Midafternoon, Cato parked down by the Round House and walked back up High Street towards the cop shop. Two hours with Norman Lip had left him feeling seedy, like he’d been caught coming out of a peep show. But Lip did seem to have taken the bait. The strategy had been worked out between himself, Pavlou and Headline Hannah from the Media Unit, and signed off by top brass. In return for easing up on the damaging attack articles and writing more constructive pieces to help win hearts and minds, Norman was to be given limited but exclusive access to the investigation. Embedded with Cato on an ‘as needs’ basis — maybe that’s why he was feeling seedy — Lip was the last person he wanted to share an embedment with. Once the investigation was concluded and the killer caught, Norman would also be privy to the process of preparing the case for trial. Weave that level of access and detail in and out of an insightful dissection of society and bingo, Cato told him, you’ve got a masterpiece. All you need is a bit of insight and dissecting ability. The sting was in the ‘as needs’ clause — in effect the investigation team would keep Norman out of the loop for anything important and just throw him scraps when they felt like it. One twerp, neutralised — as Pavlou had put it.
‘Will your editor buy the new angle?’ Cato had asked.
‘She’ll bite my hand off,’ grinned Norman. ‘Catch ya later, Cato.’
Over dessert and a glass of botrytis, Cato had shared the story of his nickname with Norman. An article of faith, Pavlou had urged him. An offering. He’ll love it. And indeed he had. But it felt like a betrayal or a cheapening. The nickname was designed by Anglo colleagues to put Cato in his place. It was an act of disempowerment of him by them. Taking back ownership of it had been his statement of re-empowerment. And now he was bartering it away, for what? To appease and embellish the ego of a moron like Lip.
‘A moron who can lead us to the killer and stop his distracting attack articles,’ Pavlou had reminded him. ‘Win-win. It was your idea after all.’
True. But he hadn’t anticipated how grubby it would make him feel.
‘Sergeant!’
It was Barry, resplendent in a T-shirt depicting Elvis and Darth Vader shaking hands and posing for the camera. Cato nodded a greeting. ‘Cool shirt.’
‘Got it from the Salvos. I do some of the bin sorting. Get an early pick.’
‘Beaut,’ said Cato, as Barry fell into step beside him. ‘Where you off to, how’ve you been?’
‘Too many questions,’ said Barry. ‘A man’s entitled to his fuckin’ privacy.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Just jokin’. The answer’s nowhere special and not bad. How about you?’
‘Back to work and been worse,’ said Cato.
Barry sighed. ‘I love this time of year. Djilba.’
‘Yeah? Why?’
‘Season of love, baby. It’s more fuckin’ peaceful. Warm days. Cool nights. Before it all kicks off.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ They were outside Record Finder, the hard chords of Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing’ drifting out. Next door, the cafe was deserted, a waiter flicked the table with a cloth and gave them an enquiring look. ‘Cup of tea?’ said Cato. ‘I’m buying.’
Barry nodded, sombre, like he was doing Cato a favour. ‘Don’t mind if I do. Earl Grey, please.’
Cato placed the order and they took an outside table. After abasing himself before Norman Lip, Cato felt curiously energised in Barry’s company.
‘What do you want, then?’ said Barry.
‘Nothing. Just fancied a cuppa. Not holding you up, am I?’
‘S’pose not.’ Barry dragged a newspaper over from the adjacent table. The front page blared about the murderer in their midst. ‘Found him yet?’
‘Who d’you fuckin’ think? Harold Holt? The serial killer. Fuckwit.’
Their teas arrived. ‘Enjoy,’ said Cato, wondering if foul-mouthed-Barry-Time was really what he needed after all. Dire Straits had been replaced by Roger Miller, ‘King of the Road’.
Barry took a sip. ‘Very nice. Thank you. So you gunna answer my question?’
‘No, we haven’t found him.’
‘Whatcha been doin’ all this time?’
‘This and that,’ said Cato. ‘Trying our best.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
Barry frowned. ‘I detect a lack of urgency, detective. I reckon you lot won’t pull your fingers out unless Bad Boy Bubby kills somebody respectable by mistake.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Cato. But it sounded lame.
Barry prodded the paper. ‘People find it all a bit uncomfortable. A shame. But not enough are thinking fuck, that could be me, or my brother, son, auntie whatever. They don’t have that fear. With those Claremont killings they were afraid, he was killing their kind. Respectable, nice girls.’
‘Didn’t help them solve it any quicker, though. Did it?’
‘True. Still, it would be nice. You know, you hear people around town and there’s more than a few think he’s doing everyone a favour.’
