by Alan Carter
‘Yep. I put her on a plane to Cairns.’
‘Good one, love. Got the gun?’
‘Glovebox.’
‘Right, let’s go and find the bastard.’
They wouldn’t have to look far. Mundine was two cars behind them on his scooter.
Cato had just made himself a coffee when Chris Thornton swung by.
‘Got you that stuff.’
‘What?’
Thornton flicked his fingers towards Cato’s computer. ‘That O’Neill bloke. I sent you an email.’
‘Cheers, thanks for that.’
‘Not going to open it then?’
How could Cato tell him it was most likely a waste of time, an experiment, and Thornton’s task had been the placebo. O’Neill wasn’t the person-of-interest, Phoebe was. ‘I’ll get on to it soon. Got a couple of urgent matters.’
‘No worries.’
Cato thanked him again.
‘You already did that.’ He skulked off.
Cato rang DI Pavlou.
‘Bit busy right now, Philip. Is it about the job?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. No point in having the phone put down on him immediately.
‘Chuck me an email and your name’s in the hat. I understand you’ve got a funeral. Sorry to hear it. This Caletti thing is going to run and run so don’t hold your breath on a quick recruitment process. Could take a few weeks.’
He assured her that was no problem. ‘Any ideas who’s behind it?’ The interest wasn’t feigned, it was deadly serious.
‘The garrotte was a bit special. We’re thinking Eastern States.’
Cato whistled appreciatively. ‘Nice. Underbelly stuff then, you reckon?’
‘Open mind. As ever.’
‘CCTV?’
She indulged him further, she must really want him on her team. ‘A drunk, a canoodling couple, a young bloke we’ve identified as a staff member, and a Johnny No-Mates who went in the brothel down the road. The young staffer is in for questioning and the others are being followed up.’ Muffled voices in the background. ‘Gotta go. Bang that email through.’
Cato was happy to leave it at that.
First they drove past Mundine’s Jolimont flat. Police were already there looking for him. They parked up the street and watched for a while. Nothing doing. They went along to J. B. O’Reilly’s. Marjorie stayed behind the wheel ready for a quick getaway while Hutchens looked inside. Dermot the barman was there.
‘Sure and you’ve been in the wars. What can I be doing for ye, sir?’
‘Your mate been in?’ growled Hutchens.
‘Last I heard he was in the slammer and good riddance. Never paid me a cent, the bastard.’
‘It was my fucking money.’
Dermot turned to the optics. ‘A Jamesons, sir. On the house.’
Hutchens necked it. ‘If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.’
He slammed the glass on the counter and departed.
‘You’re welcome,’ muttered Dermot.
Mundine emerged from the toilets as the Kia screeched out of the car park. He slapped a wad of notes on the counter. ‘Here’s your damn money.’
‘Looks like everyone forgot to take their happy pills this morning.’ Dermot folded the money and put it in his wallet. ‘Give the grumpy old tosser a kick from me.’
Cato needed to settle down. So Guido was dead; the man courted danger by his chosen lifestyle, he kept bad company. His death may or may not be coincidence, may or may not be Cato’s fault. Either way he had embarked on a strategy and stage one seemed to have produced results; it seemed he was probably being monitored via his personal laptop. He and Driscoll had agreed that stage two was about upping the ante. Given that stage one had possibly elicited a murder it was difficult to see how you could up the ante without upping the body count. The phone call, the bugged dinner conversation.
See, Dad? You were wrong. Nothing bad happened to Phil in China. He came home safe.
Why wouldn’t he?
Something tugged at his memory. One of Mandy’s older kids, being antisocial and playing on his laptop at the dinner table. If it was possible for pervs to hack into people’s laptop cameras and watch them getting undressed, presumably it was also feasible to monitor a distant conversation that way? Particularly some cyber super-nerd from Unit blah-blah of the People’s Liberation Army.
You had a premonition of doom. Don’t you remember?
That’ll teach you to listen to a silly old bugger like me.
