Hungry Ghost

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Dugan?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you know what time it is?’ he moaned.

  ‘Pull yourself together, you drunken bum. Petal’s been hurt.’

  ‘What?’ The mention of Petal cleared his head a little. He pushed himself up and sat on the bed, his feet on the wooden floor. His stomach heaved but he managed to stop himself from throwing up.

  ‘She’s been beaten up, badly,’ said Bellamy. ‘She’s in Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, room 241.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We’re not sure, Pat. It’s a complete fucking mystery at the moment. She was found in a room at the Hilton, along with two bodies.’

  ‘Bodies?’

  ‘Two Chinese. They’d been killed by some sort of kung fu expert by the look of it, a real professional job.’

  ‘Some sort of triad thing?’

  ‘Fuck, we just don’t know. The room was booked in the name of a gweilo, and he’s disappeared. At the moment he’s our prime suspect, or another victim. At the moment it looks as if they were trying to inject the gweilo with something; the lab is checking it out, but it sure as hell isn’t distilled water. Look, I’ve got things to do, Pat. I just called to let you know where she was. If I were you I’d get down there straight away. I’ll call you later this morning. See if you can find out what happened to her.’

  ‘Sure, sure. Will do.’

  He hung up and sat with his shoulders on his knees, taking deep breaths to quell his queasy stomach. If he had the choice between two sexy young Filipinas or the glass of iced water it would be no contest. His mouth felt like a ferret’s den. He opened the bottle of water and poured it on to the orange crystals. They bubbled and fizzed and frothed and he drank it in one go before groping his way to the bathroom, a thousand questions fluttering around his skull like trapped butterflies.

  The doorman who was supposed to be standing guard over the entrance to Amy’s block was asleep as usual, slumped on a rickety wooden chair, his head back, mouth open showing rotten teeth as he snored. She led Howells down a corridor, cracked tiles of dirty-white with a brightly coloured motif composed of bowls of grapes, towards the stairs. At the bottom of the concrete steps she held him against the wall and whispered urgently: ‘There’s no lift, Tom, and it’s four floors up. Lean on me.’

  Howells had kept his eyes shut ever since he’d fallen against her in the cab. He was so white, Amy thought, as white as freshly boiled rice, as if all the blood had oozed out of his head and down his arm. His sleeve was wet with blood and it was staining her own clothes. She hoped to all the gods in heaven that her neighbours were sleeping as deeply as the old doorman.

  Howells nodded and grunted and put his good arm, the left one, around her shoulders. Together they scaled the stairs, Howells putting first his right foot on a step, then his left, shuffling up one step at a time. At the top of each flight Amy let him rest, encouraging him to take deep breaths to clear his head, but he seemed to get weaker the higher they climbed.

  Eventually they were outside her door, and Amy made him stand by the wall as she went through her bag for her keys. She opened the door and switched on the light before helping him in. The living-room was small and square, a tiny kitchen to the left and a bathroom to the right. It took only a dozen of Howells’ small steps to cross the room to the bedroom door, which Amy nudged open. His legs began to buckle and she barely managed to support his weight until they reached the bed. It was a single bed with one pillow and a thin quilt. Amy did not bring customers home – ever. She would go to a hotel, or if they were local she would go to their flat. That was all. Howells was the first man she had ever allowed through the door, except for the plumber who once fixed a leaking tap for her.

  Howells pitched forward and lay face down on the bed, head turned towards the wall. She felt his forehead. He was very hot, the flesh damp with perspiration. Her small flat did not have an airconditioner but there was a floor-mounted fan under the window. She switched it on and directed the cooling breeze at the injured man.

