‘We’re not sure. The forensic evidence is indecisive. He could have killed himself and tried to make it look like an accident. He could have been murdered. It could have been an accident.’
‘I imagine his family and friends would prefer an accident,’ Marker said as tactfully as he could manage.
Skillen grunted. ‘We would have done,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid an accidental verdict won’t help much now – the investigation has already uncovered enough dirt to blacken anyone’s name. Four bank accounts so far, containing over half a million pounds.’ He offered a half smile, and Marker could see the hurt in the other man’s eyes.
‘Is there any indication of who he was getting the money from?’
‘Not yet. That end of the investigation is being handled by the OSCG. They’re the Triad experts.’
‘Did Bellamy have access to intelligence of sailings and cargoes?’ Marker asked.
‘Is that what you think he was selling? I wasn’t aware that he had that sort of access . . .’ Skillen’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Though come to think of it, a few years ago – five or six, I’d say – he did head up an investigation into corruption among the Customs & Excise staff. Maybe . . .’ He looked almost pleased, as if something at last had made sense.
What a farce, Marker thought, as he and Dubery went back down in the lift. This was one of those times he found himself wondering if the British people knew how lucky they were to have a relatively uncorrupt police force. The recently exposed fetish for forging confessions was hardly admirable, but things could be a hell of a lot worse, as most of the world’s other police forces seemed keen to demonstrate.
Ferguson was sitting in the lobby, reading the Hong Kong Standard. ‘So what’s next?’ he asked.
‘Let’s get rid of our luggage,’ Marker said. ‘You can show us the new five-star accommodation on Stonecutters’ Island.’
Cafell lowered the binoculars and felt the motion of the sea through his prone body. He reckoned the specks of land on the eastern horizon were parts of Ladd Reef, the most westerly of the Spratly Islands. They were on a course for either Hong Kong or the Pearl River and Canton, and almost halfway there.
It was another blue-sky day, the ship rolling gently in the water like a babe in arms. Cafell remembered Marker once calling the sea his real mother – the boss had no doubt been pissed at the time, but he had meant it just the same.
Cafell pulled himself up and sat with his back against the container, thinking that each of them had their own way of relating to the sea. He supposed most of them were in love with it, one way or another, but that was only a starting-point. There were some, like Ian Dubery, who loved the challenges, others, like Marker, who seemed to find something almost mystical in it all. Cafell could see both points of view, but that was nothing new. Ellen had once called him the most balanced person in the world, and since this had been in the middle of one of their rare rows, he had assumed it was not a compliment.
He made his way back to their niche among the containers, where Finn was staring into space, guidebook in his lap. ‘How do you feel about the sea?’ he asked.
The young Londoner looked at him with amusement. ‘If I’m in it, it feels wet. If I’m not . . .’
‘You know what I mean. You must have had some reason for choosing the Marines over the traffic wardens.’
‘You think I was drawn to the sea like a magnet by some psychic compulsion?’
Cafell just looked at him.
‘OK. But it had nothing to do with the sea. I used to go boating on the River Lea when I was a kid, and, well, it conjured up something. Just freedom probably. You know? You were off the streets, away from all the shit, just floating down the river. And there used to be teams of girls sculling. I used to love watching their thighs go up and down.’
‘A religious experience, was it?’
Finn laughed. ‘Yeah. But I’m not so sure about the sea. There’s hardly any girls out here.’
‘Marker thinks it’s like a mother.’
‘It’s old enough. You think how long this lot has been sloshing around . . . Well, according to Darwin anyway. You know there’s places in America where they still teach kids the Bible version, that the world’s about four thousand years old?’
‘How do they explain carbon dating?’
‘Easy – God made things so that they started off old.’
Cafell thought about it. ‘That’s . . .’
‘Ludicrous?’
‘The word I had in mind was "unanswerable".’
‘The best lines always are,’ Finn said. ‘But you know it really pisses me off. Like when people say, "Well, there must be a creator because all of this must have come from somewhere." Why, for fuck’s sake? Their imaginations are just too pathetic to cope with the idea that it’s been here for ever – there’s no beginning, no end. I like that feeling. It’s like . . .’
‘The sea?’
‘No, not the fucking sea. What I’m saying is that if there’s no beginning and no end then everything’s going to happen sooner or later. A monkey will write Shakespeare. A reindeer will write Tolstoy . . .’
‘A slug will write Jeffrey Archer.’
‘I think that’s already been done.’
Cafell laughed. ‘But what about the sun cooling down?’
‘That’s just one solar system. And humans’ll be long gone by then.’
‘Maybe. I read the other day that the Yanks couldn’t put a man on the moon now if they wanted to. It’s all been cut back. Still,’ he added, remembering a recent conversation with his mother, ‘there’s probably better ways to spend the money.’
‘Maybe,’ Finn said. ‘You know, I’ve never met a man who didn’t think space exploration was a good idea, and I’ve never met a woman who agreed with it. Why do you think that is?’
Cafell knew what Ellen would say: the same as his mother, that it was a waste of money, that there were enough problems here on earth. Which was true enough. Men tried to solve problems by turning outwards, women by turning inwards. He remembered the Charlie Brown line: there’s no problem so big you can’t run away from it.
