Take A Thousand Cuts

by TERESA HUNTER

  “You’re living in the past. Times change. And look at State's share price. A lot of people will lose a great deal of money before this fiasco is over.”

  “Aren't we jumping guns here?” Mantel leant back in his chair and spread powerful palms across the table. “Would anyone kill over a share price collapse?”

  “They kill over loss of face. If someone looks at them in a way they don't like. Warwick we’re talking about murderous thugs who call in Red Pole and his vicious fighters over nothing. Not to mention a ruthless regime at the top of the Communist Party.”

  Mantel was silent for a few moments. He stretched slowly across the table and calmly reached for some toast, which he buttered deliberately.

  “Lee, State...” he flicked a hand as if swatting a fly. “None of this is our problem. Lee died on the streets of London.”

  “But his murder must have been planned here on Hong Kong Island. You must agree?” Crisp involuntarily clenched a fist.

  Mantel ignored him. “You see this journalist, make up some excuse for me. Redirect all her questions back home. Steer her away from Hong Kong, and kill any connection with Peak. Tell her Lee only worked here in a minor capacity years ago. We’ve enough problems to concentrate on.”

  CHAPTER 20

  7.30am Wednesday August 11

  Kowloon

  JULIA SAT WITH her head in her hands, trying to imagine the scenes at home, as banks and share prices tumbled. So much for an end to boom and bust, she cursed. She felt sick – until her inner dynamo kicked in. Come on, move forward, what’s done is done, a little voice whispered. She turned to her emails. One from Ludgate screamed from the top of her Inbox, ordering her home immediately. It came as no surprise. Smacked between the eyes by the morning's news, Julia was under no illusions – her trip would be cut short. Another email jumped out confirming an interview with Warwick Mantel at 9am at Peak’s offices on Hong Kong Island. She decided to ignore the first and get ready for the second. Now she was here, she would stay a day or two whatever happened and face Ludgate’s fire on her return – but she would have to work fast.

  The sun burnt down with a terrifying heat from a cloudless blue sky as she left the comfort of Richard’s air-conditioned flat and headed for the ferry.

  Huckleberry Finn, she thought, it’s like stepping fully-clothed into a sauna. Where are my sun-glasses? She found them at the bottom of her bag and put them on. Searing heat sucked oxygen from the atmosphere. Julia’s chest tightened, a trickle of sweat slithering down her back. Her eye was drawn to locals sheltering from the bleaching sun under umbrellas.

  Missed a trick there, she thought.

  She queued at the Star Ferry terminus for a crossing, and before long was sailing towards her interview with Mantel. She picked a seat in the shade with a 360-degree view. Mountains ringed the harbour, bursting with geological arrogance, surely the inspiration for the city's architecture, which sweated hubris. Nerves may have been jittery in the run up to the handover, but its towers of glass and steel boasted of great wealth and confidence.

  Julia spotted Peak Bank's offices, standing proud in its showcase position, as the ferry glided effortlessly towards the shore opposite. She had done her homework and knew, though Peak was one of the island’s original founder banks, today’s modern building, was the work of British architect Norman Foster. Many of its components were forged half-a-world away by UK companies, then shipped thousands of miles across treacherous seas.

  Five minutes later she was stepping inside, refreshed by an icy blast. Her rib-cage swelled. Great I can breathe again, she thought, wiping sticky goo from the back of her neck.

  “Take a seat please,” a Receptionist pointed to a waiting area. “I'll let his Secretary know you're here.”

  Julia sank deep into a soft leather sofa, happy for a chance to cool before the interview. She took a notebook and pen from her bag in readiness. A Hong Kong Economic Journal faced her on a glass and chrome table. She smiled to see Richard's by-line blazed across the front page. Relaxed as he appeared at the airport last night, earlier he was busy. She turned from the headlines and peered out the glass frontage, watching boats, and river traffic flowing past. She noticed a few individuals wearing the white half-face masks.

