’s edge. From five metres away she could see they’d ripped the poor little bugger to shreds; just one flipper remained and the thing didn’t seem to have a head. She was right on top of the carcass now. She stopped, caught her breath, shivered. It wasn’t a seal; it was a human torso. It wasn’t a flipper; it was an arm – a left arm, no hand. She’d been right about the head though – there wasn’t one.
She bowed forward, hands on knees, and threw up. Behind her she could hear the sharks still splashing in the shallows like a couple of dolphins, playfully taking the piss.
Hot flush. Senior Sergeant Tess Maguire put down her coffee, opened her jacket and cracked a car window. The smell of rotting roadkill nearby forced her to shut it again, quickly. Tess swore and flicked on the air conditioning. Six-twenty on a sharp, spring south-coast morning and she was sweating like a pig. Suddenly cold again, she flicked the air conditioner back off. She felt completely out of sorts. How could she be getting hot flushes when she’d only just turned forty-two? Tess looked at herself in the rear-view. The short-cropped blonde hair was losing its fight against the wispy greys. She kept on threatening to let it grow out to all-over grey. It was natural. What’s so bad about grey anyway? She tried to think of some attractive, well-known, grey-haired women. She couldn’t get beyond Germaine Greer. Tess added hair dye to her mental shopping list and turned the radio on.
The interviewer sounded young enough to be her daughter. She’d countried her voice up a bit, talking with an authoritative twang to a primary commodities broker about the grain and wool prices. Apparently one was up and the other was down, in contrast to the stock market in general which was still in freefall. Tess couldn’t get her head around how a handful of venal mortgagebrokers in America could trigger what seemed to be a global financial tsunami and the end of the world as we know it. Never mind, it was unlikely to hit them here in Hopetoun – the end of the world and proud of it. This was Tess’s first posting since she came off sick leave. Nine months. Most of the first month in hospital and outpatients, the next three in physio, the rest in therapy. She wondered how Melissa would go: new to town, year nine in high school, sharing a classroom with a bunch of teenage hard-cases whose dads had come down to work at the new mine. She’d seen them hanging around the park – the kids, not the dads. Testosterone. The pushing and shoving, swearing and shouting: youthful high spirits, some called it. Only these days it sent her into cold sweats and panic attacks, fighting for breath, tears welling up. Even now, just at the thought of them.
A new life, a new start, new hope in Hopetoun, they’d promised her. The place hadn’t warranted a permanent police post in the past. For decades it had been a laid-back holiday or retirement spot for wheatbelt farmers. There was nothing to police except maybe the occasional drunk driver or domestic. Now, with the nearby nickel mine, the population had steadily grown from a stable four hundred in the old days to a whopping two thousand – and rising. It would still be a while before it was Gotham City but with more houses, plenty of money being tossed around and the pub getting busier it meant more bad behaviour, temptation, vandalism, domestics and drugs. Hopetoun was a good place to put ageing or wounded or useless cops out to pasture. Tess ticked all three boxes. At first she’d turned it down. Senior Sergeant Tess Maguire – the bump up to ‘Senior’ was a reward for getting the shit kicked out of her – wanted to tough it out. But after a few weeks at a desk in Perth HQ with the concerned but embarrassed stares, the traffic, the noise and the crowds, Tess was sold on the sea change. Hopetoun. No crime to speak of, she reasoned, no stress, just sunshine and sea breezes to clear out the cobwebs.
First she heard him. Then she smelled him. Then she saw him: weaving down the road, screeching and roaring, the acrid stench of burning rubber from the smoking tyres. Tess checked the clock on her dashboard: he was right on time. She had parked the paddy wagon by the turn-off to the mine. The swirling black tyre marks at the junction were a testament to his earlier handiwork. They were the kind of marks you’d see on any road in any Australian suburb these days but the big nobs of the Shire wanted an end to it. It was rampant hoonism, it created a bad impression, it was a bloody disgrace. And it was Tess Maguire’s job to nip it in the bud. Tess started up her motor, switched on the flashing lights and swung across the road blocking his path. He stopped. She tapped on his window until he opened it.
