The Water Rat of Wanchai

by Ian Hamilton

  She started her prayer from the beginning, only to have William Tell start up again. “Answer the phone,” she said under her breath. As if on cue, the tune ended and she heard him say, “What is it?”

  She was almost finished when he knocked on her door.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “My brother needs to speak to you,” said Robbins.

  Ava thought about the time, and an immediate feeling of disquiet crept through her. Why would he call so early? Had something gone wrong on the Hong Kong side? No, she thought. Uncle never failed her. “I’m coming,” she said.

  A few last words to St. Jude, the name Robbins in her prayers for the first time, and then she went to the door.

  “Here,” Robbins said, handing her the phone, and then turned and walked to his bedroom.

  Ava went to the kitchen and sat facing the balcony, the harbour glittering in the morning sun. “Good morning, Captain.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Lee.”

  “It’s rather early for a phone call.”

  “Well, I’m too perturbed to sleep.”

  Ava felt a surge of worry. “How so?”

  “The Hong Kong wire.”

  “You didn’t get it?” she asked, her disquiet expanding.

  He paused. “I got a copy of a copy. I got it by email and fax.”

  “Was the amount wrong? The date? Did they make a mistake with the bank information?”

  He said, slowly and carefully, “You know, Ms. Lee, I don’t know which annoys me more, the fact that you tried to play me for a fool or the fact that, even though you’ve been caught, you keep trying to play me for one. At this very moment I think it’s the latter, and I warn you not to persist along those lines.”

  Ava closed her eyes. Why did I try it? How the hell did he catch on so soon? She wished him away, wished away her attempt to keep the money, but she was not yet ready to concede a single thing. “I can’t even begin to respond to that until you tell me what the problem is.”

  “There is no money.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “And there you go again with your bullshit,” he said, his voice harshening.

  “I don’t understand,” she persisted, glad he couldn’t see her, the sweat beading her upper lip.

  “You didn’t send the money.”

  “Captain —”

  “My relationship with my bank is as strong as the one I imagine you have with your bank in Hong Kong. They give me twenty-four-hour service, something I never thought I needed — until I started doing business with you. Well, when I couldn’t sleep this morning, I called them, gave them the wire transfer number, and asked them to check its progress. Ms. Lee, they had no record of the wire, nothing anywhere in their system. Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

  Ava drew a deep breath, struggling to keep her voice even. “I can’t understand how that’s possible unless there was a glitch during the transmission process. Let me contact Hong Kong and check it from that end,” Ava said. “I assure you —”

  “— that it is shit. The only thing you can assure me of is that every word you’ve said to me is shit.”

  “Captain —”

  “My bank called your bank,” he said with finality.

  God, she thought, surely no one actually told them about the dummy wire?

  “A very friendly young woman on the international desk at your bank told the friendly young woman from my bank that there was no record of the wire on file. No record, no wire. Simple enough, I think.”

  That wasn’t the worst thing he could have been told, she thought, her mind spinning, searching for an explanation, any explanation, that would at least buy her a little time. “Given the nature of the transfer, my people may not have used standard procedures,” she said. “You need to let me call or email Hong Kong.”

  Robbins went quiet. He’s thinking, she thought, with a glimmer of hope. “Yes, I think we both know that you need to contact Hong Kong, and this time to tell them to actually send the money,” he said slowly. “The one thing I grant is that you know how to stick to a story. The thing is, the more I listen to it, the angrier I get.”

  “Captain, please —”

  “What? You thought this would actually work? You thought so little of me as to try something this stupid?”

  Oh God, Ava thought. When was the last time she had misjudged a situation quite so badly? When was the last time she had misjudged a man so badly? “I can fix this,” she said, still not wanting to admit culpability, not wanting to bring up Plan B.

  He ignored her, and Ava felt him slipping away. “You know, you shouldn’t have tried this. We had an arrangement and I was fully prepared to honour my end. Now you’ve changed all that, and I have to decide what I’m going to do.”

