by Peter Corris
‘You’re a bit of a shit for all your winning ways, aren’t you? That’s the deal, eh? Protection in return for information?’
‘Put it that way if you want to, yes. But I’m taking you on trust that you do have something to contribute.’
‘You could twist a corkscrew straight. All right, you set everything up the way you said and I’ll tell you something.’
It took a series of phone calls—to Sabatini, to Chang, from Chang to others and back to me, but eventually the arrangements were made.
We were both edgy, but on first name terms by then and drinking coffee as she packed a couple of bags. She had the flat on loan from a friend who was overseas, and she hadn’t brought a lot of stuff with her. No problem about leaving. She’d had her mail diverted to her business address and didn’t have a landline to the flat.
In the hook-up, she’d spoken briefly to Sabatini and was having trouble suppressing her excitement at the prospect of seeing him again. I had to tell Sabatini I couldn’t promise any scoops, but he was smart enough to know that he was, to some extent, on the inside now. Anyway, he seemed as enthusiastic as Rosemary about them meeting.
Sabatini lived in Coogee, handy to Rosemary’s office. She didn’t have a car. She told me that the Merc Richard Malouf had run was repossessed by a finance company after he went missing. I drove her and we had a discreet police escort.
‘He told me he owned the Mercedes,’ she said as we headed east. ‘I’m trying to think of one thing he told me that was true or even partly true.’
‘He must have been a good actor,’ I said.
‘Mmm, whoever he was.’
‘You only have Houli’s word on that.’
Her laugh was nervous. For all her eagerness to see Sabatini, she was aware that she was on dangerous ground and Houli’s name had triggered that fear. ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but I’m inclined to believe that bloody gangster rather than the man I was married to. If I was married. Shit, what a mess.’
She pulled out her cigarettes and lit up. I wondered what Sabatini’s attitude was to smoking. She glanced back at the police car.
‘How do you know you can trust these particular police?’
‘Instinct,’ I said.
‘Jesus Christ, I’m not sure about this. What if . . . ?’
‘We’re here.’ I pulled up outside a small block of flats a few streets back from the beach. The police car slid in behind us and two uniformed officers escorted us to the entrance. Sabatini was in flat 4. I rang, he answered, and the security door opened. We took the stairs to the second level and I knocked. Sabatini, in jeans, sneakers and a jumper, appeared. He’d trimmed his beard and smelled of the shower and shampoo.
‘Hello, Pros,’ Rosemary said.
‘Hello, Rose, Hardy. Come in.’
The senior cop said they’d be on watch in the street.
‘Thank you,’ Rosemary said.
‘I’m off,’ I said. ‘Remember, Rosemary, there’s a meeting tomorrow at nine am.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but at least I feel I’ve broken out of some kind of prison.’
Rosemary’s words stayed in my head as I drove home. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but they amounted to a pretty good description of the condition of a lot of the people I’d dealt with in my work: the parents of missing children, the blackmailed, the threatened. And it applied not only to the innocent—the liars and cheats made prisons for themselves and squirmed to get out of them.
Those thoughts led inevitably to me considering my own position. Was I in a prison of my own or somebody else’s making? I wasn’t usually given to negative self-examination and I shook the impulse off. I was working, possibly being of help to people, and I had scores to settle. That was enough on the positive side. For the rest of the way home, I played the new Dylan album Megan had left in the CD slot. The voice was just a growl now, but a great growl:
. . . it’s all good.
The next morning Chang, Ali and a technician assembled audio and visual recording gear in Sabatini’s living room.
‘This is highly unorthodox,’ Chang said, ‘but so is this whole thing.’
Rosemary and Sabatini smiled at each other. They held coffee cups and were relaxed. It was good to see. I remembered what it was like—that first firing up of a new relationship—but it seemed like a long time ago. The flat was spacious, tastefully decorated with an emphasis on books and CDs. I browsed—fiction and history, biography and economics, blues and soul—my kind of guy apart from the economics. The day was cloudy with rain threatening so the view of the water wasn’t inspiring, but it’d still have put thousands on the price or the rent.
