by Chan Ho-Kei
At the moment, his team had just received a new case which he was slowly realizing was on a far bigger scale than anything he’d seen before.
The previous spring, April 1976, the Commerce and Industry Department’s Anti-Smuggling Squad had found a cache of drugs in a building near Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market. Several men were arrested and charged, and four months later, the police swept twenty-three locations across the territory, confiscating more than twenty thousand dollars’ worth of heroin and arresting a further eight suspects, including the purported mastermind of the Fruit Market smuggling ring, all of whom asked to speak to someone from the commission while they were being held, claiming they could expose organizational corruption in law enforcement. After being found guilty a month ago, they were now formally prosecution witnesses for the commission as part of their plea deal. The gang had paid handsomely for police inattention, not expecting they’d get caught a year later by Commerce and Industry, which took a more serious view of the issue. And so they chose the nuclear option, in order to teach these ineffectual police a lesson.
The drug pushers had kept detailed accounts of the bribery in code. When they’d ‘paid squeeze’, they’d only had a vague idea of the rank and department of each receiving officer. Turning these hints into concrete allegations would require legwork. Investigators from the commission had to ensure that there were no conflicts of interest that would invalidate any of their evidence, which mean Graham had to scrutinize how all the people in this case were related and follow the paper trail carefully. He didn’t understand the Chinese words, so his colleagues translated them, and he was able to match up the symbols to dig deeper. Eventually he began to recognize certain Chinese characters – though these were of no help in his daily life, because they were just code words. For instance, ‘本C’ (‘this C’) meant ‘Yau Ma Tei Criminal Investigation Department’; ‘老國’ (‘the old country’) meant ‘Kowloon Regional Special Duties Squad’; ‘E’ meant ‘patrol car of the Emergency Unit’ and so on. In order to familiarize himself with these pictograms, which might as well have been symbols from a ouija board, Graham began bringing documents home to study them in his spare time. Of course, these sensitive materials normally lived in his safe. Not even Stella was allowed to look at them.
Very soon he saw how much larger the case was than he’d first thought. It didn’t just involve frontline officers. According to the testimonies and accounts they’d received, Regional and even Headquarters figures were involved, including some of superintendent rank and above. Graham and his colleagues realized that this was a far cry from a few dollars changing hands as ‘tea money’. Once they began, they’d surely turf out several hundred serving police officers, bringing down an entire network of corruption.
It felt like the commission’s three years of existence had all been preparation for the upcoming battle.
No matter how good the commission was at keeping things under wraps, nothing in this world can be entirely secret. Once the Fruit Market mastermind was brought to justice, rumours began circulating that the commission had the police in their sights. After this, there was an antagonistic relationship on both sides – the commission believed the police were a nest of vipers, while the police believed the commission had become drunk on power.
*
When Graham got back to Nairn House and heard what had happened from his terrified wife, apart from being shaken to the core, he was also unsure whether he ought to call the police.
The bloodstained shirt and clipped hair told him the kidnappers were serious. As an enforcement officer, he knew it was foolish to obey the criminals’ instruction not to call the police, because the odds of a kidnap victim being released after a ransom was paid were fifty–fifty. Having the police on your side was the best chance of rescuing the hostage. He’d seen a case in England where kidnappers had planned to kill a captive after they’d got the cash, but fortunately the police tailed them, found their hideout and saved her.
But what if the officer who responded to his call found out he was in the ICAC and neglected the case – or, worse, took advantage of the situation to extract revenge by obstructing a rescue, causing his son’s death?
As he hesitated by the phone, wrestling with the problem, Stella collapsed onto the sofa, clutching the little lock of hair and howling.
The seconds and minutes went by. Now it was half past one. Graham looked at the grimy uniform shirt, and thought of it being ripped off by these thugs. Now his son was sitting, bare-chested and terrified, in some dark room. That made up his mind. He picked up the receiver, knowing that even if the Royal Hong Kong Police had something against the commission he worked for, they were also the only people he could turn to at the moment. He simply had no choice.