  “I can fix this,” she said.

  “Yes, I have no doubt you can fix it, but the details may change. I’m not going to rush into anything with you, so have no fears about my being rash. I’m going to take some time to think this over. In the meantime, you need to do some thinking about what you’ve done. I think you need to make penance. You need to be punished, Ms. Lee. You need to be taught a lesson.”

  “Captain, I can’t even begin to tell you how bad I feel about the way this process has been mangled. Just give me the chance to get it fixed.”

  “That half-hearted apology doesn’t quite make up for the transgression,” he said.

  She knew what he wanted, but she just couldn’t give it to him. It was one thing for him to be ninety-five percent sure of what had happened and another for him to be one hundred percent certain. She had to leave a shred of doubt. She couldn’t prostrate herself. “I’m sure that as we talk this through —”

  “No, we’re finished talking for now. I need to think and you need to reconsider your position and your attitude towards me. I have spoken to my brother and asked him to help you rethink everything. His ways may be a little rough but I expect you to take it like a big girl, and when he’s finished we can look at this again through fresh eyes.”

  “That is —” she began, but he was gone, the phone line dead. She put Robbins’s mobile on table, her mind in a muddle. What the hell is he talking about? she thought. Then she screamed as the back of her neck and her right shoulder exploded. The pain brought her to her feet, but before she could turn her left leg collapsed and she fell forward against the kitchen wall.

  He was behind her, a thick leather belt in one hand, a baton in the other. How had he managed to move so quietly? she thought. She twisted to press her back against the wall. She knew it was the belt that had hit her shoulder and the baton that had jabbed into the soft flesh behind her knee. For some reason the details became important. He held the belt by the buckle so that he could hurt her without scarring her flesh. The baton was close to a metre long, longer than any she’d ever seen, and it was made of fibreglass, a high-tech innovation hardly necessary for the purpose it was meant to serve.

  “It’s never a good idea to screw around with my brother. He isn’t a turn-the-other-cheek kind of man,” Robbins said.

  “No one screwed your brother.”

  “That isn’t what he thinks, and that’s all that matters to me. He told me to strap you, and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “If you’re cooperative it’ll be over before you know it.”

  She shook her head.

  He held up the baton. “I know how to use this but I’d rather not. The belt won’t break anything, but this might, so I advise you to lie still for the belt. It’s your choice, though.”

  She flexed her leg. It ached, but she could move it.

  He was at least two metres away, the distance giving him time to react to anything she might try. The baton was poised and the belt hung by his side, waving back and forth. “You need to think about the big picture,” he said, enjoying the sound of his voice. “I give you a bit of a beating and my brother plays nice with you again. Not such a bad deal, the way I look at it.”

  She shook her hea
d again.

  The belt lashed out, catching her across the top of her thigh. Ava shifted her feet.

  Robbins took a step back, cautious. “Don’t let my size fool you. I can still move quickly,” he said.

  She slid slowly to the ground. He stared down at her, his eyes now tightly focused on her for the first time since she’d met him. Ava lowered her head. Her arms fell to her sides. Slowly she pressed the small of her back firmly against the wall, tightened her glutes, and pushed her hands into the floor. “This isn’t necessary,” she whispered.

  “My brother thinks it is, and I agree with him. You are a sneaky little cunt, a cunt who got caught,” he said, raising the belt.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “I’m losing my patience,” he said, the belt drawn completely back.

  She sensed rather than saw the motion, and when he took the necessary step forward to hit her, she uncoiled. The belt went flying past Ava’s face as she left the wall, her right heel driving into his groin. He groaned and staggered but didn’t fall, the baton flailing in her direction.

  The kitchen was cramped and Ava was still hemmed in against the wall, vulnerable to even the wildest of swings. She jumped to the right, the baton grazing her left arm. His head was turned and all she could see was his right eye. She thrust. He moved at the last second, too late, and her fingernail pierced it, drawing blood almost instantly. He screamed, his belt hand going to his eye, finally giving her room and time to manoeuvre.