‘OK,’ Chang said. ‘I don’t think Mr Sabatini should be present. I could do without Mr Hardy, but—’
‘I want them both here.’
‘You should have a lawyer,’ Sabatini said.
‘You’ve been through this sort of thing before, haven’t you, Cliff?’ Rosemary said.
‘A few times.’
‘You can warn me of the pitfalls.’
Chang shrugged. We took chairs around the table where the recording devices were set up and Chang made the standard introduction: time, date, place and list of those present. He asked Rosemary to detail her contacts with Selim Houli, giving dates and times as accurately as she could. Rosemary went through it more or less as she’d told me with a few extra details and specific words used. Chang was good; he interrupted her very seldom. Ali asked if she could remember anything of the Lebanese Richard Malouf had used on the phone and Rosemary rattled off a few phrases. Ali nodded. That prompted Chang to ask the same question about Chinese, and Rosemary hesitated before speaking a few words. Chang smiled and he broke the flow again only when he asked for Houli’s mobile number.
‘It’s on my phone,’ Rosemary said.
‘I’ll get it.’ Sabatini went into what was obviously one of the bedrooms. Neither Chang, nor Ali nor the technician or I moved a muscle. Sabatini handed Rosemary the phone and she brought up the number and recited it to Chang who thanked her. After she admitted making the false identification she stopped.
‘Is that a crime?’ she said.
‘I’m sure it is,’ Chang said. ‘But I wouldn’t worry about it. Now, Mrs Malouf, you told Mr Hardy there was something you’d forgotten . . . held back from Houli. I need to know what that was.’
Rosemary didn’t milk it, or not very much. She put down her coffee cup and spoke directly into the microphone.
‘Richard had a boat,’ she said.
‘I hate boats,’ Rosemary said. ‘Nasty, smelly things that crash into each other and sink.’
Sabatini smiled; he’d have smiled at anything she said.
Chang said, ‘The name of the boat?’
‘Something to do with sport . . . High Fives, that’s it!’
‘High Fives or High Five?’ the technician said.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know it existed until I found a certificate of some kind in his study. It had fallen down behind a slightly warped skirting board, or maybe it was hidden there. I don’t know. But it was insured in his name for a lot of money.’
‘And you never mentioned this to Houli?’ Chang said.
‘No. I didn’t find the certificate until a while after he did his rampage and I sort of forgot about it. I was so pissed off at Richard, and so frightened that I probably would have told him if I’d thought about it, but I didn’t.’
‘Where’s this certificate now?’ Ali asked.
Rosemary looked defiant. ‘The boat was insured for three-quarters of a million dollars and I didn’t even know he had it. I was so angry I burned the certificate.’
Chang pressed for more and Ali became almost aggressive, but the interview petered out after that. Rosemary went to work with a policewoman as escort and guard for the day. The technician packed up and left and Sabatini got ready to go to work.
‘I’ve got some leave coming
,’ Sabatini said as we left the building. ‘Rosemary’s got a lot of frequent flyer points. We’re thinking of going away for a while. To the US maybe.’
‘That’d be a very good idea,’ Chang said. ‘I can’t keep up this level of protection for very long and Houli’s bound to hear that she’s talking to us.’
Sabatini looked alarmed. ‘How?’
Ali smiled. ‘We’ll tell him. When were you thinking of going?’
‘Jesus,’ Sabatini said. ‘Sounds as if it should be now.’
‘Make it soon,’ Chang said. ‘And stay in touch with Hardy.’
Ali looked as though he wanted to protest against that but he didn’t.
Sabatini headed for a bus stop, leaving Chang, Ali and me standing by our cars.
‘That was a bit rough,’ I said, ‘letting her know you’ll leak to Houli.’
Ali shrugged. ‘I’m not impressed. That wasn’t worth much. With a boat he could be anywhere.’
‘Or still floating around in the harbour,’ I said. ‘How’re your relations with the water police?’
