Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  Inside the church-like interior, where Mick’s coffin rested on a curtained bier, the rows of pews were dotted with Mick’s neighbours in the apartment building, some of our young staff from The Factory and the landlord from The Duke’s Head. Neither Nancy nor S Y Lee had come from Malaysia but the family was represented by Sammy Lee from the Number 8 Hotel in Kingston who offered me a discreet nod of the head.

  It fell to me to give a eulogy and I spoke of how I had been inspired by Mick’s enthusiasm and energy when we started The Film Factory together. ‘We weren’t merely business partners, we were also cousins and I know that the family connection between us was as valuable to him as it was to me.’ After talking about the cinema and The Duke’s Head and recalling some funny moments, I moved on to the most recent past. ‘I was very pleased to be present in his life when he discovered love with Nancy Lee in Malaysia, who sadly can’t join us today. Not only had he fallen head over heels for Nancy but he had also found a new project. We had discovered an ancestral home in Malaysia called Kellie’s Castle, a dream house built by my grandfather for the love of his life. Nancy and Mick shared a new dream for the house that sadly won’t now come to fruition. Mick’s death leaves a gap in our hearts here in England but also, as in a previous generation of our Kellie family, leaves a dream abandoned many thousands of miles away.’

  Sammy Lee nodded to me again as we left the crematorium but did not join us for a drink at The Duke’s Head.

  8

  I may have told Detective Constables Quinn and Key the truth and nothing but the truth about Mick’s death but I had omitted to tell the whole truth. I hadn’t disclosed that, before Mick’s accident, I had met Sammy Lee at The Factory. He had been waiting at the entrance when I arrived to open up one morning a few days after Mick and I had met Kenver Trewithian when Mick made his will.

  He bowed. ‘Good morning. Do you remember me, Mr Stephen Cross?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘From the hotel in Kingston.’ I could hardly forget his trademark paisley cravat and blazer.

  ‘Yes, Sammy Lee, step-brother to Mr S Y Lee in Malaysia, uncle to Miss Nancy Lee. I have a favour to ask you concerning your partner Mr Kellie.’ He spoke carefully like a barrister addressing a judge.

  I was surprised at this out of the blue visit but since, as far as I was aware, Sammy Lee hadn’t sought to obstruct Mick’s plans once they were agreed by Nancy’s father, I had no reason to suspect his motives. ‘Come in.’ I shouldered the glass door aside and led him into the lobby. ‘Take a seat. Tea? Coffee?’

  He viewed the windows sceptically. ‘Is there somewhere more private, perhaps?’

  ‘Of course. Look I’m getting a coffee. You sure you won’t have one?’

  He shook his head.

  I went behind the counter and pressed the buttons for a double espresso. He hopped from foot to foot, eye-checking first the doors then the windows, then back again. ‘I won’t be a second.’ I said. ‘Are you expecting someone?’

  He shook his head.

  With my coffee in my hand, I led him through to the smaller screen room and sat down in the first seat in the back row. This left space for him on a couch on the other side of the aisle. I placed my drink in the armrest cup-holder and swivelled to face him. The subdued light emphasised the deep, pock-mark scars on his cheeks.

  ‘How can I help you,’ I said.

  His smile seemed genuine. ‘Forgive me for coming unannounced. I am here on my niece’s behalf – Miss Nancy Lee in Ipoh. She has asked me to make a surprise errand for her. When I say, surprise, I mean it is a surprise for her husband-to-be Mr Kellie.’

  ‘It sounds intriguing. What could it be?’ I took a pull at the espresso and felt an immediate boost at the familiar, bitter taste.

  ‘It is very simple, actually. Miss Nancy wants to surprise her husband with a wedding gift. Probably a piece of Chinese sculpture. Something with age. An artefact.’

  ‘If you’re hoping I can help you to choose…’ I shook my head.

  He held up a hand. ‘No! Not in choosing such a thing. Miss Nancy will do that. No, she would like somebody in her family over here—’ he pointed at his chest, ‘—me, to take photographs of the inside of Mr Kellie’s home. We need to get inside but we can’t ask Mr Kellie himself; it would spoil the surprise.’

