A Coffin From Hong Kong (17 page)

"I heard after the marriage, Jefferson left his wife and hired this villa at Repulse Bay." She moved restlessly.

"He lived with her at the Celestial Empire until he was killed," she said. "He never had a villa at Repulse Bay."

I offered her a cigarette, but she refused. As I lit up I asked myself why I was pursuing this line of questioning. Everyone I had met and questioned had said the same thing except Leila. Why should I instinctively feel Leila was telling the truth and all the others were lying? "Let's talk about Jo-Ann," I said. "Did you know her well?" She nodded.

"She is one of my best friends. I am very sad she has gone to America. I hope soon to hear from her. She promised if she could arrange it for me to go there too."

I hesitated for a moment, then decided to go all the way. "You haven't heard then?" I asked.

She looked inquiringly at me. "Heard . . . what?"

"She's dead."

She started back as if I had slapped her face. Her eyes opened very wide and she put her hands to her breasts. I was watching her carefully. She wasn't play-acting. What I had just told her had come as a violent shock.

"Dead? How can she be dead?" she said huskily. "What happened?"

"She was murdered a few hours after arriving at Pasadena City."

Her face suddenly fell apart. There was no other description for it. Her face crumpled and she didn't look pretty any more.

"You're lying!" she said in a muffled strangled voice.

"It's a fact. The police are trying to find her killer."

She began to cry, holding her face in her hands. "Go away," she moaned. "Please go away."

"Take it easy," I said. "I'm sorry to have given you a shock. I'm trying to find her killer myself and you could help me. Now, listen . . ."

She jumped to her feet and ran into another room, slamming the door. I stood for a moment hesitating, then I went out and closed the front door. I got in the elevator and rode down to the next floor, then getting out I waited, listening. I heard her front door open, there was a pause, then it shut. I went up the stairs silently and listened outside the red-painted door. After a few minutes I heard the tinkle of the telephone bell. I heard her talking softly and rapidly, but too softly to hear what she was saying. When she hung up, I went down the stairs to the elevator and took it to the ground floor. I walked out onto the crowded bustling street. Across the way was an arcade of shops. I entered and stood looking at various complicated cameras offered at give-away prices, my eyes from time to time looking at the door to the apartments opposite I could see reflected in the mirror in the showcase. I was acting on a hunch, but after ten minutes of waiting, I began to wonder if the hunch was going to pay off. Then just as I was about to give up, I saw her come out into the street. If I hadn't been watching carefully I wouldn't have recognised her. She was now wearing the drab black costume of the working peasant: the short coat and the baggy trousers. She looked to right and left and then walked quickly away towards the waterfront. I went after her. She was easy enough to follow. She reached a taxi rank, spoke to the driver, then got in. The taxi edged its way into the traffic.

I was lucky. The driver of the second taxi in the rank could understand a little English. I told him to follow the taxi ahead and showed him a twenty-dollar bill. He grinned cheerfully, nodded and as soon as I was in his cab, he went after the taxi which was now fifty yards ahead.

Mu Hai Ton got out at the Star Ferry station. I gave her a head start, then paid off my driver and went after her. She went third-class and I went first. The ferry-boat took us to the Kowloon City pier which is close to the Kai Tak airport.

From the ferry station she took a rickshaw. I decided it would be safer and easier to follow her on foot, but I had misjudged the speed a rickshaw boy can travel and I nearly lost her. By running hard, stared at by the Chinese who must have thought I was crazy, I just managed to hang on to the rickshaw, but only just.

She left the rickshaw in a narrow street, swarming with vendors, rickshaws and coolies trotting along with their heavy burdens and I watched her enter an alley that I knew led into the old walled City of Kowloon.

This pan of Hong Kong was in actual fact Red Chinese territory. At one time the British authorities had no right to enter it, and it had become a sanctuary for criminals and drug addicts. But now, conditions having become so bad, the police made a regular patrol, and there had been no protest from the Red Chinese Government. But it wasn't a place where any European would want to go.

