by Alan Carter
Soon after Sinclair’s disappearance in late October 1997, Mundine returned to the family home. Mum had been out of Bandyup a good six months already but expressed an inability to cope and asked if the authorities could hold on to David a little while longer until she was ready. David, meanwhile, was completing an anger management course at the hostel. By early November, Hillsview had more than enough problems of its own and sent fourteen year old David home to Mum, ready or not. It took less than a month for the boy to reappear before yet another juvenile justice team. This time he’d used his recently acquired height and bulk to menace money out of a younger kid at school. Several times. The menaces had been not only violent but also sexual in nature and had involved inappropriate touching to illustrate his point. David was transferred to another school and ordered to attend yet another round of counselling sessions. He never showed up at the new school or the counselling sessions and, from what Hutchens could make of the records, nobody bothered to follow it up.
More charges. More recommendations for counselling. More absences. Some time in Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre at the age of sixteen where he kept his nose clean and kept out of trouble. The next ten years or so were peppered with more petty drug and alcohol offences, dishonesty convictions, assaults and some vandalism, his charge sheet looking very similar to his mother’s before him. Two years ago a violence restraining order had been taken out on him by a de facto, Lisa Gangemi. It had since expired.
Mundine presented as a Class-A pathetic fuck-up, more a victim than a perpetrator. But there were clues to his more proactive potential. The extortion with menaces at high school and the more recent VRO suggested a very different temperament from his Inquiry persona of Little Davey the Victim. Hutchens went through the database and put together a TO DO list.
Reviewing the evidence, Cato was satisfied that Yu Guangming played a central role in the murders of the Tan family and had almost convinced himself that the business connections to Des O’Neill were little more than a distracting ‘look over there’ from the wily Thomas Li. Almost. He was also pretty much satisfied that Matthew Tan was not in the frame, based on his convincing display on the news of the murders, on his alibis, and on the lack of any compelling forensic evidence. Pretty much. Maybe the stowaway was just some street kid messing about, or he’d found a nice warm spot for a sleep and wasn’t expecting to wake up in transit somewhere. Maybe.
His phone rang. It was Jane.
‘Is Jake with you?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I just found a message from the school on my phone. They say he didn’t turn up today.’
‘You’ve tried his phone?’
‘Yes, of course I have. No answer.’
‘How have things been?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Before I went away, he came over. Said he wanted to come and live with me. Things didn’t seem to be going too well.’
‘When was this?’
‘Over a week ago. I left messages but I was going to call you to talk about it properly. I forgot. Work and that.’
‘Work and that,’ she repeated icily. ‘What else did he say?’
‘Not much more. He said Simon had been getting at him about his mates. Do you know what that’s about?’
‘Simon reckons some of his mates are deadbeats, probably on the dope like a lot of kids their age. He’s been around. He can spot them a mile off.’
‘So, what do you think?’
‘I think I’m doing the best I possibly can to hold some bloody family life together.’ An exasperated sigh. ‘Give me a call if or when your son gets in touch.’ The line went dead.
Cato tried Jake’s mobile. No answer. He sent him a text. Call me. Dad.
Call me Dad. After missing out on a huge chunk of Jake’s formative years due to his obsession with work, Cato believed he had found some connection with his son. Now it seemed to be slipping away again. Was he to blame? Probably. Should he be worried? Worst case scenario, the boy was shooting up in a crack den and about to go and bludge a pensioner to death. Or he was at his mate’s listening to rap music and doing a couple of bongs. Neither option appealed to Cato but he had to try and maintain some perspective. And short of suspending his day and sending out a search party, he had little choice.
Outside it had clouded over again but they didn’t look like rain clouds. He ventured out for some late lunch, treating himself to a seafood laksa down the road at Café 55. On the way he tried phoning his sister to organise a Dad visit. No answer, so he left a message. Café 55 was crowded as usual but he found a perch on a stool facing a wall festooned with posters for upcoming cultural events around Fremantle. Nearby there was an abandoned West and a virgin cryptic. He clicked his biro in readiness.
