Peter Corris - The Big Drop

In the morning the memory of May Kangri’s exotic body had faded and the need to earn the figures written on Dr Kangri’s cheque asserted itself. The job looked routine again; I rang a few people and found out the names and addresses of some establishments that dealt in rare Oriental items. Most of these places had spotless reputations, but a few didn’t. I drove and walked, heard eastern chimes ring when I pushed open doors and looked into black slanted eyes until I was sick of them. I encountered universal politeness and universal ignorance.

After two full days on the job I’d earned the advance fee but not a cent more and didn’t look like earning it. I was sitting at home reading Unreliable Memoirs when the phone rang. It was Mrs Tsang inviting me out to Vaucluse to tell me things about the Mongol scroll that she hadn’t told me before.

She was waiting for me by the front gate. I pulled up outside the house next door which gave me a fair walk back to where she stood. She was wearing the same dark dress and had a light shawl around her shoulders.

‘Come this way,’ she whispered, ‘to my flat.’

We walked on the grass towards a narrow path leading to the dark side of the house.

‘Is the doctor home, Mrs Tsang?’

‘Yes, perhaps you will want to see him but I must speak to you first.’

The path ended at a set of wooden steps with a glass panelled door at the top. She went ahead of me into a narrow kitchen that faced the wall of the next house; that left space for a nice patch of garden and a good glimpse of the night sky. Through the kitchen and into a sitting room with cane furniture. The eastern look was dominant as in the main part of Kangri’s house but there were counter-influences-framed photographs with Western faces in them and Australian books and magazines.

‘Please sit down, Mr Hardy. Would you care for tea?’

‘No thank you, Mrs Tsang. What do you have to tell me?’

It came out hesitantly, but coherently. Mrs Tsang had taken the scroll herself and faked the disturbance of the study. She spoke very softly and I had to lean forward from my chair to hear her.

‘Like Dr Kangri, I am Tibetan,’ she said. ‘But unlike him I am a religious person. Do you know anything of the religion of my country, Mr Hardy?’

I had to admit that I didn’t.

‘It is very ancient and beautiful. It is a Buddhist religion but with many influences from the old religion of Tibet-many wonderful rituals and prayers.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘You are a non-believer, like most Australians. A materialist. It is very sad. Tibetan culture and religion are synomymous, Mr Hardy.’

‘What about the scroll?’

‘It cannot possibly be genuine,’ she said fiercely. ‘It is impossible that the monks can have produced such a thing. It is counter to all teachings, all beliefs.’

‘Dr Kangri believes it to be genuine.’

‘He is mistaken.’ She drew a breath. ‘I took the scroll when I could see what he was planning-a book that would bring my religion into the greatest questioning, the greatest disrepute. There are scholars who could prove that it is a fake. Dr Kangri would not consult them.’ She leaned back on her chair, took a handkerchief from her sleeve and patted her moist forehead.

‘It’s his property, Mrs Tsang, you must return it.’

Her brown face was composed again but there was a look of fatigue in the composure. ‘It is not his property,’ she said softly. ‘He acquired it by underhand means. But that is not important. I cannot return it, Mr Hardy. It has been stolen from me in turn.’

‘Who by?’

‘My son, my only child.’

Children again, only children, tearing at their parents as if to punish them for something. Mrs Tsang showed me the photograph of Henry, her son, and his father. The father was Australian-long faced and jawed, squint-eyed, sandy-haired, strong on character, short on sense of humour perhaps. The son favoured him; the dark eyes hardly slanted and the jutting Scots physiognomy dominated over the Tibetan flatness.

Mrs Tsang has met and married Kevin Anderson in Burma after the war. Anderson had served in the country, and had gone back there after demobilisation to work as a plantation manager. He was killed in an accident on the plantation not long after Henry was born. She heard of Dr Kangri’s researches through her contacts with Tibetan priests and joined his household in the United States. The Immigration Department had put no obstacles in her way when Kangri had transplanted to Australia.

‘Henry is not a good man. He has had a lot of trouble with the police.’

‘What name does he go by?’

‘I hardly know. I do not use my married name because it does not please me. Henry would use whatever name suited him, for whatever his purpose might be.’

‘What purposes does he have?’

She closed her eyes and didn’t answer. I was about to ask the question again when she opened her eyes and sat up straight.

‘Evil ones. I had the scroll here. He came, looking for money as he often did. He took it. I went to see him to ask for it back and he laughed at me. I stole, and he thought it funny.’

‘Did he say why he took it?’

She shook her head. ‘I was not sure of this when you were here before. I suspected. But now I know it. Dr Kangri is blind to the truth but he is a clever man. He chose you because he believed you could be trusted. I am following him. Will you go to Henry and recover the scroll… and not harm my son?’

‘It was a tallish order, but Mrs Tsang was a shrewdie too. She’d worked it out that Kangri wouldn’t prosecute Henry for the same reasons as he didn’t want the theft publicised. She wanted Henry in the clear to go on making her life a misery. II Kangri gave her the sack, so be it. In the face of such calculation and forbearance, what could I do? I gave my word not to hurt Henry if it was humanly possible and she told me where to find him.

I left her in her kitchen making tea and possibly thinking how far off Nirvana was for Henry. The address she’d given me was in Petersham. I went there via home where I picked up some burglary tools and my. 38 police special. I hadn’t promised not to hurt Henry if he was trying to hurt me.

Terminal Street runs along the railway line and if you had one of the houses that sat right on the street with no front garden you had trouble, with or without double glazing. The house Mrs Tsang had nominated was one of those, a shabby building at the wrong end of the terrace-the end where the railway was closest and the factory threw the longest shadow. The house was dark in the front rooms and hall; I went around to the lane at the back, hoisted myself up on the fence and peered into a pocket-handkerchief backyard and at the crumbling back of what looked to be a totally dark, empty house.

I was contemplating the crime of break and enter when a light came on inside. I dropped back into the lane and raced around to the street. The front door of the house stood open and there was a station wagon outside on the wrong side of the street with the kerbside door open and the motor running. I heard feet pounding the stairs inside the house and saw more lights go on inside. Then a shouted curse. I scooted across to my car on the other side of the street, climbed in and hunched down to steering wheel level.

The man who ran out of the house slamming the door and hurling himself into the car was Henry Tsang-Anderson. He was taller than I thought he’d be and pretty fit to judge by his flowing movements. He was carrying a briefcase which he tossed over the back before slamming the car into gear. He roared off towards Lewisham and I started my motor and followed, not putting on my lights until he’d made his first turn.

The station wagon was an old Holden, not a good road holder and not hard to keep in sight. I kept my Falcon in the classical position, one back and not trapped on either side, and tooled along behind him. He picked up the Hume Highway and followed it for long enough to make me worry about going to Melbourne, but he swung off in Chullora and drove into the tight web of streets near the railway workshops. The traffic was almost non-existent and I had to keep well back. He stopped and I drove past keeping my head to the front and nearly displacing my eyeballs with sideways looks.