The Borrowed

by Chan Ho-Kei

  Was this a prank?

  Surely kidnapping was something that couldn’t happen to her or her family. Returning to the phone, she picked up the receiver, flipped open the phone book and searched for a number she rarely used.

  ‘Kowloon Tong British School Primary Section School Office...’ she murmured, and then dialled the string of digits.

  ‘British School Primary Section,’ said a female voice in impeccable English.

  ‘Hello, this is Alfred Hill’s mother – from 4A.’ She came straight to the point. ‘Is my son still at school?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Hill. All the classes have been dismissed. Exam week is over, and today was extramural activities. Our students finished early, at eleven thirty. Is Alfred not home yet?’

  ‘No... he’s not.’ Stella hesitated, uncertain what to say.

  ‘Please hold on, I’ll connect you to the 4A form teacher.’

  As she waited to be transferred, Stella watched the living-room clock’s second hand. It seemed to be ticking slower than usual.

  ‘Hello, is that Mrs Hill? It’s Miss Shum here.’

  ‘When did Alfred leave?’ asked Stella frantically.

  ‘At eleven thirty. I saw him walk out the school gate. Isn’t he home yet?’

  ‘No,’ rasped Stella. ‘Did you see him with any of his classmates? Could he have gone off somewhere with them?’

  ‘I remember a group of them talking to him, but he shook his head, and then they left. It looked like he was turning down an invitation.’

  ‘And my nanny? She usually collects him. Was she there?’

  ‘Mm? I think I saw her, although maybe I didn’t...’ Miss Shum paused, as if working hard to call the scene to mind. There was always such a crowd of people at the gate after school, it was hard enough to remember her own students, let alone any other faces. ‘Could Alfred’s nanny have taken him somewhere else?’

  ‘No, she’d have told me, or left a note.’ Because of work, Stella’s schedule rarely matched her son’s, so they communicated mainly through notes.

  ‘If you’re worried, should we give the police a call?’

  With the man’s warning ringing through her head – ‘If you call the police, I’ll kill him too’ – she cried, ‘No, no! That’s... that’s making too much of a fuss. It’s only been an hour, after all. Maybe the nanny’s been delayed by an errand. So sorry to have troubled you.’

  ‘Ah, that might be it. If you need to, please feel free to call again. I’m at the school till six every day. You’re at...’ The sound of pages being turned. ‘Nairn House. That’s quite close to us. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

  Stella imagined she must be looking through the student records. In order to prevent Miss Shum from mentioning the police again, she mumbled something or other, thanked the teacher and hung up.

  Replacing the receiver, Stella hesitated. She felt ashamed to have been so busy with work that she’d grown distant from her child. She hadn’t even known it was extramural day! She felt completely adrift, uncertain what she should do next. Phone her husband? Call the school back and ask for help?

  She thought back to earlier that day, running into her son in the vestibule. Alfred had seemed happier than usual – he was usually a little reluctant to go to school, sometimes outright rebellious. But this morning, he’d seemed livelier. As the name suggested, ‘extramural day’ was when students spent the morning not in class, but on the field or activity room, taking part in sporting competitions, film appreciation, music concerts and the like. Stella had never thought her son was interested in these things. Remembering how joyous he’d been, she couldn’t help thinking she was no longer fit to be a mother.

  Stella picked up the phone, but the man’s parting shot sprang into her mind – a present by the streetlight—

  Her fingers had dialled the first two digits of her husband’s number, but she dropped the receiver and went out onto the balcony, which faced the main door – from here, you could see the parking lot, garden and fence, and the street beyond. If there was something by the streetlight, it would be visible too.

  Walking out onto the balcony, she found the sun suddenly too bright to keep her eyes open. Only after a few seconds was she able to adjust to the glare. Clutching the balcony rail, she leaned forward and studied the streetlights. When her eye reached the second one to the right of the gate, she had to draw a deep breath.

  At its base was a brown cardboard box.

  Stella had still been clinging on to a shred of hope that this might be a prank, but that was now gone from her mind. Nairn House was in one of Kowloon Tong’s fancier residential districts, and the streets had always been spotless. Since moving here three years ago, she hadn’t seen a single person in this neighbourhood leaving trash in the street.

  Throwing on her shoes, not even locking the front door, she rushed out, jabbing furiously at the elevator button and, when it failed to arrive quickly, sprinting down the stairs. The Hills lived on the sixth floor, yet Stella reached the street in under a minute.

  The security guard eyed her as she passed the vestibule, no doubt wondering why her clothes were disordered and her hair such a mess, not to mention she was panting like an ox. Standing before the streetlamp, Stella looked at the box. It was between twenty and thirty centimetres square, large enough for a small football. It wasn’t secured with tape, only the top flaps crossed over each other. She studied all four sides, but they were unmarked – just a plain cardboard box.

  With trembling hands, she lifted the box, finding it surprisingly light, as if it contained nothing at all. This reassured her a little, and she boldly opened it.

  She took one look at the contents of the box and plunged into hysteria. There were two things inside. Catching her eye first was a garment – a pale green shirt, covered in dirt and spattered blood droplets.

