Bad Seed (34 page)

Nothing in the news about Mr H. and his heart problems.

He opened up the desktop mail application. The emails were personal non-work stuff. Hutchens must keep all that in the office, a good sign of a healthy work–life balance, although that must have got out of kilter a bit lately. The emails were between him and various family members, some mates in the yacht club arranging a weekend out on the water, the wine website sending him special offers. The ones between family were all dated at least a month earlier, nothing since. Everything since then had been yachties and wine and other boring stuff. Mr H. had been tidying up after himself. He must have foreseen something like this, a loss of control over his personal life, his destiny. One way or another it comes to us all eventually. He was trying to shield his family from exposure to danger. So the more recent ones he'd deleted must have had useful information in them, like contact details, possible whereabouts. But people of Mr H.'s generation always make mistakes, too old and stupid to fully understand computers, the internet and stuff. Too lazy to completely cover their tracks. Too arrogant to believe anyone could bring them down.

Mundine found it not long after. An email chain between Hutchens and an old school friend of Mrs H. about a surprise birthday bash for his wife six months ago. The old friend expressing wonder at the passage of time and how the girl they'd all known as Marjorie Coucher had weathered the years well. Now that he had a maiden name, he ran a White Pages search and located a number and address for the Couchers in Augusta. He rang it. A woman answered.

‘Marjorie?' he said.

‘No, this is her mother. She's out at the moment. Can I take a message?'

‘No worries. I'll call again, later.' He put the phone down.

Cato took over from Chris Thornton mid-afternoon. Nothing to report, he'd said, apart from the fact that he might have fallen in love with one of the nurses on the afternoon shift. Keisha from Warnbro.

Cato didn't encourage him. ‘Any sign of life from the boss?'

‘He woke up an hour or so ago, gave me a funny look and went back to sleep. Deb said he'd had some food and liquid late morning and they changed his drip. Seems to be zonked out on something or other.'

Before they parted company Cato asked Thornton to run a check on any murder, manslaughter, or otherwise suspicious death cases involving a Paul Morrison.

‘How far back and where?'

‘Let's assume metro area for now and widen it if nothing turns up.' He did some mental arithmetic and plumped for the last fifteen years.

‘That's quite a stretch. What's it related to?'

Cato told him. ‘And we need a discrete look at Mundine himself. Not just his charge sheet but also his movements over the same period: jobs, education, training et cetera. But we've got to be careful. So far he's done nothing, so us digging dirt on him on the boss's behalf won't look good at the Inquiry.'

‘I'll see what I can do.'

‘Finally,' Cato held up a finger. ‘Peter Sinclair: a résumé of his misdeeds.'

‘The hostel pervo?' Cato confirmed as much. ‘Anything else?'

‘Not for now.'

With Thornton gone Cato settled into the bedside chair. His boss's face had changed over the last forty-eight hours. The pink tightness had been replaced by grey slackness. Hutchens looked old. Cato wondered if his boss would return to work after an ordeal
like this – assuming the issues of the Inquiry and Mundine were successfully resolved.

The passivity of the situation was getting to Cato. He needed to be out hunting Mundine down, not waiting here for something that may or may not happen.

Hutchens stirred, opening one eye then the other. ‘Every time I look up it's a new face. Is this a test or something?'

Cato smiled. It was a relief to hear shades of the old Hutchens. He offered him a drink of water.

‘I don't think there's any need for this.'

‘The water?' said Cato.

‘The guardian-angel thing. That's not the way Mundine works. This is too public, too direct.'

‘Better safe than sorry.'

‘Yeah, thanks, but there's an office to run.'

‘We've got it covered. And they're sending a relief DI to cover from tomorrow.'

‘Who? Not Pavlou?'

‘No, she's a bit busy.' On the body in John Forrest park, no doubt. ‘A bloke from Midland. Jimmy Spittle?'

‘Wanker,' said Hutchens.

‘I don't know him,' shrugged Cato.

‘What's the latest on the body?'

‘Digging it up as we speak. I think Pavlou's hoping to have all the bits in place by day's end and then they'll start running the tests.' Cato lifted his chin at Hutchens and the beeping machines. ‘Have the doctors spoken to you yet?'

‘Yeah, they'll keep me in for a day or two more, gradually wean me off the jungle juice and send me home with some tablets and an appointment to get some plumbing done on the arteries.'

‘We've tried contacting Marjorie and the kids but we couldn't find the numbers.'

‘They've been changed.'

Cato told him about the text message that he believed had been from Marjorie and was in fact from Mundine. ‘And he probably sent those flowers.' Cato waved at the daffodils.

‘Bin them.'

Cato did. Hutchens located his wallet and dug out a slip of paper. ‘Marjorie's number. Tell her I'm okay and to stay where she is.'

‘Where is she?'

‘Augusta, with her folks. Melanie's there as well.'

