Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  He didn’t understand it, but he knew it made sense. Sort of.

  Marker and Dubery took the MRT subway under the harbour to Sheung Wan, ate a late dim sum lunch in a cheap restaurant on Morrison Street, and then walked east through the secondhand and antique shops on Hollywood Road. Taking his duties as a tourist guide seriously, Marker led Dubery into the smoky, perfume-laden Man Mo Temple, the oldest in Hong Kong. The place was full of locals come to honour one of the two resident gods, of literature and war respectively. Marker explained that the latter, Kuan Ti, served as a protector of pawn shops, policemen, secret societies and the military, and received a look from the younger man which asked ‘how the hell did you know that?’

  ‘I’ve been in here before,’ Marker said, answering the unspoken question. Rosalie had said it was nice that the two of them shared a god.

  Outside again, they retraced their steps for a hundred yards or so and turned up a long flight of steps which bore the name Ladder Street. ‘This was built to help the sedan-chair carriers carry their white bosses home to their houses up on the hill,’ Marker explained. ‘It used to be lined with opium dens,’ he added, thinking that the street, with its overhanging balconies and shuttered windows, still seemed like something out of the nineteenth century.

  At the top they turned left along Caine Road, and after walking for about a mile found themselves passing in front of Government House. Another few minutes and they reached the lower terminus of the Peak Tramway, just in time to catch the next ride up.

  Marker had been to the top several times before, but as the two men circled the peak on the mile-long walk he found the views as breathtaking as ever. From the south-western side of the mountain they looked out over the crowded Aberdeen Harbour and the rocky island of Lamma a mile offshore; from the western side they surveyed a wide stretch of ocean strewn with craft and the purple haze of mountainous Lantau. Another corner in the path and the city was spread out below them like a gifted child’s Lego fantasy.

  As they took the funicular back down Marker asked himself what it was that seemed so unreal about Hong Kong. Was it just that all the different blendings – of Oriental and English, high-tech and medieval, ocean and concrete – felt strange to an Englishman? Or did the Chinese also feel out of place in such a hybrid city?

  He supposed he’d have to ask someone Chinese.

  It was almost six. Marker stopped at a public phone, took a deep breath and punched out her phone number of three years ago. After four rings the answerphone cut in, and he found himself listening to her voice. It felt strange. The beep went and, realizing he hadn’t thought of a message, he instinctively hung up.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ he asked Dubery.

  The Scot nodded. ‘This is an incredible place,’ he said, as much to himself as to Marker.

  They found a British-style pub complete with horse brasses, dartboard and a predominantly Chinese clientele, ordered two Tsingtao beers and took a seat in the window. Sitting there, it occurred to Marker that he and Dubery didn’t talk to each other very much. Finn and Cafell, on the other hand, were probably both having trouble getting a word in.

  ‘Time to get back?’ Dubery suggested after their third beer.

  It was gone eight. ‘Give me a minute,’ Marker said, and walked across to the public phone. He listened to it ring, thinking he wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to talk to her that evening, but then the answerphone engaged and his sense of disappointment was impossible to deny. ‘It’s Callum Marker,’ he said. ‘I’m in Hong Kong for a few days, maybe more. I was wondering how you are, whether we could meet up for a drink or a meal. I’ll call again tomorrow.’

  He replaced the receiver, wondering if he had made a mistake.

  It was an unusually sticky evening, and the half-mile walk from her car to the surveillance post overlooking the godown did nothing to make Rosalie feel cooler. At the office she had changed into the short blue dress she kept there for such occasions, and this time it seemed to be working almost too well. The sergeant accompanying her, a man she had never taken to, was playing the part of her client as if he had forgotten it was a part, dragging her along by the arm like a man who couldn’t wait. He was still pulling as they started up the stairs of the building which housed the surveillance team, and looked both surprised and indignant when she half shouted at him to let her go.

  In the room on the third floor one man was keeping watch, the other sitting with eyes closed in an armchair, dreamily listening to his Walkman. Jackie Cheung’s face beamed out from the cassette case on the chair arm.

