Prime Cut

by Alan Carter

  Grant studied the beer mat. ‘None of my business.’

  ‘And you’re Keith’s right-hand man, you pretty well run things day to day, that right?’

  A slight inflation of the Grant chest: ‘Pretty much, he runs around making the deals and shouting at people and I keep the wheels of industry turning, mate.’

  Cato nodded again then made a show of seeming to remember something. ‘But Kane’s out of a job now, the mine sacked him. He’s the son and heir to the family business. So are you just keeping his seat warm or what?’

  Another snort and a shake of the head: ‘Little Lord Liability? Fucking joke. Keith wouldn’t trust him to go to the shops.’

  ‘No? How come?’

  Travis Grant started counting off on his fingers. ‘Can’t keep his mouth shut, can’t keep out of trouble, can’t even hold down a pisseasy, well-paying job at the mine.’

  ‘No love lost then,’ Cato observed.

  ‘Fucking idiot,’ confirmed Grant. ‘They made him a Team Leader, extra fifteen grand. All he had to do was shut up and stay out of the way of the blokes who really knew what they were doing. He even fucked that up. Picking a fight with a Maori that could eat two of him for breakfast, for fuck’s sake.’ Grant shook his head in disgust. ‘He thought they really meant the Team Leader thing, started believing in his own publicity. In fact it was all a favour to Daddy – keep Kane out of everybody’s way. Moron.’

  Cato had a thought, he followed it for curiosity. ‘What about Junior?’

  ‘The Incredible Sulk? He’s the runt of the litter. Kerry had him when she was too old. He came out munted.’ Grant curled his top lip upwards Elvis-like and crossed his eyes to illustrate his point. ‘They want to make it up to him by letting him do whatever he wants.’

  ‘Special is he?’

  ‘That’s what he reckons and it’s what they keep telling him. He can’t handle the fact that nobody else sees it that way. Keeps chucking tanties. That zapping your police sheila gave him was the best news I’ve had all week. You lot can’t be all bad, eh?’ Grant sipped thoughtfully from his beer and smiled to himself. ‘Pisses Kane off, big time. Dad takes the little runt out shooting most nights: rabbits, roos, emus, cats – never did that with Kane.’

  Cato had enough family background, he changed the subject. ‘Friday before last, remember it?’

  Travis made a show of thinking back. ‘What about it?’

  ‘The early morning pick-up at Paddy’s Field, what time do you do that?’

  Travis studied the bottom of his drink. ‘Depends on how far away the worksite is on any given day. They can be working one place one day, another place the next.’

  ‘And that day?’

  ‘Five-thirty, six-ish.’

  ‘Still dark was it?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Sun would have been just about up, it’s usually light enough by then.’

  ‘Light enough for what?’ Cato cocked his head.

  ‘To see by, without the headlights.’ Travis Grant was catching on. The conversation had moved back into dangerous territory.

  ‘See anything that morning?’ said Cato.

  ‘Couple of caravans, sheep...’ Travis smiled slyly to himself. ‘Some Chinks.’

  ‘Anything different, unusual, unexpected?’

  ‘Like what?’ Travis held Cato’s gaze for a second then scanned the room lazily.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘No. Nothing.’ Travis took a good long pull from the middy and emptied it. ‘We finished?’

  Cato shook his head and signalled for another round. The barmaid looked at Travis as if seeking his permission. Grant winked reassuringly.

  Cato checked the clock on the wall, 4.30. A news update on the plasmas: by the look of the graphics, today it was the banks and miners that were dragging the stock market down into the murky depths of hell. Nobody gave it a second glance. By now Mark McGowan, with the help of Ravy Sergeant Paul Abbott and Jessica Tan, would have started talking to the other occupants of the two caravans. So far nothing had come back from Duncan Goldflam and the search team in Paddy’s Field.

  Cato gestured for Travis to lean closer, share a confidence. ‘Why are you protecting them?’

  ‘Who?’

  Cato thumbed over his shoulder in the general direction of Paddy’s Field, a good twenty-odd kilometres away. ‘The Chinese, one of them’s already put his hand up for it. What’s it to you? I thought you would have been far more helpful, Travis.’

