Counter Attack (10 page)

‘Okay,’ Justin said.

The line went blank for five seconds, and then it was ringing.

A person called Samantha picked up in the secure-comms section of RG Casey and Mac identified himself as Albion, giving the code to say he wasn’t sitting there having his fingernails torn out.

‘What can I do for you, Albion?’ said Samantha, when she’d cleared him.

‘Can you run a VIN for me, please?’ said Mac, reading out the VIN sequences from the green LandCruiser.

Ninety seconds later, Samantha announced she had the data.

‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘I need you to query the JPJ database in Malaysia and see if you can match that VIN to either a first owner, or the buyer of the vehicle through Cameron Toyota in KL, okay?’

‘Cameron Toyota,’ said Samantha. ‘This a stolen vehicle?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mac. ‘If Cameron Toyota doesn’t come up on the JPJ, you’ll have to do a company search to find the entity behind Cameron, and then do an ownership match from there. Can do?’

‘Can do, Albion,’ said Samantha.

‘Then we need to match that VIN against new registrations in Ho Chi Minh City – I think we query the Traffic Police Department.’

‘Sure, Albion – what are we looking for?’

‘Ownership, I think, perhaps compliance paperwork for an imported vehicle,’ said Mac, kicking himself for not knowing if the rego was Malaysian or Vietnamese.

Having a fast, hot shower, Mac plundered his toilet bag for painkillers and came up with his last two Panadeine Fortes. Washing them down with the beer, he gasped as he got his leg into position under the bedcovers and adjusted the ice pack on his left knee.

Drifting off, he tried to get the image of Jim Quirk out of his head and attempted to fit Geraldine McHugh into Captain Loan’s thinking. Why was a cop asking about Quirk’s wife?

As sleep took him the phone rang, waking Mac with a start. Picking up, he croaked his hello to Samantha and fossicked for a pad and pen on the bedside table.

‘Yeah?’ said Mac, sitting up.

‘The VIN was registered to a company in Kuala Lumpur in August 2006,’ said Samantha.

‘Name?’ said Mac, his head swimming.

‘Highland Surveying. It’s listed as a provider of surveying services to the logging and mining industries.’

‘Okay.’

She continued, ‘Ho Chi Minh Traffic Police has no record of the VIN or rego.’

‘Okay, what about Hanoi?’ said Mac.

‘Vehicle rego is national in Vietnam,’ said Samantha.

Thinking about it, Mac wondered if he had the wrong VIN – but it couldn’t be that because the VIN had already been paired with Cameron Toyota’s spare key under the seat.

‘Can we try Cambodia?’ said Mac, knowing how much traffic flowed between the two countries.

‘Can you give me five minutes?’

‘I’ll wait,’ said Mac, limping into the bathroom on the hunt for more painkillers.

As Mac wondered if this call counted as staying out of trouble by Scotty’s definition, Samantha came back on the line.

‘Royal Government of Cambodia registered that VIN in February of this year.’

‘To whom?’ said Mac.

‘A company called Bright Star Consulting,’ said Samantha. ‘Listed as infrastructure consultants for inbound foreign investors, specialising in forestry, mining and resources processing.’

Mac recognised the kind of front company he’d spent most of his working life hiding behind. ‘Got an address?’

‘Sure,’ said Samantha, reeling off a Phnom Penh street and number.

‘Can we reverse-search?’ said Mac, already fairly confident that the address would be a law or accounting firm.

‘That address has two tenants,’ said Samantha. ‘Law firm on levels one and two, a partnership of accountants on two and three –’

Mac was fading, irritable with pain.

‘You want more?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Mac. ‘I get the picture.’

Chapter 18

The sound of the phone woke Mac from his sleep. Rolling to grab it, his knee caught and pain surged up his leg.

‘Faaarrrk,’ he moaned as he looked at the phone screen – it was a text. He didn’t know the alert sounds yet.

Clicking, he saw the message:
Call me. Ben.

Rolling gingerly onto his back, Mac realised he was lying in a puddle of water from the melted ice. He decided to walk around the suite and get the leg working. He had things to do and a new arrival to get rid of. With Quirk now dead, Lance Kendrick wasn’t needed and he didn’t want some new-guard ‘whiz-kid’ adding to his headaches.

As he put weight on the knee, the pain sang like a concert-hall organ, echoing in his brain as he opened his mouth to scream. Shaking in that spot beside the bed for ten seconds, Mac breathed it out with some deep diaphragm actions, making himself take the pain, forcing his brain to accept the signals and then get on with the day.

He managed to get through his shower and have a shave. Then, as he turned to grab a face towel, his leg gave way beneath him.

