by Peter Tonkin
They had rumbled down into the tunnel long before she had finished this monologue, and Andrew was driving with owlish concentration by the time they came out of it up into the restless air past the Yacht Club and, aptly, the Police Officers’ Club. All he could think of was that he had to get her to the Mandarin up on Connaught Road Central. He guided the Vantage onto Gloucester Road through Wanchai and, for the first time in his life found that he had the windblown thoroughfare all to himself. It was fortunate that this was the case, for he would never have managed the one-way system round onto Connaught Road had his not been the only vehicle involved in the manoeuvre.
It was with something akin to surprise that he pulled up outside the Mandarin and found himself looking up at the expensive frontage of the exclusive hotel. ‘Here we are,’ he announced cheerily.
No reaction. Except, perhaps, just the faintest snore.
‘Captain Mariner …’ He leaned across and shook her gently.
The wind thundered in past Jardine House and he wondered briefly whether she had been correct in her weather forecast after all.
He leaned across and said with fatigue-slurred urgency, ‘Robin!’
No reaction. She was dead to the world. Catatonic; as good as.
‘ROBIN!’ he bellowed.
There was no reaction at all.
Andrew slumped back into his seat and looked from right to left. On his right was one of the most exclusive hotels in Hong Kong. The doors were closed. He would have to summon the night porter in order to get in. The thought of turning up at that forbidding door with an insensible blonde draped over his arms was more than he would readily face. He took Robin by the shoulder and shook her with such energy that it would have had him sent off a rugby field for inappropriate use of force. She snored. She did not stir.
He sat back with the impression that his mind was racing, though in fact he was thinking with almost drunken sluggishness. OK, he thought. He had a comatose woman whom he wished to get into her suite in the Mandarin Hotel. There were only two ways in which he was going to achieve this. He would have to carry her to the door and then into the reception area, or he was going to have to get a night porter to carry her. That was it. Those were the alternatives. It was difficult for him to calculate which would be more dreadful.
‘I’m sorry, Robin,’ he said, loudly and seriously, ‘I’m going to have to take you home. But don’t worry,’ he added bracingly, ‘I know you’re going to love Repulse Bay.’
*
As he guided the Aston Martin Vantage back across Central and then out through Wanchai, past Happy Valley and on up the hill, heading south through Magazine Gap and away into the stormy night, Andrew Atherton Balfour tried to work out what he was going to do. Robin Mariner and her mysterious husband had rather turned his life on its head, and all at an amazing speed. He would have to talk things through as a matter of some urgency with his senior partner Gerry Stephenson. He would have to start making detailed arrangements to lean on the police and the Royal Navy very hard indeed. There had better be very, very good reason for the armed guards and the continued refusal to allow access to his client. Then he needed to start looking into the background of the case as a whole and find out just what the hell was going on — what had already gone on aboard the unfortunate ship the Sulu Queen and, perhaps most importantly, what would go on in seven weeks’ time if the case toppled over into the jurisdiction of the new Chinese Basic Law.
Put at its most simplistic, the nightmare scenario was this: there was a distinct possibility that a man found guilty of murder on 30 June could expect to be deported to England and put in prison there; but a man found guilty of the same crime on 1 July might expect to be taken to Beijing and executed.
As though she could read his mind, Robin stirred and groaned. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard. ‘Robin?’ he called.
No response.
He shook himself, suddenly aware that he had been bowling along the road at the better part of a ton effectively sound asleep. The wind tore a rent in the hurrying cloud cover and a low, bright moon lit up the countryside all around him. The wet slopes glinted as though the hillsides were covered with ice or snow. Ma Kong Shan gleamed precipitously on his left, its top chopped off by the Aston’s low roof. Far behind, Jardine’s Lookout glimmered spectrally in his rearview mirror, then vanished with the moonlight. Andrew hunched forwards and followed the tunnel of the headlights down to the southside coast.
