The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (10 page)

A dark green Mercedes sounded its horn and edged past the youth in the gutter and turned on to the main road towards the central business district. An English couple, he in a tuxedo and she in a glittering gown and pearls, walked arm-in-arm into a French restaurant. It was a hot and humid night and Chung felt sweat trickle down the middle of his back. He took off his jacket and held it over his arm as he walked to the California bar along the road. It was the fifth he’d been in that night.

A pretty brunette sitting on a stool behind a wooden lectern smiled at him and asked if he had a membership card. When he admitted that he didn’t she took a hefty entrance fee from him and waved him in with another smile.

The volume of the music was lower than in Nineteen 97 but the clientele was similar, young men and women dressed in expensive designer clothes, partying as if there were no tomorrow, trying to squeeze as much enjoyment out of the place as they could in the little time they had left. Chung knew that most of them reckoned that under Chinese rule the good times would soon be over. The frantic excitement of the Lan Kwai Fong revellers reminded Chung of nothing so much as the band playing as the
Titanic
went down.

Two executives of one of the more successful Chinese stockbroking firms were drinking a bottle of champagne at a table. Chung had done business with them in the past and they waved him over. They offered him a glass but he said no, he was there to meet someone. They presented him with new business cards listing their recently opened offices in Singapore, Taipei, Jakarta and Bangkok. Like most of the colony’s local brokerage firms, they were preparing for the day when the world’s investment community would regard Hong Kong as just another inefficient Chinese bureaucratic nightmare rather than a free-wheeling tax haven and manufacturing centre. When that happened the downgrading would be rapid and severe, and investment money would shift dramatically away from the local stock market and into the other little dragons in the region. The ever resourceful Hong Kong Chinese stock-brokers would make money either way. Chung wished them well and went back to the bar where he ordered himself a brandy and ice.

The dance-floor in the California was bigger than that in Nineteen 97 and less crowded, giving the dancers more room to move. They were taking full advantage of it – a cosmopolitan mix of Chinese, Caucasian and Eurasian. Lan Kwai Fong was one of the few places in Hong Kong where all the races truly mixed on a social level, where the only qualifications for acceptance were a wallet full of money and the desire to have a good time.

Chung had sipped about half of his drink when he saw her coming out of the Ladies. The photographs in the
Tatler
didn’t do her justice. Debbie Fielding was about five foot six, slim in a boyish way, with fair skin and straight blonde hair that reached just past her shoulders. From across the room Chung couldn’t tell the colour of her eyes but he guessed they’d be blue or green. She had a slight upturn to her nose and a sprinkling of freckles and her cheeks were flushed as if she weren’t used to alcohol. Her lips were full but she didn’t appear to have any make-up on. He put her age at about nineteen, maybe twenty. She was wearing a simple off-the-shoulder pale blue dress which looked like silk and which ended just above the knee. She had good legs which were accentuated by very high heels.

She was walking alongside a short, plump girl with close-cropped brown hair and they were laughing at something. Debbie put both her hands up to cover her mouth and her eyes widened. Her nails were painted a vivid red and she had a bracelet of deep red stones which were probably rubies. Her laugh was high-pitched, like a little girl being teased by her father.

The two of them went over to a table where two girls and a young man with long hair and wire-rimmed spectacles were drinking brightly coloured cocktails through straws. Chung studied the group over the top of his drink. She’d looked older in the pictures, and less vulnerable. Though the adult dress and the high heels were obviously her own, she still looked like a schoolgirl dressed up in her mother’s clothes. Chung wondered if Debbie Fielding was a virgin.

The man got up from the table and reached out his hand to the plump girl. She took it and he led her to the dance-floor and swung her into a lazy jive. Debbie looked at the thin silver watch on her wrist and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn. One of the girls leaned over and said something to her but she shook her head. The other girls sipped their drinks through their straws and then stood up and went over to the dance-floor together, leaving Debbie alone at the table.

Chung walked over to her table, his glass in his left hand.