  Next she reached for the Financial Times’ Hong Kong edition, to catch up with developments at home. Political rows had erupted in parliament over the scale of support the banks would require. Jobs were beginning to shake out. It all looked ugly.

  A shadow fell across the pink page. She looked up to see a tall figure looming over her.

  “Ms Lighthorn, I'm Scofield Crisp. I'm afraid Mr Mantel’s been called away to a meeting with Mr Yang, our Chief Regulator. Difficult time.” He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to agree. “He asked me to handle your interview on his behalf.”

  Julia took a deep breath. I’ve come half-way round the world for this interview. How dare Mantel off-load me onto this minion with a Californian accent?

  She seethed inwardly at the insult, but had little option than to follow the American to the elevator, as he called it. Only when she sat opposite him at his desk on the 44th floor, did she let rip.

  “I’ve travelled a very long way for this interview. I wish no disrespect, but your views, on anything very much, do not interest me, I’m afraid. Not one iota.”

  “Never talk to the monkey when you can...”

  “Your words not mine,” she interrupted. “When I arrange an interview I expect the other party to do me and my newspaper the courtesy of showing.”

  “Hardly a binding contract,” he grinned a mock apology, adding, “I believe you were warned he would be busy.”

  “For pity sake, the world’s going to hell in a hand cart,” she threw her notebook down with a thud on his desk. “We’re all busy.”

  “I get it,” he reached across the desk and pushed the notebook back towards her. “But situations change. Let’s be sensible. You can speak to me, or you can fly home again without an interview. Then your journey, well, a complete waste of time.”

  He’s right. Julia thought. Ambushed, hook, line and sinker. No time to reschedule with Ludgate breathing down my neck. I’ll have to salvage something. If I remember, wasn’t Crisp one of the original Golden Boys? Where to begin?

  Crisp pre-empted her, with a warm smile. “Let’s try and start again. You’re interested in markets. We don’t believe Peak’s in any way exposed to the toxic investments corroding so many other balance sheets. Have you truly come so far for me to tell you that?”

  “You mean toxic instruments you invented which poisoned the entire global financial system,” she went straight for the jugular.

  “I invented toxic instruments did I?” he laughed. “Goodness me, I must have missed that.”

  “I've spoken to Patrick Silverman,” she continued. “I know what went on at that fateful weekend in the West Country all those years ago.”

  “Ah, how is Patrick?”

  “Faring better than most of the participants at that brainstorming event.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, quietly.

  “Have you heard from Stephen Chandler?”

  “Ah, Stevie, good bloke, I think you Brits say. Look, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I honestly don't remember much about that weekend. It was freezing cold, an almighty storm crashing overhead most of the time. I seem to recall we learnt afterwards, a couple of boats were lost.”

  She flinched at these words. “So you weren't part of the brainstorming sessions?”

  “I'm the marketing guy. I was there to advise on the saleability of whatever the rocket scientists came up with.”

  “And you could sell it?”

  “Read your history.”

  “Are you ever afraid, Mr Crisp?”

  “Afraid, of what?”

  “Ominous clouds. Hong Kong isn't quite the safe comfortable home it once was.”

  “Tell that to the prisoners of Stanley Jail, or the victims of cholera. You’ve been reading too
many historical romances. The colonies were never safe, comfortable places. They were amoral, brutal, corrupt and at times extremely dangerous. Count the grave stones. Death rates from tropical diseases were high, rebellion and invasion constant threats.”

  “And yet they came. Why do you wonder?”

  “Because the alternative was that cold, wet, grey, class-ridden place you Brits call home. Even after the hardships of the war, many opted to stay here, rather than return to a bombed out Britain, with its dreary rations.”

  He leaned forward on his elbows, stretching towards her across the desk. “But it was even more than that. Hong Kong has always promised a life of ...”

  “Adventure?”

  “Opportunity. To live free of boundaries, in the fast lane – a life full of colour. To pursue the dream of wealth...to be different.”

  “Is that what keeps you here?”

