by Alan Carter
‘What if you don’t find him?’
‘I will. One way or another. I have to.’ They said their goodbyes. She detected a crack in John’s voice. Defences crumbling. A vulnerability she never thought he was capable of. She wanted to be home with her lover and far away from this madness. She resolved to quit, or at least take long leave, when she got home and to focus on the things that mattered. In the meantime she needed to sort this mess out.
A nurse wheeled a trolley past Lara’s door. Phones rang. Words floated up the corridor. Words she didn’t understand. Lara felt totally helpless: she needed to find Cato. James was out of action, Driscoll was an untrustworthy prick. Sharon Wang? She clearly hated Lara’s guts but she obviously had a soft spot for Cato and had been doing something wrong behind Driscoll’s back. Lara found her mobile in a bedside drawer. She scrolled through to Wang’s number and sent a text. Outside, there was a flash of lightning, some thunder, and then rain hitting her window.
Cato didn’t know how long he’d been out. The hood was off and he was able to breathe more freely but he was scared to open his eyes in case it provoked more beating. The room was silent. They’d gone, for now. He decided to risk it. He found he was able to open one eye, the other was gummed shut. He looked across a floor covered in oil stains and splashed by his blood. He was in some kind of mechanic’s workshop: moped parts, tyres, an oxy-acetylene burner, drills, spanners, screwdrivers, cans of oil and petrol, tyre levers, hammers. Enough playthings for the inventive torturer, if that’s what was to come. He’d never known pain like this. It pulsed through his whole body. He now understood how people could beg for death. More of his senses kicked in: touch, hearing, smell. Cato had pissed himself during the beating. Outside he could hear the steady patter of rain and the occasional roll of thunder. Some flashes through the tiny gap beneath a buckled and rusty roller door. The clouds he’d seen at the start of the day had finally arrived. Should he shout for help or would that just alert them that he was awake and ready for round two? He kept quiet and closed his eyes again.
He must have drifted off. When he awoke there was a man crouching beside his head. Cato recognised him from a file photo. Yu Guangming.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ rasped Cato.
Yu unscrewed a water bottle and held it to Cato’s lips. Cato drank.
‘Better?’ said Yu.
With difficulty, Cato nodded.
Yu said something terse-sounding in Mandarin and stood up. Cato heard footsteps behind him and braced himself for more hurt. Instead he was hauled upright and dropped onto a flimsy plastic chair. They studied each other, Cato trying not to be too obvious in case it brought down more violence. Yu Guangming was a cut above his colleagues. He was better dressed, he smelt better, spoke English, and was halfway handsome. He could see how he might turn the head of an impressionable young woman in a Sydney bar. But then he thought about what Yu had done to her later, and to Genevieve Tan.
‘Mr Kwong. The Chinaman who doesn’t speak Chinese.’ It didn’t seem to invite a reply. ‘A useless specimen, really. You’ve been looking for me, I hear.’ He gave Cato another drink. ‘So you’ve found me. How can I help?’
Cato didn’t feel in the best shape to conduct a comprehensive professional interview so he got to the point. ‘Did you kill the Tan family in Perth?’
‘No. Next question.’
‘Your DNA was at the crime scene. Your sperm was inside one of the victims.’ Cato felt a tooth wobble, an exposed nerve seek his attention. ‘Can you explain that?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘Then please do.’
Yu smiled. ‘I like your manners.’
Cato didn’t like his. If the cable ties were cut, he felt just capable, injuries notwithstanding, of beating Yu to death.
‘I’ve known Mrs Tan for some years, ever since her unlucky and lazy husband started to gamble other people’s money on stupid business ventures.’ Yu lit himself a cigarette from a packet proclaiming Double Happiness. ‘A lonely woman with strong needs. We have come to a private arrangement on a number of occasions. Each time it has bought her husband an extra few days to keep up his debt repayments. Man, that is one loyal wife.’ He blew out a plume of pungent smoke and smiled. ‘A hospitable family in general. Lovely people.’
‘And on the day of the murders?’
‘Same-same. I was there in the house. She seemed warmer towards me than usual. I think Mr Tan was maybe affected by his stressful business dealings. Not being a good husband, you know?’