It was after 1 a.m. when the Vantage grumbled into Repulse Bay. Andrew swung it left, up the hill towards the little enclave where his house stood overlooking the restless sea beside that of his senior partner and wife. As the massive car pulled up the steep hill, it moved more and more slowly. This was not because of any failure of power but because of a mixture of various types of confusion in the mind of its driver. His own, relatively modest, residence stood shuttered and dark at the end of a short drive on his right. The much larger house owned by Gerry and Dottie Stephenson stood on the left, with bars of light blazing round the edges of the storm shutters and reaching out like odd-shaped searchlights, given body by the last of the rain. The contrast between the houses gave Andrew pause for thought. The broad wheels rolled to a stop and Andrew pulled up the handbrake as he calculated what it would be best to do.
The problem was this. His amah Su Lin did not live in. She would arrive with the Sunday papers in less than seven hours’ time. She was a lively and intelligent woman but he knew from past experience that she was also an inveterate gossip. No matter how innocent the actual explanation, the discovery of a strange woman asleep in his bedroom while he camped on the sofa would give Su Lin untold licence for sexual speculation. It was a little like something out of a French farce, but he was all too well aware — as who in his profession was not — that there are not many laughs in sexual misunderstandings in real life. Especially as Su Lin’s brother was a stringer for the Standard newspaper and several Chinese language dailies. He could just see the headlines: ‘BLONDE WIFE OF MASS MURDER SUSPECT DISCOVERED IN LOCAL SOLICITOR’S BED’. And that was just the way the conservative English-language papers would put it. What the Chinese press would say went beyond even his lurid imaginings. No. If Gerry and Dottie were still up, then he had better impose on their good nature a little.
*
Gerry and Dottie Stephenson were more than up, they were in the middle of a rave-up. The weather was a perfect excuse for the first typhoon party of the season, and the Stephensons were throwing it.
Andrew, all unaware, drew the car onto their forecourt, left the lights on and ran through the spitting rain and the jumble of other vehicles to their front door. He pushed the bell and then hammered on the wet wood. The wind grumbled up from the bay but it was no longer powerful enough to drown out the thunder of music from inside. The big solicitor frowned and began to look around, the penny slowly beginning to drop. Too late. The door burst open and there was Gerry, hair awry, in his shirtsleeves with his collar wide and his tie at half mast. ‘Why, it’s Andrew! Come you in, my boy, come you in!’ He waved Andrew inwards a little unsteadily with a hand holding a tumbler full of whisky. Behind him, the Stephensons’ hallway seethed with bodies pushing through from the sitting room to the kitchen and back. The stairs rose up like the terraces at Twickenham packed for the Oxbridge match. Warmth rushed out and the wind rushed in. Knowing he was going to regret this, Andrew went in as well. Gerry at once draped himself affectionately round Andrew’s shoulders and bellowed, ‘What’ll it be?’
Long experience had taught Andrew that abstinence begat argument in the Stephenson household, so he said, ‘Carlsberg, if you have …’
‘See what I can do,’ said his host cheerfully and plunged left to the bar in the kitchen. Andrew pushed right, nodding and waving to everyone he knew — which was almost everyone there. He found Dottie by the piano surrounded, as always, by her boys from the Cricket Club. ‘Andrew,’ she cooed, her voice carrying over the hubbub after years of practice. �
��Darling, where have you been?’
‘Dottie, I have to talk to you. It’s an emergency, I’m afraid.’
‘Should you be telling this to Gerry, darling?’
‘Not that sort of emergency. Look, can we go somewhere?’
‘I say, Balfour, old man, are you still driving that beast of a Vantage?’ asked one of the Cricket Club, a slight, whip-strong man who was a demon wicketkeeper.
‘Yes, I am, Jeremy. Look, Dottie, please, I’m sorry but I need your help.’
‘Of course, darling. Follow me.’ Dottie caught up her glass with one hand and her cigarette holder with the other.
She waved the Cricket Club aside with an imperial gesture, then she plunged through her guests and he followed in her wake. Jeremy the wicketkeeper tagged along behind unnoticed.
