The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  45

  A top vans and cars parked aslant, magic lanterns spilled indigo light, beckoning to a police Halloween. Walkie-talkies crackled; stern male voices speaking in English and Cantonese cut across the night’s cicada static. Chan had the taxi drop him a hundred yards down the hill; he walked cautiously, like a fox crossing ice. Closer, halogen lamps burned caves of light out of the tropical darkness. An ambulance waited in the drive, its back doors open, disclosing stark white sheets and crimson blankets stacked neatly at the feet of stretchers. In the intensity of one of the floodlights a tall figure turned, one hand covering its eyes; under the hand’s shadow Chan made out an almost featureless face the color and texture of potato, a mouth waiting for a cue. Under the mouth the body wore the full dress uniform of a chief superintendent of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. The mouth sagged with relief when Chan emerged from the night.

  “Incredibly fast response, even for you,” Riley said. “Just this minute left a message at Mongkok. Tried to get you at home too. How on earth did you get here so fast?”

  “Taxi,” Chan said. “What happened?”

  “Unclear as yet. Damned tricky one, though. The publicity’s going to be as bad as if the governor died. They’re draining the pool. I called you just in case there’s a connection to your mincer case. I’d heard that you intended to question her.”

  At back around the swimming pool more halogen lamps bored into the water, bounced brittle light off the tiled surround and painted white masks over serious English and Chinese faces. From somewhere a sucking sound accompanied the descending water level that fell perhaps an inch every thirty seconds. No one had thought it worth trying to save the naked woman in the center; she remained anchored, apparently by her neck, while her body and legs swooped toward the surface in a perfect frozen dive. Everyone in the business saw there was no life in it to save. Yellow fluid dribbled slightly from the gaping mouth; intelligence had forsaken those eyes hours ago.

  When the water level sunk to waist-height, Emily turned to face him. Two U-shaped scars under her breasts revealed a secret vulnerability. Chan regretted his curses.

  “For now we’d better treat it as suspect homicide?” Riley said, coming up behind him, his voice rising into a question.

  “Of course.” Out of the corner of his eye Chan saw the Chinese technicians dusting the Italian marble table with meticulous Oriental care. Sweaty hands on smooth surfaces made the most beautiful prints: “Sleep with me.” “No.”

  When the water was at knee height, Chan jumped in, knelt to examine the chain that held her. It was padlocked through a thick patent leather belt that was buckled around her neck. An extra hole had been bored in the leather. At the other end the chain was padlocked to a cast-iron grille at the bottom of the deep end. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back. Just under her thighs on the tile surface of the pool lay three keys. First impressions were finely balanced: A suicide dressed up as murder? Murder masquerading as suicide? Or merely an elaborate suicide with an element of self-mockery: The belt around her throat was Chanel; the two padlocks were solid brass and glinted gold in the water. Chan borrowed paper and pencil from a detective constable. With Riley hovering over his shoulder he sketched the swimming pool, the position of the body.

  “Of course, unless it’s related to the Mincer Murders, it’s out of our area. We’ll have to give it to Central.”

  Chan stepped back, sketched the position of the house in relation to the pool. “In the morning. Until then it’s ours. And if it is related, I don’t want to come in cold on another detective’s screwup.”

  “Quite.”

  Chan looked at Riley. “Best not touch anything, sir. I wouldn’t want you to become part of the chain of evidence. Have you touched anything?”

  The question had the desired effect. Riley retreated to the collection of vehicles on the other side of the house. Chan followed him. In one of the police vans he found a video recorder which he took to the pool at the back. Everyone moved out of the way when he started to shoot. It was an automatic reflex: Overall shot of area; relationship of pool to house; film closely around the perimeter; zoom in on body; pause over cigarette butts, if any, broken fencing, if any, bushes. From the corner of his eye he saw that the technicians had finished dusting the marble table. He panned slowly from pool to table: “Sherlock Holmes used cocaine.” “It had to be you; there’s really no one else I can talk to.”

