The Case of the Chinese Boxes Read online

  She may not have been trying to implicate me but that was certainly the way I felt. Someone had followed me there that day and I’d been so busy following Mrs Chen’s man I hadn’t noticed. You are a woman. You are invisible. I hadn’t been invisible on the streets of Glebe that day. I felt sick.

  I poured myself some coffee and swallowed its bitterness like some sort of penance.

  ‘What’s so special about the key that they are willing to go to these lengths to get it?’

  ‘The key is a symbol of power for the Chen family. Without it we are like Samson without his hair. Without the key the Sun Yee On could squeeze us out of Chinatown just like that.’ Her fingers curled inwards and made a fist. ‘The key is passed from father to eldest son but Charles . . . ’ she pursed her lips, ‘Charles does not have the strength of his father. He is not yet ready to become the keeper of the key. In the meantime, its power is invested in me.’

  ‘What is its particular power?’

  She was on the edge, afraid to take the final step, as if the words themselves might make the thing happen.

  ‘The key opens boxes, doesn’t it?’ I said.

  She bowed her head in a slow, deliberate movement.

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘I believe that is part of the power of the key.’

  She poured two more coffees and offered me one. This time I didn’t refuse. I held the cup in my hand. So small, so delicate, if you didn’t handle it carefully it would smash to pieces.

  Mrs Chen rested a spoonful of sugar on the surface of the coffee and we both watched it slowly turn brown. Brown sugar, the sweet sickly taste. Brown sugar, the sweet sickly smoke hitting the back of your throat.

  I watched her slowly take a sip.

  ‘The boxes are a symbol of power for the Sun Yee On Tong. They are believed to contain great treasure. For centuries the key and the boxes have been separated. So that the power is divided. Now the Tong has moved into Australia. If the leader were to possess the key he would have everything, the Chen power as well.’

  She looked up at me and held my gaze. ‘For Alice I would give up the key.’

  Her voice was barely above a whisper, as if it was coming from a place deep within her.

  ‘You realise,’ I said just as softly, ‘that the key may well be irretrievable. They may have dumped it, had it scrapped.’

  ‘No, Miss Valentine, the key exists and it must be found. There is no alternative.’

  This was the sort of attitude that built empires, but for want of a nail empires were lost.

  ‘I will pay any amount of money for its safe return.’

  ‘There are some things even your money won’t buy. Perhaps it is time to bring in the police.’

  Mrs Chen’s body clenched as tight as the fist she’d made a few moments ago. ‘I was not to inform the police about this matter. If they suspect police they will kill Alice.’

  ‘Do you really think that once they have the key they will simply hand Alice over?’

  It was the hope that all parents have, that their child in danger will be returned safely, that its disappearance is a moment out of time, that once the child is returned clocks will start ticking again, steady as a heart beat.

  ‘They must.’

  I looked at Mrs Chen’s face, the one she wanted me to see, and the other. The one that moved when she moved, that stayed still when she did, that disappeared if you looked at it full on. The shadow that was tacked onto her like a secret. A prominent and respected businessman in Sydney’s Chinatown. It was not businessman, it was businesswomen.

  The Dragonhead of the Chinatown Triad was Mrs Chen.

  I got up and walked over to the window. Down below in the street life strolled by. The life that Mrs Chen controlled. The life built on the dragon’s back. The life that was in danger of falling off when the dragon woke from her sleep, that would burn in her breath.

  Mrs Chen and the leader of the other Tong; two Dragonheads vying for the pearl of prosperity.

  When I came back from the window I saw not the Dragonhead but a woman in distress, a woman who feared for the life of the child she loved.

  Finding one small child in this city would be the same as trying to find the key. A needle in a haystack. But there was much more at stake now. And I wasn’t just doing a job anymore. I was implicated: I was the one who had led them to Alice.

  ‘Do you have any idea where they might be keeping her?’

  Mrs Chen’s eyebrows moved together like two neat tadpoles. ‘She is not here in Chinatown. I would know if it was Chinatown.’

  I looked at her. Briefly this time. Nothing moves in Chinatown without you swatting it, does it Mrs Chen? But something is moving, shifting; empires are not eternal. And empresses can’t rule without their symbols of power.

  ‘Next time they let Alice talk to you, listen for background sound, ask her what the room is like, what she can see out of the window. Maybe they’ll let her send you a drawing. Keep up the communication as long as possible.’

  ‘You will find the key, Miss Valentine?’

  I thought of the meeting at St Mary’s. It was a long shot and I didn’t want to raise Mrs Chen’s hopes.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  I was too close to the hospital to pass up the opportunity. I thought of phoning first, but the occasion warranted a personal appearance. It was late in the day. I hoped I’d catch Steve before he left.

  To my dismay the clinic was still in session and there were quite a few people waiting. I started to head off again.

  ‘’Ere ya, love,’ said a chap in a red and blue check flannel shirt, whose strings of hair had been plastered across his bald patch. He was patting an empty spot beside him on the bench. I hesitated. And was lost. I sat down. He stuck an elbow in my ribs. ‘’Ow long ’ave you ’ad yours done?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘How’s yours keeping up?’

