by Tony Davies
He smiled at Mack “But if later police need to get involved, I hope I get called first. Good for my career if I handle big case like this properly?” It was made as simple statement and not as a request and no reply was expected from Mack.
Tommy’s English was adequate but not fluent and Mack thought he had probably come up through the ranks rather than through the graduate entry scheme. So much for first appearances, he told himself. He seemed to know how to play the game. There was no mileage in investigating unsubstantiated complaints about senior government servants, especially of this nature. If Tommy started an investigation and couldn’t prove any wrong doing then his career would be over. Lee was bound to have friends in the senior ranks of the police force and Tommy would end up spending the next ten years as the ‘Officer in charge of photocopying’ at a remote station in the New Territories.
Mack looked at him and decided he was someone he could work with in the future. Approaching Don first was a smart move and belied his youthful look of inexperience. Don was a well regarded senior officer and by not going through prescribed channels and approaching him direct he had given him the flexibility to deal with it as he saw fit. Don would of course, return the favor one day and Mack would do the same.
Mack looked at Tommy and smiled. It seemed as if it was only yesterday he had been the bright eyed, eager young Detective Inspector trying who sat opposite him. He certainly didn’t blame Tommy for trying to build relationships with senior officers of Don’s caliber. It was never too early to start cultivating friendships. There was also no harm in having a network of people in the private sector you could trust and work with when the need arose.
Modern day policing, particularly when it came to white collar crime, meant strong interaction with professionals in the private sector and people such as Mack were useful contacts to have.
Mack spoke in a non‐committal voice. “Interesting conversation you guys have been having. Not sure why my name was mentioned but I will certainly bear it in mind” They nodded to each other before Tommy smiled, shook Mack’s hand and walked away.
Don looked at Mack and chuckled “We seem to have some bright sparks coming through the system. He is one to watch for the future. Perhaps he is wasted in Vice, a stint in one of the crime squads would do him good.
“Anyway, moving on, I don’t suppose your interest in Lee Wai is limited to an insurance claim, but I don’t think there is anything to be gained by discussing this further, do you?” He grinned at Mack before calling the waitress over. “My friend here is paying for the drinks, but before he does I would like another one thanks.” He looked at Mack and said in a slightly mocking tone, “Oh, and my friend here would also like another one, he has a lot on his mind at the moment.”
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Fortunately for Mack, the previous evening had not turned into a marathon drinking session and he had been home and in bed by 11pm. Whilst he was usually an early riser and rarely relied on an alarm clock, old habits died hard and he had set up a wake call for 7am. He reasoned it was always better to be safe than sorry. By 8am he was stood outside his office door looking exasperated. It had been spray painted in red with the words ‘Drop the Lee case’.
Lindy was stood off to one side, arms folded with an angry look on her face.
Mack thought she looked quite cute, but realised then was not the time to comment on it. She said in a concerned tone “I thought I would wait a few minutes until you arrived before going in. I don’t think they got inside as the alarm didn’t go off last night, but better safe than sorry.”
Mack nodded, pressed the door code and unlocked the door before stepping inside. Lindy was right, it didn’t appear anyone had been inside. He briefly checked all the rooms before sitting down in the boardroom. He put the coffee and muffins on the table and said to Lindy “I hope you are still hungry. I wonder who did that?”
“You don’t seem very angry. But that is you I suppose. Get even not angry and all that, although I don’t think you will find out who did this in a hurry. Fortunately, no real harm has been done and I will get someone to clean up the door today. So tell me about your day yesterday.”
Mack told her the details of the meetings with Stephen Chan’s family and with Tommy So.
When he had finished Lindy looked deep in thought “So Stephen was gay, lends credence to the allegation doesn’t it. The call to the police is interesting. I can’t see the point in it. Why would the caller risk a police investigation into the activities of Lee Wai? If the police found anything illegal he would lose all his leverage. Surely he can’t have known Tommy So would go straight to Don rather than up the line in his own department?”
She looked inquisitively at Mack before continuing “The door painting was stupid, simple as that. As if you would be frightened off by a painted door! But perhaps he knew that, the door was designed to infuriate you, he wanted to make sure you didn’t give up the case by getting you angry. That must mean he wants you to keep investigating, which presumably means he knows you will eventually prove the allegation is true. But then, why bother, he could simply provide the evidence now and save all the trouble? Unless he knows it is true but can’t prove it. So you end up doing all the leg work and in the meantime we all assume he has the evidence when in fact he can’t prove anything.”
Her eyes lit up as she smiled at Mack. “Did you follow all that?” Mack laughed and sat back in the chair. “Yeah, I think I did.”
