by Chan Ho-Kei
Helplessly, Kwan shook his head, and reached into his jacket pocket.
‘Superintendent Kwan, you’re not going to tell me you have a concealed recorder, and our whole conversation is on tape? That wouldn’t help you, because I haven’t admitted to anything,’ mocked TT.
‘No, quite the opposite. If you’d been taping this, I’d be in more trouble than you.’ Kwan produced a small glass bottle containing a single expended bullet.
‘This is...’ TT grew wary.
‘If you want to talk dirty tricks, I have as many up my sleeve as you.’ Kwan held the bottle up between his index finger and thumb. ‘This is the bullet that Shek Boon-sing took to the chest.’
‘Why are you showing me this?’
‘I’ve swapped it,’ said Kwan carelessly.
‘Swapped it for what?’
‘A bullet from that Type 67 pistol – the one that killed the crooked lawyer, Ngai Yiu-chung, last year.’
‘You...’
‘I’ve already left instructions for Arms Experts to re-examine the bullets from Shek, Jaguar and Mad Dog’s bodies. Tomorrow’s Sunday so they won’t be in the lab, but when they get to work on Monday, they’ll discover that there was an error in the previous report, and the first shot Shek sustained was actually from a Type 67 pistol. This “evidence” will conflict with your report, forcing the Internal Investigation guys to look at other possibilities, such as the “hypothesis” I’ve just told you about, the only difference being that you got flustered while shooting Lee Wan and Shek Boon-sing, accidentally using the wrong gun on Shek, which means the bullet found in his body doesn’t fit with your version of events. That puts you under serious suspicion.’
‘You... You falsified evidence!’ TT stood up in shock.
‘You’re free to report me to Internal Investigations, but like you, I didn’t leave behind a trace of my “crime”. And you can try breaking into the evidence locker yourself, but Arms Experts holds a lot of weaponry; naturally, security is tight.’
TT sat again, his eyes darting wildly.
‘Just give up. This is checkmate.’
Kwan had considered the possibility that TT, backed into a corner, would assault him, but that didn’t seem likely. As soon as he struck the first blow, he’d be admitting failure. And TT was a gambler – he wouldn’t give up as long as there was one day left in which he could try to turn the situation in his favour.
‘That’s all I have to say.’ Kwan stood up, returning the photographs, bullet and notepad to his pocket. ‘TT, if you run off or go into hiding, you’ve lost. If you want another throw of the dice, your best bet is to have your day in court. See if you can get away with a manslaughter conviction, or escape life imprisonment by pleading insanity. For that to work, you’ll have to turn yourself in before the new evidence about the bullet comes back from Arms Experts.’
Kwan had reached the front door, and TT still hadn’t moved a muscle. Kwan turned back. ‘One last thing. If – just supposing, if – you were the culprit, how would you have lured Shek to the hotel, had Jaguar not come into the takeaway for lunch?’
TT looked up and blinked at Kwan, speaking slowly. ‘I’d have said I’d spotted someone suspicious and needed to tail him, left Ka Fai Mansions on my own, and called one of Jaguar’s pagers from the payphone. Afterwards, as long as I claimed the suspicious individual I was following had made a phone call, it would seem like one of Shek’s underlings had warned him.’
‘But how would you leave a message if they couldn’t call the operator?’
‘The standard code has “Ocean Terminal”, “hotel” and “room number”. You could cobble the message together out of those. Of course, they might misunderstand that as the hotel at Ocean Terminal rather than the Ocean Hotel, but the Terminal Hotel is posh enough that it wouldn’t have room numbers with a single digit.’
‘But the command centre was intercepting all the pagers, so Edgar Ko would have seen the same message. Wouldn’t that have exposed the murder of Mandy Lam?’
‘Not if the message said Room 3 instead of 4.’
Kwan recalled the empty Room 3, and without a further word, pulled open the door and left TT’s home. TT still hadn’t stirred, as if his mind was fully occupied searching for a way to reverse his fortunes.
