The Two Sisters of Borneo

by Ian Hamilton

  Ava sighed. “The trouble with using goons is that they’re goons for a reason. They usually don’t have the brains to hold down any other kind of job.”

  “I haven’t slept since that night,” Ah-Pei said in a rush. “I keep thinking about Amanda and Chi-Tze when I saw them for the first time at the hospital. I’d give anything to take all this back.”

  “Well, for starters, you’re going to transfer the money that’s sitting in Kuala Lumpur back into the company accounts,” Ava said.

  “I will.”

  “And then you’re going to go with May to see the lawyer. You’ll tell him everything you told us, and you’ll answer any other questions he has.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Have you been in contact with de Groot?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Keep it that way. I mean it — if he suspects there’s even the tiniest problem, everything I said about not involving the police will be reversed.”

  “I understand,” Ah-Pei said.

  “May, is there anything else you want to add?”

  “Stay away from the office,” she said, leaning forward and jabbing her index finger into Ah-Pei’s knee.

  Whatever composure Ah-Pei had left dissolved in a trail of tears.

  “I’ll have someone pack your things and send them to your house,” May said, and then sat back. “Unfortunately there may be occasions when we need information or some help. When that need arises, one of my people will call you. I expect you to be one hundred percent co-operative. Otherwise I expect you to do nothing, absolutely nothing, that will interfere with the supply chain or the customer base.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “A week ago I’m quite sure you didn’t think you’d cause so much damage to two young women,” May said.

  Ava stood up. Recrimination was pointless. At some point Ah-Pei would have to deal with her sister and brothers and Amanda, and it seemed obvious that the time between now and then would be painful enough. “May, when can the lawyer see you?” she asked.

  “Whenever we want.”

  “I have to go upstairs. I’m going to email Jacob Smits, with a copy to you, and tell him what’s going on here. When you finish with her at the lawyer’s office, send everything you have to Jacob. He can take care of things on the Dutch side. Now I need to get to Hong Kong.”

  “I know. I’ll look after things here.”

  “I’m so sorry,” a small voice said.

  Ava looked down at Ah-Pei. “What I don’t understand is how you could tear your family apart like that. What else do we have in this world that we can rely on? If we don’t have family, we have nothing. That’s how I was raised, and I can’t imagine you were raised any differently.”

  Ah-Pei stared at the ground.

  Ava left the two women and limped towards Sonny and Suen. They leapt to their feet as soon as they saw her coming. “I’m finished here. I’m going upstairs to pack. How soon will the plane be ready to leave?”

  “I’ll call the pilot now,” Suen said. “It shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

  “May is taking Ah-Pei to the lawyer’s office. Can you send someone with them?”

  “Choo will go,” Suen said, motioning to the man who had driven them to the hotel.

  Ava made her way to the elevator. As the doors closed she looked back and saw that May and Ah-Pei had joined the men. Ah-Pei posed no threat of bolting, or of doing anything else, for that matter. She would do exactly what Ava had told her to do. So would May. So would Jacob. Now, she thought, if only I had any control over what’s going on in Hong Kong.

  ( 32 )

  The plane was a turboprop model, a Fairchild-Dornier 328, that could seat thirty-two passengers. Ava, Sonny, and sixteen men from Shanghai were on board. The men sat together at the front. Ava sat alone in the back row. She had kept Sonny’s phone, and she checked it every ten minutes for a call from Parker.

  Ava turned on her laptop but couldn’t get an Internet connection. She pulled out her notebook and updated it with the activities of the past three days. She was doing it out of habit, as a way to kill time. When she finished, she turned to the back of the book and, almost without thinking, began to make a list of things she had to do in Hong Kong. Seeing Uncle’s lawyer was a priority, if only because Uncle had made such a pointed request.

  She had a copy of his will. She hadn’t wanted it but he had been insistent, and then he had made her sit next to him while they read it together. It was simple enough. Lourdes inherited the Kowloon apartment and Sonny the car, and both they and Uncle Fong were left some cash. Everything else went to Ava.

  “We’re about half an hour out from Chek Lap Kok,” she heard a voice say.

  Suen stood several rows in front of her, as if afraid to invade her privacy.

  “Thanks. I didn’t know the airport took private planes.”

  “We’ll land at the Business Aviation Centre; it’s tucked into a corner of the airport. The immigration people will come on board to check our papers. When that’s done, you can disembark. I had the pilot phone ahead and arrange for a limo to meet you at the plane.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Give Uncle our best regards.”

  “I will.”

  “Our boss thinks the world of him.”

  “Yes,” Ava said.

  They began to descend just five minutes later. Ava looked out the window as they cleared the clouds and the South China Sea became visible. How many times had she looked out on that view? A hundred, maybe two hundred, maybe more? When Uncle was gone, what reason would she have to come back to Hong Kong? In her mind they were interlinked; she couldn’t think of one without the other.

  As they got closer to the airport, the sky ahead of them darkened. Rain began to pelt the windows and the plane began to rock in the wind. She saw some of the men shift uncomfortably in their seats. It was strange, the different things that generated fear in people.