Whilst her summation certainly had merit, there were too many unknown facts and he knew all he could do was to go with the flow of the case and see where it led him. To jump to conclusions at this stage could have serious repercussions later.
The first thing he should do is have another meeting with Westminster. Keeping the client up to date was always a good approach. “Can you set up a meeting for later today with Westminster, sometime after lunch would be good.”
“No need, Ms Martin rang and they want to see you at 10am. You must not be late, but at least we can finish our coffee first.”
Chapter sixteen
An update
It rained heavily that morning and as he trudged to the tram stop Mack wished it was already autumn. The dry months of October and November were the best time of year in Hong Kong.
After waiting a few minutes under the shelter of an adjoining building Mack boarded a tram and managed to find a dry seat on the top deck. The tram crawled slowly towards Central as Mack reviewed his earlier meeting with Lindy. He reminded himself that Lindy was a capable operator and that he had to make his mind up about the Singapore job offer. Decisions, decisions, decisions he told himself.
The journey quickly passed and by 9.55am he was at Westminster’s offices. He was met by another of Westminster’s Chinese ‘model’ receptionists and he wondered whether they were rotated daily with the aim of impressing clients. He told himself that not even Westminster would do that, although he wasn’t convinced he was right.
Neither Weston nor Bent got up to shake his hand when he entered the room, but both men smiled at him and the atmosphere seemed friendly enough. Mack knew that could change very quickly though.
“Thanks for coming. We thought it appropriate that you give us an update on your progress so far. We can then discuss how to go forward” opened Bent.
“No problem. Let me first explain the links between Stephen and Lee. Stephen is Lee’s tennis coach at the LRC so we can confirm they knew each other. Stephen was gay and was in a relationship with someone, we don’t know who, although they did not live together. Apparently, he wanted to but the other party, for some reason, didn’t. His apartment is rented by an untraceable Cayman Islands company, which I assume means his partner was paying and didn’t want his identity discovered.
“On the 27th March, Lee was on leave so could have met Stephen in Macau. We may be able to find out whether he was in Macau on that date shortly. We can’t id
entify the occupant of the hotel room on the night in question.
“As for the cause of his death, we should know the answer on that shortly. The police have no reason to assume murder, but until the post mortem results come out they are keeping an open mind. Perhaps their involvement in this will end when the result is known. They have enough work on their hands without pursuing a death where there is no evidence of foul play.
“My business card was found in his home, but as you know, I have never had any contact whatsoever with him. I could say there are lots of reasons why he was in possession of it, but the logical conclusion is that he intended, or had at least considered at some stage, to contact me in a professional capacity. If we knew the reason for that we may be a lot nearer to getting to the bottom of all this.
“The police got an anonymous call to tell them Lee Wai had ‘done something bad’ and that I was trying to cover it up. Only you and my team knew of my involvement. There is no police enquiry into the call at the moment, but that may change, who knows.
“My office door was spray painted over night with the words ‘drop the Lee Wai case’. Someone obviously thinks I shouldn’t be working on this and is perhaps trying to persuade me to drop the case. I say ‘perhaps’ because of course, it could simply be the opposite. It is not a secret that I hate being ‘persuaded’ to do things I don’t want to do.
“So that summarises when I am up to. What has happened on your side?” Bent looked at Weston, smiled and turned to face Mack.
“The taped call revealed nothing when analysed and the photograph doesn’t provide much help. So no progress on our side. You are the professional in these matters, what do you think we should do next?”
Mack thought he detected a trace of sarcasm in Bent’s voice, but there was little point in him rising to the bait. At least, not yet anyway. He went on in a neutral voice “Let me have a copy of the tape, I want to do my own analysis of it. The allegation will be difficult to prove without an admission by Lee Wai. Having said that, the caller may be holding certain things back and I somehow doubt he has gone to all this trouble without more evidence, although whether he has enough to prove it is another thing.
“I suppose we have to ask ourselves a simple question. If someone went public with what we know now what would happen? The fact is one of your employees was gay and there is some circumstantial evidence he may or may not have known Lee Wai. He is dead so he can’t reveal anything to your detriment and you have to assume Lee Wai won’t incriminate himself. Of course, a problem arises if there is more evidence of a relationship. You will have the press all over you.”
Weston slowly stood up and walked over to the window and gazed outside. As the owner of Westminster he had the most to lose from any adverse publicity resulting from the allegation. Losing the project would not be the end of the world. His father had taught him that every deal had the potential to go wrong.
The key to surviving was to make sure there weren’t too many of them and that they didn’t affect the others. The problem with this case was that if the allegation was true, the question on everyone’s mind would be whether he had known about it and had tried to use it to his advantage. People would assume he had and that would certainly impact on his future dealings with government. The added problem was the additional scrutiny of the press. He didn’t want Westminster subjected to investigation and a witch hunt in the local media.
