Prime Cut (5 page)

Cato returned to his list. A missing Perth businessman, thirtyeight; last seen in a gay nightclub in Northbridge about a year ago. It had been a bit of a surprise to his wife who was now grieving a little less than she might otherwise have been. Italian background, Carlo Donizetti, medium height and build; a possibility? He scanned further down. One leaped out at him. Two years ago, a Royal Australian Navy frigate had come into the south-coast port of Albany after picking up a sick harpoonist from a Japanese whaler in the Southern Ocean. Heart attack. Cato remembered it on the news at the time. Otherwise kindly humanitarian conservationists
protesting loudly that they should have left the bastard to die. The navy ship had been on joint exercises with the Indonesian, Singaporean, Thai, and Malaysian forces. An Indonesian sailor had been seconded aboard the Australian frigate. Lieutenant Riri Yusala. Twenty-five years old. Medium height. Slim build. He’d jumped ship after two days in Albany. Since declared an illegal immigrant but authorities were also hedging their bets by expressing ‘concern for his welfare’. Albany, a hop and skip from Hopetoun, west along the South Coast Highway. Cato studied the picture. Smooth complexion and boyish face; he looked well-fed and affluent. He had an education. He also had a wife and two young kids. Nothing concrete; it was pure instinct that had Cato’s heart beating faster. Riri Yusala.

‘Why did you jump ship and where did you go?’ wondered Cato. ‘And is that you in the cold box on the morning flight to Perth?’

Tess was in a filthy mood as Greg Fisher bumped the paddy wagon through another of the huge potholes left by the previous week’s heavy rain and turned into the dogleg on Mason Bay Road. She had been silent and irritable the whole journey. It wasn’t Don Rundle the whingeing Pom. It was Cato Kwong the infuriating ex. Swanning in like nothing had happened between them and everything was okay as long as you didn’t face up to it. True, he had raised the subject when they were out on the groyne but it was obviously on his TO DO list between BUY TOOTHPASTE and SOLVE MURDER. Item 6: Make Tess Miraculously Forget that I’m a Bastard Because I Left Her and Still Haven’t Told Her Why. Tick. Sorted. Then move back on to the business at hand with everybody la-la happy. She snorted and Greg gave her a funny look.

A construction team was working on a pipeline that stretched north through the low dusty scrub as far as the eye could see. She knew it snaked about twenty kilometres to the mine. In the other direction, south, it would finish its journey at Mason Bay at a fencedoff compound just along from the campsite. According to the sign by the side of the road, this was the pipeline for the new desalination plant which would deliver all of the nickel mine’s substantial fresh water needs. Tess surveyed the landscape. Gently rolling coastal scrub topped by a huge blue sky.

‘Bloody beautiful isn’t it?’ said Fisher, voicing her thoughts. She nodded and he obviously took it as a cue to expand.

‘But most of the mob from these parts left about a hundred years ago. They’re Auntie Daisy’s mob, on my mum’s side. They were driven out by a massacre after one of your “pioneers” was speared. Auntie Daisy said it was to persuade the dirty little bugger to leave the young Nyungar girls alone.’

Tess had been only half-listening but she began to tune in; this was the first time she’d heard an alternative take on the local history since she’d come to town.

‘Yeah, he died so they decided to teach us a lesson. “Civilising the natives” – that’s what they call it.’

Greg knew all about that stuff, he told Tess, having been raised in Pinjarra, another famous massacre site, just south of Perth. His mum had warned him about taking the job down here.

‘She said, “This country is just too sad, Gregory. Auntie Daisy’s mob don’t go there now and if they do they don’t stop. They wind up the car windows, hold their noses, and keep driving to the other side.” ’

Tess looked at her young colleague. His family stories were filled with stuff she would never fathom.

‘So how come you’re here then?’

Greg lifted one hand from the wheel in a ‘that’s life’ gesture. An early country posting was part of serving your time to get where you wanted to be and quicker, he said. Even with his fair skin he still knew he was up against the tinted glass ceiling so he had to learn to play the game.

‘Look at Detective Kwong, he’s up there.’

Apparently it had been Kwong’s face staring out at him from the recruitment posters at the Careers Expo that encouraged him to sign up.

‘Anyway if this country gets too hard to handle I’ll just have to hold my breath like Auntie Daisy and shoot on through.’

Tess had been feeling vaguely sympathetic and more respectful of her baby-faced colleague until he cited Cato Kwong as his inspiration. Not good timing. She grunted. One look at her face told Greg to save the rest of the history lesson for another day.

One of the construction workers held up a red stop sign as a grader pulled out into the unsealed road ahead, sending up a choking dust cloud. Greg did as he was told. He recognised the stop-sign man, Travis Grant, a fellow member of the Hopetoun Southerners footy team, the Sharks. Travis had on the same fluoro overalls that just about everyone was wearing in town these days,
and reflector surfie sunnies. His blond tinted hair was spiked, unruly, and matted in dust. He had a big wide smile; he was the spitting image of legendary leg-spinner Shane Warne, give or take a few kilos. He nodded through the open window, acknowledged Tess’s presence and grinned at Fisher.

