Cato and Tess didn’t have far to go. The Stevensons lived about twelve doors up from Tess and over on the expensive side of the street. It was a two-storey McMansion with views of the Southern Ocean. A nine-metre fishing boat,
Kerry,
sat on a trailer on the steep, sloping driveway. There was a shiny new blue quad bike on the front lawn and a basketball hoop over the carport. A new model silver Prado occupied one of the parking spots and a dusty SaS Personnel four-wheel drive Hilux occupied the other. All in all, it was a fairly typical Hopetoun boomtown home. The front door opened before they got to it.
‘You charged that fucken Maori bastard yet?’
Kerry Stevenson, loving mother of a son that could obviously do no wrong. She had big brown eyes, a sweep of dyed black hair to her shoulders and a junk-food body in a shapeless tracksuit. Cato estimated she could have been anything from forty to sixty years old, her skin tanned and lined from many years’ exposure to the Australian elements. She took a long drag on her cigarette and waited for an answer. Her gaze ignored Cato, it was fixed on Tess and the uniform. Tess smiled.
‘Hi Kerry. How’s Kane?’
‘Sufferin’.’
‘Is he out of hospital yet?’
‘Tomorrow. How come you lot don’t know all this already? So what about that fucken Maori?’
‘All in hand,’ Tess assured Mrs Stevenson.
‘Well what are you here for then?’
‘Keith. We’d like a word. Is he in?’
Kerry turned her back and barked down the hallway. ‘Keith. Fucken cops. For you.’
Keith Stevenson was built like a pit bull yet had that affable farm-boy look that many men wore in these parts. As if it was only yesterday their hair had turned grey and the gut had started to go its own way, and only the day before that they were playing goodnatured rough and tumble games in the schoolyard. Good-natured but determined to win. He wiped his hands on his Born to Fish T-shirt and stuck one out towards Cato.
‘This about Kane?’
Sincere. Genuine. Concerned. Matey. He ushered them back down the hall to the kitchen. Kerry seemed less enthusiastic about having Cato over her threshold.
The Stevenson kitchen had all the gadgets known to humankind on display, yet it looked eerily underused. On the benchtop sat the remains of a fried breakfast and two cups of coffee. Cato’s stomach rumbled. In the adjoining open-plan dining area a plasma TV dominated the scene. On the floor in front of it a boy, maybe ten or eleven, clicking furiously on a game console: Jai, he presumed, the lovely little boy who visited his granny at Currawong Gardens. Jai was busy shooting everyone and everything in his line of vision; blood gushed, bodies disintegrated. He didn’t turn his head to check out the visitors. Tess mouthed ‘Disaffected Youth’ at Cato, nodding her head in Jai’s direction. So this was him. Explosions and gunfire echoed around the room until Keith found the remote and pressed mute.
‘Sorry mate,’ said dad with a nervous appeasing grin and a wink.
The boy turned around for a second and glowered out of dark eyes that were just like his mum’s. He had a scar on his upper lip from an operation to fix a cleft palate. He noticed Cato noticing, put his hand to it self-consciously then doubled the darkness in his stare for Cato’s benefit. He obviously had an alternative persona for his visits to granny in the nursing home.
Keith held his coffee mug up and raised a questioning eyebrow. The prospects were good; they had an espresso and cappuccino machine on display. Cato nodded eagerly. Keith Stevenson beamed and reached into a wall cupboard for a jar of instant. Tess buried a
smile and declined the same offer.
‘So. Kane?’ Keith Stevenson nudged.
‘Actually we’re here about another matter.’
Even muted, the huge flickering plasma was distracting. Little Jai sat staring at it, game console clicking double-time and making mayhem.
‘What’s that then?’ Keith spooned some Blend 49 into a mug.
Cato shook his head at the sugar bowl but nodded at the carton of milk. ‘SaS Personnel.’
Keith focused on pouring the milk. ‘Yes?’
‘Your company.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But in your mother’s name.’
Kerry Stevenson snorted and lit up another cigarette from the embers of the first. She exchanged a look with her husband. He returned the milk to the fridge.
‘That’s right. She’s a ... silent partner.’
‘Very.’ Tess agreed. ‘So why do you have the company registered in the name of a woman in her eighties who, according to the staff at Currawong Gardens, can hardly even care for herself?’
Keith Stevenson paused with a kettle full of boiling water in his hand. ‘Is there a law against that? What’s this all about?’
