The youngest member of the team was Yong Sue, a small, skinny, pleasant guy who always wore a smile above his bird-like neck. Yong Sue’s family had come to Australia from China thirty years ago. Ten years ago, when Yong Sue was nineteen, his parents went back to China on a visit. They were never seen again. The grandfather reckoned the son had been involved in ‘something political’, but he wouldn’t venture any deeper. Yong Sue never found out what had happened. Now he provided for his grandparents and his two younger sisters, worked twelve-hour days and smiled for at least ten of them. ‘If you’ve got a bad joke, tell it to Yong Sue. He laughs at absolutely everything,’ Andrew had told him. Now they were all assembled in a tiny, narrow room in which a noisy fan in the corner was supposed to provide some air movement. Watkins stood by the board in front of them and introduced Harry to the others.
‘Our Norwegian colleague has translated the letter we found in Inger’s room. Anything interesting you can tell us about that, Hole?’
‘Hoo-Leh.’
‘Sorry, Holy.’
‘Well, she had obviously just started a relationship with someone called Evans. From what the letter says, there is good reason to assume that it’s his hand she’s holding in the photo above the desk.’
‘We’ve checked,’ Lebie said. ‘We think he’s one Evans White.’
‘Uh-huh?’ Watkins raised a thin eyebrow.
‘We don’t have much on him. His parents came here from the US at the end of the sixties and were given a residence permit. It wasn’t a problem at that time,’ Lebie added by way of enlightenment. ‘Anyway, they travelled round the country in a VW camper, probably on the diet of veggie food, marijuana and LSD that was the norm in those days. They had a child, got divorced, and when Evans was eighteen the father went back to the US. The mother’s into healing, Scientology and all sorts of spiritual mysticism. She runs a place called the Crystal Castle on a ranch near Byron Bay. There she sells stones of karma and imported junk from Thailand to tourists and soul-seekers. When Evans was eighteen he decided to do what an increasing number of young Australians do,’ he said, turning to Harry: ‘Nothing.’
Andrew leaned over and muttered in a low voice: ‘Australia is perfect for those who want to travel around, do a bit of surfing and enjoy life at the taxpayer’s expense. Ace social network and ace climate. We live in a wonderful country.’ He leaned back.
‘At the moment he has no fixed abode,’ Lebie continued, ‘but we think that until recently he was living in a shack on the outskirts of town with Sydney’s white trash. Those we spoke to out there said they hadn’t seen him for a while. He has never been arrested. So I’m afraid the only photograph we have of him is as a thirteen-year-old when he got his passport.’
‘I’m impressed,’ Harry said without any dissimulation. ‘How did you manage to find a guy without a record from one photo and a Christian name in a population of eighteen million in such a short time?’
Lebie nodded to Andrew.
‘Andrew recognised the town in the photo. We faxed a copy to the local police station and they came up with this name. They say he has a role in the local milieu. Translated, that means he’s one of the spliff kings.’
‘It must be a very small town,’ Harry said.
‘Nimbin, just over a thousand inhabitants,’ Andrew interposed. ‘By and large they lived off dairy products until Australia’s National union of Students took it into their heads to arrange what they called the Aquarius Festival there in 1973.’
Chuckles rippled around the table.
‘The festival was actually about idealism, alternative lifestyles, back to nature and that sort of stuff. The newspapers concentrated on the young people taking drugs and having rampant sex. The festival lasted for over ten days, and for some it never stopped. Growing conditions around Nimbin are good. For everything under the sun. Let me put it this way: I doubt that dairy products are the most important business up there any longer. In the main street, fifty metres from the local police station, you will find Australia’s most open marijuana market. And LSD market, I’m sorry to say.’
‘At all events,’ Lebie said, ‘he’s been seen in Nimbin recently, according to the police.’
‘In fact, the Premier of New South Wales is about to launch a campaign there,’ Watkins interjected. ‘The Federal government has apparently been pressing him to do something about the burgeoning trade in narcotics.’
‘That’s true,’ Lebie said. ‘The cops are using spotter planes and helicopters to take photos of the fields where they’re growing hemp.’