by Peter Corris
I watched her approach, cleaving through the tourists and lunchtimers, expecting them to part, which they mostly did.
‘Mr Hardy,’ she said as she deposited her bag on the table and took off her gloves.
‘Ms Ling,’ I said. ‘Sydney at its best.’
‘Which puts it way behind a lot of other places.’
‘You think so? I don’t agree.’
‘You wouldn’t. I hope you’re ready for . . . Gretchen. She devours men.’
‘Why here? She lives in Seaforth.’
‘So she’s a bit out of her comfort zone. Gretchen’ll find this very tacky . . .’
‘She’ll have trouble parking her Beemer or Porsche or whatever.’
‘Taxi. She’s lost her licence at least twice. She’s a maniac driver.’
Unlike you, I thought. ‘Devours men, you say—is that why you never told Miles about her?’
She ignored that and glanced around for a waiter. ‘I’m betting the service here is sub-standard.’
‘I’ve got a carafe of the house white coming. What was her name before she changed it?’
‘I forget. Why don’t you ask her if you want to get off on the wrong foot. Here she comes.’
I could see why May Ling hadn’t chosen to compete with her sister. There was no chance of winning. The photograph in the magazine hadn’t done her any justice. There was no other way to describe her but as exquisitely beautiful. I caught an amused look on May Ling’s face as I got to my feet. For her, I’d only made a sketchily polite gesture. This woman could pull the strings.
‘Why, May, honey, how nice to see you in such rugged and polite company.’
‘Cliff Hardy,’ May Ling said, ‘this is Gretchen Nordlung. Gretchen spent a little time in San Francisco and she likes to let it show.’
Gretchen smiled at me, showing perfect teeth, perfect eyes, perfect lips. The effect was overwhelming and, strangely, almost comic. ‘Bitch,’ she said. ‘Where’s your fancy lawyer, and who’s this thug? I’ll give you ten minutes.’
Like May Ling, as well as the fragile beauty there was a tough side to her. Thug might be the only way to play it, I thought. I remembered the loose, almost sloppy style of her speech on the phone. Nothing like that now. ‘I rang you wanting to speak to your husband. You told me where he was. When I got to the marina they were fishing him out of the water.’
‘Did you? I’ve forgotten.’
‘I wanted to ask him about his sighting of Richard Malouf. I particularly wanted to know where and when that might have been. Do you know anything about it?’
The carafe of wine arrived and I poured a glass.
‘I’m not going to drink that piss,’ Gretchen said. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘Just answer the question, Sunny,’ May Ling said.
Gretchen tensed, her eyes narrowed and suddenly she looked more dangerous than beautiful. ‘Don’t you call me that!’
‘Sorry,’ May Ling said. ‘I’d forgotten about that chink in your armour.’
The two women glared at each other. A ferry hooted, a waiter hovered nearby, the Aboriginal band tuned up, but they were oblivious to everything except their mutual hostility. I shook my head at the waiter and leaned forward.
‘Did your husband tell you he’d seen Richard Malouf?’
‘Yes. Yes, but he must have been wrong. Richard’s dead.’ She picked up the bag she’d put on the floor. ‘Is that all?’
‘Saw him where?’
‘Somewhere on the fucking harbour.’
She’d spoken more loudly than she’d intended, and a couple of heads turned towards us.
‘I think your husband was right and Richard Malouf is still alive.’
I don’t know what reaction I’d expected but it wasn’t the one I got. Her face, a mask of anger and disdain, was suddenly transformed into a picture of confusion and distress. She fumbled in her bag.
‘You can’t smoke here,’ May Ling said.
That left Gretchen reaching for the glass of wine I’d poured. She drank some and spilled some on her dress. ‘What . . . what do you mean he’s alive?’
It was no time for pussyfooting. ‘His wife has admitted that she made a false identification. Under pressure.’
‘My God!’ Her voice was a whisper; she sat back in her chair and stared out over the quay. She gripped the glass in both hands. A number of rings on her fingers, but no wedding ring.
May Ling struck like a cobra. ‘He was your lover, eh, Sunny? Just another one in a long, long line. He came on to me, too. He was slipping it to every willing woman in sight.’
