Hungry Ghost

by Stephen Leather

  As midnight approached he began asking her to go back to his hotel room with him but she’d coyly turned him down. He’d offered to pay her bar fine but she’d said no, and then he said he’d pay double the fine. It wasn’t that she was averse to going out with customers, she did that at least once a month to boost her earnings, but the man disgusted her and she was choosy about who she’d go to bed with. Maybe as she got older she’d be less selective and grab each opportunity as it was offered, but she was still young enough and pretty enough to command a high price and while she was quite prepared to let the foul-smelling barbarian fondle and kiss her she’d rather die than spread her legs for him.

  He called the mamasan over and told her that he wanted to take Amy out and the mamasan had asked her in Cantonese if she wanted to go and Amy said no, he was a pig. The mamasan gently explained that Amy was having her period, maybe next time, and that if he wanted a girl there were plenty more in the bar. The Australian decided to go instead. He paid with a credit card which meant that Amy wouldn’t get her commission for at least two months. Her basic salary was about the same as a typist’s, but she got to keep about one-third of the cost of every drink a customer bought her. The more drinks they bought, the more she earned, with the cashier giving her a handful of cardboard tickets at the end of each night signifying how many she’d had. If the customer paid in cash she got the money at the end of the week; if they paid with plastic then she got it when the credit card company settled the bill, and that usually took a minimum of two months.

  She’d asked him to pay with cash, he had plenty of notes in his wallet, but he swore at her, called her a cock-teasing bitch. Amy walked away and told the cashier to add two more hostess drinks to his bill. The cashier grinned. ‘Fuck the gweilos,’ he cackled. ‘Fuck the gweilos and fuck their mothers.’

  Amy drank her tea, watching the leaves swirl around the bottom of the china beaker. There was more to it than money, she realized. Even if the Australian hadn’t been such an ugly bore, even if she’d been attracted to him she wouldn’t have gone with him. It was something to do with Geoff Howells, but she wasn’t exactly sure what it was, something to do with being faithful – but that didn’t make any sense. She hadn’t even slept with the gweilo, she knew nothing about him other than the fact that he’d asked for her help and that something inside her had compelled her to agree.

  All her life Amy had been used by people: by her father when she was barely into her teens; by a succession of boyfriends who had varied from cruel to callous; by the customers, and by the people who ran the bar. All had simply assumed that they had a right to use her and throughout her life she had gone along with them, taking the easy way out. And now this man was also using her, but in a different way. He needed her, it wasn’t just that he wanted her help, he needed it, and that made a difference. It made her feel special.

  She showered and dressed in a faded denim skirt and a white cotton blouse with short sleeves before making Howells a coffee. Without any effort she remembered how he liked to drink it, black with no sugar. He was awake when she went into the bedroom, but still lying face down. He twisted around and smiled up at her as she knelt down beside the bed.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she corrected.

  ‘I can’t tell with the curtains drawn.’

  ‘To help you sleep. Dr Wu said best thing for you was to sleep as much as possible. And to drink water.’

  Howells looked at the coffee and smiled. ‘Thank you for the coffee,’ he said. ‘How do I say thank you in Cantonese?’

  ‘M goy,’ she said.

  ‘M goy,’ he repeated. ‘M goy for the coffee.’

  ‘You better drink it soon, Dr Wu is coming and he will scold me if he sees I have given you coffee.’

  Howells rolled slowly on to his left side and Amy helped raise him into a sitting position, pushing the pillow to support the small of his back.

  ‘It’ll be our secret,’ he said.

  For some reason that pleased Amy immensely, and she blushed. Howells raised the steaming cup to his mouth and drank.

  ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘How do I say delicious?’

  ‘Ho sik for food,’ she said. ‘Ho yam for drink.’

  ‘Ho yam,’ said Howells. ‘M goy.’

  ‘M sai m goy,’ said Amy. ‘No need.’

