I told Chang what May Ling had said. As I did, I grabbed my car keys from a hook in the kitchen.
'What d'you think you're doing?'
'I'm going there. That woman saved my life and yours. And if that's where Habib is that's where I have to be.'
Chang pulled out his phone. 'I can get a unit there quicker than you…'
'She says her sister's unstable. Ali here told me she almost killed someone once. A howling siren could set her off. Deal with what you've got here, Inspector, and come along when you're ready.'
'Fuck you, Hardy.'
I left with Chang still swearing and Ali laughing.
The Falcon looked as though half of it had been sitting out in a hailstorm. The passenger side and part of the roof were pitted where the pellets had struck and the windows were chipped. It started perfectly though and I got going. I was tired but adrenalin charged. I had a rough idea of how to get to Mortlake, and I decided I'd search for Fairmild Cove once I got there.
I headed west through light traffic towards Strathfield and picked up the road that went close to the Concord golf course where I'd once had dealings with a client, and on to the outskirts of Mortlake where my sense of direction cut out. I stopped and consulted the Gregory's. Fairmild Cove was adjacent to the Mortlake ferry and the way there was well signposted.
I got moving again and things came back to me. Just before I joined the army I decided to get myself super fit so as to be a star recruit. I'd been told that rowing was the best aerobic exercise of the lot, so I joined a rowing club. There were a lot of chaps from private schools but one or two roughies like me. I was put through my paces in a gym first, and I just qualified to be allowed in a boat. I rowed in fours and eights on the Parramatta River for a couple of months. I'd never done anything as strenuous before and never since, including basic training. A hard row takes everything out of you, breaks you down to your fundamental physical capacities. I remembered the area around Mortlake-a complex of jetties and wharves to do with some industrial concern-coal, or was it gas? It then looked, if not derelict, neglected. I wondered how it looked now.
The suburbs were quiet; the residents of Concord and
Mortlake went to bed early or were glued to their flat-screen TVs. Hilly Street took me to the ferry. A sign said it ceased operation at six fifteen pm. Two cars were parked in front of the locked, three-metre high gate. One was May Ling's silver Peugeot; the other was the red Mercedes I'd seen in the garage at the Nordlung house. The ferry was drawn up to the dock and there was no sign of movement.
I had my answer to the changes since I was last here. Where the industrial operations had sprawled, there were blocks of townhouses. One set flanked the river and on the opposite side of the street, with a less expensive view, another was in a late stage of construction. Fairmild Cove was a small sandy beach beside the ferry wharf. A boardwalk ran away to the left, between the townhouses and the river. The moon was high and bright and I could glimpse a jetty poking out into the river a hundred metres away. A sign at the beginning of the boardwalk announced that it was on private property. The public had access, but the sign listed all the things that were banned along its length-almost everything. You could walk a dog on a leash. Forget the dog and it was Habib's milieu all right-waterfront residence with boat facilities.
The boardwalk was well lit but I grabbed a torch from the glove box before setting off-a big torch with heavy batteries. A useful weapon if needed. There were lights on in some of the townhouses and in the warmer months there would probably have been people out on the balconies sipping drinks and taking in the moonlit view. Not tonight, with a cold wind. The water slapped against the rocks at the base of the boardwalk and spray hit the chain that served as a handrail. It had a cold, clammy feel.
I rounded a bend and saw a series of jetties arranged in a rough H pattern. A few boats were tied up, not many. It looked like a perfect place for a marina but as if the idea hadn't yet occurred to anyone. Or maybe the money wasn't in the right pockets yet. I moved forward straining to see or hear anything that might tell me what was happening. The dull pulsing in my damaged ear that I'd grown used to was sharper, affected by the wind.
You're too old for this. Who'd said that? I couldn't remember.
'Hardy!'
May Ling rose up from a crouch near a point where the jetties branched and there was some kind of sculpture providing cover. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down as she pointed.
'They're on that boat,' she whispered. 'I don't know what to do. Help me, help her.'