He watched her from the glass window of an interview room. Her legs seemed to stretch to her chest, but she didn’t know how to dress. She looked vaguely familiar but too much like a man in those brown corduroy pants and heavy worker boots. Freckles across her nose. Brown eyes, something different about them, striking but too strong. At least her hair feminised her. Thick and black it flowed over her shoulders, the locks held out of her face with an emerald green clip.

He’d heard her ask the receptionist for Han Hong as he wrapped up his check of the timetables. He’d been pleased with the receptionist’s response but agitated at the inquiry – Han Hong didn’t have an English tutor. He knew that for sure.

But she was missing.

He hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks and a familiar anxiety flipped his stomach.

This was not the first time he’d lost track of one of his girls.

He scanned the paperwork, looking for a clue.

For years, the business had operated without a hitch, aided by a few dodgy language school employees who’d helped him play the system in exchange for cash. The girls enjoyed the opportunity he gave them for a decent income; they sent it home to their parents and spent a decent portion on designer handbags and eyewear. They made better money with him than working in a convenience store – and they didn’t need to worry about the language. As willing participants in his game of mix and match, his workers knew the rules and they played by them, manipulating only the system in order to get ahead.

But things had gone so well and the operation had seemed so safe that perhaps he’d got lazy. He’d allowed the drugs to seep in and for his workers to become dependent like common East Sydney hookers. Worse, he’d let his associates convince him to move away from simple sexual service work and into darker markets… clearly, the girls didn’t like it.

The question was: where had they gone? If they’d returned home to China he would know about it. And if they’d set up somewhere else in the city, surely word would have filtered through. But he’d heard and seen nothing. Three women had already vanished, and now so had Han Hong.

He twisted his hands together as he watched the woman in the brown cords tap out a message on her phone. Everything was falling apart. He’d ordered the real Wendy Chan killed out of necessity. A one-off to cover his tracks. Sooner or later, the police would have found her, questions would have been asked and she’d have led them back to him. The order had been a self-preservation decision but murder was not his main game.

As for Han Hong, she’d disappeared, not shown up at the club for over ten nights. When he called her phone it went straight to message bank. He’d visited her apartment, rapped at the metal security screen and tried to peek around the venetians. Soon a landlord somewhere would start worrying about unpaid rent.

As usual, his associates didn’t seem worried. This was a cause for concern in itself. It meant they’d also become over-confident and slack. Or that they knew something he didn’t.

Things weren’t going to plan. In the space of a fortnight Han Hong had gone missing, the substitute had committed suicide and the woman in the emerald green clip had begun nosing around.

Something would have to be done.