Bad Seed (21 page)

‘Why?' said Cato.

‘You do the Mr Inscrutability thing well. I can't predict what you're going to do next. Sumich, she's easy. She goes off like a firework in everything she does. She's the original cow in a china shop.'

‘Give her a break. Lara believes in what she's doing and her heart is in the right place.'

‘I suppose. But she did directly countermand my explicit instructions.'

‘Is this the apology you were talking about?'

She grinned. ‘Fair cop, I probably went a bit overboard, but she …'

Cato held up his hand. ‘Apology accepted.' He tried to change the subject. ‘So what brought you to China?'

‘A double degree in Mandarin and Law and a burning desire to do good.'

‘Mandarin and Law? You could be riding the mining boom on that.'

‘And climbing the walls with boredom. Also I was at a loose end, I had some aggro to work off. My first husband had just run off with one of his MBA students while I was on secondment in the Solomons.'

‘First husband?'

‘I haven't found a second. Yet.' She dabbed her lips with a napkin. ‘What about you?'

‘Bit sudden don't you think? I haven't really got to know you. Yet.'

‘Dickhead. You married?'

‘Divorced. Got a son, fourteen.'

‘Snap. Except for the offspring bit.' She plucked something from another plate.

‘Is that chicken?' said Cato.

‘Yeah. Teriyaki.'

‘Is that wise, with the bird flu and that?'

‘That was about six months ago. You ever thought of being a Pom?'

Cato's chopsticks slipped and a piece of tuna slopped into the soy sauce dish sending a dark slash across the white tablecloth. ‘Fuck. Sorry.' He retrieved his tuna. ‘You worry me, too.'

She took a gulp of Tsingtao from a frosted tankard. ‘Why?'

‘I can't predict what you're going to do next.' She smiled enigmatically. ‘And I wonder whether you're really a stickler for the rules of diplomatic protocol or whether you're gatekeeping for Li.'

‘Don't hold back, mate, say what you mean.' Sharon stabbed another piece of raw fish. ‘That's quite an accusation.'

Cato shrugged. ‘Maybe it's not deliberate. Maybe it's just a by-product of the “inter-agency ground rules”.' He mimed the parentheses. ‘They help shield people like Li from any unpleasant surprises or scrutiny.'

‘I know which side I'm on.' She gave him a stern look and ordered another round of beers. ‘Look, here's my private email and non-work mobile.' Sharon took a business card out of her wallet, scrawled the new details on the back and slid it across the table. She also slid a mobile SIM card across. ‘Use that when you're calling me. It's not being monitored. I can and will help.'

Her business card said ‘Agent Sharon Wang Hongying – Australian Federal Police'.

‘Hongying?' said Cato.

‘My full Chinese name. It goes down well in certain Beijing circles. “Wang” means a few things depending on how you say it. In my case it means “King” although I prefer the possibility of it also meaning “Hope”. Unfortunately “Hongying” is a bit out of favour these days – it means “Red Heroine”.'

‘Sharon Hope Red Heroine. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?'

‘My dad's twisted little joke. He thought “Sharon” would help me fit in at Bendigo High and the “Hongying” would remind me who I really was. He used to be a Red Guard in this area during the Cultural Revolution. A real teenage ratbag, he waved the little red book, sang the patriotic songs, beat up the capitalist running dogs, all that.'

‘How did he get from that to having you in Australia?'

‘After a few years Mao decided the Red Guards were no longer any use to him. He packed them off to the countryside for re-education. They sent my dad down to Yunnan Province on the Burmese border. He just kept walking, all the way through Burma and into Thailand. He did something a bit dodgy for the Aussies in Bangkok during the Vietnam War and wangled a visa.' She thumbed at herself. ‘The rest is history.'

‘So he lives in Bendigo now?'

She shook her head. ‘Semi-retired to Daylesford. He runs an adult retreat for Melbourne yuppies wanting a dirty weekend. Champers, choccies, spa, oils.' She licked some beer foam off her lips. ‘You should try it sometime. You might like it.'