Cato tried to remember the name of the other daughter. Hutchens saved him the trouble. ‘Don't worry. She's in Europe on her gap year. Not due back for months.'

Cato told him about the calls from Bandyup, about Tricia's old boyfriend Paul Morrison.

‘And?'

‘I've got Thornton looking at it.'

‘How's everything else?'

‘In hand,' said Cato.

Hutchens' lower lip trembled. ‘You're a good bloke, you know that?' He took a shaky sip of water. ‘Times like this, you really need someone to rely on.'

Deb Hassan resumed the seat late afternoon as the sun dropped, clouds gathered, and a wicked wind kicked in. Heading back to the office, bracing against sudden strong gusts, Cato phoned Marjorie Hutchens. She took some convincing not to drop everything and drive right back to Fremantle that instant.

‘Was that you trying to ring earlier?' she asked.

‘I don't think so.'

‘Never mind. My mum said someone called and would ring back later.'

‘On this number? The mobile?'

‘No, the landline.' A pause. ‘Why? Do you think it could be that weirdo?'

Cato sought to reassure her. ‘I can't see how he would have got the number. It's probably nothing.'

‘Well if it is that bastard, he'd better be fucking sure of himself, my dad's got a .303 and he'll use it on the arsehole.'

They say that if you live with someone long enough you begin to
take on their characteristics. It was certainly so with Mrs Hutchens. He wished her well and rang off.

Thornton had done a trawl on dead Paul Morrisons and left the results in Cato's inbox. There were three: two in the metro area and one in Albany on the south coast. The first was a one-punch killing in a brawl in Leederville twelve years earlier. The victim, twenty-nine, cracked his skull when he landed on the footpath. Cato did the maths and decided he was probably too young. The second was a Paul Scott Morrison, aged forty-nine, who'd died in a suspected arson attack in Bassendean nine years ago. Finally Paul Joseph Morrison, fifty-three, had been beaten to death in his caravan at a semi-permanent site on the outskirts of Albany four years earlier. The last two showed promise, in terms of age group and timing and the nastiness of their deaths. Cato asked for more on each. There was nothing so far on Mundine's or Peter Sinclair's respective histories. That would have to wait until tomorrow.

He made a call to Deb Hassan. ‘How's he looking?'

‘He's eating his dinner, giving the nurse a hard time, and not far from his old self.' Some words exchanged over a hand-muffled phone. ‘He wants to speak to you.'

The phone was passed over to Hutchens.

‘Let the poor woman go home to her family, Cato. This is a waste of time.'

They discussed it further for a minute or two then Cato relented. ‘Put me back on to Deb.'

‘Yeah?' she said after the rustling.

‘Go home. The boss is right, we can't sustain this.'

‘Are you sure? It's no problem at all for me to stay. I've already made arrangements on the domestics.'

‘It's fine. But leave him your gun just in case.'

‘Is that allowed?'

‘Do we care?'

Cato felt a presence at his shoulder. Hot breath in his ear. ‘Well hello,' the voice said.

‘Geez, you're jumpy,' said Rory Driscoll.

He was right, Cato's pulse was taking a while to steady. ‘How did you get past reception?'

‘Winning smile and a get-into-jail free card. Any chance of a coffee?'

Driscoll looked different. He'd swapped the Hawaiian shirt and boardies for smart winter casual and had a haircut and a shave. They adjourned to the departmental kitchen. It was less poky than the one in the old offices, this place did once belong to a bank after all. Cato put the kettle on. ‘So, any news?'

‘Our friend Yu and your friend Des were involved in a luxury housing development near Shanghai.'

‘Yep, near a place called Songjiang, an extension of Thames Town, I knew that already.'

‘The site they chose was not part of the original Thames Town.'

‘Right.' Cato couldn't hide his impatience. ‘Cambridge Gardens.'

‘Sounds classy, doesn't it? Saw the photos on the website.'

‘The reality was somewhat less shiny.'

‘Did you know a fair chunk of the surrounding area had been bought up by Thomas Li?'

‘Yes, he pointed it out to me. He was having trouble with a bunch of stubborn residents whose homes were being demolished. They brought some thugs in to move them on. A few people got badly hurt. The son of one of those victims killed Lara.'

‘You're better informed than I thought. Sharon kept you in the loop, did she?'

‘Until I left Shanghai.' Cato dished out the coffee.

Driscoll took a thoughtful sip from his mug. ‘Stubborn residents weren't Li's only problem. Cambridge Gardens got in the way of Li's grand plans for a major development: a mini city, homes for something like half a million people. All spoilt by Yu's little enclave.'

‘And?'

‘Yu and O'Neill were set to make a killing. Li had agreed to their hugely inflated buy-out price. We're talking gazillions here. But the deal stalled.'

‘Why?'

‘Don't know yet. But if your mate Tan was involved it might be worth murdering for.'