Mr Wong Goes West (24 page)

Joyce sighed. ‘It makes sense, but it all seems such a long shot. The problem was that there was no one else on the plane at the time. Drexler’s heat detector thing proves that. And I hardly think anyone is going to believe that a tiny robot sneaked onto the plane, shot the guy, and then sneaked off when no one was looking. It’s too science fiction-y.’

‘Perhaps. But we must investigate more. I want to see murder scene one more time,’ Wong said. ‘Need to check something. Angle of firing.’

He scratched at the straggly hairs on his chin and screwed up his lips, deep in thought. ‘I need a stick. Can you find one?’

‘A stick?’

‘Yes. So I can check angle of shooting. A very long, very straight stick.’

Joyce wrinkled her brow. ‘We’re on a plane. How can I find a stick? There are no forests nearby.’

Wong looked around the room they were in. ‘We need long straight piece of something. Anything. Must be something. Fisherman rod?’

She shook her head. ‘There are lots of activities on offer on this plane. But fishing? I think not.’

The feng shui master looked up at the ceiling. ‘I wonder, can we pull off a piece of door frame or something to use as long, straight stick?’

‘We’re on a plane, CF. Planes don’t have sticks lying around. And they don’t have doors and things you can pull to pieces without people noticing.’

‘What about a broom?’

‘I think they probably clean stuff up with a vacuum cleaner.’

The pair lapsed into silence.

Then Joyce’s eyes opened wide. ‘I got an idea. Just wait here. I’m going up to the conference room for a minute.’

A few minutes later, she returned. She opened her palm to show a tiny metal device, like a miniature flashlight.

Wong peered at it. ‘That is what?’

‘It’s a laser. People use them as pointers during presentations.’

‘Too small.’

‘It makes a long thin, straight line. As long as you like.’ She turned it on and a tiny red spot appeared on the wall, seven or eight metres away. ‘And, as it’s a laser, it’s exactly straight.’

The feng shui master smiled. What a useful tool for a geomancer this was. ‘Good. Let’s go.’

They went down the lower aisle towards the scene of the crime but quickly met a problem. Police officer Chin Chun-kit was still posted outside.

Wong wrinkled his brow. ‘Problem. How can we get past him?’

‘I think I have probably got a better chance of distracting him than you,’ Joyce said.

She undid her top button, rolled up her skirt and tucked it into her belt to turn it into a mini, and then strolled, slightly drunkenly, towards the officer. The slouching, bored officer immediately straightened up as she approached. He gazed directly ahead, trying to be formal and unseeing.

‘Is this the Chill-Out Room, officer? I really need to lie down.’

‘No, that way.’

She swayed unsteadily and he put out his hand to catch her.

‘Careful. Chill-Out Room is that way.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t. I tried that way already.’ She leaned against him, grabbing his jacket, and pressing her right breast into his upper arm.

‘I think it is that way.’

‘Naah. I tried already.’

‘Erm. I’ll show you. It’s just a few steps away.’

He took her arm and guided her towards the back of the plane.

Wong took the opportunity to sneak into Seferis’s room. He raced over to the desk and looked at the damaged wall. He tucked the end of the laser pointer into the double bullet hole and switched it on. A red spot appeared on the other side of the room, just under the window frame. The bullet would have crossed the entire room, coming from just below the window from which technician Danny Tang claimed to have seen the whole thing.

The geomancer left the room and headed back to the restaurant and ordered noodles.

Joyce reappeared a few minutes later, her brow wrinkled. ‘Cheese,’ she said. ‘My head really is spinning. That drunk babe act was only half an act. I think I shouldn’t have had all that Moet.’

Wong slurped his tiny portion of food noisily, and spoke with his mouth full. ‘I know where the bullets were fired from. Also I know why they were so small.’

‘Tell me, tell me.’

‘They were fired from the window—from
outside
the window.’

‘But plane windows don’t open—that woman Poon told me.’

‘No. They do not open. Even on Skyparc.’

