1962 - A Coffin From Hong Kong

by James Hadley Chase

  “I don’t,” I said.

  There was a pause as the waiter set before us a bowl of king-size shrimps cooked in a golden batter.

  “But you know her name. How do you know her name?” Leila asked, snapping up a shrimp with her chopsticks and dipping it in Soya sauce.

  “She was married to a friend of mine who lived in my home town,” I said, dropping a shrimp on the tablecloth. I nipped it up again with my uncertain chopsticks and conveyed it cautiously to my mouth. It tasted very good. “Did you ever meet him? His name’s Herman Jefferson.”

  “Oh, yes.” Leila was eating with astonishing speed. Three-quarters of the shrimps were gone before I could spear my third. “Jo-An and I escaped from Canton together. She was lucky to find an American husband even though now he is dead.”

  The waiter came with a bowl of fried rice in which was mixed finely-chopped ham, shrimps and scraps of fried egg. Leila filled her bowl and her chopsticks flashed as she whipped the food into her mouth. I lagged behind. To do justice to this meal, you had to have considerably more experience with chopsticks than I had.

  “He lived with her at your hotel?” I asked as I dropped rice onto the tablecloth in a vain effort to keep pace with her.

  She nodded.

  The shrimps had disappeared and more than half the rice. She certainly had the technique of getting the most inside herself in the shortest time.

  “He lived with her in a room next to mine for three months after they married, then he went away.”

  A large bowl of shark’s fin soup appeared. Leila began to fill her bowl.

  “Why did he go away?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “He didn’t need her anymore.”

  As I could cat the soup with a spoon, I managed to keep pace with her.

  “Why didn’t he need her anymore?”

  Leila paused for a moment to give me a cynical stare, then she went on spooning soup into her small, insatiable mouth.

  “He only married her so she could keep him,” she said. “When he began to make money for himself, he didn’t want her.”

  “How did she manage to keep him?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  “She entertained gentlemen as I do,” Leila said, and looked serenely at me. “We have no other means of making money.”

  The waiter came through the screens. He brought with him a strip of matting which he laid ceremoniously on the floor.

  Leila turned in her chair, clasping her small hands excitedly. “This is the beggar’s chicken. You must not miss seeing any of this.”

  A Chinese boy came in carrying what appeared to be an enormous ostrich egg on a wooden plate. He rolled the egg onto the matting.

  “The chicken is first rubbed with many spices and then wrapped in a covering of lotus leaves,” Leila explained, squirming around on her chair with excitement. “It is then covered with clay and put on an open fire and cooked for five hours. You can see the clay has become as hard as stone.”

  The boy produced a hammer and cracked the egg open: from it came an aroma that was unbelievably delicious. The waiter and the boy squatted opposite each other. The boy eased the chicken out of the layers of lotus leaves onto the dish held by the waiter. The bird had been so thoroughly cooked the flesh fell from the bones as it unrolled onto the dish.

  With skilled and enthusiastic hands, the waiter spooned pieces of the chicken into our bowls.

  Leila’s chopsticks began to flash again. I began on my portion. It was quite the most sensational dish I had ever eaten. Leila paused for a brief moment, a shred of chicken held securely in her chopsticks to ask, “You like?”

  I grinned at her.

  “Sure . . . I like.”

  There was no point in asking her further questions until the meal was over. I could see her concentration was now centred on the food and I didn’t blame her. We finished the chicken, then she ordered mushrooms, bamboo shoots, salted ginger and finally almond cake. By this time I had given up. I sat, smoking a cigarette, marvelling at the amount of food she could put away. After a further twenty minutes, she laid down her chopsticks and heaved a long, satisfied sigh.

  “It was good?” she said, looking inquiringly at me.

  I regarded her with considerable respect. Anyone who could eat as much as she had and still keep a nice shape was entitled to respect.

  “It was wonderful.”

  She smiled contentedly.

