Getting Warmer (28 page)

‘Eat in or out?’

‘Can we have Missy Moos?’

‘Go on then, twist my arm.’

The gourmet burger joint on the corner was standing-room only so they placed their orders and wandered over to the beach to catch the last of the sunset. Cato suggested a swim and Jake readily agreed. They chucked off shirts, kicked off thongs and dived in as the sun flashed its farewell on the horizon. Tonight Jake seemed jittery and on edge: eager to please, needy, slightly manic. Kids. Parenting. Life. So precious yet so often taken for granted. That afternoon he’d phoned Karina Ford.

‘The attack on the kids wasn’t a drug debt. It was some bikies, Apaches, scoring a point against their rivals. Nothing personal. It’ll be hard to prove but I’ll try and see somebody charged for it.’

‘Any names?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Karina. ‘I know people. We’ll ask around.’

‘These guys aren’t to be messed with, Karina. Leave it to us.’

‘Thanks anyway, mate. Hey, Cryssie’s up and about again. Little Brandon’s pleased to have her back.’

‘That’s great. Look after yourself, Karina.’

‘Oh, I will. Don’t worry.’

Cato allowed himself to be ducked by Jake. It seemed that after so many years of neglecting his son for the sake of the job, Cato’s wish to try to connect was badly timed. Cato’s problem was that he’d never got to know Jake well enough in the earlier years to be able to read the signs now for what his son did and didn’t need from him. Sometimes they felt like brothers, sometimes they were strangers, and Cato was still struggling to recognise what may or may not be the odd father-and-son moment. Maybe he should stop analysing everything and just get on with it. They ducked each
other, splashed, and raced. Jake did backflips off Cato’s shoulders. They burnt energy and laughed and by the time they wandered, dripping, back into Missy Moos to pick up their orders, the sharp edges of Jake’s mood had softened.

Cato unwrapped the burgers at the back patio table and grabbed a Coke and a Coopers out of the fridge while Jake rinsed off the sand under the cold outdoor shower. Then they both attacked their food.

‘Whatcha been doing the last week?’ said Jake through a mouthful of fried mince and salad.

‘I shot somebody.’

Jake stopped chewing. ‘Serious?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did they die?’

‘No. But they’re in pretty bad shape. Probably won’t walk again.’

‘Shit.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Why did you shoot them? Were they gunna shoot you?’

‘No, it was an accident.’

‘Shit.’

‘Does your mum let you say that at home?’

‘Only if it’s important and in the right context; I’m not allowed to use it gratuitously.’

That was the thing about Fremantle kids: a smart answer for every bloody thing. ‘Fair enough,’ said Cato.

They chewed on in silence for a few minutes, taking occasional sips from their drinks as the evening closed in, the mozzies whined, and the Friday night South Terrace traffic rumbled.

‘How did it feel, shooting him?’ Jake looked over the top of his bulging burger with wide eyes both fearing and relishing the answer.

Cato thought about it for a short while. ‘Shit,’ he said.

Lara’s email beeped just as she was packing to leave the office. There were still people buzzing around the place following up increasingly bizarre leads on Vincent Tran as the phone traffic
dwindled to the truly sad bastards. Anything of interest would be passed over to DS Meldrum, who was in charge of the night shift, and DI Hutchens was on call for any worthwhile developments.

She could have ignored the email until Monday morning but it might just be the one she was waiting for, from Corrections, with any possible leads on Vincent Tran’s old cellmates. It was. They’d sent through an Excel spreadsheet with dates, last recorded contact details, and notes as to whether they were still incarcerated, released, or ‘other’. A quick scan of ‘other’ suggested a depressing number were dead; usually from drug overdoses or drug or alcohol-related illnesses. She was about to forward the email to Meldrum for an overnight follow-up on those still alive when she noticed a familiar name amongst the list of ‘other’.

The good thing about Missy Moos, apart from the burgers, was the washing-up factor. Zero. Comfortably overfed and drowsy, Cato and Jake sat on the couch and watched a DVD:
Hoodwinked,
a postmodern animated take on
Little Red Riding Hood.

Jake giggled at the banjo-playing, hippy, hillbilly goat and burrowed his head into Cato’s shoulder. ‘Reminds me of Simon.’

Cato was drifting, half-asleep. ‘Simon?’

‘Mum’s boyfriend.’

‘Oh yeah, right.’ Cato felt his third Coopers glide down his throat and numb his senses. ‘He still teaching you guitar?’

‘Yeah, sort of.’

‘Sort of?’

‘He’s a bit busy at the moment. Lots of gigs.’

‘Right. Cool.’

‘Yeah.’ Jake yawned. ‘What we doing tomorrow?’

‘Oh, I reckon a swim, and brekkie, and take it from there. Any ideas?’

