Prime Cut

by Alan Carter

  Jenny had taken the call late last night, Sunday. It was from her nephew Tony, Jim Buckley’s eldest. Apparently it had taken them the whole weekend to recover enough from their news to remember to phone their Auntie Jenny. Just in case she wanted to know, Tony had said. No wonder Jim hadn’t been answering his phone and text messages. The funeral was a few days off yet. At this point they hadn’t even released Jim’s body. Apparently it had happened very late Friday night or very early Saturday morning. Miller already knew it to be the latter. Jim had been talking to him on the phone at just after midnight; voice slurred, wind noise in the background, and water. Waves? How much longer did he have to live then? A minute? An hour?

  Miller started the car, a new model Statesman, and pulled out of the motel car park. He headed for where he thought the sea might be. Opposite the pub he could see and hear waves breaking on the beach, a milky-white froth in the moonlight. Off left from the main street, the slip-road led down to a wide groyne lit at the far end by a single lamppost. The pub looked empty, on the verge of closing. The lights were off in the cafe next door. He drove on to the groyne, crunching across the rutted, potholed gravel, and came to a stop under the light near the small wooden jetty.

  He knew he’d agreed to pass on any developments to Detective Tim Delaney but somehow he hadn’t got around to it yet. He felt a tad guilty, particularly as Delaney had come good and phoned through with an answer to something that had been nagging him. How Arthurs, a simple shipyard worker from Sunderland, had managed to get a new ID to travel abroad. Delaney had the Immigration Department run a check on incoming passengers circa 1973. No computerisation back then but a visa record in Sydney did flag an overstayer. Andrew Arthurs, Sunderland, UK. Davey’s younger brother, same height and as alike as made no difference. Davey had used his little brother’s passport, simple.

  ‘So he’s not The Jackal,’ said Delaney. ‘He’s just a nasty, scabby, opportunistic little mongrel.’

  ‘True enough,’ Miller had concurred, ‘but both still have a lot of animal cunning.’

  Would he ever let Delaney know he had a red hot lead on the south coast? Maybe. Maybe not. Miller still harboured the fantasy of bringing Arthurs in, the Mountie getting his man. He reclined his seat, grabbed his jacket from the back as a makeshift blanket, and tried to sleep.

  Cato Kwong knew he probably shouldn’t be doing this, but he couldn’t sleep and the urge was too strong. The town hall Major Incident Room, as it was now called, stood squat, silent, and dark. Thin moonlight filtered through the roadside gums and a soft breeze tugged at their leaves. There was not a soul about. Cato slid a key into the lock on the flimsy plywood door and turned the handle. It was a spare that McGowan, as part of the official team, had been issued. On the drive back from Ravensthorpe, Cato convinced him he’d left his own official-issue key at the lockup and just wanted to access the database to check something out. The younger man had yawned, accepted the lie, and handed over the key.

  The door opened with a rusty squeak, he left the lights off. He knew where he was going and made immediately for the far corner of the hall. He sat down on the stool and lifted the lid. The peeling white gloss coat on the old upright piano seemed to glow in the moonlight beaming through the windows. Cato pressed down on the pedals; the left one was particularly stiff. He ran his fingers up and down the keyboard. Most of the lower register was out of tune. That would make for a very dodgy left-hand arpeggio.

  He started playing – Chopin’s Nocturne in B-Flat Minor, Opus 9, Number 1. It was one of his three selected pieces for the performance exam he sat when he was fifteen, still young enough to be a child prodigy although pushing it a bit. The other two were Bartok’s gypsy songs and a Schubert impromptu. But the Chopin was his favourite: haunting, melancholic and passionate, according to his piano teacher Miss Grabowski who, to her eternal chagrin, was born a hundred years too late and lived in Fremantle instead of Warsaw. She was old-school and spat derisively when he mentioned that most of his little friends were learning by the Suzuki method.

  ‘We are artistes, Philip; we don’t do painting by numbers here.’

  After five years with her, his knees had grown hairy, his thighs muscular, his hands big yet still nimble enough to skip through the cantilena.

  He played it now, cascading down through the keys. After tripping over it so many times and with Miss Grabowski’s trembling hand lingering on his to guide him, she had finally announced one day, with perspiration on her upper lip and an accent she’d conjured from her family tree, ‘You are ready.’