There was a few moments silence. ‘It’s a good story,’ said Cato. ‘Is it true?’
‘I say it is, yes.’
‘How do you know Mr Li?’
‘Who says I do?’ he smiled.
‘Me.’
‘Ah, I see. You have me in the role of Mr Li’s evil henchman. Yes?’
Cato nodded.
‘But I wanted to be the Master Villain, it’s not fair!’
Cato grimaced. ‘You’re not doing too badly on that score.’
Yu chortled. ‘A sense of humour in difficult times. I like that. Have you any more stereotypes you’d like to share with me?’
‘So if you’re not the evil henchman and you weren’t collecting debts on behalf of Li, then who?’
‘Maybe I do my own dirty work?’
‘You? And all those trips to PNG and New Zealand and elsewhere? Your money, your business?’
‘Boring now. Do your homework, policeman.’ He stubbed his cigarette out. ‘Mr Li is known to me primarily by reputation as a very successful businessman and a great contributor to the community. Sometimes we work together, sometimes not. We are like every other entrepreneur; we use our guanxi, connections. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
A contemptuous snort. ‘Uncle Li. He thinks he is a modern day Du Yusheng, have you heard of him?’
Cato shook his head.
‘A famous Shanghai gangster from the nineteen thirties. “Big-eared Du” they called him, but not to his face, eh?’
Cato wondered where this was going.
‘He ran the opium trade, the prostitutes, the protection rackets. He was a kind of Chinese Al Capone. Did you know that all those beautiful old buildings on the Bund were built by the British and French with opium money?’
Yes, Cato vaguely recalled it from the brief background he’d googled when Hutchens first put Shanghai on the agenda. When was that, three, four days ago? Yu was in full flow.
‘Modern Shanghai grew out of the Opium Wars and Big-eared Du also built some nice Shanghai mansions with his own opium money. We learn quick, eh?’ He lit himself another ciggie. ‘But Du craved respectability. He financed the Kuomintang against the Commies, bad move. He was even unofficial Mayor of Shanghai for a while.’ Yu laughed. ‘And now Uncle Li is like Big-eared Du. He forgets where he came from and he wants everyone else to forget too. Soon he will retire, or die. Either way, he is finished.’
So there was no real love lost between Yu and Li.
Yu seemed to be winding down. ‘Just over the road is a river, Suzhou Creek. It joins the Huangpu just up that way.’ He gestured in the direction. ‘Big-eared Du used to throw his enemies in the creek and watch them float away. If you like I’ll take you down there tomorrow and show you.’ He patted Cato’s shoulder. ‘It’s been a big day. Sleep well, Mr Kwong.’
Hands grabbed him from behind, forced a rag into his mouth and ran some tape over it. Cato began to panic, he felt he was going to choke to death. Yu leaned down close to his ear.
‘Relax. Breathe evenly, through your nose. You’re going to be okay. You won’t die tonight.’
The bag went back over Cato’s head and he was pushed off the chair onto the floor. Outside there was a loud crack of thunder and the rain got heavier.
18
Monday, August 19th.
The first call came through just after 6 a.m. as arranged. Lara took a deep breath and hoped that what she was about to do wasn’t going t
o seal Cato’s fate. Last night Sharon Wang hadn’t taken any convincing to come back to the hospital and talk. In fact she seemed relieved and energised by the idea. Lara hadn’t beaten around the bush.
‘Why’s Driscoll pissed off at you?’
Wang told her about the unmonitored SIM card she’d given Cato, the one that now needed to be added to Driscoll’s GSM trace list.
‘Why did you do that? You obviously don’t trust Driscoll either.’
Wang measured her words. ‘It’s not that. I just don’t always share his priorities. Those guys play by different rules.’
‘All that Mandarin on the mobile, what’s he up to?’
‘He seems to be as much concerned with managing it as a news story as he is about finding … Cato? Is that what you call him?’
‘Yep.’
‘So tomorrow everybody will read about a drunken brawl outside an expat bar during which a number of foreigners and local Chinese nationals were seriously injured with one later dying of his wounds.’
‘Prick.’ Lara shook her head.
