The Mystery of Yamashita's Map (13 page)

She handed the card to the professor, who studied it closely. After a while, his furrowed brown turned into smooth recognition.

‘The taxi driver gave it to me on the night I met you at the bar. My, it seems like weeks ago now. He told me if ever I was in trouble I was to call his cousin. Then he gave me this.’

‘We’re in trouble now, aren’t we?’ asked Fraser.

Lisa swiped the card from her uncle and ran over to the telephone. She dialled, waited, then spoke. ‘Joe? Joe Hutchins?’

There was silence in the room as Lisa listened. She twirled the phone cord in her fingers and nervously fidgeted with the things on the desk.

‘Well,’ she said after a while. ‘Do you know where he might have gone? What about a forwarding address, a telephone number? Anything?’

The professor and Fraser’s hearts sank. They knew that card had not delivered on its own meagre promises. Lisa put the phone down and joined them, looking despondent.

‘Well, it was worth a try,’ she said.

Fraser patted her shoulders. ‘Yeah, it’s always worth a try,’ he said, but the professor was silent. He had his finger up to his forehead and his eyes half closed. Without opening his eyes fully he crossed the room to the desk, opened the drawer and pulled out a stack of dollar bills of small denominations.

‘If ever I split a twenty or a fifty and I am given the change, if there are ones in there I put them in this drawer. Every now and then I take it to the market and buy a huge tub of ice cream, which I bring home and eat, all to myself.’

Lisa and Fraser were perplexed.

‘It’s a bit late for ice cream, professor,’ Fraser offered.

‘Not ice cream, Fraser, taxi cabs. The driver of my taxi was the cousin of Joe, right? Well, all we have to do is split up, take a handful of bills each, and take short, two dollar journeys in every cab we find.’

‘Hmm, there must be thousands of cabs in Hong Kong.’

‘Can you think of a better way?’ the professor asked.

‘Wait,’ Lisa interrupted. ‘How will we know we aren’t testing the same cab? I mean, I get in a cab, ask the driver if he is the cousin of Joe, he says no, I get out. Five minutes later Fraser gets in the same cab and asks the same thing, by which time I have forgotten what the back of his head looks like and I get in his cab again. We could be paying three cab drivers all the money and none of them will be Joe’s cousin – no matter how many times we ask them.’

‘Hmmm, yes, that’s a point,’ the professor acquiesced. His shoulders dropped and his hands, with the bills inside, fell to his sides.

‘What if we each take . . .’ Lisa looked around her. ‘Some flowers . . .’ She picked a handful from the vase that she had placed on the desk. ‘We put one on the parcel shelf at the back of the cab when we have checked it. It would be easy to see from the outside. If there’s a flower, it’s been checked. Who’s going to notice a flower on the parcel shelf other than someone who is looking for it?’

Fraser spoke. ‘But there still must be thousands of taxi cabs in Hong Kong.’

‘There are,’ the professor said. ‘But only maybe fifty or so in the area that I took. It would take a couple of hours at the most for all three of us to check them out. In fact we could start at the restaurant and work backwards. We know he works that area.’

So, it was set and the plan was in place. On the way to the restaurant they picked up more flowers, which made all three of them resemble mobile florists and, one by one, they hired cabs. Inside each one the conversation was the same.

‘Busy tonight?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Say, you wouldn’t know a Joe Hutchins would you?’

‘Joe Hutchins? No, don’t think so, he a friend of yours?’

‘Yeah, anyway, look I think here is far enough actually, I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

‘But it’s only been about a hundred yards.’

‘Yeah, that’s fine, I can walk the rest of the way.’

They would leave a flower on the parcel shelf of each cab they visited, pay their money and exit, leaving a trail of petals behind them.

As the night wore on it became harder and harder to find a cab that did not have a flower on the parcel shelf. The professor was right, it only took about two hours for there to be no cab driver they hadn’t asked. Every time they saw a taxi, one of the three would hail and find, to their disappointment, that there was a flower on the parcel shelf. By one o’clock in the morning, the professor had given up hope. He sat on the pavement, placed his bunch of carnations next to him and studied his face in the rain water that was by now collecting in the gutter.

A few miles down the road, Lisa was doing the same. She sat on the curb dandling her one last carnation between her fingers, sniffing its tender white petals and letting her hair fall about her face in the drizzle. Suddenly her face was lit up with a harsh white light and a spray of water covered her from head to foot.

‘You been stood up?’ a voice said and she looked up. It was a cab. She sighed. ‘Maybe.’

‘Well, he’s nuts. Do you wanna go somewhere?’

‘Away,’ she said, only half joking.

‘Get in the back,’ the voice said. Lisa stood up and as she stepped into the road noticed that there was no flower on the parcel shelf. She quickly got in and started the routine that had by now become second nature.

‘Busy night?’

The taxi driver sighed. ‘Don’t know really. I have been ill. I’ve only just come on. I hope it’s quiet. I prefer the quiet ones.’

‘Say, you wouldn’t know Joe Hutchins would you?’

Suddenly the car pulled over and the driver stared at Lisa through the rear view mirror.

‘Who wants to know?’

Lisa gulped. ‘Me.’

‘Look, I don’t want any trouble. Like I just said, I have been ill and I could do without shit tonight. I don’t care what he’s said to you or how he has promised to marry you, or whose daughter you are. As far as I am concerned Joey’s sex life is his own business and that’s that.’

