from his hand and fell to the ground. She picked them up, and put them back in her bag.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said.
‘I don’t think anybody else will either.’
‘I’ve given those children things they would never have had otherwise. They have toys, they go to school. They have good clothes and they eat every day. I’m not a monster. I’m nice to them.’
‘Spare me the violins,’ Grace said. ‘What I want to know is, do we have a deal?’
‘Where did you get those pictures?’
‘Why should I tell you that?’
He looked at her so sharply and with such outright fear that, even in role, she was shocked.
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You got those pictures from Orion. Otherwise you’d be dead.’
‘Does it matter where they came from? I’ve got them. It’s my call what happens to them. Do you want to be a known paedophile, Jon? Do you want to be hounded out of town everywhere you go by people baying for your blood?’
He was silent. Then he leaned forward with his head in his hands, crying. She looked away. It was obscene to watch that kind of desperation. He stopped crying and stared at the ground for a few moments, then sat up. No more tears; he had the strangest smile on his face.
‘If you want to play this game, then tell me what you want,’ he said, in a voice that sounded oddly unconcerned. ‘Money? Because I don’t have any.’
Grace didn’t like his tone. If this was a game, there was something disturbing about his tactics. For a few seconds she weighed up how she should handle this, then stayed with the plan she had agreed on with Clive.
‘Yes, I’d like money but that’s not my first priority. What I really want is in on your scam.’
‘What scam?’
‘Those foreign workers at Life’s Pleasures. Don’t tell me you don’t take a cut of what they make. Bet it’s a lot more than Lynette got. I’d like part of that money, thanks.’
‘I don’t get a cent and I don’t have a cent,’ he replied in a colourless voice.
‘Don’t talk rubbish!’
‘I don’t. No one pays me. You have to realise that the people who control me have pictures just like yours. I pay them and I keep paying them. I’ve told them there’s a limit to what I have. Do they want me to sell my kidneys on the net? They just keep saying, give me more. They don’t understand people. What happens when people get desperate.’ He was leaning forward. Then he closed his eyes again. ‘I’m so tired.’
‘Who’s they?’ Grace asked, hiding surprise at the openness of his confession. ‘These people bleeding you?’
He looked up at her. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘If you won’t do business with me, maybe I can deal with them.’
He laughed from somewhere deep down and closed his eyes again. He didn’t move or speak; he seemed to have withdrawn completely.
After a few moments, Grace spoke again. ‘Those workers don’t get paid a cent, do they? Why do they do it?’
‘As far as I can work it out, they’re paying off the costs of a new identity. My job is to find them. I review a lot of visa applications. It’s always women who will never get a visa no matter what they do, either for themselves or someone they want to bring over here.’ He was staring ahead. ‘After I’ve found them and referred them, the department never sees or hears from them again. They just disappear off the radar. What I have to do then is make sure we never follow them up. I’ve even destroyed files.’
‘How many women?’
‘Half a dozen over three years.’
‘That’s not very many.’
‘No. I’ve thought that too.’ He was speaking as if they were colleagues at a departmental meeting, discussing policy, not people’s lives. ‘Obviously I know what I’m sending these women to. I’ve been told that to make sure I pick the right women. But it’s a lot of effort for a few people. All I can think is that they like doing this. They like breaking people down. With me, it’s money. They grind it out of me. With these women, it’s sex. They have to do it. They may not want to but that’s just too bad.’ He frowned. ‘It’s the kick. It can’t be anything else. They like controlling people. It must be an addiction.’
‘Who’s they?’ Grace repeated.
He smiled at her, broadly, savagely. ‘The people you want to do business with.’
Again, silence.
‘Where do you refer these women?’ she asked.
He was still looking at her. Given the situation, and the surreal feel that seemed to have attached itself to their conversation, she couldn’t judge his expression. It seemed almost businesslike. He glanced around the park. It was peaceful, domestic, with the sound of distant voices and occasional bird calls.
‘There’s a place in Parramatta Westfield-the Portal. An immigration self-help business. The department’s been dealing with it since it opened four years ago. As far as the department knows, it’s completely above board. I’ve sent whole families there. They help with their English, tell them how to start a business, advise on how to get citizenship. I tell these women the Portal will be able to help them and usually they’re so desperate they go over there right away.’
‘Who was the last woman you referred?’
‘A young Somali woman. Nadifa Hasan Ibrahim. Very, very beautiful. She desperately wanted a visa for her brother. That wasn’t very long ago.’
‘She broke her bargain. She never turned up at Life’s Pleasures.’
‘Then she’s probably dead,’ he said in a neutral voice. ‘They wouldn’t tolerate someone not keeping their side of a bargain.’
‘Don’t you take these women over to Life’s Pleasures?’
‘No. The other night was the first time I’d been inside.’
‘Marie Li knew you, Jon.’
‘She’d met me once before, when I picked up that young Thai woman from the back door one night. The one whose passport you showed me.’
‘Jirawan,’ Grace said. ‘How does she fit into this?’
‘She wasn’t one of the women I referred. I can only guess they brought her there themselves. Why, I can’t tell you. They could have been punishing her for some reason. If they thought she owed them money, they might have been making her work it off. From my own experience, I’d say that’s the most likely scenario. They get very upset if they don’t get every cent they think is owed to them. Even the smallest amount.’
Again, the ordinariness with which he spoke was surreal.
‘They put this Jirawan in the boot,’ he said. ‘Marie Li and her gorilla. All I could do was what I was told.’
‘You didn’t know her?’
‘No, I was just told to go and pick her up and deliver her.’
‘Deliver her where?’
‘I wasn’t told that. I was to receive instructions on my mobile. I didn’t do it. I let her go with a train fare in her hand. It was all I could do for her. I told you, I’m not a monster, I do have a conscience. That’s what they don’t quite get-that people have free will. They think they can squash it out of you. They were very angry with me that night. Now I’m going to have to pay for doing that. It’s just how they work. It would never occur to them that I might try and get back at them somehow.’ He laughed strangely.
A tall woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a tracksuit and with her hair tucked up under a cap, jogged towards them. She stopped at a bench some distance away and began stretching exercises. Kidd’s eyes followed her. He stared at his feet and laughed again.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. They’ll eat you alive and enjoy it.’
‘Who are these people? How do you know them?’
‘They’re people I met in Thailand once. They had pictures. Since then they’ve had a lot of fun letting me know who they are and what they do. My own fault. I thought I could buy them off. What I finally realised was that someone must have found me for them. I was what they wanted. Someone who worked for the Department of Immigration. You see, these women aren’t the only ones they sell identities to. They bring other people into the
