Cato hadn’t slept well, again. He and Sharon had eaten a wordless dinner, busied themselves with chores, made lists for the following day and retired to bed, turning away from each other and hugging the edge. Add that to the tense exchange with Jake, and Cato was miserable as hell. Over breakfast there’d been the hint of a thaw.
‘If there is someone out to destroy us we’re going to have to stay strong.’ Sharon wiped some toast crumbs from her lips. Ella was rolling around on the rug, getting ready to crawl, fascinated by a saucepan lid. ‘You need to find out who it is and why they’re doing it. Stop them.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Can we trace the number that sent it?’
‘So far it’s our private business, not a criminal enquiry.’
‘Private?’ she snorted. A warning glance. ‘No more secrets, no more surprises.’
‘Right.’ He was clearing the kitchen table, acting like everything was normal. ‘What have you got on today?’
‘Painters. Ella. And a Skype call with Holloway. There could be an opening from January.’
‘Really?’
‘Long service leave, fill in. Intelligence analyst desk job.’
‘Great.’
‘And I’ll be inviting a few possible nannies around for a chat. Do you want to be in on that?’
He’d smiled. ‘I trust you.’
‘There’s a difference between trusting someone and taking them for granted.’
Cato headed out to work, leaving Sharon to her TO DO lists. At the office he opened up his emails — mainly circulars, stats requests and meeting reminders. But there was also a scanned copy of Deano’s notebook awaiting his attention, along with an analysis of Norman Lip’s telecommunications and internet habits. On balance, Cato thought the journal might be a more illuminating and uplifting read. It didn’t look promising though: pages and pages of childish Pokémon-style drawings of dragons and monsters, interspersed with prose, some lucid, lots not, some with a designated date, some just large scrawled capitals — LEAVE ME ALONE! He went straight to the last dated entry. The morning of the day of Dean’s murder.
Got an hour outside Katmandu before JJ turned up. I hate him — brain of a dog turd + thinks the uniform saves his miserable life. Jerk. Collected $12-60 + having a Whoppa at HJs — right now! Mac gets the rest cos I still owe him. So where to tonight? Esplanade? Duxton? Home with Daddy + new Mummy whose young enough to be my sister? No, I need to sleep somewhere quiet. Not easy when all the noise is in my head.
Drawings: a burger, a figure sleeping peacefully with a smile on his face and ZZZs coming out of his head. Cato tried to ignore the tightness in his chest. It was not hard to imagine these could be Jake’s words and pictures. He skipped a few pages to the next coherent entry.
The pills don’t help. If I’m not zonked out I’m freaked out. Am I being followed? Who wants to stalk a loser like me? JJ? Sad barstad but I’d know if it was him. Wouldn’t I?
So Deano had been rattled about something, someone. More drawings. Shadows and silhouettes against buildings. Cato flicked back to the beginning. The first entry back in late summer. Had there been another diary or journal before this? It seemed not. Early days and Dean still more or less compos mentis before the medication kicked in.
Happy New Year! My first resolution is off to a flying start and Dear Diary it’s you! Deano’s Dero Memoirs. A Tale of Two Cities — my Freo and everyone else’s. Dero Freo — I like that. Maybe it’ll make me famous, be a best seller, a movie, and I get to live in a mansion by the beach. I woke up with that same ocean view this morning but those dicks in the South Beach apartmts paid over a million for theirs. Open my eyes and there’s some mongrel taking a dump about a metre from my head. Rank. Did the owner come over with a yellow bag and pick it up? Fuck no, it’s only my bedroom. Then she wanders over to the kiosk where dogs are welcome and there’s a bowl of water waiting for Stinkyarse and the punters look at me like I’m the one that just pissed on their leg.
Cato was interrupted by a cough from Amy Trimboli. ‘I sent the transcript and video file of Mac’s interview through to you. Did you get it?’
He closed the diary screen and opened his inbox. ‘Yep. It’s there.’
‘Something came up. I asked him who else, apart from the ranger Jenkins, had been around acting strange or whatever.’
‘And?’
‘He mentioned a car cruising the area in the days before Dean died.’
‘What kind?’
‘A fooking Toorak tractor, he called it.’