  ‘Like a bloody bewdy. That Dr Angell’s orright.’ I refrained from telling him Steve wasn’t a doctor; it might have given him another heart attack. ‘Ya know the funny thing about it?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘The medication. The bloody medication. A nip of whisky before meals. Doctor’s order!’ he beamed.

  ‘Well, don’t overdo it,’ I said. ‘Keep it down to a nip.’

  The door to Steve’s office opened. There were voices and an elderly gent appeared. He nodded his head in a final goodbye. Then Steve appeared, hands casually in the pockets of his hospital jacket. His eyes scanned the faces in the waiting room, alighting briefly on mine. His smile set for a moment, a slight tensing of muscles, then he moved on. ‘Mr McCarty?’

  The gent in the blue and red flannel shirt stood up as if he’d been picked out of a television audience for a special prize.

  Steve made no other acknowledgement of my presence there.

  It had been a mistake to come in the first place. How would I feel if he’d turned up while I was on the job? My cheeks flushed hot; it felt like there were ants crawling round inside them. I stood up again.

  ‘I’ll see you in a minute, Ms Valentine,’ he said. Then more quietly, ‘Patience was never one of your virtues.’

  I sat down. No-one talked to me. I stuck my head in a magazine and waited.

  ‘Got a problem with your heart?’

  I sat there and he stood, the air thick between us.

  ‘I want to talk,’ I said.

  ‘Always what you want, eh Claudia?’

  I breathed heavily, tightening my lips.

  ‘Well,’ he said, after a while, ‘are you coming into my office or do you want to thrash this out in public?’

  I chose the office.

  ‘Look, whatever it is, I want ... I’d like us to sort it out. I’d like to . . . open negotiations.’

  ‘So, open.’ He wasn’t being very helpful and there was still tension in his voice.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

  ‘Look, I’m a
pretty easygoing guy but I’m not going to jump through a hoop every time you snap your fingers.’

  ‘What is it?’ I said softly. ‘Aren’t I saying “please” and “thank you” enough?’

  He shifted position, leaning forward now. ‘Something like that. You’re not the sort of person to pussyfoot around; you ask straight questions and you like straight answers. OK, so things are tough out there, your job is tough.’ He leaned further towards me. ‘But it doesn’t have to be tough in here with me, Claudia.’

  ‘I know, I know, the toughness is an occupational hazard. Sometimes I forget to turn it off.’

  I didn’t expect happily-ever-after from Steve. I didn’t expect it from anyone. In the dark night all you had was yourself but it was nice, more than nice, to know there was another human being there and that you could rest easy with him. Have the boundaries disappear if only for a little while.

  But what I was doing was more than just a job. I’d moulded myself into it, it had become part of me, part of being myself, of taking action in the world. Not sitting at home and hearing about the world from someone else. I didn’t believe I had to make a choice at this moment; I didn’t believe this was a showdown, merely an impasse.

  ‘I know all that,’ said Steve. ‘I live with it. Not all the time, just occasionally, but lately the occasionally has become too frequent.’

  ‘Would you rather I didn’t involve you in my work.’

  He smiled. ‘No, not really. It sure beats the hell out of checking these old geezers’ pacemakers in the excitement stakes. But why does Charlie Chan have to be in on everything?’

  ‘Charles Chen?’ It took me a minute to realise he meant James Ho.

  My old mate James Ho. All that stuff about snapping my fingers may have been true but that’s not what was needling Steve. It was James Ho.

  ‘He’s in it, and has been since the beginning, since before the beginning maybe. But I didn’t ask him in and it wasn’t him I asked to bug Mrs Chen, it was you. Lucy must have told you he was nosing around in Chinatown. Did she say anything about him the other night?’

  ‘Nothing you’d like to hear. She’s a little concerned about you poking your nose in Mrs Chen’s business.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Big wheel in Chinatown. Rolls right over some people.’

  ‘Her granddaughter’s been kidnapped. I don’t care about the rest.’

  We were back to talking about business again.

  ‘Heard anything interesting on the phone?’ As soon as it had blundered out of my mouth I knew it had been the wrong thing to say.

  ‘I’ve been doing my job all day, not yours. And I’m still doing it. I’ll give you a call sometime,’ he said, dismissing me.

  I closed the door behind me and didn’t turn around. I walked down the stairs and out into the street. The setting sun was splashing colour in the sky. Bright, far too bright for how I was feeling.

  There was a snarl of traffic at White Bay but once I turned off the Crescent it eased up. I drove along Federal Street skirting the now black waters of Rozelle Bay. The other side was park and there wasn’t anyone about except a man walking his greyhounds. I turned right, entering the leafy streets of large houses and pulled up alongside the brick wall of the temple grounds.

  The gates that had been open on my first visit were now shut, the green lions guarding them. There was a buzzer by one of the lions. I pressed it, announced myself, and heard a click.

  The big camphor laurel cast shadow on the lawn that was now fully mown. It looked like a snowfield. Not white though, shades of grey. There was a light on in the office and up the back behind the banana palms a dull orange glow, perhaps the light from a kerosene lamp.

