The Case of the Chinese Boxes Read online

  Jez Smith

  Marele Day grew up in Sydney and graduated from Sydney University with BA (Hons). Her work experience ranges from fruit picking to academic teaching and she has travelled extensively, taking up temporary residence in Italy, France and Ireland.

  The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender (1988) was Marele Day’s first thriller, followed by The Case of the Chinese Boxes (1990), The Last Tango of Dolores Delgado (1992) which won the 1993 Shamus Crime Fiction Award, and The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi (1994). In 1996, Day was the general editor of and contributor to How to Write Crime. And in 1997, Day published her bestselling literary novel, Lambs of God, to acclaim in Australia and overseas.

  THE CASE OF THE CHINESE BOXES

  MARELE DAY

  ALLEN & UNWIN

  Copyright © Marele Day 1990

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in 1990 by

  Allen & Unwin

  This edition was published in 1998 by

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:

  (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax:

  (61 2)9906 2218

  E-mail:

  [email protected]

  Web:

  www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Day, Marele.

  The case of the Chinese boxes.

  ISBN 1 86448 671 6.

  eISBN 978 1 74269 514 3

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Set in 10.5/12pt Sabon by DOCUPRO, Sydney

  Contents

  The Case of the Chinese Boxes

  For G.M., who pushed the envelope

  ‘You are a woman. You are invisible.’

  I turned at the sound of her voice and we looked at each other evenly, eye to beautifully made-up eye.

  The heat was on. And it wasn’t just the temperature.

  The address hadn’t been difficult to find—the ground floor flat of a corner block. I turned into the car-lined street. One of the cars was a white Merc with black tinted windows but I guessed that wasn’t too unusual for Woollahra. I walked up to the ground floor flat and peered in through the screen-door. It was not quite a residence and not quite an office either. I had the distinct impression the premises had been hired for the occasion. I looked at my watch—two minutes past the appointed hour and no-one about. I tried the handle of the screen-door. It wasn’t locked.

  The interior was plush; galah pink and grey which would fade in a few years to the status of flared trousers. A pink corded sofa and a glass-topped table the size of a tennis court. A charcoal coloured desk in one corner with a swivel chair either side.

  I looked at the areas people didn’t normally look at. The corners of the ceiling and the corners of the floor. The pink, grey and black paintings which I discovered were fixed to the wall. The rug that came up easily and revealed nothing.

  The phone on the desk rang. I waited around but still no-one came. I didn’t imagine it would be for me but I couldn’t overcome the natural urge to answer it.

  It was for me. A woman’s cultured voice telling me that Mr Chen would be there presently and to make myself comfortable.

  I settled into the pink corded sofa. It was hot outside and not much better in here. On the tennis court table was a stack of magazines and a coffee tray. The tray was ornate and gold and looked like it shouldn’t have been left unattended. On the tray was a pot of coffee. Put here fairly recently, judging by the heat of it. Surrounding it were some exquisite Chinese cups, thin as eggshell and decorated with miniature dragons breathing fire. The coffee smelled inviting. I felt like Alice in front of the DRINK ME bottles. I hesitated, but like Alice I was curious. I relaxed a little. I wasn’t exactly twelve years old and nubile. I poured some coffee into a cup and put it to my lips. I took a mouthful and rolled it around in my mouth a little, letting the taste-buds do a fast analysis. All I could taste was coffee, an Italian mocha blend. I waited a while but I didn’t get any smaller. Nor did I see any white rabbits. But I was getting increasingly curious about the mysterious Mr Chen. Someone else had made the initial appointment for him. And had rung to make sure I was here.

  And now he was keeping me waiting.

  I wasn’t even sure Chen was his real name. It sounded like the Chinese equivalent of Smith or Jones. Maybe he was a well-known businessman who wanted to keep his business with me quiet. People usually do.

  I flicked through the stack of magazines—Far Eastern Economic Review, Asiaweek, South China Morning Post. It all looked pretty dry and fiscal. There were photos of clean-shaven men in business suits. They looked pretty dry and fiscal as well.

  I got up and opened the window to let some air in, then went back to the sofa and sat fanning myself with the South China Morning Post.

  I heard a car door slam and straightened up the magazines. I hadn’t heard a car pull up.

  A man and a woman entered and I stood up to meet them.

  They looked alike, maybe a brother and an older sister. I wondered if they were the advance guard. Both had finely sculpted faces and were immaculately dressed. But there were differences. The guy tripped on the rug as he came in and the woman didn’t.

  Silently the woman closed the door and window. Then she sat down in the same spot on the sofa that I’d occupied. The seat was probably still warm.

  I thought about opening the window again but it was hardly the thing to do. I was on their ground—if they could take the heat so could I.

  The young man sat in one of the chairs at the desk and with a somewhat floppy hand movement, invited me to take the other. Little beads of perspiration formed on his upper lip as he opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Good morning, I am Mr Chen.’

  Mr Chen was not quite what I’d expected.

