‘I’m serious, Stevie. This is your last warning. I know Veitch has already had a word with you.’

Stevie made a move toward the dinosaur paperweight, but stopped herself. Taking it would be childish; besides, its presence here on the desk meant that Monty was still coming back. ‘I’ll send your regards to Mont,’ she said as she turned on her heel and left the office. (Image 18.1)

Image 18.1

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was closer to lunch than breakfast, but everyone in the establishment slept late. The girls wiped sleep from their eyes as they sat around the table devouring rice cakes and coconut milk, baked bananas and sweet fish curry left over from the night before. The packets of sugary western cereal standing on the table remained untouched. They were well fed—the assurance of good food was about the only promise of Jon Pavel’s that had come true.

Excitement crackled like static through the kitchen. The girls were going to Broome to work as hostesses at the resort where they would make more money than they had ever seen in Perth. Soon they would all be rich, pay their debts and return to their villages as celebrities. That might happen, there was always a chance, Mai thought as she silently shuffled around the table, ladling rice from a large aluminium pot to those who wanted it. She didn’t express her doubts about the venture, didn’t want to dampen their spirits. At twenty-three she was the oldest by several years, but sometimes it felt like decades.

She’d worked the high end of the market before, the favourite of a wealthy Chinese Catholic, and had enjoyed special favours for a while. When the Chinaman discovered her pregnancy, he’d paid her old Mamasan a small fortune to skip the customary abortion, telling her in the same breath that he wanted no more to do with her. High end like Broome, low end like here, there was little difference.

Unless you owned the business.

Lin refused Mai’s offer of rice; she hadn’t touched her breakfast, Mai noticed. The girl continuously rubbed at her stomach and seemed to be having trouble drawing her breath. Rick was a clever one; he knew just how much beating a girl could take, where to punch for maximum pain and minimum damage, often hitting them through a thin foam mattress so the skin wouldn’t bruise. Mai could see he’d gone too far this time. He was encouraged to beat the girls for bad behaviour, but she knew the Mamasan wouldn’t have wanted Lin to be hit that hard.

Seventeen-year-old Nien peeped around the cereal boxes and met Mai with worried eyes. With a tilt of her head she indicated Lin sitting next to her.

‘Does the Mamasan know what happened?’ Nien whispered through her hand. If Lin heard what she said, she gave no sign of it; she just continued to stare blankly into her untouched bowl of fish curry. The other girls at the table were giggling, speculating on what kind of men they would meet in Broome. They weren’t interested in the serious conversation at the other end of the table. Just as well, Mai thought, the fewer who knew the truth behind Lin’s injuries the better.

Without waiting for an answer, Nien went on. ‘She can’t work now; even the drunken farang might notice her injuries. No one will want to lie with a girl with broken bones. This will cost the Mamasan money.’

‘I can’t take her to the doctor; there isn’t time,’ Mai said. ‘I’ve bound her ribs; that will have to do, but I think some might be cracked or broken.’

‘Why can’t you get Mamasan to take her to the doctor then? She listens to you. Isn’t the doctor being friendly any more?’

They all received regular check-ups from a deregistered doctor who Mamasan exploited like she did everyone else. He was a drug addict and she got him what he needed. In return he never asked any questions other than those that were strictly necessary.

‘It’s not a question of who takes her, there isn’t time; I told you that,’ Mai said.

‘But what will you do—will you tell the Mamasan what Rick has done?’

Nien’s questions were irritating but justified. Mai took a sip of Coke and thought hard. Rick had been walking a fine line recently. He’d been taking more uppers than usual and they were scrambling his brains; he was sure to fall out of favour with the Mamasan sooner or later. But if he didn’t destroy himself with drugs, Mai thought, running her finger around the sharp hole in the top of the can, this extra piece of information might.

‘If Mamasan asks, I’ll say a client beat Lin up. It’s not worth getting on the wrong side of Rick.’ Yet, Mai added silently.

Other than the most junior of the girls who hadn’t learnt how to work the system, everyone in this place made it their business to find a weakness in someone else. It was a means of survival for them, instinctive. The discovery of a weakness provided a tiny modicum of control. Because Mai had seen what the Mamasan and The Crow had done to Jon Pavel, and now what Rick had done to Lin, she had a hold, albeit a small one, on all of them. She didn’t know what to do with the information, but she knew it would be useful one day. She would store it away like a crocodile with rotten meat and produce it when the time was right.

Rick pounded from the front of her mind and into the kitchen. The chattering stopped. It was as if the door had been slammed shut, not flung open. ‘Coffee.’ Rick’s voice was gravelly with ganja.

Mai handed him a mug and offered to cook him some eggs. She was the most trusted of the girls. She did most of the shopping and cooking for the establishment—that’s what the Mamasan called it, the establishment, trying to make it sound respectable, though they both knew it was no different to the Bangkok brothel, only cleaner. It was on these shopping expeditions that she had been able to slip out, catch the bus and travel to the Pavels’ house to feed Niran.

Rick had searched her bag when she’d returned and found the baby’s bottle, nappies and jars of food. He’d told The Crow and The Crow had put a hot iron to the soles of her feet so she couldn’t visit Niran again. The burns were healing, but she still walked with a painful shuffle.

The punishment had not kept her from her work. ‘You don’t need your feet to fuck,’ the Mamasan had said as she’d watched her crazy son pressing the searing iron into her flesh.

But that was before Mai had found out what they’d done to Jon Pavel. Things were different now she’d all but witnessed them murder a man. Before, she was the most trusted because they had the greatest hold over her; now she had a hold over them—although they didn’t know it. Soon, she wouldn’t just be the top girl; she’d be a top player too.

Rick said he didn’t want any breakfast. His grey-brown beard was the same colour as the tawny dogs that rooted through the trash outside the Bangkok brothel. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath rancid with stale alcohol. He was in no condition to begin their long bus journey.

Rick took milk for his coffee from the fridge and slammed the door shut with his foot. Lin looked up from her bowl and gasped, ‘My Buddha!’ As the head is holy in Thailand, the feet are unholy. Mai smiled to herself and shook her head—Lin still had much to learn about the farang way.

Small steps pecked down the passageway and Jimmy Jack entered the kitchen. If Rick was a lumbering elephant, Jimmy Jack was a fighting cock. He kept his dirty blond hair scraped back in a ponytail, emphasising the turmeric colour of his skin and his sharp, pointy features. The girls sometimes laughed about him behind his back, saying that his nose was plastic and stuck on with glue.

Rick smiled at the younger man and offered him a cigarette from the crushed packet in his shirt pocket. He knew he had to be nice to Jimmy Jack, and not only because of the long fishing knife he always carried. He might tell Mamasan and The Crow what he had been up to last night—drinking their liquor, smoking their ganja, fucking and beating their girls. In Bangkok, The Crow had burned one of the guardians alive for abusing his trust, covered him in petrol and set him on fire.