Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  After a few minutes he walked on, down a street full of shops selling intricate paper models, mostly of houses and cars. These, Marker knew, were burnt at funerals, in the expectation that they would improve the quality of the afterlife.

  Rosalie Kai had explained that to him on their way up Hong Kong’s Ladder Street, almost three years before. He had thought about her quite a lot since their arrival in Singapore, and now that Hong Kong seemed likely to be his and Dubery’s next port of call . . .

  He could see her very clearly in his mind: the Western eyes in the Chinese face, and the way they somehow managed to reflect both a fiercely independent spirit and an almost painful vulnerability. She had been the only other woman he had felt really drawn to during his time with Penny, and at times he had felt almost certain that she was also attracted to him. But the timing could hardly have been worse, for he had known in his bones that any sexual involvement with her would torpedo any last chance he and Penny had of holding their marriage together.

  Rosalie had seemed happy for them to be friends. They had told each other the stories of their lives, gone to the Chinese theatre and to movies, and she had shown him parts of Hong Kong which few English servicemen saw. They had made each other laugh, had fun together. For a couple of weeks, or so it seemed to Marker in retrospect, each had provided the other with an escape from the rest of their lives.

  He had given her his English address, but neither of them had written.

  Walking up South Bridge Road, past the gaudy splendour of the Hindu Sri Mariamman Temple, he wondered how the past three years had treated her, what she was planning to do when Beijing lowered the boom on Hong Kong, and how she would react to seeing him again.

  For the next two hours Rosalie criss-crossed the city, visiting editorial offices and cajoling editors into providing front-page space for the photograph and text. Most were struck by the picture, but still needed persuading that their readers wanted something like that to look at over their Sunday breakfast. She needed to be considerably more charming than she felt, and was blackmailed into accepting two dinner invitations.

  She would enjoy cancelling them later, she thought, as she enjoyed her takeaway dim sum lunch in Kowloon Park. The birds in the adjacent aviary kept up a non-stop racket, and the noise of the traffic on Nathan Road was only slightly dulled, but the open space still offered some respite from the clamour of the city, and there were few more peaceful sights than the graceful white minarets and dome of the mosque which occupied the park’s south-eastern corner. Almost for the first time that day, she felt able to cope with her own emotions.

  It was all so long ago. The winter of 1977. She had been the one to find the body, and looking back she supposed the shock had stayed with her through the weeks that followed. At first she had assumed he was innocent, driven to suicide by a campaign of false accusations, but the cumulative evidence of his involvement in organized crime soon became overwhelming, even for a thirteen-year-old desperate to believe otherwise. The Independent Commission Against Corruption, of which, ironically, he had always spoken so highly, uncovered bank accounts in Singapore and Taiwan which contained over a million pounds, and as the investigation proceeded it became apparent that her father, then chief of the RHKP Narcotics Division, had been a key player in the Triad-controlled drug trade. But though the suicide verdict began to look increasingly shaky, there didn’t seem to be much mileage for anyone in reopening the case as a murder. Ronald Bohannan was dead, and it seemed best to let things lie. Almost as an afterthought the investigators discovered a string of apartments he had owned. Each contained a mistress, the youngest of whom was fourteen, a year older than Rosalie.

  The family’s old life disintegrated. The hitherto endless stream of English visitors to the house in Shek O had long since dried up, and now Rosalie’s mother, drawn back into the Chinese community from which her husband had plucked her, decided to remarry. Rosalie went with her to the new luxury apartment downtown, but her stepfather, Kai Bin-yan, made no attempt to know his new stepdaughter, or even to hide his prejudice against mixed-blood children. With the money from the house in Shek O her mother sent her to England, where she enjoyed three miserable years of public school before returning to Hong Kong. There she attended college and lived alone, seeing her mother as little as possible. At the end of three years she surprised even herself by applying to join the RHKP.

  Whatever her motives, which seemed as emotionally charged as they were unclear, she soon discovered a fascination for the work. Initial success, moreover, came as quickly as she could have hoped. As the British withdrawal grew ever nearer the RHKP had entered a major period of transition, providing a rare window of opportunity for non-whites wishing to fill those ranks previously reserved for the British. Some of her father’s old friends had even offered help, but she had firmly refused them. If she was to enjoy any professional success then it had to be achieved honestly, in each and every aspect of her life as a police officer.

  And it had been, she thought, staring across the park. There had been enough offers. She could have been well on the way to her own first million by now.

  She smiled to herself, and decided to walk down to the ferry rather than search for a cab. It was Saturday, after all.

  An hour later she was back at the desk, asking Li if there was any news.

  ‘Nothing exciting. They didn’t find anything in his desk at Marine, and his wife’s still refusing to accept that he ever went gambling, let alone owed the Triads a life’s ransom. Speaking of which, I’ve tied two members of the Zhou clan to the Blue Dragon Triad, which might open up a new line of investigation.’

  ‘Good,’ she said absent-mindedly, still thinking about Doug Bellamy’s wife. Another woman who had been deceived, who had let herself be deceived. As for accepting the truth, well, that took years.

