‘What was this Jennifer’s last name?’ he asked.
‘Shillingworth,’ Frank said. ‘Bitch.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘I don’t know too many people with that name.’
‘Do you ever see her these days?’
‘Not since my wife left. Didn’t want to. But that’s what I don’t understand. What I just showed you, that must be what she wanted to sell me all that time ago. Who the fuck is this Ian Blackmore? Why would he have it?’
He was staring at Harrigan, his look almost a plea. All Harrigan could do was shake his head.
‘How did you get along with Craig when he was living here?’
Frank seemed to withdraw; his look was made up of suspicion and fear.
‘Why?’ he asked sharply.
‘Just background information, Frank,’ Harrigan said. ‘I don’t have any other reason for asking that question.’
‘He used to tell lies about me.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Just lies. All the fucking time. I tried to frighten him. I hit him. Things like that. Never fucking touched him. Even my wife didn’t believe him.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘The day they left. I gave him my hand to shake. He twisted my finger as hard as he could.’
‘And you never saw either of them again?’
‘No.’
Silence.
‘You said he might still be alive?’ Frank asked.
‘I don’t know that,’ Harrigan replied. ‘I’m just investigating the possibility.’
Frank stared at him with an expression that spoke of strange knowledge.
‘Is there something else you want to tell me?’ Harrigan asked.
‘No. You can go now. I thought you were going to help me more than you did. I haven’t got anything else I want to tell you.’
‘Okay. Thanks for your time, Frank. Are you prepared to see me if I need to talk to you again?’
‘If you bring your wallet. You can see yourself out.’
Harrigan walked out of the silent, stale house and closed the door behind him.
He drove down to the beachfront and bought lunch in the local mall, then sat in the beachside park to eat it. The water was calm across Botany Bay. Planes taxied along the airport runway jutting out into the bay before powerfully skimming their massive weight upwards through the hazy air. Harrigan let the sun clear the shadows of Frank Wells’s house out of his head, then checked his watch. It was early afternoon. He would give Ellie an early mark from Kidz Corner and they would both go and see Toby. His son was confined to a wheelchair but Frank Wells was locked inside his own head more inescapably than Toby’s disabilities could ever have imprisoned him. Toby’s mind was free; given the confines of his body, it was the best gift he could have, the one Harrigan hoped he’d given him. He tossed the remains of his lunch to the waiting seagulls and went to his car.
10
The Wongs’ home at Chipping Norton was a large double-storeyed yellow-brick house in a row of similar dwellings. Camellia bushes grew in a tidy pattern in the small front garden. There were entrances for a three-car garage while a flight of steps led up to the residential storey of the house. Grace parked on the street. Several cars were parked nearby, including a van with tinted windows. Somewhere within range was a vehicle where every word spoken within her vicinity this morning would be recorded by Clive’s technicians. He and Borghini were listening to it elsewhere. She got out of the car; she was in role.
The doorbell was answered by a slender man of about thirty who wasn’t much taller than Grace.
‘Duncan Wong? I’m Grace Riordan. I called you earlier.’
He wasn’t happy to see her. He nodded without speaking and gestured for her to come inside. The house had a feel of comfort; the contoured carpets were soft underfoot, the hallway walls decorated with wallpaper showing a softly glittering pattern of graceful cranes and flowers against a silver background, probably a Florence Broadhurst print. Grace saw a god in an alcove together with a vase of gladioli and incense sticks. The living areas were spacious. In one room, two women, one middle-aged, the other elderly, sat together on the lounge watching television.
‘Mum,’ Duncan said from the doorway, ‘the woman from the police task force is here. Do you want to talk to her?’
The middle-aged woman replied in Chinese without looking around and with a backward wave of her hand.
‘Do you want to come into the kitchen?’ Duncan said to Grace. ‘Mum’s really upset about this. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Dad’s not here, he’s in Hong Kong, so she’s got to deal with it by herself.’
‘What do you do, Duncan?’ she asked.
‘I’m an optometrist. I’ve got a business in Liverpool.’
‘Are you closed for the day?’
‘No, my wife’s there. She’s an optometrist as well.’
The kitchen was large with a view out to the back garden where there was a swimming pool. Above the garden fence, Grace saw a range of red-tiled suburban roofs against a cloudless sky.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Duncan asked.
‘No, I’m fine, thanks. How’s Narelle?’
‘She’s okay, I guess. She wasn’t working in that place, was she? I mean, she wasn’t one of the girls?’
‘No, she was the manager. She didn’t take clients. That wasn’t her role.’
He was too relieved to hide his feelings.
‘I’ve got to tell Mum that. She’s been too freaked to think about it.’
‘Hasn’t Narelle talked to you?’
‘She won’t. She’s locked herself in her room and won’t talk to anyone. She’s been in there ever since she came home. All she does is come out for food. I hear her crying sometimes. I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘What do your parents do, Duncan?’
‘They own the Four Seas Restaurant in Liverpool. It’s not just some takeaway. It’s got a hat, and we got seventeen out of twenty in the SMH Good Food Guide.’
‘What did Narelle do before she worked at Life’s Pleasures?’
‘She’s been trying to be an actress ever since she was about fifteen. People told her that with her face, it should be a snack for her. She wanted to go to NIDA but she didn’t get in. She’s had bit parts now and then and she’s been in commercials. Dad’s spent a fortune on her. He’s paid for all these lessons she said she had to have, for publicity photographs, everything. It still hasn’t made anything happen. Why do you want to know?’
Maybe this was the attraction for whoever her lover was-Narelle’s capacity to play a fantasy love goddess role and enjoy it. She would only have an audience of one. It might as well be virtual reality.
‘I’m just trying to find out a little about her before I talk to her,’ Grace replied. ‘Has she had an actual job?’
Duncan smiled, bitterly. ‘Not really. Nothing that’s lasted. She’s always been more interested in partying than anything else.’
‘Where does she party?’
‘She used to go to this place up at Palm Beach a lot. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home for days. When she did, she was usually drunk or high on something.’
‘Do you have an address for this place? Do you know who owned it?’
‘No. She wouldn’t tell us.’
‘Did you ever visit her at Parramatta or meet anyone she worked with?’
‘She didn’t want us to. Mum would ring to say she was going to come over and Narelle would say that if she did, she wouldn’t let her in.’
‘What did you think she was doing?’ Grace asked.
‘She said she had a job managing a hospitality business.’ He laughed enough to show how much this all hurt. ‘I feel like an idiot. We never thought she’d be doing anything like this. We thought she was organising functions or something.’
‘How long had she been doing this work?’
‘Since February. She told us about it at Dad’s birthday party. We were so relieved because she hadn’t had any kind of job for almost a year. We believed everything she told us. But it was all lies. Everything she told us was a lie. And that’s the point.’ His face contorted with grief. ‘There’s nothing more important than family. Mum and Dad built everything we have up from nothing. They’ve worked really hard. She’s treating it as if it doesn’t mean a thing. It means everything.’