by Cath Ferla
Jin Tao sat down slowly on the bed, shaking his head. When he turned to face her, she saw sadness in his eyes and disappointment in the set of his jaw. ‘How could you think I would do something like this to you?’
She didn’t have words. In her heart she knew there was no way Jin Tao would torment her like this; she could trust him. She had to – she had no choice.
You’ve given him a part of your soul.
But when Jin Tao reached a hand out to stroke the top of hers, Sophie found herself shrinking away.
‘You’re really scared of me, aren’t you?’ he said, his voice dead.
Yes. No. I don’t know.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure your tree-planting idea was much of a success.’
鬼
When Sophie walked into the staffroom on Monday morning, Chuck hurried over to her with a hug.
‘Honey, we were worried about you,’ he whispered, his mouth close to Sophie’s ear. ‘You left on Wednesday and you never came back.’
Over Chuck’s shoulder, Sophie watched her colleagues pretend to be busy. He’d probably told every staff member who would listen – and that was all of them when it came to gossip – how concerned he was for poor Sophie and her emotional reaction to Wendy’s death. This was why Sophie now saw colleagues steal fleeting glances in her direction. The only person who seemed entirely uninterested was Lenny, sitting as he always did at the end of the room, hoeing into a breakfast of sushi rolls and tea. Good old reliable Lenny. Sophie extracted herself from Chuck’s grasp.
‘I can’t think why you were worried, Chuck,’ she said, loud enough for those closest to them to hear. ‘I had some leave, went to the mountains. It was chilly.’
Chuck smiled tightly and took Sophie’s hand in his own two. ‘I haven’t raised your concerns with Pete,’ he said.
‘Don’t. I’m sure I overreacted.’
Chuck’s grip relaxed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘But if you need to talk . . .’
Sophie said nothing. She removed her hand and wove her way to her desk. Amicable chatter and weekend anecdotes again filled the air.
‘What a dickhead,’ grumbled Lenny to Sophie as she sat down at her desk.
Sophie smiled. ‘Nice weekend, Lenny?’
Lenny yawned. ‘It was a weekend.’ He looked at her. ‘You know Chuck was buzzing around here all last week stressing his little head out about you?’
‘I guessed.’
‘The man needs to make up his mind which team he bats for.’
‘We had an upsetting conversation, that’s all,’ said Sophie.
‘About the suicide chick?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Because you asked me if I knew her.’
‘You said you didn’t remember.’
‘I know what I said.’ Lenny bit into a fresh sushi roll. ‘The thing is,’ he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, ‘I remember.’
Sophie edged her chair forwards. He continued chewing, slowly, as though the conversation were closed.
‘So?’
Lenny raised an eyebrow and swallowed. ‘Patience, kid, let me finish my breakfast.’
Sophie turned back to her desk. She knew it was futile to push Lenny into anything. The man was stubborn and irritating and he seemed to enjoy the reputation. She tried to work on her class plan, urging her mind to switch on and get into gear. But each time she looked at her lesson plan, her thoughts turned to Wendy and Su Yuan and Han Hong and the butcher named Zhou. Eventually she gave up. Today she would have to wing it.
‘It’s not much, but you seem so cut up by all this I thought I may as well share it with you,’ Lenny said finally. ‘I taught her for a bit,’ he said, trapping Sophie with his clear blue eyes. ‘Funny girl, laughed a lot – when she wasn’t nodding off. I remember her because she had this strange fixation with walls.’
Sophie frowned. ‘Pardon?’
‘You heard right,’ said Lenny gruffly. ‘Anyhow, she asked me several times how to describe the action of the walls listening.’
Sophie stared at him, a slip of recognition jangling somewhere at the edge of her consciousness.
‘I thought it must have been some Chinese expression she was trying to translate into English. Maybe it was, I don’t know.’
‘She wanted to say that the walls were listening?’
Lenny shrugged. ‘I know it sounds strange, but she asked me and I told her and that’s about all I remember. Don’t ask me anything else because that’s all I have.’ And with that, Lenny returned to being his usual curt self. He zipped his pencil case and picked up his books. ‘See you after class.’