  There was no point videoing the inside of the house. Three officers had reported that there were no signs of disturbance. Pausing over her with the camera still whirring as she lay, now faceup on the bottom of the pool, Chan acknowledged a failure of professional objectivity. Through the lens he saw a fine, strong spirit, lost in a cloud.

  46

  In his twenty-five-hundred-year-old masterpiece The Art of War Sun-tzu exalts one principle above all others: Cover your back. Chan supposed government servants worldwide lived by that motto, whether they’d read Sun-tzu or not. At his desk in Mongkok he dictated a memorandum to the Commissioner of Police the Right Honorable Ronald Tsui, JP, copied to Chief Superintendent John Riley.

  File 128/mgk/HOM/STC

  The deceased, Madame Emily Ping Lin-kok, was known to me both socially and as someone who may have had information relevant to the above investigation. On 11 May 1997 at around midnight (no earlier time for the interview could be arranged) I visited her at her mansion on Old Peak Road. We sat together at a marble table on her veranda near her swimming pool. Unfortunately Madame Ping was unable or unwilling to provide any information relevant to the investigation, and I left sometime later. It is likely, therefore, that my own fingerprints will have been lifted from the aforementioned marble table.

  Signed: Chan Siu-kai, Chief Inspector, Homicide

  On the front page of the South China Morning Post Jonathan Wong read of Emily’s death. The report hinted strongly at suicide although the investigation was not complete. He read the follow-up feature in the middle pages-a flattering resume of her life with testimonials to her commercial genius (a genius that, it was suggested, may have contained seeds of imbalance)-then put the newspaper on his desk.

  Poor Emily… just like a woman, to play hard ball harder than anyone else and then expect to be forgiven, even loved for it. My friend the bitch is dead.

  He stood up, walked around his desk with an eye fixed on the newspaper article. He searched his heart for sorrow but found instead a kind of hysteria that broke on his face in the form of a grin. The empress was dead, just as the old man had predicted. Wong wondered if the old man had killed her. It seemed unlikely, somehow. He was not that kind of psychopath.

  Now was the moment to make his choice. He ought to reflect, go home and discuss it with that beautiful wife whom he had rescued from the gutter and who despised him.

  Instead he picked up the telephone and dialed a number that he had written on a scrap of paper, something he rarely did.

  “I would like to see you,” he said into the receiver. After listening for less than twenty seconds, he replaced it again. Even so are decisions made that bend souls. Well, he would not expect to be loved-or even forgiven.

  He stood up, took advantage of the harbor view that was a privilege of partners in his firm. He watched a Star Ferry cross to Kowloon and a 747 take off from the airstrip that jutted into the water. Still standing, he pressed one of the internal autodial numbers on his telephone. The LED display showed that he was calling Rathbone, the senior partner.

  “I’m going to need to see you. It’s about the matter we discussed. You’ll have to bring the other three. No, not now. When I tell you. Just stand by. And call a full partners’ meeting for next week. Just do as I say.”

  He retrieved his jacket from a wardrobe behind his chair, walked around his desk and paused again at the view. He’d gazed upon it so often for so long it was a kind of inner landscape. There was nothing, not his flat, his wife’s body, the palm of his hand, that he knew better, but it had changed overnight
. It was like a bar of music that one has heard for years; suddenly someone has the idea of playing it in a different key, and the meaning is altered forever. To his eyes the harbor view was as alluring as always, but darker and infinitely more powerful. Come to think of it, it was even more entrancing than before.

  “I’ll be about an hour,” he told his secretary, and walked quickly to the lift lobby.

  On Statue Square he strolled to the Hong Kong Bank building, walked under it, crossed Queen’s Road, passed in front of the Hilton until he reached Cotton Tree Drive, which he crossed; a few hundred yards later he was at the Bank of China. At the reception desk he gave his name and the name of the man he had come to see. The old security guard nodded respectfully and, after making a telephone call, gestured to the private lift at the back. A Chinese secretary arrived to escort Wong to the top floor. She spoke to him in Mandarin with a Beijing accent. Her manners were not as good as a Hong Kong secretary’s would have been, but he liked the look in her eye and the way she stood: military style with legs apart, hands behind her back. Conquest was a state of mind.

