close to where I still had Freddy gasping for breath and watching the acid. She shoved the knife hard into his soft belly and had to use an upward ripping motion to pull it out. Freddy screamed and sagged towards her. She fended him off with the hand holding the knife and the blade went in again. I let him go and he fell to the floor with blood gushing over May Ling's high heel shoes. I took the knife from her hand.
It was a big knife, like the one in the movie Jagged Edge, and I knew how sharp it was. May Ling had dug it in deep, and it must have done drastic internal damage to Freddy because he was dead within a minute. Lester, still dripping blood himself, cradled his brother's head in his lap and wept.
May Ling and I left the room, took the lift to the ground floor and walked out of the building into the crowded street. As soon as the cold air hit her she began to tremble. I pulled her closer to the building line and put my arms around her.
'I murdered him.'
'He was a vicious bastard. He would have scarred you and Gretchen too if things hadn't pleased him. He had it coming.'
We stood until she stopped trembling and signalled that she was ready to move. I kept my arm around her shoulders and gasped once when her elbow nudged the cut in my side.
'What?'
'Lester cut me. Just a scratch.'
'You got more than you bargained for when you came to see Miles that day, Cliff. Didn't you?'
'So did you.'
Wrong thing to say: it set her off again and she almost stumbled and started to sob quietly. I steered her slowly up Hay Street through a thick press of people out to shop, eat, have a good time. Her shoes and feet were covered in blood. I hailed a taxi in George Street and sat beside her in the back.
'Glebe,' I said to the driver.
'Where?' she said.
'You're coming to my place.'
She nodded and slumped back in the seat. Would the driver see blood on the floor when he cleaned the cab? Maybe. Would he do anything about it? Again, maybe. I stopped the cab in Glebe Point Road. No point in leaving a clear trail to the house.
I got her there. She was calm. She took off her shoes and stockings and I gave her a damp towel to clean her feet. The head butt had set up a ringing in my damaged ear. I stripped off my clothes, cleaned the cut with alcohol swabs and applied a dressing. I put on fresh clothes and joined her. Her usually immaculate hair was untidy and there were strain lines beside her eyes and mouth. She was still beautiful, but she'd never quite wear that imperturbable expression again.
I made coffee and we drank it laced with Black Douglas scotch rather than Courvoisier. She sat quietly for a while, nursing her cup. She looked around the room, taking in the books, CDs, photos and general air of careless maintenance. There were magazines and newspapers lying around and a glass and a coffee mug on a bookshelf. The carpet was new but hadn't seen a vacuum cleaner for a while.
When she seemed to be more or less composed, I said, 'Where did they pick you up?'
'At my place. Freddy… he helped me find it and lent me some of the money. I didn't know he had a key. I suppose I should have. What's going to happen now? Were you going to tell Miles about Malouf contacting you?'
I liked that about her, not having the first thought immediately for herself. I said I wasn't sure and that I'd have to think things through again now that Freddy was out of the picture.
'What about Lester?'
'I don't think he amounts to much without Freddy, do you?'
She shook her head. Mention of Freddy raised the inevitable question. 'Are you going to tell the police what happened?'
'I don't see why. Lester's going to cover it up in some way, and as far as I'm concerned it was a kind of self- defence.'
'Thank you. Oh God, what about the knife?'
'It's in the pocket of my jacket. Tomorrow it'll be in the sludge at the bottom of Blackwattle Bay.'
I showed her the spare room and found her a clean T-shirt. She kissed me on the cheek. When beautiful young women kiss you on the cheek you know you're over the hill, but I didn't really feel like that. As Wesley said, I still had some moves.
I took some pills. The pain in my side eased and the ringing in my ear dulled down. I thought about May Ling's knife work as I drifted off to sleep. She didn't owe him money anymore.
24
Standish collected May Ling in the morning. I brought him up to date on the recent events and told him that Freddy Wong had been killed by accident, with no likely repercussions for May Ling or me. She had regained complete control of herself by then, had showered, used my comb and didn't look any the worse for not having any makeup. She'd washed and rinsed her stockings and cleaned her shoes. Looked just about ready to go to work. Standish was all protective solicitude. He was relieved to hear that one of the people threatening him was out of the picture. I wondered what he'd think about his lover if he'd seen the way she'd stuck it to Freddy.
'Thanks again, Hardy. What now?'
'I have to think. As I said, the Wongs were all set to double-cross Houli. I'm going to try to find a way to make use of that.'
'Surely you just go to the police now and tell them Malouf's alive and leave it to them to catch him?'
'Don't you want to know what it's all about?' 'Not really, no.' 'I do,' May Ling said.
That wrong-footed Standish and he buckled straight off. 'Do what you have to do,' he said. He must have thought that sounded limp so he added, 'Do you need any more money?'
I said I didn't. May Ling wanted to visit Gretchen to make sure she was all right. Standish seemed to think that was an excellent idea. I told them to be careful, to keep close to other people and lock the doors.
'I think we might take a short holiday,' Standish said. 'But you have the mobile number in case you need any help.'
'Maybe a harbour cruise,' I said, 'or a houseboat on the Hawkesbury. Keep a lookout for Malouf.' May Ling laughed.
'You've got a sick sense of humour, Hardy,' Standish said. They left. I thought May Ling might give me another peck on the cheek but she didn't.
Sabatini rang. Airport. Want to pick me up?' 'In the bar,' I said.
He was nursing a beer when I arrived. No sign of jet lag. I got a Hahn Lite and we went to a quiet corner. I started to speak but he stopped me, reached into his bag and pulled out a tape recorder.
'Okay?'
I thought about it and decided it wouldn't hurt to have a record of events-things said and speculations made. I gave him chapter and verse while he finished his drink. He stopped the recording while I got two more. As I crossed to the bar I couldn't help thinking about Richard Malouf and his apparent awareness of the movements of some of the players-Standish, May Ling and me. I looked around, but there was no one answering his description, unless he was a master of disguise.
Resuming, I got to where the Wongs had picked up May Ling and me and there I did a bit of editing, much as I had for Standish. But Sabatini was a journalist.
'So who killed him?'
'It was a kind of accident.'
'Bullshit.'
'I was there, you weren't.'
'You don't trust me.'
'Look, the situation is fluid. At some point we're going to have to deal with the police. We'll be trying to hold