The consulate doctor arrived thirty-four minutes later.

‘It’s not broken,’ she said, poking his balloon-like knee with a wooden spatula. ‘But there’s ligament trauma.’

‘Yeah. Just like in footy, right?’ said Mac, trying to get the conversation around to him walking, not convalescing.

‘You’ve had injuries like
this
before?’ she said, wrapping her hands around the puffy joint and squeezing the interior ligament. ‘That hurt?’

‘No,’ said Mac, catching his breath with the pain. ‘It’s not painful, it just won’t support my weight.’

‘Oh really?’ said the quack, a fifty-something expat Aussie who eyed him suspiciously over her half-glasses. ‘Just won’t support your weight? Is that all?’

‘Yeah, doc – shot of corty should do it. Just to get me going.’

‘Hydrocortisone? Oh my God – you are a footy player, aren’t you?’ she said, moving to her medical bag. ‘You’re worse than my brothers.’

‘Where from?’ said Mac, as she opened a steel box.

‘Gladstone,’ she said, holding a bottle to the light.

‘Oh yeah?’ Mac rolled his eyes at the mention of a rival town from his childhood. ‘
Fag
stone?’

‘And you’d be from . . . let me guess:
Frock
hampton, right?’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Mac, eyeing the needle as it plunged into his knee, ‘just so long as you’re not from Mackay.’

Keying the phone from his seat on the cyclo, Mac looked down at the heavy blue brace that was now strapped around his knee – the trade-off the doctor had demanded to clear him for field duties.

Tranh came on the line and verified that the Air Vietnam flight from Bangkok was on time.

‘You speak with Loan yet?’ said Mac.

‘Yes, Mr Richard,’ said Tranh. ‘I told her we’re in Vung Tau – the name of my cousin’s restaurant is South China Dragon. We had barbecue fish and two beers. I say you went to see a school library official but not around.’

‘Nice work, Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘You scrub up okay?’

‘What?’ said Tranh. ‘I have bath.’

‘Beaut. See you at eleven o’clock,’ said Mac and hung up.

Shoving his hand in his left pocket, he pulled out Captain Loan’s business card. He didn’t want to call her but he knew she’d come after him anyway, maybe get him down to the cells. So it’d be easier to remain available and fake her out.

Mac listened to the ringing as they slowed for a red light. They were heading for the Southern Scholastic offices, where Mac wanted to make a secure call to Benny in Singapore.

‘
Xin chao
,’ came the female voice as Mac’s call connected.

‘Captain Loan – Richard Davis here. You called?’

‘Yes, Mr Richard, thank you for calling back,’ she said. ‘I’d like to have a chat, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘I’m in a meeting right now,’ he said. ‘Just stepped out for coffee and then I’m in back-to-backs all day. Yeah, so, I’m just looking at my diary –’

‘What about now?’ asked Loan.

‘Well, yeah, okay then, let’s see,’ said Mac. ‘I’ve got an eleven o’clock at An Phu, and then a one o’clock at the Pharmacy University, down in Cholon – that’s always a two-hour affair, you know what academics are like.’

‘Okay,’ said Loan.

‘And I’m looking at my diary, it’s right in front of me . . .’

‘No, I mean right now.’

‘Well, I’ve just stepped out of this meeting to make this call –’

‘Why not talk in the car, rather than ride in that cyclo?’

Mac turned slowly and saw the white Camry parked behind the cyclo.

‘Yeah, why not?’ said Mac, and hung up.

Sliding into the passenger seat, Mac felt self-conscious. The doctor had given him a bottle of T3 painkillers and he was starting to wish he’d eaten more food on top of them.

Loan didn’t greet him. ‘What happened to your leg?’

‘Spider bite,’ said Mac.

‘Big spiders in Vung Tau,’ said Captain Loan, as she accelerated into the traffic. ‘Seen the paper this morning? Aussie killed – at the Mekong Saloon.’

‘That’s in Cholon, isn’t it?’ said Mac. ‘Famous place.’

‘Tourists and expats seem to like it,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘You’re not interested that an Aussie was killed there?’

‘I’m interested, Captain.’

‘Don’t want to know the deceased’s name?’

Mac stayed cheery. ‘Haven’t even got my seatbelt on yet.’

‘Thought you Aussies stuck together?’

‘He could be anyone,’ said Mac, wanting to be out of that car.

‘How you know he’s a he?’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Mac, trying to make light of it.

‘It’s one of the consulate officers,’ she said, and left it there.

They drove in silence for just over three minutes.

‘It could have been you,’ she said, out of nowhere.

‘Really?’