  Amy went back into the lounge, dropping her bag on the one small sofa there. She closed and locked her front door and slipped off her shoes. In the kitchen she filled a blue plastic washing-up bowl with warm water and took it along with a small bottle of disinfectant and a roll of paper kitchen towel into the bedroom. She tried to get the cotton jacket off Howells but as soon as she moved his right arm he screamed involuntarily. She took a large pair of kitchen scissors from a drawer under the sink and used it to cut off the jacket, piece by piece, and she placed the bits gingerly on to a newspaper on the floor. The shirt was rust-coloured, but the area around his right shoulder was darker than the rest, and when she touched it her hand came away stained red. She cut the shirt along the back, up through the collar, and then down along the seam to the cuff. She gently pulled it away and gasped as she saw the blood-soaked material wrapped around his shoulder. She removed it and put it on the newspaper. Blood seeped out and was absorbed by the newsprint. She used pieces of the kitchen roll to clean up his torso, starting from the waist and working up. She was amazed to find that all the blood had come from one small hole just below his shoulder, about the size of a one dollar coin.

  She dipped a fresh piece of paper into the disinfectant and dabbed at the wound. She could tell that it wouldn’t heal on its own, Tom would need a doctor. She eased her hand under the front of his shoulder and felt around, but there was no wound there. Tom had said that he’d been shot so that meant the bullet was still inside. She carried the bloodstained paper and cloth through to the kitchen and put it in a black plastic rubbish bag, carefully tying it at the top. She put it in a bucket in the cupboard below the sink.

  Back in the bedroom she removed his shoes and socks, his jeans and his underpants, putting them on a small wicker chair at the bottom of the bed. She checked the pockets, finding the wallet and the two passports. Both were British, but only one contained his picture. Howells, the passport said his name was. Geoffrey Howells. The other belonged to a much softer-looking man, a man who looked as if he sweated a lot. His name was Donaldson. Neither of the men was called Tom.

  She went through the pockets of the wallet. A few thousand dollars, and a handful of credit cards. Some of them were in the name of Howells, and some of them were Donaldson’s.

  She took the cash out of the wallet, and put the passports into the top drawer of her dressing-table. From the bottom drawer she took a white sheet and draped it over the unconscious man, careful to keep it off the shoulder. There was a telephone on the wall, next to the kitchen door. She went to it and dialled a number as she rubbed the notes between her fingers.

  At first Dugan thought that maybe the nurse at the reception desk had sent him to the wrong ward. There were two beds in the semi-private room, separated by a green curtain. The bed nearest the door was empty and the girl in the bed by the window looked nothing like Petal; the face round and puffy, the lips cracked and bleeding, the nose flat against the face. As he got closer to the small figure on the bed he could see that her head was circled with a bandage and that there was some sort of padding on her left cheek. Around her neck was a plastic surgical collar. Her eyes were closed. It was Petal, all right.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his. Her eyes fluttered open and between clenched teeth she whispered, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello yourself,’ he said.

  A nurse appeared at his shoulder, a tall, thin woman with buck teeth and lank hair. ‘Her jaw is badly bruised, so she can’t talk much,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Not broken?’ asked Dugan.

  The nurse shook her head. ‘No, but she has lost two teeth, her neck is badly sprained and her cheekbone is cracked. She shouldn’t be talking at all.’ There was a look of disapproval on her face and Dugan could see that she was gearing up to ask him to leave.

  He opened his wallet and showed her his warrant card. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said. The nurse nodded curtly and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Petal squeezed his hand and Dugan leant over and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘You don’t look too bad,’ he said and she smiled with her eyes. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘They’ve given me something,’ she said, keeping her lips still as she spoke. ‘I just feel sleepy.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘What were you doing in the Hilton Hotel? Who hit you? Who were the men in the room? What is going on?’ The questions tumbled over each other, even though he knew she’d have to take it slowly and that talking was an effort for her. But he had to know. Part of it was the copper in him, but it went deeper than that. He was falling in love with this pretty little Chinese girl and he didn’t want to be locked out of her life. He wanted to know everything, to knock down the wall of secrets and silences between them. And this she couldn’t shrug off with a joke or a deft change of subject.

  ‘You won’t like it,’ she said, still with her eyes firmly shut. He moved up the bed to get closer to her, so that he could catch the whispered words.

  ‘Try me,’ he said.