Rosalie accelerated past a tram and then slowed again, looking for Hu Guang-fu’s street. A junk moving in full sail across adjacent Belcher Bay held her attention for several seconds, and she almost missed the turning. As a young girl she had often gone sailing with her father, and the graceful junks had always captivated her, but these days she usually found herself wondering what each boat was smuggling.
If this job was souring her ability to enjoy life, she thought, then it was time to find another one.
She parked the car outside the modest apartment block where Hu lived, walked in through the open glass doors and pushed the button for the lift.
Earlier that morning she had checked the 8x10s against the OSCG photo files and come up with a couple of names and a parent organization, the Blue Dragon Triad. The next by-the-book step would have involved cross-referencing men and Triad with the list of current OSCG investigations, but Rosalie was reluctant to follow the book for several reasons. For one thing, she didn’t want someone else claiming priority and effectively icing their operation. For a second, her own and others’ experience had taught that the success factor in any Triad investigation was in inverse proportion to the number of police officers involved. Apropos of which, she thought most of her British OSCG colleagues were self-serving morons. Talking to Hu Guang-fu would be both more informative and less of a risk.
He opened the door himself, his face breaking into a smile when he saw who it was. ‘My wife is out shopping,’ he said, as he showed her into a room crowded with the results of a lifetime’s compulsive shopping in junk markets. Three bamboo cages of various sizes hung in front of the window, each containing several happy-sounding songbirds.
He cleared a space on the sofa and invited her to sit down. ‘I will make some tea, and then you can tell me who it is you want to know about this time.’
S
he looked round the room, hearing him at work in the kitchen. Hu Guang-fu was a rarity – a member of a defunct Triad. He had been in his early twenties when the Communists, driving south in their final onslaught against the Nationalists, had surrounded the town of Ganzhou in southern Jiangxi province, rounded up the Red Spears, and executed them in the town square. Hu alone had escaped, with the help of the woman who would eventually become his wife.
He was not bitter about the fate of his fellow Red Spears; on the contrary, he had the strong feeling that their reign of terror in Ganzhou had deserved nothing less. But he remained fascinated by the Triads, their history and rituals, and in particular by the way in which essentially criminal fraternities could delude themselves into thinking they still represented something noble. Safely settled in Hong Kong by the time the civil war ended in Communist victory, he had spent the next five years establishing himself, first as a journalist, and then as an academic. By the end of the fifties he had been accepted as the colony’s leading expert on the Triads, and as such he had often been called upon to assist the authorities. He had now been retired for several years, but a handful of the RHKP’s Chinese officers still made the occasional journey out to Kennedy Town for information, advice and tea.
‘I saw your name in the paper on Sunday,’ he said, coming back with a cup in either hand. ‘The baby-smuggling business. Did you have luck with the appeal?’
‘Some. That’s . . .’
‘In the Golden Triangle they use dead babies to carry heroin,’ he said, sitting down.
‘They have to be less than two years old for the long sleep to seem natural, and they need to be dead less than eighteen hours for the faces to retain their colour.’
She looked at him. ‘How do you live at peace with such knowledge?’ she asked.
He smiled. ‘There is evil in the world. There always has been. How else would we recognize good?’
She smiled back. ‘Right.’ At some point in her past the Taoist awareness of relativity she had inherited from her Chinese ancestors had fought a losing battle with the English need for absolutes.
‘And my birds are still singing,’ he added with a twinkle. ‘I take it you’ve come for more specific information.’
‘The Blue Dragons,’ she said.
His eyes lit up. ‘An interesting group. Now where should I begin? There are more than fifty Triad factions active in Hong Kong at the moment, with upwards of fifty thousand members. Yes, I know you know that,’ he said with a grin, ‘but I’m setting the scene. These factions are like legitimate businesses, like political parties – their fortunes are constantly rising and falling for a variety of reasons – leadership and luck foremost amongst them.’
He paused, and she resisted the temptation to interrupt.
‘There are three basic types of organization at work these days,’ he went on. ‘There are the traditional Triads, who are doing pretty much what they’ve always done, with perhaps a little more attention to legitimate business than was once the case. Then there are splinter groups, which have often simply declared independence from a parent organization. These still pay lip-service to the old forms, but basically they’re just gangs of thugs who use Triad symbolism as a fashion statement. And then there’s the third group, which is composed of both old Triad factions and new splinters. The difference is that these factions have essentially jettisoned the past. They have single designated leaders to decide policy, small executive committees – they worship efficiency, they have no time for morality. Their single-mindedness often reminds me of the Russian Bolsheviks . . .’
‘That’s ironic.’
‘It’s more than that. Some of these groups have been extending their operations into the enterprise zones across the border, and the rumour is that a few of them have been doing so in cooperation with the local Communist authorities.’
‘The Blue Dragons?’ she asked, feeling her pulse quicken.
‘I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The Blue Dragons’ main recruitment area is Mongkok, and you know what sort of a place that is. For the smart kids the Triad offers the quickest, easiest and most lucrative way out, and from what I’ve heard the Blue Dragons have a lot of smart kids.’
