The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “You look like the cat that got the cream,” said a voice. She turned to see William coming out of the bathroom. Her cheeks reddened and suddenly she felt guilt wash over her.

  “I’m looking forward to this afternoon,” she said. “Do you like the dress?”

  “It’s fine,” he said.

  He was already combing his hair in the mirror and didn’t even turn to look at her. The guilt evaporated and she felt angry at his indifference. That was one of the things she loved about Anthony. He always appreciated what she was wearing and commented on it. William didn’t give a damn; his only comments came when the credit-card statements dropped through the letter-box.

  “And the necklace, does that look okay?” she asked.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “Well I’m not wearing it, I’m wearing the pearls,” she said frostily, and left the bedroom before he could turn round.

  Debbie was down in the lounge, supervising the maids as they prepared the drinks table and the buffet, which was a combination of Thai appetisers and Western finger food. Debbie was wearing a Kenzo dress, buttoned all the way up the front and made from a print of the heads of wild cats: tigers, lions, and pumas. It was striking, but didn’t do much for her daughter’s figure.

  “Love the dress,” said Anne, kissing Debbie on the cheek. “Did Anthony say he’d come?” Anne already knew he’d accepted Debbie’s invitation: they’d discussed it afterwards as they’d lain naked together on his bed.

  “Yes, Mum. He’s bringing the Ferrari. Is it okay if we drive it to the track?”

  “Your father will be disappointed, I think he wanted you with us.”

  “Oh, Mum, please,” said Debbie, both hands on her mother’s arm. “Please.”

  “Okay, go on then,” sighed Anne. “But don’t tell your father I said it was okay.”

  Anne looked at her watch. “The first guests will be here soon,” she said. “Tell Marie to start bringing the champagne in. I could do with a glass myself.”

  Coleman saw a dark green Daimler turn into the driveway of the Fielding house, and a few minutes later a Mercedes roadster arrived. Well-dressed middle-aged couples got out and were admitted to the house. Coleman tapped the steering wheel and craned his neck around to look out of the rear window of the Jeep. There was still no sign of Chung, but Coleman had a gut instinct that he was coming. He could feel it with the same sort of certainty he had when interrogating a suspect he knew to be guilty. It was his policeman’s sixth sense, and he trusted it completely. Chung was out to steal his girlfriend and he was going to the races with her. Chung was taking his place, and he was damn sure he was going to stop him. He rubbed his hand along his chin, feeling the stubble growing there. He lifted his arm and smelt his armpit, wincing at the pungent aroma of stale sweat. He figured that it would be smarter not to confront Debbie until he’d showered and changed.

  He heard a deep, growling sound and knew without turning that it was the Ferrari. He settled back in the driver’s seat and waited. The Ferrari drove through the gate and stopped in front of the house. The door opened and Chung climbed out. He was wearing a dark blue suit and he stretched as if he’d just woken up. He bent down and checked his hair in the car mirror.

  “I’m going to have you, Chung,” hissed Coleman. “I’m going to fucking have you.”

  Chung pressed the doorbell and after a second or two he was admitted. Coleman sat bolt upright, his spine rigid with tension. His hands gripped the steering wheel and a small vein was pulsing in his forehead. He wanted to rip Chung’s head from his body, he wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp, he wanted to drive his precious Ferrari backwards and forwards over him until every bone in his body was broken.

  His vindictive thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two Toyota Corollas, one white, one red. There were four men in each of the cars, all Chinese and not one dressed as if he were going to the races as a guest of the Kowloon and Canton Bank. They looked to Coleman like triad Red Poles, burly men with bad haircuts and hard eyes, the sort of men who carried hatchets and sharp knives inside their jackets. They both cruised up the driveway and stopped either side of Chung’s Ferrari. Coleman frowned. They didn’t look like tradesmen, or guests, and he couldn’t work out what they were doing there. The car doors opened as one, and the men got out, looking around like tourists. The occupants of the second car walked down the side of the house as if they were going to the garden, while the four men in the first car, the white one, went up to the front door. One of them pressed the doorbell. The door opened and Coleman caught a glimpse of a Filipina maid in a white uniform before the men went inside, out of sight. Coleman’s frown deepened and he scratched his chin.

