Femme Fatale

by Dominic Piper

  ‘Wait until you taste Li-Fen’s Milk Candy, Mr Beckett. Your mouth will water. But I am being impolite! Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Fizzy water? Fanta Orange? Coca Cola?’

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘I will have a coffee. Coffee perks me up!’

  ‘Then I’ll have a coffee, too.’

  Mr Sheng looks up at Li-Fen. ‘Two coffees, please, my dear.’

  Li-Fen glances at me and raises her eyebrows.

  ‘A dash of milk and no sugar. Thank you,’ I say. Li-Fen disappears into the back of the restaurant. I watch her leave then turn back to Mr Sheng. During that brief second when my glance was elsewhere, my peripheral vision caught an abrupt change of expression: the smile was gone, replaced by a suspicious, icy stare. The second our eyes meet again he’s back to his old grinning self. I’m surprised to feel a tiny surge of fear.

  ‘What about Cannonball Adderley, Mr Beckett? Do you like him?’

  ‘I know the name, but I’m not familiar with his music.’

  ‘You should listen to more jazz, Mr Beckett! I shall make you a compilation! On a compact disc!’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it, Mr Sheng. How did you know that the wallet belonged to me and not to one of the attackers?’ I say.

  Mr Sheng has quite a laugh at this. ‘Well, we didn’t at first, but when we spoke on the telephone and you agreed to come here, I knew that you had to be Li-Fen’s guardian angel.’ He slams his hand down hard on the table, making me jump. ‘If you were one of the attackers, Mr Beckett, it would have been very unwise to turn up and collect the wallet. Would you not agree?’

  ‘True.’ I smile at him. ‘But I don’t understand…’

  This gets another laugh. ‘You are curious about the speed with which Li-Fen prepared your gift. We just like to be prepared for all eventualities. That always makes for good fortune. We might have traced you, we might not have. If we did, Li-Fen wanted to show her gratitude. She prepared your gift box earlier this morning.’ He sits up in his seat and points at his chest. ‘If you had not turned up, or we had not found you, we would have eaten the contents ourselves!’

  Li-Fen arrives with the coffees and places them in front of us. She smiles at me. ‘Goodbye, Mr Beckett, and thank you again.’

  ‘You are most welcome, Li-Fen.’

  She blushes and disappears once more into the back of the restaurant. So she’s fifteen. Is that too young to be hanging around the West End at eleven-thirty at night? I don’t really know any more. What was she doing? Was she on her own? I hadn’t thought about it before, but it does seem a little odd. I can hear jazz playing quietly in the background. It’s Stan Getz. I hadn’t noticed it until now.

  Mr Sheng sips his coffee and shakes his head. ‘It was a terrible thing, Mr Beckett. Three men like that and such a young girl. Such bullies! Li-Fen said it was quite dark in that car park. They punched her and then dragged her in there. Did you know? She is only fifteen! A child!’

  ‘I wasn’t sure what had happened, to be honest. I just heard her cry out and went in.’

  ‘Into the dark. Without any regard for your own safety. Li-Fen said those men were big and strong. And angry.’

  I shrug. ‘Had to be done.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He frowns and produces a black Bookie pen and a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket.

  ‘Would you say, Mr Beckett, that those men would be in need of hospital attention after your dustup?’

  I’ve already put most of what happened out of my mind. Those events have been obliterated by the subsequent session with Annalise and the perverse urgency of her needs. I run over the events in my mind and try to work out the injuries they would have sustained: broken wrists, cracked ribs, crushed testicles, broken nose, shattered windpipe, concussion – yeah, I think they’d all need a few hours of TLC in their local A&E department.

  Mr Sheng makes me tell him their injuries in detail, accompanied by a rough description of each man. Perhaps he’s going to report the matter to the police. The Chinese community in London is peaceful and law-abiding and have a good relationship with the local constabulary. Maybe he has contacts in whichever hospital they’d have gone to. Would it have been St Mary’s?

  With each detail I give him, he either shakes his head, laughs, looks astonished or makes some remark like ‘Ah!’, ‘Oh my!’ or ‘Painful!’. He stuffs the pen and paper back in his pocket, grins to himself, and takes a sip of his coffee.

