1962 - A Coffin From Hong Kong

by James Hadley Chase

I paused, listening. I heard a man say, “Listen, you yellow bitch . . . if you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you!” The accent was American: the tone vicious.

  “That’s what he said!” Mu Hai Ton’s voice was shrill. “He said she was murdered a few hours after she had arrived in Pasadena City!”

  A gentle voice said behind me, “Don’t move, Mr. Ryan. Just keep your hands still if you please.”

  A familiar voice with a heavy Chinese accent that I couldn’t place.

  I remained still because in spite of the polite tone, the threat was there.

  “Please open the door and go in. I have a gun in my hand.”

  I took a step forward, turned the door handle and gave the door a little push. It swung wide open.

  It was a bare room. The floor was uncarpeted. There was a broad wooden bench that served as a bed with a wooden headrest to serve as a pillow. On an upturned packing case stood a metal kettle burned black, a small teapot and some small dirty tea bowls. Hanging on a hook on the wall was a filthy hand towel and below it was a basin and a large water jug The two figures squatting on the floor turned to stare at me. One of them was Mu Hai Ton. The other was a narrow-shouldered, lean-faced man, wearing a dirty black Chinese costume and a baggy black cap pulled down over his face.

  For a brief moment I took him for Chinese, but a closer look told me he was European.

  Mu Hai Ton gave a startled scream. The man swung his arm and the back of his hand caught her across the mouth, knocking her sprawling at my feet.

  “You stupid bitch!” the man snarled, getting to his feet. “You led him right here! Get out!”

  “Go on in, please,” the voice said behind me and I received a gentle prod in the back.

  The girl scrambled to her feet, sobbing. She darted around me and I heard her clattering down the stairs.

  I moved into the room. The man was staring at me, a vicious, cold gleam in his eyes.

  I took a chance and glanced over my shoulder. Wong Hop Ho, the English-speaking guide, smiled apologetically at me. In his right hand he held a .45 Colt centred on my spine. He closed the door and set his back against it.

  I examined the man before me. He looked half-starved and ill. He was unshaven and dirty and I could smell him.

  “See if he has a gun,” the man said.

  Wong pressed his gun into my spine. With his left hand he patted me over, found my gun and removed it. He then stood away.

  I decided this man in front of me could be no one else but Frank Belling. If he wasn’t then nothing else made sense.

  “Are you Belling?” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Okay, so you’ve found me,” the man said. “It’s going to do you damn little good.”

  I looked at Wong who continued to smile apologetically at me.

  “I certainly fell for you,” I said ruefully. “You were waiting at the airport to pick me up. That was careless of me. Who tipped you off I was coming?”

  Wong giggled.

  “We hear these things,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been so curious, Mr. Ryan. You certainly shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Well, I’m here,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m curious . . . it’s my business to be curious.”

  “What do you want?” Belling demanded.

  “I’m trying to find out why Jo-An Jefferson was murdered. The idea was I should start from here and work back.”

  His eyes glittered wolfishly in his thin pale face.

  “Is that straight . . . she’s dead?”

  “Yes . . . she’s dead.”

  He took off his baggy cap and threw it aside. His sand-coloured hair needed cutting. He ran filthy fingers through his hair and his mouth tightened into a thin line.

  “What happened to her?” he said. “Come on . . . give me the facts.”

  I told him about the mysterious telephone caller, John Hardwick, how I had been fooled into leaving my office, how I had found her dead on my return. I told him old man Jefferson had hired me to find her killer.

  “He said his son would have wanted to find the man who killed her. He felt it was the least he could do to do what has son would have done.”

  Belling said: “What are the police doing? Can’t they find him?”

  “They’re getting nowhere. I’m getting nowhere either. That’s why I was looking for you.”

  “Why the hell do you imagine I could help you?” he demanded, glaring at me. Sweat way running down his thin, white face. He looked frightened and vicious.

  “You could tell me something about Jefferson,” I said. “Was he hooked up in this drug organisation you belong to?”

