Bad Seed

by Alan Carter

  ‘Can you state your name and occupation, please?’

  ‘Andrew Martin Crouch, police officer, retired.’

  They went through his CV, how long he’d served, in what capacities, any awards and commendations: establishing his authority, credentials, and utter trustworthiness. Crouchie had been in Kalgoorlie when Hutchens took the posting in Mundaring. What the hell would he know?

  Burke QC was so excited he seemed to be standing on tippy-toes. ‘You were a close friend and colleague of Detective Inspector Michael Hutchens, were you not?’

  ‘In some ways I considered myself his mentor. I took him under my wing. We worked very well together, particularly in the Armed Robbery Squad.’ Burke QC checked the dates and confirmed them with Crouch. ‘And then that squad was disbanded and you transferred to Kalgoorlie while Mr Hutchens went to Mundaring. Correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Why was the squad disbanded?’

  ‘Restructuring, happens all the time. Some of the top brass go off to do a management course one weekend at a country retreat and they come back and change the names of everything and move a few people around.’

  A chuckle of recognition went around the room like a polite Mexican wave. Burke QC allowed himself a smile to show he was human after all. ‘But the Armed Robbery Squad had been together a long time, getting results, knocking heads. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’

  ‘That’s a question for higher powers than me, mate.’

  Burke’s smile faltered. This was harder work than he’d imagined. He didn’t know Crouchie. Crouchie was his own man, would say what he wanted when he wanted, and have his bit of fun in the meantime. Hutchens sympathised with the QC on this one, he just wanted the tedious old fucker to get to the point.

  ‘Do you know of any other reason, apart from internal management processes, why the Armed Robbery Squad was disbanded?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crouch, enjoying a leisurely sip of water.

  Burke took a big impatient breath. ‘Then please do tell us.’

  ‘Okay.’ And he did. He told the inquiry all about the wheeling and dealing and consorting they had to do with scumbags to get intelligence, the pay-offs, the tip-offs, the biffo in the interview rooms, the fuck-ups, the protection of low-life informants to the detriment of public safety.

  ‘That’s appalling,’ said Burke QC. ‘How did you become aware of such things?’

  ‘I had a leadership role in the Squad,’ confessed Crouch. ‘I couldn’t help but be aware of some of it.’ Because you were doing your fair share, you hypocritical old git, thought Hutchens. ‘My only regret is that I didn’t do more to prevent it. It brings the whole service into disrepute. But peer pressure is a powerful thing.’

  ‘So you and Mr Hutchens parted company at that point, having had a successful partnership for nearly six years.’

  ‘Mick Hutchens was a rising star. I didn’t want to hold him back. My way of doing things wasn’t his.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘What I said. Different temperaments.’ For the first time Crouch allowed his eyes to meet Hutchens’. ‘Out with the old, in with the new.’

  No matter how much Burke QC pushed him to elaborate, he wouldn’t, but the damage was done. Crouch had said nothing and said everything. DI Mick Hutchens was a corrupt, corner-cutting thug. Hutchens felt his chest tighten again but he wasn’t going to let that sly old bastard see him reaching for the angina spray.

  Zac Harvey was swabbed and sent on his way with mother clicking along beside him in her heels. DC Thornton admired her departing figure.

  ‘I would,’ he said.

  ‘She wouldn’t,’ said Deb Hassan. ‘You’re too short for her.’

  Cato smothered a smile. ‘Make yourself useful, Chris. Get Harvey’s spit sent off to the lab.’ He saw DI Pavlou emerge from her office and head for the kettle. He joined her. ‘All well at HQ?’

  She spooned some coffee into a plunger. ‘Yes. Anything I need to know about?’ Cato brought her up to date. ‘The Harvey boy is obviously a waste of time,’ she said. ‘The priority remains the son and the business associate.’

  ‘So how is the Li inquiry progressing?’

  For a moment he thought she was about to tell him to mind his own business, but she didn’t. ‘Lara and James are following up on some matters now with Mike.’

  ‘Mike?’

  ‘Our man from the ACC.’