The glances they exchanged suggested that such relations were non-existent.
‘Try to stay out of trouble, Hardy,’ Chang said. ‘Take your pills and watch your back.’
‘I don’t rate any protection?’
Chang had turned away; Ali said something presumably abusive, in a language I didn’t understand. Annoyed by some small leaves drifting from a street tree and clinging to his suit, he brushed them off and swore at the mark they left behind. From the look he gave me I was to blame.
Boats. I pretty much shared Rosemary Malouf’s feelings about them. I quite liked watching the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race from somewhere comfortable with a drink in my hand, but that’s about as far as my interest went. I’d been invited aboard a small yacht once for a race on the harbour and found it a mixture of utter boredom and frantic activity. Not my scene. Big toys.
Chang and Ali’s team had the resources to track down the details of Malouf’s boat, although I suspected it would be a painstaking and slow business, and locating it even more so. I had another tack to try—Gretchen Nordlung.
Nordlung was a yachtsman and he was the one who’d allegedly spotted Richard Malouf. Aboard a yacht? At some yachtie hangout? Maybe the widow would know and sufficient time had elapsed to take the hard edge off her grieving. I had the address and phone number but I needed a way to approach her. I Googled Nordlung and found that several obituaries had been published, one in an online yachting magazine. I called it up: the item was accompanied by a photographic spread of people attending Nordlung’s funeral.
It’s not true that all Asians look alike, or that Anglos can’t tell one from another. Over the years I’ve had dealings with Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans and the faces of individuals vary as much as with other races. You just have to learn to recognise the features, hair and head shapes in their own right. But one of the magazine photographs, in colour and in sharp focus, was of Gretchen Nordlung. She was slim and elegant in black, and she was the spitting image of May Ling, perhaps even a shade more beautiful.
Standish was back at work, doing whatever it was he did. I phoned and arranged to meet him and May Ling there after office hours. I didn’t say why and he didn’t ask. Speaking to him reminded me that I hadn’t spent any of his money. I took Megan to lunch at Thai Pothong in Newtown. She ordered up a solid meal and tucked into it enthusiastically. No wine, though.
‘No morning sickness?’ I asked.
‘Not a trace, touch wood.’
‘What about cravings?’
She waved her fork over her plate. ‘Just for food in general. I’m hungry from morning to night. Are you still doing whatever it is you were doing?’
‘Yeah, but in a hands-off sort of way. I’m cooperating with the New South Wales Police Service.’
‘Bullshit.’
We went for a walk in Camperdown Park. Megan gazed fondly at the infants in strollers and the children playing on the grass. I’ve never prayed in my life, but if I could I’d have prayed that everything would turn out well for her.
Standish and May Ling were waiting for me in the empty office. Standish seemed to have regained some composure and was nattily dressed again. May Ling wore an olive green pants suit and a strained, almost hostile, expression. Her makeup and hair were perfect and when she moved there was a faint waft of perfume. No one shook hands.
‘Drink, Hardy?’
‘Sure.’
Standish and I had scotch; May Ling had white wine. We sat around the table in the recess of Standish’s office.
‘It won’t be a surprise to you,’ I said, ‘that Selim Houli and Freddy Wong have formed some sort of partnership with finding Richard Malouf as a focus.’
They nodded.
‘Any further contact from either of them?’
‘No,’ Standish said.
‘I wonder why they’ve backed off.’
‘Who knows? We’re just glad they have. What more can you tell us?’
‘Malouf’s wife made a false identification of the body.’
‘Why?’ May Ling said.
‘Houli terrorised her.’
Standish took a sip of his drink. May Ling watched him. He was pacing himself. ‘I can believe that. So Malouf is alive.’
‘Maybe. At least we know he wasn’t the corpse in the car.’
May Ling said, ‘Why is he so important?’
‘Your cousin Freddy didn’t tell you?’
Her sculpted lips tightened. She didn’t like me putting it that way but she simply shook her head.
