Hungry Ghost (31 page)

‘You think that Simon might have been killed because he was passing information to the Communists?’

‘It is a possibility.’

‘But what could he possibly know that would make somebody want to kill him?’

‘There is much happening in Hong Kong at the moment that people would not want the Communists to know about. Business deals that are not in the mainland’s interest, smuggling of antiquities from China, illegal immigrants crossing the border, agents of foreign governments who are acting against China. There are a host of possibilities.’

‘And the most probable?’

‘I do not know, Kin-ming. Your brother was being very secretive about the ways in which he was helping the Communists. I do not think we will get anywhere by pondering the reasons why he was killed. Find the killer and we will solve the puzzle.’

It seemed that the old man had already decided that Simon was dead, despite the absence of a corpse. Ng had been constantly reminding himself that there was a chance that his brother had simply been kidnapped, but in his heart of hearts he knew that he was fooling himself. The gweilo already had Sophie, and there were easier ways of kidnapping a man than taking him under water.

‘You are right, of course,’ said Ng. ‘I must go.’

His father nodded. ‘You will be here tonight for the ceremony? I suggest nine o’clock.’

‘I will be here.’

The old man remained seated while Ng got up and walked back down the steps towards Lin and Tse. He heard a cry somewhere behind him, but it could have been one of the peacocks.

Dugan was swallowing another couple of aspirins when Tomkins appeared at the door.

‘How’s the brain tumour?’ he asked, and Dugan grimaced.

‘This one is drink-induced,’ he said.

‘You have my sympathy then.’ He walked over to the desk, buttocks clenched, and looked over Dugan’s papers. ‘Was it any use to you?’

‘What?’ said Dugan, his mind a blank.

‘Lee Ling-ling’s futures dealing. The papers I gave you.’

‘Oh shit, I’m sorry. I forgot all about them.’ Dugan didn’t like the look that flashed across Tomkins’ face. It was a look that said ‘amateur’ and ‘incompetent’ and ‘why the fuck did I bother?’ Dugan opened his desk drawer and took out the papers.

‘I was just about to go through them,’ he said.

‘Perhaps you’d better just photocopy them,’ said Tomkins. ‘Then you can read them at your leisure.’

Dugan was too tired to argue, so he walked with Tomkins along the corridor to the photocopying room. Tomkins stood with his arms folded across his chest like an impatient executioner as Dugan copied each sheet, and then took the original version off him when he’d finished.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked Dugan. ‘You look as if you’ve got something on your mind.’

‘I’m OK,’ said Dugan. ‘Just a hangover.’

He didn’t want to tell Tomkins about Petal, but there was no point in lying because Commercial Crime was a close-knit family and he’d find out before long anyway. ‘And I think I need glasses,’ he added lamely.

‘I’ve always said you needed your head examined,’ agreed Tomkins and tottered stiff-legged down the corridor to his office.

Dugan kept his head down as he walked back to his own desk, deep in thought. He rang Jill again. This time the phone was answered by a Filipina, obviously one of the maids. She said the same as the bodyguard who’d answered earlier, that Jill was not home but was expected back. Dugan asked if Mr Ng was at home.

‘Which Mr Ng is it you want, sir?’ the maid asked.

‘Why?’ asked Dugan. ‘Is Simon’s father there?’

‘No, sir, but his brother has returned today from America.’

‘Thomas?’

‘Yes, sir, Mr Thomas Ng.’

‘Can I speak to him?’

‘No sir, he is not here right now.’

Despite all his years in Hong Kong, Dugan could still get annoyed by the way Asians could be polite, precise, and at the same time so infuriating that he could quite happily bang their heads against a wall. Secretaries would insist on him spelling his name three times and asking him for a detailed explanation of his enquiry before politely telling him that the person he wanted wasn’t in the office. Or they’d tell him four or five times that the person he wanted was not in the office, but not mention the fact that he was on long leave and wouldn’t be back for a month. They weren’t being deliberately unhelpful, just unimaginative. He thanked the maid and said he’d call back.

