Cavalier and Jacinta travelled in silence along Beach Road in Melbourne’s horse-shoe-shaped Port Phillip Bay. It began to rain. Soon the only sound was the steady whoosh, whoosh of the windscreen wipers.
‘How’d the shoot go?’ Cavalier asked finally.
Jacinta made a so-so gesture with her hand.
‘You scored well?’
She nodded.
‘Where did you learn?’
‘When I joined the force.’ She paused, glanced at him and added, ‘I had an aptitude and a very good instructor.’
She switched on her iPad. ‘I had all your crime articles downloaded,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘You are on top of the drug subject in Australia and the region. I wanted to see if you had any interesting information.’ She brought up an article headed ‘Death in Tonga’. ‘I didn’t know this detail,’ she said. ‘You say here that the Mendez cartel was shipping huge quantities of cocaine from the coast of South America, across the Pacific to the Queensland coast.’
‘Not just Queensland. They’re reaching New South Wales and Victoria too.’
‘Why would Mendez do this?’
‘The price,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘He could sell it for two hundred and fifty thousand a kilo in Australia, but for only a tenth of that in the States.’
‘Is there a big market here?’
‘Over half a million users. We have a most affluent middle class and it’s their drug of choice.’
‘Was much intercepted?’
‘The feds have caught about six boats. But, at first, about ten times that number were getting through, thanks to our vast coastline.’
‘What’s the value on the street?’
‘The feds’ve cleared up a lot of it coming from South America. Now it’s down to maybe half a billion.’
Jacinta fell silent. After a few minutes, she observed, with a broad smile, ‘I love the rain. It is so lovely over the bay, and the green is drawn out in all the gardens.’
As they approached Beaumaris, she asked if Cavalier was a Buddhist.
‘No. I have respect for the movement, though, with certain caveats,’ he replied. ‘My ex-wife is devout, if that applies to Buddhists.’
‘Will you wai the Buddha with me?’
Cavalier looked surprised. ‘I know where there are a few centres—’ he began.
‘I checked. There is one in Beaumaris. Could we stop there, please? I need to buy some fruit.’
Minutes later, they entered a small temple, where a pleasant smell of incense enveloped them. It was empty but for a young yellow-robed monk, who was sitting cross-legged in a corner, facing a human-sized gold-painted Buddha. Jacinta, carrying a box of fruit, put her finger to her lips and bowed. Cavalier followed her moves as she placed the food in a bowl, sat and held her hands in the prayer position. They remained like this for ten minutes and then left, the monk not moving a muscle.
‘I’m honoured that you asked me to join you,’ Cavalier told Jacinta when they’d stopped for a coffee at Leroy Espresso.
‘It is good for you to wai the Buddha,’ she said. ‘He is open to all. You are troubled. Surrender to the Buddha, and his spirit will enter you and be your salvation.’
‘I think I might be beyond it,’ Cavalier said in a low voice. ‘But why do you think I’m troubled?’
‘Your drinking, for one thing.’
He nodded. ‘It’s a problem.’
‘It has been since your daughter’s disappearance, I imagine?’
‘You imagine correctly.’
‘You don’t want to let go of her?’
‘No. Though my ex-wife’s managed to do it and claims that Pon is in a better place. She believes in reincarnation.’ ‘You don’t?’
‘I’d like to believe in it. It’d give a sense of a continuum, which is comforting for all of us. But, no, I’m sceptical.’
‘You should believe. It would centre you.’
‘And you—you had past lives you know of?’ he asked.
Jacinta nodded. ‘I was a warrior chief.’
‘A man?’
‘I have been a warrior on more than one occasion.’
‘If I believed in reincarnation,’ he said, ‘I would certainly believe you were.’
‘And will be again,’ she said. Then she added with a strange smile, ‘And so will you.’
They were interrupted by a high-pitched scream from the street outside the cafe. At first they thought a dog had been hit by a car but then realised the cry had come from a woman. Cavalier jumped to his feet and hurried out, followed by Jacinta. A tall, tattooed man was being felled by a diving tackle from a youth, who had a bystander helping him. The woman yelled that the tattooed man had grabbed her handbag. The two men wrestled it from him. Soon four men held the thief down. One of the cafe’s staff called the police, and the thief hurled abuse at everyone as a crowd gathered.
Jacinta moved close and stood over his head, looking down at him. The thief looked up: ‘What are you looking at, bitch?!’
Jacinta stared down and did not respond.
‘I’ll come and kill ya!’ the thief yelled at her, as the police arrived.
‘This sort of thing’s happening more and more,’ one of the cafe’s staff remarked as Jacinta and Cavalier resumed their seats.
‘I see it in Bangkok too,’ Jacinta said quietly to Cavalier, ‘and a decade ago, violence and drug addiction were barely related.’
‘It’s endemic here.’
‘Soon it will be in Asia.’