Prime Cut (25 page)

‘At a price.’

Travis looked across the rim of his glass. ‘Dog eat dog, sunshine. We all need to earn a crust. They’re doing okay, your mates, don’t worry. Lot better off than back home I reckon.’

‘Keith giving you your fair share of the pie?’

A frown and another uncertain, suspicious, flicker.

Cato hopscotched around the questions, not giving Travis enough time to settle. ‘So they have no access to a vehicle at all except through you?’

‘Far as I know.’ Travis nodded irritably, he was finding it hard to concentrate.

‘So if, as Guan Yu says, he killed a man out there last Thursday week and the body was gone by the Friday morning, then he must have had help. And the only guy he knows with a vehicle is you, Travis.’

Grant slammed his drink down on the table and put both hands up defensively. ‘No way mate. What those fuckers did is their business. I had nothing to do with it.’

The pub went quiet the way they sometimes do in the movies. The barmaid reached for the remote and unmuted
The Bold and the Beautiful.
Somebody was finding out they’d just been pashing with their long-lost illegitimate sister. Cato scanned the faces of some of the hardened afternoon drinkers, no longer bold, never had been beautiful. No wonder they preferred it with the sound down; too much like real life. One of Travis’s mates looked up from his pool game, slapping the cue in his palm.

‘Everything okay, Trav?’

Cato was aware that another crony had quietly planted himself behind and to the right of where he was sitting. Cato’s hand gripped the glass of lime soda, not the coolest of weapons but his gun was locked in the bull-mobile. He figured if he limesoda’d the guy holding the pool cue first, then rushed Travis and smacked his face on the edge of the table, he might get the upper hand. Trouble was he couldn’t see what the other crony was holding, maybe a shandy.

Travis came to a decision but not before letting Cato know who had the numbers. ‘Yeah, no worries.’

The handful of drinkers resumed their conversations and the balls clicked again on the pool table.

Cato’s voice was hardly a murmur. ‘What did those fuckers do, Travis?’ No reply. ‘So if it wasn’t you that helped them, then who was it?’

Travis shook his head and stared into the depths of his drink. ‘Don’t ask me, you’re the detective and, unless you’re going to arrest me, I’m finished here. Thanks for the beer.’

Travis hopped off his stool, car keys jangling in his hand.

Cato nodded towards them. ‘Leave the keys with me.’

‘I’ve only had the two, breath test me if you like.’ Travis kept walking towards the door.

Cato’s voice hardened. ‘Leave them. Forensics will want to take a look at the car.’

‘Make it official. Get the paperwork, or get fucked.’

Travis said the last line loud enough for everyone to hear. The door swung closed behind him. A whoop went up from the pool table. The barmaid looked flushed.

Cato found him outside across the road, angle-parked. Faces milled at the pub windows. Travis Grant had opened the minibus driver’s side door and was climbing into his seat. Cato kickslammed the door with maximum force onto Travis’s exposed right leg, arm and shoulder. There was a muffled yelp of pain and a string of curses. Cato wrenched the door open again, hauled Travis out and pushed his face down into the gravel, making sure it got a bit of a scrape. He pocketed the car keys. Kneeling on the prone man’s back, Cato cuffed him then hauled him to his feet.

‘Let’s go and take care of that paperwork shall we?’

Travis’s mates had left the pub and were walking purposefully over the road towards them. Cato Kwong found a roar within him.

‘Back off!’

They did. Cato frogmarched Travis the hundred or so metres up the centre of Veal Street to the police station in the Sea Rescue hut.

‘This is absolutely outrageous.’

Henry Hurley had arrived. DI Mick Hutchens made a soothing gesture with his hands. At least, he probably thought it was soothing. To the casual observer it may well have seemed threatening. They were boxer’s hands, hard and surprisingly big, betraying the streetfighting origins of the squat, dapper detective. He had allowed Hooray Henry two minutes for his predictable tirade. Time was now up for the Pinstriped Pixie.

Justin Woodward had affected a raffish, supercilious look. Lara whispered to Hutchens that he reminded her of Hugh Grant.

‘Who?’ Hutchens whispered back, sneaking a look down her shirt.

Of course he knew who Hugh Grant was. He was the Pommie actor who got picked up in the US midway through a blowjob from a street hooker. Class act.

Lara began shuffling papers in a folder and looking impatient. They’d agreed on the way up: it was her turn to play bad cop this time. Hutchens had experienced a little shiver of excitement at the thought. Next door the girlfriend, Angelique, was being calmly and patiently worn down by a couple of B-grade detective constables with cold eyes and dull voices. They were looking for cracks in the alibi. It would be like an excruciating audit with the taxmen from hell. If she didn’t crack under the unrelenting questioning, she’d probably fold with the unremitting boredom of looking at those two for hours on end. Hutchens cleared his throat, a cue for them all to get on with it.

