The guard looked hesitant but eventually he knelt down and picked up the phone. He tried pressing the buttons while holding the gun but couldn’t manage it so he tucked the gun under his arm while he dialled. Dugan couldn’t hear what he was saying but after a few sentences the man held the phone out to Dugan. ‘Throw it,’ said Dugan. It landed at his feet and he pushed the guard he was holding forward towards the road and grabbed the phone before ducking back behind the tree.
The two guards stood together, his former prisoner massaging his throat. Dugan’s right arm had practically gone to sleep so he held the phone to his ear with his left hand.
‘It’s Dugan here. Is that you, Thomas?’
‘Patrick, my old friend. How are you?’ There was not a trace of Chinese accent left in Thomas Ng’s cultured American voice. They had met several times since the huge wedding almost a decade earlier, but calling him an old friend was pushing it a bit far. Dugan had never really liked him. Simon Ng had always been up front about what he did, take it or leave it, but his brother was always trying to pretend to be a legitimate businessman, acting as if the family fortune was based on hard work, initiative and enterprise rather than on extortion, prostitution and drugs. You knew where you were with the man Jill had married but Thomas was harder to read and Dugan had always kept away from him.
‘Thomas, I heard you were back.’
‘You should be a detective,’ laughed Ng, but it was a harsh metallic sound as if knives were being sharpened.
‘Yeah, very funny,’ said Dugan, keeping a wary eye on the two thugs. They were whispering to each other but at least the gun was now directed at the ground rather than at his head. ‘Look, have you called off your dogs?’
‘They won’t hurt you, Patrick, don’t worry.’
‘Hey, I’m not worried. I just didn’t want to damage them,’ replied Dugan, but he didn’t feel anywhere near as cocky as he sounded. Whistling in the dark. ‘They’re trying to stop me talking to Jill.’
‘They are protecting her.’
‘From her own brother?’
‘We are not sure what we are protecting her from.’
‘Presumably from the man who killed Simon.’ Ng didn’t say anything. ‘Simon is dead, then?’ pressed Dugan.
‘You haven’t heard? I’d have thought the police would have told you already,’ said Ng.
‘Nobody is telling me anything at the moment, Thomas. What happened?’
‘It’s a long story, Patrick. Come round and we’ll talk.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Golden Dragon Lodge. My father’s house.’
‘I know it. But I want to see Jill first.’
‘I understand. Let me speak to my men again and I will tell them to take you to her. But I must warn you that she is being sedated at the moment. Her husband has been killed . . .’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with her,’ interrupted Dugan.
‘Let me finish,’ continued Ng coldly. ‘There’s something you don’t know. Sophie has been kidnapped. At the moment we don’t know if she is alive or dead.’
The news stunned Dugan. He didn’t know what to say.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Ng.
‘I’m here. I’m here. Christ almighty! Look, I’ll be right over after I’ve seen Jill. Can you get your men to lend me a car? They’ve scared off my taxi already.’
‘They’ll drive you,’ said Ng. ‘Put them on.’
Dugan popped his head around the tree again. The gun had gone back inside the guard’s jacket so he stepped out and handed over the phone.
‘He wants to talk to you,’ he said in Cantonese.
‘Thank you,’ said the armed guard, in English, and took the phone. After listening and muttering a few words he led Dugan up the track to the black iron gates where half a dozen more guards were standing, two of them with machine guns. Artillery like that was very unusual in Hong Kong, most triad soldiers stuck to knives and hatchets and when they did resort to firearms it was usually handguns. They opened the gate and two of the guards escorted Dugan to the house. Dugan rang the doorbell and it was opened by a Filipina maid whose name he couldn’t remember.
‘I’m Mrs Ng’s brother, can you tell her I’m here please.’
‘Mrs Ng is not to be disturbed, sir,’ said the maid, her lower lip trembling.
‘It’s OK,’ said Dugan. ‘I’ve already spoken to Thomas Ng and he has said it’s OK.’
The magic words ‘Thomas Ng’ seemed to do the trick and she stepped to one side to allow him in.
‘I’ll get her for you, sir,’ said the maid, turning to go up the stairs.
‘No, that’s all right. I’ll see myself up. Is she in the main bedroom?’
