48

A FULL eight hours sleep and I was a new woman. In fact, I was early, so I dropped my phone off at a screen-repair shop in the plaza near work. Then I got straight down to WORMS business, firing off emails, making appointments, and reading The Age online. Boss snuck up behind me and stared at my computer screen. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Reading internet comments,’ I answered, though it was unnecessary as he was reading them over my shoulder.

‘What are you, some kind of masochist?’

I clicked the ‘X’ button and swivelled my chair around. ‘What’s up, Boss?’

‘My God, Stella. What happened to your face?’

‘Roughed up by a couple of bikies.’

‘Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?’ He pulled an empty chair over. This was a bad sign. I was hoping for a quick set of instructions for the day and to be left alone.

‘I’ve resigned. Leaving at the end of the week.’

A part of me didn’t believe he would really go. ‘Does that make you feel better?’

‘No.’

I was worried about him, hide-the-sharp-objects worried. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I can’t give you the job, Hardy. Procedures must be followed, hoops must be jumped through. But I can help you apply.’ He hesitated. ‘If you want it.’

I felt I should want it. I wanted to want it. It was complicated. If I was the boss, I’d have to work a lot harder. If I didn’t go for it, maybe I’d regret it.

He touched my shoulder. ‘I think you could do it.’

He was right, I could do it. That was not the issue.

The phone rang, and he rose wearily.

‘Want me to take it?’

‘Please. Whoever it is, I’m not here.’

Waving him off, I picked up the receiver, pressed a button, and said all the words.

‘Stella Hardy? Jim from Talbot’s Body Works. Your Mazda is ready.’

‘What’s the damage?’

‘No damage now, love.’

‘I mean —’

‘Six hundred.’

‘Sounds reasonable.’

‘You gotta collect it now, we’re closing up for the Cup.’

‘Wednesday will be fine.’ After this business has blown over.

‘Um, I’ll be … on holidays. Closing the shop for a year.’

That sounded suss to me. Gorman probably put the mechanic up to it. He suspected I was still alive, and now he knew it for sure. If I went anywhere near Talbots, Buster would pounce. A car was no reason to risk death.

‘It’s not even my car. Belongs to my brother, and he’s away for a while, so you can hang onto it for a whole year for all I care.’ I hung up, thinking I’d rather lie back and feel the cold metal shock of a spring-loaded speculum than go anywhere near those thugs.

The phone on my desk rang again. This was getting ridiculous.

‘Stella? Mum says I’m allowed to come over to your place. I asked because you said we can make that pumpkin mash one day. So she said I can come over and make it with you.’

‘That’s awesome, Marigold. Where are you?’

‘Home. We got the day off.’

‘How did you know where I work?’

‘Googled you.’

A photo of me, with my name and occupation, was on the WORMS website. What an appalling lack of privacy.

‘I’m a bit busy right now. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?’

‘Hey shorty, you don’t sound fully rad.’

A responsible adult would remind her that how rad I was, was not her concern and to go and play with her friends. But when was I ever a responsible adult? She was a good listener, and there was no one around that I could discuss the situation with. ‘Do you think art is futile?’

‘No. It’s a bludge from maths, and kids go crazy and we make a big mess.’

‘Good answer. Do you think I should be the manager at my work?’

‘Sure, you’re bossy enough. But you’ll need to be all serious and boring and probably get so busy that me and Dad wouldn’t get to see you much. We’d miss you.’

‘Another excellent answer. Okay, last one. There are some bad people in the world, people are dangerous. They even hurt people. And it is possible they will try to —’

‘You got to muscle up, ya feel me?’

‘You mean weapons?’

‘Oh, indeed. And your posse.’

‘Thanks. Um. Great advice.’

‘So can we hang out? Do some cooking together?’

‘Sure. When things settle down.’

‘Thanks, shorty. Gotta bounce, yo.’

Muscle up. I wished. I finished updating a case file. The morning was quiet in the WORMS office, with not a single new client showing up. Or any existing ones, for that matter. I spent the morning putting together a work-skills training course; liaising with a local adult learning centre, covering CV writing, interview skills including role play, what to wear, what’s expected; and highlighting job ads suitable for unskilled, recently-arrived residents.

And my skills? Bossy, erratic, moody, loyal. Did any of that add up to management material?

In need of fresh coffee, I plunged a French press in the staff room, sat alone, eschewed the crossword and the quiz, preferring to contemplate career suicide — staying put.

Senior Constable Raewyn Ross bounced in, aglow. Sexrisx or UzeHer must have come through.

‘Coffee?’

‘Not this time, I just came in to deliver some hot gossip. A bloke from the station here knows that cop from St Albans, Joe Conti. He reckons they’re having a Cup Day barbeque at his place, all the local cops are going. I asked whereabouts that would be, in a super casual way. And he goes, Caroline Springs. Just like that, he blurted out the address.’ She sang the word address, like Oprah.

‘You sure this is … appropriate?’

‘Hell no! But the path of true love has to break a few rules,’ she said, and started to write it down. ‘You can totally just rock up.’

‘Not me — my friend.’

‘Sure, sure.’ Rae winked. ‘Your friend.’

‘I have a boyfriend.’

