The Case of the Chinese Boxes Read online

  ‘What were you doing that night?’

  ‘Probably the same.’

  ‘Do you think you can be more definite? It was only a week ago. Sunday night. The day visitors come.’

  ‘I usually make myself scarce when they’re around; it’s all families and kids, you know the scene.’

  I hadn’t heard that phrase for years. On a religious trip, living out in the jungle in the middle of the inner city, maybe someone ought to preserve this guy as part of the National Heritage.

  ‘And that night?’

  ‘Well, they all go about sunset; that’s usually when I come back. I don’t have lessons with Sifu on Sundays. So, up to my shack, do a bit of reading.’

  ‘You weren’t out all of that day. I saw you, asleep in your shack.’

  ‘Maybe. In the afternoon there’s not so many people about. They come in the morning. Offer prayers, have a cup of tea and a chat, the kids play around.’

  ‘Did Alice play with the kids?’

  ‘No, she stayed in her room when there were other people around.’

  ‘Did you ever wonder about that?’

  ‘No.’ His response was genuine. I suppose when you are on the Way you don’t ask questions, you just accept the Master’s wisdom, when and if he decides to drop a pearl of it on you. Like Inspector Clouseau, you never know where the next lesson is coming from.

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Quite serious. She didn’t play much outside and when she did the old woman kept watch over her, even when we were weeding the garden.’ He looked at me with those child’s eyes. ‘She was in trouble, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know why she was being kept here?’

  ‘Buddhists don’t question their life, they accept it, detach themselves from it.’

  I hoped he wasn’t going to start preaching.

  ‘You mentioned an old woman. Who was she?’

  ‘She watched the child. Just sat there, watched.’

  ‘Where did she stay?’

  ‘In the temple. In Alice’s room.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She left.’

  I’d gone as far as I could with him. ‘Want to go back?’

  We got out of the van. I picked up the keys and handed them to him. He didn’t drive off, he came back.

  Sifu was still waiting at the tables beneath the camphor laurel.

  ‘Sifu,’ I said respectfully, ‘may I see the child’s room?’

  It was upstairs. The window that had framed her face so precisely was opposite the door. There were two narrow beds. There was no other furniture apart from a bedside cupboard with a shrine on top of it. The place was clean. I wondered if it had been Sifu who was so meticulous with this room while his office remained a mess.

  ‘Has the room been cleaned since . . . ?’

  His head moved diagonally, almost from side to side, the movement which in the East signifies yes, but which looks like no to western eyes.

  ‘It is a guest room.’ As if he was expecting more children to be brought to the sanctuary of the temple. For Alice that sanctuary had been only temporary.

  ‘Yet you left the offerings.’

  There was an orange cut into segments and some little crawling critters anxious to be offered to Buddha, or perhaps anxious only to suck the sweet juices and turn them into vinegar. The floor of the shrine was powdery with incense ash and wafted up the smell of what was once sandalwood.

  I opened the drawer of the bedside cupboard. It was full of messages written on thin strips of paper. Fortune cookie messages, some of them run-of-the mill printed ones, others handwritten from Grandma to Alice. They weren’t messages anymore, just scraps of paper.

  On the wall were child’s drawings. They were done in Texta pens. She had a good eye for detail.

  Sifu brushed the crawly things off the fruit.

  ‘Where are her Textas?’ He looked at me blankly. ‘Pens—for drawing. Did she take them with her?’

  ‘I did not find drawing pens.’

  They had let her take them? To keep the child quiet? Maybe the kidnappers were kindly. But I didn’t like her chances.

  I looked under the bed, an area that men seldom clean, not even Masters. There was a pink object like a bent sausage, and lots of dust. I reached my hand in and felt something cold and mildly clammy. I brought it out to the light. It was a doll’s arm. But there wasn’t a one-armed doll in the room that I could see.

  ‘She had a doll?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  He didn’t know. So the child took with her the doll and the Texta pens. It must have been some comfort to her. I could do with a bit of comfort myself.