  “I don’t know a thing about Jefferson! You keep out of this! Now get out! Jefferson is dead. Let him stay dead. Go on, get out!”

  I should have been more alert, but I wasn’t and I suffered for it. I saw Belling look past me at Wong. I spun around. Wong stabbed me in the belly with his gun barrel. As I jerked forward in agony, he slammed the gun butt down on top of my head.

  chapter fifteen

  I heard myself saying silently, “Frank Belling is English, isn’t he?” and a voice that sounded like the voice of Chief Inspector MacCarthy replied, “That’s right. . . he’s English.”

  And yet the thin, dirty specimen who said he was Frank Belling had spoken with a strong American accent. Was it possible an Englishman could have picked up such an accent? I didn’t think so.

  A sudden stab of pain in my head concluded these thoughts and I heard myself groan.

  “All right . . . all right,” I said aloud. “You’re not hurt all that bad. You’ve just had a bang on the head. You have to expect that in your business. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  I opened my eyes. I could see nothing. It was as dark as a tunnel, but the familiar smell told me I was still in the room where Wong had coshed me. I sat up slowly, wincing at more stabbing pains and I gently felt the bump on my head. I sat there for some minutes, then I made the effort and got to my feet The door would be behind me and to the left. I groped my way to it, found the door handle and opened the door. A feeble light burning on the landing made me blink. I stood in the doorway listening, but heard only the gentle murmur of many voices in the alley below. I looked at my strap watch. The time was five minutes past midnight. I had been unconscious for about half an hour . . . quite long enough for Belling and Wong to have got well away.

  My one thought now was to get out of this evil-smelling hole.

  As I started towards the stairs, I heard someone coming up. I slid my hand inside my coat. The gun holster was there still strapped to my side, but it was empty.

  The beam of a powerful flashlight hit me in the face.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” a familiar Scottish voice demanded.

  “Slumming,” I said and relaxed. “What are you?”

  Sergeant Hamish, followed by a uniformed Chinese police officer, came on up the stairs.

  “You were spotted coming in here,” he said. “I thought I’d better see what you were up to.”

  “You’re a little late. I’ve been holding a one-sided conversation with your pal Frank Belling.”

  “You were?” He gaped at me. “Where is he?”

  “He’s skipped.” I fingered the lump on the back of my head. “A Chinese pal of his boffed me before we had time to exchange confidences.”

  He moved the beam of his flashlight so he could see the back of my head, then he whistled.

  “Well, you asked for it, coming here. This is the toughest spot in Hong Kong.”

  “Would you take that goddam light out of my eyes? My head hurts,” I growled at him.

  He moved past me into the room and swung the light around. Then he came out.

  “The Chief Inspector will want to talk to you. Let’s go.”

  “He’ll want to talk to a Chinese girl named Mu Hai Ton too,” I said and gave him the girl’s address. “You’d better get after her. She’s likely to have skipped.”


  “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “She led me to Belling. Hurry it up, friend. You could miss her.”

  He said something in Cantonese to the policeman with him who clattered off down the stairs.

  “You come on,” he said to me and we followed the policeman into the dark, evil-smelling alley.

  Half an hour later I was back on the island and sitting in Chief Inspector MacCarthy’s office. They had got him out of bed by radio-telephone and he looked none too pleased. We had cups of strong tea in front of us. My head was still aching but the tea helped.

  Sergeant Hamish leaned against the wall, chewing a tooth-pick, his cop eyes blankly staring at me. MacCarthy sucked at his empty pipe while he listened to my story.

  I didn’t tell him about the Silver Mine Bay outing. I felt if I had told him he might have turned hostile. I told him how I had wanted to talk to Mu Hai Ton, how I had found her through the Madame at the Wanchai bar and how I had seen her surprise and distress when I had told her Jo-An was dead.

  “I had an idea she might want to pass on the news,” I said, “so I waited across the road and followed her into the walled city.”

