FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (16 page)

I headed out before Mister Ling had a chance to prepare breakfast. As I left the hotel I saw the night workers leaving and the day workers arriving; it’s just the right time to see Central Hong Kong come to life. After walking off my spate of sentimentality, and the Catholic guilt trip, I slipped into a Queen’s Road restaurant for a Chinese dim sum breakfast of steamed buns and
congee
.

With a full belly, I don’t feel like tramping up a steep hill. I got a taxi outside the gleaming Landmark, but I can’t remember the exact address of my new offices on Wyndham Street. I gave the driver the name of the building and he dropped me outside the front door of Tivoli Mansion, a red brick building with sash windows.

“Good morning, how might I assist you, sir?” enquired the beturbaned Indian gentleman in the front hall.

I showed him the tag on my set of office keys, but it’s not enough to satisfy him that I should be here. He walked around from his reception counter and accompanied me into an old-fashioned, slow-moving lift. When we reached the fourth floor he politely requested my keys. He opened the office door, stepped inside and turned on the lights.

The offices are smallish by European standards. The outer room is compact, with a small secretary’s desk and chair, a single visitor’s chair, and a two-drawer filing cabinet. The larger adjoining room will be my office; it has a tall filing cabinet, two visitors’ chairs, and a comfortable-looking swivel chair behind a modest desk in front of the large sash window.

“Sir, may I enquire as to your name please?”

“I’m Flynn, Mister Finn Flynn, and I’m expecting my secretary later.”

“Certainly, sir. Should you require any assistance at any time, day or night, my name is Singh…ex-Colour-Sergeant Singh. I sleep in the building and I’m always on duty, sir.”

Bloody great
, I thought. I’m being protected by an ex-colour-sergeant from the British Army, or maybe it’s the Indian Army now…same difference. If anyone short of the Governor of Hong Kong or the Queen of England tries to gain entry to Tivoli Mansion without identification, they won’t get past ex-Colour-Sergeant Singh. All the same, it’s handy to have someone at the front door who won’t let in any riff-raff. Not that I’ve ever seen any riff-raff hanging around Central Hong Kong…the police soon shift them on if they’re making the area look untidy.

At eight thirty a.m. there was a gentle tap on the office door. “Yes, come in,” I yelled, a little too loudly.

A Eurasian beauty stepped into the office, wafting in an aroma of expensive perfume. Gerry’d told me my secretary speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese, French, Russian and English, types one hundred forty words a minute, and can kick the shite out of ten men twice her size. And most importantly, he said ‘make sure you take care of her, she’s on loan from a man I wouldn’t want to upset.’ He forgot to mention that she’s a looker.

“Please allow me to introduce myself, Mister Flynn. I am Sui-Lin Rodriquez. I will be your secretary, and my salary will be paid by Mister Gerry Gant. I am a resident of Macau, but my family maintains an apartment on the Peak, and I normally have no need to return to Macau every day….So I can work for as many hours as you require.” She said all this with one of her long legs hooked over the other, the way mannequins are posed for still photographs in fashion magazines.

“Good to meet you Sui-Lin. There’s not a whole lot we can do until the office equipment arrives, and I don’t know when that’ll be,” I smiled.

As if on cue, the telephone in the outer office rang. “Excuse me,” she said, before answering the call in Cantonese.

A moment later Sui-Lin popped back into my office. “That was Gilman and Company of Causeway Bay Mister Flynn. They will deliver the office equipment within the hour.”

“Grand. I’ve a freelance artist designing our stationery. Can you write out the wording you want on your business card? But make your title Executive Assistant to the Chairman or something like that, not Secretary,” I told her.

I already know about the importance of face in Asia, and I’m not paying her wages, so she can call herself anything she likes. And if it gives her status, no harm done.

Forty minutes later six men in matching blue overalls arrived with computers, printers, fax machines, shelving units and two paper shredders. The Gilman team set out all the paraphernalia needed to equip a new office, fitted and tested everything, and filled the desk drawers and shelves with paper, pens and folders.

I went to the hotel to retrieve the papers that arrived last night in the envelope from Gerry. It’s a sunny morning, and the humidity is low, so I won’t bother getting a taxi back to the office.

Three quarters of the way up Wyndham Street I had a change of plan. Instead of stepping into Tivoli Mansion, I crossed the busy street and skipped up twenty-one well-worn stone steps to Albert Road. I turned sharp right and entered the swing doors of the FCC.

