Sophie squatted, feet flat, on the stone bench under the cherry blossom in the garden. She warmed her hands around a mug of oolong, breath disappearing into the vapours of the day. The world out here smelled of wood fire. If she tilted her head, she could see the smoke wafting from the chimney of their stone cottage. It followed the drift rising from a neighbour’s home, spiriting away into the sky.

They had visited this cottage three times, always in winter. Sophie had never seen the tree in bloom. She imagined, with the flowers unfurled and the world green and fresh and new, this place would have a different feel. But she liked it now, bare, cold and harsh: the smells of eucalypt, earth, smoke and baking bread soaking into her pores, the chill in the air making her throat sing and her cheeks glow. She found complex beauty in the ragged branches, dripping eucalypts and haunted, scraggy piles of wood. A bush winter gave her a sense of calm and comfort.

‘Want a top-up?’ Jin Tao stood beside her in his muddy hiking boots, a thermos of hot water in his hand. Sophie placed her mug on the bench. He filled it carefully with water and then slowly filled his own cup. He leapt up onto the bench next to her and folded himself into a squat.

‘Do you know where the first tea plant came from?’

The question sounded more like a statement. Sophie picked up her cup and blew gentle ripples onto the surface of the dark amber brew. She took a sip, felt the liquid soak into her tongue. Her mind drew images of curled leaves, broken twigs, a camp fire. The tea washed her mouth and coated her throat. She felt it warming her insides, bringing with it a sense of peace, distance from her physical presence and a separation from the events of the day before. Its comforting embrace dulled Sophie’s angst. It even eased the throbbing of her face.

Jin Tao took a sip and again examined his cup. ‘This is a Buddhist tale,’ he said. His voice blended smoothly with the textures of the day, interrupting Sophie’s sense of inwardness no more than breath or the whir of wind passing through leaves. She allowed her eyelids to drop a little. She viewed the brown and grey winter world through neat slits and out of focus.

‘There was this monk. I can’t remember his name. He set out on a nine-year meditation. He meditated night and day without sleeping until one time, and only once, he allowed himself to fall asleep.’

Sophie exhaled, bringing with her breath a slight nod of her head.

‘And when the monk awoke, he felt disgusted with himself,’ said Jin Tao. ‘He was so disgusted that he cut off his own eyelids.’

Sophie’s eye’s snapped wide. All the fear and revulsion from the night before stormed into her veins. She lurched backwards as her feet slid out from under her, throwing the curve of her lower back against the stone of the bench and her bottom to the ground. The green mug fell from her hands and smashed against the ground, its contents splashing into Sophie’s jeans, where it soaked and burned.

‘Shit, Soph!’ Jin Tao scrambled to his knees and stretched his hands down to Sophie’s armpits. Using one leg as a lever, he hauled her up.

Sophie clutched at her thigh, which the tea had stained dark. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. She looked down at the smashed pieces of porcelain splayed like chunky confetti. She focused on the edges of the shattered pieces, studying their jagged shapes, urging her mind to settle and return to its state of calm.

But the meditative peace of the moments before had gone. Emotions flooded Sophie’s system, thick and heavy and stifling. Now she saw danger in the crooked curves of the branches, spread out like bony fingers, their thin twigs a thorny web hanging over her, and suffocation in the wet piles of autumn leaves lining the back fence.

Jin Tao placed a firm hand on her shoulder. ‘You’d better change,’ he said, his voice laced with concern. ‘Come inside where it’s warm.’

Sophie wiped a sleeve across her face, took Jin Tao’s hand and allowed him to lead her in.

鬼

Later, by the fire, Sophie stared at flames that licked and leapt.

‘You were telling me something about tea,’ she said.

Jin Tao had his back to the couch, his legs stretched out to the fire. Sophie noticed he wore socks with individual toes sewn into them. She pinched Jin Tao’s big toe between thumb and forefinger. ‘I never knew you were such a dag,’ she said. He flicked her hand away with a flinch of the foot. ‘Finish the story about the tea. We got up to the bit about the eyelids.’

Jin Tao studied her. ‘You seemed like you were reflecting out there,’ he said. ‘And you were drinking tea. The thing about the eyelids is that when the monk cut them off they fell to the ground and from there arose the first tea plant in China. Or so they say.’

‘Gross.’

Jin Tao smiled. ‘So, ever since that time, meditating monks have used tea to keep awake and mindful.’

‘And you’re telling me this why?’

‘You’re dealing with something bigger than you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been dismissive, not mindful. If you want to talk, we can sit here, drink tea, talk all day.’

Sophie reached over and rubbed Jin Tao’s leg through his tracksuit. ‘Thanks.’

‘Tell me what you know.’

Sophie talked and Jin Tao listened, only interrupting to top up her teacup, put more wood on the fire and fill the thermos with fresh water. When she finished it was dark outside and a long time before Jin Tao spoke. He ran a hand across his shiny head.

