by Peter Tonkin
Such thoughts had been suppressed at once, but it was disturbing that she should have entertained them at all. To do so for any man was something which in the past would have been unthinkable. To do so now for Daniel Huuk was an extremely dangerous indulgence.
‘My plan is this,’ she said, round a mouthful of lemon chicken. ‘I want to find Richard.’
‘I will be happy to help. I know no more than it said on the note, but I know men who might be able to share a little enlightenment.’
‘If he is on one of Twelvetoes’ ships then you’ll be lucky to find anyone willing to share information about destinations. Unless Twelvetoes himself is available.’
‘Last I heard he was still in Macau. The chop and the message did not come direct.’
‘Well, I’ve an alternative place to start. There’s a detective both Richard and I were convinced was a direct line to Twelvetoes. As a matter of fact, he delivered the last chop from Twelvetoes I saw. His name is Lawkeeper … ’ She stopped talking because Daniel was shaking his head.
‘You haven’t looked at the full passenger list,’ he said quietly. ‘Lawkeeper Ho was on the Macau jetcat too.’
Robin stared at him. ‘They were going across to see him,’ she whispered.
‘Looks that way.’
‘My God. Now what are the implications of that?’
They were still examining the possibilities as they left the restaurant. In the great marble lobby of the hotel, Robin crossed to reception. Even though Giuseppe Borelli no longer adorned the place and she was no longer recognised here, she felt sure that they would be willing to call her a cab — or even allow her to use one of the hotel’s limousines.
Half an hour later, Robin was paying off the cabbie in Repulse Bay, her mind very actively engaged with the suddenly urgent task of deciding what she was going to tell Su-lin. That young lady worshipped Richard and she was likely to take very strongly against itinerant men brought home by his grieving widow. Especially if Robin’s gweilo assumptions about the libidinous speculation of the Oriental mind had any basis in fact. But things turned out more positively than could have been envisaged, for this was a different Robin to the one Su-lin had been comforting. The amah saw the change at once. She knew Robin too well to suppose for a moment that the rebirth of her little mistress was in any way due to anything sexual the guttersnipe guest had done. And in any case, the amah was the first person other than the officers of Sulu Queen to hear the news he brought. Under the circumstances, the overjoyed Su-lin was prepared to be indulgent. She made them jasmine tea and left them talking over the kitchen table.
They went to bed at midnight with a wide range of possibilities examined but all too few solid facts established. They had decided on a plan of action for the morning. They had sketched out what they should be trying to do for the rest of the day and had made a list of targets. These latter got increasingly vague as time passed and exhaustion set in; exhaustion compounded by reaction. At last there was simply no more for them to say except good night.
Ten minutes later, Robin was standing beneath the shower. She had set it to the hottest temperature she could stand. Steam billowed sensuously around her, redolent of the delicately perfumed soaps she favoured. The spray of the shower glittered in the tight curls of her hair like diamonds in golden wool. The power of the fine jets was enough to bring a blush to clear pink flesh but was not quite enough to flatten those golden curls. Idly, she was soaping the flat plane of her stomach, her mind far removed in place and time. The slippery bubbles wound their way downwards as her hand slipped upwards over the short ribs beneath the surprisingly full swell of her breasts. The heat of the shower made her rosy flesh soft and the softness of the water added to the sensuous slipperiness of the soap. The actions became caresses, the caresses more lingering. First one hand, then the other slid round that narrow waist until the long muscles of back and the first dimples of hip received the same lingering, soapy caress. The river of bubbles meandering out of the valley of her cleavage at the front slid down until it flowed into more springy golden curls. Then the hands moved down to flanks, and from flanks, round to the front, round and down …
Daniel Huuk sat cross-legged on the bed in the guest room, listening to the sounds of the shower and examining these pictures in his mind. It was a pleasant way of passing time until the subject of his fantasies went to sleep. It was all very well for Robin to set targets and make lists, she was working absolutely in the dark. All of her surmises were baseless.
The sound of the shower stopped abruptly, though he allowed his fantasy to continue for a while. By half past midnight there was absolute stillness in the house. Only then did Daniel permit his thoughts to become actions. Like the shadow he had so nearly become, he flowed off the bed and crossed the room on silent feet. The door yielded to him with little more than the grating of the tongue in the groove. The hall was as silent as the rest of the sleeping house. On his way in here he had automatically taken stock of all the furniture and furnishings with a mind to the necessity of silent movement in the dark. But in fact the moon, only a day or two past the full, cast a good deal of light into the public areas of the Mariners’ home. And, he discovered, after a little more silent breaking and entering, a bar of silver moonlight gave its chill illumination to the private quarters as well.
Silently, reliving his fantasy, he stood in the doorway of her bedroom telling himself that he was merely ensuring she was safely sound asleep. Restless as a slumbering child, she had kicked off the silk sheet which was all the carefully adjusted air conditioning required. The white silk of her nightgown clung to her flesh as intimately as the moonlight would have done had she been naked. She lay on her back with one arm snugged beneath the tousled curls of her still drying hair. The other arm was flung wide, throwing the swell of her breasts into full relief. Beneath the heavy curve of their underside, her waist seemed still girlishly slight, slim enough to throw into contrast again the swell of her hips. Her long, ballet-dancer’s thighs were as loosely disposed as her arms and the pale columns of her ankles the only part of her apart from the arms actually unclothed, before her feet were lost in the waves of sheet.
