Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  ‘It can’t be six . . .’ Cafell began indignantly.

  ‘The weather’s changed,’ Finn told him, and as if to emphasize the point large spots of rain suddenly began to fall.

  Cafell looked up. Dark grey clouds were swirling in the rectangle of sky above them, the wind was whipping through the gaps between the containers, and the ship itself was bucking in the rough swell, sending great fountains of spray up and across the loaded deck.

  ‘A spot of drizzle,’ Finn shouted. The rain was getting heavier now, the wind still rising, the clouds almost black. ‘Still think we should tie ourselves up?’

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Cafell yelled back. He had no real idea what they were in for, only that it was likely to be bad. ‘And we can tie a rope between us,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘Great,’ Finn shouted. ‘If we’re found dead the headline will be "SBS Men in Gay Bondage Scandal".’

  ‘I didn’t know you cared,’ Cafell yelled. He turned with the coil of rope in his hand, saw the man standing there in the rain, mouth open and eyes wide with surprise, and for the first time in his life appreciated the meaning of the expression ‘time stood still’.

  In an single instant he seemed to take in every detail of the scene, from the stains on the man’s T-shirt to the curly black hair plastered across his forehead, from the rivulet of water running down the container behind him to the tattoo on his forearm. He let the rope drop from his own hand, saw the gun snag in the man’s waistband, and felt his own grasp the butt of the Browning. There was a flash of detonation, a triple ping as the bullet ricocheted around the walls of their hiding place, and then his own finger was squeezing the trigger, the man jerking back. The dead feet slipped on the wet steel, and the body slid backwards over the edge and into the wave-lashed channel between containers.

  For a few seconds Cafell and Finn stood immobilized by shock, the rain streaming down their faces. Then they advanced together to the rim, and stole a glance outwards. Below them the dead man was being buffeted by the water sluicing down the channel; fifty yards away they saw the flicker of a light moving away from them in the direction of the superstructure. There was no other sign of movement.

  Cafell pointed at the corpse below and made a lifting gesture. If the pirates found the two of them, he decided, a body here or there wasn’t likely to make much difference.

  Finn had come to the same conclusion. He went back for the rope, attached it to one of the container handles and swung himself down into the channel. Between waves he tied a harness around the dead man’s shoulders, helped lift as Cafell pulled the corpse up, and then climbed back up the re-lowered rope.

  There were two bullets in the man’s upper trunk, both within inches of the heart. And although he knew it was ridiculous Cafell felt glad that both of them had been responsible for the fatal shots. ‘We’ll give him to the sea after dark,’ he said in Finn’s ear.

  ‘If the sea doesn’t take him first,’ Finn shouted, as the huge ship seemed to hang in the air and a cloud of spray flung itself over them.

  As her train pulled into the Mongkok MTR station Rosalie took the sudden decision to visit Dr Chen. After all, she was still wearing the anonymous blouse and trousers she had put on for the early-morning stake-out, so there was no reason for anyone to think she was anything other than a potential patient. She used a public phone to leave a message for Li and started off through the narrow streets towards the doctor’s address, wondering what fictional ailment she should claim to have.

  The block in which Dr Chen lived was almost visibly crumbling, the lift out of order, the pale-green paint peeling off the stairway walls. She supposed she was breaking an unspoken bargain in coming here – or at least she would be if it hadn’t already been broken by their digging out his address and following him on the night of the boat chase. She hoped he would understand, and that he wouldn’t use it as a reason to clam up on her.

  His two-room flat was at the far end of a dimly lit corridor, and a piece of paper pinned to the door announced his profession. Before knocking she pulled back the thin curtain flapping in the open window and looked out at the fire-escape. In the narrow street below a group of children were playing with a cat, and probably not with the best of intentions. She yelled at them, all five faces turned upwards, and the cat saw its opportunity to escape, hightailing it down the street.

  As she raised her hand to rap on the door she heard movement inside the flat. He was in.

