Follow the Money

'Bloody hypo,' she said. 'That fucking lying wog bastard.'

May Ling nodded. 'Right. Hardy, let's get out of here.'

I put money on the table to pay for the wine. May Ling collected her things and Gretchen's bag and we left the cafe, supporting her between us. Gretchen was still shaky and didn't protest. The Aboriginal band blasted out its first riffs.

'My car's not far off,' May Ling said. 'I'll take her home.'

'I'm with you all the way,' I said. 'She knows something and I'm not letting her out of my sight.'

We walked to where May Ling's Peugeot was parked and she handed me the keys she'd dug out of her bag.

'You drive. I'll look after her. It's 17 View Street, Seaforth. Use the GPS.'

We bundled Gretchen into the back seat and May Ling slid in beside her. I started the car, switched on the GPS and gave the destination. I familiarised myself with the controls before setting off-nothing makes you feel sillier than activating the wipers when you want to signal a turn.

In one hundred and fifty metres turn…

The programmatic female voice soon became irritating, but the directions to an area I knew little about were helpful.

'How's she doing?' I asked.

'She's groggy. Would you believe she hasn't got any glucose with her? Not so much as a bloody jelly bean. How's that for stupid?'

I didn't say anything. My mother had been the same. Denial, but in her case she was sometimes too drunk to remember to carry something with her. She was also capable of injecting too much insulin when under the weather.

I pulled in to a service station along Pitt Road and got a bottle of Coke. May Ling forced Gretchen, against her protests, to sip from it.

'She's coming good,' May Ling said. 'Know about this stuff, do you?'

'One of my many talents.'

May Ling snorted. 'I've been through this so many times, and worse. I don't know about you, but I could do with a drink. There'll be plenty at her place. They were both alcoholics.'

'Unlike someone who needs a drink at one thirty.'

'Fuck you.'

In one hundred and fifty metres, turn…

View Street lived up to its name. It afforded a panoramic visual sweep of Middle Harbour from Sugarloaf Bay to Beauty Point, and number 17 was the jewel in the street's crown, if you like that sort of thing. It was built on three levels, all glass and steel and white brick and with a brick driveway flanked by palm trees.

'Hollywood Gothic, isn't it?' said May Ling. She handed me a remote control device that opened the gates. I drove up a steep series of ramps to a garage door twenty metres across.

'Hit it again.'

The door slid open; there were three spaces, one filled with a sporty red Mercedes, one with a trailer carrying a medium-size catamaran and one empty.

'Here we are,' May Ling said, 'where Sun Ling found her pot of gold-a rich man with two quadruple bypasses.'

We got Gretchen into the house, into a living room filled with modernistic furniture. The floor to ceiling windows looked out to the water through slightly tinted glass. May Ling eased her sister into an armchair and left the room. She came back with a small plastic case. She opened it and proceeded to check Gretchen's blood glucose level.

'Coming up,' she said. 'A few brain cells gone maybe but she won't miss them.'

Gretchen glared at her. 'Get me a fucking drink.'

May Ling pointed to the bar. 'Do the honours, Cliff. She'll have gin and just wave the tonic bottle over it. I'll have white wine and you can suit yourself.'

Bombay Sapphire gin, what else? Wolf Blass chardonnay and I took a single malt with a name I couldn't pronounce.

We sat around a glass-topped coffee table on the slightly uncomfortable chairs while the air-conditioning kept the room temperature at perfect and the white carpet showed no signs of dirty footmarks. The big house-a spiral staircase rose from one corner of the room to a mezzanine with two staircases going on up from there-had an eerie feeling of emptiness.

Gretchen knocked back her drink in a couple of swallows and held out her glass. I looked at May Ling.

'Go ahead. It usually takes three or four to put her on her ear.'

I prepared the drink but didn't make it as strong; I wanted her to talk sense. Gretchen took it without thanking me. She looked annoyed at the signs of spillage on her clothes but shrugged. She kicked off her stilettos and tucked her legs up under her. Still limber despite the hypo and the gin.

'Well, this is cosy, sis. The thug's a gun driver and can mix a good drink. How is he in the sack?'

'I wouldn't know,' May Ling said. 'Where we were was that you as good as told us that you were fucking Richard Malouf and that him faking his death, which could be what happened, leaves you feeling angry. What was going on?'

'Why do you care?' Gretchen said.

'I'll tell you why,' I said. 'Two people are dead-your husband, the man who was ID'd as Malouf-and some very heavy people are looking for him. They've terrorised one woman, scared the shit out of May Ling and Miles Standish and put me in hospital. Malouf stole a lot of money from me and other people. I'd like to get it back, but there's other people who're a lot keener.'

Gretchen giggled. The gin was getting to her and I wished I hadn't made the first one so strong, but maybe it was the low sugar having an effect. 'I like the bit about May and Miles being scared shitless.'

May Ling sipped her wine. 'You won't like it so much when I tell Freddy Wong that you were fucking the guy he's looking for so hard.'

Gretchen's face lost colour and I thought she was going to go into another faint. She drained her glass and dropped it onto the floor before wrapping her arms around herself and shaking uncontrollably. May Ling jumped up and went to her.

'Sunny, Sunny, what is it?'

Gretchen half rose from her chair and collapsed into her sister's arms. They clung to each other with Gretchen sobbing softly and May Ling making soothing noises. I felt shut out, invisible. Eventually Gretchen became quiet, passive, and May Ling stayed crouched by her chair. Gretchen drew in a long, painful breath.

'Could you get me a cigarette, May?'

May Ling got the packet from Gretchen's bag, lit a cigarette and handed it to her. Gretchen puffed and then handed it back. May Ling snuffed it out in a big ceramic ashtray on the coffee table.

Gretchen was wearing a blue silk dress with long, loose sleeves buttoned at the wrist. It was still damp with the sweat induced by the hypo. With some difficulty, she undid the button on the left and pushed the sleeve up. Livid injection marks stood out against her smooth, ivory skin.

'Freddy got me hooked,' she said. 'Really hooked. No one else can supply me-no one ever!'

18

May Ling got Gretchen steadied down and onto coffee rather than gin. She worked her way through a good many cigarettes as she told us that Freddy Wong had introduced her to heroin after she'd learned of Malouf's death. She'd been intensely involved with him for some time and she took the news hard. The death of her husband was a second, but minor, shock. When May Ling asked her how she'd become so involved with Freddy, Gretchen had recovered enough to read some signs.

'Freddy's got to you, too, hasn't he? I can tell from the way you reacted to his name. So, you first.'

'Debt. He lent me money,' May Ling said. 'You?'

'Gambling.'

Gretchen said she knew Freddy was dangerous and had always avoided him, but when she took up with Malouf and was drawn into high stakes gambling, she'd caught the bug and got deep in debt to Freddy.

'I've got an addictive personality,' Gretchen said. 'And other problems.'

May Ling bit back a response although her sympathy for her sister was ebbing fast. They were both smoking now, and a fug was building up in the room, something you don't experience much these days. Gretchen lit another cigarette from the butt of her previous one and looked at me.