Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  ***

  Eddie watched in disbelief as the storefront window shattered. He threw himself on the floor, and pulled the safety from the grenade, arming it. Benny Cheong staggered back into the shop, doubled over and clutching his stomach. Blood oozed in little red worms between his fingers.

  Paul Tam lay face down in the doorway of the shop. His eyes were open and there was a pool of blood around his head. One of the women lying on the floor was screaming hysterically. “Shut her up!” he shouted at Tang.

  But Tang could only stare at Benny, who had slumped to his knees making unintelligible sounds.

  One of the shop assistants got up and ran for the door. Eddie fired three times but the man kept running. He only began to stagger when he reached the street. He reeled into a doorway on the other side and sagged to one knee before he collapsed.

  Benny was shaking like he was having a fit.

  “Shut up, fucking your mother!” Eddie shouted at him.

  “I think I got one of them!” Tang shouted.

  “How many yellow air?”

  “I don't know!”

  Eddie watched Benny go through his death agony. If he went through that door the policemen could shoot him in the stomach too.

  “We have to get to the car!” Tang shouted.

  But Eddie could not move.

  ***

  Sian Lacey was just two streets away when the heist was called in on the radio. She heard the sounds of the gunshots even over the morning clamor of the Lockhart Road traffic. It sounded like firecrackers.

  She knew she could get there quicker on foot, so she abandoned her Toyota in the middle of the street, ignoring the blaring horns of the drivers behind her, and raced past startled pedestrians up Marsh towards Hennessey.

  ***

  Benny had rolled onto his side on the floor, and was threshing his legs. “Help me ... help me ...” There was a pink froth on his teeth.

  “Shut him up, fucking your mother!” Eddie screamed. A blonde woman lay on her face a few feet away, her hands behind her head, whispering something into the carpet. She kept saying “Help me, Jesus,” over and over.

  Tang grabbed her by the hair and jerked her to her feet. The man with her tried to help her and Tang slammed his pistol onto the back of his skull. His head seemed to bounce on the carpet and then he was still.

  “Let's get out of here!” Tang shouted.

  He pulled the woman towards the door, the gun jammed into her neck, the other arm around her throat, using her as a shield.

  Eddie hesitated. He had the grenade primed. He looked around for the safety pin and couldn't find it. Well, now what should he do? He would have to throw it when they reached the street. He jumped over Benny's writhing body and followed Tang and his hostage towards the door.

  ***

  There were cars abandoned in the street, their doors yawning open. People crouched in doorways, others had gathered at the corners of the street to watch. Lacey had to fight her way through a press of onlookers.

  The footpath outside the gold shop was littered with shards of glass. A uniformed policeman lay among the glass fragments, not moving. Another policeman was hunched behind a parked car, his head lolling on his chest.

  The sight of the two dead policeman enraged her. Her training was to wait for back up. Besides, what could she do about this? The Royal Hong Kong Police had not armed their women detectives with the same .38's that the men wore.

  She could hear sirens a couple of street away.

  To hell with it.

  She sprinted along the street, hugging the shopfronts. From somewhere close by she heard a woman screaming, and what sounded like a shouted argument in Cantonese.

  The dead policeman was sprawled horribly on his back, his service revolver a few feet away on the footpath. Lacey crawled on her belly through the blood and broken glass and snapped open the chamber. He had not even had the chance to fire one round.

  Before she could find cover she heard shouts behind her and realized the gunmen were coming out of the shop. She had her back towards them and she was defenseless.

  ***

  Eddie followed Tang out of the shop, screaming threats at the shop assistants who were cringing on the floor. He held the grenade high in the air, still expecting the other policeman to appear from behind the parked car outside the store.

  The first patrolman lay a few yards away, a woman lay prone beside him, he supposed she had been caught in the crossfire. People were screaming up and down the street. Where was the yellow air?

  Tang dragged his blonde hostage towards their Mercedes.

  “Leave it!” Eddie shouted. An abandoned car had blocked them against the curb. Tang’s hostage twisted free from his grasp and started to run. Tang raised his weapon to shoot her, then hesitated.

  “We can't get out!” Eddie shouted at him.

  The woman tripped and fell, scrambled back to her feet and kept running. Tang yelled in frustration and aimed his pistol at her back.

  ***

  Lacey saw the gunman level his gun at the woman. She knew she would need a head shot to stop him. She was no markswoman, and even at this range, less than twenty meters, she was not sure she could do it.

  She fired twice.

  The first bullet took him in the neck, the other shattered his skull. Tang was dead before he hit the ground.

  Eddie turned around. Oh Jesus, Lacey thought. He’s holding a live grenade. Only the pressure of his thumb was keeping the fly-off lever against the body of the grenade.

  She kept the gun levelled at him and got to her knees, started to crawl towards the nearest parked car.

  Eddie saw her.

  What is he going to do? she thought. Is he going to throw it at me, or will he try and run?

  She heard police sirens now, saw flashing blue lights at the bottom of the street. Eddie heard them too. He screamed at her in Cantonese to drop the gun.

  If I shoot him now, she thought, the grenade will explode. Let him escape, anything but have a grenade explode in the middle of Hennessy Road.

