DI Sandra Pavlou’s afternoon media conference went down a storm. Nobody was using the term ‘serial killer’ officially, just ‘possibly connected crimes’, but the newshounds weren’t so coy. An e-fit photograph of victim number three, an educated guess based on what was left of the face, had been distributed to traditional news outlets and on social media and had already prompted some response: he looks like the noisy bloke in the unit upstairs; he works in a mine out Boddington way; he was hanging around the kids playground last week, et cetera. But so far the fingerprints, DNA and dental records had elicited zilch. Pavlou wanted a word with Cato and Trimboli.
‘We need a name for victim three.’
‘We’re on the case,’ said Cato.
‘According to the Professor’s prelim he doesn’t fit the usual profile, is that right?’
Cato nodded. ‘Good shape and health, no outward or inward signs of illicit drugs or alcohol abuse. Although there are traces of some sort of medication there, still to be confirmed but possibly an antidepressant. Otherwise clean.’
‘Maybe our killer got the wrong man?’
‘Maybe,’ said Cato.
‘It would help.’
Amy Trimboli glanced up from her iPad. ‘So everybody should be worried, not just deros?’
Pavlou allowed herself the ghost of a smile. ‘Easy on the pedal, Amy. Words can wound.’
‘Sorry, boss.’
Pavlou looked at Cato. ‘So, Philip, a name and a story for number three would be good. Can you make that your priority?’
‘Excellent. Maybe you could keep Amy with you on this. Take her under your wing?’
Amy gazed at him through her round red frames.
‘Sure,’ said Cato.
‘It’s looking like another late one.’
‘Thought it might be. So what time do you reckon?’ Sharon sounded half asleep. Maybe that accounted for the distance in her voice. Cato remembered that same dull flatness from his marriage to Jane. Then it had evoked guilt and irritation in equal measure. Now, the guilt was still there but there was something else. Fear. He really didn’t want this one to fail.
‘Mid to late evening?’ He changed tack. ‘What’s Ella been up to?’
‘Oh, she’s walking and talking and already got her eye on the boy up the road.’
‘That’s my girl.’
There was a muffled wail. ‘I have to go, she’s woken up. Tits out. Catch you later.’
‘Something funny?’ Amy Trimboli was sitting at an adjacent desk, expectant and, it seemed to Cato, a little impatient.
‘What?’
‘You’ve got a strange smile on your face.’
‘Married bliss.’
Amy looked puzzled. A foreign concept, obviously. ‘Why do they call you Cato?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too painful.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘Joke. It was a nickname they gave me at the Academy. Generic for Asian sidekick.’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Okay,’ she said, not entirely convinced. ‘So. Victim three?’
Deb Hassan dropped by, leaned against the doorframe.
‘Anything from doorknocks yet?’ asked Cato.
‘Nothing. Everyone was tucked up in bed when matey died.’
‘What about Chris Thornton?’ Their colleague in local enquiries.
‘Still neck-deep in CCTV as far as I know.’
‘Can you call him, find out where he’s at?’
‘Sure.’ Hassan glanced at Trimboli then back at Cato. ‘Any developments from your end?’
‘The P-M suggests a possible mistaken identity. Maybe our killer got the wrong man. The DI wants us to follow it up.’
‘You and Amy?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ said Hassan. ‘Get back to doorknocking.’
‘Regroup at six, here. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ Hassan pursed her lips and made herself scarce.
‘I don’t think she likes me,’ said Trimboli.
‘Nothing personal. There’s not many people she does like.’
‘What should we do now?’ A grumpy tap on her iPad. ‘Sarge?’
‘Maybe we need to educate ourselves.’
‘We’ve been expecting you. Pity you’re six weeks late.’
Not a good start, thought Cato. Sonya Allegretta from St Mary’s Community Support Centre had an orange and blue butterfly tattooed on the inside of her left wrist. She ran one of the organisations operating at the sharp end of the homelessness crisis in Fremantle. And she had a point: this meeting was way overdue. True, the first victim was officially No Fixed Abode but because he was on the police system for prior offences he was known to them, and his family were tracked down quickly. Dean Pearson, just twenty-two, stabbed repeatedly. His homelessness was seen as a factor of his high-risk lifestyle, not as a motive for murder. Until victim two, a month later, it was still regarded as some kind of drugs or alcohol thing. So perhaps they were only two weeks late, not six, if that made it any better.
‘We’re here to listen and learn,’ Cato said.
‘Deano dropped in here most days for a feed,’ said Sonya. ‘He was no angel but he didn’t deserve what happened to him.’
‘Nobody does,’ said Cato. On the whole, he meant it.
‘He’d been on the streets for about three years. Dropped out of uni in his second year. Put on anti-anxiety medication. Couch-surfed for a few months but it doesn’t take long before you’ve used up your favours and overstayed your welcome.’
