Hungry Ghost (7 page)

Dugan’s only blessing being that he was virtually a head taller than most of the rush-hour crowd, at least he had the illusion of space from the neck up. The underground train was like a huge snake as it rumbled along, one long continuous chain of carriages. On the straight sections of track he could see from one end of the train to the other, every inch occupied by the great unwashed public. He tried to breathe through his nose as much as possible because he worried about catching flu or something. There must have been at least two dozen people within breathing distance and any one of them could have had something contagious, he thought.

Standing on the MTR and swaying as the train braked to a halt, he made the effort to concentrate his mind on the work that was piling up on his desk. There were at least ten cases that had to be treated as urgent, but there were two that he was particularly interested in. One was a complicated fraud case involving a small Chinese bank – a case of cheque kiting that involved three Hong Kong deposit-taking companies and banks in Texas, Geneva and the Cayman Islands. The stream of cheques, each one covering another, had totalled 160 million dollars before anyone had noticed, and the twenty-three-year-old cashier who looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth had netted herself a cool $12 million with the scam. Dugan was putting a case together and, just as importantly, was trying to track down the missing money. The girl was out on bail, her passport confiscated, and Dugan was sure that at any moment she’d disappear into the mainland or to Taiwan. God, what he’d give to go with her – and the money.

The other case concerned a company that sold computers and then stole them back a couple of months later. Over a dozen firms, most of them in Sha Tin, had been hit, the same computers in each case. Dugan reckoned there’d be a triad link somewhere and privately nursed the hope that it would bring him to the attention of the top brass in the anti-triad squad. He was getting bloody nowhere, though. How was he expected to, for God’s sake, when he was practically chained to his desk?

He brooded about the unfairness of it all as he got off the train and took the escalator to the surface of Wan Chai MTR station. The hot air took him by surprise as it always did when he left the air-conditioned station and stepped into the bright sunlight. By the time he got to his office he was sweating. He slumped into his chair, glared at the pile of pale green files on his desk and sighed deeply. Coffee, he thought, and wandered out into the corridor. His boss, a beanpole by the name of Chief Inspector Christopher Tomkins – Chief Inspector to his friends – was by the machine, gingerly removing a liquid-filled cup.

‘Why the hell does this machine always fill right up to the brim?’ he asked Dugan.

Dugan shoved a two-dollar coin into the slot. He pressed the button marked ‘black coffee with sugar’. The machine vomited dark brown liquid into Dugan’s plastic cup. It stopped half an inch from the top.

‘It likes you,’ said Tomkins, jealously.

Dugan took his coffee back to his laden desk and slumped down in the chair. It rocked dangerously; one of the wheels was loose – again. At least once a week he upended it and screwed the five castors in as tight as he could but it seemed to make no difference. Sometimes he worried that Tomkins might be sneaking into his office late at night and unscrewing them. As he sat down he realized that Tomkins had followed him. He seemed to have something on his mind, so Dugan looked at him expectantly.

‘The computer case,’ said Tomkins.

‘It’s going well,’ said Dugan. ‘I thought I might visit a few of the computer shops in Tsim Sha Tsui, rattle a few cages and see what falls out.’

‘Actually Pat, I’ve had a call from the anti-triad squad. They want the file sent over.’

‘What!’ Dugan snapped. ‘How the hell do they know about it?’ It was obvious from the look on Tomkins’ face that he’d told them. Dugan shook his head, lost for words. His big case. His chance to be noticed.

‘Come on, Pat, you’ve got a heavy case load as it is. You should be glad they want to help.’

‘Help?’ said Dugan. ‘You mean they’ll let me work on the case with them?’ Tomkins looked embarrassed at the hope in Dugan’s voice.

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’ll handle it, but I guess they’ll want to talk to you about it.’

‘It’s not fair!’ said Dugan.

‘Life’s not fair, Dugan. Don’t be dumb. You’ve plenty of cases.’ He nodded at the stack of files on the desk.

‘This one’s different. It’s a big one.’

‘It’s triad-related.’

‘I know it’s triad-related, that’s why I want to work on it.’

‘Look, Dugan, that’s what the anti-triad unit is for.’

