by Alan Carter
‘Late night lights on the boat ramp at Starvo,’ said Jim Buckley cupping his chin thoughtfully in his right fist. ‘That could be the turning point in this case.’
Greg Fisher nodded enthusiastically until he realised that Buckley was being sarcastic. Cato didn’t want the meeting to sink into oblivion just yet.
‘The old guy, the fisherman...’
‘Mather?’ offered Greg.
‘Yeah, he didn’t mention any lights?’
Greg shrugged. ‘Asleep? Bit deaf? Forgot?’
‘Maybe, or, for all you know, lying, or hiding something. Can you get back to him and double-check?’
Fisher blushed. ‘Sure.’
Fisher wrapped up his report and beat a hasty retreat. No, he hadn’t got around to checking out shipping movements yet but yes, he would get onto it now, talk to a few boaties around town, and get back to Mather about those lights.
Next it was Cato’s turn. He told them about the mispers list and the two of interest to him – Riri Yusala and, to a lesser extent, the closet Italian gay Carlo Donizetti. That raised a smirk from an otherwise dour Jim Buckley. There were contact numbers for the case officers assigned to the two mispers, one in Perth for Donizetti, and Yusala’s in Albany: DI Mick Hutchens’ turf. Cato would follow up on that today. Tess Maguire met his eye. He couldn’t read the look, it was as if she hardly knew him. Private. Keep Out.
‘I’ll be following up on the mine fight,’ Tess said, ‘Talking to Kane Stevenson and some of those other names we took. I’ll be on that for most of the day.’
Tess’s expression challenged Cato to say it ain’t so. He didn’t. Jim Buckley asked her if she wanted him there for the Stevenson interview. She didn’t. He looked surprisingly disappointed.
Tess left for Ravensthorpe. Greg Fisher was already on the phone checking shipping. Cato gave Buckley the number for the Donizetti case officer, keeping Riri Yusala and the Albany office for himself. He rang the number.
‘Julie Silvestri, Albany Detectives.’
The voice at the other end of the phone sounded like it was being channelled through a soggy mattress. Cato introduced himself and told her what he wanted. She took a moment to find the case on her computer; Cato could hear the clicking of the keyboard and heavy mouth-breathing. Julie Silvestri had a cold.
‘Here it is,’ she croaked, ‘Riri Yusala, missing since ... February 2006. Looks like he jumped ship here at Albany ... naval exercises ... whaling ship ... I assume you’ve already read all this?’
Cato confirmed that he had and asked what else she could tell him about the case.
‘Wife and two kids back in ... Sulawesi?’ Not easy to say with a head cold.
‘Yes, I read that too,’ said Cato.
A few more keyboard clicks. ‘A couple of unconfirmed sightings: the first, a month or so after he disappeared. It was on a building site in Perth, a security guard with aspirations to be Sam Spade. Trawls mispers sites for a hobby, sad bastard. Anyway that’s how he recognised him, or thought he did. Reckoned he was doing some labouring on the hush-hush. If it was him he’d moved on by the time we had it checked out and whoever it was also had a new name ... Freddy Sudhyono. The foreman couldn’t confirm anything from the picture. “They all look the same,” he said.’
‘And the second sighting?’
‘Fremantle Markets: another month later. Somebody reckoned they saw him working at the satay stall there. A bit more credence to that one.’ Julie Silvestri snuffled and seemed to catch some mucous in her throat.
Cato winced at the noise. ‘Why?’
‘The guy who saw him was on leave from the Australian Navy, he’d been on the same ship as Yusala. He was sure it was him but he didn’t report it until about six weeks later. He hadn’t realised Yusala was deemed a missing person until he went into his local cop shop to collect his son who’d been picked up for underage drinking or something. Saw the Missing Persons poster while he was waiting.’
‘So why the “concern for his welfare” if he was last seen alive and well?’
‘Our Freo colleagues went back to the satay stall. It says here, quote, “The stall owner was terrified.” A Vietnamese woman, Penny Nguyen, said she’d last seen Freddy – so he’s still using the same name at that point anyway – she’d seen him arguing with two guys one night after work about a week earlier. They’d bundled him into a car and sped off. He hadn’t been back since.’
