by Alan Carter
Steve Bell was already outside waiting for them, blood on his ranger shirt and matting his blond sideburns, a big elastoplast barely covering the scrape down the right side of his face. Otherwise he had that perennially fit, rugged and healthy look of the outdoors type. ‘It’s in there.’ He nodded towards an old rusty fridge up on the porch, the kind normally used to store beers and meat for the barbie.
Cato went up and opened the fridge door. There it was, the ‘Quoin Head head’. It was in the biggest freezer bag Bell’s wife had been able to find, he explained. She’d made herself scarce, it was nearly school’s-out time and she intended to keep the kids away until both the police and the head had gone. No offence.
‘None taken,’ Cato assured him.
The head lay sideways on the top shelf. The eyes were missing, hair black, or dark anyway. Nose, ears and lips had been fish-or crabnibbled and there was a strand of green mossy seaweed clinging to the chin. The head was male.
Jim Buckley peered over Cato’s shoulder. ‘Spitting image of you mate.’
Cato stared at the whiteboard in the Murder Room, at the name circled in the centre, Flipper. The head was on a flight to Perth to join the rest of the body. Both bits of Flipper had now moved a few steps up the priority ladder at the pathology lab and Cato had been told he could expect a preliminary report within forty-eight hours. That wasn’t quick enough for him but it would have to do. Buckley had been right, the head definitely looked of Chinese origin. It certainly didn’t look like Indonesian Navy Lieutenant Riri Yusala.
The only Chinese Cato had seen in the area had been the guy in the phone box on the main street on day one, and those working at the mine and getting into fights. Was that where he needed to look? Was that where he should have been looking all along? He reminded himself he’d only been in town for two days, although it felt longer. Nobody from the mine had reported anybody missing, but then again they hadn’t been asked. Or maybe they hadn’t even noticed. Apparently there were over two thousand people on site, most of them were fly-in fly-out, and that didn’t include the contractors and subcontractors.
Somebody coughed and he realised that they were all sitting there waiting for him to say something – Greg Fisher, Tess Maguire, Jim Buckley. Patiently hanging out for some words of wisdom from Sherlock fucking Kwong.
‘What now, Maestro?’ asked Buckley, as if reading his mind.
Buckley’s dig in the Taste of the Toun still rankled with Cato but only because, like all home truths, it was on target. He’d been busted for being lazy, sloppy, incompetent, arrogant and corrupt. He was a disgrace. Fair cop as they say. But how had it come to this? That first day on the detective squad: the try-hard handshakes, the surly nods and knowing looks. It wasn’t unanimous but it was certainly widely believed, Cato Kwong was the new golden boy. He was a protected species, the modern face of WA policing, the one on the recruitment poster. He wanted them to know he was a good cop and he would show them all. Was that when the self-delusion started, on day one as a detective? Did he in his own heart of hearts also believe he was a protected species?
He certainly seemed bulletproof in those first few months out of uniform. DI Mick Hutchens taking him under his wing, showing him how it was done. An early result on a string of home invasions, Mick Hutchens puffing his chest out modestly for the news crew and Cato Kwong in the background putting the cuffed prisoner into the car, dark blue detective’s bib proudly on display. Then a big hydroponic drugs bust: Cato Kwong gets the tip-off from suspicious neighbours and the Western Power electricity readout backs him up. This time Detective Senior Constable Philip Kwong gets to front the cameras and they like what they see.
Then one chill winter’s morning, a Cockburn newsagent, Maria Lazzara, is found with her head smashed and the cash till empty. An opportunistic, tacky low-rent robbery accompanied by a savage bashing with a blunt instrument wielded by somebody who obviously had a taste for it. Fremantle Detectives caught the case, DI Mick Hutchens leading the investigation. Cato Kwong was put in charge of collating the handful of witness statements. The first was a nurse in a taxi on her way to the early shift at Freo Hospital. The cab stops at traffic lights and through the cold dawn drizzle she notices lights on in the shop and a man there: stocky, medium height and reddish hair. Why did she notice him? Something a bit scruffy about him and not quite right; he didn’t seem like he belonged. Another witness, a student teacher on a moped, had to brake suddenly and nearly came off in the slippery conditions. A man had run out into the road in front of her: medium height, stocky build, reddish hair. It was just around the corner from the newsagent’s. The timing corresponded. By late morning they had their man: Peter Beaton – a tall, thin rangy alcoholic no-hoper with a spider web tattoo on his neck and a record for opportunistic, tacky low-rent robberies. He had been picked up by a patrol who’d noticed him acting suspiciously. Beaton was just four streets away from the murder scene. Mick Hutchens and another senior detective went to work on him. After two days they had a confession. Nine months later a jury put him away for life.
