‘How would I know?’ he replied, crumbs sticking to his upper lip. ‘I don’t go through their personal queues.’
Like hell, I thought. Everybody did in London and I was damn sure things were no different in Hong Kong.
‘Have you got back-up copies?’
‘Not of the stuff in the personal queues, only what goes through the working queues.’
‘Can you remember what she was working on?’
‘A few things, sure, but Sally was a loner. I knew about the stories I’d given her but the rest of the time she worked on her own and just produced the copy when she was ready. She was freelance, remember, not staff.’
I leant back on the chair and put my feet on the desk, next to the VDU. John inhaled deeply and blew a tatty smoke ring towards the ceiling. Ash scattered across the keyboard as he waved his hand at me.
‘She was working on a feature on drugs in Hong Kong, the cocaine scene, who was supplying it, where it was coming from, the damage it was doing. She was chasing up a couple of leads on the triads being involved and getting a lot of help from her contacts in the police.
‘The advertising department had asked her for a couple of articles on the diamond exchange for a supplement we’ve got coming out next month. I think she’d started on that.
‘And I’d given her a cracker of a story to chase up about the thousands of Vietnamese refugees being held in the camps here.’
‘Nothing new about that,’ I said.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ he replied, dropping ash over his trousers as he leant forward. ‘Seems one of the reasons the Government is taking such a long time to let the poor buggers out is because they reckon the North Vietnamese are using them as a cover for getting agents into the West. Once they get through the holding camp they can be sent to Britain, Canada, the United States. We’ve heard that the government is putting its own men into the camps to try to sniff out the spies. Great story.’
‘If it’s true,’ I said.
‘It’s a great story whether or not it’s true,’ he laughed, spraying biscuit crumbs over the VDU.
‘But there’s nothing in the system at all.’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’ He leant forward and used a page from a notebook to wipe the gunge off the screen, but he just smeared it across the plastic.
‘How come?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe somebody has beaten you to it.’
‘Who could have done it?’
‘Security isn’t exactly watertight here. There’s a whole pool of freelances with access, on top of a couple of hundred reporters and subs. The advertising department aren’t supposed to get into the editorial queues but it’s not exactly unknown. And there are always strange faces wandering around. They’ve even locked the toilets because of the number of people who were wandering in off the streets for a pee.’
‘Did she have a desk here? Or a locker?’
‘No. She kept everything in her briefcase.’
‘Briefcase?’
‘A big leather fake Gucci case she brought back from Bangkok a few months ago. She carried everything in it.’
‘There’s no sign of that either,’ I said.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I wish I knew,’ I said. ‘I just wish I knew.’
The doorbell chimed twice and then there were footsteps and the door opened, a smiling Filipina face and a flash of white teeth, cute and curvy in a flowery print dress and working for peanuts for a Chinese family because peanuts in Hong Kong was better than nothing in the Philippines.
‘Yes, sir?’ she asked, rolling the ‘r’ like a West Country burr, smiling naturally, little lines crinkling at the corner of her eyes so she was older than I’d first thought.
‘I’d like to see Mr Lai,’ I said and she said, ‘Follow me, sir,’ and led me through the hall and left into a lounge with a huge picture window that looked out over Central and across the harbour, a view similar to the one from Sally’s flat but with no tower blocks in the way. The view from the top. A view that only money, real money, could buy.