  ‘It must be interesting work being a private investigator, Mr Beckett.’

  Now how does he know that? Then I remember. When Annalise was tending to Li-Fen she made some remark about what private investigators do on their nights off. Li-Fen must have reported this.

  ‘Interesting enough, Mr Sheng.’

  ‘Does it pay well? I hope you do not mind my asking that of you.’

  ‘Of course not. It pays well enough. I’m probably top of the range. You can’t charge too much though, or you’re in danger of pricing yourself out of the market.’ Or making yourself too conspicuous.

  ‘Yes. Like in all business; and I expect there are always others waiting to take your place. Probably top of the range! That is most excellent. And you are such a young man! I am guessing you are probably in your early thirties. May I ask – how much do you charge for your services?’

  ‘A thousand a day plus non-negotiable expenses.’

  ‘That is a good phrase! Non-negotiable expenses. You don’t want to quibble over matters like that when you have finished a successful case, I expect. That would be the last thing you would want. Do you have a business card? I always like to see people’s business cards.’

  As if he didn’t know. I take out my wallet and give one of my cards to him (with both hands, of course). He inspects it very carefully. It doesn’t have much on it – just my name and mobile number – but despite this, he looks at it like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen in his life.

  ‘May I keep this, Mr Beckett? It has a very striking look to it. But not much information?’

  ‘All you need is there, I think. I didn’t want to go crazy, you know?’

  This gets another big laugh. ‘True, true. But a metal business card! And such an interesting design.’

  It does look unusual, I have to admit. It’s made from a thin, silvery metal with miniature micro-grills on the top and bottom. People don’t throw something like that away in a hurry.

  He inspects the card for about another thirty seconds. Nothing unusual about this: it’s Chinese business etiquette. He takes a wallet out of his inside pocket and carefully places the card inside. He stares at me for a while. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Then his eyes start twinkling again and a smile spreads across his face.

  ‘Mr Beckett. I shall be honest and frank with you. You may think I am a foolish old man, but I think that things that may seem to be bad luck can often be good luck in disguise. Do you agree?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Li-Fen’s misfortune, for example, may seem like bad luck, but it caused our paths to cross, and I view that as good luck.’

  From somewhere, he produces an A3 size manila card-backed envelope with ‘Please Do Not Bend’ on the front in red letters.

  ‘I would like to hire you, Mr Beckett, if you are not otherwise engaged, of course.’

  As I was walking down Charing Cross Road it was bright and sunny and I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. Now there’s a bit of a chill, and as a cloud passes across the sun outside, the interior of the restaurant gets suddenly and noticeably darker. Mr Sheng grins, places the envelope on the table between us and pushes it over to me.

  4

  THE MISSING FACILITATOR

  ‘Oh, this weather!’ says Mr Sheng, getting up. ‘One moment sunny, the next moment cloudy.’ He walks over to the other side of the restaurant and adjusts a lighting control on the wall. The place is now marginally brighter. He returns, sits down and points to the envelope that’s in front of
me. ‘Would you care to look at the contents of the envelope, Mr Beckett? Then we can have a little tête-à-tête. Then you can let me know if you can help me. I do understand that not all private investigators are the same. There are many specialities.’

  I open the envelope and pull out the contents. Two big glossy photographs of a good-looking Chinese guy who could be in his late twenties or early thirties. The first is a head and shoulders shot. Dark blue suit jacket or blazer, white shirt, red tie. Expensive, fashionable haircut and a healthy complexion. He’s looking straight at the camera. His face has a confident, self-assured expression: cocky, even. There are marks on the side of his nose which suggest that he wears glasses and took them off just before the photograph was taken. He cut himself shaving that morning.

  The other photograph is almost full length and very slightly out of focus. He’s posing by some rocks by the sea. I can’t tell where it is, but the light and the ocean suggest it isn’t the UK. He’s grinning in this one and he looks more relaxed. He’s only wearing a pair of white chinos held up with an expensive-looking black leather belt. The buckle is silver and there’s a big gemstone inlaid into the metal, probably turquoise. He wears two green jade rings on his left forefinger.