  ‘Why?’

  He steepled his fingers in front of his chest and studied his fingernails. ‘Do you remember coming to see me, Mr Cross?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Lee. I provided you with information—’

  He nodded slowly – almost a bow. ‘Information that I didn’t use – didn’t even look at.’

  I returned the bow. ‘Of course. I didn’t expect you to.’

  Now that he was satisfied that we understood each other, Sammy Lee narrowed his eyes pensively. ‘It is not so much. We merely need to find a way to access Mr Kellie’s apartment—’

  ‘You said, but I still don’t see—’

  ‘If you’ll permit me to finish… Miss Nancy is keen that the wedding gift she buys for her husband is to his taste. If we can access Mr Kellie’s apartment we can take photographs and send them to Ipoh. She will be able to see his furnishings and possessions and, knowing his taste, choose a suitable artefact.’

  ‘But they won’t be living here. He’s moving to join her in Malaysia.’

  ‘Yes, she told us this. The photographs are to get his style… his taste. She will be able to see the sort of things he likes.’ He flashed his teeth. ‘I was hoping you may be able to get a key—’

  ‘I already have a key, in case of emergencies—’ I immediately regretted blurting it out.

  ‘So much the better. All I ask of you then is that you lend me your key when you know Mr Kellie will be out – perhaps when you have a meeting with him. I will arrange for the photographs to be taken and return the key on the same afternoon.’

  Within a week, the job was done. Sammy Lee only had the key for a few hours and came to my front door to return it with a wink. Mick never said anything so I assumed that Sammy and his henchmen had taken the photographs without disturbing the furniture.

  It was only after Mick’s death that I realised the full implication of my giving the key to Sammy Lee: the man probably behind the VW crashing into the front of the cinema; the UK representative of that part of Nancy’s family most closely related to her jilted fiancé Tommy Lee. This Tommy being the man who styled himself after a psychopathic Mafioso who shot people for fun. What if Sammy Lee had simply made a copy of the key giving him access to Mick’s flat at any time of his choosing?

  Perhaps the instruction from Tommy Lee in KL had been for Sammy Lee’s enforcers to kill the man who had brought him such unhappiness and made him lose face. After delivering one fatal blow to the side of Mick’s head, his murderers had arranged his body to look like he had fallen in the shower.

  Perhaps Tommy had told Sammy and the boys to merely rough up Mick and demonstrate what it meant to have an intractable enemy in Malaysia. What if one of them had crept up on Mick in the shower, hit him and the blow caused the fatal haemorrhage?

  Perhaps they burst into the bathroom and, in his shock and surprise, even before one of them had touched him, Mick slipped, fell and banged his head.

  Perhaps Mick had fallen in the shower prior to the planned raid and it had never happened.

  Perhaps, there was no planned raid and, while Mick was in the meeting with me, as he had promised, Sammy Lee and an associate had entered the apartment, taken a few photographs and left things exactly as they had been before.

  There’s no doubt about it, I was not responsible for my cousin’s death. I didn’t wish for it. I didn’t engineer it. There’s equally no doubt about the fact that I benefited hugely because he died before he married Nancy. Nevertheless, he was my family, I didn’t want him to die. Even though, within a month, he was going to be lost to me.

  These certainties should have meant that I could face my solitary, but financially blessed, future with equanimity
. However, I could never forget that, thanks to me, for a few hours, Sammy Lee had the key to Mick’s apartment. In the darkness of its shadow I think about Mick’s death and my part in it and I’m forced to conclude that there’s every doubt about it.

  9

  I cut my hair, bought a tropical weight suit and flew to Malaysia with Mick’s ashes. I had considered scattering them from Richmond Bridge onto the waters of the Thames so that they could be swept out to the North Sea and beyond. However, Mick had shown little enthusiasm for the river, other than that its oblique view enhanced the value of his apartment, and so I decided to take him to Kellie’s Castle. I made the arrangements through a travel agent who booked me into the Leeyate Plaza Hotel in Ipoh.

  It was the first time I had been in contact with Nancy since I had called her with the dreadful news. She responded to thank me for thinking of her and to say that she had persuaded her father to agree to the urn being buried in the grounds of Kellie’s Castle. She added that she would like to accompany me.

