Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

Ruby shook his hand - he held it too long, caressing it in his damp palm - and sat down.

  “Good to see you again, Ruby-ah. You look very beautiful. Not good for me you look so wonderful.” He patted his chest. “I got bad heart.”

  Yeah, full of worms, like a pig, Ruby thought.

  “Give rest of this hand for one night with you, Ruby-ah,” he whispered.

  “Must be blind, never mind,” Ruby said, with a laugh. Big heap of leper turd, I would rather copulate with a dog.

  He told the maître d' to bring them lunch. “Eat first, then we talk business,” he said.

  ***

  The remains of the meal were scattered around the table; lobster tails, shrimp balls, slices of goose growing cold in its own grease. Three Finger sipped his dark, bitter tea and lit another cigarette.

  “So, Ruby-ah,” he said, “all twelve and a half chickens arrive in San Francisco safe.”

  “Just one problem,” Ruby said.

  “Problem?”

  “Cannot pay you six hundred cash right now. But we are good friends, we can make arrangement.”

  Three Finger looked amused. “What sort of arrangement?”

  “You keep one and a half chicken. At one thirty for one chicken, that is one ninety five. Can give you rest cash. Got a deal, okay?”

  He threw back his head and laughed; he laughed so hard his jowls quivered under his chin.

  “What is so funny, heya?”

  “You are some piece of business, Ruby-ah.”

  “Giving you good deal.”

  He leaned across the table. “Now I give you my deal. My deal is this: I do not give you your chicken back. I sell it all, make very big profit. But I am generous man, as everyone can tell you. So I will pay for lunch.”

  Ruby felt the world spin. “You got my chicken.”

  “No, Ruby-ah. Don't have your chicken. I got Crazy Eddie's chicken. But Crazy Eddie don't know I have his chicken, right? You are in a fix, Ruby.”

  You stinking pile of dog vomit, she thought. This son of a whore's left tit had trapped her. He must have known all along.

  “You fucking cheat me,” Ruby said, hardly able to believe what was happening.

  “You act too bloody big, Ruby-ah. You want to sell your chicken, you must have a tiger with very sharp claws to guard it. But where is your tiger, Ruby-ah? Steal from your tiger, then what you going to do?”

  “Talk about this. Want you to be my partner, okay. Not just this deal, got many deals, can make you a very rich guy.”

  “I am already very rich guy.”

  “Ruby Wen is going to kill you, fucking your mother!”

  “You are stupid, Ruby-ah.” He held up his crippled hand. “You know what? Guy who did this, he take my finger. I take his whole fucking arm! That is what you get when you fuck with Three Finger!”

  This is not happening, she thought. A few weeks ago she had had a share in two hundred kilos of number four, a fortune. Now it was all gone. She had burned incense to the gods every day, left fruit and red notes at the temple, and this was her joss.

  “Swear I will kill you,” she said.

  He waved his crippled hand towards the door in dismissal. “Go defecate in your grandfather's ear.”

  Ruby staggered out, knocking over a carved screen near the door, hardly noticing the other diners staring at her. They thought she was drunk.

  Wanchai Police Station, Hong Kong

  The old man in the white vest fidgeted with the packet of Mild Sevens in his hand. He wanted to smoke, and badly, but Lacey wouldn't let him. They had kept him at the police station since the murder the night before, three different detectives had interrogated him, and he had given them three entirely different accounts of the night's events. But their threats of prosecution for perjury, and the punishments he could expect - vastly exaggerated - had not make him waver. He was not about to name Won Ton’s killers.

  There was a strong odor of sweat coming off him.

  Lacey had a Parker pen in her right hand and a yellow legal notepad on the table in front of her. She took her glasses from her jacket pocket and put them on. “Let's go through this again, Mister Ng,” she said. “Now, you said there were three men?”

  Ng looked confused. “Four men.”

  “Interesting,” Lacey said. “In our first interview you told me there were three men. You told Chief Inspector Tyler four, you told Detective Sergeant Kwok you could not remember, and when Detective Poon asked you this same question you said you were looking out of the window and didn't realize anything was wrong until the police came.”

  Ng turned the cigarette packet over and over in his hand. “None of my business. One must not interfere with the decisions of the gods.”

  “So what happened when these three or four men came into your mah-jongg parlor?”

  “Don't know.”

  “A man was chopped to death with meat cleavers right in front of you and you didn't see what happened?”

  “Heard little bit noise. Think it is someone arguing over a game.”

  Lacey knew it was hopeless. Even if he did talk he'd only recant later, just like the old fisherman. What does it matter? Let them all kill each other. Each one that dies is one less for us to worry about.

  She snatched the packet of Mild Sevens out of his hands and walked out of the room.

  Tyler was waiting for her in the corridor, eating a chicken sandwich. He had dark shadows under his eyes. “You took his cigarettes?”

  Lacey nodded sheepishly.

  “That was petulant of you.”

  “Should I give them back?”

  He shook his head. “Go back in there now and you'll lose face.”

  “Did we find those tourists?”

  “They came in a little while ago. They heard the appeal on the television in their hotel. Married couple from Frankfurt.”

  “Anything?”

