by D. L. Kung
Albert shouted at them in an opera whisper, ‘Two people? Wah! Two passengers cost you ten thousand Hong Kong dollars return trip. I’m not taking any crummy renminbi. But this time, okay, okay, I give you credit!’
Chapter Sixteen
—Sunday morning—
Cecilia stretched across the back seat of Albert’s sedan, her eyes closed and breathing shallow. They bumped past village after village. Claire’s head rested on the back of the front seat, her ears filled with Albert’s bootleg cassette of Henry Mancini playing ‘Christmas Favorites.’
‘Hotel music,’ explained Albert. ‘No singing. Ho fang bian, very comfortable.’
Claire nodded her appreciation. Albert hadn’t even driven a hard bargain when she ordered him to drive all the way to the border town of Shenzhen in a swing far to the east and then straight south on a superhighway. The trip would take four hours, but Albert was earning a year’s pay in one night. Or looking at it from his point of view, a lifetime supply of U2 and Henry Mancini cassettes.
They passed through Shenzhen an hour past dawn, the boomtown springing alive with thousands of young workers bicycling five and six abreast to their factories. Albert, red-eyed and uncharacteristically focused on his driving, navigated through traffic jammed with taxis and buses. Street vendors plied their breakfast trade to clusters of pedestrians and cyclists competing for attention.
Claire bought buns and tea at a small restaurant going full steam with dim sum carts and fresh fish. Albert couldn’t stop eating, but Cecilia was only starting to come out from under the drugs and shrugged off food. She was absolutely silent, couldn’t smile, and still seemed stunned. Claire thought of the girl’s mental history. She must have dropped five pounds, weight she couldn’t spare. They had to get Cecilia to a hospital right away.
They only realized when they reached the border that in the course of her ordeal Cecilia had lost her Hong Kong ID card. Claire helped her to the wooden bench inside the bustling Shenzhen immigration building and telephoned Harris and Slaughter for assistance. She’d left her address book of private numbers in Hong Kong as a precaution in case she was arrested.
The marine at the consulate could only promise to pass on her message to Harris at home. A duty officer reached Slaughter on the way to a workout at the Kowloon Cricket Club within minutes while Claire waited. He could reach the border in an hour. An ambulance would be waiting at the checkpoint to take Cecilia to Queen Mary Hospital. Later Slaughter and Claire would talk at police headquarters.
Albert was as good as his word when it came to credit. He gave her his card and scribbled his bank branch on the back. Exhausted, but exhilarated at his takings, he waved them on to the Shenzhen train, helping Cecilia into her seat, and shouted, ‘No more bets with you guys. No way, José!’
Claire reached the hospital with Cecilia in a daze nearly as complete as her assistant’s. Slaughter waited while she accompanied Cecilia to her room. Claire had insisted on a private room and called Mrs Chao. The mother’s relief and joy washed over Claire, who realized she needed another kind of wash as soon as possible. Soon Cecilia was asleep again, this time induced not by drugs, but fresh sheets and a clean gown. Claire envied her. There was so much more to do.
What had Chen said? We’re the best in the province, known to have the healthiest workers year round. We don’t have to beef them up at the last minute.
What had Dr Liu said? And there were to be no mistakes, no infections, no rejections. One of them joked there was only one place to be sure of ‘really healthy specimens.’
They had to get the records of Brainchild’s inmates to find out if Gu Weng-kin had been transferred there before her death. And there must be other files that would incriminate MacGinnes and Chen, if only they could crack open the whole racket. Certainly she would find a friendly software hacker to crack open Vic’s laptop—but not at Brainchild.
Another part of the puzzle was also here in Hong Kong—if she could somehow get the right name of the donor who had insisted there be no second-class transplants for his daughter.
If it wasn’t Jason Ng, who was it?
Claire’s brain raced as she meandered down the hospital corridor in search of coffee. She had agreed to wait in the ward until Mrs Chao arrived—maybe another half an hour.
