Crown 2, page 12
part #2 of Crown Series
‘We’ll wait and see?’ Willie said, his tone forming it into a query. Whenever they worked directly together, he always acknowledged Ju as the senior.
‘Gold’s a spiteful bastard,’ Ju replied. ‘Sometimes he says things without thinking. Maybe he’ll overlook what happened last night if we can give him something better than a couple of dead pigs.’
They moved away from the concession to sit on a wooden bench in the sun: two innocent-looking young Chinese who between them had killed more than twenty people. Willie was ahead by six deaths and was anxious to get off the unlucky thirteen total.
The bar in which Crown and Chang waited had the luxury of air conditioning but no other frills. It was in the basement of a three story commercial hotel that offered rooms to sleep in and a bar for thirsty transients arriving or leaving Macao through the Porto Interior. It was cheap and it was convenient. It wasn’t very clean.
Crown bought four bottles of Sagres beer and took them to a corner table. Chang carried the glasses.
‘You’re sure you can trust the porter?’ the Australian asked after tasting the beer and relishing its coolness.
Chang shot a penetrating glance of his own at Crown and the lines of anxiety around the Australian’s mouth confirmed the tone was a genuine symptom of the big man’s feelings.
‘If you want to, Mr. Crown, we can go over to the pier in an hour and it won’t be long to wait,’ Chang said.
Crown sighed, then showed a tired grin. ‘Sorry, Po. I’m jumpy, uh?’
‘Because of Huang Mu Li?’ Chang asked. Although they worked so closely together, their personal lives had become less entangled since the divorce. Without a real family around him, Crown was not inclined to play the role of foster father to Chang when the working day was over. The Australian could have been visiting half the call girls in Hong Kong without the Chinese knowing anything about it.
‘Just another sheila who did her grafting on her back, Po,’ Crown muttered. ‘But I’m no moralist, you know that. I liked her. But she was still nothing more than a nice chick. They come and they go. They’re in a risky business and when they turn up as dead chickens, I’m not about to shed any tears for them.’
‘So Mu Li was no different to the couple fished out of the Sulphur Channel?’ Chang said.
Crown took a swig of beer. ‘In the way I feel personally, no,’ he replied. ‘But those two were drink hustlers in a bar, weren’t they. Mu Li only sold herself and her price was high.’
Chang was relieved, but he didn’t reveal it. Crown was anxious about the case, which was a healthy state of mind for a copper. Once a policeman began to get involved with personalities, that were not healthy.
‘You’re going to fill me in on some bits and pieces I don’t know, Mr. Crown?’ he asked.
The Australian fixed the Chinese with a hard, flat-eyed stare. This isn’t like the last time, Po,’ he said earnestly. ‘You passed the test with flying colours. I’m not holding anything back.’
Chang showed a fleeting, contrite smile, then his smooth features became grave. ‘I ought to be able to fit in the bits and pieces for myself?’ Another smile, but this time with some humour. ‘If I want to move into the brains department?’
‘Spell out what we’ve got,’ Crown invited.
‘Concrete?’
‘Pre-cast and reinforced.’
Chang scratched his jaw and creased his forehead as he collected his thoughts. ‘A spy ring operating in Hong Kong,’ he opened. ‘Not nationalistic. Secrets bought piecemeal and sold to the highest bidder. Nothing political to grab Special Branch. They just picked up the rumour and passed it to PHQ. London heard about it and gave it to us. All we had to go on was the unconfirmed story that the ring collected its information through the vice girls. We seemed to be on to a lead with an anonymous telephone tip to meet two girls at Belcher’s Cape. But they stood us up. It’s not pre-cast and reinforced that our two girls were the ones who had their throats cut and were dumped in the sea the same night we were supposed to meet them.’
‘Nothing’s ever a hundred per cent certain, Po,’ Crown said thoughtfully. ‘I say we pencil them in.’
‘Okay,’ Chang allowed. ‘One factor that gives the circumstantial evidence a little weight is that the grapevine stopped producing as soon as news of the killings came out. Nobody knew anything. A lot of them even forgot how to say hello to us.’
‘So let’s say the double killing served a double purpose,’ Crown put in. To shut up the girls and to warn anybody else who might be thinking of telling tales out of turn.’