Was that what upping the ante entailed? They’d slaughtered a whole family before. No reason why they wouldn’t do it again.
He scrolled through his mobile contact list, located the number, then used his office phone to make the call.
‘Hi, it’s me.’
‘This is a nice surprise.’ Sharon Wang’s voice curled around his senses like a cat around his ankles after a long day of solitude.
‘What’s new?’
‘Um, let me see. I’m back in Beijing and the smog is at factor five today. That means don’t go out without a lead suit and scuba breathing tanks. I’ve got a ton of reports to read and statistics to digest. And a disciplinary hearing this arvo at two.’
‘Ah.’
‘How about you, when are you coming to visit me in China? There’s a plane from Perth every day at eight thirty. I’ve checked. There’s also afternoon and evening flights.’
Things were looking up. Maybe the seemingly aloof Sharon of the previous phone call had been an aberration.
‘You wouldn’t believe how tempting that is, right now.’
‘Sweet-talking bastard. What are you really after?’
He told her.
‘You realise you’re drawing me into your international web of deceit and intrigue, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘It’ll cost you. I don’t come cheap and I always exact my price.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Leave it with me.’
She put the phone down.
Cato fantasised momentarily about that afternoon flight to Beijing.
After an afternoon of driving around and failed attempts to reach Mundine by call and text, Mr and Mrs Hutchens reached the inevitable conclusion and went home.
‘He’ll be coming to find us. We may as well make ourselves comfortable.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Marjorie.
‘Good idea, pumpkin. Got any biscuits or cake or anything?’
‘You’re too fat, that’s why you had the heart attack.’
‘So?’
‘There’s lemon slice in the fridge. Cut me a bit while you’re on.’
They settled down with their tea and cake and Hutchens flicked on News 24. Election coverage: lots of tossers in high-viz and hard hats looking uncomfortable with shovels. On the hour they recapped the headlines. The murder of Guido Caletti was a nice break from the election. DI Pavlou fronted the cameras.
‘Is she the one you were talking about?’
‘Yeah,’ he muttered.
‘I can see why she got you sparked up. I can just imagine her in stilletos and a bit of lace.’
‘Love, can we just leave it?’
Marjorie wiped some crumbs down her blouse. ‘No way, sweetie. She got you so riled that was the best bonk we’d had for ages. Come to that, it was the only bonk we’ve had for ages. All power to her, I reckon.’
Hutchens slurped on his tea. Eyed the Glock on the couch beside him.
The news showed CCTV stills of the persons of interest. As usual they were blurred and murky and could have been anyone. They returned to the rolling election coverage. The polls looked catastrophic for the government. The opposition looked smug.
Then the TV went off. Power cut.
Cato got the emails and background info from Sharon Wang by the end of the afternoon. He wondered how her disciplinary hearing had gone. She’d put herself on the line for him and Lara. In a posting where political sensitivities were paramou
nt, there would be little room for forgiveness. While he waited for the monitored emails to take effect, for the wire to go around his neck, he busied himself with loose administrative ends. He read reports, deleted circulars, inputted stats, returned calls, allocated budget codes. Another hour passed. No wire.
He opened up the email from Chris Thornton: the background on the Lake Grace murder-suicide. The lure to test who was listening in to what. Charlie Strickland’s family had held their thousand acres just east of Lake Grace for three generations. He had been looking forward to passing it on to a fourth, his son Benjamin. But four years of drought, bad luck and poor health had taken the family farm to the abyss. Late in June three years ago, with still no sign of the rain he desperately needed, Charlie snapped. He blew his wife’s head off while she was pegging out the washing, then, sitting in his favourite chair in the kitchen, put the shotgun to his chin and used his toes to press the trigger.