  She brought her fingers down on the thin wood and waited. No one came. She rapped again, wondering if she had imagined the noise. Or perhaps it had been a cat.

  ‘The doctor is out,’ a voice said in Cantonese from the other side of the door.

  ‘When will he be back?’ she shouted.

  There was a noticeable pause. ‘Tomorrow,’ the voice decided.

  Rosalie reached for the holster in the small of her back and took out the handgun. ‘Open the door – police,’ she shouted, and remembered in the nick of time to take a large sideways step.

  The door seemed almost to explode as a hail of bullets ripped through it. There was a sharp stab of pain, the wet warmth of blood on her face, and for a second she thought she’d been shot.

  She backed into the wall a few feet from the door and pulled out the splinter of wood which was still hanging from her cheek.

  ‘I’ll make a deal,’ the man shouted from inside.

  She said nothing. They were on the fourth floor, and to reach either stairs or fire-escape the man had to come out through the door.

  Further down the corridor another door opened, and a woman’s head poked gingerly out. ‘Go and call the police,’ Rosalie shouted at her. ‘The doctor’s been killed,’ she added, guessing both that this was the case and that he had been popular with the people he lived among. She had spoken to him for only ten minutes on the telephone, and she had liked him.

  The woman ran off towards the stairs, hopefully to do what she’d been told.

  Inside the doctor’s flat an animated conversation broke out. Either the man was talking to himself or there were two of them.

  There was still only the one door.

  Should she wait or take the initiative? Silence suddenly descended behind the door, as if a decision had been made.

  She decided to give them another option. ‘Throw out your guns and then come out with your hands in the air,’ she yelled, her voice sounding shriller than she intended. This was a situation which she’d been through in several training simulations, but never in real life. Still, her hands were steady on the gun, and her head felt wonderfully clear, as if the needs of the moment had driven out all the rage and confusion of her visit to the hospital.

  ‘We’re coming out,’ a voice said, but there was nothing submissive in the tone.

  She sank to one knee as the door was pulled back. Two handguns thudded into the threadbare carpet and lay there like unexploded grenades. One thing was certain – neither of these had been responsible for shredding the door.

  The first man edged slowly into view, hands above his head. He was not much more than twenty, wearing jeans, Nike T-shirt and bright orange trainers. ‘This is all a mistake,’ he started to say, and the other man stepped suddenly out behind him, his machine-pistol looking for a target.

  She squeezed the trigger, taking the man in the centre of the chest and throwing him backwards. His partner was reaching for one of the guns on the floor, eyes watching her gun swing towards him, and it seemed as if a message from the brain reached the hand at the last possible moment, freezing it in motion, the fingers a few inches from the gleaming butt.

  Her finger loosened on the trigger, almost reluctantly. His face broke into a grin, and they stared at each other for a moment, bound by mutual loathing.

  ‘Get back,’ she said. ‘On the floor, face down.’

  She back-heeled the two guns down the corridor like a footballer. Blood was turning the wounded man’s blue T-shirt purple, and bloody froth was bubb
ling between his lips.

  The sound of approaching sirens was floating through the open window, and she stood there, shoulder against the wall, until the uniforms arrived. Then, with a heavy heart, she went into the flat.

  Dr Chen, a small, thin man with a wispy grey beard, was half lying, half sitting in the cupboard which contained his jars of herbs. His throat was slit, the blood still wet on his shirt front.

  Rosalie leaned back against a wall and closed her eyes.

  She spent the next two hours answering the questions of the local police and making a formal statement detailing her version of the afternoon’s events. Writing down the short history of her dealings with the doctor, she felt close to despair. No doubt the two young men – assuming the injured one survived – would get life for his murder, but securing a conviction against the men who had ordered it seemed a forlorn hope. So try, try and try again, she told herself, echoing her father. Dr Chen had cared enough to put himself at risk, and she would do her best to see he hadn’t died in vain.

  It was almost seven when she remembered that Marker was waiting for her at the Horse and Groom.

  She couldn’t see him this evening, not feeling like this.