  When I arrived at the Leeyate Plaza, the receptionist told me that I was the guest of its owner and that my suite on the seventh floor and anything else I needed were complimentary. An invitation to join S Y Lee that evening was waiting on a table alongside a lavish display of tropical blooms. I turned my cuff to check the time on Mick’s Patek Philippe wristwatch.

  Mick had told me what to expect when I stepped out of the lift and I wasn’t surprised to find the hotel owner sitting behind his desk in front of the array of windows. I hadn’t anticipated the breath-taking, panoramic view of the city’s rooftops with white and red vehicle lights criss-crossing behind him like silent fireworks.

  He stood and we shook hands. ‘These sad times, Mr Cross,’ he said. ‘I see you have booked with us two nights. A short stay after long journey.’

  Thank you for your very kind hospitality, Mr Lee, but I need to be back in the UK by the end of week.’

  ‘A flying visit then. Can I get you drink? Please sit.’ He pointed to the low armchair.

  After we had agreed that we would have white wine, he picked up the telephone and barked an order into it.

  ‘My daughter will join you tomorrow. What time you want go to house?’

  ‘At eleven?’

  ‘Excellent. I will organise cars. Chauffeur-driven, of course.’

  I thanked him and paused while a uniformed waitress served us both with chilled white wine.

  ‘Cheers!’ S Y Lee said, still seated.

  ‘Cheers! You have a wonderful view from this room,’ I said, lifting the glass.

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t bother looking behind him. Instead, he leaned forward. ‘Do you suspect why I asked see you?’

  I shook my head. I had assumed it was merely a courtesy but didn’t think I should say so.

  ‘I wonder whether you know plans your business partner had for the house, so-called Kellie’s Castle?’

  ‘Yes. He told me about the project to turn it into a hotel.’

  ‘Not just hotel, magnificent spa hotel. I still want this happen. Sadly, not possible without Mr Kellie’s funds.’

  ‘No. I understand that.’

  ‘Do you know if Mr Kellie made arrangements my project go ahead even if something happen to him?’

  I shook my head. ‘As far as I know he did not.’

  ‘Where his money?’

  ‘I’ll be straight with you, Mr Lee. I’m not sure that there was as much money as Mr Kellie may have given the impression there was. Perhaps he allowed his love for your daughter to make him promise more than he should have. To be honest, I don’t really know the situation. The only person who knows is his solicitor and executor.’

  S Y Lee’s expression didn’t change. ‘This most disappointing. Perhaps we have claim against Mr Kellie estate.’

  Before I left England, I had called Kenver to check this possibility and I knew that, although the seed money was lost, there was no further liability. ‘If you put your lawyers in touch with the executors I’m sure that the estate will meet all the terms of any contract you have.’

  S Y Lee stood up. Neither of us had tasted more than the first sip of wine. ‘Well you have been most helpful, Mr Cross. Thank you coming to see me.’ I stepped up on the dais and we shook hands. ‘I hope you have successful day tomorrow,’ he said.

  Next morning, I waited in the lobby at 11am holding Mick’s ashes. Nancy emerged from a lift and I was struck by her frailty. Her cheeks were hollow and her wrists and ankles were thin as twigs. Her shift dress was black and she carried a wide-brimmed black hat. She walked as if her slipper-style shoes were on broken glass, her gaze fixed on the floor in front of her. When she lifted her eyes, she saw what I was carrying and stopped, stepped back and half-turned away as if she had changed her mind about coming.

  After a few seconds, she straightened her back and started towards me again.

  ‘Thank you for bringing him back,’ she said, shaking my hand. Hers was cold and limp. Her eyes were pools of sadness.

  ‘I am so sorry about what happened,’ I said.

  She took a handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and dabbed the points of her dark eyes. She looked at the urn, clamped her eyes shut as if to banish the idea that Mick was in there, and half-stumbled past me. I caught her elbow and she allowed me to walk beside her through the doors and outside into the heat. There were two limousines waiting, the lead one for her, the trailing one for me. There was no question of travelling together.