‘On one level I can see what he’s doing. The truth would drive certain people into a corner, limit their options for stepping back, for walking away.’
‘Face?’ said Lara. Wang nodded. ‘Do you think it will work?’
‘No, not this time. I think we need to make a lot of noise, put the pressure on, seize the initiative.’
‘How?’
‘By doing the opposite of what Driscoll is doing.’
Their plan was to hijack Driscoll’s spun headlines, get a heap of international media attention on the story, quickly, mentioning the names Li Tonggui and Yu Guangming as often as possible. There would be a flowdown to local media, and potentially a shitstorm that would either see Cato bargained for silence, or killed. Wang had been awake half the night revving up her contacts. First was the ABC’s man in Beijing, an effusive chap who liked a bit of theatrics. He was booked on the first plane down and would be in Shanghai in a couple of hours with a crew. In the meantime he wanted to get the gist by phone. Lara gave it to him: a gruesome family murder in Perth, business connections to Li.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. ‘Li Tonggui. Would you like me to spell it for you?’ The correspondent, a fluent Mandarin speaker, declined the offer.
Another man wanted for questioning in relation to this and other murders and acts of violence.
‘Yu Guangming,’ said Lara. ‘Got that?’
An Australian police officer badly wounded in an unprovoked attack, another abducted and still missing. And yet another man, a prominent Hong Kong-based lawyer involved in a case against Li, murdered. Finally, the bit that would probably bring a load of grief down on Sharon Wang.
‘No, neither the consulate nor the Australian Federal Police seem to be taking this seriously.’
‘But it was Sharon who called me,’ said the man from Aunty.
‘I guilt-tripped her into it. She’ll probably get into trouble for this.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ he said.
More calls followed. Associated Press. Reuters. The BBC. It was showing on their news websites by now. South China Morning Post was particularly interested in the untimely and bloody death of one of their own – Richard Chan.
‘Yes, Li Tonggui,’ said Lara. ‘Would you like me to spell it for you?’
Finally the Shanghai Daily.
‘Yu Guangming,’ said Lara. ‘Got that?’
Cato awoke with a start, his heart racing, panic surging. He’d woken several times during the night with recurring dreams of suffocation, of drowning, of being buried alive. Each time it would take a moment for him to remember where he was. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the nightmares or the reality. Was his father’s premonition about to come true? Cato would die in China. He lay still, listening, trying to work out what was going on in the world beyond his hood. In an adjoining room people were speaking low in Mandarin. He recognised one voice as Yu Guangming’s but the other sounded oddly familiar too. The door opened and somebody came in. By the footsteps, it was at least two people. Cato’s hood was pulled off. The other voice had been Rory Driscoll’s. They must have negotiated a release or ransom deal. Driscoll tutted at the state of Cato while he removed the tape and gag.
‘Been in the wars, mate?’ He gave Cato a sip of water from a bottle, wrinkling his nose. ‘What’s that smell?’
Cato had lost control of his bladder again during the night. He tried to sit up, gesturing at the cable ties. ‘Get these off me.’
Driscoll shook his head. ‘Not so fast, buddy.’
So that was it, realised Cato, with cold certainty. Driscoll and Yu were working together. It accounted for Yu’s untouchability as he flew around the Asia Pacific wreaking mayhem.
‘You know why Mr Li specifically requested your presence in Shanghai, don’t you?’ said Driscoll.
Cato’s tongue probed a loose tooth. ‘We connected meaningfully?’
‘You could say that.’ Driscoll crouched down and reached a hand towards Cato’s face. Cato flinched, expecting a blow. Instead his hair was gently brushed from his forehead. ‘Quiz time. List the Bali Nine.’
Cato played along. ‘Renae Lawrence, Scott Rush …’ He ran out of names, quickly.
‘Who were Barlow and Chambers?’
‘The two Aussie drug traffickers that got hung in Malaysia in the eighties?’
‘Van Nguyen?’
‘Who?’ said Cato. Then he remembered, a few years ago a Vietnamese-Australian had been executed in Singapore for drug trafficking.
‘Schapelle Corby?’