‘Wait here, sir,’ said the maid and the eyes crinkled again and she smiled and walked out of the room, long legs taking their time because she knew I was watching her go. The room was light and airy and expensive, a room that could have featured in any upper crust glossy coffee-table magazine without a single alteration. It was a room to look at and to admire, not to live in. It was like being in a film set. The discreet wallpaper looked like silk which meant it probably was and the floor was made of a wood that I didn’t recognize, a brown so dark that it was almost black. At least twenty cows had given their lives to make the leather sofa that ran along one side of the room with enough space to seat a football team. The reserves, a referee and a couple of linesmen would have had no problem finding somewhere to sit, from the obviously antique Chinese wooden collectors’ pieces to the leather armchairs either side of a Victorian metal fireplace, not just for show because even Hong Kong gets cold in winter. That’s what it had said in the Cathay Pacific guide to Hong Kong, anyway. Above the fireplace was an oil painting, I didn’t recognize the style but I knew the name in the bottom right hand corner and I whistled gently. At one end of the room, to the left of the picture window, was a baby grand piano and I recognized the name on that too, and the man in the photographs in solid silver frames, with his family, arm around his children, a pudgy teenage boy and a gangly girl, a wedding photograph, a graduation picture, Lai Kwok-lee at work, rest and play.
Footsteps behind me, the click, clack, click of high heels on hard wood and I turned to see a middle-aged Chinese woman walk into the room, chin up as she measured me through inquisitive eyes and I gave her the professional smile, the one that puts them at ease and makes them think you’re on their side, the one that lulls them into a false sense of security so you can get in close and get what you want. She was the one in the wedding photograph with Lai so it wasn’t hard to work out that she was his wife.
The professional smile was having about as much effect as if I’d waggled my ears, I was looking into a cold, placid round face with narrow lips and hard eyes, hair short and permed, a wide nose and a large dimple in the middle of her chin. Not ugly but far from pretty, the body stocky and rectangular, clothed in a little something Chanel had thrown together for a few thousand pounds. The gold and diamond Rolex on her thick weightlifter’s wrist wasn’t the sort they sell for $200 in Temple Street when the police aren’t looking, and the necklace would have kept a family of four in relative luxury for about a decade.
I couldn’t see her teeth because she wasn’t smiling but I would have bet a month’s expenses that any cavities she had were filled with enough gold to send a prospector running to the saloon shouting, ‘drinks all round, I’m gonna be rich.’
I told her who I was and who I worked for and I gave her the boyish smile, the one that says I’m only doing my job and I’d really appreciate any help you could give me because I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I raised my eyebrows expectantly but she still didn’t speak and the idea of pretending to throw a fit and trying to win the sympathy vote crossed my mind.
‘I was just admiring the photographs,’ I said, and nodded towards the baby grand. Get her talking, break the ice. ‘You have a lovely family.’
A slight smile, a curt formality for a compliment paid. No warmth.
‘Who is the photographer in the family?’ I asked, throwing her a question that was going to need an answer so I could at least see if she could talk.
‘My son,’ she said, and there was a glint of gold from the corner of her mouth. ‘He wants to be a professional photographer when he is older.’
I was in. Always works with mothers, the boyish smile and ask about the kids. ‘What was he doing on the roof of the train, Mrs McNee? Where did James go to school, Mrs McNee? How do you feel, Mrs McNee?’
‘He’s very good,’ I said. ‘Does he want to work for newspapers, or magazines?’
‘Advertising,’ she sa
id, and I thought he’s probably right, there’s more money in it and probably as much integrity. My face was starting to ache. She was weighing me up and I got the impression she ranked me slightly higher than the man who came round to spray against cockroaches. She hadn’t offered to shake hands, she hadn’t asked me to sit down and she hadn’t smiled. Maybe she had oil on her hands, maybe the chairs weren’t made for sitting on, maybe she was on the sort of diet where they wire your jaws together. Maybe she just wanted me to get the hell out of her house.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked eventually.
‘Actually, it was your husband I wanted, Mrs Lai,’ I said. ‘Is he here?’
She made an impatient clicking noise behind her tightly closed lips and I could see that when I finally got the hell out of her house the maid with the ‘come get me’ smile and the long legs and the flashing eyes was going to get a tongue-lashing that would make her wish she’d stayed in the Philippines.