Just then, a nurse pushed a newborn past her, a tiny bundle in pistachio terrycloth lying helpless in a plastic bin set on a trolley He was a little beet-faced primate with a shock of black hair and only his wrist band and a label hanging on the back of the bin to stake his claim in the world. Claire mused that his identity in those early hours hung on such slim evidence. Suppose the name were wrong or—
She gasped and leaned back against the wall as the baby trolley rolled on. Supposed the ‘childless’ Jason Ng did have a child, after all. With concubinage banned in Hong Kong thirty years ago, he was stuck like any other modern man with the wife he had or a hefty alimony payment and loss of face to the clan, while mistresses were second nature in Hong Kong culture. He mightn’t be the first man in Asia to be nurturing a second family from public view.
Claire raced back to Cecilia’s room where she’d left her backpack. She found the scribbled number of Ng’s private office in her battered red notebook. She went straight to the lobby and looked up the Urology Department, then took the elevator up to the third floor. On the wall next to the floor nurse’s desk hung a collection of patient’s names slotted on little cards next to the doctors’ names treating them. Claire scribbled down, ‘Dr Michael Tsang Tse-wu, consultant.’
From the payphone next to the florist in the lobby, she dialed the Ng company number. There was absolutely nothing to lose. A secretary answered, ‘Mr Woon’s office.’
Claire affected the best British nurse’s voice she could muster under the circumstances. ‘This is Fiona Fitzsimmons, emergency admissions at Queen Mary Hospital. Is Mr Ng available? It’s quite urgent, thank you.’
‘Would you mind to wait, please?’ Claire heard the Cantonese dialogue in the background. Woon was being called to the phone. Fiona Fitzsimmon had better deliver the goods, Claire prayed.
‘Emergency admissions, Queen Mary. Is this Mr Ng?’
‘No. I am his personal assistant Roderick Woon. What is the matter?’
‘I must speak directly to Mr Ng, it’s an emergency.’
‘He’s in the New Territories, contactable by mobile phone. We’ll convey your message, if it concerns him.’
‘We just admitted a young woman here, in complete renal failure. Dr Tsang in Urology is examining her now. She’s gone into shock, and she’s carrying documents which indicate—’ Claire was panicking. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to bluff Woon after talking to him as herself only two days before.
‘That’s enough.’ Woon hung up.
Claire stood there, red-faced, breathless, and confused, holding a dead line in her hand. Woon had sussed her out.
Or had he? She had had only one chance at this gambit, and she should have had the patience to wait until she had cleared up this mess with Cecilia and Slaughter before she tried it.
She deposited herself near the hospital entrance on a plastic-upholstered sofa where she would be sure to see Mrs Chao’s taxi pull up. The lobby was crowded with people waiting for rides and relatives and she closed her eyes in the hubbub . . .
Mrs Chao was tapping her on the shoulder. ‘Miss Raymond. I am here now.’
Claire had dozed off. She nodded wearily and smiled her thanks to Mrs Chao.
‘It is I who thank you,’ the older woman said. ‘I know my daughter’s wishes and her loyalties. I do not think they are wasted on her work with you.’
Claire was too worn out to protest such an absurd compliment. The two of them rode the elevator to Cecilia’s floor. Claire had the pleasure of seeing Mrs Chao stroking her daughter’s forehead.
She’d lost twenty minutes napping in the lobby. It was time to face Slaughter. She sighed and leaned against the back of the elevator and closed he
r eyes. The elevator stopped at the floor below. Two Chinese men who stepped in.
For their part, they gave the scruffy, smelly redhead barely a glance and turned back to the door, angrily muttering in Cantonese.
‘Dim gai m’hai do-ah,’ the shorter man burst out angrily at the younger man. ‘Why not here?’
Claire’s mouth dropped open as she started with recognition. She had him right here in the elevator, she realized, as she examined Jason Ng’s profile, familiar from so many news photos. The other man must be Woon. She composed herself again and shrunk back. But of course, why would they recognize her? When the elevator reached the lobby, Ng and Woon strode to a waiting Mercedes Benz and rode off.
They’d rushed to the hospital without any further questions.
She had him.
As soon as she told Woon she’d seen them at the hospital, she’d trade her guarantee to protect Ng’s secret in exchange for all the details of the deal he’d made with First Affiliated Hospital.
Was that blackmail? Well, she’d wear her best suit for that interview.
