Detained (23 page)

Jennifer looked at her and appeared to make a decision. “The man in jail.” She turned Michael in her arms so he could snuggle back against her body. “He didn’t kill Kee.”

“How do you know?” Darcy held her breath.

“Because Great Uncle Kee was at my wedding.”

“When was your wedding?”

“February fourteen,” Jennifer shrugged, “Wasn’t auspicious, but I’m sentimental.”

That was a month after Will was accused of killing Feng. Darcy took her sunnies off. The truth needed to be looked at without tinted lenses. “You’re sure?”

“I have pictures.”

“Why did you tell me this?”

“Because we’re scared they’ll try to control us. I’m telling you so you can do something. Maybe it will stop them.”

Darcy sucked in a breath. Being late to the party always was a fashionable move. “Did you tell the other journalists too?”

Jennifer Feng looked at her, a head to toe inspection that made Darcy want to tug at the hem of her shorts, tuck in her t-shirt, tidy up.

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “They didn’t ask.” She looked down at her son’s sleeping face. “And Michael likes you.”

“A man without a moustache is a man without a soul.” — Confucius

They didn’t stop. They drove straight through, Bo and Robert sharing the driving. Peter was waiting for them. They had enough evidence to cast doubt over Will’s guilt, if not to exonerate him entirely.

Darcy had wanted to call in the story from the car but she was scared to do anything that might have the unintended consequences of making things worse for Will. As soon as she had assurance from Peter, she’d file it with the wire service.

She had a wedding photo in her bag that showed the Feng wedding. Bride and groom in the foreground with a triple tier red cake with gold roses on the top, and the symbols for double happiness iced in gold. Great Uncle Kee stood proudly in the background with his much younger girlfriend.

On Robert’s camera was a photograph of a plaque on the fence of a basketball court. Kee had donated the facility to the village after the date of his supposed death, the same month as Jennifer’s wedding.

But Bo had found the smoking gun. In the Golden Lotus restaurant, he had tea with a toothless old woman who told him about the story of her business. About how she ran the best restaurant in town, serving only the freshest vegetables, the choicest meats and the most fragrant tea.

She told Bo with great pride how her father started the business, how she inherited it, and how one night she nearly lost it all, because some foolish men were drunk and dancing with the whores they’d brought.

She’d wanted to ask them to leave, but they were all men from the Feng family, the founders of the village, very powerful. They danced and they drank, and they picked a fight with her chef. Chef attacked the men with a carving knife, there was a chase and fat got tipped over and a fire started. The restaurant nearly burned down, the kitchen was gutted. It was probably chef’s fault he died, but he was an excellent cook so it still made her sad. The other man who died, good riddance. His name was Feng Kee but his family put out the story that he was beaten to death by a shady business partner in the city.

Zhongshan Road was quiet when they arrived, but Parker offices were lit up. Peter met them at the elevators. He wore jeans and a crushed linen shirt, no fancy watch. His hair was mussed up, and he had score marks under his eyes and down his cheeks from lack of sleep.

Bo had no sooner cleared the closing doors than Peter had him in a bear hug. “I don’t have the words to thank you for what you’ve done.”

Bo pumped Peter on the back. “We will get him out now.”

“We will.” Peter sighed from deep in his chest, from a place he’d carried heavy despair. Darcy felt the heft of it in his words. “It should be enough to end this nightmare.” He turned away. “Come through, all of you.”

Aileen met them in a reception room. She too was dressed for being called back to the office at eleven at night, but looked no less beautiful.

Dusty, sweaty and able to smell herself in a t-shirt she’d worn for two days, Darcy felt like a complete grunge in her presence. There was food and drink laid out. Robert was on it, groaning in delight as he discovered prawns.

Aileen went to Bo and the two hugged, soft words between them. She went to Robert and extended her hand, made him juggle his plate to accept it, stepped in to him, kissed him on the cheek, and almost made him drop it.

