The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (11 page)

     “You’re right. Gerry always used to talk to me," Amie replied. "It's not like him just to disappear.  If he was going off somewhere, he would almost certainly tell me, even if it was to be a secret between us.”

     “Everyone remarks on how he’s changed too.”

     "No, it's not as bad as that but he did become withdrawn.  That's not like him.  You know he's always cheerful. He always had a good word for everyone."

     "I've heard it said that's what he is. Two minutes of good cheer for everyone. Nothing else."

     “Diana Lundy changed him. He went to the slaughter like a lamb.”

     “You know her?”

     “Oh sure. Gerry fell head over heels for her. You know how he liked blondes!”

     "And Diana was a blonde," Jack said with emphasis, “root and branch.”

     Amie was too engrossed in her own thoughts to notice his observation. "The other thing is he's been spending a lot of time in Macao at the casinos. I can't say if he went haywire but something about Macao attracted him."

     "Speculate," he suggested.

     "I don't need to. There was a woman over there. I know – from my cousin who works at a casino in Macao. If you want, I’ll ask him if he can throw any more light on the situation.”

     “That would be good. I need all the help I can get, even if it is a long shot.”

     Their attention was suddenly drawn to a commotion. In stark contrast to the pageantry, an army of youths, chanting loudly, their fists in the air, occupied the arena in front of the temple. Two factions confronted each other. Amie nudged Jack.  "Their T shirts!" she said quietly.

     "What about them?"

     "Those are Wo Shing Wo,” she pointed at one group, "and the others are 14K."

     It is a criminal offence in Hong Kong to proclaim yourself a member of the Triads yet these youths were doing it brazenly. Their features were hidden from prying cameras by face paint but their actions otherwise were not covert. Jack was fascinated until one of the youths in the 14K faction looked directly at him, then at Amie. The youth walked towards them. He pointed at Jack.  “You!” he shouted.

     Caught in that momentary indecision of wanting to stand up to the thug, yet knowing it was better not to, foolishly he returned the challenge. “Me?” he replied pointing at his chest. “Had your eyeful?” They squared up to each other. The Triad started to curse him in Cantonese. A number of his comrades joined in, all of one mind, pointing aggressively, chanting their weird war cries.

     Amie was full of good advice. “Run!" she said as the Triad grabbed Jack’s coat. Instead of resisting he went with the flow, following through with his head. It smashed into the Triad’s face like a bullet. Athletically he turned a backwards somersault, landing ten feet away. Amie grabbed Jack’s arm and dragged him away. The unevenly eroded steps up to the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas presented a daunting means of escape but the mob’s pursuit was hampered by the Wo Shing Wo faction as the two rival groups hacked at each other. The 14K struggled to get to the steps; then a vanguard broke through in hot pursuit. Amie hurried Jack on, "Don't stop! Don't look back!"  They got to the top of the steps. The mob was at least twenty strong. God only knew what the carnage was like down in the square.

     Cresting the rise, they reached the road down to the harbour, descending at a fast trot. As they rounded the first bend a pursuer detached himself from the top of the steps and, with a blood-curdling yell, signalled to his friends. With no cover on the steep-sided, stone-banked road, he looked back from the next hairpin: the mob was gaining; things looked bleak. Then a Public Light Bus came hurtling round the bend. Amie waved it down. The gangsters were only fifty yards behind; they speeded up as the fugitives boarded the bus. The driver started off laconically, belying the breakneck speed of his approach until grinning effigies of ghosts surrounded the bus, their meat choppers beating its sides. The driver braked only for Amie to shout out, "Don't stop!" Others on board took up her cry. One of the ghosts slashed at a tyre; the bus flung another to one side as its engine revved. It hurtled down to the next hairpin bend, the mob shouting in fury; the driver had got the message.

     “It’s just like back home,” Jack joked as they arrived back at his hotel without further mishap, “typical Friday down the Bigg Market.”

     Amie looked grim, “You don’t think that was coincidence, do you?”

     Surprised by that, he said, “You’ve changed your tune. Don’t you?”

     “No, of course not. Two attacks in a night! Someone doesn’t want you here.”

     “You mean someone’s sending me a message?” Wasn’t Ma supposed to be taking care of this business?  But he had said it would take a couple of days; he had probably intended that Jack should stay indoors until then, get over the jet lag perhaps. In any event they didn’t have time for more because the Indian doorman flagged down a taxi for her and stood now with the door open. Jack leaned forward to peck her cheek.  He was momentarily undone by her perfume, the type that goes directly for the groin. 

     “I don’t have to go quite yet,” she whispered to him. “Don’t you want to know how we get rid of the ghosts?”

