The Sky Might Fall (Harry Vee, PI)

by Michael Young

  “What about the cops?”

  “The police have precisely nothing.”

  “No leads? A business rival, mafia, boyfriend?”

  “They don’t think any of that looks very likely. No boyfriend. Fong has no real enemies, but some pretty powerful friends. They haven’t got a single thing to go on, Harry, and I know that ‘cause I looked at the file myself.”

  “Alright, thanks,” said Harry. “Try and find out about Fong’s American contacts for me, will you?”

  “Sure thing, Harry, anything for an old pal. I’ll add it to your tab, shall I?”

  *

  Fong’s Export Co occupied five storeys of a large office building across the bay on Hong Kong Island. As Harry waited in reception, toying with the fronds of a potted plant, he could see Kenny Fong through the glass walls of his office. The short, bald man was pacing up and down, talking on the phone. He was speaking quietly, but the stress was marked on his face. Anger, fear and sleeplessness were etching new wrinkles. The strip lights shone off the film of sweat covering his bald patch.

  “So you’re Harry Vee.”

  “Mr Fong, it’s a pleasure.”

  “Save it. What are you doing to find my daughter?”

  Harry took a deep breath. “When did you last see your daughter, Mr Fong?”

  “A couple days before she disappeared. What does that matter?” He went to sit behind his desk, shuffling distractedly at some papers.

  “Has your daughter turned up with any new friends lately? Been seeing a different crowd?”

  “No. She studied hard. She did what she was told. That’s it.”

  “Was she seeing anyone? A boyfriend?”

  “Of course not. What are you trying to say, Mr Vee?”

  “Just some standard questions, Mr Fong.” Harry wondered how much about his daughter’s life Fong really knew. Probably better to find out from someone else. He tried a different angle. “What about your business. Have you laid off any workers recently? Any disgruntled employees, any rivals who might want to get one over on you?”

  Fong made it clear he’d had enough. “Are you trying to find her, or investigate me?” Harry watched the angry little man jabbing a finger in his face. He was stressed all right. “Just fuck off and do your job, and keep your nose out of my business. And if you don’t come up with something, there’ll be trouble all round. Get it?”

  Talking with him didn’t get Harry anything new, except a sense that they weren’t the closest of families and a 4x6 headshot of the girl in her school photograph. She was pretty, smiling in a smart, bordeaux uniform. Her face had strong lines and her eyes sparked brightly. There was genuine joy in the smile, as if her best friend had just told a joke. She seemed smart, a real model daughter.

  Harry went to the Fong house, further up towards the Peak. It was the big, private house of someone who feels they deserve it. A security guard let him wordlessly through the gate, and the door was opened by a tiny old house-keeper who spoke no English. She showed him up to Anita Fong’s bedroom, with a constant stream of hand-wringing talk. Harry didn’t have to speak Cantonese to recognise real concern. Maybe he’d have to get someone to speak to her, she might know more about what the girl really got up to than the father.

  Inside the room was nothing Harry couldn’t already guess would be there: the band posters, clothes, scattered jewellery and souvenirs of a teenage girl. Books and magazines, hair bands, and discarded socks and tights covered most surfaces. Harry flicked through the titles on the bookshelf. Anita was well read, if she had indeed read all of them. He knew that the police had taken her phone, her computer and her diary. He could see the space where the computer had been, but he also knew they had gotten nothing off it except her homework and some downloaded music and movies. On the top of some drawers, in a sparkly frame, was a picture of Anita with two friends, giggling into the camera. She looked the same age as in the photo Mr Fong had given him. He slipped the photo out of its frame and into his pocket. Outside he turned to walk up the hill towards the girl’s school. He had some time before they would be getting out, and some exercise might clear his head.