No longer concerned and affable. Cato could forget the coffee now. Small mercies.
‘If there is a law against that I’ll find out and let you know. In the meantime we are conducting a possible murder investigation.’ Cato’s voice was as cold as the glares of his hosts.
‘The cop? What’s that got to do with us for fuck’s sake?’ Keith Stevenson laughed humourlessly. ‘Fucking pathetic, a bloke has a past and you won’t let him forget it. Now you want to pin this one on me.’
Cato grimaced inwardly. They’d neglected to run Keith Stevenson’s name through the system before paying him a visit, so they didn’t know what that past was. Fools rush in.
‘No, not yesterday’s incident, this is about the body on the beach a few days ago. We believe it to be a Chinese male. Possibly one of
the workers around these parts.’
Stevenson stirred his coffee. ‘Yes and we gave you the list didn’t we? Everybody signed in, present and correct for their wages on Thursday. Nobody missing.’
‘How do they get their wages? Do they all line up?’ asked Tess.
‘They come in throughout the day according to their shifts, sign the form and take the pay slip. The wages are paid direct into bank accounts.’
‘What if somebody is off sick that day?’
‘Usually they’ll arrange for somebody to sign for them.’
‘Did that happen this week?’ said Cato.
‘I’ll check with the foreman.’
‘Thanks.’
Cato couldn’t help himself; having just been done a favour, he had to push it a little too far. ‘By the way, you still haven’t answered the question.’
Stevenson bristled. ‘Which one?’
‘Why you have legal ownership of your company vested in an elderly, infirm woman in a nursing home.’
Keith Stevenson gestured towards the front door. ‘None of your business, mate. Time you left.’
Jai took that as a cue to unmute his game. Automatic gunfire erupted in the Stevenson kitchen and some dude got his, big time.
Miller was back on the old Google again. He had locked himself in the study while Jenny pottered around in the backyard weeding, planting, pruning and enjoying the spring sunshine. There was still no word from Jim Buckley and he wasn’t answering his phone. Probably another bullshit wind-up. Davey Arthurs in a pub in Hopetoun under the watchful eye of his brother-in-law? It had seemed too good to be true, and it was. Stuart’s meeting with Brian Munro had nagged at him all night. Something Arthurs had said to Vicki Munro about his past. He didn’t have one. What did that mean? Miller had already trawled the Adelaide murder reports but now he wanted to go back to Sunderland, May 1973. Would that stuff
be on the internet? Only one way to find out.
A search on the
Sunderland Echo
site showed its online records didn’t go back far enough. He could order copies of the real thing if he was happy to wait a week or two. He wasn’t. He tried the national papers; the murders had been gruesome enough to warrant their interest. He read their take on it, stomach churning at his own memories, but nothing there that he didn’t already know. His internet skills were rudimentary; he knew how to search but not necessarily where, or how to wade through the ocean of rubbish that was offered up on every click. He was drowning in trivia. He remembered a TV documentary he’d seen recently, a baby-boomer Rock God searching his family tree. Master of the guitar solo but a real nanna on the computer – they’d had to beep his string of curses. Miller knew the feeling.
The Census. The Rock God had managed to find the Census online, or at least the film crew had shown him how. Would the records of the Arthurs family and who was living at 11 Maud Street during that time throw up anything new? Maybe CK was in there somewhere? He tapped on the keyboard. The 1971 Census had David, Christine and Stephen Arthurs in situ at 11 Maud Street. Davey’s occupation: shipyard electrician. So far, so good. He trawled backwards, following Arthurs to the previous Census in 1961 – aged fifteen. He found him living with mother Elizabeth and little brother Andrew in Southwick, not far from the shipyards. Mother’s occupation: shop assistant. So during the ten years to 1971 they’d moved up a little bit in the world, from Southwick to Fulwell. A mini-notch on the register of social class that permeated everything in those days, probably still did and that was one of the reasons Miller had got the hell out. Davey, his mother and little brother ... but where was dad? Dead? Done a runner?