‘Having fun, Kane?’
Kane Stevenson, Doughnut King: a drongo kid from a drongo family. There was a time Tess might have avoided pinning labels on to people. Give them a chance, that kind of thing. Not any more. Drongo is as drongo does. But what the Shire bigwigs might find hard to swallow was the fact that this particular drongo was a local boy, born and bred. They couldn’t blame this on miners, outsiders or incomers; Kane was home-grown trouble. Now that he was working at the mine, he had money to burn along with those tyres.
He wound down his window, all innocent. ‘Morning Tess, early start?’
‘Sergeant, or Officer, to you. What do you think you’re doing?
‘Sorry mate, had to swerve. Roo on the road, I couldn’t kill it, animal lover me.’
‘Right.’
‘No: straight up.’
Tess stepped back and made a show of admiring what she saw.
‘Company ute, nice. Been promoted, Kane?’
He slapped the steering wheel proudly. ‘Yeah, Team Leader; extra fifteen grand.’
‘Congratulations. Thing is, Kane, under our lovely new hoon laws, I’ve got every right to impound this vehicle.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Gone in sixty seconds. I don’t think your employers are going to be too impressed.’
His employers being Western Minerals, one of the biggest and richest companies in the world with mines in all corners of the globe. They paid their employees extremely well but were very unforgiving of transgressions. Their motto: Zero Tolerance. Everybody assumed they were talking about bad behaviour.
‘Ah fuck, Tess, c’mon,’ Kane pleaded, for the first time a flicker of recognition of consequences in his big brown eyes.
Tess’s mobile trilled: caller ID, Greg, her offsider.
‘Tess? You’d better get back to town. There’s been a body.’
She squinted menacingly at the Doughnut King. ‘First and last warning,’ and took off in the paddy wagon, burning a bit of rubber on the way.
As the sky brightened, Tess passed a convoy of white utes heading in the opposite direction out to the mine, forty kilometres away. On the outskirts of town she climbed the low hill to the roundabout leading off to the light industrial on one side and the new sprawling off-the-peg Legoland housing estate on the other. Cresting the rise she relaxed a notch or two at the view down the main street to the bright blue Southern Ocean at the bottom of the hill. After three months she still hadn’t got over how small, quiet and, yes, beautiful the place was. And she hoped she never would.
Tess pulled into the beachside gravel car park. Her colleague, Constable Greg Fisher, was on the beach talking to a middle-aged woman dressed in running gear, while the town GP crouched examining something on the sand; it was hidden from view by a makeshift canvas windbreak. Greg’s initiative: he was in his first year out of police academy and eager to impress. Tess had long forgotten that feeling. A pair of pied oystercatchers pecked the sand irritably with scarlet stiletto beaks. A small handful of earlyrising onlookers strained to get a glimpse of the body, careful not to overstep the invisible line established by Constable Fisher.
As she got closer, Tess recognised the woman as a teacher from the primary school: she’d seen her around, hard not to in a town this small. The teacher was a bit green around the gills; her eyes were puffy, her lower lip trembled as she talked, Greg taking notes. Tess left them to it and walked, white sand squeaking beneath her feet, over to the doctor and the body. T
he torso glistened in the morning sun; green tendrils of seaweed sparkled on the mottled, lightly tanned flesh. There was no head, no legs, only part of one arm and a pale grey mush where the missing pieces should have been.
The doctor stood up, broad-shouldered, early fifties. Tess had met him once before, a few weeks back when she dropped in a young miner who’d been on a bender and tried to punch out the pub ATM when it argued with him about his PIN number.
‘What’s the word, Doctor Terhorst?’
‘Well he’s dead, that’s for sure.’ His lip curled slightly at his little joke, then he continued in his clipped Afrikaans accent. ‘But at this stage I can’t accurately say what age bracket or even, for sure, what race. From the torso length I’d estimate medium height, medium build. Don’t ask me for a time of death, with something that’s been in the water it’s too hard without the proper tests. Ball park? Less than a week.’
