The Allegation: A John Mackworth novel

by Tony Davies

  Chapter eighteen

  Telling Lindy

  The next morning Mack was sat at his desk at 8.30am pondering the events of the night before. He had spent thirty minutes or so talking to Em at her apartment and had been a little surprised with the final outcome. Em had sat opposite him on a large comfortable lounge chair and had made no effort to breach the distance between them. At one point he was tempted to take the initiative, but he held back and instead enjoyed the conversation, which had flowed freely and covered a range of topics.

  They had exchanged phone numbers before he left. It was the tried and tested approach of ‘I don’t want to put you under pressure so here is my number. If you are interested then call me.’ Mack had every intention of calling her. It was only a question of delaying it long enough so he didn’t appear overly keen.

  Lindy came into the room just as he was reaching for his mobile phone to text Em.

  “Were you about to make a call? Shall I come back?” she asked. “No, I can do that later.”

  He put the phone down and looked at her “By the way, I went to the La boheme last night.” He explained what had happened at the club but made no mention of meeting Em.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “I am not sure there is much I can or should do. It may have no connection with the case. If it rattles a few cages then great, if it doesn’t then so be it.”

  She looked at him quizzically and he explained what ‘rattling a few cages’ meant. “You British and your idioms, why can’t you speak properly like what us Chinese do?” She smiled at her own attempt at humour and waited for a response.

  Mack made the obligatory smile. “In terms of Westminster, I don’t want to do much until they call us with an update. I will have to speak to Don and I would like to see Stephen’s autopsy report. I am not sure if it will be much help though. If I ask him he is bound to want me to explain the connection.

  “Stephen may have been involved in something to do with the club and possibly Lee Wai is tied up in it as well. If the club is involved in some way then triad involvement can’t be ruled out. I got the impression they were providing the muscle on the club door. Then again, it may simply be that Chan went there once, nothing more, nothing less. Did you find out anything more about Bent?”

  “Zero. The guy is almost a ghost. Ping talked to Lee’s driver, didn’t get much but apparently he likes horse racing so that they are both going to tonight’s races at Happy Valley. Ping is going to have to do some background reading today so that his interest appears genuine. He knows nothing about horses. More on that tomorrow. Don’t forget to ring Debbie Chan. She may have something useful for you.”

  After Lindy had left he rang Debbie Chan. She answered her phone on the first ring and as soon as he identified himself she asked what progress he had made. He found her manner too business-like and brusque. He had been expecting a more friendly approach, but then he reasoned he had told her very little other than he was still looking into Stephen’s death and when he had something concrete he would contact her. The fact she was a journalist was one reason for his reluctance to use her, another reason was that she was the victim’s sister. Her phone manner didn’t help her case either.

  His next call was to Don and he left a message on his answering service saying that he could not be contacted that day but that he would be in touch before the end of the week. He hoped that would give him a few days breathing space, but he doubted it. Don Taylor could be very persistent, especially when he was investigating a possible murder case. It would be useful to talk to him to see how far he had got, but the downside was that he would then have to explain his own involvement.

  Mack spent the rest of the morning preparing a report for a USA based company that had been referred to him by a contact of Lindy’s. The company had one of its products, a well known brand of water filters, manufactured in Guangzhou and then shipped to the USA for labeling and sale. Over the past year the filters had begun appearing in retail outlets in southern China, under a different brand name, which the company only found out through a friend of the CEO who regularly visited China. Its Guangzhou office had made no mention of the problem in its monthly reports.

  Mack’s initial research indicated the products almost certainly came off the same production line, which meant the factory in question was acting in breach of its agreement with the company.

  He wasn’t sure what approach the Americans would adopt and how far they were prepared to go to get the products removed from the market place. There was also the Guangzhou’s manager’s failure to report it to head office. Mack had complied with the company’s first request, which to assess how widespread the illegal distribution was and whether the factory was directly involved.

  Mack hadn’t been asked to do anything more, so until he received further instructions the manager was off limits. He doubted his involvement in the case was over as the Americans seemed to be in the China market for the long haul. If they didn’t stop this type of thing at the outset it would spread like wild fire and would mean they would never be able to launch the product themselves in China. He knew Lindy would be happy with his ongoing involvement as work of this type, particularly for US based companies, was lucrative and not overly time consuming.

  At lunchtime he got a text on his mobile phone. It simply said ‘Tonight. Your place. 10pm. Address? M.’

  Em was certainly attractive, easy to talk to and seemed fun to be around. He wasn’t adverse to a serious relationship with the right person, but at the same time he was open to casual sex. It didn’t matter to him either way as long as they were both on the same wave length. In one of the lighter topics they had discussed the night before they had agreed that two people could have fun with no complications as long as the ground rules had been established at the outset.