Out through the sitting room door they went, Andrew pausing only to reach across and relieve Gerry of the lager glass he was waving, down through the hall and to the door of the cloakroom beside it. They jumped the little queue waiting there and Dottie slapped the door with an open hand until a sheepish girl in a rumpled miniskirt came out and then the pair of them crushed into the tiny room and closed the door behind them, unaware that Jeremy the wicketkeeper had gone on out to look at the car. Andrew pressed his back against the mass of coats dripping against the wall and took an extremely welcome pull from the glass. Dottie put the lid down and perched on the loo. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me all about it, dear.’
He had only just begun when everything outside suddenly went absolutely still. Wind thundered loudly, but all music and conversation stopped dead. ‘Now what?’ snapped Dottie, pushing past Andrew to open the cloakroom door.
Her action revealed the packed hall, with everyone facing the stairs. And it revealed, halfway up the stairs, Jeremy the wicketkeeper with his hands wide and his face white.
‘Swear to God,’ he was yelling at the top of his voice, ‘swear to God and I kid you not. Balfour’s got a strange blonde in his Aston Martin, and I do believe she’s dead!’
Chapter Ten
Next morning, Robin was awoken by a combination of sunlight striking through pink silk curtains and the gentlest of knocking at a door. She looked around herself with profound disquiet, for the last thing she remembered was falling asleep in Andrew Balfour’s car on the way to the Mandarin Hotel. And this was not the Mandarin Hotel. This was nowhere that she recognised at all. This was not a bed she knew. This was not a duvet she had ever seen before. And, perhaps most worryingly, the nightdress she was wearing was not one she knew either.
She sat up, looking around. The room was reassuringly feminine and a little cluttered. Her cases were piled on an armchair, both closed. Her coat and travelling clothes were neatly folded on them and her underwear was still in place beneath the peach chiffon of the strange nightie.
The knocking was repeated and a slightly plummy, husky voice called, ‘Mrs Mariner, are you awake?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Please come in.’
A middle-aged woman in a beige wool suit, pearls and a neat little hat came in followed by a younger, Oriental woman carrying a tray. At once the fragrance of brewing tea filled the air and Robin’s mouth began to water. ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, more in confusion than actual apology.
‘I know, my dear, you have no idea who I am or where you are. You’re worried and I can’t blame you.’
The tray went onto a little kidney-shaped vanity table and the lady in the beige wool suit perched on the bed while the tea was being poured. Robin noticed that she was wearing tan kid gloves. At no time did she stop talking.
‘My name is Dorothea Stephenson but everyone calls me Dottie. My husband is Andrew’s senior partner and you are in the spare room of our house in Repulse Bay. One lump or two?’
‘Just a little milk, thank you. I —’
‘Andrew brought you here last night when he couldn’t wake you up. I don’t think he was particularly concerned about that, you understand, though we did ask Dr Towne to look at you after that idiot Jeremy announced that you were dead. No, it was quite obvious that you were simply exhausted. But I’m afraid the thought of carrying you into the Mandarin in that condition was simply too much for the poor boy …’
Robin accepted the tea and sipped it. Her expression was one of absolute concentration, but she let Mrs Stephenson’s words wash over her, content to pick out one in ten and think her own thoughts.
She was in Repulse Bay. That was no good at all. She had to be back in Central where she could get to the police and the navy and pop across to Kowloon if need be. She had a name now: Daniel Huuk. She wanted him for a start. And she wanted the name of the man who had put armed guards on Richard’s door. That would have to be a senior police officer, the man in charge of the case. And she wanted the name of, and an interview with, whichever doctor in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was treating Richard.
The Stephensons were off to church apparently and that was why she had been woken up by a woman so obviously ready to go out. Andrew would normally be going with them, the woman continued, but he was at Robin’s service this morning. When she had got herself up and ready, she only had to give him a ring. He was just next door. His house was easily visible from the window …
The Stephensons, Dottie concluded, would be back just before lunchtime and she was very welcome to stay. She was to treat the house as her own. Anything she wanted, just ask the amah whose name was Ann Chu.