The drive into Wanchai in the back of Slaughter’s car was silent. Claire couldn’t imagine what he was thinking nor did he ask for any explanation. The gun and its empty bullet chambers in her backpack lay heavily in her arms.
Riding the elevator up to Slaughter’s office on Arsenal Street, they were joined by a tall, lanky Chinese officer smoking a cigarette. Claire gaped in recognition of the terrifying stranger who had shadowed her on the Cheung Chau ferry, to her office, into the registry office and even to Lin Hua Shan.
He glanced at her but, without missing a beat, returned to his chat with a colleague as if he’d never seen her before.
The Queen had allotted her servant Slaughter a simple wooden desk, an old rotating office chair, a picture of Herself at twenty-five, and a wall map of Hong Kong island and the New Territories.
Slaughter had added a Rotary Club of Wanchai West pennant, a faded photo of a swimming team in front of the long-defunct Victoria Club, and an imitation celadon green ceramic tea mug. After her hellish night on the run, Claire marveled that they were less than three hours and an empire away from the sentry tower of the Cha Ling reform-through-detention camp.
A subdued Harris Hillward waited in a chair facing Slaughter’s desk.
‘Are you all right, Claire?’ Harris looked up at to her, his face white.
‘Harris, I tried to reach you—’
‘We located him after you rang us,’ Slaughter explained. ‘I think we have some unraveling to do, us three.’
Three large cups of thin, milky, overly sweet tea were served with three ‘digestive biscuits.’ Claire’s stomach recoiled at the soggy snack.
Slaughter settled his solid bulk down behind his desk.
‘We arrested Chew Lo-man and his sister last night in Kai Tak’s departure lounge. They were holding tickets for a Cathay flight to Singapore, where the brother has some kind of loose business connection with an import-export outfit. We’ll charge him with the murder of Craig Hager—’
‘But—’
‘Just a moment, Claire. I want a full explanation of what you were doing across the border,’ he said, stiffening his neck and leaning back in his chair to face Claire with the full force of his colonial authority. ‘I’m warning you, we could hold you under suspicion of being an accessory for at least twenty four hours if you don’t give me the full story,’ he added, and then clamped his jaw shut.
‘Did you find Victor D’Amato?’ asked Harris.
Claire gulped down the syrupy tea. Images of Albert, of Joop, of Hager’s cold, eyeless corpse and the blackened bullet hole exploded into Chen’s innards all floated past her memory.
Slowly she began with an explanation of her research into Brainchild’s ownership, the unexplained links with the Punyu county judiciary that Cecilia confirmed by her visit to Huang’s office and the thread that tied Vic’s pursuit of a story with information about a prison production line that logically came from Lo-Man.
‘The pieces only fell into place at the end, and only when Fresnay discovered that old postal directory from when Cha Ling was last listed.’
She sighed, exhausted. The explanation of the company history alone had taken her more than a quarter of an hour.
‘Lo-man offered Vic a big scoop, the story of an old re-education camp bought outright and modernized by a prominent American investing in China, a guy that was billing himself as a progressive friend of China’s reforms. Lo-man traded in components and other parts. Somehow, either through his old contacts from his prison days or his export business, he put two and two together about MacGinnes and leaked it to Vic.
‘Vic realized immediately that it was a perfect exposé for us—part business, part politics—a focus on one American guy with a so-called big-picture theme running through it.’ Claire sipped more tea. Normally she didn’t like sweet drinks, but this was comforting and warm as a nursery bribe.
‘Vic was a sucker for Nancy, but my suspicions that Nancy wasn’t much interested in Vic for his charms were confirmed as soon as I saw her in bed with Hager. I misjudged her a little, but she was interested in Vic for an ulterior reason: as it turns out, for the sake of a Green Card in the US for her brother who planned to ride on the dragon’s back, as they say. Nancy owed him that because he took care of the family after their father died. It was a debt she had to repay.’
Harris and Slaughter nodded. ‘We’ve got a clear picture that sister and brother aren’t otherwise devoted to each other, judging from their conversation as we brought them in,’ Slaughter said.