There was no reply. Jake was asleep. Cato carried him to his room and put him to bed. The boy was heavy and Cato’s injury whinged at the effort. He toyed with the idea of hitting the sack too but Madge was yapping next door and he didn’t fancy trying to sleep with that going on. He returned to the lounge, put on a CD of the Pigram
Brothers, lay on the couch and resumed his beer.

So the honeymoon period with Simon the new boyfriend was pretty much over as far as Jake was concerned. The guy wasn’t so cool and interesting any more. A bit busy. Aren’t we all? Cato tried to repress the schadenfreude but he couldn’t help himself. Things were no longer quite so rosy in Mum’s household, hence Jake’s earlier manic demeanour. Cato lifted his beer in mock salute. ‘Cheers and up yours, Simon.’ He belched, drained the bottle and fell asleep on the couch.

‘Are you the people after that Asian man on the TV?’

Here we go. DC Chris Thornton adjusted his headphones; they were making his ears sweat. He tweaked the mouthpiece, opened a new notes screen on his monitor, and clicked his biro in case the computers crashed again. He took down her name, address and phone number. ‘Yes, madam, how can I help you?’

‘What a lovely phone manner, I haven’t been called madam in years.’

His mum reckoned he had a lovely phone manner too. Told him he would go places with it. He’d love to be going places tonight. Friday night. You were meant to be out with your mates on the piss. No. He gets phone duty like he’s some schmuck selling something from a call centre in Delhi. When he was fresh out of the Academy he’d been warned you get all the shit work: the drunks, the domestics. Bring it on. Nobody had warned him about Safer Streets and Nanna Duty though.

‘Have you something to report, madam?’

There was a breathless kind of pigeon coo noise at the other end of the phone. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve just seen him, I literally bumped into him when I was getting off the 532 bus.’

WTF? ‘Where was that, then?’ he said, keeping his voice as bright and interested as possible.

‘Well he was walking down Douro Road in South Fremantle and obviously not looking where he was going. Didn’t even apologise.’

‘Right, and did you notice what direction he was headed in?’

‘Yes of course, I followed him.’

Cool, I’m talking to Miss Marple. ‘So where did he go?’

‘I followed him down onto South Terrace as far as that noisy pub and then he turned right into that street.’

‘Which pub and which street is that, madam?’

‘The pub is the South Beach Hotel but I forget the name of the street. Silly me. But that’ll be on a map won’t it?’

‘Okay, so you didn’t follow him any further?’

‘Oh no, the street was too empty and dark and my cover would have been blown.’

‘Good decision, madam. Can you describe him, say what he was wearing?’

She told him and he made a few cursory notes on the computer screen before using his biro to doodle the word ‘nutter’ in big
Crusty Demons
-style letters while she wittered on. When she’d finished he said thank you madam and pinged the file note through to Detective Sergeant Jabba the Hutt.

Lara sat on her balcony and crunched an apple. She thought about that name on the Corrections list: the now deceased cellmate of Vincent Tran who’d shared close quarters with him during his stint for the Cottesloe assault. At the time both had been on remand in Hakea, awaiting sentencing. The cellmate was only familiar as a name to Lara but she knew Cato would find it particularly interesting that Vincent Tran had, for nearly three months, enjoyed the company of Gordon Francis Wellard. He was the one who’d led her colleagues on some wild-goose chase in bushland further south: the same bushland where they found the nail-gunned pig. Coincidence? Not any more.

Lara checked the clock: nearly nine-thirty. Was it urgent enough to bother Cato at home or was it something that could wait until Monday morning? Cato could make that decision but she would at least give him the information. Lara scrolled through her mobile and pressed call. No answer, straight to messagebank.

Hi Cato. It’s Lara. Sorry to be calling you so late at home but something came up you might want to know about. Can you give me a
call? Cheers.

Detective Sergeant Meldrum had just binned his Hungry Jack’s wrappers when his email beeped with a new list of call summaries. Of the six, four were not actionable because they were either too vague or several hours too late –
I saw a bloke riding a quad bike through the bush in Yanchep yesterday arvo. No I don’t know what he looked like ’cause he had a helmet on but he was going way too fast and gave me the finger when I told him to be more careful
– the remaining two were worth a flick to a mobile patrol for checking just to keep his arse covered. The first, a possible sighting up in Maylands in a block of units flagged as having Tran connections. Imagine having those nasty bastards as landlords. That looked promising and was probably worth bringing the DI back in for. The second was local, an old lady in Fremantle who’d literally just bumped into Tran down at South Beach. Yeah right. He gave Hutchens a call about the Maylands prospect.

Cato woke up to the furious yapping of Madge. He felt fuzzy, thickheaded and his neck didn’t want to work. Vengeance coursed through his veins; Madge was not long for this world. There was another sound: a creak. Maybe it was Jake going to the toilet. This was an old house with a life of its own and he’d grown used to the noises it made over the years. Still, he did have precious cargo on board: it wouldn’t hurt to go and check. He stood up from the couch, stretched and ironed out the kinks in his back.

