by Peter Tonkin
‘So when will this be?’
‘As soon as they can.’
‘We have to be there.’
‘I certainly do. I’ve never come across a case like this one and I’ll check with Gerry first thing and try to chase up some case law on it. But I suppose it’s even possible that the court could appoint someone else to the defence if Richard makes no specific request to retain me. And that’s quite possible because he has no idea who I am any more.’
‘I know how you feel!’
‘Robin, don’t get bitter. It’s not his fault. He was wounded in the head, for goodness sake. It could have happened to anyone. He’ll remember soon enough, I’m sure.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. So, this transfer.’
‘I’m not sure it would be a good idea for you to be there. It may get pretty bad.’
‘I’ve had bad before.’
‘Not like this. I warn you. These will be specimen charges but they’ll choose the easiest to prove, and if they hold it in open court, then the press will have a field day. And there are so many of the press here, with the Prince …’
‘Then you’ll have to stop them. They’ll have to hold it — what do they call it? — in camera.’
‘Yes. Yes indeed. We’d better see about getting right onto that,’ and that was the moment Andrew really thought he had better at least try to get some sort of a grip on this situation. ‘Phone?’ he asked.
‘Behind the teapot,’ she answered, still hesitating in the French window.
‘I see it,’ said Andrew and crossed to it at once. The handset was warm from the heat of the pot. ‘Hello, switchboard? Hello? Yes, I’d like 812-0392 … Hello, Dottie? Pretty bad, I’m afraid … Yes … Oh, holding together, you know … Listen, Dottie, is Gerry there? … He is? Good. Can I speak to him, please? … Hello, Gerry? Listen …’ He glanced across towards Robin, saw that she was still watching him, turned his shoulder a little to shut her out and dropped his voice. ‘Listen …’
Robin turned away and crossed the balcony. Clearly Andrew needed privacy at this point, though she had a feeling he was only protecting her feelings. She leaned on the warm rail of the balcony and looked down at the pedestrian area. She would probably have been less happy about doing so on a weekday, but on Sunday sections of this area were closed to traffic. She took in a deep breath and held it. There was so much emotion within her and it needed to be sorted out before it overwhelmed her entirely.
She supposed that her reaction to this situation over the last terrible days had shown her where the centre of her world was. Like any mother, she had played mind games with herself wondering whether, if she ever had to choose between them, she would surrender her husband or her children. She had always assumed that she would stand by the twins. And yet here she was in Hong Kong having dropped William and Mary into her father’s arms again. When it had come right down to it, she had left her darlings and come after Richard.
Which made the pain of his rejection even harder to bear. And it was a rejection. No wise words from Andrew could alter what she felt. She felt he no longer loved her.
How could anyone love someone they couldn’t remember? If he had really loved her he wouldn’t have forgotten her in the first place. No. He loved his company and his ships and his sailing from one romantic place to another; he was happy enough to leave his wife and his babies at home. And sometime during the time he was away from them he had ceased to love them. Ceased to love her. That was all that made sense; there could be no other explanation. Somewhere along the line, on some day she had never known about or noticed, the steps had become complete: out of sight, out of mind, out of heart. Out of love.
There was a sharp pain in her breast and vaguely she wondered whether she was having a heart attack. That would be just perfect, she thought bitterly. What would happen to the children if her heart gave out now? With a mother lying in the middle of Connaught Road and a mass murderer father who didn’t even remember them, what would her darlings do?
She should go back to them. She should go back to them at once!
The decision made, she forgot all about her heart and her husband and stepped decisively back through into the room to find that Andrew was waving at her with some desperation. He was still glued to the phone and there was someone knocking at the door. She crossed to the door at once and opened it wide, expecting a member of the hotel staff to be waiting to take the tea things.
The police sergeant from police headquarters was there. The sergeant called Ho. She looked at him, her body utterly still as though he had struck her. He looked at her with the dark length of his eyes burning with fearsome intelligence. She opened her mouth but he raised his hand. She flinched, actually expecting a blow because the gesture was so sudden. But no. He was holding his hand level with her eyes so that she could see the corner of paper clutched between his closed fist and his thumb.
