The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (13 page)

     "What do you mean?" She handed him a glass.

     "You know exactly what I mean, you just disappeared off the face of the earth. We swim to the beach, go back to the party as if nothing happened, I try and get in touch with you, and you just piss off. Back to Australia.  Not a word."

     "Jack, that was ten years ago! Don’t tell me you’ve carried that sack round with you ever since!”

     “Maybe I have. Is there an answer?”

     “I took a vacation," she said. "It wouldn’t have worked. No way did I fancy going off with you to dreary old Angleterre and let’s face it, you were going nowhere else. Demi-paradise? No thanks!”

     “Simple as that. You should have said. Maybe I’d have stayed?”

     “Don’t be stupid. Jack. You got what you wanted, no strings attached, so did I.  That's the way it was. It was the right thing.  We came from different worlds. It was okay for them to collide … in fact," and she laughed her throaty laugh, "it was bloody fantastic the one time they did. Fancy going double or quits?"

     "Don't kid yourself! I'm not interested."

     “Oh, no?” She let the cheong sam slip straight to the floor and there she was in front of him with her magnificent body. Despite himself, he felt everything tightening. “Sure?” she asked,.looking coquettishly over her shoulder.

     “Diana, level with me, why did you come here?” He handed her the cheong-sam. It was hard; he really wanted her, but it had to be done. She looked surprised.

     “Oh, okay, if you insist on business before pleasure. So when did you last see Gerry then?”

     Jack looked at her suspiciously. “I haven’t. What makes you ask?”

     “Nothing. I just wondered.”

     “What he’d left with me?”

      She shrugged, trying to play it cool, “No. Well, okay, I guess there’s been some speculation.”

     “Diana, did you come here just to get the information your boss didn’t dare ask for?” There was a certain menace in his tone, which, unfortunately, she totally missed.

     “Well, you could save yourself an awful lot of hassle if you just come clean. You can tell me, you know?”

     “Oh yeah, sure, and it goes straight to K.K. Chow! Is that who sent you? Nice one, Diana!” Jack took her arm and led her to the door.

     “What are you doing?” At the door he couldn’t resist a squeeze of her shapely bottom as he eased her out. It felt good. He
did
want her. “Well let me get dressed for Christ’s sake!” she shouted.

     “Why deprive Repulse Bay of that view?” He was laughing now.

     “You know you still want it!” she snarled.

     “You’re like a rich diet, Diana, what you want isn’t always good for you!”

     “You stupid idiot! Do you think I’d soil myself like this if K.K. Chow hadn’t asked me too?” In her humiliation she’d come out with the truth.

     “So he wants to know what Gerry left me, does he? Tough! You weren’t the right interrogator, lady!”

     “You think you’re safe, just because the famous Mr. Ma forced K.K. Chow to call the dogs off. You think again!” So that was the truth of it? He had been in the company of the man who had set this up and an even more powerful one had stepped in to prevent it.

     Her nipples were standing erect in the night air. “Piss off Diana!” He said it because he was feeling very sorely tempted to change his mind! He closed the door. Still, he thought, it maybe wasn’t a good idea to let her think he did know something but he hadn’t been able to resist it. He breathed out audibly, wondering how he did that, how he’d kicked her out? He felt strangely at ease with himself. He still had the champagne too. He got up on impulse and opened the door. She was still standing there, her Cheong-sam back on now, her mobile phone pressed to her ear. She looked at him, sort of pleading. He thrust the ice bucket at her but without the champagne. “This’ll keep you warm.”  

CHAPTER 5

     The next morning Graham Witherspoon rang. Jack groaned in reply to the Australian’s jovial, “Good day mate.” Quick as a flash the brash Queenslander picked up the vibe and added, “tie one down last night?" It occurred to Jack that Graham could very easily have him under surveillance, for his own protection if nothing else. "I was just ringing to let you know your man has definitely gone to Manila.” Graham didn't seem impressed when Jack named the first person to give him the same information in the last twenty-four hours. “You’re keeping bad company, sport. But your man’s got friends in the north and that opens doors everywhere. Anyway about Gerry, he was last in Manila, staying at The American.”

     “The American? Is that a hotel?” 

     “Some call it that. It’s a sleazy joint.  He's probably doing all the tacky bits: Olongapo, Angeles City and all that stuff you single blokes do!” He laughed uneasily at the words. “You know,” Graham continued, “I’d like to know what those guys want with you.” That jogged his memory and this time it was of what Mr. Ma had said – there could be something there in his subconscious which even he wasn’t aware of. Even Graham was fishing so he cut short their talk by saying he was going for a swim. He didn’t know what had made him think of Ma but maybe it was because he’d thought of telephoning Amie on his Tri-band to tell her not to leave for their date up the Peak too early but he remembered she’d said she wasn’t working today. He didn’t know her number in Mei Foo Sun Chuen and he now recalled that address, that massive block of apartments on Kowloon side, connected her with Ma.

