No Peace for the Wicked

by Pip Granger

  We reassembled outside and Mrs Wong simply waited to see what we wanted, volunteering nothing except a smile and a small bow of polite greeting. Maggie took over. ‘We’re sorry to track you down in your own time, Mrs W., but we’re looking for Peace. She’s disappeared, you see, and we’re worried.’

  Mrs Wong looked from one to the other of us then asked quietly, ‘And Miss Bandy?’ The implication was clear: where was Peace’s aunt, and why wasn’t she worried?

  ‘She’s waiting by the telephone in case Peace rings her, and the police want to talk to her before they begin their search,’ T.C. explained. ‘She’s asked me to start looking on her behalf. Have you seen Peace, Mrs Wong?’

  ‘I saw her on Wednesday, at the cafe, before I left,’ Mrs Wong replied.

  ‘And you haven’t seen her since?’ Maggie pleaded.

  Mrs Wong simply shook her head.

  ‘What about your daughter; Bubbles, is it?’ T.C. asked.

  Mrs Wong grew very still. ‘My daughter?’

  ‘Rosie took a message from Peace to your daughter just before she disappeared,’ Maggie explained gently. ‘We don’t think Bubbles has done anything wrong at all, but we do know she was meeting Peace after Peace finished work.’

  ‘I know nothing of this,’ Mrs Wong replied.

  ‘Do you think we could talk to your daughter, Mrs Wong? It might help us enormously,’ T.C. asked.

  Mrs Wong looked startled for a second, then shook her head vehemently. ‘No, my daughter not here.’

  ‘Has she gone away?’ Maggie asked eagerly. ‘She might have taken Peace, Mrs W. She might have taken Peace with her. We only want to know she’s safe. You’d want to know your girl was safe if she went missing, wouldn’t you?’ Maggie’s voice took on a pleading note, one mother to another. ‘It’s only natural to worry when they’re out of your sight, isn’t it?’

  Before Mrs Wong could reply, a man appeared from the empty shop beside the Emporium on the other side of the road, and approached, smiling and bowing as he did so. He was well dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and silk tie. Speaking in beautifully precise Oxbridge English, he said, ‘Perhaps I can be of assistance?’ as if there were no perhaps about it. Then he spoke rapidly to Mrs Wong in Chinese, and she answered him briefly. He bowed towards us again, smiling rather sadly. ‘Ah, I understand. Children are such a worry, especially the girls. Sadly, Mrs Wong’s daughter is not available to answer your questions at the present time.’

  T.C. frowned slightly and asked, ‘And you are …?’

  Another smile, another small bow. ‘I am so sorry. My name is Chang.’

  ‘And you’re absolutely sure that Miss Wong can’t help us because …?’ T.C. inclined his head slightly, all polite interest.

  ‘She is looking after a visiting relative and is away attending to her duties.’ Mr Chang smiled and made another little bow.

  ‘And when will she be back?’ T.C. asked.

  ‘That is very hard to say, but not soon,’ Mr Chang replied.

  T.C. sighed. ‘Well, thank you for your help.’

  Mr Chang bowed but Mrs Wong stood rooted to her spot. She hadn’t moved or spoken since he had arrived on the scene. I had been watching her throughout the exchange between the two men. As ever, her expression was hard for me to read, but her eyes were different; I thought I could see fear in them.

  20

  Maggie and I were very despondent on the walk back to the cafe. It seemed to us that we’d wasted our time in Gerrard Street and we’d come away with nothing.

  T.C., however, looked and sounded positively chirpy. ‘Don’t worry, girls, it was only ever a very long shot. I didn’t really think we’d get any help from that quarter. The Chinese folks don’t bother us, and they like us to return the favour.’

  ‘Still, I would have thought Mrs Wong …’ Maggie didn’t finish the thought, but I could tell that she was a little hurt.

  ‘But that Mr Chang didn’t give her a chance, did he?’ I pointed out.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Maggie asked me.