  Howells studied her over the top of the cup as he drank, wondering what he was going to do with the girl. For the moment he needed her to hide him, but what then? She knew who he was, and before long she’d know what he’d done. The shooting in the hotel would surely get into the newspapers and he’d used his real name. That was stupid, but he had trusted Grey completely. Still, no point in looking back, it was the future that counted.

  ‘How you feel?’ she asked.

  ‘Much better,’ he replied.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I am pleased.’

  She looked it, too. Howells wasn’t sure if it was because she was glad he was on the mend or because it meant he’d soon be getting the hell out of her flat. The doorbell rang, startling them both.

  ‘Dr Wu,’ she said, grabbing the cup and running into the kitchen before opening the door and admitting the elderly doctor. He greeted Amy and then walked into the bedroom.

  ‘You seem much better than the last time I saw you,’ he said.

  ‘I heal quickly,’ said Howells.

  ‘I will decide that,’ said the doctor, putting his leather medical bag next to Howells’ feet. ‘Lean forward, please.’

  Howells leant forward while the doctor removed the dressing and peered at the wound over the top of his glasses.

  ‘Hmm, it seems you are right,’ he said. ‘I see no problems. I will just change the dressing for you. Do you feel any pain?’

  ‘A dull ache, unless I move the arm suddenly.’

  ‘Do you want anything for that?’

  ‘No injection,’ said Howells. ‘But if you have any tablets that I could take if it starts to hurt, I’d appreciate it.’

  Dr Wu took a small plastic bottle from his bag containing half a dozen white tablets.

  ‘I will leave these,’ he said. ‘Take one if the pain gets very bad, but on no account take more than two over a three-hour period. They are painkillers but they will also help you sleep. But if it hurts so much that you feel you need to take three tablets then you should call me anyway.’ He put the bottle down by Howells’ glass of water. ‘And drink lots of water.’

  ‘I am doing, Amy is looking after me very well.’

  Amy came into the bedroom and stood behind the doctor, fidgeting nervously. Wu turned to her and spoke in Cantonese. She nodded and answered. Seeing the curious look on his face, Amy hurriedly said to Howells: ‘Dr Wu is saying you can get up in two days, but he will come see you before.’ There was no need to translate, Dr Wu’s English was much better than hers, but she didn’t want Howells to think she had been betraying him.

  Howells looked at the doctor and nodded. ‘M goy,’ he said.

  Dr Wu smiled. ‘M sai m goy, he said. ‘Your Cantonese is very good.’ Behind him, Amy smiled with pride.

  One of the best things about being a chef was the fact that you always had afternoons free. André Beaumont knew there were plenty of drawbacks to the job: long hours, the pressure of always having to be on top form, the fact that he never got away before eleven o’clock at night, but he relished the free time between the lunchtime rush and the preparations for dinner.

  Beaumont was the head chef at one of the top Kowloon hotels and whenever the weather was good and he didn’t have a banquet to organize he’d drive his Golf GTI to Hebe Haven, the sunroof open and the stereo full on, and take out his yacht for a couple of hours.

  He loved Hong Kong and the lifestyle it gave him: a salary almost double what he’d earn back in France, a 3,000 square-foot flat rent-free that was decorated every year to his specifications, the car, two first-class flights home every year, free hospitality in the hotel and a ch
ance to be head chef at an age, twenty-eight, when his friends who had stayed behind were still sous-chefs.

  Today was perfect for sailing; a cloudless sky, a fresh wind from the north, and in the seat next to him Caroline Chang, the hotel’s public relations manager, who’d sneaked out of her office on the pretence of visiting their advertising agency. She had an easy-going boss and fancied André something rotten and she had no regrets about skipping off for a few hours. She reckoned that she gave the hotel more than enough in terms of hours, dealing with cantankerous customers, checking menus, sending out press releases and handling VIPs.

  She raised her face to the sky and let the breeze play through her long black hair as André turned off the main road and drove towards the pier. There were plenty of parking spaces, as there always were on weekday afternoons. It was only at weekends that it got crowded, and then André stayed away.

  ‘Which is yours?’ Caroline asked as André closed the sunroof and locked the doors.