‘Shark attack?’ Hopetoun. Southern Ocean. Not an unreasonable question.
‘Well I’ve seen a few of these back in Cape Town and the injuries are consistent with sharks.’
Tess pointed to the mush at the base of the spine where the legs were meant to start. ‘Looks like they bit clean through him.’
The doctor nodded grimly then scratched his chin. ‘Possibly. I’d be more worried about the sever wound at the neck.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s very neat compared to the punctures and tears everywhere else. The spinal column looks like it’s been sheared with a clean straight edge. Either our shark had meticulous table manners ... or somebody cut this poor man’s head off.’
3
Wednesday, October 8th. Midmorning.
Busselton, Western Australia.
The floorboard creaks under Stuart Miller’s size tens. The passageway seems shorter than he remembers it and that bitter ashtray smell is back in his nostrils. The lights are out, another power cut, bloody miners on strike again. So why can he hear the telly on the other side of the door? A football match. He turns the handle and steps into the dim room lit only by the flickering TV screen: a sea of red and white rolling and roaring. Jenny and Graeme are on the settee, cuddled up, watching the game. On the floor, Graeme’s Scalextric cars race around the track giving off sparks at each corner.
‘Home, pet, what you got the lights out for?’
His hand goes to the light switch but nothing happens.
‘Shite, the bulb must have gone. What’s the score?’ he nods at the TV.
‘Nil all,’ says little Graeme, finally acknowledging his dad’s presence. Jenny must be in a huff about something: him working late again probably. She hasn’t moved or said a word. Miller looks at the screen again, the Cup Final, Sunderland and Leeds. Billy Hughes steps up for the corner, the ball lands for Porterfield. He’s seen this before: the goal, the setting. That’s when the panic kicks in. He touches his wife’s shoulder and head, and his fingers come away sticky with blood. Graeme is nestled into her, hand resting on her knee, a deep crimson gash above his ear.
Stuart Miller jerked awake gasping for breath. The bed was empty and Jenny was gone.
4
Wednesday, October 8th. Late morning.
Sergeant Jim Buckley was heaving, puffing and fit to have a coronary. His normally flushed drinker’s face was nearly purple and his ginger-grey sideburns glistened with sweat. The cow’s head was now separated from the body after a joint effort by himself, Cato and three hacksaw blades. Its neck was flat to the ground and the eyes were staring skywards to cow heaven. Buckley had a foot planted firmly on either side of the head, pinning the ears to the ground. With his left hand pushing down hard on the nose for extra leverage, he gave one last mighty tug with the right. His hand emerged triumphant from the cow’s face, pliers gripping a small blood-soaked lump of metal.
‘A twenty-two, just as I thought.’
Cato finished pissing against a ghost gum and zipped back up. He had retired to the shade and was halfway through today’s cryptic from the West. He’d managed to snaffle it from the neighbouring breakfast table at the Katanning Motel. It had been a close shave though, the guy had only gone to the toilet and when he came back for his paper Cato had to plead ignorance and suggest that the breakfast lady had cleared it away. Buckley had shaken his head in disgust.
‘Why don’t you ever buy your own, they’re only a dollar, you tight-arsed bastard.’
‘Dollar thirty. All I need is the crossword, I don’t need to read all the other crap.’
His father had taught him how to crack the cryptic codes a couple of years ago and now he was hooked. There was something about the search for clear reasoning among the insane ramblings, and identifying the cold calculation behind the crafty wordplay. It came in useful in the interview room sometimes. Dad meanwhile had moved on to Sudokus to enrich his widowed dotage; he’d knock them off in ten minutes if his hands weren’t shaking too much. He’d tried to get Cato onto it, reckoned the process of patient, logical elimination would be good for training his detective brain. Cato was sticking with the cryptics; intuition, flights of fancy, twisted logic and inspiration backed up later by the facts – that was more his style.
Merit Cup for perfect roast.
Cup, roast, something to do with coffee? The heat was curdling his brain. Cato stretched out his long legs and smiled encouragingly.