  They landed and then taxied for what seemed like ten minutes before stopping on the tarmac in front of a long, curved two-storey glass building. Ava saw a small group of people leave the building and run towards them, umbrellas pointed straight ahead. The pilot came out of the cockpit and opened the plane’s door. Two immigration officers entered.

  “Who’s getting out here in Hong Kong?”

  “We are,” Ava said, pointing to Sonny.

  “Follow my colleague here into the terminal. The rest of you, I need to see your papers.”

  Ava gathered her bags. Sonny took the heavier one from her and led her towards the exit. “Goodbye, and thanks,” she said to Suen.

  Holding a large umbrella, a young man in a raincoat waited at the foot of the stairs. He held it over Ava and then led the way into the terminal. Within minutes they were through Immigration and had entered the baggage area. They walked almost directly into a limo driver holding a sign that read MS. LEE. “Do you have any bags to collect?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “So where am I taking you?”

  “The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kowloon.”

  “The car is right outside.”

  Ava checked the phone again as soon as they were inside the limo. Still nothing from Parker. She tried his number again, and again it went to voicemail. She phoned Uncle Fong. He wasn’t answering either. Then she phoned the Kowloon apartment, thinking that Lourdes was sure to be there. She let the phone ring until she heard Uncle’s voice-message prompt.

  It was verging on rush hour, and with the rain and the wind Ava was afraid they would be caught in a mess of traffic. But the limo coasted over the Tsing Ma suspension bridge and edged into Kowloon. Traffic in the city was slower; it took them another twenty minutes before the sprawling hospital complex came into view. By then it had stopped raining, and when the limo ran into a wall of traffic about two bloc
ks from the hospital, Ava told the driver to pull over and let them out.

  “Do you know which building we’re supposed to go to?” Ava asked as she and Sonny started to walk.

  “R Block.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  They climbed the steps into R Block, Ava leading. She was starting to move towards the reception desk when she see saw a familiar figure leaving an elevator.

  “Doctor Parker!” she shouted.

  He took two steps to the side and stopped, searching the hall for the voice’s origin. When he saw her, he lifted his chin ever so slightly. What she thought was surprise on his face turned into something that chilled her to the core.

  “Ms. Lee,” he said.

  She felt her knees weaken.

  Parker took several steps towards them. “Ms. Lee,” he said.

  She saw that his lips were moving but she couldn’t hear him. Her legs buckled. She would have collapsed onto the floor if Sonny hadn’t been gripping her arm.

  ( 33 )

  The funeral home was in Fanling, a northern suburb in the New Territories. Uncle had chosen it because it was only a kilometre from the cemetery in Wo Hop Shek, where he had chosen to be buried.

  When he had explained the arrangements to her, Ava had asked, “Why Wo Hop Shek? Why Fanling?”

  He had owned the plot, he said, for more than forty years. He was just starting his first gang then, in Fanling, and there had been a lot of opposition. He decided it would be prudent to plan for the worst, so he bought the plot. He had looked in Hong Kong and Kowloon, but even then land was being sold by the square inch and hardly anyone was buried anymore. Even finding places to put ashes was a challenge. And anyway, the idea of being cremated didn’t appeal to him then, and it did so even less now. The plot at Wo Hop Shek Cemetery had given him peace of mind.

  The funeral home came to collect his body late that Saturday night, after Dr. Parker had completed the paperwork. They placed Uncle in a silver-coloured basket-weave container that was to transport him to Fanling. He had bought a new suit — black, of course — and a new white shirt and new shoes a few months before. Lourdes sent them from the apartment to the funeral home so he could be dressed quickly in clothes that represented the start of his new life.

  The reception at the funeral home would be brief, as Uncle had requested. It was scheduled for between eleven a.m. and three p.m. on the Tuesday. There was no embalming. Uncle had wanted a closed casket, so as soon as he arrived in Fanling he was dressed in his new suit and laid in a steel coffin with the traditional three humps.

  Sonny, Lourdes, Uncle Fong, and Ava had decided that they would maintain a vigil at the funeral home. They split the time into six-hour shifts. Ava took the first and the last. Sonny drove her to Fanling on Saturday night so she would be there when his body arrived. She had been on the phone for most of the evening, talking to her mother, her sister, Maria, Mimi, her father, and May Ling. Both her mother and Maria wanted to come to Hong Kong. Ava discouraged them. The timing was tight, and the truth was that Ava wasn’t sure she could handle the additional emotional pressure they would bring.

  On Sunday morning she went back to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to see Amanda. Her sister-in-law’s room wasn’t in R Block, but simply being at the hospital sent tremors through Ava’s body.

  She hadn’t told them she was coming and didn’t know what to expect, so it was with some trepidation that she walked into the private ward. There were two beds in the room. One was empty. In the other, Amanda lay on her back, a string of tubes running from her arm. Her head was bandaged diagonally, the right eye almost completely covered.

  Ava approached the bed. Amanda’s left eye and what she could see of the right were closed. Ava sat in a chair beside the bed and reached for her hand. She had been sitting quietly for five minutes, maybe longer, when she heard a sound at the door. She turned and saw Michael.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Maybe I should have called,” she said.