‘You were there last night, weren’t you?’

‘Must have the wrong guy,’ said Mac, smiling. ‘I was down in Vung Tau.’

‘The staff are talking about an Aussie man who was there.’

‘What, who looked like Brad Pitt? Moved like Muhammad Ali?’

‘No – tallish, blond. Heavily built. Barman thought he was a soldier.’

‘Well, that counts me out,’ said Mac, his mind racing.

‘Does it?’

He took her in: she’d put on make-up, she was chewing gum and – the big giveaway – her nails were bitten down.

‘Parents must be proud, eh, Captain?’

‘Sorry?’ she asked, as if she hadn’t heard correctly.

‘Your parents – they must be proud to have their girl making captain in the police?’

They stopped at traffic and Loan whipped her sunnies off, looking at him. ‘You want to play games, Mr Uc?’

Mac was taken aback. ‘Look . . .’

‘No, you look, Mr Richard, or whatever your name is. You know very well that any man who sends his daughter to Monash University is going to be disappointed when she comes home and joins the police.’

‘Well,’ said Mac.

‘And I don’t chew my nails because I can’t find a husband.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mac.

‘The dead man is James Kirk.’

‘Quirk,’ said Mac before he could stop himself.

‘Ah,’ said Captain Loan, smiling as she put her sunnies back on. ‘You seem to know more than me.’

‘Only because you told me –’ said Mac, but she was grinning ear to ear.

‘I want to show you something,’ said Loan, and threw the Camry across traffic before Mac could reply.

Mac followed Loan and the landlord up the wooden staircase of the colonial apartment building. On the second-floor landing, the land- lord – a short elderly man with a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip – searched for a key and opened the door with the number 3 screwed into the wood.

Leading Mac inside, Loan shut the door. ‘This is where we tracked Geraldine McHugh,’ said Loan, as she walked to the living-room bay window and looked down on the hyperkinetic street activity of Cholon.

‘Geraldine McHugh?’ said Mac, confused, joining her at the window. ‘Quirk’s wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mac, the T3s clouding his thinking as he looked around at the bare walls and a sparsely furnished apartment.

‘I don’t understand either,’ said Loan. ‘Want to tell me about it?’

‘I can’t,’ said Mac, trying to think of where to go with this. ‘What do you mean, you
tracked
her here?’

‘White woman, blonde, living alone. In
Cholon
?’ said Loan, as if it was the moon. ‘We got a tip-off – one of the neighbours was worried about her. She didn’t seem to know what she was doing and she had unsavoury company.’

‘So?’ said Mac.

‘So we had her under surveillance and one of our guys says he recognises her – that she’d been at an Aussie consulate barbecue two years ago.’

‘Really?’ said Mac.

‘So we went through the diplomatic files and connected Jim Quirk and Geraldine McHugh. Husband and wife, but he’s living in the compound at An Phu, while she’s living here.’

‘Maybe they’re separated?’

‘Then why’s she in Saigon, Mr Richard?’ said Loan, whose intellect was starting to grate.

‘I don’t know, Captain Loan,’ said Mac.‘You have a theory?’

‘Well, at first I thought she might have been kidnapped – you know, held against her will.’

‘How did you rule that out?’ asked Mac.

‘Women’s intuition,’ said Loan. ‘And a listening device under the coffee table.’

‘So what was she doing?’

‘Some sex, with a man she called Dodo,’ said Loan. ‘Nickname, I think. We established she wasn’t being held here, if you see what I mean.’

‘I think I do, but –’

‘By the way, does the phrase “BP” or “Beep” mean anything to you?’ asked Loan. ‘Is that an Australian saying?’

‘One’s an oil company,’ said Mac.

‘Hmm,’ she said, losing interest. ‘Not what I wanted.’

Rattling the keys in her hand, Loan made to leave the apartment.

‘So, what’s the theory?’ said Mac, wanting the final pieces.

‘I think she was pretending to be kidnapped. The few calls she made were to Quirk.’

‘Why would she come all the way to Saigon to pretend to be kidnapped?’ asked Mac.

‘She was getting him to go to the Mekong Saloon each day,’ said Loan, her eyes boring into Mac’s. ‘Before we could get answers, Quirk was dead.’

‘Where?’ said Mac.

‘The compound behind the club – in the alley.’ Loan was walking towards the door. ‘Single shot to the temple.’

‘So where’s Geraldine?’ said Mac, following her.

‘You tell me.’

‘What?’

‘She left last night,’ said the captain, holding the door open for him. ‘Neighbours say she was picked up around midnight.’

‘Taxi?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Man in a white Ford Explorer.’