‘What are they into?’
‘Ah, that’s another interesting thing. They don’t touch drugs, or at least they didn’t the last I heard. The Dragon Head disapproves – there’s a story one of his sons died of an overdose, but I’ve no idea if it’s true. His name is Shu Zhi-fang and he lives in a house on Tai Tam Bay, on that peninsular opposite the Country Park. He must be over seventy by now, but I doubt if he has relinquished any control. His Red Pole is a man named Lu Zhen – very clever, utterly ruthless.’
‘If they don’t do drugs what do they do?’
‘All the usual. Protection, prostitution, and a lot of semi-legal stuff. Computer software copying, Gucci handbags, Rolex watches. So-called "victimless crimes". They also have a lot of legal interests – construction companies, car dealerships, hotels. They’ve grown a lot since Shu took over a few years ago. Remember what I was saying about fortunes rising and falling? Well, the fortunes of the Blue Dragons have definitely risen.’
She thought for a moment. ‘Would a man who has qualms about smuggling drugs get involved in smuggling babies?’
‘If the aversion to drugs is just a personal quirk, why not? Involvement in a simple cash trade like that . . .’
‘A simple cash trade! What do you mean?’
He smiled and shook his head at her. ‘That’s what it is. You may not like it, but people across the border want to sell and people here want to buy. It’s not like getting involved in smuggling dissidents out, where the Triads’ interests and the Chinese authorities’ interests are in conflict. With the babies everyone can make some money. And for the Triads there will be an added incentive – all those useful contacts they’ll be making across the border in advance of 1997.’
He was right, she thought, as she made her way back down in the lift. She was in danger of becoming a slave to her own rage. But then a picture of the English Marine pulling the spluttering baby out of the water the night before came into her mind, scattering her good resolutions. She drove back towards Central, wondering for the umpteenth time how the father she had loved so much could have spent his professional life wringing profit from such casual barbarism.
The two-mile trip to Stonecutters’ Island took only a few minutes in the Navy launch, but it was nice to be out on the water, and to feel the oppressive heat and clamour of the city falling away behind them. The new naval base seemed well provided with home comforts, which presumably tempered the inevitable sense of distance from the real world. Marker found himself feeling nostalgic for HMS Tamar and its location at the neon-lit centre of things.
After the two men had been shown to their neat, cabin-like rooms, Marker reported to the base commander, who had already been privately briefed by the Admiralty, and made a phone call to his CO in Poole.
‘I think it would be a good idea to get the RAF to have a look for the Ocean Carousel,’ he told Colhoun, ‘but I don’t want to have to explain myself to any more people than I have to. This town’s not what I’d call tight-lipped.’
‘I understand,’ Colhoun said. ‘Just give me your number and I’ll get the local head man to call you back.’
Twenty minutes later, Wing Commander David Barton was on the line.
Marker told him what he wanted.
‘Do you want to go up yourself?’ Barton asked unexpectedly.
‘Yeah, that’d be great.’
‘We’ll expect you Thursday morning then. Don’t forget your goggles.’
Marker put down the phone, feeling better than he had for some time. Two and a half more days, and they should at least know where Cafell and Finn were.
Fergie had also been on the phone. ‘Chief Inspector Ormond will see you at the OSCG office at nine in the morning,’ he told Marker. ‘And you can imagine how thrilled he sounded at the p
rospect.’
‘Another friend of Bellamy’s?’
‘No idea. Anyway, you seem to have the rest of the day off, you lucky buggers. Any ideas?’
‘Yeah, lunch, and I don’t mean the galley. Can we get a lift back to Kowloon?’
‘No probs . . .’
‘And how do we get back?’
Fergie ripped the top sheet off a convenient jotting pad and wrote down a number. ‘When you’ve had your fill of the bright lights just call the duty officer and they’ll send a boat for you.’
Marker was impressed. ‘We must be royalty,’ Marker told Dubery. ‘Fancy some lunch and sightseeing?’
‘Aye, why not?’ the Scot said, sounding less than completely convinced.
The afternoon sun was at its hottest, but the shadow of the containers had already reached Cafell’s knees – another few minutes and he would be wholly immersed in the relative cool.
He was thinking about Ellen. In fact he seemed to think about little else. Was that just because she was far away? he wondered. Did she occupy all his thinking spaces when he was in England?
He pictured her in the classroom at the Bournemouth school, the way he had seen her through the window a few weeks before when he had arrived early to pick her up. There had been kids all over the place, paint everywhere. Her hair had escaped from its confinement, and she had held it back from her eyes as she leaned over the table to look at a painting.
He saw her in her flat later that same day, remembered the Van Morrison album playing, the Indian bedspread, the look on her face in the candlelight after they had made love.
He had never known anything like this before.
He thought about what she would say if she could see him now, sitting in this space two hundred yards away from a gang of murderers. She would be upset and angry, worried for him and indignant that he could put himself at risk in such a way. She would see it as playing games, but she would also love him for it. Like his maps and models – she loved the fact of them even as she thought them childish. She loved the boy in him, but still wanted him to grow up.
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