  The problem was that not everyone played by the rules. The last thing he wanted at the moment was the added complication of a failed romance and all the fall out that may go with it.

  He got up and walked to the kitchen. He refilled his coffee cup from the espresso machine Lindy had insisted they buy to impress clients and took two chocolate biscuits from the fridge. Before he headed back to his office he paused and wondered whether Em was a morning coffee or tea person. He told himself there was one way to find out.

  Chapter nineteen

  Mack’s apartment

  Queens Road East in Wanchai is the main artery running from Queensway to the bottom of Stubbs Road. Running parallel to it is Starr Street, which is perched on the mountainside behind a series of commercial buildings. Those buildings obscure most of the views to the harbor and the hum of traffic and people on Queens Road East is a constant reminder of its close proximity to the busy thoroughfare below.

  The street had in recent times become trendy, with several bars, restaurants and coffee shops opening there. It is only a five minute walk to the main bar area in Lockhart Road, but it has none of the seediness that Wanchai is famously known for.

  Mack had bought an apartment there five years before, just before the area started becoming popular with upwardly mobile Chinese. It was the top floor of an old four-storey building that had been refurbished by a private developer.

  The apartment came with a small roof top garden, which offered little privacy as the adjoining buildings were higher and overlooked it on all sides. Despite numerous offers, none of his previous girlfriends had been game enough to sunbathe topless there.

  There were two apartments per floor, which suited Mack as he didn’t want neighbors monitoring his comings and goings. The fact there was no lift didn’t concern him, the stairs weren’t a hardship even in the height of summer.

  Mack arrived at his building at 9pm and was carrying take away food from Café de Coral in Wu Chung House. As a single person it was cheaper and more convenient to order take away food than it was to cook for himself. Occasionally he would rustle up pasta with steamed fish and vegetables, but that was only on evenings when he
arrived home early and recently there had been few of those.

  As he entered the ground floor entrance he saw that the top floor stairwell was shrouded in darkness. The lights on the lower floors were working so he assumed the light bulb had blown outside his apartment door. Since there was no janitor employed by the apartment owners he would have to replace it himself and he remembered he had some spare bulbs in the cabinet below his kitchen sink.

  It was a hot evening and he climbed the stairs slowly. His neighbours kept the stair well clean, although the occupants on the second floor did keep a shoe rack with numerous pairs of shoes on it outside their front door. Chinese always take their shoes off before entering a house and whilst he had taken to the same habit, he kept his shoe rack inside his apartment.

  As he got to the top floor he paused as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. For a brief moment he felt the presence of someone standing close to him and turned to see who was there. He immediately felt a searing pain in his right shoulder followed by another at the base of his spine. His legs crumpled and he fell to the floor.

  He knew someone had hit him with what he assumed was a baseball bat or its equivalent and he pulled his knees up to his chest in an attempt to protect himself. He shouted loudly for help in Cantonese in the hope that one of his neighbours would hear him.

  His shouts were curtailed when he was struck a blow to the head and another to his back from the opposite side. He glanced up and could vaguely see a largely built Chinese man wearing jeans and a dark T shirt. The man crouched down and grabbed hold of Mack’s head. As he did so Mack saw he had a scar running down the left hand side of his face.

  He pulled Mack’s head back and shouted “Drop the case.”

  Mack looked at him, forcing his face into his memory. ‘And don’t go near the club again.’ His head then exploded in an avalanche of pain as he passed out.

  Chapter twenty

  A frustrating meeting

  The meeting was not going well and Weston was becoming bored. They had spent over two hours closeted in his office going over the Paradise Cove project and they didn’t seem to have made much progress.

  “What do you mean they won’t move on the land premium issue. Of course they will, there must be some way of achieving this” he said in a calm, controlled voice that betrayed none of his mounting frustration.

  His team looked at him, but no-one answered. The silence stretched on as the tension rose within the room. Weston’s ability to command both respect and fear was without question, but what few outsiders recognized was the intense loyalty he endeared from his team. To a man they admired his ability to deal with the most complex of issues and to act rationally and in the best interests of the organization.

  If you were part of his team you were a member of an elite group that was paid fabulous sums and was made to feel anything was possible. The price was an endless routine of long hours and stress trying to impress the man you knew you could never emulate.

  Weston smiled at the people sat around the table. He took several deep breathes before continuing.

  “They can’t ask for the full value of the land as determined by the government’s independent valuation” he moaned in a feigned tone of exasperation. “Who the hell is independent these days? If the government appoints the valuer the price will go through the roof. Their valuation will certainly exceed ours and we can’t allow that to happen.”

