China Wife (5 page)

8

‘Good heavens!'

David Hutchinson's surprise was almost comic. The email on his Black-Berry was totally unexpected.

‘What?'

Susie Peveral and David Hutchinson had settled like a couple of companionable old-age pensioners on a seafront bench at Seaton in Devon. It was an idyllic setting. The gentle swell hissed and swished only a few feet away from them; excited small children and dogs formed the backdrop. A peace so different from their normal lives re-established itself after the traumas of seeing the body in the sea off the Dorset coast.

Neither Susie nor David was prone to too much self-analysis but both were struggling to understand why the sight of what, for David at least, was sadly just one more body was having such a depressing effect.

Seeing the report in the paper had also been a bit of a shock to David – partly because he hadn't expected to see someone he had known, however fleetingly, and he had photographed, in the media as a murder victim, and partly because the photo commission that he had undertaken, which included the dead man, had not been one that he had relished and he had done only as a favour to someone whom he now regarded as rather less than a friend.

He knew he was jaded and he guessed from the various comments and hints from Susie that she also felt herself to be, too. Their decision to take off into the West Country without
their usual working paraphernalia was something of a recognition of this.

‘Ever been on a tram?'

‘Only in San Francisco.'

The double-decked trams of Seaton were a novelty to Susie. With a burst of schoolgirl enthusiasm she scurried up to the top deck and to the front of the tram and subsided into a seat with a sigh both of depth and of contentment.

‘Well,' said Hutchinson as they rattled away into the countryside, ‘we did plan to get away from it all and do something different.'

‘I'm not sure that spotting a body in the sea was exactly getting away from it all!'

‘No.'

‘You knew the dead guy, though?' Susie asked.

Now that the conversation had got started, she was keen to know more of David's involvement with the dead man.

‘Hardly knew him; I was asked to take a photo of this bunch of businessmen at a lunch. For some Middle East trade magazine, I was told. The dead man was one of the guests. The
Chronicle
must have got access to the magazine.'

‘Copyright fee?' Susie grinned.

‘No chance.'

‘So why were you so surprised when you saw the guy's face in the paper?'

Hutchinson pondered on how much to tell Susie or whether in fact to just close the conversation down and not tell her anything at all. Killing off the conversation didn't seem too friendly, and talking about it, he thought, might perhaps exorcise his discomfort over the assignment.

‘They were a mixed bunch, Chinese certainly; one at least could have been Middle Eastern; but the rest, it was hard to tell. They were all very wary of each other. No sort of social context to the gathering. The point is, some underling took down the names as I organised them for the shot. The name
that the underling gave this bloke was not Middle Eastern; I'm sure it was Russian, East European – I don't know, it was very different.'

‘The police said he was identified by documents in his pockets.'

‘OK,' said David, ‘so that's incontrovertible proof?'

‘Why are you so edgy about this?'

‘The bloke who asked me to take the photos got me into an East European night club – don't ask where – and I got some shots of under-age girls being groomed for prostitution and made a lot of money. It was a bit dodgy … no, no, it was hellishly dodgy. But I owed this bloke. So I took his group photo. It was a clunking good payday, too, but the sod was using the whole thing as a lever in the internecine warfare that seems to be endemic among these East European criminals. Not my finest hour and something that has made me think a lot about what the hell I'm doing with my life.'

The underlying thought at the back of David Hutchinson's mind surfaced at last.

‘OK, David' – she was thoughtful – ‘so you're not happy with what you do any more; what are you going to do about it?'

‘I just wonder whether there was something … some injustice … I could right some wrong, do a book … I don't know. All I know is I don't want to write about and photograph dead bodies, sick children, ravaged villages any more.'

The tram was passing through the sort of countryside that was familiar to David from childhood. For Susie, who had spent her whole life within the broad confines of Greater London, the lushness was unfamiliar and very welcome.

After the burst of intense conversation they lapsed into silence once more and took in the further views around them. But it wasn't quite the same relaxed, untroubled silence as before.

David Hutchinson felt disturbed. Susie's reaction passed him
by but she seemed almost pleased that he was apparently ready for some new and different challenge.

The rest of the day passed.

