The Borrowed

by Chan Ho-Kei

  ‘Yes, the Commander of West Kowloon Regional Crime Wing. But you know which department Benny used to run?’

  ‘Wasn’t it HQ CIB Division A? I was in Division B at the time, working under you.’

  ‘Sonny, what is Division A in charge of?’

  ‘Surveillance, and also making contact with and buying off informants.’

  ‘Candy Ton’s father was an informant, in charge of providing reports on Hung-yi’s drug dealing,’ said Kwan dispassionately, looking at the girl.

  ‘Really?’ Lok hadn’t expected this at all. But then he remembered Ah Gut saying that Candy’s father, Ton Hei-chi, had been a bartender at a bar in Yau Ma Tei, within Hung-yi’s turf. And those guys meet all kinds of people. It would make sense for them to be police informants.

  ‘But Candy...’ Lok looked at her, wanting to ask about her father, but not knowing where to start.

  Candy had shuddered when she heard her father’s name. She turned her head beneath Lok’s gaze, as if trying to avoid the question. But seeing Kwan nodding gently at her, she gained courage and met his eye, speaking the words she’d kept unsaid for years.

  ‘Daddy was murdered five years ago.’ Her voice was slow, and thick with anger.

  ‘Murdered?’ exclaimed Lok.

  ‘The hospital said it was a ketamine overdose, but Daddy was no druggie. He’d never touched the stuff.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a police investigation?’

  ‘No! The cops said there was nothing suspicious. They were biased! Because Daddy worked in a bar where drugs were sold, they assumed he was one of those scumbags.’

  ‘The regional police didn’t have the full story,’ said Kwan. ‘At the time, Boss Chor had just taken charge, and eight-tenths of Benny Lau’s Hung-yi informants were killed off. Everyone in CIB knew something was wrong. Informants are a sensitive area, and Intelligence didn’t want to let the other departments see their data, so had to carry out their own investigation. But the mastermind had been clever, and none of the deceased showed signs of having been murdered – they died in their cars, or at home, or at work.’

  ‘Daddy was forced to take those drugs. That day, on my way home from school, I saw five men pull him into a car...’ Candy’s eyes grew red as she spoke.

  ‘Didn’t you tell this to the police?’

  ‘They didn’t believe me. I was only twelve. Daddy died in the back room of the bar he worked at, so they all said there was nothing suspicious.’

  ‘Those five men must have been Boss Chor’s thugs. They’d have paid the bar owner hush money, making it look like Ton Hei-chi died of an overdose,’ said Kwan.

  ‘I’ll never forgive those bastards!’ Candy spat out, rubbing at her reddened eyes. ‘I found Daddy’s diary later. He wrote how he’d turned informant, with a whole list of names, but I didn’t want to ask the police for help again. I’d take revenge my own way.’

  Lok was startled by her attitude, though the situation was starting to make sense. ‘And so you joined Starry Night, in order to... kill Boss Chor?’

  Candy shook her head. ‘Killing that scumbag wouldn’t bring Daddy back to life. I wanted to expose all his crimes, to give Daddy back his reputation.’

  ‘You were just a girl. How would you expose Boss Chor’s crimes?’ How naive, Lok thought.

  ‘People said Chor was a lech, so I figured if I slept with him, I’d get close enough to dig up some evidence.’

  Lok gaped. That was a new one, that a girl, just fourteen at the time, could already have had such cold determination. She hadn’t used her body for fame, but for vengeance.

  ‘And so... did you?’

  ‘I didn’t even get to see him that often, never mind seducing him,’ said Candy, despairingly. ‘The first two years I was with Starry Night, it was just some agent setting up a few small jobs for me. I only got to see him in my third year there. My agent said the boss wanted to give me a boost, and I thought the old perv must have finally noticed my body, but each time I saw him, he only wanted to talk about official business. I never had a private meeting with him.’

  ‘You underestimated Boss Chor,’ interjected Kwan. ‘He’s not actually a womanizer at all – those are just rumours he planted.’

  ‘Rumours?’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Chor Hon-keung is a crafty bastard. He’s laid down red herrings all over the place. In order to hide his true weaknesses, he’s manufactured false ones. Think about it, Sonny. If some underworld upstart decided to attack his floozy as a way to get at him, or if the police tried to recruit the female star we’d heard he was intimate with, how would that actually affect him?’

