Directed by feel and by smell, Julie removed the head bag and caught the surge of foul-smelling liquid that it had held back in another length of sterile material. She wiped Alice’s face both of accumulated sweat and vomit.
‘Ahrr!’
The exclamation indicated that the foul smell had wafted its way into the front cabin of the vehicle.
Unable to see Julie because of the darkness and her eyes having been covered for several hours, Alice could get no sense of the woman who was working on her. Her body ached from lying on the hard metal floor of the camper van and from the restraint of the ropes around her wrists and ankles; the quick and vigorous way in which she was being wiped down told her nothing.
‘You’d better try and sit up.’
Still dressed in her scanty nightwear, Alice was freezing cold, numb in her extremities and still fighting the desire to be sick. She struggled to force herself upright; Julie didn’t offer to help her.
As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom of the sleeping compartment of the camper van, Alice began to discern the outline of the woman who was wiping her face and neck again. But she still couldn’t sense whether this woman was as hostile to her as the tall man whom she remembered from the dormitory. Where the man was she had no idea, but as she became more aware of her situation she had no doubt that he would be in the vehicle that they were travelling in.
Alice wore only a rather tattered T-shirt to cover her upper body, and Julie could see that she was both pretty and possessed of a very well-proportioned figure. And as she completed her task of tidying up Alice’s face and inserted another wedge of material into her mouth, she became aware that her legs and the floor of the van were covered with yet more evil-smelling detritus.
‘Jesus,’ she muttered, ‘she’s shit herself!’
There wasn’t much that Julie could do. Grabbing a towel from the camper van’s tiny shower compartment, she mopped up as much of the faeces that she could and pitched the towel out of the van window.
‘What are you doing?’
Alerted by the cold draught, Kim was out of his seat and turning to come back to where Julie was crouching beside the seated Alice.
‘Ahrr!’
‘I was getting rid of a load of her shit out of the window.’
Turning on the van light, something that Julie had tried to avoid, it was obvious what the problem was. Kim retreated.
‘Get her sorted again!’
Once he was back in his seat beside the driver, Julie reached for her shoulder bag. When Alice saw the silver roll of packaging tape she let out a strangled cry of terror.
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Julie, ‘the hood is too foul to put back on. I have to do this to you.’
She tore off a length of tape and placed it loosely over Alice’s mouth and pressed it down. She did the same with her eyes. As she watched, she saw Alice flex her face muscles and realise that the strapping was not as painfully tight as she had expected.
Julie pulled a blanket off one of the camper van beds and wrapped it around Alice.
Alice settled again after Julie withdrew. The sense she now got of the woman working on her was one of careful and caring treatment of her. As her primitive instincts began to reassert themselves and the desire to escape entered her head, she began to find the other woman’s behaviour very confusing.
As the camper van passed through a small settlement and mobile phone coverage resumed, Mr Kim’s Black-Berry bleeped.
The email was short and precise.
‘Take the woman to the agreed address. Miss Li can get her some decent clothes and start tutoring her. She knows what’s required. She will tell you when the woman is ready to move on. After the last cock-up in Hong Kong, we will need to plan the handover much more carefully. Our client is not only very wealthy but also very powerful, with a considerable reach. Send the camper van back to Melbourne, but, before you do, go to Swan Hill and hire a car for a month. You must try and leave no signature in Echuca. X.’
Mr Kim gave a wry smile. Mr Xu’s signature initial always gave him a feeling of unreality. A parting kiss was just about the last thing that he could imagine his boss sending him. Requiring absolute obedience Mr Xu was just about the most intimidating person Kim Lee Sung had ever met; and he’d met a few people in his time.
It was almost midnight when the camper van pulled up at the water’s edge near the river-boat landing jetty at Echuca. As they had envisaged, the area was almost deserted. The Murray River was very low and the floating jetty was well down, creating quite a steep slope down to the water. The unequal height of the two men manhandling the large wicker hamper down to the skiff moored at the jetty caused some raucous amusement to the only observer of the scene. Satisfied that the man was probably too drunk to remember anything, the party set off upriver towards a group of moored river boats. Mingled in with the aging and picturesque paddle boats was a modern vessel with high, almost pyramidal, superstructure and a fore-deck sun lounge that allowed the hamper to be easily landed on the vessel.
Kim and the driver settled to watch a martial arts DVD that was among the stock that came with the home cinema equipment, leaving Julie to deal with Alice. She made her comfortable in the tiny dressing room that interconnected with the main bedroom, first un-taping her, and then withdrew to the galley kitchen. Julie had a lot of planning to do on how she would deal with Alice and Mr Kim.
A reheated Chinese meal bought on the journey that attracted only the contempt of Kim and the driver but seemed to satisfy Alice and Julie provided the only break in the two men’s sustained binge-watching of violent DVDs. Allowing Alice to shower and then forcing her to sleep naked provided all of the security that Julie thought necessary. For Kim, it was as if Alice no longer existed; Julie existed only in so far as it was necessary to give her instructions. If Julie had had any fears of the two men taking advantage of Alice, they were dispelled by her limited but frightening knowledge of Mr Xu and his likely reaction to any despoiling of her prisoner. Alice was money, lots of it, and there was no way that she was going to be devalued.