Slowly, as though performing some kind of tai chi exercise or kung fu move, he lowered the fist and pushed it towards her. Numbly, she took the white corner of the paper and he released the rest of it into her grasp. He smiled. His face was transformed. He turned on his heel and marched off down the corridor, moving with absolute silence.
Robin stepped back into the room and closed the door. Before turning back into the room, she looked at the piece of paper closely. It was white rice paper, clean cut. It was about five centimetres square. It was not folded. There was a combination of writing and printing on one side. The writing and printing were in black ink. The writing was in English and seemed to be written with a brush. The printing was in black also and looked to be a chop — a personal signet or seal. And that was all.
Robin turned. ‘Andrew,’ she said. ‘Andrew, look at this …’
Andrew looked across at her and stopped in mid-flow. There was a pause lasting hardly longer than an instant. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he said. And he hung up at once. ‘What is it, Robin?’ he asked.
‘This. It’s just come. What d’you think?’ She held it out and he took it.
He squinted at it.
‘The English writing says “Golden Star, 5 p.m.”. What does the chop say?’
He looked at her, frowning. ‘What do you know about chops?’ he asked. ‘You know, you seem to know one hell of a lot about this place. It’s amazing …’
‘Is it a Triad chop?’
‘There are a lot of people who would like to know the answer to that. Starting, I suspect, with your friend Commander Lee.’
‘What does the chop say?’
‘You can work it out for yourself. Look. This is the Chinese character for foot. And these dots are toes.’
She took it back and looked at it as closely as he. She saw the character clearly. And the dots, the toes. There were twelve.
‘So, what is it?’ he asked.
She handed it to him, suddenly Ailing with excitement. ‘It’s a message,’ she answered insouciantly. ‘A message from an old friend.’
She walked back to the French window and he saw that there was a new swing to her movement, a new bounce to her step. His heart clenched. He put the paper on the table without looking at what he was doing. It fluttered down onto the tray beside the cups and the cold teapot. ‘You’re not going?’ he said, aghast.
She stood silently, looking down across the car park to the bustle of the Star Ferry terminal. ‘What time is it?’ she asked, almost dreamily.
‘Four on the dot,’ he answered. ‘You’re not going,’ he repeated and this time it was an order, not a question. He crossed to her, suddenly very much afraid. ‘I can’t let you go,’ he told her. ‘It’s far too much of a risk.’
His hurried movement across the room caused him to brush against the tea table making the fine cups chime against each other like prayer bells in the sudden silence. And the tea spilt earlier soaked through the little square of rice paper, making it spread and dissolve into pale slime on the tray.
Chapter Twelve
The Golden Star
left from the right-hand pier at five that evening. In fact, the voyage and turnaround were so quick, it left every twenty minutes, but the note said five and that was the voyage Robin wanted to be on. ‘You’re mad,’ huffed Andrew, deeply concerned, as they walked briskly down towards the ferry terminal from the exit of the underpass across the plaza outside Jardine House.
‘He’s an old friend.’
‘He’s a pirate.’
‘I’d trust him with my life.’
‘That’s exactly what you are doing. And with my life too, come to that.’
‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’
‘Jesus wept.’
They came past the taxi rank and joined the crowd going into the ferry terminal. She took his arm placatingly, feeling a little guilty about all sorts of things. ‘Got three dollars?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
‘What more do we need?’
‘The return fare,’ he said glumly, but he said it to himself. She was already at the nearest $1.50 counter, speaking to the ticket clerk. ‘Tsimshatsui,’ she said, holding up two fingers with a smile. Not that the ferry went anywhere else in any case.
The clerk put two tickets in front of her as Andrew came up with the money.
‘Mgoi’, she said, taking them and smiling.
‘Hou wa’, said the clerk with unusual courtesy. Then he silently took the money from Andrew, obviously thinking gweilo!