     He didn’t know how he’d got so lucky and she wasn’t going through the motions either. He had seen ample evidence of her physicality and now the violence was replaced by passion. Her body wasn’t just firm, it was hard. She was either totally transported or an actress fit for any stage and, whichever of the two was true, the reward for Jack was immense. Eventually it came to an end when she told him she had to go home and climbed off him wetly.

     “Why? You can stay the night!”

     She was pulling on her knickers as she spoke and she leant over and kissed his lips, her breasts brushing his chest but he was too sated with sex to do anything. “No, I must go,” she replied. “I have things to do, people to call, including my cousin Lam. I need my beauty sleep. I need my own space.” All the other reasons he might have been able to argue with but he understood fully what she meant by that last remark and, in a way, he felt the same. The two of them had exploded across each other like tracer fire from opposite camps. There had to be a lull.

     Later, he was dreaming of her and he didn’t know how long he’d slept or what made him come to with such a start but he became aware of a disturbance, and then he saw, in the pale light reflected from the mirror, a figure rifling through the cabinet drawers. He shouted but it came out like a croak, stifled by the struggle to reach full consciousness. The figure turned and stared at him, its dark eyes visible through a painted mask so terrifying it made Jack jump back. The figure crouched; yellow fangs snarled; then it leapt at him. Strong arms reached for his neck. He brought his knee up beneath the quilt; the intruder grunted. He grappled momentarily with a sleek, muscular body until, with a growl, the intruder threw him back on the bed and leapt astride him, holding him down. He yelled out as the pillow came over his face; his senses were slipping. His groping hand caught the bedside lamp and brought it crashing down on his assailant’s temple. He felt the instant weakening of the figure’s grip and with a superhuman effort he threw the weight off him. He tried to get a grip of the slippery, snake-like body as it staggered towards the door. Jack’s feet got caught in the quilt. He hobbled towards the corridor as the door swung open. The intruder had disappeared by the time he reached it. He called the management but a search of the hotel found nothing. He got the impression they thought he’d drunk too much and had a bad dream. He didn’t think it would help to say three attacks in one night.

CHAPTER 4

     Later the next day he told Amie of his midnight encounter and she was shocked. “Maybe it’s because Mr. Ma’s message hadn’t got through. I think it will be okay, though. I think it will settle down. I am sure everyone who needs to know will soon.” He hoped she was right but they made contingency plans anyway, including the move into Gerry’s apartment. This seemed to fool the enemy because he had two days undisturbed to get over his jet lag and no one knew where he was. The typhoon had disappeared back into the South China Sea; the southern tip of China was enjoying a ridge of high pressure for a change. He felt confident enough in his anonymity to start walking down on the sea shore, enjoying the warmth of the water on his bare feet. He bought swimming shorts for a daily swim inshore out of reach of the jet skis off Repulse Bay.

     “I could get used to this,” he told Amie who was cuddling up against him on the Friday night. They were watching the English Channel on the television before getting in a takeaway from one of the bay’s famous restaurants.

     No one disturbed them until Graham rang his mobile. “Who was that?” she asked. When he told her she added, “Wow! You’re well connected. Mr. Ma and now the Assistant-Commissioner! What did he want?”

     “A trip to the islands tomorrow?”

     “Are you going?”

     “Might as well.” She pouted a little as if he was interfering with her plans but he couldn’t let himself be distracted. “Just for a catch up, like the old days. Maybe he has news of Gerry?”

      “Maybe,” she replied, but she didn’t look convinced. He sat down next to her, moving her body back slightly to make room for himself and then he leaned over to kiss her. Her body rose immediately to meet his, as if there were wind beneath it.

      The next day he met Graham at the Government Pier and they took the ferry to Lantau, sitting at the stern of the boat, watching the wash churned up by the screws. The slow ferry made a welcome change from the hurly burly of the city and they could sit outside so Graham could light up his pipe, puffing contentedly in the sunlight. They picked up passengers at Cheung Chau and continued on their leisurely way, docking an hour later in Silvermine Bay. Breakfast of noodles and the local seafood at the cooked food market provided fuel for the forthcoming hike. The plan was to take the footpath up Sunset Peak and boulder on the outcrops. Assuming they reached their first destination they would head over the mountain to the monastery at Wun Yam Temple and then back down to Tai O for the return ferry from that end of the island. Graham had been Jack’s regular climbing partner back in the old days but it was pure leisure climbing, low level stuff. If he had wanted something more testing, Jack had gone off to Trango or the sea cliffs of Thailand.