  But in the examination room under the steely gaze of the Board he realised he wasn’t. He froze. So many of his ‘little friends’ in their Suzuki classes had sailed through this moment because regular performances before an audience were a staple of their teaching. He stumbled over the Chopin cantilena and killed his child-prodigy prospects stone dead. Humiliated, head boiling and eyes brimming, he’d stormed out of the examination room and flung his music books into the nearest bin. Out on the street the first thing he saw was two cops chasing a young guy down the road before beating the crap out of him in broad daylight. That’s when Philip Kwong realised what he wanted to do with his life.

  It had taken a long time for him to retrieve the joy of playing piano for himself, the calming meditative pleasure. And he’d since learned that there was more to policing than what he’d witnessed after his piano exam. Failed child prodigy, failed police poster boy and failed ace detective. He brought the nocturne to a close with a clunk on the off-key low notes. Cato Kwong was relatively calm and at peace with the world. The applause from the shadows scared the living daylights out of him. Lara Sumich sauntered through a shaft of moonlight with a playful half-smile and sat down on the stool next to him.

  ‘Bravo,’ she whispered.

  Her shoulder brushed his, so did her hip, thigh, and knee. Her perfume was discreet, musky and probably very expensive. The moonlight on her neck revealed a sheen of perspiration. Come to think of it the temperature did seem to have risen a touch.

  ‘How’s the case going?’ she inquired casually.

  ‘I’m thinking of finding a proper job. Maybe Cato the Carpenter.’

  ‘Elder or Younger?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Isn’t that where you got it from? The ancient Roman lawmaker? I can’t remember whether it was Cato the Elder or Younger but one of them was a byword for incorruptibility.’

  ‘That education of yours was worth every cent.’

  Lara pursed her lips. ‘Mind you he was also known as an uptight, austere bigot.’

  ‘That’s sounding more like me I must admit.’

  Lara tinkled a couple of bars from ‘Für Elise’.

  ‘Fancy a duet?’

  They played a rollicking plinking-plonking exuberant round of ‘Chopsticks’ before collapsing into adolescent giggles. Then, with the echoes still dying around the old gyprock walls, Lara placed her hand high on Cato Kwong’s thigh and planted a long wet kiss hard on his mouth, allowing her fingers to flutter across his zipper as she broke contact.

  ‘Good night, Detective Kwong.’

  And she was gone, leaving him flushed, flustered and with a throbbing groin. It wasn’t until later that he realised he’d neglected to ask her what the hell she was doing there at that time of night anyway.

  Tess Maguire was halfway through a bottle of gin, Mother’s Ruin some called it. Melissa hadn’t come out of her room, the offer of dinner was ignored. Tess had left her own plate pretty well untouched too. It sat there in the middle of the kitchen table, pasta shells doused unceremoniously with a jar of ready-made bolognaise sauce, congealing now under a sixty-watt bulb. It was dark outside, still and cool, a cloudless night with millions of stars.

  The radio murmured low in the background, a late-night talk show discussing the global financial meltdown and when and if it was going to wash up on the shores of this wide brown land. Given the so-called turmoil, the voices were calm and reasonable, verging
on the soporific. Tess had been dwelling on her own personal meltdown and was contemplating possible remedies. There they stood lined up on the table ready for inspection. Sleeping tablets, tranquillisers, antidepressants. Up. Down. Up. Down. The doctor had prescribed like he owned the pill company. None of it had worked. None of those pills had managed to purge Johnno Djukic from her system. Tess Maguire unscrewed the caps, one by one, spilling the contents out onto the table in front of her and mixing them up like Scrabble tiles.

  22

  Tuesday, October 14th. Early morning.

  ‘Bullshit.’

  That was DI Mick Hutchens’ succinct reaction to the news that Hai Chen’s body had disappeared into thin air according to Guan Yu. Cato Kwong flipped his palms upwards; he had run out of answers. In fact, he was running out of questions too. His brain felt like it was coated in sump oil. They were at Hutchens’ desk in the town hall. The sun was just up, bursting over the treetops. Outside there were hammerings, rattlings and cursings as the Mobile Command Centre was being lowered from the trailer to its new home in the town hall car park. The way things were going there was every chance that both murders would be solved before it was ever open for business.

