Vitazul frowned, shook his head. ‘No, but he visit the park often.’
I stared over at the O’Donnell Gardens, a patch of parkland that backed onto the rear of the café. Black, still mounds lay beneath the palm trees. On warm February nights the homeless didn’t need the shelters.
‘Is he a vagrant?’
Vitazul shrugged.
Deciding not to ask any more questions at this stage, I waited as a police divisional van pulled up next to my car. Our combined flashing lights made the loading bay look like a Vegas show. I watched as Kim Pendlebury stepped out of the van. We’d worked several cases together over the years, including one where her partner had been executed during an underworld war. Kim was a tough cop and a competent investigator, but the case had taken its toll and she’d subsequently transferred out of the detective bureau back into uniform.
‘Okay, Mr Vitazul,’ I said, ‘here’s my card. We may need to talk in a minute. For now, this is Sergeant Kim Pendlebury. She’s going to ask you some more questions.’
As Kim took Vitazul away, I snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and followed Kim’s partner, a younger cop named Mark Finetti, towards the loading bay. Finetti was another story. We’d butted heads on more than a few occasions, mostly because he’d once had a fling with my partner, Cassie, and couldn’t get over her promotion to the detective unit, but we’d come to an unspoken understanding since my return to work and now managed to get along. He was a cocky, arrogant bastard, and about as subtle as a flying brick, but there was a place for blokes like him in the job. In joints like St Kilda, you needed the brawn as much as the brain sometimes.
‘Another druggie croaks himself on my shift, third since Christmas,’ Finetti said, sweeping the torch beam back and forth. ‘Why do I always get the shit work?’
‘Probably do it because they know you’re on duty,’ I joked. ‘All that muscle you got terrifies them, makes them more nervous than a turkey at Christmas time.’
‘Yeah, righto.’
‘I’m serious. Soon as word gets out Big Bad Finetti’s on the prowl, they all whack up whatever they’ve got.’
We stepped through the gates to the smell of stale alcohol and food scraps. I used my torch to navigate alongside a rubbish bin so as not to dirty my shirt.
‘Got one a while back in his car,’ Finetti said. ‘Last year. Prick didn’t even make it a hundred metres down the street after he scored. Carked it right outside the rehab on Grey Street. Reckon they add that to the road toll?’
‘Nah, just the Finetti toll.’ I poked him in the back as we squeezed between a row of boxes and crates stacked waist high. ‘Still order your uniforms a size too small, show off those pecs?’
‘Piss off. Haven’t seen you in the weights room lately, McCauley. What’s up, getting too old? Got a hernia? Or wait, maybe you just wanna go when nobody’s –’
Finetti stopped mid-speech and an uncomfortable silence ensued. It had been a month since my return to work and everyone was pretty used to me being back. It didn’t help that I showed no obvious signs of physical injury from the shooting. I half-expected Finetti to apologise but was glad he didn’t.
We stopped at a small pile of glass on the ground, which looked like it was from a light bulb. I shone my torch beam at the roof and, sure enough, a globe had been smashed.
‘Finetti, get your pen out.’
‘Already have. Let me guess, you want me to ask Vitazul about the globe?’
‘Just make a note about it. We’ll ask him later.’
A row of wheelie bins abutted the rear wall and a set of stairs rose to the back door. I saw the feet first, two runners illuminated in the torch beam. As I approached, I tucked my tie inside my shirt so it wouldn’t drape over the body, a trick I’d learnt several years back when I’d ruined a new tie at a crime scene, almost doing the same to the evidence. That sorted, I rolled my sleeves up and ran the torch beam from the feet to the head, realising with a start that the deceased was a teenage boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen. I’d expected him to be older, but I kept that to myself and proceeded to assess the scene. The boy was slumped against one of the bins. A belt was