42

‘COME,’ SHAHID said. ‘I’ll show you where you can sleep.’

His bedroom was a covered veranda at the back of the house. Blankets had been hung over the louvre windows, attached to the walls with tacks. An old wardrobe against one wall had a massive crack in the door. There was a single mattress on the floor and another mattress propped up on its side against the wall. He dropped it to the floor. From the wardrobe, he took out blankets and pillows. ‘Sleep well,’ he said, and left.

Cuong reclined, not bothering with the blankets and pillow, and pulled out a cigarette.

‘So my hypnotism didn’t work.’

‘Huh?’ He lit the smoke.

‘Still smoking.’

He did a half smile; it must’ve been in the DNA.

Could the Flowers have orchestrated passport fraud for street kids? A ready supply of drug couriers with no families to agitate for them, no strings. The invisible strays of the fast food joints and train stations, those kids had no radar for exploitation. Offer them drugs, money, adventure, and they’d jump on board without a moment’s hesitation. They would be up for anything, any crime, to turn a dollar.

On the other hand, those kids had the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that was sorely lacking in this country, I’d give them that.

‘So Kengtung,’ I said. ‘Quite an adventure for those kids. Beats the school bus trip to Uluru.’

‘No kids.’

‘But the passports your friend was forging, they were for teenagers.’ I watched him for signs of guilt. The man had a terrific poker face, probably had a lot of practice with all the gambling.

‘You spoke to Phuong?’

‘I’m sorry, Cuong, I had to. But not as a cop, as my friend, and your cousin. She’s on her way.’

He frowned.

‘I understand you’re upset, but it’s better to have her help, don’t you think?’

Cuong rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm.

I stretched out my legs to ease the ache. ‘Tell her everything. The trip to Burma and about how the Corpse Flowers are grooming kids as would-be couriers.’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘Like hell you don’t.’

He took a long drag and then stubbed the cigarette out in an overflowing saucer. ‘Alright, when Phuong gets here, I’ll tell her everything.’

I pulled up the blanket and settled into a sideways foetal, thinking I’d have a short nap before Phuong arrived. I closed my eyes, but just saw Jeff Vanderhoek’s corpse.

Outside the room, the sound of low voices arguing. I opened an eye. ‘Phuong?’

‘Visitors,’ Cuong whispered.

I sat up gingerly. ‘Ghosts, you mean?’

‘Don’t say that,’ he said firmly.

‘Oh right, sorry. Friends. That’s some serious phobia you got there.’

‘It’s not a phobia, it’s my culture.’

‘Right. But I’m just saying, if the dudes behind the DSM-5 ever got wind of this, your whole culture would be branded bizarre.’

‘Shows how worthless it is.’

‘Ssh. Listen.’

The voices stopped. Cuong put his ear to the door. I gripped the knife. Afshan, sounding angry, and a man, a deeper voice. Cuong and I locked eyes for a second. ‘The Turk?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We would be dead already.’

‘Then —’

‘In the wardrobe. Quick!’

I dived in and pulled the door shut behind me. The mechanism was dodgy and the door wanted to swing open. I held the tiny screw on the inside, holding the door in place.

A soft tap outside the room, then Shahid’s voice, anxious, apologetic. ‘Excuse me.’

The crack in the door offered a segment of room and I saw Shahid shoved aside.

‘Make yourself scarce, mate, if you know what’s good for you.’

Shahid reluctantly withdrew.

I exhaled silently, shallow breaths. Cuong moved to the mattress, perhaps to draw attention away from the wardrobe. But I couldn’t see him now. What I could see was the spruce dude, fifties, healthy tan, trim beard, and collar-length grey hair striding into the room. I thought he was a cop, but he was bone thin, his white t-shirt hung off him, and the jeans were pulled in with a belt. A half-full green garbage bag over his shoulder. But it was the shoulder holster and gun that caught my attention. He dropped the bag and leaned against the wall.

‘Where’s Stella Hardy?’

I stood perfectly still, but my wounded leg protested.

‘Who are you?’ Cuong said.

‘Detective Senior Sergeant Blyton.’

William Blyton? Phuong’s good cop, the one I’d left my card with? I didn’t know how he’d found me, but I was greatly relieved. At last, proper police were involved. I was all set to leap out of the wardrobe and demand he take action. That he arrange protection for Cuong until he could testify. That he round up everyone. But something about the way he was behaving held me back.

He sniffed. ‘You the boyfriend?’

Cuong said nothing.

‘Hang on, don’t I know you? You’re Peck’s flunky.’

Static electricity buzzed in my ears. Blyton had met Cuong?

‘Where is she?’ Blyton demanded so aggressively I wondered if Phuong might have been wrong about him.