  She kept her revolver aimed at the center of his chest.

  He threw the grenade.

  She fired twice, heard the grenade drop onto the footpath and roll towards her. She jumped up to her feet and took two strides around the car, and threw herself face down onto the road, her feet towards the grenade, just as they taught her.

  And waited to die.

  Chapter 83

  ON THE Continental flight from San Francisco the entertainment channel replayed half an hour of World News featuring the now-famous video footage of the street gun battle in Hong Kong in which one of the thieves was gunned down on camera by a police detective.

  It was amateur footage, taken by a German tourist, and the images were muddled. Keelan had seen it replayed countless times on CNN, made perhaps more dramatic by the inexperience of the cameraman, the hand-held camera losing its subject at the moment the shots were fired, the camera hitting the ground at the moment the grenade exploded, the jumbled images that followed accentuating the screams of the onlookers.

  He had seen this same clip replayed endlessly on the news channels in the last twenty-four hours. Eddie Lau had been named as one of the dead men. Lacey's name had been suppressed.

  He had called her from San Francisco when he first saw it. She sounded shaken but she was unharmed, she said, a police doctor had given her something in case she had trouble sleeping. She was suspended from duty pending an investigation. Routine.

  He had promised her he would come and see her as soon as he was back in Hong Kong.

  The news channel moved on to sport, an NBL game. He tuned his headphones to another channel and listened to some classical music. He watched a small child run up and down the aisle pursued by his harried mother.

  The debt to Anna and Caroline remained unpaid. He stared out of his window. It was night and he was thirty five thousand feet above the Pacific, lost between the East and the West, looking for some light in t
hat deep and unfathomable dark.

  ***

  Rain hammered down in grey sheets, washed ankle-deep down Nathan Road, the nullahs overflowing. Ruby looked out of the window of the Sze Hoi, felt the building tremble in the teeth of the gale. Far below her people fought their way along the street, bodies bent towards the wind. Cardboard and bits of paper were hurled high into the air. A page of the China Morning Post slapped against the restaurant window and was suspended there for a moment in the brute breath of the wind.

  Ruby chose a basket of deep fried chicken feet from the dim sum cart. On the other side of the table Vincent was content to just sip his cha. He looked even more cadaverous than usual. His eyes were glassy. Looks like some addict in Mongkok, Ruby thought.

  “Shoot him down in the street like a dog,” he murmured.

  Still mourning for Eddie. Think I have not cried a river of tears for him? Ruby thought. Even after he scares me half to death the night before he dies? “Joss,” she said.

  “I warned him. But I think he wanted to die.”

  “May the gods piss on the current of air who does this to him.”

  “Can do better than that,” Vincent whispered. “Will wash her myself. Cut her with a thousand knives until she screams to me to let her die.”

  Ruby averted her eyes. Vincent is just a White Fan, she thought, how can he talk like this? Maybe he is a little crazy, too.

  “I am your tai lo now,” Vincent said to her.

  Ruby almost laughed in his face. You have the liver of a sheep. I think maybe I will find another Company instead.

  “Tell me about our business in Golden Mountain,” Vincent said.

  “Have some bad luck with the Monkey,” Ruby said, using the nickname she had given to Frank Bertolli.

  “What is this bad luck, Ruby-ah?”

  “Says he can get number four at better price somewhere else.”

  Vincent shook his head.

  “Not my fault, heya! Someone offer him fifteen units at one twelve.” She felt vulnerable around Vincent. How do you talk to a man when you know he is not thinking about what is between your legs? Gives him too much power. “Won't let you down no more, okay. No more gambling, no more bad luck things. Promise you this time, no shit.”

  Vincent sipped his cha and said nothing.

  The building shivered again in the wind. Through the window she saw tattered clouds tumbling over Kowloon before the gathering storm. Eddie's belt pager summoned him to a phone. He walked quickly across the restaurant to the foyer.

  Ruby looked at his bowl. He had not touched his food, had left his chopsticks in the bowl, upright, the death sign. She looked around. The restaurant had emptied, as if by magic. Even the waiters had gone.

  Dew neh loh moh!

  She scrambled in her bag for her cell phone and punched in a number. A woman's voice told her Chief Superintendent McReadie was out. She hung up, dialed Wanchai Police Headquarters and was patched through to the CID desk.

  “Brian Kwok.”

  “Is Ruby.”

  “Tell you never to ring me here!”

  “Vincent going to kill me! Gone crazy. Says he will wash detective who kill his Eddy!”

  “Where are you?”

  “Sze Hoi in Austin Road. Got to help me!”

  Ruby glanced towards the elevators. Four young men dressed almost identically in dark suits and wrap-around sunglasses got out of the lift. They pulled cleavers and long knives from under their coats.

  She stood up. “Got to help me now!”

  She dropped the phone. The four men formed a semi-circle around her. They were in no hurry.

  Always wanted to be a good girl. Not my fault all the bad that happens. Just want a fun life.

  From somewhere back in time a little girl astride a water buffalo in a Shatin rice paddy shouted at her to be careful, that there were four men who wanted to kill her. She screamed and screamed but there was nothing she could do to help Ruby now. There was finally nowhere left to run.