‘So we know these things,’ he said finally. ‘A couple of students at the city language schools have gone missing. These students are female and Asian. The missing students have gone unnoticed because they are only a few among many and because other women are attending classes under their names. Wendy was perhaps one of these substitutes.’

Sophie nodded.

‘Next, we have Tae Hun’s friend, Han Hong. She’s missing and a substitute is attending classes on her behalf. But Tae Hun saw her at an illegal S&M club and took her photo.’

‘Which I have on my phone,’ Sophie said.

‘Right,’ said Jin Tao. ‘But we don’t know where she is now. We also know your student, Su Yuan, is missing and a girl pretend­ing to be her is taking her place. This has only just happened.’

‘Correct,’ said Sophie.

‘This girl told you everything was cool, that the whole visa scam substitution thing goes on all the time, that everyone knows about random girls earning cash in their spare time by delivering drinks semi-naked to boozed-up stockbrokers.’

‘Something like that.’

‘And you want to go ruin their party?’ Jin Tao had a curious smile on his face.

Sophie stared. Had she become the nagging school ma’am, ruining the midnight feast? Did it really matter if a few consenting women played the system in order to make money on the side? What was she, the morality police?

‘Like I said, this visa-fraud stuff goes on in the cooking schools, too,’ Jin Tao said. ‘But for it to work, there’s got to be someone on the inside.’

Sophie’s mind sorted through a jumble of images – Maria eating banana bread; the receptionist from Central English stinking of tuna; Pete in his fire warden’s helmet, insipid and weak and anything but a people person.

‘The weird bit is the guy at the market,’ said Jin Tao. He flexed his toes. ‘He wouldn’t have attacked you if he didn’t have something to hide.’

Exactly. If everything was as cool as the substitute said, if all the women were happy and working of their own accord, then they hardly needed shadowy figures like Zhou operating as their own personal minders. He obviously had a secret he didn’t want to share, and, judging from the way he’d roughed her up, it was something pretty dark.

She turned to Jin Tao. ‘So what have we got?’

He smiled gently. ‘Mindfulness means patience, analysing what you’ve got, turning it over slowly.’

‘I thought you were going to figure it all out for me.’ She was serious. Every inch of her physical and emotional body resisted the idea that this mystery was hers to solve.

Jin Tao sighed. ‘All right, these illegal clubs exist, but everyone knows that. You didn’t see Han Hong or Su Yuan there, you didn’t know any of the girls there, and there’s nothing to suggest they are not there of their own volition and that they are not being paid extremely well. In fact, the girl you spoke to said as much herself. Han Hong may have made her money and now be paying for an expensive business degree at Sydney University. Or she might have gone back to China, like Zhou said.’

‘And as for Zhou?’

‘You don’t know any more about him other than that he’s violent,’ Jin Tao said. ‘But so are a lot of men when it comes to protecting their business ventures, illegal or otherwise.’

‘So we’ve got nothing, is that what you’re saying?’ asked Sophie, her heart sinking.

‘I’m saying you need more information.’ He poured more steaming water into Sophie’s cup. ‘Drink tea, be mindful and patient, think outside the box.’

Sophie took a sip of her tea. ‘There is something else,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘That Zhou guy. When he grabbed me in the market, he was wearing chef’s whites. I guess that’s why I didn’t put two and two together about his business. I didn’t know what business he was referring to.’

Jin Tao looked up, interested.

Sophie continued, ‘And then when he grabbed me in Ashfield, he said he guts things for a living…’

She stopped. Jin Tao was staring at her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Chef’s whites?’ he said, frowning. ‘Are you fucking with me or are you serious?’

‘Not fucking with you. He was wearing whites, dirty ones, too. Like he was in the middle of gutting something. I guess that makes sense, if he’s a chef.’

‘Or a butcher,’ said Jin Tao.

‘He said he guts pretty things for a living.’

‘Ask a butcher for a definition of pretty and he’ll say a butterflied lamb,’ said Jin Tao, absorbed in thought.

‘Right.’

‘The thing is,’ he said slowly, ‘I know a butcher named Zhou.’

Sophie sat up straight. The bill in the rubbish bin. The sighting of Zhou in the Cross.

‘Zhou’s a fairly common Chinese surname,’ Jin Tao continued. ‘I didn’t make the connection before…’

Sophie waited.

‘The guy I know works down in Chinatown,’ he said. ‘I get my meat from him. I take it from the kitchen door myself.’

‘So you know the address of the shop?’

Jin Tao nodded.

‘I’ll tell Damian.’

‘Who’s Damian?’

Sophie hesitated. ‘A private investigator.’

She watched his face darken as he took her words in.

‘You really want to go back there, Soph?’

It was a fair question. But one she just couldn’t answer.