  *

  Waiting across the road from the school, girls streamed out through the gates, chatting, shrieking, and passing Harry without even seeing him. It was a classy private school. Harry didn’t even know how much these things cost, but he bet it was more than he’d seen in the last year. These girls would be the future leaders of Hong Kong, or at least married to them. Most of them were born into the wealth of Hong Kong’s heyday. The afternoon sun was bright and hot, and he was starting to sweat. The girls in their white knee socks, the police in their uniforms that hadn’t changed in decades, the red taxis, the noodle bars and glass skyscrapers, everything about Hong Kong looked to Harry like the Hong Kong of films; as though nothing was entirely real, everyone was an actor playing a part, and the city was the biggest movie set ever built. It was all part of being an outsider in a place like Hong Kong. He tried to focus through his hangover.

  Checking the photo in his hand, he saw Anita’s friends coming out through the school gate. They stopped as he approached them, warily looking over the photo he held out, and then back at him.

  One of them said, “What do you want?” They were scared of him. He didn’t blame them.

  “You were Anita’s best friends,” he stated.

  They both nodded. “We talked to the police,” said the taller one.

  “I’m not the police. You saw her the day she disappeared?” They nodded again. Through the gates Harry saw a woman watching him carefully. The school was alert, even if most of the students weren’t.

  The same girl spoke again, “She was in school all day.”

  She was on the verge of tears. Harry supposed your best friend disappearing could kind of unnerve a teenager. The other one said nothing, but looked down at her feet. “Did you walk home with her?” Harry asked.

  “Except Tuesdays and Thursdays,” the girl said.

  “Where did she go on Tuesday and Thursday?”

  The shorter girl spoke to Harry for the first time. “That’s when she went to see the doctor.”

  Harry nodded, checked the teacher who was still watching them with intent, turned and walked away. As he was walking he took out his phone and dialled. “Chang. I need a favour. You said the girl was seeing a specialist, right? Every week?”

  “It’s not a good time Harry. Hang on, yeah, she saw a Dr. Grant. Haematologist.”

  “That’s blood, right?”

  “Right. Police checked him out, he’s legit.”

  “When did she see him?”

  A heavy sigh came down the phone. “Christ, Harry. Wait a second. Every Tuesday. Why?”

  Harry said, “You can get into CCTV, right? Traffic cameras and the like? Pull it up, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  *

  In an anonymous glass and steel building along the harbour side of Hong Kong Island, the small office was marked only as ‘HK Information Services’ on a polished bronze plaque. Inside, the blinds were drawn and the lighting minimal. In the centre of an otherwise empty office space were three desks filled with equipment, but Steven Chang was there alone, sat before a huge split screen computer.

  “Right, here we go,” said Chang, bringing up the black and white security camera footage of the school gates. “She disappeared on the Thursday. This is Tuesday, two days before.”

  They watched girl after girl file out through the gate, until they saw Anita Fong, in jerky stop-motion, come out with the two friends Harry had spoken to that afternoon. The three of them, excitedly, passed under the camera’s view.

  “There she is,” said Chang. “Now, from across the street.” He switched to another view, scrolled through with an eye on the timestamp, and they watched the girls come out through the gate. The three of them silently said their goodbyes, and Anita disappeared off-screen in the opposite direction to her two friends.

  “Right, hang on, we’ve
got another camera a little further down the street.” Chang switched cameras again, and, on a longer shot, they struggled to make out Anita as she came into frame, walking towards the camera. Crossing the street to a taxi rank, they saw her climb into the first cab, and it slowly pulled out into the heavy after school traffic.

  Chang started cleaning his glasses on his shirt. “Ok, Harry. She takes a cab to her appointment. I’m really failing to see your point to all this. I like you, Harry, and I like your money, but I’m a busy man.”

  Harry ignored him. “Now pull up the same cameras, same time, from the Thursday she disappeared.”

  Chang did as he was asked. Again, they saw the girl coming out from school with her two friends. Again, they saw her turn and leave in the opposite direction. This time, though, she walked past the rows of taxis and on past the camera.

  “Okay, this is where she disappears. There’s another camera further down the street, but it wasn’t working that day. She doesn’t show on any other camera in the area.”