‘I get the picture.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Driscoll. ‘The Great Australian Public couldn’t give a toss about you. You’re not one of them. You could be a bogan fuckwit with a record as long as your arm and we’ll be rooting for you all the way. Or you could be as pure as the driven snow but if your face and name don’t fit you’re finished. Nothing. Your eyes are the wrong shape so nobody gives a damn and nobody will remember your name.’
Cato didn’t want to believe that, he wanted to believe that when push came to shove he had more friends than Driscoll credited him for. ‘What’s your point?’
‘People like you and me, when we’re not sticking out like a sore thumb, we’re invisible. Me? When I’m at the top of my game I can stop governments from toppling, but I can’t stop a cab in King’s Cross at the wrong time of night.’ He leaned closer as if taking Cato into his confidence. His voice dropped a notch. ‘They can bury us alive here. Sure we’ve got a handful of friends and colleagues who might look out for us but if it needs higher powers …’ Driscoll shrugged.
‘So I’m Tommy Li’s hostage?’
Driscoll shook his head in pity. ‘To be a hostage you need to be worth something to someone.’ A call came through on his mobile, in English this time.
‘Yes sir,’ said Driscoll with a frown. ‘I’m onto it. I’ll give you a ring in an hour with an update. Cheers.’ He severed the connection and snapped something at Yu Guangming in Mandarin. Then he gave Cato a funny, almost sad look. ‘Gotta go. Few spotfires to put out.’ He replaced Cato’s gag and tape and pulled the hood back down. ‘Chin up, bro.’
A pat on the shoulder and he was gone.
‘You’re in a shitload of trouble now, aren’t you?’ said Lara.
Sharon Wang nodded. ‘Probably. But some things are worth more than a job.’
‘Like Cato?’
Wang blushed. ‘I meant, like doing the right thing.’ A pause and a smile. ‘But now you come to mention it.’
Lara thought she was doing a good job of her poker face but Wang saw right through it.
‘You’ve been there, haven’t you?’
‘Truth be told, he didn’t have much to do with it.’ Lara gave the lowdown on her encounter with Cato in a Hopetoun motel room. ‘I’ve had worse,’ she concluded.
Wang stifled a grin. ‘You shameless trollop!’ They were interrupt
ed by a call on Wang’s mobile. An exchange of Mandarin. More media? She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘It’s Li, he’d like to talk to you.’
Lara frowned. ‘In Pudong?’
‘No, he’s downstairs at reception.’
‘Send him up,’ said Lara.
Li came in with a big bunch of flowers and Phoebe. ‘Number one daughter,’ he said.
So now she was Phoebe the Daughter instead of Phoebe the Lawyer, a softer, more pliant and filial version. Lara wondered how many more there were. She thanked them both for the flowers.
‘Terrible thing, this. Terrible.’ Li looked troubled and Phoebe copied him. Lara wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the violence and the abduction, or to the saturation media mention of his name in connection with something unsavoury.
No point wasting a meeting. ‘Did you have Richard Chan killed?’
He looked mortified. ‘Heavens, no!’ Phoebe’s stern lawyer face nearly returned but she stopped it just in time. Li unfolded a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘You’ll find Yu Guangming here,’ he said. ‘Hopefully we can bring this terrible business to an end and safely recover your colleague.’
Lara looked at the address, it meant nothing to her. She passed it over to Sharon Wang.
Li levelled his gaze at Lara. ‘You are a remarkable young woman, Ms Sumich. I do not appreciate your methods but I certainly admire your tenacity and your decisiveness. I wish you success in your endeavours.’ He turned to leave.
‘One moment, Mr Li,’ said Sharon Wang. ‘I request that you and your daughter attend Police Headquarters this afternoon for an interview.’
‘I believe I have some business appointments.’
‘Cancel them. As you are aware, there is now a great deal of local and international scrutiny of these matters. It is important that we are seen to be diligent in our investigations, without fear or favour.’
Phoebe’s lawyer face was well and truly back. Li was also having some difficulty holding his composure. ‘As you wish, Ms Wang, these are turbulent times. Be we princes, satraps, or peasants, we all must learn to chart the stormy waters or be dashed upon the rocks.’
