The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (64 page)

She took a step towards him. Then another. She kept moving until she was standing in front of him, her arms at her side, her face turned up to his. “I don’t want any sort of commitment from you,” she whispered. “I don’t even want your love. I just want to be touched.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her softly on the lips. “You’re the wife of an important man, you shouldn’t put yourself in this position,” he said.

She reached up with her right hand and put it behind his neck. “Will you promise me you’ll never tell anyone?” she whispered.

“Of course,” he said.

She pressed herself against him. “Then there’s nothing wrong,” she said. She stood up on tiptoe and kissed him, forcing her soft tongue between his lips. He returned the kiss but then pressed down on her shoulders, pushing her away from him.

“One thing,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

“What?” she said.

“Your rings,” he said. “Your wedding ring and your engagement ring. Take them off.”

She looked up at him, frowning. “Why?” she asked.

“Because I want to make love to Anne, not to the wife of William Fielding.”

She kept her eyes on his, and nodded. She slowly slipped the two rings off her wedding finger and held them in the palm of her hand.

“Drop them,” he said quietly. “Drop them on the floor.”

She did as he asked, still watching his face. The rings rattled on the wooden floor, but she didn’t look to see where they fell. Instead she pressed a forefinger against his lips. He opened them and gently bit her finger, then licked it sensuously. He reached for her hips and pulled her towards him. She removed her finger and kissed him, her eyes open so she could watch him as she pressed her lips against his. She moaned like an animal in pain and slid her hand down the front of his trousers.

Neil Coleman put his head in his hands and rested his elbows on the table. In front of him were the half-eaten remains of a hamburger and French fries, the plate smeared with ketchup.

“You want another beer, mate?” asked Phil Donaldson.

“Yeah, go on,” said Coleman. He ran his hands through his sandy hair while Donaldson waved over a waitress and ordered two more San Miguels.

“You look as miserable as sin, Neil,” said Donaldson. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s that fucking Chink,” said Coleman.

“Chung?”

“Yeah. He’s still after Debbie. I just can’t get to her any more. She’s always seeing him.”

“Wasn’t Terry McNeil any help?”

“No, and it was a fucking terrible idea going to him in the first place. Seems that Chung is related to some Chinese politician. I think McNeil was getting a hard-on, you know? He was starting to wonder if maybe Special Branch should be taking an interest. I had to back-pedal like fuck.” He reached into the pocket of his grey suit and took out a packet of Kent cigarettes and lit one with a neon green disposable lighter.

“I thought you’d given up smoking,” said Donaldson. The waitress returned with their two beers and Donaldson tried to look down the front of her dress as she poured them. Both men watched her walk away. “Big tits for a Chinese, that one,” said Donaldson.

“Good arse, too,” said Coleman.

“So what’s with the smoking?”

Coleman looked at the cigarette in his hand. “I only gave up to encourage Debbie,” he said. “There doesn’t seem any point now.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to let that heiress get away from you. All that money. The car.”

The mention of the car brought back memories of their lovemaking in the passenger seat of the XJS, the top of her dress around her waist, his hands on her breasts, her eyes closed as she pounded away on top of him. He shook his head. “It’s that bastard Chung,” he said. “If he wasn’t around, I’m sure I could get to her. She loves me, I know she does, it’s just that he’s getting in the way, you know?”

“We could always plant drugs in his car,” said Donaldson.

Coleman looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You serious?”

Donaldson wiggled his eyebrows. “I could get it done,” he said.

“I bet you could,” said Coleman. “No, it wouldn’t work. McNeil would hear about it and he’d remember that I was asking questions about Chung.”

Donaldson leaned over the table. “I was joking, you soft bastard,” he said.

Coleman took a mouthful of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I knew that,” he said. “Thing is, I can’t get close to her any more, you know? Last month she said I could go to the races with her, to the last race of the season. The bank’s got its own private box and she said I could go. Now she says she’s changed her mind. Chung’s going with her, I know he is. Bastard. I hate the fucking Chinese bastard.”

“Maybe he’ll get shot in the robbery,” said Donaldson, grinning.

“What are you talking about?” said Coleman, intrigued.

Donaldson bent over the table again, his sleeve scraping against the curry sauce on his plate. “It’s all hush-hush,” he whispered.

Coleman also leaned over the table so that his head was close to Donaldson’s. “Phil, you can trust me. I’m a policeman.”

Donaldson guffawed and punched Coleman on the shoulder. “Yeah, right,” he said. He kept his head over the table. “We’ve had a tip from one of our triad contacts that the racetrack is going to be hit tomorrow. An armed gang is going to bust into the betting halls.”

“Is that connected with the fire?” Coleman asked.

“Could be,” said Donaldson. “We don’t have any details. Just the tip that there’s going to be a heist. This sort of vague tip is par for the course. It’s probably from another triad that’s got wind of what’s going on and wants to spoil it. It happens.”

Coleman frowned and took a long drag on his cigarette. He tried to blow a smoke ring up to the ceiling but it came out of his thick lips as a cloud. He coughed and looked at Donaldson. “They’re going to hit the track while the race is on?” he asked.

“That’s the tip. We’ll be swamping the racecourse with plain-clothes cops and we’ll have marksmen in several of the boxes. We’ve also arranged to have our own people in the betting halls, working as tellers.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Coleman. “The way I remember, all the money goes straight from the tellers to an underground vault below the grandstand, right?” Donaldson nodded. “It stays there overnight and then it’s taken by armoured car to their underground vault in Kowloon Bay. Why would they hit the track? The money is all over the place during the meeting; it would make much more sense to attack the armoured car. Best place would be while it’s in the cross-harbour tunnel.”

