The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (8 page)

     Lowther stood outside with the troops. "What's going on, Jack? " he asked. Jack led him into the breakfast room and showed him the throwing star embedded in the wall. "Nasty," Lowther said, looking at it carefully, "but leave it there until the crime scene people get here." He bent down to examine the glittering, silver star, which had crunched into the wall through three quarters of its diameter. "I wouldn't have liked my head in the way of that," he added.

     "It was meant to take me out." Jack mentioned Johnny Kwok's phone call and the odd command to ring him at 23.00 on the dot, something he‘d forgotten to do.

     "Well, you lucky beggar," Lowther said, "He‘d see you through the window when you picked up the phone. As soon as you did, bingo! Hole in one. He must not have had his sights right. Maybe because you didn’t do it on time and he wasn‘t prepared when you did. You caught him off balance." Lowther left a Police guard at the house overnight. By the time Jack climbed the stairs to bed, he was dog-tired. As he went off to sleep something banged away in his head. He was a sitting duck here. The answer lay with Gerry Montrose in Hong Kong. What did the Triads think Jack had of Gerry’s? 

     In the morning the telephone rang. It was Lowther. "Sorry to tell you, Jack, but Kwok flew to Amsterdam last night. He was on the plane for Taiwan today." That was convenient in the sense that the British Government had no extradition treaty with the Republican one in Taiwan. "Look on the bright side, though. This does demonstrate that your theory was right. For once." Jack ignored the jibe. After hours of thought, he had made up his mind and had a game plan. He had no pressing cases on now Peter’s was over and he could leave the office to his partners for a couple of weeks. A sweet song beguiled him, its melody the perfume of orchids and incense, its libretto the sounds of the raucous night. It was the song of the Orient. All in all he had a couple of good reasons for looking up old friends in the East.

7
Sir

8
Tournament

9
Going

10
About

11
I’m

12
Alright

13
Nice

14
Blokes

15
Don’t know

16
Pal

17
To do with

18
once

19
Where’s that

20
Yourself

21
Told

22
Myself

23
Want to know

23
outside

25
head

26
Mouth out

27
Mate

28
Wasn’t

29
Child’s

30
Don’t

31
murder

32
All wrong

33
Mate

34
Wasn’t

35
was

36
Nothing ersonal

37
was

38
Down

39
You deaf

40
Someone from Sunderland

41
Nothing personal

PART 2

CHAPTER 1

     At Heathrow he found himself with a couple of hours before take-off so he headed for the restaurant. Not long after he had ordered, his attention was attracted to the arrival of a young Chinese man and a European woman. He was supremely self-confident. She was restrained by comparison and Jack had the impression the young man was showing off. She had her back towards him but she was older than her companion. It was the way she dressed: casually elegant but not in an overly youthful way. He took an interest now. She was blond with a superb shape but he could not get a good enough view. He had a nagging sense of
déjà vu
. There was there was something familiar about her, and it had him trawling the memory banks of well-known celebrities, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. A little later his plane was called.

     The journey was uneventful until the aeroplane arrived over Hong Kong. The descent into Kai Tak was a thrilling if slightly uncomfortable experience as the plane came in between the high rises towards the runway which jutted out on reclaimed land into Victoria Harbour. No wonder a new airport was being planned over on Lantao; you could reach out and grab the clothing off the lines here.

     He had to wait a short while in the baggage reclaim and noticed once again the couple he had seen at Heathrow. They must have travelled first class. Again he had that distinct feeling of
deja vu
when he looked at the woman. Perhaps she was an actress or something but it nagged at him because it wasn’t that kind of familiarity. It was something much more personal, just out of context. It was really annoying because it was like he was looking at someone through a haze, just waiting for the object to heave into view, but it never does. There was another odd feeling as well: as if there was a reason for the sighting; as if his life was interlocked in some way with this couple’s. It was a stupid thought, no logic to it at all, but he couldn’t get away from it.

     Instead of travelling first class, he had booked into the Mandarin on Hong Kong Island. Typical of such an establishment the hotel Roller was waiting to collect its only passenger. Soon, Jack found himself once again among the garish neon signs and the streets full of teeming humanity, which, in his younger days, had proved initially such a culture shock, but which had rapidly captivated his senses. The Mandarin’s reception system was among the best in the world. You didn’t stand at a desk and fill in a registration form. They took you into a room and completed the process. Everything was done as if you were their first and last visitor and that carried on until the moment the bellboy left you, luggage carefully stowed, the electronics of the room explained, and the tip safely in his pocket. 

