automatically transferred offshore.
The brothel itself was large enough for Jirawan to have been hidden away in one room while business went on as normal in the rest of the place. Each room had a theme, a colour, a fantasy for whatever taste. The erotic paintings had the commercial look of pneumatic sex, while the mirrors on the walls and ceilings made her wonder why people so enjoyed watching themselves.
At the end of one corridor there was a fire door. Grace opened it to see the landing of a bleak, cement fire stair. She opened the door of the room closest to the exit. It was a little more spare than the others she’d seen, but it was serviceable and could be locked. It held a faint smell of air freshener gone stale. Grace climbed the fire stairs to the fourth floor. The fire door opened onto what seemed to be a private hallway laid with a length of red carpet. Not far from the fire exit a uniformed police officer stood outside an open doorway. Miss Marie Li’s apartment, with a direct line to the most discreet room in the brothel. Grace decided it was time to introduce herself.
She walked into a room where someone had let their imagination take a different turn altogether from the pay-as-you-go fantasy downstairs. It was softer, a place where all negativities were expelled. Close the door behind you and you left the grey Parramatta streets below for some much more romantic place. Even so it had a fake quality, a chinoiserie such as you might find in a 1930s Hollywood film set where the action was supposedly situated in the exotic colonial Far East. The Art Deco furnishings, the drapes in period prints, the light fittings, the potted palms, the decorated screens, even the wallpaper, were a loving recreation of the time; elegant, richly coloured and luxurious.
The room was filled with a sweet, fresh, but still almost overpowering odour. On the tables roundabout stood vases of cut flowers: red, white, lilac and yellow roses, deep blue irises, lilies. An ornate sideboard was covered with an array of orchids in heavy gilded metal pots. The flowers bloomed in every shade of colour merging to deeply variegated textures, one patterned almost like leopard skin. Downstairs, the clients paid by the half-hour to the hour; here the fantasy could go on for as long as anyone wanted.
A smaller room off the main lounge had been set up for entertainment and was dominated by a large, flat screen. There were shelves of DVDs: silent and 1930s films, Hollywood musicals-
The sudden and pervasive smell of cigarette smoke caught her attention. She moved towards the kitchen, a room with gleaming stainless-steel fittings and pale granite bench tops. There were signs of interrupted food preparation on one of the benches: an array of dishes usually found on a yum cha menu and a bottle of vintage Pol Roger champagne in an ice bucket with two champagne flutes beside it. Borghini was sitting with Marie Li at the table, a uniformed policewoman with them. The rest of his team were searching the apartment. Jon Kidd was already there, leaning against the bench and watching everything.
Marie was smoking quickly, a packet of cigarettes and a gold lighter close to her hand. There was no ingrained smell of stale cigarette smoke in the flat; if there had been, it would have disturbed the ambience, the smell of the flowers. If Marie lit up at other times, she must have had to go outside. No more than in her early twenties, she was stylishly attractive with a resemblance to Gong Li herself. Her eyebrows were finely curved, her mouth shaped full with red lipstick. Iridescent red tints in her black hair matched her rose-coloured fingernails. Her hands were shaking badly and she seemed unable to sit completely still.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked, her face showing more confusion and fear than anger.
Borghini gave the standard reply to that question. ‘Grace Riordan, one of my officers. I’ve already shown Marie a photograph of Coco and told her she’s dead,’ he said to Grace. ‘I’ve also told her we have information that she was a worker here. She denies that. She also says she’s never met the brothel’s owners and doesn’t know who they are.’
‘Lynette handles all that kind of thing,’ Marie said. ‘She deals with the accountants. I’m the hostess. That’s all I do.’
‘You’re the manager,’ Borghini said.
‘The hostess,’ she replied sharply. ‘It might be called manager but it really means hostess. I make people feel at ease. I’m better at that than Lynette.’
Grace sat down. Marie lit a cigarette from the end of the one she was just finishing. Jirawan’s photograph, taken at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, lay on the table.
‘Where did you get this information about this girl?’ Marie asked. ‘Whoever it was, they must have been mistaken. I don’t know her. She’s never worked here.’
‘Our informant knew your receptionist’s name,’ Borghini said.
‘Maybe he’s been a customer here. He might have a grudge against us.’
‘So if I go downstairs and ask Lynette about Coco, what’s she going to tell me?’
‘That she’s never seen her here and she’s never heard of her.’
‘And the workers?’
‘The same!’ Marie’s voice had an edge of panic. ‘She was never here. I don’t know why you keep asking me. Where did this information come from? What was this informant’s name?’ She spoke with a modified Australian accent, giving her speech a strained, artificial, up-market gloss.
‘That information is confidential,’ Borghini said.
‘We don’t even know who’s accusing us. That doesn’t seem very fair.’
‘Who were you expecting tonight? You got the champagne out for someone.’
‘That’s none of your business!’ She almost shrieked this, theatrically.
‘I think you’ll find it is,’ Borghini replied. ‘Whoever he is, he hasn’t turned up.’
‘My private life is my affair. It’s got nothing to do with this.’
Grace’s gaze went past Marie to a plain-clothes officer heading towards them from the hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms. He whispered in Borghini’s ear.
‘Okay,’ Borghini said. ‘If you don’t mind, Marie, we’ll just stop there for the moment. There’s a room in your flat I want to have a look at.’
She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I don’t have anything to hide. This is my home and I don’t like you being here but I don’t have anything to hide. Which room is it?’
‘The one beside the linen cupboard.’
‘There’s nothing to see in there. I’ll show you.’
Marie rose to her feet. She was slender, and wearing a red silk cheongsam set off by very high stiletto heels. Kidd fell into step behind her. They all followed her down the hallway past the main bedroom-a large room furnished with a king-size bed and soft rugs, including one that seemed to be a genuine tiger’s skin. The windows were covered with heavy drapes. They stopped outside another door.
‘Is this the room you’re interested in?’ she said. ‘I can’t see why.’
Furnished with a single bed, it was small and spare and lacking the gaudy luxury of the rest of the flat. There was no window and the door had a lock on the outside.
‘Why do you need a lock on this door?’ Borghini asked. ‘Do you lock anyone in here?’
‘No, of course I don’t. That lock was here when I moved into this place. I don’t use this room. Go inside and look at it if you want to. It’s not such a terrible place. It has heating and an en suite.’
Grace stepped into the room. The surfaces seemed free of dust and there was the same faint smell of artificial air freshener as in the room downstairs. There would be nothing in here, not even a hair. A place with no exit, except to another room downstairs which also had no way out. She returned to the hallway.
‘It’s very clean for a room you never use,’ she said to Marie. ‘Have you cleaned it recently? It smells of air freshener.’
‘I like things clean.’
Grace glanced at Borghini. He was standing back a little, watching; a slight nod said she should go on.
‘You like things clean?’ she said. ‘Is this a maid’s room? A place for someone who cooks and cleans for you?’
‘I do my own cooking. I like to cook.’
‘Then who does your cleaning? Whoever slept in there?’