  “Me? No. California’s neither grey nor cold and the dream of wealth can be pursued in my own back yard. Some of the greatest fortunes have been spun there in the sand.”

  “Is that where you’re headed next?”

  “I'm not here for good necessarily. For the time being, it suits me to stay. I'm not blind. The Chinese behemoth is stirring. Things could go either way. For the time being, they need us to create wealth.”

  “Money moves in cycles. Cycles are something the Communists have difficulties with. What happens when it next turns to destruction?”

  “I'm guessing it already has,” he gazed directly into Julia’s eyes. “Aren't you? It's more complicated than that. Don't forget the trade winds. From April to October the South-Westerlies make easy passage through the South China Sea for ships coming from the West. From November the reciprocal North-Easterlies blow them home again.”

  “The winds must be less important now we have satellite navigation?”

  The more they talked the more she liked Crisp, just as she had liked Chandler and Silverman.

  “China’s building huge new mega ports elsewhere on the mainland. Once these flourish, won't Hong Kong's day in the sun be over.”

  Scofield shrugged.

  “What d’you know about Adam Lee?” Julia twisted the knife.

  “I can't help you with Lee. I can tell you our banks are built on rock, apart from the odd suspect operation. Hong Kong’s a survivor. It will adapt and flourish. This storm will not destroy us.”

  “Suspect operation? You mean First State?”

  “I'm saying nothing. Hey, I like you. I’d like us to be friends. Take this,” he handed her a card. “I'd hate you to go home empty-handed. It's my contact at the city's fraud squad. Mention my name. He'll be happy to help a prestigious London journalist.”

  “You worked with Adam Lee?”

  Scofield shook his head.

  “Not me. Not in any meaningful way. The truth is I don't know the man. The only time I met him was at that jolly in Cornwall. Not that it was all that jolly. It says much for the Brits that their idea of a sun-kissed vacation is a craggy windswept outpost jutting into the Atlantic.”

  “You know he's dead?”

  “Of course. Surely the answer to that must lie in London. That's where the crime occurred.”

  “What d’you know of his family...his background?”

  “I'll not speak ill of those who’ve passed. Ask your colleagues in the local press – or maybe look through their archives.”

  “I see. Famous – good or ill?”

  “It's complicated. Large family. Won't be hard to track down.”

  “What about Laura Wan Sun?”

  He reached for a paper clip and twisted it between his index and second finger.

  “Dear Laura. Sweet kid. Didn't have the balls for this business. Came back to Hong Kong you know? Works in a hospital somewhere on the island. Her family were doctors, but they died young. Not sure what happened. Her grandparents brought her up. Grandfather was an English missionary and her grandmother a Chinese doctor. They ran a mission amid the Godowns after the war. Hong Kong has a great system of health care now, but not always so. Took time to eradicate poverty and disease, particularly in the slums by the water. ”

  “Is she still at the hospital?”

  “I used to run into her from time to time,” he shrugged. “Haven't seen her for while.”

  “You didn't answer my question.”

  “Which one?”

  “About being afraid. Businessmen are disappearing in strange circumstances every week.”

  “Not really. It’s all largely exaggerated. They turn up again. The Chinese do things differently that's all.”

  “Not all of them. They don't all come back.”

  He looked away, playing with his solid gold cufflinks.

  “As I say, I'm not necessarily here forever.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Wednesday August 11

  Hong Kong Island

  SMOOTH OPERATOR, Julia thought, settling back in the taxi. The clock was ticking fast. So much to do – so little time. The air-con blasting full tilt was fighting a losing battle against the Hong Kong heat. The taxi twisted through the helter-skelter streets up the mountainous metropolis, where life was lived on so many different levels. Her shirt stuck to her back. She sat forward, tugging the cotton free. Out the window was a sign for Lower Albert Street. Buildings flashed past, testament to the former Empire and her Colonies.

