Hungry Ghost (10 page)

He watched one of the television sets mounted on the wall, an old black-and-white video of the Beatles, a fresh-faced John Lennon shaking his head in time to the beat. Howells raised his glass to the screen. ‘You’ll go out with a bang, John,’ he said. ‘At the top. The best way to go.’ He drained the glass and paid his bill and walked down to the hard driving noise of the disco.

He shouldered his way through the sweating crowd, helped by the fact that he was a few inches taller than most of the clientele. His gaze swept back and forth like a fighter pilot on patrol, and he found what he wanted standing by the bar: two Europeans, short haircuts, fit-looking with restless eyes. Howells stood about six feet from them as he ordered another lager, straining to hear them over the music. They looked like coppers and after ten minutes or so Howells had heard enough to know that they were. One was a big bastard, the other was tall and thin with a moustache. They each had a Chinese girl hanging on to their arms but they ignored them, talking over their heads as if they weren’t there. They were joined by a third man, also a policeman, and they began discussing another man, something about wanting a transfer. Office politics.

The one with the moustache looked the best yet. Howells was now completely clean-shaven, but it wouldn’t be a problem; men shaved and grew moustaches all the time. Howells waited until he went to the toilet and caught up with him as he banged through the black door.

‘Sorry,’ muttered Holt.

‘OK, no problem,’ said Howells, keeping his head down. Holt stood in front of one of the urinals and unzipped his flies. It looked as if they were the only two in the room, but to be sure Howells ducked down and pretended to tie his shoelace while checking the toilet doors. Both unlocked. All clear. Holt had closed his eyes as he urinated. Howells swung his arm round and slammed the edge of his hand into Holt’s temple, not hard enough to kill, but hard enough so that the policeman dropped without a sound, urine splashing down his left leg. Howells caught him under the arms and dragged him backwards into one of the compartments. He eased him on to the seat and then undid his belt and pulled the man’s trousers down to his ankles. One of Holt’s shoes had fallen off and Howells went back for it. He locked himself in with the unconscious man and was just replacing the shoe when the door to the washroom thudded open. Soundlessly Howells sprang up, placing his feet between Holt’s thighs and balancing on the seat, arms outstretched against the walls.

When they were alone again Howells finished tying Holt’s shoelace before going through his pockets. The warrant card was in a clear plastic pocket in Holt’s brown pigskin wallet. Howells took the lot; there was more chance of it looking like a robbery that way. Holt’s head had slumped down on his chest. He was breathing heavily through his nose, and apart from a red mark on the side on his head there was nothing to indicate that he hadn’t just passed into a drunken stupor. Howells put his hands on top of the cubicle and heaved himself up and over. He stepped down on to the neighbouring toilet bowl and slipped through the door. He kept his head down as he walked back into the disco, nodding in time to the music and pretending to be slightly unsteady on his feet. Two minutes later he was in a taxi heading back to his hotel, gently rubbing his right hand.

Dugan awoke as the morning sunlight shafted through his bedroom window and pinned him to the bed. The aluminium window-frame began clicking as it warmed up and he rolled over in the double bed and opened his eyes. She was gone. For a moment he wondered if he’d dreamt her but there was a dip in the pillow and several long, black hairs, and the smell of her perfume.

‘Petal,’ he called. ‘Are you there?’

There was no reply, and when he walked into the lounge he found a note on the circular dining table.
Pat – you looked so sweet I didn’t want to wake you. Call me if you get time – Petal
. She’d left her telephone number and at the bottom of the sheet of notepaper was a flower, hastily drawn.

Dugan made himself a black coffee and sat in his bathrobe as he drank it. Normally he showered first, but this morning he wanted to put if off as long as possible; he knew it was stupid, adolescent even, but he didn’t want to get rid of the smell of her.

