The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller

by Clive Hindle

  “So what like?” He was still bristling with aggression, which was good.

  “Would you care to share your conversation with us?”

  “Wey, not likely.”

  “Mr. Harvey,” the judge intervened, “what did you talk about?” He waved the prosecutor down. “It is relevant,” he added. “Mr. Harvey was in the middle of his evidence.”

  “Wey, he just tellt[21] me to behave mesel[22] like.”

  “Well, that’s all right then,” the judge said and his glance at Jack suggested more eloquently than words that he didn’t want to hear the Superintendent impugned.

  Notwithstanding the potential for a judicial backlash, Jack persisted, “Did you talk about the case?” The judge frowned but let it go.

  “Nah, not really like.”

  “What does ‘not really’ mean?”

  “He just tellt us to tell the truth.” The judge looked at Lowther then. Even that was going beyond the pale. Lowther squirmed uncomfortably.

  “Were you not telling the truth before?”

  It was Harvey’s turn to squirm. “Aye, I was like.”

  “Well do it now. Are you a fully paid up member of the National Front?”

  “Wey, what if I am?”

  “Shall I take that as a yes?” the judge asked and the big man nodded defiantly. The judge added, “For the sake of the record let it be shown that the witness nodded in the affirmative.”

  "Face it, Mr. Harvey, you don't like foreigners, do you?" Jack pressed.

  The pugnacious lip doubled in size. "Frigging wogs and spics, if you wanna nah[23]!"

  "What about the Chinese?"

  "Only good for running takeaways, fookin’ slanty-eyed bastards!"

  "And Russians?"

  "Red twats, Nuke the fookin’ lot!"

  "Ah, so can we take it that you don’t believe in the fellowship of man?"

  "I'll fellership yous if I catch yous ootside[24]. I'll rive yor fuckin’ ’eed[25] off."

  "Is that what you said before you killed George Armstrong?”

  "You want to wash yor mooth oot[26], marra[27]!" Harvey pointed his finger at Jack. The judge was captivated now.

  "Bit too close to the bone, is it?" Jack asked. "Well, try this one for size. No way were you at the Lights that night!" Just on cue, Russ Ronson, who'd reacted to Jack’s signal through the glass panel at the back of the courtroom, ushered in the witnesses he'd subpoenaed, the ones who knew Harvey’s alibi was false. Reluctant to say anything on the record, they couldn't refuse to attend Court on a subpoena. Harvey didn't know they'd kept silent. He thought they were there to drop him in. He was slack-jawed as Jack hit him with the kitchen sink. “That’s right, isn’t it? All these people will be able to tell the court where you were?” Now a bit of bluff became necessary. The bad news imparted by his private detective was that the video cameras on Tyne Street had been taken out in the melee. There was no footage. "You're lying too when you say you weren't at the Jungle. You and your team thought you were clever when you knocked out the video surveillance camera at the end of Tyne Street. You thought the Police couldn't identify who was in the fight, but you forgot about the one further down the street. It showed you on your way to kill Geordie Armstrong!"

  Harvey didn't know there was no footage. "It warn't[28] me, I swear on me bairn’s[29] life," he retorted in anguish. "Divn't[30] put that on my toes!"

  "Divn't put what on your toes?" Jack mimicked.

  “That thingummybob!" Harvey had lost his way with words and looked as if he was about to have an epileptic fit.

  "That thingummybob?" Jack replied. "You're not talking about the murder of Geordie Armstrong, are you?"

  "Aye, that's the one like, that mordor[31]!" Harvey started hyperventilating.

  "But," Jack said, just twisting the knife, "I thought we’d established it was you who killed Mr. Armstrong?"

  "Nah, nah, that's the point. That’s where yous’ve got it arl wrang[32], hinny[33], it warn't[34] me, it wor[35] Bud Nicholson.”

  “Sorry!” Jack acted as if this news came as a terrible surprise. “What on earth would Mr. Nicholson have against Geordie Armstrong?”

