Ghost Girls

by Cath Ferla

  ‘So did you know the real Wendy Chan?’

  Tae Hun shook his head. ‘I knew Wendy and I knew Han Hong. When Han Hong stopped showing up at the clubs, at first I thought nothing about it. But then I missed her. I realised I liked her, I wanted to see her again.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I went to see Cho. He sells DVDs and sex toys in Chinatown.’

  ‘And what happened when you went there?’

  ‘He was busy with a customer, so I started flipping through the latest DVDs, the ones our girls make.’

  ‘And you found a movie with Han Hong in it?’

  He nodded. ‘I took it without him knowing.’

  ‘What makes you think she didn’t make that movie of her own accord, and get paid for it, like all the others? What makes you think there’s a problem?’

  ‘Because the film isn’t like the others – it isn’t sexy. It’s scary. And on the screen she looks afraid. I think someone’s taken her and is making her work against her will.’

  ‘Did you ask Cho about it?’

  ‘You saw what they did to me for taking you to the club,’ he said. ‘You don’t question the people I work for. I didn’t want to get involved.’

  So you involved me instead.

  ‘And besides,’ he said. ‘If the film was in his shop, don’t you think he might know something about what’s happened to her?’

  ‘You mean he’s behind it?’

  Tae Hun fidgeted with his cigarette packet, trying to find the right words. ‘I think someone in the organisation is cheating the boss.’

  Sophie worked hard at trying to decipher the boy’s meaning. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘The business you’re involved in is illegal, but everyone’s there of their own accord.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you think one of the operators of the business has gone rogue?’

  ‘I don’t understand that word.’

  ‘You think someone is operating behind the boss’s back, holding women without their consent and making films of them.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And they’re getting away with it because of the whole substitution set-up and the fact that the girls consented in the first place.’

  ‘That’s right. The other students don’t give a fuck, they just assume the girls are off working.’

  Sophie considered this. ‘But the boss must know his workers are going missing?’

  Tae Hun looked at her. ‘What’s he going to do? Phone the police?’

  Sophie’s phone rang. She slipped it out of her jeans and scanned the caller ID. Damian. She guessed he was calling to tell her the butcher stocked more than just meat.

  女孩

  ‘I hope you have a decent alibi,’ Damian said when she met him at a coffee shop overlooking Railway Square.

  ‘Beg yours?’

  Damian pulled out a wooden chair, indicating that Sophie should sit. ‘For me, not the cops. I checked out your butcher shop.’

  ‘And you found some kind of dodgy sex shop as well?’

  Damian studied her. ‘No,’ he said, with a slow shake of the head. ‘Missed that one. But I did find your Zhou character.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Couldn’t get much out of him. It’s kind of hard to make someone talk when they’re dead.’

  Sophie stared at him. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘I don’t know who did it or why.’

  ‘Are the police onto it?’

  Damian shook his head. ‘I left him there and I closed the door. I went out, took a walk, tried to figure out what was going on. I went back later. The body was gone.’

  ‘Someone moved it.’

  ‘No shit.’ He stared at her. ‘That’s not to say the police won’t get onto it.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Damian’s gaze penetrated her. ‘It looks like it was a woman who did him in – there was an earring lodged in Zhou’s throat, a cheap red plastic thing, shaped like a rose.’

  Sophie’s heart skipped. ‘Must’ve been a woman then,’ she said.

  ‘He was a big guy. My theory immediately is that there were two people.’

  ‘Have you told anyone about my story?’

  ‘Nobody knows about your involvement yet.’ His eyes searched Sophie’s face. ‘There’s no reason they should, is there?’

  She eyeballed him, said nothing.

  ‘Another thing,’ said Damian. ‘When I asked about Zhou at the butcher shop, the man behind the counter said he might be working at a restaurant. A place called Firewater.’

  ‘The Sichuan place?’

  Damian shrugged. ‘Never been there. But the guy said it was spicy.’

