Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  But, as it happened, Andrew’s papers were more than sufficient to get them past the policeman guarding the door into the China Queens office. He leafed through the papers, scanned her passport, and then with a curt nod opened the door for them.

  The first thing Robin saw when she entered the little suite of offices was a computer. With hope welling in her heart, she switched it on and provided an operating system as requested. There was a standard word-processing package which auto loaded. As it did so, she opened her briefcase and lifted out that increasingly battered little book-shaped parcel wrapped in Mickey Mouse paper. It had gone beyond being a perfect hiding place now — it was almost a good luck charm. Just for a moment as she looked at it, Robin thought that she had better get some matching paper and rewrap it before she sent it on to the little girl for whom it was destined. No, she decided. She would not just send it, she would take it herself.

  As she thought these thoughts, she slid the disk out of the wrapping paper and placed the present back in her briefcase. Then, heart in her mouth, she slipped in the disk from the Sulu Queen and asked for the index. The tiny red light at the drive port flickered on as the machine consulted the disk, looking for a program it recognised. The screen on the monitor flickered and went blank.

  ‘You got nothing on that disk at all,’ said Tan helpfully, looking over her shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got a lot on this disk. I just can’t find a program that’s compatible with it, that’s all. You know any computer experts?’

  ‘No. We could try the Yellow Pages.’

  ‘Not with this one, it’s too precious.’

  ‘If you won’t trust experts to get into it for you then you’re looking at a long haul before you find out what it says. There must be thousands of programs on the market. And even the new ones which are compatible with each other aren’t compatible with the older ones.’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t an expert,’ she said, popping her disk out of the machine and slipping it back into the wrapping.

  ‘I’m not. I keep up to date because I keep promising myself I’m going to buy one some day, but every time one I like comes along, something even better’s in the shops before I can raise the purchase price.’

  ‘You’ve got to buy them on hire purchase.’

  ‘Never get into debt. This is a low-return business at the best of times.’

  ‘Wise man. Now, I’ll look through the computer files here. You look through the rest of the offices.’

  ‘OK. What am I looking for?’

  ‘Anything which throws any light on Anna Leung or Captain Walter Gough, their relationships, and their disappearance. Records about the crew of the Sulu Queen — here’s a list. Anything about the China Queens Company which doesn’t feel right. Hard copies of any records, especially lading records of the cargo carried most recently by the Sulu Queen, origin and destination.’

  ‘OK,’ he said equably. ‘But do you think the police will let us take any of this stuff away with us?’

  ‘Depends on the case they’re trying to prove, apparently. My advice is from my Hong Kong lawyer so some of the detail may not quite fit in with the local scene but I have enough documentation to prove that this is my company and therefore my property. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem.’

  ‘Unless they want to charge you with anything that this Anna Leung has been up to. Anything that the company itself is actually responsible for, in law.’

  ‘It’s a risk we may have to take. But it’s pretty remote, my solicitor tells me. And if the worst comes to the worst and Ms Leung has been involved in fraud of some kind for which the whole company is legally responsible, then I can start getting that sorted out in short order and there’ll be less chance of them holding the Seram Queen.’

  ‘And that’s important too, is it?’

  She glanced across the room to where he was going through a tall filing cabinet slowly and carefully as they talked. ‘Heritage Mariner is a big company, but we’ve never been that wealthy as companies go. If Seram Queen is held for any time at all, then the China Queens Company folds. Heritage Mariner, as parent company, will become liable for all debts and losses. We could go down too.’

  ‘Sounds important to me. Ah … Gough, Walter. Captain.’ He slipped out a fat file and began to pore over it.

  Robin’s deft fingers danced across the keys of the computer, exploring the company records on disks which the system could read.

  Inspector Sung arrived while they were still working, but Robin had been expecting that. It was all very well for police constables to allow access to places they were guarding but no constable in his right mind would do so without alerting his seniors.

  Sung was urbane, cheerful and friendly. He already knew Edgar Tan, of course, and seemed quite amenable to chatting with Robin, watching closely as she worked and answering her questions with apparent candour.

  ‘Can you tell me whether there are, in fact, any charges outstanding against Miss Leung?’

  A glance passed between the two men, a flickering of the eyes and nothing more. It was so quick that Robin was not really certain she had seen it but it alerted her to be careful from here on. There might be just a little more happening than immediately met the eye. She decided to try some subtle interrogation of Tan at a later stage. For now she concentrated her eyes on the monitor as she scanned file headings and her ears on Inspector Sung’s gentle voice. ‘No. There is nothing specific against Ms Leung at the moment. Let us say that she has been mentioned in connection with another, ongoing, investigation.’

  ‘If her name has been mentioned, then this company must have been mentioned, if only by association. And the company itself is clearly under some kind of investigation too.’

  ‘In a very general way. This company has always stood far above suspicion, you understand. But during the last five years, since Ms Leung took over as company secretary here, there have been … questions.’

  ‘Five years is a long time to be asking questions.’

  ‘That fact alone should tell you how nebulous those questions were. In any case, it was one of those general investigations which is always running in some form or another.’

