She wrote him real, but she didn’t embarrass him. She’d done that already. The story was fifteen hundred words on the enigma of Will Parker. It asked, without spelling it out, why this man would murder anyone.
It was fresh, it was original content, and it was breaking news. Her wire service contact told her it would get broad pick-up and run internationally. He asked if there’d be more.
It earned her enough to finance their road trip and broke all of her agreements with Spidey. Peter Parker could sue her for all her leftover cash. It was the best story she’d ever written, and she was proud of it, even if one detail was off. There was no evidence in electoral rolls, council, social security or tax records that anyone called Parker ever lived in Tara.
Tengtou village wasn’t all dusty streets, lean-to shacks and skinny dogs. It was rural, pretty and prosperous. And it had already been raked over by every media organisation on the planet. As they drove in, a CNN truck was barrelling out.
Bo grunted as it went passed, “Big noise.”
From the windblown back seat Robert said, “What’s the plan now, Grandfather?” but he’d stopped being sarky. He and Bo had reached an accommodation.
“He who knows all the answers has not asked all the questions,” said Bo.
“Will there be much English spoken here?” Darcy asked. The further they’d driven from the city, the more a liability she felt she was becoming.
“Some,” said Bo. He glanced across at her. “They’ll come to you.” He pulled the car into a side street off the town centre and gestured over his shoulder. “You sit out there. They will see you. If they want to speak they will come.”
Darcy sighed. She was a novice investigative reporter on the biggest story of her life, and her role was to sit in the sun until some random local wandered up to say hi. How Brian would laugh. How Andy would scoff. This was a very long way from being able to help Will Parker in any shape or form.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to photograph buildings, and see what I can dig up,” said Robert, jamming a faded Sydney Roosters cap on his head. “I’ve trained for this, Lin Gui, remember.”
“I will talk to people about the village,” said Bo. “We don’t mention Will, okay. Learn more by being quiet.”
They split up; Robert going off with a jaunty whistle, his camera slung over his shoulder, Bo going to a restaurant and taking a seat. Darcy watched him settle at a common table and order. She turned away and wandered through the main village centre towards a park. She could see a children’s swing set and a slippery dip shaped like a dragon, but the park was empty. She’d driven for two days with two men she hardly knew in a death trap to sit in an empty park.
Behind her sunglasses her eyes watered. This was an insanely stupid thing to have done. Realistically, she’d already exhausted her ammunition in support of Will by writing the one story she could write, and the best it would do is start another feeding frenzy.
Tengtou had already been picked clean, and no doubt the media would be swarming all over Tara soon too. Someone with better resources and deeper pockets would solve the problem of the Parker name. And if Peter Parker and the Australian Government couldn’t secure Will’s release then it probably couldn’t be done.
She closed her eyes and images of Will flooded her senses. Will dancing with her pashmina, embarrassed but doing it anyway. Will laughing at her, egging her on to sing in the bath. Will touching her tenderly, roughly, completely. Will walking into her punch physically, emotionally, and mentally again and again and again.
She opened her eyes when tiny, sticky hands grasped her legs. They belonged to the cutest toddler in a pale blue bodysuit with Buzz Lightyear images printed all over it. He had enormous brown eyes and thick black hair that stuck up every which way. He was studying her as though she was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.
“Hello little man, where did you come from?” There was no one else in sight. “Where’s your mummy?”
Buzz boy gurgled and gave Darcy’s knee a good patting down. He didn’t seem in the least bit worried to be touring the town on his own. She looked around again, there’d be a frantic carer around somewhere. Meanwhile Buzz boy had run out of puff to stand. He plumped back on his bottom in the dirt and grabbed a handful of it. He had one fist in his mouth before Darcy was quick enough to react.
“Oh baby, no, no, no, don’t eat that.”
Too late. He made a face, his tongue working between his lips, dirt and spit coating his chin. His eyebrow went up and stayed there, and he flapped his arms in annoyance. He looked at Darcy as though it was all her fault and started screaming.
“Oh hell!” She scooped him up, scanning for mum, dad, big sister, anyone who had the frantic look of lost kid. Once in her arms he stopped crying, his hands went to her sunglasses and he pulled them off her face, smiling when he saw her eyes, which he decided were a good target to poke.
She dodged his pudgy hands, and rescued her sunglasses from his grip. “Who owns you, baby? Did you run away? I understand that, sometimes life gets hard doesn’t it?” She spat on her fingers and tried to clean the dirt off his face and he twisted his head to get away. “You wait till you’re my age, and you’ve done something really dumb, and you end up a long way from home with no job, no prospects, and a hole in your heart. Then you’ll really know you’re eating dirt.”
Buzz boy looked at her and laughed. “Oh you think that’s funny.” Then his focus went over her shoulders and his arms shot out in front. His little body tensed and his face was wreathed in smiles. Darcy turned to find a relieved mum running towards them.
“Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry!” Mum’s arms came up and Darcy shifted a wriggling Buzz into her grip. He latched onto a stand of her hair and pulled as they exchanged his weight.
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” said the mother again. English words, even if on repeat.
“He’s okay, but he ate some dirt.”