‘No he is not.’ The click again. The accent wasn’t English, it had a hint of Canadian so I guess she’d studied there or more likely spent a few years there to establish residency and get her hands on a passport while hubby kept churning out the money in Hong Kong. They’ll take anyone, the Canadians, providing they’ve got the money or the entrepreneurial background to set up their own business. Then when the lifeboat is ready they move back to Hong Kong to milk it for as much as they can before 1997, knowing that they can jump ship whenever the going gets rough.
I couldn’t hear the hum of an air-conditioner and I wasn’t likely to in a house like this, but I was starting to sweat so maybe it wasn’t switched on. I could feel dampness between my shoulder blades and at the back of my legs and I wanted to wipe my forehead but I didn’t have a handkerchief and even if I had I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction of seeing my discomfort.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to have bothered you. Perhaps I should have phoned first.’ Bullshit. Rule number one of the doorstepping game – don’t let them know you’re coming. Rule number two – don’t give up. They’ll weaken eventually and ask you in so long as you’re polite and keep smiling. Rule number three – when you’re inside keep them talking so they don’t get the chance to ask what it is you want, because you can’t say you’re after a page three lead or a picture of their dead son or a chance to prove how good you are.
‘What is it you want?’ she asked. Shit. So much for doorstepping rule number three. I widened the smile and told her I was doing a series on Hong Kong tycoons and as her husband was obviously one of the territory’s (I nearly said colony but I knew how sensitive they get about that) most successful businessmen obviously I wanted to include him but I’d obviously called at an inconvenient time and obviously I was saying obviously too much. Obviously.
‘Do you think he would be interested? I wouldn’t need too much of his time?’ I asked.
‘I’m sure he would be,’ she replied, and managed a half smile. It seemed I’d moved up from pest exterminator to drain unblocker so I asked her if she’d mind giving me a bit of background on her husband. I kept dropping in the word successful because her weakness was vanity and I could see her mentally preening herself, bathing in the reflected glory of her man. The man who’d paid for her Rolex, her house and her passport.
Of course, she said, sit down, she said, would I like a cup of tea, she said, still no smile but I’d got around her defences, found the weak spot. I took out the notebook from my jacket pocket and rested it on my knee, looking for the general question that would keep her talking and give me a chance to think.
‘Where did you first meet?’ I asked, pen poised like a heron about to stab a fish. It’s easier if you know what you’re looking for, if there are a few simple facts to slot into a story that you’ve already written in your head, the who, why, what, where and when. You know what you want, it’s just a matter of the approach, meek and mild, aggressive, subtle, press the right buttons and get the information. Sometimes it’s just a quote you want, a tight paragraph to put colour into a story, ‘I warned him not to go to the depot at night, I knew something like this would happen one day.’ Sometimes all you want is confirmation that the schedule line you’ve given the news desk is close enough to the truth to stand up as a story.
But sometimes you don’t know what you want, you fix up an interview and you go along with eyes and ears wide open, antennae twitching because you know there’s an angle there and you don’t want to miss it. It’s not such a problem for the features boys, they can write a colour piece about a paper clip or a postage stamp and they’re so good at it they have you clamouring for more. But hard news is different — you’re looking for the angle, the human interest, the tickle at the back of the neck that lets you know you’ve got the splash or a page lead at worst.
I did six months on an evening paper in the Midlands and blotted my copybook by getting pissed one night and turning up three hours late for my early morning shift. The punishment dreamt up by the rat-faced news editor, who spent most of his time selling his reporters’ stories to the nationals, was to send me along to the inspector who ran the local police horse training school. I sat with the guy in his pokey little office for an hour chatting about horses and crowd control and dressage and my smile was wearing thin and my backside was numb and then I hit paydirt.
‘See what you can get out of it,’ Rat-Face had said. ‘I see it as a spread with lots of pics.’ Like hell he did. He saw it as a way of teaching me a lesson.
‘Where do the horses go when they retire,’ I asked the inspector and his eyes hardened a little and he said they didn’t retire.
