Getting Warmer (4 page)

To some ears it sounded repetitive and to others restful, even meditative. For Cato, the Bach Prelude offered a promise of resolution, of homecoming. He went to the outer reaches of the keys and, just as it seemed the pattern would collapse into chaos, he returned to the fold. In some moods that same piece could induce vertigo, a sense of teetering on the edge of the unknown. The upright Kawai had recently been tuned by an old Hungarian from out Willeton way and, in playing it, Cato felt like a dear friend had returned to him. He wound down from the piece and sat back, Sunday-morning relaxed.

For the second night running, Cato hadn’t slept well. Madge had barked for a full hour after he got home. The owners were either out, deaf, or oblivious. Cato had gone into the backyard, grabbed the hosepipe and squirted it over the fence. It didn’t work, Madge just yapped all the more. In bed, Cato had been too hot and all the fan did was move around the dead, warm air. As far as he was concerned, the lie-in today was well deserved. It was eight-thirty and he had made up his mind to do big fat nothing.

There was a rap at the front flywire. It was Madge’s master, Felix something or other. Cato dug deep for his neighbourly face.

‘How you goin’?’

‘Great. Yeah. Cool.’ Felix tugged at the grey soul patch under his lip and gestured towards the piano. ‘Um, any chance of keeping it down a bit, dude?’ He nodded back towards his own house. ‘We’re in the middle of a yoga session. Bit distracting.’

Cato knew it was more than his job’s worth to headbutt Felix. Just then Madge waddled up the path behind her master, wagged her tail and squatted against Cato’s geraniums.

‘How about we make a deal? You keep your dog quiet at night and
I’ll play the piano at a more convenient time?’

Felix picked Madge up and hugged her to his bosom. ‘I only asked. Sorry to have disturbed you.’ He retreated huffily down the path with his striped Bali pants flapping in the strengthening easterly.

Cato couldn’t help himself. ‘Dog Act, 1976: read it.’

So much for making friends and diverting suspicion, thought Cato. Madge panted over Felix’s shoulder. It looked like a smile.

Lara Sumich frowned down from her balcony. Fremantle on summer Sundays was the pits. All those tourists, and the bogans from the burbs, clogging the streets. She hated it. She’d woken early, gone for a run, done the grocery shopping and cleaned her apartment. Colin Graham didn’t stay over. He would have been back in the arms of his new wife by midnight. Lara had felt strangely abandoned after he left. It wasn’t how she’d planned to feel.

For the last couple of hours she’d been wading through the cesspit of Detective Constable Santo Rosetti’s double life. He’d put on a very good performance as a low-life junkie loser for the last two years. All that his parents knew about his unkempt appearance and weight loss was that he was doing some special plain-clothes work and they were not to worry about it. His comings and goings at home had been increasingly erratic. Sometimes they went weeks without seeing him. Santo had not only kept his parents in the dark, he’d fooled Lara too and that really pissed her off.

She remembered her first encounter with him over a year ago. It was not long after the transfer from Albany to Fremantle and she was keen to get some early runs on the board after the Jim Buckley murder case had collapsed. Santo had been picked up for selling mull to some kids in Timezone. If losers have a certain sour smell, then he reeked of it. Lara was onto him immediately; cajoling names out of him, worming into his mind the painful price he would pay for dobbing in those same names, and then drawing him back in with her offer of protection.

‘I’m the best friend you’ve got, Santo. Those guys’ll put a blowtorch to your nuts as soon as look at you.’

‘You’re not doing so bad yourself, Detective.’

She’d played him beautifully, or so she thought. Santo had fed her regular titbits ever since: who the players were, who was working for whom, who was ripping so and so off, who was taking deliveries and when. She’d made a few worthwhile busts and helped him out with a few nods and winks to uniform colleagues whenever he got arrested for doing something stupid – which was quite often. He was always pathetically grateful and eager to please. And she had been sucked in, big-time.

