“What stress?” Scrimple said.
“There must be senior officers who are giving her a hard time to substantiate some of the cases in order to show the public how impartial the police is when investigating its own complaints.”
“Go on,” Scrimple said, with little enthusiasm.
“It would solve a lot of her and your problems if she could just have a really good hard shag.”
“That’s always your solution to everything, isn’t it?”
“Anything wrong with that, Fat-boy?”
“I think I’ll give up beer for a month or so.”
“What are you going to do for your long leave?”
“Not sure. Bring the girlfriend to England and then maybe visit America.”
“Still shagging that Freda bird?”
“Yes. Any problem with that?”
Kenworthy shrugged and put more green stuff on his poppadom pieces, then slid them into his mouth.
Scrimple leaned forward. “What’s the matter with Freda? Tell me.”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right. What problem do you have with my girlfriend?”
“She’s okay, Scrimple. Just a bit skinny.”
“Not everyone considers tits the be and end all of a woman, you know.”
“It’s fine by me if you like women with no tits.”
“Most Chinese women don’t have big tits.”
“But the younger ones do,” Kenworthy pointed out.
“What’s that mean?”
“The young ones have been eating more Westernised food and drink more milk. Fat and protein! There is a noticeable increase in tit size once you get under the twenty-five year old mark.” Kenworthy nodded knowingly and took the Kingfisher beer the waiter had just delivered. “Also I think your girlfriend is after your money.”
“My money?”
The waiter returned and delivered a dish of sizzling Tandoori chicken.
Kenworthy smiled condescendingly. “Yes, I know she’s obviously misguided but it’s not unreasonable to assume that a man who has been working in Asia for fifteen years might have saved a fair amount of cash.”
“She knows I haven’t got any money.”
“You tell her you haven’t got any money but she’s Chinese, she doesn’t believe you. She just thinks you’re being coy.”
“Ah, bollocks.”
“You want this extra piece of chicken?” Kenworthy said.
Scrimple shook his head. He studied his friend over the top of his beer glass. When they’d been fresh young inspectors people had often described Kenworthy as being a George Michael look-alike. He was chunkier now, still handsome, but then George Michael wasn’t much of a role-model anymore since he’d been caught fraternising with the locals in a Los Angeles public lavatory.
“Whatever happened to Hong Kong?” Kenworthy said wistfully.
“Are you the only person who didn’t notice?”
“Notice what?”
“That the Chinese took it all over.”
“Which Chinese?”
“The locals.”
“Nothing to do with Beijing then, in your opinion?”
“I don’t know. Politics doesn’t interest me. I just want to do my job,” Scrimple said.
“So I heard that old Bottle left the Force and got a nice job on the board of Directors of one of Li Ka Shing’s companies.”
“Yes, I heard.”
“He was quite a fellow,” Kenworthy teased.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Scrimple said. He looked up from his plate and regarded his friend and colleague for a moment. There were some things he’d never told Kenworthy about Bottle and the events that had marked him and his career in the Force so many years ago. Things that only he and Bottle knew now, since Tang Siu Ling had been killed by a mysterious gunman in 1995 while playing mahjong at his girlfriend’s house.
And whatever had happened to Mabel? She’d vanished. Kenworthy had known the girl. But only briefly and not in the same way that Scrimple had known her. She’d been a stunner and there hadn’t been many of those in his bed, not then, not since. But he hated thinking about the past.
There was a time when Scrimple thought he might be a good cop. Then reality had caught up with him in the shape of his own mediocrity. Now it didn’t matter much. He had no ambition, except to get through to the next month. Sometimes when he pondered on this too much it depressed him and then he’d have to go to the freezer and drink a couple of fast shots of vodka to take the edge off the oncoming depression. Mostly he didn’t think too much about things. Like a man who closed his eyes while walking along the ledge of a high building. If you didn’t look down, you had nothing to fear.
After lunch he went back to work and at five got up and locked his depressing paperwork into the battleship grey steel filing cabinet.
He took the MTR home and squeezed in between a fat Chinese man—whose friends probably imaginatively called him 'fei-jai—and two schoolgirls with “Hello Kitty” satchels who tried to edge away from the sweaty gwai-lo.
When Scrimple had been in CID he’d been heavily overweight but then the powers that be sent him to the Police Tactical Unit where he and his platoon ran up and down the hilly roads of Fanling until he mysteriously sweated off twenty pounds. He still wasn’t slim but nowadays he could fit into a size thirty-eight pants and even though the girls in the bars of Bangkok still called him “bum-boi” he didn’t feel obese anymore. Now he tried to go to the gym and go jogging a few times a week and that helped to keep him at two hundred and twenty pounds. Not a featherweight but at least he didn’t waddle down the street anymore and had managed to keep a regular live-in girlfriend for a year and a half.
When he reached home Freda was there on the sofa watching TVB Pearl, the Chinese channel.
“Hya,” Scrimple said but the girl ignored him, the remote control in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Had a nice day or just happy to see me?” he said, annoyed by her attitude. He went to the master bedroom which in England would have been barely large enough to be used as a storage cupboard. He took off his tie and shoes, tossed the soggy shirt into the basket where the Filipina maid, who visited twice weekly, would retrieve it.
