‘That sounds fine,’ Marker said. He liked both the serious Xiao and the cheerful Sukiman.
‘I’ll get these translated,’ Xiao said, picking up the copy of the fax messages, ‘and get an accurate fix on the source. Let’s just hope it wasn’t a backstreet copy shop.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘Shall we meet back here at ten? I should have something to tell you by then.’
Rosalie Kai took one look at the packed MTR cars and wished she had followed her instincts and waited for a tram. They might be slower than the subway, but they offered two priceless compensations: distracting views and breathable air.
Where were all these people going on a Saturday morning? As she was half carried into the car by the crush, she remembered the images of a half-empty subway she had seen on TV the previous night. They had been part of a scaremongering piece about the imminent Beijing take-over, and, for those condemned to a life of MTR commuting, had made 1997 seem almost inviting.
She fought her way through to a more human-sized space. It was only for five stops, after all. Through a gap in the crush she noticed a seated woman holding a copy of the English-language South China Morning Post in front of her face like a shield, its banner headline proclaiming some fresh hold-up in the new airport negotiations. The other main item followed up the previous morning’s story of the hijacking off Singapore – the news of Bellamy’s death had obviously arrived too late for the final morning editions.
The train stopped at North Point, and a new influx of passengers worsened the scrimmage. Rosalie thought back over the report she had heard on the radio: nothing definite had been mentioned about the cause of death, other than that the police were still trying to ascertain what it had been. Which might or might not be suspicious. Was she reading her own personal history into this?
She had seen Douglas Bellamy occasionally over the years – their operational areas had inevitably overlapped at times – but she couldn’t remember speaking to him since her father’s funeral, almost twenty years ago. She had first met him soon after his arrival in Hong Kong. He had been in his early twenties, fresh down from Oxford, and like most of the newcomers from England he had wangled an invitation to the Bohannan house in Shek O, where her British policeman father had lived what looked like the ideal colonial life with his exotically beautiful Chinese wife and his lovely young Eurasian daughter in his beautiful family mansion full of exotic things. She had asked the young Bellamy about England – she had asked them all about England in those days – and he had not yet been in Hong Kong long enough to forget what the old country was really like. She could still remember the strange mixture of elation and disappointment she had felt.
Now he was dead. At forty-two, according to the radio.
The train was entering Wan Chai station, and she fought her way back through the crush towards the door, twice feeling fingers scrabbling across her breasts. This daily assault usually made her angry, but today she found herself feeling pity for anyone who sought pleasure in such a pathetic manner.
Outside on Hennessy Road the traffic seemed almost grid-locked, the cream and blue double-decker buses stranded like elephants among the honking cars and taxis. She began walking briskly west down the urban canyon and, as happened on most mornings, felt her spirits lifted by the exhilaration of Hong Kong’s skyline. The city might be hell to live in, but there was something magnificent about it just the same. She would miss it if she ever left.
At the intersection with Arsenal Street she turned right, and walked across the road to the front entrance of the Royal Hong Kong Police Building. The lift carried her up to the open-plan office of the Organized and Serious Crimes Group. Her partner, Li Zai-Shuo, was already at work on his side of the desk they shared. Ten yards away, among the area of desks occupied by the Narcotics Section, two red-faced English officers were involved in a quiet but unmistakably forceful exchange of views.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked Li.
He gave her a characteristically ironic smile. ‘They’re already taking sides over Bellamy,’ he said in Cantonese.
She sat down. ‘What’s the latest?’ she asked in the same language.
‘What do you know?’
‘Only what was on the radio – nothing.’
‘Well, the first take was that he killed himself but tried to make it look like an accident. His gun-cleaning stuff was on the desk where he supposedly shot himself.’
‘And the second?’
Li shrugged. ‘The talk is that he was in hock to several of the Triads. Gambling debts.’
Rosalie gathered her hair into the scrunchy she kept at work, feeling sick at heart. ‘And what are Dempster and Crabbe arguing about?’ she asked, though she could guess the answer.
‘Whether he was very stupid and a little corrupt or very corrupt and a little stupid,’ Li said acerbically. My money’s on suicide – the Triads don’t usually kill people who owe them money, especially not policemen who have other things to offer.’ He stopped suddenly, as if suddenly aware of whom he was talking to. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.
‘Forget it,’ she said. He hadn’t said anything that she hadn’t already thought.
‘Want some coffee?’ he asked, getting to his feet.
She nodded, and watched him thread his way across the office to the machine. Seven years ago, when she had first been assigned a desk here, the ratio of English faces to Chinese had been roughly two to one. Now it was the reverse. A couple more years and the faces would all be either Chinese or, like hers, oriental enough to pass muster. And all the conversations would be in Cantonese or Mandarin.
‘Who’s in charge of the Bellamy case?’ she asked Li when he returned.
‘Ormond’s taken it on himself,’ he answered. ‘Where do you want to start this morning?’
She took a sip of coffee to hide the sudden surge of emotion. George Ormond had been one of the junior officers involved in her father’s case, and, quite unreasonably, she had never quite forgiven him for it. He didn’t seem to like her much either. Perhaps he sensed her resentment, perhaps in his mind she was tarred by her father’s brush.