     The Assistant-Commissioner’s girth suggested that now even the moderate stuff might be beyond him but he proved to be an energetic walker, putting up a fierce pace as they tackled the steep inclines before the humidity got up. Most tourists would either end up north towards the Trappist monastery and Discovery Bay or south down to the Chi Ma Wan peninsula along the Lantau trail. Hiking up the peak wasn't easy. They paused for breath after a mile or so and Jack spotted something. He nudged Graham and pointed out lights flashing on the rocks below, “Someone’s using binoculars,” Graham said. “Trained on us?” He looked at Jack as if seeking an explanation, which seemed incongruous. The feeling he’d had of safety over the last few days was fast disappearing but surely not even the Triads would try something when he was with the Assistant-Commissioner?

     Determined to get to the bottom of it, they abandoned their push for the top and went down towards Chi Ma Wan, heading straight for the outcrop of rocks from which the flashes had come, only to find their observers had struck camp. Continuing down to the Shek Pik reservoir they picked up the Lantau trail and struck inland towards Po Lin. Reaching the temple, they tagged on to the back of a conducted tour. In the main hall of the monastery a group of three statues of the Buddha stood three or four metres high.  The main temple, painted in brilliant, gaudy colours, was Indian, reminding the visitor of the origins of the Buddha and that it was in fact Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen, who introduced the religion to China. They followed the sightseers up to the tea gardens. The sensation of suspended reality was heightened as saffron-robed monks roller-skated towards them. Jack was about to tug Graham’s sleeve to draw his attention to the scene when one of the monks detached himself from his colleagues and hurtled towards them. His movement revealed something dark concealed in the folds of his robe. Graham dived and knocked Jack sprawling on to the steps. The tea garden customers turned round in consternation. The monk opened fire. Bullets ricocheted off the stone terrace as tourists ran for cover. “Struth, mate, they’re really after you!” Graham yelled.

     Jack lurched after him down the path to Tai O. They ran through the rice terraces over terrain which would defeat the best blader and left their pursuers well behind before they reached the harbour. Too early for the boat, they hung about in a bar close to the pier watching everyone who went aboard. Only when the ferry was about to cast off did they break cover, running on to the dock before anyone could stop them. The boat was already revving, the big sidescrews ready to push it outwards. The harbourmaster shouted. A screech of tyres behind them made Jack stop and look back. Three dark clad men climbed out of a Mercedes. They nearly sent the harbourmaster spinning as they ran past him. Jack’s momentary pause meant that Graham was first there and he leapt into the air clutching hold of the boat’s back rail as he landed. Jack hurtled along the quay a few yards behind. “Come on, Jack!” Graham yelled, holding out a perfunctory hand. Jack took off from the quay as the boat went into forward gear and began to surge towards the open sea. He seemed to be an age in the air and he came crashing down on the other side, missing the top rail of the stern but catching hold of the middle one.

     He hung there one-handed for a few moments and then Graham leaned over and pulled him up, his heart pounding. The three Triads from the car had made it to the quay and they stood in shades and dark suits, watching the ferry disappear. Two blue-clad sailors rushed on to the aft deck and approached them in consternation. “Leave this to me,” Graham said. He was taking out his ICAC badge as they mounted the bridge, flanked by the seamen. The skipper took one look at the badge and thought better of what he had been about to say.  Full of excessively effusive praise for their acrobatics, he let them go but not before Graham had him wire Hong Kong, “Otherwise those guys will disappear into thin air,” he said.

     The sun was going down in the west as they sat on the back of the ferry, exhausted by the day’s events, full glasses of San Mig in their hands, Graham puffing away on his pipe as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Curiouser and curiouser, Jack thought. Then their attention was caught by some activity at the stern where a crowd of passengers had gathered. A motor launch came up alongside; the three men from Tai O stood in the cockpit, scanning the boat. Seeing the two Europeans, one of them raised a leather-gloved fist in the air.  The launch arc’ed behind the ferry and ran along the starboard side.  It tracked them all the way to their pier, then turned towards the typhoon shelter at Causeway Bay.  What exactly was it that everyone thought Gerry Montrose had left with him? The three men were still staring back at the ferry as the launch pulled away. It occurred to him a short while later that they could have been policemen. He didn’t know what made him think that but maybe it was Graham’s apparent insouciance, the attitude which had struck him as strange on the boat. The men looked like Triad hoodlums but that means nothing. Back home the plain-clothes coppers often looked like criminals. If you got them in a line up and dressed them all in shell suits it would be hard to tell which was which.

    It was about 7 o‘clock that evening in the middle of a short doze that he received the phone call. "Is this Mr. Jack?" the voice said in effusive tones.