  ‘Nothing?’ she asked the watcher.

  He shook his head.

  It had just gone seven o’clock. She would hang around till nine, she decided, and then come again in the morning.

  The minutes passed as slowly as they always did on surveillance duty. The man with the Walkman offered her a turn with Jackie Cheung but she declined – Chinese pop was like the Chinese food she had eaten in England, a sickly imitation.

  She took a turn on watch. The view from the window looked straight across the rusty corrugated roof of the godown to the darkened boat-house, the empty dock and the black waters beyond. Away to the south some of Kowloon’s waterside restaurants were bleeding neon across the water, and in the far distance Hong Kong Island split sea and sky with a ribbon of lights. To the right Stonecutters’ Island lay mostly in darkness. The Royal Navy had recently moved there from the old HMS Tamar base in the heart of Victoria, on the grounds that Beijing should not inherit a fully equipped military garrison in such a sensitive location. And of course the utter hypocrisy of this had been lost on every Englishman in the colony.

  Nothing was moving. No cars were drawing up in the alley below, no boats headed in to the dock. Rosalie had the strong sense that this surveillance operation was going to be a waste of time and resources, and felt tempted to call it off there and then. Twelve more hours, she decided.

  The Jackie Cheung fan escorted her back to her car, chatting most of the way about the troubles he was having finding a bigger apartment now that his wife had given birth to twins. She drove back through Kowloon and the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, picked up the print-outs she had ordered by phone at the OSCG offices, and started for home. On impulse she stopped at the Wishful Cottage on Lockhart Road and devoured a plate of deep-fried walnuts in sweet and sour sauce. She had brought Callum Marker here, she remembered.

  Back at home she showered and sat on the balcony in her dressing-gown, reading the print-out of the Blue Dragon file by the light of the room behind her. As always, the faces in the photographs reflected little of the barbarism within.

  Except perhaps for that of Lu Zhen. He was smiling at the camera, as if he knew the last laugh would be his.

  ‘But it won’t,’ she murmured. ‘It won’t.’

  6

  The following morning Marker and Dubery arrived on Hong Kong Island with almost an hour to spare, and decided to walk the mile or so from their disembarkation point to Wan Chai. But the trip across the harbour had not prepared them for the stickiness of the city streets, and it was with some relief that they finally walked through the revolving doors and into the air-conditioned comfort of the RHKP building.

  Chief Inspector Ormond, a bulky Scot with short ginger hair and a reddened face, met them by the lift on the open-plan fifth floor, shook their hands perfunctorily and led them across to where a group of five men were already gathered around a space between desks. ‘This is the day shift,’ he told the SBS men. ‘These are the latest reinforcements,’ he told the others. ‘OK, let’s get started.’

  It seemed rather a public place to hold such a meeting, Marker thought.

  ‘If this bunch isn’t kosher, then we might as well give up and go home,’ Ormond told him, as if he’d read the thought. ‘OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Marker agreed. He had just seen her walk out of the lift, and now she was walking across the room and dumping her bag on one of the desks. She must have been promoted, he thoug
ht. Three years ago she had been working out of the Central Police Station on Hollywood Road, about half a mile up from the Man Mo Temple.

  As if aware of his gaze, she suddenly looked round. He smiled at her but she simply raised a hand in acknowledgement of his presence, her face expressionless.

  Marker turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

  ‘Bellamy seems to have spent three or four evenings a week in the Macau casinos,’ one of the younger Chinese men was saying, ‘but most of the time he seems to have come out well on top.’

  ‘That’s how he was paid,’ someone else muttered.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Ormond agreed. ‘I think we’re going to have to abandon the man-blackmailed-by-debt theory.’

  ‘More like man seduced by greed,’ one of the others said bitterly.

  ‘Aye, well,’ Ormond muttered. ‘So the next question is – which Triad or Triads had him on the payroll? The casinos should have records, and we’ll have to go cap in hand to the Portuguese for current ownership info. Plus Bellamy must have kept some sort of receipts, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any point in going through the charade of winning money he was already owed. Right? Well, get on your bikes then. I want this business cleared up before 1997, OK?’

