I was contemplating the crime of break and enter when a light came on inside. I dropped back into the lane and raced around to the street. The front door of the house stood open and there was a station wagon outside on the wrong side of the street with the kerbside door open and the motor running. I heard feet pounding the stairs inside the house and saw more lights go on inside. Then a shouted curse. I scooted across to my car on the other side of the street, climbed in and hunched down to steering wheel level.
The man who ran out of the house slamming the door and hurling himself into the car was Henry Tsang- Anderson. He was taller than I thought he’d be and pretty fit to judge by his flowing movements. He was carrying a briefcase which he tossed over the back before slamming the car into gear. He roared off towards Lewisham and I started my motor and followed, not putting on my lights until he’d made his first turn.
The station wagon was an old Holden, not a good road holder and not hard to keep in sight. I kept my Falcon in the classical position, one back and not trapped on either side, and tooled along behind him. He picked up the Hume Highway and followed it for long enough to make me worry about going to Melbourne, but he swung off in Chullora and drove into the tight web of streets near the railway workshops. The traffic was almost non- existent and I had to keep well back. He stopped and I drove past keeping my head to the front and nearly displacing my eyeballs with sideways looks.
The Holden was parked outside a low, iron roofed, concrete workshop carrying a sign, hand-painted on n sheet of tin, that read TOP SPOT PRINTING. I parked fifty metres up the street and came back with the. 38 in my waistband and a slowly dawning idea of what was happening. It seemed to be my night for creeping around buildings; I stayed in the shadows and worked my way to the back of the workshop. It was a run-down place with grass sprouting from the foundations and broken windows sealed up with wood and tin. At the back I stacked a couple of boxes on top of a pile of pallets and looked through a high window.
There were three men in the single room, one working at an offset press, another at a heavy-duty guillotine and stapler and Henry was unfolding boxes, stacking the product into them and sealing them with heavy tape. The briefcase he’d brought from Petersham was standing on the floor near him-he glanced down at it from time to time and so did the tall, skinny guy at the press.
The trimmer and stapler was a freckled redhead, young and nervous-looking. He worked fast until he’d got ahead of the pages being fed to him, stopped, and lit a cigarette. Henry shouted something and the kid snarled back and marched over to the rear door about a metre from where I was standing. I dropped down and went around the nearest corner. Light flooded out through the open door and the kid puffed his cigarette angrily. He flipped the butt out and I heard a voice say ‘Leave it open.’
He did and that suited me because I sneaked back to the doorway and could hear most of what was said inside. After the noise of printing and packing stopped, they fell to arguing about money. The youthful voice I took to be the redhead’s; it must have been Henry who spoke next because he said he’d gone and got the bloody money, hadn’t he?
The skinny guy said what was going to happen to the fuckin’ painting and Henry said that was his business and he was taking the risks by keeping it at his place.
The redhead said: ‘Well, let’s have some bloody cash now and you’d better come up with some more.’
Henry said not to threaten him and the other guy told them both to shut up. I heard the sound of money slapping down on a table and some quiet counting.
‘That’s for starters,’ Henry said. ‘There’s plenty more to come. We’ll make the first delivery tomorrow. I want you both here at 10 o’clock with your cars. And don’t get on the piss tonight.’
There was some grumbling and I had to nick around the corner again as one of them slammed and locked the back door. The lights went out and I heard three motors start and the cars drive away. The street was quiet and not particularly well lit. There were a number of small factories, vacant lots and only a few houses some distance from the print shop. A light, curiosity-deterring rain started to fall. Boldness seemed to be indicated; I put my car in front of the building, got out the tools and broke in at the back. I turned on the lights and opened the front door. Nothing stirred in the street.
The photographic plates were set up on the press. They showed the thirty-seven sections of the scroll in full colour and slightly muzzy detail. A drawer in a desk contained slides and other photographic preparations that preceded the making of the plates. I broke open one of the eight boxes and took a look at the result of all this activity. It was a fifty-page stapled book, printed on rough paper and entitled Tibetan Love Positions. The colour was variable; the most explicit of the sections had been crudely reproduced and touched up to form the cover of the book. Even in this shoddy form the beauty of the drawings was remarkable and the sexual acts shown were varied without being perverse or contorted. The pleasure on the faces of the participants hit you in the eye and made the crude captions lettered in underneath all the more offensive.
I took the plates out of the press, collected all the stuff from the drawer-including a copy of the book that hadn’t had the captions stripped in-and the eight boxes and stowed the lot in the car. I turned off the lights, closed the front door and drove away.
On the drive back to Petersham I went carefully on the wet roads and wondered if Henry had taken his own advice and settled down for a quiet, sober night. It looked that way. The Holden was parked neatly in front of the house and all the lights were out bar one in the toilet at the back. No music, no dogs, no television. I climbed over the back fence and went in through the back door which had a light lock that took me less than a minute to open.
The house was shabby inside and very untidy. It looked as if renovations had started and stopped; the bedroom downstairs was crammed with timber and had no floorboards. The other rooms weren’t much better. The stairs were sound though, and I picked my way up them using a thin torch beam to negotiate the bends. Henry was in the front room asleep all alone in a double bed. He lay on his back and snored; lank dark hair fell forward on his face which was fatter than in the photograph I had seen.
I sat on the edge of the bed, put the muzzle of the. 38 in his mouth and rapped hard against one of his back teeth. He jerked awake and I dug the gun in between his front teeth and upper lip. His eyes were wide in shock. I kept the gun wedged firmly in and worked the slide to cock it. The sound in the quiet room was like a door falling in. It must have sounded even worse to Henry.
‘Where’s the scroll, Henry? I’ll take this out to let you tell me. If you don’t I’ll put it back and when the first train goes by you get a bullet going upwards.’ A train rumbled past; the house shook and rattled. I grinned at Henry. ‘You get the idea?’
He nodded and terror shone from his eyes.
‘Okay. Make it quick, you get one chance.’ I took the gun out and saliva ran down from his mouth. I held the small dark hole level with his right eye.
‘Under the bed,’ he said shakily, ‘Box…’
‘Get it!’
I eased back, and he came up trembling and having difficulty moving his limbs in the right sequence. I followed him with the gun like a movie camera panning as he rolled forward and scrabbled under the bed. He pulled up with a heavy metal box with a hinged lid. I gestured for him to open it; he put his hand inside the neck of his T-shirt and drew up a small key on a chain. The fingers holding the key shook and he scratched around the lock before he got it open and took out the scroll. It looked like the real thing-right dimensions, light fabric rolled around a slender piece of wood. I nodded and he put it back in the box which I tucked under my arm.
‘Who’re you? You want bread?’
I shook my head. ‘No questions, Henry. No answers.’
He lay back on the bed and didn’t show any signs of getting braver. Maybe he could reconcile himself to losing the scroll so I thought I should tell him just how bad things were.
‘I’ve got the books too,’ I said, ‘and the plates and the negs.’
There was a new level of fright in the dark eyes now. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I’ve been paid… I paid out…’
I smiled at him. ‘I know you did, mate. I was there. I was sorry to see you do that.’
‘They’ll kill me.’
‘I suggest you take a trip, Henry. No one’s going to miss you.’ I levelled the gun at his chest and got off the bed. ‘Roll over on your front and stay there until you hear the next train. That way you can think about your next move and I won’t have to shoot you.’
Down the stairs and out the front door. A train rushed past as I made the turn out of Terminal Street. It was well after midnight but it’s never too late for good news. I rang Kangri’s number and he answered, sounding
