by Clive Hindle
“Jack! So good to hear from you!” She sounded genuinely happy he’d rung. As if he was someone she hadn’t seen for some time and was looking forward to catching up.
The recent past wasn‘t that easy for him to forget. “I thought…. I thought…”
“I know,” she replied, “it was essential. I am sorry we had to fool you like that and in such a terrible way. My cousin Lam is also very displeased.”
“I’m not surprised, but, look, I wasn’t totally fooled. When you dealt with those two thugs I knew you were something special and I saw over in your flat those photos of me in Northumberland so I knew you were involved then and I never felt you were on the other side. I always knew you were there for me.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you saw through that. I don’t know why I should care but I do.”
“But…”
“But…?”
“I saw you in the water. In the bath.”
“No,” she replied, “you thought you did. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone. It was just a dummy, like a film dummy. They can do incredible things with special effects nowadays.”
“Tell me about it,” There was a mixture of relief and resentment in his voice.
“Don’t take it too personally, Jack,” she replied, “it was a job I was engaged in before I met you and I couldn’t just abandon it. I couldn’t tell you either because no one was sure of what you already knew and what your agenda was. I wanted to because I saw I could trust you but it just wasn’t possible. I am sure you have been in similar situations because of professional commitments?”
Of course he had and the young woman’s perspicacity put him momentarily to shame. “I’m sorry,” he replied, “I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just I was totally shocked. I was devastated.”
“Why? Did you think we had something going?”
“Well, we did, didn’t we, after a fashion?”
Her voice now had an amused edge. “The time of mourning didn’t last long,” she replied, “you were soon off with the old love and on with the new.”
Whoa! That bit. “That’s not entirely fair,” he replied and couldn’t help but notice the whingeing tone which had entered his voice, “I presume you are talking about Diana. We were thrown together, she and I. It didn’t just happen like that. We shared a couple of adventures and….”
“Your romantic inclination took over?” She gave her lilting laugh and he was truly delighted to hear it again.
“Is it that obvious?”
“That need in you? Yes, it is.”
“Oh dear. Diana said something similar about me. And Graham Witherspoon, he implied I was a mug and at the end of the day she’d treat me like one.”
“She will.”
“How do you mean?” He was suddenly alarmed.
“He would know better than most.”
“How come?”
“Are you at Gerry’s flat?”
“No. The Mandarin.”
“Stay there. I’ll come over. Give me half an hour. Room number?”
He gave it to her and she rang off. He lay back on the double bed and wondered what that was all about. He would be very pleased to see her but what was the urgency? And how had she been so sure that Diana wasn’t the right person for him?” He had a sudden feeling of trepidation. It wasn’t the first time on this trip he’d felt this way.
She was as always punctual and his first reaction on seeing her was to hug her and hold her close, enjoying the fragrance of her perfume and the softness of her skin, until she felt the need to break away from his embrace. She became business-like. “Tell me what Graham told you,” she said.
“He didn’t really say much. He just gave me this.” He handed over the piece of paper, “It’s a room at the Park.”
She looked as if she was struggling with something and then it was all resolved, “It’s none of my business, I know, but you should check it out.”
“Why? What’s the big secret?”
“How long ago did he tell you?”
“About an hour.”
“I think you should go now or it may be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late to make an informed decision about your future.”
“Wow!” he hadn’t expected that. He made a snap decision to do as she said. He trusted her, more, when he thought about it, than he trusted Di, the woman he was about to marry. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course I will. Only don’t ask me any questions until you have judged for yourself.”
He held put his hands, “Whatever you say.”
It took about ten minutes to get a cab up to the Park and they took the lift up to the twentieth floor crammed in with a group of tourists. He had this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach which seemed to run in inverse proportion to the rapid rise of the machinery. When they finally reached their exit floor they roamed the corridors until they came to the room. Sure enough it was one of the special suites and had a key code on the lock. “That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it, in a hotel?”
“It’s an unusual room. More a kind of apartment.”
“I feel I should knock.”
“You can if you wish but I think you’d be best off just going in.”
“It’s trespassing.”
“Sure it is,” She took out her RHKP card with the insignia of the Anti-Triad Squad, “unless we use this in which case we can go anywhere we want.”
“Okay.” He did her bidding and tapped in the numbers. The door opened into a corridor at the other end of which was a suite of rooms. There was no one in the living room and kitchen so they crept soundlessly across the plushly carpeted floor until they came to the master bedroom. He looked at Amie in consternation and she looked back at him. She leant forward and whispered. “Your call. Do this or walk away and never think of it again.”