They chitchatted a bit more, Cato trying to steer Barry away from shoptalk but never quite succeeding. Finally he drained his tea. ‘Well I better get back to it or we’ll never catch him.’
‘That’d be good.’ Barry nodded towards the record shop, Roger Miller wrapping up his finger-clicking hymn to freedom-loving hobos. ‘Love that song. Cheers for the tea. Second one this week.’
‘Second cuppa in a whole week?’
‘Earl Grey. Cut above.’ He winked. ‘Like me.’ He sauntered off, whistling ‘King of the Road’.
Cato gave him a wave. ‘Stay cool, Barry.’
Sharon would be glad to see the back of the painters. Steve reckoned they’d be finished by tomorrow and that was fine by her. Nat and his buddy had stuffed around for most of the day and their work was turning sloppy, particularly Nat’s. She made a point of letting Steve know it while the boys were outside having an undeserved coffee break on the back patio.
‘There are drips on the windows and verandah, smudges on door frames, uneven strokes. Rubbish left lying around. It’s like someone else took over the job. It was going well up to now.’
Steve carried out a rudimentary inspection of the work and it obviously met his not very high standards. ‘We don’t usually get complaints. And no shortage of work.’ He squinted at her, scratched his ear with a pencil. ‘Nat mentioned you’d had words yesterday. He’s apologised for the breakage and is happy to reimburse. Accidents happen. The lads are doing their best.’
‘The breakage is not an issue. Really.’ It’s his weird, intrusive, controlling manner. Instead she said, ‘But I would appreciate a bit more focus on the quality of the work.’
‘We’ll do our best, ma’am.’ Was it her or had he just made her feel like some stuck-up bitch perfectionist? He smiled and made his departure. ‘As always, the customer is king. Or queen, as they say.’ The Yorkshire accent was piled on to turn it into a joke but she knew its intent. The flyscreen door slid open. ‘Nat here’ll fix things up, missus. However long it takes.’
Sharon thought she saw the ghost of a smirk on Nat’s face but she let the matter drop. Julie, the prospective nanny, was due any moment now and Ella had to be awake, fed, happy and putting her best foot forward. Sharon set about making it happen.
The doorbell rang while Sharon was in the middle of changing Ella’s nappy.
‘Want me to get that?’ said Nat.
Shit. ‘Yes, please. Ta.’
‘No worries.’
There was a murmured exchange at the front door and footsteps back along the hall. A cheery wave from a plump blonde with a nose stud. ‘Hiya.’
Nat gave Sharon a wink and a grin in passing. ‘Cuppa tea, love?’ he said to Julie, mimicking the accent.
‘Aye, great, thanks,’ said Julie. ‘Lovely house.’
‘T’is in’t it?’ said Nat.
‘You tekkin the mickey?’
‘Nay, lass.’
But he was and she didn’t seem to mind. Sharon heard them chatting away while she finished with Ella. Occasional giggles. ‘Cheeky monkey,’ she heard Julie say.
Sharon took over and encouraged Nat on his way. For all his cockiness and intrusive manner, he’d broken the ice and set Julie at ease, and that was a good thing. She and Ella got on like a house on fire and Sharon signed Julie up for a few hours twice a week, effective from Monday, and gradually building from then. She wanted a good transition period to make sure everything was fine before she went back to work.
‘He’s a card,’ said Julie on her way out, nodding in the direction of Nat.
‘Yes,’ said Sharon. ‘Never a dull moment.’
‘I bet. He can park his blundies under my bed any time.’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. See you Monday.’
Cato couldn’t get Jacqui out of his mind.
What do you want?
A token.
What kind?
A big one. A sacrifice.
Then within the next twenty-four hours the SMS direct from the killer to Norman’s phone in response to Cato’s planted message.
I’ll be in touch sooner than you think.
Cato re-checked the log, the timeline, the sequence of events. In between those two messages, Lip had been in touch with Jackboot Johnny Jenkins, ostensibly to research and write his ‘Primed Suspect’ article. So what if all three were connected? What if the killer was Jacqui, a Tinder persona created especially as a communication backup? Jacqui wants Norman to bring her a sacrifice. Norman then pays Jenkins a visit. Next thing the killer hints at another imminent victim. Were Jacqui and Jenkins one and the same? Had Jenkins really been where the surveillance team thought he was for murder number four? Maybe he had an accomplice? The tie-in with the City West factory fire, however tenuous, left him well and truly in the running.
Or was Jenkins in fact the next target? Not homeless, but working closely with them. Also stealing the limelight as the ‘Primed Suspect’ — a rival, if you like. Cato had to admit it, Jenkins being victim number five wasn’t the worst result he could imagine.