She hadn’t heard, or chose to ignore me. In any case, she placed an ingratiating hand on my arm. ‘Get back in the saddle, Hardy.’ And away she bounced.

I walked to Racecourse Road to pick up my phone, with its shiny new screen, and some lunch. On my way to my desk I was surprised to see a client in the waiting room. No, not a client. Flicky Sparks. ‘What the?’

‘I googled you.’

Boss had to take that webpage down. Immediately. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘I’m going to drive you home.’

Felicity’s timing was not fully rad. ‘That’s grand, except for two things. First, I’m not going home after work — I’m going to a temple in Braybrook.’

‘No worries. I’ve been practising in the manual.’ She steered an invisible wheel. ‘Come on, you don’t have a car, let me drive you around for practice.’

‘And, two, I don’t finish work for three hours.’

‘Happy to hang around.’

It was a trap, no doubt. A voodoo thing. Next, she’d cut a piece of finger nail, take a stray hair from my shoulder, mix it with that cashmere-wood crap and poof! I’d be a slug.

‘For three hours?’

‘Yes.’

A definite trap.

Or was it? ‘If you’re going to stay, I have some work for you to do …’

I set Felicity up at Shanninder’s desk, and logged in on the computer. ‘Since you’re so good at Google, let’s see you search for ‘Kengtung’ and ‘methamphetamine’ and maybe throw in ‘trafficking’ and, what the hell, ‘outlaw motorcycle gangs’, and report back to me.’

She acquiesced readily. Sat, adjusted the chair height, lightly placed her fingers on the keyboard. ‘Is this a social-worker thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘For your work?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘A hobby?’

She was worse than Brown Cardigan’s dog. If I didn’t throw her a bone, she’d never shut up. I gave her a very truncated version of events. The story of Phuong needing to find a drug courier, and how I went to his house and didn’t come home until next day, with burns, bruises, and a possible case of post-traumatic stress syndrome triggered by any Human League song. I left out names, but I gave her threads, leading up to passports for homeless children and an unofficial tour of Burma. This sent her walking around the room repeating ‘Oh my God!’ until I told her to stop.

She finally got to work, tapping and clicking and cutting and pasting. Meanwhile, I wrote a memo to Boss. I’d got to unfortunately … when she stood at my side and coughed.

‘How did you do?’

‘The numbers were horrifying. Militias, gangs, and rebel groups, all involved. Millions of pills. Most of it goes to China.’

‘China? Really?’

I followed her to the computer she was working on.

‘This website has loads of data. It’s by an organisation that monitors international drug trafficking. Drugs not sent to China go anywhere. Laos. Cambodia.’

Bunny was all over that. ‘So much for the war on drugs,’ I said.

‘Plus, Kengtung has a roaring trade in local girls, mainly, sold into prostitution and sex slavery. They’re snatched off the street or — get this — sometimes a man comes to their village with lies about good jobs in Thailand.’

I lowered my voice. ‘Is there a demand for Australian teenagers, can you see?’

‘I don’t see that. But girls of any kind are targets for the sex trade, aren’t they?’

‘There’s lots of poor, vulnerable humans in that part of the world,’ I said.

‘Wow, here’s a story about destitute people selling their kids, or their organs.’

I read over her shoulder and there were story of bodies dumped, missing kidneys, heart, liver. A community serving as a human butcher shop.

‘Is organ harvesting really a thing?’

I thought of Cory. He had hepatitis C — was that a deal breaker?

She sighed. ‘It’s business. If you have enough money, you can buy anything. Wealthy westerners on waiting lists get desperate and go to China. They’re notorious for using prisoners on death row. Outside of state-sanctioned arrangements, the black market for organs is huge it looks like.’

A rich person needs a kidney, do they want any old kidney, or a healthy one from a young body? Was that the Corpse Flowers’s plan? The kids Raewyn Ross spoke to were worried that Ricky Peck was a paedophile. But why send kids from Australia for prostitution?

‘What are you going to do now?’ Felicity asked. ‘Are you going to tell Brophy?’

I glanced up, distracted. ‘Tell him what?’

‘That I’ve helped you.’

‘Yes. Sure. And you’ve been generous to me, too, under the circumstances.’

She did her cat blink. ‘Have you seen him?’ She asked in a way that made me uneasy.

‘No, have you?’

‘No.’ She left the room, presumably to perform a nude Wicca ritual in the staff room or something.

I went back to my desk and saw an email from an agency alarmed by Marcus Pugh’s HARM plan for homeless people. They’d gone over it, and it was nothing more than forced relocation. Hardly a solution. I couldn’t concentrate on this policy stuff. I needed to talk to Cuong.

Boss had yet to emerge from the bunker in his office. To go now was, strictly speaking, earlier than the proper knock-off time. But Cuong knew more about what the Corpse Flowers had planned in Kengtung than he was letting on.

‘Get your stuff,’ I called out to Felicity. ‘We’re going to the temple.’

She jangled keys and said she’d meet me outside. I finished my letter for Boss and hummed a Kenny Rogers song about playing a game of cards while I printed it out. I signed it and left it in his pigeon hole. As I left WORMS, I felt a load lift from my shoulders.

‘Stell-a!’ Felicity yelled from the Mercedes. I made a sign of the cross and climbed in.