     Mei Foo had played a significant part in his discovering that the wealthy Chinese businessman had been framed. One of the reasons the Narcotic Bureau latched on to Ma back then was because he kept an apartment in the Mei Foo complex. It wasn’t really his own place, it was more a bolt-hole, the home of his tsai and her children. In common with a lot of Hong Kong grandees, Mr. Ma wasn’t faithful to one woman: he had the usual wife, a tsai (a kind of unmarried or common law wife), a tsip (a lady of legal but lesser status than a tsai) and numerous concubines. The coincidence of the morphine factory’s situation in Mei Foo guaranteed Ma’s downfall. But that was the point, it was a fit up: the factory was never in Ma’s flat.

     Mei Foo was built in four monolithic towers with a central lift system feeding all the radiating spurs. The accomplice witness was a small-time drug courier called Chiu Chat-yam. Previously employed by the gang he had now turned Queen‘s Evidence. During the course of leading the police to the location of the factory, he picked the tsai’s flat and, when the forensic boys appeared on the scene, they found morphine powder everywhere – in the ventilation system, beneath the floorboards, on the wall. Judging by the traces and the Government scientist’s testimony, there must have been millions of dollars of no. 4 heroin in those premises.

      So a simple mistake all but ruined Ma’s life. The butt was Jack. Something about the theory didn’t quite fit. Why would someone as influential as Ma risk having a factory in a flat occupied by his favourite? Why would he put her and the kids at risk like that? He looked bang to rights but, much to the annoyance of His Honour Judge Rory O’ Connor QC, who would have hanged more men than Judge Jeffries if he‘d been born in a different time, and to the delight of Philip Chan, the QC acting for the accused, Jack accepted his challenge of a re-enactment of the visit. He didn’t have to; the judge couldn’t understand it; the Narcotics Bureau were incandescent; questions were asked by his own Law Officers; Gerry Montrose voiced his disapproval but he stuck to his guns: what harm can it do, he argued? On this second occasion, however, Chiu didn’t stop at Ma’s flat. He went through the arch into the adjacent block, claiming he’d been chasing the dragon just before his first view, hence the error. The forensic boys, this time, carried out their examination under scrutiny and found traces of morphine powder and no. 4 in the apartment in the next block. It had been used as a factory. When a check of the deeds revealed that a previous tenant had been one of the two drug chemists in the trial, Ma was discharged from the indictment.

     But the problem was still there and Philip Chan wasn’t going to let it go; he was like a dog at a bone: how did the Crown account for the traces in the tsai’s flat?  For Jack at least the truth came out down a Wanchai bar with his former co-counsel a few days after the newspaperman had been released from custody. The Narcotics boys had been in the tsai’s apartment before the forensic team had been alerted and they had given the place a good dusting over - “as you do,” was the way a jocular Gerry Montrose put it. The film of white powder on the fan was a deft detail. Those cops were never brought to book; the authorities swept it under the carpet, much to Philip’s anger.

     Jack’s first call today was to the Mandarin to check if any messages had been left for him. There were none so obviously they were managing without him back home. He was about to leave when he heard a familiar voice behind him. Turning, he was astonished to see Johnny Kwok with two other men coming up from the Captain‘s Bar. Jack’s fists bunched and he balanced on his toes like a tiger about to spring but he overcame the urge and mingled, instead, among the herbaceous plants in the reception area. It proved a sensible move because Plum Moriarty was with Johhny. Curiouser and curiouser: the thought kept recurring. The second man, a tall, muscular Chinese, cast his eyes suspiciously into the shadows of the hotel’s alcoves. Jack recognised a Red Pole when he saw one. Menace throbbed in his movements. As he watched, the man held out his right hand to usher the other two away and, catching sight of the dragon tattoo on his wrist, his stomach turned over. Could this be his attacker?

     The men left the hotel through the main entrance. A few moments later Jack sauntered out into the sunshine just in time to see them reach the end of the street. The Sikh porter at the hotel door, seeing Jack’s surreptitious movement, said, “Can I help you, sir, taxi perhaps?”

     “No, no thanks, thought I’d forgotten something, that’s all.” He patted his breast pocket. “It’s all here,” he added reassuringly as the Indian’s face shone with a smile. He followed his quarry down the street, conscious that the Sikh was interested in his movements. He had to walk round the corner in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion and prayed that the other men were not looking in his direction. He needn’t have worried. The trio walked swiftly through Hong Kong Park to Garden Road. They crossed the busy thoroughfare and walked into the Peak Tram terminal. Great minds think alike, he thought, but this was a quandary. If he walked in there too they would recognise him. He waited until the tram was winched down from the heights of the Peak and then, as everyone boarded, he bought his ticket, joined the throng and walked to the back as far away from the three men as he could get.