I went after her. In the narrow crowded alleys with their stinking open drains, there was no hope of quick concealment.

If she had looked back she would have seen me, but she didn't. I kept twenty yards behind her, jostling the filthy-looking Chinese who stared at me with drug bemused eyes, moving away from me as if I were something untouchable.

We walked some distance through a maze of horrible alleys, then she paused at a door, pushed it open and went into a house. I waited a moment, aware I was being watched by a number of Chinese who either squatted or leaned against the wall of the alley, their faces the colour of mushroom fungus, the pupils of their eyes like pinpoints. I didn't believe they even saw me, but their fixed stare gave me the creeps.

I pushed open the door. Facing me was a steep, narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs. I moved in and closed the door. I listened. Somewhere above I could hear a woman's voice. I eased my gun in its holster, then went silently up the stairs to a landing. Facing me was a door. To my right was another door.

I paused, listening. I heard a man say, "Listen, you yellow bitch ... if you're lying to me, I'll kill you!" The accent was American: the tone vicious.

"That's what he said!" Mu Hai Ton's voice was shrill. "He said she was murdered a few hours after she had arrived in Pasadena City!"

A gentle voice said behind me, "Don't move, Mr. Ryan. Just keep your hands still if you please."

A familiar voice with a heavy Chinese accent that I couldn't place.

I remained still because in spite of the polite tone, the threat was there. "Please open the door and go in. I have a gun in my hand."

I took a step forward, turned the door handle and gave the door a little push. It swung wide open.

It was a bare room. The floor was uncarpeted. There was a broad wooden bench that served as a bed with a wooden headrest to serve as a pillow. On an upturned packing case stood a metal kettle burned black, a small teapot and some small dirty tea bowls. Hanging on a hook on the wall was a filthy hand towel and below it was a basin and a large water jug

The two figures squatting on the floor turned to stare at me. One of them was Mu Hai Ton. The other was a narrow-shouldered, lean-faced man, wearing a dirty black Chinese costume and a baggy black cap pulled down over his face.

For a brief moment I took him for Chinese, but a closer look told me he was European.

Mu Hai Ton gave a startled scream. The man swung his arm and the back of his hand caught her across the mouth, knocking her sprawling at my feet.

"You stupid bitch!" the man snarled, getting to his feet. "You led him right here! Get out!" "Go on in, please," the voice said behind me and I received a gentle prod in the back.

The girl scrambled to her feet, sobbing. She darted around me and I heard her clattering down the stairs.

I moved into the room. The man was staring at me, a vicious, cold gleam in his eyes.

I took a chance and glanced over my shoulder. Wong Hop Ho, the English-speaking guide, smiled apologetically at me. In his right hand he held a .45 Colt centred on my spine. He closed the door and set his back against it.

I examined the man before me. He looked half-starved and ill. He was unshaven and dirty and I could smell him.

"See if he has a gun," the man said.

Wong pressed his gun into my spine. With his left hand he patted me over, found my gun and removed it. He then stood away.

I decided this man in front of me could be no one else but Frank Belling. If he wasn't then nothing else made sense. "Are you Belling?" I said. "I've been looking for you."

"Okay, so you've found me," the man said. "It's going to do you damn little good."

I looked at Wong who continued to smile apologetically at me.

"I certainly fell for you," I said ruefully. "You were waiting at the airport to pick me up. That was careless of me. Who tipped you off I was coming?" Wong giggled.

"We hear these things,' he said. "You shouldn't have been so curious, Mr. Ryan. You certainly shouldn't have come here."

"Well, I'm here," I said. "I can't help it if I'm curious ... it's my business to be curious." "What do you want?" Belling demanded.

"I'm trying to find out why Jo-An Jefferson was murdered. The idea was I should start from here and work back."

His eyes glittered wolfishly in his thin pale face.

"Is that straight . . . she's dead?"

"Yes ... she's dead."

He took off his baggy cap and threw it aside. His sand-coloured hair needed cutting. He ran filthy fingers through his hair and his mouth tightened into a thin line.

