That seemed to interest her; she looked up and her breasts moved and the movement rippled down her body. I tried to keep from gaping.
‘You persuaded him. Did you use a gun?’
‘No. I pulled his hair a little.’
She laughed, again without warmth but even she couldn’t manage to laugh with hostility. A voice called from behind her, a female voice, American.
‘May, who is it, honey?’
‘A man,’ May Kangri said.
Another head poked up, a blonde one this time, and it was followed by a body wrapped in a towelling dressing gown. The woman was about twice May Kangri’s age-which I guessed to be middle-twenties-and what she lacked in beauty she made up in aggression. She marched forward, elbowed the girl aside and glared up at me.
‘What d’you want, mister?’
The naked, golden body moved, swivelled and one hand came crashing against the side of the blonde woman’s head; she staggered and the combination followed-a sweeping leg that scythed her down like wheat and crashed her to the deck. She lay in a crumpled heap and May Kangri delivered a modest kick to her exposed backside.
‘Don’t be bossy with me, Candy. I won’t take it.’
Candy got up stiffly; tears were running down her swollen face and she limped off towards the hatch. The action had put a light film of sweat on the golden skin and I was finding it hard to keep my professional detachment. She smiled up at me, white teeth in a flat, brown face. I’d rather have gone up against the guy in Royal Street again.
‘What’s Daddy’s problem?’
‘Why don’t you put some clothes on and we can have a talk?’
‘I’m not wearing any clothes today. Talk quick, I’m easily bored.’
‘Something valuable’s been stolen from your father’s house-a scroll. Do you know anything about it?’
‘That ancient, creepy shit? No, what would I know about it?’
The interview wasn’t turning out to be one of my best. I felt like a combination of perv and head-shrinker. I went direct. ‘You seem to be a forthright young woman, Miss Kangri. You didn’t pinch your father’s scroll either for money or to rub his nose in the shit?’
She gave the laugh again, this time with a bit of contempt in it. I felt pretty sure she’d be good at contempt. ‘No, I didn’t. I don’t need money. Candy’s loaded and I’m going for a trip around the world with her on the yacht. We’re off tomorrow. Wanna come?’
I grinned, shook my head and backed off. She turned around and sauntered off towards the stern; she moved well, like her Dad. Somehow I didn’t think that stealing the scroll would be her style of spite-she’d be more likely to burn the house down.
That left me with no obvious leads and the slightly defeated feeling that goes with that situation. My hand was greasy from contact with the Darlinghurst stomper and I walked down a few steps from one of the stagings on the marina and had a wash. My face was hot and I dabbed it with the cool salt water. It was dark now and cool with a nice breeze coming off the water, but the park at Rushcutters Bay is no place for a clean living man to hang around in at night. I drove down New South Head Road, ate some fish somewhere, drank a fair bit of white wine and went home to sleep on it.
In the morning the memory of May Kangri’s exotic body had faded and the need to earn the figures written on Dr Kangri’s cheque asserted itself. The job looked routine again; I rang a few people and found out the names and addresses of some establishments that dealt in rare Oriental items. Most of these places had spotless reputations, but a few didn’t. I drove and walked, heard eastern chimes ring when I pushed open doors and looked into black slanted eyes until I was sick of them. I encountered universal politeness and universal ignorance.
After two full days on the job I’d earned the advance fee but not a cent more and didn’t look like earning it. I was sitting at home reading Unreliable Memoirs when the phone rang. It was Mrs Tsang inviting me out to Vaucluse to tell me things about the Mongol scroll that she hadn’t told me before.
She was waiting for me by the front gate. I pulled up outside the house next door which gave me a fair walk back to where she stood. She was wearing the same dark dress and had a light shawl around her shoulders.
‘Come this way,’ she whispered, ‘to my flat.’
We walked on the grass towards a narrow path leading to the dark side of the house.
‘Is the doctor home, Mrs Tsang?’
‘Yes, perhaps you will want to see him but I must speak to you first.’
The path ended at a set of wooden steps with a glass panelled door at the top. She went ahead of me into a narrow kitchen that faced the wall of the next house; that left space for a nice patch of garden and a good glimpse of the night sky. Through the kitchen and into a sitting room with cane furniture. The eastern look was dominant as in the main part of Kangri’s house but there were counter-influences-framed photographs with Western faces in them and Australian books and magazines.
‘Please sit down, Mr Hardy. Would you care for tea?’
‘No thank you, Mrs Tsang. What do you have to tell me?’
It came out hesitantly, but coherently. Mrs Tsang had taken the scroll herself and faked the disturbance of the study. She spoke very softly and I had to lean forward from my chair to hear her.
‘Like Dr Kangri, I am Tibetan,’ she said. ‘But unlike him I am a religious person. Do you know anything of the religion of my country, Mr Hardy?’
I had to admit that I didn’t.
‘It is very ancient and beautiful. It is a Buddhist religion but with many influences from the old religion of Tibet-many wonderful rituals and prayers.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘You are a non-believer, like most Australians. A materialist. It is very sad. Tibetan culture and religion are synomymous, Mr Hardy.’
‘What about the scroll?’
‘It cannot possibly be genuine,’ she said fiercely. ‘It is impossible that the monks can have produced such a thing. It is counter to all teachings, all beliefs.’
‘Dr Kangri believes it to be genuine.’
‘He is mistaken.’ She drew a breath. ‘I took the scroll when I could see what he was planning-a book that would bring my religion into the greatest questioning, the greatest disrepute. There are scholars who could prove that it is a fake. Dr Kangri would not consult them.’ She leaned back on her chair, took a handkerchief from her sleeve and patted her moist forehead.
‘It’s his property, Mrs Tsang, you must return it.’
Her brown face was composed again but there was a look of fatigue in the composure. ‘It is not his property,’ she said softly. ‘He acquired it by underhand means. But that is not important. I cannot return it, Mr Hardy. It has been stolen from me in turn.’
‘Who by?’
‘My son, my only child.’
Children again, only children, tearing at their parents as if to punish them for something. Mrs Tsang showed me the photograph of Henry, her son, and his father. The father was Australian-long faced and jawed, squint-eyed, sandy-haired, strong on character, short on sense of humour perhaps. The son favoured him; the dark eyes hardly slanted and the jutting Scots physiognomy dominated over the Tibetan flatness.
Mrs Tsang has met and married Kevin Anderson in Burma after the war. Anderson had served in the country, and had gone back there after demobilisation to work as a plantation manager. He was killed in an accident on the plantation not long after Henry was born. She heard of Dr Kangri’s researches through her contacts with Tibetan priests and joined his household in the United States. The Immigration Department had put no obstacles in her way when Kangri had transplanted to Australia.
‘Henry is not a good man. He has had a lot of trouble with the police.’
‘What name does he go by?’
‘I hardly know. I do not use my married name because it does not please me. Henry would use whatever name suited him, for whatever his purpose might be.’