  ‘You mean like investigations into drug running, smuggling, that sort of thing? You mentioned financial irregularities. Is this an investigation into white-collar crime, then, like the investigations run by our City watchdogs back in London?’

  ‘In the past, many shipping companies of more or less solid reputation have found themselves caught up in smuggling adventures of all sorts, though in my experience most drug smuggling has been done by individuals. And, yes, we do have ongoing investigations into fraud involving shipping concerns, but only because they are companies like any other, and the same crimes of fraud, improper dealing and so forth can be run through them. But the ongoing investigation which currently involves Ms Leung — by name if not in fact, yet — is none of these. It is one which we are running in association with colleagues far to the north and south of here, but it is centred here. It is an investigation into piracy.’

  Robin stopped typing and sat, her eyes apparently focused on the screen in front of her. ‘There are many different types of piracy,’ she observed.

  ‘Indeed. Everything from the old-fashioned, traditional type involving going aboard ships with teams of armed men and stealing goods and valuables to the more modem type involving the creation of a container and a package which seems to be the product of a famous factory when in fact it is a cheap imitation. In this part of the world both of these types overlap more completely than in any other. And they are augmented by that other great piratical tradition, smuggling. Inevitably so, since once you have created your cutprice Chanel perfume, you still have to move it to market, do you not? And, of course, if you can move your suspect goods through the good offices, shall we say, of a well-respected shipper, then you will have less trouble in passing it off as the genuine article. That is why shippers of established reputation, such as th
e China Queens Company, are a particularly tempting target for pirates of all sorts.’

  ‘I can see that. But by definition, then, your investigations must focus for some of the time on companies which have the best of reputations.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Companies which deserve their reputations because they have never, in fact, done anything illegal.’

  ‘True. But we do not look at companies as monolithic institutions. We look at them as collections of individuals. And, no matter how great or good the company itself may be, individual people are fallible, lazy, self-serving, greedy, desperate, open to blackmail.’

  ‘And which of these was Anna Leung?’

  ‘Oh, Miss Leung is none of the above, as far as we know. No, she is far more interesting than any of those.’

  ‘Then what is she? Apart from missing?’

  Inspector Sung actually laughed. ‘I’m not sure that she is even missing. You see, what is so interesting about Ms Leung is that she never existed in the first place.’

  *

  The public records of Singapore went back, uninterrupted, to the year 1819 when Raffles himself had arrived. There was a range of people called Leung, and several of them, in that melting-pot of a society, were called Anna. But the Anna Leung whose details were on record at the China Queens Company had never been born in Singapore or christened there, in spite of the fact that the China Queens records were very specific about her original nationality and held the number of a current Singaporean citizen’s passport for her. They also checked the immigration files. No one called Anna Leung had ever arrived, by any legal route, in the city-state of Singapore. The only record of an Anna Leung of the correct birth date and birthplace was accompanied by a record of death a little less than three years later.

  ‘We didn’t pick up on this, you see,’ explained Inspector Sung, ‘until after she disappeared. No one has actually reported her as missing, and we might never have noticed that anything was amiss except for the enquiries arising out of your husband’s case in Hong Kong. Commander Lee is our direct liaison on the piracy investigation and Captain Daniel Huuk is our liaison with the Royal Hong Kong navy contingent.’

  ‘But she must have bank accounts, rooms somewhere.’

  ‘Not in the name of Anna Leung. She ran the offices here alone, had done so long before Heritage Mariner became involved. She paid herself a salary in cash, according to the records. Apart from that, everything seems to be quite above board. She took her cash each week and effectively vanished. Who she really was and where she actually lived, we have no idea yet.’

  ‘And that’s all there is? An invisible woman?’

  ‘That can’t be all there is, can it? Nobody would set up a front like this and run it for five years without good reason. A good illegal reason. But if she wasn’t fleecing the China Queens Company, then what was she doing? And why has she disappeared?’

  ‘Goodness knows. But surely it has to have something to do with what happened to the Sulu Queen, whose captain has also disappeared. God, I’ve got to think this through!’

  ‘Keep me up to date with anything you work out — and anything you find,’ requested Inspector Sung.

  Five minutes later, Robin and Tan hesitated on the steps of the Public Records Office.

  ‘Where do you want to go in order to think things through then?’ Tan asked.

  Robin glanced at her watch. ‘It’s still too early to go back to the Port Authority. I need a cup of tea.’

  ‘Kill two birds with one stone,’ suggested Tan. ‘The Raffles serves good tea, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Back to Beach Road, then,’ she said. ‘Lucky this place is no real size at all.’

  An hour later they were side by side in a corner of the Long Bar. Robin poured the tea.

  ‘One lump or two?’ she asked.

  Tan would have preferred a Singapore Sling but it was early and they had a lot of work to do. ‘No one’s ever asked me that before,’ he confided.

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad to have added to your education, Mr Tan. Now, how much sugar would you like? It’s Daijeeling.’