  ‘Dead set, that’s what he’s saying.’ Cato was standing up, too tense to sit. He hovered near the dusty old upright piano and lifted the lid to glance abstractedly at the yellowing ivories and the hot, troubling mental snapshot of his midnight tryst with Lara Sumich.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Hutchens repeated. ‘Keep at him. He’s spinning a line.’

  ‘Why? He’s already admitting to murder. What’s to be gained from disowning the body?’

  ‘Fuck knows how his mind works but stick with him. We want his whole story to fit, right through to the lump of meat on the beach.’

  Cato sighed and nodded. He took a swig of coffee, and relished the rich smooth taste. The Major Incident Room was now equipped with a plunger and several bags of boomtown-priced Brazilian blend from the general store. Things were looking up but what they really needed, thought Cato, was for Justin Woodward to be out of the frame for Buckley’s murder so the bloke could get back to doing what he did best, strong flat white. With his free hand Cato tinkled a two-fingered version of the opening bars of ‘I don’t like Mondays’, The Boomtown Rats.

  Hutchens was impressed. ‘Good job it’s Tuesday. Didn’t know you played piano.’

  ‘Chinese,’ Cato pointed to his own face. ‘So, where are you at with Woodward?’

  An upward twist at the corner of Hutchens’ mouth. ‘The drug traces in the coffee van, confirmed as eckies and ice.’

  Cato whistled. ‘Nice. Anything else?’

  Hutchens shook his head. ‘We’re trawling the phone records, bank accounts, witness statements. Talking to intelligence in Perth about any whispers on Woodward.’

  Or Jim Buckley, thought Cato, loath to speak ill of the dead. But he voiced his thoughts anyway. Hutchens met his eye.

  ‘Yes. That too.’

  Lara Sumich appeared in the doorway, bright-eyed and bushytailed. ‘This private?’

  ‘No,’ they said in choirboy unison.

  She graced them both with a smile, throwing in a free iris-flare for Cato, and strode across to the small kitchen at the back of the hall, footsteps echoing on the jarrah floorboards. She flicked on the kettle and dropped a tea bag into a cup, Hutchens enjoying her every move, Cato idly watching Hutchens and waiting for his blood to subside. What was he these days, fifteen? He needed to get a grip; he was technically old enough to be her father.

  He ahemmed to get Hutchens’ attention. ‘I’ll get on up to Ravensthorpe. Any chance of any forensics on Hai Chen’s stuff today? Something to keep us ticking over?’

  Cato inwardly winced at the almost pleading tone he’d adopted. Hutchens had already moved on from Flipper, his mind was probably on Lara, or the Buckley case, or plotting his next career move.

  ‘I’ll talk to Duncan, I’ll get him to call you.’

  Mark McGowan hovered at the door, recently showered and shaved. He lifted his chin in Cato’s direction. ‘Ready to put the screws on Mr Yu?’

  ‘Mum. Wake up.’

  Tess Maguire stirred and opened one eye. She’d fallen asleep in the armchair and her neck had seized up, leaving her head to one side with the chin slightly raised like she was deep in thought.

  ‘Mum.’ Melissa’s voice; a bit more urgent, a hint of panic.

  Tess’s temples throbbed and her neck felt like it was encased in freshly poured concrete. Then there was her stomach. She lurched out of the chair, dizzy with the pain of the hangover, rushed to the toilet and chucked her guts up. She was there seven long minutes until her belly was empty and only bitter bile remained. That and the thumping migraine.

  ‘Disgusting,’ Melissa sniffed, handing her mother a cup of tea.

  Tess eyed the tea suspiciously, then decided she had nothing to lose. It tasted wonderful.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ she croaked.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

  ‘I’m on stress leave.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Tess mustered a smile: Melissa, a sharp answer for everything, wonder where she got that from? She looked outside, it was shaping up as a glorious spring day.

  ‘Fancy a swim?’

  Melissa shook her head. ‘No. Thought I’d have a shower. Maybe clean my room. Go for a walk.’

