Ghost Girls

by Cath Ferla

  And so they were here. The cop at the counter was all protocol and no emotion. With a freckled finger he pushed a sheet of paper from his side of the counter to theirs. ‘Fill in the form,’ he said. ‘And we’ll lodge your report.’

  ‘Don’t you want to hear what we have to say?’

  He looked up from the counter. ‘I can’t help you until you fill in the form.’

  ‘Have you seen his head?’

  The constable nodded slowly. With a helpless shrug of the shoulders, he pointed to a row of chairs positioned along one wall. ‘He might feel more comfortable with a seat.’

  Sophie helped Tae Hun to a chair. The cop stared as though he knew her.

  ‘I think we’ve met before,’ he said, when she returned to the counter.

  Sophie pulled the form towards herself and picked up a pen.

  ‘The jumper,’ said the cop. ‘Outside the language school. You were there.’

  Sophie looked at him, remembered the young cop with the face full of disdain. He’d disliked her then and given her a guilt trip for hanging around. And now here he was, pedantic about paperwork and ignoring the real story in front of him.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ she said, shoving her hands in her pockets, a finger touching cardboard.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Forms, protocol, administration. Does anything ever get done?’

  ‘It’s all about numbers here. If you and your boyfriend are having domestic issues, it might take the investigators a while to get onto looking into them.’

  Sophie fingered the cardboard in her pocket. She pulled it out, turned it over: the business card from the PI, Damian Sommers.

  Always do everything for yourself, Seamus had said. But never be afraid to ask for advice.

  Sophie made a decision. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  She took satisfaction in the cop’s quizzical look as she backed away from the bench.

  Tae Hun stood up as she approached. ‘What do we do now?’

  Sophie pulled her phone from her bag. ‘You go home,’ she said, keying in Damian’s number. ‘I’m going to talk to a PI.’

  鬼

  They met at a grungy Surry Hills coffee shop. Damian wore jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of brightly coloured high-tops.

  ‘No suit today?’ asked Sophie when he sat down.

  ‘I call this my down time,’ he said, flashing a smile.

  ‘Your day off?’

  He nodded. ‘Most of my sneaking around is done Friday night till Sunday, cheating lovers and all that,’ he said. ‘I only wear the suit to blend in with the five o’clock crowd anyway. Makes it look like I’m working a real job.’

  ‘You don’t consider private investigation a real job?’

  ‘It pays okay but there’s a lot of running around, sorting through other people’s rubbish, crawling through confined spaces, checking pipes for foreign objects. Stuff better suited to overalls.’

  She couldn’t resist a jab. ‘So the suit helps you pick up chicks?’

  Damian smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  The coffees arrived, a cappuccino and a long black. Damian sipped his coffee straight through the foamy top.

  ‘The coffee here is the best,’ he said, wiping milk from his lip with a napkin. ‘Almost as good as Melbourne.’

  ‘My hometown.’

  ‘Yeah, I can kind of tell.’

  Sophie laughed. ‘Oh yeah?’

  He nodded. ‘Must be the bruises. You’re a rough lot down south.’

  He’d got that one right. Rough as guts. Time to change the subject.

  ‘Do you want to hear my story?’

  Damian took out a notepad and a pen. ‘I do,’ he said, all serious.

  She studied him. He had the lean, jowl-less look of a man not yet thirty. He should be throwing back beers at the pub or taking his board out for a surf. What was he doing here in this grungy cafe taking an interest in the problems of a woman he’d only just met? Would he be hitting her up for big money?

  ‘And what are you going to do with the information?’ she asked.

  Damian considered her. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Because I’m not going to pay you.’

  A faint smile played on his lips. ‘Then why did you contact me?’

  ‘I had a feeling.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That you’d give a shit.’

  He sat back in his chair, hands folded across the back of his head. ‘You’re right on that one,’ he said. ‘I give a shit about what happened to you and I want to find the person who damaged your gorgeous face.’

  女孩

  Sophie returned home to find a note on the fridge.

  Are we still on for the trip? Call me.

