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.
'Freddy warned me to get in touch with him if anyone made any sort of enquiry about Richard. When you rang, that's what I did. I've wondered ever since whether Freddy killed Stefan and if I'm responsible.'
So Freddy Wong had the same thing going as Houli-an early warning system for when Malouf's name came up. And when the need arose one alerted the other. I was pretty sure Talat had killed Nordlung and presumably after he'd been told everything about the sighting of Malouf.
'That's all your husband told you, was it?' I said. 'That he'd seen Malouf somewhere on the harbour.'
Gretchen nodded. 'It could've been around the harbour somewhere. Stefan liked to drink in various places.'
'What places?' May Ling asked.
Gretchen almost laughed. 'Don't ask me. I hate boats and everything to do with them.'
'So you never went on Malouf's boat?'
That brought another slight smile. 'I didn't say that. His boat was beautifully fitted out…'
May Ling said, 'Somewhere to fuck.'
'You should try it.'
I said, 'When you say fitted out, what d'you mean? Apart from the bed?'
'Oh, it had everything-computers, satellite dishes, GPS, television. He had a bunch of mobile phones and he used Skype. He talked fluently to people all over the world.'
'What d'you mean?' I said.
'Well, I heard him speaking Chinese and what sounded like Arabic and Indonesian. I know a bit of Indonesian from going to Bali.'
'What kind of a boat was it? Was it ocean-going?'
Gretchen shrugged. 'I don't know. It was white.'
'Great help,' May Ling said. 'So he had a floating office. Why?'
My thought was different. 'Where did you meet up with him and get on the boat?'
'Different places, different marinas, all around the harbour.'
'At the Spit?'
She gave a lopsided grin, almost a grimace. 'Yes, only when Stefan was away. May, I'm going to need…'
'Jesus,' May Ling said, 'you have to get off that stuff, Sunny.'
Gretchen hugged herself and shivered, the classic junkie-in-need pose. 'I don't think I…'
'I know a good detox place,' I said.