Lisa felt her heart leap out of her chest. ‘So you know him then?’

The driver turned round to face her for the first time in the conversation. ‘Know him? Sure, he’s my cousin.’

‘Look,’ said Lisa. ‘Will you come with me to my uncle’s flat? We really need to speak to Joey.’

‘Look, I told you I don’t want any trouble.’

Lisa laughed. ‘There’s no trouble. We want to hire him and his plane. We’ll give you something for your help too.’

The cab driver looked Lisa over. His eyes rested on her breasts and made their way up to her slender neck and large brown eyes.

‘OK,’ he said finally. ‘Where to?’

By the time Lisa and the taxi driver had got to the apartment, Fraser and the professor were already there. As soon as they burst through the door Lisa started explaining excitedly what had happened. She told the professor how she had given up hope and had been sitting on the curb by the side of the road when he had just driven past, soaking her dress, but how that did not matter because they were here now and that Joe could not be far away.

The taxi driver remained silent until he caught sight of the professor.

‘Hey, you’re the guy who was running. I heard you want my cousin Joe. Yeah, he’s a damn good pilot.’

Fraser whispered underneath his breath. ‘He needs to be.’

They fixed the cab driver a drink and sat round the table.

‘So?’ Lisa asked, but the taxi driver’s face remained expressionless.

‘So what?’

‘So where’s Joe?’

‘Hong Kong,’ he said.

‘Yes, we guessed Hong Kong, where exactly?’

The cab driver shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know, did you phone that number I gave you?’

‘Yes, but they said he moved out about three months ago.’

The driver sat back in his chair and rubbed his stomach. ‘Yep, that sounds like Joe. He could never keep in one place very long. It’s not so much he wants to move as other people want him to; they either drive him out or try to kill him.’

Lisa felt exasperated but was determined to see this thing through. ‘Well, do you know where we could find him?’

‘You could try the docks, he sometimes drinks down there. Oh, and the Club Hundred, he goes there a lot.’ He stared at Lisa. ‘You’d fit in down there.’

Lisa shifted nervously in her seat. ‘Right, and you say he’s a pilot?’

‘Yep.’

‘And he’ll be able to fly us?’

‘Nope.’

Lisa felt like giving up. ‘Why?’

‘Got no plane any more. Last time I heard it had been impounded by the police. This is grapevine stuff, you understand, it’s been a good while since I seen his face.’

‘But, if we got a plane, he could fly it?’

‘Oh yeah, you pay him, he’ll fly anywhere. That’s why he’s got no plane.’ The taxi driver laughed a raspy, smoky laugh which segued into a raspy, smoky cough. ‘Well, that sounds like just the sort of person we need,’ Lisa said. ‘The Club Hundred, you say?’

‘Yep.’

Lisa stood up. ‘Thank you Mr . . . er . . .’

‘Just call me Lee,’ the taxi driver said.

Lisa smiled. ‘Lee.’

‘Now you said there might be something for me, if I could . . . er . . . help you with your business?’ Lisa looked at him and her skin crawled. ‘Er, yes,’ she said, and looked round.

‘Here,’ Fraser said and offered Lee a handful of the one dollar bills, which he took with a scowl.

‘Thanks,’ he said with heavy sarcasm and left, slamming the door behind him.

The Club One Hundred was its usual precipitous self. The smoke hung low below the ceiling and the music bounced off the walls in a lugubrious display of rhythmic suggestion. Lisa, Fraser and the professor walked straight in after paying their cover charge and started to weave in and out of the other customers who all jostled to see the stage. They found a table in a corner and sat down.

Fraser said that he would order some drinks and ask about Joe at the bar, so he left the professor and Lisa alone at the table. Lisa tapped nervously to the rhythm of the music and noticed that a pair of eyes was staring at her. They were small and blue and piercing, easily noticeable through the smoke of the club. They belonged to a small man in a white coat who was standing over by the door. He could have only been five feet one and was as skinny as a rake but wore the most outlandishly wide white hat. With consternation, Lisa realised that the man was walking towards her. His gait bobbed to the beat of the music as his feet slid across the polished floor of the club. As he got nearer she could smell his cologne. It smelt of incense and roses, a little too sweet and cloying to be pleasant. He stood at the table, in front of her and the professor. ‘You want to trade?’ he said to the professor, who in turn looked blankly back. ‘You wanna trade? I got a whole room full of women here you can have, black ones, white ones, Japanese, Korean, European, you wanna European? Yeah, course you do.’ Lisa suddenly realised that he was making her uncle an offer for her. She put on her most indignant face and said, ‘I’m not for trade.’ But the man ignored her. ‘You want a couple for this one, eh? How about these two?’

He snapped his fingers and two scantily-clad women ran up and draped themselves over his shoulders.

‘They look good, yes? You can have them both for this one, she’s got something.’

‘Yes, I have,’ said Lisa. ‘A degree in chemistry.’

‘A brainy one. I like it. Maybe you want three?’

The professor leaned forward. ‘You know, I am thinking seriously about your offer, but perhaps another day.’

The man in white shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whatever you say, you know where I am if you need a little something.’

He clicked his tongue and winked as he turned to go. Fraser passed him on the way. ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

‘My future pimp,’ Lisa said.

Fraser looked puzzled. He set down the drinks. ‘I asked at the bar and they said they know Joe and he was in last night, got absolutely smashed by all accounts, so will probably be in today for the hair of the dog.’

‘How will we know him?’