The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (42 page)

I’d just about recovered when the taxi stopped at the back of the towering metal edifice that was the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters. Howard was standing in the middle by two escalators which climbed up into the building. I craned my neck back as I walked over to him. The base of the tower, some fifty feet up, was transparent perspex criss-crossed with grey metal struts, and above that were tier upon tier of offices, illuminated by shafts of sunlight that seared through the huge atrium.

‘How did it go?’ asked Howard. He was wearing a light blue safari suit, not the same as the one he’d been wearing when he met me at the airport, this one had short sleeves.

‘I didn’t find out much,’ I said. ‘There was nothing in the computer, nothing to show what she’d been working on.’

‘Was Healy any help?’

‘He gave me a few pointers, but without her notes I’m not going to get anywhere. I need to know who she saw, what she was doing. You’re going to have to help me, Howard. You’re going to have to put me in touch with everyone she was working with.’

‘I’ll do my best, laddie. You seemed to have spent a lot of time with Healy and got very little out of it.’

‘Yeah, I went for a trip to the Peak.’

‘Sightseeing?’

‘You can stop fishing, Howie. I went up to see Lai.’

‘Where did you get his address?’ he said, and he sounded angry. He flapped his handkerchief out and mopped his brow. Maybe our Howie was starting to lose his cool at last.

‘He’s in the phone book, it wasn’t difficult.’

‘Damn it,’ he exploded, ‘you should have told me.’

‘Why? What the fuck’s it got to do with you? You’re just the hired hand.’ His eyes narrowed when I said that and I could see that I’d struck home. What the hell, he asked for it, but I tried to soothe his feelings anyway.

‘It was a spur of the moment thing, and anyway, he wasn’t there.’

Howard seemed to relax then. ‘I’m supposed to be looking after you, that’s all,’ he said. ‘This is my territory, and it makes me look stupid if I don’t know where you are . . .’ he trailed off lamely. I thought it was probably best not to mention the run in I’d had with Mrs Lai in case he threw a fit.

I smiled and he smiled and I slapped him on the back. Friends again.

‘OK, now where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Queen’s Pier. It’s a couple of hundred yards away.’

‘Let’s go then. It’s some building this.’

‘Aye, but it’s a bit of an acquired taste. It grows on you after a while. The staff love it, though inside it’s more like an electronics factory than a bank, sterile and metallic. The only things that they brought from the old building were these two bronze lions.’ He nodded towards two magnificent metal animals lying on blocks of stone. At the base of one sat two girls eating sandwiches from a paper bag as they talked.

We waited by the roadside until a red-painted tram rattled past packed tight with passengers and then we crossed, stepping over the metal tracks and dodging an open truck piled high with boxes of oranges.

For the first time I noticed the noise, a high-pitched babble of voices like thousands of swallows preparing to fly south for winter. We walked into a square, green and cool with fountains playing, but the sound of the water was masked by the chattering of hundreds upon hundreds of girls and women, most dressed in brightly coloured dresses, standing in groups or sitting on benches sharing lunch boxes.

They were Filipina, all of them, skin the same as the girl who’d opened Mrs Lai’s door, the colour of well polished mahogany.

‘What is this, Howard? A demonstration?’

‘It’s Sunday, most of the Filipina amahs come here on Sunday afternoons to meet their friends. It’s their one day off.’

‘I didn’t realize there were so many of them.’

‘They’re the biggest expat community in Hong Kong, by far. And generally they’re treated like shit.’

‘By the gweilos?’

‘No laddie, by the Chinese. The Filipinas are tied to contracts, paid a salary which is about one third of the national average here, and if they quit they have to go back to the Philippines. A lot of them are beaten and sexually abused by their bosses. There was a case a few years back of a lawyer who got locked out on the roof garden of his flat with his maid. He made her climb down the outside of the building to get in through the window.’

He fell silent then as we weaved in and out of the gossiping groups of women, all dolled up in their Sunday best.

‘What happened, Howard?’ I asked.