  “Yes, it really was wonderful. May I please have a cigarette?”

  I gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She blew smoke from her small neatly made-up mouth and then her smile became inviting.

  “Would you like to return to the hotel now?” she said. “We could make love. It would be good after such a meal.”

  “It’s early yet . . . we have the night before us,” I said. “Tell me more about Herman Jefferson. You say he began to make money three months after he married Jo-An. How did he make it?”

  She frowned. I could see Jefferson as a subject bored her.

  “I don’t know. Jo-An didn’t tell me. One day I found her alone and crying. She said he had left her. He no longer needed her because he was now making money.”

  “She didn’t tell you how?”

  “Why should she? It wasn’t my business.”

  “Did he come back?”

  “Oh, he came back from time to time.” Leila pulled a face. “Men come back when they want a change. He only came back for a night now and then.”

  “What did Jo-An do when he left her?”

  “Do?” Leila stared at me. “What could she do? She worked as before.”

  “Entertaining gentlemen?”

  “How else could she live?”

  “But if Jefferson was making money and she was his wife, surely he gave her something?”

  “He gave her nothing.”

  “Do you know where he lived after he left her?”

  “Jo-An told me he had rented a big villa belonging to a Chinese gambler at Repulse Bay. I have seen the place.” Leila heaved an envious sigh. “It is very beautiful . . . a big white villa with steps leading down into the sea with a little harbour and a boat.”

  “Did Jo-An ever go there?”

  Leila shook her head.

  “She was never asked.”

  The waiter came in smiling and bowing. He gave me the check. The price of the meal was ridiculously cheap. I paid while Leila watched with a happy expression on her face.

  “You are pleased?” she asked.

  “It was a wonderful meal.”

  “Let us go back to the hotel then and make love.”

  I was in Hong Kong. There was this odd atmosphere of surrender to the senses that made argument difficult. Besides, I had never made love to a Chinese girl. It was something I felt I should do.

  “Okay,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let us go back to the hotel.”

  We went out into the noisy dark night with the clatter of Mah Jong tiles following us.

  We began to walk down Nathan Road.

  “Perhaps you would like to buy me a little present?” Leila said, taking my arm and smiling persuasively at me.

  “I could be talked into it. What had you in mind?”

  “I will show you.”

  We walked a little way, then she steered me into a brilliantly lit arcade of small shops. Before each shop stood a smiling, hopeful Chinese salesman.

  “I would like to have a ring to remember you by,” Leila said. “It need not be an expensive ring.”

  We went into a jewellers and she selected an imitation jade ring. It wasn’t much of a ring, but it seemed to delight her. The salesman asked forty Hong Kong dollars. Leila and he spent ten minutes haggling and finally she got it for twenty-five dollars.

  “I will always wear it,” she said, smiling at the ring on her finger. “I will always remember you by it. Now let us go back to the hotel.”

  It was after we had left the ferry boat and I was waving to a taxi tha
t I lost her. It is something I haven’t been able to understand even now. Three heavily-built Chinese, in black city suits, jostled me as the taxi moved towards me. One of them bowed and apologised in imperfect English while the other two surrounded me, then the three moved off to a waiting car. When I looked around for Leila she had vanished. It was as if the sidewalk had opened and had swallowed her up.

  chapter nine

  I spent fifteen fruitless minutes walking up and down the vast approach to the Star Ferry without seeing Leila, then with a feeling of uneasiness mixed with irritation I took a taxi back to the hotel.

  The old reception clerk was dozing behind his counter.

  “Did Leila come back?” I asked him.

  He opened one heavy eyelid, stared blankly at me and said, “No speak English.” and the eyelid snapped shut.

  I went to my room. Leila’s door was shut. I turned the handle and the door swung open into darkness. I groped for the light switch and turned it on. I looked into the clean little room: no Leila.

  Leaving the door open and the light on, I entered my room, also leaving the door open. I sat on the bed, lit a cigarette and waited.