     It was impossible to enjoy the vista of Hong Kong harbour slipping backwards behind him as the tram began its journey up the hill because he was too busy keeping his eyes on the men in front and looking away each time the Red Pole glanced suspiciously around.  At MacDonnell Road they stood up to alight. He let them disappear into the tunnel before making a belated dash for the closing door. The other passengers looked astonished as he jumped off the tram. Hugging the walls, he followed the men through the corridors until they came out on the street. A black Mercedes limousine waited for them. Two men stood outside the vehicle; they looked like the guys who had followed the ferry from Lantao. Unfortunately, that was where his detective work ended. They all climbed into the limo and it swept away.

     Retracing his footsteps to wait for the next tram, he was delighted to find Amie aboard. “How strange to meet you here!” she said with a brilliant smile in which her pearly teeth were shown to best advantage. “Have you been visiting someone?”

     “Just been looking around. Taking advantage of the fact that K.K. Chow’s on the case so I should be okay now.”

     “Still, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks. I’ve told you these are dangerous times in Hong Kong. It isn’t just about your private squabbles.”

     If he was curious about her fears, it was when they settled down for ching cha in a little tea shop on the Peak that she talked of the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Local fears about the effect of the eugenics law in China made Jack realise how strongly ordinary Hong Kong people felt about the British sell out. Rumours abounded of a powerhouse economy being built on the slave labour of a billion people while the CCP became the new royalty and exported billions of dollars abroad for their future bolt-holes. Those issues barely troubled the man in the street back where he came from. The grand colonial past was something to savour for the patricians, whom it had benefited; it scarcely touched the rest of the population. The Chinese eugenics law was barely news back there even though it was ethnic cleansing of an unpleasant kind. It demonstrated that the new Chinese mandarins intended to control who had the right to have children; how many they could have; which genes were deemed to be acceptable; which weren't. “There are many politicians in the West who would envy that sort of social control,” he said wryly.

     “Except it isn’t as simple as that,” she responded. “Ethnic cleansing of the worst possible kind is going on too! In Xianjing, in Tibet, to name but two. And anyone who has seen a mob in China stirred to blind hatred by a few rabble-rousers would quake at the thought of the Chinese cloning only those genetic qualities their octogenarian leaders think to be of use in society!” She shook with anger as she told him she had friends who were mown down in Tian An Men Square.

     “That was 89 wasn’t it? I was back in the UK by then. I saw it on the television. In common with just about everyone else in the west, I have no appreciation of the horrors of those events.” She nodded, her face grim. “The Basic Law should keep similar atrocities here at bay, shouldn’t it?”

     Amie laughed. “The Basic Law!” He was reminded that people like Mr. Ma were preparing escape plans precisely because of the same fears but for the ordinary Hong Kong Chinese there was no alternative to the Chinese government. That is what they saw as the British betrayal: they had been given no choice, used as pawns in a diplomatic game. It was pointless arguing that the days of the Raj were long gone; that Britain, if not entirely toothless, was certainly weakened by the internal, family squabbles of Europe. There was, therefore, a degree of gloom in their walk around the Peak, even though it yielded breath-taking views of the harbour and the ships ploughing through the Kowloon Roads. Plumed bow-wakes shot up from the junks. “Stormy waters,” Amie said, “the typhoon is still out there.”

     “An allegory for life.”

     She smiled and slipped her hand into his. His heart skipped a beat. Maybe she had thought it through and the deliberations had come down in his favour. How it would work out he didn’t know, but you can say that about everything in life. He hid his feelings, though, behind light-hearted banter and they craned their necks towards the horizon in search of the Big Wind but nothing was visible. Whatever held the land in thrall lurked out at sea, choosing the moment and the place to come crashing ashore.

     “So, how are you finding Gerry’s flat?”

     “Pretty good.” He was playing his cards close to his chest.

     “I was very worried about you when I left you last night.”

     “Oh, why?” He hoped he hadn’t turned too bright a shade of crimson.

    “Oh, on your own,” she said, “in Gerry’s flat, after meeting K.K. Chow.”

    “It was no great problem.” Jack was thinking, surely she can’t know?  There’s no way she can know. It crossed his mind that Diana could still be sufficient of a bitch to have rung her and just mentioned in passing that she’d been there and he was of course from way back the extra notch on her gun. She wouldn’t actually have had to lie about what happened, just left out the detail that he’d turned down the offer, and Amie would have put two and two together. It had been obvious from the introduction at K.K. Chow’s that no love was lost there. But he dismissed the thought. Diana wouldn’t do that. Even in the old days, she’d have waited for a really vulnerable moment and then slid in the stiletto and Jack had noticed something different about her on this last occasion. It was a kind of softness and, if not exactly transparency, a translucence that hadn’t been there previously. She’d tried to play the old Diana but her admission that she was acting on orders, almost under duress, had carried with it a hint of self-preservation. He’d been a bit hard on her, throwing her out without her clothes on, let alone keeping the champagne! The look on her face! He’d like to have told Amie of that but thought it best not to go there.

     “What are you laughing at?” she asked.

     “Oh, nothing, just a thought about how I left a case back at work.” Lying tripped off the tongue. That didn’t augur well for a long relationship.