Or. But. Maybe. The language of straw-clutching. This was all wild speculation based on little more than coincidence and a perceived anomaly in Norman’s mode of communication. Cocky egocentric hipster one minute, Jacqui’s gimp the next. He called IT Imogen.
‘Any news on Jacqui?’
‘Her IP address used to register with Tinder is a proxy channelled through a VPN in Hong Kong.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Think the cyber equivalent of a Panama-registered rust bucket wandering the seven seas. Not entirely untraceable, given time. But certainly playing hard to get.’
‘Not what you’d expect from a twenty-one-year-old commerce student and fitness instructor whose hobbies include clubbing, getting blazed and meeting people.’
Imogen chuckled. ‘I hadn’t realised you were paying so much attention to her profile.’
‘She’s supposedly meeting Norman tonight at his place.’
‘The ball’s in your court then, isn’t it?’
Thornton meanwhile had sent through his latest delvings on Barbarossa Nominees. The names behind the shelf company remained elusive at this stage but he had found something interesting. A number of the buildings and blocks of land they had interests in were adjacent to the murder scenes down at the port, along Marine Terrace and across the road from Esplanade Park where the marine repair businesses were housed. Thornton had mapped them and then overlaid them with the published plans for Freo 2020.
‘Neat, huh?’ he’d grinned.
They were all in zones earmarked for exciting new future developments. The council was back in play and so was their employee, Jackboot Johnny Jenkins.
Cato ran his theories past DI Pavlou.
An irritated shake of the head at the idea of Jenkins being Jacqui aka the killer. ‘He was definitely home that night for number four. We had two teams watching front and back. I’ve grilled them again and they insist, not a peep.’ Cato wondered if they really would own up to the Velvet Hammer if they had stuffed up in some way. ‘As to whether Jenkins is candidate for victim number five …’ she shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ll get two for the price of one and Jacqui will rid us of both him and Lip all in one night.’
‘But?’ said Cato.
‘But you’re right. Tempting as it is, we have this damn duty of care thing to consider. Let’s sit outside Norman’s for the night, two cars with backup on standby, and wait for Jacqui. If it does turn out to be Jenkins, the vodkas are on me.’
‘Do we still give Jenkins protection in the event it’s not him?’
‘Yes, I’ll have somebody ring him and either advise him to get out of town for a while or be put up in a hotel by us for the foreseeable.’
‘But if it’s him, doesn’t that tip him off?’
‘We’ll find a way of phrasing it as a general perceived threat. No specifics. Either way, he gets watched as a suspect and protected as a citizen.’
Cato shook his head, grimly. ‘Pity we can’t do this for all the rough sleepers too.’
‘S’pose so. Can you sort the surveillance on Norman?’
‘Sure.’
Another late one. Cato called Sharon and explained.
‘No worries. I’ll see you when I see you.’ She put Ella on the phone for a goodnight goo-goo-ga-ga. ‘Stay safe, okay?’
He promised he would.
The wind had picked up by mid-evening and pinned a plastic bag to Norman Lip’s front gate. It was the only action so far. Cato and Amy Trimboli were in one car over the road from Lip’s place, Chris Thornton and Deb Hassan in the other, down the street and tucked into the private driveway of an Airbnb house specially booked for the night. Inside, playing with iPads and drinking coffee, were half-a-dozen members of the TRG. Johnny Jenkins had accepted Pavlou’s kind offer of a couple of nights in the Mandurah Atrium under the watchful eye of local detectives. He seemed to find it all a bit funny — but then if you are the killer and you’ve just been offered two free nights in a hotel to protect you from yourself then it does begin to get laughable. Whatever. All they needed to concentrate on tonight was Norman Lip and his assignation with the lovely Jacqui.
Amy munched on a muesli bar. ‘I was on this stake-out once. A peeper in Kings Park who liked to watch couples doing it in their cars. We got him, and there was all this night-vision shit, goggles and stuff, real creepy. Then we take him home and take a look at his computer. All these crappy grainy-green shots of people humping in their Mazdas. I told him, make life easier for yourself, mate. This shit’s all legally available online and in much better quality.’
‘But you can’t beat homemade,’ said Cato.
‘Give me take-out any day.’ Another crunch on the wildberry bar. ‘Speaking of which, is that him?’
A pizza delivery car had drawn up outside Norman’s. A young bloke stepped out in a red T-shirt and a baseball cap pulled low. Gym build. Cato tapped on the in-car computer console to check Norman’s latest phone and internet use — a live feed organised by Imogen. ‘Can’t see any references here to a takeaway order.’
‘So?’
‘So phone Chris and the TRG crew, alert them.’
She did so, they were avoiding the radio channel in case of eavesdroppers.
