The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (52 page)

‘How long have you known her?’ I asked.

‘A year, maybe longer,’ he said. ‘We met at some construction firm’s cocktail party. She stuck out from the crowd, bright, lively, intelligent.’ The fingers were pressed together hard now, the tendons in the hands stretched taut. ‘I want to find out what happened every bit as much as you do,’ he said grimly.

‘I thought it might be your wife,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘My wife knew about Sally,’ he said. ‘And she knew that she was not a threat. At least not a threat to the things she wants, her home, her children.’

‘Her passport?’

‘She has that too, in her own right. And she and the children all have their own trust funds. All she was losing was my love, and that had died a long time ago.’ He paused. ‘Mistresses are a traditional part of Chinese life, or at least they used to be. Many of the older businessmen here still have two homes, one for the wife and one for the mistress, often with two sets of children.’

He pushed the glasses up again. ‘I’m not saying that she was a paid-for mistress, don’t misunderstand me. I’m trying to explain that my wife would not react in the same way as a European woman would if she found out that her husband was being unfaithful. And divorce here is not as common as elsewhere in the world. She knew she would not lose me, or my money – our money.’

‘Well, if it wasn’t your wife, who would want her killed?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and sighed. ‘I have thought long and hard and I just don’t know.’

‘Have you tried to find out?’

‘Of course I have tried. As you know, the police appear to be certain she killed herself. They are fools. I have made my own inquiries but so far, nothing. But we have so little to go on.’

‘Did she tell you what stories she was working on?’

‘Rarely. She kept her work to herself, though I tried to help whenever I could.’

The door opened and a matronly secretary popped her head round and spoke to Lai in loud Cantonese.

‘Would you like some tea?’ Lai asked me. I said yes and he spoke rapidly to the woman. Her head disappeared and the door closed.

‘I thought that perhaps it was something to do with one of the stories she was working on.’

‘Which one?’

‘I don’t know. Everything she was working on disappeared from the system.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘All her stories have gone from the computer at the
Post.
And from her flat. I thought you might have had something to do with that?’

‘Me?’

‘There were photographs of you in Sally’s flat. They’ve gone. And somebody searched the flat.’

‘Looking for what?’

‘I don’t know. But there were three guys in my hotel room looking for something. Or maybe they were just there to frighten me.’

‘And why do you think I was involved?’ This wasn’t going the way I’d planned. All the questions were coming from him. And there was a quiet authority in his voice that compelled me to answer.

I paused and looked for the signs that he was lying, the nervousness, an unwillingness to meet my gaze, a tightening of the jaw, licking of the lips, but there were none. Maybe he was telling the truth, or maybe he just had good control over his reactions.

‘Yours was the last number rung from Sally’s flat – after it had been searched. I figured that whoever had been there had been acting on your authority.’

‘A good deduction,’ he said. ‘And a valid one.’

‘Why search her flat?’ I asked.

‘Not search,’ he replied. ‘My men were there to repair the damage. Someone else had done the searching after you and Howard had left.’

‘Yes,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Howard.’

The secretary came back with two handleless white mugs on a circular wooden tray. They were filled with steaming water that had been poured onto a spoonful of green leaves. It smelt like newly cut grass. The woman knelt on the carpet floor as she served the tea. A nice touch that. I tried to imagine Andy doing the same back in London. No way. I waited until she’d left before continuing.

‘Howard told you about the photographs, I suppose.’

‘It seemed sensible at least not to draw attention to my connection with Sally. Late that night Berenger went back to the flat to get the photographs only to discover it had been overturned. So he called me and I sent help around to put the place in order. I am intrigued, how did you know that Berenger worked for me?’

‘He had a key to the flat. I didn’t think there’d be too many of them floating around Hong Kong.’

I tried sipping the tea. It tasted of freshly-cut grass. Maybe that’s why they don’t have tea breaks in Hong Kong factories. ‘Getting into the flat obviously wasn’t a problem for whoever conducted the search. But picking locks isn’t exactly difficult. Did they take away the photographs of you?’