Settled, with Alice imprisoned in the dressing room beside her, Julie lay awake and spent time considering her next moves. Improvisation was the only modus operandi possible. She still sensed Kim’s distrust; she had work to do to overcome that, and she doubted whether she ever would completely. He, in his turn, she knew, was planning his actions for the next day. She had no idea what his instructions were but going to Swan Hill to hire a car and getting rid of the camper van and driver were a challenge because he trusted neither her nor the driver. Eventually, she slept.
Melbourne Gazette
Continental Edition – Thursday, 1 July 2010
POLICE RAID IN CHINA TOWN – PEOPLE-TRAFFICKING OPERATION UNCOVERED
Police were called to a disturbance at premises in Little Bourke Street yesterday after there were claims of a fight between two groups of Chinese men and suspicions that someone had been taken away from one of the flats above the ‘Golden Lion’ buffet restaurant. The police were accompanied by Federal Police officers and Federal Immigration officers.
On arrival, the police were advised that it had been a domestic matter – a young woman was seeing a man that her parents considered unsuitable. The situation was now resolved. The injuries to at least one of the Chinese men, however, seemed to be sufficiently severe for the police to insist on searching the premises and questioning all of the occupants.
None of the men remaining at the scene could give an explanation for why the vehicle, thought to be a cult VW Camper Van, had been seen speeding away from the alleyway adjoining the restaurant with little regard for the safety of the people in the vicinity. Opinions differed on how many other Chinese men had left the scene.
In a top-floor bedroom, which showed evidence of violent entry, the police found five Chinese women, four of whom were from Indonesia; the fifth was subsequently established to be a Canadian citizen. All five were taken into protective custody. Four Chines
e men were arrested.
The Assistant Commissioner of Victorian Police later issued a statement saying that the discovery had added to evidence gathered in previous raids that had yielded a number of Chinese women apparently destined for the sex trade.
‘We are hopeful that these young women will be able to add to our knowledge of the entry routes for these girls, some of whom are as young as fourteen.’ At a later press conference the Assistant Commissioner commented on how a Canadian woman, in her mid-twenties, had ended up in this situation.
‘Her evidence has given us a number of leads on how she entered Australia but it has also raised questions about how she arrived in Canada and obtained a Canadian passport. The young woman was born in Brazil. Our Canadian colleagues have been informed of the detention of this woman and we are also keeping the Brazilian Embassy in Canberra in the picture.’
13
As she had left the offices in St Kilda Road with the gorgeous Alan, Julie Kershawe, now totally unexpectedly an operative of the Australian Security Service, was in a state of shock and awe. The shock related to the convoluted way she had been set up and induced into coming to Australia; the awe to how readily she had been accepted and co-opted into the secret workings of her new employers. Her new masters had clearly done an incredible amount of homework to satisfy themselves about her before so speedily welcoming her into their ranks. The fact that she was needed made her feel good, but in ignorance as yet of what she had been recruited to do her natural caution now began to surface. It was exciting, but she needed to know much more before she would be comfortable. The recognition that she had been so easily set up and manipulated by the Border Agency (through Tariq al Hussaini) hadn’t done much for her self-confidence either.
And then, of course, there was Alan.
He was good-looking, enigmatic and largely unreadable, and Julie was both attracted to him and somehow repelled by him as well. There was something so artificial about him that she found it difficult to be relaxed in his company. He seemed more like an incompletely sketched-out soap-opera character.
And as he shepherded her on to a tram, she was very conscious that, just as the situation at the office had been orchestrated, so had their careful departure.
‘I thought I might show you some of the sights of Melbourne you may not have come across yet.’
Why this simple statement put Julie on her guard she wasn’t sure. It sounded like a chat-up line but she wasn’t sure that it was meant to be. Alan hadn’t changed from the amiable, relaxed, unhurried and almost cardboard person that he had always been for her. But why would he now want to show her the sights on the company’s time?
Maybe it was a chat-up; maybe it was a test?
Alan was impassive beside her; how would she ever know what he was thinking?
‘Oh, shit, perhaps he just wants sex but isn’t sure that he’s going to get it!’
She laughed aloud at the thought and settled to see what would transpire. They were just getting off the tram near the Aquarium, so Alan only managed to give her a quizzical look before he headed off across the Yarra River, towards the tall buildings on the other side.
‘The Eureka Tower.’
Julie had heard of it; she’d been impressed by its towering presence but she had never thought that she would ever have any need to go there.
Again Alan organised everything and they were rocketing up in a special lift to the eighty-eighth floor before she could grasp what was happening.
‘I don’t know about sights,’ she said as they came out of the lift. ‘I guess up here you get to see all of Melbourne.’
Alan grinned. It was a sort of mechanical schoolboy grin that was more an acknowledgement that she had spoken than an expression of pleasure. It didn’t tell Julie anything.