  Phil Donaldson stuck his hands deep into his pockets and surveyed the towering grandstand in front of him. He was standing by the barriers at the edge of the grass track with a uniformed superintendent, Paul Penycate, who was talking into a radio mike mounted on his shoulder. The temperature was in the upper eighties and there were damp patches under Donaldson’s armpits. A sudden gust of wind made the hair covering his bald patch flap up like a banner and he pressed it down with his left hand.

  Penycate was organising one hundred constables who were usually in uniform but who were now scattered around the grandstand in plain clothes. They had been split into groups of six, each group controlled by an officer with a concealed radio who would issue his men verbal instructions. The police had no idea where the robbers would come from, so they had to keep the security as low key as possible.

  Twenty men and women from Donaldson’s anti-triad squad had been given Jockey Club uniforms and a quick briefing on how to operate as tellers and were already in place in the betting halls with concealed radios. Another fifty members of the Tactical Support Group were sitting in a Jockey Club lecture room listening in to the radio traffic ready to rush to wherever they were needed. Penycate had plain-clothes policemen sitting in cars on all the main roads around the track and another twenty expat officers were scattered around the members’ enclosure in their best suits and Jockey Club ties.

  “Think we’ve covered everything, Phil?” asked Penycate. They’d known each other for a long time, and used first names when other ranks weren’t close by.

  “I can’t see any gaps,” said Donaldson.

  “I still think they’d be mad to try and hit the track today,” said Penycate. He nodded at the crowds pouring into the grandstand. “Look at all the witnesses. Thirty thousand of them. And where are they going to go? The roads are jammed solid. If you ask me someone’s pulling our leg.”

  “Our source is normally reliable, Paul,” said Donaldson. The radio on Penycate’s shoulder crackled in Cantonese and he replied. Like Donaldson he was fluent in the language. A sergeant from the Tactical Support Group was asking about the timing of the first race and Penycate said it was thirty minutes away.

  A figure at the far end of the track shouted Donaldson’s name and waved. Donaldson shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted. It was Tommy Lai, one of his anti-triad detectives and the man who had picked up the tip about the robbery. Tommy was a thickset Chinese with a pudding-basin haircut and a broken nose, and looked more like a triad Red Pole than a detective. He also had a huge tattoo of a hooded snake on his back and was rumoured to be an honorary member of the 14K triad, though Donaldson knew he was one of the straightest men on the force. His brother, a uniformed policeman, had been killed in a shoot-out with triad thieves who were fleeing from a jewellery store in Tsim Sha Tsui.

  “Yo, Tommy, what’s up?” Donaldson called as soon as he was within range.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Phil,” said Lai, who was also in plain clothes: a black leather bomber jacket, tight blue jeans, brown cowboy boots and a thick gold chain around his neck. “I’ve just had a call from my snitch, and he says they’re going to use a helicopter.”

  “A what?” said Penycate.

  “A helicopter,” repeated Lai, his eyes darting from Don
aldson to the uniformed officer. “He said they’re going to fly in, just before the last race. And they’re going to be armed. With automatic rifles.”

  “Fucking hell, Tommy, somebody’s winding you up.”

  Lai shook his head fiercely. “This is kosher, boss. Straight up.” Tommy Lai had learned most of his English from detective shows on late night television, mainly reruns of Kojak, Magnum PI and The Sweeney.

  “Where are they going to get this helicopter from?” asked Penycate.

  Lai gave a Kojak-type shrug and raised his eyebrows like Magnum. “Fucked if I know,” he said. “Sir,” he added. Penycate glared at him. “Sorry, sir,” said Lai. The anti-triad squad was a lot less disciplined than the uniformed branch, and Lai had grown used to the informality.

  “The airport?” said Donaldson.

  “Could be,” said Penycate. “I’ll call the airport police and get them to check out any helicopters they have at Kai Tak.”