  I told them how Wong had suddenly appeared, what Belling had said and how Wong had coshed me.

  After a long pause, MacCarthy said, “Well, you asked for it. You should have come to me.”

  I let that one go.

  He sat for some moments thinking over what I had told him, then before he could say what was on his mind, the telephone bell rang. He scooped up the receiver, listened, then said, “Well, keep after her, I want her,” and hung up.

  “She didn’t return to her apartment,” he said to me. “I have a man watching the place and we’re looking for her.”

  I hadn’t expected she would have been there waiting for them to pick her up. I wondered if they would eventually find her in the harbour the way they had found Leila.

  “Have you a photograph of Frank Belling?” I asked. “I have an idea this guy wasn’t Belling. He was an American.”

  MacCarthy opened a desk drawer and took out a fat file which showed he was taking more interest in Belling than he had led me to believe. He opened the file and took out a half-plate glossy print which he flicked across the desk so it fell right side up in front of me.

  I looked at the photograph and felt a queer creepy sensation crawl up my spine. It was the same photograph that Janet West had given me: the hard gangster face Janet West had said belonged to Herman Jefferson.

  “You sure this is Belling?” I said.

  MacCarthy stared blankly at me.

  “That’s a police photograph. We distributed a number of them to the newspaper agencies and to the newspapers when we were trying to pick him up. Yes . . . that’s Frank Belling.”

  “That’s not the man I talked to . . . the man who said he was Frank Belling.”

  MacCarthy drank some of his tea and then began to fill his pipe. I could see by the expression in his eyes he was beginning to dislike me.

  “Then who was the man you talked to?”

  “Did you ever meet Herman Jefferson?”

  “Yes . . . why?”

  “Got a photograph of him?”

  “No . . . he was an American citizen. Why should I have a photograph of him?”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Thin, sharp-featured with thinning sand-coloured hair,” MacCarthy said promptly.

  “Sound like the man I talked to . . . the man who said he was Frank Belling.”

  There was a long pause, then MacCarthy said heavily, “Jefferson is dead. He was killed in a road accident and his body was shipped to America.”

  “Jefferson is alive . . . anyway, he was alive two hours ago,” I said. “That description of yours fits him.”

  “The body in the car matched Jefferson’s size,” MacCarthy said as if trying to convince himself. “The body was so badly burned identification wasn’t possible but his wife identified him by the ring on his finger and the cigarette case he was carrying. We had and still have no reason to think he was anyone else but Jefferson.”

  “If it wasn’t Jefferson and I’m damn sure it wasn’t, who was it?” I said.

  “Why ask me?” MacCarthy said. “I’ve still no reason to think Jefferson is alive.”

  “A tall thin man with pale green eyes, thin sandy hair and thin lips,” I said. I thought for a moment, then went on, “He had a crooked little finger on his right hand, come to think of it, as if it had been broken at one time and had been badly set.”

  “That’s Jefferson,” Hamish said. It was the first time he had said anything since I had come into the office. “I remember the crooked finger. That’s Jefferson all right.”

  MacCarthy puffed at his pipe.

  “Then who was buried?” he asked uneasily. “Whose body was sent back to America?”

  “My guess is that it was Frank Selling’s body,” I said. “For some reason Jefferson tried to kid me he was Belling.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “I don’t know.” I touched the bump on my head and grimaced. “If it’s all the same to you, Chief Inspector, I’ll go to bed. I’m feeling like something the cat has dragged in.”

  “You look like it,” he said. “Let’s have a description of Wong.”

  “He looks like any other Chinese to me. Squat, fat with gold teeth.”

  “That’s right,” MacCarthy said and stifled a yawn. “They all look alike to us just as we all look alike to them.” He turned to Hamish. “Take as many men as you want and go through the walled city. See if you can find Jefferson. You won’t, but we’ve got to try.” To me, he said, “Okay, Ryan, you go to bed. You can leave this to us.”

  I said I would be glad to and went out of the office with Hamish.