Kwan Chun-dok walked down the street, rubbing shoulders with the throngs of tourists, his heart full of sorrow. TT was an intelligent man, and back when they’d worked together, Kwan had seen great potential in him. Yet he’d chosen a dark path. The day before, Kwan had been lying when he told Edgar Ko he wouldn’t reveal the name of the suspect for fear of a leak from Internal Investigations. The truth was he’d wanted to give TT a chance to surrender himself. He was still anxious about whether he’d dealt with the matter in the best way, if he’d done everything he could to make TT give himself up. Kwan Chun-dok could be ruthless in pursuing criminals, but when it came to someone who’d once been an excellent subordinate, he was simply unable to go after them as harshly.
He reflected that there was no sadder sight than a fine example of a police officer turning to evil.
But this time, Kwan Chun-dok was wrong.
He got the news on Monday morning. Tang ‘TT’ Ting, leader of Mong Kok Crime Unit Team 3, had walked into the station, put the barrel of a gun into his mouth and shot himself dead.
*
‘You mean to say, you didn’t actually swap the bullets?’ Keith Tso asked.
‘Yes, I was just trying to scare him. Swapping a few documents in the Identification Bureau, I could maybe have managed. But pulling this kind of trick in Forensic Firearms Examination Bureau wouldn’t be that easy,’ said Kwan.
The day they got news of TT’s death, Kwan went to Internal Investigations with his suspicions, evidence and data about the Ka Fai Mansions incident. The following morning, Tso turned up to see how he was doing, and Kwan told him everything.
‘I discovered something else this morning.’ Kwan flipped open an old case file. ‘The lawyer who was murdered at the beginning of last year, Mr Ngai, was a frequent visitor at the New Metropolis – the nightclub Mandy Lam worked at. This could be a coincidence, but perhaps TT killed the lawyer too.’
‘Really?’
‘There’s no concrete evidence, so this is just a hypothesis. I don’t know how I’d ever prove it – after all, we have no way of knowing when TT acquired the Type 67,’ Kwan shrugged. ‘But if this were the case, then Mandy Lam may not have been killed for something as simple as threatening to stop TT’s wedding. She might have been an accessory to TT’s murder of Ngai Yiu-chung.’
‘That’s possible. She was willing to wait for him at Ka Fai Mansions, which means they must have known a fair number of each other’s secrets.’
If TT really were Ngai’s killer, Kwan thought, even he would never know if he’d done it to make his work easier, or if Mandy Lam had goaded him into it because of some dispute. Unless new evidence turned up, this would wind up a cold case, the truth never to be known.
‘So instead of turning himself in, TT killed himself out of guilt,’ sighed Keith.
‘No, that bastard felt no guilt. He was making a big show to me – that I’d never beat him.’ Kwan’s brow was creased, unhappiness filling his face.
‘Making a big show? Ah Dok, aren’t you reading too much into this?’
‘Keith, this fellow’s aims in life might have been exactly the opposite of mine, but I can’t deny that our brains worked similarly. To people like us, existence is also a sort of tool. I understand that each life is precious, and would risk my own to save another person, but he had no such restriction. For him, it was worth sacrificing his own life to gain a psychological victory.’
‘So you’re saying he’s the real winner here,’ said Keith despairingly. ‘Campbell is pondering whether to make the matter public.’ Senior Assistant Commissioner William Campbell – Kim Wai-lim in Cantonese – was the Director of Crime and Security.
‘What’s there to decide?’
‘The higher-ups are thinking about covering up the whole thing, and pushing all the blame onto Shek Boon-sing. The official story will be that TT committed suicide out of depression at not being able to save the hostages.’
‘What!’ yelled Kwan. ‘He’s planning to lie to the public? Don’t Lee Wan, Bunny Chin and all the other innocents deserve the truth?’
‘Chief Superintendent Yuan from Internal Investigations has had a hand in this,’ Tso explained. ‘He said the incident would damage the force’s reputation. After all, there’s no definitive evidence to show TT was the killer, and the dead are beyond help. Putting the blame on the police won’t bring them back to life.’
‘And Campbell has actually agreed to this?’
‘Ah Dok, you know how complicated the political situation is. Campbell’s a Brit, and with the Handover just eight years away, he’s obliged to pay more attention to what the Chinese say. I heard that when the Commissioner retires this year, he’ll be replaced by a local. Our first Chinese Commissioner. The position of the Englishmen in the force is only going to get lower and lower.’
