The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (36 page)

     “Nothing for it, girl, but to go home, tail between the legs.”

     “I am so sorry, Jack.”

     “Yeah, you were right, though, that I had to see it for myself, as I doubt I would have believed it from anyone else. Maybe I would from you but you wouldn’t tell me, would you?”

    “No. It was all right to show you but I don’t think I could have told you all that. You would always have doubted.”

     “What I don’t get is why would Graham have the code?”

     “The ICAC keeps a regular room there. That’s why it’s a key code instead of a swipe key. He’ll have used the room many times.”

     “What as? A safe house?”

     “Sometimes maybe but it’s handy having a secure pad in the city, don’t you think? You can get up to all sorts of covert activities? Generally they house out-of-town agents there.”

     “Pretty well known to Diana then?”

     “I’m afraid so. The party girl.”

     They walked a little way in silence. “You know,” he said, “it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for that subterfuge about your being dead. I never would have gone with her while I was with you.”

     “Oh, come on, you had history!” Even though she denied it, she was affected, the blush showing pink on her ivory white cheeks.

    “No, I mean it. She came round to see me the night after we went to K.K. Chow’s and she offered me it on a plate but I turned her down. Threw her out!” He smiled at the recollection. “I met up with her on the rebound after I lost you. I don’t think it would have happened otherwise.”

     She smiled shyly, “I don’t think you were really with me, Jack. You know, in a place like this it’s very hard to make mixed race relationships work. There is a lot of history attached to that too. What was de rigueur once was really just an extension of a master and servant relationship. There are very few Chinese women happily married to Europeans.”

     “Same everywhere. But I did sense that reluctance in you. It was all right when it was a bit of fun but you backed off when I started acting as if it was serious.”

     “Which I’m guessing you always do.”

     He nodded, a glum look on his face, “Yeah, but I’m trying to lighten up. I‘m working on it.”

     “Maybe there’s hope for you yet then!”

     “I’d like to think so. I’d like you to come across and visit me in England. Take a proper look round, not like last time.” His voice faltered slightly as he spoke. “I’m not coming on to you. I’m pretty numb with what’s happened and even if I was with Di I would say the same. Come and visit me. We can still be friends.”

     “I’d like that too. What about her? Do you think you could still be friends with her? Accept her for what she is?”

      “Well, only time will tell. The rational side of me says, what is she? Just a girl who behaves like blokes usually do. It’s no big deal when blokes do it but she’s a whore because she’s a woman? No, no matter how hurt I feel, I can’t buy that. Sure, I think I could be friends with her. It will take a long time, though. I certainly don’t hate her. We went through too much together.”

    “I have a feeling that she is going to come to understand that she has lost a lot more than you have.”

     “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she’s the one who’s had a lucky escape.”

     She linked arms with him then and they continued along the path past the tennis courts and the boys playing football and basketball. To their right the hills of Victoria Peak and Jardine’s Lookout towered above them, the lower slopes bedecked with hotels and high rise apartment blocks. They were heading towards the metro station at Tin Hau temple at the north end of the park and Jack suddenly felt relieved, as if a great burden had been lifted from him. What’s that about? he thought but it was obvious really that his intended change in marital status had been weighing heavily on him, too. He wouldn’t be Jack the lad anymore and did he ever see Diana settling down into his life back in England? The more he thought about it the more ridiculous it sounded and, although he’d rather have had a talk about it and a friendly break with her, it was maybe best it had happened this way so that he at least would not feel any regrets. What about her? What would she feel if he just wrote her a Dear John and said he’d gone back home? He guessed she’d stamp her feet because secretly she wanted and thought she could have it all but then she’d be mightily relieved too and she’d just get on with her life the way she always had in the last decade before he had walked back into it without so much as a by your leave. He thought about the first time he’d seen her in the Club Volvo when she was playing the role of the main man’s lady but really she was undercover for the ICAC Commissioner and he couldn’t but smile at the thought because that demonstrated her courage, something he‘d seen at close quarters for himself. He couldn’t actually be angry with her for very long simply because she was such a vital woman, simply because she was such a character.

    “Fear no more the heat of the sun, nor the furious winter’s rages. Thou thy worldly task hast done. Home art gone and taken thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust,” he recited the song from Cymbeline aloud as he went along and Amie, still holding on to his arm for dear life, looked up at him with a bright smile on her face as if she at least knew the old Jack was in there somewhere.

CHAPTER 10

     It was odd, he thought, once back at the Mandarin and furiously packing to catch the evening flight, that he and Amie had gelled like that because she’d never actually known the old Jack. She was right, though. He’d left home uncertain about his future and not merely from the threat he had faced as a result of helping Gerry but also because of the stasis in his own life. Now he had come and confronted his foes, faced many perils, braved many adventures. He hadn’t been in time to save his friend, in fact he’d never had a chance. And at the same time he had loved and lost. It didn’t sound good but inside he felt alive again, as if the stasis was back on the move, sliding down the mountain like a glacier. He thought of Amie holding on to his arm and he wondered what the future might have held for them. No one would believe they couldn’t make it work. What had he been doing with Diana? That was a crazy notion. It could never have worked. Was he that desperate that he’d give anything a chance? If he had been, at least that had changed now. That was all part of the stasis. Now he was his own man again.