  The drinks arrived. Grant gave the barmaid another wink and smile. More than just friends, Cato surmised.

  Travis took a long pull, wiped the froth from his lips with the back of his hand and blessed the room with a gassy belch. ‘I’m not protecting anybody, mate. Do what the fuck you like with them. None of my business.’

  ‘So there was nothing different about that morning?’

  ‘Nothing, mate.’

  ‘What about the fact that one of them didn’t show up for work? Didn’t you wonder where he was?’

  A theatrical shrug, ‘Pulled a sickie. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘And you didn’t look in the caravan, check him out?’

  ‘What for? No workee, no payee. Not getting me into one of those fleapits, who knows what you’d catch.’

  ‘Chen’s meant to be your gangmaster and he doesn’t show up for work. You’re telling me you’re not in the least bit curious? Wouldn’t Keith want to know something like that?’

  It was only a quick flicker but Cato had seen it. Uncertainty. Fear? Something to probe later; he tried a different angle.

  ‘Say somebody wants to call in sick, how do they contact you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I assume you’d want as much notice as possible if anyone is sick, so you can organise replacements?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Grant gave another sly smile. ‘Or maybe we’d just get the ones who do show up to work harder.’

  Cato tried a stab in the dark. ‘Chen, your gangmaster, he had a phone, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t have worked out there though. No signal.’

  And no phone among the collected belongings of Hai Chen, noted Cato.

  ‘What’s his phone number?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chen. You’d have him in your address book wouldn’t you?’

  Travis nodded, reached into his pocket and scrolled through his mobile. Cato wrote down the number for record-tracking later.

  ‘Not much use out there then?’

  ‘No, but if he walks north about a kilometre, that brings you out near the airstrip. There’s a signal there.’

  ‘All heart, you guys.’

  ‘Keeps them fit,’ Travis smirked.

  The late afternoon sun had disappeared behind scudding clouds, casting a sudden extra gloom on the bar room tableau. Cato could see that Travis was running out of patience and cooperation: no eye contact, putting on bored, checking the watch.

  ‘Where were they going to be working that day?’

  Travis pretended to be thinking again. ‘Friday before last you say?’

  Cato nodded.

  ‘That team would have been on the desal pipeline. Out Mason Bay Road.’

  ‘How far is that from where they live?’

  ‘As the crow flies, maybe thirty k?’

  ‘And the only way they can get there, or anywhere else for that matter, is if you drive them?’

  ‘That’s right, just a glorified chauffeur really, that’s me.’

  ‘At a price.’

  Travis looked across the rim of his glass. ‘Dog eat dog, sunshine. We all need to earn a crust. They’re doing okay, your mates, don’t worry. Lot better off than back home I reckon.’

  ‘Keith giving you your fair share of the pie?’

  A frown and another uncertain, suspicious, flicker.

  Cato hopscotched around the questions, not giving Travis enough time to settle. ‘So they have no access to a vehicle at all except through you?’

 
; ‘Far as I know.’ Travis nodded irritably, he was finding it hard to concentrate.

  ‘So if, as Guan Yu says, he killed a man out there last Thursday week and the body was gone by the Friday morning, then he must have had help. And the only guy he knows with a vehicle is you, Travis.’

  Grant slammed his drink down on the table and put both hands up defensively. ‘No way mate. What those fuckers did is their business. I had nothing to do with it.’

  The pub went quiet the way they sometimes do in the movies. The barmaid reached for the remote and unmuted The Bold and the Beautiful. Somebody was finding out they’d just been pashing with their long-lost illegitimate sister. Cato scanned the faces of some of the hardened afternoon drinkers, no longer bold, never had been beautiful. No wonder they preferred it with the sound down; too much like real life. One of Travis’s mates looked up from his pool game, slapping the cue in his palm.

  ‘Everything okay, Trav?’

  Cato was aware that another crony had quietly planted himself behind and to the right of where he was sitting. Cato’s hand gripped the glass of lime soda, not the coolest of weapons but his gun was locked in the bull-mobile. He figured if he limesoda’d the guy holding the pool cue first, then rushed Travis and smacked his face on the edge of the table, he might get the upper hand. Trouble was he couldn’t see what the other crony was holding, maybe a shandy.

