46

I PULLED in at Marigold’s mother’s house. The Mercedes’s tyres clipped the gutter, and we rolled up and off the nature strip.

‘Way to park,’ Marigold said.

‘Quiet, you.’

‘There is no cool way to mount the kerb, know what I’m sayin’?’

‘We say “gutter” in this country.’

‘I think kerb is also acceptable,’ said Felicity.

‘Oh, for the love of —’

‘Off you go, Marigold,’ Felicity was saying.

The child was stubborn. ‘I hate it here.’

‘If you need a break, you can come and visit me. We can make kaddu bharta.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Mashed pumpkin.’

She groaned and slid out of the car like she was heading to the gallows.

And once more I was heading to Williamstown. The Mercedes purred into the Sparks’s garage. ‘Come in,’ she said.

‘Things to do.’

She seemed disappointed.

‘But I’ll see you around,’ I mumbled.

‘I knew we’d get along.’ She beamed with affection that seemed almost childish. It made me uneasy, and I got out of there before the moment became even creepier.

I took a taxi to Phuong’s place in Kensington. She let me into her apartment and offered me tea, telling me how she bought it specially for me, and about its health-giving properties.

‘How kind,’ I said. ‘And I brought something for you.’ I waved the envelope under her nose. ‘But I reckon you need gloves.’

‘What the —’

‘Gloves, Phuong. You have to come out of this looking clean, like a surgical instrument. Like a comb in that purple liquid hairdressers use.’

‘What liquid?’

‘It doesn’t matter, you just need to remain above reproach, okay?’

She took a packet of disposables from a drawer. ‘What have you done?’

I tipped out the passports on her kitchen counter. She picked one up.

‘Where’d you get these?’

‘Ricky Peck’s place, the one with the hydroponic set-up. There’s a stash of documents and accounts. Crates of weapons.’

‘You broke in.’

‘I learned from the best.’

She went to the kitchen and heaped some dumplings on a plate. ‘Someone saw you.’

‘No.’

‘No one watching the house?’

‘Not while I was there.’

‘I shouldn’t have involved you. It was a mistake from the beginning. Someone will have seen you. You were probably followed back here.’

‘No. No one followed me.’

‘The Raw-Prawn people will find out. OTIOSE at Crown looking for Cuong. They’ll put this together. I’ll be sacked.’

She thrust the plate at me and a pair of chopsticks.

‘Phuong, when you get stressed you turn into a drama queen. Have you noticed that? From Zen master to nuclear-powered pessimist in five seconds.’

‘It’s easy for you to make fun, you don’t have a career.’

Ouch. That was uncalled for. I put it down to the pressure she was under. Besides, I was feeling tolerant and generous. The score at the house left me euphoric. I ate a few bites. ‘I didn’t get caught.’

She snorted, smothered a dumpling in Sriracha sauce.

After a moment I said, ‘These are fraudulent passports, supplied by the woman we saw at Crown. Marcus Pugh said she was being blackmailed.’

‘The Corpse Flowers blackmailed the woman, demanded she supply passports?’

‘Yes, and like you told me yourself, they’re all for teenagers. Those bikies do what they like. They sent the Guns and Gangs unit into disarray, then they pretended to disband. Then they quietly carry on trafficking unsuspecting kids to Burma.’

‘Trafficking?’ She chewed another dumpling, shook her head. ‘This whole thing has been a travesty. Expecting Mortimer to clear Bruce’s name is like asking Satan to babysit.’

‘Not necessarily. I mean, I can’t speak for Bruce. But it is possible Mortimer was working against the Flowers from the inside?’

She thought for a moment. ‘Why would Mortimer do that?’

‘He was the distributor for the youth demographic, remember?’

‘That was just Peck trying to sound like a CEO.’

‘Yes. But still. Mortimer was selling to teenagers. Maybe he formed a friendship with some of them. It could happen. What if he didn’t like what Peck and Gorman were planning to do with them?’

Phuong held the bridge of her nose. She looked exhausted. ‘What about Cuong?’

‘I think Cuong was in on it. He and Mortimer couldn’t go to the cops. So they undermined the Corpse Flowers’s activities from the inside. We know it was a whistle-blower who blew up the passport scam. That might have been Cuong. Which would explain why the OTIOSE officers didn’t detain him at Crown. She’d come to meet him, and brought evidence with her.’

‘If that’s true, Cuong should have come to me,’ Phuong said.

‘The Flowers have cops in their pockets. Even Blyton, who you vouched for. If Cuong came to you, word would’ve reached Blyton, then Gorman and you’d both be dead.’

Phuong was quiet. We ate in silence. Then she said, ‘I’m going to the temple where Cuong is staying tomorrow. This time I’m going to get everything out of him.’

Later, she drove me home, and kept her own counsel. She was taking a huge risk protecting Cuong, and I guessed she was ruminating on the idea of unemployment — if she was ever found out.

Me, I was thinking about Brophy. And the cash getting cool in my flat.