Cato set out for the office feeling rested and refreshed. No more nightmares, some long-neglected domestic jobs ticked off, and Sharon open to the idea of offering the granny flat to Jake.
‘It’s a compliment, really, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Cato. ‘It’d be nice to spend some solid time with him. We kind of missed out, those early years. The Job, you know?’
She’d nodded. ‘It happens.’ And a look that said it better not happen again.
‘I’ll call Jane later, sound her out.’
But he’d forgotten to. He added it to his mental TO DO list for today. Cato parked down near the Round House for the walk back up High Street to the old bank building that now housed Fremantle Police. These premises might well be flasher than the old limestone, asbestos-riddled nick but car parking was a pain in the butt. He picked up a takeaway coffee at Cafe 55 and, coming out, noticed a familiar face selling the Big Issue on the corner.
‘Barry, g’day.’ He fished a ten dollar note out of his wallet and took a copy of the magazine.
‘Morning, Sergeant Kwong.’ Barry slipped the money into his bag and rummaged around for change.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Cato. ‘How’d you go in court?’
Barry frowned. ‘Fined. Hundred bucks for a single “fuck” at Carine Station. Shoulda got me money’s worth. Arseholes.’
‘Careful,’ said Cato spotting an approaching council ranger. ‘Or you’ll be another hundred bucks poorer.’
The ranger was late twenties maybe or early thirties and built like the proverbial brick outhouse. He gave Barry a stare then turned to Cato. ‘Everything okay here, sir?’
‘Yep,’ said Cato. ‘No problem.’
The ranger turned back to Barry. ‘You know there’s an agreed precinct, mate, up the street and around the corner.’
‘That’s for beggars,’ said Barry. He pointed to his official seller’s ID lanyard and uniform shirt. ‘Not begging. Working.’
‘All the same.’ The ranger smiled and reached for Barry’s elbow in a shepherding manner.
Barry shook him off. ‘Have I introduced you to my friend, Sergeant Kwong? He’s a policeman.’
Cato stuck out a hand. ‘G’day. And you are?’
‘John.’ They shook and John clapped a paw on Barry’s shoulder. Gave it a squeeze. ‘No worries, Barry. Have a good day. See you around, yeah?’ He gave a final nod to Cato and left.
‘You two seem well acquainted,’ said Cato.
‘Jackboot John knows all our names.’ Barry’s gaze followed the man up the street. ‘I’d love to swear right now but I better not, eh?’
When Cato got to his desk, he found Paddy McMahon sitting at it.
‘Morning,’ said McMahon. ‘What can I do for you?’
Cato murmured a return greeting and went in to see DI Hutchens. ‘What’s the score?’ He thumbed over his shoulder at McMahon, now clipping his fingernails into Cato’s rubbish bin.
‘Take a seat,’ said Hutchens, squinting at his laptop. ‘Just finishing a tweet about the weekend arrests. Hashtag dontdrinkandtalk.’
Catching a middle-aged man mid-tweet somehow deprived him of any residual dignity, reflected Cato. This former warrior of the streets, sunk so low. Would this be Dirty Harry in the twenty-first century? Hashtag feelluckypunk?
‘You signed a form agreeing to send me over to Major Crime and having McMahon take my job here.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re needed at the sharp end, mate. Somebody’s got to catch this nutter and if anybody can do it, it’s you.’
‘Not with Pavlou scrutinising my every move.’
‘I suspect you’ll find she’s more flexible than you think. She’s had her eye on you for yonks, mate. It’s time to show her what you’re really made of.’
‘And you’re dropping me, just like that? No consultation, nothing?’
Hutchens lifted his gaze from the screen. ‘Trust me on this one, mate. It’s for the best.’
Cato shook his head. ‘So what, I hop on the train up to Perth now?’
‘No, not at all. You’re based just along the corridor here.’ Hutchens nodded in the general direction. ‘Special outpost of Task Force Hermes. You’re their permanent Major Crime man on the ground. Different budget allocation, too. You get your own coffee plunger and a gopher.’ He closed the laptop. ‘Young Amy’s waiting for you with breathless anticipation. Catch you around the water cooler sometime.’
On the way to his new office Cato received looks from Deb Hassan and Chris Thornton carrying those same elements of bewilderment, hurt and betrayal that he too was feeling.