  Xian wore almost the same clothes as he had on Emily’s boat: black shirt, creased slacks, worn sneakers that rested at angles on the Italian leather two-tone pouffe. The general was lighting a cigarette as Jonathan approached. From the glass-roofed cocktail lounge the view was much better than from Jonathan’s office: higher, more panoramic, more commanding.

  Xian pointed to a leather armchair. “Women have everything except strong nerves,” the old man said. “You’ve come to accept my offer…”

  When Xian had finished speaking, Wong stood, bowed and left the room.

  On returning to his office, his secretary told him that a meeting had been arranged with the senior partners in the main boardroom.

  Rathbone stood in front of the board table with his legs planted apart and his arms folded-like a bouncer in a nightclub, Wong always thought. Ng, Watson and Savile stood in various contemplative postures around the large boadroom. Ng half leaned on a polished teak credenza near the window; success meant a saturation of harbor views. Wong could see the uncertainty in the eyes of the three Englishmen. Ng was less concerned. Wong strode to the head of the board table, where he took a chair. The others sat near him.

  “I’ve just come from the general,” Wong said. Watson looked away; Ng nodded respectfully; Savile blinked; Rathbone stared at his hands. On the way back from Xian, Wong had debated with himself how to run the meeting. He had toyed with various subtle approaches, then abandoned them. He was developing mainland ways.

  “He’s offering us work.”

  “Good,” Rathbone said.

  “Excellent,” Ng said.

  “Well done indeed,” Savile said.

  “You all know that Xian and his friends will be running this place after June. They practically run it already. So it’s not quite an offer exactly. It’s an order. The work we’ll be required to do is somewhat unorthodox for a firm of solicitors.”

  Wong paused to look into each man’s face. What he was about to say could not really shock them; they were nothing if not shrewd. They must have worked it out at least in part. He ought to have been surprised that none of them had talked about resigning. After all, they were each of them stupendously rich already, the poorest of them being worth at least ten million U.S. dollars. Greed was a fascinating study. It afflicted mediocrities more than most. It caused the mind to fixate not on what one had but upon what one was about to acquire. Even as they sat at the table, each man was silently calculating.

  “With the death of Emily Ping,” Wong continued, “Xian needs a representative and a comprador. This firm will fulfill that function. We shall import on his behalf. In strict secrecy, of course.”

  “May one inquire what?” Savile asked with a foolish beam.

  “Weapons of mass destruction.”

  Savile looked pensive. “Something will have to be said at the full partners’ meeting next week. It’s going to take a little finessing.”

  “Tush,” Wong said. “They’re commercial lawyers, aren’t they? Subhuman apparatchiks, in other words, powered by greed. They’ll follow the money.” He looked into Savile’s porcine eyes. “Just like you, Cecil.”

  47

  You’re kidding me! The judge really did that? Even numbers guilty, odd numbers innocent? That is kind of Oriental. I have some great stories for you too that I’m typing out. I just wanted to scribble this to let you know I’m thinking about you. Must be all of forty-eight hours since you last heard from me.

  By the way, those sneaky little Chinese characters you added to your last fax-I tried to look them up in a Chinese dictionary in the public library. If they mean what I think they mean, I feel the same way.

  M.

  Chan scowled at the fax, screwed it into a ball and threw it in the trash can. Well, I don’t feel that way anymore. You know she’s alive. Dental records: I know you knew.

