47

I RACED up the stairs and put the TV on. The ABC announcer was telling viewers that Bunny Slipper’s three-part series was coming up.

There was Bunny, speaking direct-to-camera: ‘Before his death, enforcer Ricky Peck, and known thug, Luigi ‘the Turk’ Tacchini, had joined a criminal network stretching from Australia to Thailand and all the way around. South East Asia was their playground. Ice was in, and heroin was coming back with a vengeance. They dealt not only drugs but firearms and military-grade explosives.’ Bunny walked towards the viewer, hands touching lightly in front of her. The background was the Australian Federal Police building in La Trobe Street, Melbourne.

‘The Corpse Flowers are following those motorcycle gangs who have already expanded into Malaysia and have improved supply chains, after setting up in Cambodia and Laos.’ Cut to vision of big tattooed Australian men being arrested by Thai police in neat, perfectly ironed uniforms. Ring-a-ding sixties druggy music played. Shot of a Thai girl dancing in a skimpy outfit.

‘The obligatory bikini shot,’ I said out loud and sighed. Bunny lost points there.

‘Europol believes motorcycle gangs are expanding their empires, into other black-market enterprises, including the trafficking of human beings,’ Bunny continued. ‘In the meantime, the stage is set for Australia to be awash in drugs.’

When the credits rolled, I called the ABC newsroom. ‘Bunny Slipper, please.’

‘Putting you through to her voicemail.’

At the tone, I left my details and hinted I had valuable Corpse Flower information. I wasn’t going to the police, and I would never endanger Cuong. But Slipper was an expert on the activities of Australian bikie gangs in Asia. If I gave her a few juicy details, she might reciprocate with some background on Kengtung, maybe have a theory for the Flowers’s scheme.

A moment later, an call came from an unknown number. I picked up. ‘Hello?’

‘This is Bunny Slipper. Am I speaking with Stella Hardy?’

Score! ‘Yes. Thanks for calling back. I have some extremely sensitive information you will be interested in.’

‘About?’

‘About the Corpse Flowers, and Victoria Police. Can we meet?’

‘I need to know the nature of the information before I set up a meeting.’

‘I doubt this line is secure. You’re going to have to trust me.’

Long pause, breathing at Slipper’s end. I held my breath.

‘Do you know the Drunken Tweet?’

I pumped my fist, and said I did.

‘If you can meet me there in half an hour …’

I replied, ‘Oh, indeed.’

As I dropped my phone in my handbag, the Carpenters sang again. It was Raewyn Ross. ‘Hi, Rae.’

‘Senior Constable Ross, actually.’

‘Right. Sorry.’

‘Those two suspects you were enquiring about. I have a positive ID.’

‘Excellent work.’

‘All in the cause of love. Young one is Conti, Joe and the older bloke is Healey, Dan. Both stationed at St Albans.’

‘Bless you, Rae.’

I splashed some water on my face, brushed my hair, and ran downstairs to hail a cab to Seddon.

‘Two Mad Fucking Witches.’

The bearded youth who had drummed his fingers on our table while we studied the cocktail menu, pronounced our order ‘too easy’ and whirled away to the bar.

‘So, you’re Stella Hardy.’ Bunny studied me.

And I studied her. She was a confident woman, with a rare form of self-possession. Not to be confused with bravado, which was everywhere, but genuine uncommon self-assurance. She, I imagined, would never look down at her breasts laced with blue veins and sigh, or frown at rolls and spots and flab. She would never rue the ancestors who bequeathed her the wide face peppered with freckles, or praise the ones who gave her the penetrating grey eyes. She embraced it all and offered it freely to the world with — I now pictured her naked — hands on hips, saying to some adoring hopeful, ‘You will never own me.’ Every line on her face was a proud souvenir of a war zone, or a long journey to a secret location, or Persian Gulf uprising.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said. ‘I understand your time is valuable.’

‘I’m flying to Laos next week for another series. But if your information is useful, then it’s fine.’ She tapped a spiral-bound notebook with a biro. ‘Also, I’m kind of addicted to the witch juices here.’ Dazzling smile.

I was about to play my useful-information card when Bunny pointed at my face.

‘Colourful bruise.’

‘Bikie punched me in the face.’

‘I don’t get it. You’re not a cop, you said. How did a social worker get involved with the likes of Ox Gorman, number one Corpse Flower?’