After a few moments Weston walked back to his seat and smiled at Mack. Mack’s first reaction was that this was going to be one of those days when everyone smiled at him just before they plunged a knife into his heart.
Weston spoke in a matter of fact tone when he said “Mack, now that someone has contacted the police it could mean the caller is sending us a message that he is prepared to go public if we don’t stop you investigating this. Agreed?”
Mack’s answer was delivered immediately. “Agreed. But that doesn’t answer how he came to find out I was involved. How the caller knew your code name for Lee. It implies some inside knowledge of the project. Remember, this isn’t something that he has just stumbled on. The photograph means he had them, or at least one of them, under surveillance. It may mean he knew what was going on and was looking for evidence to prove it. Alternatively, it may mean he was investigating one of them for some reason and just got lucky when he saw them together. He then changed tack and looked at a possible relationship between them and here we are now. If this is the case, then the obvious question is why was one of them being investigated in the first place?
“All this conjecture is counter-productive though. We could speculate for hours on this and come up with numerous scenarios. The fact is that until we hear from the caller again we have very little to go on. He hasn’t asked for anything and until he does all we can do is try to prove or disprove the allegation. Whilst I don’t think we are going to be able to disprove it, the circumstantial evidence we have certainly doesn’t prove it happened so it’s now a waiting game, with me continuing with my efforts.”
“What’s your gut feeling?” was Weston’s reply.
“I don’t think it matters if it is true, I think the caller may have enough evidence that the public will think there is no smoke without fire. The press will be all over you and whilst I don’t run your PR for you, a simple denial from you and Lee Wai will not cut it. At best he will withdraw from the project and whether the government will simply appoint a replacement is beyond me.
“Either way, the allegation is of an affair with one of your team, so irrespective of whether Paradise Cove ever gets built, your involvement in it will be over. No- one will welcome the attention the publicity will bring, least of all your other clients. I assume a number of them will question whether they could come under the spotlight in the future if they deal with you.
“You have built your business and reputation on a low profile and minimum public disclosure. Presumably your clients like this approach, which is one of the reasons you have been so successful. Too much public attention over the Lee Wai allegation and that approach will be well and truly over.”
Weston sat back in his chair and looked contemplatively at Mack. “You are very astute Mack, I didn’t realize policemen could have such a sound grasp of how the business world operates. But then, you were no ordinary policemen were you. Still, its very impressive how you have grasped the real problem we are facing and why we have to prevent this ever becoming public, irrespective of whether it is true or not. Too much hard work and effort has gone into building this business to have it destroyed over an affair, if indeed there was an affair, which we knew nothing about and didn’t try to exploit.”
Weston got up from the chair to signal the meeting was over and as he did so he spoke to Mack “I am keen to get to the bottom of all this for everyone’s sake.”
He then stood erect and lowered his voice to say “But let’s be clear on one thing. I am not after the truth. I only care about one thing, protecting what I have built. If that means that we have to break some rules or flout some laws then so be it. I will take whatever steps are necessary to protect this firm. I repeat, whatever steps are necessary.”
After he left the room and headed back to his office Mack considered the statement Weston had made about protecting what he had built. Weston’s emphasis on the word ‘whatever’ was not lost on him, although he wondered how far Weston would actually go to achieve his aim. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he had a feeling that this case was not going to end with handshakes all round and drinks at the Captain’s bar.
Chapter seventeen
My sort of place
It was after 10pm when Mack knocked on the door of the La boheme club in Soho. The building was very non descript, just another commercial property on the fringes of Lan Kwai Fong. A small brass plaque on the door showed the club’s name, but there was nothing to indicate the nature of its activities or facilities.
Lindy had told him the club had no web site and she had only been able to find
out it was registered with the liquor licensing department as a members only club offering dining facilities. The building’s owner was an untraceable Cayman Islands company.
Since Debbie Chan had mentioned her brother had been to the club, Mack felt he should at least visit there. Whilst it probably had nothing to do with the case, the police force had taught him to follow up every lead, no matter how trivial. The English expression was ‘no stone unturned’ and he was sure there was a Cantonese version although despite his fluency he couldn’t think of it.
He was skeptical it would lead to anything, but as he looked at the entrance door he hesitated. The street was deserted and he noted that the building’s location at the end of a quiet alley way meant there were likely to be few passersby. If the club’s members wanted anonymity they had certainly picked the right building. The street lighting was poor, but he noted that the adjoining buildings seemed to comprise offices and their occupants had long since left for the day.