I took a slug of Standish’s very good scotch. ‘It’s the big question. It’s what led Freddy and Houli to scare the shit out of you and Houli and his mate to work me over. That’s the easy part. Stefan Nordlung was murdered and the man Rosemary Malouf identified was killed as well. It’s all connected but we don’t know how. The police are working on it.’
Standish almost spilled his drink. ‘You didn’t . . .’
‘Your name hasn’t come up so far. I know you’ve got something to hide, perhaps lots of things. I know you were involved in some dodgy stuff with Nordlung, but unless you actually know where Malouf is—’
‘I don’t!’
I looked at May Ling. She shook her head, again.
‘Are you sure?’
Her fists clenched, the lacquered nails biting into her palms. ‘Yes. Yes!’
‘Then I don’t much care about what you might have been up to. The thing is to find Malouf if it can be done.’
I’d printed out the photograph of Gretchen Nordlung. I put it on the table and leaned back. ‘Sister?’ I said. ‘Another cousin, perhaps?’
The look May Ling gave me would’ve scaled fish. She put her glass down as if it offended her to be drinking with me. ‘I worked for another solicitor before coming to Miles,’ she said. ‘He had frequent dealings with people in your line of work. Detestable probers into people’s lives. Nasty turners-over of rocks.’
‘Some rocks need to be disturbed. You haven’t answered my question.’
For a moment I thought she was going to turn to Standish for support, but a glance at him showed her that he was interested in her answer too. She came as close to being flustered as I imagine she ever got. The private school accent even slipped a bit. ‘Yes, she’s my sister. So what?’
‘Gretchen.’
‘Yes, she’s ashamed of being Chinese. I’m surprised she hasn’t had her eyes straightened and her hair bleached.’
‘I want to talk to her and I want you to pave the way.’
Standish evidently thought it time for him to play a part. ‘Why, Hardy?’
‘Boats,’ I said. ‘Boats have a lot to do with all this some- how. I phoned Mrs Nordlung, she told me where her husband was and within an hour he was dead. It looked as though Houli’s enforcer Yusef Talat killed him, perhaps scared him to death. Houli’s technique seems to be to get people to alert him to what’s going
on. I want to know if there’s a connection between Gretchen Nordlung and Houli, or with Freddy Wong for that matter.’
‘I didn’t know you had a sister,’ Standish said. ‘I gather you’re not close? You didn’t go to Stefan’s funeral. He was your brother-in-law.’
May Ling flared, ‘Neither did you and he was your client.’ She picked up her glass and had another sip. ‘I try not to be close, but it’s hard in our community to cut yourself off. And she clings, when she needs to, and that can be at any time.’
‘Can you arrange to meet her?’ I said.
‘With you along?’
‘Absolutely.’
Standish swilled the dregs of his drink in his glass. He wanted another but he didn’t want May Ling to see his need and he didn’t want me to see his dependence on her. A tough choice. He reached for the bottle and topped himself up.
‘Jesus, Hardy,’ he said. ‘If . . . Gretchen is under Houli or Freddy’s control they’re likely to turn up at this meeting.’
I nodded. ‘That’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?’
May Ling looked worried, a frown line disturbing the satin-smooth brow. ‘What game are you playing?’
‘The only one I know,’ I said. ‘Push the buttons and see what pops.’
The venue for the meeting, at lunch the following day, was a café at Circular Quay. Fine by me; plenty of people about and I like to see the ferries at work. A bit of didgeridoo goes down well, too. It wasn’t quite May Ling’s kind of place though, a touch too much of the common people, and she struck me as an indoors woman, the place where she did her best work. That complexion hadn’t been subjected much to sun, wind and rain. A bit of a threat on this day. The winter sun was strong and she had mounted massive protection—a broad brimmed hat and sunglasses that seemed to cover most of her face.
She’d dressed down for the occasion in trousers, medium heels and a sweater and I wondered what this meant about her relationship with her sister. The scarf and gloves she wore added a touch of elegance, but she clearly wasn’t trying to outshine another woman.