  Ah, Mystery Mike. ‘What are they up to then?’

  ‘Classified.’

  ‘Even for the 2IC on the investigation?’

  A thin smile. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Cato could feel one of his reckless surges coming on. ‘So Sumich and Maloney continue to do their own thing and report to you, even though they’re also seconded to my side of the investigation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Makes for a blurred chain of command doesn’t it?’

  ‘Are you questioning my management of this operation?’

  ‘Just seeking clarity.’

  ‘Everything clear now?’

  ‘Not yet but I’ll play it by ear.’

  ‘You do that.’ She poured some scalding water into the coffee pot and didn’t offer Cato any.

  ‘So when did you first become aware of Peter Sinclair and the allegations of abuse at the Hillsview Hostel, Mr Crouch?’

  ‘October twenty-first, nineteen ninety-seven.’

  ‘That’s very precise. How can you be so sure of that?’

  ‘It’s in my diary. Do you mind if I consult it?’

  Burke QC addressed the Inquiry chair. ‘Your honour I’ve taken the liberty of copying the salient entries from Mr Crouch’s diary. Are you happy for me to distribute these to the relevant parties? The original diary will of course be entered officially into the record.’

  The judge nodded his assent and copies were given out. Hutchens got one too.

  ‘Now Mr Crouch, can you read the entry you have for that day, Tuesday, October twenty-first, nineteen ninety-seven. The day before Mrs Ransley recalls that the warden, Peter Sinclair, went missing.’

  ‘Really?’ said Crouch. ‘Well there you go.’ He slipped on a pair of half-moon glasses. ‘Here it is. “Ten p.m.-ish. Call from MH. Pissed as usual. Reckons he’s killed some kiddie-fiddler from the Hills. Bullshit”.’

  Eyes turned Hutchens’ way.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was the purpose of you recording that particular diary entry, Mr Crouch?’

  A rueful shrug. ‘I was thinking of writing me memoirs. I was in the middle of a first draft. I’d taken to keeping a diary of my thoughts at the time. Nothing ever came of it, though.’

  ‘Never say die, it might have just assumed a new lease of life.’ Burke QC chortled, enjoying himself immensely. ‘And who do the initials “MH” refer to?’

  ‘Mick Hutchens. Him over there.’

  A few journos made hasty exits and the crowd did a dramatic hubbub.

  The judge adjourned the hearing and summoned Hutchens into his anteroom. ‘At this juncture you might want to consider legal representation, inspector.’

  ‘Fucking right, your honour,’ said Hutchens, shoving the angina spray up his nostril.

  9

  Cato took a call from Jane, his ex-wife and mother of their son, Jake, who had survived having a bocce ball bounced off his head at a very young age to develop into a handsome, confident fourteen year old halfway through year nine at John Curtin Senior High in Fremantle.

  ‘He doesn’t want to come over to yours this weekend.’

  ‘Oh. Something on?’

  ‘Nothing special. He just, quote, doesn’t feel like it, unquote.’

  Cato tried to keep the hurt out of his voice. ‘Fair enough. He didn’t feel able to call me himself, then?’

  ‘He’s fourteen. He wants us all to stop treating him like a kid except when it suits him. Put it down to hormones, I don’t think it’s personal or terminal.’
/>
  ‘Yeah,’ said Cato. ‘Probably right.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of news. I thought you should hear it from me, first.’

  Uh-oh. Cato steeled himself. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Simon and I are getting married.’ Simon, the hippy musician boyfriend.

  ‘Great,’ said Cato. ‘When’s the happy day?’

  ‘September fourteenth.’

  ‘Wow, that’s near. Keen, eh?’

  ‘There’s a reason. I’m pregnant.’ She laughed softly. ‘I’d like to do it before I start to show too much. Old-fashioned girl that I am.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Cato. ‘Really.’

  ‘Thanks. There’ll be an invite in the post. Plus a friend if you want.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘I’ll keep you updated about Jake, okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Cheers.’

  The call ended. Duration: one minute and fifty seconds. It had taken less than two minutes to turn his world upside down and leave him wondering if there was any point to this existence of his. Any fucking point at all.