‘Yes, but they’re both desperate to get out of Hong Kong. The brother has a criminal record with the Communists and Nancy—well, she just wants the main chance, like everybody else in this town. Lo-man was furious when he found out that Nancy was fouling up his plans of getting to the US. Then, he figured that he could get the emigration plan back on track by eliminating Hager and passing it off as a drug killing. They were both after Hager’s drug profits, but the limits of her loyalty to her brother were clear when she deposited the gun with me. The gun was Lo-man’s. She didn’t want to be caught with it by the police, but I think she stole it, to dangle over Lo-man’s head in case he double-crossed her.’ Claire said.
Slaughter chuckled. ‘Yes, we had the Bangkok police running through their paces for many weeks, and not entirely unprofitably, at that. We’ve uncovered more information than we had before about the extent of freelance baby-sitting here in Hong Kong for drug shipments, particularly to the United States.’
Slaughter’s telephone rang and he leaned towards his intercom ‘I’m in a meeting, Rose. Take messages until we’re finished. Thanks.’
‘But here’s where you’re wrong about Lo-Man.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Slaughter wasn’t already showing signs of irritation at Claire’s risky free-lancing.
‘He’s innocent.’
‘He shot Hager.’
‘Uh, yes, but one thing that troubled me,’ Claire continued, ‘was the sympathetic interest in Hager’s body that MacGinnes showed the day we met for breakfast. On the ride home this morning, I realized why. He was startled when I said that Hager’d been shot.’
‘And knifed?’ Harris added.
‘No, no, that’s it, I mean that the thing he found unexpected was specifically the bullet wound and the news that we’d found Hager in the sea.’
Slaughter interjected, ‘While Nancy knew he was shot—
‘But never mentioned the knife wound . . . Exactly . . . You see, Vic never interviewed someone without his tape recorder. His notes were just too messy to rely on since half the time he was so hung over. But Lo-man wouldn’t have known Vic’s interview habits. So he wouldn’t have removed any tape from that mess in the Cheung Chau flat. I only just realized too late that there were notes, but no tape of his interview with MacGinnes. Who took the tape and when and why?’
‘Then who crossed the border using Vic’s ID?’ Harris
prompted.
Harris leaned out of his chair and straightened his bow tie automatically before speaking. ‘Are you suggesting that MacGinnes—?’
‘Yes. MacGinnes realized Vic wasn’t researching underage labor—he was about to expose the whole racket of using the prison camp as his private slave factory and from time to time, executing his employees to fill orders for corneas and kidneys.’
‘Good Lord,’ Slaughter muttered.
‘MacGinnes checked in with us by phone that first Friday after Chinese New Year to report that Vic had missed an appointment, but he wasjust playing innocent as an alibi. He worried Vic put the appointment in his datebook. He also realized that sooner or later we might listen to Vic’s tape. It must have some clue or accusation about the labor camp on it.’
‘You’re alleging that MacGinnes burgled the Cheung Chau flat for the tape,’ said Slaughter.
‘Here’s my theory. Thanks to Lo-man, Vic gets too close to the truth about Brainchild, the prison and the organ racket. He confronts MacGinnes during his interview in Hong Kong. Then he turns up in Punyu, asking Chen questions, not realizing how much Chen was actually a partner. MacGinnes drives up to Punyu and with Chen’s help, locks up Vic in Cha Ling. He and Chen question Vic, trying to find out how much he knows, trying to figure out what to do with him. MacGinnes learns Vic lives alone, maybe from Vic himself. Maybe he even promises to release Vic in exchange for all the evidence.
‘At any rate, he knows from his phone call to our bureau that I didn’t know anything about Vic’s Brainchild story, and he hopes the incriminating interview tape is at Vic’s place, which he assumes is empty. Only Cecilia, Nancy, and I knew Hager had overstayed. MacGinnes returns from Cha Ling via Shenzhen.’
‘Using Vic’s ID card to pass through the border that Thursday night.’ said Harris.
‘Exactly,’ said Claire, ‘That’s why during our breakfast at the Grill Room, MacGinnes encouraged me to check with Immigration. But we had two suggestions of Vic being alive and well, remember? We also had that message from Vic in Shanghai. Hager sent it because he was worried I’d spotted the drug mess in the kitchen that he tried to clean up behind my back. He faked a decoy message from Vic in Shanghai to keep me out of the apartment and off his scent but, as I realized only too late, he used last year’s computer coding by mistake.’