     "Who is this?"

     "Ha," he replied, "my good friend Mr. Ma ask me speak with you. He give me your number. He say you need help. He explain whole story to me."

     Jack struggled upright. "Can you help?"

     "I help in more way than you think. What about your friend, for instance, Mr. Montro? He my friend too. He help me big time." He paused to let that sink in.

     “How did he help you?”

     “He prove police conspiracy.”

     So that's who you are, Jack thought, the ubiquitous K.K. Chow.  He was instantly on his guard. This man was a well-known underworld figure and this was Ma’s way of getting things done? No half measures. Yesterday's experience had demonstrated that it wasn’t a moment too soon. K.K. Chow might be a notorious Triad boss but he was taking care of the business personally. "Do you know where Gerry is?" Jack asked, rubbing his eyes.

     "You been told already," K.K. Chow replied, "he in Manila. He take long leave. He deserve. He go see Filipina girls, eh?" Jack was getting used to Gerry's elusiveness but the suggestion that his absence had been agreed with a gangster didn't ring true. He had no time to express his thoughts because K.K. Chow chuckled again.  "I like you meet me.”

     “Okay.”

     "Tonight, at Club Volvo." He pronounced Volvo like Wo wo. "Why don't you bring that nice young lady with you?  You know?  The one who work in Mr Montro's office? And perhaps you like bring Mr. Witherspoon?  It is long time since I make his acquaintance." Great, Jack thought, the main man of the ICAC would really thank him for an introduction to one of Hong Kong's biggest racketeers, whom he probably knew all too well anyway, albeit in a different context. Meanwhile, Chow prattled on, demonstrating his knowledge of English. He was one of the new model Triads, the designer-suits-and Mercedes-car crew, well-educated, suave, as familiar with the stock market as the heroin trade. "Shall we say nine o'clock then?  No, make it ten.  You have extra time.  Give Miss Chow time get ready."

     “How do you know about her?” He was talking to a dial tone as the caller rang off. Jack called Amie. "I thought you’d be out.”

     “No, quiet night. I thought you were too busy playing policeman!” He laughed at her teasing. “Why? Do you have something in mind? As if I couldn’t guess!” She paused a moment and then added, “Jack, you know I’ve been thinking and I think we should cool it.”

     “Hey,” he replied, his head not round that yet, “I was only going to ask if you’re up for going out around tennish?"

     “Oh, okay. Yes. Could do. Make me an offer! What do you have in mind?” He told her of K.K. Chow 's invitation. “Wow! The Club Volvo?" she said, "we are honoured.  It is very expensive."

     "I rather get the impression we don't have to bother about the tab with your namesake there.”

     “No, I shouldn’t think so. I wonder what he’s got up his sleeve?”

     Amie arrived that evening, looking absolutely stupendous in a white skirt, short but not overdone. "You look great," he told her and, secretly, he was thinking of how he was going to remove each of those garments later but he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t forgotten her earlier remark. He’d have to get to the bottom of that first. Instead, they had a quick hug in which she appeared to stand off him a little and then they acted as if nothing was different and swapped news as they went down in the lift. Amie’s cousin hadn’t called back yet. “There may be no point in bothering him,” Jack said, “Chow says Gerry’s definitely in the Philippines.”

     Amie thought that settled it, “K.K. Chow knows everything!”

     They took the Star Ferry to their appointment in Tsimshatsui. Darkness had already fallen but the outline of the Lion Rock and the glittering lights of Kowloon below made for a stupendous sight in the twilight. When they reached the Club Volvo the evening’s surprises were only just beginning. First, the club itself was massive, well over 50,000 square feet, and so lavishly decorated that Jack gasped as he entered. They climbed into an antique Rolls Royce, which drove them to their ‘personal relaxation zone’.  It glided down a long, glass-smooth boardwalk, a replica of the brightly-lit main streets of Kowloon.  Lasers washed the dance floors; dozens of hostesses attended to the wishes of customers in nooks and crannies stretching as far as the eye could see.  Specially chosen for their looks and of all nationalities, the girls were uniformly dressed in traditional split-to-the-thigh Cheong-sams and supervised by walkie-talkie carrying Mama-Sans.  Managers for each sector carried pagers with digital codes corresponding to any customer’s request. The waitresses, dressed in black bow ties and tails, kneeled at tables to serve drinks and snacks.  As soon as a customer lifted a cigarette a girl was at his side, lighter poised. A segregated area had been reserved for Japanese visitors. It was quiet and Zen-like in the midst of all this hurly-burly. Nothing was left to chance.