Grace waited a few moments.
‘I need to talk to her. Can you show me her room?’
‘She won’t let you in,’ Duncan said.
‘Just let me talk to her through the door.’
As Duncan had predicted, Narelle’s first response through the door was to say no.
‘Go away,’ came the muffled reply. ‘I’m not talking to anyone. I don’t care who you are.’
‘Narelle,’ Grace said, ‘you need to talk to me. If you care about your family, that is.’
‘Why?’
‘You should know why. Why don’t you think about it for a few moments? You should be able to put it together.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Okay. A question for you in that case. Has he called you? Because if he hasn’t, maybe I can help you get in touch with him.’
There was silence. Narelle’s mother had appeared in the hallway and had heard what was being said. She held a handkerchief crushed in her hand and her face was covered with tears. She spoke softly to her son in Chinese. He replied to her, shaking his head.
‘What did you mean by that?’ he asked Grace. ‘Why would we be threatened?’
‘If I can talk to you after I’ve spoken to Narelle, I’ll be able to explain.’
The door was opened. Narelle stood there, her face stripped bare of make-up, her hair pulled back off her face. The exotic clothes from the brothel had been replaced by jeans and a T-shirt.
‘Let’s talk privately,’ Grace said, and stepped inside, shutting the door behind her.
Narelle sat down on the bed and lay back on the pillows. She gestured for Grace to sit wherever she wanted to. It was a large room with an en suite, a computer, and its own flat-screen TV and sound system. A walk-in wardrobe was stuffed with clothes. The decor was fussy and girlish. Pink and blue soft toys were piled on any surface, along with Barbie dolls. One wall was covered with studio and publicity shots of Narelle in various poses. Some thousands of dollars worth, paid for by her father. Cosmetics, also expensive, littered the dressing table. There was a powerful smell of cigarette smoke in the air. Grace looked at a full ashtray and an empty packet on the bedside table. There were no books but DVDs abounded. Sentimental romances, teen flicks, and a set of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. No sophisticated Art Deco fantasies here.
‘Don’t you have some ID?’ Narelle asked, an angry, suspicious look on her face.
‘I don’t think you need to be interested in seeing my ID, Narelle. Not if you want me to help you.’
‘Why do I need your help?’
‘Don’t you want to see your boyfriend again? He won’t just have forgotten about you, will he?’
This hurt. Narelle’s mouth opened a little. She looked like a child, angry and spoilt; wanting to answer back but unable to.
‘Have you got any cigarettes? I wanted Duncan to get me some but he won’t do it. Why don’t you get some? Then maybe we can talk.’
She was no longer forcing her voice into its late-night up-market gloss; it had become ordinary, almost squeaky. Maybe this was why she’d never made it as an actor; she had the face but not the voice or the presence.
‘He doesn’t like you to smoke,’ Grace said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your boyfriend. He didn’t let you smoke in your own flat.’
‘I don’t need to when he’s around. Are you going to get me some?’
‘No, Narelle, you can wait for your cigarettes. Let’s talk about Coco.’
‘She never worked there. I don’t know who she was!’
‘Don’t talk rubbish. Look at this. I bet you’ve seen this before.’
Grace handed over a photocopy of the photograph page of Jirawan’s passport. Narelle looked at it once, then screwed it up and threw it on the floor.
‘I don’t know anything about that!’
For an answer, Grace took a miniature recording device out of her bag and pressed the start button.
‘Marie would leave the clients there, and often enough they’d come back to me and say they didn’t want that. It wasn’t what they’d paid for. Then Marie started getting angry with Coco because she wouldn’t cooperate. One day, madam dragged me down there and told me to sort her out. What was I supposed to do? Coco was wrapped up like this tight little ball. You could see her shaking. I lost it. I shouted at that little bitch for once. I said, you can’t fucking do this! It’s creating too many bad vibes. That shut her up. Anyway, after that Coco disappeared.’
‘Lynette didn’t like you, Narelle. She called you a nasty little cow.’
‘She was just a fat, ugly, old woman. I don’t know why they didn’t get someone better than that.’
‘She’s dead now. Does that worry you?’
‘Why should it?’
‘Want me to play you some more of that tape? There’s enough on it for me to put you in gaol. If I do, do you think your boyfriend’s going to come and visit you? He wasn’t there the other night. He left you to deal with the police all on your own. Sink or swim. Your problem.’
Instantly there were tears in Narelle’s eyes. She bit her lip and stared at Grace with a strange, bunched expression on her face.
‘Why would you want to put me in gaol?’
‘You locked Coco away without thinking about it. Why shouldn’t I lock you away?’
Narelle’s eyes were still filled with tears. ‘She didn’t care. I don’t think she felt it. I don’t even know why the men paid. She was just this plain little thing.’
For a second, Grace wanted to take Jirawan’s photograph, the one taken in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, out of her bag and slide it under Narelle’s nose. But they had agreed she wouldn’t do this. It was easy now to speak sharply.
‘Narelle, there are things you don’t understand. You’re the fall guy in all this. That’s what you were doing there, being set up to fall. Everyone else can run for cover but you can’t. I can get an arrest warrant for you like that.’ Grace snapped her fingers. ‘Do you want me to do that? Or do you want to talk business?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How much is that passport worth to you? Because I’ve got it in a very safe place. And if you want it back, it’s going to cost you. That passport and this tape together. Just exactly how much are they worth to you?’
Narelle made a face of exaggerated rejection and shrugged her shoulders. The tears were flowing down her cheeks.
‘You want to go to gaol,’ Grace said in the silence, ‘fine by me.’
There was a knock on the door. Narelle hadn’t locked it after she had let Grace inside. It was opened and Duncan stood there. He was about to speak when Narelle sat upright and shouted at him in Chinese. He looked away but not before Grace had seen a look of deep humiliation on his face. The door was shut abruptly. Narelle nodded her head in satisfaction. She turned back to Grace.
‘Where’d you get that passport?’
‘Where do you think? Lynette gave it to me.’
‘Aren’t you with the police? What are you doing this for? It’s some kind of trick, isn’t it?’
‘You can think what you want. You’ll have plenty of time in gaol. Let’s just say I’d like a bit of extra money. It would give me some excitement in my life. It gets a bit dull sometimes. Do we have a deal? That’s what I want to know.’
There were more tears. Grace watched her without a shred of sympathy.
‘I’d have to ask my boyfriend what he wants to do,’ Narelle managed at last.
‘What’s he got to do with this?’
Narelle gave her a single dark look of pure suspicion. ‘Why do you want to know? Don’t you want to get paid?’
‘Be careful, Narelle. If you want me to be nice to you, then you’d better behave yourself. You go ahead and talk to whoever you want to, but you’ve only got forty-eight hours to do it. Take this.’ Grace handed her a card.
‘What’s that?’