  ‘I have to trust you, Pat,’ she said. ‘They’ll be coming to take me away soon, so when I’ve told you you’ll have to go. You have a right to know, but you must keep what I tell you to yourself.’ She opened her eyes and studied his face. ‘Do you promise?’

  Dugan nodded. He would promise her anything.

  ‘I was there to kill him,’ she said simply.

  The confusion showed on his face and he shook his head wordlessly.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I work for the Chinese, for their equivalent of a secret service. The two men with me were part of my team. The man we were to kill was a guest in the hotel, Howells was his name. It went wrong – he was so fast, so vicious. I have never seen such a man.’ There was admiration in her voice and Dugan was simultaneously hit with anger and jealousy, that she could admire the qualities of the man who had beaten her so badly.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why were you trying to kill him?’

  ‘It’s my job,’ she said flatly.

  ‘You kill for money?’

  ‘No, Pat. I kill for my country.’

  Dugan was totally lost, unable to comprehend what she was saying. All he could think of saying was: ‘Why?’

  ‘I have no choice,’ she said, her voice faltering. ‘They tell me what to do. They tell me where to live. They control everything I do.’

  ‘Not in Hong Kong,’ said Dugan. ‘And who are they?’

  ‘Beijing. The Government. Oh, you don’t understand.’

  She’d got that right at least, thought Dugan. He ran his hands through his hair and wiped his eyes with the backs of his fingers. To Petal he looked like a small child, trying to be brave.

  ‘Why do it?’ he asked. ‘You can get away from them here. This is Hong Kong. I can help you. You can get asylum or something.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she said. Her voice was getting quieter and Dugan leant forward, putting his hands on either side of the pillow and lowering his head so that he could hear better. ‘I told you about what happened during the Cultural Revolution. Remember?’

  Dugan nodded. ‘They killed your pony.’

  ‘They did more than that, Pat. Much more. They took everything we had, they paraded us through the streets. They made us wear placards and stupid paper hats. Then they took me and my brother away from our parents, for re-education they said. I was sent to a farm in northern China. My brother was sent to a village in Manchuria. I never heard from my father again, he was sent away to a commune in the middle of nowhere to work as a barefoot doctor. He’s dead now.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died, Pat. In prison. They put her in prison for being a singer. They persecuted her for being talented. They made me work in rice fields until I was fifteen and then they put me in the army. I served for three years on the Sino–Russian border and then I was sent to Beijing for what they called special training. Now I do what I do.’

  She slowly closed her eyes, either from exhaustion or from the medication.

  ‘Let me tell the police. We can get you away, get you to Canada or Australia where they can’t get you.’

  ‘Defect, you mean?’ she whispered. ‘I can’t. My brother is still alive. They let me see him every Christmas. He’s a soldier, now. He’s about to get married. So long as he is in China I must do exactly as they say. He is insurance that I do not run away. But if I do well, he gets a good salary, his children will go to the best universities, he will have an easy life. And so will I.’

  ‘All you have to do is kill for them?’

  ‘Yes, that’s all I have to do,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Is there nothing I can do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. She lifted up her right arm and gripped his shoulder. ‘Pat, they’ll come for me soon, to take me back. They’ll say they’re from Bank of China or the New China News Agency but they’ll be from Beijing and they’ll put me on the first CAAC jet out of Hong Kong.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never failed before. I don’t know if they’ll punish me or retire me or just rap me on the knuckles and send me on another mission. You can never tell.’

  ‘Do me one thing,’ said Dugan. ‘If you can, get in touch with me. Let me know that you’re OK. Tell me where you are, anywhere in the world. I’ll come and see you.’

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I promise. And if I can get my brother out of China, who knows …’ Her voice tailed off again.

  There was something niggling at the back of Dugan’s mind, something worrying him but he couldn’t pin it down. It kept drifting just out of range. He released her grip from his shoulder and put her hand under the sheet. ‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve known you for such a short time, but …’ It was there again, a shadowy thought floating around a corner of his mind. He tried to grasp it but it shied away like a nervous animal.

  ‘I feel the same,’ she said, through unmoving lips. ‘I never thought I would, but I fell for you, Patrick Dugan, in a big way.’