‘She left.’

A long pause. My leg ached to move.

‘How’s her leg? A stab wound, the hospital tells me.’

‘The hospital told you?’

He pulled my handbag from the garbage bag. ‘Found this at the fire in Tarneit. My brilliant deduction is, if she was there, then odds on she’s not healthy. Basic detective work, really, check the hospitals, taxi companies. You bozos didn’t even try to cover your tracks.’

Phuong had been wrong — very, very wrong — about bloody William Blyton.

He dropped my handbag in disgust. ‘Stella-fucking-Hardy. Never heard of her, then the next minute, she’s ringing me at work, coming to my place. Says she’s a social worker all upset about some dead kid. I don’t know if he was wasted or if it was natural causes, but I’ll tell you this for free, if the Flowers give two shits about some homeless kid, I’ll turn in my gun.’

Blyton put his hands on his hips, big patch of sweat under his arms.

‘Detective, is there something I can help you with?’ Cuong asked.

‘Yes.’ He paused.

I watched his face contort as he fought to compose himself. It seemed Blyton was straining not to weep. ‘When I didn’t hear from him …’ He broke off, took a big breath. ‘I thought they wouldn’t touch him. We both did. But they crossed that line. And that was a big fucking mistake.’

Perhaps Blyton was unhinged. I kept my eye on the gun.

‘Who are we talking about?’ Cuong asked.

He let out a breath. ‘Emergency services get called to a property in Tarneit last night. The Turk’s little set-up. For days, I had a bad feeling. Waiting to hear from him. So I go up there.’ He put his hand over his mouth, his face momentarily frozen in anguish. Deep breath through the nose, blinking back tears. ‘Ambos are carrying him out.’

‘Jeff Vanderhoek,’ Cuong said, softly.

Blyton nodded; he seemed relieved that he didn’t have to say the name.

‘Were you there? With Hardy?’

‘Briefly, yes,’ Cuong said. ‘The fire had already started.’

‘Did you talk to him before he died?’

‘No,’ Cuong said. ‘He was dead when I got there.’

Blyton let out a howl, then closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. ‘Someone talked.’

Cuong coughed.

Beads of sweat on Blyton’s face. ‘Now the scum’ve gone to ground. Turk’s absconded. The only possible witness is this mad social worker who’s trying to save all the little kiddies. This Hardy and her fucking handbag.’

The Turk was on the lam?

‘Detective,’ Cuong said, respectfully. ‘As I said, Stella’s not here. I’m very sorry about Jeff. But there’s nothing more I can tell you.’

I couldn’t see Cuong, but I could hear the calm in his voice. I imagined his sangfroid came in handy at poker.

‘Why did they snatch Hardy?’

‘They think she knows where Mortimer is, they think Mortimer killed Peck.’

‘Bastard drowned,’ Blyton snarled.

‘I believe you,’ Cuong said. ‘But they’re paranoid, they suspect everyone. Maybe they thought it was Jeff?’

‘It wasn’t Jeff. He didn’t have a violent bone in his body.’

‘Of course not,’ Cuong said.

‘Doesn’t mean he wasn’t brave. I’ve met some hard men in my time,’ Blyton was saying. ‘Lean on them and they crumble. But Jeff Vanderhoek was the bravest human being I’ve ever met. The Flowers stopped supplying me, and I had the Raw-bloody-Prawn enquiry breathing down my neck. So Jeff offers to turn against Gorman. Make it look like I’m doing my job. He did it for me. We were in love. That’s something you wouldn’t understand.’

‘I understand,’ said Cuong in a soothing voice. ‘Jeff was very brave.’

Blyton was shaking his head, seemed unable to concentrate. ‘Get Mortimer arrested, take smack. That was the plan.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The gear was for Jeff and me,’ he muttered.

‘Right,’ Cuong said. ‘For Jeff.’

Cuong was humouring him, even though he didn’t have a clue what Blyton was talking about. But I did. It was Blyton who stole the evidence Bruce Copeland had put in the Guns and Gangs safe. Blyton was the other detective under investigation.

‘We were going to get clean, get the hell out of Melbourne.’

‘You think someone told Gorman?’ Cuong asked.

‘Someone? It was bloody Mortimer. I’d bet my life on it.’

‘Wait,’ Cuong said. ‘I just remembered something Stella said. Before he shot Jeff, the Turk said, “This is for Thailand.”’

‘Thailand?’ Blyton frowned. ‘Enright?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cuong said.

‘You’re wrong!’ Blyton thundered at him. ‘Jeff didn’t do it. How the fuck did she even get that idea? The feds knew about it before that Enright bitch left the fucking country.’