‘We make him come to us.’ Norman concluded his pitch to Betsy.
‘What if he doesn’t read us?’ She laid a hand on his, mock-concerned. ‘It’s possible, you know.’
‘We write something provocative enough to enrage the mainstream rags and draw his attention to us via them. And we add a coded invitation within our piece.’
Her dark brows knitted in a frown. ‘How provocative?’
Norman handed his iPad over. ‘Try that.’ He’d sweated over it the whole weekend. Wrote, rewrote, cut, pasted, deleted. Stayed in. Ignored Tinder. She had to love it. Had to.
A smile on the bright red lips. ‘This is good.’ Like it was a fucking surprise. Her hand went to her mouth and she stifled a laugh. ‘You’re bad. You bad, bad boy.’
Dig deep for the homeless. About six feet should do it. Yes, the homeless are now part of the funky Freo story. And paying the price, in spades. Geddit? It’s taken three murders for the cops to pull their fingers out and admit there’s something funny going on. Maybe if the victims had been upstanding members of the Fremantle Sailing Club, or lived in a big house by the beach, the killer would be behind bars by now. But they’re not. They’re the people you avoid in the street. They’re the people you wish would go away. And now your wishes are coming true.
And further down:
So what’s your message, Mystery Man? Sick of bludgers tugging your sleeve, saying buddy can you spare a dime? Maybe you’re the Caped Crusader, cleaning up the streets and making them safe for the white middle-class cappuccinistas? Or maybe you’re just a sad bastard who got bullied at school and rejected by the pretty girls. What’s it all about, Alfie? New WAve would love to know.
Norman had included his name, a dedicated mobile and email contacts at the end. He’d signed off with the words Don’t. Be. Shy.
‘How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? A whole bunch of weirdos and time-wasters are going to take up your invitation.’
‘I’ll turn it into another story: My Life as a Freak Magnet. Call it research if you like but I’ll know when the One True Lord reveals himself to me.’
‘Run it,’ said Betsy, shaking her head and chuckling. ‘Live from tomorrow. This is going to be fun.’ She summoned a flunkey. ‘Martin, sweetie, I need you to rev up the advertisers.’
‘All good?’
DI Pavlou was on her way down the freeway and had called a squad meeting for an hour hence. She’d phoned ahead to check on the ‘new boy’.
‘Yes,’ said Cato.
‘Amy looking after you?’
‘Yep, got her following up a few things.’
‘Great,’ said Pavlou, brightly.
‘Might be an idea, after the squad brief, if you, Paddy and me get together to talk about this job swap.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘No worries.’
And that worried Cato even more.
Amy Trimboli stepped in to hand Cato a printout. It was a spreadsheet of organisations and names of people working with the homeless in Fremantle. It was, to Cato’s eye, a surprisingly long list. Chris Thornton was running the names to see if any of them had previously come to the attention of the police for any reason. Cato was interested in Barry’s reference to the council ranger as ‘Jackboot John’. There were two council rangers called John. Over the coming days Cato intended to introduce himself to both of them. There was a tentative rap on his door. Chris Thornton.
‘Sarge?’ He handed over his copy of the same spreadsheet with a handful of names highlighted in different colours. ‘Still more to come in but three of those so far have records for violence, one for drugs and one for unpaid fines.’ Thornton traced a finger down the page. ‘Blue is for biffo.’
Cato studied them. A volunteer on one of the soup runs had a restraining order out against him for repeatedly bashing his wife. A community outreach worker for one of the NGOs had been arrested twelve years earlier for assaulting a police officer at a demo in Perth. And a ranger employed by the council had a conviction for assault but at the lower end of the scale. There’d been a minor ruckus in a late-night taxi queue eighteen months previously. Cato smiled grimly. Judging by the age and first name of the offender, it looked like it was Jackboot John.
‘So let’s take stock.’
DI Pavlou had gathered the whole team in the big room. There were half-a-dozen extra civilian data wranglers on board, a few more detective foot soldiers poached from other districts, and bonus uniforms on call as needed. The briefing room that morning reminded Cato of his brief experience of the Shanghai underground at rush hour — if everyone cooperated they’d all still be breathing at the end of the day.