Then she came to Darcy, tears hovering in her eyes. “Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Me too,” said Peter. He had his hand extended. Darcy lifted hers, and was hauled into Peter’s hug. He smelled of expensive aftershave and was all elbows and ribs, nothing like the solidity and strength of Will. She clung to Peter momentarily. As uncomfortable as the hug was, it might be as close as she’d get to Will.

When she pulled away, Peter had tears in his eyes too.

“God, I’m a sook. If Will was here, he’d bash me.”

“If Will was here, he’d want to reward all of you,” said Aileen. She gestured to the table. “Please sit, eat, as a start.”

“Before I scoff the lot,” said Robert, starting on a second helping.

The five of them sat at the table, Aileen seeing to drinks.

Peter opened the conversation. “I’d like to thank each of you. What you’ve done, all of you, was exceptional. I paid a fortune to get hold of this type of information and came up with nothing but a suspicion there was something odd going on.” He sighed, looked across at Bo. “Something odder even than you and Will being kidnapped.

“The village closed ranks. I didn’t think anyone with a camera and a notebook could possibly do any better than my money on the table to get people to talk. I was wrong.”

“Bo is a very clever man. This is his triumph, because of Bo we got lucky,” Darcy said.

Peter acknowledged Bo with another glance down the length of the table and returned his eyes to her. “And I didn’t trust you not to cause more trouble. Aileen says I’ve got to stop blaming you for putting Will into this position in the first place.” He looked at Aileen.

“We were going to put him in front of the press anyway for Avalon,” she said.

“But not like...” Peter shook his head. “I have a way to go with forgiving you for that, Darcy. I assume that was you behind the profile story on Will? And you Bo, I know it was you too.”

Darcy nodded. Did turning up evidence to free Will mean wiping her slate clean, or would Peter still want to pursue her about using that off the record material? He was clearly emotional, relieved, but there was anger simmering there. “Are you going to empty my bank account over it?”

“I thought about it. We had an agreement. But Will would have my head for it.”

She sighed. Her own relief an unknotting of muscles in her chest.

“What you’ve uncovered is enough to kickstart a legitimate police investigation which Parker will back up with one of our own. The truth won’t hide now. Tomorrow we start the process of getting Will released.”

Robert banged on the table with a soup spoon in approval and Peter smiled for the first time since they’d arrived.

“Let’s run through what we know,” he said. He looked at Darcy. “This is your story.”

Her eyes went to Bo, got a tight nod, to Robert and got a grin around a mouthful. It was her story, and when she was sure the details were squared away she’d file it with the wire service and watch it explode. And this time she could be sure she was doing the right thing for Will.

“This is what we know. Feng Kee was born in the village of Tengtou into a ruling class family. His father and grandfather before him were leaders of the village. The family was wealthy, the source of their income coming from rentals from real estate, both in Tengtou and in Shanghai. Village legend holds that the men of the Feng family were gangsters and standover men.

“Feng rented office space to Will. At the end of the twelve month lease, Will moved the office to alternative premises.”

“Because Feng tried to extort him,” said Peter.

Darcy acknowledged that new piece of information with a nod. It made sense. “The charge report says Feng Kee confronted Will about an unpaid rent agreement on January tenth. They fought and Will beat Feng to death.”

Peter flinched and Aileen lent across and patted his hand. “I hate hearing it said like that,” he said.

Darcy went on, her eyes down on a translation of the Ministry of Justice charge. “It says Feng died the next week in his village of injuries sustained in the beating. It says the family was unable to identify the mystery business partner until they recognised his name in newspaper stories.”

She looked up. “What it doesn’t say is that, being a family of gangsters, they went about getting retribution in their own style by kidnapping Will and Bo, and hoping to continue the family practice of extortion in a big way.”

“Friggin’ idiots,” said Robert.

Peter was watching her intently. “Go on.”

“What we know is Feng returned to the village around January fifteenth. He attended a wedding on February fourteen.” She tossed the wedding picture on the table and Peter picked it up and peered at it, Aileen leaning over his shoulder to look too.

“He looks drunk but not at death’s door.”