I held her gaze. ‘Long story.’

The waiter danced over with two tall glasses of blue magic and a bowl of caramelised popcorn, winked at Bunny, and scootered away. I removed the straw and drank most of it in one go.

Bunny frowned and leaned back in her chair. ‘Come on. How are you involved?’

‘Cops. I personally know two cops under investigation by the task force. One has ties to the Flowers. The other is mostly, probably, a bit innocent-ish.’

She sipped her witch juice. ‘Who is the one with ties?’

I lowered my voice. ‘Detective William Blyton. He and the late Jeff Vanderhoek, the junkie who died at the Turk’s place on Saturday night, were lovers. Vanderhoek was sent by the top Corpse Flower, Ox Gorman, to act as an informant for the police, while in reality feeding information back to the Flowers. But Blyton got involved with Vanderhoek — they were both addicts, and Vanderhoek set up a dealer with a large stash to be arrested, so that Blyton could steal the drugs from the police evidence safe. They had plans to —’

‘Slow down.’

I threw a couple of popcorn pieces in my mouth. Phuong refused to use this information, out of a desire to protect Copeland from implicit suspicion. I had no such desire.

Bunny continued scribbling, then looked up. ‘I didn’t say stop.’

‘That will do for now.’

‘You’ve got more?’

I nodded. I’d happily give her everything I had, starting from the night Bruce Copeland announced that Ricky Peck had drowned. Even the irrelevant bits, like Felicity. But not now. ‘First, I need something from you.’

She smiled, like a viper. ‘What do you want and what do you want it for?’

‘I’ll get to the point. A group of homeless kids in Footscray have been targeted by the Corpse Flowers. They’ve been offered rewards of money and some vague mention of a job to do in South East Asia. They name a town in Burma. What are these gangs up to in fucking Burma?’

‘Burma, Laos, Cambodia,’ she shrugged. ‘The gangs are all over.’

‘They were told specifically Kengtung.’

‘That’s wild Burma. Shan province. Lawless. Kengtung is a sleazy frontier town that is supported by China, but really, it’s under complete Chinese control because all the Burmese officials there are corrupt.’

‘Drugs?’

A group of boisterous young women came in. In a sudden panic, I scanned them, fearing Felicity might be among them.

Bunny’s eyes moved from me, to the group, to the door.

I took a deep breath, acted relaxed. ‘I mean, drugs would be the obvious reason.’

‘Yes. That part of the world is all about opium. But not just opium. More than half the young people use yaba, basically cheap ice with caffeine mixed in. I don’t blame them. Their prospects are shit — either a form of slave labour on Thai prawn trawlers or prostitution. When I was doing research for the series, I hung out with some Australians working for an NGO over there, and even they were jacked. Pretty fucked up stuff is going on there.’

‘Not just drugs then.’

She jabbed her witch juice with the straw. ‘More than westerners hear about. There’s huge resistance to western interference. The rebel groups despise the blue-eyed NGO-types. They just want to get on with business — drug trafficking, human trafficking, smuggling of animal products, tiger, monkey. Even illegal logging. The Chinese market is insatiable.’

I mused on that. Bunny was still, quiet, eyes down. At the next table, the women erupted into laughter. Meanwhile, the two of us were miserable. What horrors went on in the world while we sat here drinking in near absolute safety.

Bunny took a last sip of juice and wiped the blue from her lips. ‘You’re a fraud, Stella Hardy.’

I gasped.

‘You got better intel out of me than I got with your corrupt-cop spiel.’

‘The Corpse Flowers are also importing weapons. I personally saw a crate full of grenades. Think it’s easy to get a crate of grenades into this country?’

She shrugged, unimpressed. ‘I only have your word for it.’

‘It’s under a Corpse Flower house in Sunshine. There’s enough storage room under the floor for crates, files. All the evidence the police need is under that house.’

She tilted her head to the side. ‘The dope house where Ricky Peck died?’

‘Not telling,’ I said, mysteriously. ‘But there’s material on Kengtung there and about how Gorman and Peck were planning to send crews of homeless kids to South East Asia.’