  ‘She looked frightened to me. It was her eyes,’ I explained. ‘They went sort of dead and still the minute she heard Mr Chang’s voice and they stayed like it. But they were bright and busy before. She was interested in why we were there and embarrassed at the same time, so she kept looking around to see who was watching. Then he spoke and the life went out of them.’

  ‘Did you get your Brownie badge for “Sitting Up and Taking Notice” by any chance?’ Maggie asked in an awed tone of voice.

  I smiled. ‘No, I wasn’t allowed the Brownies. Wrong church.’

  ‘Well, in the Scouts it was knots and map reading.’ T.C. grew more serious. ‘See, it wasn’t a wasted journey after all. We’ve learned that Mrs Wong could be afraid of Mr Chang; that Mr Chang is an important member of the Chinese community hereabouts; and that they both say Bubbles is away. That means one of two things – that they’re lying because they don’t want us to talk to Bubbles for some reason that we can only guess at, or that she really is away. Either way, that doesn’t mean that Peace is with her, any more than it means that she isn’t. It simply means that we still don’t know.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘How do I know what?’ T.C. was looking puzzled.

  ‘That Mr Chang’s an important geezer,’ Maggie answered a shade testily.

  T.C. smiled. ‘Oh, that’s easy. The way he glided up, took over and, as Lizzie said, terrified the life out of Mrs Wong.’

  ‘And the way he was dressed,’ I added. ‘I’ve noticed that powerful people usually dress well.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Maggie agreed. ‘It’s all that money, I expect.’

  ‘I really would like the chance to ask Bubbles a few questions, though. After all, she is Peace’s friend, and girls like to talk, they like a confidante. So, if anyone knows who the chap Peace is involved with, Bubbles will.’

  ‘Well, Rosie did hint that Peace was interested in someone not too long ago. I could probe a bit and see if she has any idea who,’ Maggie suggested. ‘I could also have another go at Mrs Wong. Things might be a bit different if we’re in the cafe.’

  ‘And I can go to her school tomorrow and find Beatrice and Angela. You never know, she may have talked to them,’ I said.

  We walked Maggie back to the cafe in silence. T.C. and I carried on to Bandy’s place and found both Bandy and Sugar in the club talking to Bobby Bristowe. Bobby was really upset by their news.

  ‘I like that kid. She’d often drop in for a chat while I was working and she’d help me with the dusting. Tell us if there’s anything we can do, won’t you? Me and Pans – we’ll help all we can. We like kids,’ Bobby said awkwardly, clutching his duster. He was a shy man. Pansy usually did his talking for him.

  ‘Thanks Bobby, we appreciate it,’ Sugar said wearily. The strain was beginning to show on his dear face. Deep lines were etched between his eyebrows, as if they were clenched, like fists.

  ‘Actually,’ T.C. began, ‘there is something you and Pansy can do. You can help me and Lizzie to ask at the stations, taxi ranks, stuff like that. Until the police extract their digits, they’ll not get on her tracks straight away. They’ll think it’s probably just a spot of flouncing and that Peace will be back right as rain by teatime: it is usually the way of things. However, it won’t do any harm to get going while the trail’s still warm.’ Rapidly T.C. assigned railway stations and nearby taxi ranks to us. ‘I suggest you split up at each station and one of you take the station and the other the taxi rank.

  ‘Bobby, how about taking Charing Cross? Again, if you go with Pansy, split up, you’ll cover more ground much quicker. Lizzie and I’ll take Euston, then on to Victoria and the bus station. Then there’s Waterloo, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Paddington …’ His voice trailed off. He thought for a moment, then pulled himself up straight. ‘Yup. That’s the way we’ll do it. We’ll start at the closer ones and fan out. It makes the best se
nse.

  ‘There’s no point in searching for a lead if it’s already been found, so Bandy and Sugar – you stay here and we can telephone in from each station, report back and then, if one of us finds something, we can decide where to go from there. Is everyone clear?’

  We all nodded and headed for the door, ready and eager to get going. I felt sorry for Bandy and Sugar, being the ones who had to sit and worry.

