‘Chinese agents sniffing round the Hilton.’ Dog was referring to the Bluebird Hilton, the pub and bottle-o tucked between the surf club and the shopping strip. After buying it at the bottom of the property cycle, Gordon’s late father-in-law Noel Chidgey had overseen the Hilton’s transformation from the Beirut of the beaches into the money-printing factory of poker machine and liquor trade and self-abuse that it was today. The Hilton was the jewel of the Chidgey empire. It was the Hilton that made Leonie, its present owner and licensee, a rich woman.

‘Chinese agents?’

‘Matter of time, bud.’

‘Chinese agents’, spoken so significantly, did not refer to intelligence agents of the Chinese government or even agents provocateurs of Chinese appearance. In the shorthand of Bluebird Beach, ‘Chinese agents’ meant local real estate agents with previous connections to clients who might or might not have been Chinese. They only needed to have sold a house to somebody who looked Chinese. Hence Ken Grainger, of First National Northcliffe, ‘Born and Bred on the Beaches’, was a ‘Chinese agent’. His Brazilian-born ex-wife Cara, the co-franchisee of the rival realtor L.J. Hooker Sorrento, was also, somewhat confusingly, a ‘Chinese agent’. They were, Dog liked to insinuate, everywhere.

‘I heard it on the coconut wireless. They get the Hilton, you know what that means.’

‘All it means is that you’re shit-stirring. You’re Leonie’s solicitor; you know what her plans are.’

‘Yeah, but I can’t tell you, can I? That would be a breach of client confidentiality. But I can tell you about the Chinese agents.’ Chinese agent sightings spun the Bluebird rumour mill like a hurricane on a wind farm. ‘They get the Hilton, they’ll get The Lodge,’ Dog went on. ‘She’s not going to hang on to it. The Chinese buy it up, knock it down, build a palace, leave it empty fifty weeks of the year. These fucken beaches, look around us—most of these massive piles are operated by robot lighting systems, CCTV controlled by security guards in Shang fucken hai. Lights are on, nobody’s home.’

‘Leonie’s not interested in selling,’ Gordon stated, although, come to think of it, he had seen Ken Grainger sniffing around the Hilton yesterday morning. Said g’day to him while he walked up the shops for milk and a paper. Gordon didn’t know if he was blocking out reality, as Dog probably thought, or if he possessed a higher wisdom. Despite the evidence, Gordon refused to concede that the arrival of wealth had to eradicate Old Bluebird. He just wouldn’t. Leonie giving Gordon his one-third share had been a statement that she cared. She was a good person. Or, if not good, strategic. The Lodge could survive if Gordon could believe it strongly enough, a miracle of mind control like bending a spoon, beyond optimism, operating on the far side of hope, passing through to some dark occult faith.