  After leaving the OSCG building that morning the two SBS men had gone their separate ways. Dubery had headed off in search of the silk which Helen had asked for, and Marker had spent the morning strolling round the Central and Wan Chai districts. After lunch he had taken a tram out to Shau Kei Wan, where he had pottered around the market for an hour and then sat by the sea watching the fishing boats go by. Back in Wan Chai he had scrounged a shower in the YMCA, changed into the shirt he had bought that afternoon, and arrived at the Horse and Groom with half an hour to spare.

  He was on his second glass of Merlot when a young and almost obscenely bronzed Australian bartender arrived at his table with a portable phone.

  ‘Callum, I’m sorry, I can’t make it this evening,’ Rosalie said. ‘I’m still working,’ she added.

  She sounded a million miles away, he thought. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘Can we try again tomorrow?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said, but there didn’t seem to be any feeling behind the words.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but I will be. It’s just work. I’ll see you tomorrow, same time, same place.’

  ‘OK, but ...’

  There was the click of disconnection. He took the phone back to the bar, and got a sympathetic look in return. ‘Can’t trust ’em, mate,’ the Aussie said. ‘Another glass?’

  Marker started to say yes and then thought better of it. There was something pathetic about drinking himself into a stupor just because their date had been put off for twenty-four hours.

  Outside, the colony was girding its neon loins for another night. He walked west along Lockhart Street, passing the brightly lit RHKP building where she worked, and on into Central. The buildings of HMS Tamar, where he had stayed on his last visit, were shrouded in darkness. They were presumably awaiting demolition.

  He cut through behind City Hall to the Star Ferry terminal, and paid the extra dollars to ride on the upper deck of the green and white boat. The gates opened, the crowd bustled aboard, and they were underway almost immediately, heading for Kowloon’s wall of light on the other side of the harbour. It always reminded Marker of New York’s Staten Island ferry, on which he and Penny had once spent most of a morning mapping out their future together.

  Once ashore he made for the bottom of Nathan Road, and then walked briskly northwards up the Golden Mile’s tunnel of neon. The whores were already out in numbers, their shiny cheongsams reflecting the colours of the Chinese characters which blazed from the shop fronts and hanging signs. Oblivious to them, he walked on, purging the disappointment from his system with every step.

  In the South China Sea the typhoon seemed to have reached its apogee. Night had added its darkness to the storm’s, the rain was doing a passable imitation of a waterfall, and the wind was lashing it into their faces with the power of a water cannon. If this storm had a still centre, the Ocean Carousel had managed to miss it.

  The two men had looped the rope through handles on the containers, the straps of the bergens and the belts around their waists. Despite being soaked to the skin and colder than they had been since leaving England, both men were feeling thoroughly exhilarated. There was majesty and beauty in the frantic patterns of wind and water, as the storm crashed and danced around the lumbering behemoth of the ship. Only the dead man’s body struck a sombre note, and not long after dark a particularly strong eddy of water washed it back over the edge of their loft among the stacked containers.

  Around eight o’clock the rain suddenly slackened and stopped. As the sky began to break up, the clouds seemed to be racing each other along in huge arcs, like a celestial Catherine wheel. And then it seemed as if someone switched the wind off, reducing the sky to its normal speed.

  The body was back where it had fallen the first time, the head badly disfigured by two hours of violent contact with the steel container sides. This time Cafell went down the rope. He edged an eye around the corner of the last container on each side of the ship, but there were no lights advancing towards him.

  He went back for the body, grabbed the ankles and pulled it across to the edge of the deck. The dead eyes stared up at him from out of the ruined head.

  Cafell took a deep breath. ‘If by some remote chance there’s a God up there wants to claim him,’ he murmured, gently sliding the body over the side, ‘here he is.’

  He thought he heard a faint splash far below.

  By the time he’d regained their hidey-hole the moon was out, the stars flickering brilliantly between the thinning clouds. The churning of the ship through the rolling sea was the only sound to break the silence.

