The Case of the Chinese Boxes

by Marele Day

  ‘Whose life and death?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I cannot tell you more than this. Please return the key. You will receive a bonus. Then you can consider your engagement finished. You will not be further involved.’

  ‘I’m not one of your servants, to dismiss at your whim. You want the key, you’d better come up with some answers. You know where to reach me.’

  At the bottom of the stairs I waited. Everything in the restaurant was back to normal. I looked across at Steve and Ho. They were eating little custard tarts and drinking tea. They looked like they were doing fine without me.

  The man who’d appeared at the door came down the stairs. He was carrying the red cellophane parcel.

  I took out one of my cards, scribbled a note to Steve, grabbed a passing waiter and asked him to give it to him.

  The man with the cellophane parcel left the restaurant by the back entrance. So did I.

  In the narrow back alley was a car that looked oddly out of place amid the garbage bins. The white Mercedes with black tinted windows. The man beeped off the burglar alarm and got in.

  I sprinted over to where my car was parked and waited. There was only one way out of that alley and he’d have to pass me.

  He came by and I set the Daimler’s engine purring. I watched him turn left out of Harbour Street into Pier, then followed.

  There was traffic now between us. I was close enough to keep him in view, far enough away not to be obvious.

  We drove past the Powerhouse Museum and continued down the steep hill towards Wentworth Park, stopping at the lights at the bottom. I remembered how in the flash floods last spring this area had looked like Venice, the water right up to the buildings, covering both the road and footpaths. Cars ploughed through, sending up curved sheets of spray. Now it was a road again and the grass in Wentworth Park had turned brown.

  The lights changed and the Merc continued. He was taking a well-worn path into Glebe, round Wentworth Park and into Bridge Road. Now side streets proliferated and the traffic thinned and fanned out as we came up to Glebe Point Road.

  The Merc turned right. I was familiar with this stretch. Lots of Lebanese take-aways and one of the world’s best book shops. Further up, on the other side of the road, was a motel. Beside the pool of this motel I’d once overheard a couple of well-oiled men in dark glasses and single earrings negotiating a drug deal. It was outside this motel that the Merc stopped.

  I cruised past slowly. Through the rear-vision mirror I watched the chauffeur get out. With a shopping-bag. He looked about. Not furtively, but his eyes were taking in more than a casual glance. I parked the car and got out. There were a few people walking along but no-one took any notice of him. Except me.

  He led me through a maze of back streets that got progressively leafier in keeping with the large houses down that end of Glebe. Then he came to a long brick wall topped by a terracotta Chinese tile trim. I darted into a particularly green garden and watched from the cover of a dark bush that had hard orange berries on it. A small bird fluttered up from it. The man looked about and walked to an entrance—a red ornamental gate, opened; a green lion either side sitting comfortably like domestic cats. The Sze Yap temple in Glebe. He went in.

  I waited in the bush. It was a little cramped. I had dislodged a spider’s web and the wispy bits were making my forehead itch. Thankfully it didn’t take him long to go about his business. He was out again in under ten minutes.

  Without the shopping-bag with the red cellophane parcel.

  I waited till he had gone past then I entered through the gates.

  The grounds formed a definite square, divided by the path leading in from the gates. One side was just lawn, or rather lawn and grass—only half of it had been mown and the mower sat where the lawn stopped and the grass started. On the other side of the path grew old peach trees and camellias. Behind them were banana palms and some big old eucalypts. There was a toilet block with signs, LADIES and GENTS. In English. The path led to what looked like a picnic area. There were chairs and tables and a sort of barbecue with an A-frame roof on it. There were blobs of candle wax on what would have been the barbecue plate and beside it a small furnace. Both were brick with red and green trimmings. They were places to offer prayers. Prayers going up to heaven in the smoke of incense or in paper burnt.

  People were sitting at the tables chatting while some well-behaved kids in their Sunday best played nearby. The chatting dropped away considerably when I came into view. I smiled at everyone, nice and easy, as if I was out on a Sunday stroll and had just happened to wander in.