     Once on his own, Jack took nostalgia one step further and ventured into the Captain’s Bar. Some things never change and this was one of them. As he quaffed from the silver tankard in which the beer was still served, he was already planning his next move. Back in England he had tried to contact Gerry's work place. Sometimes he’d got no response; sometimes a Chinese girl answered but he’d always got the barest of information. Now he marked carefully the place where he would find it – in the Jardine Building, near the Star Ferry. Gerry hadn’t gone into any of the traditional chambers. Confident that his reputation alone would guarantee him work, he had set up alone.

     He acclimatised himself with a stroll round Statue Square and the Supreme Court Building. On a whim he took a tram up towards Wanchai and recognised the smell when he was a quarter of a mile away: palm oil, sesame, vaporized diesel, comminuted oranges and ginger, the scent of the Orient. The hot, steamy heat was like a Turkish bath. It insinuated itself down the street like a living body. You could almost see it in the air, writhing its tactile way between the pedestrians and the buildings, relieved once in a while by a blast of cold air from a doorway or by the constant overhead drip of the air-conditioners. Space was at such a premium they had constructed walkways above the road like arteries full of flowing blood cells. The crowds streamed to and fro all day long but, at rush hour, police at each end guided the human traffic into lanes. Back home, when preparing for this journey, he’d wondered what his reaction would be, how changed he would find the town. But what had struck him was how much of it was the same. Okay, yes, they’d put the tunnels in the air and built a few more monoliths like the Lippo and the Wanchai Towers but those were superficial things. The city was the same as it had been all those years ago when he had half-promised friends that he would return swiftly.

    He never had. Secretly, even as he’d mouthed the words, he knew he wouldn’t return, that it was a closed chapter. He didn’t tend ever to go back and even now only fate had put him in reverse gear. He climbed up the stairs to the walkways and looked down Hennessey at the vehicle congestion. In the building opposite was a gymnasium. Lined up against the window, a row of runners, twenty long, raced on their machines, staring fixedly ahead, oblivious to their neighbours, like lemmings desperate to throw themselves through the plate glass into the street below. Looking up the walkway past the intensifying throng of bodies he saw the sign for the Wanchai station of the MTR. He descended into the clean, mosaic halls of the underground for the short trip to Central.

     When he came back up into the light, the Jardine Building towered over the Star Ferry. Out in the harbour junks and sampans with their red pterodactyl sails, ploughed the narrowing channel towards Causeway Bay, criss-crossing with lighters and inshore freighters. Larger vessels made for the open sea away from the lee shore, while the smaller vessels made for the typhoon shelter. Across at the naval base the No. 3 was hoisted. A storm was approaching. Somehow he’d missed that piece of information. He had to get his skates on so he headed for the lift. If the No. 1 went up the city streets would empty. When he reached the suite which housed Gerry’s chambers, the Chinese receptionist seemed surprised when he asked for his old friend by his first name. She looked at him suspiciously, trying to weigh him up. “Knew him from the old days,” he added brightly, “when we worked for the Government together.” She was a very attractive young lady, obviously well brought up and from a wealthy family as her facility with English suggested she‘d been schooled abroad, probably America judging by the tone. She had a creamy complexion for an Asian, and a winning smile. The girl looked at him in a way, which owed the politeness of her facial expression to the East but the sceptical tilt of the head and the quizzically upraised eyebrows distinctly to the West. Plainly she must have been wondering who he was, what he wanted. He shrugged. “Is he in?”

     She shook her beautiful head, her hair moving like an Oriental bead curtain. "I'm afraid he's away but Mr. Moriarty will be in later."

     "Mr. Moriarty?" Jack repeated, his memory stirred. "Not Plum Moriarty?"

    "Mr. Pelham Moriarty." She spoke with a transatlantic accent that made the very English name sound more delightful than it deserved. Once again he couldn’t help but think she was very good looking and he had changed his mind about the description: it was an ivory, translucent quality she had to her skin.  Her eyes were dark brown and limpid and her eyelashes long and silky. There was something about her, something feline; she looked strong and self-assured, not like the average receptionist but this was obviously an up-market operation. There was something else too, which Jack couldn't quite put his finger on. It was again a kind of familiarity just like with the airport woman, but this one was obviously mistaken: This girl would have been in school when he was last here.

     “Plum’s not a lawyer,” he said, “what’s he doing here?”

     “But he is Mr. Montrose’s business manager.” 

     Oh, yes, Jack thought, Plum would be the one greasing the palms, schmoozing the clients, a bit of a super-clerk. That was right up his street. He leaned forward and made a conspicuous show of reading the European name tag on the girl’s tunic, “Amie Chow?” He was remembering the name of the infamous gangster the ICAC guys had told him Gerry worked for and wondering if he was putting two and two together here. Another move of Plum’s perhaps?