Had those dobbings been strategic, or just expendable crumbs from Santo’s table? What kind of undercover hotshot, as Colin Graham hinted Santo was, allowed himself to keep on getting arrested for blatant stupidity? That was no way to win the trust of the big players in the drug league and work your way into a useful position with them. Something clenched at her gut. Maybe
they
weren’t the target. Maybe
she
had been, all along. And if Santo had been targetting her then who, of his colleagues, was also taking an interest? Colin Graham? He certainly acted like he knew everyone’s secrets. No, it couldn’t be her. There were other cops out there a lot worse than Lara. She was getting paranoid; time for some fresh air, sunshine, and the great outdoors. Late afternoon. The bogans should be heading home to the burbs soon.

Cato nursed a flat white at an outside table at X-Wray Cafe. He was surly and sleep-deprived. He checked the time on his mobile and made up his mind to have an early dinner followed by an early night. After several false starts he finally caught the eye of one of the uber-confident waiters, ordered a pasta thing and another coffee, and returned to his cryptic. Six down –
Colourful catch leads nowhere.
Easy. Red Herring. After Felix the dog man had left, Cato had phoned Shellie Petkovic to update her on the investigation into the mystery package and the prison conversation with Wellard. He wasn’t obliged to be so attentive, it wasn’t in his job description, but Shellie’s desolation was hard to ignore. He’d recommended she keep her doors locked, just in case.

‘Why?’

‘Wellard’s accomplice knows where you live and is trying to scare you.’

‘I’m not scared.’

‘Why not?’

A pause. ‘Keeping the game going, that’s what Gordo’s about. Harming me physically would bring it to an end.’

Cato hoped she was right. ‘All the same,’ he said. ‘Look after yourself.’

She’d thanked him, her voice a thousand miles away.

The sun was dimming and the breeze had picked up. The Sunday afternoon coffee and cake crowd was being replaced by dreadlocked groovers waiting for the evening live-music session. The poster showed an angelic young woman with a nose stud and an acoustic guitar. Her name was Ocean Mantra. Cato feared the worst and hoped his pasta would hurry up. Twelve across –
Agent of fate seems in trouble.

‘This seat taken?’

Cato looked up. It was Lara Sumich. Fremantle was like that, for all the crowds and hubbub it was hard not to come across a familiar face. Hopetoun on steroids. He folded his paper. ‘Help yourself. I didn’t think Sunday evening acoustics would be your scene.’

She sat down and a waiter instantly appeared. Funny that. She gave her order. ‘What do you think my scene is?’

Cato pondered the matter for a moment. ‘You’ve got me.’ He waved his hand at the assembled braids and face-piercings. ‘But this didn’t figure.’

Lara drank some water. ‘You were wrong, Mr Kwong.’

They sat in uncompanionable silence for a few minutes, then Cato’s pasta arrived. Lara told him not to wait so he dug in. ‘How’s it going with our Birdcage Slasher? You and DS Graham getting along?’ he said.

‘Like a house on fire,’ said Lara.

‘Any progress?’

‘Of sorts.’

‘Not into shop talk, are you.’
‘Au contraire, tell me about your old friend Colin.’

Cato took another mouthful of linguine. An agenda was a given with Lara Sumich: checking out the background of her new colleague was to be expected. What was in it for Cato to help out? Nothing. ‘Good bloke,’ he said.

‘Ambitious?’

‘No more than the rest of us.’

‘I hear he’s in line for DI soon.’

Cato wiped some pesto from the corner of his mouth. ‘Then you know more than me.’

Lara’s fruit juice arrived. She gifted the waiter a smile and he retreated with a swagger. She closed her lips over the straw and sucked briefly. ‘Hutchens was forced to have him. Part of the deal to keep Major Crime and Gangs from taking over the case.’

Cato shrugged. ‘It happens. Hutchens is big enough to take care of himself.’

‘So you don’t think Graham’s got any other agenda then?’

