10
The Wongs’ home at Chipping Norton was a large double-storeyed yellow-brick house in a row of similar dwellings. Camellia bushes grew in a tidy pattern in the small front garden. There were entrances for a three-car garage while a flight of steps led up to the residential storey of the house. Grace parked on the street. Several cars were parked nearby, including a van with tinted windows. Somewhere within range was a vehicle where every word spoken within her vicinity this morning would be recorded by Clive’s technicians. He and Borghini were listening to it elsewhere. She got out of the car; she was in role.
The doorbell was answered by a slender man of about thirty who wasn’t much taller than Grace.
‘Duncan Wong? I’m Grace Riordan. I called you earlier.’
He wasn’t happy to see her. He nodded without speaking and gestured for her to come inside. The house had a feel of comfort; the contoured carpets were soft underfoot, the hallway walls decorated with wallpaper showing a softly glittering pattern of graceful cranes and flowers against a silver background, probably a Florence Broadhurst print. Grace saw a god in an alcove together with a vase of gladioli and incense sticks. The living areas were spacious. In one room, two women, one middle-aged, the other elderly, sat together on the lounge watching television.
‘Mum,’ Duncan said from the doorway, ‘the woman from the police task force is here. Do you want to talk to her?’
The middle-aged woman replied in Chinese without looking around and with a backward wave of her hand.
‘Do you want to come into the kitchen?’ Duncan said to Grace. ‘Mum’s really upset about this. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Dad’s not here, he’s in Hong Kong, so she’s got to deal with it by herself.’
‘What do you do, Duncan?’ she asked.
‘I’m an optometrist. I’ve got a business in Liverpool.’
‘Are you closed for the day?’
‘No, my wife’s there. She’s an optometrist as well.’
The kitchen was large with a view out to the back garden where there was a swimming pool. Above the garden fence, Grace saw a range of red-tiled suburban roofs against a cloudless sky.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Duncan asked.
‘No, I’m fine, thanks. How’s Narelle?’
‘She’s okay, I guess. She wasn’t working in that place, was she? I mean, she wasn’t one of the girls?’
‘No, she was the manager. She didn’t take clients. That wasn’t her role.’
He was too relieved to hide his feelings.
‘I’ve got to tell Mum that. She’s been too freaked to think about it.’
‘Hasn’t Narelle talked to you?’
‘She won’t. She’s locked herself in her room and won’t talk to anyone. She’s been in there ever since she came home. All she does is come out for food. I hear her crying sometimes. I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘What do your parents do, Duncan?’
‘They own the Four Seas Restaurant in Liverpool. It’s not just some takeaway. It’s got a hat, and we got seventeen out of twenty in the
‘What did Narelle do before she worked at Life’s Pleasures?’
‘She’s been trying to be an actress ever since she was about fifteen. People told her that with her face, it should be a snack for her. She wanted to go to NIDA but she didn’t get in. She’s had bit parts now and then and she’s been in commercials. Dad’s spent a fortune on her. He’s paid for all these lessons she said she had to have, for publicity photographs, everything. It still hasn’t made anything happen. Why do you want to know?’
Maybe this was the attraction for whoever her lover was-Narelle’s capacity to play a fantasy love goddess role and enjoy it. She would only have an audience of one. It might as well be virtual reality.
‘I’m just trying to find out a little about her before I talk to her,’ Grace replied. ‘Has she had an actual job?’
Duncan smiled, bitterly. ‘Not really. Nothing that’s lasted. She’s always been more interested in partying than anything else.’
‘Where does she party?’
‘She used to go to this place up at Palm Beach a lot. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home for days. When she did, she was usually drunk or high on something.’
‘Do you have an address for this place? Do you know who owned it?’
‘No. She wouldn’t tell us.’
‘Did you ever visit her at Parramatta or meet anyone she worked with?’
‘She didn’t want us to. Mum would ring to say she was going to come over and Narelle would say that if she did, she wouldn’t let her in.’
‘What did you think she was doing?’ Grace asked.
‘She said she had a job managing a hospitality business.’ He laughed enough to show how much this all hurt. ‘I feel like an idiot. We never thought she’d be doing anything like this. We thought she was organising functions or something.’
‘How long had she been doing this work?’
‘Since February. She told us about it at Dad’s birthday party. We were so relieved because she hadn’t had any kind of job for almost a year. We believed everything she told us. But it was all lies. Everything she told us was a lie. And that’s the point.’ His face contorted with grief. ‘There’s nothing more important than family. Mum and Dad built everything we have up from nothing. They’ve worked really hard. She’s treating it as if it doesn’t mean a thing. It means everything.’
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
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
