War Lord Page 10

  ‘Catch of the day,’ the coroner replied with a wry twist of his lips, the egg he’d been saving no longer hanging in the corner. Then to me, he said, ‘Never know, mate, might get those papers signed after all, eh?’

  I gave his optimism a brief smile.

  We crossed the pier to the trawler as the forensics and pathologists on board were packing their respective gear into cases. In the back of the boat was a shark, a good ten to twelve feet in length, gray to black and broad across the back like a heavyweight boxer, lying in a pool of blood and seawater gently sliding back and forth with the motion of the boat. A badly mangled leg with deep puncture wounds, a Rockport shoe on the foot, extended from its bloody mouth. The shark’s belly was slit open, the viscera pulled out. Among the rolls of gut and intestines was part of a human head, including a cheek and an ear, attached to the shoulder by a flap of skin and a couple of tendons. The arm, with hand attached, all of it punctured like the leg, was joined to the shoulder, as were maybe three ribs, which were, in turn, clinging to a length of spine. A blue cotton shirt turned partially black with blood was tangled up with the body parts. This didn’t look anything like the Randy Sweetwater I’d shared a drink with in Afghanistan.

  Two of the fishermen – the men in the undershirts and shorts – joined us as the forensic and pathologist teams began the grisly job of transferring the remains into large ice buckets.

  ‘Caught her thirteen kays north’a Maningrida,’ said the stockier of the two men, the tips missing from all four fingers on his right hand down to the first knuckle.

  The taller of the two, a native guy with orange hair and a face as black as a bottomless well, nodded.

  ‘When’dja find out what the bastard had for tea, Clock?’ Grubb asked, producing a pad and taking notes. Petinski took out a notebook herself and likewise started jotting.

  I watched the forensics and pathologists juggle the slippery remains into the ice bins and glanced at Petinski. She was craning her neck to get a look at what was going on – pretty interested in the remains after all.

  ‘Just bin telling yer mate over there,’ the fisherman called Clock said, nodding at one of the uniforms. ‘Pulled ’er out of the chilli bin thirty kays north, t’ give ’er time t’ thaw before we docked, ’n saw the cunt had spewed a fucken foot. Surprised the shit out of us. We opened ’er up and what you see’s what we found. Called youse blokes straight after that.’

  The leg and shoe went in one ice bin, the remains of the head and body, along with his shirt, in the other.

  ‘More sharks in the area where you hooked him?’ Grubb asked.

  ‘Fucken millions.’

  ‘Stroke of luck hooking this one.’

  ‘Reckon,’ Clock said with a snort. ‘Heard a rumor some blacks jagged a couple of bulls further east. Body parts in those bastards too, I heard.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Grubb. ‘Bullshit.’

  The fisherman nodded. ‘How long you blokes gonna be, d’y’reckon? William and I got a shitload of fish t’ get t’ market.’

  William agreed, ‘Yeah, shitload, mate,’ and gestured toward the buildings at the end of the pier, DARWIN FISH MARKETS painted on the side of one of them in peeling black lettering.

  ‘Jim?’ Grubb pointed at the shark. ‘Ya done?’

  Hunt massaged his chin. ‘Got pictures, plenty of teeth and jaw measurements: not much more of interest here for me.’

  ‘She’s all yours, mate.’ Grubb motioned at the gutted shark. ‘Not gonna find ’er in me sushi, am I?’

  ‘Nah. Gonna sell ’er to the sport fishers and the tourists – bait.’

  ‘Where do I reach ya if we got more questions?’

  Clock gave Grubb their details.

  ‘So, Mr Cooper,’ said Hunt, making his way toward me. ‘Lemme get these remains back to the bench – see what they tell us. There’s more to go on, but not much more, so I reckon we’re still gonna be waiting for that DNA screen. We can lift some prints from the hand we’ve recovered. That might speed things up for us. Who knows, eh? I got your number . . . Where you staying while you’re in town?’

  ‘The A-Star.’

  The look on his face suggested I’d be more comfortable in a dumpster. ‘Round here, we call that the A-Soll,’ he said drily. ‘And Ms Petinski? You’re at . . . ?’