‘There are plenty of guys in Commercial Crime working on triad cases, you know that.’

‘Yeah, but they don’t have relatives running one of the biggest triads in Hong Kong, do they?’ said Tomkins, beginning to lose his temper.

‘Is that what it’s about, my brother-in-law?’

‘There’s nothing I can do, Pat. The word has come down from on high. You’re to be kept off this case.’

‘Christ! He only married my sister,’ said Dugan. ‘It’s not as if I sleep with him or anything! What do they think I do, go over all my cases with him? Is that what they think?’

‘Don’t fight it, Pat, you’ll be pissing into the wind.’ He held out his hand and with a snort Dugan thrust the file at him. Tomkins took it and started to say something but Dugan waved him away.

‘Forget it,’ said Dugan. ‘Just forget it.’

Howells booked into the Holiday Inn Harbour View. The hotel was about ten minutes’ drive from the single runway of Kai Tak airport, on the mainland, close to the bustling shopping arcades of Tsim Sha Tsui. It was a modern, comfortable room with light teak furniture and a picture of a golden peacock on the wall.

It was early evening and Howells lay on the bed, his legs crossed at the ankles, slowly rereading the three sheets of papers that held the life, and death, of Simon Ng. Chinese name Ng Chao-huang, but to his friends and associates he was Simon Ng. Simon Ng was the Lung Tau – Dragon Head – controlling a drug and vice empire that pulled in tens of millions of dollars every year. Simon Ng, who lived with his family in a closely guarded complex in the New Territories, surrounded by triad soldiers. Simon Ng, who had to die. The two black and white photographs lay by his side. They showed a good-looking Chinese man in his early forties, smooth-skinned with a small dimple in the centre of his chin. The face was squarish, the hair closely cropped so that it stood up almost straight on the top of his head and was shaped around his ears. He had thin lips that didn’t look as if they had the habit of forming a smile. Simon Ng looked hard. And if Grey’s notes were to be believed, he was hard.

The triad leader had a wife, an English girl called Jill, and a daughter, eight years old, called Sophie. He had two brothers, one in San Francisco, the other in Vancouver, and a sister who’d stayed in Hong Kong and married a Chinese banker. Father had retired to a large house on the Peak where he spent his time polishing his collection of jade. The father used to be the head of the organization, but now the power lay with Simon Ng.

Howells rang down to reception and asked if he could hire a car through the hotel. It was easily arranged, said the girl who answered, and yes, the hotel could supply him with a road map, she’d send one right up.

He’d travelled on his own passport but booked into the hotel under Donaldson’s name. He’d brought Donaldson’s passport with him, and his credit cards, and his glasses, just to be on the safe side. He didn’t look much like the man buried under the flagstones of the villa in Bali, but neither did the picture in the passport, and with the glasses on he was close enough.

The map arrived and he studied it until the phone rang and the receptionist said his car was downstairs. It was a blue Mazda, almost new, with a pine air-freshener fixed to the dashboard. The agent who’d delivered it to the hotel had left the aircon running so it was pleasantly cool. He dropped the map on to the passenger seat and edged out into the afternoon traffic of downtown Kowloon. The car was a right-hand-drive automatic and the traffic drove on the left so it confused him for a while. He’d been in Bali too long and grown accustomed to driving on the right. Cars and vans were bumper to bumper for the first mile or so as he drove past the tourist shops packed with cameras, electrical goods and clothes. Hong Kong looked a prosperous city, with none of the obvious poverty he’d seen in Indonesia, where the pavements were full of beggars and children in tattered clothes and the roads buzzed with motorcycles. Hong Kong had few bikes, all the cars seemed new, and the crowds on the pavements were well-dressed and affluent. The buildings were as clean and new as the cars, blocks of glass and steel and marble. Howells drove out of Tsim Sha Tsui, through the industrial areas of Kowloon and past towering residential blocks, thirty storeys high. He glanced at the map a couple of times, but only for reassurance. His sense of direction was unfailingly good and he’d been trained to memorize routes. He left the built-up areas behind him and was soon driving through countryside that reminded him of the Brecon Beacons, rolling hills and thickets of wind-stunted trees.