“And he donated a basketball court to the village before our witness says he died in a fire after a fight in the Golden Lotus restaurant on February twenty. That’s six weeks after Will is supposed to have killed him. The story about him dying in his bed from injuries sustained in a fight with a business partner surfaced immediately after the fire. It was meant to be a more honourable way to die than in what was effectively a bar fight.”

“So, Will has been accused of beating a man to death who immediately after the said beating, attended a wedding looking like a handsome bastard, spent big for the kids of Tengtou, then got toasted in a fire,” said Peter.

Darcy nodded. “Is it enough?”

“It’s enough.” Peter still managed to look hesitant, but then he must have been worried about what it was still going to take to get Will freed.

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“Write the story.”

“I will. It’ll go out tomorrow. It should start syndicating almost immediately, with internet, radio and TV taking it up first.”

“And come with me to tell Will.”

Darcy started, “Me?” See Will? God, through all of this she’d not paused to think she’d ever see Will again. It was enough to know she’d done something to right the wrong she’d set in motion.

Peter got up from the table and walked across to a sideboard with coffee, tea and milk laid out on it. He poured a coffee. He spoke to the reflection of the room in the window.

“Will is convinced he killed Feng. He thinks I’d do anything to get him out, including fabricate evidence and lie to him. He’s already resigned to staying in jail or worse. He’s tried to hand control of Parker to me permanently, and he’s even had a new last will and testament drawn up.”

Darcy could see a distorted version of Peter’s face in the window, but the agony of what he’d said was distinct on Aileen’s face and made Bo mutter inaudibly.

“He went so far as to admit to killing Feng in an interrogation session.”

“Holy shit, they interrogated him,” said Robert.

“Every day in a bloodstained room. Sometimes twice a day. Two goons. They tell him he’s guilty and he’s going to die, and he should cleanse his conscience by confessing.”

Darcy put her hand over her mouth and tasted bile in the back of her throat as the horror of what Will was experiencing washed over her. She’d been so busy focusing on her crusade to find information to help him she’d not stopped to think about how he was coping with the terror of what his life had become.

The weight of Peter’s words blanketed them in silence until he spoke again. “They’ve put him in with the general population: with gang members, rapists, murderers, drug traffickers and child molesters. He hasn’t recovered from the beating he took from the kidnappers, and I haven’t been able to get him proper medical attention. He doesn’t sleep, he gives his food ration away. He thinks he’s guilty and he’s given up on trying to prove otherwise.”

Peter turned back to face them, his features showing the ravages of dealing with this nightmare. “You told me Will meant something to you. I think you mean something to Will too, Darcy. There’s a chance he’ll listen if this news comes from you. A chance we can reach him, shake him out of this. It’s going to take a lot to clear this through the legal system. I need him to be ready to fight, to be mentally on board. Will you help?”

She’d do anything. For Will Parker, she’d do anything at all.

“Of course, what else are we missing?”

“We’re missing Will,” said Peter. “We need to go and get him.”

“Behind every smile there’s teeth.” — Confucius

Something was different about today’s interrogation. It started far earlier than normal and went on far longer.

Will felt like he’d only closed his eyes and they were dragging him from the sleeping platform. He was so groggy he could hardly stand, which earned him a kick in the shins. Amazing how quickly a well-aimed kick in the shins could get your faculties functioning.

The interrogations had changed subtly since he’d confessed, so he shouldn’t have been surprised by this one. He’d been naive to think giving them what they wanted would end the process. It’d seemed to excite them further. It wasn’t enough to say he’d killed Feng; they wanted details. So this morning he told them.

It was dark, it was late, it was wintertime. Will remembered he’d been cold walking from the office, remembered thinking he should’ve accepted Bo’s offer to wait and drive him home after working late. It’d caught him by surprise. At first he hadn’t understood who it was threatening him, thought it was random. Then he’d heard the voice, seen the knife and attacked. He beat Feng till he lay on the ground and didn’t move again. He’d left him on the street and gone inside to go to bed.

But none of that was enough for them. They said there was no knife. That Feng came to see Will out of friendship, and Will attacked without provocation, that he’d wanted to avoid paying his debt by killing Feng, who was his only friend and supporter in Shanghai.