  She moved farther right, away from the still-thrashing baton. Her right hand formed a fist, the middle knuckle of her index finger extended like the end of a pile driver, and then she leapt, the knuckle driving into his ear. He rocked on his heels, backing up some more.

  Ava couldn’t believe that he hadn’t collapsed, though he was staggering now and looked disoriented. The last blow had moved him completely out of the kitchen and into the living room. She circled wider, to the side where his vision was impaired. He hadn’t dropped either the baton or the belt, but the belt hand was still held to the eye she had damaged, blood trickling through his fingers. She moved in on him from behind and jumped onto his back, her fingers digging into his neck, searching for a carotid artery.

  He yelled and shook his upper body. She could not believe how big and strong he was; she was hard-pressed to hang on. Robbins swung the baton over his shoulder, trying to catch her head, but she had it pressed against the side of his neck. Then he swung it around behind his back and found her, the stick catching her repeatedly on the calf. Ava tried to move her leg out of the way but started to slide down his back. She had no choice but to recover her grip, ignore the pain, and hold on even harder. “Where is that fucking artery?” she shouted, her fingers lost in the mounds of flesh that protected his neck.

  Robbins turned sideways and started to back up. Ava saw he was going to try to drive her into the wall. Her fingers pressed deeper, harder. She hit the wall and felt it give, but the momentum wasn’t strong enough to dislodge her. He lurched forward. Ava could finally feel his legs starting to buckle. She clenched her fingers with every ounce of strength she could concentrate in them.

  When they hit the floor, Robbins’s head bounced with the impact. Ava slid off to the side and did a complete roll, coming to rest on her back about a metre away from him. Her leg was sore where he had beaten her with the baton. Her neck and shoulders ached from the belt strike; she knew there would be a welt. Her fingers felt stiff.

  She turned to look at him. She’d never taken on anyone bigger or stronger. He twitched. No, she thought, lie still. He twitched again. His eyes opened, the bloody one nearest her, staring blindly. What does it take? she thought. He raised his head, shook his shoulders, and started to get up.

  Ava scrambled to her feet and grabbed the baton, which had been jarred free when he fell.

  Robbins was halfway up, his attention moving back and forth between her and the baton. “Don’t make me use it,” she said.

  “Cunt,” he said, forcing himself to his feet.

  She took out his left leg, the baton smashing into the kneecap with a sickening crack. He fell to the ground as if he’d been shot, letting loose a screech that tore through her head.

  Ava’s duct tape was in Seto’s room. When she went in, he was awake and sitting up. His eyes bulged like a raccoon’s caught in a flashlight, sweat pouring down his face. “Lie down and don’t move,” she said.

  Robbins was still on the floor when she came back, but he was moving, trying to crawl towards his room. Ava got behind him and, avoiding the kicks from his good leg, grabbed his ankles and taped them together. That at least slowed him down. She thought about taping his wrists but wasn’t sure she was strong enough to hold them together long enough to do it. She also wasn’t sure that, even if she did manage it, he wouldn’t eventually force the tape apart.

  She went back to check on Seto. He looked even more panicked. “You can sit up now, and turn around,” she told him.

  He struggled to a sitting position, mumbling beneath his tape. She thought she could hear him saying, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.” She undid his handcuffs and quickly taped his wrists together. Then she pushed him back onto the bed. “Stay there and you’ll be fine.”

  Robbins wasn’t moving as much. Maybe the effort to crawl had exhausted him, Ava thought. Still, she approached him cautiously, looking to see where his hands were. She slid one of the cuffs over his right wrist. It barely fit. Then she lifted his left arm and moved it across his back. He flinched and she felt the arm begin to resist. Quickly she yanked it towards the other, slipped the second handcuff on, and closed it. Then she reached again for his neck. He tried to twist away but she persisted, and finally she managed to put him completely out.