  Hutchens got the Police Union lawyer to persuade the judge to adjourn for a week. Burke QC wasn’t too happy but to hell with him. The Police Union solicitor, a short motherly woman called Joan Peters, would read up on the story so far and have him in for a chat tomorrow. At this stage she had only two questions: did you phone Andy Crouch and did you kill the kiddie-fiddler?

  ‘Fucked if I know,’ he said.

  The truth was that both were a complete blank. In those years he was hitting the Jim Beam and Prozac pretty hard and he’d had a number of memory lapses and blackouts. He could have done anything. Maybe he should have kept a friggin’ diary like Crouch and his bastard ‘memoirs’.

  What he did remember, and what he knew was on record because he’d checked in preparation for this hearing, was that on Tuesday, October 21st, 1997 he’d been called out to an assault at the Mundaring Weir Hotel that early evening towards the end of his shift. He probably could have flick-passed it to someone else but he’d taken it. Some bloke had a broken stubby shoved in his face and the perp had legged it. It was all on CCTV and the barman knew who’d done it. They’d arrested the little prick at his mum’s place in Chidlow the following morning. But that Tuesday evening, after taking the statements and viewing the security footage, was a blank. His partner that night was a detective constable called Vesna who’d given the job up two years later to have kids and then subsequently died of breast cancer at the age of thirty-nine. He remembered he’d quite fancied her and possibly had made a clumsy drunken pass at her one time at a work do. He must have decided to stay on at the Mundaring hotel for a drink or two. In those days that would have extended to half a dozen more. There’d be no CCTV to prove it now but maybe the barman remembered him? Then Hutchens remembered something about the barman. He was a Pommie backpacker, long gone.

  Maybe if he thought about something else completely for a while, then some nugget might return. He had an adjournment for a week and could get stuck back into the nitty-gritty of the job. He took out his mobile and rang Cato.

  ‘Got a bit of blue sky in my schedule, mate. Anything I need to know?’

  Cato gave him the update but Hutchens found his attention wandering.

  Driving back down the freeway he switched on the radio, Classic Hits, to try and take his mind off things. It was Barbara Streisand, ‘The Way We Were’. Could it be that it was all so simple then? Before 9/11 and Tampa, before Facebook and fucking Twitter. In 1997 Howard was in, Keating was out. Keating: now there was a man who knew how to wield a good insult and still keep his eyes on the big picture; a professorial intellect with the pugilistic instincts of a street fighter. These days it was all the bloody flag; he said – she said; dumb and dumber. Kids in the playground.

  That next morning, arresting the prick in Chidlow. Why hadn’t they arrested him the previous night, straight away? By the time they finished with the statements they’d gone two hours over shift’s end. He’d probably had enough. Pass it over to the night crew, he’d have thought, get a few JBs down and unwind. And the night crew had failed to find the kid. That was it – he remembered now: next morning Hutchens showed up to work clean and without a hangover, he must have, otherwise Vesna would have got stuck into him and she didn’t. So he must have got home that previous night; slept, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth. He couldn’t check with Marjorie, they’d been going through a bad patch then and she often took the kids and stayed for weeks at her mum’s. The grog, the attitude, it gave her the shits. The disbanding of Armed Robbery had hit him hard, it was his niche, his reason for getting out of bed in the morning. It took him a year and a marriage ultimatum to get over it.

  Scattered pictures. So he’d turned up to work that day clean and sober for a change. In some ways that was even more of a worry. Something must have shaken him into caring about how he presented to others. What was it?

  Vesna had noticed something. Scraped raw knuckles and a graze on his chin. ‘Been fighting again?’

  ‘Nah. Ever tried opening one of those little plastic thimbles of milk?’

  ‘I’d stick to black coffee if I were you.’

  ‘I did, in the end.’

  What’s too painful to remember we simply smother with pills and booze. The song was getting to him, blurring his eyes, tightening his chest. He needed to get a grip and stop getting sentimental and soft. If he didn’t watch it he’d end up like Cato.