“Hi,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

She looked up, frowning. He saw her eyes weigh him up, checking out his Armani jacket, the white linen shirt, the black wool trousers, the Bally loafers, and the Cartier watch, then she looked at his face. She smiled, and he knew that he’d passed muster.

“Sure,” she said. “But I’m just going.”

“Husband waiting at home for you?” he asked, sitting down and straightening the creases of his trousers.

She laughed. “Hardly,” she said, fluttering her left hand in front of his face so that he could see she wasn’t wearing a ring. “I have a junk party tomorrow, and I’ve got to be at Queen’s Pier at nine o’clock.”

“But it’s not as if you need any beauty sleep,” he said, raising his glass to her.

“Why thank you, kind sir,” she said.

“Anthony,” he said. “Anthony Chung.”

“Debbie,” she replied. “Debbie Fielding.” She extended her hand and he shook it. Her skin was warm and dry and there was no strength in her grip.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, really. I must be going.” She stood up and waved goodbye to her friends on the dance-floor. They waved back and she blew a goodbye kiss to the plump girl.

“Can I give you a lift?” asked Chung, getting to his feet.

“I have a car,” said Debbie, picking up her handbag.

“How about a race, then?” he asked.

She stopped dead. “I’m sorry?” she said.

“A race,” repeated Chung. “How about a race?”

“A race?”

“A race home. If I can’t give you a lift, the least you can do is give me a race.”

She grinned, thought about it, and then nodded. “Okay, Anthony Chung. You’ve got your race. But I warn you, I’ve got a Jaguar XJS.”

“Nice car,” said Chung. “I’ll meet you outside in five minutes. That okay with you?”

“Fine.”

“So where are we going?” She told him the address of her house on the Peak which Chung knew was her parents’ house. “I’ll see you outside, then,” he said.

When Chung went out to get his car, Debbie asked one of the waiters to arrange to have her Jaguar brought over. While she waited she lit a cigarette.

“Smoking?” said a voice. It was her friend, May. “I thought you’d given up.”

“It’s the only one I’ve had today,” said Debbie.

“Who was the Chinese guy?”

“Anthony Chung. I’ve never met him before tonight.”

“Seems cute,” said May.

“Very,” agreed Debbie.

“And you let him get away?”

“We’re about to have a race, actually,” said Debbie.

“You’re what?” exclaimed May.

“A race. You know, brum-brum, first one past the chequered flag is the winner.”

A waiter came up and told Debbie her car was outside. “Gotta go, kiddo,” said Debbie and kissed May on the cheek.

“Be careful,” May said, but Debbie was already gone.

Debbie slid into the driver’s seat and slipped off her high heels. She turned the ignition key. The Jaguar’s engine purred and she stroked its gear stick absent-mindedly as she waited for Chung to arrive. She heard his car before she saw it – a deep-throated roar that seemed to vibrate up through her seat. She looked over her shoulder as he drew up next to her Jaguar. His window slid down smoothly and he smiled across at her.

“Tell me that’s not a Ferrari F40,” she said.

Chung raised an eyebrow. “Okay, it’s not a Ferrari F40,” he said.

“Four-valve V8 engine, 478 brake horsepower at 7,000 rpm, Weber Marelli fuel injection system, carbon fibre and Kevlar body.” She rattled off the statistics like a Ferrari salesman.

“That’s the one,” he said. “But you forgot the twin turbos.” He gunned the accelerator. She could hear the whistle of the turbo and the clatter of the cams and saw that several heads turned to stare at the lipstick red car and its good-looking driver.

“That is one terrific car,” said Debbie, enviously.

“And fast,” said Chung.

Debbie slowly pushed her foot down on the clutch and put the Jaguar in first gear. “So tell me, Anthony …” she said, but roared off before she finished the sentence, leaving him fumbling for his own gear stick.