‘But the guy outside—’

‘The guy outside remove outer panel. He was replacing a rivet. He took rivet out, stuck barrel of a narrow gun into hole, and pulled trigger four times. All four shots went at exactly same angle. Rivet hole is narrow and there is only one direction he could fire. Plane body is curved. But he or his partners already made sure Seferis’s desk was at correct angle. All carefully set up.’

‘If Seferis was sitting at his desk, he would have had his back to the window. How come the bullet went into his chest from the front?’

Wong slurped his second mouthful of noodles and emptied the tiny dish before answering. ‘I think man at the window stuck his gun in through the window rivet hole. And then taps at Perspex with his other hand. Seferis stands up and turns around. The man at the window shoots gun. Seferis falls backwards against wall and starts to slide down. The man shoots three more times at same angle, hitting him once in shoulder, and hitting wall twice. The rivet hole is tight and there is no way he can change angle of gun. Still, bullets are small and powerful—even one is enough to kill Seferis. So the man hides the gun and then starts shouting to his comrades that he has seen something shocking: he says he has seen a young man killing Seferis. They have heard the shots. It all seems to fit. So the belief is that engineers in hangar witnessed whole thing: Paul killing Seferis.’

‘But Paul was actually upstairs.’

‘Yes. Paul was never in the room. Whole claim of murder being widely witnessed actually built around lies of one man only.’

‘Danny Tang. But how can we prove that Paul never came down?’

‘The camera tapes for the backstairs. It’s not the tapes of Paul going up front stairs that are important. It is the tapes that prove he did not come down backstairs. There is a camera on the back steps. The images from that camera will show that he never came downstairs during time of murder. Silence say more than speech.’

‘We need to tell Oscar Jackson about this.’

‘Yes.’

Breathless, McQuinnie took Wong to the security guard’s chamber.

‘If we can get the tapes or disks from the back staircase camera before someone hides them or destroys them, the lawyers can prove that Paul never came downstairs. It kinda shows the whole thing was a frame-up,’ Joyce said excitedly.

‘Correct. Security man will help us?’

‘We gotta try. He seemed friendly. A bit too friendly, actually.’

‘How do we get in?’ said Wong, looking at the flat panel wall with no door handle.

‘We just ask.’

Joyce tapped at the wall and heard Drexler’s voice. ‘Huh?’

‘It’s me, Joyce McQuinnie? I changed my mind. I want to try some of your special brew?’ She spoke in flutish, girly voice.

‘Heh-heh. I knew you’d be back.’

They heard the door click open.

Drexler’s grinning face appeared. ‘Hello, darling. We’re talking about an irresistible force of nature here. Come to Daddy.’ He held out his large hands.

‘Uh,’ said Joyce, jerking her head to show the guard that she was accompanied. ‘You know Mr Wong? While we’re all here, we wonder if you can do us a little favour.’

Drexler’s grin stayed on his face but its sincerity drained away. He lowered his arms. ‘Yeah? What do you want?’

‘We want the images for the backstairs area at the time of the murder.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’ll show that the intruder never came downstairs at the time of the killing.’

‘We don’t have tapes showing that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Uh, there’s no camera there.’

‘Yes there is. You caught me there earlier today, remember? By the swimwear boutique.’

‘Uh, the camera’s working now. Wednesday it wasn’t. It was broken. It was switched off.’

‘Which? Broken or switched off?’ asked Wong.

‘Hey, what’s it to you?’

‘Broken and switched off are not the same thing.’

‘Are you trying to imply something? I don’t need this.’

‘Whoa, hold your horses. We’re just trying to find out what happened that morning. If Paul Barker didn’t come downstairs, then he didn’t shoot anyone on the lower level, that’s all. It’s important to know the truth,’ Joyce said.

Drexler spread his palms, as if he was asking her to be reasonable. ‘Look. The greenie guy killed the oil guy—we all know what happened. Geez, there were witnesses. All the techies
saw
him do it. Everyone heard the shots.’

‘Careful,’ said Wong, pointing at Drexler’s left hand reaching for the phone. ‘He is calling someone.’

Drexler stabbed the redial button on his phone.