  It was a clear sunny day but without the heaviness of full summer heat. A good day for strolling.

  In between the banana palms I spied the bright blue of a tarpaulin. Things hidden away in corners interested me. I walked closer.

  The tarp was part of a makeshift abode. There were a couple of milk crates in the middle of the dirt floor, and a board on top of them on which was standing a pot with coffee caked in mud-coloured rivulets down the sides.

  On a piece of foam rubber lay a sleeping figure. It wore jeans, its back was young and tender and streaming down the back was long curling brown hair. It was a hippie, a species long believed to be extinct. Perhaps, like Sleeping Beauty, it was waiting for one of its kind to give it the kiss of life. It wasn’t going to be me. I would rather let sleeping hippies lie. There was no-one else about outside. Time to tackle the temple itself.

  On the way I noticed a line strung with clothes too small to belong to Sleeping Beauty.

  The temple was in three sections with a board that served as a walkway between them. I went into the section on the left. The walls were lined with photos of people, some script in Chinese but beside that were their names, and the years denoting their birth and death. I stopped at one photo and looked at it for a long time. The name told me it was John Chen and that he had died in 1987. A handsome man, in the photo he looked about twenty-five.

  Someone else entered the temple. A man wearing an ordinary shirt and trousers. I don’t know why that surprised me. Maybe I’d been expecting monk’s clothes or something. He asked me if I wanted tea. I said yes. He walked out again without waiting.

  He was sitting at a table beneath a big tree, away from the other visitors. I sat down with him, politely.

  ‘Do you live here?’ I asked.

  ‘I am the manager. I work. Only the days.’

  ‘Anyone else live here?’

  ‘Sifu. The teacher. He lives upstairs.’

  But there were children’s clothes hanging on the line. Maybe they were going to the poor, to a St Vincent de Paul kind of shop. I thought of Lucy’s father and his charity work. Of Mrs Chen and her committees.

  ‘I saw a boy up the back.’

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘A young man. Near the banana palms. Asleep.’

  ‘He works here. Gardener.’

  I looked again at the lawn-mower stopped in mid-stream. He must have had a sudden urge to lie down.

  ‘It’s very peaceful here,’ I remarked.

  ‘It is the place of Buddha,’ he said, slowly sipping his tea.

  Buddha’s temple. Perhaps I would find some interesting relics here.

  I finished my tea, taking large but unobtrusive mouthfuls.

  ‘Is it permitted to visit the rest of the temple?’

  ‘It is like a church. Open to all sincere visitors.’

  ‘Thank you for the tea.’

  He bowed his head in acknowledgement. Maybe he should have been thanking me. He had served me tea. I had allowed him to earn some brownie points in Buddha heaven.

  I entered the central section. The smell of sandalwood pervaded the place. Everything was red and gold. Lanterns with tassels hung in crowded rows from the ceiling. It was nowhere near the size of a church, about the size of a largish bedroom. Up the front was an altar. I recognised the white statue of Kuan Yin. There were other deities as well. Warlike deities. There were burnt-down incense sticks, flowers and
sweets as offerings. I noticed some Minties.

  There were a few chairs against the wall—marble seats in wooden frames. They looked like commodes. I tried one but the seat didn’t fit.

  It was not the place for a priest and congregation. You made your offering then went outside and had tea and gossip at the tables under the big tree.

  By way of one of the boards I walked through to another section. It turned out to be some sort of office. A messy sort of office. Again, there was a coffee pot that looked as if it had stood in the same place for years. The whole place was taking on the allure of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. I walked through to the third section of the temple.

  This was smaller but the offerings were bigger. There were white hen’s eggs and slices of fruit that had vinegar flies crawling over them. At the front was a painted cloth depicting the chief god of the temple in martial attire. On the right was the yang god, Kuan Ti, champion of kung fu and former idol of warlords and emperors. On the left was Kuan Yin, sometimes known as the queen of heaven. She had offerings in front of her.