Dishonest stock-taker. Six and seven. The laksa arrived and he made space for it on the narrow counter. Cattle rustler.
Imagine one less mix up to a mystery. Enigma.
Cato decided that he was sick of carrying passengers. Michael the mystery ACC man needed to start earning his keep. He put in a call then got stuck into his laksa. It was delicious.
Hutchens lifted all the virtual rocks in the database and peered beneath, but Lisa Gangemi was nowhere to be found. She’d dropped off the face of the earth, or at least the immediate public record. David Mundine’s mum was easier. She was back in Bandyup. But it would still be highly irregular for Hutchens to approach her. Luck, however, moves in mysterious ways. Hutchens put in a call to Cato.
‘Got anything on?’
There was hubbub in the background. ‘The remains of a laksa and Pavlou’s report so she can be on her merry way by day’s end.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Hutchens. ‘Got time for a trip to Bandyup?’
‘Why?’
‘The mannequin upskirter we pulled in week before last?’
‘Yes?’
‘Possibly part of a disturbing pattern.’
‘Serious?’
‘Am I ever not?’
They opted for South and Roe to take them out and around the urban sprawl and north to Bandyup Women’s Prison. Hutchens filled Cato in en route.
‘So our upskirter is a former de facto of this Tricia Mundine who’s locked up?’
‘Yeah,’ said Hutchens. ‘He was the love of her life for a few weeks earlier this year.’
‘And she can attest that he was a bit weird back then?’
‘Yeah, bound to.’
‘And this warrants the attention of a detective inspector and a detective sergeant?’
‘Acting,’ Hutchens reminded him. ‘Look it’s a matter of public safety and wellbeing, mate.’
‘It’s bullshit. What’s really going on?’
Hutchens told Cato everything. Except the bit about getting some pals to put the frighteners on Mundine.
‘No wonder you’ve been looking like a walking cardiac arrest.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
‘What do you want to know from her?’
‘Any more history on her darling son, although she doesn’t seem to have been around much in his formative years.’
‘Okay.’
‘And anything I can use to neutralise him.’
‘A taser’s probably your best option.’
‘It’s on my list.’ They pulled into Bandyup car park. Squat pale buildings, barbed wire, bleak-looking visitors, and some complaining crows to set the scene. ‘Good luck,’ said Hutchens. ‘And thanks.’
As Cato strolled away towards reception, Hutchens felt another tightening in his chest and reached for his angina spray.
‘Ian who?’
‘Ian Rigby. Your former partner. You took a restraining order out against him back in February.’
‘Did I?’ Tricia Mundine was struggling to catch up. Cato could sympathise. A few months inside for unpaid fines had done little to purge her inner workings. She had a hacking smoker’s cough and the complexion of a Rolling Stone. ‘What for?’
Cato checked the paper
work. ‘Violence, harassment, threats. It says here.’
‘I put that on all of them.’
And so she did. She was a serial restrainer. For her the VRO system was a means of retaliating against people who had wronged her in any way: the next-door neighbour for complaining about the noise, an old boyfriend for leaving her, or not leaving her. Twenty-three and counting. And Tricia Mundine wasn’t alone in using the system to score petty grudges. The VRO paper wastage in Perth could have fuelled Collie Power Station for decades. No wonder they were practically unpoliceable. It was a pity about those that were genuine and foreshadowed serious domestic violence or even murder. They never stood out from the mass until it was usually too late.
‘But you also claimed that Ian was sexually aggressive.’
‘Oh, that Ian.’ She visibly brightened.
‘What did he do, then?’ asked Cato.
Tricia scratched at a scab on her wrist. ‘He was always taking pictures. Me during sex, from all angles. Surprised he could still concentrate on the deed. Then it got weirder. Me in the dunny snapping one off. Asleep, catching flies. That’s okay if it’s just for him but then he was selling the pictures.’