How early did Cato Kwong know it was all bullshit? When the coalition of pushy journos and do-gooders secured an appeal for Peter Beaton after eight years of incarceration? Or was it when DI Hutchens pulled him to one side half an hour after the confession was signed and mentioned a couple of anomalies that needed straightening out? Like what? Like our man is tall, skinny, with darkish hair and a big fucking spider’s web tattoo on his neck that nobody seems to have noticed, not medium height with reddish hair like the witnesses are saying. No worries. Cato Kwong was Mr Can-Do. The nurse in the taxi was contacted. She knew the score, been out with a few cops in her time. Yes, maybe the man she saw at a distance of thirty metres through the dawn drizzle was actually stooped over, that may account for the height thing. Pretty sure the hair was reddish though but yes it did all happen a bit quickly. Maybe darkish-reddish? The student teacher was pretty adamant that he was medium height, stocky build and reddish hair. She was up close and personal and he nearly made her come off her bike. She wasn’t changing her statement.
Hutchens and Cato considered the matter. Maybe it was someone else who just happened to be in the area. Maybe best not to call her as a witness, bury the statement and just use the nurse and the confession instead. Maybe Detective Senior Constable Philip Kwong began to think right then that it was bullshit. If so he did nothing about it. Peter Beaton had put his hand up and now he was locked up. Case closed. Cato Kwong’s star continued to rise and before long he was a detective sergeant with his eye on Mick Hutchens’ job.
Over the years the ‘Free Beaton’ campaign intensified. They found an independent pathology expert who showed that the wounds inflicted on Maria Lazzara could not have been left by the weapon described in the confession. The shape and indentations were wrong. Hutchens had fumed. ‘Wounds? Indentations? What the fuck would they know? Strawberry jam is fucking strawberry jam.’
An independent cold-case team is brought in to review the evidence. They concur with the expert on the murder weapon. They raise an eyebrow at the witness statements, particularly the one from the student teacher filed at the back and never produced in court. Then they run the scene fingerprints through the new whizbang computer. Bingo, a match on a known thug serving time in Bunbury Regional Prison for another opportunistic and tacky lowrent robbery, with violence. Medium height. Stocky build. Reddish hair. Peter Beaton, the very first murderer Cato Kwong helped put away, was the wrong man. Shit meets fan. Heads must roll but the only clear concrete breach of protocol, the paper trail, the smoking gun, could be traced to Detective Sergeant Philip Kwong. Golden Boy. Protected Species. Those at the top of the food chain get a disapproving shake of the head and the dreaded tsk-tsk but they get to stay on the path to greatness. DI Mick Hutchens is invited to consider early retirement but digs his heels in and tells them to get fucked. He’s moved to Albany instead. Cato Kwong, no longer on the protected species list, gets demoted and sent to Stock Squad in the si
ncere hope that he’ll get the hint and quietly slip away into oblivion, career effectively over. He’d known for a long time now: it was a career founded on self-delusion and bullshit. Stock Squad was exactly the right place for him.
‘Maestro?’ Jim Buckley repeated.
Cato shook himself back through the time warp. ‘The mine, the contractors, the subcontractors – we want a list of all Chinese nationals or Chinese-Australians on their books. Then we do a rollcall. Second thoughts, just get the full list of all employees from them. We’re not just looking for a victim here, we’ll also be looking for a perpetrator.’
Greg Fisher put up his hand like he was at school, then realised what he was doing and put it down again.