  “There’s the helicopter service to Macau from the Sheung Wan ferry terminal, sir,” said Lai, trying to win back Penycate’s goodwill.

  “And the army have some, don’t they?” added Donaldson.

  Penycate nodded. He waved a uniformed inspector over and quickly briefed him to contact all helicopter users, and to get an officer over to air traffic control at Kai Tak Airport so that they’d be guaranteed immediate warning of any unidentified helicopters.

  When he’d finished, Penycate looked at Lai. “This had better be right,” he warned. “If it turns out that someone’s having you on …” He left the threat unfinished.

  “Tommy’s sources are impeccable,” said Donaldson. “He’s never let us down before.”

  “He’d better not start now,” said Penycate. “I’m going to call in more men from Kowloon and the New Territories. It’s going to leave us stretched really thin, but if they do have automatic rifles, we’ll have to swamp the area with police.”

  “You don’t think we should cancel the meeting?” asked Donaldson.

  “You want to explain to thirty thousand Chinese that the last race of the season is off?” said Penycate. “You’d have the mother and father of all riots on your hands.”

  Donaldson nodded. He knew how volatile the Chinese could be. There had been street riots when the Star Ferry company had announced it was raising the cost of a trip across the harbour by just a few cents. And the Chinese felt a hell of a lot more strongly about racing than the ferry. “Okay, but you might want to think about getting some marksmen up there.” Donaldson pointed up at the residential skyscrapers looking down at the racetrack.

  Michael Wong nodded at the Filipina maid who opened the door, and stepped inside before she could react. She was flustered, not sure if he was a rude guest or a gate-crasher, but before she could ask him for his name two more Chinese men appeared behind him, then a third. Wong put his hand across her mouth, whirled her round and pushed her against the wall, hard enough to bang her forehead. He slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a handgun which he jammed up under the side of her chin.

  “Keep quiet!” he hissed. He felt her jaw shake under his hand and he tightened his grip around her mouth. The last man through the door closed it behind him. As he turned round he pulled a gun from under his jacket and a woollen ski-mask from the pocket of his trousers. The two others did the same and the three men moved together to the door that led to the lounge.

  “If you move, you’re dead!” Wong hissed at the frightened woman. “Do you understand?”

  The maid nodded and Wong slowly took his hand away from her mouth. He kept the barrel of the gun against her neck while he fumbled for his own black ski-mask and put it on. He seized the back of her blouse and pulled her away from the wall and then pushed her ahead of him, after the three men.

  Bart Lewis polished the nose of the Huey with his cloth – small, circular movements that a housewife might use to remove a stain from a coffee table. Carmody and Horvitz knelt by the tarpaulin as if at prayer, bending over the M16s and pushing shells into magazines. Lehman and Doherty walked around the Huey, carrying out the preflight check.

  The door to the office area opened and Tyler walked out. Lehman looked over and did a quick double-take. Tyler had on his khaki police inspector’s uniform, complete with peaked cap and gleaming leather belt. He was carrying a bundle of camouflage material in his arms.

  “Nice outfit, Colonel,” said Lewis.

  “Thanks, Bart,” said Tyler. “Gather round, gentlemen. I have something for you.”

  Horvitz and Carmody stood up, wiped their hands on their overalls and walked over to Tyler with Doherty and Lehman. Lewis flicked his cloth into the back of the Huey and ambled over, his hands in his pockets.

  “Fatigues!” said Carmody. “Just like we used to wear in Nam.”

  Tyler handed them out, making sure that each man got the correct size. Lehman unfolded his and held the shirt against his chest. It seemed like a perfect fit. It appeared to be US Army issue, the brown and light green stripes reminiscent of the fatigues worn by the Rangers in Nam. All that was missing was his name tag.

  “I thought you might enjoy wearing the uniform,” said Tyler.

  “Great idea, Colonel,” said Carmody, as he stripped off his overalls and pulled on the fatigues. The rest of the vets followed his example, throwing their overalls on to a workbench and replacing them with the crisp new uniforms. When they’d finished they stood in a group, admiring each other. Lehman had to admit that even with the thickening waistlines and encroaching wrinkles, the fatigues made them appear like a team of professional soldiers.