‘No, sir, she’s sleeping in Sophie’s bedroom.’
Dugan left her at the bottom of the stairs and went up alone. He found Jill curled up on a single brass bed with pink sheets and pillowcases, cuddling the dog he’d bought for Sophie. On the bedside table was an empty brandy glass and a bottle containing green tablets. She moved in her sleep when he sat down on the bed and put his hand on her shoulder. She moaned and squeezed the dog, hugging it close and rubbing it with her nose. She looked terrible, her face drawn and pale, dark shadows round her eyes and puffy bags under them, lips cracked and dry. For a moment a picture of Petal lying in the hospital bed flashed through his mind; two girls that he loved, both of them normally so pretty and vibrant, both so full of life, both reduced to shells by the man called Howells, beating one almost to death, killing the husband of the other.
‘Jill,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you awake?’
She murmured something and a hand appeared from under the sheet and brushed a lock of damp hair across her lined forehead. He called her name and her eyes opened slightly.
‘Simon?’
‘It’s me, kid, it’s Pat,’ said Dugan, leaning forward and stroking her tear-stained cheek.
‘Oh Pat, Pat,’ she moaned and then she closed her eyes and slept again. Dugan tenderly put her arm back under the sheet and switched off the light before closing the door. On the way out he handed the bottle of tablets to the maid.
‘Be careful with them,’ he warned. ‘Give them to her one at a time, and only if she asks for them. Whatever you do, do not leave them by her bed. Do you understand?’
She nodded and put the bottle in a small pocket in the front of her apron.
Outside two of Ng’s men were waiting in a blue Mercedes, the engine running.
After visiting his third Wan Chai bar Edmunds had put together a workable model of the Jack Edmunds Theory of Economic Development as Related to Bars – the poorer a country the cheaper the booze and the younger the girls.
The cab had dropped him at a set of traffic lights on Lockhart Road and he’d gone first into the San Francisco Bar, followed by Popeye’s and the Country Club. The layout varied but the music and the prices of the booze were the same, and the girls all had bored looks as if they’d rather be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else. In each of the bars Edmunds had allowed himself to be shown to a stool and had sat there with a whisky on the rocks. Not one of the three stocked Jack Daniels and occasionally he grimaced as he drank. Within seconds of his drink arriving he was joined by one of the hostesses with slackly-applied lipstick and bad breath, smiling like a simpleton and asking him his name, his job, how long he’d been in Hong Kong and if he would buy her a drink. In each case he lied to the first three questions and said yes to the last, which earned him an even bigger smile, usually one showing yellowed teeth encrusted with plaque, and twenty minutes of what passed for conversation.
Edmunds waited until they hit him for a second drink before he began to talk about his good friend Geoff, how he was supposed to meet him in one of the bars but couldn’t remember which, and then he’d hand over the black-and-white picture and ask if she’d seen him. Three times he showed the picture and three times they’d said no. The women had all been keen to help and had passed the picture around for their friends to examine, but nobody remembered seeing Howells. It was a long shot, Edmunds knew that, but he also knew that Feinberg was right, a wounded man on the run in a hostile environment had few options, and they lost nothing by looking. They might even get lucky. Once he’d drawn a blank Edmunds would gather up his bill and the chits from the plastic beaker in front of him and ask for the check, paying in cash. Both he and Feinberg had changed a stack of traveller’s cheques in the hotel before going their separate ways.
The Washington Club was the fourth bar Edmunds tried. As three others had done before him, the doorman jumped off his stool and held the velvet curtain open for Edmunds, waving him inside and promising ‘many girls, full show.’ A fattish woman in a too-tight black dress who barely came up to his shoulder gripped him by the arm and virtually frog-marched him to an empty stool. Edmunds ordered a Jack Daniels, and received a confused look so he asked for a whisky instead.
‘Whisky Coke,’ said the woman, and walked away.
‘No, whisky with ice,’ he called after her but she didn’t seem to have heard. What the hell, he was in no mood to drink it anyway. He looked around the bar but it had little to distinguish it from the ones he’d already visited, except for a large fish tank by the door. A boy barely out of his teens was admiring his crew cut in his reflection, smoothing it and patting it down. One of the fish was dying, swimming on its side and sinking to the bottom each time it stopped waving its fins. One of its bigger companions was nudging it, or biting it, Edmunds couldn’t tell which.