‘Come on then.’
Why the sudden hurry? thought Julie.
They funnelled into a roped-off area at one end of the viewing gallery and Alan spoke to the young man standing by a rather anonymous-looking door. And then, before she knew it, Alan had led her into a glass-sided box – except that it was glass-bottomed and glass-topped as well, and it moved.
Julie stood beside Alan with her back to the outside wall of the glass box looking back at the door through which they had entered. Slowly, the glass cube moved away from the tower. Then everything was clear to her; she knew exactly where she was and why she was there.
Shit! she thought. This is the Skydeck 88, the Edge. The bastard’s testing me out.
So he was but, as she turned to look at him, Julie realised that Alan was also testing himself out. For once, his eyes were readable and what she saw in them was anxiety. Alan was very uncomfortable about being suspended hundreds of metres above the Melbourne business area supported by nothing more than thick glass.
‘Yes!’ she said to herself in some satisfaction.
She moved into the middle of the cube. Below like a miniature moving picture Melbourne got on with its normal life. She didn’t look down; she wasn’t quite ready for that.
He’s far more scared than I am, she told herself.
The experience didn’t last long but the relationship between them had changed. Never since she had been at the height of her powers in her job in Edinburgh had she felt so much in command of herself and of her situation. Whether he had meant to or not, Alan had totally restored her feelings of self-worth and turned her into the capable and competent operative that his organisation needed.
When they left the glass cube, Alan reverted to his previous inscrutability. Julie tried to hide her exhilaration.
‘That was clever,’ she said to him.
She didn’t explain what was and he didn’t ask.
Lunch in a bustling Crown Plaza wine bar added nothing to her knowledge of Alan but clarified a few basics about the job in hand.
Alan’s intentions towards Julie were clearly impersonal and Julie found her thought processes almost in disarray. Something very physical in her was disappointed; she hadn’t slept with a man since she had parted company with Tariq al Hussaini, and she found that she missed his exuberant lovemaking. She couldn’t quite see Alan as an alternative, but she still had needs and his indifference did nothing to quell them.
Why were they so keen to reinforce the fact that the Chinese women that I let into the UK have disappeared? she wondered.
Feeling much more confident in herself now, Julie’s brain had resumed normal service and was already questioning things that she remembered from her interview in St Kilda. Alan rather faded from her mind as she reconsidered the whole performance afresh. And it was definitely a performance, stage-managed with the outcome preordained. But why? The question kept coming back to her as she thought about her day.
After a long soak in the bath, a ready meal from her freezer and much cogitation, she decided that, although she had obviously been set up for the interview and the job over a long period, what she was needed for had to have something to do with the disappeared Chinese women. What, she still couldn’t imagine.
As she questioned herself, her mirror provided her with a clue.
‘I’m half Chinese but I could easily be taken for being fully Chinese.’
She could indeed!
Then it was next day.
Julie had been instructed to meet Alan at the Queen Victoria Market. She’d been there before. Someone of her limited financial means would inevitably gravitate to such a place.
Apart from the mass-produced Aboriginal trash artefacts, the market was much the same as markets that she had seen in England and Scotland. Getting there by tram and foot was easy enough.
Idling at the tram stop as she set out, Julie wondered whether a stage-managed meeting at the market was another test. The arrangement was to meet at eleven o’clock with no location specified – was locating Alan the test? The delicately featured Chinese girl who was already at the tram stop gave her a friendly inclusive grin and looked as if she was about to open a conversation. The arrival of the tram
forestalled the action, if she was. The girl did sit opposite Julie but, apart from the continuing ever-ready grin, there were no obvious signs now that conversation had been her intention.
Reminded of her own proposition that she looked much more Chinese than European, Julie studied the girl whenever she got the opportunity without actually staring. Black hair, high cheek bones and almond-shaped eyes; the defining features of the Mongoloid peoples were clearly there. The symmetry of the face and its delicate colouring were all of girl’s own.
She’s really beautiful: I’m not beautiful. … And she’s a hell of a lot better dressed!
The jeans that the girl had been poured into Julie knew were expensive and Italian. The matching ankle boots and handbag owed more to Gucci than any Australian designer and the quilted jacket only attracted Julie’s envy.
And she was getting off the tram at the market.
Letting her pass in front of her, Julie watched the girl – hardly really a girl; she guessed she was in her late-twenties – step neatly off the tram and head off towards the entrance to the market. Julie trailed after her, losing interest by the footstep.
Goodness!
Julie’s interest returned sharply when the girl was met as she crossed into the open side of the market by a Chinese man of exceptional height. The man not only stood out above the various Chinese people that were near him but also above many of the white Australians as well.
‘Kim Lee Sung. You will need to remember him.’
The visit to the Queen Victoria Market wasn’t a test. From where Julie lived Alan knew exactly which tram she would get and when. He had quietly moved to her side.
‘So why should I remember him?’
She got no answer. But Julie did get a surprise when she realised that she and Alan were unobtrusively following the said Kim Lee Sung and his girl companion.
China Wife Page 8