When he came out of the bedroom he was wearing T-shirts, shorts and slippers. Even with air-con in all the rooms Hong Kong autumn was still a sweaty affair.
“You cooking or anything?” he asked the girl.
“No,” she replied.
He went into the kitchen and got out a San Miguel, then studied the inside of the fridge for a while. Whatever had gotten into her meant he’d have to come up with something for himself to eat. He patted his belly absently. Not that she always cooked, but she often did. Asian girls were supposed to take care of their men.
Scrimple decided to cook himself beans on toast and a fried egg on the side. Nothing glamorous but it had all the nourishment one could want. Vitamins he’d have to get from his bottle of Centrum pills.
“You want anything?” he asked her.
“No, I eat some noodle already.”
“Okay.”
He shrugged. Moody bitches, all of them. Not that he’d had too many serious girlfriends but those that he’d had were never easy and his colleagues verified this. It was a myth that Chinese girls were nice, pleasing and subservient. They could be hard as nails and twice as sharp. Living or marrying a local girl wasn’t a bed of roses. On the other hand the white women weren’t much better. And most of the time they had big bottoms and wide saggy bosoms. There must be some rule in the Immigration Department that forbade entry to any slim, cute, blonde, attractive white girls to the territory.
Scrimple got the frying pan out and set to work. When it was ready he brought the food into the living room and put the plate down on the small four-seater dining table.
The Chinese channel she was watching had some banal game show where a bunch of young locals were running about making fools of themselves while everyon
e giggled hysterically at stupid antics that were neither clever nor amusing. A small, fat bald presenter who’d been around for ever chortled into a large microphone and rammed it up contestants’ noses.
Scrimple ate his food. “Something wrong? Your boss treated you badly? What's with the long face?”
“Nothing. Okay,” she said without turning around. He snorted in mild irritation and then brought the empty plate back into the kitchen.
Sitting down on the sofa he reached out for her waist but she pulled back, pushing his hand away.
He carried on sipping his beer watching the stupidity on television. Every once in a while he’d look at her and she’d ignore him, flicking ash into the Carlsberg ashtray he’d once lifted from a pub in Tsim Sha Tsui. Finally he got up and went into the bedroom where there was another TV and VCD/DVD player.
He put on a movie with Denzel Washington that he’d started watching the night before.
An hour later the girl opened the bedroom door and stood glaring at him.
“Yes?” he said hitting the pause button. He was sprawled on the bed, scratching his belly.
“Maybe I’ll move out. I’m not happy to be here anymore,” she said.
Scrimple was shocked. He sat up and studied her. She wasn’t pretty, with unkempt black hair down to her shoulders and a sharp unusual nose for a Chinese girl. Her lips were thin and she rarely painted them and her breasts were un-noteworthy, but she had a nice pert bottom that had given Scrimple much pleasure during their early love-making. These days the sex had become less. Maybe once a week. Mostly he couldn’t be bothered and she’d never really demanded it, being quite passive and seeming to enjoy mainly the fact that Scrimple was enjoying himself rather than actually getting pleasure from the physical act herself.
Whatever: he did like her a lot and her sudden announcement left him with a hard feeling of hurt somewhere around his breast bone.
“What does that mean? You don’t want to be with me anymore? You want to finish?”
“Maybe,” she said without much emotion.
“Any reason...just suddenly, without warning?”
“It’s boring. You’re boring and I like a guy in my office.”
“Chinese guy?”
“No,” she seemed to shrug, “a gwai-lo. He’s smart and just come to Hong Kong a short time and he’s a high salary.”
“Good looking, is he?” Scrimple heard himself saying. He still didn’t know how to react. It was all unexpected and he was upset. They’d had a good thing going. He took her out for dinner. He was rarely unfaithful to her, only when he went to Bangkok for golf with the lads or Macau for a couple of hours of baccarat followed by “Russian roulette” with some Slavic temptress.
“You want to move out now, tonight?”
“No, I pack tomorrow. I sleep in the other room tonight.”
“Was it something I did, that you just don’t want to be with me anymore?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, you’re a nice guy and I love you sometime but it just get too boring. You know, Scrimple. Every day, every week we do same thing. We do nothing and your job is no good and you never get promotion. I’m not so young. I have to marry before I’m thirty. I want to marry somebody successful.”
“Oh, I see, that’s it. I’m not successful.” He was overcome with a great deep sadness. Not bad enough to cry but enough to make him weary. Scrimple wanted to roll up into a ball under the thin sheets.
“Good-night,” she said, “You’re a good man but maybe not for me. I’m not a good girl I think.” Her voice trailed off as she turned away from the door towards the spare bedroom where the old computer and suitcases were kept.
Scrimple stared at the door, still ajar. “Well, thank you very much. After all my time and effort. You little Honkie bitch. Thank you,” he said with vehement sarcasm, but not loud enough for her to hear. “I should have known. But maybe I’m just fucking stupid.”
