Bad Seed (18 page)

Hutchens would be glad to have Cato out of the way for a few days. He was torn between murdering David Mundine and capitulating to him. Either way, he didn't want Cato's saintly presence haunting him, judging either his evil intent or his vile weakness. Mundine was getting the better of him. What was happening?

You've just been owned by a junkie fuck-up, Mr H. What does that make you?

What precisely was the threat here? Mundine claimed to know what had happened between him and Peter Sinclair that night and
wanted money to keep quiet. Further than that, he was displaying all the signs of being a stalking little control freak and had issued veiled threats to physically harm Hutchens' family. The two didn't seem to go together. Money for silence was a straightforward enough motive but the added antipathy towards Hutchens and his brood? That was crazy enough to derail the blackmail scheme. So which was most important to Mundine? If Hutchens paid up there was every reason to believe that the problem wouldn't go away.

He needed to separate the issues and deal with them differently. Mundine could stand up at the Inquiry and claim to have seen something that night but without corroborating evidence it surely counted for very little. So what did he have? What did he know?

On the matter of the personal menaces there were witnesses at J. B. O'Reilly's who would have seen Mundine threaten him with the blade. But they would also have seen Hutchens grab his throat first. Mundine, the victim of sexual abuse and a key witness at the Inquiry, versus Hutchens a thuggish corner-cutting cop with questions to answer. How would that look? At this stage there would be little mileage in making any official complaints about Mundine's actions. But Hutchens did know people, hard men who could have a quiet word. Was he prepared to go down that path? He recalled the pic of Melanie on Mundine's phone. Hell, yes.

His phone buzzed.

10K cash, leave with barman @ JBs by Friday

He texted back asking what he would get in return.

Peace of mind

The Qantas flight touched down at Pudong International Airport just after 10 p.m. Cato had spent most of the long day and two flights sandwiched between Lara in the window seat and James Blond in the aisle – the seating arrangements were no doubt DI Pavlou's last-minute revenge. James Blond had played
Call of Duty
on his games console, twitching furiously with each kill and robbing Cato of any sleep. When she wasn't squeezing past for an excessive number of toilet visits, Lara had snapped on a blindfold, plugged in her earphones, and stayed AWOL. Cato had snuck a glance at her engagement ring while she dozed. Lara in love? Good luck to her, she was certainly less abrasive to be around. Cato wondered if the same could be said for him.

Tommy Li had specified the three underlings or nothing, and he got his way – he was under no obligation to return to Perth for interview. Of the three, Cato was the senior officer, so ostensibly he was the boss. Was that another one of Li's little games, arrange it so the Chinese guy is in charge of the visiting cops? Either way, it was still Lara who held the paperwork and Pavlou's list of questions.

An immigration officer had studied Cato's passport for longer than felt necessary before firing off a stream of Mandarin at him.

‘What?' said Cato.

The official looked at him in disgust. ‘Tourist or business?'

Cato assumed that the class of visa in his passport and the boxes he'd ticked on the form made it clear enough. The official was interrupted by a rap on his cubicle rear window and the appearance
of a more senior-looking colleague accompanied by a tall Westerner in a Hawaiian shirt. More words exchanged, the Westerner seemed to be fluent in Chinese. They were waved through.

‘Rory Driscoll.' The tall stranger stuck out a hand for shaking.

‘Philip Kwong,' said Cato.

‘AKA Cato?'

‘Philip should do it – for now.'

Driscoll had the look of a footy player turned commentator: plenty of teeth and grooming but a mongrel never far from the surface. He shared a manly handshake with James Blond and upped the wattage on the smile for Lara. They jumped into Driscoll's car, Cato taking the spare front seat and the two juniors in the back.

‘Perth? Sydney? Melbourne? Where do you call home?' said Cato, to make conversation.

‘Warnambool. Gunditj mob. The wild west of Victoria,' said Driscoll. He broke into a chuckle. ‘You've got to admit, mate, it
was
funny.'

‘What?' said Cato.

‘You weren't expecting an Aborigine to be the Chinese interpreter for a bloke called Kwong who can't speak a fucking word.' He slapped his thigh and roared.

Cato found himself grinning. Then laughing. A lot.

‘Fluent in Mandarin. Impressive,' said Lara. ‘It doesn't seem like an easy language to learn.'

Driscoll studied her in the rear-view. Looking for signs he was being patronised? ‘I can also speak half a dozen Aboriginal languages, fluent Bahasa and Tagalog, passable Japanese, and you should hear my Pidgin. Awesome.'

No reply. Cato glanced over his shoulder. Lara looked deep in thought.

‘I was brought up to believe that if you go through someone else's country you need to ask their permission, pay your dues, and try to learn a little of their language and culture. You never assume a divine right to be there.' Driscoll's gaze drifted over to James Blond in the other back seat. ‘It's about respect. That right, brother?'

James yawned. ‘Sure. Whatever.'

‘I can see already you guys are going to go down a storm in Shanghai.' He closed the conversation by switching on some music. The Gipsy Kings.

Music aside, they drove in tired and companionable silence along an elevated expressway. It was bland, as most airport roads are, but still an improvement on the tawdry ribbon of fast-food barns and no-tell motels on the way out to Perth International. Lara had tried asking a few questions, like who the hell was Driscoll anyway, but was met with a smile and the promise of a full briefing first thing tomorrow.