‘Rosalie?’ Li asked patiently.
‘Sorry. I don’t know . . . Have we had any luck with the Zhou family?’
‘The old woman’s still denying that she knew anything about the babies. The husband and younger son are still missing, maybe drowned, maybe hiding out. The older son not only denies any knowledge, he’s talking about suing the family of the speedboat owner.’
Kai half choked on her coffee. ‘He’s what?’
Li grinned. ‘The speedboat was to blame, apparently.’
‘And since the fourteen babies were drowned I suppose we should charge the dead driver with murder?’
‘I’m sure that’ll occur to the Zhous’ lawyer.’
‘Our simple sampan-dwelling family have a lawyer already?’
‘Zhang Zi-yang.’
‘Of course.’ Zhang worked for several of the Triad factions. ‘Have we got any of the Zhou family on our books?
‘Both the sons have been in custody for juvenile offences, but nothing serious, and nothing lately. There are about seven cousins though, and at least three brothers-in-law – it’s a big family. I was going to run through the whole clan this morning, see if I can find some kind of lever.’
‘You do that.’ It didn’t sound promising, but the chances of getting anything out of the Zhou family had always been remote. ‘I’ve got to do the rounds of the newspaper offices.’
‘In person?’
‘I want to make sure they all get it right.’
‘Have you got the appeal with you?’
Rosalie pulled it out of her briefcase and passed it across. The photograph of the dead babies, stacked like sardines in the narrow space beneath the false deck, was attached by paper-clip to a single sheet.
‘A barbaric trade,’ Li read softly. ‘These fourteen children died when a smuggler’s boat collided with a speedboat. At first it was thought
that they had all drowned, but post-mortems proved that four had already died of suffocation. It is not only the smugglers who are responsible for these deaths, and for the whole barbaric trade in infants, but also the purchasers for whom the children are intended. Please, help us put a stop to such cruelty. If you have any information which would be useful to the police contact Inspector Rosalie Kai on 860-2000 ext 141. Caller anonymity will be respected.’ He looked up at her. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to include your real name?’
‘I think it makes it more personal.’
‘You could use a false name.’
‘I could, but . . .’ She shrugged. At that moment she really didn’t care.
She got up and made her way to the women’s toilet. As usual it was empty, since the number of women working in the OSCG could still be counted on one hand. She washed her hands and stared at herself in the mirror, wondering if other people saw what she did. There were the Chinese bones, the wider English eyes, her mother’s nose and her father’s chin. She was tall by Hong Kong standards; bigger-breasted too. She remembered the first time she had realized that wherever she went she would always be something of an outsider.
Enough, she told herself. So the baby-smuggling investigation was probably going nowhere – there was no point in expecting miracles. So Doug Bellamy had gone the same way as her father – it was all water under the bridge, as he had been fond of saying. So Hong Kong was a gold earring waiting for Beijing’s vacuum cleaner, as the cartoon in the Post had claimed that morning. Life went on, more or less.
Back at their desk Li was busy on his computer. She slipped the appeal back into her briefcase, checked that she had the envelope full of copies, raised a hand in farewell and left the office.
The first few hours of daylight had passed without incident for the two SBS stowaways aboard the container ship. The vessel was ploughing through the slight swell at a steady fifteen knots, the sun shining hazily down through a thin layer of high cloud. By Cafell’s reckoning their heading was a few degrees north of north-east, which would take the ship into the South China Sea.
‘This is interesting,’ Finn said, waving the guidebook which he had found in Cafell’s bergen. ‘You know the Japs did all sorts of nasties after taking Singapore: bayoneted wounded prisoners in their beds, tortured any Chinese they didn’t like the look of, shipped out the lucky ones to build the Burma Railway . . .’
‘Bunch of real sweeties,’ Cafell agreed.
‘Well, the interesting bit is that the two Jap divisions responsible came from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’
Cafell grunted. ‘Was that why they drew the short straw in 1945?’
‘Doesn’t say. Either that or poetic justice.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone deserved that.’
‘It shortened the war.’
‘Not according to my dad. When he was on NATO exercises in the fifties, some Americans he talked to told him there were two reasons why they’d dropped the atom bombs, and shortening the war wasn’t one of them, since they already knew the Japanese were going to surrender. The first reason was just curiosity – they’d built the things and wanted to see the effect on a real target. The second was that they wanted the Japanese to surrender quickly – before the Russians got a stake in the occupation, the way they had in Germany and Korea.’
Finn shook his head. ‘I think I was happier believing the official story,’ he said, looking down to where the container ends framed a narrow rectangle of green sea and blue-white sky. ‘We made the right decision staying here,’ he added. ‘This corridor even generates its own breeze.’
‘Wait till the sun’s directly overhead,’ Cafell said cheerfully.
‘It’ll only be on us for an hour or so.’ Finn’s eyes caught the piece of paper on which Cafell had been making his calculations. ‘So where are we headed?’
‘Could be anywhere in the South China Sea. Probably not Vietnam, though. The Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan . . . even China.’
‘And how far away are we?’