The scratching of bolt against latch woke Han Hong from an uncomfortable sleep. They were back for more.
She focused on her sense of smell. Her nostrils flared against the rough hem of the blindfold as she fought to catch the scent of something savoury. But there was nothing. Only the familiar stale air of her prison, its silence now punctuated by the scrape of what she knew was a camera tripod and the shallow, ragged breathing of her captor.
Just how much more torment she could endure, Han Hong did not know.
What she did know was that the soup had stopped coming and she was growing weaker.
And this could only mean one thing.
They didn’t intend to keep her alive for much longer.
She did not have many films left to make.
The cuts in the butcher shop window were like none Damian had ever seen. A pig’s head stared at him through the finger-smudged glass. Are you talking to me? Damian pressed his forehead against the window. The pig stared back, its beady eyes glazed and shining. Inside the store, an elderly Chinese woman glared at him. The place was crowded, customers spewing out the door. Inside he could hear them barking orders in languages he couldn’t understand to white-coated men who worked the counter and broke apart huge slabs of meat on round wooden chopping boards with blades ten centimetres wide.
He’d already fought the crowd once, to be told by the man doling out pigs’ trotters that a butcher named Zhou did exist but that, no, he wasn’t working today.
‘You look at the restaurant. He works there too.’
‘Which restaurant?’ Damian had asked, his phone in hand, ready to take down the address.
‘Firewater,’ the butcher had said. ‘Very spicy.’
Damian had punched the restaurant’s name into his phone. The name sounded familiar but he couldn’t quite place it. As the page loaded, he’d stepped back out onto the pavement and come face to face with the pig.
‘Excuse me.’ The elderly lady who’d frowned at him from inside the butcher shop tugged on his arm. Her hair shone unnaturally black, contrasting sharply with the many deep furrows on the face that she turned up to him. She smiled a crowded mouthful of long and yellowing teeth and beckoned him to the side of the road.
‘You looking for a girl?’ she asked, her voice almost a whisper.
‘Pardon?’ Damian had to stoop to bring his ear level to her mouth. She wore a strong perfume but beneath that she smelled faintly of garlic.
‘I said, are you looking for a girl?’
He heard her clearly this time, and, from the sparkle in her eye, Damian guessed the lady had mistaken him for someone else.
‘Yes,’ he said, deciding to play along.
‘You at the wrong place,’ she said, with a giggle. ‘You go there.’ She pointed to an open doorway next to the butcher shop. Inside, a steep set of stairs ascended into the main body of the building.
‘What do you know about the girls?’ he asked.
She smiled again. ‘I been around,’ she said. ‘I see men like you for a long time.’
Damian tilted his head skywards to examine the building’s facade. It was a pale pink Art Deco number, about six storeys high and in serious need of a paint job. Below each window the colour of the exterior had been washed grey by rain mixed with dirt dripping over the sills. There were many rooms above the butcher shop, and any
one of them could house Han Hong.
When he looked down again, the old woman was no longer standing beside him. The sea of people made it impossible for him to pick her out in the crowd.
He took the stairs in twos. The first landing opened onto a long, narrow corridor lined with numbered wooden doors. He tried the handle on the first and found it locked. Same with the second and the third. The final door, at the end of the corridor, pushed open at his touch. He entered, noting first the Persian rug on the floor, and then the unmistakable scent of early decomposition. Finally he noticed the pair of legs extending out from behind an armchair in the corner.
Damian took a breath and fought the urge to vomit. He hadn’t known what he was going to find when he came here, but he certainly hadn’t expected it to be a dead person.
Justin was pulled up in a traffic jam when he saw her. Too late he realised she had also seen him. He had no opportunity to hide. And worse, she was heading this way. Justin honked his horn, urging the cars in front of him to move, but he knew it was useless. The traffic had crawled to a halt ten minutes ago and since then he had moved forward only about a centimetre. The flashing red of an ambulance up ahead told him that there had been an accident and it could be a while. Somebody was probably hurt. Injury? Death? He didn’t much care. He cared only about returning home before Veronica did and forgetting all about this terrible mess. The stash of porn films burning a hole in his glove box right now made him feel sick. So did the knowledge of what he’d done to the girl in that room.