  Firewater. The night out with Wendy. The restaurant next door to Brad’s.

  Our storage room shares a door with the Sichuan place and so they think we should let them use it.

  Images of her recent encounters with Brad flashed through Sophie’s mind. The meeting with Jin Tao at Brad’s restaurant: exactly how much of their conversation had he overheard? Brad appearing out of the blue on her doorstep, rushing off before she could invite him in. The animosity between him and Jin Tao…

  ‘My friend works at the restaurant next door to Firewater,’ Sophie said.

  Damian smiled. ‘You mean Brad?’

  Sophie stared at him, surprised. ‘You know him?’

  Damian looked down at his hands. ‘You could say that,’ he said, and Sophie’s heart lurched to her throat.

  ‘He was hanging around my house when I came home to find a noose on my bed,’ she said, her voice weak.

  ‘A noose sounds pretty intense.’

  ‘Someone left it there to scare me.’

  Damian frowned. ‘You mean when you came back from the mountains?’

  Sophie nodded.

  Damian rocked back in his seat. ‘And you think Brad might have something to do with this?’

  Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been betrayed by someone close. Nausea gurgled in Sophie’s stomach. ‘He never visits.’

  Damian smiled. ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was in your street because of me. We’d just had lunch together and I decided to stop by your house and talk to you some more. Brad decided to push on because he had a shift to work.’

  ‘You ate lunch together?’

  Damian nodded. ‘We’ve been seeing each other.’

  Sophie worked hard to stop her jaw from hanging wide.

  ‘It’s actually why I stopped you in the street on the day Wendy died,’ Damian continued. ‘I’d seen your photo at Brad’s house and I knew you worked at that school.’ He paused. ‘I also know about your past.’

  ‘My past?’

  ‘Your father. The private investigation business. What happened.’

  Arsehole.

  ‘When I saw you there taking notes, I thought maybe you were back in the game.’

  Sophie eyeballed him. ‘Why didn’t you come clean?’

  ‘Career habit.’

  ‘You’re sly as they come and Brad can have you.’

  ‘Trust me, he has.’

  Sophie held up a hand. ‘Way too much information.’

  They laughed. The tension lifted.

  ‘So Zhou’s dead and it looks like a woman killed him,’ Sophie said. ‘It sounds like someone decided to fight back, so whoever is behind all this is likely to have their defences up by now. You’ve already been nosing around the butcher shop, so why don’t you take the restaurant? Go out there and see what you can find. I’ll get Jin Tao to help me hunt down the porn shop.’

  ‘So there is some investigator left in you after all,’ said Damian, his eyes sparkling.

  鬼

  ‘I like your roses,’ Joy Lin said when she looked up from her assignment.

  Sophie looked at the bunch of roses in the glass jar on her desk. They’d seen better days and the edges of the petals had taken on a brown hue. ‘I should hang them upside down
to dry,’ she said. ‘You ever tried that?’

  Joy Lin shook her head, thoughtful. ‘I think I flunked the exam,’ she said. ‘I practised so hard but during the test I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t find the words.’

  ‘You probably did better than you think.’

  ‘I probably did worse.’

  ‘How about the lucky charms?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The earrings.’

  Joy Lin’s face fell. ‘I’m really sorry, Soph,’ she said. ‘I lost them. I hope they weren’t expensive.’

  ‘No,’ said Sophie. She pushed her hair back, exposing her ear.

  ‘You don’t even have your ears pierced,’ said Joy Lin, breaking into a relieved smile.

  ‘So you don’t need to stress,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m sure they’ll turn up.’

  ‘I don’t want to find them.’ Her lip quivered.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because last time I looked for them, I saw something I can’t unsee.’

  女孩

  The house at number 60 looked like it belonged in a home decorating magazine. Beyond a low hedge and carefully manicured garden sat a two-storey house, all red brickwork, latticed windows and slanted gables. It appeared to be a warm home – not unlike the one I grew up in – but Sophie knew appearances could be deceiving.