The mood was better in the evening. David had made enquiries at the guesthouse about the whereabouts of a good country pub. For someone with a vast wealth of experience in living and eating in a staggering range of countries and places, the English country pub had become something of a Holy Grail for him. A major part of their trip was about sampling traditional English pubs.

‘Great idea' was Susie's response to David's suggestion for their evening.

Branscombe had been suggested.

The meal was every bit as good as the guesthouse owner had predicted. The conversation drifted, as neither wanted to revert to the discussions about the dead body in the sea. And inevitably, as they drifted, they took in childhood, school, university and their upbringing in general. Both were cautious, even coy, at first until they realised that the lessons of their childhood were the same for both of them, despite their vastly differing backgrounds.

‘Overbearing fathers with no more ambition than our following in their footsteps come what may.'

Susie's summary seemed to David to exactly fit his situation.

It was a warm evening and the food had been good. The strictly limited amount of wine drunk had also been good. The single malt was for later back at the guesthouse. Both were now fully relaxed again and savouring the sort of peacefulness that they had hoped for.

‘I reckon,' Susie finally said, ‘there's a story somewhere in both our backgrounds. Maybe more so in yours since a poor little rich girl in token revolt isn't as good a tale as a poor little poor guy totally breaking free of his background.'

David's chuckle said that he agreed and that he was in no way put out by the characterisation.

Back at the guesthouse David produced the bottle of single malt whisky. The guesthouse terrace overlooked the sea; it was an obvious place for a nightcap.

It was then that the insistent vibration of David's Black-Berry in his jacket pocket caught his attention.

‘What?' Susie repeated as David read the email.

Later, David realised that she knew what the email was going to say.

‘Susie, your secretary is inviting me to a meeting with you!'

9

Hong Kong Airport was new, vast and luxurious and its shops and services were definitely beyond the means of all but a few Chinese, although in the new China this number was increasing rapidly. The international terminal was the last word in spaciousness, in layout and facilities, and in its scope for people-watching.

Everything was clean, even excessively so, well tended and customer-friendly in a way that virtually no other airport terminal in the world seemed to be. It seemed that all the lessons from around the world had been learned. The air conditioning was arctic cold; movement along its great thoroughfares was easy via a travolator or for those with time and curiosity by walking. The travolator, the moving walkway so beloved of European airport designers, was a novelty that attracted interest among even the most seasoned travellers as it made its arrow-straight way along the whole length of the upper gallery of the terminal. Brightly lit with an arched ceiling, the moving walkway seemed to define the pace of the terminal in sedate contrast to the usual frenetic activity in such places. Even the politely tooting passenger buggies seemed to move more slowly than at Heathrow or Schiphol.

Passengers of the small variety found the travolator an instant source of entertainment. Very few people among the Chinese passengers actually walked; it was if they were determined to get their money's worth.

Transiting flights to London and Australia didn't spend
much time in Hong Kong. It was often little more that a refuelling stop, but passengers were disgorged into the terminal and gravitated almost automatically to the merchandising area. The plaza of shops seemed to encircle and enclose the idling passengers; those who had seen it all before gravitated further into the coffee lounge area. Whether this was less luxurious by design, in order to focus passengers' attention on the high-end shops, it would have been hard to say. A snapshot of the whole area on any day would probably have demonstrated that the luxury goods shops won out every time.

‘You know what?'

The strident female American voice commanded attention even from those not within her general orbit.

‘You know what? Nothing seems to have a price tag. How are we supposed to know what things cost?'

There was agreement, disdain and amusement at the woman's ignorance about the culture of the top end of the luxury goods market among the more knowledgeable listeners. The likes of Gucci and Prada didn't as a matter of course attach gaudy labels to their sales items; a discreet enquiry was the norm. The oft-quoted dictum ‘If you need to know the price, you can't afford it' generally prevailed.

In any case, it was clear, even to the casual observer, that everybody was looking and nobody buying. So a more relevant question might have been, ‘Who buys this stuff anyway?'

It was a question that might have occurred to a pair of idling suited men who seemed to be interested more in who went into the Gucci shop rather than who might be buying something there. It was an interest that began to sharpen after a flight from London had arrived and discharged its payload while the Qantas staff refuelled it.