  Travis came to a decision but not before letting Cato know who had the numbers. ‘Yeah, no worries.’

  The handful of drinkers resumed their conversations and the balls clicked again on the pool table.

  Cato’s voice was hardly a murmur. ‘What did those fuckers do, Travis?’ No reply. ‘So if it wasn’t you that helped them, then who was it?’

  Travis shook his head and stared into the depths of his drink. ‘Don’t ask me, you’re the detective and, unless you’re going to arrest me, I’m finished here. Thanks for the beer.’

  Travis hopped off his stool, car keys jangling in his hand.

  Cato nodded towards them. ‘Leave the keys with me.’

  ‘I’ve only had the two, breath test me if you like.’ Travis kept walking towards the door.

  Cato’s voice hardened. ‘Leave them. Forensics will want to take a look at the car.’

  ‘Make it official. Get the paperwork, or get fucked.’

  Travis said the last line loud enough for everyone to hear. The door swung closed behind him. A whoop went up from the pool table. The barmaid looked flushed.

  Cato found him outside across the road, angle-parked. Faces milled at the pub windows. Travis Grant had opened the minibus driver’s side door and was climbing into his seat. Cato kickslammed the door with maximum force onto Travis’s exposed right leg, arm and shoulder. There was a muffled yelp of pain and a string of curses. Cato wrenched the door open again, hauled Travis out and pushed his face down into the gravel, making sure it got a bit of a scrape. He pocketed the car keys. Kneeling on the prone man’s back, Cato cuffed him then hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Let’s go and take care of that paperwork shall we?’

  Travis’s mates had left the pub and were walking purposefully over the road towards them. Cato Kwong found a roar within him.

  ‘Back off!’

  They did. Cato frogmarched Travis the hundred or so metres up the centre of Veal Street to the police station in the Sea Rescue hut.

  29

  Wednesday, October 15th. Early evening.

  ‘This is absolutely outrageous.’

  Henry Hurley had arrived. DI Mick Hutchens made a soothing gesture with his hands. At least, he probably thought it was soothing. To the casual observer it may well have seemed threatening. They were boxer’s hands, hard and surprisingly big, betraying the streetfighting origins of the squat, dapper detective. He had allowed Hooray Henry two minutes for his predictable tirade. Time was now up for the Pinstriped Pixie.

  Justin Woodward had affected a raffish, supercilious look. Lara whispered to Hutchens that he reminded her of Hugh Grant.

  ‘Who?’ Hutchens whispered back, sneaking a look down her shirt.

  Of course he knew who Hugh Grant was. He was the Pommie actor who got picked up in the US midway through a blowjob from a street hooker. Class act.

  Lara began shuffling papers in a folder and looking impatient. They’d agreed on the way up: it was her turn to play bad cop this time. Hutchens had experienced a little shiver of excitement at the thought. Next door the girlfriend, Angelique, was being calmly and patiently worn down by a couple of B-grade detective constables with cold eyes and dull voices. They were looking for cracks in the alibi. It would be like an excruciating audit with the taxmen from hell. If she didn’t crack under the unrelenting questioning, she’d probably fold with the unremitting boredom of looking at those two for hours on end. Hutchens cleared his throat, a cue for them all to get on with it.

  ‘New evidence has come to light, Mr Hurley. We need your client’s help to answer questions arising from these developments.’

  ‘Is he at liberty to leave at any time?’

  ‘Of course,’ Hutchens lied.

  They’d already worked out their strategy. Either way, DI Hutchens intended to formally charge Justin Woodward with murder today. If he answered some more questions willingly, then fine. If he clammed up now, Hutchens was still confident of his case. Woodward was history, dead and buried. It was Jim Buckley’s funeral in Perth the day after next. As far as he was concerned, this would be the best fucking eulogy the poor bastard could have wished for. Hurley and Woodward had finished whispering. The lawyer gave a curt nod. Game on.

  Lara finished shuffling her papers. The recording was underway, formalities done. ‘Tell me about Freddy Bataam.’

  ‘Who?’ Justin Woodward did the Hugh Grant eyebrow thing again.