He was still silent, and from his embarrassment I knew the answer – she’d fallen to her death. Nice story, Howard, shame about the ending. I let the question lie unanswered, and covered his
faux pas
by asking about the junk trip.

‘We’re on the bank’s number two boat,’ he said. ‘Most of their PR department will be there along with a few of the lads from their merchant banking side.’

‘What’s the reason for the trip?’ I asked.

‘No reason,’ he said. ‘Just a chance for them to meet the press. But that’s not a kosher reason because they know us all anyway. It’s just one of their social get togethers and they usually turn out to be a right royal piss up.’

We left the square and the sing-song clamour behind us, and walked to the harbour’s edge to meet a group of gweilos standing by concrete steps that led down to the water. Fifty yards out bobbed a wooden-clad boat, built like an old-style junk but with two powerful engines in place of the traditional sail. Howard did the introductions and I got a series of earnest handshakes from the dozen or so bank staff and uninterested world-weary smiles from the press corps.

The journalists were a mixed bag. Healy was there, twitching and chain smoking, there was a young stringer from an Australian paper, a Commercial Radio reporter, a spotty English girl from the
Standard
and a tall, cadaverous China watcher from the
Far Eastern Economic Review
who looked like an off-duty undertaker. There was a handful of Chinese reporters, uniformly dressed in open-necked shirts, baggy jeans and training shoes, a sharp contrast to the immaculate suits and twin sets of the Bank.

As we stood around and made small talk another group of a dozen or so wandered along from the other end of the pier, shepherded by one of the suits.

‘I think we’re all here now,’ trilled the middle-aged PR lady with too much make-up who was masterminding this little voyage into the unknown. She waved her guest list at the junk and it turned towards the pier in a lazy circle before coasting to a stop. It was held steady by an old woman and a man using long wooden poles, him at the sharp end and her at the back like almost matching bookends. They looked like elderly brother and sister, with lined, weath-erbeaten faces and grey hair and they both wore black trousers and white nautical shirts.

‘Mr and Mrs Fong, they’re absolute darlings,’ said the PR lady as she guided me onto the heaving deck. ‘They’ve been with us for years, simply years.’

I was going to make some crack about it being time the bank bought them shoes but maybe they just preferred to go barefoot.

I found my way to a drink-laden waiter with the unwavering instincts of a homing pigeon and I had a G and T in my hand before the last guest was on board and we were growling through the waves. The small talk of the bankers held my interest for about ten minutes and I stuck it for another five until the conversation about rising rents, the cost of school fees and the problems of finding a decent amah got too much to stomach. The bar seemed to offer the nearest thing to sanctuary and I made it back there without throwing up. The man standing there ordering a drink had a head of thinning red hair scraped sideways in a vain attempt to cover his baldness. He had the look of a rugby player going to seed, muscle turning to fat, the skin ageing and slackening. He handed me a fresh gin and tonic without even asking what I was drinking. Instinctively I liked him. His name was Dick Graham, he was something to do with security at the bank and this time I lasted twelve minutes before I was bored to tears with his views on why there would always be a place for expats in Hong Kong. Over his shoulder I could see Howard looming over a pretty young Chinese girl with sleek black hair. He was gently stroking her shoulder as she looked up at him, her hand covering her mouth as she laughed at whatever it was that the lecherous old sod was telling her.

I made my excuses to Dick, telling him I wanted to look at the view, leaving the bar to stand on the deck, savouring the cool breeze that blew in from the sea. The sun was beginning to set and was turning the water blood red. I hadn’t realized it was so late.

Healy detached himself from the clutches of the PR woman and walked over, a can of Fosters lager in one hand and a half-finished cigarette in the other.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, flicking ash over the side. The wind caught it and blew it back, smearing it across the knees of his trousers. He didn’t seem to notice.

‘Not so bad,’ I said. ‘Thanks for your help this morning.’

‘I wish I could have done more,’ he said. ‘Sally was a good kid.’

He took a mouthful of lager from the can, and a thin dribble of amber fluid trickled down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand, which he then rubbed on his thigh.