  “All they saw was four men running down the stairs and out the door. All happened too fast they said.” He yawned. Twenty hours straight they'd been working on this. “They can chop the living shit out of each other for all I care, but one day there's going to be a police officer or some unsuspecting tourist in the way.” He looked at his watch. Almost six o'clock. “Let's go home. I refuse to lose any more sleep over a guy named after a dumpling.”

  Lacey nodded towards the interview room. “Shall I send him home?”

  “Yes, and give him his cigarettes back. I don't want you reported to Amnesty International for torturing prisoners.”

  ***

  Lacey was back at her desk five hours later, and at five o'clock that afternoon she and Tyler were summoned to Arsenal Street. A special task force had been established to oversee the investigation into the Johnston Road slayings and the previous night's murder of Won Ton. They were to continue their investigations of all four homicides but liaise daily with headquarters. The Commissioner himself was taking an interest in both cases. The message was clear; they were to get convictions, and they were to get them quickly.

  Tyler and Lacey did not speak in the elevator; they were both drained, physically and emotionally. The lift stopped on the tenth floor and Tyler got out. A man ran for the lifts, just as the doors were closing. Lacey instinctively reached for the button to hold them open. Keelan jumped in.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  “How are you Inspector Lacey?”

  “Fine.”

  “You don't look it. You have rings under your eyes. Did you go out with your uncle last night?”

  “You know what it's like in Serious Crimes. Every night's a party.”

  The lift doors opened and Lacey headed across the foyer. It was a three minute walk to the mini bus stop.

  “Detective Lacey.”

  She turned around.

  “I know you said the other day that you didn't think it was a good idea but ... can I buy you a drink?”

  “I've had a very long and wearying day. I just want to go home, have so
me dinner and go to bed.”

  “I was hoping we could talk about triad operational structure.”

  She stared at him. Was he making fun of her? “It's very difficult for me to have social drinks with male colleagues in the police department, Lieutenant Keelan. You and Mac go for a drink and it’s just a drink. I do it and by the next day half the office thinks I'm sleeping with the guy.”

  “Sorry, you told me this the other day, I should pay better attention.”

  Lacey hesitated. To hell with it, she thought. I could do with a drink right now. “Ever been to Delaney's?” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “It's just round the corner. We can talk about triad operational structure. I could do with a laugh.”

  ***

  She knew what they called her in the mess: Icy. Detective Inspector Icy. The Chinese detectives in her squad were a little more poetic; their nickname for her roughly translated to The Perfumed Dragon.

  She had fostered the image. It was tough being a woman in such a man's world. She should be accustomed to it, being the only girl among four older brothers, and the only one to follow in the old man's shoes.

  It had been her cast-iron rule ever since she joined the Royal Hong Kong Police Force; don't mix work with sex. The result was a sort of enforced abstinence because the only men she ever met were other cops.

  Delaney's was on the first floor of a commercial building in Jaffe Road. It was crowded with young ex-pats. Lacey fought her way to the bar.

  “Not your usual kind of place,” she said to him. “Sorry.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The waitresses all have their shirts on.”

  He let her get the drinks. He wanted Scotch with coke. When hers arrived a few minutes later he stared at the pint glass of black liquid and grimaced. “You really drink that stuff?”

  “Guinness is actually a food. My grandmother had half a pint a day on prescription from her doctor.” She sipped her stout and watched him. The Ice Maiden and the married man. Who would have thought?

  “So you want to talk about the triads?”

  “Not really.”

  “So you got me here on a pretext.”

  “You know, you're kind of ...”

  “Aggressive?”

  “Ballsy.”

  “It comes with the territory. Girls with tissue boxes on the desk don't get very far in the Serious Crimes Squad.”

  “I guess not.”

  “You like ballsy women, Lieutenant? Is it a challenge for you?”

  “John will do. And in answer to your question, I'm not trying to score. I just would like some female company that doesn't charge by the hour. Do you mind?”

  “I guess not. I'm here, aren't I?”

  “So, how long have you been a cop, Lace?”

  “I joined straight from school. It was all I ever wanted to do.”

  “Yeah? Civic responsibility or just a sense of adventure?”

  “I'm sure Mac has told you. I'm just following in the old man's footsteps.” His eyes were flint grey she noticed, with hazel flecks. They were sad eyes, even when he was smiling, as he was now.

  “So what will you do when the red hordes come streaming over the border?”

  “The red hordes are already here, they have been for decades. It's become a bit of a game in the department: Pick the Sleeper. You know, spies willing to stay undercover for years, waiting for the right moment. Everyone seems to think the barman in the Arsenal Street mess is actually the head of the Chinese Secret Police.”

  “Will you stay on?”

  “I guess so. Going to England would be like emigrating to a foreign country now. I spent three years there at boarding school, then never went back again.”

  “And perhaps Beijing will make your job a lot easier. Thing about the Chinese, they cut a lot of red tape. Easier to shoot someone than go through the aggravation of arresting them and then having to get evidence.”

  “I used to think the Chinese hard liners would drive the triads out of Hong Kong when they took over. Now I'm not so sure.”

  “I thought the communists hated the tongs.”