Thinking again of their teasing references to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Daniel wondered what magic herb he would have to distil into those flickering eyes of hers to make her love him to distraction when she woke. The thought brought a bitter smile to his lips.
But then, as he stood as still and silent as a black heron in the doorway, the subject of his watch stirred and turned her head slightly towards him. Her eyes flickered and he saw them as two fathomless pools of grey shadow. The full, curving sensuality of her lips parted slightly. A whisper of sound sped from between them which seemed to pierce his heart like Cupid’s own blind arrow. And, as he strained to hear it more fully, that whisper of sound became a long, susurrating snore.
An hour later, Daniel was sitting at a table in a dingy bar along from Repulse Bay. He was not alone in enjoying the knowledge that somewhere beneath his feet lay the bones of his mother’s father, a British Army officer, executed by the monstrous Japanese with many others who had fought to defend Hong Kong in the dark days of 1941. On a screen above the bar, circumstances came full circle. Two massive sumo wrestlers were locked in combat. Disorientatingly, between bouts, whoever had made the tape being shown had intercut apparently identical wrestling matches, but these were being enacted by naked women considerably less weighty than the real wrestlers. Daniel had led two lives; one in Hong Kong and one in Xianggang. Both of these lives allowed him access to places such as this, although by no means on the same side of the law. It did not matter that he had come here with no money. It did not matter that he told the importunate waitress to leave him alone and had refused to buy a drink. It did matter that the tables nearest to him were beginning to empty, however. It was this that ensured a swift reply to the quiet request he had made upon entering the place.
‘Gweilo Huuk,’ said the extremely corpulent man w
ho owned this place, the pool room upstairs, the mah-jong parlour above that and the bedrooms above that. ‘They told me you were dead.’
‘It may have been wishful thinking. It may also very nearly have been true. Very nearly, but as you see, not quite.’
Fat-belly Pot eased his bulk on to a chair at the table and it became obvious at once why he favoured sumo wrestling tapes — the sumo stars were the only men alive who might make him seem small by comparison. Fat-belly did not really own Good Luck Bamboo. He owned the debt to the White Powder Triad which had purchased it and he owned the responsibility for the monthly squeeze he paid them. On the other hand, thought Daniel, calculating with practised precision, he also owned the protection certificate, signed in chicken’s blood, which would have a couple of White Powder insurance agents here any minute now. But the risk was worth taking. Fat-belly Pot had information which would make an enormous difference to Daniel and, try as he might, he could see no reason why Fat-belly would not be willing to share it with him.
‘Are you sure you will not take a drink?’ inquired Fat-belly, clearly playing for time. Daniel bowed his head in courteous acquiescence and as Fat-belly signalled to a scrawny waitress wearing only black lace panties and with breasts like a boy, Daniel’s restless fingers fiddled with the cheap mirror-stemmed lamp until he could also see reflected in it the doorway to the establishment. It would have been too discourteous to sit where he could see it directly; but as a lover of Westerns in his youth, he knew what happened when Wild Bill Hickok sat with his back to the door of a saloon. Having positioned the lamp, he folded his hands on the tabletop, in plain view of his host’s almost invisible eyes.
‘Elder brother Pot,’ he began, pitching his voice just above the bustle of the bar, ‘I have been informed that you may hold a piece of information of some value to me.’
‘Of value?’
‘Of value only to me. To yourself worthless, or I would not come to you, poor as I am, in case I should insult you with my worthlessness.’
The waitress brought the drinks. It was only when she leaned forward that her chest gathered itself into paps. Daniel was surprised to note that what he had thought to be black lace panties was a narrow belt low on her hips and a certain bounty of nature in the matter of body hair.
Movement. Daniel’s momentarily distracted gaze snapped back from the girl to the lampstand. Two young men were pushing their way through the customers and several near the door were already sidling out into the street. Daniel was sitting with his hands decorously folded on the grimy tablecloth before him. This allowed his fingers ready access to the two knives, each forearm-long, which nestled between his cuff and his elbow. He did not use them yet.
‘Elder brother,’ he said, ‘I see that you have wisely asked your insurers to be present here. I would most forcefully advise you that their presence is not required. I mean you no harm. I am but a poor seeker after truth. I swear on the bones of my mother’s father.’
‘Upon which you are sitting,’ wheezed Fat-belly. ‘It is a good oath, especially in the season of the hungry ghosts.’ He raised a hand like five boiled chicken sausages stuck on to a big steamed dumpling. The movement behind Daniel ceased at once. ‘Ask your question, Gweilo Huuk.’
‘It is simply this. Who supplies the best crews in Xianggang for commercial ships? The very best?’
Fat-belly’s thick eyebrows would have vanished above his hairline had he possessed such a thing. ‘But you are a navy man.’
‘That was a long time ago. And in a different city. It was called Hong Kong.’