  ‘The Crowne Plaza.’

  ‘Nice.’ He took notes while I wondered what could be so bad about the A-Star, aside from the fact that it was cheap and had an unfortunate name. I hadn’t checked in yet.

  ‘Not sure what your movements are,’ the coroner said, speaking to both of us when he stopped scribbling on his pad, ‘but if you could hang around for twenty-four hours or so, I might have something for you.’

  ‘I need to get a look at that wreckage as soon as possible,’ Petinski insisted to Grubb. ‘Today, even.’

  ‘Well, it’s on the cards, I s’pose, but only if I can tee up some transport.’ Grubb rubbed the bottom of his nose with his forefinger. ‘Drop ya back at your hotels, if y’like, and give y’a call later.’

  ‘Okay, good,’ said Petinski. She examined her notes. ‘Um . . . Clock. Was that his first or last name? For the report.’

  ‘Neither. His name’s Clock ’cause he’s got one fucken hand shorter than th’other.’

  I smiled. Petinski frowned.

  ‘Happened five or six years back,’ Grubb continued. ‘Hooked something big. Took him by surprise. Got tangled in the line. Next thing he knew he was looking at his fingers on the deck.’

  We all stepped back up onto the pier, except for Clock and his mate, who both disappeared into the wheelhouse. An unmarked van driven by Jim Hunt’s pathologists scribed a slow one-eighty and motored off toward the fish markets, trailing one of the cruisers.

  The detective inspector drove us back to our respective hotels and provided a potted history of the city along the way. He told us that in February 1942 the same Imperial Japanese naval fleet that smashed Pearl Harbor turned up and dropped even more bombs on Darwin than it did on Pearl. This slid into a story about how, on Christmas Eve 1974, a cyclone by the name of Tracy came along and completely flattened the place. ‘Darwin’s like a plantar wart,’ he said as he pulled into the crumbling asphalt forecourt of the A-Star. ‘Rip the bugger out and it pops up again, bigger and better. Well, this is you, Mr Cooper.’

  From the street, my hotel appeared to be an old-fashioned three-story motel, the kind with low ceilings, rumbling air-conditioning and athlete’s foot in the shower recesses. Sitting in the front passenger seat, Petinski turned and gave me an attempt at a smile, then turned back, keen to get moving no doubt to four-star Crowne Plaza–land. I got out of the vehicle and pulled my bag from the rear seat.

  Grubb waved vaguely out his open window as his vehicle crept forward, crunching on the loose gravel.

  I made my way to reception where an unshaven old guy in shorts and a pajama top was sitting behind the desk, eating a toasted sandwich, watching dog racing, a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray made from half a mother-of-pearl shell. He ignored me until the race was finished, and then he ignored me some more.

  ‘Got a minute, Mac?’ I finally said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, keep ya shirt on,’ he replied.

  ‘I’ve got a room booked.’

  ‘Smoking? Non-smoking?’

  ‘Non-smoking.’

  ‘Name,’ he said, turning from the TV to face the computer screen.

  I gave him my details and credit card and filled in the usual form. In return he gave me an old brass key attached by string to a length of dirty plywood, the room number burned into it with a soldering iron. I found the room on the second story of the main wing facing the street. Inside I was greeted by two narrow single beds, an old-style TV, an old bar fridge with a motor chewing on its bearings, and a smell somewhere between mothballs and old mattress. I checked out.

  *

  Heading onto the tenth-floor pool terrace, I could see the Timor Sea sparkling emerald green beneath a
tropical blue sky. I opened the door and a hotel staff member asked which lounge chair I’d care to occupy and inquired about my needs drinks-wise. This was more like it. I chose a vacant chair beside a trim blonde in a silver bikini lying on her front, reading some report opened out on the floor tiles, one smooth leg bent at right angles and her foot doing languid circles in midair above her ass.

  ‘A Heineken, please,’ I told the guy. ‘Wait a moment,’ I said, changing my mind. ‘What’s Darwin’s favorite beer? Whatever you guys drink here, I’ll have one of those.’ Being on the far side of the world, I told myself, I should take the opportunity to soak up some local culture. And Aussie beer – at least so the Aussies claim – is the world’s best. The guy took my room number and scooted on back in the direction of the bar.

