The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (35 page)

CHAPTER 9

     Or could it? He had one piece of business left and it wasn’t to look at that note Graham had given him. That was the last thing he wanted to do even though it was burning a hole in his pocket and his brain. The bit of business was Amie’s resurrection and he tried on spec telephoning her old apartment. He was surprised when her lilting tones came on the phone with their transatlantic English accent. Indeed he was so stunned that he hung on the end of the line a moment and even thought about not speaking, just letting it lie there, but at last he plucked up the courage just as a note of concern crept into her voice. “Hi, Amie, it‘s Jack.”

     “Jack! So good to hear from you!” She sounded genuinely happy he’d rung. As if he was someone she hadn’t seen for some time and was looking forward to catching up.

      The recent past wasn‘t that easy for him to forget. “I thought…. I thought…”

      “I know,” she replied, “it was essential. I am sorry we had to fool you like that and in such a terrible way. My cousin Lam is also very displeased.”

     “I’m not surprised, but, look, I wasn’t totally fooled. When you dealt with those two thugs I knew you were something special and I saw over in your flat those photos of me in Northumberland so I knew you were involved then and I never felt you were on the other side. I always knew you were there for me.”

     “Thanks. I’m glad you saw through that. I don’t know why I should care but I do.”

     “But…”

     “But…?”

     “I saw you in the water. In the bath.”

      “No,” she replied, “you thought you did. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone. It was just a dummy, like a film dummy. They can do incredible things with special effects nowadays.”

    “Tell me about it,” There was a mixture of relief and resentment in his voice.

      “Don’t take it too personally, Jack,” she replied, “it was a job I was engaged in before I met you and I couldn’t just abandon it. I couldn’t tell you either because no one was sure of what you already knew and what your agenda was. I wanted to because I saw I could trust you but it just wasn’t possible. I am sure you have been in similar situations because of professional commitments?”

      Of course he had and the young woman’s perspicacity put him momentarily to shame. “I’m sorry,” he replied, “I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just I was totally shocked. I was devastated.”

      “Why? Did you think we had something going?”

      “Well, we did, didn’t we, after a fashion?”

      Her voice now had an amused edge. “The time of mourning didn’t last long,” she replied, “you were soon off with the old love and on with the new.”

     Whoa! That bit. “That’s not entirely fair,” he replied and couldn’t help but notice the whingeing tone which had entered his voice, “I presume you are talking about Diana. We were thrown together, she and I. It didn’t just happen like that. We shared a couple of adventures and….”

    “Your romantic inclination took over?” She gave her lilting laugh and he was truly delighted to hear it again.

     “Is it that obvious?”

     “That need in you? Yes, it is.”

     “Oh dear. Diana said something similar about me. And Graham Witherspoon, he implied I was a mug and at the end of the day she’d treat me like one.”

     “She will.”

     “How do you mean?” He was suddenly alarmed.

     “He would know better than most.”

     “How come?”

     “Are you at Gerry’s flat?”

     “No. The Mandarin.”

     “Stay there. I’ll come over. Give me half an hour. Room number?”

     He gave it to her and she rang off. He lay back on the double bed and wondered what that was all about. He would be very pleased to see her but what was the urgency? And how had she been so sure that Diana wasn’t the right person for him?” He had a sudden feeling of trepidation. It wasn’t the first time on this trip he’d felt this way.

     She was as always punctual and his first reaction on seeing her was to hug her and hold her close, enjoying the fragrance of her perfume and the softness of her skin, until she felt the need to break away from his embrace. She became business-like. “Tell me what Graham told you,” she said.

    “He didn’t really say much. He just gave me this.” He handed over the piece of paper, “It’s a room at the Park.”

     She looked as if she was struggling with something and then it was all resolved, “It’s none of my business, I know, but you should check it out.”

     “Why? What’s the big secret?”

     “How long ago did he tell you?”

     “About an hour.”

     “I think you should go now or it may be too late.”

     “Too late for what?”

     “Too late to make an informed decision about your future.”

     “Wow!” he hadn’t expected that. He made a snap decision to do as she said. He trusted her, more, when he thought about it, than he trusted Di, the woman he was about to marry. “Will you come with me?”

     “Of course I will. Only don’t ask me any questions until you have judged for yourself.”

     He held put his hands, “Whatever you say.”

     It took about ten minutes to get a cab up to the Park and they took the lift up to the twentieth floor crammed in with a group of tourists. He had this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach which seemed to run in inverse proportion to the rapid rise of the machinery. When they finally reached their exit floor they roamed the corridors until they came to the room. Sure enough it was one of the special suites and had a key code on the lock. “That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it, in a hotel?”