  ‘Not at all?’ Lok was beginning to realize where this was going. So a starlet could have an ‘accident’, and Boss Chor would be unmoved; the police would take her on as an informant, but that’d be a waste of time – they’d be looking for evidence in the wrong place. And this provided him with a screen behind which he could watch and see what happened to his female stars, in order to know what his opponents were up to.

  ‘You judge a system not by its strongest point, but by its weakest link. Boss Chor understands this very well, and so he lays down false weak links to confuse his enemies,’ said Kwan. ‘And to keep up the smokescreen, singers or DJs who “accidentally” mention his supposed indiscretions are severely punished. This has three functions: firstly, it makes the deception more convincing; secondly, it creates the impression that he’s impulsive and vicious; and thirdly, it increases the respect his thugs have for him. But much stronger than sexual lust is his thirst for power. This fellow is a seasoned gambler, and it’s impossible to tell whether he actually has a good hand or is just bluffing.’

  ‘You mean Boss Chor has never actually cared whether he or his stars have their reputations damaged?’

  ‘Correct. These distraction tactics have prevented the police getting any dirt on him, making it possible for his Triad leadership to be an open secret – they couldn’t arrest him without evidence – but they’ve also created the impression that even the law is on his side and the police are helpless against him. And as long as the police hesitated to bring him in, he’d find it easier to control his gang, whilst keeping himself separate from his illegal activities. Only today, when some newly appointed “hard-boiled detective” dared to beard him without any evidence whatsoever, was this legend finally shattered.’

  Lok didn’t react, uncertain whether his mentor was praising or making fun of him.

  ‘One of the reasons Benny Lau was transferred to West Kowloon Crime was so he could eliminate Boss Chor,’ Kwan continued. ‘But he couldn’t find a single point of attack. Then last year he began to suspect that Starry Night’s new singer, Candy Ton, was the daughter of a deceased informant. He investigated and discovered she was Ton Hei-chi’s child. This might have been a coincidence, but he was afraid Candy was trying to get close to Boss Chor for some reason – and he was right. After all those informants died mysteriously, he was naturally worried about Candy’s safety.’

  ‘When Superintendent Lau found me, I pretended he had the wrong person,’ added Candy. ‘I wasn’t about to let anyone interfere with my plan, and anyway I thought the police were all untrustworthy.’

  ‘So Benny asked me for help.’ Superintendent Kwan sipped his tea.

  ‘Asked you for help? So were you the commanding officer of this op?’

  ‘What commanding officer? I’m just a consultant,’ beamed Kwan. ‘But as a consultant, I could do exactly what I wanted, including some tricks you guys would never dare to pull. To start with, I looked up Candy Ton and told her she was wasting her energy. Even if she did manage to get close to Chor, he’d never trust her. Boss Chor might not pay much attention to other people’s family relationships, but if you went too far, even he would start to take notice.’

  Lok realized that when his mentor had told him before about Chor being indifferent to families, he’d been referring to Candy rather than Eric Yeung.

  ‘Superintendent Kw
an told me that as long as I played along, we’d expose Boss Chor once and for all.’ Candy’s expression was fierce, far more so than you’d have expected from a seventeen-year-old. ‘Not only would I be part of the scheme, he’d give me a lead role. So I really would be able to take revenge with my own hands.’

  Lok looked at his mentor, who was smiling faintly. Kwan was a sweet talker, and could see right into the human heart – he always hit on your vulnerable point. Candy Ton wanted vengeance, and she wanted to bring it about through her own efforts, so this was what he offered her, in order to complete Benny Lau’s task.

  ‘I said from the start that as long as we could get Yam Tak-ngok into the witness box, Chor’s defences would collapse, so that became the point of this exercise,’ Kwan went on. ‘Chiang Fu was the first condition for subduing Yam Tak-ngok; once he was in police custody, Yam would know his days of freedom were numbered. Then we’d have to find a method of forcing Yam to abandon his underworld code of honour, and so our next step was Operation Viper.’

  ‘But Operation Viper failed,’ protested Lok.

  ‘It was designed to fail.’

  ‘Designed to fail?’ Lok stared at him. ‘You’re saying that Kowloon West mobilized more than two hundred people, and knew all along that the op would fail?’