The fact that Thomas Ng was back in Hong Kong was a surprise, and a worry. His visits were few and far between, and planned well in advance. According to Jill he was frightened of flying and as a result it was usually Simon who flew over to see his brother. It was too much of a coincidence that he was back in town at the same time that somebody in China was trying to kill Simon.

‘Jill, where the fuck are you?’ he said under his breath, glaring at the phone. He picked up Tomkins’ papers and read them, but his eyes only passed over the typewritten words, they didn’t penetrate and he had no idea of the content. He was too busy thinking about Petal and when he’d see her again. Or if he would see her again.

The headmistress saw Howells on the second tape. She leant forward like a retriever that had spotted a downed bird, blinking her eyes. Cheng stood up and walked over to the video recorder.

‘You have seen something?’ he said.

‘Him,’ she said, and pointed to a casually dressed gweilo, white cotton trousers, sandals and a red sweatshirt, swinging a shopping bag. He looked directly into the camera for a fraction of a second and then turned sharply to look at a young Chinese girl, then the camera was focused on a family heading towards the pier.

‘Let me play it back for you,’ said Cheng, and he rewound the tape. ‘Watch very carefully.’ Miss Quinlan stood up and walked closer to the television screen, and peered at it as Cheng pressed the play button.

‘It is him,’ she said, after watching the few seconds of film.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Cheng. ‘Let me play it for you one more time. Don’t just look at the face, look at the way he moves, the way he holds himself. Look at the whole man, not just the face.’

After the third viewing Miss Quinlan was just as certain, and Cheng allowed a smile to pass over his lined face. The headmistress smiled back, relief flooding over her like a warm tropical rain. At least she’d been able to do something to put right the damage she’d done.

A car pulled up outside, and Cheng and Miss Quinlan heard doors open and close and footsteps crunch along the gravel to the front door. It was Ng. As he walked into the study he could see the triumphant look on Miss Quinlan’s face and he raised his eyebrows.

‘You have recognized him? Already?’

The headmistress nodded quickly. ‘I am sure it’s him. Look.’

Cheng had frozen the film at the point just before Howells turned his head. It was a thin face with deep-set eyes, clean-shaven, and with a longish neck. Cheng pressed the advance button and Ng watched the man jerk his head around and walk past the camera. He moved well; there was a fluidity in his walk that suggested he was a man used to sport, or physical exercise. Ng had trained in many dojos in Hong Kong and America, and the gweilo moved like a martial arts expert, relaxed but ready to move fast and hard at the merest hint of aggression or danger.

‘We need photographs, close-ups,’ Ng said to Cheng.

‘I will arrange it. We have a brother who is an editor at one of the local television stations. He will be able to enhance the picture and make prints for us.’ Cheng spoke to Ng in rapid Cantonese but he noticed that the gweipor was listening. He turned to her and said: ‘Would you do me a great service, Miss Quinlan?’ He ejected the cassette and slotted in another. ‘Could you watch this third tape, just in case the man returned, or you recognize anyone else?’

What Miss Quinlan really wanted to do was to get back to her school, her office, and her desk, but she knew she could refuse them nothing. She meekly said yes and sat down again and watched the dizzying images on the television set while Cheng ushered Ng across the corridor and into the lounge.

‘The gweipor speaks Cantonese,’ he explained to Ng.

‘A rarity,’ said Ng. ‘So few of them bother.’

‘A teacher. It would be useful in her job. But a rarity nonetheless. I will arrange for the tape to be delivered to our man. What shall we do with the prints?’

‘First we must rush copies out to our men at the ports and the airport. We must know whether or not he has left Hong Kong. If he has left, then we must go after him. But for the moment we will assume he is still here. Distribute copies to our men, all of them. Then they are to begin checking all the hotels and guest houses in the territory.’

‘There are many.’

‘I know there are many, but we must start somewhere. He is a gweilo and he must be staying somewhere. I also want some prints sent up to Golden Dragon Lodge.’

‘How many in total?’ asked Cheng.

Ng thought for a while. ‘One thousand,’ he said eventually. ‘I think one thousand will be sufficient.’

The normally inscrutable Cheng could not prevent his surprise showing on his face. ‘One thousand?’ he snorted.