‘I think Col’s got bigger fish than us to fry. Either way it’ll keep our DI occupied and that’s no bad thing.’

‘I’m sorry if you’re pissed off about the Rosetti line-of-command issue. That was Hutchens’ idea, not mine.’

‘Yeah?’ Cato peered at his pasta.

‘And we are on the same side after all,’ she reminded him.

‘Right.’

‘So how’s it going with your missing body case?’

‘Nowhere fast. He’s wasting our time and doing the mum’s head in.’

‘She’s the ex-wife, that right?’

‘Right.’

Lara sniffed. ‘Sounds like the mum needs to choose her friends more carefully. Some people are born victims.’

‘Thanks. I’ll tell her next time I see her.’

There was a commotion at the far end of the cafe. Raised voices, scraping chairs. ‘Sounds like somebody’s
Green Left
subscriptions are overdue,’ said Cato, looking to extricate himself from an uncomfortable conversation.

Lara reached inside her shoulder bag and fished out a taser. ‘Must be well overdue, one of them has pulled a knife.’

Cato had neglected to bring his taser or gun with him. Sunday afternoon. Off-duty. X-Wray Cafe. Silly really. The only useful looking weapon close to hand was Lara’s table order number – made out of metal and about a foot long with a bit of weight to the base. It would have to do – at least it was Number Seven, lucky in Chinese numerology, symbolising togetherness. Cato took a last scoop of pasta and they both headed over to do their duty.

‘Police. Drop the knife and lie down or I will use the taser.’

Tables and chairs scraped and a space opened up around them. The guy with the knife was young, African background, he had a wiry muscularity and a calm, determined expression. The others were three white kids with that dressed-down affluent student look: the tongue studs would disappear soon after their graduation and a good job beckoned. They were terrified, scrambling across each other to get out of the way. Lara produced some ID from her pocket. ‘Police. Drop the knife now.’ She levelled the stun gun at the young man’s chest.

His eyes seemed to welcome this new challenge. Cato edged around to try to get behind him. That’s when it kicked off. Cato had never seen anybody move so fast. The African held up a chair to shield himself from the taser and lunged at Lara with the knife. The taser darts missed their target, one sticking in the bottom of the chair, the other ricocheting off and hitting one of the students. The blade connected with Lara’s arm and she yelped as a gash opened up. She lost her balance and fell. Cato swung his Number Seven hard and low and connected with a kneecap. The African grunted and smacked the chair into Cato’s face, stamped on Lara’s head as he skipped past, vaulting the railings into the street. Disoriented by the blow, Cato scrabbled for his mobile and called in a description and direction to the police hotline. No way was he going to catch him; the horse had bolted.

Cato helped Lara to her feet. The stomp had produced a cut lip and the beginnings of a black eye. Her arm would need stitches. Cato
had received a hefty whack to the side of the face with a chair leg but it hadn’t broken the skin. The waiter appeared from the kitchen, confused by the scene of disarray during his absence: upturned tables and chairs, customers cowering in corners. He spotted the number in Cato’s hand.

‘Number Seven? Your lentil burger.’

Lara announced that her taser was missing.

Meanwhile, Cato had just worked out that last crossword clue.
Agent of fate seems in trouble.
Seems in – an anagram. Nemesis.

There was an alert out on the African and the missing taser. According to the students, none of whom claimed to have met him before, one moment it was laughs and jokes and all cool together – the next it was like,
Saw III
or
IV,
or whatever, dude. Other witnesses from the cafe had overheard a racial insult and an accusation of theft. The students hotly denied it but maybe they weren’t as laid-back as they claimed to be. Lara Sumich had six stitches in her arm, a black eye and a puffy lip. She was ensconced with the returned DS David ‘Molly’ Meldrum, doing a handover on the Rosetti case. DS Colin Graham was over by the water dispenser taking everything in and acting bored. Cato had a bruise and scrape on the left cheek.

