Bad Seed (23 page)

Lara was left alone in her hospital room to reflect upon the day and on how much of it had been her doing. Chan dead, James horribly maimed, and Cato missing. All down to her wanting to rattle Li's cage and get a result. Some result. Guards were stationed at her door but she had the impression that nobody was really expecting any follow up. The message had already been well and truly delivered. How close had she come to losing her baby and for what?

She called John and told him what had happened.

‘Get the hell out of there. Next flight. Please.'

‘I can't. Cato's missing. I've got to find him.'

‘Can't you leave it to the AFP, the embassy guy, the locals?'

‘Would you?'

Of course he wouldn't, and neither would she. They both knew it.

‘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.

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 to 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.