‘New evidence has come to light, Mr Hurley. We need your client’s help to answer questions arising from these developments.’

‘Is he at liberty to leave at any time?’

‘Of course,’ Hutchens lied.

They’d already worked out their strategy. Either way, DI Hutchens intended to formally charge Justin Woodward with murder today. If he answered some more questions willingly, then fine. If he clammed up now, Hutchens was still confident of his case. Woodward was history, dead and buried. It was Jim Buckley’s funeral in Perth the day after next. As far as he was concerned, this would be the best fucking eulogy the poor bastard could have wished for. Hurley and Woodward had finished whispering. The lawyer gave a curt nod. Game on.

Lara finished shuffling her papers. The recording was underway, formalities done. ‘Tell me about Freddy Bataam.’

‘Who?’ Justin Woodward did the Hugh Grant eyebrow thing again.

‘Freddy Bataam, Indonesian guy, aka Freddy Sudhyono, real name Riri Yusala.’

‘You asked me about him last time. Like I said then, I’ve never heard of him.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Funny. He knows you.’

Woodward looked up at Lara with his bedroom eyes and shrugged.

‘A shrug doesn’t answer the question, Mr Woodward.’

‘What question?’

‘Freddy Bataam claims to know you. Are you still saying that you don’t know him?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He claims he is your supplier.’

Woodward rolled his eyes and shook his head.

His lawyer gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Is this your new evidence Mr Hutchens? The word of a criminal?’

‘Who said he was a criminal?’ Hutchens: butter not melting in mouth.

Hurley flapped his hand dismissively at Lara, the subspecies in the room. ‘Your colleague did. She said “supplier”.’

Lara picked a sheet of paper out of her folder. ‘Actually Mr Yusala, or Freddy Bataam, does not have a criminal record.’

And as a result of their little chat in Albany he still didn’t. The car full of drugs and underage girls was going to disappear in a puff of smoke. That’s what she’d told him anyway. Hutchens had smiled approvingly on hearing that one, it was the same kind of bullshit line he would have fed the bastard too.

Henry Hurley was shaking his head. ‘If this is all you have, we’ll call a halt to this farce right now.’

Hutchens did the soothing-threatening boxer’s hands thing again. ‘There are a couple of other matters still to consider.’

Justin Woodward patted his lawyer’s arm confidently and twinkled at Hutchens. ‘Humour me.’

Travis Grant had been booked for obstruction and sent home, on foot. His minibus was impounded and a tired, grumpy DS Duncan Goldflam had delegated his spotty offsider Mark Hamlyn to give it a cursory forensic once-over. Cato would have preferred a bit less of the cursory but didn’t want to push his luck. The minibus was unlikely to be the vehicle that transported the body; it needed to be four-wheel drive to be sure of getting all the way to Starvation Bay with a boat in tow. Besides, there was no towbar on the back – but who knew what else it might throw up forensically. At the very least it would be out of action for a day or so and hopefully further disrupt the operations of SaS Personnel. Anything that made life difficult for Keith Stevenson and Travis Grant was a bonus for Cato. That reminded him, he still needed to put in a call to the RSPCA about those scrawny sheep in Paddy’s Field.

The search of the sheep paddock had produced nothing. No murder weapon, no missing limbs, no freshly turned earth, no bloodbath. McGowan’s little inquiry team was still working their way through the residents of Paddy’s Field but no word back yet. Cato checked his watch: gone 7.00. He decided to call it a day, he was stuffed. Sure, they’d all been up all night at the exploded caravan but the drained feeling had only come on in the last hour or two.
Had it all just caught up with him? No. The violence he’d inflicted on Travis Grant, that’s what had drained him. Oh, and Lara Sumich. He’d noticed something else too. He was tired, yes, but the knotted tension had disappeared from his neck and shoulders. Was that all it took? A good root and a bit of biff? Pathetic. Still, whatever it takes.

He switched off the computer and looked for a key to lock up the Sea Rescue hut. Greg Fisher had one, no doubt Tess Maguire had the other. He idly wondered where she was. He assumed she would have finished in Esperance by now and be on her way back. Cato snicked the yale and closed the door behind him. He’d worry about getting back in when the time came. The breeze had dropped off again. It was still light outside, a perfect evening for a barbie if he had any family or friends, or even colleagues. He wondered how Lara Sumich was going. Already the morning encounter was fading into a distant unreality. He was trying to shake off the nagging feeling that they hadn’t actually fucked each other, rather that he had been fucked.