Cato leaned forward and gripped the phone a little harder. ‘Any description on the guys or the car?’
‘Australian. White. Big. That’s both the guys and the car. Otherwise it was too dark to see and it all happened too quickly, et cetera. No other witnesses, it seems.’
‘Nothing since?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What about his family or the Indonesian Navy? Did they provide any information on him worth knowing?’
‘Nothing on file. The Indonesian Navy doesn’t seem to have made any waves about his disappearance.’
She snorted at her little joke, inviting Cato to join in. He gave a false chuckle and heard Silvestri blow her nose daintily, one nostril at a time, away from the phone – snorting at her own joke probably hadn’t been a good idea.
‘Think he’s your floater?’
‘Maybe. But we’re a long way from Fremantle Markets, and a long time past that sighting,’ Cato said.
‘Maybe they took him for a ride to give him a warning of some kind and when he got his chance later he did a runner?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe baby. Anything else I can do for you, darl?’ Silvestri sneezed and the receiver exploded in Cato’s ear.
‘Have a nice hot lemon drink and some Panadol. Thanks Julie.’
‘Can I have a Panadol?’
The voice was self-pitying and slightly distorted, coming as it did out of Kane Stevenson’s smashed lips. But at least he was talking, which was good news for Tess. The nurse shook her head at Kane’s request.
‘Not for another four hours.’
It wasn’t Brunhilde from the Nazi Women’s League, Tess noted. Jim Buckley would have been disappointed. It was an older, some would say matronly, woman; her badge said ‘Jill’. Jill left and Tess smiled a greeting towards Kane Stevenson’s one half-open eye.
‘Looking much better today Kane.’
A grunt. The good eye closed.
‘Got a headache; that fucken Maori. Should be locked up.’
‘He is. We’ll be needing a statement from you, as victim, for the court case.’
The eye opened again. ‘Court case?’
‘Assault occasioning bodily harm: serious offence, the jailing type.’
‘Good.’
Tess had her notebook and pen ready. ‘So what happened?’
‘The big fucken Maori kicked the shit out of me.’
‘Why? What started it?’
‘Dunno. Just minding my own business and he starts up.’
‘We’ve got witnesses saying you’d been abusing the foreign workers, the contractors. That true?’
‘Just looking after my team.’
Tess glanced idly at the medical chart at the end of his bed; it meant nothing to her.
‘Your team?’
‘Health and Safety. The Chinks haven’t got a fucking clue, always accidents with them around. You try talking to them and they can’t speak a word of English. Not even “Turn the fucking valve off”. Mate of mine nearly died the other day cos of them useless cunts.’
‘Did you assault any of the contractors, Kane?’
‘Bit of pushing and shoving, can’t remember who did what when. All I remember is the big...’
‘Maori, yeah Kane I get the picture. Soon as you’re well enough we’ll do a proper typed and signed statement for the court case, okay?’
‘Too right. Get that bastard put in jail. Get rid of them one way or another eh?’ Kane Stevenson smiled but winced when it cracked his sore lips.
Tess put her notebook away. ‘That�
��s the spirit. By the way, have you heard? Apparently you’re fired as well. You won’t need to worry about sticking up for your team anymore. Chin up Kane, keep smiling.’
Stuart Miller had woken in a foul mood. His brother-in-law had given him short shrift over his request to help find Arthurs. One, he was too busy and had more important things on his mind. Two, it was a needle-in-a-haystack job. Three, there were rules these days about unauthorised access of the police database. Thanks for nothing, you grumpy old time-serving bastard. Jim Buckley had never been one for taking the job home with him. Miller recalled family Christmases in the early days: Jenny and Maggie would clear off over to the beach with all the kids and he’d be left to make conversation with his semi-pissed and half-asleep wanker-in-law. Even though Stuart was out of the game now the obvious point of connection should have been The Job. Not a peep. No matter how many times Stuart would start the ball rolling with an anecdote, Jim would kick it into touch with a belch and the pop of a new can. The return of screaming kids and yet another plateful of turkey came to be seen as a relief. He’d tried relating all of this to Jenny over the usual rushed breakfast this morning but he could tell her mind was on the coming day at school. She summoned up a semiconcerned, ‘Ach, ye poor wee sausage,’ in her Edinburgh brogue then pecked him on the cheek, squeezed his bum, told him she loved him, and left another list of jobs that needed doing.