Destroyed her.
Or, by sharing the truth, had he in fact turned away from the sure-fire path to hell he’d been on for so long? He expected he’d never know. But one thing he’d decided upon – he was quitting.
A sharp rap on the passenger-side window told him she’d arrived. Justin forced his lips into a smile and flipped the switch to bring down the window.
Joy Lin grinned toothily in at him. ‘How are you doing, Mr Holmes?’
‘I’m fine thank you, Joy Lin,’ he said. ‘I can’t say the same for the traffic.’ He hoped the casual frustration in his voice would encourage the girl to show good sense and leave. Instead, Joy Lin opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat.
‘I don’t mind keeping you company,’ she said, batting her eyelids in the way he’d begun to notice teenage girls did without thinking. Even his own daughter was guilty. Flirts, all of them. ‘I’m on my way to see my grandmother but she’ll still be at the market. I’ve got nothing else to do.’ Joy Lin hauled her schoolbag in after her and rested it on a knee.
‘Well, that’s a kind offer, Joy Lin, but I’m rehearsing a presentation I’m giving at work tomorrow. I really could use the time to practise.’
‘You can practise on me,’ she said, her voice light and sweet. ‘I’m on the debating team at school. I might even have a suggestion.’
Justin looked at her. Was this girl for real? What did she think she was doing, climbing into a strange man’s car? Asking for trouble, that’s what. He admired the creamy flesh of her thigh. She wore knee-high socks instead of stockings – purposefully erotic, surely. He wouldn’t allow Isobel to dress like that. She wore ribbed stockings and lace-up shoes. And her winter skirt fell below her knee.
‘You know, Joy Lin,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s probably not a good idea to spend too much time in men’s cars. You don’t know me very well.’
If Joy Lin sensed the warning he was trying to give, she didn’t show it. ‘You’re Isobel’s dad. That’s all I need to know, right?’
‘If Isobel saw you here now, she’d probably think it was a bit weird.’
‘Isobel said I left my earrings in your car. Did you find them?’
He saw her hand on the glove compartment and he reached out to slap it away. But she was too quick in her movement and he was too slow in his. She’d opened the hatch before he could stop her and a DVD case fell forward. The DVD cover was particularly graphic and the next moments passed in slow motion. Joy Lin stared, transfixed, at the image, her mouth frozen open in shock.
She did not move her eyes as Justin took the case from her and gently closed the lid on the compartment.
‘I think it’s time you went to find your grandmother,’ he said softly and the girl nodded.
‘Say anything about this to Isobel and I’ll have to come and see you.’ Justin heard the threat in his whisper cut through the air like a blade.
‘I didn’t see anything, Mr Holmes,’ Joy Lin said slowly. ‘I didn’t even see you.’
And she was spilling out of his car and picking herself up and trudging into the evening light without looking back. Justin watched her for a while, turning back to the road ahead of him only when she had disappeared around the arc of the overpass.
The traffic had begun to edge forwards and he pressed his foot against the accelerator and moved on.
Sophie managed to bluff her way through the first period, armed with a grammar game that took the best part of an hour. As she sieved her way out through the morning tea throng she fell in beside Janie, a young teacher from the Shire with a thinly disguised contempt for foreign students.
‘I’ve got her,’ Janie said, her narrow face aglow.
‘Who?’ Sophie asked.
‘Come here.’ Janie grabbed Sophie’s hand and dragged her into an empty classroom. Sophie glanced through the windows at the rapidly emptying corridor. The last thing she needed right now was to spend her break listening to Janie’s mindless prattle. She couldn’t wing another class with games and free talk.
‘You won’t believe this,’ Janie said. Sophie detected a conspiratorial tone in her voice. ‘I’m filling in for Tim, who’s on holidays somewhere hot.’ Janie paced the room as she spoke, as though she were thinking out loud or testing a theory with Sophie as her audience.