Chang nodded. Two weeks go by. Two weeks of nothing but hot weather and a thousand negative answers. No way to know which were the lies and which the truth.’ He finished one of the beers and poured another. ‘Until last night, when it all happened.’
That’s right, Po,’ Crown said earnestly. Two weeks of calm, then the storm. And it’s not the typhoon season.’ His clear eyed stare asked a tacit question.
‘Either we’ve scared the hell out of them, or something big’s in the air,’ Chang supplied.
‘Link them,’ Crown urged. They’re scared of us because something big is in the air.’
‘Which gets us where?’ Chang asked.
To swinging downtown Macao,’ Crown replied. ‘Physically. With a little time to kill. Tell me what happened in the gambling joint behind the massage parlour, son?’
The fellow who runs it comes up with a lot of bad tips and sometimes a good one, Mr. Crown,’ Chang replied. ‘A year ago, maybe, he was in trouble. In a different joint across the harbour. A crooked syndicate took him to the cleaners. He was raising money all over the place to get a new start. Some of it he got from me—all with bad tips. I didn’t lean on him then. Wanted to save him for a better time.’
This was the best,’ Crown put in, nursing his second beer in the manner of a man who felt it necessary to make the drink last.
‘He was my last resort,’ Chang admitted. ‘I told him that if he didn’t come up with something, I’d bust him and ship him back to Canton. That was a week ago. I know he worked hard. In his position, he had to work hard.’
‘And he came up with the Shing Wong village drop?’
‘Which you already know.’
‘Tell me something I don’t?’
Chang’s features showed an angry grimace. ‘I don’t like being hung up in a pigsty, Mr. Crown.’
‘I can figure that out for myself, Po.’
‘Last night you did some work setting up this trip,’ the Chinese said, his tone matching his expression. ‘I didn’t go straight home, either.’ He shrugged. ‘I won’t be able to use him as an informer again.’
Crown nodded his understanding of what Chang meant. A source of information was only good for as long as what he supplied was taken on trust. To probe deeper was to antagonize the informer into non-cooperation. ‘You hit him hard?’
‘I didn’t touch him, physically. I just told him that unless he let me know where he got the gen, the threat still stood.’
‘He came through?’
‘Loud and clear, Mr. Crown. My man isn’t a good Chinese. He doesn’t take care of his aged relatives. His mother has to work as an amah. She cleans several apartments in Bowen Road.’
He gave Crown an up-from-under look.
‘Mu Li?’ the Australian said, knowing the response he would get.
‘Right, Mr. Crown. I told my man the racket was being worked through the vice girls, and his mother was just one of the tools he used. He wasn’t able to find out what the Shing Wong payment was for. Just that Mu Li was a go-between to set it up. The amah overheard the girl on the telephone.’
‘You’ve been sitting on it, Po,’ Crown accused, more disappointed than angry.
‘We’ve lost nothing,’ Chang replied. ‘It’s the limit of what my man and his mother know. I wasn’t sure how deep it went with you and the girl. Our case is probably responsible for getting her killed.’
‘Just a dead chicken dish,’ Crown reminded. ‘Anyway, Mu Li got it before the stuff hit the fan out at Shing Wong.’
‘But after you had your last run-in with Mu Li over the shoe mender’s shop,’ Chang said. ‘My man’s mother heard her talking about that. She was scared of knowing you.’
‘Not just because she was a call girl.’
‘What do you think, Mr. Crown?’
Crown was thoughtful for a few moments, staring into the heeltap of pale beer at the bottom of his glass. Then he shook his head suddenly. ‘This has got to be something really big, Po,’ he muttered. ‘A ten thousand dollar caper just doesn’t merit them getting into such a murderous panic’
‘Except that it got us close to them,’ Chang pointed out.
The Australian nodded. ‘But all we did was bump in the night and bounce off. If I were in their shoes I’d just keep a low profile until the heat died down. Unless ...’
‘Something really big was in the wind,’ Chang completed.
‘Right on, Po,’ Crown said, and sank the half mouthful of beer left in the glass. ‘And that thought gives me ants in the pants, son. Let’s go and wait in the sun.’