  He’s slim, but has a finely sculpted, muscular torso: big pectorals, weighty biceps, powerful deltoids and an impressive six-pack. This is a guy that hits the gym frequently and I get a feeling it’s for vanity purposes, though I could be wrong. Both of these photographs have a slightly arrogant and narcissistic ‘look-at-me’ quality to them. They’re the sort of photographs you can imagine being in the portfolio of a male model.

  Apart from the photographs, there’s a single sheet of paper with his personal details. Chan ‘Rikki’ Tuan, aged twenty-eight, five foot nine inches high, shoe size eight and a half, weighs one hundred and fifty-seven pounds, black hair, brown eyes. That’s it, apart from his address and a mobile telephone number. I assume he’s not answering his mobile.

  I look up to see Mr Sheng watching me like a wily old hawk.

  ‘So what’s the problem, Mr Sheng? Who is this guy?’

  He rests his elbows on the table, links his fingers beneath his chin and narrows his eyes. Something’s rattling him. It’s as if he’s trying to work out how to say something that he most definitely doesn’t want to say. Something that I have to be told that is really none of my business. It doesn’t bother me either way. He says something and we proceed or he says nothing and I go to lunch. After about thirty seconds, he points at the photographs.

  ‘This young gentleman is a business associate of mine. I suppose you could say he is an employee of sorts.’

  I wonder if he could possibly ratchet the vagueness up a little.

  ‘OK. What does he do?’

  I’m counting the seconds off in my head. This question gets a full minute before I get a response. I’m hoping we can get through this before I retire or die of old age.

  ‘He is a facilitator. Yes. That is it. Chan Tuan is a facilitator. He brings about outcomes. I think that would be an accurate description of his job.’

  OK. So the chances of me finding out what this guy does are nil. I’m starting to get mildly annoyed with this now and want him to get on with it. I’m going to have to push whether he likes it or not.

  ‘So. He’s important to your business and he’s missing. Would that be correct?’

  ‘My apologies, Mr Beckett. I know that I am prevaricating. I do not mean to be obstructive towards you. Sometimes it can be hard to describe the occupation of another. And you are right – Chan Tuan is missing. He has been missing for three days.’

  ‘Is three days a long time for him?’ I take a sip of my coffee and keep my eyes on his face.

  ‘Absolutely. It is part of his job to check in with me every single day. Even the weekends. If he was unwell, he would certainly let me know.’

  ‘I take it you’ve tried to contact him on that mobile number.’

  ‘Yes. It is dead.’

  ‘And you’ve been to the address on this sheet of paper? It’s a flat, yes?’

  ‘Yes it is. And yes – I sent someone to visit his flat. He is not there.’

  ‘And everything looked normal at this flat?’

  ‘Yes it did.’

  ‘Call the police. You can report him as a missing person. He may have been in an accident. The police would check all the hospitals.’

  He smiles again and nods his head, as if this highly foolish suggestion has been made to him thousands of times in the last twenty-four hours alone.

  ‘It is a cliché, isn’t it, Mr Beckett. It is like on a television adventure show where the kidnapper says I don’t want the police involved!’

  ‘Maybe it is. You tell me. Has he been kidnapped? Is that what you’re saying? Is it a possibility?’

  ‘No, no, no. Not kidnapped. Not as far as I can tell, anyway. No, I’m sure that would be unlikely and we have received no ransom demand. Just missing, that is all. We are a very tight-knit community here, Mr Beckett. We do not like to bother the authorities with our problems. It is part of the Chinese nature. We keep ourselves to ourselves. If we have any problems, we deal with them within the community. It is our way.’

  ‘And yet you’re requesting my services: a gweilo.’

  Using this word makes him laugh. It’s usually pretty derogatory when aimed at a westerner, but rather old-fashioned now, and it depends who’s using it, of course, and to whom. It’s Cantonese slang. A loose translation would be ‘Foreign Devil’ or ‘Ghost man’. Doesn’t bother me; both are pretty accurate in my case. I finish my coffee.