  He shook his head in befuddlement. This was way beyond him. ‘Milk,’ he said. ‘Just milk. Thanks.’ But when he sipped, he smiled. Afternoon tea was not really his line but this was the best he had ever tasted.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Let’s try and make some sense of this so far. Two years ago, flush with some profits made because we were able to pull an iceberg to the west coast of Africa on behalf of the United Nations, Heritage Mariner was looking to expand a little. One of our senior executives, Charles Lee, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, suggested we look East. A wise decision based on sound judgement. He came out here himself, did a lot of networking and research and bought the China Queens Company, lock, stock, barrel and Ms Leung. Assets, two ships in good working order, fully crewed — one crewed with men we already knew or knew of. Going concern with much local standing and good will, running a circular shipping route round the outer edges of the China Sea. Office here, apparently ticking over perfectly. We set up a subsidiary office in Hong Kong to run in full co-operation. Which it did. No problems at all. Good profits. No trouble.

  ‘Until six weeks ago. Six weeks ago, something important happened. My husband, Richard, was called out here. I don’t know why or by whom. He arrives, sends a postcard which I get. He writes a letter which gets destroyed. He makes a call or two which get wiped off my answerphone. Sulu Queen comes in, unloads, loads, apparently as normal. You have checked that for yourself. Richard goes aboard. Somebody, and I am quite sure it was Richard, makes some notes in the ship’s network, addressed to me. For some reason they don’t reach me; they just stay in the computer’s memory until I download them onto a disk I can’t get back into. Richard stays aboard. We don’t know what Wally Gough, the registered captain, does — but we’ll start to look into that when we talk to the pilot later this evening. Somewhere in its run up towards Hong Kong, the Sulu Queen comes across some Vietnamese boat people and takes them aboard but they are all dead. Murdered, by the look of it.

  ‘Within ten days of Richard’s arrival, Anna Leung has vanished, the offices here are closed; Sulu Queen has been attacked and everyone aboard killed except for Richard. Something among the cargo may or may not have been removed. Some containers she may have been carrying later end up empty on Ping Chau Island just off the Chinese coast. But, if that is so, then someone else must have gone aboard Sulu Queen at some time, taken the containers, at the very least, and come off again, leaving no real trace. And that does present some problems because it is almost impossible to surprise a well-guarded ship and get your men up into the bridgehouse without an emergency being sounded over the radio. There has been no question, as far as I am aware, that there was anything wrong with Sulu Queen’s radio, though I’d better double-check.

  ‘Sulu Queen’s most economic cruising speed is about eight knots. So the run up from Singapore takes a week. One week after she departs, there she is, drifting without power into Hong Kong waters with everyone aboard her butchered, except for Richard. And the team who go aboard, who construct the case and who are preparing to take him to court for mass murder, are the colony’s specialists in piracy. And that is interesting too because piracy keeps cropping up here, doesn’t it? It’s there, but in the background as far as I can see. Who but pirates would go aboard and then come away again without leaving any traces? Who but pirates would want to smuggle containers off and carry them to Ping Chau? Who but pirates of some kind or another would want to fill these containers with contraband in the first place? Who but pirates with a really far-reaching, well-organised plan could move the containers off Ping Chau within days of their first discovery?’

  ‘And who but pirates,’ wondered Edgar Tan, ‘would have killed all the Vietnamese you mentioned just now?’ Late tea turned into early supper, two culinary jewels joined by the irresistible strin
g of a Singapore Sling or two — though Edgar Tan, too well aware of the Singaporean drink-drive laws, was careful with his second one. Robin, who had eaten nothing but Chinese food for a month, and little enough of that, insisted on the Elizabethan Grill and gorged herself on rare roast beef from the silver trolley. Edgar, concerned about the possibility of physical action later, was happy with a little sole. They were finished by seven thirty and piled contentedly into the Nissan to return to the Port Authority building.

  *

  The pilot’s name was Ram Seth and he was of Indian extraction. He was a solid mahogany ball of decisive energy who bounced on his feet even when at rest. He had thin black hair which he wore slicked back with a pale-floored parting on the right. On his forehead and on his ebony crown there remained the line where his uniform cap had sat. He wore gold-rimmed half-glasses for reading, but his distance vision was perfect. ‘Now,’ he said, his accent deepening the vowel, allowing it to sit deep in his throat as it rolled over his tongue, ‘what can I tell you about the Sulu Queen? Well, as chance will have it, I can tell you quite a lot.’

  He ran his hand back over his forehead, pulling his perfect hair flat as he thought. ‘There were two captains aboard. Captain Gough and Captain Mariner. Captain Gough was in command and Captain Mariner proposed to come ashore with me in the pilot’s cutter once the ship was out in the roads. But that is not what happened at all. As we were pulling well out, Captain Gough fell violently unwell. Oh yes. It was most unexpected. And it was most upsetting for everyone. It was the advanced stage of appendicitis, I understand — what is that called?’

  ‘Peritonitis,’ suggested Robin.

  ‘Yes, even so: peritonitis. One moment he was on the bridge standing beside the helmsman Wing Chau, the next he was on his knees on the deck clutching at his side and screaming. It was most unsettling, I can tell you. I crossed to him. “Captain Gough, are you quite well?” I asked. He fell onto his side. He was grey. You understand — his face was white. He was extremely unwell. I had no alternative but to call the first officer. His name was, let me see …’