3
‘HEADMAN, YOU STEP in this time,’ said Mac from the driver’s seat of the small car, not looking back.
‘Every minute counts in a kidnapping. With the hostage’s life on the line, of course they’d want to use our Big Bon.’ Before Kwan Chun-dok could answer, Sergeant Tsui had piped up from beside him. Inspectors were known in Hong Kong as ‘Bon-pans’, after an old term for Chinese officers who spoke English in the Qing Dynasty, so senior inspectors naturally became ‘Big Bons’, a coveted position in the regional departments.
Kwan Chun-dok didn’t agree or disagree, but smiled noncommittally and went back to staring out the window. In his current post at Kowloon Regional CID, he’d been promoted from inspector to senior inspector at the start of the year – his high crime-solving rate over the last few years must have caught his superiors’ attention. For Kwan to have such a high rank before the age of thirty had attracted admiring gazes, and of course jealous murmurs that he was the running dog of the British, that after two years in the UK he’d forgotten he was Chinese. Some also mocked him for being merely lucky, his swift ascent possible because he’d caught the eye of a white officer. But whether they were respectful or envious, no one in the force was in any doubt as to Kwan’s abilities. He was the real thing, and especially after returning from training in 1972, he’d performed outstandingly in every investigation he took part in.
Inspector Kwan had three subordinates in the car with him as they headed to Nairn House. The driver Mac – Mak Kin-si – was the youngest of the group, twenty-five, and only a year into his CID stint. Despite his inexperience, he was quick- witted and nimble, and once chased a suspect ten whole blocks before apprehending him. Next to him was twenty-eight-year-old Detective Police Constable Ronald Ngai, with Old Tsui and Kwan in the back. Despite his nickname, Sergeant Tsui was only thirty-six, but he had the face of a man pushing fifty.
Kwan had decided to use these three men mainly because they all spoke English. Police reports had to be in English, and there was a language requirement to join the force, but many officers’ ability still left a lot to be desired. There was a joke going round the force that a traffic cop had to write up a report about a collision, and the best he could do was, ‘One car come, one car go, two car kiss.’ Kwan didn’t want to take any chances. The caller had been a British national who didn’t understand the local language, and if any investigator present didn’t have fluent English, they’d lose a lot of time on translation – which they couldn’t afford in a kidnapping case.
‘Hey, Ron, have you checked the call tracer? Don’t want something going wrong like last time,’ said Old Tsui.
‘Yes,’ answered Ngai curtly. During the previous operation, he hadn’t noticed the fuse had blown on a surveillance device, which failed to tape the suspect’s words at a crucial moment. It took a week’s extra work to gather enough additional evidence to secure an arrest.
‘As long as you checked it,’ Old Tsui insisted, almost as if he was trying to irritate the younger man. ‘If anything goes wrong, that’s a life at stake. It’s not like we’d get another chance.’
‘I checked it three times.’ Ron Ngai turned around to glare at Old Tsui.
‘Uh huh.’ Old Tsui pursed
his lips, avoiding his gaze. Looking out the window, he added, ‘Wow, it’s posh around here. No wonder someone looked at that kid and saw dollar signs.’
‘But the caller is some British investigator brought in by the ICAC. He can’t be that rich, can he?’ interrupted Mac.
‘Who says?’ sneered Old Tsui. ‘You know Morris, in Shaw? I heard that fellow comes from quite the family – his dad and brother both have bottle caps, they’re in parliament or some high official post, I don’t know. Anyway, he’s come to Hong Kong to get some practical experience, and after a few years he’ll be back in Britain, in diplomacy or government intelligence, that sort of thing. This director who got his kid snatched, I’d wager his background’s about the same as Morris’s.’