  “So this is where the police lose track of her.”

  “Right, and this is where we lose track of her. I’m not a magician, Harry. I’m the best there is, but she’s gone.”

  “Okay, can you pull up Thursday, one week before she disappeared?”

  Chang adjusted his glasses on his nose, looked at Harry, and leaned thoughtfully in to the screen. He pulled up the day and adjusted the time, and again they saw the girl say goodbye to her friends. Again, she walked straight past the taxi rank, and disappeared off screen.

  “Now pull up that next camera.”

  Chang was already doing it. The next camera was at a petrol station, pointing out across the forecourt. Cars on the road were stopped at a junction. As they watched, they saw the girl walk into view and wait on the corner. A minute, two minutes, a group of men in business suits walked by as she stood swinging her bag around her legs. The cars at the junction drove out of view, and new ones came in to stop at the red light.

  Four minutes later a motorbike pulled up alongside the girl. The rider was helmeted, and facing away from the camera. Harry and Chang watched as Anita reached up to kiss him through his open visor and, slinging her school bag onto her back and donning the spare helmet he gave her, climbed on behind him. The bike disappeared down the road, the girl’s arms wrapped tightly around the rider.

  “No boyfriend, huh?” said Harry. “Now we just need the registration on that bike.”

  Steven was dialling a number on his phone. “I’m already on it.”

  *

  Half an hour later Harry had a name – Andrew Buchanen – and the address that the bike was registered to. It was a tall, dingy old apartment block on the edge of Kowloon. At the front of the building, Harry saw a group of young children playing on the steps. The boys were slapping the latest collector cards down on the ground, yelling and shoving each other as they won or lost each game.

  Watching them was a chubby girl, maybe a sister, silently following the games and idly piling corn snacks into her mouth. Harry tried to hide his distaste as he walked past and, going through the alleyway to the other side of the building, saw the motorbike from the camera footage parked up next to a hedge. It was dirty and beat up, hand-painted black, badly, with tape over the seat and one indicator hanging down from its wiring.

  Harry went up to the apartment building and pushed open the heavy double glass doors. The lift stank of people and food. He got out on the seventh floor. At number 706, the door was slightly ajar. Harry pressed tight up against the wall and listened. He didn’t have any weapon. Inside he could hear movement, shuffling, but no voices. Harry took a deep breath and swung the door open.

  He had half a second to take in the small, dark room with drawn curtains, the boxes, clothes, rubbish strewn about the floor, and the short man in black motorcycle leathers and helmet who was looking through the bookcase. The man turned, saw Harry, and pulled an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer from inside his jacket. At the same time, Harry grabbed the nearest object to hand, a small speaker, and sent it flying. The speaker hit the man in the chest, trailing wires behind it, as Harry heard the click and muffled whump of the gun, and the bullet sprayed crumbling plaster from the wall next to him. Harry leapt across the room and crashed hard into the guy, knocking him back into the bookcase. Books and debris rained onto them as they struggled, Harry hanging on to the man’s gun arm. The man butted Harry in the face with his helmet, opening up his lip again and leaving a bloody smear in the centre of the visor. Harry tripped on a coffee table behind him, but managed to keep hold of the gun arm and twist it as they fell together over the wooden table.

  The sudden twist of his arm made the man drop the gun with a satisfying cry of pain, and gave Harry a chance to climb half on top. He scrabbled around for a weapon, and smashed a lamp uselessly over the helmet, but the man got a foot under Harry and kicked him off, sending Harry flying onto the sofa against the far wall. Harry jumped to his feet, expecting the man to go for the gun, but instead saw him dash for the exit, grabbing at a bag that was lying just inside the door. The bag crashed heavily into the wall as it and the man disappeared out of the flat.