First up, Duncan Goldflam with a forensics update. He brought an image up on the wall-mounted screen. ‘We’ve confirmed the make of boots, they are indeed Steel Blue, and there’s a couple of telltale nicks in the tread according to the impression we took from the victim’s face.’ He then showed pictures of other detritus collected from the scene: lolly wrappings, cigarette butts, chewing gum and so on and so forth. As yet, no identified relevance.
Next it was Deb Hassan with a summary of the doorknocks and other local enquiries. She confirmed that she had phoned the victim’s sister in Mount Barker and, to her knowledge, Christopher White didn’t leave behind any childhood enemies with burning grudges. All the same, the local Mount Barker cops would do some nosing around. She went on. ‘All of the staff from the Esplanade Hotel have been interviewed and we’re working our way through the guest list from that night. So far nobody saw or heard anything of consequence out on the street or in the park.’ She scrolled through her iPad. ‘We’re following up on some calls from the phone-in of people who say they were in the vicinity that night and we’ll be inputting the results of that as it becomes available. But so far, again, nothing jumps out.’
Chris Thornton’s CCTV trawl had, of course, netted them Wayne Joseph Bradley and his rottie, and when Chris stood up to do his bit there were a couple of woofs from the back of the room. He took it in good humour. ‘Nothing to report on CCTV at this stage. The focus at the moment is on collating names associated with the homeless industry and running them through the system.’ He nodded towards his trusty team of civilian data wranglers. ‘That’s ongoing.’ He looked over at Cato. ‘A couple of names have come up already.’
Pavlou looked interested. ‘Philip?’
‘Some violence convictions,’ said Cato. ‘Relatively low-level compared to what our perp is doing, but it’s a start and may be helpful with some arm-twisting.’
Pavlou then explained the job swap between Cato and McMahon, which was met with little more than bemused or blank faces. She looked over at DI Hutchens. ‘Mick? This works for you?’
‘Paddy’s going to be a real asset to Frontline 2020 and we’re glad to have him on board.’ Hutchens kept his eyes on Cato the whole time he was talking. Cato had seen that lying glint before.
‘Great,’ said Pavlou. ‘And Paddy, I believe you and Sergeant Kwong met with Defence over the weekend?’
‘Yeah,’ said McMahon. ‘Captain Fletcher. Nothing to say but he was very nice about it.’
‘Follow-up?’ said Pavlou.
‘Unless you have access further up the food chain I don’t think they’re going to give us anything. But Captain Fletcher did suggest talking to the veterans associations to see if they knew Chris White. I’m onto it.’
‘Bravo,’ said Pavlou.
The meeting broke up and Pavlou asked Hutchens, McMahon and Cato to stay behind.
‘Problem?’ said Hutchens when the room had cleared.
‘Au contraire,’ said Pavlou. ‘Just dotting some t’s.’ The seating arrangements said it all: Cato had taken a place on Hutchens’ side of the table while McMahon joined Pavlou on the other. She seemed to find it amusing. ‘My apologies for the short notice on the job swap, guys.’
McMahon looked like he’d rather not be there. He probably didn’t do conflict and confrontation well unless it was the easy stuff involving cops and crims and a bit of honest biff. He was a behind-the-scenes mutterer but never took it any further.
‘An unusual step,’ conceded Cato. ‘Normally it’s a more consultative process. What’s your rationale?’
‘Frontline 2020: optimising our resources to meet our primary targets — happy customers and unhappy criminals.’ She paused to allow McMahon a moment to finish snorting into his handkerchief. ‘The timing of these murders isn’t good, just as the Commissioner is launching another one of his restructures. So Task Force Hermes is under a great deal of scrutiny both internally and externally.’
A nod from McMahon like that all made perfect sense.
‘And rearranging the deckchairs optimises those resources?’ asked Cato.
An icy smile from Pavlou, a Velvet Hammer special. ‘I see it more as a reprioritising and retargetting of available skills and assets.’
Cato remained unconvinced. Was there some other agenda at work here? Testing Cato? Booting McMahon? He wished these people would just play a straight bat now and again.
Hutchens shifted in his seat. ‘I’m with DI Pavlou on this one. Cato, you’re a kick-arse investigator and left-field thinker and Hermes needs you out there chasing after this maniac.’ He turned his attention to McMahon. ‘Paddy, on the other hand, is a small-minded, clockwatching waste of space fit only for the drudge of piss-easy volume crime. Perfect for the local office.’
