China Wife (11 page)

‘This is … Shit, I don't know what it is. Are you serious?'

The superintendent was.

‘The press were right there when the body was fished out of the sea off the Dorset coast. Everything is so instant these days, what with mobile phone cameras and the like, it's hard to get
a whole story together before the half of it is on the Internet in Australia or Saudi Arabia!'

David didn't mention that he too had been right there.

In the peace and quiet of his flat David Hutchinson tried to piece together what he had learned. The giant Chinese man seemed to be a thread through all of the events that he had observed or been told about. The picture of mainland Chinese infiltration of the local Chinese gangs and the increase in competition and warfare with the
in situ
East European and Somali labour gangs was clear enough. The separate information that he had got from the police and Susie Peveral about the trafficking of much of the workforce for these gangs was also now much clearer to him.

But precisely how the enigmatic Mr Joe Kim fitted into this picture he was no clearer about. Hints of other shadowy figures, the Chinese woman, visiting with increasing frequency, who clearly had some kind of clout, the links to past figures in the Border Agency – all of this was no clearer to him either.

The police seemed to think that there was a status quo developing among the gangs and traffickers. So why would they still need an instantly recognisable fixer to keep flying in?

It was a question to which David had no answer.

São Paulo Daily News
English-language Edition – Monday, 12 July 2010
MYSTERY OF SÃO PAULO GIRL'S ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

The São Paulo Police were recently contacted by the Brazilian Embassy in Canberra, Australia concerning Patience Zhang, aged 25 years, released from captivity in Melbourne, Australia.

Miss Zhang, who claims to be a Canadian citizen, a claim that the federal authorities in Ottawa are investigating, was released in a raid by Melbourne Police on a premises in the famous China Town district of the city. She was being held along with four other Chinese women who claimed through an interpreter to come from Indonesia. Police were called to the premises after reports of fighting among two groups of Chinese men.

Unconfirmed reports from Brazilian officials in Canberra suggest that Miss Zhang was one of a group of young Chinese women who had been trafficked from Brazil to Canada and given Canadian passports. This information, if proved correct, would support the investigations of the São Paulo Police into the apparent disappearance of at least five young Chinese women from their area in the last two years. Both the Embassy in Canberra and the São Paulo Police declined to comment on rumours that they had been given the names of other women who were transported to Australia along with Miss Zhang.

Interpol has confirmed that it is investigating an increase in the trafficking of young Chinese women. So far, women have been identified from the US, the UK and Canada. Numbers are unconfirmed, but are thought to be quite small, and Interpol would give no further information. Evidence is building that all of these women eventually ended up in Australia from where they then subsequently disappeared.

All of the officials that the
News
has spoken to declined to entertain any speculation about a link to a recent incident in Hong Kong in which a young Chinese woman appeared to be
being delivered to a Chinese businessman. The young woman had been drugged.

According to the official at the Brazilian Embassy in Canberra, a common theme linking these women is that all were educated, even middle class, and although each, by leaving Brazil, was seeking to better themselves, there was no suggestion that any of them had been offered to the sex trade.

18

Mr Kim was not happy having to rush back to Australia. He had unfinished, albeit interrupted, business in the UK and the call to return to Melbourne to take charge of the hijacking of Alice Hou from the rival group was causing him some concern. While he accepted that Alice was high-value merchandise sought by a specific customer, starting a war with another Chinese gang in Australia was not in his opinion a very wise thing to do. There was too much evidence accumulating that the authorities in Australia, if not other countries, were now very much aware of this emerging trafficking sideline and their interest could lead only to increasing pressure on the gangs. And strife among the gangs, Kim knew, would only accelerate any clamp-down.

But Mr Xu had spoken and Joe Kim was in no position to challenge his boss's orders.

Equally, he was concerned about the frequency with which he was being recorded in the immigration and transits records of Singapore or, as in the case in point, Hong Kong. However, despite his desire not to appear too often on the official radar, his regular movements around the world were well known, reported and disseminated.

Joe Kim was travelling on an Australian passport; not that that fooled anybody. Certainly, the Chinese Government's various agencies who took a particular interest in him all knew his real name, his aliases and the various combinations of the two. Be he Joe Kim or Kim Lee Sung, the intelligence services
of the US, the UK and various other countries made an effort to keep each other informed about Mr Kim's movements and in particular these movements were relayed to Australia and thence to the Chinese. Suspicions abounded in Beijing on what Kim was up to on his various journeys around the world, but he was adept at not getting caught leaving too obvious an evidential trail. And with Mr Xu's influence in the Chinese infrastructure Kim also had other assistance to obfuscate his activities.

However, when he arrived within Chinese territory, as at Hong Kong International Airport, the authorities were alerted and became especially vigilant while he remained there.