  ‘Cooper . . . ?’

  The trim blonde in the silver bikini lying beside me closed the report, rolled over and turned into Petinski.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, as surprised as she was – more, perhaps.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, sitting up. ‘What about the A-Star?’ She hurriedly threw on a robe like I’d just caught her nude, the Plaza’s logo on its top pocket. ‘Aren’t you staying there?’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said, apparently annoyed.

  ‘Because I like Darwin and I want to keep on liking it.’ I lay back and closed my eyes and felt the sun’s warmth wash over my skin. From Petinski’s huffy attitude I gathered she thought I was invading her personal space. I waited a minute before opening an eye and when I did I caught her staring at me – or, more accurately, at those scars of mine. She turned away suddenly and fumbled with her gear, packing up.

  Squaring my face to the sun, I said, ‘Stick around, why don’t you? Let’s talk about what we’ve got here. There’s more to this Sweetwater thing than either of us realize.’ I wasn’t on a case, not officially. But what would it hurt to share, especially now that I’d seen what Petinski looked like without any clothes on, more or less. Okay, so I have shallow moments, and this was one of them. She was a petite Barbie doll: slender legs and hips, and breasts that belonged on a bigger model. It was the kind of mismatch that argues with the atheist in me that there really is a god.

  ‘You’ve, um, collected a few scars,’ she said. ‘Look, I . . . I didn’t mean to stare.’

  ‘Forget it.’ I was tempted to tell her to take off her robe, lie back and let me even the score with a little staring of my own, but this was a moment of moral superiority. They happen so rarely, I didn’t want to blow it.

  ‘You’ve been shot?’

  I grunted.

  ‘What’s that like, to be shot?’

  Petinski. If there was a question on her mind she was going to ask it. To her abruptness, I could add bluntness. Abrupt and blunt. Fun combination. ‘It hurts,’ I said. In truth, the moment of being shot, at least in my case, wasn’t so bad. The adrenalin surge took away most of the immediate pain. But the recovery was always a bitch. It went on and on, a long and arduous journey with plenty of rehab. And when a bullet passes through, even if nothing important gets hit, it takes something indefinable with it that you never get back.

  ‘You don’t like answering questions,’ she said.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You like asking them, though, don’t you?’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  I grinned. ‘Well I’m glad we sorted that out.’

  I detected a more relaxed Petinski, confirmed when she slipped the robe off her shoulders, deciding to stay. She lay down on the chair and presented her magnificent lungs to the sun. I thought about the last time I was poolside – at Bally’s with Sugar. ‘Hey, don’t suppose you got any sun cream on you?’ I asked on the off chance.

  ‘Sorry.’

  I gave a mental shrug. Didn’t hurt to ask, right?

  ‘You’ve got a shark’s tooth around your neck,’ she said without looking over.

  ‘From a great white.’

  ‘It’s big.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Is it significant?’

  ‘A memento from a past case.’

  ‘You know much about sharks?’

  ‘I know they’ve got teeth,’ I said.

  She glanced at me then looked away, no doubt stunned at the depth of my general knowledge.

  The pool attendant came back with an enormous half-gallon-sized brown bottle with a frosted glass on a silver tray. ‘Beer, the way we like it in Darwin.’ He grinned. ‘We don’t care about the brand, sir, just as long as there’s plenty of it. Just let me know when you want another.’

  Once the attendant was gone, Petinski asked, ‘So, what do you know about Randy Sweetwater?’ Her head was back, arms along the armrests, a shapely leg bent, nice and relaxed at last.

  I poured myself a glass and drank half. ‘What if that wasn’t Randy they pulled from the shark’s gullet?’

  ‘Who else is it going to be?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s Sweetwater they found?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I repeated.

  ‘What are you really doing here, Mr Cooper?’

  ‘I told you already. And you can call me Vin.’

  ‘I’d prefer to keep it formal, Mr Cooper, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Why would I mind? At least lose the mister. You’re making me sound fifty.’