  It must be like this in cities all over the world, Julia thought. Vestiges of a past regime - the things we left behind. Prisons, law courts, police headquarters, customs offices and barracks. All now controlled by new masters. She passed the Department for Sewerage, once a magnificent classical facade.

  The Chinese had to go one step further and rub our noses in it. Who can blame them?

  One building evaded their clutches - the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. The taxi pulled up outside the Edwardian colonial frontage. The bar, a stage post for journos from all over the old Empire and East Asia, doing what they always did, right under Beijing’s nose. She paid the cabbie and stepped out into the Hong Kong heat.

  Not my true style, she thought, I’m not the clubbable type, but this far from base I couldn’t ask for a better support network.

  Security staff on the door directed her to the Reception. “This is amazing,” she said as she stepped inside, grinning from ear to ear.

  “We like to think so,” a woman behind the Reception desk smiled warmly. “Welcome. Are you a member?”

  Oh yes, I belong here, Julia thought, as she explained she was a visiting London journalist, and believed a colleague had arranged temporary membership for her. Richard had been as good as his word.

  “The bar is through there, and off at a side, a room you can work in – telephone lines, check emails and so forth,” the Receptionist pointed the way through.

  “This is remarkable,” Julia said as she entered the bar, and found herself in a slightly less smoky version of the Jamaica wine bar, in St Michaels Alley, off Cornhill. The likeness was uncanny. The bar lined with heavy wood – same tables and bar stools, even the same ceiling fans, though these whirred energetically.

  Built by the same people that built the City of London, Julia mused.

  Same cartoons, same caricatures gawped from frames on the walls, front covers of the same magazines - the Economist, Spectator and Times.

  Different subjects though. This satire twisted knives and drew blood over the betrayal of Hong Kong.

  How I’ve dreamed of this place. The Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club had filled Julia's imagination since she was young and read about turmoil in Asia and human rights abuses. She was humbled by those heroes, who daily risked their lives to record the Japanese invasion, rise of Mao Zedong, and the Vietnam War. They shone powerful spotlights through chaos and suffering.

  She walked through the bar to the working area, found a seat, fired up her laptop and checked email, bracing herself for another deluge from Ludgate. Nothing. Of course it’s the middle of the night back
in London. Richard had emailed with a potential name and number for tracking down Laura Wan Sun.

  What a star. A pal on the health desk called round his contacts and came up with this suggestion.

  “Brilliant!” Typing fast she emailed back. “One more favour? Do you have a crime correspondent? If so, can you ask about the Lee family?”

  Crime correspondent! On the Economic Journal – I don’t think so.

  She twisted between her index and second finger the card Crisp had given her for Hong Kong’s top fraud man.

  “Tick-tock, the clock is ticking,” she muttered, dialling the number for Michael Chen, Chief Fraud Investigator. It clicked through to an answer machine. She left a message.

  Switching back to Richard's email, she began to dial the number for a doctor named Tsim Koon Lan. Half-way through dialling, she stopped.

  An uneasy misgiving checked her.

  What has this Chinese doctor Laura got to do with me?

  Chasing her, as Silverman wanted, could be harassment.

  I simply don’t have time for this. If he’s pursuing an old flame, he can get a private detective to do his dirty work.

  She sat motionless for a few moments, torn by what to do next. Against her better judgment, she began to dial the number again.

  A pleasant voice answered at the other end. “Hello, Dr Kathy here.”

  “Dr Kathy? I’m looking for Dr Tssss...” she stumbled over the Chinese name.

  “That’s me, please call me Kathy.”

  “Hello, you won't know me, I'm a London journalist, Julia Lighthorn, visiting Hong Kong. A friend asked me to look up a doctor, Laura Wan Sun, while I'm here. A colleague suggested I give you a ring. Can you help me to track Laura down?”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  “Laura’s a great friend of mine,” came a cautious reply. “We work together at the Duchess of Kent Children's Hospital in Sandy Bay.”

  “Fantastic. D’you have a number for her?”

  The voice hesitated again. Julia waited.