    Or was he? Was it that simple? He stopped off at the desk and checked out, ordered a place on the hotel bus bound for Kai Tak and sat waiting in the foyer. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he just get a taxi and move on? Was he clinging on to the idea that Diana might arrive while he waited? If she did, he wondered if he’d speak to her before she went upstairs and tried the lock only to find it wouldn’t work. He decided a trifle maliciously that, if she didn’t see him, he wouldn’t speak; he’d let her find out for herself that her gear was with the concierge. Why hadn’t he just got a taxi and high-tailed it out of there?  Did he for some reason want that last meeting?

     The bus came before he found out and he boarded it looking back over his shoulder to see if she arrived. The way he’d last seen her, though, it was unlikely she’d be rushing back. She’d looked like a woman satisfied with her life and he had to admit it was exactly that carefree attitude, that sense of the freedom to do as she willed, which had attracted him to her in the first place. That and her sensuality, which, Amie had implied, was something closer to nymphomania, a condition in which Jack did not believe except as the product of a fevered male imagination. Anyway it was over now. He imagined the look on her face when she found she’d been dumped and she’d have no idea why except for a guilty conscience, if she possessed such a thing. At least that made him smile. Either way she wouldn’t be best pleased, whether it was about being found out or him voting with his feet.

     When he reached the airport he didn’t go straight through to the Departures Lounge but stayed out on the arrivals concourse. He had plenty of time before the plane took off but there was no reason why he should have a coffee out here rather than through there. Once he was through there it was final. No going back. Was he hoping still that she might appear, that they might have their say? He bought a newspaper and sat down at a café. He became engrossed in the story about the capture of triads plotting against the government and chuckled when he read how Sir Clifford was accepting all the plaudits. He wasn’t mentioned, which was just as well. It was Peter’s gang-from-Moscow trick again. He didn’t want that kind of limelight. He didn’t know how long he’d been reading when he heard the soft voice, “Thought I might find you here, Jack. I never really believed you’d go without saying goodbye.”

     He looked up from the newsprint and, even though he’d been half-expecting this moment, wishing it on himself, perhaps, he gave a little start. She sat down opposite him, not a blond hair out of place, as if she’d just come from some business meeting rather than from another man’s wrecked bed. He recovered his composure swiftly and folded up the newspaper, “Well, it’s goodbye from me, then,” he said. He made something of a performance of putting the paper in his bag, first of all undoing all its catches and then clicking them shut, laboriously resetting the codes. All this time neither of them spoke.

     She leaned across the table then and put her hand on his wrist. He noticed the perfect half-moons of the cuticles and wondered how she’d kept them like that through all the trials and tribulations of their Russian excursion and that made him yearn suddenly for their time together all over again. “What is it, Jack? Cold feet? You don’t really love me? What?”

     He stood up as if to go and just then his plane was called, “You ask me that?”

     “Yes. I think I have at least earned that right. You proposed to me and I accepted, remember?”

     “Like Gerry did?”

     She didn’t flinch, “So you know about that? Okay, well I was going to tell you.”

     “Oh really? When?”

     “Look, I have made the mistake of accepting a proposal twice before but I didn’t think it was a mistake in your case.”

     “Oh well, welcome to the real world of disappointed expectations.” He grabbed his bag and began to walk towards Departures.

    She wasn’t accepting that as an explanation, though, and she got up and followed him. “Look, that’s not the problem. You know that. It’s something else. You want to tell me, don’t you? You waited here for me. You knew I’d come when I found you’d left the hotel. You telegraphed the fact you were coming here and it wasn’t hard to find the next available flight to somewhere you could get a connection. What is this is about? Why not stop fooling yourself and playing these stupid mind games? I am not one of your chess opponents. There’s nothing to hide. You can be up front with me.”

     He stopped in mid-progress and looked at her. “Nothing to hide? Park Hotel mean anything to you?” He asked it airily, knowing that would floor her, would bring home to roost her worst suspicions. Then, equally airily, satisfied that he’d dealt the coup de grace, he resumed his stride towards the gate.

“Of course, it does,” she said, momentarily interrupting her stride but then picking it up and following him again, “but what about it?”

     He was slightly nonplussed by the lack of guardedness in her voice as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. She was a cool customer, this one, so used to lying she didn’t even know herself when she was doing it. She’d just deny, deny, deny until the cows came home. “The Tictac room? That mean anything to you.”

    “Yes, I know it well. The ICAC keeps a security room there, so what?”

     “You ever used it?” The gate was drawing closer.

     “Yes.”

     He shook his head with disgust, “Last time you were there?”

     “Let me think. It was before we went away, certainly.”

