Cato pushed the victim’s e-fit photo across the desk. ‘You’re sure it’s him?’
The woman had hit the road before dawn and driven up from Mount Barker, in the state’s south, a four or five hour drive. She was in her early forties and had that stocky, weather-burnished look of those who have grown up on a farm. She’d been offered coffee but preferred tea, strong with milk and one sugar. Her name was Denise Anderson née White.
‘As sure as I’ll ever be. I haven’t heard from him in nearly ten years but I’d swear that’s Chris.’
There was hardly enough of the face left to make that kind of call. The e-fit was a guess, a sketch from the computer’s imagination. Maybe she just wanted it to be so, thought Cato. ‘What makes you think it’s him?’
‘It’s him. Sometimes you just know, don’t you?’
‘But you haven’t seen your brother in, what, ten, eleven years?’
‘Heard from him. Haven’t seen him in nearly fourteen. He was heading off to Iraq. Two thousand and three.’
The Second Gulf War, thought Cato. The one where they couldn’t find any of those weapons of mass destruction. ‘Your brother was in the military?’
She nodded. ‘Special forces. Some kind of commando, hush-hush. If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you, kind of thing.’ She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a photo. ‘That’s him back then.’
A man in a beret and khaki, clean-shaven, uncertain smile. Plain background. The kind of photo they show on the news at the funeral of a homecoming hero. If the man on the slab was indeed Christopher White, then the killer had proved himself capable of besting an ex-Special Forces commando. What were they dealing with here?
‘Excuse my saying this,’ said Trimboli, ‘but you don’t seem very upset.’
Denise Anderson sat up straighter and took a drink of tea. ‘Expecting me to bawl, are you? Not sad enough, like Lindy Chamberlain?’
Trimboli held her ground. ‘So are you upset? Or not?’
‘He was nearly ten years older than me. He’d been away in the army most of the time I was growing up. I never really knew him as a person, just a photo on the mantlepiece. Besides,’ she sipped some more tea, ‘we still haven’t confirmed it’s him yet, have we?’
‘And that’s it?’ said Trimboli.
‘Yep. That’s it.’
That wasn’t it, she was holding something back. Cato let it go for the time being. They’d arrange for a viewing at the morgue later that morning, and comparison blood and DNA tests. Denise Anderson could be back on the road to Mount Barker after lunch.
‘He was on antidepressants.’ Cato checked the update from the lab. ‘Celica, or citalopram. Know anything about that? Why he was depressed?’
A shrug. ‘War veteran. Par for the course I imagine.’
‘Thanks for coming in,’ said Cato. They shook hands and she turned to leave.
‘Was it a bad death?’
Kicked and stomped into oblivion. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ said Cato.
Denise nodded and walked out.
‘Christopher John White, aged fifty-one, ex-military.’ The comparison DNA tests had confirmed it. Now DI Pavlou would have the delicate and probably frustrating task of liaising with the Defence Department to get access to White’s army service record to see if that held any clues to his murder. ‘Was at the sharp end in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another angle to pursue, maybe?’
‘You reckon some jihadi’s got it in for him?’ DI Hutchens wasn’t convinced.
‘As always, Mick, I’m keeping an open mind.’ Pavlou was also struggling to keep her patience. Cato could sympathise. These were long hours and tough times and Hutchens’ unremitting negativity wasn’t helping anybody. ‘Look at the news most nights. The zealots from both sides have brought the war home to everyone everywhere.’
It was true enough. Cato recalled the horrifying TV news images from the UK of a soldier hacked to death in broad daylight on a busy London thoroughfare, massacres in Paris, elsewhere. This was the age of the lone wolf, unpredictable, resourceful and all the more terrifying for it.
Hutchens persisted. ‘What about victims one and two? Where do they fit into your new theory?’
‘I don’t have a theory, Mick. I just want to see the bloke’s army record to show due diligence. All right?’
She set Morose McMahon the task of preliminary contact with Defence. Cato reiterated his thoughts on the killer and Pavlou concurred: anyone who could bring down an ex-commando wasn’t to be taken lightly. Then again, nobody had been taking this bloke lightly. So far neither CCTV nor doorknocks had elicited any sightings or hearings of suspicious activity around Esplanade Park before, during, or after White’s murder. As with the first two victims, the killer had ghosted in and out leaving no trace. Except the bodies of course.
‘Duncan?’ Pavlou wanted a forensics update.