  “They are also pragmatists. Money talks all languages but its mother tongue is Cantonese. The new breed in Beijing are more interested in modernization than manifestos.” Lacey's pager interrupted her. She unclipped it from her belt and read the message. “Won't be a moment,” she said, and went outside to use the pay phone in the lobby.

  ***

  “Charlotte,” she said when she came back.

  “Sounds like a code name. One of your CI's?”

  “My housemaid. She wants to know what time I'll be home for dinner.”

  “Your maid rings you on your pager to tell you to get your ass home for dinner? This doesn't fit with the tough bitch image, Lace.”

  “I can still be badass. Sometimes I defy her and don't eat my desserts.”

  She leaned across the bar for a handful of peanuts. Under the plain black jumper he glimpsed her bra strap, burgundy lace. She caught him looking and he turned away. She pushed her ash-blond hair out of her eyes and watched him. Christ, those eyes that could melt butter, he thought. She could stare down my old station sergeant.

  “So, Lieutenant. John. Now that Eddie Lau has got away from us again, has the DEA any further official business with my department?”

  “No, ma'am.” He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, from habit, then he remembered how she felt about cigarette smoke and put them away back.

  “Always been a smoker?”

  “Took it up a couple of years ago. I know it's bad, you don't have to lecture me.”

  “I wouldn't dream of it.” She studied him over the rim of her glass. “Does your wife smoke?”

  “She did. She gave it up when she got pregnant with Caroline.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  He shrugged.

  “What happened?”

  “We're separated.”

  “By the Pacific Ocean?”

  “No, I mean permanently.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “They all say that.”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Not right now. I'm late.” She finished her drink and set it the glass down decisively on the bar. She still had half a pint left.

  “Well, maybe we can do this again sometime,” he said.

  She hoisted her bag on her shoulder. She gave him a long, speculative look. “Hungry?” she said.

  “A little.”

  “Good. I've told Charlotte to expect a guest for dinner.”

  Keelan blinked. “You're inviting me for dinner?”

  “Yes, but not for coffee, okay?”

  “But what about Charlotte? Is she okay with this?”

  “I'm not afraid of my maid,” Lacey said. “But when we get there, you go in first.”

  Chapter 30

  Lacey's apartment was off Pokfulam Road, on the fourth floor of the block. He followed her inside. He had imagined something modern and functional, but the furnishings could have been plundered from an English cottage; an oak hallstand, thick rugs on the parquet floors, a beech dining table and sideboard in the dining room. There were framed photographs on all the walls, mostly sepia or black and white. There was even an antelope's head.

  “Not very politically correct, is it?” Lacey said to him when she caught him staring.

  “Was this a police involved shooting?”

  “Kenya. My grandfather. I have a very colonial past.”

  Charlotte appeared from the kitchen. Keelan had imagined a wizened Chinese with a black pigtail but Charlotte looked to be younger than Lacey, a slight and pretty Filipina with piercing dark eyes. She looked Keelan up and down twice. Now he knew what it felt like to be in a police line-up.

  “Charlotte, this is Lieutenant John Keelan. He's joining me for dinner tonight.”

  “Hi, Charlotte.”

  Charlotte frowned. The gold crucifix at her throat glowed
in the dull light of the hallway lamp. “He is a yanqui?” she whispered to Lacey.

  Lacey nodded and Charlotte turned up her nose and returned to the kitchen. “Wow,” Keelan said, “I was a big hit.”

  “She doesn't like Americans. I think one of your compatriots at Clarke Air Base got her little sister pregnant. She'll probably poison your food.”

  “Still beats eating alone.”

  She led the way into the living room. There were two Chesterfields the color of old port and a teak coffee table with legs carved in the shape of elephant's feet. There was even a tiger skin rug on the floor.

  “Time warp,” Keelan said.

  “My father left most of the furniture when he went back to England. This all looks better in the right surroundings but I could never bear to part with any of it.” She pointed to the photographs on the wall. “That's me and my brothers at Dad's sixtieth two years ago. He's living in Gloucester now.”

  “Four brothers. That must have been tough.”

  “They were okay. It was living with Dad that was hard.” She nodded to another picture, an oak-framed black-and-white, perhaps thirty years old. “That was my mother. She died a couple of years ago. Patience of a saint, God rest her soul.”

  “She's very pretty.” He resisted the obvious clichéd compliment. “You're more like your old man.”

  She looked up at him. “That's truer than you know.”

  “Any of your brothers become cops?”

  “Dad would have liked that. But no, just me. I think it broke his heart, he wanted me to be a nurse.”

  Keelan looked around. “Being a cop in Hong Kong must pay well,” he said.

  It was an innocent observation, and he was unprepared for her reaction. “Did you get that from my uncle?” she said.

  “Get what?”

  “He's got a big mouth,” she said. “Excuse me, I have to check on Charlotte.” She walked out of the room.

  ***

  Charlotte had prepared sini gang, a sour soup flavored with tamarinds, mangoes and limes, and a fish curry. There was a bottle of mineral water in the middle of the table. “She disapproves of drinking,” Lacey whispered to Keelan, after Charlotte had served the food and left the room.