“Bitch!” he shouted, surprised by her sudden departure. He put the Ferrari into first and spun the rear wheels on the cobbled road as he accelerated after her. He had to brake to avoid a red and grey taxi which pulled out in front of him, and by the time he reached Arbuthnot Road she was out of sight. It was just after midnight so there was little traffic about. He ran a red light and headed up Robinson Road, towards Shan Teng, the Peak. She lived on Findlay Road and he was pretty sure she’d head up the narrow, winding Old Peak Road where he’d find it difficult to overtake.

He roared up Robinson Road, the noise of the engine behind his shoulder blades almost deafening him. The F40 didn’t come with a stereo system because when the car was in full flight you couldn’t hear anything above the jet engine whistle of the turbos and the whir of pumps and motors that fed the 2,936 cc of greedy piston space. The Pirelli P Zero tyres gripped the road like a limpet as he cornered, and as he entered Old Peak Road he saw the rear lights of her Jaguar about a hundred yards ahead. In its early climb up the Peak the road was a respectable size, but after it intersected with Tregunter Path it became treacherously narrow so Chung pushed his foot down on the accelerator and moved the tall, thin gear lever quickly through the kink in the gate from first to second, a manoeuvre which had taken quite a bit of getting used to. The Ferrari kicked and the turbines whistled and he hit seventy mph, still in second gear. The car seemed to hug the ground even tighter as it followed the curves and bends of the road, passing the Ladies’ Recreation Club on his left, and he smiled as he saw how quickly he was gaining on her. He wasn’t surprised; the F40 was a racing car made street legal while the XJS was a luxury executive car, albeit a stylish one. It was like putting an Olympic sprinter up against a weekend jogger.

He eased off the accelerator but he still gained on Debbie and he had to brake sharply to avoid hitting her rear bumper. She accelerated and for a second it looked as if she were going to lose control as the back wheels slid to the left but then they gripped and she increased the gap between them. Chung had wanted to make more of a race of it, but he realised that she wasn’t a particularly good driver and if he pushed her too hard it would end in disaster. He could see that she wasn’t even wearing her seat-belt whereas he was firmly strapped into his bucket seat by the Ferrari’s six-point racing harness. He decided to end it as quickly as possible.

He nudged the F40 to within ten feet of the back of the Jaguar, checked that there was nothing coming in the opposite direction, then flicked the car to the side and forward, feeling the end slide, corrected for it and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The Jaguar dissolved into a blur on his left and then disappeared behind him. The road narrowed and bent to the left and right and he flicked the steering wheel to stay in his lane. A yellow and cream-coloured minibus flashed towards him and then was gone, leaving an image in his mind of an old driver, mouth wide open and chin forward as the Ferrari zipped by, missing it by inches.

He eased back on the accelerator and went into third gear, hearing the guttural roar of the eight cylinders relax as the speedometer touched ninety mph. He was nowhere near testing the car’s performance, and he knew it. The F40 could do nought to ninety mph in less than seven seconds on a straight run and its top speed was close to 200 mph. Put wings on it and it’d fly. He wanted to get so far ahead of Debbie that she’d give up and drive home at a sensible speed. He kept looking at the rearview mirror but he was alone on the road. The Ferrari flashed over the tunnel where the Peak tram clawed its way to the top of the highest point of Hong Kong Island and on to Barker Road, the lights of Kowloon away to his left. He put the Ferrari into a tight turn and swung into Findlay Road, scanning the numbers as they whizzed by until he saw the Fielding residence. He began braking but the F40 was still more than 200 feet past it when it came to rest. He turned the car round and stopped in front of the gates to the Fielding house, keeping the engine running at a high rpm to stop the plugs from fouling while he waited for Debbie.

It was a full thirty seconds before she turned into Findlay Road. Her brakes squealed as she stopped the XJS in front of Chung’s car. He got out and walked over, putting his hand on the roof of the Jaguar and leaning down as she lowered the window.

“Congratulations,” she said. She was smiling, but there was a hard edge to her smile as if she weren’t used to losing.

“It’s a fast car,” he said. “I’ll let you drive it some time.”