‘Even so, isn’t he hurting police morale with his actions?’ Kwan’s face was absolutely despairing.
‘He says it’s for “the greater good”. If we lose the trust of the populace, that will only benefit the criminal element.’
‘But we’re shoring up their trust with a fiction. Does that trust still mean anything?’ Kwan’s fists were clenched.
‘There’s no help for it. The Ka Fai Mansions incident made us look so bad, the higher-ups don’t think we can take another blow.’
Kwan rubbed his temples, and was silent for a long time. Eventually, he said, ‘Keith, have you ever been in Statue Square, looked up at the Legislative Council Building?’
‘I guess so?’ Tso had no idea what he was getting at.
‘And you know it used to be the old Supreme Court building, which was then taken over by the Council in 1978,’ said Kwan slowly. ‘Because it used to be a court, there’s a statue of Themis above the porch roof, representing justice.’
‘Ah, I know the one you mean, that Greek goddess with the sword and balancing scales.’
‘Every time I walk past it, I look up at her. She has a blindfold over her eyes, to show that justice is blind, hence treating everyone fairly. The balance shows that the courts will weigh out responsibility in a just manner, and the sword is ultimate power. I’ve always thought that the police are that sword. In order to eliminate evil, we have to possess immense strength. But we’re not the scales. We use everything we have to catch criminals, or to trick them into giving themselves away, but all I’ve ever done is present them to the scales, so that justice can weigh them and decide if they’re guilty. We shouldn’t have the power to decide what the “greater good” is.’
Keith Tso smiled grimly. ‘I understand everything you’re saying. But if Superintendent Yuan insists, what can we do?’
Kwan sighed. ‘Yuan’s reasoning is that the force has taken one too many beatings to withstand another scandal?’
‘Right.’
‘Then if we were to score a great victory, redeeming ourselves, and at the same time announce that we’d found a traitor in our midst, then good and bad would balance out. I guess the top brass could handle that?’
‘Campbell would probably be all right with that.’
‘Then please tell him that within a month from now – no, from the Ka Fai Mansions incident – I’ll capture our most wanted criminal, Shek Boon-tim. And I’ll get him alive, and make him spit out everything he knows about his criminal empire.’
‘A month?’ gaped Tso. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No, but even if I have to go without sleep or rest, chasing him to the ends of the earth, I’ll still find Shek Boon-tim.’
Tso knew that once Kwan Chun-dok got serious, even an imp- ossible task like this had a chance of success.
‘All right, I’ll talk to Campbell. I hope you give him a good show.’
Kwan nodded.
Just as Tso was about to leave, Kwan thought of something else. ‘Oh, and do you know where that Sonny Lok ended up?’
‘Not sure. Probably kicked back to uniformed patrol. Why?’
‘I think it’s a bit unfair for him to get punished over this,’ said Kwan. ‘He may have disobeyed an order from a superior, but his steadfastness in wanting to preserve the life he was certain he could save – I can’t say that’s wrong. If he’d gone by the book and blindly followed instructions, Constable Fan Si-tat would have bled to death, and Lok would have been shot dead by TT. Before we’re police officers, we’re human beings. By that meas- ure, I think Lok showed some potential. Someone like that would only cause his colleagues trouble in the lower ranks, but if you placed him in a Crime Unit, he might excel.’
‘In that case, I’ll see if Campbell will give the rookie one more chance. It’d be awkward to leave him in Mong Kok. Maybe we’ll transfer him to Hong Kong Island or somewhere like that.’
‘I hope this time my feeling is right,’ said Kwan Chun-dok with a helpless smile.
V
BORROWED PLACE:
1977
1
BRRRING...
Bleary-eyed, Stella Hill heard the telephone ring piercingly.
Brrring...
She rolled over and pressed a pillow over her ears. She didn’t know how long she’d slept, only that it wasn’t enough.
Brrring...
The phone was indifferent to Stella’s feelings, like a loan shark come to collect payment.
‘Liz... Liz...’ Stella called for her son’s nanny. ‘Liz, could you answer the phone?’