  ‘We’d better both stay awake tonight,’ he told Finn. It was the first time in several hours he hadn’t needed to shout.

  ‘I suppose they’ll come looking for sonny boy.’

  Cafell nodded. ‘They’ll look, but probably not very hard. They’ll assume he was washed overboard.’

  ‘They’re not likely to look up here,’ Finn said.

  ‘Let’s hope.’

  Rosalie got home a little after nine, still numb from her experiences that day. She supposed she ought to feel hungry, but nothing in the fridge looked like a gastronomic treat in waiting, so she settled for a packet of garlic breadsticks and a can of Guinness. On the TV a panel of Englishwomen in twin-sets and pearls were earnestly discussing the latest Charles and Di revelations. As if anyone in Hong Kong cared.

  She picked up the phone and punched out the number of the Kwong Wah Hospital, which was where the Triad foot soldier had been taken. Eventually someone told her that he had been operated on, and was expected to survive.

  She felt a surge of relief, and then anger for feeling it.

  The phone rang in her hands, making her jump. Guessing it was Marker, she picked it up.

  ‘If you don’t find a way to terminate your investigation,’ a man said in Cantonese, ‘you will be next.’

  She kept silent, hoping he would say something else, but there was only a click.

  Dubery’s head had felt better. A lot better. He tried taking deep breaths of the cold air coming in through the open taxi window, but it didn’t seem to help.

  After spending most of the daylight hours in Stanley and Aberdeen he had made his way back to Stonecutters’ Island, thinking that he’d have a beer in the bar and then get an early night. He managed the beer, but had then been persuaded by some friendly Marines to accompany them back to the mainland for a few more. There were four of them: Mac, a pug-nosed fellow-Scot from Falkirk, the lanky Steve from South Shields, a curly-haired Welshman called Bev, and an overweight giant from God knew where whom everyone called Shaky.

  They had started out in Harbour City’s Canton Disco, but after four pints and a near-punch-up with some evil-looking locals, had decided to move on. Steve ha
d suggested a place called Madame Chang’s, but Bev had disagreed. ‘They bore me,’ he’d screamed, loud enough for most of Kowloon to hear. ‘Little China dolls – they’re more like cash registers than women. They take you in, give you a screw, spit you out and take your money, all with the same expression on their faces. It’s not only fucking boring – it’s boring fucking!’

  ‘OK,’ Mac had said equably. ‘Since you’ve all been good, I’ll take you somewhere different.’

  And they were on their way there now, driving up Nathan Road in the general direction of China.

  The cab eventually stopped, which was more than Dubery could say for his head. They all got out, and Mac paid the cabbie – ‘Here y’a go, slitty-eyes, and don’t spend it all on opium’ – before leading the group across the road and into what looked like a private house.

  Inside, though, there was a bar.

  They had just finished ordering when a middle-aged woman appeared. ‘Mr Mac,’ she said with apparent pleasure.

  ‘Bring ’em in,’ Mac ordered.

  She disappeared through a curtain, and the five men sprawled on the available couches.

  A few moments later she came back, a line of girls behind her. One had no arms, one was a hunchback, one was clearly blind. ‘She no speak,’ the woman said, indicating the fourth girl. The fifth, seated in a cart, was legless. All five were beautifully attired in silk.

  Dubery could hardly believe his eyes.

  ‘I think Shaky should take the blind one,’ Bev said. ‘Then no one’ll have to look at him.’

  ‘I suppose we should give the SBS first dibs,’ Mac said. ‘He may be a prat, but he is our guest.’

  ‘No,’ Dubery said, ‘not for me, lads. I’m a happily married man.’

  ‘She’s ten thousand miles away, you silly fucker. Come on, take your pick.’ There was an edge in Mac’s voice now, as if he was determined to take refusal as a personal affront.

  ‘Maybe he like straight girl,’ the woman suggested, and as if by magic another girl materialized.

  ‘OK,’ Dubery heard himself say. He would go upstairs with her, and then once they were alone he would explain that he was married.