‘At this speed about four days from Manila, five from Hong Kong, six from Taiwan.’
‘Christ. And there’s no reason in all that time for any of the crew to check up here? That seems weird.’
‘Not really. A freight-train driver doesn’t check his train every few miles – he just takes it for granted the load will still be there when he gets wherever it is he’s going. The crew of a ship like this hardly ever needs to go forward, let alone up among the containers.’ Cafell sighed. ‘The main enemy on this trip is going to be boredom.’
At ten o’clock Marker was back at the command centre, staring out at the jungle of skyscrapers which loomed above the mouth of the Singapore River. Reckoning that there was no need for both of them to make the meeting, he had left Dubery at the hotel, still catching up on lost sleep.
Sukiman arrived next, and Xiao almost bounced through the door behind him, his face a study in barely restrained excitement. ‘We have found the source,’ Xiao said, perching on the edge of his desk. ‘The fax was sent from a warehouse on the Panjang Road, on the edge of Chinatown. It belongs to two brothers, Wu Ka-shing and Wu Hou-sheng. They have an import-export business which was established about two years ago, soon after the older brother arrived from Hong Kong. The younger one followed a few months later. An old friend in the OSCG told me the Wus were investigated pretty thoroughly a year or so ago, and came up clean. He also gave me the names of several other companies they control. And listen to this – one of them spent most of last week cornering the market in industrial detergent!’
Sukiman’s face was blank. ‘I am sorry . . .’
‘The tanker,’ Marker said. ‘If the oil had spilled they would have cleaned up. In more ways than one.’
Sukiman understood. ‘And if our pirates on Batam knew the Antares was going to be hijacked it could only be because they set it up . . .’
‘The Vietnamese survivor says their leader, a man named Bao, was given all the information about how and when, and told that the tanker was carrying gems in its safe. He says Bao claimed that it was his own idea to confuse things by letting the tanker drift, but the survivor didn’t think so, even at the time.’ Xiao sighed. ‘He also says the captain was shot by accident – Bao was waving the gun in his face and it went off.’
‘Oh Christ,’ Marker murmured. ‘Is there any evidence the Wu brothers are Triad-connected?’
‘We’d have to check that out with the police in Hong Kong, and in the circumstances . . .’
‘Point taken,’ Marker said. The RHKP had earned its nickname: ‘the best force that money could buy’.
‘I’ve also been doing a little judicious checking on the current state of play as regards the Triads,’ Xiao said. ‘No one seems quite sure what’s going on, except to say that this seems to be a period of transition. Whether that’s good news or bad news depends on who you listen to. One school of thought believes that the loss of their Hong Kong base will inevitably weaken the Triads; another believes that an enforced relocation will actually strengthen them, and that Beijing’s gain will be everyone else’s loss.’
Marker suddenly remembered something. ‘Did the intelligence of the sailing and cargo come from Hong Kong?’ he asked.
‘It’s impossible to tell,’ Sukiman said. ‘It seems the likely bet.’
‘What was the cargo?’ Marker asked, realizing he still didn’t know.
‘Mostly electronic goods,’ Sukiman told him. ‘From China – the Shenzhen free enterprise zone just across the border with Hong Kong. Probably US $60 million worth.’
‘We may find out more about the source of the intelligence when we pay our visit to the Wu brothers,’ Xiao said, pulling himself upright.
‘And when will we be doing that?’ Marker asked.
Xiao smiled at him. ‘I suppose you could come along as an observer. We are waiting until this evening, because on a Saturday night people expect to see police on the streets.’
&nb
sp; Xiao arranged for Marker to be driven back to the city centre, but halfway there the Englishman decided a stroll would do him more good than sitting around in an air-conditioned hotel. He got the driver to drop him off outside the Tajong Pagar metro station, and started walking up Maxwell Road towards the heart of the local Chinatown.
He had been to Singapore nearly ten years before, but only briefly, as part of the South-East Asia tour he had taken during his first term of duty in Hong Kong. Much of its remaining charm had vanished since then, for street after street of two and three-storey housing had been bulldozed to make way for shining high-rise blocks. An attempt at damage limitation had been made in recent years, with mixed success. The famous Raffles Hotel, for example, had been renovated with great care, but something had definitely been lost in the new blend of colonial elegance and modern shopping mall.
It was the way the world was going, Marker supposed. Singapore just seemed an extreme example of the phoney-Canute syndrome – all determination on the surface, utter submission to market forces whenever it mattered. The same government which had banned chewing gum, and which enforced huge fines for littering and jaywalking, had sanctioned what locals called the ‘architectural holocaust’.
Chinatown, though now living in the shadow of the financial centre’s skyscrapers, had remained relatively unscathed, and most of its streets were still lined with low-rise baroque-style shop-houses, complete with weathered shutters and, in many cases, striking ornamentation. At the first crossroads Marker reached a triangular area of pavement that had been sequestered for one of the traditional Sunday morning songbird competitions, and in each of thirty or more bamboo cages a bird was either singing its heart out or receiving its final instructions from a proud owner. Every now and then one of the birds would stop and cock its head, as if seeking inspiration from its fellow competitors.
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