‘God, I’m wrecked,’ he said out loud. He grinned stupidly. It had been a long time since a girl had made him feel the way Petal had. There had been a horrible moment when he thought that maybe he’d read the signs wrong and that she was on the game, she’d seemed almost too willing. Dugan was no stranger to hookers; many was the time he’d gone home with one to fill up an empty night, and he didn’t begrudge them the money. A couple had even become friends, though he still had to pay them. But he’d wanted Petal as a lover, and as a friend, and anything else would have spoiled it for him. But she didn’t force him to shower first, the way that hookers always did, nor did she insist that he wore a sheath. ‘I’m on the pill,’ she whispered. He’d been overcome by an animal passion that almost scared him with its intensity, but it had been coupled with an overwhelming feeling of tenderness. He’d wanted to squeeze her, bite her, eat her, to dominate her and yet at the same time be completely in her power. He’d stroked and caressed her and he was sure she’d come within seconds of his moving inside her, and eventually he’d cried out her name and afterwards she’d curled up next to him like a cat with his arms around her and he’d fallen asleep with her head under his chin.

He began to grow hard again as he thought of her and when he stepped into the shower he put it on full cold and gasped.

Howells sat in his rented car and yawned. The sky was smudged with the first light of dawn but he’d already been up an hour. He’d bolted down a room-service breakfast and driven out to Ng’s house, where he’d parked about a quarter of a mile from the junction of the main road and the track that led up to the triad leader’s compound.

There had been three deliveries: the papers, the milk and the post. Nothing else. Howells waited patiently. He didn’t read a newspaper, or listen to the radio, or do anything else that might distract him from the job at hand – the waiting and the watching. Twenty minutes after the postman had left, an olive-green Mercedes 560 nosed down the track indicating that it was going to turn right, towards where Howells was sitting. The engine was already running because he’d needed the airconditioner to keep from melting. He waited until the Mercedes passed him, then began to follow it, never getting closer than fifty yards. It headed towards Kowloon and there was plenty of morning traffic so Howells wasn’t worried about losing it.

They followed the road into the built-up area and then the car indicated a left turn as it approached a set of traffic lights and Howells did the same. The lights changed to amber as the Mercedes went through and by the time Howells made the turn they were red. The car in front braked suddenly and he had to swerve around it with a squeal of tortured tyres. He had no choice, he knew that, but he also realized that it was a sure way of attracting attention to himself. He should have waited, but he’d reacted instinctively, the way he usually did, letting his subconscious show the way. He stamped on the accelerator and caught up with the Mercedes, twenty feet from its bumper, then fifteen, and then he indicated he was going to overtake and rattled past it. There were three people in the car: a uniformed driver, a heavily built man in a leather bomber jacket in the front passenger seat, and a small girl in pigtails. She had blonde hair, Howells noticed with surprise. The girl was playing with something, her head down in concentration. The driver looked straight ahead but the passenger gave Howells the once-over and then looked scornfully at the rented car.

Howells accelerated until he was about a hundred yards ahead of the Mercedes and then he slowed to match its speed, watching it in the driving mirror. Another set of traffic lights came up and Howells slowed. The Mercedes indicated a right turn and Howells followed suit. They were driving through a commercial area now; shopkeepers were opening their small stores, pushing up metal grilles and sweeping floors. The traffic was denser; there were at least a dozen cars between them, and Howells was having trouble keeping the Mercedes in sight. He came to a busy crossroads and drove straight on, seeing too late that the Mercedes was indicating it was going to turn right again. Howells checked his watch. They’d been driving for twenty-five minutes and he doubted if the girl’s school was much further away. He’d pick them up at the crossroads tomorrow morning. Now he had some shopping to do.

He found a diving shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, not far from the hotel. It used up about a third of the cash that had been left over after he’d paid for the ticket from Bali, but he got everything he needed. The guy in the shop must have thought it was Christmas – a customer who didn’t bother bargaining and who paid in cash. He carried his purchases back to the hotel in two nylon bags and spread them out on his bed.

There was a single steel cylinder that the salesman had filled with a compressor at the back of the shop, a demand valve, flippers, a mask and a snorkel. Howells had thought about a wetsuit and discarded the idea, because he didn’t plan on being in the water for long and the South China Sea wasn’t particularly cold. And if he didn’t wear a suit he wouldn’t need a weight belt; the cylinder would just about balance his natural buoyancy. He’d bought a pair of trunks and a large knife and scabbard to strap to his calf. He already had a diving watch, a gold-plated Chronosport that he’d owned for going on fifteen years, but he’d paid for a good underwater compass. He didn’t need a depth gauge.