Gretchen didn’t respond to her use of the name. In fact, she didn’t appear to have heard what her sister said. She drank a little wine, retched, and for a minute it looked as if she’d vomit, but she collected herself. ‘I was in love with him,’ she said. ‘I loved him so much and he promised me we would . . .’
Her head fell forward and she fainted, sliding down in her chair. May Ling was lightning fast and strong. She grabbed Gretchen’s arm and supported her before moving to get a better grip. People around, already interested, murmured their concern but May Ling quelled them with a fierce stare.
‘She’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘She’s a diabetic and the silly bitch doesn’t eat enough. Her sugar’s always low and a shock can trigger a hypo. Pour some sugar into that wine.’
I poured three sachets of sugar into the half-glass of wine and May Ling forced her sister, coming out of the hypoglycaemic faint, to drink it. A good deal of the liquid spilled on her clothes, but enough went down to bring her around. Her face was damp with sweat and there were wet patches showing under her armpits and spreading. I’d faced the same situation and done the same things for my diabetic mother many times when I was young and was always surprised at how quickly it worked. Gretchen’s eyes opened and came back into focus.
‘Bloody hypo,’ she said. ‘That fucking lying wog bastard.’
May Ling nodded. ‘Right. Hardy, let’s get out of here.’
I put money on the table to pay for the wine. May Ling collected her things and Gretchen’s bag and we left the café, supporting her between us. Gretchen was still shaky and didn’t protest. The Aboriginal band blasted out its first riffs.
‘My car’s not far off,’ May Ling said. ‘I’ll take her home.’
‘I’m with you all the way,’ I said. ‘She knows something and I’m not letting her out of my sight.’
We walked to where May Ling’s Peugeot was parked and she handed me the keys she’d dug out of her bag.
‘You drive. I’ll look after her. It’s 17 View Street, Seaforth. Use the GPS.’
We bundled Gretchen into the back seat and May Ling slid in beside her. I started the car, switched on the GPS and gave the destination. I familiarised myself with the controls before setting off—nothing makes you feel sillier than activating the wipers when you want to signal a turn.
In one hundred and fifty metres turn . . .
The programmatic female voice soon became irritating, but the directions to an area I knew little about were helpful.
‘How’s she doing?’ I asked.
‘She’s groggy. Would you believe she hasn’t got any glucose with her? Not so much as a bloody jelly bean. How’s that for stupid?’
I didn’t say anything. My mother had been the same. Denial, but in her case she was sometimes too drunk to remember to carry something with her. She was also capable of injecting too much insulin when under the weather.
I pulled in to a service station along Pitt Road and got a bottle of Coke. May Ling forced Gretchen, against her protests, to sip from it.
‘She’s coming good,’ May Ling said. ‘Know about this stuff, do you?’
‘One of my many talents.’
May Ling snorted. ‘I’ve been through this so many times, and worse. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a drink. There’ll be plenty at her place. They were both alcoholics.’
‘Unlike someone who n
eeds a drink at one thirty.’
‘Fuck you.’
In one hundred and fifty metres, turn . . .
View Street lived up to its name. It afforded a panoramic visual sweep of Middle Harbour from Sugarloaf Bay to Beauty Point, and number 17 was the jewel in the street’s crown, if you like that sort of thing. It was built on three levels, all glass and steel and white brick and with a brick driveway flanked by palm trees.
‘Hollywood Gothic, isn’t it?’ said May Ling. She handed me a remote control device that opened the gates. I drove up a steep series of ramps to a garage door twenty metres across.
‘Hit it again.’
The door slid open; there were three spaces, one filled with a sporty red Mercedes, one with a trailer carrying a medium-size catamaran and one empty.
‘Here we are,’ May Ling said, ‘where Sun Ling found her pot of gold—a rich man with two quadruple bypasses.’
We got Gretchen into the house, into a living room filled with modernistic furniture. The floor to ceiling windows looked out to the water through slightly tinted glass. May Ling eased her sister into an armchair and left the room. She came back with a small plastic case. She opened it and proceeded to check Gretchen’s blood glucose level.