Joyce’s fist flew to her mouth: it was evident that they’d shown their cards to the wrong man. She slammed the door, shutting Drexler in his sunken bunker. Then she started looking around frantically for something to push against the door. Wong had already seen a drinks’ trolley, which he swung around and wedged between the security chamber door and the other side of the aisle.

Unfortunately, the door opened inwards—which became obvious when an angry Drexler yanked it open. Wong kicked the drinks’ trolley so that it tipped into the bunker, which was at a lower level than the corridor floor. Various vessels
tumbled off the trolley. They heard a howl of pain behind them as something heavy landed on the man’s foot. They raced off.

The pair of them ran down the corridor—but where could they go? They were in the aisle of an aircraft. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Almost immediately, they heard multiple footsteps behind them and heard angry male voices: ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Trouble. That way.’

Joyce stumbled as she raced along the aisle, and then she heard Wong fall back and call out to her: ‘Here, come here.’

She turned to see that he had gone through another small, almost unnoticeable door on the left side of the aisle. She turned and went back to it, jumping through and slamming it shut behind her. It was freezing inside. ‘Where are we?’

‘Internal emergency door heading to luggage section below.’

Joyce realised that the time Wong had spent studying the aircraft plans was paying off—providing them with their best hope of staying hidden.

‘He’s in on this, right? The security guy.’

Wong nodded. ‘Yes. Maybe. Don’t know. Is a frame-up. Few people together. Danny Tang, this guy, maybe other people. Don’t know. I think some group wants oil company man dead, and get Paul blamed for it. So they arrange a murder.’

‘What do we do now? We can’t stay here for the whole flight.’

They heard footsteps race past them. Then they waited until there was silence from outside. Wong gingerly opened the door. There was no one in sight. They crept out.

Joyce chewed her lower lip. ‘This is so scary. There are so few directions we can go in. A plane is a rotten place for hide and seek.’

‘The best place to hide is plain sight,’ Wong said. ‘We go back to Food Street. Always many people there. We must tell Jackson.’

As they approached the main dining area, they were intercepted by Robbie Manks. ‘There you are. You guys disappeared. I thought you’d decided to get off the plane by parachute. Come on, there’s some jolly interesting people I want you to meet.’

‘Mr Manks, we have to tell you something,’ said Joyce.

He turned around and started marching the way he came, gesturing for them to follow him. ‘What’s that? Talk to me as we walk.’

‘It’s important. We’ve learned something important about the murder.’

‘Really? Excellent. It’ll be good to get that whole nasty business cleared up as soon as possible.’

‘Paul Baker didn’t kill Seferis. We’re sure of it.’

‘What? But everyone saw him do it. There were loads of witnesses. It’s on
video
, for Pete’s sake.’

‘We need to talk to you somewhere private—explain how we think it was done.’

‘Do you really mean this? Bit far-fetched, surely.’

‘We know how it was done,’ Wong said. ‘Mr Paul did not shoot him.’

‘Good God.’

Joyce agreed. ‘Things aren’t what they seem.’

‘Often the case,’ Manks said. ‘Come along. If you want to talk in private, there’s a room over here we can use. Step lively.’ He raced down the corridor at high speed, and the other two had to almost run to keep up with him.

They approached a door built into a wall which Joyce recognised. ‘Why are we here?’

‘It’s a good place to talk. Nice and quiet. We won’t be disturbed. Step inside.’

Wong and McQuinnie stepped into the room—into the hands of Drexler, and the small restraining room that he had shown Joyce earlier.

‘Now I gotcha,’ the security chief said, clamping his big hands on Joyce’s arms. ‘You should have been more cooperative earlier.’

Joyce turned to look at Robbie Manks: ‘You’re in on this as well, correct?’

The public relations officer smiled. ‘We’ve spent a long time and did a great deal of very hard work on this little project for BM Dutch Petroleum. And we really don’t want you guys spoiling it. We need to make sure everything goes forward perfectly smoothly. It’s really very important: much more important than you people will ever know. Welcome to Alcatraz.’