“Can I leave a note for Susie Cooke?” I asked the receptionist. She smiled, nodded yes and handed me headed notepaper and an envelope.

Slipping into the bar, I settled on a stool and wrote out the details for the stationery and business cards; I added a postscript asking Susie to ring me on the office number. I left the note with the bar steward and headed back to Tivoli Mansion.

Sui-Lin’s been busy in the office. There are vases of flowers on the window sills and prints of pagodas on the walls.

My direct telephone line rang for the first time. “So, what d’ya think of Sui-Lin?” Gerry asked, laughing. “Did all that office equipment arrive?”

“Everything’s fine. Where are you? Don’t we have a meeting this morning?”

“We do, that’s why I’m calling….I can’t make it.”

“Grand,” I said, and hung up the phone.

Sui-Lin popped her head around my door. “May we employ another member of staff Mister Flynn?”

Being a naturally cynical bastard, my immediate thought was that I’d made a mistake over the job title – and now the Executive Assistant to the Chairman wants a secretary. I was wrong, as I usually am when I jump to conclusions. She explained that she just wants to get a messenger to run errands.

“Sure,” I said.

———

A smartly dressed Chinese man of indeterminate age was waiting for me when I arrived at the office this morning.

“Good morning sir. Engaged by Miss Rodriquez….I am dispatch manager, sir,” he explained in broken English. “There is something you need?”

“Yeah, please go to the newspaper shop in the Landmark on Pedder Street and buy any Irish newspapers they have,” I said, handing him twenty dollars. “Take the lift, it’s easier.”

He shot off down the stairs like a hare – not taking the lift as I had suggested. My thoughts turned to heart attacks and compensation claims.

Sui-Lin arrived full of apologies. “I am sorry Mister Flynn, the jetfoil from Macau sucked up floating
lap sap
in its engine…so I was unavoidably delayed,” she blushed. Then she corrected herself. “Sorry, sorry,
lap sap
is Cantonese for rubbish,” she giggled, and the effect is charming. “Did the messenger boy arrive?”

“Yes, a dispatch manager was waiting when I arrived. He’s collecting newspapers from the Landmark.”

“I wanted him to feel fitting to his age, and I thought that
messenger boy
wasn’t respectful enough. I hope you don’t mind? He’s still only getting a messenger boy’s pay.”

Sui-Lin only followed my lead by giving the old guy a bit of status; it was a humane gesture.

“Double his pay at the end of the month, if you feel he’s working out,” I told her. I wouldn’t feel right employing a man and paying him less for a week’s work than I spend on an evening meal. In spite of my earlier thoughts about heart attacks and compensation claims, I’m determined to hang on to some humanity in laissez-faire Hong Kong.

Gerry rang my mobile just before midday. “Hi Finn, you in the office? Have you looked through those papers I sent over? Got any questions or anything?”

I’m recalling something that was said to me during what MI6 likes to describe as a ‘vigorous interrogation session’. Between punches to my kidneys, a senior member of the Anti-Terrorist Branch from London’s New Scotland Yard gloated that the introduction of cellular telephones was ‘manna from heaven’. He informed me that even if they had to trawl through hours, days, weeks and months of Irish crap, they always come up with some dope saying what he shouldn’t be saying on a cellular phone. That ignorant, sadistic bollocks was bragging at me, but what he really did was guarantee that I never say anything on a mobile that a third party shouldn’t hear.

“Yes Gerry, I’m in the office…which you’d know if you rang the land line. Why don’t you come around this afternoon and we can talk then?”

“I’m at home, but I’ll catch the afternoon launch and meet you at Central Pier at five and take you for tea.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Will you be the fellow with the pig under his arm?”

“No, I’ll be the guy with the parrot on his shoulder.…OK?” I said, before putting the phone down with a bang. Was that a dig at my Irish ethnicity? If it was, good auld friend Gerry is in for another Flynn Gaeilge outburst.

