Getting Warmer Read Free Page B

solid connections to the Apaches or the Trans among those who were there. And we’re still looking for a murder weapon.’
    ‘I think you’ll find it’s a fucking big sharp knife,’ said DI Hutchens. ‘Weekend leave cancelled, the overtime’s on me; see you in the morning, folks.’
    Cato had grabbed a pad thai at the food markets along the street from the office. It was still early enough in the evening to get a table outside. He was doodling over a cryptic crossword from a West that had been abandoned in the police canteen. The front-page headline gave a running total of how many asylum-seekers and how many boats had showed up in the last twelve months. That was the state of play these days: the refugee convention distilled down to its pure mathematical essence.
    Cato was getting nowhere with the cryptic. Nautical practice for figuring out the fatalities. Four and nine. There was an ‘a’ three letters in. Boat something? The sea breeze had finally arrived and mingled with the sweat and suncream, hot concrete, car fumes, and spicy aromas from the food hall. Cato had fixed up a meeting with a DS from Gangs later that evening. The trawl on Birdcage punters was beginning to show results and a team had been established to interview them and follow up more names as they emerged. Mobile phones would be temporarily sequestered from the clubbers in case they held any helpful pictures from the big night out. Lara hadn’t passed over the CCTV yet, he’d remind her when he got back to the office.
    His TO DO list was taking on a life of its own: witnesses, footage, Gangs liaison, keeping tabs on Shellie Petkovic. He could still feel those eyes on him. He wondered how she made it from one day tothe next; joining your fate with a man like Gordon Wellard and seeing your own daughter infected by his poison. Knowing he’s the one who has taken her and won’t give her back. Knowing it’s nothing more than a joke to him. And knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. Cato couldn’t fathom how he might feel if somebody had done that to his son. The charade in the bush had disgusted him. Cato studied the faces of his fellow diners and tried to recall what it was like to live a day without thoughts of shallow bush graves or blood-drenched toilet cubicles. Blank. He looked down at the crossword again and this time he saw it. Nautical practice for figuring out the fatalities. He clicked his biro: Dead Reckoning.
    Cato clamped the remaining noodles onto his chopsticks, swallowed, and headed back to the office.

4
    Cato had been through the CCTV footage twice and seen nothing that pricked his attention apart from a blurry scuffle on the edge of the dance floor that fizzled out in thirty seconds. Santo Rosetti appeared at various points, talking to people, drinking, dancing – badly. No menacing Apache bikers or Vietnamese gangsters joined him for a bop to ‘Land Down Under’. Cato handed the disks over to a dogsbody for more concentrated scrutiny and to organise photo printouts on any punters not yet identified and rounded up.
    ‘Cato. Return of the Jedi. How was Stock Squad?’
    ‘No great chop,’ said Cato. They shook hands. ‘Dirty Harry: long time no see.’
    It was Detective Sergeant Colin Graham: Gangs, or ‘Organised Crime’ as it said under his name on the TV news. Regular media exposure agreed with him. He’d lost about ten kilos in the eight years since he and Cato had worked together. The hair was carefully groomed to appear unkempt and he looked nearer to thirty-five than the forty-five he really was. They wandered over to the kitchen where Cato clicked on the kettle and spooned some Colombian into a plunger. ‘Milk and one?’
    ‘Black and none.’ Graham patted his flat stomach. ‘Need to keep the gut down. New wife, Tania, doesn’t take any nonsense.’
    ‘Congratulations. It suits you.’
    ‘I know, I’m a lucky man. How about you? I heard you and Jane split.’
    Cato shrugged. ‘The statistics