  No shit.

  Chapter 84

  KEELAN'S Cathay Pacific flight flew into heavy turbulence two hours out of Hong Kong. A tropical cyclone had moved north east from Vietnam, its eye just south of Hainan Island. Babies and young children screamed as the aircraft bucked and rolled and the woman in the seat next to him was noisily sick. At times the 747 seemed to bounce and skid like a car travelling too fast on a dirt road. He felt his insides clench like a fist and a cold oily sweat greased the palms of his hands.

  After two hours of it Keelan was relieved to hear the flaps rumble into position. A cluster of white apartments appeared for a moment etched against a green and rocky hill and then was swallowed up again by low cloud. Keelan knew the Kai Tak approach was one of the toughest in the world, even in good weather. In other airports the ILS would lead the aircraft down but here the pilot had to get a visual on a red and white checked board on the side of a mountain. At just seven hundred feet the captain would put the aircraft on a sharp 47.2 degree starboard turn, practically standing the jet on its wingtip.

  Keelan saw the lights of Mongkok's high rises dance crazily below him. Less than a minute later they were down, the wheels bouncing on the concrete ribbon of Kai Tak. He unclenched his fists from the armrests.

  ***

  He had planned to take a taxi to his apartment and get washed up before he went over to Pokfulam, but when he emerged from Customs he saw Lacey waiting for him on the other side of the barrier.

  “Lace!”

  “Hello, yanqui,” she said and put her arms around him.

  “I missed you,” he whispered. “You okay?”

  “A little shaken up. I'm glad you're back. Rough flight?”

  “Ever been on one of those amusement park rides where they strap you into a cage and spin you around in different directions so that you don't know which way is up, and the person next to you is sick and you can't get off? It was like that.”

  “You look pale.”

  “There goes the myth of the tough drug agent. And here I am confessing all this to a real hero.”

  The smile melted away. “No hero, John. I've had nightmares every night since it happened.”

  “You and me both. In my nightmare the guy shot you.”

  She clung to him again, tighter. When she pulled away her eyes were bright. “I need a drink,” she said.

  “Good idea.” He picked up his bag and followed her out into the gathering storm.

  ***

  A Signal 8 warning had been issued, with gusts of up to sixty knots expected on the harbor, sending shipping scurrying into the typhoon shelters. All ferry services had been cancelled.

  The shops along Lockhart Road were closed and shuttered, and even at four o'clock in the afternoon Wanchai was almost deserted, except for a few unfortunates struggling towards the MTR station. A tram clattered past, its brightly painted sides caked with mud.

  There was a gathering of ex-pats in the Press Club. They had all told their wives they had been trapped by the oncoming cyclone, even though they had known about it since that morning.

  Lacey got two San Migs. “Mac said that if you weren't too tired from the flight I was to bring you over to his place for dinner tonight. I think he's quite fond of you.”

  A new addition to the rogue's gallery on the wall caught his eye. Lacey reddened with embarrassment.

  “I told you you'd get your picture in here,” Keelan said. He went closer to get a better look at the Club’s latest black and white photograph; it was Lacey, frog-marching a press photographer towards the rail of the mezzanine in the Queens Plaza. The image froze the journalist's look of terror, his spectacles awry on his face, the astonishment on the face of the police constable watching.

  “I stopped coming here because of that photograph,” she said.

  “Hey, not everyone can be famous.”

  “Notorious. There's a difference. It nearly cost me a grade.”

  “Did you ask for a copy for the grandchildren?”
/>   “Someone started a caption competition around the office.”

  “What won?”

  “Next time get my best side or I'll beat you to death with my handbag. It didn't get my vote but some of the guys around the department found it amusing.”

  “No getting away from you these days, Lace. The in-flight news had you as a major item.”

  “I'd rather they talked about the two cops who died. They were the real heroes.”

  He stopped smiling. “You saved that woman's life. And he had a live grenade, for Christ's sake.”

  “You ever shot anyone, John?”

  “Once.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn't sleep for weeks. The guy had a record of violent crime and if I hadn't used my weapon he would have killed me. But it's the nightmares that make us different from the psychopath who kills for fun and sleeps like a baby. But I'll give you the tip, Lace. Better to be the one pulling the trigger than ...”

  She took his hand. “I heard what happened over there. With Bertolli. Mac told me.”

  He shrugged.

  “I hear you've been suspended.”

  “What it amounts to is they've asked me to send in my resignation before the acceptance arrives.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don't know. I'll tidy up things here and then ... then I'll see. Maybe it's for the best. Last couple of years I felt like I was trying to fill a string bag full of sand.” A squall of rain splattered against the windows. “Will we get home tonight?”

  “Change of subject.”

  Keelan's face was taut. “Maybe I should have done it. Pulled the trigger, I mean.”

  “You’d be in prison right now if you had.”

  “And it would make me no better than them, right? That's how the argument goes. But ...”

  “But?”

  “But if there's no justice, if guys like Bertolli can hide behind fancy lawyers, what's the point? The law has to serve justice, real justice, or else it’s just loading the system.”