  ‘Freddy Bataam, Indonesian guy, aka Freddy Sudhyono, real name Riri Yusala.’

  ‘You asked me about him last time. Like I said then, I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Funny. He knows you.’

  Woodward looked up at Lara with his bedroom eyes and shrugged.

  ‘A shrug doesn’t answer the question, Mr Woodward.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Freddy Bataam claims to know you. Are you still saying that you don’t know him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He claims he is your supplier.’

  Woodward rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  His lawyer gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Is this your new evidence Mr Hutchens? The word of a criminal?’

  ‘Who said he was a criminal?’ Hutchens: butter not melting in mouth.

  Hurley flapped his hand dismissively at Lara, the subspecies in the room. ‘Your colleague did. She said “supplier”.’

  Lara picked a sheet of paper out of her folder. ‘Actually Mr Yusala, or Freddy Bataam, does not have a criminal record.’

  And as a result of their little chat in Albany he still didn’t. The car full of drugs and underage girls was going to disappear in a puff of smoke. That’s what she’d told him anyway. Hutchens had smiled approvingly on hearing that one, it was the same kind of bullshit line he would have fed the bastard too.

  Henry Hurley was shaking his head. ‘If this is all you have, we’ll call a halt to this farce right now.’

  Hutchens did the soothing-threatening boxer’s hands thing again. ‘There are a couple of other matters still to consider.’

  Justin Woodward patted his lawyer’s arm confidently and twinkled at Hutchens. ‘Humour me.’

  Travis Grant had been booked for obstruction and sent home, on foot. His minibus was impounded and a tired, grumpy DS Duncan Goldflam had delegated his spotty offsider Mark Hamlyn to give it a cursory forensic once-over. Cato would have preferred a bit less of the cursory but didn’t want to push his luck. The minibus was unlikely to be the vehicle that transported the body; it needed to be four-wheel drive to be sure of getting all the way
to Starvation Bay with a boat in tow. Besides, there was no towbar on the back – but who knew what else it might throw up forensically. At the very least it would be out of action for a day or so and hopefully further disrupt the operations of SaS Personnel. Anything that made life difficult for Keith Stevenson and Travis Grant was a bonus for Cato. That reminded him, he still needed to put in a call to the RSPCA about those scrawny sheep in Paddy’s Field.

  The search of the sheep paddock had produced nothing. No murder weapon, no missing limbs, no freshly turned earth, no bloodbath. McGowan’s little inquiry team was still working their way through the residents of Paddy’s Field but no word back yet. Cato checked his watch: gone 7.00. He decided to call it a day, he was stuffed. Sure, they’d all been up all night at the exploded caravan but the drained feeling had only come on in the last hour or two. Had it all just caught up with him? No. The violence he’d inflicted on Travis Grant, that’s what had drained him. Oh, and Lara Sumich. He’d noticed something else too. He was tired, yes, but the knotted tension had disappeared from his neck and shoulders. Was that all it took? A good root and a bit of biff? Pathetic. Still, whatever it takes.

  He switched off the computer and looked for a key to lock up the Sea Rescue hut. Greg Fisher had one, no doubt Tess Maguire had the other. He idly wondered where she was. He assumed she would have finished in Esperance by now and be on her way back. Cato snicked the yale and closed the door behind him. He’d worry about getting back in when the time came. The breeze had dropped off again. It was still light outside, a perfect evening for a barbie if he had any family or friends, or even colleagues. He wondered how Lara Sumich was going. Already the morning encounter was fading into a distant unreality. He was trying to shake off the nagging feeling that they hadn’t actually fucked each other, rather that he had been fucked.

  That reminded him. Guiltily, he debated phoning Jane and Jake, juggling the mobile in his palm. He took out his wallet and looked at the photo inside. It was taken in happier times at Little Salmon Bay, Rottnest. Cato behind the camera, Jane tanned and smiling in her red swimsuit, yellow flippers, and blue snorkelling gear. Jake looking happier than Cato remembered him ever being. It was taken three days before he was called to the internal inquiry. He stopped juggling his mobile; he didn’t know what he could say to them that would even begin to undo the damage he had done. He wandered down to the Taste of the Toun to check out the menu.