‘Greg, how’s it hanging?’

‘Travis, good mate, how’s the knee?’

‘Getting there. Should be good for next season. Where you off to?’

‘Just taking a run down to Mason’s and Starvo.’ Greg gestured towards the pipe. ‘Looks like you’re nearly there.’

‘Yeah, another month maybe then it’s the big switch-on. Just need these idle bastards to pull their fingers out.’ Travis Grant thumbed over his shoulder at the vague human outlines in the dust cloud behind him. ‘So what’s up? Kane been doing doughnuts in the Starvo car park again? Or is it the mysterious case of the missing surf ski?’

Greg sat taller in his seat. ‘Get fucked Trav. Serious business today, didn’t you hear about the body?’

No, Travis said he hadn’t heard about the body. ‘Been camped out here since Sunday. What happened?’

‘Washed up yesterday. Looks like sharks but we’re keeping an open mind.’

Tess shot him a warning look. Too much information to the punters, too early. She nodded vaguely south across the landscape towards Mason Bay.

‘Noticed anything unusual or suspicious the last few days, Travis?’

‘Like what?’

‘Strangers, boats coming and going at unusual times, anything strange or unusual, that’s all.’

Travis squinted back over his shoulder to the ghostly shadows hovering in the dust.

‘Most of these bastards are strange and unusual. Don’t know most of them. Can’t understand them. And they do lots of weird shit. You can round the whole fucken lot up if you like. Once the job’s
finished that is.’

‘Thanks Travis, very helpful.’ Tess was quickly tiring of the highpissing Mr Grant.

Travis glanced casually over at the reversing grader. ‘So what’s Starvo and Mason’s got to do with it?’

Greg Fisher redeemed himself with a cards-to-chest display. ‘Don’t know yet. Watch this space.’

The grader was out of the way now and even though Travis hadn’t yet spun his sign around, Greg took it upon himself to go. In the rear-view mirror Tess caught a glimpse of Travis giving them the finger and his big Warnie smile before disappearing in the dust.

Stuart Miller was too hyped up to hang around the house waiting for a phone call that might never come. Senior Constable Tim Delaney could be anywhere in WA: up north in the red dust, driving around one of those soulless suburbs on the outskirts of Perth, or just down the road. Maybe he already had Davey Arthurs in custody. Davey Arthurs aka Derek Chapman. Stuart knew he shouldn’t be thinking it but he was; he wanted Davey Arthurs still out there. He wanted to be the one to bring him in, even if it was thirty-odd years too late.

He went into the bathroom to splash water on his face, cool down and freshen up. The face in the mirror was tanned but sagging, too much of the good life, the brown hair receding a little but greying rapidly. A good thick head of hair – it ran in the family, along with high blood pressure. Had he taken his pills today? He couldn’t remember. That was another family trait, Alzheimer’s. Miller’s mind was all over the place but it was his eyes that told him the truth about where he stood. Not the pale scar in the corner of the right one or the laugh lines radiating out from both. It was the weakness. He hadn’t been able to cut it as a cop because he was too soft. Bring Arthurs in? Who was he kidding? He had no right to any claim on the Arthurs case. He’d walked away from it, away from the blood and slaughter. Defeated. A young mother with her head caved in, her little boy resting against her with his hand on
her knee. He’d abandoned them. All he had to show for it was bad dreams and days like this.

‘Get real,’ he told the face in the mirror.

But he knew he couldn’t let go of Arthurs. Or maybe Arthurs wouldn’t let go of him. Was that what The Dream was about last night? A premonition?

Miller picked up a wide-brimmed floppy hat, sunnies and his mobile, and stepped outside into the heat. It was nearly enough to make him change his mind and head for the dark, air-conditioned bedroom. But he didn’t. He walked along the foreshore footpath, heading west into town. Ahead to his right, the long wooden jetty stretched almost two kilometres out into Geographe Bay. The water was unnaturally blue and, on a day like this, probably infested with millions of little jellyfish. Always just below the surface of what seemed like a perfect paradise, a nasty sting to remind you of what else life had to offer.

It’s horrific that a father could slaughter his own wife and children in their own home.

Davey Arthurs, Derek Chapman. Where are you?

The sweat was pouring off Miller and he was out of breath. He looked up and found he’d already walked the two kilometres into town. Where did the last fifteen minutes go? His eyes were stinging from the salty perspiration. His polo shirt stuck to him, back and front. He was at a roundabout. To his left, the Busselton coffee strip; to his right, the jetty and beach; straight ahead, not much. He stood there like a confused pensioner who’d forgotten who, where, and why. His head was all over the place, off the bloody planet. His hand was throbbing. It took him a moment to realise it was his mobile. He answered it.