  The team scattered, leaving Marker, Dubery and Ormond.

  ‘Have a seat,’ the Chief Inspector said, ‘and tell me what else you want to know.’

  ‘Are you any nearer to deciding whether it was suicide, murder or an accident?’ Marker asked.

  ‘Not really. The idea of it being an accident seems a little too pat, but, having said that, we haven’t found a motive for either suicide or murder. If he was passing on good information then there was no reason for the Triads to kill him, and as for suicide, well, he had an apparently happy family life, he didn’t drink, his doctor said he had no incurable disease, and he had at least half a million salted away for his retirement. As far as we know, he had no reason to think he was about to be caught. Have you reason to think he was?’

  ‘None. We caught him posthumously, so to speak.’ Marker told Ormond about the tapped phone call in Singapore. ‘They were only talking about him because he was dead.’

  Ormond sighed. ‘So maybe it was an accident. I don’t suppose it matters very much now.’ He started tidying the papers on his desk, then abruptly abandoned the task. ‘If and when we narrow his paymasters down to a particular Triad,’ he asked as he rummaged in his desk for something, ‘then what comes next?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Marker admitted. ‘I have another iron in the fire – nothing that impinges on the Bellamy death,’ he added, seeing the sudden flash of indignation in the policeman’s eyes. ‘I think it’s a case of wait and see for the next few days.’

  Ormond nodded. ‘I’ll keep you informed,’ he said. ‘And I trust you’ll be doing some reciprocating when the time comes.’

  They all shook hands again, this time with rather more warmth. ‘I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes,’ Marker told Dubery, and wended his way through the desks to where Rosalie was scrolling through records on her computer screen.

  She must have seen his reflection bearing down on her, because she turned and rose to greet him with a hug. There was a smile on her face this time, and he could smell the familiar hint of Shalimar which both she and Penny had always worn.

  ‘This is Inspector Li,’ she said, introducing the Chinese man across the desk. ‘He is my partner. And this is Callum Marker,’ she said, ‘an old friend.’ The two men shook hands.

  ‘I only heard your message this morning,’ she said. These days she received so few calls that she had given up checking the answerphone on a regular basis. ‘How about dinner this evening?’

  ‘Fine. Any preferences?’

  ‘Somewhere new,’ she said spontaneously. ‘Let me think about it. We can meet in the Horse and Groom – remember it? Happy Hour lasts from sunset to midnight these days.’ She could tell she was chattering from the look on Li’s face.

  ‘OK, what time?’

  ‘Seven?’

  ‘Great,’ Marker said. ‘I’ll let you get on with your work then.’ He backed away, feeling like a schoolboy who had just asked for his first date.

  She turned back to her screen, ignoring Li’s raised eyebrows.

  Out in the South China Sea dark clouds were gathering above the Ocean Carousel.

  ‘You know something?’ Finn said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I ever meet the man who wrote "I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China" I’m going to fucking kill him.’

  * * *

  The morning passed slowly and frustratingly for Rosalie and Li. As expected, the dawn stake-out on the Cheung Sha Wan godown had come up empty, and their decision to keep it in place for another twenty-four hours was grounded more in desperation than any real expectation of success. They finally discovered who owned the property that morning, but it took only another hour to establish that the man in question had been dead for six months. Despite a colony-wide search, the sampan described by the doctor had not been found. And none of the hospitals had reported any cases of children with bacterial pneumonia.

  Until early that afternoon. Rosalie took the call from the Princess Margaret Hospital in Lai Chi Kok. A woman had brought in a baby that morning, a woman doctor told her, and both were still there. The baby was likely to die in the next few hours.

  ‘If it does, don’t tell the mother until I get there,’ Rosalie said, without stopping to think how callous she sounded. ‘The woman’s not the real mother,’ she added, as if that made a difference.

  The doctor made a noncommittal noise and hung up.