  In particular she had a red cellophane parcel.

  I looked at her face and her out-turned palms offering me infinite mercy and compassion. I hoped there was forgiveness in them too for what I was about to do.

  I picked up the parcel. I felt like I was robbing the collection box.

  I had time only to loosen one end of the shiny red ribbon before I saw him. coming from behind the screen.

  A monk in maroon robes.

  His face was placid but his body was ready for action.

  I ran. With the parcel. Out of the temple and into the yard. Suddenly the castle had come to life. An image flashed past like a scene observed from a fast-moving train. A child’s face in an upstairs window of the temple, a child about the same age as Amy. It only lasted a second. The child’s mouth started to open in surprise then she was gone and a curtain had been drawn. The clothes on the line. I was running hard. Towards the wall. My pursuer was closing in. My veins filled with adrenalin. I felt as if I could fly.

  I was making my run-up to the wall when I felt a hand grab my heel. I was coming down to the ground. Slowly. I had time to see the world flash by, as if I were falling from a great height. Before I hit the ground I flung the parcel over the wall. I struck out wildly with my now freed hands but I was only hitting air. There was no-one there. Whoever had grabbed my foot wanted the parcel, not me. What was in it that the whole temple had gone on red alert the minute I’d touched it?

  Was Mrs Chen hiding something in there? Transferring it to the protective custody of the temple?

  I ran back out the open gates. The parcel had split and fortune cookies were strewn across the street. But there were rapidly fewer and fewer of them. They were being picked up by the man in maroon. I tried to join in but was pushed aside. He was like a dog protecting a bone. I felt the skin of my knee grazing against the hard bitumen. My hands grazed as well as I landed flat on the road. Beneath one hand I felt some lumps. Cookies. I curled my hand around them and before the maroon-shrouded leg could make contact I lurched up and ran.

  Once back in the safety of numbers in Glebe Point Road I took out the fortune cookies I’d managed to retrieve. Similar to the one I’d been handed at the Lantern Festival. I broke the first one open. There was no message in it. I broke open the second. Nothing. I dropped the cookies into a garbage bin.

  As I approached my car I noticed something slouching against it. He was wearing sunglasses and had his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket. I couldn’t be sure but he looked like one of the guys who’d caused trouble in the restaurant. When he spotted me he stood up straight and walked briskly down a side street.

  I sprinted up to the car. There were no broken windows or any visible damage. I followed down the street in time to see him disappear in the direction of the temple. I went all the way back there looking for him but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I walked back up to Glebe Point Road, feeling my grazed knees with every step.

  The white Merc was gone.

  I went back to the Daimler and drove off.

  Steve was watering his courtyard jungle when I got back to Newtown.

  ‘How did you go?’

  ‘Robbed a church. Lightning struck. How about you?’

  ‘Your secret admirer was very entertaining. And informative. Said he’d been up to your room.’

  Water dripped off the ferns. The earth soaked it up audibly. Little hissed sounds as it drank.

  ‘Not invited though.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re still talking to him.’

  He’d turned the tap off now and was pulling at odd weeds that came easily out of the damp soil.

  ‘The way you go on about your “space”, as if your room is hallowed ground. I thought no-one got into your room without an invitation.’

  ‘You need some snail pellets.’

  ‘The soil in Newtown is poisonous enough. I’d rather come out here at night and trample them to death. It wasn’t just the once, was it?’

  ‘What?’ I’d been pulling out the odd weed myself and now I stood up.

  It was Steve’s garden.

  ‘Him coming to your room.’

  ‘C’mon, Steve, he’s just a pesky little mosquito.’

  ‘That’s not the impression I got,’ said Steve darkly, ‘seems to be a pretty smart operator. And not at all bad looking, if you like that type. What’s he doing here anyhow?’

  ‘You tell me. Since he was so “informative”.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were working on a case together. In fact you never mentioned him before the yum cha invitation.’