  The trip. She and Jin Tao had made plans to skip town and head west to the Blue Mountains. They’d organised a blue-stone cottage and planned to build a log fire, make Chinese corn cakes and wild mushroom ragu, drink tea, read trashy magazines and sleep. They’d made the booking weeks ago and planned to leave today. Sophie hadn’t thought of it since.

  She went into the bathroom and considered her face in the mirror. The bruise on her cheek bloomed a blotchy purple and the whites of her eyes were streaked with red. The skin on her lips had cracked and started to peel. She could definitely do with a break.

  She needed to collect some supplies. In the kitchen she sorted through the resuable shopping bags, selecting the one containing the least number of useless receipts. Then she picked up the phone.

  Jin Tao answered on the first ring. ‘Okay, spill the goss. You could have just told me you were seeing someone.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Someone stayed over last night.’

  Sophie fingered the bruise. Jin Tao had it all wrong but how she wished he were right. She wished last night hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t chased down Tae Hun and gone out to the house in Ashfield. She wished she’d simply gone out to a club, had too many drinks, pashed a strange man and brought him home.

  ‘That was just a friend,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t get to share your bed, Sophie,’ said Jin Tao.

  There was no point delaying it.

  ‘You remember that guy, Tae Hun?’

  She caught a sharp intake of breath on the end of the line.

  ‘What are you doing, Soph?’ Jin Tao had lowered his voice but she detected the steel in his tone.

  ‘I was with him last night,’ she said, hoping to sound light.

  ‘And what did you guys get up to?’

  ‘I’ll tell you on our way to the mountains.’

  ‘I’m only going to say this once,’ said Jin Tao after a pause. ‘Your dad was a PI and look what happened to your family. You chose not to become a detective, Soph. I wish you’d try to remember that.’

  It’s in my blood.

  ‘No need when I’ve got you to remind me,’ she said. ‘I’ll catch you soon.’ A wave of disappointment washed her insides. She’d forgive Jin Tao for bringing up her father but she imagined she would have a battle convincing him that she’d done anything right last night. It was true, she was lucky to have escaped with little more than some bruising and a scare. Damian had agreed. And then he’d quoted a whole bunch of terrifying statistics about the number of illegal brothels operating in Sydney and the things that happened to the women who worked in them.

  ‘But something about what you’ve told me is different,’ Damian had said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The violence,’ he’d said. ‘Illegal brothels are usually exactly that. The men who visit them get off on knowing the women are desperate and exploited. They also like the fact that there are no rules and no chance the proprietors will call the police if they do something off. But brothels specifically set up for violence, that’s something different.’

  Sophie slung the shopping bag over her shoulder. The weekend away would give her a good opportunity to clear her head. Next week
she would contact Damian and see what he had turned up.

  鬼

  By the time she arrived at the restaurant, Sophie no longer felt cold. The wind, brutal when she’d started out, now refreshed her; the skin beneath her many layers felt clammy with sweat. She looked at her watch. Seven minutes early. She’d completed the walk from home to Blue Lotus in near record time.

  Jin Tao’s Audi was parked against the paling fence opposite the door. Sophie dumped her backpack beside the wheel and leaned against the car to drink from a bottle of water. She’d seen Jin Tao through the dining room window on her way around. He’d appeared deep in conversation with a delivery guy. She noticed he’d dressed in his favourite old flannelette shirt, a piece of clothing he reserved for bumming around on the couch and doing nothing much at all. That was what they both needed, a weekend to unwind and do nothing but share each other’s company. Who knew what clarity such space might bring?

  She drained the remnants of the water and lobbed the bottle over to the open recycling bin. It hit the corner and bounced off onto the cobblestones, the clatter making the alley cat jump. Sophie collected the bottle. She dropped it into the bin as the kitchen door opened and Jin Tao popped his shiny head out into the lane.

  ‘You going to hang out in the freezing cold all day, or are you going to come in?’

  ‘Hello to you too.’

  Jin Tao pushed the door open wider. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What happened to your face?’

  Sophie touched the bruise, turned her head.

  He softened. ‘Come in, why don’t you,’ he said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Sophie raised a hand. ‘We’ll be here all day. The idea is to get you away from your work.’ She took another glance at her watch. ‘I’m early and you’ve got another two minutes to be on time.’