  On her knees, Ava pushed herself back towards the bedroom. Easing into a sitting position, she leaned her back against the wall. She took deep, slow breaths, trying to calm herself down. But even as her body’s tension eased, her mind raced with an anger that was directed mainly at herself — for having taken the Robbins brothers too lightly, for letting herself be blindsided. Calm yourself, she thought. The worst is over.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  Ava struggled to her feet. She had no idea who was there, but she wasn’t going to open the door for anyone. She looked through the peephole. A young man in powder blue pyjamas was standing at the door looking concerned.

  “Hello,” Ava said through the door, her voice hoarse with emotion that hadn’t completely dissipated.

  “I’m from the apartment next door. Is everything okay in there? I heard a horrible racket. I was just about to go downstairs to get someone,” he said, his face clouded with confusion.

  “Please don’t,” Ava said. “My husband, he’s epileptic. He had a fit, that’s all. It was a bad one, even for him, but he’s all right now. He would be mortified if he thought strangers were looking in on him.”

  “It was a hell of a noise.”

  “He’s a big man and he hit the wall. It’s passed. Please believe me, there will be no more trouble.”

  She watched him through the peephole. He looked at least partially convinced. “Thank you for your concern, though. It’s really appreciated,” she said.

  He took two steps back and looked around as if waiting for someone else to voice a complaint. “Okay, no worries then. Like I said, I’m next door, in 310. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Thanks again,” Ava said, watching as he moved away, glancing back at the door.

  She took a deep breath and turned. The apartment was a disaster. There was blood in several places on the floor and a cracked crater in the drywall she’d been backed into, and sometime during their struggle the coffee table had collapsed, two of its legs broken. There was no point in trying to clean it up. Robbins was on the floor and Seto was in the bed, and they weren’t going anywhere. Ava knew she had better things to do and not that much time in which to get them done.

  She had to step over Robb
ins to get into his room. A gun and a police badge were on top of his dresser. He was a sergeant, and still active. She figured he’d been crawling towards the gun. Her cellphone was in the bottom drawer, resting on some very large men’s underwear. She took it out, turned it on, and walked into her own bedroom. Then she picked up her notebook and pen and took three sachets of VIA instant from her bag. The clock said six forty. She needed her morning coffee. She needed to think. The morning had barely begun, and Ava didn’t need the day to get any more dramatic.

  ( 40 )

  AVA STOOD BY THE STOVE WATCHING THE WATER BOIL, the mindlessness of it comfortably distracting. She made her coffee and went out onto the balcony. The sun was creeping up the side of the building and soon she’d be engulfed in it. She was thinking how pleasant it was outside when the William Tell overture called from the kitchen. She stuck her head through the door and looked at Robbins’s phone until it went quiet. It was only a short reprieve, she knew. The Captain would call back soon, and she’d better be prepared to talk to him.

  She sat on a chair and hoisted her legs onto the railing. She knew if she rolled up her pants the bruising would already be visible. What a mess, she thought. What a fucking awful mess. When was the last time, she thought again, she had misjudged a situation so badly? When was the last time she had misjudged a man so badly? Why hadn’t she simply sent him the money in the first place and avoided all this chaos? Because it wasn’t her nature to give in so easily, and besides, she hadn’t trusted him to honour his commitments. And why hadn’t he given her a chance to resend the money without all that unnecessary violence? Because that wasn’t his nature, she answered herself again. He needed to hurt her. He needed to be dominant.

  Ava finished her coffee and went back to the kitchen for another. She put two sachets into her second cup to really get a jolt. Then she picked up Robbins’s phone and her own and returned to the balcony. She placed his on the table and pressed her voicemail key. There were more than twenty messages, most of them old. Uncle. Uncle. Uncle. Derek. Derek. Her mother. Mimi. Her mother. Uncle. Uncle. He’s worried, she thought.