I lifted my bag, pulled out the manila envelope, and slid it across the table. ‘Fakes, procured by the woman recently arrested in Crown and under investigation by OTIOSE. Other documents here are in Chinese, some translated. I’ve only skimmed the things in English, which are mostly shipping statements, inventory. Some letters are addressed to Mr Richard Peck.’

She sat up, glanced around.

I went on. ‘I have a contact inside the Corpse Flowers who is supposed to travel to Kengtung via Vietnam. He doesn’t want to go through with it, but can’t go to the police for fear of Gorman.’

She regarded me afresh, more attentive now. ‘Gorman doesn’t suspect him?’

‘I don’t know what they know.’

Bright-eyed Bunny, eyebrows raised. ‘Is he your lover? Is that how you’re involved? Did he give you that?’

I touched the bruise on my face. ‘No.’

She shook her head. ‘You seem like a rational, regular person. Yet you know all the Corpse Flower secrets. How did you get involved with this business?’

‘I was helping a friend. But then something happened to a kid named Cory, and it keeps me awake at night.’

She lifted her pen. ‘Cory who?’

‘Fontaine. A teenager, sweet kid, charismatic, clever. The type likely to become school captain except he was one of those unlucky ones who spent his childhood in foster care, and his adolescence on the streets. Later, I saw his dead body sprawled on Ballarat Road. He’d been pushed into the path of a truck.’

She made a note in her book. She glanced up at me, pulled a bunch of tissues from her bag and shoved them in my hand.

‘He was murdered because he didn’t want to go to Kengtung,’ I said, dabbing my eyes. ‘Corpse Flowers are using homeless kids as drug mules.’

Bunny’s nose flared; she’d picked a scent. Her eyes moved to the envelope.

I blew my nose. ‘Cory told me, there was nothing I could do. I happen to think otherwise.’

‘Me too.’ She picked up the envelope. ‘This contact of yours, the one about to leave for Burma, would he be willing to speak to me?’

‘I’ll ask.’

‘My direct number is on the back.’ She slid her business card across the table and left.

She was right, I thought, as I finished my drink, I should be dead. How the hell did things get so messed up?

Fuzzy-face the disco waiter picked up my empty glass, waved it at me. I nodded.

Phuong — no, Copeland — he wanted Mortimer found with no cops involved. I doubted it was for him to testify on Copeland’s behalf. More likely, it was a stitch-up job. The Corpse Flowers wanted Mortimer dead for trying to sabotage the kids-to-Asia scheme. And the Flowers had certain cops in their pockets. Maybe they asked Copeland to find Mortimer so they could get rid of him.

If so, I almost helped Copeland do that. I shuddered and put my head in my hands, and remembered poor Jeff Vanderhoek. Tortured and murdered by the Turk for Josie, because she thought he had informed on her in Thailand. But who’d told Josie it was Jeff? Blyton thought it must have been Mortimer.

Cuong didn’t believe it was Mortimer. And I believed Cuong.

I looked up and saw another Mad Fucking Witch juice waiting for me. If the government got wind of these drinks they’d be made illegal. I took a long drink and wondered if Jeff Vanderhoek really had ratted out Josie Enright. There must have been others who knew about the Thailand case, and that Jeff had been involved. Like maybe a cop, a cop who had informants. Blyton and Copeland worked together. Copeland knew Blyton was involved with Jeff. Could Copeland have told the Flowers that Jeff was the informant? From his relationship with Blyton, Jeff knew a lot about Copeland. It would be opportune for him to have Jeff out of the way.

Copeland, I was sure, was corrupt. But how to broach that with Phuong? I couldn’t tell her anything. In the first place, she would accuse me of sour-graping her marriage, and hate me for it. And secondly, it would get back to Copeland.

In any case, she had her hands full keeping her cousin out of jail. Cuong was a tragic gambling addict, but an otherwise decent man, until the Corpse Flowers got their claws in him. Next thing, he was on his way to becoming an international drug trafficker, obliged to collect millions of dollars’ worth of drugs from Burma.

And they did the same to the woman who counterfeited the passports. They were capable of bending all kinds of people to their will: junkies and vulnerable kids, sure, but also cops, a terrified mechanic, and a defenceless public servant.

I finished my second Mad Fucking Witch juice. They went down easily, and hit like a concrete truck. I was tempted to order another. If only I had taken tomorrow off like half the population of the city. I paid for the drinks and contributed to the taxi economy once more.