Raising her voice for that last sentence, Stella’s brain began to clear. She remembered the dream she’d been dragged out of – her husband and son were at their old home in England, watching a sci-fi programme, when the main character, ‘the Doctor’, suddenly leaped from the TV screen into their living room and began discussing the issue of debt with her husband. Just as he was saying the Martians could reduce the Hills’ financial obligations, the doorbell rang – a bunch of lawyers sent by their creditor had arrived at the front door.
Of course, it wasn’t the doorbell, but that relentless telephone.
‘Liz! Liz!’ she called, getting out of bed. It was after twelve, so Liz and the kid ought to be at home, but no matter how Stella shouted, there was no response. No movement in the air except that shrill ringing. No point yelling, she realized – if Liz could hear Stella’s voice, she could certainly also hear that maddening bell.
Brrring...
Stella pulled on her slippers and opened the bedroom door. Striding out into the living room, she found it empty, as she’d thought. No Liz, and no sign of her son. She looked at the clock, which showed 12.46 p.m. Bright sun shot from the balcony into the living room. She snatched up the receiver anxiously.
‘Hello?’ she snapped.
‘Are you a relative of Alfred Hill’s?’ It was a man speaking imperfect English – must be a local.
‘Yes?’ Hearing her son’s name, Stella was suddenly wide awake.
‘And this is Nairn House on Princess Margaret Road?’
‘Yes... Why? Has... has something happened to Alfred?’ With a lurch, she realized that her son and nanny being absent, and now this stranger’s phone call, could mean a car accident. When she’d got home this morning, she’d bumped into Liz and Alfred on their way out. The school was no more than ten minutes away, and her husband said that ten-year-old Alfred should walk there and back on his own. But Stella was wary of this strange city, full of people with different-coloured skin speaking an unfamiliar language, and urged Liz never to leave her son’s side. Alfred was in the fourth year of primary school, and only had classes in the morning. He normally came back with Liz at half past twelve, so finding him missing now, and this man on the phone knowing his name and address, Stella naturally imagined the worst.
‘Are you Alfred’s mother?’ He ignore
d her question.
‘Yes, yes. Is Alfred...’
‘Don’t worry. He’s fine...’
Stella let out a breath, but didn’t expect what came next.
‘...but he’s in my hands. If you want him to come home safe, you’ll have to pay a ransom.’
Stella was frozen. These were nightmare words, spoken by kidnappers in movies or books, and for a moment she couldn’t understand what they meant.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I said, Alfred Hill is in my hands. If I don’t get my money, I’ll kill him. If you call the police, I’ll kill him too.’
A cold shiver transfixed her heart, and her scalp grew numb. She couldn’t breathe. Finally, the meaning of those words sank in.
‘You – you have Alfred?’ She turned back to the empty living room. ‘Liz! Alfred!’
‘Madam, please don’t waste your energy. I need to talk to your husband – I assume he handles the finances? Please ask him to come home as quickly as possible. I’ll call again at half past two. If he isn’t back by then, don’t blame me if I take it out on your son.’
‘You’re talking nonsense! My son isn’t with you!’ she screamed, trying hard to keep from trembling.
‘Madam, I’d suggest you don’t make me angry. If I’m not happy, it’ll be your darling son who suffers.’ The voice remained steadfastly calm. ‘You’re free to disbelieve me, but then you’ll never see your child again... Ah, my mistake, I should have said you’ll never see your child alive again. As a token of my sincerity, I’ve got a present for you – I left it by the streetlight outside the main entrance of Nairn House. It might help you to decide whether to call your husband.’
The line went dead. Stella’s mind whirled with confusion. Flinging down the receiver, she rushed through the apartment screaming her son’s name. She rushed into his room, which was empty, and then the bathroom, the storeroom, the study, the living room, the kitchen, Liz’s bedroom – he wasn’t in any of them. She was the only person in this huge apartment.
She looked at the clock. Little hand between 12 and 1, big hand on 11. At this time, her son ought to be sitting at the dining table, eating the lunch Liz had made for him. He was a reserved child, and barely smiled at his parents, but always ate his lunch with gusto. Stella and her husband had been in Hong Kong almost three years now, and still couldn’t get used to Chinese food, but their son had adapted quickly. He was especially fond of the tofu soup Liz prepared. Staring at the desolate table, Stella felt something was out of sync, in a way she couldn’t quite put into words.