  T.C. and I chatted easily as we sat on the tube, heading towards Euston. I felt so much better being able to do something that I was able to chat about something that had been niggling me for a while. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, T.C., do you know what goes on in those places in Soho that look deserted? You know, the ones with the tatty curtains or the boards? There’s always Chinese men going in and out, but no clue as to what goes on in there.’

  ‘Some of them are kind of social clubs,’ he said, ‘where the men sit around, gossip, drink tea, play this game with loads of small ivory tiles and generally get together. Most of them have left their families behind in Hong Kong or somewhere, and the poor sods get lonely. So when they’re free for a few hours, they want to relax with fellow countrymen. It’s only natural, really. They often don’t speak the lingo, either, which makes socializing outside of their own tight little groups a bit tricky.

  ‘See, they work like stink – I mean, real sweatshop stuff – and grab a few hours a week with mates. The rest of the time, they must be sleeping. So they have these clubs. At least, on the surface they’re clubs. They’re also benevolent societies, sort of.’ T.C. frowned, trying to find a way of explaining something he didn’t fully understand himself.

  ‘We had a talk once, from an inspector in the Hong Kong Police. He said that these clubs – Triads he called them – are partly social groupings, with the members mostly coming from the same area of China, and part secret society. They’re all things to all men, ’specially when the men are working a long way from home. They arrange marriages, and finance and organize weddings and funerals, that kind of stuff. They sort out jobs, favours, travel plans, moneylending, places to live, health care, banking, gambling, prostitutes, drugs, revenge. You name it, your branch of the Triad’ll arrange it – if it suits the men in charge, that is.

  ‘But if they do a member a favour, it is for a price. And members must pay their dues, regularly and on time, even if there are no favours. Even some poor sod sweating away for eighteen hours a day in a laundry pays somebody for the privilege. They call this boss type a “gangmaster”, and because he speaks English, he gets the jobs, negotiates the pay and takes a large cut. That’s what the inspector said. The only thing is …’

  T.C. paused. ‘The only thing is, the members can’t resign. It’s not allowed and I mean, not allowed. To leave your Triad without permission, apparently, is asking to have your right to breathe rescinded on a permanent basis.’

  ‘Is that a copper’s way of saying they risk being killed?’

  T.C. laughed and crinkled his face at me. I liked the way he did that. ‘Our stop,’ he said and stood up. He offered a hand to steady me as I rose and the train stopped rather abruptly.

  No one at the ticket office in Euston remembered a small Chinese girl with a suitcase buying a ticket and no one at the barriers remembered letting anyone fitting her description pass on to a train. T.C. had no better luck with the cab rank. No one had picked her up or even seen her. We rendezvoused at the buffet and resumed our chat over a cup of tea and a rather tired British Railways Chelsea bun.

  ‘So, have you ever been in one of these social clubs or dens of iniquity or whatever they are?’ I asked. I was really interested.

  ‘A few times, I suppose, a very few. When I was on the Force, we’d be informed of some sort of fracas at one of those places, but it’d mostly melt away before we’d arrive, and we’d find a couple of harmless old chaps having a peaceful game of mah-jong – the game with the tiles.’

  His voice grew sombre. ‘But there were stories. Gruesome ones. Once or twice officers found little bits of Chinamen strewn all over one of the gambling clubs and their spokesman would assure us that it was merely a little local difficulty that they’d sort out amongst themselves.

  ‘They did, too. More bits of Chinamen would turn up somewhere else and then it would all go quiet again. We’d never find out what it was about, let alone who did it. Never a hint, never a whisper, nothing. Getting information really is like chatting up a brick wall, only you’d get more change out of the wall. No wonder the powers that be on the Force just tend to let them get on with it. Their view is, if the Chinese want to kill each other – fine, as long as it doesn’t spill out on to the streets and involve us in any way.’

  ‘What’s your view?’ I asked.

  T.C. stared at the wall for a moment, choosing his words carefully. ‘I believe that no human being should be allowed to kill another unless his or her life, or the lives of their loved ones, depends upon it. Simple as that. I don’t care if they’re Chinese, Maltese, Jewish, African, Indian or English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish, I think basic humanity should apply to every living soul. If Hitler didn’t teach us that, then all those men, women and children died for nothing and that doesn’t bear thinking about. It makes us animals. Worse; animals don’t do murder, mass or otherwise, simply for the sake of it.’