  ‘You don’t tell me all the details of your job. And besides, I’m not working with him, he just seems to turn up all the time.’

  ‘Bearing gifts.’

  I could feel the earrings burning holes in my ears.

  Steve said nothing.

  I sighed. ‘Look, this is stupid. I don’t invite him, he just turns up. Do you think I should get a restraining order put on him?’ I quipped.

  Steve didn’t laugh. Instead he made loops of the hose and neatly placed it back around the tap.

  ‘Want to go to the pub?’ he said suddenly. ‘I feel like getting sloshed.’

  ‘On a Sunday night?’

  ‘The hospital can pay for the hangover.’

  He walked past me into the bathroom and washed his hands. He put on a T-shirt and slapped his arm. ‘Mosquitoes are particularly bad this summer, aren’t they?’

  I smiled. The little black cloud had lifted. ‘Will we go to Jack’s?’

  I was careful not to say my pub.

  George was there in full swing, rocking from his toes to his heels. He didn’t even know he was doing it. But he never spilt a precious drop of alcohol.

  ‘G’day, Steve,’ said Jack with a nod of his head, ‘what’ll you have, mate?’

  ‘Double Scotch.’

  Jack poured a double, and a single for me. We took them away to the table in the corner. The white noise of the pub was a good background against which to think. The image of the girl’s face at the window kept coming back. I held it in my mind and tried to scan every inch of it. It was out of place. I shouldn’t have seen it. Why else would the curtain have come across so suddenly?

  In Nepal they have a Living Goddess who lives from the age of six till puberty in the temple of Kathmandu. It is a great honour, especially for the parents of the chosen child, but at puberty she becomes ‘impure’ and must leave. She usually ends up as a prostitute. No-one wants to marry an ex-Living Goddess.

  But the face at the window wasn’t a Living Goddess, it was just a little girl.

  And what of the guy leaning against my car? He’d walked away as soon as he’d seen me. How did he know it was my car? Had I been so intent on following the man in the white Merc that I’d missed someone following me?

  There were a lot of questions going through my mind but no answers. But I knew who might have t
hem. Mrs Chen.

  Steve came back to the table with his second Scotch. Mine was hardly touched.

  ‘Well you’re a packet of laughs,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Precisely. I thought at least you’d keep pace with me.’

  ‘Sloshed yet?’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘While you can still remember things I’d like to make you an offer. How would you like to earn a bit extra on the side? Get back on the game?’

  ‘I’m not going to stand on a street corner in a miniskirt for anyone.’

  ‘Not that game. Your old one. The one you were doing in Germany. There’d be a quid in it. Make a change from listening to hearts.’

  ‘Who do you want me to bug?’

  ‘Mrs Chen,’ I said, finishing off my Scotch. ‘Ready for another?’

  ‘I will be by the time you come back with them.’

  I walked towards the bar. George raised his glass to me. The bar was two rows deep now. There are times when being tall and knowing the barman has advantages. This was one of them. I held up a five dollar note, letting Jack know we wanted another round.

  ‘I’m going cheap,’ said a guy sitting on a nearby barstool.

  ‘Mind you don’t fall off your perch,’ I retorted.

  ‘Sorry I spoke,’ he said in mock apology.

  When the drinks came he was the one to hand them to me. And it gave him great patronising pleasure.

  I breezed past him, back to Steve.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you said you wanted to get pissed.’

  ‘Why Mrs Chen? You want me to bug your client?’

  ‘Because I’m not getting any information out of her through the regular channels. She’s like Fort Knox. I’ve asked her polite questions, I’ve asked not so polite questions. What we saw at yum cha is just the top of an iceberg. It’s the other eight-ninths I want to know about. She makes phone calls. There’s something going on that she’s not telling me about, just dismisses me like a servant.’

  ‘Now that would get Claudia Valentine’s dander up, wouldn’t it?’ said Steve amused.