It was an hour’s drive from the hotel to where Ng lived, halfway up a hill that looked down on the South China Sea. The house stood alone, a single storey H-shaped building, two long wings connected by a third block in which was set the main entrance. It was surrounded by green, well-kept lawns on all sides and enclosed by a ten-foot-high stone wall. That was what the file had said, anyway; all that Howells could see from the main road as he craned his neck out of the Mazda’s window was the imposing wall. A single track side-road linked the main road to the compound, winding its way left and right up the wooded hill to a pair of black metal gates. The nearest houses were about half a mile away, red-roofed three-storey blocks that would have looked at home in a Spanish seaside town, but they were served by a separate road. There was only one way up, and there seemed to be no way of getting the car to the top of the hill from where he could look down on Ng’s house. He’d be able to make it on foot, but he’d have some explaining to do if he got caught.

He drove the car off the main road and headed up the track but he’d barely travelled a hundred yards before the way was blocked by a horizontal pole painted in bright red and white. There was a large sign covered in foot-high Chinese characters and Howells didn’t have to be a linguist to work out that it meant ‘Halt’ or ‘Private Property’ or ‘Trespassers Will Have Their Balls Removed’. He stopped the car, but before he could open the door a man came out of a wooden gatehouse, hand moving towards the inside of his brown leather jacket. The hand didn’t reappear, it lingered around his left armpit as if idly scratching. Howells wound down his window and grinned. ‘I’m trying to get to Sai Kung,’ he said to the guard. The man was about fifty, but stockily built and in good condition. He shook his head.

‘Not this road,’ he said, and pointed at the barrier. ‘Private.’ He took his hand away from the shoulder holster, confident that he was talking to a stupid tourist who’d just lost his way. He rested both hands on the car door and leant forward, smiling at Howells with yellowed teeth. ‘You must go back.’

‘Whatever you say, sunshine,’ said Howells, conscious that another guard had moved out of the trees behind him and was standing at the rear offside wing of the car. Security was good, and he had no reason to doubt that there would be more men scattered through the woods. He reversed the Mazda back down the track and on to the road before driving around to the far side of the hill.

So far as he could see the road was the only way he’d be able to get up to the compound. And even if he got there, what then? This wasn’t a James Bond movie, one man couldn’t storm a fortress alone, no matter how heavily armed. The thought of free-falling in from 25,000 feet made him smile, bringing back fond memories of his days with the SBS. But even then it wouldn’t have been considered without a team of four and stun grenades and Uzis and whatever else they could hold on to at 120 mph during the long drop. No, while he was at home, Ng was safe. Howells drove back to Kowloon deep in thought, whistling quietly to himself through clenched teeth.

Hot Gossip was jumping. It was one of Dugan’s favourite bars and a hangout for many of the unmarried cops, gweilo and Chinese. A bar where you were reasonably sure of picking up a girl and reasonably sure of not picking up something contagious, where the food wasn’t bad and the music was loud and the drinks were expensive enough to keep out the rabble. It was on two floors in Canton Road, the bar and dining area above and a trendy disco below. Dugan was upstairs, priming himself with half pints of lager before diving into the flesh market below.

He was standing by just about the longest bar in Kowloon, a polished black job that could seat a couple of dozen people without looking the least bit crowded. And behind the bar, at intervals of ten feet, were wall-mounted television screens all showing the same music video. At the far end of the bar, where it curved around to the left to the nook where the barmen mixed their high-priced cocktails, was a cluster of tables with pink tablecloths. They too were surrounded by television sets. No matter where you stood or sat you could see a screen without moving your head.

Dugan had left the office early and had walked in on his own but soon found friends in the form of three officers from the anti-triad squad who were also on the police rugby team. They’d begun teasing Dugan about his work, as they always did, and asking when his next quarry would be taking a one-way trip to Taiwan. Dugan was used to the ribbing, in the same way that he was used to suspects disappearing from Hong Kong as soon as the Commercial Crime boys got anywhere near ready to make an arrest.

‘It’s all right for you bastards,’ he said, waving his half-filled glass at them. ‘You can catch them with a gun in their hand or a pocket full of dope. Or you can kick down the door to a fishball stall and catch them with underage girls.’