‘Family didn’t help?’ Cato had met some of them in the early days of the investigation. They’d been suitably shocked and sad yet, to Cato’s mind, also unsurprised and possibly even relieved. Still, he wanted Sonya’s take on them.
‘Mother died of cancer when he was in his early teens. Father remarried and focused on his new brood. He ran out of patience when Deano dropped out of ECU. Turned the tap off.’
Cato got to thinking about his own son, Jake. Now sixteen and building up a collection of infringement letters from John Curtin Senior High. Both his parents moving on with new families, new kids. No contact now for at least a month and Cato had let it fly by.
‘You seem to know a lot about Dean.’ Amy Trimboli pushed her glasses back up her nose.
‘It’s my job,’ said Allegretta.
‘So how did he get by?’
‘A bit of begging, some benefits, picking up a feed from groups like ours.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Amy, already knowing the answer.
‘Such as?’
‘Crime or prostitution? Drugs?’
Allegretta scratched her nose. ‘Not to my knowledge.’
Amy didn’t let up. ‘Shoplifting, burglaries, drug dealing, assignations with strangers. All risk-taking behaviour isn’t it?’
‘So he had it coming?’
‘Just wondering if you knew any of that dangerous company he kept.’
‘No. I only know the non-dangerous ones.’
‘Where did he usually sleep?’ asked Cato.
‘Here and there, depending on the time of year and the weather. Summer you could usually find him down at South Beach. Winter we might get him some temporary shelter or he’d be in the Woolstores, or a multistorey car park, abandoned building, shop doorway. Take your pick.’
‘The place he was found, down by the wharf. That was a favourite spot of his?’
‘Yes. You know it was, your blokes asked around at the time.’
‘Do many people know about that spot?’
Allegretta shrugged. ‘Enough. They talk, they share.’
‘How about Maureen Bryant?’ said Cato. ‘Did you deal with her?’
A shake of the head. ‘She was with the Salvos or the Anglicans wasn’t she? Try them.’ Allegretta fixed her gaze on Cato. ‘So what brings you here, now?’
‘The third victim, discovered overnight. He doesn’t seem to fit the profile.’
‘Yeah? How come?’
Cato told her.
‘So he doesn’t seem to have been a drug or alcohol abuser and he kept himself in reasonable shape?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re figuring or hoping he’s not really homeless,’ said Allegretta. ‘Maybe you’re starting to care now? Maybe everybody out there will start caring now, if they think they might be next?’
Cato didn’t want to get into an argument. ‘Just wondering, really, if you had any thoughts about who he might be.’
‘Take a drive along the coast any night anywhere from Hillarys down to Rockingham. You’ll find most beach car parks have somebody living in their car or van and fitting your description. You don’t have to be a junkie or a fuck-up to find yourself homeless in WA. Mortgages and rents the way they are at the moment there’s a lot of people just two pay cheques away from the street. Fall ill, get evicted because your landlord wants to redevelop or up the rent even further, leave your abusive violent partner and click’ — she snapped her fingers — ‘you’re one of the invisible.’
‘So we shouldn’t make any assumptions?’ said Cato.
‘Fucking right,’ said Allegretta.
As a result of DI Pavlou’s afternoon at HQ, the enquiry into the murders of Dean Pearson, Maureen Bryant and Person Unknown had been upgraded and given a new name: Task Force Hermes. The operational names often seemed random, plucked from the air, or maybe from the job description of one of the spare Assistant Commissioners. So, wondered Cato, is our killer some emissary of the gods? He was reminded of Dieudonne, the Congolese former child soldier and assassin who’d wreaked havoc in Fremantle a few years earlier. His name translated roughly into ‘gift from God’. Last time Cato checked, Dieudonne was carving out his fiefdom as one of the Lords of Casuarina Prison. But it wouldn’t harm to double-check he was still there.
DI Sandra Pavlou had gathered the Hermes management team for a brainstorming session: DI Hutchens, Cato, Chris Thornton and Duncan Goldflam representing Fremantle; Pavlou, a bald and morose detective sergeant called McMahon, and DC Amy Trimboli flying the flag for Major Crime. Pavlou had brought in an extra whiteboard, there were three plungers of coffee on the table, and pizza had been ordered. She meant business. It was just after 8.00 p.m. and Cato was fading. The media conference and the evening news had lit up the phones. The subsequent new avenues of enquiry would quadruple the workload. Unfortunately the team strength hadn’t been quadrupled in response. It would be at least another two or three hours before Cato would be able to go home.
‘So three bodies, three different ways of killing. Why?’ Pavlou dunked an Anzac in her coffee.
‘He bores easily?’ said Hutchens. It raised a few sniggers but nobody was really in the mood.
‘It’s real “look at me” stuff, isn’t it?’ Cato ventured.