  The phone call telling Marker that the operation had been brought forward came shortly before five o’clock; the car to collect him arrived in front of the hotel not much more than five minutes later. He had been planning to take Dubery along for the ride, but the Scot, presumably thinking he had at least an hour to spare, had left a note saying he had gone for a walk.

  The car sped across Anderson Bridge and along the bay shore, the sinking sun flashing between the buildings to the right. They turned right on to Keppel Road, passing the main railway station on one side and the cranes of old Empire Dock on the other, and drove towards the deepening silhouette of the World Trade Centre. Here they pulled into the car park, where about a dozen cars were lined up in two rows, like the starters in a Grand Prix. The two lead vehicles had adapted front ends, presumably to save their drivers the trouble of opening gates by hand. Marker was ushered across to one of the cars near the rear, which contained both Xiao Guo-feng and the police chief in charge of the raid, one Wang Jing-hua, who seemed less than ecstatic about the Englishman’s presence. A few moments later they were on the move.

  ‘Only a few of the men know where we’re going,’ Xiao confided to Marker.

  ‘I hope that includes the ones at the front,’ Marker murmured, causing Xiao to grin at him. Wang seemed less amused.

  ‘This is the layout,’ Xiao said, handing Marker a photocopied sketch map of the target area. ‘There are new warehouses all along the south side of the Padang Road,’ he added. ‘The Wu brothers have the one main building, several outbuildings including the garage, and a line of offices on the side furthest from the road.’

  ‘And beyond them?’

  ‘A disused railway line, some derelict docks and the sea.’

  ‘How far’s that?’

  Xiao shrugged. ‘Maybe two hundred yards. The Marine Police will have a couple of launches standing by.’ He turned to look Marker in the eye. ‘You’re only here as an observer,’ he reminded him.

  ‘I know. But I expect a front seat.’

  Wang said something to Xiao in Chinese, and there wasn’t much chance of mistaking the disapproval in his tone. Not that it was going to ma
tter much, Marker thought, looking out of the window. The light was fading with its usual tropical swiftness: another fifteen minutes and it wouldn’t matter which row he was sitting in.

  There were industrial premises on both sides of the road now, and occasional views of the sea beyond. ‘This is it,’ Xiao said, and through the windscreen Marker had a fleeting glimpse of the front-armoured cars swinging off the highway. Seconds later their car was passing through the demolished gates, and ducking between parked lorries to follow the prearranged course towards the rear of the modern warehouse.

  Two cars were already disgorging officers, but there was no sign of life inside the buildings. After waiting behind their cars for several moments the armed policemen were ordered forward, and in a series of leap-frogging manoeuvres they reached the doors. Throwing these open failed to evoke a response from within, and after another pause first one, then two, men slipped inside, SMGs at the ready. A minute or so later Xiao and Marker heard a single shot from deep inside the building, and a few minutes after that the police chief emerged, a self-satisfied look on his face. He said a few words to Xiao and turned away, ignoring Marker completely.

  ‘I’ve been invited inside,’ Xiao said apologetically.

  ‘Have fun,’ Marker said. He waited until the two men had disappeared through the door and climbed out into the evening air, thinking that Dubery wasn’t missing much – all the fun was happening inside the building. He had only a yard strewn with cars for company, most of them with their doors still hanging open. Even the two policemen he had seen at the far end of the building had suddenly vanished.

  It was almost fully dark now. He leaned against the car, intertwined fingers supporting his chin on the roof, wondering how Cafell and Finn were getting on.

  It was then that he caught the hint of movement in the shadows some fifty yards to his left. The dark figure descended the last few rungs of the ladder, stood motionless for a moment, and then scurried a couple of steps in the general direction of the sea before disappearing into the gloom.

  Marker went after him, keeping his pace to not much more than a brisk walk, his ears straining for sounds of the other man’s progress. He walked cautiously between two outhouses and found himself facing a breeze-block wall some ten feet high. A slight sound jerked his head around, and he caught a glimpse of something disappearing behind the wall some thirty yards to his left. The man was over.

  Looking up, Marker could see the razor wire atop the wall, and couldn’t believe his quarry had simply climbed over it. He made for the spot where the man had disappeared and found that a ladder had been set into the wall at this point, presumably as an emergency exit. At the top there was a hinged section of razor wire, easy to pass through, impossible to distinguish from the other side.

  Pausing for a second, he could see the man half walking, half running across an area of industrial wasteland. Derelict cranes loomed beyond him, dark shapes against the shining sea. He seemed to be carrying a bag of some kind.

  Marker dropped to the ground, skipped across a pair of rusted rails, and broke into a jog. He was about fifty yards behind when the man suddenly turned, saw him, and took off like a startled rabbit. Marker upped his own pace, but the man was fast, and for a couple of minutes the gap between them seemed not to narrow.

  They were close to the sea now, the smell of salt strong on the breeze. Cranes towered above them, the distant lights of downtown Singapore twinkling through the girders. The ground was littered with industrial rubbish, which made running in the dark a perilous business.

  They were now almost surrounded by water, Marker realized. He slowed down and started moving diagonally to his left, closing the only avenue of escape. Faced with the same realization, the man in front of him opened fire, spitting light and sound to no apparent effect. In reply Marker fired once, into the air, just to let the other man know he was armed.