  Mrs Chen looked almost pleased to see me. Hopeful yet apprehensive. I knew how she felt.

  ‘The old woman that was looking after Alice. I’d like to talk to her.’

  ‘Her English is not good.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll help out, Mrs Chen.’

  She smiled. There was relief in that gesture. ‘I have questioned her myself.’

  ‘I’m sure you have, but I might ask different questions.’

  She went away. I looked out at the Daimler on the gravel and thought about the first time I’d come here to the Chen mansion. It didn’t feel anywhere near so opulent now.

  Mrs Chen came back with a woman slowly but surely shuffling behind her. She must have been a hundred. She was wearing a grey silk pants suit with little black motifs on it. Her feet were remarkably small.

  ‘This is Amah.’

  The woman looked at me with bright beady eyes. Eyes that looked like they wouldn’t miss a trick.

  It didn’t take me long to realise that Mrs Chen was right about her English. She was limited to ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’. We couldn’t carry on a conversation without Mrs Chen’s intervention.

  ‘What’s the story so far?’

  ‘She says she was knocked out.’

  ‘Any damage?’ She looked like even a light tap to the head would be enough to send her permanently to nirvana.

  ‘Nothing that is visible. There are ways of doing it that don’t leave a trace.’ I looked at Mrs Chen. Once again I saw the Dragonhead.

  ‘Did she see them? Before they knocked her out?’

  ‘No. She was sleeping; they hardly disturbed the bed.’

  They must have been quiet. Quiet as thieves in the night. Old ladies are light sleepers, particularly when on the alert for the night sounds of a child.

  So I didn’t have a witness. Either she was lying or the kidnappers had been very careful.

  ‘Ask her about the doll,’ I said.

  Apparently the child slept with it.

  ‘Was it there after Alice disappeared?’

  No.

  ‘What about the Texta pens?’

  She didn’t know. She didn’t look in the drawers. She was only concerned about one thing missing from the room. The child.

  Though it was Mrs Chen doing most of the answering I directed my questions each time to Amah, looking at her eyes for any flicker, for something the words might not tell me. I looked and I listened. But the kidnappers made sure she had no story to tell. I talked to the old woman some more but she had nothing to add to the picture.

  I drove back to the city and home via Chinatown. Slowly.

  A wind had come up and a few pieces of garbage gushed into the air like paper birds. People winced in the wind, thrusting their hands in their pockets and hunching their heads down low in their collars; others confronted it head on. But mostly the streets of Chinatown were empty. I looked for Alice. Hoping. Knowing she wouldn’t be there.

  Wind was the worst sort of weather for the city. Under the sun the harbour sparkled and in the rain, well, that grey rain is what cities are about. But the wind blows up the canyons of the streets, blowing the city’s grit into your face.

  I kept the car window open. I always have it open unless there are hailstones pounding in.

  I
was crossing the upward curve of the flyover to my part of the city. Not in Chinatown. Where would you hide a Chinese kid? Among other Chinese. Cabramatta. It was a long shot but I had to start somewhere and no other road looked like it was going to lead anywhere promising. But as I know from my first visit I stuck out like a sore thumb in Cabramatta.

  It had to be someone who could blend in with the scenery. Who was more invisible than I had proved to be.

  As far as I could see there was only one candidate.

  When I got home I rang the Airport Hilton. I described James Ho to them. They told me there were a number of Asians staying who answered that description. In Italian kung fu shoes? They told me they never looked at their guests’ feet. They hung up pretty quickly after that.

  It was probably just as well. I had the feeling James Ho knew a whole lot more about this matter than he was telling me.

  I had a quiet Scotch. I closed the french doors against the wind and lay on the bed. I was there to clear my mind and watch the thoughts floating across the still lake. There was plenty for me to think about alone in that bed. For a start there was Steve. Those thoughts crept in like unwelcome guests. I let them drift on, out of my line of vision. I closed my eyes, softly, slowly, and sent the relaxed movement of the eyelids through the entire body. I pictured Alice, the image of her framed in the window. I held it there and pulled it across the boundary into sleep.