Benji Strickland was twelve at the time and at boarding school in Esperance. Not yet a teenager and already, it seemed, he was an orphan, an heir, and a bankrupt. Up steps family friend and benefactor Des O’Neill. Des organised for a mystery buyer for the farm, a foreign consortium. By some miracle or charitable sleight of hand he’d managed to raise far more than the farm was worth. Nobody was asking too many questions. The net result was debts paid off, the balance in a trust fund for young Benji who would continue his schooling and be looked after by his mum’s sister’s family. Was this another one of those deals where Francis Tan’s reputed generous heart and love of country had loosened the purse strings for the greater good? It seemed so. Out of tragedy, a new beginning.
Thornton had appended the police and pathology reports on the murder-suicide and they concurred with the scenario as outlined by the investigating officers. News reports of the time added little. There was however a footnote of one further tragedy. Young Benji had died eighteen months later in a hit and run driving accident one early morning on his way from the residential accommodation to a music practice session at his Esperance boarding school. Apparently he’d been a very promising oboeist. The car and driver had never been found.
Hutchens bundled Marjorie into the bathroom and got her to lock the door. He handed her a claw hammer.
‘If he comes through, use this. But make sure it’s him first, not me.’
‘Have you phoned the cops?’
‘They’re on their way. We just need to hold the fort for about five minutes.’
‘It wasn’t just a power cut was it?’
‘No.’
Marjorie bolted the door on him and he turned to check if there had been any breach of the perimeter. He thought he’d locked all doors and windows before they sat down to their tea and cake. He hadn’t heard any breakages since the power went out. Was he just getting jittery over nothing? Maybe he shouldn’t have summoned the cavalry. He was going to look a complete idiot.
Mundine came at him from the old downstairs laundry that they now used as a wine cellar. No, he hadn’t breached the perimeter. He’d been inside all along, waiting for them.
Hutchens felt a blow across the bridge of his nose. It blinded him. He dropped the Glock. He was on his knees, Mundine bludgeoning him with a cricket bat. Hutchens’ old cricket bat, the one he’d once scored a century with for the under sixteens. He tried lifting his arms to defend himself but he couldn’t summon the energy. He was very tired. Everything hurt so much. He was blinded by his own blood. That chemically thinned blood that couldn’t stop sluicing out. He slumped sideways to the kitchen floor, the tiles cool and slippery on his skin. The blows kept coming. Mundine raising the bat with both hands in a chopping motion, the bat edge on.
Goodbye, Hutchens thought. Christ, this really is it.
The explosion was deafening. Mundine was lying on top of him. Warm, wet, a stink of the abattoir. In the distance the wailing of sirens. And Marjorie weeping, stroking his head with one hand, still cradling the Glock with the other.
‘Don’t die, love. Don’t you fucking dare.’
Cato arrived as Hutchens was being carried out to the ambulance. There was a mask, a drip, and so much blood. He tried to get a prognosis out of the paramedics but all they would give him was a shake of the head. Marjorie was being comforted by a uniformed police officer. The radios chattered. A second ambulance was on its way and there was a body inside the house. Cato didn’t know why Mundine was back on the streets or why Hutchens wasn’t still recuperating in Freo Hospital from his last lot of injuries. It was like Groundhog Day. He glimpsed one of Pavlou’s stooges, a young bloke called Fernandez.
‘How did this happen?’
Fernandez told him about the private security bungle allowing Mundine to escape.
Cato growled. ‘Where’s Mundine now?’
‘In the kitchen with a bullet between his shoulders.’
‘Dead?’
‘I fucking hope so.’
‘What did the medics say about Mick?’
‘Not much. Doesn’t look too good.’
Cato felt his eyes swimming. He couldn’t do this anymore. The Tans, Lara, now Hutchens. Too many good people being snuffed out. His dad.
Fernandez reached a hand out to him. ‘You gonna be okay?’
Cato shook his head and walked away.
33
Tuesday, September 3rd – Wednesday, September 4th.
Cato sat at home with a bottle of shiraz two-thirds empty and a plate of chicken curry going cold on the coffee table in front of him. He knew he shouldn’t be necking the wine. He would be burying his father tomorrow and he owed the old man a eulogy without the hangover. The news from the hospital was not good. Hutchens was on life support, in an induced coma. The head injuries were severe and the blood loss traumatic. Outside, the wind had whipped up again and one more cold front was approaching. Maybe the last. It was officially spring after all. New life. New beginnings. Rebirth.