‘Who to?’
‘Some website in Russia that deals with all sorts of weird stuff? I mean who wants to pay to see me doing a dump? But they did. Ian showed me the webpage once. Click. There’s me on all fours backing his way. Click. And another one of me when I had this bout of gastro.’ She grimaced and shook her head. ‘He had to go. He didn’t even share the money with me.’
This was as good a time as any to change the subject. ‘Heard from David recently?’
‘Who?’
‘Your son.’
‘No. Why, what’s he done?’
Cato filled her in on the hostel inquiry and his role in it. ‘Do you remember if he mentioned anything at the time about the warden, about what was going on there?’
‘Nothing. Some bloke fiddling with him, you say?’
‘Yes.’
A shrug. ‘Wouldn’t have been the first time. I’ve made some poor choices in boyfriends over the years.’ A vague look of regret. ‘I had my suspicions about a couple of them. More interested in him than me, they were.’
‘Any that stand out?’
She looked like she was trying to remember. ‘Nah. Sorry. Why? I thought this was about Ian whatshisname and the shop dummies?’
He ignored the question. ‘Did David ever seem capable of violence?’
‘Oh yeah, he belted me once. Big time. Put me in hospital.’
‘Do you remember when? The circumstances?’
‘He must have been a bit older then, maybe sixteen. Can’t remember why he did it though. I must have upset him or something.’
The interview wound to a close. Cato was running out of questions and Tricia was running out of answers and becoming increasingly insistent on wanting to know what this was all about. Cato said his farewells, reasonably confident that her shattered brain cells wouldn’t hold the memory of this encounter for long.
Cato passed on the salient highlights of the encounter as Hutchens drove them home through the late afternoon traffic and the fading light.
‘So you reckon there’s a Russian website specialises in upskirted mannequin shots?’
‘Nothing would surprise me,’ said Cato. ‘And if it’s a crime then it’s probably a victimless one.’
‘Flickpass it back to Murdoch. Tell them they could be on to something big.’ Hutchens braked sharply to allow a dickhead back into the traffic flow. They exchanged middle-finger salutes. ‘So Mum says Davey has a propensity for violence and that Peter Sinclair might not have been his first love?’
‘In a nutshell. But I can’t see how any of this helps with your current problem.’
‘No worries, Cato mate. Thanks for the favour, you’re a legend.’
That sheen of sweat had returned to Hutchens’ face.
‘Have you seen a doctor at all lately?’
‘Yep. Blood pressure’s up a bit but he’s got me on some tablets.’
‘And you’re okay for going back to the Inquiry on Monday?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Maybe you should move into a hotel for a few days until this stuff with Mundine gets sorted?’
‘Two hundred bucks a night? No way.’
‘Maybe you should be going official with this. Get some help.’
‘There’s no evidence of him doing anything, yet.’
‘What about the texts to you? The abusive phone call to your wife?’
‘Unregistered phone. Unreliable witness. They’ll send me packing. They’ll say I’ve lost it.’
‘There must be something.’
Hutchens turned and beamed at Cato. ‘You’ve been a diamond, mate. Really.’
When Cato got home Jake was waiting for him on the weatherworn couch on the front verandah.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he said, accusingly.
‘I might ask you the same thing. Why weren’t you at school today?’
No reply. Jake followed his father into the house.
‘So?’ said Cato.
‘So what?’
‘School. Where were you?’ He shepherded Jake to the kitchen table. Sat him down and put the kettle on. There was a sweaty fug about his son. None of the obvious smells of dope. Maybe it was just teenage funk. But something wasn’t right. ‘Answer the question.’
A smirk. ‘Am I under arrest?’
‘Stop being a smart-arse.’ Cato phoned Jane to let her know what was going on. He said he’d keep Jake there for the night. Jane didn’t object. Cato finished making a cuppa and slid one Jake’s way. ‘Once again. Where were you today?’