Thus the Australian Head of Intelligence in Canberra was able to write to the Chinese Embassy: ‘We know that he has knocked heads together in Great Britain and forced the various Chinese immigrant gangmasters into line with one of the major mainland Chinese crime syndicates now active in Europe. We also know that his role has changed with the appearance of at least one Chinese woman, of complex origins, who while being registered as mainland Chinese otherwise travels on a UK passport. This woman has started to undertake the courier role that had previously been associated with Kim. And she would appear to have more authority and reach than Kim.'

The urbane Head of Intelligence at the Chinese Embassy was sufficiently used to dealing with Australians to understand what ‘knocking heads' together meant. His Australian colleague, in reciprocation of his Chinese opposite number's usual economy of information, was only passing on what he thought necessary to maintain good relations. It was a game of sorts but one with a common purpose, if not a common motivation; to eliminate these influential criminal groups. For the Chinese mainland authorities, such free enterprise as the groups displayed was a threat; for the law-enforcement agencies of the rest of the world, they simply represented criminal activities that harmed the generality of law-abiding citizens.

Li Chen knew perfectly well the identity of the two key crime syndicates. The Chinese's own investigations, which they didn't share with the Australians, told them that both of these groups had fingers in the importation of illegal labour into the European Union, Canada and even the US, and were struggling for supremacy against each other and various indigenous organisations all around the world. What they hadn't been sure about was which of the two Mr Kim worked for, although information was soon to emerge in Melbourne that would provide an answer to this question. What they also didn't know for certain, but assumed, was that both groups had political protectors.

However, none of the people keeping watch over Mr Kim at Hong Kong International Airport had any idea why he was heading back to Melbourne. It wasn't really their business. Their job was to insulate him from any contact with anyone from Hong Kong or elsewhere in mainland China, and to see him on his way in as quiet and trouble-free a way as possible.

Kim knew this. With nothing to occupy him, he spent his time making the job as onerous as possible for his minders.

But his patience wasn't unlimited. Being tall, even in Business Class he hadn't slept very much, and the perpetual attentions of the cabin crew hadn't improved his temper either.

His rising irritation was directed particularly at a couple of the plain-clothed police officers. He had no doubt that that was what they were. Walking when he walked, stopping when he stopped, they followed him back to the area next to the reembarkation gate after his circumnavigation of the terminal. Their presence would have been obvious to a child. But then they were supposed to be obvious.

Maybe I should have gone into the Duty Free
, he thought, knowing that that would have activated some sort of action to either deter him or isolate him and prevent any contact with any third party.

But he also knew that his unforgiving boss in the syndicate
in Shanghai wouldn't take kindly to his playing games with the authorities; he was supposed to be as inconspicuous as possible. What did he need from the Duty Free Shop anyway?

Notwithstanding all of the official interest, Mr Kim was also being kept in view by other, much more discreet observers who would be reporting back that his passage through Hong Kong had been totally sanitised. Mr Xu didn't always trust even his most loyal lieutenants.

As always, Kim wondered what was the point of such close-quarters surveillance. He was at least half a head taller than any other Chinese man that he had ever known. How could he have become invisible in such a public place as an international airport?

Time passed slowly but fortunately the stopover was only short.

Back on the aircraft, where as far as Mr Kim knew he was not under surveillance, he took time to review his brief stay in the UK. As he had anticipated they would, the local Chinese gang leaders had detected much greater pressure from the authorities and the gossip through contacts in the London Civil Service seemed to suggest an increased level of cooperation around the world in response to the mainland Chinese's increased activity. He wasn't sorry that some of what he called the political stuff was being taken off him. He'd been impressed by the slip of a girl who was supposed to deal with the increasingly complex interface with the local gangs. But he wondered whether, remote from China, the power she held from her husband would be enough to impress and gain obedience from the British gang leaders. But then Kim wasn't privy to the true nature of Mr Xu's relationship with his clients and how little they trusted him. Contracting his wife to Xu was key insurance to Shi Xiulu.

‘Nobody seemed to know why there was this sudden increase in interest,' Kim was to report to his principals
later, ‘but it was very much about trafficking the illegal labour; nothing to do with the women trafficking.'

It was this analysis that the women trafficking was as yet not too strongly on the radar of the authorities in the UK that had occupied much of Kim's thoughts on the Hong Kong to Melbourne leg of his journey.

But then he was never likely to have heard of Susie Peveral and her discreet crusading on the issue, or of David Hutchinson, whose subversion from his investigation into trafficking of illegal labour Ms Peveral was engineering.

Kim realised, however, that it was only a question of time. That it was on the radar of the authorities in Australia and Canada he did know, but his sense was that they were scratching about in the dark. That was a situation that his actions in Melbourne would change – snatching the young woman in China Town had attracted too much attention.

