We reached a door on the right. Another guard, identical uniform, identical earpiece and jacket bulge, was standing on the nearside of the door. He stiffened as we came round the corner.
The first guy walked off without a word. I flashed my ID again. The second guard opened the door and nodded us in.
It was another impressively proportioned room, high ceiling, sumptuous sofas, a desk, ancient-looking framed Chinese silk prints on dark walls. No sign of Ho.
Halfway into the room, I heard a faint sound from the far corner. There was a door into another room. I noticed a flickering light coming from beyond the doorway but couldn’t make out the sound.
I turned to Mary and put a finger to my lips. Stopping a yard from the door, I pulled to the wall, peered in, Mary right next to me.
There was a wide flat screen on the far wall. A sofa.
On the screen a small boy played with a toy train. He lifted his head and beamed a beatific smile. Then the scene changed. The boy was a little older, maybe seven, eight. He was flying a kite on the beach. The camera panned back and I saw Bathers’ Pavilion, the landmark café on Balmoral Beach a mile from here.
Ho Meng sat in half-profile staring ahead, transfixed. A line of tears running down his cheek, his body shaking.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to come face-to-face with the dead kid.
Chapter 27
THE YOUNG GUY gripped my shoulders and turned me from the sight of the weeping Ho Meng. I realized it must be Dai, Chang’s brother. They were so alike it was spooky. I caught Mary’s eye and we crept away across the office, back out into the corridor. Dai led us into one of the living areas I’d seen earlier. He closed the door and indicated we should sit on a sofa, pulled up a chair and leaned forward.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
I started to reply but he lifted a hand.
“Please. I’m sorry because my father would have been so ashamed if he knew you were there. I’m sorry for him, for me.”
I nodded. It wasn’t the way I would have thought, but I understood what the guy meant – from his cultural perspective.
“We didn’t mean to intrude,” Mary said.
“What is it you want?”
“We hoped to talk to your father about your brother’s murder.”
“He’s told me all about the Triads. I grew up with them as a dark presence in our lives.”
There was a sound from the doorway. Ho Meng was standing with the light from the hall breaking around him. He strode over as Mary and I got up from the sofa. He gripped my hand and then pecked Mary on the cheek. He had transformed from the grief-stricken father in the home theater, and was once again the upright businessman. But he couldn’t completely hide the pain. I saw it in his eyes.
“Please everyone, sit,” he said. “I heard what my son told you, and it is absolutely true. The Triads have hung over our lives like a dark shadow, and they still do. In fact their shadow has grown darker.”
“Meng, this morning I could tell you were holding back. If you want us to work with you in hunting down your son’s killers you have to tell us everything,” Mary said.
He held her gaze unblinking. “You are right. The fact is I am convinced my wife, Jiao, was murdered by the Triads twelve years ago, soon after we came to Australia. She was last seen in Chinatown, in the middle of the day. Next morning her headless body was discovered in Roseville. The police were convinced it was the work of a psycho killer, connected it with two similar unsolved murders from three years before. But they never caught the killer.”
“And that is why you don’t trust the cops,” I said.
Ho merely nodded. “They have consistently let me down. First Jiao, then Chang. I reported him missing. They did nothing. Then he died.”
I felt like saying that the police could not be everywhere all the time, but thought better of it.
Then Mary said, “But Meng, what I don’t understand is this. If you are convinced the Triads killed Jiao, surely when Chang was kidnapped you knew they would be serious about killing him if you didn’t agree to work with them?”
Dai went to speak, but his father silenced him with a look. “You’re missing the point, Mary. The members of the Triads are not honorable men. They would have killed Chang either way. They would have kept him until I fulfilled my side of the bargain, then they would have slit his throat – he knew too much about them to live. Now, perhaps you begin to understand why I don’t trust the police. It was thanks to them I was put in that terrible position.”
Chapter 28
I WAS WITH Johnny again in my office at Private, the door open. We heard voices from reception – Colette talking to a man. Without looking up, I heard Johnny shuffle in his chair, then sensed rather than saw him freeze in surprise.