‘I'd be terrified he'd come barging into the room in the middle of the night to denounce me.'

‘Only if you've done something really bad,' she said with a look that made Cato's blood rush. Sharon Wang – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Vixen. ‘So what's your history? Where do your family come from?'

‘I don't know. My dad was never really into that family heritage stuff but his grandfather or great grandie or something lived in Bendigo I think, or was it Ballarat? Anyway something to do with the gold rush, I assume.' He hesitated, not sure whether to share this or not, feeling curiously vulnerable. ‘When I was very young my father had a pet name for me: “Qian Ping”.'

She smiled. ‘It means powerful but gentle. It's a beautiful name for a man. Kwong Qian Ping.'

Cato felt himself blushing.

‘If they've been around that long your family should be pretty established. Gold rush, that's blue-blood Chinese-Aussie. Do you want me to ask my mob? I mean “Kwong”, how hard can that be?'

Twice in one day he'd been nudged towards his Chinese ancestry. He realised he too wanted to be able to recount a tale like the one he'd just heard from Sharon Wang. Something to pass on to Jake, something for the boy to find some pride in, instead of his stoner mates. Cato recalled that surge of emotion he'd felt watching the calligraphers in Zhongshan Park.

‘Sure,' he said. ‘Why not?'

Cato woke early after an inappropriate dream about Sharon Wang. The night out had ended well enough, a goodbye and a little wave, like an old-fashioned first date or something. Cato wondered if he was reading too much into it. Probably. He'd tried a late night phone call to his sister in the vain hope of catching Dad awake.

‘Do you know what time it is?' Mand had grumped at him.

‘Sorry. Dad asleep then?'

‘Yeah. Why?'

‘How's he been?'

‘Same as ever. Crap jokes. Forgets everything. Sleeps a lot. How's Shanghai?'

‘Big, busy. So far, I like it.'

‘I didn't think it would be your cup of tea.'

‘Shanghai?'

‘China in general.'

‘Where were Dad's mob from, do you know?'

‘Ballarat. Before that, who knows? Why?'

‘Just curious.'

‘Have you been drinking? You sound funny.'

Cato was aware of a surge of feeling, a hotness in his face. ‘Yeah, a couple of Tsingtaos.'

‘Don't forget the old man's warning. Look after yourself over there, okay?'

‘Sure, no worries. G'night sis.'

He'd also tried Jane's and Jake's mobiles. Both were switched off.

The room was already hot with thick hazy sunlight spilling through his window. He zapped the aircon into action and pulled back the curtains. The sky was a muted gauzy pale blue with distant dark clouds holding the promise of an afternoon storm. He headed for the bathroom and spotted the note that had been shoved under his door.

Our phones are tapped. Meet me in the hotel gym @ 10. L

He found Lara on a treadmill jogging steadily, sweat beading her brow and darkening her singlet. She'd reserved the machine next to her by draping a towel over it. The gym was noisy, thumping music overflowed from an aerobics class in an adjoining room. Good choice for a clandestine meeting, thought Cato. He stepped on the treadmill and set off at a leisurely walking pace. Lara pushed up to a sprint for a minute or two then dropped down to join him on his gentle perambulations.

‘My nanna walks faster than this,' she said, still looking straight ahead as if she didn't know him.

‘Good for her. Why the cloak and dagger?'

‘We fly out tomorrow night. We need to do more to provoke a result.'

‘Like what?'

‘I've been given the name of a lawyer. He's involved in a case against Li. Compensation for some tenants kicked out of their homes for a property development. He might help us shake things up a bit.'

‘Relevance to our case?'

‘At face value, zero. But he might give us an insight into Li's unofficial business methods. Some of those tenants were hospitalised and crippled for life. He may have even come across our Mr Yu Guangming.'