  On a summons from headquarters Chan left his office, took the underground to Admiralty and walked in the heat to Arsenal Street. At reception he called up to homicide on the third floor. An officer there said that the death of Emily Ping was being handled by Chief Inspector Jack Siu. Chan walked up the three flights of broad stairs. There was nothing on the walls except paint, nothing on the stairs except a nonslip synthetic product and no one in uniform going up or down at that particular moment, yet Chan reckoned that if he’d been transported there blindfolded, he would have known it was a police station. There was a subliminal message that went with law enforcement and attached itself to the walls and floors of police stations. Criminals learned to read it, but so did the police themselves. This was the first time Chan had been asked to assist in a death investigation other than as an investigator. Siu was waiting with his assistant, a young Chinese inspector. Siu smiled as he entered.

  “Sorry to drag you over here. Unusual, isn’t it?”

  Chan nodded, looked around the office. The wall behind Siu was a Bayeau tapestry in photographs of one man’s progress through the system: Siu as head prefect; Siu as police cadet; Siu graduating; Siu promoted to sergeant; Siu arresting two notorious triad killers; Siu promoted to senior inspector; Siu receiving a medal from the governor; Siu in full-dress uniform of chief inspector. Chan vowed to dispose of his own photograph featuring his bravery award as soon as he returned to his office. There were certain aspects of Chineseness that his Irish side couldn’t take.

  “We received a copy of your memo-where you mention that your prints would be on the marble top. You’re right. They are.”

  Chan allowed his eyes to rest on Siu for a beat too long. He was not surprised that Siu had checked. He was surprised that Siu had not asked Chan personally for a card with his prints. Without it there was only one way for him to have obtained Chan’s prints. Like everyone else who lived in Hong Kong, when Chan had applied for his identity card, he had submitted to fingerprinting. Normally those fingerprints were considered confidential information, not available to police except with the consent of the commissioner. Siu must have applied to Commissioner Tsui for permission to access confidential information relating to Chan. And Commissioner Tsui had consented.

  Chan smiled. “Told you.”

  Siu nodded. “She was a friend of yours?”

  “Not exactly. She was a close friend of my brother-in-law. I spent a night on her boat with my sister, her husband and a few other people.”

  “I’d better take the names of those other people.”

  Chan hesitated. Siu waited. The young Chinese inspector leaned forward. Siu leaned back in his chair. “Would you like Inspector Ng to leave the room?”

  Chan felt he was losing control of the situation. Why wait for a prompt from Siu? “Yes.”

  With a shrug the inspector left the room and closed the door behind him. Siu took up a government issue pencil.

  Chan recited: “General Xian, the political adviser, Mr. Milton Cuthbert, two bodyguards belonging to Xian, my sister, Jenny,
her husband, Jonathan Wong.”

  “That’s a pretty impressive list. Well connected for a humble cop, aren’t you?”

  “I told you, she was close to my brother-in-law. He’s a partner in a law firm. It’s his business to know people like that. Also, there were crew for the boat and a Sri Lankan cook employed by Emily Ping.”

  “Yes, we’ve spoken to the cook. She was asleep when you paid your visit. Not surprising, it was after midnight.”

  “I didn’t see any servants, that’s true.”

  “How about opium?”

  “What?”

  “We found evidence of recent opium use in the house. We expect to find some in her blood. Know anything about that?”

  “No.”

  “Were you lovers?”

  “No.”

  “She ever make a pass at you? She had quite a reputation.”

  “No, not really.” Chan could not believe he’d said that.

  Siu pounced. “Not really?”

  Chan felt the blood rising to his cheeks. “She asked me to sleep with her. I refused.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d call that making a pass, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “And when you refused, she asked you to smoke opium with her?”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “We’ve spoken to other men. She was notorious. Sex, drugs-the only Western decadence she didn’t like was rock and roll. You visit a woman like her late at night, it’s not to play mah-jongg.”

  “I know nothing about the opium,” Chan said, not knowing why he was lying. Wrong, he knew why he was lying. To admit to knowing about the opium was one step closer to admitting he had smoked with her. He’d caught people that way. If you have no odor, the dogs can’t track you, but he was ashamed to be thinking like that. There was an adage: The line between cop and crook may be too fine to be distinguished.