Paddy twisted his head. ‘Bit harsh, mate.’
‘The truth is my sword,’ said Hutchens.
Cato and Amy dropped by the town hall to have a chat with the head of the council ranger team, a statuesque woman with an open face and a relaxed manner. Her name was Courtney. Cato didn’t catch the surname but he was glad Amy wrote it down.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ said Courtney.
Hasn’t everybody, thought Cato. He wanted to know how the rangers dealt with Fremantle’s homeless and whether any of Courtney’s team had noticed anything or anyone unusual in recent weeks.
‘Not as such, this is still a relatively new area for us. Until about nine months ago our focus was on barking dogs and noise complaints. The council has only recently become interested in homelessness and begging and begun to formulate policies and strategies.’
‘What prompted the change?’
‘A rise in numbers of homeless generally but also increased visibility over the summer months; the nice weather brings out the tourists, the citizens and the beggars all at the same time. A consequent rise in complaints.’
‘About what?’ asked Amy.
‘Take your pick: blocking the footpaths and shop doorways, scaring customers, harassment, vandalism, being unsightly, making people feel guilty or sad.’ She glugged from a water bottle. ‘The citizens of Fremantle don’t like being made to feel guilty or sad.’
Cato was beginning to like Courtney. ‘So what is the policy?’
‘Our first step was to fund the various agencies operating in the city to do an audit, count their clients if you like, so we had a better idea of the numbers we’re dealing with. We can’t be waiting until the next census before we act. Then we formulated our strategy. The council calls its approach “holistic”.’ She accompanied the last word with finger quotes. ‘Very Freo. We don’t want to be seen as hostile to an already downtrodden and vulnerable section of society. We leave that to our neighbours up in Perth.’ A wry grin. ‘Did you know some councils in the UK have even installed anti-homeless spikes in shop doorways? Retractable — tucked away in the day and spring out at night, like a flick-knife. Try sleeping there and it’s like one of those beds of nails the cartoon fakirs sleep on. Poms, eh? Nothing they’re not capable of when they put their minds to it.’
‘Holistic?’ prompted Cato.
‘Yeah, right. So we recognise there are genuine homeless people in need and that there are genuine concerned citizens who want to be able to help those in need.’ Her mobile buzzed on the desk but she did a good job of ignoring it. ‘As opposed to pro beggars.’
‘Pro beggars?’ said Amy.
‘The same faces turn up in several shopping precincts across the CBD. They’re really professionals, sometimes operating in gangs or at least loose associations, supplementing their income with begging.’
Cato frowned. ‘And the rangers tell you this?’
‘Actually, we call them community safety officers. They have a chat with the beggars about who they are, where they’re from. We also talk to our colleagues from other municipalities. Share intelligence if you like. It’s clear there’s a hard core that give the genuine homeless a bad name.’
Cato wasn’t aware that the homeless, genuine or otherwise, had ever had a good name. He didn’t buy it, gangs of pro beggars, this sounded like spin, nonsense. Dickens meets Mad Max. ‘So once you’ve talked to them and decided which category they’re in, what next?’
‘We’ve allocated agreed begging precincts in Adelaide and William Streets, to keep them from cluttering up the mall. We know the local, genuine ones and they’re registered with us. We pretty much leave them alone as long as they behave. We encourage the pro beggars to move on.’
Cato recalled Barry’s interaction with the ranger that morning. Yeah, Jackboot John knows all our names.
‘How do you move them on?’
‘Ask them nicely, at first. If that doesn’t work we hang around, crowd their space, stand right next to them if we have to, and that usually discourages donations so they get the message. If all else fails we might ask for help from your good selves.’
‘Would it be okay if we have a chat with your team to see if they’ve heard or seen anything unusual?’
‘Sure,’ said Courtney.
‘And I probably need to talk to the mayor. We don’t want this to become an election issue.’
A wry smile and a lifted hand. ‘I’m just a bureaucrat, you can take that up with him.’ Her phone buzzed again. ‘Sorry, do you mind if I take this?’
Cato shrugged and smiled.
‘Fuck,’ said Courtney after a few seconds.
When her eyes found Cato’s, he realised this might involve him too.