‘Good work, Sarge. Any idea whose gun it came from?’
Jim Buckley’s good mood had withered in the heat.
‘Get fucked. Bag this evidence while I clean up.’
‘What, the head as well?’
‘In the esky; sooner it’s on ice the better.’
‘No worries,’ Cato sighed. He wondered if he should resign now or after next payday. That was the intention after all: disgraced, demoted, demeaned, despised – until he had taken enough and went of his own accord. They wouldn’t sack him; he knew too much. But they certainly had their ways.
Cato grabbed a Ziploc bag out of the Land Cruiser glove box, hauled the esky off the back seat, and kick-closed the car door, planting his heel dead centre of the bull’s-head logo. He popped the bullet in the bag and crammed the head into the esky. A mobile buzzed in his trousers. It took Cato by surprise; he hadn’t expected a signal out here.
‘That you, Cato?’
‘Detective Senior Constable Kwong speaking, who’s this?’
‘Hutchens.’
DI Mick Hutchens, his old boss from Fremantle Detectives. Now with Albany Detectives, enjoying a south-coast sea change in Bogan Town. He’d fared better in the fallout than Cato had.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’
‘Cut the crap, it’s me, Mick. Where are you?’
Cato looked around at the parched, blistered landscape.
‘Somewhere near Katanning.’
Hutchens chuckled. ‘Enjoying life with the Sheep-Shagging Squad then?’
‘Not sure the Commissioner would appreciate your cynical tone, sir.’
‘Right. That fuckwit Buckley with you?’
‘Want a word with him?’
‘No. Listen up. Got some real work for you. A body, well, half a one anyway. Human though; would make a nice change for you.’
Cato’s pulse quickened like it hadn’t done for a long time.
‘Where is it?’
‘Down in Hopetoun; maybe three hours drive for you.’
Cato racked his brain – Hopetoun, south coast, fishing spot? Other than that, the place meant nothing to him.
‘Why aren’t your mob onto it? I’m supposed to be banished to Siberia, remember?’
A momentary uncomfortable silence, then Hutchens cleared his throat.
‘Three are on suspension, two on sick leave, two on holiday. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. Thought of you immediately.’
‘Cheers.’
The faintest whining hint of desperation crept into Hutchens’ voice. ‘Cato mate, I need you. For the next few days anyway.’
Cato couldn’t s
hake the thought that there was more to this than met the eye. Was Hutchens really scraping the very bottom of the barrel before he thought of his old mate Cato? The sun scorched the back of his neck, flies worried his face, and the headless three-legged cow was starting to smell really bad. The road out of Katanning shimmered in the heat haze. Who was Cato Kwong to look a gift horse in the mouth?
‘Tell me more.’
‘Washed up this morning. Looks like a shark attack but the local doctor reckons our bloke might have been dead before he hit the water. He’s a country quack so probably talking through his arse.’ Same old Mick Hutchens, thought Cato, Zen master of the sweeping generalisation. ‘I need you to take a look, confirm or deny. No hassle, no fuss. Fill out the paperwork and file it, Cato. Home by Friday.’
Cato had lost track of time – then he remembered, today was Wednesday. If it really was that simple and clean-cut he’d still be home in time for the weekend. It was his turn to have Jake. They could have a family weekend together, just the two of them. Yeah right.
‘Who’s the officer-in-charge down there?’
‘Senior Sergeant Tess Maguire...’ Hutchens paused, no doubt for effect. Cato didn’t miss a beat, didn’t give Hutchens the reaction he wanted.
‘Taser Tess?’
‘The very same.’
After her ordeal at the hands of the mob up north, the Commissioner had made taser stun guns standard issue for all officers in the optimistic belief that the outcome might have been different had she been ‘suitably equipped’ with a fifty-thousand-volt zapper. Cato had his doubts about their effectiveness in that kind of situation, particularly if they fell into the wrong hands. Scepticism aside, it had made Tess something of a folk hero among her colleagues right around the state. She had been more than that to him, once.