The ferry was nestling restlessly beside the pier and Robin almost ran through the slow stream of people moving down the pier side, all but jumping aboard into the shade of the white awning which served the green-sided vessel as a roof. Andrew followed as closely as he could, keeping his eye fixed on her tossing golden curls. He had paid for upper deck but that did not mean that she would stay up here. If he lost sight of her now there was no telling where she might end up. This was one hell of a way to spend a weekend, he thought, and stepped aboard in her wake, just as the boat began to move.
This time on a Sunday the ferry was perhaps at its quietest. A certain number of Hong Kong natives sat, their noses buried in papers or daydreaming as though bored with the view, while the ferry began to pull away. A far larger number of tourists stood, awed by the view on the upper deck, talking excitedly in a range of languages and accents and using up roll after roll of film.
The waters of the harbour across which they were beginning to push were at their quietest as well. There would be more of a surge of traffic later, perhaps, when the crystal evening began to close down, but now it was a slack time. There were only half a dozen junks spreading their great red sails in the forlorn hope of a wind and hardly more than twenty sampans crawling like energetic black beetles across the surface of the water. A great freighter piled high with containers lay moored to an SMB and for a stomach-churning moment Andrew thought it must be Sulu Queen before he remembered that she was tied up further out near Stonecutter’s Island.
And it was during that moment, while Andrew stood looking at the freighter, that he lost sight of Robin. When he turned back, she was gone and an extremely large blackhaired gentleman with long dark eyes was standing immediately at his side. The gentleman smiled, displaying a large number of extremely straight, white teeth. The peppermint odour of chewing gum swept over Andrew as the stranger began to speak. ‘Hi. I’m Joe De Santos from Portland, Oregon,’ he said in a thunderous bass, sticking out a hand the size of a ham. ‘Would you mind taking just one or two photographs of me and my wife Annie here while we stand at the front of the ship?’
*
Robin walked down the companionway onto the lower deck. Here there were more Hong Kong people, all very obviously minding their own business, and no tourists at all. Some might come down later — if the term ‘later’ could be applied to something less than five minutes away — when they began to pull through the last of the shipping and into Kowloon. She walked purposefully along the deck towards the stem of the little boat, looking straight ahead of herself, back across the widening gap of water, towards the tall spear of the Jardine building.
When the tall, black-clad figure fell in step beside her she did not vary her gait but walked on until they could lean against the rail together and look out from under the awning as the first shades of early evening began to climb Saan Deng, the Peak.
‘Neih hou ma, Twelvetoes?’ she asked gently, using up almost all her Cantonese.
‘I am well, Little Mistress,’ he answered just as gently in English. ‘But how are you?’
‘I feel as though I’ve lost a leg; an arm; a heart.’
‘It is a bad, dark business.’
‘Can you tell me what is going on?’
‘I do not know. My people do not know. Yet.’
‘My people don’t seem to know much either.’
‘Give them time. They will learn.’
‘They haven’t done much so far.’
‘Early days. Be patient if you can.’
‘It is so hard, Twelvetoes. I have been here less than twenty-four hours and yet I am out of patience with them already.’
‘Patience was never a strength with you, Little Mistress. You have chosen well with this advocate, though. He is a good man. Give him time. Let him work. Trust him.’
‘Trust him? He came on board against his better judgement simply to protect me. And he’s lost me already!’ Her voice was mildly scornful.
‘You know better than that,’ chided Twelvetoes indulgently. ‘He is a greyhound, not a bloodhound. There are horses for courses. Trust him.’
Almost the whole of the harbour now stood between them and the far pier. They would be pulling in to Tsimshatsui in a moment. ‘Is that all you wanted to tell me?’ she asked. ‘Trust Balfour?’
‘The messenger was also the message,’ he said.
‘God, I’d forgotten how you love to be cryptic. Is he your son?’
‘We are related.’
‘And everyone must know.’