  It seemed a strange thing to do but it had a sense of urgency. I had to talk to Charles. Who’d been kept out of the limelight. Outshone by the powerful number of watts emanating from his mother. Then it became less strange; he was, after all, the child’s father.

  I rang the Chen residence. The phone was answered immediately. I identified myself and stated my purpose.

  When Charles came to the phone he asked if I wouldn’t rather talk to his mother. I told him I’d done that already. Several times. He didn’t know if he could be of much help. I didn’t know either but it was worth a try.

  I was going to the Chen residence so frequently lately that I wondered whether it wouldn’t be more convenient to rent a room there. The hired hands even smiled at me now.

  Charles and I sat in the room with the heavy red curtains.

  ‘Your mother not here?’

  ‘No.’ That was just the way I wanted it. I wanted to hear Charles’ story, without his mother there putting words in his mouth. ‘She’s at the restaurant, in case the phone there . . . ’

  ‘Have you had any more calls?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you say they were going to ring? Didn’t you have an ultimatum?’

  ‘Friday. The key must be returned by Friday.’

  ‘Not a lot of time, is it? There’s a faint possibility but . . . We should think of alternative ways to . . . extricate Alice.’

  Extricate—to remove or free from complications, hindrance or difficulty; disentangle.

  I had the feeling that life for Alice would never be free of those things, even if she was returned to the Chens.

  ‘Can we have a cup of coffee, Charles?’

  He looked startled. ‘Coffee? Yes, coffee . . . I’m sorry I . . . He’d forgotten his manners. He pressed a buzzer and the girl dressed like a French maid appeared. He said something to her in Chinese, she did a sort of bow and went away.

  ‘Cigarette?’ he said, offering me a lacquer cigarette case with gold hinges.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said politely.

  He lit one for himself and put the case back into the pocket of a light linen jacket. The sleeves were pushed up and his arms were smooth and creamy. I couldn’t see any needle marks.

  ‘How close were you to Alice?’

  He stared at the tip of his cigarette, as if wanting to avoid the question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he began, ‘she . . . ’ He flicked the ash of the cigarette nervously, still not looking up. ‘I liked her, she . . . she was more like a baby sister than my . . . ’ His eyes flashed up at me. ‘You must understand, I was only seventeen!’ he blurted out. ‘A mistake of my youth,’ he said more quietly.

  I thought of my own kids, and the mistakes of my youth. Maybe they had come too soon but once they were there they were loved.

  They were still loved.

  The coffee arrived. The maid looked at Charles quizzically but he hardly acknowledged her presence. She left.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said, stirring my coffee.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Alice, about her mother.’

  He sighed. ‘I suppose it was a rebellion against my mother. My first, and she made sure it was my last,’ he said, curling his lip. ‘I knew she was a prostitute. Maybe I was in love with Tai May, maybe it was just because she was my first lover. She was still working when she got pregnant. She’d been brought to Australia under false pretences, promised a job. Well, that was the job.’

  ‘Who brought her here?’

  ‘Men about town. Men who ran the racket, rich men, others who wanted to get rich. I wanted to marry her.’ He laughed, more of a snort than a laugh. ‘My mother of course wouldn’t hear of it.’ I could well imagine. ‘She kept the child and sent the mother back. I never saw Tai May again. My mother thought it was better for me not to have contact.’

  ‘How come the girl got pregnant? Prostitutes don’t usually. They would have told her how to avoid it. Bad for business if she gets pregnant.’

  ‘My mother said she did it deliberately, wanted to use our family, to marry our money.’

  ‘She didn’t marry it but she got the money anyway,’ I observed.

  ‘But not her child. That was my mother’s way of punishing her.’

  Mrs Chen was looking less and less likely to win any awards for Parent of the Year.