  “Does the Huey check out, Dan?” Tyler asked.

  “Like a dream, Colonel,” said Lehman. Dressed in the fatigues and facing Tyler in his starched inspector’s uniform, it seemed only right to call him “Colonel”.

  “Any problems?” Tyler asked. All the vets shook their heads. Tyler looked at his watch. “Okay, gentlemen, I’ll be leaving. The next time we meet will be on the roof of the Happy Valley grandstand with upwards of twenty million dollars.” He threw them a smart salute, his back straight, his left arm stiff at his side. The vets straightened up, pulled their shoulders back, and saluted as one.

  Anne Fielding was standing at the buffet table when Anthony Chung walked into the room. He was immaculately dressed as always, a dark blue suit which showed off his wide shoulders, a white shirt with thin blue vertical stripes that was clearly made to measure and a blue silk tie. He saw her and smiled, then Debbie was at his arm and kissing him on the cheek.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t he?” said Phyllis Kelley, who was standing next to Anne and dipping a large shrimp into a bowl of hot sauce.

  “Phyllis, you’re insatiable,” scolded Anne.

  Phyllis popped the shrimp into her mouth and chewed. A spot of red sauce dribbled down her chin and she dabbed at it with a napkin. “Do you think Debbie and he are …”

  “Sleeping together?” said Anne frostily. “I don’t know, and frankly, Phyllis, I don’t care. And, incidentally, do you think you might have a word with your husband and ask him to stop feeling up my maids? It’s hard enough getting them to work as it is.” She walked away, her heels clicking on the wooden floor, leaving Phyllis standing with her mouth open.

  “Anthony, so nice to see you,” said Anne.

  “Mrs Fielding,” said Chung, extending his hand. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  Anne gave him her hand and he kissed it, giving her a barely perceptible squeeze as he did so.

  “We should have a good day’s racing, the weather is perfect,” said Anne.

  Chung kept hold of her hand until Anne withdrew it, their fingertips touching at the last moment as if reluctant to part. “I understand your husband has a horse running,” Chung said, smiling easily. “Do you think it’s worth a bet?”

  The mention of her husband on her lover’s lips made her stomach lurch, but she continued to smile at him. She felt light-headed being so close to him and she had a sudden ur
ge to step forward and embrace him, to press her lips against his and to invade his mouth with her tongue.

  “Galloping Dragon’s only good for one thing, and that’s to feed family pets,” giggled Debbie. “The sooner he’s petfood, the better.”

  “Debbie!” chided Anne. “You’re talking about the love of your father’s life.”

  Over Chung’s shoulder Anne saw a man in a blue ski-mask push open the door. He had a gun in his hand, which he held above his head. “Nobody move!” the man barked in accented English. “If move, you die!”

  The cocktail party chatter died away. A plate crashed to the floor and Anne turned to see Phyllis Kelley with both hands up to her mouth. The man in the mask moved into the room, closely followed by two others. Behind them Anne could see a fourth man wearing a black ski-mask, his arm around Marie’s neck. All had guns held in the air.

  “Everyone down on floor! Down!” shouted the man in front. No one moved, and one or two of the men began to protest. The man stepped forward and brought the gun crashing down on the side of Jonathan Kelley’s head. He cried out and slumped to his knees, blood streaming down the side of his head. Phyllis Kelley gasped and dashed forward to put her arms around her husband, but the man kicked her in the chest and she fell to the floor, choking and crying. Anne went down on her knees and lay face down, turning her head to the side so she could see what was going on.

  “Down!” the man shouted, waving his gun menacingly. One of the men turned and was about to run for the French window which led out on to a balcony overlooking the garden, but before he could even move four more figures appeared wearing ski-masks and carrying guns. They moved methodically through the room, pushing the guests to the floor and making sure they lay face down.

  “If you do as we say, no one get hurt,” said the man in the black mask. He threw the maid down on the floor. Her skirt rode up her thighs and she tried to pull it down but the man prodded her with his foot and she stopped.