"What happened to her?" he said. "Come on . . . give me the facts."

I told him about the mysterious telephone caller, John Hard-wick, how I had been fooled into leaving my office, how I had found her dead on my return. I told him old man Jefferson had hired me to find her killer.

"He said his son would have wanted to find the man who killed her. He felt it was the least he could do to do what has son would have done."

Belling said: "What are the police doing? Can't they find him?"

"They're getting nowhere. I'm getting nowhere either. That's why I was looking for you." "Why the hell do you imagine I could help you?" he demanded, glaring at me. Sweat way running down his thin, white face. He looked frightened and vicious.

"You could tell me something about Jefferson," I said. "Was he hooked up in this drug organisation you belong to?"

"I don't know a thing about Jefferson! You keep out of this! Now get out! Jefferson is dead. Let him stay dead. Go on, get out!"

I should have been more alert, but I wasn't and I suffered for it. I saw Belling look past me at Wong. I spun around. Wong stabbed me in the belly with his gun barrel. As I jerked forward in agony, he slammed the gun butt down on top of my head.

I heard myself saying silently, "Frank Belling is English, isn't he?" and a voice that sounded like the voice of Chief Inspector MacCarthy replied, "That's right. . . he's English." And yet the thin, dirty specimen who said he was Frank Belling had spoken with a strong American accent. Was it possible an Englishman could have picked up such an accent? I didn't think so.

A sudden stab of pain in my head concluded these thoughts and I heard myself groan.

"All right ... all right," I said aloud. "You're not hurt all that bad. You've just had a bang on the head. You have to expect that in your business. You're lucky to be alive."

I opened my eyes. I could see nothing. It was as dark as a tunnel, but the familiar smell told me I was still in the room where Wong had coshed me. I sat up slowly, wincing at more stabbing pains and I gently felt the bump on my head. I sat there for some minutes, then I made the effort and got to my feet The door would be behind me and to the left. I groped my way to it, found the door handle and opened the door. A feeble light burning on the landing made me blink. I stood in the doorway listening, but heard only the gentle murmur of many voices in the alley below. I looked at my strap watch. The time was five minutes past midnight. I had been unconscious for about half an hour . . . quite long enough for Belling and Wong to have got well away.

My one thought now was to get out of this evil-smelling hole.

As I started towards the stairs, I heard someone coming up. I slid my hand inside my coat. The gun holster was there still strapped to my side, but it was empty. The beam of a powerful flashlight hit me in the face.

"What do you think you're doing here?" a familiar Scottish voice demanded. "Slumming," I said and relaxed. "What are you?"

Sergeant Hamish, followed by a uniformed Chinese police officer, came on up the stairs.

"You were spotted coming in here," he said. "I thought I'd better see what you were up to."

"You're a little late. I've been holding a one-sided conversation with your pal Frank Belling."

"You were?" He gaped at me. "Where is he?"

"He's skipped." I fingered the lump on the back of my head. "A Chinese pal of his boffed me before we had time to exchange confidences."

He moved the beam of his flashlight so he could see the back of my head, then he whistled. "Well, you asked for it, coming here. This is the toughest spot in Hong Kong."

"Would you take that goddam light out of my eyes? My head hurts," I growled at him.

He moved past me into the room and swung the light around. Then he came out. "The Chief Inspector will want to talk to you. Let's go."

"He'll want to talk to a Chinese girl named Mu Hai Ton too," I said and gave him the girl's address. "You'd better get after her. She's likely to have skipped." "What's she got to do with this?"

"She led me to Belling. Hurry it up, friend. You could miss her."

He said something in Cantonese to the policeman with him who clattered off down the stairs.

"You come on," he said to me and we followed the policeman into the dark, evil-smelling alley.

Half an hour later I was back on the island and sitting in Chief Inspector MacCarthy's office. They had got him out of bed by radio-telephone and he looked none too pleased. We had cups of strong tea in front of us. My head was still aching but the tea helped.