  After the cars had parked up, Nancy and I walked side by side along the path towards the building. It was my first sight of the ancestral home and I was struck by how its elevation and the loftiness of the walls and towers created the impression of a fortification, a barrier to outsiders. I had expected it to be welcoming, embracing and instead was troubled by its antagonism. My grandfather had evidently recognised the natural enmity between natives and their colonial masters.

  A bonfire crackled and spat nearby and its acrid smoke hung around us as we climbed to the elevated lawn. Somebody, presumably the gardener who stood leaning on his spade at the end of the building, had dug a hole in advance and Nancy and I stood by it in the hot sun. She removed her cardigan revealing gaunt arms and nodded to me. Reverentially, I laid the urn in its place. The hole was too big and the container looked forlorn, stranded, as if it would fit better somewhere else.

  I stood up straight and watched Nancy mouth a silent prayer. She signalled to the gardener to finish his task and took my arm as we negotiated the slope, neither of us turning back when we heard the gardener’s spade, first cleaving into the earth pile and then swishing soil into the hole.

  Standing by the door to her car, Nancy took my hand as if to shake it but held on in a desperate grip. ‘Thank you again for bringing Mick back, Mr Cross. He will have wanted to be here.’ She took off her Ray-Bans and looked me in the eye for what seemed the first time since we had met and her hand tightened around mine. ‘I never really believed Mick and I would marry. Not even after my father agreed because of the damned hotel. It was better for Mick not to be part of the Lee family, I think. My marriage to him would have been hard for others to accept.’

  Guilt about my arrangement with Sammy Lee rose in my throat like bile. I considered asking her whether she had involved her uncle in a plan to photograph Mick’s apartment, but the idea was so ludicrous that I already knew the answer.

  Instead, I squinted up at the sandstone edifice radiating the sun’s heat, thickening and stirring the air above it like broth. Crows circled above the curling smoke making their plangent call. ‘What about this place?’ I asked. ‘Do you think it will ever be rebuilt?’

  ‘Not by my father.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I will never come here again. Not even for…’ She scanned the walls before her gaze settled on the gardener still swinging his spade. In that instant, taking in her wide-brimmed hat and crisp cotton dress, seeing the likeness to Audrey Hepburn that Mick had mentioned, I recogni
sed the woman that he had fallen in love with; the cool, elegant woman who had reminded him of a drift of bamboo swaying under the influence of a warm breeze.

  We watched the gardener finish and walk away leaving a mound of turned tilth. ‘Will you mark the place?’ I asked.

  She sighed so deeply that it sounded from the depths of her before morphing into a choked sob. Whispering, so that I had to lean in close enough to smell the dead-leaf musk of her perfume she said, ‘Mick will be more peaceful if nobody knows he is here. He is our secret. You. Me. My father.’

  Still she stood facing the castle, half-turned away as if she couldn’t force herself to leave. Malaysia’s unrelenting sun toasted our backs while, from behind the screen of trees, the bonfire, that had been the soundtrack to our visit, cracked out a volley of pistol shots.

  Abruptly, without warning, Nancy spun on the soles of her fragile shoes and the chauffeur guided her into the limousine. Its engine had been running to keep the interior cool and without further delay the car exited the castle grounds and turned towards Ipoh.

  I thought about my cousin Luis who had fallen to his death not far from this spot and my cousin-partner who too had died daring to dream a future for the building that loomed before me, shimmering in the smoke like a mirage. My generation of the family destroyed because of this building. Me, the only surviving Kellie, too timid to take it on.

  Curious about the bonfire, I followed the path that ran parallel to the stream and broke through an archway of blossom into a clearing. On the far side, the ornately tiled walls of the temple rose above the shrubbery. A pair of gates were open and the bonfire bristled and flared on the asphalt. Two men carried planks and scraps of broken furniture out of the building and threw them onto the flames, sending embers spiralling upwards, sparkling like tinsel.

  I walked over and waited for one of the men to return. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, immediately regretting my haughty colonial tone.

  ‘The temple is opening again,’ he said, ‘for worship.’ He cast his armful of lumber onto the fire and, from the bubbling paint, orange flames knitted new spirals of black smoke that twisted towards the house.