That reminded him. Guiltily, he debated phoning Jane and Jake, juggling the mobile in his palm. He took out his wallet and looked at the photo inside. It was taken in happier times at Little Salmon Bay, Rottnest. Cato behind the camera, Jane tanned and smiling in her red swimsuit, yellow flippers, and blue snorkelling gear. Jake looking happier than Cato remembered him ever being. It was taken three days before he was called to the internal inquiry. He stopped juggling his mobile; he didn’t know what he could say to them that would even begin to undo the damage he had done. He wandered down to the Taste of the Toun to check out the menu.

Justin Woodward had gone pale. He looked like he wanted to throw up. He was shaking his head slowly from side to side, eyes fixed on his favourite spot on the tabletop. Henry Hurley was furiously taking notes on his yellow legal pad. DI Mick Hutchens leaned forward, eyebrows raised as if hearing all of this for the first time. Lara was counting points off on her fingers.

‘So we’ve got you leaving the pub, drinks unfinished, just as Jim
Buckley arrives. We’ve got a lengthy phone conversation between the two of you the previous day. We’ve got Freddy Bataam, your supplier, telling us that he’d been talking to you in the pub earlier that day and that you were going to, quote, sort Buckley out. We’ve got CCTV footage in the pub confirming you and Freddy Bataam were there at the same time...’

Unfortunately the camera didn’t actually catch them in conversation but it hopefully added to the weight of evidence.

‘We’ve got tabs of ecstasy and traces of crystal meth in your coffee van, and we’ve got Jim Buckley’s hairs on your jeans.’ Lara pointed the last finger in his direction.

Woodward stared at the tabletop. ‘You’re mad. This is not happening.’

‘Yes it is, Justin. Shall I tell you what I think actually
did
happen?’

Woodward shook his head again. If his answer was no, Lara ignored him.

‘You’ve set up a new life down here with your girlfriend – coffee and cakes, doing nicely, and a side order of eckies and ice for the cashed-up miners. Detective Sergeant Jim Buckley comes to town, a face from the past, he recognises you. The van gets searched and Jim Buckley doesn’t seem to find the drugs. Big relief. Then he calls you. In fact he did find them and he wants money from you to keep quiet...’

Woodward snorted and shook his head firmly, pursing his lips. ‘This is bullshit. The call from Buckley was about his keys. The only difference in the story is that Angelique took the call, not me, that’s why I was worried. I didn’t know about the call until later when she told me. I wanted to keep her out of all this.’

Lara sighed and pushed on. ‘Freddy Bataam comes to town to drop off his supplies. You tell him about Buckley, your lucrative little operation is looking shaky. He wants to know what you’re going to do about it. You still owe him money from the last drop off. He’s getting impatient, he knows some nasty people. You tell him you’ll sort it out. Later, Jim Buckley comes into the pub. Looking for an answer from you? Looking for his money maybe? You leave. You go
home. You brood. You think about what you need to do. You work up courage...’

‘Fucking fairytales. I’m leaving.’ Woodward made as if to stand up.

Hutchens leaned across the table and gently pushed him back into his seat. ‘Nearly finished, mate.’

Lara was on a roll. ‘You return later. You see he’s still in there. You wait for him to leave. You follow him down to the groyne. He’s preoccupied, he’s talking on the mobile, having a smoke. He doesn’t hear you come up behind. You pick up one of those big lumps of rock they’ve used to make the groyne. You bounce it off the back of his head. He’s down but not out. You finish him off. Not elegant, not subtle, but job done.’

Justin Woodward was out of his chair, across the table, clawing at Lara’s throat. Her chair sailed backwards and they landed on the floor still locked together. Hutchens watched with interest. Mr Smooth-as-Fuck wasn’t quite as handsome right now. Spittle flecked his lips, a bubble of snot hung from the end of his nose, the bedroom eyes were bulging and bloodshot. His hands were tight around Lara’s neck, thumbs pressing into her windpipe.

Henry Hurley was hopping from foot to foot and flapping his hands like an infant duck forced into premature flight. A couple of uniforms burst through the door and looked to Hutchens for guidance. He unclipped a gun from the nearest one’s belt, knelt down and pressed it into Justin Woodward’s neck.

‘That’s enough mate,’ he said gently as if to his own son.

Woodward slumped. Defeated. He began to sob quietly. Lara Sumich shoved him off and set about regaining her composure.

Hurley was still flapping. ‘I really must protest.’

Hutchens handed the gun back to the uniform and turned to Hooray Henry. ‘You go ahead mate. Go for your life. Lara, charge Mr Woodward with murder and lock him up.’