‘That was the worst Scottish accent I’ve ever heard. Don’t give up the day job. Get Chris Thornton onto it, he’s got a car thing running and he needs to know.’
‘Will do.’ She turned away. ‘The boss called. She wants you to ring her.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know.’
He rang Pavlou.
‘I’ve had a complaint about you.’
‘Who? What about?’
‘Bill Jenkins. And he’s brought in some heavy weights up the food chain. He reckons you’re a bully.’
This from a man who arranged to have him beaten up in a noodle house. ‘And?’
‘I’ve got bigger friends even further up the food chain. I’ll sort it. But watch your back, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Maybe Pavlou as a boss wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Was Bill Jenkins behind the photo of him and Tess? Possibly. If so, how did he get hold of his and Sharon’s private numbers? Not beyond the capabilities of an ex-cop with connections. But a beating, and now this? It was an overreaction to Cato’s enquiries. Was the person behind the photo the same one driving the character assassination of Cato via Norman Lip’s articles? What on earth connected Lip and Jenkins? Whatever it was that Jenkins wanted to keep a lid on, Cato was now even more determined to lift it.
Sharon had been feeling penned in all morning. She’d left Nat and his mate to get on with the job and strapped Ella into the baby capsule in the car.
‘Out for long?’ Nat wanted to know.
What the fuck is it to you? ‘No. Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Just asking.’
She gave him an answer in spite of herself. ‘A couple of hours.’
She’d driven out to the end of South Mole and sat looking out to sea while Ella snored softly in the back. She’d fought the urge to cry, breathing deeply to steady herself. It was a panicked, claustrophobic feeling: chest tight, searching for air. Phil wasn’t having an affair, or even a fling, she believed that. But he wasn’t sharing that happiness he had in the photo with her. Where had the fun gone? The life? The energy? She glanced in the rear-view at Ella. Did you suck it up, all eight kilos of you? She’d shopped, roaming the aisles of the IGA in a daze, buying some items she didn’t really need. Mumnesia or disintegrating marriage? On her return she found Nat painting exterior window frames and his colleague scraping down the side gate.
‘Need a hand with those shopping bags?’ said Nat.
‘Thanks.’ Going up the steps into the house with a sleepy Ella in her arms she caught a leer pass between Nat and his mate. Pathetic. ‘Just put them in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ll sort it once I’ve put her down.’
‘No worries.’
She lowered Ella into the cot and sat nearby in the nursing chair waiting for her to fully drop off.
There was a crash from the kitchen: breaking glass or crockery. Ella woke up and began mewling. Sharon felt like doing the same. She went out to see what had happened. Nat was on all fours picking shards of glass from a slop of marmalade. Why had she bought that? She hated fucking marmalade. He looked up. ‘Sorry.’
‘Leave it,’ she said. She grabbed the dustpan and brush and took over. Nat stood aside as she crouched down. ‘I’ll take care of this if you want to get back to what you were doing.’
‘The baby’s crying,’ Nat said.
‘I know, I can hear it.’
‘Maybe …’
‘Maybe mind your own business, okay?’
‘Sure,’ he muttered, walking away. Under his breath she clearly heard the word: bitch.
‘What did you say?’
‘Switch. I was talking to Davo. Time to switch jobs.’
‘I don’t think so.’
He turned. Open-handed, non-confrontational. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’
Sharon let it go. Ella was bellowing, there were bigger fish to fry.
Norman Lip’s phone and browsing history showed no apparent direct connection between him and Bill Jenkins, but as recently as yesterday, according to his online diary, Lip had met Jenkins Junior, the ranger, at Hungry Jack’s for about an hour. Given that he was writing about the murders, then it wasn’t beyond reason that he would want to talk to the man who, until recently, had been the prime suspect. Was there more to it than that? Pavlou had said watch your back. But this seeming vendetta wasn’t tangible enough to warrant official enquiry. Cato would be obliged to watch his back on his own time, for now.