The mother bumped Buzz to her hip and regarded Darcy. “Thank you.”
Darcy smiled, “He’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
She tried again. “What’s his name? How old is he?”
Buzz’s mum sat. “He’s called Michael, his Chinese name is An and he’s nearly two.”
Coming down from her shock—Michael’s mum’s English was perfect—Darcy sat beside her. Bo said they’d come. Maybe chatting about a toddler would be as good as it got.
“Is he your first?”
Michael’s mum nodded.
“He’s a handful.”
“He’s a little monkey who just gave me the fright of my life. I told my husband to close the door. I was in the other room for five minutes, that’s all, and he’s gone. I can’t wait to get back to the city.”
“You’re not from here?”
“My husband is. I was born in Shanghai. I hate it out here. They’re all inbred.”
Darcy laughed. Mum wasn’t much younger than she was.
“Why are you here then?”
“Visiting family. They’re like the big shots here. Big shots of nothing if you ask me.” She joggled Michael on her knee. “Are you a tourist?”
“Yeah. We drove in from Shanghai.”
“Reporter?”
Darcy hesitated. What did it matter if she told the women the truth? “Yes. But I’m late to the party. I’m Darcy Campbell.”
“Hah, place has been overrun by reporters since the story about Feng Kee came out.”
“I feel like I should apologise for that.” If only Michael’s mum knew how true that feeling was.
She smiled. “You look harmless enough.” She spat on her fingers and wiped at the corner of Michael’s mouth. He did the head twist thing again and both women laughed. “What do you want to know?”
Darcy was shocked. “What can you tell me?”
“My name is Jennifer Feng. Apart from my husband, the Feng men are liars and gangsters.” Jennifer had gone from worried witless mother, to r
elieved young cosmopolitan woman marooned in the rural backblocks, to deadly serious willing informant. Darcy’s heart was lodged in her oesophagus.
“But around here you’d think they shat gold bricks. I don’t want anything to do with them, and I don’t want them to have any hold over me or my family.” She hugged Michael until he squirmed and thumped his head against her chest.
“You sound angry.”
“I am angry. I’d never have married Shen if I’d known about them, how far they’d go.”
“How far have they gone?”
Jennifer looked away. Darcy had pushed too hard. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s your job isn’t it, prying?”
“Kind of. It’s my job to report what happens, to find out the truth.” Darcy closed her eyes behind her sunnies. She sounded like a Lois Lane cliché, all truth, justice and the American way. Like a woman who hadn’t just made news up and gotten a good man attention he didn’t deserve. Gotten a good man kidnapped and jailed.
Jennifer looked at her and appeared to make a decision. “The man in jail.” She turned Michael in her arms so he could snuggle back against her body. “He didn’t kill Kee.”
“How do you know?” Darcy held her breath.
“Because Great Uncle Kee was at my wedding.”
“When was your wedding?”
“February fourteen,” Jennifer shrugged, “Wasn’t auspicious, but I’m sentimental.”
That was a month after Will was accused of killing Feng. Darcy took her sunnies off. The truth needed to be looked at without tinted lenses. “You’re sure?”
“I have pictures.”
“Why did you tell me this?”
“Because we’re scared they’ll try to control us. I’m telling you so you can do something. Maybe it will stop them.”
Darcy sucked in a breath. Being late to the party always was a fashionable move. “Did you tell the other journalists too?”
Jennifer Feng looked at her, a head to toe inspection that made Darcy want to tug at the hem of her shorts, tuck in her t-shirt, tidy up.
“No.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t ask.” She looked down at her son’s sleeping face. “And Michael likes you.”
26. Missing
“A man without a moustache is a man without a soul.” — Confucius
They didn’t stop. They drove straight through, Bo and Robert sharing the driving. Peter was waiting for them. They had enough evidence to cast doubt over Will’s guilt, if not to exonerate him entirely.
Darcy had wanted to call in the story from the car but she was scared to do anything that might have the unintended consequences of making things worse for Will. As soon as she had assurance from Peter, she’d file it with the wire service.
She had a wedding photo in her bag that showed the Feng wedding. Bride and groom in the foreground with a triple tier red cake with gold roses on the top, and the symbols for double happiness iced in gold. Great Uncle Kee stood proudly in the background with his much younger girlfriend.
On Robert’s camera was a photograph of a plaque on the fence of a basketball court. Kee had donated the facility to the village after the date of his supposed death, the same month as Jennifer’s wedding.
But Bo had found the smoking gun. In the Golden Lotus restaurant, he had tea with a toothless old woman who told him about the story of her business. About how she ran the best restaurant in town, serving only the freshest vegetables, the choicest meats and the most fragrant tea.
She told Bo with great pride how her father started the business, how she inherited it, and how one night she nearly lost it all, because some foolish men were drunk and dancing with the whores they’d brought.
She’d wanted to ask them to leave, but they were all men from the Feng family, the founders of the village, very powerful. They danced and they drank, and they picked a fight with her chef. Chef attacked the men with a carving knife, there was a chase and fat got tipped over and a fire started. The restaurant nearly burned down, the kitchen was gutted. It was probably chef’s fault he died, but he was an excellent cook so it still made her sad. The other man who died, good riddance. His name was Feng Kee but his family put out the story that he was beaten to death by a shady business partner in the city.