For a while he sat on the bed and stared at the frozen television frame. Then the door bell rang. It startled him.
Nobody came around at this time of the evening except men wanting to sell cable TV or the downstairs guard complaining about rubbish bags on the backstairs.
When he opened the door there were three Chinese guys standing outside the safety grille. They all wore suits and one was thrusting a plastic identity card at Scrimple.
“Inspector Scrimple, can we come in and talk to you?” the man said in reasonable English.
“What about?” Scrimple was trying to make out the card but all he could see was the word “Independent” before the guy snatched it away again.
They trooped into the flat once he’d unlatched the grille and stood in the living room. Scrimple frowned. The one who’d done the talking said, “You know about casey number LF-32578/00?”
“No, what are you talking about?”
“You investigate the case. Mr. Wong Kam Ting who complain about the police beat him up during investigation?”
“There’s a lot of Mr. Wong’s in my files.”
“He say you offer him money to withdraw the complaint.”
Scrimple snorted. “You’re fucking joking aren’t you?”
The Chinese man looked upset. He was taking himself very seriously and so were his colleagues.
“You deny the charge?”
“Of course I deny the charge. What a load of bollocks. I remember this guy. He’s a Triad drug dealer and he was arrested by one of the SDS teams.”
“He made the complaint to ICAC so we have to investigate.”
“Don’t you realise he’s just trying it on? He’s got done for an offence that will send him down for five years so he’s first trying to put a finger on the Vice Squad boys and now for good measure is wasting your time.” Scrimple was shaking his head in utter disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. It would never have happened in the old days when the Force and the Independent Commission Against Corruption was still controlled by Western senior officers who took a more balanced perspective instead of just doing things by the book.
“Inspector Scrimple,” the man said. “We ask you come to our office in Admiralty for giving a statement.”
“Not now.” He looked over at Freda who had come out of the spare bedroom and was staring at him with the sort of look that seemed to say “I knew you were up to no good.” What the hell did she know.
All of a sudden he had a great anger with all things Chinese.
Fuck them all.
“We insist you come now, or we can get warrant for your arrest.”
“Don’t you understand you stupid bong-head that I’m a police officer who’s doing his job. Why would I offer any money to some scumbag drug dealer for dropping a complaint that is so patently ludicrous given the circumstances?”
The three ICAC men all stared at him stonily. They were not on his side. They wanted to find men like Scrimple to nail up as examples of how hard they were working to root out corruption. They wanted to be holier than the Pope, looking for evil in all the wrong places.
“Maybe somebody give you some money to offer to Mr. Wong to drop the charge. Somebody in the SDS team. All police help each other,” the guy was saying.
“You’re mad.”
“Please get your clothes and come with us.”
Scrimple shook his head but there was no choice. He’d have to go through the motions. Maybe it was time to think about leaving Hong Kong after all. He gave Freda a filthy look and she just shrugged without showing any emotion.
* * * *
The Bamboo Bar in the Oriental Hotel was famous for its jazz. It was the best venue of its kind in Bangkok. Today they had a famous singer from Alabama who was guesting for a month and she was perched on a stool next to the piano—a large African-American woman in a black dress designed for somebody much slimmer and younger. She had a voice that could both shatter glass and charm flowers into growing. Her range was amazing and John McHardy sat in a rattan wing-tip armchair in a corner with his eyes
closed, enjoying the music.
He was alone. There was plenty of company to be had in Bangkok if you were the lonely type but McHardy enjoyed his privacy. At home he had a blonde wife and two teenage daughters who studied at the International school. They had a good family life, everyone was nice and civil to each other when they met at breakfast. His wife was busy with charities and they had sex maybe once or twice a month because she was still an attractive woman and took her aerobics seriously.
McHardy didn’t have a mistress or casual girlfriends like many men who spent time in the Thai capital. He didn’t have the need for illicit sex. He got his kicks from making money. Originally from a small town in New Jersey, not far from New York City, John had made his way to Asia in the eighties and now ran the Bangkok office for McPherson Ferguson. He had about fifteen staff and mostly they shipped garments, furniture and handicrafts. He was the only American to work in the British company and had been hired after a chance encounter with the Old Man, Sir Thomas Ferguson, who’d been desperate when the previous Bangkok Manager had drunk himself into a state of incompetence. McHardy had been playing tennis at the British Club and was recommended to Sir Thomas as a good trader who understood the ways of the East. McHardy spoke fluent Thai and wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty by visiting factories needing proactive supervision.
He was dressed now, as always, in Bangkok business attire: white shirt and maroon tie, black slacks and brogues, gold Rolex watch and a Nokia mobile phone resting on the table next to the Jim Beam Coke.
The singer took a break and the waitress, who knew McHardy by name, asked him if he wanted a cigar. She brought him his usual Hoyo de Monterey and he asked her how things were. She giggled and explained that not all customers were as appreciative as him. McHardy was a tall, athletic man with a large bushy moustache and he was popular for his looks as well as his un-American politeness.
Somebody approached the table, a ruddy-faced, pot-bellied fellow. He sat down uninvited.
Dragon Breath Page 3