  The uniform of the British School’s Primary Section.

  Above the crumpled shirt was a lock of bright red hair, tied with a string.

  The exact same colour as Stella’s hair.

  Alfred’s features and personality were very similar to his father’s. Only the colour of his hair came from his mother, showing his Celtic heritage.

  2

  GRAHAM HILL ABANDONED his work and drove home, his mind uneasy.

  He knew very well that his wife was a calm woman – as a nurse, she had to deal with patients without agitation, even if they were on the brink of death – so when he heard her howling and sobbing on the phone, saying something had happened to the child and he had to come home, he knew it must be serious. Normally, he’d have told his wife to wait, that he’d sort it out when he got home.

  Graham had a strong sense of responsibility, a quality required in his job. He was an investigator in the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption.

  Like many other British people, when he first arrived in Hong Kong, Graham Hill had acquired a Chinese name – Ha Ka-hon, the closest Cantonese could get to his name, surname first in the Chinese style. Some colleagues even started calling him ‘Mr Ha’ in English. He thought this was pretty funny, that he, a foreigner who spoke no Cantonese at all, should have a name in that language, while many Hongkongers were giving themselves English names, wanting to be fashionable. Take his son’s nanny – she wanted to be known as Liz, but had no idea what that was short for. When she’d first started working for them, Graham often called her Elizabeth, to which she didn’t respond. It took them a little while to clear that up. Hong Kong was peculiar like that, the colonials slowly turning local, while the colonized picked up the lifestyles and cultures of the incomers.

  His wife’s name was Stella, but she had ended up with the not particularly similar ‘Shuk-lan’. Alfred became ‘Nga-fan’. The person who gave them these names kept insisting they were beautiful and auspicious, which Graham didn’t care about, not being a superstitious person. He thought all that ‘feng shui’ stuff was just unscientific nonsense.

  He firmly believed that
people needed to stand on their own two feet if they wanted to be happy.

  Graham Hill was born in 1938, and was a child during the Second World War. After graduation, he trained as a policeman and worked in Scotland Yard. A colleague introduced him to Stella. They got married and set up home, and three years later had Alfred. The normal life of a British public servant. At the time, Graham had thought he’d go on working like this till he retired, then live out his last years with his wife in some quiet suburb, spending time with his son and grandchildren on holidays. But he was wrong.

  Stella continued working as a nurse after their marriage – she was a strong, independent woman – but gave it up when Alfred was born. In order to give his family a better life, as well as to make up the shortfall left by his wife’s unemployment, Graham invested his savings in the housing market, taking out a bank loan to buy a rental property. He calculated that if property prices continued to rise, he might even be able to retire early, and not have to worry about his son’s university fees in the future.

  The problem was, the British economy suddenly went into recession.

  Four years ago, in 1973, British house prices started falling, putting banks at risk of collapse. At the same time, an oil crisis, stock-market crash and stagflation put the British economy beyond hope of revival in the short term. Graham had hesitated rather than quickly getting rid of the property; their tenant absconded, and the house was repossessed. Their investment had evaporated overnight, and they still had significant debts. Stella began working again, but with unemployment soaring, her wages were much lower than before. With prices rising all around them, they could barely support themselves after making their monthly repayments. The couple tried to support each other through this difficult time, thinking the situation would improve after a few months of hardship, but as time went on and they realized they would be in debt for the foreseeable future, they began to quarrel. Their six-year-old son sensed a change in the atmosphere and grew introverted, no longer smiling all day long.

  Just as the couple felt they might lose their minds if this went on much longer, Graham saw an advertisement in the newspaper. The colonial government in Hong Kong was establishing a new law enforcement department – the Independent Commission Against Corruption – and experienced police officers were invited to apply. A Grade One investigator would receive a salary of six or seven thousand Hong Kong dollars, which was about £600 per month – more than he was currently earning – as well as attractive benefits and perks. After discussing it with his wife, Graham decided to try changing track. Thanks to his ample experience as an investigator at Scotland Yard, he got his letter of appointment just a few days after the interview, and the family of three set forth, leaving their familiar home for a strange city in Asia, prepared to work and pay off their debts.

  The Hills knew nothing about Hong Kong to start with, only that it had been ceded to Britain for a hundred years. As he read up, Graham realized this ‘colony’ didn’t belong entirely to the United Kingdom – Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula were British in perpetuity, while the New Territories were on a ninety-nine-year lease expiring in 1997. But it wouldn’t be feasible for Britain to cut the territory in half after 1997, continuing to govern Kowloon and the Island whilst returning the New Territories to China. The two governments had yet to come up with a solution to this problem. At this point, Graham felt that Hong Kong was just a borrowed place, and he would be doing the same as so many other British people had done, coming to scratch a living on someone else’s land.