‘Mates.’
‘Who? Where?’
‘Stef’s. White Gum Valley.’
‘Who else was there?’
‘A few others. You wouldn’t know them.’
‘And Stef’s parents. Where were they?’
‘Working.’
‘What did you do all day?’
‘Hung out. Talked. Played music. Video games.’
‘Any drugs involved?’
‘Been talking to Mum and Simon, have you?’
The obfuscation, the attitude. He’d seen too much of it in his job not to recognise what probably lay behind it. Cato took a decision he hoped he wouldn’t regret.
‘Empty your school bag.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Do it.’
‘What happened to trust, here?’ Cato took the bag from him and started rummaging through. ‘You can’t do that. That is just so wrong.’
‘Watch me,’ said Cato. ‘If there’s nothing there you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
He emptied the bag onto the kitchen table. Books. Files. Scraps of paper. Pens, pencils, a calculator, eraser. School lunch, untouched. Cato opened the lunchbox. Two halves of a ham salad sandwich in grainy brown bread. An apple, a bruised banana. And a pipe. And a lighter. And a small plastic bag of leafy material.
Cato shook his head. ‘I’d thought you were better than this …’ he searched for words, ‘bullcrap.’
‘Sorry. Dad.’ No apology at all. Just contempt and derision. Jake’s phone started beeping.
‘Hand it over.’
‘No.’
Cato wrestled the phone out of his son’s hand. It was from Stef – a photo of him with his pipe. And a message: Duuuuude!
‘I hate you,’ said Jake, red-faced, his eyes watering with anger.
‘I don’t hate you. But I don’t think much of you right now.’ Cato sent Stef’s number to his own phone. ‘Your mum and I will need to talk about some punishment for this.’
‘What for? I’ve done nothing wrong. Everybody does dope.’
‘You won’t be doing it anymore. If there are no consequences then it won’t stop.’
‘You are so naïve. This is pathetic.’
‘No, I’ll tell you what’s pathetic. A bunch of affluent western subu
rbs kids bunking off school, fucking up their studies and doing dope. That’s what’s pathetic. There’s no noble rebellion in any of this because you’ve all got parents who’ll dig you out of whatever hole you get yourself into.’
The phone buzzed. Stef again. Wassup?
‘And you haven’t got enough real rebellion or independence in you to go out and buy your own bloody gadgets. Meanwhile there are people crying out for the kind of privileges you have. Poor little rich boys. That’s what’s pathetic.’
‘Don’t hold back, Dad.’
‘Cut the backchat.’ Cato wrenched open the fridge door. ‘Scrambled eggs for dinner. Okay?’
23
Saturday, August 24th.
Lara Sumich’s funeral was a full-dress uniform affair at St George’s Cathedral in the city. The Commissioner was there along with the Police Minister and other top brass. Farmer John was there, holding it together, just. Mr and Mrs Sumich and their entourage occupied the front rows. She was a porcelain figurine ready to crack, whereas Oscar Sumich had snapped into professional diplomat mode, pressing the flesh of dignitaries, putting on a show. It would have been nearer to the world he understood. Whatever it takes, mused Cato.
There was a large photo of Lara on an easel in front of the coffin. An earlier picture. In the last few weeks Cato had caught glimpses of a different Lara, one who seemed a whole lot more human, happy, in love. This photo showed no hint of any of that; it showed the self-assured, steely, ambitious Lara. Maybe that was the only Lara her parents got to know, or wanted to know. Certainly Oscar Sumich’s eulogy stuck to that script.
She was buried in the family plot in Karrakatta. A kilted police bagpiper had led the funeral procession the last few hundred metres through the tombstones. Cato wasn’t sure where the Scottish connection came in but it all sounded and looked quite impressive. The news media certainly got what they came for, including a statement from the Commissioner that the horrific Tan family murders had now been solved and attributed to a business feud involving a Chinese national, since deceased. High fives all round.