‘As with the previous ones, the blood perimeter stops about five metres away. Our man must have changed out of his killing clothes and boots and gone on his way. Lots of detritus to work through. We’ll keep at it and let you know.’
Pavlou turned to Cato and Trimboli. ‘So we now have a name for number three, but still no indication of whether he was homeless, or whether he was mistakenly targeted. Thoughts?’
‘The lady from St Mary’s reckons you get all sorts on the streets these days,’ said Trimboli. ‘Not just junkies and fuck-ups, as she put it.’
‘If it was a mistaken encounter,’ said Cato, ‘what was Mr White doing hanging around the park at that time of night?’
‘Looking for company?’ offered Amy.
‘Well, there’s another line of enquiry for you,’ admitted Hutchens.
‘Sober, drug and alcohol free, and in reasonable physical shape. Ex-military hard man. You’d have to catch somebody like White unawares if you’re going to come off best,’ mused Cato. ‘That suggests to me that he was sleeping rough and didn’t see it coming.’
‘Yet nobody from St Mary’s, or the other agencies, or the rough-sleeper community seems to have known of him,’ said Trimboli.
‘But once again,’ pointed out Pavlou, ‘our killer knew exactly where to find White as he did with numbers one and two.’
‘It wouldn’t be hard to wander around and find a victim at random,’ said Hutchens. ‘Their sleeping spots aren’t a secret.’
Duncan Goldflam lifted a finger. ‘Somebody this neat isn’t acting impulsively or randomly. This requires patience and planning.’
‘Like a croc at a waterhole. Matey knows this terrain,’ said Cato. ‘Intimately.’
Pavlou was back on the whiteboard, marker at the ready. ‘He’s homeless?’
‘Or used to be,’ said Chris Thornton. ‘Or knows someone who is, or has been.’
‘Or works with the homeless,’ said Cato. ‘Or used to.’
‘Social worker, medic, cop,’ said Hutchens. ‘Do-gooder.’
‘Ranger,’ pointed out Thornton. ‘The council’s diverting them from locking up stray dogs to moving the beggars on.’ He was a veritable font.
It didn’t really narrow things down but it would help focus their minds.
Sharon strapped Ella into the stroller, adjusted the sun shade so the bub would keep on sleeping, put on a hat and snicked the door behind her. It would be about a twenty to thirty minute hike down to the South Beach walk track, another twenty to the old Coogee Power station, stop off at the kiosk on the way back for a cappuccino, and then home. Keep it brisk and it could be an hour and a half’s worth of meaningful exercise, albeit ruined by a cuppa. But better than nothing and she’d be having a coffee anyway, there or at home, just to stay awake for a few more hours. Ella’s unpredictable sleeping patterns ruled Sharon’s life: motherhood — exhilarating and exhausting.
Passing the bistro at South Beach, Sharon looked out across a glass-flat, azure ocean. She was still in awe of the kind of days Fremantle could conjure up. After three years in Beijing, she’d come to see pollution and congestion as pretty much normal. Places and days like this had been remote, unreal, the stuff of fantasies or photoshopped pics in magazines. Middle-aged cyclists, hipsters with dogs, jogging mums with grunty off-road strollers — all seemed to have the time and inclination for a quick smile or hello in passing. On past the South Beach apartment blocks and the sudden quiet as buildings gave way to bush on one side and shimmering water on the other. Among the bushes, a few splashes of blue. Tents. Freedom campers? Homeless? Ahead, a few metres out into the ocean, the statue of C.Y. O’Connor and his horse. Phil had given her the history: it was a monument to a man who took failure personally, riding into the sea to kill himself, unaware that his feat of engineering brilliance would prove successful after all. Taking failure personally: it could be Australia’s motto — you’re not allowed to be unlucky in the Lucky Country.
Approaching the old Robb Jetty cattle rails, a jogger who had passed her in the same direction earlier was on his way back now. A gym junkie by the looks of it. That powerful concoction of workouts, steroids and self-belief you could see in any gym, any courtroom, or any prison yard, any day of the week. A face so sculpted it could have been plastic. He slowed and gave her a nice smile. Maybe she was too quick and too harsh in her judgement.
‘Beautiful day,’ he said, coming to a stop. A deep, mellifluous voice. He’d be nice to listen to on the radio or the phone.
She nodded. ‘Glorious.’
He crouched down for a look into the stroller. ‘Boy or girl?’
Mr Muscles was only young, twenty maybe. He probably thought he was just being friendly. Unaware that he’d already crossed a line and encroached on her space.
