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have time for this crap, and he’d rather be anywhere else, just not near this so-called tough private eye who sobs and occasionally wipes his face with his arm.
    Faulkner isn’t in the best of states. No, not the best of states at all, which is understandable given that Lucy is there on the slab, her cute little face like a china doll. That’s what he calls her: his little china doll. All those years of wandering and he’d found this girl, finally, and now she was dead. He was supposed to be a PI—quick on his heels, fast on the draw, one step ahead. Wild-eyed Shorty Cheng had come to him and said, “Faulkner...Faulkner...It’s Lucy.”
    Faulkner pushes the thought from his mind. He has to concentrate. The killer was either a freak or a pro: cigarette burns run along her arms, her neck red from strangulation. But her face is delicate and beautiful and doll-like: a button nose, high cheek-bones, freckles flicked across her face like confetti. The orderly lets the sheet fall. It drifts down slowly, as if it is held up by a gust of air.
    Faulkner climbs the stairs out of the morgue, onto the streets of a Melbourne we don’t know, a massive metropolis of eight million, its buildings rammed up against each other with little streets and alleyways in between. The buildings seem constructed in a ramshackle over-the-top extravagance, as if a child has piled blocks upon blocks, disregarding their size. Balconies hang over the streets, all iron lace-work. The stained-glass windows of churches glow an almost unnatural red and blue. It’s 1951, a hundred years after the great boom driven by the settlement of rich lands along the coasts of Australia’s great inland sea, where the Inneminkan Metropolis rises in futuristic spires over long white beaches. It’s a hundred years since the influx of immigrants from China and Malaya, Burma and French Indochina, an influx which has made Australia the great power of the south.
    The lights of Chinatown reflect on the wet pavement as Faulkner wanders along the sidewalk, moving in between groups of people. Hawkers stand outside dumpling houses: “Shrimp dumplings, prawn dumplings. Steamed, fried.” The alleyways, lined with red Chinese banners, seem to lean in towards each other with cubist intent. A ragged line of emu-driven rickshaws—all red, blue and gold—rushes past him, the birds’ necks jutting forward and back as they run, their feet scrabbling on the cobblestones.
    Behind Faulkner a suited man strikes another: “Bloody commie nips.”
    A group of Chinese Australians moves towards the fight and the white man runs a few steps away, turns back and yells: “You can’t take us over you know. We’ll never give in.”
    I’m back, thinks Faulkner. I’m back where I met you, Lucy.

    Back in 1947, Faulkner threw open the ornate red doors of the opium den. A couple of men, dressed in formless clothes, hammer and sickle pins on their lapels, squeezed past him and down the stairs, nodding politely. He surveyed the large, opulent room. The roof was hidden by red and gold drapes that gave the impression of a soft, billowy world. Chinese lanterns sent light flickering across the room, while curtains obscured half-hidden grottos. Smoke billowed and roiled from these little rooms. Faulkner took a step forward, but as if from nowhere Lucy stood before him, her doll’s face hard and cold.
    “Yes?” It was almost as if she hadn’t spoken at all, simply projected the words to him.
    “I’m looking for someone.”
    “Aren’t we all?”
    “His name’s Jackson. Victor Jackson.”
    “Well unfortunately all our guests are indisposed.”
    “I’ll find him.” Faulkner stepped forward, but was stopped. Again, it was almost as if she hadn’t moved, but now stood before him, her hand flat against his chest.
    “Well, well,” he said, “you’re quite a number. What’s your name?”
    “Jade,” she said.
    “What’s your real name?”
    “That’s a dangerous thing to just hand