  Harry picked up the gun and looked out through the door, but the attacker was already gone. He pushed the door shut; the lock had been broken open from outside. Harry took a moment to get his breath back. He noticed the blood from his lip again. It wasn’t too bad. The room was a mess. It was hard to say how much was from the search, and how much was there before. Clothes and takeaway boxes littered corners of the room. On the far side, next to the sofa Harry had fallen on, was a door. Harry checked the gun, a simple black Czech 9mm with a long muffler screwed onto the barrel. He made sure there was a round in the chamber and moved slowly forward. There was no sound. He used the gun to push the door open, and saw a bedroom in much the same state as the first room.

  The room had been turned upside down, but the man in the helmet hadn’t had time to gather everything he wanted. A notebook computer was lying closed on the bed, a brown leather wallet placed on top, ready to be picked up. The wallet revealed Andrew Buchanen’s driving license and a foreigner ID card. He checked the photo. Buchanen was certainly handsome enough, early twenties with shoulder length, straggly blonde hair. Harry could believe a schoolgirl falling for a face like that.

  He looked around for a mobile phone but there was nothing. On a bookcase against the far wall Harry noticed an empty shelf, and the square that was empty of dust, slightly scuffed at the front, told Harry that something heavy had been removed recently, and he thought of the bag the stranger had picked up on his way out.

  He pocketed the wallet and the gun, picked up the laptop, and left quickly and quietly through the front door.

  *

  Back in his hotel room, Harry rang Steven Chang.

  “Harry, what a surprise. How fortunate for you that I have nothing else to be doing right now. What do you want?”

  “What can you tell me about Andrew Buchanen?”

  “I looked him up from the registration. He’s American, from Atlanta, been in Hong Kong for six months, after spending two years on the mainland. His visa says he’s an English teacher. That’s it. Now, what can you tell me about Andrew Buchanen?”

  “He’s had a few visitors.” said Harry “And someone took something from his room, but no sign of the guy. I have his laptop, but no password. I need you to break into it for me, see what you can find. See what he’s been up to.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you in the morning. I got other things to do tonight. Some of us have a life, you know. You should try it sometime.”

  Harry hung up, and pulled a cigarillo from the box on the desk, just as there was a knock at the door. He stowed the laptop and wallet into the wardrobe, and opened the door to Jessica Lee.

  “Jessica. What a delightful surprise,” said Harry as she pushed past him into the room, carrying a briefcase. She put the briefcase on the bed and clicked it open, and handed him a cardbo
ard file filled with papers.

  “I just came to give you a copy of the police report, and to see what you’ve been up to today. Mr Fong is very worried.”

  Harry had already seen Chang’s copy of the report, but he didn’t tell her that. He didn’t need her to know yet that he was working with Chang. He flicked through it and tossed it on the bed. “Oh, it’s been a quiet start today,” said Harry, lighting his cigarillo. “Just sniffing around.”

  Jessica inspected the freshly re-opened wound on his lip. “Just remember, the safety of the girl comes above everything. I heard you like to do things your own way, but Fong wants reports, details, things like that.”

  “Don’t worry, I get results.”

  “Mr Fong wants some progress by tomorrow evening. That’ll be ten days that she’s been missing, and she must have run out of medicine for her condition. We’re running out of time here, Harry.”

  Harry walked over to the desk and poured them a large scotch each. “I’d like to feel that I’m onto something pretty solid before I report anything,” said Harry. He passed a glass to Jessica, catching her wrist as she took it.

  Jessica Lee shook him off and turned away, smiling. “I don’t care what you’d like to feel. I’m not interested in your vanity plays.”

  “All is vanity, Jessica,” said Harry as he sipped his drink, the alcohol stinging his cut lip. “All is vanity.”

  “Well, you’d better turn up something soon. There’s a lot of pressure on this one, Harry. The girl’s sick, she needs her medicine and her doctor.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “It’s all in the report. That’s as much as I know, and as much as you need to know.”

  “Don’t be coy, Jessica. Tell me everything.”

  She gave him a cynical look. She drained her whisky, and slammed the glass on the desk. Her eyes wandered up and down Harry, unkempt, unshaven. Harry watched her and sipped at the glass in his hand. She said, “You drink too much.”