  I waited a little more than an hour. Then because it was more comfortable, I stretched out on the bed. In half an hour, lulled by the heat and the heavy eating, I went to sleep.

  I woke, feeling hot, damp and uncomfortable. The early morning sun was filtering through the shutters. I raised my head and looked at my strap watch. The time was twenty minutes to eight. I sat up and stared across the passage into Leila’s empty room. A creepy sensation moved icily up my spine. I had a sudden feeling that something bad had happened to her. She hadn’t run away from me. I was sure of that. She had been spirited away and I could guess why. Someone had decided she not only knew too much but she had been talking too much.

  I considered what to do. I got off the bed, closed my door, shaved and washed as best I could in the cracked basin. I put on a clean shirt, then feeling slightly better than a dead man, I stepped into the passage, locked my door and went to the head of the stairs.

  A Chinese boy sat behind the counter: probably the reception clerk’s grandson.

  “Leila hasn’t returned to her room,” I said.

  He giggled with embarrassment and bowed to me. I could see he hadn’t understood one word I had said.

  I went down the stairs, waved away an eager rickshaw boy and signalled to a passing taxi. I told the driver to take me to police headquarters.

  I was lucky. Chief Inspector MacCarthy was getting out of his car as I arrived. He took me to the police canteen where we were served with strong tea in thick white mugs.

  I told him the whole story.

  I found his attitude infuriating. This was the first time I had ever done business with a British cop. His calm stolid don’t-let-panic manner made my blood pressure rise.

  “But something’s happened to her,” I said, trying to keep from shouting. “I’m sure of it! One moment she was right with me— the next she had vanished and she hasn’t returned to the hotel.”

  He produced his Dunhill pipe and began to fill it.

  “My dear chap,” he said, “you don’t have to get worked up about it I’ve had fifteen years’ experience handling these girls. They are here today—gone tomorrow. She probably saw someone she thought had more money than you. It is a well-known dodge with these girls. They get what they can out of you—then they disappear.”

  I drank some of the tea and fought against grinding my teeth.

  “This is different. We were going back to the hotel—oh, the hell with it! Someone thinks she’s talking. She’s been kidnapped.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “I’m trying to solve a murder case,” I snarled at him. “She was giving me information.”

  MacCarthy blew expensive-smelling smoke at me. He smiled the way a parent smiles when his first-born has said something cute. I could see he regarded me as just another American screwball.

  “What information could she give you to solve a murder that happened in America?” he asked.

  “She told me Herman Jefferson rented a luxury villa at Repulse Bay. She told me he suddenly began to make money three months after he married and because he was making money he left his wife.”

  He smiled that bright Britannic smile that has even fazed the Russians.

  “My dear chap, you shouldn’t pay any attention to what a Chinese prostitute tells you—you really shouldn’t.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m simple. You think she was kidding me and was staying out of her room just to give me an uneasy night?”

  He blew smoke at me.

  “It’s part of a prostitute’s job to stay out all night.”

  “Do you know of any Americans living out at Repulse Bay?”

  “I believe there are quite a few.”

  “Would you know if Jefferson had a place out there?”

  “If he had, I would have known, but he hadn’t.”

  “So she was kidding me?”

  He smiled his diplomatic smile.

  “That of course could be the explanation.”

  I got to my feet. I knew I was wasting time.

  “Thanks for the tea. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Always glad to help.”

  I took a taxi back to the hotel. The old inception clerk had taken up his position behind the counter. He bowed to me. I would have liked to have questioned him, but the language barrier was too much of a handicap. If I were going to get anywhere, I would have to find an interpreter. It was then I remembered the English-speaking guide, Wong Hop Ho, who had given me his card at the airport. He might be able to help me.

  I went to my room. I saw Leila’s door was closed and I paused to knock. There was no answer. I tried the door handle, but the door was locked. I knocked again, listened, hearing nothing, then shrugging, I went to my room.