‘No, they were where you and Howard left them. Howard brought them to me, along with all her papers and files.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to find out what happened to Sally every bit as much as you do.’

‘And?’

‘Her notes were just that, notes. And if there had been any clues among her files then whoever searched the flat would surely have taken them. I would think that they only took the files that interested them.’

‘Which leaves us where?’ I asked. He shrugged and sipped his tea noisily.

We fell silent, trying not to look at each other. Brother and lover, neither wanting to talk about the one common thread we had – Sally.

‘How long has Howard been on your payroll?’ I asked eventually.

‘Several years. We have him on retainer as a public relations consultant. He helps us with press releases, our annual reports, that sort of thing.’

‘Did he delete her stories from the
Post
’s computer?’

‘Certainly not at my request.’

‘He told you about what happened in the Excelsior?’

‘He did, but from what he said I gather he spent most of the time in the bathroom.’

A phone rang and Lai got smoothly to his feet and walked to his desk to pick up a portable telephone, I guess it was the one whose number I had called from Sally’s flat.

‘Lai Kwok-lee,’ he said, then listened as he walked back to the sofa and sat, crossing his legs. Even the soles of his shoes seemed polished. ‘He is here with me now,’ he said, and then mouthed ‘Howard Berenger’ to me.

‘Yes, yes of course,’ he said, and then placed the phone on the seat next to him. ‘He is coming round now,’ he said to me. ‘Can you describe the men who attacked you? Berenger’s description was decidedly sketchy.’

I recalled my attackers as best I could. Lai took notes in a small pocket notebook with a gold pen.

‘I will try to find these men, but you can appreciate how difficult it will be,’ he said when I’d finished.

‘And if you find them?’

‘Then I will ask them what happened to your sister.’

That was subtle, that, calling her ‘your sister’ and not ‘my mistress’. Tactful.

‘Can you find them?’

‘Hong Kong is a very small place, and I have many friends here,’ he said. ‘We will see.’

He took a crisp white handkerchief out of his top pocket and began to clean his glasses, slowly and methodically. There were three blue Chinese characters on the corner of the square of cloth and they matched a set on his shirt pocket.

‘I loved her,’ he said, in a small voice that seemed strangely weak. ‘And I miss her.’

Yeah, maybe. And what did she get in return? All his worldly goods, a nice line in patter, a quick screw in the afternoon on the bed with Woofer nearby, his big red tongue flopping out of the side of his mouth? I wanted to say something to hurt him, to find the words that would get under his skin and draw blood, but I knew that the anger wasn’t rational, it was jealousy, green and acidic and eating at my heart. Not jealous of the man, or what he owned, his money or his power, but of the time he’d spent with Sally, before she’d died. Time that he’d have forever and that I couldn’t touch. He missed her, well so did I, but his memories were fresher and mine were going stale and I wondered whom she’d thought of just before she died, me or him?

‘I’d better go,’ I said, getting to my feet. He stayed where he was, didn’t even look up, didn’t speak, but continued slowly polishing the lenses of his glasses, head bent down in concentration.

I’d got as far as the door when he called out my name, and I turned to see him replacing his glasses.

‘I will help you find whoever did it,’ he said firmly. ‘But I want you to promise me one thing.’

I nodded.

‘I want the life of the man or the men who killed her. I don’t want you to hand them over to the police. I want them.’

‘No problem,’ I said. It seemed to make him feel better. The light streaming in through the large windows made his eyes glisten.

The lift doors opened to reveal Howard picking his nose. He hurriedly put his hand by his side with a guilty look on his face.

‘Come on, let’s go back to the Excelsior and eat before we go to see Slazenger or whatever his name is,’ I said.

We walked together out into the afternoon sunshine.

‘You should have told me you worked for Lai,’ I said, squinting under the bright sun. God, it was hot.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you know how it is.’

‘No, Howard, I don’t think I do know how it is. The way I understood it, you’re supposed to be on my side. You’re supposed to be helping me, not spying on me.’

‘What do you mean, spying?’ he said.