  ‘Rikki Tuan, as he liked to be known, Mr Beckett, is enamoured of western ways, perhaps a little more than he should be. I know that sounds very conservative of me. He has always enjoyed a social life that took him away from his friends, relatives and colleagues here. Away from people who care about him. I have sent out feelers, as you might say, to the Chinese community here in London. Also to more…outlying Chinese communities. I thought someone might have heard something about his sudden absence. They have not.’

  ‘Are those sources usually reliable?’

  ‘Always. One hundred per cent. No margin of error.’

  ‘You don’t know what he gets up to in his spare time. You don’t know where he goes. You don’t know who he hangs out with. He’s not particularly secretive about these things; he just doesn’t talk about them to anyone. Maybe he thinks it’s not important. Maybe he thinks it’s none of your business. And now it’s made it difficult to trace him. Is that about it?’

  He looks serious. He’s still dancing around whatever the truth is here. Maybe there isn’t a truth. Talking like this and having to think like this is actually starting to give me a headache. Or maybe that was last night’s booze.

  ‘Precisely, Mr Beckett. Let us say that he is comfortable moving in circles that we have no access to, or are ignorant of, or would be too conspicuous in. If something untoward has happened to Rikki – and I am not saying it has – the appearance of another Chinese person might attract suspicion. Make it obvious his disappearance is being, um, looked into.’

  He starts to say something else, but stops himself.

  ‘Or cause any perpetrators of his possible misfortune to flee,’ I say.

  He slams a fist down on the table. I wish he wouldn’t do that. ‘That is it exactly! Exactly! Someone like you could make thorough enquiries, no one would be apprehensive and it would contribute to your good luck and it would contribute to your success. There is a Chinese-run private detective agency not a minute’s walk from here. They provide an excellent service, but in this case…’

  I didn’t hear anyone come in, but I’m suddenly aware of a woman’s presence. She’s behind me, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away and I can smell her perfume, though I can’t immediately identify it. I wonder who she is and why Mr Sheng hasn’t acknowledged her or even glanced in her direction.

  ‘So, Mr Beckett – what do you say? Would thi
s case be of interest to you? I would be grateful in more ways than you could imagine. I will not be offended if you turn me down. I am already in your debt for your brave rescue of Li-Fen. I put no pressure on you.’

  I have to admit that I’m curious. The whole thing is so ambiguous, mildly creepy, suspicious, vague and difficult-sounding that it’s attractive to the puzzle-solving part of my brain, but I need something else.

  ‘The case is of interest to me, Mr Sheng. I am curious as to what you mean when you say that you would be grateful in more ways than I can imagine.’

  ‘I am speaking financially, Mr Beckett.’

  And there’s the icing on the cake.

  ‘OK. I’ll do it.’

  I can smell tobacco smoke mixed in with the perfume. Whoever she is, she’s just lit up. The aroma is rich, spicy and not unpleasant. I’m not an expert on tobacco, but I can detect notes of whisky, orange and vanilla in whatever it is she’s smoking. Once again, Mr Sheng doesn’t react to her presence. Without turning my head, I glance to the side, to let him know I’m aware and curious.

  He ignores my not-so-subtle hint. ‘That is excellent! Excellent! Thank you, Mr Beckett. Thank you so much. Let us shake hands on the deal!’

  We shake across the table. I must remember not to forget my box of Chinese candies.

  ‘One thing, Mr Beckett. If, during the course of your investigation, you come across Rikki, be sure to tell him who it is you are working for. It would be the wise thing to do.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to.’

  He laughs again. ‘Better to be safe than sorry!’

  I jab my finger against the sheet of paper in front of me. ‘Presumably you or someone else had spare keys for Rikki’s flat. I’ll need those. I know you’ve already been there, but there’s a chance that I may see something that you or your colleagues have missed.’

  ‘Of course. That is only right and reasonable. Flowers look different in different eyes.’ He reaches in his trouser pocket and produces a Maruse Italian leather key ring. A new-looking Yale and a bronze mortice key hang off it. I take it and put it in my pocket.