‘Shaw’ was what they called Special Branch, on the grounds that its initials were the same as the movie studio Shaw Brothers. SB was, on the face of it, a police department, but in fact reported directly to MI5, and outsiders were only allowed to know a little about their cases some time after they’d been resolved. Morris was a high-ranking officer in Special Branch, whose father and brother were both in the British government and had been awarded OBEs – the decorations nicknamed ‘bottle caps’ in Hong Kong for their resemblance to a certain brand of soda-bottle top. In truth, the Morris family wasn’t particularly wealthy, but to many Chinese people, if you had an important government job or an official position with power, the money would come from somewhere.
‘So that guy’s from the commission – but when something goes wrong, he still has to lean on us,’ snorted Ngai. ‘He spends all day thinking of ways to hobble us, until we’re all walking on eggshells. Then the criminals come for him, and he has the nerve to ask us for help. The nerve.’
‘Ron, it doesn’t matter who he is, we’re just going to do our jobs.’ Kwan finally broke his silence.
The other three grew quiet at their leader’s words. Mac focused on driving, while Ron and Old Tsui stared out their windows. None of them noticed that Kwan was speaking less than usual, as if he had something on his mind.
When the car was still one block away from Nairn House, Kwan tapped Mac on the shoulder. ‘Stop here.’
‘Huh? We’re not there yet, Headman.’ Even as Mac spoke, his hands were obediently turning the wheel so the car drifted to the side of the road.
‘Old Tsui and I will walk there, and the two of you can drive to the parking lot. We don’t know if the kidnappers are watching,’ Kwan explained. ‘Ron, you and Mac tell reception that you’re here to see Liu Wah-ming from the Fire Department – he’s on the third floor – while Old Tsui and I will say we have an appointment with Senior Superintendent Campbell on eight. They’ve been notified, so if the receptionist calls up, we’ll be covered.’
‘Headman, we’re lying to reception too?’
‘Anyone might be an accomplice,’ said Kwan, getting out of the car. ‘When we’re all in, let’s meet in the corridor.’
*
Ding dong. As soon as they were all together, Kwan pressed the doorbell. Mac was gawping at everything – he’d never been to this sort of fancy lodging. He himself lived in North Point Police Quarters. With ten rooms to each floor, it was crowded and noisy. There were only two apartments on each floor here, and everything was so quiet. He couldn’t stop marvelling at the difference.
‘Good afternoon, I’m Inspector Kwan Chun-dok from Kowloon CID,’ said Kwan when the front door opened, producing his badge. His English was British-inflected, reminding his subordinates that he’d studied there. The accent alone would give him a certain intimacy with the white officers that they’d never have.
‘Uh... I’m Graham Hill. Come in.’
In the living room, Stella had stopped crying, but still sat disconsolately on the sofa, not reacting at all to the arrival of the police, as if her soul had left her body. Kwan looked around until he found the phone, and gave a look to Ngai, who walked over with his bag of tools and began fitting the recording and tracing devices. The other three sat on the longer sofa, facing Graham.
‘Mr Hill, was it you who made the report? Could you tell us what happened?’ Even that final ‘l’ in ‘Hill’ sounded British in Kwan’s mouth.
‘Uh, yes.’ Graham leaned forward. ‘My wife was woken by a phone call at twelve forty-five...’
Graham recounted the sequence of events he’d heard from Stella – the threatening words, the call to the school, discovering the uniform shirt and hair. As an experienced investigator, he knew how to describe an incident in an orderly manner. Without needing to ask a single question, Kwan learned the basics of the situation.
‘So he said he’d call again at two thirty.’ Kwan looked at his watch – it was 1.52 p.m. ‘Of course, he might phone earlier. Ron, is everything done?’
‘All connected, just testing it. Seems fine.’ Ngai popped in his earpiece and flashed the OK sign.
‘Mac, bag the shirt, hair and cardboard box. There might be fingerprints or other clues. Call the Identification Bureau and tell them to send someone dressed as a delivery person for it – don’t forget, the kidnappers might be watching.’
‘Got it.’
‘Mr Hill, I’d like to ask some questions about your family, to see if there are any leads there,’ Kwan said solemnly. ‘Had you recently encountered any suspicious individuals? Or has anything out of the ordinary happened?’