He plonked himself down at the kitchen table and flicked away the chores list irritably. Reaching for yesterday’s paper he pored over the cold-case article again, willing it to give him some idea of what to do. After two or three re-reads and a second cup of tea he finally saw it.
Police Media have also released an image of Chapman, based on information from a woman who knew him and who reported a sighting of him in Bunbury in the state’s south-west in 1998, 17 years after the murders.
Who was she? How did she know him? What were the circumstances of the sighting? This was before their new publicity push because the photofit was based on what she had seen. So what led the SA Police to this woman in WA? What was Detective Tim Delaney holding back? Stuart Miller reached for his phone and the embossed business card of the young man in the suit.
Six down, twelve letters. Fellow’s glee takes your breath away. Cato nodded to himself, clicked his biro, and filled in the answer. ‘Manslaughter’. The coffees arrived. He furtively slipped the crossword pages out of the paper, folded them into his jacket pocket and put the newspaper back into the cafe’s complimentary pile along with the glossies. Jim Buckley clapped his hands at a spot just above and behind Cato’s head.
‘Moth, got it, must have escaped from your wallet. Poor bastard was blinded by the daylight.’
Cato ignored the jibe and sized up his partner. ‘Everything okay at home?’
He couldn’t help himself, he had to stick his nose into Jim Buckley’s business: curiosity rather than real concern. Since breakfast Buckley seemed to have spent every spare moment talking quietly but fiercely into his mobile. He had just done it again, pacing up and down outside, smoking and muttering into the phone while they waited for the coffees. They were sitting at a table at the top deck of the Taste of the Toun cafe. The view out over the Southern Ocean was magnificent. The day was fine and the wind was already up, it was an easterly but still cool as it came off the sea. In Perth an easterly came off the desert, hot and unforgiving. The top deck of the cafe was a bit claustrophobic with undersized tables and chairs and a roof that sloped down to below head height at its lowest point. Both Cato and Buckley had to stoop when standing in that space. If he’d been green, Buckley would have been a dead ringer for Shrek having unknowingly wandered into the seven dwarves’ cottage.
‘Fine,’ said Buckley.
Cato took the hint. ‘Great,’ he said.
Buckley’s call to the Donizetti case officer in Perth had drawn a blank. No sightings: Donizetti had disappeared without a trace, bank account untouched, no credit card transactions, nothing. Suspicion initially fell on a boyfriend who had previous for domestic violence but, while he remained a person of interest, it was hard to pursue without a body and without any forensics pointing the finger. There had also been a spate of gay bashings in the area in previous weeks. Take your pick.
Meanwhile Greg Fisher had been a busy little bee: he’d got back to the old man at Starvation Bay who had insisted he’d slept through and hadn’t seen or heard anything to do with lights on the boat ramp and was sorry he couldn’t be of any more help. Fisher had also left requests with the harbourmasters at Adelaide, Esperance, Albany and Fremantle to check shipping through their ports in the last few days with any notifications of missing personnel. He’d been in touch with fishing cooperatives at key points east and west to check if any fishers were reported lost overboard and he was now out on the groyne chatting with boaties at the town ramp.
Buckley slurped his coffee. ‘Think this Indonesian is your man then?’
‘Maybe,’ Cato shrugged, not wanting the other to think he was getting too excited by the possibility.
‘Long shot if you ask me.’
‘Probably right,’ Cato said, screwing up his face after a mouthful of the brew. ‘Maybe we should go and say hello to Justin; he may be a skanky drug-pusher but he knows how to do coffee.’
Buckley brightened. ‘Well we do have unfinished business with him. You reckon he looked pretty relieved to see us go yesterday.’
Cato could tell that Buckley would be more than happy to be back on the kind of police work he understood. Hassling drugpushers, retrieving stolen tractors, anything was better than trying to put a name to a piece of rotting flotsam that probably fell off a foreign fishing boat. Out on the street Greg Fisher had finished talking to the boaties on the groyne. He gestured up towards their window, thumbs down, no luck there. Cato decided to give Buckley what he wanted.