‘Girl,’ she said.
He peered into the gloom of the shaded stroller. ‘Lovely.’
‘Well, I need to be going,’ said Sharon.
‘Haven’t seen you down here before?’
‘No,’ she said.
He straightened up. ‘Bye, then.’
‘Yeah, bye,’ said Sharon.
Sharon chastised herself for thinking uncharitable thoughts.
Lunchtime. Cato decided he needed some fresh air and time on his own. He headed towards the food hall beside the old markets with seafood pad thai and a psycho on his mind. He turned the corner into a bustling Market Street and nearly bowled someone over.
‘Fuckin’ hell!’ said the man.
‘Sorry, mate,’ said Cato, reaching out a steadying hand. ‘You okay?’
‘What’s your name?’ the man said, putting down his shopping bag, taking out a notepad and licking a stubby pencil. He was short and middle-aged with yellow boardies, thongs and a Metallica T-shirt. At his feet, a grimy IGA shopping bag stuffed with official-looking papers. He didn’t seem like he was the full quid.
‘Philip.’ Cato smiled, aiming for a quick resolution and onward to lunch.
‘What’s your proper name?’ he said, pointing to Cato’s lanyard and ID.
‘Sergeant Philip Kwong. That better?’
‘Barry.’ The man stuck out his hand and Cato shook it.
‘Where you off to today, Barry?’
He pointed ahead of him. ‘Station. Joondalup. Court.’
‘Court? What for?’
‘Swearing. Not allowed to swear on the train, it says so here on the restraining order.’ He started rummaging around in his bag among the reams of papers. Thrust one in Cato’s face. ‘See.’
Cato held up a hand. ‘Okay, I believe you. It’s not nice, swearing, shouldn’t do that, mate.’
Barry nodded sourly as he ran his finger down the crumpled pages, squinting and reading with his mouth open. ‘Not allowed to say “fuck” on the train.’
Cato felt a twinge of sympathy for Barry if he was obliged to travel regularly on the Joondalup Line. Best not to encourage him though. ‘Right, I should think so too.’
‘Or cunt.’
‘I get the picture, Barry.’
‘Or shit even. Not on the bus either. Or the ferry.’
Barry waved down a bus even though it was only one stop to the train station. He climbed aboard. As the bus doors closed, Cato saw Barry sit down, mime zipping up his rude mouth, and stick up his middle finger at his fellow passengers.
At the food hall Cato took a table outside in the sun and waited for his noodles to arrive. He unfolded a West he’d found in the kitchen at work. The headline was all about the rough-sleeper murders — FEAR STALKS FREO — with one pic of DI Pavlou looking determined against a Crimestoppers backdrop and another of the early morning Esplanade Park crime scene with a blurry Cato caught on long lens. Inside, more photographs of the victims and sketchy backstory on each of their lives, except of course Christopher John White who, at the time of printing, remained a person unknown. Interviews, vox pops with scared residents, and reminders of other notable WA serial killings. They managed to fill four pages with it. Rumblings about the mayoral election: the challenger accusing the incumbent of letting the city go to the dogs, the incumbent trying to stay nice and reasonable. It reminded Cato he still needed to do that bit of pollie-wrangling. Further inside, joy of joys, the cryptic was untouched. Herald angels, haven’t seen anything like it — six and four. The pad thai arrived and Cato dug in, spearing a piece of squid on his chopstick. He glanced at his fellow diners as they ate and chatted and enjoyed the midday sun. He wondered if the killer might be among them and, if so, whether he’d be distinguishable from the crowd. No, of course he wouldn’t. He was a phantom, drifting in and out of people’s lives, leaving no trace of himself except the stench of death. Herald angels, haven’t seen anything like it. Six and four. Cato put down his chopsticks and picked up his biro. An anagram, haven’t seen — Heaven Sent.
His phone burbled. It was Chris Thornton.
‘The CCTV’s thrown up something worth a look.’
‘Yep?’
‘The same car in the vicinity of murders two and three during the time frame. Holden muscle ute. Silver.’
‘ID?’
‘Wayne Joseph Bradley. Lives in Palmyra. He’s got form for violence.’
Cato chased a bean sprout around his plate. ‘Do we know where he is right now?’
‘At home. He’s FIFO, it’s his week off. He flies out tomorrow.’
‘Quick work. Have you told Pavlou?’
‘Her phone’s off.’
‘DI Hutchens?’
‘He says, quote, “Do what the fuck you like.”’