  ‘Claudia Valentine,’ I said, offering my hand over the desk. With my other hand I turned on my pocket cassette recorder.

  ‘You were not followed here?’ he asked.

  ‘Not unless you saw someone while you were sitting in the car.’

  His hand shot up to smooth hair that was already slicked down with gel. He glanced quickly at the woman on the sofa, startled at having been found out but also impressed. He turned back and steadied his milky fingers in prayer position. Mr Chen was a nervous boy.

  ‘We have invited you here to discuss a rather delicate matter.’ He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. ‘My family has business interests in Chinatown.’ Money was always a delicate matter, especially when you had a lot of it. ‘You may remember the bank robbery in Chinatown a few weeks ago, safety deposit boxes.’ Especially when a lot of it went missing.

  In the quiet holiday period after New Year the Chinatown bank robbery had scooped all the headlines. Then it had dropped mysteriously out of the media except for a short follow-up in a Sunday newspaper which stated that only half of the eighty victims of the heist had come forward to declare their losses. Hardly surprising considering that the contents of safety deposit boxes were ‘safe’ from the prying eyes of the Taxation Office.

  The heist wasn’t going to do the private eye business any harm either. Maybe this case would be the first of many that would come my way. I liked the efficiency of doing one lot of work for several clients. It was neat. Very neat and the research was recyclable.

  These thoughts went through
my head in the time it took to nod to Mr Chen. Yes. I remembered the bank robbery.

  He continued. Many of the families in Chinatown lost a lot of money in that robbery, but more importantly they lost irreplaceable family heirlooms. ‘Ours was such a loss. A small item but . . . ’ He looked towards the sofa and changed tack. ‘It is not the monetary worth, it is the great sentimental value, a family heirloom.’

  He took a photo from the inside pocket of his Armani jacket and handed it to me. It was a photo of a key.

  An antique key made of gold. With a tubular shaft and at one end six teeth. It must have been an intricate lock that key fitted. But that wasn’t what commanded my attention.

  It was the dragon at the crown of the key—the same fire-breathing dragon that decorated the coffee cups.

  ‘This key is one of the items that went missing during the robbery. We would like you to find it. The thieves may still have it. We would like you to find them and make them an offer. A considerable offer. For return of the key, no questions asked.’

  He leant back in the chair and breathed a sigh of relief, as if he had been rehearsing for weeks and the performance was now over.

  ‘What makes you think I can succeed where the police have so far failed?’

  ‘You are a woman. You are invisible.’

  I turned at the sound of her voice and we looked at each other evenly, eye to beautifully made-up eye.

  The heat was on. And it wasn’t just the temperature.

  It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

  But I liked long odds.

  They were waiting for my answer.

  I nodded my head.

  ‘So. We are agreed?’ said Mr Chen.

  ‘We are agreed,’ I echoed, turning back to him.

  The woman came over to the desk and smoothly retrieved the photo I was still holding. ‘No need to burden you with this,’ she said, as if doing me a favour by lightening my load.

  I didn’t really need the photo; there weren’t too many keys like that around. If it was still around.

  ‘What’s it the key to?’ I asked.

  She smiled indulgently. In a minute she’d be telling me to run along and play. ‘It is not the key to anything, it is a family heirloom. Charles?’

  Mr Chen dived into his pocket again and produced a cheque. For a thousand dollars.

  ‘This will be satisfactory for the moment?’

  ‘That’s fine.’ I was trying to sound like thousand dollar cheques happened to me every day.

  ‘You will of course give us progress reports and we will be of whatever assistance we can.’ She handed me a business card. ‘You can contact my son or myself on this number.’

  Son? She was his mother? When we got a bit friendlier I might ask her what skin creme she used. If she was the sort of person you got friendly with.

  I looked at the card. The Red Dragon. A restaurant, the proprietor of which was Mrs Victoria Chen.

  I waited in my car long enough to see Charles and Victoria Chen get into the white Merc with the black tinted windows, then I drove to Randwick to pick up my kids. It was late in the day. I would start earning my thousand dollars tomorrow. Tomorrow the school holidays would be over and the kids would be returning to their father. It was usually a slack period for me—even crims go on holidays—but if a job cropped up, Mina was a more than willing babysitter. That suited me fine. I liked to keep my kids well out of the way of my business.

  I parked in the driveway of the old suburban house and walked round the back. I could hear the kids squealing and came round the corner to see them firing at each other with water-pistols.

  ‘G’day, Mum,’ said Amy breathlessly.

  ‘Mum!’ shouted David, and squirted the pistol at me. I twirled around but he got me anyway.

  Mina stirred under her big sun-hat and coughed a throaty cough as she eased herself up on the banana chair. Her white slacks were rolled up to her knees, showing the legs that had once been compared to Betty Grable’s. They still looked good. Freshly painted red toenails peeped out of the white sandals. Even at home my mother dressed as if a Hollywood agent might drop in on her. I stubbed out the cigarette smouldering in the ashtray. There was a sizeable pile of butts there already.

  ‘Hello, love,’ she greeted me, ‘how did the interview go?’