  “He didn’t hev nowt[36] against him like. It wor[37] just the cash!”

  “The cash?”

  “Aye, he mordered him because Albert had a grudge against him. He wor canny well weighed off like. Yous ask him!” All bravado gone now and, forgetting the robber’s charter that you never grass on a mate, he was pointing one fat, stubby finger up into the public gallery where Bud was sliding along the bench towards the exit. Police officers on guard on the doors appeared at the exit at that moment and the red-faced, would be fugitive sat down heavily.

  “Are we talking about Mr. Albert Abel when we speak of the man with a grudge?” Jack questioned. When the forlorn witness nodded his head, he continued, “What was this grudge?”

  “Geordie cheated Albert over some swag. Albert gets a share of everything doon[38] the quay like.”

  “Contraband?” Harvey nodded in response to the clarification, “Are you saying that Mr. Abel paid Mr. Nicholson for ridding him of a fisherman who had cheated him out of his smuggler’s gains?" Jack asked.

  All eyes in the court room were fixed on the quaking mass of protoplasm in the witness box. Harvey breathed out audibly. "Aye," he said, "aye, that's what ‘appened, like, I swear it, on the bairn’s life."

  How many lives did the bairn have? Jack didn’t put much by the child’s survival prospects if these depended on this man telling the truth but what he had now was enough for present purposes. The case had been broken. "Well done, it feels good to tell the truth, doesn’t it?” The big man nodded in agreement. “But enlighten me on this. Why did you implicate this innocent man?" Jack turned and pointed to Peter, who sat in the dock, struck dumb by the sudden turn of events.

  "Well, he's a Ruski, ain’t he?”

  “You mean he’s a Russian?”

  “Aye. A Ruski, like ah said. Are yous deef[39], like?”

  “So you implicated him because he’s a foreigner?”

  “Aye! Nearly as bad as a Mackem[40]." His use of the vernacular for a native of Sunderland brought thin smiles from the well of the court.

  "Joking aside, is that it?" Jack said, "You framed this man simply because he is not British?"

  "Nah," he said, "and he shook his head, "it wor Albert's idea. He'd had a bit bother with the Ruski.”

  “What sort of bother?”

  “Nowt porsonal[41] like. He were just undercutting his agents on the Fish Quay."

  Pandemonium erupted when the Vladivostok sea captain came out of the courthouse. A few of his countrymen had turned up waving placards, showing that his country’s authorities might have dumped him but his own people, mainly long-term refugees themselves, had not. Moreover, Peter was in demand from every television station in the country. The fact that he spoke good English made him a celebrity. He was holding Jack’s arm up in the air as if he’d won an Olympic championship. "I and my family will always have a debt of honour to this man," he said. "If he ever travels to my country then he is sure of a hero's welcome."

  “Oh yeah, sure,” Jack responded, “I’ve got a lot of clients in Vladivostok.”

  On the way home that night he called at the Chinese and bought a takeout. After the euphoria of a famous victory and an excess of vodka, something was getting to him. He felt really sad but couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the way his life was slipping away. He was well set up, okay, but what did he do at night? He ate alone, prepared the case for the next day. Sometimes he went out for a drink with a few pals, all of them visibly ageing and getting more depressing by the minute. They were all married but that didn‘t seem to make them any happier. He wouldn’t know because he’d never found the right person. He was a loner. Anyway, whatever it was, there was something missing. He thought about it, knew he shouldn’t but he ended up buying a bottle of Chablis from the Off Licence and walked the pavements home.

>   The house was silent. He liked it enough but somehow tonight he felt lonelier than ever. He tried the answer-phone to see if there were any messages, thinking Lowther might have been on about the dead man, but it was still early doors and now he had his hands tied with the fallout from Peter’s case. There was one message but it was from Johnny Kwok. He wanted Jack to ring him at 23.00 prompt. Prompt? He had an in-built aversion to commands: even if his conscious mind didn’t always decide to ignore them, sometimes his subconscious one over-rode it.