  Joy Lin had told Sophie everything: losing the earrings en route to the audition; the gear in Mr Holmes’s car.

  The connection had clicked for Sophie: hardcore porn, red rosebuds, a dank room in Chinatown. Justin Holmes had to know something.

  Sophie left Joy Lin in the passenger seat. ‘Don’t tell him I’m here,’ the girl had pleaded, and Sophie had done her best to reassure her that everything would be all right. But as she walked up the pebbled path to the front door, her cheeks carried the burn of her lie.

  A woman answered on Sophie’s first knock. Perfectly straightened hair, warm smile, lipstick on a front tooth.

  ‘I’m here to see Justin Holmes,’ said Sophie.

  A puzzled expression crossed the woman’s face. ‘Are you selling something?’

  ‘I just need to talk to him. It’s quite urgent.’

  The woman took this in. ‘Who shall I tell him is here?’

  ‘He doesn’t know me,’ Sophie said. ‘I’m here about one of my students, a girl named Joy Lin.’

  ‘Joy Lin Tan?’ A new voice. A man appeared in the doorway.

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘She’s my daughter’s best friend,’ the woman said.

  ‘What’s this about?’ The man, Justin, placed his hand protectively on the woman’s shoulder and Sophie’s glance fell to the wedding ring bound to his finger.

  ‘I wondered if we could have a word in private?’

  ‘Private?’ The woman’s voice had the shrill ring of concern to it now.

  Justin gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘I think I know why she’s here,’ he said to his wife in a low voice. ‘Just give us a moment, I’ll tell you later.’

  The woman glanced from Justin to Sophie, unease in her eyes. Then, with a modest bow of the head, she slipped from under her husband’s hand and moved back into the house. He watched her pad back down the hallway. When she disappeared into a room, he turned to Sophie.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Joy Lin Tan’s. She sent me to collect a pair of earrings she says she left in your car.’

  ‘Earrings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sophie thought she saw the muscles in Justin’s face relax. ‘Oh, those.’ He paused. ‘I seem to have misplaced them,’ he said quietly. ‘But tell Joy Lin I’ll send them to school with Isobel as soon as they turn up.’ His eyes pierced hers. ‘Was there something else?’

  Hell, yes.

  ‘A man was murdered in Chinatown and they found a red rose earring in his mouth,’ she said, watching Justin’s face pale. ‘Joy Lin told me she found porn in your car, and because I happen to know the dead guy was involved in that business, I thought you might know something about who killed him.’

  Justin looked Sophie up and down. ‘You make a habit of turning up on people’s doorsteps talking ludicrous shit like this?’ he asked with a sneer.

  ‘You’re saying you have no idea what I’m talking about?’

  ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘So if I take Joy Lin to the nearest police station and we tell them what she found in your car and we mention she’s missing a pair of red rose earrings, you don’t think they’ll be interested?’

  ‘There must be thousands of cheap fucking earrings in Sydney.’

  ‘The ones I gave Joy Lin had the Chinese characters for David inked on the back,’ she said. ‘It will only take one phone call to discover if the one found with the dead body is mine.’

  Justin paled. ‘Are you after money?’

  ‘Did you kill that man?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘How did the earring end up in his mouth?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Some women are missing and I’m trying to find out what happened to them. I don’t know how much involvement you’ve had with any of this, but I need to know where you got those DVDs. I need to know the location of that shop.’

  Justin stared at her. ‘And if I tell you, will you leave me alone?’

  ‘I won’t go to the police, if that’s what you’re asking,’ she said. ‘And I won’t mention the characters on the earring.’

  He seemed to consider this. Then, head bowed and hands in his pockets, he said, ‘There’s a butcher shop in Chinatown. The DVD store is in the back room. You enter via an alley that runs along the back. They sell standard stuff there. But they sell a bunch of under-the-counter stuff too. The guy you want to speak to has a lot of rings in his face.’

  Rings in his face. Tae Hun in a headlock. The backyard bouncer. Cho.