  “No, I’m glad you came.”

  He walked towards her. She stood, wincing as her knee reacted to the change of position, and reached up. They clung to each other.

  “I heard about Uncle,” he said when they finally separated.

  “I knew it was just a matter of time, but it turned out that no time was ever going to be right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry about Amanda. How is she?”

  “Better — at least, better than she was. She fell asleep just about half an hour ago. She’s been awake and alert, which is a blessing. She’s concussed, but there doesn’t seem to be any brain damage. The orbital bone will knit just fine, they think, although she’ll probably have some kind of scar above the eye.”

  “Thank God.”

  “That’s what Jack Yee keeps saying. You just missed him. We’re taking turns sleeping in the other bed.”

  “He left a note for me in Borneo.”

  “I know.”

  “When you see him, tell him we got the person who did this.”

  Michael closed his eyes. “He’ll be happy, but you know you can tell him yourself. He plans on going to Uncle’s funeral.”

  “That won’t be the place, or the time. Please do it for me.”

  “I will.”

  “And do me one more favour: don’t come to the funeral yourself. You and Amanda have just got married. I don’t want to bring any more bad luck into your lives by letting you attend a funeral. I know that’s superstitious, but I believe it all the same.”

  “So does Jack, and so does my mother. So don’t worry, I won’t be going.”

  Ava turned towards Amanda. She leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Tell her that I was here. Tell her that May and I love her and worry about her and are praying for her.”

  “I will.”

  ( 34 )

  On Tuesday morning, the day of Uncle’s farewell, Ava arrived at the funeral home at five a.m. for the final vigil and for final inspection of the room they would be using. It was long and narrow, and Uncle’s coffin was placed on a raised platform at the far end. It wasn’t common for the coffin to be visible at a Chinese funeral, but he wanted it that way and gave no reason. In front of it, on an easel, was a large photo of him that was a particular favourite of Ava’s. He was seated outside a restaurant, wearing his black suit, his shirt done up to the collar. He was leaning forward, a cigarette burning in one hand, his eyes locked onto the person taking the picture. What Ava loved about it was his eyes. They were so alive, so alert, so full of intelligence — and, Ava thought, so full of warning. He had been a complex man. The photo did him justice.

  Around the coffin were a circle of white candles and a second circle of incense sticks. The candles would be lit before people started arriving. The incense was for the guests to light if they chose.

  It was traditional for the family to sit on one side of the room and the guests to sit on the other. The funeral home director had suggested that, given the small size of Uncle’s “family,” they forego the tradition. Ava had to intervene before Sonny took the man’s head off. So there were four chairs to the right of the coffin with Ava, as his closest “relative,” sitting next to it to receive guests. A hundred chairs were set up to the left, though they doubted they would need that many. As it was, the four chairs would be only partly occupied, because Sonny and Uncle Fong would be standing at the door to welcome the guests and give each of them a white envelope that contained a small white towel, a candy, and a coin. The towel was to dab away tears. The candy represented something sweet in a time of bitterness. The coin was for the guests to take away, to buy something sweet when memories of the deceased came to them.

  The guests themselves would bring white envelopes with money for the family. The amount in each packet would come to an odd single number, normally achi
eved by a bill plus a small coin. Just as the double number eight, so prevalent at Amanda’s wedding, represented happiness, the single number was meant to represent a one-time occurrence.

  The plan after the visitation ended was for the hearse to drive the kilometre or so to the cemetery. Ava, Sonny, Lourdes, and Uncle Fong would walk behind it, and any of the guests who chose to do so also were welcome.

  At six o’clock Ava changed into her mourning clothes: a plain white skirt and a white tunic made from burlap. The top had a hood that she would wear from the time the first guest arrived until Uncle was buried. Sonny was already dressed in a thin surcoat of sackcloth over a white gown; he had a white band tied around his forehead. Uncle Fong would be dressed identically.

  During her vigil, Ava had avoided any close contact with the coffin; it still seemed unreal that it contained Uncle. It wasn’t until she arrived that morning and saw the photograph and the chairs set in position that it began to take hold that he was gone.

  “Sonny, do you think you could leave me alone for a little while?” she said.

  “I’ll go and talk to the funeral director about the wreaths. There are only three set up here, and I know more were sent.”

  “You do that,” Ava said.

  When she was alone, she took an orange and some money from her purse and approached the coffin. She knelt and placed both at its base. Then she lit an incense stick and pressed it between her palms. And then she prayed. She prayed to God, to every god, to any god who would listen. Her Catholic god, the Buddhist god, the Taoist god.

  The man she had known was a gentle, generous, loving, and thoughtful man. Whatever deeds he had committed before she met him were unknown to her. All she knew was a man who had done immeasurable good, who had saved businesses, saved families, saved so many poor souls from ruin. Please see him as I saw him, she prayed. Please accept him into whatever eternity there is. Tears welled in her eyes and she found herself unable to continue. She remained there in front of the coffin, on her knees, silent, the incense stick burning down to its base between her palms.