  ‘They mobilized, all right, but only Benny and I knew what would happen.’ Kwan’s lips curled up on one side. ‘Why do you think Fat Dragon was able to escape? Because someone leaked the plan – but no one would expect the commanding officer to do that.’

  Lok was on the brink of jumping up to yell at his mentor. After all, he was the one who’d had to sit through that inquiry, enduring the scathing comments of his senior colleagues. But then he remembered that Benedict Lau had not said anything negative, and perhaps that ought to have told him something was up. ‘Why design an operation to fail?’

  ‘We had to put on a show for Yam. All the underworld bosses know we barge in every now and then for a “clean sweep”, as inevitable as the seasons changing. If such a large-scale drug bust didn’t affect Chor at all, Yam would start to think his rival was untouchable. And Chor wouldn’t suspect anything – his underlings would just take all the credit.’ Kwan glanced at Candy. ‘While you were preparing for this failed mission, I gave Ms Ton a few tasks.’

  ‘What tasks?’

  ‘First, to let slip to the media that she was being poached by a Japanese company,’ said Kwan. ‘There was no such company, but the journalists wouldn’t care. We just needed the word to spread. And secondly, we needed Candy to make an enemy of Eric Yeung.’

  Lok saw the connection. ‘To increase the friction between Chor and Yam?’

  ‘Correct. We knew of the relationship between Eric Yeung and Yam Tak-ngok, but Yeung wasn’t involved with the Triads, and Yam was never our primary target, so we didn’t make anything of it. But with this plan, he was a good catalyst. I told Candy to flirt with him at a party, and then turn on him when he tried to take things further. Boss Chor often used insults to his clients as excuses to deal with someone, so I beat him at his own game. Once he made a move, I had my connection with Yam Tak-ngok.’

  ‘But how did you ensure the incident would reach Chor’s ears?’

  ‘Sonny, do you think the Eight-Day Week reporter just happened to be there? It was a private party, and naturally someone needed to bring her in.’ Kwan glanced again at Candy, and Lok finally understood that she’d scripted the whole scene. He was impressed.

  ‘But in the end, even I got fooled by Superintendent Kwan,’ grimaced Candy.

  ‘Fooled?’

  ‘He told me that Eric getting beaten up would create a grudge between Yam and Chor. But I didn’t know that was just the first step. No one told me I’d have to die.’

  Lok looked at the two people before him, confused.

  ‘You have to lie to your own people first, before you can deceive outsiders,’ shrugged Kwan. ‘Even after his son was assaulted, Yam wouldn’t abandon his golden rule of non-betrayal. After so many years as a Triad leader, he has a good sense of what really matters. No, Eric Yeung getting beaten up was just a prelude – to Candy Ton’s death.’

  ‘So, sifu, was it you who sent those men after Candy?’

  ‘You could call them associates. Just like young Miss Koo, they’re the cream of certain shady professions. Of course, their lips are sealed. They’d never let slip a word to either the police or the other side.’

  ‘That evening, Superintendent Kwan told me to go alone to Jordan Road and walk in the direction of Lin Cheung Road. I had no idea why,’ Candy explained to Sonny. ‘After I’d been walking for half an hour, those four masked men charged towards me. I thought Boss Chor had learned about my plan, or that Eric Yeung’s dad was settling accounts. I ran for my life, towards the bridge, and there was Superintendent Kwan. As soon as he saw me, he said, “Well done,” and pulled me to safety at the other end of the bridge. He only told me why later on, and that was the first I learned of this part of the plan.’

  ‘Sir, does this mean the video was all faked?’

  ‘That depends on your definition of “fake”,’ smiled Kwan. ‘Of course Candy didn’t actually get murdered – the “corpse” below the bridge was someone else. We knew what Candy was wearing, and got one of my female “associates” to dress like her. When the cameraman came to the dead end, our fake Candy was lying there covered in fake blood. That’s also why there was no soundtrack – no thud of a body hitting the road. But that little pause in the picture would make people imagine there’d been one.’

  ‘And the man Candy punched...’ Lok suddenly remembered.

  ‘That was a surprise to us too. His nose was bruised for a week,’ chuckled Kwan. ‘But that was great, it made the film even more believable.’