  ‘Right,’ said Sophie.

  ‘You breathe my name in connection with this to anyone and I will deny everything,’ said Justin. ‘And then I will come after you with everything I’ve got.’

  Whatever, man. You’ve got nothing but guilt.

  ‘Sure,’ Sophie said and she turned to head back to the car.

  鬼

  ‘So you and Damian decided to go it alone?’ Jin Tao was at his workbench, massaging salt and Sichuan pepper into the pimply white skin of a chicken. He grimaced as he worked, although Sophie suspected the pained facial expression came as much from their discussion as the task at hand. ‘A man’s dead, Soph. This needs to be handled formally.’

  Sophie glanced around the kitchen. They were alone aside from Stu, who sat on a stool in the corner chopping garlic. ‘The police won’t give a shit about a few missing foreign students,’ she said, matter-of-fact. ‘I’m willing to bet on that.’

  Jin Tao grunted, unimpressed. He trussed the bird and placed it gently next to another in a giant bamboo steamer near the stove. When he turned to face her, Sophie noticed the red stain of an irritated blush creeping into his face.

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t lose your job for letting that girl go.’

  ‘Maybe Pete was happy about it. You said there had to be someone on the inside, right? And besides, she was sick on the carpet outside his office – I think that put him off.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I wish it had done the same for you.’

  ‘I can’t let this go, Jin Tao.’

  He turned to her, his eyes studying her face. Even in the harsh fluorescent light of the kitchen he was beautiful. When he spoke his voice was quiet. ‘Go to the police.’

  ‘I went to the police.’ She could hear her tone, defiant.

  Jin Tao had picked up his steamer and was walking with it to the burners at the end of the kitchen. ‘Then find another cop who’ll listen,’ he said over his shoulder as he secured the steamer into position over a blackened wok bubbling with water.

  ‘The girl asked me not to talk to the police. She’s scared for her family.’


  ‘Her family?’

  ‘In China. They told her they’d harm her family if she went to the police or if she tried to escape. She owes them a debt. She says that they’ll let her go when she’s paid it off.’

  Jin Tao removed the towel from his shoulder and wiped his hands with great care. ‘You know that’s unlikely, don’t you?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘That’s the thing about imaginary debts, you never can pay them off.’

  A cry from the other end of the kitchen – ‘Fuck!’ Stuart gripped his left forefinger in a clenched fist.

  Jin Tao spoke first. ‘You right, mate?’

  Stu nodded his head as he examined his finger. ‘Thought I sliced the top off it,’ he said. ‘But it’s just a cut.’

  ‘The idea is to slice the cloves, not your fingers,’ said Jin Tao. ‘Your apprentice could teach you that.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ mumbled Stu as he headed for the first-aid cabinet.

  Jin Tao exhaled a noisy breath and raised his hands in the air in defeat. When he turned back to Sophie, his expression had settled into one of resignation. ‘What do you want from me, Soph?’

  ‘I want you to come with me to the butcher shop in Chinatown. It’s a front for an illegal porn shop.’

  ‘It is not a front – I buy meat from there, thank you very much.’

  ‘Okay, well, the illegal business is using the butcher as a cover. Whatever, I just want you to come check it out.’

  Jin Tao sighed. ‘What are we looking for exactly?’

  ‘We’re looking for some missing women.’

  In the kitchen, Justin drank from a tall glass of water. The liquid eased the dryness in his throat but did nothing to quell the rage boiling deep inside him. Who else had Joy Lin blabbed to?

  He’d managed to subdue the curious questions from his wife with a story about an argument between Joy Lin and their daughter. He’d thought it had been resolved, he said, but clearly Joy Lin had told her English tutor about it. His wife had immediately wanted to talk to Isobel about the incident but Justin had placed a hand on her arm. ‘I promised Isobel I wouldn’t say anything,’ he’d said, imploring her with his eyes. ‘Don’t turn me into the daddy who can’t keep secrets.’