  “Looking for Jefferson in the walled city is like looking for the invisible man,” Hamish said bitterly. “No one knows anything. Everyone covers up for everyone. I might have Jefferson right next to me and I wouldn’t know it.”

  “Cheer up,” I said unfeelingly. “It’ll give you something to do.”

  Leaving him swearing, I picked up the Packard and drove back to the Repulse Bay Hotel. I felt old, tired and worn out.

  I left the elevator on the fourth floor where my room was. The night boy, a grinning, bowing Chinese, wearing a white drill jacket and black trousers, bowed to me as he handed me my key. I thanked him and walked to my room. I unlocked the door and entered the sitting-room. Most of the rooms in the hotel had sitting rooms. The bedroom was beyond drawn curtains that divided the two rooms. I turned on the light and pulled off my jacket. The air-conditioner made the room pleasantly cool.

  My one thought was to take a cold shower and then go to bed, but it wasn’t to be. As I parted the curtains and moved into the bedroom, I saw the bedside lamp was on.

  I saw a woman lying on the bed. It was Stella Enright. She had on a gold and black cocktail dress. She had kicked off her shoes that were lying by the bed.

  The sight of her gave me a shock. For a moment I thought she was dead, then I saw she was breathing by the rise and fall of her breasts. I stood there, staring at her, aware of the pain in my head and wondering what the hell she was doing here and how she got in. Then I remembered the grinning night boy and guessed she had bribed her way in.

  As I watched her, she slowly opened her eyes and looked at me, then she lifted her head. Sitting up, she swung her long legs off the bed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and smiled. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I just got bored waiting for you.”

  “Have you been waiting long?” I asked, more for something to say. I sat down in an armchair, watching her as she slipped into her shoes. She patted her hair and then stood up and came into the sitting-room.

  “I’ve been here since ten o’clock,” she said. “I was worrying about you. I hope you don’t mind me coming here.” She hurried on before I could say anything. “What happened to you? I nearly missed the fer
ry. Why weren’t you waiting for me?”

  “I was delayed,” I said, thinking of the thin Chinese with his knife and the squat Chinese with his rifle. “Now I’ll ask you something. Was it your idea that you and I should go to Silver Mine Bay?”

  She sat on the arm of the armchair facing me,

  “My idea? What do you mean?”

  “It’s not so hard, surely? When you suggested I should see the waterfall . . . was it your idea or did someone else suggest it to you?”

  She frowned, staring at me for a moment, then she said, “I don’t know why you ask, but my brother told me to invite you. He said you were lonely and would be glad of company.”

  “Is he your brother?” I asked.

  She stiffened, stared at me and then quickly looked away.

  As she said nothing, I repeated the question.

  “You’re asking the most extraordinary questions,” she said, still looking away from me. “What makes you ask that?”

  “There’s no likeness between you,” I said, “and it seems odd to me that a girl like you should want to live with her brother.”

  I watched her hesitate, then she shrugged.

  “No, he isn’t my brother. I’ve only known him a couple of months. Now, I’m sorry I ever met him.”

  I gave up the thought of going to bed. I took out my pack of cigarettes and we both lit up. She slid off the arm of the chair into the chair itself and leaning back, she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply.

  “Where did you meet him?” I asked.

  “In Singapore. I was doing a strip act at a night club there,” she told me. “I’d come all the way from New York . . . like the dope I am. The night club was raided and I never got my money and I was strapped. Harry turned up. He had seen my act several times and he propositioned me. He had plenty of money, certain charm and . . . well, I went to live with him in a bungalow near the MacRitchie reservoir. It was nice out there. I had a good time with him until people began to talk, then it wasn’t so good.” She opened her eyes to stare at the burning tip of her cigarette. “I decided to go home, but Harry wouldn’t give me the fare. Then suddenly he had to come here. He got me a false passport. We came here as brother and sister.” She looked at me. “I still want to go home. Could you lend me the money? I’ll pay you back in a couple of months.”