He’d been prowling among the shelves when he spotted a small metal cylinder with a mouthpiece attached to its mid-point that he’d never seen before. He’d seen one in a James Bond movie once –
Thunderball
, he thought – but that had obviously been faked because it had only been six inches or so long, hardly enough for a couple of breaths even under very high pressure. The packaging on this one said that it was an emergency air supply and could be used for approximately thirty deep breaths. It was, the blurb stressed, only for emergency use. Howells bought one. The shop also sold a range of security equipment: truncheons, torches, Mace sprays and the like. Howells included a pair of handcuffs in his purchases.

He laid them all out on the bed and checked each item again before repacking them and putting the bags in the bottom of the wardrobe. Then he got the Yellow Pages out of the cabinet under the TV and began looking for a firm that hired out boats.

The first one he went to see was moored a couple of hundred yards from the shore of a place called Hebe Haven, about half an hour’s drive from the hotel. There were hundreds of boats there, all shapes and sizes, yachts and junks, but the nearest was at least fifty metres away, a small, white and red cruiser that obviously wasn’t lived on. He wouldn’t be disturbed, he was sure of that, and if pushed he could always move it.

It was built in the style of an old-fashioned junk, shiny teak boards with a raised deck at the back and a single mast, but no sail because down below there was a powerful diesel engine. It bobbed in the water to the sound of ripples slapping against seasoned wood.

‘You like?’ asked the tall, gaunt Chinese boy standing next to Howells, leaning over the rail and staring at the sea.

‘It’s a good boat,’ said Howells. ‘How old is it?’

‘Four years,’ said the boy. ‘Built Kowloon-side. For banker.’

‘What happened to him? Emigrate?’

The boy laughed, showing yellowed teeth. ‘No emigrate. He steal from bank. Go Taiwan. Bank sell boat. Now I rent.’

It seemed perfect, thought Howells. The hull looked solid, and the portholes were small, too small for even a child to climb through. Below decks was a large master bedroom and a thick, teak door which opened to reveal a small chemical toilet, and there was a lounge area with seats either side that pulled out to form two more beds. A galley kitchen lay to the left of the wooden stairway that led down from the main deck and at the rear was the engine-room.

By the look of the state of the engine it had hardly been used; the banker had probably only bought it for show. The upper deck at the back was perfect for a drinks party, and Howells could imagine a gathering of beautiful people out in the moonlight, drinking pink gins and making small talk.

The boy said that for a price he could arrange a place in one of the typhoon shelters, or even a berth at one of the yacht clubs, but Howells said no, where it was was just fine.

‘You sleep here?’ the boy asked.

Howells nodded. ‘Sometimes.’

‘You cannot sail, you must have boatboy to sail. Understand?’

Howells said yes, he understood. He paid a month’s charter and a deposit, in cash. Then the boy climbed down to his black and red speedboat and roared off, the boat rocking in his wake. There was a small white glass-fibre dinghy tethered to the back of the junk so that Howells could row himself to the shore. The main landing-place was a large, L-shaped concrete pier that jutted into the water but to either side of it were ungainly, rickety old wooden jetties to which were moored lines of small boats waiting for their owners. Most of them were probably weekend sailors – and by the weekend it should all be over, thought Howells. Bar the shouting.

Dugan’s head was starting to hurt, a dull thudding pain behind his left eye. Maybe he needed glasses. Sometimes he had to squint a little when watching television and he had trouble reading the signs down in the MTR stations, but he had no trouble reading, no trouble at all. He rubbed his temples, making small circles with his fingertips, and closed his eyes.

‘Sleeping, huh?’ said a laconic voice at the door. It was Burr. Dugan kept his eyes closed.

‘I’m not sleeping, you wanker. I’ve just got the mother and father of all headaches.’

‘Just behind the eyes, is it?’ asked Burr, sympathetically.

‘Yes,’ growled Dugan.