The 1951 Census. David, Andrew, Elizabeth, and William (father) living in the same house in Southwick. Davey was five, Andrew two, mother was a housewife, and father a labourer at the shipyard. End of story? There was no 1941 Census because of the war. No CK in the picture over the two decades. Miller sat back and rubbed his eyes. Where to next? He thought back to his own childhood: in 1951
he was eight years old. He’d been conceived in 1943 when his father went AWOL ahead of a posting to North Africa, a last conjugal visit before a hellish two years in the desert. Miller fingered the scar by his right eye: there had been times when he’d wished the vicious old bastard had copped a German bullet. When the old man had come back after the war, that’s when the nightmare started for them. After demob his father had been given a skilled job in one of the heavy engineering plants that serviced the shipyards and coalmines. It was relatively well paid: he was never short of money for a drink. By contrast Arthurs’ dad’s wages as a shipyard labourer wouldn’t have gone far. Were those hard times the start of it all for Davey Arthurs? Miller didn’t buy it. Plenty of people had it tough. Very very few of them turned into serial killers. No, it was something else. But what?
Miller skipped back to the 1931 Census, switching the search to Davey Arthurs’ father. William John Arthurs aged twelve, living with his mother and father and sisters in Seaburn. Just down the hill from Fulwell. One of the big semidetached houses two streets back from the beach. His father was a bank manager. So Davey Arthurs’ father is born into prosperity and privilege and ends up in a shitty low-paid job just after the war living in a grimy two-up, two-down terrace. How did that happen? And where did dad disappear to between the 1951 and 1961 census?
Jenny signalled through the window for him to get the kettle on. He gave her the thumbs up.
‘A busy boy,’ Cato agreed.
They were logged on in the Murder Hut, looking at the record of Keith John Stevenson, DOB 26 th April 1956. Early years were spent around the northern suburbs of Perth. He had teenage convictions for shoplifting, car theft, assault, drunk and disorderly. Perth in the ’60s, early ’70s, limited entertainment options. Keith graduated in his twenties and thirties to hanging out with known standover men around the nightclubs of Northbridge and picking up the kind of convictions that go with the territory: serious assaults, possession
of weapons and drugs. Perth in the ’80s: WA Inc and cash to splash. Then he upped the ante: charged with manslaughter in the early ’90s. He’d king-hit an American sailor, a father of three from Alabama, during an altercation in a pub in Fremantle. The sailor was in a coma for six weeks before they pulled the plug. Stevenson was acquitted of manslaughter but served a year on a lesser assault charge.
‘Since then, not a peep, he’s kept his nose clean for over fifteen years,’ Tess said.
‘Reformed character?’ said Cato.
Tess shook her head. ‘No such thing.’
‘Prejudices like that won’t get you far in the modern WA police service.’
‘Hopetoun’s far enough I reckon.’ Tess tapped her finger on the employee lists. ‘So when do we do the rollcall?’
Cato yawned, the sleepless night was finally catching up with him.
‘It’ll wait until tomorrow. Start of the new working week. Okay with you?’
She was surprised both at his willingness to wait and that he cared what she thought.
‘Sure,’ she shrugged, already turning her mind to the rest of her Sunday: washing, tidying and trying to communicate with Melissa. Wondering what she would do about Johnno Djukic, due back at work tomorrow.
Cato looked at her. ‘You okay?’
‘Fine,’ said Tess. ‘Yeah, fine.’
Over their midmorning cuppa, Stuart Miller told his wife what he’d been up to, locking himself in the study all morning. At least he hadn’t been surfing porn sites, he joked.
‘Maybe you should, hen. It might spark things up a wee bit around here,’ she retorted gloomily. But she’d been drawn in too.
Davey Arthurs was part of their shared history; he’d blighted both of their lives. And she was intrigued by the dangling questions.
How did Arthurs senior go from being a well-off middle-class boy before the war to relative penury in later years? And what happened to dad between Davey’s fifth and fifteenth birthdays?
Jenny was more computer savvy than Stuart and, as part of a social sciences project, had taught the kids at school how to research their family trees. First things first: William Arthurs’ death record.
Stuart Miller marvelled at his wife’s dexterity as she whizzed around cyberspace. He was also dumbfounded by the amount of online information there was in the field of genealogy. Thank god for anoraks and train-spotters. Finally she had it: William John Arthurs, date of death 19 th September 1953, age thirty-three. Cause of death: asphyxia. Though not required to, the doctor had helpfully added ‘hanging’ in brackets. Place of death: the two-up, two-down in Southwick. When Davey Arthurs was just seven years old his father had, it seemed, committed suicide. That’s where dad disappeared to, but why did he do it?