Graham shook his head. ‘No. I’ve been very busy, often doing overtime and getting home late. I haven’t met anyone at all, and I don’t think Stella’s mentioned anything strange.’ He turned to his wife and shook her arm. ‘Stella, Officer Kwan wants to know if you’ve seen any strange people or behaviour?’
Stella Hill looked up blankly. As her eyes swept across the policemen, she bit her lip and shook her head as if in pain. ‘No... nothing at all... but this is all my fault...’
‘Your fault?’ Kwan asked.
‘I’ve thought about nothing but work all these years. I’ve never taken good care of Alfred. His nanny did everything... Is God punishing me for being an unfit mother? I hardly said a word to him when I got back from work this morning. Oh God...’
‘Stella, you’re not to blame. I’ve neglected Alfred too.’ Graham hugged his wife, letting her bury her face in his chest.
‘Mr Hill, could you tell us if anyone goes in and out of your home regularly, other than the nanny?’ Kwan steered them back to the point.
‘There’s a cleaning lady, she comes twice a week.’
‘I’ll need the names, ages and addresses of both women. Could you write them down?’
‘Officer Kwan, do you think they’re... connected to what happened?’
‘In a kidnapping case, anyone who has regular contact with the victim is a suspect, especially employees who aren’t part of the family.’
Graham seemed to be swallowing a protest. Working in law enforcement, he knew Kwan was absolutely right, but just couldn’t believe it.
‘I really don’t think they’d harm Alfred. Of course, for the investigation, let me go and get the information.’ Graham stepped into his study, returning with a little notebook from his desk drawer.
‘The nanny’s name is... Leung Lai-ping. Her English name is Liz. She’s forty-two,’ he said, reading from the book.
‘Leung Lai-ping... how do you write “ping”?’ asked Kwan, scribbling down the information.
‘Like this.’ Graham indicated the characters on the page.
‘And that’s her address and phone number?’
‘Yes.’
Kwan, Old Tsui and Mac all took down this information.
‘And the cleaning lady?’ asked Kwan.
‘She’s Wang Tai-tai. Aged fifty.’
‘Mac, call both their homes, see if there’s anything we can find out.’ Mac went over to the phone and picked up the receiver.
‘Liz lives alone, and often spends the night here. She has her own room,’ added Graham. ‘Although we hired her as a nanny, she also helps us with cooking and man
ages the household.’
‘How many nights a week does she spend here?’
‘It varies, depending on Stella’s work.’ Graham turned to glance at his wife. ‘When she’s on the night shift at Kowloon Hospital, Liz stays here with Alfred, especially as I’m often late back too. If Stella and I get home at a reasonable hour, she’ll leave – she says she doesn’t want to be in the way. Oh, but we don’t think of her as an outsider.’
‘And the cleaner, Wang Tai-tai?’
‘I don’t know much about her.’ Graham shook his head. ‘We didn’t want to overburden Liz, so I hired Tai-tai to help with the cleaning. She only understands simple English, so I’ve hardly spoken to her. According to Liz, she lives with some “sisters” – I don’t think she plans to get married.’
‘That sounds like the Sun-tak Sisterhood,’ interjected Old Tsui. Graham had heard this term during his three years here, but had supposed it just meant elderly, single maidservants. He had no idea that Sun-tak was a place in Guangdong province, where these female workers who had taken a vow of spinsterhood came from.
‘Headman, I made the calls,’ said Mac, returning to his seat. ‘No one answered at Leung Lai-ping’s place. Wang Tai-tai was home. I pretended to be from the Mutual Aid Committee, asking questions about her work and home situation. She didn’t suspect a thing. I doubt she has anything to do with this case.’
‘Then Liz must be our suspect,’ said Old Tsui. ‘Mr Hill’s kid goes missing, you’d expect the nanny to be the first to know. But no, she hasn’t come back here, hasn’t gone home. Maybe she’s in cahoots with the kidnappers. As long as she was around, they wouldn’t need any tricks. The kid would just go willingly and no one would pay any attention.’