  ‘Got the job.’

  ‘Good girl!’ she exclaimed, patting me on the arm.

  I’d given up trying to convince my mother that meetings with clients weren’t auditions. Though the idea of a chorus line of private investigators strutting their stuff was an interesting proposition.

  Legwork was all part of the game and I fancied my high kicks would make an interesting variation to the average gum-shoe shuffle.

  ‘Want a drink?’ I knew it wouldn’t be alcohol. My father had drunk enough of that for all of us. ‘I’ve got some . . . David, stop that!’ she shouted.

  I turned around in time to see a rather wet cat sprinting into the neighbour’s yard. David looked at me with his lips tightened, not sure which way the wind would blow. I raised my eyebrows at him and he tightened his lips even more, trying to suppress the grin. Amy crept up behind him, water-pistol at the ready.

  ‘. . . juice in the fridge,’ Mina finished her interrupted sentence.

  ‘Gotcha!’ shouted Amy as David yelped. The game reeled on.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I said. ‘Amy, David, you’d better wind things up if you want to go down to Darling Harbour tonight.’

  ‘Can we go back to your place first?’ asked Amy.

  ‘Why? You got a pressing need to tidy up your Lego?’

  ‘I wanna see that man in the pub. The one with the black teeth that talks to himself.’

  ‘Well, he’ll still be there when we get home.’ There was no fear of missing George. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave.

  ‘You know what, Mum? David reckons he’s our grandfather.’

  Mina and I looked at each other. This time it was our turn to tighten our lips.

  It wasn’t to suppress a grin.

  My ingenuity as a child-minder had been tested during these long summer holidays. As the part-time parent I felt my role was to fill the weeks together with such memorable occasions that when the kids went back to their father’s place in Queensland there would be enough sparkling memories of the bright city lights to last them till the next visit.

  Tonight all the lights would be on.

  We were on our way to the Lantern Festival at Darling Harbour. Once a spectacular dream in an architect’s eye, it had become just another shopping mall, big and brash, as sanitised as laundered money, but the kids stared at it wide-eyed.

  I had, against all principle, consented to a ride on the monorail and sat quietly as the kids pressed their noses to the glass and looked at the star-spangled banner of Sydney.

  ‘It looks like my train-set at home,’ said David as we returned to the Harbourside shopping mall and walked down the steps.

  ‘Yes, well it is a toy. A big boy’s toy,’ I said, and headed them off towards Tumbalong Park.

  All around the park area were conventional Chinese lanterns, red tassels swaying in the breeze; and there were other decorations—spangly red fish and Chinese junks made of cellophane and bamboo. The moon, full and fat, floated like a balloon in the light night sky. Lit up beside it was the white needle of Centrepoint Tower.

  A good-sized crowd had gathered in the park for the Lantern Festival. A portable stage was in place and we squeezed in right up close, sitting on plastic bags on the night-moist grass so that those behind could see over our heads. The average age of the crowd was about seven.

  While waiting for the ceremony to begin, Amy and David eyed up other kids the way children do, aware that they were in the world of peers and that the adults were outnumbered. Many of the kids were Chinese. I wondered whether the Lantern Festival tugged at their roots or if it was just another tourist attraction. The prize for the winner of each sect
ion of the lantern-making competition was a bank account with a deposit of a hundred dollars. I was glad the banks of Chinatown still had something in the coffers to offer children.

  There was a sudden hush as the compere appeared. With his shining yellow robe and mitred hat he looked like a bishop. Underneath, white trousers and white shoes peeped out. The bishop’s cheeks were rouged and there were touches of make-up around the eyes and mouth. He held the portable microphone like a true professional: ‘I can hear the full moon, you’re so quiet. Can you all hear the full moon?’

  ‘Yes!’ the little liars ready to believe this conjurer’s magic shouted in one resounding high-pitched boom.

  He announced the winners in each age group and they paraded their lanterns around the stage, subtly directed by the magician’s assistant who also hauled off those who, dazzled by the lights of precocious fame and fortune, lingered too long. The winners got a bank account and fortune cookies as well. Then all the kids got fortune cookies, including David and Amy who held out their hands to the nice Chinese lady like dogs begging for biscuits.

  They came back to me unrolling the cheap thin paper. ‘You will be pretty and rich,’ read Amy through a shower of fortune cookie crumbs. ‘You will have good fortune,’ read David.

  ‘It’s good luck,’ I said when he assed me what four tunes it meant.

  Suddenly there was a flash of gold and a hand grabbed mine. I felt the pain as my fingers were sharply crushed into the palm of my hand. Then just as abruptly the pressure was released. It all happened in a second. I’d been caught off guard. I didn’t even have time to see who’d done it.

  I scanned the faces in the crowd, not even sure what I was looking for. Eyes that might quickly avoid my gaze, eyes that might give me a glint of recognition, a flash of gold in the darkness of the park, a figure stealing away into the shadows?

  I scanned the whole area but all I saw were happy families.

  My assailant had disappeared completely.