  Jin Tao grinned. ‘I can do better than that. I’ll be out in one.’ He disappeared into the kitchen, the door banging loudly. The vibration caused the lid of the recycling bin to clang shut, revealing a cardboard fruit box, rammed with newspapers and paperwork, wedged against the wall. The yellow highlight against the text of a bill caught Sophie’s eye.

  She stepped closer. A payment order for meat. The payment was made by Jin Tao on behalf of Blue Lotus. The supplier’s name, printed clearly in black felt-tip beneath it, was Jonnie Zhou. Sophie picked the bill out of the bin with pincer fingers. She spread its double page wide, stared at the black and white text and Jin Tao’s signature, his familiar scrawl.

  Zhou: the surname was one of the most common in China. There’d be hundreds of Zhous in Sydney alone. Recent memories flashed before her like the frames of a film. Jin Tao’s absences from the restaurant. The scratches on his face. The sighting of Zhou in the Cross near Blue Lotus. Li Hua would say these were more than coincidences.

  Everything’s connected. How had Zhou known where she lived?

  The door banged shut again. Jin Tao stood with his back to her, a duffel bag over his shoulder, fiddling with the deadbolt. Beside him on the ground sat a lidded box and a long-handled shovel.

  Always pay attention to the details.

  Sophie stuffed the invoice back into the box with the news­papers. She moved quietly to the car, her mind aflame.

  The name had to be a coincidence, she needed it to be a coincidence.

  Her thoughts jumped to Seamus and his large, imperfect heart. As a girl she’d viewed him as a hero; her mother’s great rescuer from a life that had been frightening and dangerous and soiled by crime. She’d thought her father to be one of the good guys. And he was. He’d saved her mother from certain execution: people didn’t witness murders inside the Walled City and live to tell about them.

  But even good guys get it wrong. Or go wrong.

  And crims need PIs too.

  Seamus had been bent, in with the wrong people. Sophie had learned this long after Helen disappeared, when Seamus, his eyes red from crying and his face ruddy from wine, told her everything. It was his fault Helen had disappeared. Seamus had saved Helen once, and brought her to Australia, where he’d loved and protected her. But his shady dealings had finally caught up with him. Helen had become payback.

  Already exhausted from her own fear and grief, Sophie had wanted to vomit. In the den that night, it had felt like her whole world tilted; she knew that her axis would never be the same. Her father was a crook and she had lost her beautiful mother because of it.

  She had run out of the den and out of her family home. She’d never seen Seamus again.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  Jin Tao’s voice jerked Sophie alert. He stood behind the car, loading gear into the boot.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Sophie asked, pointing to the shovel.

  Jin Tao grinned and slid it into the car on an angle. ‘A little project I’ve got for us in the mountains,’ he said. ‘It’s a surprise. You’ll find out when we get there.’

  女孩

  It was colder in Katoomba. The air had the kind of bite to it that Sydney rarely managed. The sky stretched high and wide, like the beginnings of an embrace.

  Not that Sophie could see the sky now, enclosed as she was in a tunnel of ghostly blue gums. She found herself puffing as she hurried to keep up with Jin Tao on their hike through the bush.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he’d said when he pulled up at the side of the road.

  ‘Now?’ They hadn’t rolled into town yet. ‘You don’t want to check-in first, dump our stuff?’

  Jin Tao had pushed open his door. ‘I need a leak for starters,’ he’d said. ‘Wait here and I’ll be right back.’

  Sophie had leaned into the leather, pulling her coat closer to block out the cold. She’d looked out at the eucalypts – grey leaves, white trunks glowing like bones.

  The passenger door had jerked open and Jin Tao had offered his hand. ‘C’mon,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve a surprise for you. Something you need to do.’

  She’d unfastened her belt, jumped onto the gravel. Jin Tao had collected the shovel and the box from the boot. ‘I can’t carry them both,’ he’d said, offering the box to her. ‘Promise not to peek inside or you’ll ruin my plans.’

  Sophie had reached for the shovel instead.

  He’d shrugged. ‘This is lighter, but whatever.’ He’d turned, raising the box to his shoulder, and begun stomping through long grass towards the trees. ‘There’s a track here. I used to walk it with my yeye as a kid.’