A Chinese man in a suit that could probably have bought the two watching men a whole wardrobe of clothes each arrived briskly at the Gucci shop, and the men went visibly on to the alert.

The muttered exchange between them accompanied by some brief but sage nodding of heads clearly indicated that the man was expected. More discreet muttering into lapel microphones ensued.

The sauntering transit passengers and the scurrying crew-change staff seemed oblivious both to the well-dressed man and his watchers and, as they spilled over into the aisles leading into and out of the plaza area, to the uniformed police officers as well. Police officers were rather more in evidence in many parts of China than was common in the UK or Australia, so people, locals and visitors, largely took no notice of them.

And as the watchers watched, in the coffee lounge above, they themselves were being watched.

The two plain-clothes police officers stiffened as an obviously holidaying couple of either American or Antipodean origins, their loud and colourful shirts and baggy shorts not only inappropriate in the chill of the terminal building but also at odds with even the increasingly relaxed norms of Chinese society, seemed to get into a tangle of gyrating bodies. The two officers then relaxed. The pantomime of the cold contemptuous look of the expensively sartorial Chinese man and the looks of near outrage from the visitors signalled very clearly the ‘get out of my way' message that had been transmitted.

The man looked at his watch. Another gaggle of people went by; an incoming flight from Melbourne had disembarked its load, temporarily adding to the throng in the terminal building.

A loudly chattering Qantas crew surged into the plaza area intent on taking over one of the parked aircraft. A chauffeur joined the man outside the Gucci shop. And in the opposite direction a pair of women in cabin attendant uniforms approached assisting a young woman who appeared to be ill. A medical bag was slung over the shoulder of one of the cabin attendants.

Another pantomime started as the Chinese man and his
chauffeur greeted the trio, play-acting anxiety over the ailing young woman. It was clearly a pre-arranged meeting and unrelated to any desire to spend money on goods in the Gucci shop.

‘Jesus!'

There was now no doubt where the casually dressed couple, whose exclamation caught the attention of the bulk of the time-filling passengers in the plaza area, came from. Americans, nervous about being in China anyway. The woman's voice was at once strident and anxious.

A cloud of dark green descended on the group of five people. The two cabin attendants, more alert than the man they were meeting, immediately turned and set off back along an access way heading for the exit.

The sharp cry in Chinese was followed by an explosive roar as the police opened fire at the running figures. Both women were hit and collapsed and slithered in their momentum along the access way until they cannoned into the wall. Neither moved once their motion had been arrested.

‘Go, go!'

The Chinese police didn't really need to speak to indicate what the shocked passengers should do. They were shepherded quickly from the plaza area, the shops were closed and a security blanket came firmly down.

The observer from the coffee lounge above was nowhere to be seen.

People's National Daily
English-language Hong Kong Edition – Tuesday, 22 June 2010
INCIDENT AT HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL AIR PORT

The police arrested a Hong Kong banker yesterday afternoon at the airport on suspicion of importing an illegal immigrant following a brief incident in which two women suspects were killed.

In an operation in coordination with the police forces of Australia, Great Britain and Canada, the People's Police made the arrest based on information received in this instance from the Australian Federal Police that a young woman would be on a flight from Melbourne yesterday and that this young woman was being brought to the People's Republic against her will and against the immigration protocols agreed between the People's Republic of China and the Commonwealth of Australia.

The names being used by the two women accompanying the enforced illegal immigrant had been passed to the People's Police, and surveillance established at the airport to intercept them if and when they arrived from Australia. Until the trio arrived, the police had no idea that the immigrant would be met by the banker.

The young woman taken into custody was in a distressed state having been both drugged and restrained during the flight from Melbourne. The police wouldn't elaborate on what exactly had occurred on the flight.

The People's Police is being unusually forthcoming about the incident, in the hope that the people of Hong Kong will be vigilant against a possible rise in the illegal traffic of young women into China.

The police made no comment on the role of the banker in the incident other than to confirm that he was there to meet the women. All that is known about him is that he is wealthy, has several houses in PRC and abroad, and he is single. The
police are currently investigating his contacts and associates, particularly in the three countries with whom the PRC is cooperating.