The telecommunications profile also gave Cato his first chuckle of the day. There was the expected: news websites, a lot of Twitter. Lip even followed the Fremantle Police tweets, DI Hutchens would be happy. He liked music, movies and food — he was a hipster after all, and he followed the soccer Bundesliga in Germany. He was also an avid, in fact downright promiscuous, user of the dating site Tinder. But what really tickled Cato was that Norman took himself very seriously and had aspirations towards the high arts. He regularly dropped in on publisher submission pages, latest news, contacts and the opportunities sections of writing agency websites, and made regular ‘How to Write’ purchases from online booksellers in addition to classic novels. It looked like he was really into Hemingway and Orwell at the moment, mixed in with some Hunter S. Thompson. Lip wanted to make his mark, to go down in history as a man of his times. Fair enough, thought Cato, it’s nice to aim high. Lip could have taken the shortcut to immortality and auditioned for a reality TV dating or cooking show. Maybe there was hope for him yet.
His phone buzzed. Cato reached for it, but it wasn’t his that was ringing. At the same time a tech from Computer Crime, the people monitoring the communications, came through his door. They’d set up an outpost in Fremantle with a direct feed to the nerve centre in Perth. She nodded towards the other phone dancing on Cato’s desk, Norman Lip’s hotline to the killer. An SMS had come in. Cato opened it.
Sorry, I missed you.
By four days? Cato texted back. No probs. Like the article?
Yes, thanks.
So what now, genius?
‘Keep talking,’ said the tech, whose lanyard read Imogen. ‘We need to get a fix on him.’
What now? texted Cato, in the absence of inspiration.
‘He’s gone,’ said Imogen. ‘Battery and SIM card out.’ She studied her portable screen a moment longer. ‘The signal came from White Gum Valley. South Street area.’
They could send some patrol units up there for a look and a drive-by but Cato knew it would be a waste of time. A doorknock? Excuse me, madam, did you notice a bloke on a phone near here about ten minutes ago? Cato couldn’t dismiss it, killers had been caught on the basis of less. He put out the call for a drive-by patrol.
The hotline buzzed once more. A different caller.
I’ll be in touch sooner than you think.
And then he was gone again.
At the end of the day Pavlou called another case conference. Duncan Goldflam had nothing new to report, his forensic flotsam and jetsam was still being analysed. Deb Hassan had provided a summary of doorknock and canvassing interviews, and all guests at the Esplanade had now been tracked and provided absolutely nothing of value. Chris Thornton had gone home sick late in the afternoon. Exhausted and rundown, Cato surmised. So he summed up recent developments: cars with obscured regos parked near to the murder scenes, Dean’s diary and the brief contact with the killer.
I’ll be in touch sooner than you think.
‘Sounds like a threat to me,’ said Pavlou.
That had been Cato’s thinking too. ‘Lining up number five?’
‘But there’s no more jacks left,’ said Hutchens.
‘Maybe their only purpose was to let us know early on that this was a serial.’ Amy Trimboli wiped her glasses on the bottom of her shirt.
‘What makes you say that, Amy?’ Pavlou obviously liked the idea. Cato found himself feeling slightly miffed, like he’d bought into the rivalry.
Amy shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’
Something else occurred to Cato. It had pricked him while he was reviewing the case notes but he hadn’t grasped what it was. Now he saw it. ‘He’s building to something.’
‘Explain,’ said Pavlou.
Cato stood by the whiteboard, tapping the photos in turn. ‘Murder one, the victim is lying down, probably asleep, and stabbed before he wakes. Through the sleeping bag at first. Number two, he shares a goonie with her in the bus shelter before killing her. More risky, she’s alert, albeit pissed, there’s likely to be passing traffic. He’s testing his nerve. Number three he takes on someone as big and tough as himself, if not more so. But most likely asleep at the time, zonked out on medication. Number four, early evening with the hubby only a hundred metres away on the jetty.’
‘He’s using them as practice?’ Pavlou seemed unconvinced.
Cato lifted his shoulders. ‘He might still have a thing about homeless people and that should remain the focus of our efforts. But …’
‘If he’s building to something, it would have to be pretty bad,’ said Hutchens.
Pavlou tapped her chin with the whiteboard marker. ‘He definitely wants to be caught, doesn’t he? It’s just a matter of when. He wants the world to know about him and what he’s done.’
‘Hope you’re right,’ said Hutchens.
‘Maybe we should bring people in off the streets, as a precaution?’ said Cato.