‘It’s not just the mine...’ All faces turned towards Fisher and he blushed, bless him. ‘There’s a general labour shortage around here. The mine is sucking up any spare skilled labour so they’re bringing in guest workers for construction, for plumbing, electrics, earthmoving, you name it.’
Cato nodded in agreement. ‘Fair enough. Widen it, the building firm and contractors on the new housing estate, et cetera. You and Tess know the scene and the people better than we do. Can you do that Greg, Tess?’ More nods. Cato looked over at Buckley. ‘And we’ll take that tour of the mine.’
Tess scanned the list provided to her by one of the bigger mine contractors, Dunstan Construction Industries in Ravensthorpe. There were about twenty Chinese-looking names on the list, all accounted for at this stage. They’d all been paid yesterday and signed receipts to that effect. Tess and Greg were on their way back to Hopetoun to call on a smaller contractor supplying labour to the surrounding housing developments. The sun was dropping over to the west, the Barren Ranges lying on the horizon like a huge black sleeping dog. Friday afternoon. The pub would be starting to fill up. Her normal job would occupy her fully tonight: drunks in the pub, same as it ever was.
Tess felt her chest tighten, her stomach knot. On the list in front of her, a third of the way down, sandwiched between Kyle Dixon and Frank Duncan. John Djukic. Employed driving a water-truck at the mine. There he was, the man who’d tried to kick her to death and got away with it. According to the roster Johnno Djukic was commuting from Esperance, five days on four days off, and living part-time in a donga at the mine site village. Djukic: ginger mullet and coal-black eyes, bastard offspring of an alcoholic Scottish mother and a foul-tempered Serbian father. Ending up with the worst of all their genes. Djukic winking, grinning and blowing her kisses across the courtroom while his lawyer weaved a tale of chaos and confusion surrounding the events in the Karratha Hotel. Creating enough reasonable doubt to let Djukic walk free.
By the time the verdict came in she’d had her own doubts. Was it really him in the centre of the melee stomping and kicking her like it was personal? She knew there were others but she hadn’t been able to identify them and that was part of the problem. ‘Did she have something against gingers?’ his lawyer had joked. Her young colleague Pete Latham had been invalided out of the force with half an ear bitten off, a fractured eye socket and partial loss of sight in the left eye. His career over before it really began. Johnno Djukic. Had he really tried to kill her? As far as Tess was concerned the answer was still yes.
‘What’s the matter?’ It was Greg Fisher, in the driving seat, looking scared.
‘What?’
‘You’re ... are you crying?’
She hadn’t even realised she was. ‘It’s nothing. Focus on the driving.’
‘Sure, boss. Sorry.’
Tess wiped her face, and kept on scanning the list. John Djukic was on a four-day break. He was due back on Monday. Three days’ time.
‘Bloody big,’ Buckley agreed.
‘State of the art,’ Bruce Yelland informed them with a proud sweep of the arm.
‘Hole in the ground,’ Cato was thinking to himself.
The sun clipped the summit of Mount Barren. The dark clouds that he earlier thought would pass safely to the south had crept up behind the ranges and now boiled with the storm they carried within. Inky-purple cumulonimbus bubbled with pinks, oranges, greys and blues. The wind occasionally swelled into gusts that slapped the ute side-on. It was late in the day and extremely short notice, big boss Marnus van der Kuyp had pointed out through a fixed smile, but he was sure he could rustle something up. Yelland had been pulled out of a mine crisis-planning meeting to do the honours. No, he informed Cato tersely, holding on to his civil tongue like the true pro he was, they weren’t actually planning to have a crisis. Cato was none the wiser. The tour would be the severely abridged version. Cato and Buckley let Bruce Yelland know they were duly appreciative.
Van der Kuyp had already instructed Human Resources to provide a list of all Western Minerals on-site and fly-in fly-out employees on the understanding that the list would be treated with confidentiality and employee privacy in mind. Cato had nodded and smiled that he understood, which wasn’t the same as agreeing to comply. The tour was an optional extra, not immediately germane – that word again – to the investigation but Cato was beginning to get a gut feeling that the mine was central to uncovering what had happened to Flipper. The severely abridged version of the tour would suit him fine, for now. He just wanted to get his head around what was going on in this bloody big state-of-the-art hole in the ground. And whether it might have cost a man his life.