He had stood up and was halfway to the door before Chang finished his drink and went after him. The sun was harsh in the cloudless sky and the two detectives began to sweat the moment they stepped out from the air-conditioned atmosphere of the hotel bar. It was no cooler on the other side of the avenida close to the junk-busy water of the Porto Interior. Not even the hint of a breeze rippled the blue sea or moved a green palm frond.
Crown saw Willie and Ju lounging on the bench and recognized the former without suspecting his reason for being there. For he also spotted several other familiar faces from when he had last been on the wharf: and what was suspicious about people waiting at a dockside when a ferry was due?
The two detectives joined the fragmented group of loungers and had to wait twenty minutes before the Australian’s police mind picked up a vibration of trouble. South of where he waited, the Wah Shan steamed around Ponta da Barra and the Chinese porter hurried out of the dockside complex to do Chang’s bidding. He stopped in surprise at seeing Chang, then altered course to approach him: anxious to have it known that he was on the ball. Crown just happened to be looking in the general direction of Willie and Ju and spotted their sudden guarded interest and rapid exchange of conversation.
‘Hong Kong steamer, she be here in few minutes,’ the porter reported enthusiastically. ‘I was coming to hotel to tell you.’
‘Thanks,’ Chang told him. ‘I’ll tell my friends you can be relied on.’
The porter showed a black-toothed grin, bright at first. But then became embarrassed as he glanced fleetingly towards the two Chinese killers who no longer seemed so idly at ease on the bench. The porter scuttled away and Crown made no move to stop him. Instead, the Australian smiled at his partner. His tone was no match for his expression.
‘Don’t look now, and when you do, keep it light,’ he said. ‘The two tough-looking fellers on the bench behind you and to your right. Maybe they’re queer and reckon they have a chance with us.’
‘Interested?’ Chang asked, raising a grin to match Crown’s false good humour.
‘You know it’s just the way I walk,’ Crown replied. ‘Yeah, they’re interested. Looks like your friendly neighbourhood nark on the pier doesn’t sell his service exclusive.’
Word had spread that the Hong Kong ferry was nearing the end of its journey and Chang’s glance towards the two killers was merged with the general shuffle of movement as the waiting groups prepared to meet the passengers.
‘We wait and see?’ he asked.
‘And pick up Jenny Lau,’ Crown replied. ‘No loose tail if third parties are interested.’
Just before their smiles took on a fixed quality that would have marked them as false, the detectives changed into attitudes of bored relaxation. By unhurried, off-handed movements, they were able to take it in turns in keeping Willie and Ju under surveillance: without betraying their interest. Then, when the Wah Shan had slid alongside the berth and the passengers began to disembark, the man not concerned with watching the killers concentrated upon the stream of tourists and businessmen moving off the pier. It was Chang who first spotted the Hong Kong whore: mincing nervously along at the side of the sweating, fat, rich-looking man she had picked up in the Crown Colony. The man seemed excited and smiled and talked a lot as he guided the woman in the wake of a porter trundling several pieces of luggage on a trolley. The porter was setting a fast pace towards the row of waiting taxis and pedicabs.
‘Got her,’ Chang said, turning away a moment before Jenny’s frightened gaze swept over him.
He was in time to see the Australian stiffen and hear him grunt. Continuing his turn, he spotted Willie and Ju in the process of rising from the bench. Willie was trying to play it cool, but Ju could not quell his excitement at seeing Jenny Lau get off the boat.
‘Snap,’ Crown said. ‘Because they ain’t queer. Let’s go, son.’
The two detectives swung out of the shadow of a wall and Crown set a pace of long strides on an interception course with the nervous Jenny Lau and her happy escort. The crowd of incoming passengers had to curl around them, for they allowed nobody to side-track them from their objective. Jenny saw them while they were still three yards from her. She screamed, tore free of the loose grip of her escort and lunged at the hapless porter. The porter emitted a cry of alarm and was forced to take a series of running steps to stay upright. His trolley careered into a once-happy group of American women tourists and more high-pitched screams punctured the stiflingly hot air. One wheel of the trolley ran over a woman’s foot and the six suitcases spilled to the concrete. At least half a dozen people were on the ground and Crown and Chang had to leap over them and sent others reeling as they raced in pursuit of the whore.