‘Okay, take young Greg with you and have another chat with Justin. See if you can find out who or what he’s hiding from. But Jim...’ Buckley had started to rise and was stooped under the low ceiling, cigarette packet in hand, ‘no rough stuff, we don’t want to give Greg any bad habits, eh?’
Cato smiled; he’d meant it as a joke, male bonding and all that. Buckley produced half a smirk. ‘Reckon you’re the one to be giving advice about how to be a good cop?’
Cato stopped smiling.
The ranger put the outboard into reverse as he approached the cave. The ocean was fairly calm at this side of Quoin Head, a secluded bay about forty kilometres west of Hopetoun in the Fitzgerald River National Park. A jutting headland sheltered it from the strengthening easterly which was whipping up whitecaps further out to sea. His khaki park-ranger shirt was sodden from the sea spray he’d faced on the way out. The sea cave in the western side of the headland was about eight metres high and the same wide. He knew it went back about fifteen metres, gradually narrowing down to no more than the height and width of a child. And it was dark back there.
The report had come in from a fisherman the previous afternoon: something bobbing around the mouth of the cave, maybe a seal or a dog? The angler hadn’t gone down to investigate because the waves were building into kingies. Maybe the creature was injured by a shark, or tangled in a net or fishing line. Seal, schmeal, the ranger thought, they come, they go, they live, they die. But if it turned out to be someone’s pet dog or, heaven forbid, a person, then that was a whole different matter. Anyway it was his job to check it out and it wasn’t like he had much else on at the moment.
He flicked on his Dolphin torch, scanning the surface of the water as it lapped against the sides of the cave. The outboard chugged – he didn’t want the tinny to be caught on the treacherous rocks around the cave mouth; it could be a real pain in the arse sourcing new prop parts down here. Another quick scan and he’d be out of there.
Something shimmered in the torchlight against the mossy cave wall further back. It was too small to be a seal, or a dog, although it could possibly be part of one. He turned the outbo
ard off, allowing the boat to drift for a moment. He had a net attached to a two-metre pole but even at full stretch from the front of the dinghy he was still another two metres short of whatever it was. Outside the cave entrance the wind had moved south and conditions, even in the sheltered end of the bay, were chopping up. A wave surge sent the dinghy further into the darkness and clanging off a side wall. At full stretch out the front of the boat, he was bounced off a small jagged overhang. It scraped down the side of his face and hurt like hell.
‘Fuck.’
The curse rebounded all round the cave and out on to the blue waters of the bay. He was now much nearer to the object and he focused his flashlight on it.
‘Fuck,’ he said again. Quieter this time.
11
Friday, October 10th. Early afternoon.
‘Where’s Quoin Head?’ Cato asked Tess as they bumped westwards along the gravel road. The rugged rock-strewn Mount Barren reared up ahead to their right like it was auditioning for a location role in Lord of the Rings. It was somehow smaller close up than it seemed in the distance.
‘About forty kilometres inside the national park. Nice camping spot, when it’s not closed by bushfire or dieback,’ said Tess. ‘But we’re meeting our bloke, his name’s Steve Bell, at the ranger’s house just up here.’
Jim Buckley was crunched up in the back seat looking thoughtful. Apparently the visit to Justin Woodward had been unproductive, the Snak-Attack was closed and the proprietor hadn’t been at home. To their left, the wide sweep of blue foamy Southern Ocean and the hazy hint of some islands out on the edge of the known world. There were clouds out there too, a dark smudge on the distant horizon, but they looked like they would pass along the bottom of Australia and into the bight without troubling this stretch of coastline.
Tess turned left up a rough rutted driveway to a green wood and fibro house with a couple of sheds, a rainwater tank and a weather station on site. The view from the front porch was a million dollars, or probably more these days, across unspoilt low scrub to the ocean. The occasional royal hakea stood head and shoulders above the rest of the vegetation, lurid orange and red diamond-shaped wounds blistering the dark crusty skin. Spring had well and truly sprung and the air fairly hummed with its vibrations.