‘I’m still not sure what it is you’re looking for.’

‘For answers, I suppose. I want to know why.’

‘Sometimes people just get to the stage where they can’t take any more.’

‘Take what?’

He shrugged. ‘Life, I guess.’

I shook my head violently. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not Sally.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘That’s not the point,’ I said. ‘I knew her, she was my sister.’

‘People change.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he admitted, and dropped his cigarette to the deck, stubbing it out with a scuffed shoe. ‘But be careful you don’t make too many waves.’ He wasn’t looking at me when he spoke, but I could sense that he was waiting to see how I’d react.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, keeping my voice as level as possible.

‘Well, for a start, I understand you gave Simon Hall a hard time yesterday.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Friend of a friend. I don’t think you appreciate how small a place Hong Kong is. The story I heard is that you had him pinned to the wall and were threatening to castrate him with your bare hands.’ He laughed, and nervously pulled the lobe of his ear. ‘You’ll get yourself a reputation,’ he said.

‘I just lost my temper, they didn’t seem to be doing anything.’

‘Why should they? To them it’s a clear-cut case of suicide.’

I snorted. ‘She wouldn’t have killed herself. I know she wouldn’t have killed herself.’

‘They’ll need more than a hunch to go on,’ said Healy, and I knew he was right. What I needed was proof and so far all I had was a photograph of a Chinese businessman.

A couple of suits walked over, earnest young men with army haircuts and fox-hunting voices who wanted to know what 1997 would mean to press freedom. I said I was going on to the upper deck to get some sea air. I climbed the white wooden stairs alongside the main cabin and dropped into a deck chair. An observant white-jacketed waiter spotted my almost empty glass and came over with a refill. There were no Chinese on the upper deck, except for two waiters, and one by one the suits drifted upstairs to where I was, seeking their own kind. Healy and Howard stayed with the Chinese reporters, and both seemed to be drinking heavily.

The young Chinese girl with shoulder length hair, high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes whom I’d seen with Howard earlier, climbed up the stairs and sat down in the chair next to me, slowly crossing one long leg over the other. She was wearing a knee length charcoal grey skirt and it rode up her thighs. Nice thighs, too. Her shirt was clean and white and she’d turned the collar up at the back. Around her neck was a string of pearls that were so small they had to be real. Her lips, when she opened them, curved upwards in a knowing smile.

‘Eighteen months, Happy Valley, researcher with Business International,’ she said, eyes flashing. The voice was soft and very American.

‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

‘They’re the answers to the three questions everybody asks. How long have you been in Hong Kong, where do you live, what do you do? I thought it would save time. My name’s Jenny.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, and clinked glasses with her. She looked like she was drinking gin too. ‘Three days, the Excelsior Hotel, journalist.’

‘You’re Sally’s brother,’ she said, suddenly looking serious. ‘I’m sorry to be so flippant, I didn’t realize.’

‘This is one hell of a small town,’ I said, and took a mouthful of gin and tonic. She looked hurt so I gently nudged her shoulder. ‘It’s OK, really. Are you a friend of Sally’s?’

‘I liked her a lot,’ she said, nodding eagerly. ‘Though I’d only known her for six months or so. She was very, how shall I put it, lively. Things seemed to happen when she was around. I’d no idea she was so unhappy.’

‘Unhappy?’

‘To have killed herself. I suppose she must have been depressed.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘Two weeks ago, I think, at a disco in Tsim Sha Tsui East.’

‘Did she look depressed then?’

Jenny laughed, tossing her head back and showing me a set of perfect teeth that were every bit as white as the pearls. ‘No, she was having a great time.’ She frowned. ‘You mean, you don’t think she killed herself?’

‘No, I don’t. But at the moment I’ve no idea what did happen.’

We sat in silence for a while, and watched the guests fill their mouths with food. The party began to split into two, the gweilos moved onto the upper deck leaving the Chinese jostling around the buffet. We were looking down on the heads of two Chinese girls, reporters I guess, who were arguing fiercely in Cantonese.