  In June 1974, the Hills arrived in Hong Kong. In order to pay off their debts as quickly as possible, Stella found a job in Kowloon Hospital, where her experience was impressive enough for her to serve as a role model for local nurses, so they made her a good offer. The Independent Commission Against Corruption helped Graham negotiate the details of the move, most notably providing government accommodation for the Hills. Nairn House in Kowloon Tong was reserved for high-ranking civil servants, its spacious apartments designed to resemble high-class British dwellings, so European and American arrivals would feel comfortable. The surroundings were superb, security strong, and all the neighbouring buildings were occupied by important local businessmen, high-ranking employees of other companies, or foreign high fliers.

  Their child’s education was of the utmost concern to the Hills. When they first considered coming here, it was this point that almost deterred them. It wasn’t a big deal for them to live abroad for five or ten years, but it would be a formative experience for their son. What if they couldn’t find a good school in Hong Kong, or Alfred was unable to make new friends? Graham wrote to a friend in Hong Kong, asking about the quality and standard of education; the friend wrote back enthusiastically, enclosing a stack of school prospectuses. After reading through these, the couple felt more at ease, knowing the Hong Kong education system was modelled on the British one, and that several schools catered specifically to Western children, with textbooks, homework, lessons and even parental instructions all in English. They picked a school near Nairn House for their son. The premises weren’t large, but the teachers and staff all spoke fluent British English and seemed passionate about their jobs.

  For the last three years, the Hills had lived frugally. The benefits provided by the Hong Kong government were even greater than Graham had dreamed of. With overtime and Stella’s salary, they were able to pay off their debts in two years. They’d even managed to save up a respectable amount in the last year, which was sitting in the bank, steadily earning interest.

  Graham wanted to work in Hong Kong a while longer before returning to Britain, partly for the high pay, partly because of the economic situation back home. Reading the papers each day, he couldn’t help shaking his head and sighing. Unemployment remained terrible, with more than a million people out of work, and labour strikes were constant. The country was now ‘the sick man of Europe’, brought so low it was mentioned in the same breath as the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Graham found this ridiculous, but still he despaired.

  Of course, he was grateful for the opportunity this tiny Asian city across the ocean had offered his household. If they’d stayed in London, money problems might well have driven them to divorce by this point. Then again, a hefty salary is often the sign of a difficult job.

  From his first day at the commission, Graham was startled by the scope of his work and the number of cases he faced. Daily they received a large volume of anonymous complaints, mostly about corrupt government officials. These weren’t necessarily major cases involving huge amounts of money, but the scale and frequency of the incidents stunned him. Hawkers having to pay a few dollars each day to patrol cops; patients having to tip the cleaners and porters in public hospitals to ensure they weren’t ignored or badly treated. Almost every government department had similar issues. Graham began to understand how badly this commission was needed right now – otherwise, as the territory became more prosperous, petty corruption would expand in significance, nibbling at the fabric of society, at which point it would be too late to address the problem.

  Not knowing a word of Chinese made Graham’s work particularly difficult, and local customs and practices left him at a loss at first. Still, he’d been appointed for his experience, to teach the relatively untutored locals how to carry out an investigation, gather evidence and follow protocol in operations that would lead to corrupt individuals being brought to court. Before the commission was set up, the most experienced investigators in Hong Kong were of course in the Royal Hong Kong Police. Unfortunately, the force itself was rampantly corrupt, and needed to be investigated – so the commission had to look elsewhere to recruit and train its staff.

  The issue of police corruption had serious implications for law and order. Ever since Hong Kong had opened up for trade, outlaws and Triads had used bribes to convince the force to shut one eye. Police sweeps of illegal gambling clubs, vice shops and drug dens weren’t intended to rid the territory
of crime, but to collect more under-the-table payments. In order to make it look like the officers were doing their job, criminals would arrange for some of their number to go willingly to jail, handed over as a ‘gift’ together with the necessary evidence. The money from drugs, gambling and so forth which they offered up was a tiny proportion of the trade, of course.

  If you joined the police and you were honest, you had to keep your head down. There was a saying within the force that bribery was a car; you could ‘get in the car’ and take your share, or you could refuse, in which case you would be expected to ‘run alongside the car’ and not interfere. If you insisted on reporting each incident to your superiors, that’d be ‘standing in front of the car’, and you’d probably get knocked down and run over, ending up with multiple injuries. Only those with no idea what they were up against would try to stop this vehicle, and even if they weren’t completely destroyed, would probably still end up neglected, frozen out of the hierarchy, all hopes of promotion gone.

  There’d been an internal anti-corruption division within the police force, but as it was staffed with existing officers, it had too many connections to other departments to be effective. The commission sought to break this stalemate; it reported directly to the Governor of Hong Kong, and so was able to operate independently.

  Graham Hill had investigated several corrupt police officers in his first year on the job. At the start of the second year, he started uncovering more cases involving higher-ranking officers – the top brass were as bad as their subordinates when it came to sheltering criminals. The commission had to be very careful to separate truth from slander – many suspects were willing to denounce ‘corrupt police officers’ in exchange for a reduced sentence, so it was necessary to investigate each complaint carefully. Graham Hill believed outlaws were the same the world over, and even without speaking the language, he always had a good idea if they were lying, if the details of their evidence was contradictory.