  André pointed. ‘The one with the white hull and the two masts,’ he said.

  ‘What’s she called?’

  ‘Katrina,’ he said. ‘It used to belong to a lawyer. He named it after his wife and she ran off and left him. He had to sell the boat to raise the money for his settlement. I haven’t got round to changing the name yet.’

  He walked behind her and slipped his arm around her waist. He rubbed his nose up against the side of her head, breathing in the warm fragrance of her hair. ‘Perhaps I should call her Caroline.’ She was the fifth girl he’d promised to name the boat after, and three of the previous girls had all ended up making love to him in the main cabin. For some reason the promise of having their name on a yacht seemed to act as an intense aphrodisiac. To be honest, André was quite happy with Katrina.

  Caroline pressed herself against him. ‘I’d like that,’ she said, and turned to slip her arms around his neck and kiss him full on the lips. He was the first to pull away.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll get one of the boatmen to row us out.’

  They found a grizzled old woman with a dinghy and after a minute of bargaining she agreed to take them out to the Katrina.

  ‘It’s fabulous, so sleek, so feminine. I love her already,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Wait until you see inside,’ said André, and held her gaze for a couple of seconds before smiling. She laughed and he knew she was his. For the afternoon, at least.

  He climbed on board first and then helped her. ‘Ask her to come and collect us when we get back,’ he said and Caroline spoke to her in rapid Cantonese. The woman cackled and rowed away.

  Caroline leant over the side and watched the water below as André began to operate the winch to pull up the anchor. It seemed to need more effort than usual; maybe it was caught in something on the sea bottom. That was all he needed. Slowly, painfully slowly, it heaved the anchor up, at about half its normal speed. As he waited André admired Caroline’s backside and her long legs. She had unusually long legs for a Chinese. When she screamed it was a blood-curdling yell that caused the old woman to drop one of her oars and wiped all thoughts of sex from André’s mind.

  Tomkins walked into Dugan’s office as if he had an unpeeled banana up his backside. Dugan was eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and had grease all round his lips.

  ‘Bloody Hell, Dugan, you’re a pig,’ said Tomkins.

  ‘You should be glad I’m working through my lunch,’ said Dugan.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m grateful, the Commissioner is grateful, the Governor is grateful, hell I bet the Queen herself will get to hear about this devotion to duty.’

  Dugan reached for a sheet of typing paper and used it to clean his hands. The red and white cardboard box was full of chicken bones and a sprinkling of cold French fries. Dugan began to spoon coleslaw into his mouth with a white plastic spoon, the sort you used to feed babies. ‘What do you want?’ he said between mouthfuls.

  ‘Me? I just want you to clear your caseload so I can dump another dozen or so on to your desk. But the boys in Arsenal Street seem to have other plans for you. I’ve just had them on the phone. They want you to go right over. What have you done to attract the attention of Special Branch, Pat?’

  ‘Fucked if I know,’ answered Dugan. ‘They want me right now?’

  ‘That’s what they said. You’re to ask for a Chief Inspector Leigh.’

  ‘I didn’t think there were any high-ranking Chinese left in Special Branch.’

  ‘There aren’t. He’s a Brit.’ He spelled out the name for Dugan.

  Special Branch were also in Wan Chai, in a squat office block not far from the one where Dugan worked, so he walked over. The roads were crowded and noisy, trucks pouring out black exhaust smoke, chauffeur-driven limousines with high-powered businessmen on mobile phones in the back seats, taxis with impatient drivers banging their horns, bare-chested deliverymen on bicycles, one carrying dead, plucked chickens, another with large green gas cylinders, a mixture of old and new that typified Hong Kong.

  The shops too were a rag-bag of ancient and modern: a herbalist with shelves full of glass bottles of mysterious green and brown plants and roots, sacks of dried mushrooms and deer antlers in display cases, a coffin maker with his wares stacked from floor to ceiling, an electrician’s store with portable colour televisions and boxes of Japanese cameras, a noodle shop with five cluttered circular tables where Dugan sometimes bought beef noodles when he tired of gweilo fast food, a shop selling nothing but cosmetics. Some of the blocks were twenty years old or more, less than ten storeys high with flats above the shops and entrances blocked with ornate metal grilles, but gradually they were coming down and being replaced with glass and marble towers two or three times taller as the developers moved away from the Central office area in search of big profits.