  It hit Dugan then, like a wave crashing over his head, drenching him with the horrible realization that it hadn’t been an accident, meeting Petal. He’d been pushing to one side the fact that never before had such a pretty and intelligent girl been so keen to go out with him, to be with him, to sleep with him. He’d been frightened to look a gift horse in the mouth, to wonder why a girl like Petal would go out with a balding policeman with no prospects.

  She saw the frown on his face and her eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t think about it, Pat,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you go out with me?’ he asked, his heart filled with dread, wanting to know the answer but at the same time frightened that he wouldn’t be able to handle the truth.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t look back. I love you now, that’s all that matters. Why it happened isn’t important.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said, sitting up straight. He began biting the thumbnail on his right hand, a nervous habit he’d had since he was a kid. ‘I have to know why,’ he said. ‘It’s the policeman in me.’

  She sighed, deeply and sadly. ‘Your brother-in-law. I was supposed to get close to him.’

  ‘To kill him?’

  ‘I was a back-up,’ she said. ‘Somebody else was to kill him. I don’t know who. But if he failed then I was to do it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The barbecue would have been soon enough. But I was only the back-up.’

  ‘But you would have done it if they’d told you to.’ He couldn’t hide the anger in his voice.

  ‘I’m a soldier, Pat. I obey orders.’

  She made it sound so matter-of-fact, so cold, that Dugan began to wonder if he was dreaming. He couldn’t believe it was possible that a girl he’d grown to love could so easily talk about killing the husband of his sister, someone she’d met and seeme
d to have befriended.

  ‘And this man Howells?’

  ‘They didn’t say why, they never do. But they said it had to be done immediately.’ She fell silent.

  ‘Why?’ he pounced. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think that maybe he was the one that was supposed to kill Simon Ng.’

  ‘So why were you ordered to kill him?’

  ‘Perhaps he refused. Perhaps he changed his mind.’

  ‘And why would the Chinese use a gweilo to kill a Hong Kong triad leader? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It never does,’ she said.

  The nurse came back into the room and told Dugan he’d have to go. Behind her were two shortish Chinese men in dark suits and behind them was the uniformed constable who’d been posted outside the door. He hadn’t seen the two men before but they had the look of policemen the whole world over, hard eyes that had seen too much of the dark side of human nature, faces that looked as if nothing would surprise them any more.

  ‘Don’t make it difficult for me, Pat,’ said Petal.

  He leant forward and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Remember what I said,’ he whispered. ‘Whenever, wherever.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said.

  As he left the room the two men walked in and closed the door behind them.

  Amy was sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair with her hands in her lap listening to Howells snoring when the doorbell buzzed. The sound, even though expected, made her jump. She tiptoed across the floor and looked through the peep-hole in the door. She recognized the distorted features of the man on the other side of the door and she unlocked it and let him in. He was carrying a brown leather bag with a brass clasp.

  ‘Lam Siu Fe. Neih ho ma?’

  ‘I am fine, Dr Wu. And you?’

  ‘Getting by, getting by. Where is the patient?’

  Wu was not a man who wasted any time, which was probably best considering he charged by the minute. He was called Dr Wu by everyone who knew him, and by everyone he treated, but he had no medical qualification that would be recognized by any decent hospital. Medical knowledge he had, in abundance, but he had learned his trade within the Walled City, the enclosed slum close to Kai Tak airport where the police were frightened to go. The city had been demolished but it left hundreds of doctors and dentists without a livelihood. At sixty, Dr Wu was too old to study for a recognized qualification, and too old to find any other sort of work, so he continued to practise, but illegally. His patients now were those who didn’t want to go to private or government hospitals for whatever reason. He treated hookers, junkies and triads, and the treatment they got was as good as in the best hospitals in Hong Kong. He had performed an abortion on Amy two years ago with the minimum of fuss and pain. Amy had always been grateful for the gentle way he had treated her, even coming back to check up on her twice, drinking tea and eating a sweet cake she had baked.