‘Go on,’ said Pavlou.
‘The calling cards, the different modus for each one, the locations. Very stagey.’
‘So he’s got our attention. His deeds are on the telly.’ Pavlou rescued a soggy piece of Anzac from her cup. ‘What do we glean from the methods? Duncan?’
‘According to the P-M, the stabbing on victim one was frenzied and deep, striking bone at times, the strangulation with number two required strength and determination, and the stomping on number three needed stamina.’ Goldflam smothered a yawn, he’d been up and about even earlier than Cato. ‘All in all we can probably assume a younger, stronger person. Most likely male but you can never be sure these days, there’s some scary women doing CrossFit.’
The pizzas arrived, boxes were opened, arms reaching across the table. Pavlou summed up the work-in-progress. ‘So we’re looking at a fit, strong male under forty, like our mate from the Liquorland CCTV.’
‘Try the local gyms,’ said Hutchens.
‘With something to say about the underclass?’ added Cato.
‘What do you think that message is?’ said Pavlou.
Trimboli dabbed her lips with a napkin. ‘They’re not wanted?’
‘As in, they’re not wanted because they’re an eyesore or a burden?’ said Cato, dwelling on his afternoon meeting at St Mary’s. ‘Or society is unfair and so they shouldn’t exist?’
‘A warped crusader.’ Pavlou liked that and wrote it on the whiteboard. ‘What about the playing cards. Any ideas?’
‘From a jack to a king,’ said morose McMahon.
‘Loneliness to a wedding ring,’ added Hutchens with a faraway look.
‘Jack, as in lowest form of nobility, or knave as in servant, or trickster, or person without moral code.’ Chris Thornton looked up from his phone and waggled it. ‘Wikipedia,’ he said. Thornton had developed a reputation for being a details man and was once again in charge of collating the tsunami of information gathered during an investigation and giving it some preliminary shape.
Pavlou wrote that down too. ‘How’s it going with the trawl on similar crimes?’
Thornton read from notes on his iPad. ‘About nine months ago three homeless died in a fire in an abandoned storage warehouse up in Perth, near City West station. Looked like an insurance job as the site was marked for redevelopment. No arrests, case still open.’
‘I remember it,’ said Pavlou. ‘It went back to local enquiries after a while, judged the deaths were by accident rather than design. But I think Gangs had an interest too. Primary motive, money.’ She asked Thornton to review it, talk to the investigators. ‘Anything else?’
‘Around the country there’s been a handful of cases of rough sleepers being killed in mainly one-offs either by strangers or friends but nothing as sustained as this. Targeted. Serial. Nearly all of those cases have produced a culprit and a conviction pretty quickly.’
‘Find out if any of those convicted culprits have been released and moved to WA recently.’
There was a knock and Deb Hassan stuck her head around the door. She looked first at Cato then at Pavlou. Decided this was for Pavlou. ‘The phone-in, boss. We might have a name for number three.’
Cato left the office a little before midnight. En route, along South Terrace, lights still glowed in the cafes and pubs. Last drinks. Staff sweeping and hosing down the footpaths, clearing away chairs and tables. Those with homes to go to said their farewells. Those without, waited in the shadows for a favourite spot they could claim as theirs for the rest of the night. The wind was up and there was a salty bite to it. At home Sharon was sitting up in bed with Ella on her breast.
‘Is this all there is to life?’ she said, opening one eye and mustering a smile.
‘I hope so.’ Cato yawned and leaned in to kiss her. The baby complained at the space invasion but suckled on determinedly.
Both Sharon’s eyes were open now. The look was both troubled and troubling. ‘We’re stuffed.’
‘Yep.’
‘Something’s got to give.’
The script was sounding familiar. Cato absent-mindedly brushed a finger against the baby’s cheek. Ella’s little hand lifted, as if trying to swat him away. ‘I know, but …’
‘Yeah, I don’t have any ideas either.’ Sharon switched the baby to the other side. ‘How’s it going out in the real world?’
Real world, thought Cato. A sociopath cutting a swathe through the most vulnerable people in the city. Fear stalking the backstreets. The invisible only becoming visible through sensational headlines. Cato looked at his wife and baby daughter bathed in the soft glow of the bedside lamp and breathed their warm musky smell. ‘Slowly,’ he said. ‘I think after the news tonight there’ll be a few less people sleeping soundly in their beds.’
Ella had finished and gave off her little snores. ‘Speaking of which …’ said Sharon. She handed Cato the baby and slid down under the covers.
Cato settled Ella and found himself waking up again. He went into the kitchen, checked the mail on the table and binned it. He drank a glass of water then rinsed it under the tap. Out the kitchen window the breeze rustled the olive and lemon trees in the back yard. At the edge of his vision there was a smudge of movement as if a shadow had broken from its background. Cato frowned out into the darkness. He really needed to sleep.