‘And you are working for a woman whose fortunes are based on the possession of such knowledge.’
‘A gweilo woman whose husband, if not dead, is in the hands of Twelve toes Ho.’
The eyebrows went even higher. Perhaps Gweilo Huuk had not come so empty-handed after all. Information such as this might have a worth beyond ready computation. ‘Very well. The name of the man you seek is Hip. Shipchandler Hip is the man who supplies the best crews in the whole of Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian; in the whole of southern China.’
13
Robin was almost surprised to find Daniel Huuk there next morning, talking to Su-lin and waiting quietly to share breakfast with her, showered, shaved, dressed in his patched black suit. And he clearly had every intention of staying by her side in her search for Richard, whether on his own behalf or on the orders of Twelvetoes Ho she wasn’t sure.
If Twelvetoes had Richard, then there could be a problem, because if Daniel was working for the old man, his real mission might actually be to slow her down, perhaps even to frustrate her. These thoughts slipped quietly into Robin’s much more balanced head over a breakfast of ripe mango, Earl Grey and toast.
If Twelvetoes did want her stopped, he would have to employ someone very good indeed because, of almost all the women in south China, Robin was perhaps the best equipped to go after her missing husband. Her company might be on the rocks financially, but it was still big enough to get her anywhere on the globe she wanted to go, in a minimum of time, by any mode of public transport, regardless of cost. And if she could not go by public transport, she still had her own shipping fleet and the papers to command any of its vessels. Only one thing was holding her up in fact: she did not know where to go.
She spent the day, with Daniel at her side, settling the affairs of the China Queens Company and obtaining formal permission for Sulu Queen to sail, so that when she did find out where Richard was she would be free to get herself there as fast as possible, if necessary on board Sulu Queen herself. She instructed Captain So to load up the ship and await further instructions. She also made use of the various people she was dealing with to send out feelers in case any of them knew anything at all which might help her locate Richard. She visited several police stations, questioning members of the People’s Police Force as to any information they could give her on the workings of Triad organisations and of the Triad run by Twelvetoes Ho in particular. She was politely pushed from pillar to post, all around the downtown police stations. At police headquarters, the Organised Crime Unit simply referred her to Government House where, inevitably, she met with bland incomprehension. Triads were the brainchildren of decadent Western thriller writers. They did not really exist.
The South China Morning Post offices were more helpful with the history which the government departments were unwilling to discuss, but even their records became closed to Robin when she expressed interest in more current information. And through all of this, Daniel Huuk was no bloody help whatsoever, for all that he had left her side only when she actually went into police headquarters itself, preferring, he said, to go round the comer and re-acquaint himself with someone in the Wanchai.
By Friday afternoon, Robin was more than willing to channel some of her frustration and anger at him. But she didn’t. Her next task in particular required tact and sensitivity. ‘Daniel,’ she said, looking deep into those eyes that seemed to be entirely composed of liquid darkness, ‘I don’t want to insult you, but I think you need some new clothes. You have such powerful face in my eyes that if you were dressed in rags you would still be of the utmost consequence. But you must see that while you are with me, your face is my face. And anyway, you may need to represent me. You must therefore allow me to be careful of my own face, even when it is represented through you.’
Not one muscle of his lined, rice-paper visage moved. He looked equally deeply into the earnest grey of her eyes. ‘If it will serve you,’ he said. ‘Though you should be aware that in many of the places I may venture on your behalf, what I wear now serves us both well and what you would like me to wear would get at least one of us killed.’
‘So change before you go out,’ she said, but she said it lightly, with a smile.
She could have taken him to Alfred Dunhill’s in the Prince’s Building — it still existed and its name was unchanged, even in the new Xianggang. She could have taken him to Daks close by; Armani, Givenchy Gentleman, St Laurent, S
wank and Tux all beckoned. But, practical housekeeper that she was, she took him down to Causeway Bay, into the Exelsior Shopping Centre, and introduced him to the delights of Marks and Spencer. Here at very reasonable cost she kitted him out with clothing more fitted to his standing as her self-appointed right-hand man. The effect of a two-piece lightweight pinstriped business suit in charcoal grey with white shirt, fashionable tie and gleaming shoes was very positive. Disturbingly so. He looked, she thought, like a man who could be responsible for anything from a small commercial enterprise to a Triad hit squad. The pair of them turned heads in the open street. John Shaw, who for Oriental reasons beyond her fathoming had been bowing and scraping to Daniel anyway, simply started to grovel.
That night, Daniel went out again, as he had on Wednesday night, and on Thursday. He hung his suit in his wardrobe and changed into his own patched black before he left the house. As well as information, Fat-belly Pot had been willing to part with a battered old Honda Accord, and a little after midnight Daniel once again eased it down past Happy Valley and along Canal Road into the tunnel.
*
If Thursday was bad and Friday worse, Saturday nearly sent Robin insane.
She awoke into a dangerously explosive temper. It was now a week since Richard had vanished, nearly six days since she had received word of his apparent death, three days since she had heard that he was not dead after all. And what had she accomplished? She had bored several officials rigid and bought Daniel Huuk a new suit. It was pathetic.