  It was too early to do anything constructive so I took off my jacket, tie and shoes and stretched out on the bed. I did a little thinking that got me nowhere, then I dozed off.

  It was after ten o’clock when I woke to the sound of gentle tapping on my door. I swung my legs off the bed and opened the door.

  The Chinese boy bobbed, smiling, pointing down the passage. I put on my shoes, then followed him to the reception desk. The old clerk offered me the telephone receiver.

  It was Chief Inspector MacCarthy calling me.

  “This girl you were telling me about,” he said, “You did say you bought her a jade ring last night?”

  I stiffened.

  “Yes . . . it was imitation jade.”

  “Would you take a taxi to the Chatham Road police station? It’s on the Kowloon side. They have a girl there—could be this girl you’re talking about. She is wearing an imitation jade ring.”

  “Is she dead?” I asked, aware my stomach muscles were tight.

  “Oh, very.” I could almost smell his expensive tobacco smoke coming over the line. “It’d help if you would identify her. Ask for Sergeant Hamish.”

  “Another Scotsman?”

  “That’s right. Lots of Scotsmen in the police force.”

  “Probably a good thing for Scotland,” I said and hung up.

  Forty minutes later, I walked up the steps leading to the Chatham Road police station. Just inside the large lobby was a big frame hanging on the wall containing a number of gruesome morgue pictures-photographs of some fifty dead Chinese men and women who had been found in the Straits or in the streets with an appeal both in English and in Chinese to identify them.

  The desk sergeant showed me into a tiny office where a hard-faced young man with blond wavy hair and a cop stare was examining a file. He nodded to me when I introduced myself. He said his name was Sergeant Hamish.

  “You have a body for me to look at,” I said.

  He took from his pocket a battered briar pipe. The Hong Kong police seemed to be pipe-smoking types. I watched him fill it as his cold, green eyes considered me without
much interest.

  “That’s right. The Chief Inspector seemed to think you could identify her. She was fished out of the Straits last night around two. Not much of her left. She must have been caught by one of the ferry steamers from the look of her.”

  I felt sweat sticking my shirt to my back.

  He got to his feet.

  “These damn people are always killing themselves,” he said conversationally. “Every day we collect half a dozen bodies. The Chinese just don’t seem to take their lives seriously.”

  We went down a passage, across a yard and into the morgue. From the number of forms under the coarse twill sheets, business seemed pretty brisk this morning.

  He led me to a table, covered with a thick rubber sheet. He lifted a corner of the sheet, groped under it and produced a small amber-coloured hand on which was an imitation jade ring.

  “I’ve had eggs and bacon for breakfast,” he said chattily. “If you can identify her by the ring, it’ll save me risking a throw-up.”

  I looked at the ring and the small, slim fingers. It was the ring I had bought Leila.

  “That’s the ring,” I said, and I felt really bad.

  He put the hand back out of sight.

  “Okay, I’ll tell the Chief Inspector.”

  I reached forward and lifted the rubber sheet. I looked for a long moment at what was left of Leila. I wished I hadn’t, but I had to say goodbye to her. I dropped the sheet into place.

  I remembered her sighing with happy contentment after we had eaten that memorial meal. I saw again her sturdily-built little back as she had walked ahead of me. I hadn’t known her for long, but her personality had impressed me. I felt I had lost someone important.

  There was a detective waiting for me on the other side of the ferry. He was a large red-faced man who said his name was MacPherson: there seemed no end to these Scotsmen. He took me back to the hotel in a police jeep.

  He talked to the reception clerk in haltering Chinese, then took the key of Leila’s room.

  As we went down the passage, he said, “The old coot’s cagey. We would close up this hole. He isn’t admitting she was a tart— can’t say I blame him.”

  I hated him for sentimental reasons. Leila, I felt, deserved something better for an epitaph than being called a tan by a Scotch cop.