‘They know what they choose to know and believe what they choose to believe.’ He stirred as the ferry slowed, ready to come into its Kowloonside berth. And she knew that now would come the true point of their meeting. ‘Would it amuse you to see over Sulu Queen!’ he asked.
‘When? How?’
‘The last sailing tonight is at eleven thirty. Be there one hour earlier. This time come alone.’ He stepped away from her and she turned, looking down the length of the boat as she pulled into the terminal. His tall form hesitated. ‘Wear something dark,’ he said almost inaudibly and then moved on.
As Ho reached the foot of the companionway, Andrew came down it at a rush. Their shoulders almost touched, then the lawyer came puffing down the deck obviously relieved to have Robin in plain sight again. He had not even noticed the tall old Oriental in his traditional black clothing with his pink newspaper tucked under his arm. She switched on a dazzling smile and walked up the deck to take his arm. Solicitously listening to his affronted story about importunate American tourists, she led him back up the companionway and off onto the Kowloonside dock. When she was in a position to look for Twelvetoes again, he had vanished, one old Chinese invisible amid the milling crowd streaming up the pier towards the bus station.
‘Well, that’s that. No mysterious Twelvetoes Ho after all. What do we do now?’ he said when they reached the ticket office with no further incident.
She looked up at him, pleased that the adventure with his American tourists had so perfectly disguised her own adventure. So perfectly, it made her wonder … ‘If you’ve got another three dollars, we ride back,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t, then I’m afraid we’ll have to swim.’
Chapter Thirteen
There was only a skeleton command at HMS Tamar that night because the Prince of Wales, for whom the barracks and the great broad-shouldered building beside it were named, was entertaining the command aboard the Royal Yacht, currently moored off the new base on Stonecutter’s Island. The senior service stretched to the normal guard at
the entrance, supplemented by two of the colony’s shrinking Gurkha contingent, but no guard at all on the good ship Sulu Queen moored well out in the roads. It seemed that no one either at Tamar or at police headquarters was worried about the number of people in the harbours close by who might be expected to come aboard her for a little clandestine exploration, for they had even left the accommodation ladder down. This apparent carelessness was less stupid than at first it might have seemed, for it was taken for granted among the authorities that the events on the ship would have given her such a fearsome reputation among the notoriously superstitious Orientals that only the most foolish would dare go aboard.
Only the most foolish — or the most desperate.
It was just approaching 11 p.m. when the long prow of Twelvetoes’ sampan nudged silently against the metal hull beneath the ladder’s bottom step. Robin would have gone up first given half a chance but she was in the waist of the boat beneath the little thatched shelter with Twelvetoes himself and there were two strapping young men crouching in the bow as well as the two oarsmen in the stem with the long oar held between them.
‘We go slowly, with dignity,’ said Twelvetoes in a voice softer than the flutter of a moth’s wing. ‘And with flashlights, among other things,’ he added drily.
She did not ask about the ‘other things’, but took a torch when it was offered.
They did not switch the torches on at once. Sulu Queen might be unguarded but she was unlikely to be unobserved. They crept up the rocking sampan and clambered up onto the first step. Here they paused until a tiny flash of movement above summoned them onwards and upwards. They could hardly go side by side and so Robin went first and Twelvetoes came up close behind her. One of his men was waiting for them at the top of the ladder. He waved Robin inboard as Twelvetoes came silently up beside her and then he motioned them onwards.
Up on deck here, even beside the high-piled deck cargo, there was more than enough light to see by. The moon was almost full and hung like a lantern above the Peak. The stars were low in the clear sky, and the only thing which kept them from adding many candlepowers of light themselves was the overpowering glow which came from every side, multiplied by the quiet water all around. Such was the brightness that the bridgehouse seemed to glimmer as though it was luminous. Somehow Robin was surprised and vaguely offended that there was no barrier against their entry to the A-deck corridor. Perhaps she had seen too many American police films, but she had expected to find yellow-and-black striped tape with ‘POLICE: NO ENTRY’ written on it. It was as though the lack of such an injunction was an insult to Richard: were they taking this case as seriously as they ought to do?