  Around 11.15 he looked at his watch. Cursing his forgetfulness, he walked into the sitting room and reached for the phone, which, for some reason, he hadn’t replaced on the table but had left on the floor. He knelt down. Telepathy or what, the phone must have been about to ring because, before he had finished dialling, someone was on the other end.

  "Wei, hello," the voice said. Jack recognised it instantly as Chinese.

  "Who's there?" he replied.

  "Ah, Mr. Jack," came the familiar tones of a slightly bewildered Johnny Kwok, as if Jack’s picking up the phone so quickly had taken him by surprise, "I was wanting to talk to you about our mutual friend, Mr. Ma. Sorry to bother you at home. I hope you don't mind."

  Jack had no time to reply. A blinding flash at the window made him duck as the glass caved in. A dark figure outside was caught momentarily in the light of the moon, then something whizzed through the air, missed Jack’s head by a shave's width and struck the wall. He jumped up and made for the window, shouting at the top of his voice. He could see car headlights in the lane behind the house. Jack gave chase as the intruder legged it over the hedge, jumping it Fosbury style. He ran through the gate to see a car making off down the lane, it's passenger door swinging drunkenly as the driver tried frantically to pull another person in while keeping the vehicle on course. "Blast!" he said, and returned to the house. He picked up the receiver. It was dead. Quickly he grabbed his mobile and dialled 999. Returning to the broken window, he drew the curtain and put the light on. He began searching the wall close to the telephone for the missile. Even as the doorbell rang he discovered it.

  Lowther stood outside with the troops. "What's going on, Jack? " he asked. Jack led him into the breakfast room and showed him the throwing star embedded in the wall. "Nasty," Lowther said, looking at it carefully, "but leave it there until the crime scene people get here." He bent down to examine the glittering, silver star, which had crunched into the wall through three quarters of its diameter. "I wouldn't have liked my head in the way of that," he added.

  "It was meant to take me out." Jack mentioned Johnny Kwok's phone call and the odd command to ring him at 23.00 on the dot, something he‘d forgotten to do.

  "Well, you lucky beggar," Lowther said, "He‘d see you through the window when you picked up the phone. As soon as you did, bingo! Hole in one. He must not have had his sights right. Maybe because you didn’t do it on time and he wasn‘t prepared when you did. You caught him off balance." Lowther left a Police guard at the house overnight. By the time Jack climbed the stairs to bed, he was dog-tired. As he went off to sleep something banged away in his head. He was a sitting duck here. The answer lay with Gerry Montrose in Hong Kong. What did the Triads think Jack had of Gerry’s?

  In the morning the telephone rang. It was Lowther. "Sorry to tell you, Jack, but Kwok flew to Amsterdam last night. He was on the plane for Taiwan today." That was convenient in the sense that the British Government had no extradition treaty with the Republican one in Taiwan. "Look on the bright side, though. This does demonstrate that your theory was right. For once." Jack ignored the jibe. After hours of thought, he had made up his mind and had a game plan. He had no pressing cases on now Peter’s was over and he could leave the office to his partners for a couple of weeks. A sweet song beguiled him, its melody the perfume of orchids and incense, its libretto the sounds of the raucous night. It was the song of the Orient. All in all he had a couple of good reasons for looking up old friends in the East.