Donaldson smiled. “You’ve got a criminal mind, Neil my boy,” he said. “But we’ve got to follow the tip we’ve been given. And our source tells us that it’s the track they’re going to hit.”

“And where are they going to go with the money? The roads’ll be jammed solid for miles around.”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll catch a tram to Shau Kei Wan. Don’t tell anyone, all right, or my balls’ll be in a vice.”

“Of course I won’t,” said Coleman. “As you said, maybe Chung’ll get caught in the crossfire.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Donaldson. “You want another?”

“Yeah,” said Coleman. “And some. By the way, can I borrow your car again tomorrow?”

“Oh shit, Neil, why don’t you get your own?”

“Can’t afford it, you know that. So is that a yes?”

“It’s a yes, but only if you fill the tank this time.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Phil.” He stabbed his cigarette out in an ashtray, twisting it savagely as if grinding it into the eye of Anthony Chung.

Archie Kwan arrived at the Shatin stables shortly before six o’clock. His
ma-foos
were already there, feeding and watering their charges. He had eighteen horses racing at the afternoon meeting and he had high hopes for ten of them. All the horses had been under constant scrutiny for the past forty-eight hours to check that they weren’t slipped any drugs and all the feed and water was checked by Jockey Club officials. He went over to the stall where Galloping Dragon was being prepared. The horse was not one which Kwan thought would win, but William Fielding had been adamant that he race. Face, thought Kwan. Sometimes it seemed that it was the gweilos who were more concerned about face than the Chinese.

The
ma-foo
was checking Galloping Dragon’s legs, running his hands expertly over the muscles and tendons. “Too soon to race again,” he muttered.

“He’ll do okay,” said Kwan.

The old
ma-foo
shrugged, a gesture that said everything. He knew as well as Kwan that the horse was being raced for the wrong reasons. Kwan had already decided that next season he would tell William Fielding that he wouldn’t be able to train his horses at his stable. He’d come up with some excuse but the bottom line was that Kwan no longer wanted to train horses for British owners. He’d noticed that when British owners entered the winner’s enclosures with their horses more often than not they’d attract booing and catcalls from the crowd. There’d be cheers and applause, too, but there was bad feeling, a sense that if the British were pulling out they should leave now, the sooner the better. The fire at the grandstand had been the last straw so far as Kwan was concerned. The Chinese press was saying that the arson attack was a reflection of anti-British sentiment and that more such attacks were expected. Kwan had no wish for his own stables to become a target, so he would train only for Chinese owners in future. Besides, the Chinese generally owned better quality horses.

He went outside to check that the horseboxes were ready. All the horses would be exercised and then driven across the harbour to the Happy Valley stables where they would be prepared for the races. Kwan would also meet his jockeys there. He was concerned about one of them, an Englishman called Reg Dykes who’d been in the colony for just two years and who was having problems maintaining his racing weight. He’d developed a taste for Asian women and Scotch whisky, and the combination had proved disastrous. Kwan hadn’t told him yet, but this would be Dykes’s last race. He didn’t want British owners and he didn’t want British jockeys. He wanted to have as little to do with the British as possible. He looked at his Cartier wristwatch. It would soon be time to go.

Woo Bik-kuen lay on his back, his face covered in sweat. He’d barely slept all night. His wife slept curled up in a tight ball next to him, her knees up against her chest, snoring loudly. It wasn’t the sound of her snoring which kept Woo awake, nor the stifling heat of their cramped bedroom. Woo was worried, more worried than he’d ever been in his life. He’d obeyed the instructions of the softly spoken Grass Sandal, setting the time locks so that they’d open in two short hours instead of at eight thirty Monday morning. Woo had wanted to call in sick so that he didn’t have to be at his post, but he knew that to do so would be sure to attract attention to himself. His only hope of getting through this was to act as if it was just another Sunday. He rubbed his nose and turned on to his side, but there was no relief from the nagging doubts that plagued his mind. In the next room he heard one of his sons cough. If it wasn’t for his sons, and his wife, then maybe Woo would have risked going to the police, but he knew that the triads would have no compunction about killing them all, slowly and painfully, just to teach him a lesson. He looked over at the cheap plastic alarm clock on the side table. Only thirty minutes and he would have to get up. He rolled on to his back and rubbed his hands over his face. Maybe they wouldn’t come. Maybe they’d decide not to go through with the robbery. Maybe it had all been a bad dream. His wife grunted in her sleep and a thin dribble of saliva ran down her chin. No, it was no dream. Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes and he clenched his fists.

Neil Coleman drove Donaldson’s car up the Peak, his right foot to the floor and its engine screaming in protest. He had the mother and father of all hangovers, having stayed drinking with Donaldson until four o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t managed to crawl out of bed until just before eleven o’clock and he hadn’t bothered shaving or showering, he’d just thrown on a T-shirt and blue jeans and dashed to the car. He was determined to sit outside the Fieldings’ house until he saw whether or not Anthony Chung had indeed been invited to the races in his place. He parked close enough to the main gate so that he could see anyone driving in or out, and then settled back to wait. He switched on the police radio and tuned it to 449.625 MHz, the frequency used by the Happy Valley police station, so that he could keep track of what was happening over at the racecourse.

Lehman padded out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. He knocked on the door to Lewis’s bedroom to tell him that he’d finished with the shower. Hearing no answer, he opened the door and went in. Lewis was kneeling naked on the floor, his back to the door, his head hunched forward. Lehman stepped to the side to see what Lewis was so engrossed in. He seemed to be holding a strip of silver foil under his chin, and heating some white powder in it with a cigarette lighter. He had his eyes fixed on the line of white powder in the foil and as the heat from the flame vaporised it he moved his nose along, inhaling deeply. Lewis suddenly became aware that Lehman was standing in the room and his eyes widened, but he continued to breathe in the white smoke.