Women trafficking had always been the least of Kim's concerns. But the particular client that his organisation was working for was far too powerful and far too valuable to neglect. The fact that the perfect woman, a virgin, was being held by another Chinese group was an inconvenience. Snatching the girl was a risk that had to be taken, according to Mr Xu. The fact that another of the high-value women was present was something that Kim couldn't have foreseen. But her presence was to give the authorities a gold mine of information that could well lead to the shutting down of one of Mr Kim's organisation's rivals.

‘There has to be an easier way to earn a living,' Kim said to himself once all the action in Melbourne was over, the dust had settled and he found himself in Echuca with a striking Chinese woman who for once raised other feelings than just contempt.

It was an expression he had picked up from one of the gang leaders in Manchester. Not having a sense of humour, Mr Kim didn't really appreciate the subtlety of the remark; avoiding arrest in Lincolnshire one day and kidnapping a very attractive
young woman like Alice Hou a week later seemed to him to be all in a day's work.

And now there was Julie Li!

A week after their arrival at Echuca, Julie had so far failed to get on terms with Mr Kim, but she had begun to get to know Alice Hou. Kim proved to be something of a complex and often confusing character. The day after they had arrived he sent the driver to Swan Hill to hire a car. He then spent a couple of hours apparently driving around the locality making himself familiar with the late-model Holden that he had acquired. The driver remained on the boat to physically prevent Julie, let alone Alice, from even coming on deck.

Somehow as the days went by and Kim was forced to have more and more contact with her, she sensed that something of his distrust was abating and something that she found hard to define had crept into his behaviour towards her. Used to and expecting contempt from Kim, Julie took time to realise that a grudging respect was emerging in the way he related to her.

She guessed he could see that he didn't frighten her.

Alice, on the other hand, seemed to shrink into herself more and more whenever Kim was anywhere near her; in his turn, he either ignored her or addressed her roughly and with the sort of contempt that Julie had expected to attract. The poor girl was totally intimidated by him and seemed increasingly to look to Julie as a barrier between them.

At the beginning of the second week Kim gestured Julie out on to the afterdeck of the houseboat and showed her his Black-Berry. Another email from the dreaded Mr Xu had arrived and Kim was required to show it to Julie.

The afterdeck was larger than the foredeck that they had used to deliver the packaged and terrified Alice. It had a guard rail all round it to protect the occupants of the houseboat from the engines, but it was also sheltered from view from the shore where the vessel had been tied up.

The email gave Mr Kim instructions to give to Julie. Mr Xu came from a rather different world from Julie and it would never normally have occurred to him to deal directly with her.

‘We need to get busy,' Kim said.

Even he could see that Alice was looking very jaded and nothing like the fresh faced and lively girl that Mr Xu clearly expected and wanted her to be.

The instructions were to get Alice fit and healthy and to tutor her in various domestic skills.

‘What does he mean tutor her in domestic skills? She's been doing the cooking and all the other chores virtually since we arrived. I thought it would give her something to do since I have no idea how long we're supposed to keep her here.'

‘Never mind that!'

‘What do you mean never mind that! You going to have to tell me how long we're going to be here sometime, for Christ's sake. I have another life as well as this.'

Mr Kim looked bemused and fleetingly anxious. Over the last week or so Julie had realised that talking back to him and challenging him were very effective ways of asserting her independence and forcing him to deal with her. And he knew that, if she were determined to leave him, there wasn't much he could do beyond killing her. That was hardly an outcome that Mr Xu would have appreciated. Somewhere in his complex mind Mr Kim perceived that, despite the shadow of arrest that was supposed to hang over Julie, she would run if she felt that she had to. Julie's real motivation seemed unlikely to occur to Kim, so successful had the petite Singapore police lieutenant been in selling her capabilities

‘You'll be told!'

She needed to be told. She had been out of contact with the Australian Security Service for over two weeks now and, although they knew it would take time for her to establish herself, they would have been expecting her to attempt some sort of communication.

‘So what do you want me to do? I can take her jogging. That'll do me some good, too. If I don't get out of this tub soon, I'll go mad staring at four small walls and you.'

It was light-heartedly said but again Mr Kim's lack of a sense of humour meant that he picked up literally on what she had said and only concentrated on the idea of Alice and herself running freely around the countryside.

‘No way!'

‘Jesus, man, we're supposed to groom her until she looks the picture of health and beauty according to your Mr Xu, whatever that means. I could take her to the Echuca gym; I'm sure they have one. You could come running with us!'

From the way that his body stiffened, Julie knew that Kim was getting angry. She backed off.

‘OK, go and buy an exercise bicycle in Swan Hill or somewhere. Not in town here. I used to use a gym so I'll try and think up some exercises for her.'

The ease with which Mr Kim accepted her proposal told Julie two important things. One, he was desperate to be seen to carry out Xu's orders, which confirmed her belief that he was frightened of him for some clearly very powerful reason, and two, his lack of imagination as well as sense of humour meant that he could be manipulated rather more easily than she had expected. Or at least so it seemed.