Zhongshan Road was quiet when they arrived, but Parker offices were lit up. Peter met them at the elevators. He wore jeans and a crushed linen shirt, no fancy watch. His hair was mussed up, and he had score marks under his eyes and down his cheeks from lack of sleep.
Bo had no sooner cleared the closing doors than Peter had him in a bear hug. “I don’t have the words to thank you for what you’ve done.”
Bo pumped Peter on the back. “We will get him out now.”
“We will.” Peter sighed from deep in his chest, from a place he’d carried heavy despair. Darcy felt the heft of it in his words. “It should be enough to end this nightmare.” He turned away. “Come through, all of you.”
Aileen met them in a reception room. She too was dressed for being called back to the office at eleven at night, but looked no less beautiful.
Dusty, sweaty and able to smell herself in a t-shirt she’d worn for two days, Darcy felt like a complete grunge in her presence. There was food and drink laid out. Robert was on it, groaning in delight as he discovered prawns.
Aileen went to Bo and the two hugged, soft words between them. She went to Robert and extended her hand, made him juggle his plate to accept it, stepped in to him, kissed him on the cheek, and almost made him drop it.
Then she came to Darcy, tears hovering in her eyes. “Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Me too,” said Peter. He had his hand extended. Darcy lifted hers, and was hauled into Peter’s hug. He smelled of expensive aftershave and was all elbows and ribs, nothing like the solidity and strength of Will. She clung to Peter momentarily. As uncomfortable as the hug was, it might be as close as she’d get to Will.
When she pulled away, Peter had tears in his eyes too.
“God, I’m a sook. If Will was here, he’d bash me.”
“If Will was here, he’d want to reward all of you,” said Aileen. She gestured to the table. “Please sit, eat, as a start.”
“Before I scoff the lot,” said Robert, starting on a second helping.
The five of them sat at the table, Aileen seeing to drinks.
Peter opened the conversation. “I’d like to thank each of you. What you’ve done, all of you, was exceptional. I paid a fortune to get hold of this type of information and came up with nothing but a suspicion there was something odd going on.” He sighed, looked across at Bo. “Something odder even than you and Will being kidnapped.
“The village closed ranks. I didn’t think anyone with a camera and a notebook could possibly do any better than my money on the table to get people to talk. I was wrong.”
“Bo is a very clever man. This is his triumph, because of Bo we got lucky,” Darcy said.
Peter acknowledged Bo with another glance down the length of the table and returned his eyes to her. “And I didn’t trust you not to cause more trouble. Aileen says I’ve got to stop blaming you for putting Will into this position in the first place.” He looked at Aileen.
“We were going to put him in front of the press anyway for Avalon,” she said.
“But not like...” Peter shook his head. “I have a way to go with forgiving you for that, Darcy. I assume that was you behind the profile story on Will? And you Bo, I know it was you too.”
Darcy nodded. Did turning up evidence to free Will mean wiping her slate clean, or would Peter still want to pursue her about using that off the record material? He was clearly emotional, relieved, but there was anger simmering there. “Are you going to empty my bank account over it?”
“I thought about it. We had an agreement. But Will would have my head for it.”
She sighed. Her own relief an u
nknotting of muscles in her chest.
“What you’ve uncovered is enough to kickstart a legitimate police investigation which Parker will back up with one of our own. The truth won’t hide now. Tomorrow we start the process of getting Will released.”
Robert banged on the table with a soup spoon in approval and Peter smiled for the first time since they’d arrived.
“Let’s run through what we know,” he said. He looked at Darcy. “This is your story.”
Her eyes went to Bo, got a tight nod, to Robert and got a grin around a mouthful. It was her story, and when she was sure the details were squared away she’d file it with the wire service and watch it explode. And this time she could be sure she was doing the right thing for Will.
“This is what we know. Feng Kee was born in the village of Tengtou into a ruling class family. His father and grandfather before him were leaders of the village. The family was wealthy, the source of their income coming from rentals from real estate, both in Tengtou and in Shanghai. Village legend holds that the men of the Feng family were gangsters and standover men.
“Feng rented office space to Will. At the end of the twelve month lease, Will moved the office to alternative premises.”
“Because Feng tried to extort him,” said Peter.
Darcy acknowledged that new piece of information with a nod. It made sense. “The charge report says Feng Kee confronted Will about an unpaid rent agreement on January tenth. They fought and Will beat Feng to death.”
Peter flinched and Aileen lent across and patted his hand. “I hate hearing it said like that,” he said.
Darcy went on, her eyes down on a translation of the Ministry of Justice charge. “It says Feng died the next week in his village of injuries sustained in the beating. It says the family was unable to identify the mystery business partner until they recognised his name in newspaper stories.”
She looked up. “What it doesn’t say is that, being a family of gangsters, they went about getting retribution in their own style by kidnapping Will and Bo, and hoping to continue the family practice of extortion in a big way.”
Detained Page 18
