I'd left Freddy with the impression that Malouf was on his boat which I didn't think was necessarily the case. He barked instructions to the driver who left in a hurry. At a guess he was going to try to find the boat, and as no one had had any luck at that so far, it didn't seem likely he would. Freddy picked his butt out of the beaker and dropped it in the acid. At the smoke and smell May Ling shrank back in her chair.
'Little reminder,' Freddy said. 'Lester, get his phone.'
I know less than nothing about satellites and electronic tracking, but I could see what was in Freddy's mind. He'd have someone try to track the source of Malouf's call when it came and be able to take the initiative. May Ling and I would be expendable. I thought Malouf would have found a way to prevent a trace but Freddy didn't know that. Maybe Freddy was reluctant to kill but Lester wasn't. Just at that moment, the phone was an asset. I took it from my pocket and juggled it as Lester moved towards me with his knife.
'No phone, no trace,' I said. I tossed it up and caught it.
Lester glanced at Freddy and that was my chance. I kicked Lester as hard as I could in the crotch. He yelled, dropped the knife and both his hands went down protectively. I headbutted him; he went down and I kept moving. Freddy had the brains but not the moves. He was frozen for just a little too long. I pinned him back against the bench and grabbed the beaker of acid. Blood was streaming from Lester's forehead, but he recovered and crawled towards the knife.
'No!' I held the beaker at Freddy's shoulder.
Lester stopped. 'You wouldn't.'
I jiggled the beaker. The acid hissed. 'Try me.'
The blood was running into his eyes, blinding him. He rubbed at his face with his sleeve and swore in English and then in Chinese.
'May Ling,' I said, 'get the knife.'
She didn't move.
'Get the fucking knife!'
She pushed up from the chair and strode across the floor. She bent in one fluid motion for the knife and glided close to where I still had Freddy gasping for breath and watching the acid. She shoved the knife hard into his soft belly and had to use an upward ripping motion to pull it out. Freddy screamed and sagged towards her. She fended him off with the hand holding the knife and the blade went in again. I let him go and he fell to the floor with blood gushing over May Ling's high heel shoes. I took the knife from her hand.
It was a big knife, like the one in the movie Jagged Edge, and I knew how sharp it was. May Ling had dug it in deep, and it must have done drastic internal damage to Freddy because he was dead within a minute. Lester, still dripping blood himself, cradled his brother's head in his lap and wept.
May Ling and I left the room, took the lift to the ground floor and walked out of the building into the crowded street. As soon as the cold air hit her she began to tremble. I pulled her closer to the building line and put my arms around her.
'I murdered him.'
'He was a vicious bastard. He would have scarred you and Gretchen too if things hadn't pleased him. He had it coming.'
We stood until she stopped trembling and signalled that she was ready to move. I kept my arm around her shoulders and gasped once when her elbow nudged the cut in my side.
'What?'
'Lester cut me. Just a scratch.'
'You got more than you bargained for when you came to see Miles that day, Cliff. Didn't you?'
'So did you.'
Wrong thing to say: it set her off again and she almost stumbled and started to sob quietly. I steered her slowly up Hay Street through a thick press of people out to shop, eat, have a good time. Her shoes and feet were covered in blood. I hailed a taxi in George Street and sat beside her in the back.
'Glebe,' I said to the driver.
'Where?' she said.
'You're coming to my place.'
She nodded and slumped back in the seat. Would the driver see blood on the floor when he cleaned the cab? Maybe. Would he do anything about it? Again, maybe. I stopped the cab in Glebe Point Road. No point in leaving a clear trail to the house.
I got her there. She was calm. She took off her shoes and stockings and I gave her a damp towel to clean her feet. The head butt had set up a ringing in my damaged ear. I stripped off my clothes, cleaned the cut with alcohol swabs and applied a dressing. I put on fresh clothes and joined her. Her usually immaculate hair was untidy and there were strain lines beside her eyes and mouth. She was still beautiful, but she'd never quite wear that imperturbable expression again.
I made coffee and we drank it laced with Black Douglas scotch rather than Courvoisier. She sat quietly for a while, nursing her cup. She looked around the room, taking in the books, CDs, photos and general air of careless maintenance. There were magazines and newspapers lying around and a glass and a coffee mug on a bookshelf. The carpet was new but hadn't seen a vacuum cleaner for a while.
When she seemed to be more or less composed, I said, 'Where did they pick you up?'
'At my place. Freddy… he helped me find it and lent me some of the money. I didn't know he had a key. I suppose I should have. What's going to happen now? Were you going to tell Miles about Malouf contacting you?'
I liked that about her, not having the first thought immediately for herself. I said I wasn't sure and that I'd have to think things through again now that Freddy was out of the picture.
'What about Lester?'
'I don't think he amounts to much without Freddy, do you?'
She shook her head. Mention of Freddy raised the inevitable question. 'Are you going to tell the police what happened?'
'I don't see why. Lester's going to cover it up in some way, and as far as I'm concerned it was a kind of self-defence.'
'Thank you. Oh God, what about the knife?'
'It's in the pocket of my jacket. Tomorrow it'll be in the sludge at the bottom of Blackwattle Bay.'
I showed her the spare room and found her a clean T-shirt. She kissed me on the cheek. When beautiful young women kiss you on the cheek you know you're over the hill, but I didn't really feel like that. As Wesley said, I still had some moves.
I took some pills. The pain in my side eased and the ringing in my ear dulled down. I thought about May Ling's knife work as I drifted off to sleep. She didn't owe him money anymore.