‘On the roll is a girl called Mei Li. I know her because I taught her last term.’
Sophie tuned in. She guessed she knew what Janie was going to say.
‘But this is where it gets interesting,’ said Janie, raising a bony finger in the air. ‘The girl who shows up each day isn’t Mei Li.’ She stared at Sophie, her eyes shining bright, hands clasped together, an expression of sheer pleasure illuminating her thin face.
‘You just said Mei Li was in your class,’ Sophie said.
‘That’s the thing,’ said Janie, grasping Sophie’s hands with her own. ‘She says she’s Mei Li, but it’s not her! It’s a different girl.’
‘What did you do?’
Janie smiled widely, unable to contain her self-satisfaction. ‘I marked her name on the roll and continued on as usual.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes! It’s exactly what Pete was talking about. You know, with that poor Wendy girl…’ Janie trailed off, lost in a thought. But in the next moment she snapped back, eyes again gleaming. ‘I can’t believe it, Sophie. I’ve caught my own fraudster. I can’t wait to spring her.’
Sophie knew she should stall for time. She needed to talk to this girl, and she needed to see if she could establish some connection between the missing Mei Li and the others: Su Yuan, Wendy, Han Hong.
‘Are you going to tell Pete?’
‘Of course!’ said Janie. ‘But I’m going to wait until lunch. Make sure I have enough time to sit in on any interview with the student. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that.’
Sophie smiled. ‘Good on you, Janie. You’re a right detective, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe I’m in the wrong industry,’ Janie said with a smile as she followed Sophie out to the corridor. ‘Keep it to yourself, hey?’
Sophie nodded. ‘Cross my heart.’
Sophie followed Janie into the staffroom but turned sharply to her left after passing through the door. The sounds of mid-morning chatter faded behind her as she stalked down the hallway towards the row of grey filing cabinets lining the back wall. The cabinets stored copies of student files. Sophie knew Janie took elementary English and it didn’t take her long to fin
d Janie’s elementary class folder and Mei Li’s file within it.
Sophie glanced at the form listing Mei Li’s personal information. She was eighteen and Chinese. She planned to study at language school for one year. After that it was her intention to study at an Australian university. She wanted to study business. She flipped through the file to take a look at Mei Li’s test results. She was only one term in, but her first test results showed her to be a student with potential. She hadn’t aced it, but she’d done well enough in her reading, listening and writing sections. Her oral section, the only subjectively assessed part of the test, had let her down. Speak up! Janie had scrawled across the examination page. Don’t be shy. Enunciate! Mei Li had probably needed to use her dictionary to decipher that last word, Sophie thought, annoyed on Mei Li’s behalf. Janie was always complaining that she couldn’t understand ‘them’ properly. It was as though she expected her students to adopt a broad Australian accent when they stood up to speak.
Sophie flipped to the plastic pocket containing Mei Li’s introductory essay, the piece that had determined her class placement. The topic again was ‘My Hometown’; Mei Li had titled her piece ‘Kunming’.
Noodles like my hometown.
Su Yuan had also come from Kunming. She’d written about her hometown in her entrance paper and Sophie had looked at it only last week. Two missing girls from the same town. This had to be the connection she was looking for. There was one way to confirm it.
女孩
Tae Hun sat slumped at the back of the classroom hoping his teacher wouldn’t call on him today. His left cheek still throbbed despite days of painkillers and a bottle of soju last night. Actually, he thought, shifting in his seat, maybe the soju was the reason his head throbbed. He would lay off the booze and get to bed early tonight.
His phone rang.
The other students groaned, several twisting in their seats to shoot accusing glares his way. Tae Hun scowled back at them as he fumbled with the zipper on the pocket of his army pants. His teacher, a weedy, balding guy named Jake, stared at Tae Hun, crossed his arms and tapped a foot impatiently against the floor. Tae Hun’s fingers grasped the thick wedge of the handset and he tapped madly at its keypad, hoping to turn the damn thing off. He succeeded, and the synthetic pop cut out as suddenly as it had begun. The room was silent but for the sound of Jake’s sneakered foot beating against the floor.