Cuong shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

Blyton pulled the gun from the holster and put it to Cuong’s temple. ‘Where is Mortimer?’

I had to stop myself from leaping out of the wardrobe and screaming Don’t shoot!

Cuong spoke, icy calm. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m not playing games, sonny.’

A pause.

‘Nothing to say? Then you will be dead in five, four, three —’

A sigh. ‘Sunshine,’ Cuong said. ‘A squat. I’ll take you. It’s not far.’

Blyton thought this over. ‘Okay. Yes.’ He threw a pair of handcuffs at him.

Cuong started attaching the cuffs. ‘Maybe we can help each other,’ he said in that low soothing voice. ‘You want Mortimer to testify at the enquiry, is that it? Help out Copeland?’

‘I’d rather eat dog shit than help Copeland.’

I knew the feeling.

‘This isn’t about Copeland, with his money problems, the ex-wife, the fucking wedding. He’s not my concern.’ Blyton turned away, used the hanky to pat his sweaty face. Flu, he’d said on Friday. Yeah, right.

He grabbed Cuong by the shoulder, put the gun to his back, and ordered him outside.

I waited a moment then climbed out of the wardrobe. I picked up my bag from where Blyton had thrown it; it smelled of smoke. Still in shock, I unplugged my phone in the bathroom and rang Phuong. She was in her car, she said, only five minutes from St Albans. The sun hadn’t risen and yet the household was up and about. Blyton’s visit had disturbed everyone. Afshan was in the kitchen, buttering a piece of toast.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You offer me sanctuary and I’ve brought danger to you and your friends.’

He opened a jar of Vegemite. ‘We’re used to the police bullying us.’

The grubby kitchen window looked out onto the neighbour’s weatherboards, pink undercoat, a project trapped in perpetual stasis. I stared out, bewildered. Used to the police bullying. Wait, what? ‘Afshan, who are these bullies?’

‘Their names, I don’t know. Who asks names when they are ransacking your house?’

‘Can you describe them?’

He smudged the Vegemite. ‘One is young, light-brown skin and thick black eyebrows. The other is older, a white man. An Australian man.’

‘That narrows it down.’

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Some breakfast.’

I took the toast to the front steps to wait for Phuong, hoping Cuong was safe. Blyton was a dangerous addict, armed and desperate for someone to blame for Jeff Vanderhoek’s death. And Cuong — what was he thinking? — giving him a crazy brave line about knowing where Mortimer was. He was a good liar, I’d give him that. He even had me going with that quick-as-a-flash response. Sunshine. He was probably going to take Blyton to La Fonderie. But what would he do once they got there?

Phuong’s little blue car pulled into the driveway. I went down the steps to meet her. She looked at my dirty feet, cut-off jeans and blood-stained t-shirt, knees and hands covered in bandages, half my face blue.

‘Stella, look at you.’

‘Blyton. He’s the detective caught on the phone, the one who had been demanding money from the Corpse Flowers. But it wasn’t money he wanted, it was heroin. He and Vanderhoek were lovers. Blyton stole the evidence that Bruce had put in the safe so that he and Vanderhoek could use.’

She blinked. ‘I didn’t know …’

‘You don’t need Mortimer to clear Bruce now. Blyton admitted everything. I heard him.’

An inscrutable movement of her head.

‘Call the squad cars, the helicopter. Call the fucking army. He’s the guy everyone wants.’

Her face broke into the saddest Phuong-smile I ever saw. ‘I can’t.’

I didn’t understand. And then I did. Copeland. An involuntary gasp escaped.

‘Friday night, you put it so bluntly, like a slap,’ Phuong said. ‘His behaviour, the explanations, the secrecy.’

I blinked at her. ‘And getting you to delete the recording.’

‘Yes. I had my doubts, nagging away at the back of my mind. After you went off, I sat in my car thinking … and I had to admit you might be right.’

I nodded. ‘What he’s involved in? Is he in the Flowers’s pocket?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve tried to contact him. He hasn’t got back.’

‘You can’t protect him, Phuong. Not now. Your career. Your reputation.’

‘I’m not doing that. All I’ll do is … delay things. He just needs more time.’

‘Oh, Phuong.’ Tears stung my eyes. I felt caught between triumphal glee that she’d seen through Copeland’s bullshit at last, and horror at her passive response. Sticking by him was stupid. I wanted her to get angry, to rid herself of his taint.

We hugged.

I wiped my eyes. ‘Shit. Cuong. He’s pretending he knows where Mortimer is. Blyton’s dangerous, he’s withdrawing. My guess is they went to La Fonderie. We better hurry.’

‘I better hurry. You’ve done enough, Stella. Go home.’