Even though it was only walking pace Cato was working up a sweat. ‘Who's your source?'

‘That weedy Fed bloke who hangs out with Pavlou.'

Mystery Mike. ‘How did you get that info without it being tapped?'

‘We skyped but these days they can hack into that too. Look,
even if they're already onto us, we're showing them we're not stepping back. Fuck them.'

Fair enough, thought Cato. ‘So have you contacted this lawyer?'

‘Yep. Got supernerd to do it from over there to try and bypass the tapping.'

‘And?'

‘Midday today at the Big Bamboo Sports Bar in an area called Jing'an, not that far from here. Apparently they screen AFL, the beer's nice and cold, and the Dockers are playing.'

‘Perfect. How do we lose our minders?'

‘I've been thinking about that,' said Lara. She leaned over and pressed a few buttons on his console. Cato was being forced to run.

The lawyer's name was Richard Chan. His business card showed a head office in Hong Kong and, on the back, law qualifications obtained in England, Australia and Beijing. He was in his early thirties, medium height with a spreading waistline and a nervous countenance. He was casually dressed and spoke immaculate, precise English. Lara's basic plan to shake off any tail had been for the three of them to head off in different directions using different modes of transport and then meet up again. Hardly
Bourne Ultimatum
stuff but, so far, it seemed to have worked. Cato had deliberated on whether or not he should keep Sharon Wang in the loop but decided against it. They were meeting a lawyer in an expat sports bar in broad daylight. What could possibly go wrong?

Lara outlined their interest in Thomas Li while Chan listened, nodding and sipping from a glass of white wine. Chan's eyes widened at the description of the Tan killings. On the flat screens it was midway through the first quarter and the Dockers were two goals up against the Demons. As usual, Hayden Ballantyne was getting in the faces of the opposition. The bar was mainly haunted by pasty pudgy expats and, with the familiar VB and Guinness signs, it could have been suburban Perth. Except for a couple of local Chinese guys in a nearby alcove who stuck out like sore thumbs. One, the older, was wheelchair bound. The younger
companion was scowling in Cato's general direction. Both wore thin, cheap clothes that suggested they weren't part of Shanghai's booming middle class and probably couldn't afford to be drinking at expat bar prices. They were sipping at Cokes and ignoring the footy – sacrilege. Lara wrapped up her preliminaries and sent James Blond off to the bar for some refills.

‘Does that sound like the Li you know? Maybe you could fill us in on your dealings with him.'

Chan put down his glass and looked like he was settling in for a long session. ‘Li Tonggui belongs to what we call “the bitter generation”, born in the nineteen fifties. At the time they should have been getting an education, they got instead the chaos and destruction of Mao's Cultural Revolution. At the time they should have been embarking on a career and maybe starting a family, they were sent to the countryside for re-education. Ten, fifteen years later, at the time they might have been leaders in their chosen career, they were made redundant by Deng Xiaoping's free market economic reforms. And now, at the time when maybe they should be looking forward to retirement, they have to use up all of their savings to help their children buy an over-priced apartment in the new capitalistic economy.'

Apart from the Cultural Revolution bit it sounded like the lot of any baby boomer, reflected Cato. ‘So?' he said, hoping for a nice short answer this time.

‘So to survive those challenges intact is a major feat. To then flourish and prosper like Li has done, you need to be lucky, very smart, and a little bit ruthless.'

‘Tell me about the case you're involved in now,' said Lara.

Chan shrugged. ‘The same old story. An area of old laneway or longtang community housing demolished to make way for one of Li's skyscrapers. Agreements were signed with the local municipal government to compensate and re-house the tenants. The agreements, of course, were worthless.'

‘This is an established part of Li's modus operandi?' said Lara.

‘He's done this at least four other times, in China, to my knowledge.' Richard said something in Mandarin to the two
locals in the nearby recess. They abandoned their Cokes and the younger one wheeled the older over to join them. Chan did the introductions.