He picked up the Coopers stubby for depositing in the recycling bin in the kitchen, flicked off the lounge room light and headed down the hall. Jake’s bedroom door was closed. Cato was sure he’d left it ajar but then most of the windows in the house were open and a breeze could have swung the door shut. He gently turned the handle but as he did so the stubby slipped from his grasp and he ducked to try to catch it before it hit the floor and woke up Jake.

That’s probably what saved him.

There was a thwap sound and something thudded into the wall
behind. The light from the hallway showed Jake in bed, wide-eyed, an arm around his throat. The arm belonged to Vincent Tran. In his free hand, Tran held a nail gun. He stopped pointing it at Cato and placed it against Jake’s temple, about a centimetre away from his right eye.

DI Hutchens had moved quickly to dispatch a TRG team up to the Maylands address along with two carloads of detectives and any spare patrols in support. He was snapping on a Kevlar to head there himself when Meldrum remembered the arse-covering aspect of his job and mentioned the other report in case they should action that too.

‘Show it to me,’ snapped Hutchens, in a hurry to get away.

Meldrum brought it up on the screen and Hutchens bent down for a squint. ‘Waste of time, boss?’

‘Shit.’

‘Boss?’

‘That road beside the pub where she said he walked up?’

‘Yeah?’

‘That’s where Cato lives. Remember him? The one who shot Vincent Tran’s brother?’

‘Vincent.’

Cato crouched down to eye-level. He tried to present as calm and non-threatening. His throat was dry, his heart was pounding.

‘I forgot your name, sorry,’ said Vincent.

‘Philip, Phil, or most of my workmates call me Cato.’

‘I like that. Like the kung-fu guy in
The Green Hornet,
right?’

‘He’s Kato with a K, mine’s a C.’

‘Whatever. Reminds you that you’re one of us anyway.’ He tapped the nail gun lightly against Jake’s eye socket. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jake.’ Cato resisted the temptation to dive over there and kill Vincent. He couldn’t do that until the time was right. The balance of probabilities just now was against him, against Jake.

‘Jake.’ Vincent turned his face to the boy. ‘Do you know what your dad did yesterday, Jake?’ A widening of the boy’s eyes. ‘He shot my big brother. He didn’t kill him but I still don’t know how he is.’
He turned back to Cato. ‘How is he, Cato with a C? He gunna live?’

‘He’ll live but he’ll probably need some help getting around. He’ll need you.’

Vincent sang a line from the song ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. His voice was remarkably clear and tuneful. ‘In some ways you probably did me a favour.’

‘How come?’

‘Jimmy’s a bit of a control freak. Always had to be centre of attention. Always had to have everything, first. Even my friends, he had to own them too.’

‘So if I did you a favour, what are you doing here? What’s this all about?’

‘Love, hate, love, hate. That’s brothers for you, eh? Jimmy looked after me on the boat, you see. He looked after me in the camp in Malaysia – kept the dirty old men at bay. He took it up the arse to protect me. How’s that for staunch? He’s looked after me ever since. Family.’ He nodded, enough said.

‘What do you want from me, Vincent?’

His eyes filled. ‘I don’t know. I’m screwed either way. But somebody has to pay.’ His arm tightened around Jake’s neck, his finger tensed on the nail-gun trigger. Jake squeezed his eyes shut.

Cato launched himself across the room, hearing another thwap and Jake’s agonised squeal. He was on Vincent and clawing blindly to try to get the nail gun off him. They struggled on the bed then rolled onto the floor, gouging, punching, scraping, butting, tearing. At some point a knee or an elbow went hard and deep into Cato’s knife wound and he thought he might die from the fire engulfing him. Then Vincent was on top, pinning Cato’s arms with his legs and raining punches into his face. Cato knew he was losing.

The punches ceased and Cato breathed again. Then he realised it was only because Vincent was scrabbling for the dropped nail gun. Cato struggled but he was weakened, he couldn’t unpin his arms. Vincent wiped a smear of blood from his face and ratcheted the gun. He pressed the muzzle against Cato’s nostril.

‘Drop it.’ Lara Sumich stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the
hall light, her gun levelled at Vincent. ‘Now.’

Vincent was clearly weighing up his options: a life inside, a crippled brother, suicide by cop. Cato felt the muzzle pushing harder against his nose. He smelled the metal, the plastic and paint, a hint of oil: pictured a nail travelling up through his face and into his brain. Jake was outside his field of vision. Was he still alive?

Lara’s trigger finger curled tighter. ‘Do it.’

Madge yapped at phantoms. A breeze crept through the window.

Vincent nodded to himself like he’d just made up his mind.