‘What’s going on around here, Cato?’

‘Boss?’

Hutchens waved vaguely at Lara, at Cato, at everything. ‘The stuff with Lara; bloody Col Graham hanging around like a bad smell, Wellard, Rosetti, mad Africans. The lot.’

‘Monday morning blues?’

Hutchens didn’t seem amused. He shepherded Cato into his office. ‘Take a squiz at that.’ He slung a thin, glossy A4 booklet across the desk. The front cover had a photo of a smiling Anglo nuclear family on the lawn in front of their modest McMansion. It was titled
Safer Streets Initiative.

Cato didn’t like the look of this at all.

‘The Premier is concerned, Cato. Baffled. He can’t work out why we’re not all happy little vegemites, if we’re all so rich from the mining boom and riding the storm of the global recession, blah blah blah. Instead there’s all this rage, unkindness and thuggishness
on
his
streets. That...’ Hutchens poked the report with his stubby forefinger, ‘keeps the poor bloke awake at night.’

Fair point. Cato sometimes succumbed to the same thoughts himself. Every weekend there was a catalogue of glassings, stabbings, road rage, out of control suburban parties. The preceding weekend was no exception. Your average West Australian was statistically far more likely than most other true blue Aussies to end their night on the town in an induced coma from a king-hit. Welcome to Boom Town.

‘Thoughts?’ said Hutchens.

‘Money can’t buy me love?’ said Cato.

‘That’s why you’re on the team, Cato mate.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Deep thinker.’

Hutchens closed the door, sat Cato down and proceeded to tell him what he had in mind.

Lara finished briefing DS Meldrum and began to review some of the footage from mobile phones confiscated from Birdcage patrons. Based on the CCTV and cash till receipts on the door, she estimated there were at least twenty to thirty patrons still unaccounted for. They were working through the list of those they did have but so far nothing of consequence had materialised. Nobody had seen or heard anything. The hard word had been put on the club and the local unis and hostels to rustle up a few more names. In the meantime the mobiles still needed to be checked. DS Graham was standing beside Lara’s chair.

‘Can I help you?’ she said.

‘I was about to say the same.’ He crouched down and helped her unpack the jiffy bags holding the phones. They spread them out on the desk, each in their own labelled Ziploc. Some looked decidedly grubby, many smelled of beer and cigarettes. ‘By my count that’s about forty each,’ he said.

They snapped on rubber gloves and started scrolling through the photo folders. Mostly it was hugs, kisses, pouts, silly faces, and lots of sculling.

‘Ever feel you’re missing out on something?’ murmured Graham.

‘No,’ said Lara.

Santo turned up in one of the shots, in the background. Lara checked the time recorded on the phone. So he was still alive at 11.43p.m. More phones, more poses. No familiar faces, no more Santo. An hour or so later they finished ticking off the list between them and put the phones back in the bag.

‘Fancy a coffee?’ said Graham.

‘Not feeling too sociable today, thanks.’

‘Could be worth your while.’ That look of his, somewhere between a tease and a threat.

‘Santo had pissed off the Trans. It was only a matter of time. Those boys don’t forgive or forget and they don’t take prisoners.’ DS Graham looked around the coffee shop conspiratorially.

Lara licked froth from her swollen top lip. It stung. The faux leather armchair stuck to her back and a fly strolled over an abandoned blueberry muffin on the uncleared table in front of her. ‘Could just as easily have been the bikies, he was supposedly playing them both. Why specifically the Trans?’

Graham looked away, playing enigmatic.

‘Stop pissing about, Colin, you’re either part of this or you’re not. I’m in no mood for games.’

‘No, you’re right. Sorry, Lara.’

His hand closed over hers. She withdrew it. ‘Tell me what makes you think it’s the Trans.’

‘We have a high-level informant. He told us Jimmy Tran planned to do Santo himself, sooner rather than later. They believe Santo was passing on valuable information to the Apaches. Some deliveries had gone missing.’