  The pavements were as busy as the roads, and there too could be seen a cosmopolitan mix: gnarled old housewives making their way home with pink plastic bags containing enough food for a day, businessmen with sharp suits and thin ties, the occasional poser walking along talking into a hand-held phone, shouting to make himself heard over the roar of the traffic and the blaring horns, schoolchildren with crisp white shirts and white socks, rucksacks full of books distorting their frail shoulders, mothers with babies on their backs.

  Dugan walked slowly, partly because the crowds were so thick but also because he didn’t want to arrive for an interview with Special Branch sweating like a pig. Occasionally he had to move off the pavement and into the road and he took care to avoid stepping in the piles of ash and rotting fruit left over from night-time ghost appeasing.

  Chief Inspector Leigh looked to be a kindly man; greying hair, soft green eyes and folds of loose skin that gave him the appearance of a tired, but loyal, bloodhound. He seemed ill at ease in his light blue suit as if it had been the only thing hanging in his wardrobe when he got out of bed this morning. He smiled benignly when Dugan walked into his office and took him completely by surprise by offering to shake his hand.

  ‘I’ve always been a fan of yours,’ said Leigh. His voice had the lilt of a Welshman’s and made Dugan think of congregations singing in frost-covered stone churches.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Dugan, flustered.

  ‘You played a blinder during the last Sevens. That last try you scored, sheer magic. I remember telling my wife; Glynnis, I said, that boy could play for Wales.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ said Dugan. ‘I’m not Welsh.’

  Leigh looked hurt but it was too late for Dugan to add the word ‘unfortunately’ without appearing to take the piss.

  ‘Never mind, never mind. Please sit down.’

  He waved Dugan to one of the two comfortable seats facing the desk. Leigh’s office was much the same as Dugan’s, albeit a bit larger. In one corner was a large metal safe, and on it was a brass bowl containing a bushy green plant with bulbous leaves. Leigh’s desk was as cluttered as Dugan’s though he merited a small table lamp. Dugan could see the back of a silver p
icture frame and guessed it contained a picture of Glynnis Leigh and probably a couple of children, too. Leigh was no doubt a devoted husband and family man, and a pillar of the church. God knows what he was doing in Special Branch. It must be a soul-destroying job, trying to stop Communist infiltration in a place which was gearing up to be handed over to Red China. Talk about a job with no prospects. Special Branch was due to be disbanded before the Communists took over and all their files gutted or destroyed. Most of the Chinese members had been promised British citizenship, unlike most of the other six million inhabitants, because even the British Government accepted that such men would not last long under the new regime.

  Special Branch had other tasks, sure, they monitored CIA activity and any other intelligence agencies that tried to operate in Hong Kong, and they kept tabs on the local members of the Kuomintang, the hardline anti-Communist party that controlled Taiwan; but their main purpose was to identify Communists in Hong Kong and for that they had a network of contacts and informers throughout the colony, whose lives would also become dispensable after handover. That was one of the reasons there were so few Chinese in Special Branch, and none in top positions. The job was too sensitive to be trusted to locals.

  ‘So,’ said Leigh, steepling his fingers and leaning back in his chair. ‘Tell me about this girl.’ It felt for all the world like he was Dugan’s father asking about his latest girlfriend.

  ‘What is it you want to know, sir?’

  Leigh smiled and his eyes wrinkled. He was obviously a man used to smiling. Dugan could imagine him on Christmas morning, helping grandchildren to unwrap their presents and basting the turkey while his wife looked after the vegetables. ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘A few days, just a few days,’ said Dugan.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Was?’

  He smiled again. ‘A slip of the tongue, son. Of course, I mean is. What is her name?’