‘Coming up,’ she said. ‘A few brain cells gone maybe but she won’t miss them.’
Gretchen glared at her. ‘Get me a fucking drink.’
May Ling pointed to the bar. ‘Do the honours, Cliff. She’ll have gin and just wave the tonic bottle over it. I’ll have white wine and you can suit yourself.’
Bombay Sapphire gin, what else? Wolf Blass chardonnay and I took a single malt with a name I couldn’t pronounce. We sat around a glass-topped coffee table on the slightly uncomfortable chairs while the air-conditioning kept the room temperature at perfect and the white carpet showed no signs of dirty footmarks. The big house—a spiral staircase rose from one corner of the room to a mezzanine with two staircases going on up from there—had an eerie feeling of emptiness.
Gretchen knocked back her drink in a couple of swallows and held out her glass. I looked at May Ling.
‘Go ahead. It usually takes three or four to put her on her ear.’
I prepared the drink but didn’t make it as strong; I wanted her to talk sense. Gretchen took it without thanking me. She looked annoyed at the signs of spillage on her clothes but shrugged. She kicked off her stilettos and tucked her legs up under her. Still limber despite the hypo and the gin.
‘Well, this is cosy, sis. The thug’s a gun driver and can mix a good drink. How is he in the sack?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ May Ling said. ‘Where we were was that you as good as told us that you were fucking Richard Malouf and that him faking his death, which could be what happened, leaves you feeling angry. What was going on?’
‘Why do you care?’ Gretchen said.
‘I’ll tell you why,’ I said. ‘Two people are dead—your husband, the man who was ID’d as Malouf—and some very heavy people are looking for him. They’ve terrorised one woman, scared the shit out of May Ling and Miles Standish and put me in hospital. Malouf stole a lot of money from me and other people. I’d like to get it back, but there’s other people who’re a lot keener.’
Gretchen giggled. The gin was getting to her and I wished I hadn’t made the first one so strong, but maybe it was the low sugar having an effect. ‘I like the bit about May and Miles being scared shitless.’
May Ling sipped her wine. ‘You won’t like it so much when I tell Freddy Wong that you were fucking the guy he’s looking for so hard.’
Gretchen’s face lost colour and I thought she was going to go into another faint. She drained her glass and dropped it onto the floor before wrapping her arms around herself and shaking uncontrollably. May Ling jumped up and went to her.
‘Sunny, Sunny, what is it?’
Gretchen half rose from her chair and collapsed into her sister’s arms. They clung to each other with Gretchen sobbing softly and May Ling making soothing noises. I felt shut out, invisible. Eventually Gretchen became quiet, passive, and May Ling stayed crouched by her chair. Gretchen drew in a long, painful breath.
‘Could you get me a cigarette, May?’
May Ling got the packet from Gretchen’s bag, lit a cigarette and handed it to her. Gretchen puffed and then handed it back. May Ling snuffed it out in a big ceramic ashtray on the coffee table.
Gretchen was wearing a blue silk dress with long, loose sleeves buttoned at the wrist. It was still damp with the sweat induced by the hypo. With some difficulty, she undid the button on the left and pushed the sleeve up. Livid injection marks stood out against her smooth, ivory skin.
‘Freddy got me hooked,’ she said. ‘Really hooked. No one else can supply me—no one ever!’
May Ling got Gretchen steadied down and onto coffee rather than gin. She worked her way through a good many cigarettes as she told us that Freddy Wong had introduced her to heroin after she’d learned of Malouf’s death. She’d been intensely involved with him for some time and she took the news hard. The death of her husband was a second, but minor, shock. When May Ling asked her how she’d become so involved with Freddy, Gretchen had recovered enough to read some signs.
‘Freddy’s got to you, too, hasn’t he? I can tell from the way you reacted to his name. So, you first.’
‘Debt. He lent me money,’ May Ling said. ‘You?’
‘Gambling.’
Gretchen said she knew Freddy was dangerous and had always avoided him, but when she took up with Malouf and was drawn into high stakes gambling, she’d caught the bug and got deep in debt to Freddy.
‘I’ve got an addictive personality,’ Gretchen said. ‘And other problems.’