  Cato!

  Now there was a bloke with a brain. A lateral thinker, a left-field sort of bloke. All those cryptic crosswords and tinkling on the Joanna. A Keating without the uppercut. He’d definitely come up with something to get Hutchens out of this basket of shit. He wouldn’t be able to order Cato to do it though, like usual. It would have to be a favour. He’d have to ask him nicely. Woo the fucker.

  Perspective. Cato needed to put it all in perspective. His ex-wife was just getting on with her life and Jake was just being a selfish teenager. They weren’t doing this especially to make Cato feel bad, the world didn’t revolve around him. There. Better? Not really, he thought, but probably nearer the truth. He wasn’t sure which hurt more: Jane getting pregnant and remarrying, or Jake deciding he couldn’t be bothered to come over for the weekend. Maybe the fact that they hurt at all was evidence that he really needed to get a life. Yet another year had slipped by and he was still single, still alone. No surprises there. All he did was work or stay at home. He never went to the places nor did the things that might help him meet normal people. Why? Maybe it was fear of failure. Maybe it was denial, an unreal hope that magically he, Jane and Jake might one day be a family again.

  ‘Cato, mate. I want to invite you to dinner.’ Hutchens barged through Cato’s office door and plonked himself down in a spare chair, breathless and flushed.

  ‘What? Me? Dinner?’ Cato’s day was going from bad to catastrophic. He wondered what he’d done wrong this time. He racked his brain for a recent misdemeanour that might have been sackable.

  ‘Yeah. Curry or something? What do people like you eat?’

  ‘Chinese people?’ said Cato, bristling, wanting a fight with someone, anyone.

  ‘Nah, fuck that. Sensitive, thinking people.’

  This was too much. It really was. ‘Well, normal food I guess, like everybody else.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good steak, then?’

  ‘Fine. Sure. Whatever.’

  ‘Great. When suits?’ Hutchens seemed oblivious to Cato’s state of emotional turmoil.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s a date. The Dav okay with you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Cato wouldn’t have sworn to it but he had the unnerving impression that Hutchens was thinking about giving him a hug. He changed the subject. Work. That was it, bury it all in work. ‘You’ll be after an update.’

  ‘The Tans?’ said Hutchens, frowning in a show of concentration.

  Cato outlined the story so f
ar. The most promising bit seemed to be the rogue DNA in the master bedroom. Hutchens nodded in all the right places. Cato wanted to know why his boss was back in the game. ‘You mentioned blue sky in your schedule. Something happen at the Inquiry?’

  Hutchens clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll tell you all about it over a nice piece of Scotch fillet tomorrow, mate.’

  Cato couldn’t wait.

  10

  Friday, August 9th.

  Lara looked at the screen. The pulsing shifting shape. The life that was growing inside her. Mesmerising. She gripped John’s hand tighter as the ultrasound glided over her belly. The beeps and beats and the muffled roar. John seemed hypnotised too, eyes full with emotion even though he had been here before – he already had two kids from his first marriage. The one she broke up.

  ‘Do you want to know the sex?’ The technician seemed as excited as them, maybe it was part of her training.

  ‘No,’ said John.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lara.

  ‘So?’ said the technician, hand monitor hovering over the goo on Lara’s tummy.

  ‘I want to know,’ said Lara. ‘It just seems right.’ Her eyes searched John’s face. Farmer John. He’d given his gorgeous bulk over to her on demand that first night they met for a quiet drink. He’d taught her things, about the job. She’d taught him a few things too. But what surprised her was how quickly it had moved from just another conquest to something deeper. She loved him and it was mutual. They were head over heels, still, two years on, through the ugliness of his divorce, through the long antisocial hours of the job. He was a keeper. He’d given up on the undercover spook stuff and moved up the food chain. He was a nine-to-five desk jockey at Police HQ. He got his adrenalin from her now, he said, and he didn’t need the heroics anymore. She was the one keeping the shit hours and it was beginning to scare her. Could she have it all? The job she had coveted for so long, this man, this child? A family?