  Standing like a sentinel at the doorway was the monk in the maroon robes.

  ‘I am here on behalf of Mrs Chen.’

  He nodded acknowledgement. ‘Would you like tea?’

  This might take some time but I guessed that’s how things went at the temple. I might also learn some patience, I thought ruefully. I was in no hurry. I had all night if necessary.

  The tea had been stewing on the stove but it didn’t taste bitter.

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’ he invited.

  It looked like a physical impossibility in there, even on the floor.

  He flicked a switch and a light went on outside near the tables and chairs. We went out. A few insects hovered round the light while others dive-bombed like kamikaze pilots.

  The girl had been taken in the early hours of Monday morning, the morning after I had visited the temple. She was there at midnight and when he’d checked again at six she was gone.

  Was he the only other person on the premise?

  No. A woman who worked for Mrs Chen had been asleep in the same room as the girl but she had not woken. I asked for her name. He said Mrs Chen would tell me.

  ‘What about the boy up the back?’ He looked at me silently. ‘The boy who sleeps under the tarpaulin.’

  ‘He is the gardener; he stays here sometimes.’

  Sometimes must have been fairly often. He was here on my first visit and I was pretty sure he was up there now.

  ‘I’d like to talk to him.’

  ‘Wait one moment. I will see if he is here.’

  Who else would it be burning a kerosene lamp up there? Maybe he was going through some sort of rites of passage, pretending he was in the wilderness, fending off wild mosquitoes among the banana palms.

  Sifu walked into the night garden.

  When he was around the corner of the building I walked in the same direction. I stood at the edge of the path watching. The lamp went out then there was some dark movement up there. I walked up to where the light had been. I saw a shadow coming towards me. Sifu.

  Then I saw another. Climbing over the back wall.

  I sprinted up there and scaled the wall.

  On the other side the boy was running down the street, shirt-tails flying. I started running after him. He heard my footsteps and looked back for a second. I gained a few steps on him. He ran around the corner. I got to the corner in time to see him fling open the door of an orange Kombivan. I reached him before he had time to close the door. He swung his feet out to kick me away. I blocked his legs with my forearm and swept them up so that he did a clumsy sort of somersault in the front seat. I took the keys out of the ignition and threw them out onto the street.

  He smelled like a wet puppy and was looking at me with huge eyes.

  I said, ‘I’m not going to bite you. I probably won’t even bark. Where are you off to in such a hurry?’

  He didn’t answer, merely sat there with his lips pursed as if I was about to try and prise them open to get the information. In the streetlight I could see the sweat glistening on him. I watched the hands and feet carefully but he didn’t really look like he was going to move them in my direction.

  ‘I put in a polite request to speak to you and you not so politely jumped over the fence,’ I said, in soft you-can-trust-me tones. ‘Just what did that man say to you?’

  ‘He’s not “that man”, he’s Sifu. The Master.’ He said it like a truculent child.

  ‘OK. Sifu.’ I said it like a sigh.

  ‘He said you were a cop and that you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘One out of two. I want to talk to you but I’m not a cop.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he said, looking into his lap.

  ‘Considering the circumstances perhaps we can start with what you don’t want me to know. What you had to run away from.’

  Silence filled the van.

  I gave him a mental nudge and repeated, ‘I’m not a cop.’

  He remained sullen. He didn’t look old enough to have a driver’s licence. That didn’t mean he couldn’t drive though.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Can I see your driver’s licence?’

  ‘I don’t have it on me.’

  ‘Rego papers?’

&
nbsp; He stuck out his bottom lip.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, I can check it.’

  ‘Why would you want to?’ He looked startled.

  ‘Why would you not want me to?’

  The silence came in like a tide.

  ‘Perhaps we should go back and talk with Sifu. You might feel more comfortable in his company.’

  He sat with a sulky look on his face.

  ‘What do you do at the temple?’

  ‘I garden. And,’ he added more reluctantly, ‘I am a pupil of Sifu. I am learning the Way.’

  ‘Do you live there, up among the banana palms?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘It’s a nice spot. Doesn’t it get cold in winter?’

  ‘I haven’t been there in winter.’

  ‘What do your parents think of you living here?’

  I’d finally put my finger on the trigger.

  ‘They don’t know.’

  ‘And I guess they wouldn’t like it, eh? They’d worry you didn’t have clean underwear, enough warm jumpers.’

  He smiled for the first time. The teeth were yellowish.

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t dob you in.’ I felt like I was down the back of the school toilets having a smoke.

  ‘Did you know the little girl who was staying here?’

  ‘Alice? Yeah, she was my little mate, used to help me with the weeding and stuff.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She went back to her uncle’s.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘One day she just wasn’t there.’

  ‘Were you here that night? The night before she . . . left?’

  ‘I’ve been here for the last three months, every night.’

  ‘Did you notice anything that night? Noises?’

  He shrugged again. ‘Why should I? Sifu sometimes has visitors. I don’t know. I look after myself up there.’

  ‘Did he have any visitors that night?’

  He thought about it. ‘Don’t think so. Don’t remember.’

  ‘What do you do up there by yourself at night?’

  ‘I study mostly, meditate.’