  Weston and his client had already commissioned three independent valuations and these were the basis of the incentive scheme he had struck with the developer. Westminster was to receive 25% of the difference between the aggregate of the three valuation figures and the price paid to the government. That meant he had every incentive to drive the premium down and no incentive to allow the government’s valuer to inflate it to equal or beyond the agreed aggregate.

  Troy Wilson, spoke first. “Lee Wai has dismissed our opening position that government should donate the land free on the basis of the overall benefits the development will bring to Hong Kong. He is adamant we have to pay the land premium and he presumably knows that his valuer will stand on their side when it comes to determining that figure. His threat of offering the land to other bidders shouldn’t be taken too seriously. They are only considering the project because we devised it and we can move quickly on it. Now they know our proposal, they could open it up to everyone but then the whole process would slow down and afford the vested interests an opportunity to frustrate it.

  “The government wants the deal, but politically it would be difficult if not impossible to just give us the land. It would raise all sorts of issues for them and in fairness, we always knew we would have to pay something for it.

  “Lee Wai is supposed to be independent and definitely wants to be seen as having secured the best deal possible for government. His opening position, and one he is sticking to for the time being, is that we pay the full figure whatever it may be. If we agree to this he will commission the valuation. There is no way he is prepared to accept our independent valuations as the basis for negotiations.

  “Of course, if we then refuse to pay that figure the deal is off. He will argue that we have not acted in good faith as by agreeing to the valuation we had in effect agreed to pay whatever figure it came up with. He has, in effect, already told us that.

  “We could negotiate a maximum figure for the valuation over which we could withdraw, but that would mean we would lose our incentive. We would be locked into the deal even if there was no incentive payment to us.

  “If I didn’t know better, I would say he knows what our deal is with our client and he doesn’t see why we should benefit at the expense of the government. Either someone has tipped him off, and that would have to be either our client or one of our team, or he has surmised that our client will probably pay a very full price for the land and that we are the stumbling block.”

  Bent was sat alongside Weston and had remained silent throughout the meeting. He had no intention of participating in the discussion. This was an operational issue and he knew Weston was doing his best to keep him out of that side of the business. That would have to change, but for the time being he was content to be a by-stander in these situations.

  He reminded himself of how stupid people could be at times. Wilson had just dug himself a hole by suggesting the client had released details of the incentive. He had then dug an even bigger hole, if that was possible, by suggesting it could have been one of the Westminster team. Heaven forbid, how stupid could people be. Of course it could have been the client or one of the team, but that was not something you told Weston in an open meeting. He wondered if Wilson would complete his demise by jumping into the hole and piling all the earth on top of himself. He didn’t have long to wait to find out.

  “Any other thoughts?” said Weston smoothly, his face showing no emotion whatsoever.

  Wilson appeared to have suddenly realized his error and froze for an instant. Weston prided loyalty over all else and Wilson had just suggested either one of them or the client had abused that. He had also done it in front of the whole team. He looked around the room for support, but saw none of his team was prepared to comment. He noticed Bent sat at the end of the table with a smirk on his face. Oh how he hated that man with his spies and covert operations. He told himself quickly that he hadn’t been given the project to handle because he was a fool. He was good at his job. It was just that he had misread this situation and now he needed to extract himself from it and quickly.

  “Of course, I am not suggesting for a moment that someone on our side has acted improperly. I think at this stage we just have to accept Lee Wai is an astute negotiator.”

  They all sat in silence before Weston broke it. “Let me ask you a question. Did Stephen Chan know of our deal with the client?”

  “I doubt it, although I can’t be certain. He was not part of the core team and would not have attended this meeting for example.” said Wilson trying to keep an even tone to his voice. He wasn’t sure why
Weston had asked that question, but now was not the time to think about that. He needed to focus on extricating himself from the statements he had made.

  Weston did not reply immediately and looked out of the window to the view beyond. When he spoke it was with a firm tone that broached no argument.

  “Let me reiterate my position on this. I am not prepared to allow a government appointed valuer to determine whether we make any money from the initial purchase. So, given that, what’s the solution?”

  Wilson looked at the other parties sat around the table in a vain request for help. No‐one spoke and it was clear they were not going to offer any assistance. Wilson could handle this one on his own.

  “I think you should meet Lee Wai and see who blinks first. He clearly thinks he has the upper hand, but he hasn’t met you yet. Let’s not underestimate the Weston factor. There are also a few things we need to finalise and you could address those in the meeting. For example, the tax concessions we are seeking. These will be of major concern to our client as they will be necessary if we are to maximize the return from stages 2 and 3. All this should be fairly easy to negotiate, but we could do it now so that at least we get some momentum going. It would also help if you took charge of the negotiations.”