     “Oh yeah? What about today?” The gate loomed up ahead now.

     “Today? I haven’t been near the place today.”

     They reached the gate. He turned and faced her, “You know a DEA agent called Lionel?” He was waiting to see the blush but of course she didn’t do blushes. She was far too cool for that.

     “Yeah, course I do. Mate of Graham Witherspoon’s. Friend of mine too.”

     “Another of your lovers?”

     “Which one?” This time she flinched a little.

     “Ha! Yeah, you see. Now you stop playing mind games, lady!”

     She held out her hands, a despairing look on her face. “Jack,” she replied, “I thought we’d been through all this. Sure I’ve done some things I’m not too happy about now but I thought we had got over that. The Gerry thing, okay. I missed that out but it’s hardly a crime, is it? Otherwise I’ve always been honest with you about my past. That‘s where it is. I thought we agreed we‘d leave it there.”

     He was already moving down the aisle towards the gate and she couldn’t follow him now, not without being arrested. He turned like a stag at bay. “Liar!” he said, “I saw you today in that room, with that guy, in bed, naked, asleep.” There it was, out now. Nowhere for her to hide.

     And she did look astonished, “You saw me? How did you do that?”

     “What does it matter? I saw you with my own eyes. Witherspoon gave me the code.” He shook his head and turned away. He was almost gone but he was moving slowly, his ear attuned to any response. This time it took a while to come.

     “Jack,” she called, “I accept you must have seen something….”

     “Something! That’s rich!”

     “Okay, someone with Lionel.”

     “Good,” He turned and looked back at her one last time.

     “But it wasn’t me.”

     That brought him up short. He had no response to it. He stood there dumbstruck, just staring at her, running through the scene in his head. What had he seen? A blond in a bed with a man. Had he seen her face? No, he couldn’t swear he had. By the time he’d got up there he’d known the worst case scenario and he’d already half-accepted it. Could it have been the power of suggestion? It was an attractive argument, a shock move even, but it wasn’t quite good enough. Not yet anyway. “Why would they want to fool me?” he asked.

     “They?”

     “Graham….”

     “Hmm. He might want to teach you a lesson. Or it may be about me. Maybe he doesn‘t want me to leave?” She cocked her head to one side. She wasn’t going to spell it out but Amie already had.

     “And Amie.”

     “Ah,” She shrugged, both hands open to the heavens. “I don’t know,” she replied, “that may be more about you. But it wasn’t me you saw in that bed. Doesn’t that make a difference?”

     He breathed out deeply. Of course it did but could he trust her? Wasn’t that the crux of his problem? He just never knew where he was with her. What if she was fooling him again right now? Why would Graham set him up like that if it wasn’t true? Why would Amie? How he wished he‘d gone for that moment of confrontation in the room, the one he’d shrunk from in such cowardly fashion because he’d felt like the intruder. He made a snap decision. “Have you got your passport?”

     “Why?”

     “You’ve just got time to get a ticket for this plane.”

     “No, of course I haven’t. It’s in my bag back at the hotel.”

     He nodded. That was right. He’d put it there himself. “Okay,” he replied, “I’m going now. Got a flight to catch.”

     “Okay. If you must,” He was astonished that she looked so forlorn.

     “If you’re on the next plane, then I guess I’ll know I have a partner. If you’re not, then I guess I’ll know I don’t.”

     He took a step towards her and kissed her gently on the lips then he picked up his bag and strode through the gate. He didn’t look back.

DON’T FORGET

NOT GUILTY NOT INNOCENT
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Not Guilty Not innocent is the
brand new
thriller by this author and a co-author.

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Teaser:

Valda is on trial for murder and it’s the biggest scandal since Profumo.
 
Murdered singer Renee Porter is the link between a Russian oligarch and a key political player - what she knew was dynamite. Can Valda work out what it is before she pays the ultimate price? 
Lawyer Jack Lauder is in Belfast dealing with the case of a young well-heeled Russian woman at the special request of up and coming Labour MP Dustin Stanhope acting on behalf of his ‘friend’ oligarch, Oleg Lagunov. 
Valda and her band, The G-String Girls, are performing in Belfast as part of a UK tour. Was it the hand of fate that led her to Jack that night or does she have another agenda? Can Jack ever be entirely sure that Stanhope wasn’t behind this coincidence? Although he does not yet know it Valda and her band mate, Renee, are also tied up with Stanhope and Lagunov, two of the London high society power brokers who quaff Moet in their clubs whilst they decide the fate of others. 
When Renee is found dead in the bath, Valda is branded the “jealous femme fatale” and charged with her murder. Jack puts his reputation and his life on the line to defend her; he is fast falling for this enigmatic singer even though he knows she is not always 100% honest with him. 
Meanwhile the Fleet Street hacks salivate at the prospect of the Trial of the Century. Valda and Jack have little time to gather the evidence which will save her whilst carefully watching their backs as Oleg Lagunov plays only for the highest stakes. 
Readers who enjoy John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon will find this book right up their street.