  ‘And me,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘And me!’ he said, this time loud enough for the whole house to hear. ‘Alice was my mother’s way of punishing me. A living reminder of my mistake. Whenever I did anything without her approval she’d always remind me of Alice, of the trouble, the scandal I’d brought to the family. Some scandal,’ he snorted. ‘She always passed her off to the outside world as her niece. That, Miss Valentine, is my mother.’

  ‘Why do you stay, Charles?’ I asked softly.

  ‘She’s my mother.’

  ‘That’s not good enough, Charles.’

  ‘She’s a powerful woman. She could make things very difficult for me.’

  ‘All you have to do is pack up your things and walk out that door.’

  He smiled sheepishly. ‘Easier said than done,’ he pointed out.

  I knew that. But I had done it and so had Lucy. It wasn’t easy but neither was it impossible.

  But I didn’t belong to a powerful family. I suppose in this case it was a bit like asking Prince Charles why he didn’t leave the Queen. It must be a real strain when the person you’re grooming for power turns out to be a wimp.

  I also had the feeling that if Charles proved a liability Mrs Chen could well arrange ways of getting rid of him.

  ‘How much do you want your daughter back?’

  ‘Before, I didn’t . . . ’ He kneaded the veins standing out on the back of his hand. ‘This crisis . . . ’ He steadied his hands on his knees. ‘Now that Alice’s life is in danger I realise how much she means to me.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘I never really understood why she wanted Alice. She wanted to punish Tai May for what she felt she’d done to our family but it was more than that.’ He took out another cigarette, lit it, then put the case on the table, among an assortment of gold ornaments. I never could understand this predilection for gold, far too gaudy for my taste. ‘You know, they used to sell girl children in the land of my forefathers. And my mother wanted to keep this girl child, bring her up as her own.’ He smiled wryly. ‘My mother is . . . idiosyncratic. Sometimes she will do things that seem out of character, that no-one can explain. I think she saw strength in Alice, s
trength that perhaps she would have wanted in me.’ He lowered his head.

  I looked at him steadily. It takes a certain kind of strength to admit weakness.

  ‘My mother’s greatest wish is for Alice to replace her as . . . ’

  ‘Dragonhead.’

  He looked up at me. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well kidnapping is certainly going to toughen Alice up. Where do you think she is?’

  ‘Cabramatta.’

  My heart missed a beat, like he’d named a secret thing.

  ‘Those hoods making trouble in our restaurant, they are Sun Yee On street-fighters. They make trouble in Cabramatta too. Use it as their base. Now they are trying to move in on Chinatown.’

  ‘Tell me about the key.’

  He laughed. ‘The key! My mother thinks it gives us power, but that power has been turned against us. My father was killed over it and now Alice is gone. Some old Chinese superstition about it being the key to great treasure. Well let them have their treasure. The Red Dragon restaurant and the other family properties aren’t going to suddenly disappear overnight if we don’t have the key. The people my mother looks after don’t even know the key exists.’

  Looks after. He made extortion sound like an act of charity.

  I had always wondered what it was like for people like the Chens. They had so much to lose. But I wasn’t trying to prop up an empire, I was trying to save the life of a child no matter which family she belonged to. I sat there thinking about the Chens I knew—the mother, the son, the granddaughter. A father who hadn’t cared enough, a grandmother who cared too much.

  All the wheeling and dealing in the city, all the dramas—the biggest ones occurred right here at the centre of things, in the family.

  That key might have lost its charm as far as Charles was concerned but it still might be able to charm the people who had Alice.

  St Marys Cathedral stood at a busy intersection where four roads converged. In nearby Hyde Park a flock of seagulls floated above the open lawn like scraps of paper caught up in the breeze. Shooting the breeze, for the sheer hell of it. There was a park bench conveniently placed directly opposite the front entrance to the cathedral. I’d arrived early, early enough to watch the comings and goings, early enough perhaps to see a man enter wearing size nine shoes. I don’t know why I’d taken so much time over dressing; it wasn’t like I was going on a date.