  I thought about his answer and realized that I agreed with him. ‘What about the death penalty?’

  ‘I don’t see why another killing somehow magically evens the score. One more murder doesn’t pay for the murder or murders that led to the execution in the first place. I mean, the victim’s still dead, the family’s still grieving. Hanging – just because it’s official – doesn’t make it right, in my book.’

  T.C.’s voice grew passionate. ‘There’s been too many bad calls for hanging to be right. Look at that poor, simple boy, Bentley, he should never have been hanged. That was disgusting, that was. Then there’s that Welsh bloke who was topped for killing his wife over in Notting Hill, and the main witness against him was Christie. It can be a wicked world, but two stranglers living in the same house is hard to take.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ I told him. ‘And what about Ruth Ellis? After all, she was a mother. How can it be right to deprive a child of his mother like that? I know she did wrong, killing her lover, but the poor woman was half-crazed with jealousy. They should never have hanged her. The French would have called it a crime of passion and put her in prison, that would have been the best thing to do. After all, she wasn’t likely to make a habit of it, was she? Then that poor boy would still have his mother at least and some chance of seeing her.’

  T.C. nodded. ‘And what do you do when you find you’ve made a mistake? You can’t dig ’em up and say, “Sorry mate, bit of a ricket on the trial front, seems some other bugger did it.” And if you find someone else who you think did do it, what do you do then? Hang him as well and hope you got it right the second time? Personally, I think that sort of justice is best left up to God, if there is one, and we should bang ’em up in a nice jail somewhere.’

  I felt pretty much the same and was ridiculously pleased at our meeting of minds on the subject.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking. Do you think it’d be a good idea to check the buses? I don’t mean just the Victoria bus station ones, but the local red buses. You see, the more I try to put myself in Peace’s place, the more I can’t see her getting on a train to leave town. She barely knows England at all, but she does know her way around London a bit now. She understands the tubes and the buses.’

  I heard my voice trail away uncertainly. I didn’t want to try to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, as the saying goes, although anyone less like my granny than T.C. was hard to imagine. ‘Besides, it’s the only place in which she has friends,’ I added, almost in a whisper.

  T.C. grinned. ‘You should join the Force. You’ve got a knack of knowing what makes people tick, you have. I think you’re right. Once we’ve done the bus station, s
eeing we’re already here, we’ll nip down the local depot and ask a few questions in the canteen. The canteen’s the place to find a load of conductors all at once. If we can have a word with some of them, we might find a trace. It won’t do any harm to ask them to put the word out among their mates while they’re at it.’

  We had no luck at Victoria Bus Station either, so we headed back to Soho with a view to nipping in at the club first. If there was nothing doing there, we’d head on to the bus depot. And just for form’s sake, I made up my mind to check Peace’s room again before we left, just in case she’d slipped in while the coast was clear to have a nap or a snack, or to pack another bag. I didn’t hold out much hope, but I’d feel an utter fool if we were trawling London while she was catching forty winks in her own bed.

  It was only when I arrived home, once again checked Peace’s room in vain and sat for a moment with a cup of tea, that the thought that had been nagging at the back of my mind finally surfaced. I had forgotten to ask T.C. if he thought that Mr Chang, the man Mrs Wong had been so afraid of, could be anything to do with the local arm of one of these Triads he’d been talking about. After all, T.C. had said that wherever there were Chinese folk, then their Triad was right there with them, organizing things.

  It was obvious that Mr Chang was an important fellow. Perhaps his importance, and his obvious wealth, stemmed from his position within the Triad. Perhaps he was even the the chap in charge?

  21

  T.C. and I had agreed to meet at the cafe for breakfast. I had to ask Freddy and Antony if they’d let me have time off to question Peace’s friends at school. T.C. was planning to have another go at Rosie, but she’d already gone to school. Maggie was very apologetic.