  For what seemed like a long time, but was probably no more than a few seconds, neither man moved, and then suddenly both became aware of the lights approaching them – one of the police launches was heading in to investigate the gunfire.

  The man turned and began running again, towards the sea this time. Marker went after him slowly, then picked up his pace when he realized that it was unlikely the man still believed he could escape – he obviously had something else in mind, like getting rid of the briefcase.

  He was still thirty yards away when he saw the bag arc into the air, and heard the faint splash as it hit the water. A few seconds later he saw the man walking towards him, hands above his head, the gun nowhere to be seen. He was Chinese, probably in his late twenties, with long hair in a pony-tail, silver dragon earrings and a sleazy smile.

  The launch was bathing them both in the glare of its searchlight, and Marker gestured his prisoner back towards the waterfront. He was about to ask the police to turn their light on the waters of the harbour when he caught sight of the briefcase, bobbing in the water not ten feet away from the side of the launch.

  It was shortly after eight o’clock on the Saturday evening, some forty-four hours after the crew’s initial incarceration, that the door to their A-deck prison finally swung open. In the cabin the stench was now almost unbearable, and several men were suffering severely from lack of water. Lamrakis pushed himself forward, willing his brain to come up with the right words to deal with their nose-holding captors, but his almost apologetic request for water was simply ignored. ‘Out’ was the only word spoken in reply, and that was rendered almost redundant by the jerk of the sub-machine-gun which accompanied it.

  Lamrakis started to protest, and the barrel of the gun was rammed into his stomach, almost causing him to retch with the pain.

  The prisoners filed out, some walking without too much difficulty, others only able to move with the support of a friend. They climbed one flight of stairs to the boat deck, then another.

  ‘In,’ the man told them, gesturing towards the lifeboat. A feeling of relief almost threatened to overwhelm Lamrakis. They were getting off the ship, away from these apologies for humankind. He knew without looking that there would be no food or water in the lifeboat, but they could always drink rain.

  He helped the more stricken members of his crew clamber aboard, and then, as the lifeboat was slowly lowered towards the waiting sea, he began working out their position from the few stars visible between the clouds. He had one last glimpse of grinning faces looking down, and tried consciously to commit each and every one to memory.

  Searching for some explanation as to why the ship had stopped, Cafell had moved along the wall of containers to a position just above the walkway, from which he could see back along the length of the ship. Even with the naked eye he could see the lifeboat riding the swell, and with the veiled nightscope he could make out fifteen or so occupants – the original crew.

  By Cafell’s reckoning the ship had only just left Indonesian waters, and that fact presumably explained the timing of the crew’s release. If they were discovered drifting in the international waters of the South China Sea then any suspicions of Indonesian involvement would remain only that – suspicions.

  Still, at least the crew were alive, and would probably be picked up without too much delay in such a busy sea lane.

  The lifeboat was beginning to recede as the container ship got back underway. Cafell took another look through the nightscope, and almost lost his hold as the brilliant light blazed in the eyepiece. A split second later the crash of the explosion rolled over him.

  In the nightscope there was now nothing but the open sea. Cafell pulled himself back from the edge of the deck and sat with his back against a container, breath rasping from his lungs, his mind in shock.

  After soaking in the bath for almost half an hour, Rosalie put on a kimono and searched the fridge for something edible. At the back she found a yoghurt container half full of week-old chicken lo mein, which seemed to smell OK. She heated it up in the microwave and took the plate out on to the balcony of her three-room f
lat. The lights of Kowloon danced in the waters of the harbour, but for once the night city failed to raise her spirits, and after wolfing down the food she went back inside and curled up on the futon in front of the TV. A British cop show was on, the one with Helen Mirren as the woman inspector. Rosalie had seen this story before, but she watched it anyway, fascinated by the dreadful emptiness of the culture it portrayed.

  It had been a bad day in more ways than one. The past had come back to haunt her, and the present had offered no compensation. When first assigned to the baby-smuggling investigation she had been more than a little resentful of the implied gender-typing. Anything to do with babies – put a woman in charge. But after a few days on the case such considerations had come to seem irrelevant. This was one crime which enraged her.

  The combination of ingrained prejudice and China’s one-baby-per-family law made the scale of the trade possible. For many parents a daughter was simply not good enough, and they were quite prepared to sell a female first-born, hoping for a son at the second attempt. This was bad enough, but the callousness of those involved in the transport and sale of the babies was almost beyond belief. As someone at the office had said, the smugglers worked on the same principles as banana-shippers – a certain number of boxes always had to be written off.

  Maybe the newspaper appeal would turn up something, but tonight she found it hard to dredge up any optimism. They might catch a few of the people who were hired to ferry the babies across the thirty miles which separated Chinese waters from the buyers in Hong Kong, and a few others, like the Zhous, might even meet their just deserts in some other way, but as long as China maintained the one-child policy, and as long as boys were considered more valuable than girls, the trade would continue in one form or another. After all, she thought cynically, matching supply with demand was Hong Kong’s raison d’être.