‘Who’s the informant?’

‘Classified. Sorry.’

Lara shook her head, unconvinced. ‘I don’t blame them for not trusting Santo. He was a liability. He couldn’t sell weed to a bunch of teens in Timezone without getting busted. But passing on valuable information? Bullshit.’

‘Bit harsh. You don’t have the inside run on what he was doing.’

‘No, but you seem to. All I’m going on is available proof, like his arrest record and...’

Graham’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what?’

Personal knowledge.

Instead she said, ‘Gut feeling. So, apart from scuttlebutt, what hard evidence do you have for looking at the Trans?’

‘This has got the Trans written all over it, lashings of blood. They have no rules, no boundaries. We need to start playing the game their way or they’ll walk all over us. Since when do we need “hard evidence” to kick down the doors on people like that?’

‘Since they could afford good lawyers. I don’t know how you do things in Gangs, but I can assure you DI Hutchens will want more before making a move.’ She drained her coffee. ‘He’s been burnt once too often.’

Graham smiled. ‘You’re a hard case. Loosen up a bit and you’d go down well in Gangs, Lara.’ He fished a mobile out of his pocket and scrolled through until he found what he wanted. ‘Recognise anybody?’

It was Santo at the Birdcage, in the background of another backpacker-sculling competition. He had a beer in one hand; the other hand was around the shoulders of a blurry long-haired guy. ‘Where did you get this?’ asked Lara.

‘It was in my pile.’

‘So why didn’t you raise this back in the office?’

‘Walls have ears.’

‘What are you on about? We’re all on the same team aren’t we?’

‘I’d like to think so.’ Graham cocked his head. ‘Lara, we have to be able to trust each other.’

Since when, she wondered? ‘He looks familiar. Who’s the boyfriend?’ she pointed at Santo’s companion, already knowing the answer.

Graham winked. ‘Jimmy Tran.’

‘That shirt of his, white T with black trim, was involved in a scuffle earlier in the evening and may have been responsible for a glassing outside later.’

‘Perfect,’ said Graham.

Cato now knew, on one level at least, why he’d been sidelined from the Rosetti case. Hutchens had plans for him. It must have emerged at the management meeting at HQ yesterday. Cato was, as of half an hour ago, the Fremantle representative on the Safer Streets Task Force, or SSTF; already sniggeringly referred to as the ‘Stiffies’ by his colleagues. Fremantle, Northbridge, Hillarys, Claremont and Leederville were all recent street-violence hotspots garnering unpleasant media scrutiny and
something has to be seen to be done.
A combination of intelligence, high-profile policing and zero tolerance would apparently send a strong message to the thugs of Boom Town –
Stop it or the Stiffies will get you.

Cato smelled a rat. They had a cop-murderer out there, a very public throat-slashing with hundreds of potential witnesses to process and the possibility of organised crime involvement. The case was being run first of all by Lara Sumich, a junior officer with a limited and discredited track record, and now by DS Meldrum, a man nobody had missed while he was on leave. Meanwhile DSC Cato Kwong, a star at least in his own mind, was relegated to the Constable Care Committee. It was a criminal misuse of his talents. But what was behind all this bullcrap? DI Hutchens was obviously the key. Cato knew he’d pissed off his boss by suggesting that Gordon Wellard seemed to be in control of the old cop–informer relationship with Hutchens. Was the DI that petty-minded and vengeful? You betcha. Maybe a nerve had been struck or maybe it was plain old hubris. Either way this was as good a way as any of telling Cato to pull his head in. His mobile pinged. A text from Jane.

Don’t forget Jake, tomorrow 5.30

The Stiffies task force assignment did at least have one upside: it was a low-impact, nine-to-five desk job. It meant nothing could stop him from getting to Cracker Night with his son.