  She’d followed him through the grass, eyes peeled for snakes.

  Now, with sheets of trees on either side, the unease she’d felt in the laneway behind the restaurant gnawed. She could only think of a sinister reason someone would take a shovel into deserted bushland; she felt strangely comforted by the fact she was the one holding it.

  ‘Here.’ Jin Tao stopped just ahead of her and placed the box on the ground. ‘I know you’re into ritual and I thought we could make one of our own,’ he said. He toed his boot at the earth. ‘I reckon this is a good spot to dig.’

  Sophie looked about. Walls of gums glowed white around the small clearing. She gripped the shovel tight.

  ‘What is this, some kind of treasure hunt?’ she said, trying to make the question sound like a joke.

  Jin Tao studied her for a long time. ‘I think it’s time to say goodbye to the past,’ he said. He knelt and began peeling the tape from the box.

  Sophie looked from him to the ground, moist from rain, a patchwork of black earth, green grass and decaying leaves. Who had she told about her weekend away? And what the fuck was in that box? Her mind conjured predictions.

  She tightened her grip on the shovel.

  Out of the box, Jin Tao took a sapling. A plant in a black pot.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Sophie heard her voice ask the question, but her mind had raced a hundred beats ahead. He didn’t have a weapon. He hadn’t planned to harm her.

  ‘It’s a blue gum, like the rest of these,’ Jin Tao said, motion­ing to the bush around them. ‘Some people call t
hem ghosts, because of the white trunks. It’s for you. To plant here for David.’

  Sophie stared at the tree. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He’s your ghost, Sophie. He’s haunting you and colouring your view of everything around you. That shrine in your room, your obsession with these missing students, it’s all related. It’s consuming you and putting you in danger. It’s unhealthy and unsafe.’

  ‘And how’s a tree going to help with that?’ Sophie hoped the dryness in her voice distracted Jin Tao from the moisture forming in her eyes.

  ‘You plant this gum and you watch it grow. You come here when you want to talk to David. You go home and you stop with the shrine and the incense and the obsessing. You move on with your life. You forgive yourself.’

  The tears were running now, hot and wet against her cheeks. Sophie swiped at her face with the back of her sleeve, embarrassment and relief and thankfulness clambering over each other.

  Jin Tao stood and moved towards her, his arms open. Sophie allowed herself to step into them.

  The iron gates opened to let out the flood. A sea of royal blue, the colour of prize ribbons, surged forwards. Justin stepped up onto the nature strip. The girls wore their hair in high pony­tails and short, shaggy bobs. They flowed through the school gates and down the footpath in a huge, seething, cackling mass. Justin watched them with wonder, amazed at the volume of their taunts, shrieks and laughter and stunned at the happy confidence on their faces, in their straight-backed postures and in the quick flicks of their heads. He didn’t remember childhood like this.

  Justin’s childhood had been one of shy slinking away from things: first from his father’s hand and then from his mother’s sweet, fermenting alcoholic breath. At school he had hidden from the bullies with his head down and shoulders scrunched together. He’d walked along walls and slid around corners, spent lunchtimes in graffitied library carrels and free periods locked in toilet cubicles. There, in the light, quiet space of the toilet, with only the drip of the urinal and the occasional hiss of a student taking a piss to disturb him, he’d taught himself to release.

  Justin had known that most boys learned to masturbate in their beds. But for Justin, his bed had seemed inappropriate. His bed had been his sanctuary, the place where he felt warm and safe and hidden. He retreated there when the fighting between his parents started to suffocate him. He lay on his bed with his pillow over his head and almost succeeded in drowning out the screaming and the crashing and the sobs. Warm and safe, Justin would be comforted by the knowledge that no one would come for him here, that soon he would be sleeping and so would they. In the morning, the night before would be forgotten and everything would be all right. So although the thought of masturbating in his bed did occur to him, he never acted on the impulse until he’d moved away. He hadn’t wanted a soundtrack of screaming to interrupt his pleasure. For the teenage Justin, bed was a place for sleep or for comfort and it was only in the toilet cubicle where, bored and lonely, Justin would take his cock in his hands and rub it.