At first she had made to whirl around and run back for the ferry berth. But she realized there was no escape in this direction and plunged forward: heading for the broad avenues and cobbled back streets of Macao. Luck played into her hands, for while the two detectives had to struggle through the press of frightened and excited people, she found a clearway through the crowd. At the far end of the human walled corridor she saw the taxis and pedicabs with the fast flow of traffic on the waterfront avenue beyond. The long slit in her cheongsam showed a pumping length of naked thigh as she raced for the only sign of freedom within sight. Fear constricted her lungs but somehow she managed to suck in the humid air necessary to power her run. She heard pounding footfalls behind her and did not need to snatch a glance over her shoulder. She knew it had to be Crown and Chang. The sound of the running feet, strangely detached from the main body of noise from the watchers, grew nearer. Her breathing became a series of dry sobs as she struggled for more speed.
Two men stepped out in front of her—several yards ahead. Her sobs were dry, but the tears were wet and blurred her vision. The men ahead of her were indistinct forms: just two figures who had moved out of the crowd. But a flash of sunlight reflected on metal was like a switch, set and triggered to clear her vision. She recognized Willie and Ju and a scream of sheer terror burst from her gasping mouth. The metal object left Willie’s hand in a powerful underarm throw and spun towards her. Still running, she tensed herself for the thud and spread of wetness at the front of her body.
Instead, hands clawed at her ankles and her legs were snatched out from under her. To her own ears her scream rose an octave as she was slammed down to the concrete: her arms flailed forward in reflex to break her fall. But then powerful arms went around her waist and she was jerked sideways. She couldn’t be sure whether or not it was imagination, but it seemed that the spinning knife tugged at her streaming hair as it skimmed over her falling body.
It was Chang who toppled Jenny as the knife was hurled towards her. He dived forward from the run, arms fully-stretched to reach for her pumping ankles. Two feet ahead of him, Crown veered to the side, then in again to snatch the whore out of the crashing fall. As he made contact, he flung himself down and rolled, hauling Jenny down on top of him.
‘Hell on wheels!’ a refined English voice shouted.
From beneath Jenny’s shuddering body, Crown looked up and saw the throwing knife sunk deep into the suitcase of a tall, bearded man who paled visibly beneath the beads of sweat which had nothing to do with the heat. Then his view was blocked as Chang sprang to his feet.
‘Stay like that long enough and everyone’ll know you’re not queer, Mr. Crown!’ the Chinese muttered as he powered into another run.
The sounds of Jenny’s fear took on a note of hysteria and she began to struggle frantically to get loose from Crown.
‘Cool it, you stupid bitch!’ the Australian snarled, close to her ear, then craned his head around to peer after the running Chang.
When he saw what was happening he almost hurled the whore away from him like a piece of unwanted ballast. But Chang did not need help. Only Ju had a gun and he took too long in deciding whether to jerk it out in front of so many shocked witnesses. Willie, minus his knife, whirled and ran out into the street. He yelled for his partner to follow him. But his words were lost amid the blasts of horns and squeals of brakes as he zigzagged through the angry traffic. And Ju had decided there was something to do before he fled. He reached under his shirt and dragged out the Snub Magnum. Women screamed and men shouted. The crowd split into two horrified groups, broadening the open area between them. For an infinity of seconds as Ju struggled to unsnag the gun from his shirt, the running Chang and the struggling Crown and Jenny were as clearly defined as moving targets in a brightly lit shooting gallery. Then Crown powered himself upright, forcing the woman to join him.
Willie was almost on the far side of the avenue, where the crowd was more thinly spread on the pavement and unaware of the excitement outside the ferry pier. Then, abruptly, this section of the mid-morning throng had an attention grabber. A pedicab driver swung from around the side of a slowing truck and yelled a warning as Willie ran in front of him. The truck accelerated to block forward escape. Willie pulled up short and leapt backwards. The driver of a car who had braked violently to avoid the killer once, did not have time to change pedals again. The steeply curved front end of a VW Variant tossed Willie high into the air. He screamed in pain and fear, came down hard on to the roof of the car and then slid helplessly off the side. The two leading nearside wheels of a large oil tanker rolled over Willie’s stomach. Skin burst and bones crunched. Blood sprayed and crimson tissue oozed. Before so many of his vital organs were pulped into the street surface, Willie had time to reflect that he had been right to regard thirteen kills as unlucky.