‘We keep them until they’re too old to work,’ he said and adjusted his tie and I left it at that because the hairs on the back of my neck were tingling, I had the story and I wasn’t going to blow it by cross-questioning the guy with a notebook on my knee so I changed the subject and talked about temperament and feeding and led him by the nose for a full twenty minutes until he’d forgotten what he’d told me.
Then we went out with a photographer to the training field, and while the inspector rode stiff-backed between flagwaving and shouting constables I stood next to a hardbitten sergeant in jodhpurs and chatted, gave him the rueful smile and said, ‘It’s a pity the poor buggers can’t be put out to grass,’ and shrugged. No notebook, no pen, no looking at him as we spoke, just talking as we watched the horse being trained to intimidate football fans and striking miners.
‘Too bloody expensive. And where would we keep them?’ he replied as the wind ripped the flags through the air, snapping and cracking either side of the horse and rider. ‘These horses are trained to work, they’d go mad grazing in a field somewhere.’
‘So what happens? The vet puts them down, I suppose.’
‘You’re joking, man. The guy from the knacker’s yard does it, and he pays for the meat too.’
He turned to look at me, suspicion aroused. ‘This is off the record, right?’ he asked.
‘You think I’d use this in the paper?’ I laughed and slapped him on the back. That got me out of saying yes it was off the record because no it wasn’t, I was going to use every word. I changed the subject and before long the inspector rode up, followed by the red-faced and slightly out-of-breath photographer, and asked did we have everything we wanted and I gave him the winning smile and sure we did and thanked them both for all their help.
‘Anytime,’ said the inspector, and I thought sure, and I winked at the sergeant as the photographer and I climbed into the company van. Lambs to the slaughter, I thought. I was twenty-four years old and as cocky as hell.
It took me half an hour back at the office to track down the abattoir where the horses were slaughtered and I went round and chatted with a man in a bloodstained apron who, for a few quid and the promise of a few more, gave me the name of the pet food company where the horse-meat went.
Back in the office again I went through the picture files and came up with a handful of black-and-white shots of horses who�
��d been honoured for bravery and long service and had presumably ended up in cans of dog and cat food. Two phone calls to rent-a-quote animal lovers, another to a local MP and a call to the police press officer for an official statement and the story was in the bag.
The paper splashed it – ‘Hero horses killed for Pet Food’ – and we spilled it over to the centre spread. I could see Rat-Face’s eyes light up with pound signs but I beat him to it, sold it to the Express for more than I normally earned in a month and two months later I got my first job in Fleet Street. I’d burnt off a couple of coppers but what the hell, I wasn’t going back.
So I sat in an uncomfortable leather armchair and let Mrs Lai’s words pour over me like syrup over a pancake, thick and clogging and sickly sweet, while I nodded and smiled, doodling in the notebook because I wasn’t after his life story. I was looking for the angle.
They’d come across from China together in a leaky boat thirty years ago, a couple of teenagers with their belongings in a canvas bag, and five taels of gold in a leather pouch tied around his neck.
The money was the life savings of his peasant parents, given to them so that they could start a new life in capitalist Hong Kong, she said, but with a downcast look and a lowering of the voice that gave her away – he’d stolen it and given them and the poverty of mainland China two fingers. He’d looked after the money then and that’s how it had always been. They’d married in Hong Kong and used the gold to rent a small room in the New Territories and to buy half a dozen manual sewing machines, paying shifts of illiterate young girls with nimble fingers and simple minds to run them twenty-four hours a day, churning out dresses and T-shirts or whatever the buyers from the UK or America wanted.
Mrs Lai kept the books, Dennis cracked the whip, and soon they had a small van and then a bigger factory and more machines and more exploited teenagers and then he’d gone into plastics, making cheap toys to put in Christmas crackers and then manufacturing practical jokes, fake dog shit and rubber chickens and then the calculator boom took off and he was into injection moulding and started making the plastic cases that surrounded the chips and liquid crystal displays from Japan and then he’d moved into transport and at one point during the heady days of OPEC lunacy he’d owned a couple of oil tankers.
The Fireman Page 9