  ‘Sir, wasn’t this much too risky? What if a passer-by had seen you?’

  ‘Sonny, you’ve got it the wrong way round. It was because there were no witnesses that we went ahead with the plan. Besides, your team weren’t even able to figure out how Candy got to the scene from her apartment, were you?’

  ‘Did you drive her there, sifu? Wait, you said you only saw her on the bridge.’

  ‘I got a taxi to Jordan Road, then walked to the scene,’ Candy cut in.

  ‘But when the news of this “murder” was everywhere, why didn’t the cab driver step forward?’

  ‘Haven’t you guessed yet, Sonny? You got the video on the 22nd, but that doesn’t mean it was filmed the night before. In fact, we did it just two days after Eric Yeung got beaten up – that is, on the 18th. Remember, a CD only tells you when it was burned, not when the actual recording was made.’

  ‘What?’ Lok looked at his mentor, baffled.

  ‘Candy’s “murder” took place on the 18th, but no one knew about it. After I’d filled her in about the plan, she went back to her regular life on the 19th. Then on the 21st, she made sure to wear the same clothes she’d worn three nights before, and went “missing” after her agent drove her home. No cab-driver witness to deal with. In the small hours of the 22nd, we did two simple things: we sprayed blood where the “corpse” lay in the video, then hosed it away, and we dropped Candy’s handbag into the hole by the side of the road. That just took a couple of minutes – much less stressful than that whole production on the 18th.’

  Lok laughed silently. So Candy was no victim, but a conspirator. The crime scene and sequence of events had been doctored beyond recognition. And he had to laugh again when he remembered what his mentor said to him in the car: ‘Sonny, you won’t solve the Candy Ton case, because your opponent is too wicked.’

  ‘And I suppose on the morning of the 22nd, you were the one who slipped the CD into the police station?’ Lok grumbled.

  ‘No, that was Benny. And that was his handwriting on the envelope.’

  Lok had thought nothing his mentor said would ever shock him again, but he was astonished to hear the commander would do such a thing.

  ‘And the body we foun
d in Castle Peak Bay?’

  ‘It was actually one of the prostitutes from the sex-trafficking case I was telling you about.’

  ‘But the fingerprints...’

  ‘A little switcheroo.’ Kwan spread his hands wide. ‘You told me the pathologist had given you the fingerprints, so I went straight to the Identification Bureau and swapped Candy’s prints for the ones you’d handed in. You know how easy it is for me to do that sort of thing.’

  Lok smacked his forehead.

  ‘I was going to find some other way to cook up a body, then one came along ready for use. No one would notice anything as long as I falsified the records after the body was cremated. After all, we’re talking about a nameless corpse, someone who entered the territory with false documents. It’ll probably take us several years to uncover her real identity.’

  ‘All right, so now I understand the whole business of Candy’s “murder”. But I’m still not sure what the point of all this was?’

  ‘To get you to step forward.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. In this whole operation, you and Candy are the two main figures.’ Kwan pointed at Lok. ‘And there’s no one better suited than you for this role.’

  ‘What role?’

  ‘A stubborn, hot-blooded man who doesn’t cave in to shows of strength on his way to solving a case. A hard-boiled detective.’

  Lok remained confused.

  ‘Everyone assumed Candy’s murder was Yam Tak-ngok’s revenge for the attack on his son, but Yam himself would know very well he wasn’t the culprit. We needed a police officer to point out that Boss Chor must be the real murderer. Even if he wasn’t completely convincing, that’d be enough to make Yam suspicious. The Japanese company supposedly poaching her, the attackers coming armed with cleavers, Chor’s calm reaction to the news – all this was to make you believe in Chor’s guilt. You couldn’t obtain the evidence you needed because it never existed – Chor never sent anyone after Candy Ton. Knowing he was innocent, he didn’t need to take any action – he could just sit back and wait for you to humiliate yourself. But I used the point to make Yam believe that Chor wouldn’t even flinch from murdering an innocent teenage girl. As soon as Uncle Ngok hears of the accusations you flung at Chor today, he’ll start to wonder whether he’s been wrong about his code of honour. And if he believes your version of events, he’ll worry about what he might suffer under Boss Chor, and whether Eric Yeung will be implicated in the future. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, if someone believes he might be betrayed, he’ll choose to betray the other person first.’