The Tactical Response Group love themselves, thought Lara. The heavily armed men-in-black had done their ninja thing with the armoured car and battering rams on the Tran compound in Baldivis, a semi-rural enclave south-east of Fremantle. The
property was a rundown treeless five-acre block, bordered on one side by a freight railway line littered with cans and broken bottles and on the other by a neglected potholed road scarred with burnout marks. ‘Compound’ was the only way to describe it: the place certainly didn’t look homely. A squat characterless prefabricated house with all sources of light and fresh air blocked by bars and reinforced mesh screens. A slab of concrete with a cheap plastic table and four chairs: the entertainment area perhaps? Two outlying sheds, equally ugly. The gates to the property were high, fortified, and electronically operated from inside.
Chez Tran
bristled with high-tech security and surveillance equipment and, just to make sure, three pit bull attack-dogs – now dead, courtesy of the TRG.

‘This place needs a woman’s touch,’ Lara said, as she strolled past the canine corpses to inspect the prisoners.

They were facedown and handcuffed, each with his own personal ninja standing guard. The two Tran brothers, Jimmy and Vincent, were there plus three of their friends. DS Colin Graham was in a crouch over Jimmy. A safe distance away, DI Hutchens fielded a media doorstop flanked by two of the black-clad TRG for sex appeal. That would keep him occupied for a while. There was a bushfire less than three kilometres away, lit just that morning. It was fanned by hot strong winds from the east. If the southwesterly Freo Doctor didn’t show up soon, that fire would keep on coming right over this part of Baldivis. As Lara neared, Graham finished his chat with Jimmy Tran and stood up to acknowledge her.

‘Not much of turnout,’ Lara said, nodding at the prostrate gangsters. ‘Five weedy blokes. I was expecting a cast of thousands. All scary. This all there is?’

‘These are what you might call the core management team. They tend to subcontract out. Or maybe franchise is a better way of putting it.’

‘Franchise?’

‘They run a very successful loyalty program. The last bloke who crossed them got his hands and feet chopped off with a machete. It
was on YouTube for a couple of days. Got over two thousand views before they took it down.’

Lara grimaced and nodded down at Jimmy Tran. ‘He confessed yet?’

‘Thinking it over.’ Graham led her out of earshot. ‘The place is clean, metaphorically speaking anyway: a shame but not unexpected.’ He looked around and sniffed the burnt air. ‘They must keep the drugs and guns elsewhere. Fiendishly clever, the Trans.’

‘Dastardly,’ agreed Lara. ‘But it would be nice to give something to DI Hutchens for agreeing to put on this circus.’

‘Happy snaps on the mobile not enough you reckon?’

Lara looked thoughtful: the media doorstop was heading for a lacklustre wind-up. She went around to behind one of the prone Tran underlings and stamped hard on his ankle. He yelped and cursed and struggled to his knees. Lara positioned herself between the TRG man and his newly wounded charge, enabling the underling time to get fully upright. Game on. All media were now running and pointing in her direction. The man limped towards Lara.

‘That hurt, you bitch.’

Lara took out her gun and ordered him to the ground. DS Graham covered his smile with a hand cupped thoughtfully over his chin. The TRG were circling and shouting orders. The news cameras rolled. The limping man was already handcuffed, he’d be mad to push it any further. Lara levelled her gun at his chest.

‘Do it. Lie down.’

He didn’t. The ninjas were closing in but he seemed oblivious to the heavy weaponry levelled at him. They wouldn’t shoot a handcuffed and unarmed man in front of the TV cameras, would they? Only a few seconds had elapsed since the stamping but it felt longer.

‘Final warning.’

He took another painful step towards Lara. She wondered if she’d miscalculated.

There was a string of Vietnamese from Jimmy Tran and the
man did as he was told. Lara found she was kind of disappointed but DI Hutchens was beaming. This guaranteed him some airtime tonight.

The TRG reassumed control, one of them whispering out from under his black helmet like Darth Vader. ‘You made me look like a dickhead there, love. That wasn’t very nice.’