The latter was impossible so he reached forward and opened the door which was slightly ajar. Sprawled out in the bed, both fast asleep, and the covers only half-covering them as if they had been thrown off in a flurry of activity, were the naked bodies of Diana and a man. Their intimacy was obvious from the way his thigh crossed her loins in that most proprietorial of ways as if he was staking his claim to her or at least to her body. Jack had gone to sleep with her like that, immediately after making love, and it would resume as soon as one awoke the other, except on the next occasion it would not be him. The contrast in colour between the man’s chocolate black and the rosy hue of her white skin somehow enhanced the impression of their total immersion in each other.
It was tempting to walk in on this scene of conjugal bliss and have his say, as it were in triumph, although in fact it was a scene indicative of the greatest defeat a man could suffer. Wisely, perhaps, he shrank from this and turned and slunk away towards the corridor. Amie shut it behind her as she followed him out. Neither of them spoke as they trudged down the corridor towards the lift. They stood in silence while it seemed to take an age to arrive and he had this terrible fear that Diana and her lover would come out of the room any moment and join them here waiting for the lift. It was irrational, not only because of the deep, romantic sleep in which he had left them and from which it had seemed that neither had wanted to awake but also because he felt like the intruder here, the one behaving badly, the one doing the wrong.
The lift finally came and they exited on the ground floor and made their way to the front door. Instead of getting a taxi straightaway he pointed ahead towards the trees on the opposite side and they crossed the road to Victoria Park, walking towards North Point. “Did you know that guy?” he asked her, breaking the silence at last.
“Oh yeah. He’s quite well known to us. He’s an undercover guy for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Special assignment in South East Asia.”
He nodded. “American?”
“Yeah.”
“Graham knew I’d find them like that, in flagrante?”
“I guess so.”
“Hmm. I got the imp
ression she didn’t like Graham. Told me not to trust him. I guess she was right.”
“She was. And I don’t think she was lacking in feeling for you.”
He laughed, “Seems not! Just got another lover splayed across her limbs.”
“Yeah, I know how it must hurt. But you have to understand they’ve been an item for a long time. That’s all I can say. She worked for Graham.”
“Really?”
“She never told you that?”
“Among other omissions.”
“Lionel, that’s the DEA guy, had regular contact with Anti-Corruption because of their involvement with Triads.”
“Oh, a cosy cartel was it?” He couldn’t hide the cynicism.
She was silent a while as if wrestling with something and then she came out with it. “There’s a couple of things you ought to know. She was married to Gerry?”
“What?”
“Yeah. They were married. They weren’t together any more but they weren’t divorced either.”
He breathed out audibly. That explained why she was so animated when she’d believed Gerry was going to remarry in Vladivostok. She’d intended to expose not congratulate him. She was going to stick the knife in. She never forgave and she never forgot. “What was her relationship with Graham? Was there a personal one?”
“A woman like her has many lovers.”
He laughed at the slightly oblique answer and shook his head in the way only someone can who feels he has made a mug of himself. “Why not? She told me she’d probably screwed about every big hitter on the island.”
“She has a reputation as something of a man eater.”
Somehow, the tigress image suited. “Yeah. Look at me,” he held out an arm, “chewed all over.” He winced as he thought about the tenderness of her touch and how it was often the igniter of fierce passion.
“And that didn’t bother you?”
“Well now you mention it, I’d never thought about it really. She was over twenty one and I couldn’t act as if she had been waiting round for me to return. I just got carried away with the way things were with her. It would have been a problem when I was younger, sure, but not so much now. If it was in the past. Obviously it wasn’t.”
“Maybe it was her last fling at freedom? You know, like a man’s stag night?”
He looked her straight in the eye noticing for the first time the sadness in her brown ones. “I don’t think you believe that for a moment. Even if it were true, would it make any difference?”
Her eyes lowered, “No, I guess not. I was just conjecturing that it might have started out like that. Then they got drunk and before they knew it…. Anyway, what do you want to do now?”
“Nothing for it, girl, but to go home, tail between the legs.”
“I am so sorry, Jack.”
“Yeah, you were right, though, that I had to see it for myself, as I doubt I would have believed it from anyone else. Maybe I would from you but you wouldn’t tell me, would you?”
“No. It was all right to show you but I don’t think I could have told you all that. You would always have doubted.”
“What I don’t get is why would Graham have the code?”
“The ICAC keeps a regular room there. That’s why it’s a key code instead of a swipe key. He’ll have used the room many times.”
“What as? A safe house?”
“Sometimes maybe but it’s handy having a secure pad in the city, don’t you think? You can get up to all sorts of covert activities? Generally they house out-of-town agents there.”