May Ling bit back a response although her sympathy for her sister was ebbing fast. They were both smoking now, and a fug was building up in the room, something you don’t experience much these days. Gretchen lit another cigarette from the butt of her previous one and looked at me.
‘Freddy warned me to get in touch with him if anyone made any sort of enquiry about Richard. When you rang, that’s what I did. I’ve wondered ever since whether Freddy killed Stefan and if I’m responsible.’
So Freddy Wong had the same thing going as Houli—an early warning system for when Malouf’s name came up. And when the need arose one alerted the other. I was pretty sure Talat had killed Nordlung and presumably after he’d been told everything about the sighting of Malouf.
‘That’s all your husband told you, was it?’ I said. ‘That he’d seen Malouf somewhere on the harbour.’
Gretchen nodded. ‘It could’ve been around the harbour somewhere. Stefan liked to drink in various places.’
‘What places?’ May Ling asked.
Gretchen almost laughed. ‘Don’t ask me. I hate boats and everything to do with them.’
‘So you never went on Malouf’s boat?’
That brought another slight smile. ‘I didn’t say that. His boat was beautifully fitted out . . .’
May Ling said, ‘Somewhere to fuck.’
‘You should try it.’
I said, ‘When you say fitted out, what d’you mean? Apart from the bed?’
‘Oh, it had everything—computers, satellite dishes, GPS, television. He had a bunch of mobile phones and he used Skype. He talked fluently to people all over the world.’
‘What d’you mean?’ I said.
‘Well, I heard him speaking Chinese and what sounded like Arabic and Indonesian. I know a bit of Indonesian from going to Bali.’
‘What kind of a boat was it? Was it ocean-going?’
Gretchen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was white.’
‘Great help,’ May Ling said. ‘So he had a floating office. Why?’
My thought was different. ‘Where did you meet up with him and get on the boat?’
‘Different places, different marinas, all around the harbour.’
‘At the Spit?’
She gave a lopsided grin, almos
t a grimace. ‘Yes, only when Stefan was away. May, I’m going to need . . .’
‘Jesus,’ May Ling said, ‘you have to get off that stuff, Sunny.’
Gretchen hugged herself and shivered, the classic junkie-in-need pose. ‘I don’t think I . . .’
‘I know a good detox place,’ I said.
May Ling nodded. There was a long silence as Gretchen looked at me and back at May Ling, whose face was set implacably. It was obviously a scene she’d played in before.
‘Oh yes,’ Gretchen whispered. ‘But I just need a small hit now.’
‘No way,’ May Ling said.
We got Gretchen to a clinic in Marrickville I’d had dealings with in the past. My doctor, Ian Sangster, signed the admission form and May Ling acted as guarantor for the fees, next of kin and contact. Gretchen was passive, resigned.
‘She’s in for a rough time,’ I said as we left the clinic. ‘Coming off one dependency’s bad enough, but three or four . . .’
‘Five,’ May Ling said. ‘She’s a sex addict as well. So where did that get us, Cliff?’
‘When did I become Cliff?’
‘Today. You handled all that very well. My confidence in you has grown.’
‘That’s nice and I guess you’ve shown your softer side with your sister, but I’m not sure we’re playing on the same team. You want to find Malouf so as to get Houli and Freddy off your back. You don’t care what they were up to with Malouf or who killed Stefan Nordlung and the mystery man. Right?’
We were walking along Marrickville Road towards where I’d parked the Peugeot in a side street. May Ling stopped, slumped into a chair outside a café.
‘I’m tired and hungry.’
I was, too. We ordered coffee and sandwiches and we drank and ate steadily without speaking. She finished first, wiped her hands and sniffed at her fingers.
‘I haven’t smoked for years. Bugger Sunny. I’ve hauled her out of trouble since she was thirteen and had her first abortion, but she is my sister and I do care about her.’
I nodded. ‘Parents?’
‘Both dead from overwork. They built up a restaurant and import business from nothing. When they died Freddy managed to take it over—I never found out how. That’s why I studied law, to see if I could get it back, but I got sidetracked and Freddy grew too big and nasty to go up against.’