‘How many’s that — one hundred, two hundred, three?’ said Pavlou. ‘And there’s the people camping in their cars. And the people in temporary accommodation, hostels or what have you, that might want to go out for a walk.’
‘Or broadcast an alert, something, anything.’ Cato knew what was coming.
Nothing.
‘Raise the threat from yellow to red you mean?’ said Pavlou, almost with pity.
‘If there was an imminent terror attack we would, wouldn’t we?’
‘Exactly, and in both cases it would be just as meaningless until the deed was done.’ Pavlou relented. ‘I suppose we could put the word around the agencies, heightened vigilance, keep loved ones close, keep the doors open, et cetera.’
Cato knew it would have to do. The meeting wound up and they headed home for the day. Cato felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘You can’t save them all, mate.’ It was Hutchens. He seemed increasingly to Cato like the spare bolt left over after the IKEA shelves have been put together. Probably had a purpose but the shelves still functioned pretty well without it.
‘How’s the retirement plans?’
‘Taking shape. Marj is looking at either a cruise down the Rhine or a fortnight in Fiji.’
‘You invited?’
‘Yep. On balance I think I prefer Fiji. Trouble with cruises is, if you don’t like the company, you’re fucking trapped with the bastards.’
Cato nodded glumly. ‘Bit like the office really.’
En route home Cato remembered the missed call from Jake — this morning? Yesterday? He’d seen him since, surely? That disastrous encounter in the kitchen. He returned the call anyway.
‘You rang.’
‘That was yesterday.’
‘Sorry, been busy.’ Cato tried to stay bright, to counterbalance the low energy he perceived in his son’s voice. ‘Anything special?’
‘Nah.’
‘I’m sorry I was a bit grumpy last night. Work and stuff. Everything okay?’
‘Yep, you said that at the time.’
‘Jake, if you want to talk about something let’s talk. I’m not a mind-reader. It doesn’t have to be now, it can be whenever you like. But I haven’t got the time or energy for guessing games.’
‘Make an appointment, you mean?’
‘Jake.’
‘Forget it.’
Jake hung up. Cato chucked the phone on the passenger seat and pulled into his driveway. Steeled himself for more happy families inside.
That evening after Jake came home, he stayed in the granny flat while Cato and Sharon circled each other warily, shielded by chores and Ella. If anything, Sharon seemed even more on edge.
‘How’d it go with Holloway?’ asked Cato.
The Skype call had been late that afternoon after the painters left. ‘Good. I can start back in the New Year and work four half-days and a full on Wednesdays.’
‘Wednesdays?’
‘Favourite day for meetings and bringing cake in.’ She bit her lip and looked away. ‘I think I’ve found a nanny. Good references. Julie. She’s a Pom but she seems nice enough all the same.’
‘Great,’ said Cato.
‘I’ll get her over to meet Ella in the next day or two. See how they get on.’
‘Good idea. How old is she?’
‘Strange question.’
‘Just wondering, I don’t know, whatever.’ Every word seemed potentially a booby trap.
‘Thirtyish.’ A smile twisted her lips. ‘Not your type.’
‘What’s my type?’ He tried a twinkle in return.
‘Me. And don’t forget it.’
‘I won’t.’ He changed the subject while it was still on safer ground. ‘The painters seem to be doing a good job.’
‘Yeah, but there’s one that gives me the shits.’
‘What way?’
‘It’s like he thinks he lives here. Overfamiliar, personal comments. Stuff like that. Fancies himself.’
‘You’re blushing.’
‘He’s got a nice bod. I’d probably have ravished him by now if he wasn’t such a creep.’
‘Thank God he’s a creep.’
‘Jealous?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ Sharon scrabbled around, searching for something in her wallet. ‘Julie’s phone number, I must have left it in the car.’ She went to get it and Cato busied himself with Ella’s full and disgusting nappy. ‘Shit,’ she said on her return.
Cato couldn’t have put it better himself. ‘What’s up?’
‘Some bastard’s taken a key to the side of my car. Scratch from one end to the other.’
‘Insurance’ll cover it. Worse things happen at sea.’ He surveyed the contents of the nappy. ‘Or perhaps not.’