  7 Sir

  8 Tournament

  9 Going

  10 About

  11 I’m

  12 Alright

  13 Nice

  14 Blokes

  15 Don’t know

  16 Pal

  17 To do with

  18 once

  19 Where’s that

  20 Yourself

  21 Told

  22 Myself

  23 Want to know

  23 outside

  25 head

  26 Mouth out

  27 Mate

  28 Wasn’t

  29 Child’s

  30 Don’t

  31 murder

  32 All wrong

  33 Mate

  34 Wasn’t

  35 was

  36 Nothing ersonal

  37 was

  38 Down

  39 You deaf

  40 Someone from Sunderland

  41 Nothing personal

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 1

  At Heathrow he found himself with a couple of hours before take-off so he headed for the restaurant. Not long after he had ordered, his attention was attracted to the arrival of a young Chinese man and a European woman. He was supremely self-confident. She was restrained by comparison and Jack had the impression the young man was showing off. She had her back towards him but she was older than her companion. It was the way she dressed: casually elegant but not in an overly youthful way. He took an interest now. She was blond with a superb shape but he could not get a good enough view. He had a nagging sense of déjà vu. There was there was something familiar about her, and it had him trawling the memory banks of well-known celebrities, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. A little later his plane was called.

  The journey was uneventful until the aeroplane arrived over Hong Kong. The descent into Kai Tak was a thrilling if slightly uncomfortable experience as the plane came in between the high rises towards the runway which jutted out on reclaimed land into Victoria Harbour. No wonder a new airport was being planned over on Lantao; you could reach out and grab the clothing off the lines here.

  He had to wait a short while in the baggage reclaim and noticed once again the couple he had seen at Heathrow. They must have travelled first class. Again he had that distinct feeling of deja vu when he looked at the woman. Perhaps she was an actress or something but it nagged at him because it wasn’t that kind of familiarity. It was something much more personal, just out of context. It was really annoying because it was like he was looking at someone through a haze, just waiting for the object to heave into view, but it never does. There was another odd feeling as well: as if there was a reason for the sighting; as if his life was interlocked in some way with this couple’s. It was a stupid thought, no logic to it at all, but he couldn’t get away from it.

  Instead of travelling first class, he had booked into the Mandarin on Hong Kong Island. Typical of such an establishment the hotel Roller was waiting to collect its only passenger. Soon, Jack found himself once again among the garish neon signs and the streets full of teeming humanity, which, in his younger days, had proved initially such a culture shock, but which had rapidly captivated his senses. The Mandarin’s reception system was among the best in the world. You didn’t stand at a desk and fill in a registration form. They took you into a room and completed the process. Everything was done as if you were their first and last visitor and that carried on until the moment the bellboy left you, luggage carefully stowed, the electronics of the room explained, and the tip safely in his pocket.

  Once on his own, Jack took nostalgia one step further and ventured into the Captain’s Bar. Some things never change and this was one of them. As he quaffed from the silver tankard in which the beer was still served, he was already planning his next move. Back in England he had tried to contact Gerry's work place. Sometimes he’d got no response; sometimes a Chinese girl answered but he’d always got the barest of information. Now he marked carefully the place where he would find it – in the Jard
ine Building, near the Star Ferry. Gerry hadn’t gone into any of the traditional chambers. Confident that his reputation alone would guarantee him work, he had set up alone.

  He acclimatised himself with a stroll round Statue Square and the Supreme Court Building. On a whim he took a tram up towards Wanchai and recognised the smell when he was a quarter of a mile away: palm oil, sesame, vaporized diesel, comminuted oranges and ginger, the scent of the Orient. The hot, steamy heat was like a Turkish bath. It insinuated itself down the street like a living body. You could almost see it in the air, writhing its tactile way between the pedestrians and the buildings, relieved once in a while by a blast of cold air from a doorway or by the constant overhead drip of the air-conditioners. Space was at such a premium they had constructed walkways above the road like arteries full of flowing blood cells. The crowds streamed to and fro all day long but, at rush hour, police at each end guided the human traffic into lanes. Back home, when preparing for this journey, he’d wondered what his reaction would be, how changed he would find the town. But what had struck him was how much of it was the same. Okay, yes, they’d put the tunnels in the air and built a few more monoliths like the Lippo and the Wanchai Towers but those were superficial things. The city was the same as it had been all those years ago when he had half-promised friends that he would return swiftly.