     “It’s an unusual room. More a kind of apartment.”

    “I feel I should knock.”

     “You can if you wish but I think you’d be best off just going in.”

     “It’s trespassing.”

     “Sure it is,” She took out her RHKP card with the insignia of the Anti-Triad Squad, “unless we use this in which case we can go anywhere we want.”

     “Okay.” He did her bidding and tapped in the numbers. The door opened into a corridor at the other end of which was a suite of rooms. There was no one in the living room and kitchen so they crept soundlessly across the plushly carpeted floor until they came to the master bedroom. He looked at Amie in consternation and she looked back at him. She leant forward and whispered. “Your call. Do this or walk away and never think of it again.”

     The latter was impossible so he reached forward and opened the door which was slightly ajar. Sprawled out in the bed, both fast asleep, and the covers only half-covering them as if they had been thrown off in a flurry of activity, were the naked bodies of Diana and a man. Their intimacy was obvious from the way his thigh crossed her loins in that most proprietorial of ways as if he was staking his claim to her or at least to her body. Jack had gone to sleep with her like that, immediately after making love, and it would resume as soon as one awoke the other, except on the next occasion it would not be him. The contrast in colour between the man’s chocolate black and the rosy hue of her white skin somehow enhanced the impression of their total immersion in each other.

     It was tempting to walk in on this scene of conjugal bliss and have his say, as it were in triumph, although in fact it was a scene indicative of the greatest defeat a man could suffer. Wisely, perhaps, he shrank from this and turned and slunk away towards the corridor. Amie shut it behind her as she followed him out. Neither of them spoke as they trudged down the corridor towards the lift. They stood in silence while it seemed to take an age to arrive and he had this terrible fear that Diana and her lover would come out of the room any moment and join them here waiting for the lift. It was irrational, not only because of the deep, romantic sleep in which he had left them and from which it had seemed that neither had wanted to awake but also because he felt like the intruder here, the one behaving badly, the one doing the wrong.

      The lift finally came and they exited on the ground floor and made their way to the front door. Instead of getting a taxi straightaway he pointed ahead towards the trees on the opposite side and they crossed the road to Victoria Park, walking towards North Point. “Did you know that guy?” he asked her, breaking the silence at last.

     “Oh yeah. He’s quite well known to us. He’s an undercover guy for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Special assignment in South East Asia.”

     He nodded. “American?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Graham knew I’d find them like that, in flagrante?”

     “I guess so.”

     “Hmm. I got the impression she didn’t like Graham. Told me not to trust him. I guess she was right.”

     “She was. And I don’t think she was lacking in feeling for you.”

     He laughed, “Seems not! Just got another lover splayed across her limbs.”

     “Yeah, I know how it must hurt. But you have to understand they’ve been an item for a long time. That’s all I can say. She worked for Graham.”

    “Really?”

     “She never told you that?”

     “Among other omissions.”

     “Lionel, that’s the DEA guy, had regular contact with Anti-Corruption because of their involvement with Triads.”

     “Oh, a cosy cartel was it?” He couldn’t hide the cynicism.

     She was silent a while as if wrestling with something and then she came out with it. “There’s a couple of things you ought to know. She was married to Gerry?”

     “What?”

     “Yeah. They were married. They weren’t together any more but they weren’t divorced either.”

     He breathed out audibly. That explained why she was so animated when she’d believed Gerry was going to remarry in Vladivostok. She’d intended to expose not congratulate him. She was going to stick the knife in. She never forgave and she never forgot. “What was her relationship with Graham? Was there a personal one?”

     “A woman like her has many lovers.”

     He laughed at the slightly oblique answer and shook his head in the way only someone can who feels he has made a mug of himself. “Why not? She told me she’d probably screwed about every big hitter on the island.”

     “She has a reputation as something of a man eater.”

     Somehow, the tigress image suited. “Yeah. Look at me,” he held out an arm, “chewed all over.” He winced as he thought about the tenderness of her touch and how it was often the igniter of fierce passion.

     “And that didn’t bother you?”

     “Well now you mention it, I’d never thought about it really. She was over twenty one and I couldn’t act as if she had been waiting round for me to return. I just got carried away with the way things were with her. It would have been a problem when I was younger, sure, but not so much now. If it was in the past. Obviously it wasn’t.”

     “Maybe it was her last fling at freedom? You know, like a man’s stag night?”

    He looked her straight in the eye noticing for the first time the sadness in her brown ones. “I don’t think you believe that for a moment. Even if it were true, would it make any difference?”

    Her eyes lowered, “No, I guess not. I was just conjecturing that it might have started out like that. Then they got drunk and before they knew it…. Anyway, what do you want to do now?”