  Tess nodded slowly. ‘Want company?’

  ‘No. Not right now. Thanks.’

  Melissa looked like she was about to say something else. Tess waited for it, Melissa obliged.

  ‘I thought I was meant to be the reckless out-of-control one around here.’

  Told, by a fourteen year old. The upside was it was the longest conversation they’d had in weeks.

  A rap on the windscreen. ‘Mate, wake up. You okay in there?’

  Stuart Miller snapped his eyes open and jerked upright. A spasm shot down his neck and along his right shoulder from cramped and seized-up muscles. Miller wound down his window, squinted and smiled at the concerned, weather-beaten face bent towards him.

  ‘Yeah, thanks...’ Miller thumbed over his shoulder back towards town, ‘no room at the inn. I arrived late.’

  The fisherman grinned and gave him a relieved thumbs-up. ‘No worries, thought you might be another dead’un. Dropping like flies around here.’

  Miller wiped some sleep dribble off his chin and pretended ignorance. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A cop murdered, right here. At the weekend.’

  ‘Jeez,’ Miller whistled and shook his head. ‘Did they get the bloke that did it?’

  ‘Nothing announced but I heard they lifted somebody on Sunday. Drugs they reckon: a Colombian syndicate. Probably supplying the miners.’ He nodded sagely then stuck his hand through the open window. ‘Davo.’

  ‘Stuart.’

  They shook.

  Miller cocked his head, he couldn’t do much else, it seemed to be stuck in that position. ‘You said, dropping like flies, sounds like more than one?’

  ‘Yeah, a few days before that, a body on the beach. Well, bits of one apparently. No head they say.’ Davo grimaced.

  ‘Are the two cases connected?’ Miller pulled the lever to bring his seat upright.

  ‘Who knows?’ Davo patted the side of his nose with his index finger. ‘This town has gone to the dogs since that mine opened. Anyway, need to see if those fish are biting. Glad you’re not another dead’un. Catch ya later.’ Davo waved ta-ta and strolled down to the end of the jetty, unfolded his chair, and opened his tackle box.

  Stuart Miller yawned, stretched, cracked a few vertebrae and started the car. The sun was up and the ocean was calm and blue. It was already shaping up to be a lovely day in Hopetoun. Miller’s stomach rumbled; he went in search of breakfast.

  Tess Maguire reached forward, clawing the water and dragging it back before lifting her elbow high for the next lazy long stroke. The ocean was crystal clear, bracingly c
ool and flat as a sheet of glass. There was not a breath of wind. The sun glinted through the droplets from each stroke, dripping diamonds. All you could hear was the movement and splash of water made by one person – her. Under the surface, clumps of brown weed hovered above the sand, a curtain of tiny baitfish lifted and parted, terrorised by a gang of herring. Tess focused on her stroke, cupping the water and drawing back, kick regular but strong. She had the beach to herself. Hugging the shoreline, she headed west from the groyne over towards the boat ramp with the pontoons floating twenty metres out to her left. Ahead in the far distance, Mount Barren and the hills of the national park as clear and sharp as a photograph. Something stirred and lifted in the sand ahead of her, a stingray, maybe a metre wide. Black wings and a whip-like tail flicking as it glided away out to the depths.

  Another movement, a darting shadow over to her left in the deeper water. Was it still the stingray? Her heart raced. It was less than a week since a pair of sharks had deposited Flipper in the shallows on the far side of the groyne. Even though he now apparently had a name, it was Flipper that stuck. There it was again, over to her right this time. Tess stopped, trod water, and looked around. What did they always say? You never see the one that gets you. Why did every moment of beauty in this place seem to come with an edge of terror? There, again, in front this time, coming her way. It swam into clear vision before her, a baby sea lion, sleek, fawn, with deep, darkbrown patches. Consummately graceful under the water, it darted around behind Tess and then appeared right under her, swimming in the same direction. It turned on its back, still swimming along and now looking directly up at her. The bugger was smiling. Tess snorted and laughed, swallowing seawater, coughing, spluttering and laughing some more. She was back in her own depth now. Planting her feet in the sand but keeping her head under water she followed the sea lion’s movements as it darted here and there and round and round while she blubbed her heart out.