“Pretty well known to Diana then?”
“I’m afraid so. The party girl.”
They walked a little way in silence. “You know,” he said, “it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for that subterfuge about your being dead. I never would have gone with her while I was with you.”
“Oh, come on, you had history!” Even though she denied it, she was affected, the blush showing pink on her ivory white cheeks.
“No, I mean it. She came round to see me the night after we went to K.K. Chow’s and she offered me it on a plate but I turned her down. Threw her out!” He smiled at the recollection. “I met up with her on the rebound after I lost you. I don’t think it would have happened otherwise.”
She smiled shyly, “I don’t think you were really with me, Jack. You know, in a place like this it’s very hard to make mixed race relationships work. There is a lot of history attached to that too. What was de rigueur once was really just an extension of a master and servant relationship. There are very few Chinese women happily married to Europeans.”
“Same everywhere. But I did sense that reluctance in you. It was all right when it was a bit of fun but you backed off when I started acting as if it was serious.”
“Which I’m guessing you always do.”
He nodded, a glum look on his face, “Yeah, but I’m trying to lighten up. I‘m working on it.”
“Maybe there’s hope for you yet then!”
“I’d like to think so. I’d like you to come across and visit me in England. Take a proper look round, not like last time.” His voice faltered slightly as he spoke. “I’m not coming on to you. I’m pretty numb with what’s happened and even if I was with Di I would say the same. Come and visit me. We can still be friends.”
“I’d like that too. What about her? Do you think you could still be friends with her? Accept her for what she is?”
“Well, only time will tell. The rational side of me says, what is she? Just a girl who behaves like blokes usually do. It’s no big deal when blokes do it but she’s a whore because she’s a woman? No, no matter how hurt I feel, I can’t buy that. Sure, I think I could be friends with her. It will take a long time, though. I certainly don’t hate her. We went through too much together.”
“I have a feeling that she is going to come to understand that she has lost a lot more than you have.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she’s the one who’s had a lucky escape.”
She linked arms with him then and they continued along the path past the tennis courts and the boys playing football and basketball. To their right the hills of Victoria Peak and Jardine’s Lookout towered above them, the lower slopes bedecked with hotels and high rise apartment blocks. They were heading towards the metro station at Tin Hau temple at the north end of the park and Jack suddenly felt relieved, as if a great burden had been lifted from him. What’s that about? he thought but it was obvious really that his intended change in marital status had been weighing heavily on him, too. He wouldn’t be Jack the lad anymore and did he ever see Diana settling down into his life back in England? The more he thought about it the more ridiculous it sounded and, although he’d rather have had a talk about it and a friendly break with her, it was maybe best it had happened this way so that he at least would not feel any regrets. What about her? What would she feel if he just wrote her a Dear John and said he’d gone back home? He guessed she’d stamp her feet because secretly she wanted and thought she could have it all but then she’d be mightily relieved too and she’d just get on with her life the way she always had in the last decade before he had walked back into it without so much as a by your leave. He thought about the first time he’d seen her in the Club Volvo when she was playing the role of the main man’s lady but really she was undercover for the ICAC Commissioner and he couldn’t but smile at the thought because that demonstrated her courage, something he‘d seen at close quarters for himself. He couldn’t actually be angry with her for very long simply because she was such a vital woman, simply because she was such a character.
“Fear no more the heat of the sun, nor the furious winter’s rages. Thou thy worldly task hast done. Home art gone and taken thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust,” he recited the song from Cymbeline aloud as he went along and Amie, still holding on to his arm for dear life, looked up at him with a bright smile on her face as if she at least knew the old Jack was in there som
ewhere.
CHAPTER 10
It was odd, he thought, once back at the Mandarin and furiously packing to catch the evening flight, that he and Amie had gelled like that because she’d never actually known the old Jack. She was right, though. He’d left home uncertain about his future and not merely from the threat he had faced as a result of helping Gerry but also because of the stasis in his own life. Now he had come and confronted his foes, faced many perils, braved many adventures. He hadn’t been in time to save his friend, in fact he’d never had a chance. And at the same time he had loved and lost. It didn’t sound good but inside he felt alive again, as if the stasis was back on the move, sliding down the mountain like a glacier. He thought of Amie holding on to his arm and he wondered what the future might have held for them. No one would believe they couldn’t make it work. What had he been doing with Diana? That was a crazy notion. It could never have worked. Was he that desperate that he’d give anything a chance? If he had been, at least that had changed now. That was all part of the stasis. Now he was his own man again.