———

I decided not to hang around on Central Pier while I wait for Gerry. This pier is where the inter-island ferries drop their passengers from Cheung Chau, Lamma, Peng Chau, Lantau and countless other islands scattered around Hong Kong and the New Territories. The place is always teeming with people, and I don’t care for the sweating, pushing and jostling…or the smells. There’s no queuing on the pier, no give and take amongst the ferry passengers boarding or disembarking. It’s survival of the fittest, and little old ladies are in danger of being trampled underfoot in the crowd. You could easily expect a fight to break out at any time, but the armed Royal Hong Kong Police prevent any fisticuffs. They maintain a very public profile in armour-plated Land Rovers parked in full view of the ferry terminal.

I went up to the elevated walkway and stood looking down over the pier. The Sea Ranch motor launch is just arriving from Lantau Island. Gerry, in his sporty blazer and Panama hat, is the only disembarking passenger; I waved to him from my vantage point.

“I’ll be right there…stay where you are!” he yelled up to me.

Gerry skipped up the steps to the walkway.

“So, where’s the parrot my American friend?”

“Sorry, don’t have a parrot I’m afraid” he replied, as he wiped the sweat from his face with a large green silk handkerchief.

“Well, seeing that you’re waving a green flag, I’ll forgive the pig in the parlour slight…this time.”

“Now, ain’t I a lucky guy! I’m gonna take you to tea in a genuine tea house in Sheung Wan…my Irish friend. Let’s see if they brew it just like mammy used to. Or should that be mash the tea? No, that’s England, right?”

We strolled along the overhead walkway as far as the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry pier. The stairway we descended led to the side of the busy road farthest from the harbour, and the air has an unusual aroma I’ve never smelt before.

“Gerry, what’s that smell?”

“It’s a mix of dried abalone, sea cucumber and shark fins. They dry ’em up on the roofs of the buildings around here.”

We’re passing lorries being unloaded into storerooms and warehouses, and I’m fascinated by the old men sitting at doorways counting out sticks of wood. As each rattan-wrapped bale is moved past the old man he hands a stick to the lorry driver’s helper, and the helper hands the stick to a man standing by the cab of the lorry.
There’s a simple way of keeping count of what’s been delivered
, I thought. I remarked on it to Gerry.

“If the truck is supposed to deliver fifty bundles, bales, or what have you, they’d better have fifty sticks in their hand by the time the whole shebang is unloaded….And the man on the chair better not have any sticks left in his hand,” Gerry explained.

“Of course…these people invented the abacus. So what’s a few counting sticks to them?”

“You’re right about that.”

Gerry nudged me as we passed a rice importing emporium. “Take a look over there,” he said, pointing out a man standing at a high clerk’s table inside the emporium. The man’s fingers are moving like lightning over an old abacus. Obviously, these merchants don’t need any calculators to keep tally.

I took an instant liking to Sheung Wan. It’s a sharp contrast to the high-rise towers, flashy hotels and antiseptic environment around Central. The people here look less westernised, and they smile more. They just look more relaxed…happier.

Many of the shops and small warehouses have crates of dried fish and reptiles. I spotted quite a few shops selling live and dead snakes alongside each other. It reminds me of the street traders in Western Market who strangle and pluck poultry on top of the cages holding live birds – allowing the dead birds’ feathers to fall in on the live ones. If this isn’t just downright cruelty, it’s certainly thoughtless and uncaring.

Gerry took me to a Chinese tea shop on Wing Lok Street. We drank tea from porcelain bowls, and we ate small cakes and buns that we selected from a trolley pushed around the shop by an old woman with tiny lotus feet. The green tea is more refreshing than any tea I’ve had before, and the cakes are mostly delicious. I don’t like the red bean buns – the red bean paste clings to my mouth – but the coconut cakes and mango cakes are great.

As we enjoyed our tea and cakes, Gerry produced documents from his briefcase. When he tried to hand them to me I told him that I have no intention of leaving my fingerprints, or anything else, anywhere on those papers…or any others. I was relieved when my reaction didn’t seem to bother him; he just grinned. Then he went through a list of law firms and accounting practices – with the names of the senior partners underlined – and draft letters.

“Try to tie up the senior partners, if you can,” he said.

“Why is the return address 57 Curzon Street, London W1, England?”

“As you can see from the letters, you’re asking the lawyers and accountants to agree that they’ll act for you before you arrive in Hong Kong. So the letters will be mailed from London, and we want them to write back to you in London, confirming you as their client. As soon as they write back we’ll send a retainer payment on your behalf,” he explained, as he stuffed the papers back in his briefcase.