Ng laughed and put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. ‘My father is going to ask the other triads for their help. And I do not think they will refuse him. It will save time if we have photographs ready to distribute this evening.’

‘Asking for favours can be a double-edged sword,’ warned Cheng.

‘He is aware of that, Master Cheng. But we have to find the gweilo, and to do that we will have to search more than our own territory. Better to ask for their co-operation than to be caught unexpectedly in areas we do not control.’

‘Your father knows best,’ said Cheng quietly, but it was obvious from his tone that he was far from happy. Ng made a mental note to mention to his father to have a talk with Cheng, to smooth his ruffled feathers. Cheng was too valuable an adviser to upset. He had to be treated with kid gloves, and Ng was out of the habit of being delicate with people’s feelings.

‘You want to leave the gweipor in there watching the tapes?’ he asked Cheng.

‘I think it best to keep her here,’ he answered. ‘I doubt he will be filmed more than once. The shopping bag will have been to confuse any watchers. But better we know where she is. And while she is here she cannot talk to anyone else about what has happened.’

‘I doubt that she will tell anyone. She values her job too much,’ said Ng.

Cheng inclined his head slightly, a half nod that let Ng know that he had once again offended the old man. Shit, he thought, and before he could stop himself the thought that Chinese were always so fucking easy to upset flashed through his mind. There were times when he no longer thought of himself as Chinese, he thought like an American, he talked like an American, and in most things he acted like an American, and he now found the Asian sensitivity, ‘face’ as they called it, infuriating at times. Patience was one of the virtues he had left behind him when he moved to San Francisco.

‘But best we do not give her the opportunity,’ he added, hoping that would mollify Cheng. He patted the old man on the back and watched as he went back into the study.

He called Lin and Tse in from the outside and went with them back into the lounge. He explained to them about the photographs and told Lin to speak to Cheng about the tape and the prints and to handle it. The phone rang as he was talking and Tse picked it up, listened, and then cursed loudly. He banged down the receiver hard enough to jolt the table and his eyes were glaring as he turned back to face Ng.

‘Some prick reporter from the
South China Morning Post
saying he’d heard a rumour that Lung Tau had been killed.’

‘Tell him to go fuck his mother.’

Tse grinned. ‘Already done,’ he said.

Ng pointed his finger at Tse, stabbing the air as he spoke. ‘And tell everyone to keep their mouths shut. There’s only one way a reporter could have found out what’s happening and that’s if one of our brothers spoke out of turn. No one, repeat no one, is to discuss this outside the triad. Spread the word round.’

The grin vanished from Tse’s face and he nodded and grunted, avoiding Ng’s glare.

‘About the pictures, Mister Ng,’ said Lin.

‘What?’

‘How do we get so many printed so quickly?’

‘Make sure we get several negatives, and then take them to the developing shops that we control. They have machines for such things. Give five hundred to the Red Poles and have them show them at all the hotels and guest houses. Take five hundred to my father’s house.’ He couldn’t bother explaining why and dismissed Lin with a wave of his hand. He hadn’t forgotten that it was Lin who was supposed to be guarding his brother when he was taken. Tse stood by the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot, before deciding to go with Lin.

Ng called for the maid and she practically ran out of the kitchen, nervous hands clutching at her white apron.

‘Get me a martini,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, sir?’ she said, looking close to tears.

‘A martini. Make me a martini, please. A very dry one.’

Now there were tears in her big, brown eyes. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I don’t know what a martini is.’

‘For God’s sake, can’t anyone do anything here!’ Ng yelled. ‘I’ll make it myself then.’

The girl backed away from him and Ng suddenly felt sorry for her. She was a pretty young thing, nineteen years old or so, long lean legs, firm breasts that moved under her blue uniform as she breathed and skin that matched the colour of the parquet flooring. Her lips were full and red even without lipstick, and her eyelashes had no need of mascara.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, smiling. ‘I did not mean to shout.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry,’ she repeated, and continued to back away until she reached the kitchen door, then she whirled around and was gone in a flurry of brown, white and blue.