Pizza Boy opened the back door of his car and reached in for the canvas warming bag. He shoved something into it.
‘Did you see what that was?’
‘I could be wrong,’ said Amy, ‘but it looked like a tyre lever to me.’ She checked her Glock. ‘Should we bell Norman, get him to keep the door locked?’
‘Too late,’ said Cato. ‘He’s already opened it.’
Norman had spent the rest of the day since his long lunch with Cato wondering if he could have his cake and eat it. Reining in the attack articles was no problem, they were probably running out of steam anyway. And Betsy would be in a lather at the idea of exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the investigation, so a shift in editorial stance wouldn’t faze her. The only problem was Jacqui, who would chuck the mother of all tanties when Norman confessed that he’d found someone else. But stuff it. It was Jacqui who was expecting all the quo without giving any quid back. Ultimatum time, Jacqui. Give me my interview with the vampire or I go and get a big wooden stake and join Cato’s team.
The doorbell went. Norman jumped up and checked himself in the mirror, then stopped. Jacqui isn’t real, you idiot. She’s probably a middle-aged accountant with a dungeon in the suburbs and a grievance against his mother. He opened the door to a pizza delivery boy built like a brick shithouse.
‘I think you’ve got the wrong house, mate.’
The pizza boy opened his warmer bag and reached in.
Then all hell broke loose.
Boy and pizzas disappeared under a rugby scrum as he was jumped by three, maybe four, blokes. There was yelling, swearing and the unmistakeable sounds of flesh and bone colliding. One of the blokes looked up out of the scrum. It was Cato.
‘Get back inside and lock the door. Now.’
Norman did as he was told.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Josh.’ Pizza Boy snivelled and produced some ID.
Cato hadn’t expected someone so big and muscly to cry so easily. ‘Who sent you?’
‘The boss, Tracey. Order for number six. Hawaiian deep crust, added anchovies, and a garlic bread.’
‘This is number four.’
‘Yeah? Shit. Sorry.’
‘What’s with the tyre lever?’
‘Sometimes you get jumped for the cash. Or the pizza. Happened to my mate in Hammy Hill.’
‘Would you have used it?’
‘Didn’t get the chance.’
The TRG had dispersed back to where they came from. The Hawaiian was a sloppy mess on Norman’s doorstep and the garlic bread was bent at an unnatural angle. Cato handed Josh his baseball cap. Apart from a very red face and dishevelled hair, the boy looked like he would live. ‘You okay?’
‘S’pose.’
Cato handed over his business card. ‘If your boss wants to know what happened, get her to ring me.’ He slipped him twenty bucks. ‘For the broken pizza.’
‘It’s twenty-two fifty including the garlic bread.’
Cato made up the difference.
A head appeared around the door at number six. ‘Is that my pizza?’
Josh snapped into action. ‘Coming right up, mate, new one on its way.’ He thumbed over his shoulder at Cato. ‘Blame these guys.’
Cato rang Norman’s doorbell. ‘Who is it?’
Like he didn’t already know. ‘Me.’ The door opened. Cato walked in, Amy following. ‘So, Norman,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Jacqui.’
Barry had treated himself to fish and chips from the shop near South Beach. He unpacked them sitting on the rocks at the end of the southern groyne that marked the border with Cockburn. The sun was an orange flare on the horizon and the sea had turned purple. Seagulls wheeled and squawked.
‘Getting any?’ he said to the bloke with his rod in the water and a beanie with a headtorch.
‘Nah.’
‘Best to buy them,’ chuckled Barry. He lifted the package in the bloke’s direction. ‘Chip?’
‘Nah, mate, cheers. I’ve eaten.’
Bucket of steroids by the look of him. They reckoned they stunted your dick and, in this guy’s case, your conversation. ‘You local?’
‘Good as. Ask a lot of questions, dontcha?’
‘Sorry,’ said Barry. And under his breath, ‘Miserable cunt.’
‘Say something?’
‘Why would I?’ said Barry. He hid ‘cocksucker’ under a cough.
The uncompanionable silence settled in. Barry ate his fish and fuckin’ chips and fuckface dangled his bastard rod. The wind was cutting through Barry’s thin jacket. Windcheater, my arse. He crumpled up his wrappings.
‘Well, nice talking to you.’ Not.
‘Yeah,’ said the bloke.
Barry set off across the grass leading to the railway line. Then he was in Wilson Park, five minutes from home. He checked his watch. If he hurried he’d catch the beginning of that new crime show on SBS, with all the subtitles, nudity and, best of all, the swearing. It cheered him up. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
‘Oh,’ he smiled. ‘It’s you.’