‘Hello?’

‘Tim Delaney.’

No ‘Hello, is that such and such?’ On any other day Miller would have lectured the young upstart on good phone manners. But that would have been probably just a symptom of his low testosterone levels, his grumpy-old-man syndrome. Today? Today he was so fucked up he didn’t even know which way to turn. Miller parked
himself at a spare table outside a coffee shop and told Detective Delaney his story. It took a while; he realised he probably sounded like a silly, confused old codger. He certainly felt like one. Delaney obviously hadn’t come to the call with a completely open mind either: his responses were cluttered with non-committal umms. Perhaps his ears were clogged as well. He kept asking Miller to repeat things. But then a penny must have dropped somewhere because all of a sudden Delaney seemed to be taking him seriously. Was it the similarity in the MO that Miller had described?

‘Your accent,’ Delaney interrupted, ‘is that what you call Geordie?’

Obviously the thirty years in Australia hadn’t quite transformed Stuart Miller into Slim Dusty.

‘Aye, that’s right.’

The voice at the other end brightened. ‘Same as Derek Chapman, so you can’t be completely bullshitting me if you both talk like that. Let’s meet.’

Jim Buckley looked up from the entertainment and gossip section of the paper and grinned.

‘Clocked him.’

Cato was still scrolling through the mispers, checking if he’d missed anything.

‘Say something?’

‘Justin Trousersnake. Snack-Van Boy. Clocked him.’

‘And?’

‘Three, four years ago, Perth Cup, I pulled him over. He had a looker with him in the car then too. Leggy blonde, private school type, a bit lippy. Didn’t know when to shut up.’

‘That what you arrested him for? Lippy, leggy blonde in his front seat instead of yours?’

‘Would if I could. No. He had a big bag of eckies in the glove box and a Dockers rookie with his chick in the back. Simpson, his name was, the one that got de-listed last year for drinking too much. His chick was a bit of a donkey, now I come to think of it.’

Cato shook his head in wonder. ‘Photographic memory, amazing. Was the donkey blonde or brunette?’

‘Redhead. Nice bod but teeth too big for her mouth. Anyway Justin got off the ecky charge. Good lawyer; the same one who does the bikies and gangsters. Not cheap.’

Cato sat up and took more notice. ‘Justin: supplier of ecstasy to the fairly rich-and-famous, now the supplier of coffee and burgers to Hopetoun. Bit of a step down in the world. I wonder what, or who, he’s hiding from?’

Buckley folded his newspaper. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, B2?’

‘Lunch time?’ Cato nodded.

Buckley stood up and reached for his jacket, he paused briefly. ‘How germane is it to your floater?’

Cato stopped and studied Buckley. ‘Germane. Now that’s a word I never thought I’d hear you use.’

Tess and Greg had no luck at Mason Bay. It was midweek and deserted, not even any grey nomads hanging around. They’d had a bit of a poke around some of the campsites near the water’s edge and the short steep sandy tracks down to the beach. Not sure what they were looking for – a smoking gun, a bloody knife, a signed confession? They didn’t find any of those or anything else for that matter. They’d pushed on another twenty kilometres or so to Starvation Bay. At least there were a few shacks here and a proper boat ramp. Greg was back on the history lesson and a thawed out Tess was more receptive now.

‘Starvation Bay, called that in the early days by those whitefellas who couldn’t see all that food in front of them because it didn’t come served up on a plate with shiny cutlery and lovely white napkins.’

It seemed that all along this stretch of coast the names left by the white ‘explorers’ betrayed their ignorance: Starvation Bay, Mount Barren ... they’d called it ‘worthless’ when in fact it had more life than you could point a stick at in a thousand years.

They came to a halt and Tess unbuckled her seat belt. ‘You’re a font, Greg, do you know that?’

The water was flat and bright blue in the growing heat of the day. The bay was sheltered from the south-westerly and Tess could see the foaming whitecaps out beyond the headland. But here, tucked into a corner at the western end, all was calm. A green 1970s vintage Land Rover was parked halfway down the boat ramp with its trailer sitting empty in the water. Whoever it was, they weren’t expecting to share the ramp that day, or didn’t care if they were.

They heard the outboard before they saw it, a tinny rounding the headland. An old bearded salty-seadog type with a grubby, weathered Eagles cap, long-sleeved faded blue work shirt and khaki shorts waved briefly from the helm. He guided the boat in and Greg helped him get it on the trailer. Up close, Tess adjusted his age estimate downwards, figuring him to be nearer early sixties. He and Greg exchanged minimal greetings, trimmed smiles and guarded looks while they secured the dinghy. The old guy wasn’t particularly inquisitive about his young helper. Greg opened the proceedings.