‘You know damn well what I mean. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I knew you’d blow your top. That’s why. Look, firemen come and go, but Lai will always be here. The work comes regularly from him, slow but steady. The interest from papers like yours comes in waves, one day Hong Kong is flavour of the month, the next we’re ignored. I couldn’t live on what your paper pays me.’

‘So that’s what it comes down to, money?’

‘What else is there?’

‘How about trust,’ I shouted. ‘And loyalty.’

He laughed, a deep-throated chuckle that made his belly shake.

‘Just remember, Howie, that when I get back to England I can do you a great deal of damage.’

The chuckle dried up but he was still smiling. ‘OK, laddie, I’ll remember.’ His eyes were hard.

I followed him as he waded through the evening crowds, swaying with his gentle swagger as the flip-flopped through the rubbish littering the pavement. He ducked between a husband and wife frying pieces of pork and green peppers in a huge rusting wok and I knocked the man’s arm as I hurried to keep up with Howard. He erupted into a tirade of Cantonese, egged on by his greasy haired wife, and I waved an apology.

Howard had turned off the main road and was heading for a bar with a garish red and blue neon sign in the window, flickering slightly. There were fewer people around, though the pavements and gutters were just as filthy. I broke into a run to catch up with Howard, who hadn’t even looked back to see how I was getting on, and I fell into step with him.

Howard saw the cat first, lying on its side in the gutter, chest heaving up and down and I heard its laboured breathing from a dozen feet away. Its back had been crushed by the wheel of a car.

‘Poor wee bastard,’ he said, then pushed the yellow painted door of the bar as we stepped into the blackness. It was as cool and as dark as a tomb and as noisy as hell. Howard turned sharp left and we moved out of the gloom and into an explosion of red, yellow and green lights that blinked on and off in time with the Chinese pop song that blared out of a set of man-sized speakers embedded in the mirrored ceiling. The music was deafening, brain-numbing, but the dance floor was empty.

‘This way,’ mouthed Howard and pointed to a purple velvet-coloured bar where a Chinese girl in a yellow cheong sam absent-mindedly polished a glass. She flashed a smile the way the light goes on when you open the fridge door.

‘What would you like?’ she asked but I’d already made up my mind and before Howard could answer I said, ‘A cardboard box,’ and she looked at me as if I was mad. Maybe I was, but I told her I was serious and she bent under the bar, and reappeared with a tatty box that had been full of bags of crisps. She shook it and tipped out the last two bags, arching her eyebrows.

‘Anything else?’

I didn’t feel like smiling but I did and said no and then I told Howard I’d be back and went back out into the hot night, my ears ringing.

She was ginger and white and some time in the past few weeks she’d had kittens but now she was stretched out in a gutter with her spine broken. There was no blood but the bottom half of her rib cage had been flattened. She half raised her head and bared her teeth when I sat down next to her and placed the box just behind her crippled rear legs. She snarled and hissed and I loved her for that, for fighting and hating even though she wasn’t going anywhere. Then her front legs scrabbled against the tarmac as she tried to get away and she pivoted around her splintered spine and she spluttered and coughed in frustration so I started talking to her quietly because I didn’t want her to hurt herself, crazy because she’d be so high on her own adrenaline and hormones that she’d be feeling no pain but the words kept coming anyway.

There was movement to my right and out of the shadows stepped another cat, same colouring but bigger, tail bristling, green eyes looking me over, then the crippled cat I was trying to help. Maybe her mate, maybe her rival. A taxi horn blared and it was gone in a blur of movement back into the dark. The cat in the gutter started to pull herself along the road, claws scraping, dragging her useless back legs behind her.

‘No, lie still. It’s all right, it’s all right,’ I said, even though it wasn’t and we both knew it. ‘It’s all right.’

An old guy on a battered bicycle pedalled slowly past, his head turning to watch. Then he wobbled to a halt and stood there, leaning on the handlebars with his finger up his nose, studying the crazy gweilo talking to a dying cat. I flared inside, a red hot anger like a parachute flare going off and I felt my shoulders tremble and my stomach tighten and I glared at him.