‘You’ve been most kind, Mrs Stephenson …’ Robin was overwhelmed to the point of being acutely embarrassed, but Dottie Stephenson was genuinely the soul of goodness and hushed her as though they had been friends for many years. ‘It’s nothing, my dear, nothing at all. I’m just so happy that Andrew thought to bring you to us. I’m sure we’ll become the best of friends and look back on this as quite a little adventure! Now I must run, my dear, the Reverend Chan is quite a timekeeper, and gets so grumpy if one is late …’ She leaned forward and gave Robin a peck on the cheek, and then she was gone, leaving Ann Chu hesitating with the teapot.
*
‘You’re going to have to stop waking me up like this,’ said Andrew, a little less that an hour later. Then he gave a half-grunt of laughter. ‘God, Robin, was it only yesterday morning?’ He hesitated for an instant, then he said, ‘And what mischief do you want to get up to today?’
Against her better nature, Robin found herself frowning at his over-intimate assumption of friendship. She almost wondered whether to call him Mr Balfour and put him in his place a little. But she could not bring herself to do anything so mean, for she did stand in his debt — and was likely to have to ask for more favours in the near future, though to do so went against the grain. And anyway, she was probably just being over-sensitive after being kissed like a girl by Dottie Stephenson.
She reached across the table for another piece of toast and Ann Chu pushed open the door from the kitchen with yet another pot of that delicious tea. ‘I was just calling,’ she said, ‘to tell you that you don’t have to get involved in today’s adventures at all if you don’t want to. I’ve just finished talking to reception at the Mandarin and they’re very happy to send one of their limousines down for me.’
‘Oh, I say …’ His voice sounded deflated, a little disappointed. She found herself smiling indulgently and realised it was her first smile since she got the news about Richard.
She stopped smiling at once, but a little warmth lingered in her voice as she said, ‘Look, Andrew. Today I propose to do the following things. Drop my bags off at the Mandarin, then go to the Heritage Mariner Office in Jardine House. That’s just across the road so I can walk.’
‘Well, yes, good, but …’
Robin rode over him easily and the warmth rapidly drained out of her voice as she continued, ‘Then I propose to go to the police headquarters on Harcourt Street and if I can’t find out what I need to know there, then I’ll go on down to the Police Officers’ Club beside the Yacht Club. I’ll need to get a car fo
r that but it won’t be too much trouble and they’ll help me get a taxi at the Mandarin. That will make it easy to pop across to Kowloon and the marine police HQ opposite Star House there on the corner of Canton and Salisbury, where I shall start to ask my questions about Captain Daniel Huuk. Then, while I am Kowloonside, I thought I’d pop back up to the Queen Elizabeth and see if they still have armed guards outside my husband’s room. On the assumption that they do, I will come back to the island side but on the way back to my hotel I thought I’d see if the Supreme Court on Queensway is open for business so I can get some kind of an injunction and at least start the process of getting to see Richard as soon as I possibly can!’ By the end of this speech she was in tears again and that fact was obvious to the man on the other end of the connection.
The instant her surprisingly knowledgeable tirade came to a halt, he said, ‘Look, you can’t do all that on your own, you know. Don’t bother with a saloon, I’ll take you up; and if you don’t want me tagging along after you all the time, I’ll go into the office and clear my desk a bit. I rather think you’re going to be my concern exclusively for the next few weeks.’
‘Right,’ she said, never at her best while crying. ‘I’ll get my things. Twenty minutes?’
‘Oh. Ah … Yes. Fine. I mean … Fine.’
As she broke the connection, she heard him call, a little plaintively, ‘Su Lin, forget breakfast. No time, I’m afraid …’ She felt guilty, but the simple fact was that if she was still here when Dottie and her husband returned then she would find it impossible to escape without actually being rude to them.