A short girl, with an impish brown face and short black hair in a pageboy cut and wearing a lime-green cheongsam appeared next to him and smiled up at him, head on one side.
‘Good evening,’ said Edmunds, and motioned for her to take the stool next to his.
‘You American?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, do you want a drink?’
‘Thanks,’ she said and gave her order to one of the women behind the bar.
‘You’re not Chinese, are you?’ he said.
She pulled a face as if she had a sour taste in her mouth. ‘Filipina,’ she said. Edmunds chatted with her for the best part of an hour, during the course of which she racked up four blue chits in the tumbler in front of him. She seemed to enjoy herself, laughing at his jokes and asking question after question about his life, ninety per cent of which he answered with lies; but every time the curtain was pulled back to admit another punter her eyes flicked to the door. She was always alert, and Edmunds knew that as soon as he paid his bill and left she’d be by someone else’s side.
He started telling her about his friend Geoff and took the black-and-white picture out of his jacket pocket and showed it to her.
‘Have you seen him?’ he asked.
She studied it carefully and said no, she hadn’t. Edmunds wondered how many customers she fleeced in a night and how many she remembered ten minutes after they’d stepped out of the bar. He asked her if she’d show the picture to her friends and she went from girl to girl, mostly getting quick uninterested shakes of the head, occasionally pointing to him.
Edmunds pretended not to look but as he toyed with his tumbler of adulterated whisky his attention was focused on the girl and the reaction she was getting. He struck gold when she had gone to the far side of the bar, directly opposite where he was sitting. She handed the picture to a young Chinese girl with sleek black hair that curled above her shoulders, a small silver brooch at the neck of a peach-coloured blouse. She was talking to an overweight balding man in a cheap grey suit, laughing with her hand over her mouth, but when she saw the picture her lips closed like steel gates slamming shut. She glared at the Filipina and although he couldn’t hear them over the pulsing beat of the dance music he guessed that she was demanding to know where the picture had come from. He looked down as the Filipina pointed and then checked them out in a long mirror above one of the booths. The Chinese girl’s eyes narrowed as she studied him across the bar and then she began to question the Filipina.
Edmunds looked at her as she glared down at the shorter girl, hands on her hips. The Filipina kept shaking her head and then the Chinese girl put a hand on her shoulder and spoke to her. Edmunds could see the urgency on her face, and he wasn’t in the least bit surprised when she came back and said that none of the girls could remember seeing the man in the bar. Edmunds put the picture back in his jacket pocket and thanked her anyway.
‘Why don’t you give me your card and write down where you’re staying and I’ll give it to him if he comes in,’ said the Filipina, and Edmunds was one hundred per cent certain then.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No point. I’m leaving Hong Kong tomorrow. I’ll catch Geoff next time.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘I’d better be going,’ he said.
‘What hotel are you staying at?’
‘Hilton,’ he lied. ‘Can you get me the check, please?’
She didn’t seem as friendly now; there was an edge to her voice and a wall behind her eyes, but the smile was still there and she swung her hips as she went over to the cashier. Edmunds suddenly realized just how much he missed his wife. He wanted to be back home with her, sharing a bed with her, no matter how cold it was.
He paid the bill and walked through the curtain out into the hot night air. A couple of hundred yards down the road he flagged down a taxi and got into the back.
‘How’s your English?’ he asked the driver.
‘English or American?’ he replied with a grin.
‘You’ll do,’ said Edmunds. He opened his wallet and handed the man two $500 notes. ‘I want to hire you for the rest of the night.’
The driver took the notes and examined them under the dashboard lights. ‘Where do you want to go?’ he said suspiciously.
‘At the moment, nowhere,’ he said. ‘Drive a little way down the road and park. I’m waiting for someone.’
The red doors swung open as the Mercedes approached, and the twin headlights cut through the night, swerving from side to side as they drove up the path to the double garage and parked. The two men escorted Dugan up the steps and over the wooden bridge to the house. The stone dragon scowled at him, illuminated by hidden spotlights under the water, and he scowled back.