  Deciding speed was more important than comfort, Rosalie took a car as far as the Admiralty MTR stop, parked it halfway up a Drake Street kerb, and took the subway. Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the Lai Chi Kok subway and walked briskly up the street to the sprawling public hospital. The doctor, a woman of around her own age, was waiting for her in the paediatric wing. Her face seemed even more drawn than the one Rosalie remembered seeing in the mirror at four o’clock that morning.

  ‘The baby died ten minutes ago,’ the doctor said sharply, as if Rosalie was partly to blame. ‘The mother – or whoever she is – is still waiting. I think she should be told.’

  ‘Can I talk to you for a minute first?’ Rosalie asked. ‘Somewhere private.’

  ‘For privacy you need a private hospital,’ the doctor said, but she led Rosalie down a corridor and into a small room full of shelves and cabinets, most of which seemed half empty.

  Rosalie explained why the police had asked for bacterial pneumonia cases to be reported, and why she needed to talk to the woman. The doctor’s face changed, moving from anger into what Rosalie suspected was an equally familiar sense of bitterness. ‘I’ll take you to her,’ she said. ‘You can question her after I’ve given her the bad news.’

  The woman was well into her forties, Rosalie thought, too old for a legal adoption. Perhaps she had never been able to have children of her own, or perhaps she had lost those she bore. Whatever the woman’s reason for purchasing the baby, the beseeching look on her face as the doctor entered proved it was not a decision she had taken lightly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor told her. ‘Your baby died a few minutes ago.’

  The woman stared back, as if hoping that the doctor would reverse the terrible verdict, then abruptly got to her feet.

  ‘This woman is from the police,’ the doctor said gently, ‘and she needs to talk to you before you go.’ Rosalie was watching for the flicker of panic in the woman’s eyes. ‘I know you bought the baby,’ she said, ‘and I need . . .’

  ‘There will be no one to look after my husband,’ the woman said imploringly.

  ‘You will look after him,’ Rosalie said. ‘You must tell me everything you know here in this room, and that will be the end of it. I promise.’

  The woman looked at the doctor, as if seeking confirmation.
r />   ‘These people sell babies that are ill,’ Rosalie said. ‘They do not care about anything but money. They have no honour.’

  ‘I know that,’ the woman said. ‘But what can I tell you? A man came to our door and offered to bring us a baby . . .’

  ‘Where do you live? Which area?’

  ‘Mongkok.’

  ‘And what was the price?’

  ‘Two thousand Hong Kong dollars.’

  Rosalie was surprised. ‘Excuse me for saying this, but you do not look like a wealthy woman. How did you find so much money?’

  ‘My husband, he was injured at work, paralysed. They paid him compensation, and we decided . . .’ She shook her head.

  ‘Did you try to adopt a baby?’ Rosalie asked. She couldn’t believe the smugglers went round drumming up custom door to door.

  ‘Yes, but the agency says we are too old.’

  ‘Which agency?’

  The woman gave her a name and address in Cheung Sha Wan. ‘They have other offices in Kowloon and Hong Kong,’ the woman volunteered.

  I bet they do, Rosalie thought. ‘How did you pay?’ she asked.

  ‘In cash, when they brought the baby. I knew from the first minute she was not well, but I was afraid to bring her . . . There was something in the newspaper, and I thought they would take the baby away from us.’

  Rosalie felt heartsick. After asking the woman a few more questions she escorted her down to the street, put her in a taxi and gave the driver enough money to get her home to Mongkok. The woman looked crushed, but still had the presence of mind not to give the driver an address until Rosalie was out of earshot.

  Rosalie walked slowly back towards the MRT station, feeling the weight of the investigation bearing down on her heart. Grief followed rage, despair followed grief, and then she would find another reason for rage. It was like a rollercoaster of negative emotions, and she couldn’t seem to get off.

  The pleasure she had felt at the prospect of seeing Callum Marker that evening now seemed insubstantial, almost an unwelcome distraction.

  Finn woke Cafell soon after four in the afternoon.