A huge three-hundred-tonne yellow tip truck rumbled past them in a dust cloud, a kids’ Tonka toy on steroids. Bruce Yelland nodded towards it, uncurling a finger from the steering wheel in casual greeting. ‘In its raw form the nickel in there is worth about twenty thousand dollars a tonne. In simplistic terms, and leaving out the processing and refining stages, each container on each roadtrain taking the nickel from here to Esperance port is worth about a quarter of a million. That’s just one container on one day. Do the sums for a week, a month, a year.’
As far as Cato was concerned it was Monopoly money, currency of la-la land, too big to comprehend. It was those meaningless graphs and charts at the end of the evening news, when you’re putting the kettle on before coming back for something that makes more sense, like the sport and the weather. Except those graphs and charts had all been pointing south the last few weeks while the experts slaughtered chickens, scrutinised their innards and confidently predicted financial apocalypse. Yelland obviously knew the apocalypse was meant for everyone everywhere else.
‘This is a fifty-year mine. It cost two billion dollars to establish. That means Western Minerals Group is here for the long haul. Hopetoun’s days as a collection of fishing shacks are well and truly over.’
‘So the odd body here and there isn’t likely to get in the way of business then?’ Cato commented, not really expecting an answer.
Yelland shrugged, he didn’t seem too sure of the point of the question. ‘We’ve got mines all over the world. Africa, North and South America, Asia, you name it. Of course we care about our employees and we always aim to do the best by them. But this is the real world, the show must go on. Death? All part of the circle of life, I think someone once said.’
‘Simba,’ said Jim Buckley.
‘What?’ Both Cato and Yelland turned to look at him.
‘The Lion King,’ he announced confidently.
Detective Tim Delaney didn’t return Stuart Miller’s messages or texts until close of business. Miller was nearly climbing the walls with frustration by the time the call came through. Delaney sounded far away and on the edge of mobile reception; he quickly got to the point.
‘Why the interest in her?’
‘The paper said she was the last to see Chapman; she gave you your photofit. So who is she, how does she know him, and how come you know her?’
‘Stuart, are you playing games with me?’
‘What?’
Miller didn’t have a clue what he was on about but something had suddenly shifted and he needed to grab it before it slipped away again. He made a stab in the dark.
‘S
he’s the one that got away. When you dusted off the cold-case files a few weeks ago you finally got around to checking MOs in other states’ crime lists. It’s the kind of information resource and cooperation that didn’t really exist back in 1981, not in a big way anyway. The best you were hoping for was another body but you hit jackpot – a survivor.’
‘How long have you known?’
Well he’d had all afternoon to brood and speculate but it was about thirty seconds, truth be told. Instead he enigmatically said, ‘I’ve got my contacts.’
‘You didn’t mention them before. Stuart I don’t need to be telling a man with your experience that this isn’t a game.’
That’s progress, thought Miller, he was no longer a silly old codger, he was ‘a man with experience’, even if he was making it up as he went along.
Delaney seemed to come to a decision.
‘We’re chasing our arses from Pannawonica to Paraburdoo up here...’ Hence the distant drop-out quality of the call, Miller realised, ‘and you’re going to stick your nose into this whatever I say, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So let’s agree to go sharesies. If you come up with anything let me know first, okay?’
Miller nodded but if Delaney couldn’t see it down the phone then maybe it didn’t count. ‘I need a name and a current contact number for her, the survivor.’
‘Too late, she’s dead.’
Miller gripped the phone tighter. ‘When? How?’
‘Eight years ago. Topped herself.’
‘So where did you get the photofit from?’
‘She gave one to Bunbury Detectives at the time. We’ve enhanced it. We decided to keep her death out of the papers so it wouldn’t muddy the waters.’
Miller rubbed at his temples, trying to get a grasp on his thoughts. ‘Any relatives?’