  She gave a shrug that said ‘whatever’.

  ‘Can I get you a drink? A scotch, maybe?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  Of course she didn’t. ‘What, never?’

  ‘Rarely.’ Big sigh. ‘Oh, all right. Maybe I’ll have a diet soda. A Coke. Thanks.’

  I signaled and the attendant guy came over. I ordered the soda and some nuts. When he was out of earshot, I said, ‘Around a week ago, the woman I work for, Randy’s de facto, took delivery of an amputated human hand. It was FedExed to her from an address in Rio. Randy’s Air Force Academy ring was on its finger and it arrived with a ransom note demanding fifteen million bucks.’

  Petinski sat up like someone had just plugged her toes into a wall socket. ‘What? You’re kidding.’

  I told her I wasn’t. Meanwhile I was having my own problems digesting what I’d seen being scooped into the ice buckets. Alabama was waiting back in Vegas to hear from me, and I’d have to give her a call soon to bring her up to speed. The trouble was that I couldn’t give her any kind of satisfactory answer to the question uppermost in her mind: was the dead guy I came all the way here to identify her boyfriend, or not? If the meat found inside those sharks was indeed Randy Sweetwater, then that might be something she wouldn’t want to hear. Alternatively, if the remains weren’t Randy’s, did that mean the folks who mail body parts really were holding him hostage in Rio? Either way, things didn’t look good for Randy. He was either already chewed up, or about to be sawed up.

  Meanwhile, the nuts arrived along with Petinski’s Coke. I signed and handed the investigator her drink just as a black man in a khaki policeman’s uniform pushed through the door between the elevator and the terrace and walked toward us. He didn’t look like he was here for a swim or a beer.

  ‘Ms Petinski,’ the uniform said. ‘Detective Inspector Grubb wants you to come with me. He also suggests that you bring a change of underwear.’ He looked at me. ‘Are you Mr Cooper, by any chance?’

  I gave him a nod.

  ‘Aren’t you staying at the A-Star? I was going there next.’

  Eight

  Without headsets the flight from Darwin was noisy as well as being cramped and dull: two hours of looking at pretty much nothing except the occasional herd of cattle or kangaroo or dolphin pod out the tiny porthole beside my shoulder as we flew low across the top end of Australia. Finally, the Cessna dipped its wing over the blue sea as it lightened to green, and the droning engine note changed. In the front passenger seat, Grubb turned and pointed down at the ground, following this with the
thumbs-up sign as we crossed a white-and-black-sand beach of an island that was tinder-dry khaki-colored scrub over red earth. Elcho Island. Petinski struggled forward, craned her neck and looked past me out the window, then wedged herself back into her default position, a cross between aloof and snooty, and continued staring at pretty much nothing except the back of Grubb’s head.

  The pilot flew over the corrugated metal roofs of the settlement called – if I heard it right – Galiwinku. Grubb had already briefed us on the place before departure. It was home to the largest indigenous community in this part of the world, known as Arnhem Land. It was also home to Senior Constable David Nolngu, sitting behind us in the back seat, whom the detective inspector had borrowed from another department to act as our guide and effectively get us a free pass into the community, access to which was apparently limited and subject to all kinds of formal requests to public servants who always said no.

  The Cessna banked again several times to line up the runway, then dived steeply down, flaps extended. Something didn’t feel right. Maybe it was our speed. The pilot pulled the nose up a little, goosed the throttle, and we roared along, tracking the strip at about tree height. I understood the problem when I pressed my nose up against the porthole and saw maybe fifty kangaroos scattering helter-skelter across the dusty runway below us, in a panic to avoid being chopped into pet food. The pilot was just clearing the decks. Another circuit of the runway and we landed, bouncing a couple of times on the undulating surface lined with kangaroos staring blankly at us, and finally taxied up to an aluminum-clad shed servicing another light aircraft similar to the one we’d arrived in.

  ‘How was that, mate?’ Grubb asked as we climbed out of the winged sardine can.

  I opened my mouth to clear the ringing out of my ears. ‘Can’t wait to do it all again,’ I said, brushing a fly out of my face while trying to adopt the über-casualness of the Australians.