Cato woke to the sound of knocking on his door. He checked the time on his phone: it was ten minutes to midnight and he’d had three missed calls and messages. His tongue was furry, his head thick. The wine bottle was empty. The late night noise had triggered some barking from Madge, next door’s Jack Russell. There was a tattoo of rain on his tin roof. It was dark, it was late, it was raining and there was somebody at his front door. He decided to answer it.
He could see a shape through the door glass, back lit by the orange glow of the streetlamp. Big, indistinct. Dark clothing.
He couldn’t remember whether or not he’d snicked the security screen door. He pressed the wall switch for the porchlight. It flooded the front verandah. The figure tensed, shifted uncertainly, reached a hand up for the screen door handle.
Tested it.
‘Who’s there?’ said Cato.
‘Me.’ Rory Driscoll.
Cato invited him across the threshold, relieved and irritated in equal measure.
‘You smell like a brewery, mate. Been hittin’ it?’
‘What do you want?’ said Cato. ‘And how do you know where I live?’ He saw the enigmatic arching of the eyebrow. ‘On second thoughts don’t bother with the second question. I don’t give a stuff.’
Driscoll shifted over to serious. ‘So what’s new? You weren’t answering my calls. I got to thinking about garrottes.’
Cato told him about Hutchens.
‘Jesus. That’s bad. Sorry.’
‘And on top of that I’m burying my father in the morning.’ Cato filled a glass with water and took a long gulp. ‘So this better be good.’
‘Phoebe is on the move.’
‘Headed this way?’
A nod. ‘So I’m told. With two companions – a bloke who calls himself a lawyer, and another who seems to be her father’s driver-cum-bodyguard.’
Skin moisturiser.
Driscoll filled Cato’s kettle and dragged some mugs and tea bags out of a cupboard. ‘So what transpired between you and Shazza?’
No way. Sharon Wang was already in enou
gh trouble.
‘She wasn’t too enthusiastic. I’ve already caused her enough grief.’
‘But?’
‘But she copied and pasted those relevant sections of the extradition treaty between China and Australia, as requested, and gave me some contacts in the Feds offices in Perth and Canberra.’ He drained his glass of water. ‘Made a point of mentioning Phoebe three or four times.’
‘It seems to have worked.’
‘If Phoebe really does think we’re looking at extradition then hopping on a plane to Perth isn’t the smartest move. Killing me wouldn’t solve her problems.’
‘Hell hath no fury, mate.’
Cato shook his head. ‘I don’t buy it.’ He accepted the mug of tea Driscoll slid his way. ‘You on your way to the airport, then?’
‘I rescheduled.’ He grinned. ‘Phoebe in Perth? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’
It was a godless service at Fremantle Cemetery. The way Jack would have wanted it. A solid turnout as well. Cato hadn’t realised how many friends the old man had. There were colleagues from Curtin, and alumni old and young. Was it really less than ten years since Jack Kwong had left the job? He’d always claimed they’d have to carry him off campus in a box, he loved the place so. Instead, two years short of official retirement, the Parkinson’s got the better of him and he’d sadly stumbled off to the car park with an armful of cards and gifts and a skinful of sauvignon blanc.
There were the tributes and the handshakes. The memories and the laughs. The tears. Cato choked a little during his eulogy, signing off as ‘Qianping’. Jane and Jake were there. They hugged him, watched over him, shed a tear for Pops. The mourners drifted out of the ceremony to the strains of ‘Volare’.
At the graveside rain spat through the sunshine and occasional gusts tugged at hats and skirt hems.
Jake sidled up to him. ‘You okay, Dad?’
The temptation was to say yep, and give his son a brave and reassuring smile. But his eyes were swimming and bravery was beyond him. ‘I’ll miss him.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jake. ‘Sorry.’ A pause. ‘About everything.’