     She looked up and smiled a taut smile, the suspicion returning.  "Yes?"

     "Nothing," Jack lied, "it's just I have a client at home called Chow who hails from Hong Kong. It’s a long shot, I know, but I wondered if he could be any relation?"

     She laughed. "Mr. Lauder," she said, "you'll have to get used to the fact that many people have the same surname in China. We only have about five hundred to share among billions of us." She stood up to show him to the reception area and he noticed how willowy and long legged she was, a real beauty. His male instincts were stirred and it was probably just as well he didn't have to wait long for Pelham Moriarty to appear. 

     The third son of some minor landed gentry back home, Plum had been sent to the new version of the Raj to earn his fortune. It had been a long time since Jack had seen him and, although the colonial circuit had treated him well in the financial sense, it might have been at the expense of his life expectancy. Bloated and red of face, obviously after a rich and largely liquid lunch, he affected the forlorn statelessness of the colonial type. There was something else too: he wasn’t all that pleased to see Jack; maybe he thought this was a shakedown. If he was Gerry’s business manager he’d probably know Jack had lent him money and he would put two and two together and assume he now wanted it repaid. The impression was confirmed when he made a snide comment about Jack’s concern for Gerry perhaps having a dollar sign in front of it. "It's not that," Jack replied, "I'm here because he's a pal, he was in a bit of trouble and he asked me for help.  I gave it and I didn't hear from him again. Do you know where he is?"

     Presumably relieved at raising the anticipated siege of his wallet, Plum suddenly became confiding. "Look, Jack, Gerry's been a bit strange of late. He seems to have been taking stock of his life. He went private because he realised, later than most, money makes the world go round. Once he got into it, maybe it wasn't quite what he expected. Who knows what's happened to him? Did he see the main chance and get out?" He shrugged.  "Jack, you've done your money.” Why was it these people all seemed to be fond of telling him that?  “I can tell you,” Plum went off after the pause to see how Jack reacted, “the Gerry you knew and loved is just not the same guy any more.  I don't know what's gone wrong with him, but there have been a lot of very heavy people coming round here and if you find us a bit reticent from time to time you should understand that’s why."

     "I know, I got a visit from the ICAC myself."

     “The Tic Tac are the least of the problem, dear boy!” Jack pricked up his ears at that because there was only one organisation in Hong Kong more feared than the ICAC and it wasn’t the Police. He didn’t intend to let on that he had any worries about Triads. Plum would love that. He’d dine out on it for weeks.

     The fat man sat down in his plush leather chair and swivelled it round towards a view of Victoria Harbour, a massive expanse of turbulent waves and teeming ships.  The outer winds of the typhoon had reached the island. The Star Ferry ploughed its way through seething seas between Tsim Sha Tsui and Central with the Hung Hom car ferry off to port. "Jack," Plum continued, "let me tell you how I understand it."  He sat staring out of the window his arms folded, the fat jowls of his chin hanging down over his collar.  "Gerry went off to Macao; he was staying at the Westin Resort on Coloane Island. The truth is he was seeing a blonde girl there, a young woman with expensive tastes.  He was dining in Fernandos every night.  You won't remember that, it wasn't open when you were last here, but, believe me, it’s expensive, a trendy, high end place.  Gerry's not been earning the kind of money lately to live that lifestyle for too long and from what I’ve heard about the bimbo….” He paused and made the ideal shape of a woman in the air. “She was a stunner and I bet she charged a pretty penny.” He smiled, looking slyly at Jack to see if he was surprised by his description of her as a hooker.

     “Not what the ICAC guys told me.” Jack realized Plum would have reason to pretend Gerry was skint.

     The other man shrugged. “He's been neglecting his work something chronic.  Besides you‘re not the only one asking."

     “Oh, who else is interested?”

     “You remember Diana?”

     "Diana?" Jack exclaimed.  Even as he repeated her name something which had tugged at the back of his mind suddenly fell into place. That’s why the woman at the airport had appeared familiar! Could it have been Diana Lundy? Older and more worldly wise perhaps, certainly much more prosperous than in the old days when she’d been married to Simon, one of the Crown servants out here, but Diana nonetheless. How could he have failed to recognise her? Was the memory of intimacy as vulnerable as a Polaroid snapshot to the ravages of time? If it was, time had been turned on its heels now. It all came flooding back as his mind lingered momentarily on that night on the beach in Telegraph Bay. Oh yes, he remembered Diana Lundy very well, in particular that night.