‘You guys are too stuffed and won't take anything in right now. As my nan used to say, “I never boil me cabbage twice.”'

They crossed the Huangpu River but it was too dark for Cato to see if there were any dead pigs in it.
My name is Legion, for we are many.
They were dropped at a hotel in a city of a million brightly lit tower blocks. Cato noticed a bilingual street sign as he stepped out of the car into the humid night: Nanjing Road. According to Driscoll it was about ten minutes walk to the Bund – that way, he thumbed in the direction. He gave them his business card and wished them goodnight. They all had neighbouring rooms on the nineteenth floor. Cato went into his and fell straight asleep.

Cato woke early and went to find the Bund. The day was humid and a milky-white sun hung behind a jaundiced veil of ozone. In the street, the smell of cooking oil mingled with petrol fumes and something overripe. Along the way, Nanjing Road became a pedestrian mall. It was throbbing: huge department stores already opening their doors, office and shop workers on their way somewhere, old and middle-aged couples waltzing to Chinese love songs, and a handful of western tourists capturing everything on their cameras and phones, even the quiet, intimate moments of complete strangers. Then suddenly there it was, the Bund, wider and more open than he had imagined. It was Shanghai's iconic landmark, according to the travel guides he'd scanned in transit. The solid and grand nineteenth-century architecture of the old
bank, shipping, and insurance buildings reminded him of visits to Liverpool, Manchester and other European cities from a bygone age. And along the wide, muddy brown swirl of the Huangpu huge industrial barges chugged, belching smoke as they must have done for a century or more. By contrast Pudong, across the river, definitely belonged to the future; the space-age architecture was right out of The Jetsons. So this is Shanghai, thought Cato, old meets new, east meets west – simple really. A clock atop one of the old buildings struck the hour, eight, tolling out a tune that was unmistakably Chinese and vaguely martial in tone. Cato strolled the length of the Bund and back without being bothered by any touts, as the anglo Westerners were. Descending the steps into Bund Park he passed the bronze statue of Chairman Mao beneath which tourists posed for happy snaps.

On his return to the hotel, Lara emerged from her room freshly showered and flushed from exercise.

‘Run or gym?' said Cato.

‘Both, they have a treadmill. Had breakfast yet?'

‘No.'

‘See you down there. If you're good I'll show you my file.'

‘Whoopee,' said Cato. ‘Where's 007? He invited too?'

‘He's skypeing his mum. He'll meet us down there.'

Business or casual? Cato surveyed his open suitcase and opted for casual. It was muggy and he felt no great need to impress Driscoll, Lara, James Blond or anyone else today. Li? He'd think about it. At the breakfast table Lara was eating yoghurt and fresh fruit and JB was working his way through a fry-up. Cato found some cereal and coffee at the buffet and joined them.

‘How's Mum?' he asked James.

‘Good, thanks. Sends her regards.'

‘Really?'

‘No.'

Lara slid a file across the table to him. Inside was an enlarged passport photo of Tommy Li's fellow traveller, Yu Guangming: it
was one of those chiselled faces, heroic and handsome from one angle, cruel and petulant from another. There was also one sheet of A4 and a photocopy of a press clipping. It was brief but still an advance on the thumbnail sketch they'd been given in Pavlou's office earlier in the week. Four years ago Charlotte Wen, a twenty-two year old Singaporean exchange student, had been raped, beaten, and left for dead in a Sydney hotel room. She'd survived and not only provided police with a description but also a name. She had met Yu Guangming in a bar in King's Cross but remembered little after that. Traces of the date rape drug Rohypnol had been found in her system. Yu was arrested and the trace samples taken from him backed up her story. Unaccountably he was released on bail and within a week had left the country.

‘So?' said Cato.

‘Read the other sheet,' said Lara. ‘The ACC profile.'

Yu Guangming, and his handful of aliases, seemed to be anything from thirty-three to forty-two years old. Using various names he had criss-crossed the Asia Pacific regularly over the last few years: Australia, New Zealand, PNG, Nauru, Fiji, Indonesia. It seemed that everywhere he went he left bodies or maimed victims. Meanwhile the student, Charlotte Wen, had subsequently tried to retract her allegation and now suggested the sex had been consensual and that somebody else must have beaten the crap out of her. Sydney detectives were apparently keeping an open mind.

‘If we know this guy's movements and his history why do we keep letting him go?'

Lara shrugged. ‘Conspiracy or fuck-up, we haven't worked that one out yet.'

‘But you believe he's here in Shanghai, connected to Li, and involved in the Tan murders?'

‘Yes. The bodies in New Zealand, Indonesia, and PNG were of people who seemed to be either blocking or threatening projects in which Li has interests.'

‘What about the other bodies in Fiji and Nauru?'

Lara shrugged again. ‘Maybe some were business, others were pleasure.'

‘Interesting,' Cato conceded, ‘but still a bit circumstantial so far?'

‘Enough to shake a few trees with though, eh?' Lara gathered up the folder and downed the rest of her orange juice. ‘Driscoll's meeting us in the lobby in ten minutes.' She checked out Cato's T-shirt and shorts. ‘You getting changed or what?'