Crown 2, page 6
part #2 of Crown Series
He opened his mouth to scream a denial of what he saw, and started to turn. But Ju pushed away from the wall behind the door and the Snub Magnum swung through the humid, death-heavy air. The barrel and trigger guard crashed hard into de Jong’s temple and the big Dutchman crumpled to the floor. His attacker’s face was nothing more than an Oriental blob printed on his memory as he sank into unconsciousness. He ejaculated and shrivelled as his flabby body curled up on the floor.
Willie craned around from behind Ju to look down at the Dutchman. ‘There’s a guy who wanted his oats real bad,’ he said.
‘Couldn’t even wait for a live one,’ Ju replied, stepping across the slumped form.
Willie followed him out of the room and there was just enough clearance to allow the door to close. ‘Necrophilism,’ he said as the two men swung in front of the door of the next room, which had been closed by the expectant whore.
‘What?’ Ju asked.
‘Necrophilism,’ his partner repeated. ‘What it’s called. When a stiff makes a guy stiff.’ ‘
Chapter Six
‘YOU OKAY, PO?’ Crown asked anxiously after elbowing his way through the group of Chinese staring in awe through the open doorway of the pigsty.
‘My ego pains me, Mr. Crown,’ the younger detective replied tightly. ‘But they warned me in police training school I’d have to hang around some pretty lousy places from time to time.’
Chang was folded double, his wrists and ankles tied together and then to each other. A short length of rope was attached to these bonds with the other end lashed to a beam in the pigsty roof. Thus, Chang was suspended, a few inches above the heads of a half-dozen scrawny swine who were eyeing his reluctant intrusion in much the same manner as the watching Chinese farm workers: half intrigued and half irate.
‘Cut him down!’ Crown snapped to the nearest man.
The man was suddenly afraid, and he backed away, forcing those around him to move.
‘None of them know English and they won’t believe I’m a copper, Mr. Crown,’ Chang said in a long-suffering tone.
The Australian yanked out his warrant card and waved it around. Moonlight, lights from windows and open doorways and the VW’s headlights supplied ample illumination for the ID card to be seen. It was probable that not one of the simple farmers recognized it for what it was. But the photograph and printed matter made it an official document and the men and women were familiar with the need to obey authority provided the representative of authority carried documentation. And Crown had the right tone of voice as he began to yell at the Chinese in their own language, berating them to be careful in freeing Chang. The farmers moved quickly, but gently. Four of them supported the awkwardly hung body while another leapt upwards to cling to the beam with one hand while he sawed at the rope. Then Chang was carried outside and not lowered to the ground until the bonds at his ankles and wrists were severed. Only the farmers had churned through the muck of the pigsty, bringing the stink outside on their heavy boots. Neither they nor the other peasants took exception to the smell for they worked with it constantly assaulting their nostrils.
Crown checked that Chang really was not hurt and moved quickly away to lean against the side of the battered VW. Chang politely thanked his helpers while he flexed cramped muscles, then went to join the Australian. The peasants remained in a tight knit group, watching the two detectives anxiously,
‘The karate king got kicked up his unroyal ass again, uh?’ Crown asked, low but angry.
Chang reached under his jacket and was relieved that the gun nestled in its holster. He was not offended to face a bawling out from the senior detective. Crown hauled him on the carpet fairly regularly but there was never any hint of official rank-pulling in the Australian’s attitude. Rather, Crown acted at such moments like a benign father pressured into heavy-handedness as a reaction to anxiety. Which was not surprising since the orphaned Chang had been a constant companion of Darren Crown when they were boys: to the extent that the Chinese youngster had almost been a member of the family at the villa north of Aberdeen.
‘It wasn’t karate, Mr. Crown,’ Chang replied, subordinate but not subservient. ‘Very unorthodox. But it worked. Until the man I took turned out to have a couple of helpers waiting on the side-lines.’
‘What happened?’ Crown asked, calmer now that he had recovered from the shock of finding Chang strung up helplessly in front of a mob of Chinese who could have turned nasty.
Chang told him of the events between bracing the man who went for the package of money and getting hit on the head by the gun. He gave the information in the manner of delivering an official police report: in a monotone with no stress to highlight the salient factors. Crown could decide what these were for himself. That the pay-off was neither small nor exceptionally large. Ten thousand Hong Kong dollars. That they had physical descriptions of the three men involved. One of them called Yeh. That the ‘man in Macau’ was in control. That killing a cop was not something to be undertaken lightly. Not much, but more than they had when they left the city.
‘What about your audience for the swinging scene you played back there?’ Crown asked, his tone a lot lighter now.
‘We talked,’ Chang replied, turning slightly to conceal his movements as he massaged his groin where he had taken the kick while unconscious. ‘They say they had nothing to do with this and I believe them, Mr. Crown. A drop was needed and this place was chosen. The three men just moved in and only had to act tough to scare these people. Scared them enough so they wouldn’t listen to me when I told them who I was. They were warned not to cut me down. And they didn’t.’
‘I saw,’ Crown said, and spat at the ground in front of him. ‘Probably all comrades. Can’t wait to spread it around they had a real live police pig in their sty.’ Crown was a bitter cynic who burdened himself with a lot of hate. Communists, who in his estimation accounted for ninety-eight per cent of Hong Kong’s Chinese population, were high on his enmity list. ‘They say how your playmates got here and left?’
‘A car,’ Chang replied. It was parked behind the biggest house. I didn’t see it. They say it was a dark coloured saloon. Nothing else.’
‘In your position, you had to be polite, Po,’ Crown pointed out, swinging his penetrating gaze towards the group of peasants and glowering at them. ‘Maybe a little pressure will prise some hard facts out of them?’
Crown made it a question because Chang was always allowed to out-rank his senior officer when they were dealing with Chinese. Despite becoming Westernized in many respects, Chang was nonetheless a born and bred Oriental. And Crown’s long experience of Hong Kong had taught him that the Chinese can only really be understood by the Chinese.
‘I don’t think so, Mr. Crown,’ Chang replied earnestly. ‘Some of them could probably give us the make, model, year and registration number of the car. But why the hell should they?’
Crown didn’t like it, but he shrugged his acceptance and jerked open the door of the car. Chang swung around the front. The farmers were visibly relieved that they were to be left in peace at last. The door on the battered nearside of the car made a sound which set the teeth on edge as Chang opened it and closed it. He noticed the flecks of white cellulose clinging to the buckled green panelling and recalled that the drop car had been white.
The Australian reversed the car out on to the road, the headlights sweeping over the peasants as the group split up to go to their respective houses. ‘Probably going to check whether any of Mao’s thoughts cover tonight’s situation,’ he muttered grimly.
‘The old boy has one for every eventuality,’ Chang said lightly. ‘How about, in your case, “Man with dents in car must some time explain them to interested party”?’
‘Not him, Po,’ Crown replied. ‘Mao would never mention cars. It might get the comrades thinking the internal combustion engine can be used to drive something other than the local co-operative tractor.’
‘Whatever happened, did you get anything more than I did, Mr. Crown?’ Chang asked as the VW started down the winding side road towards the main route back to Kowloon.
Crown leaned across to flip open the glove compartment flap. He drew out the dead man’s wallet and dropped it into Chang’s cupped hands. ‘There were two of them in the car,’ he explained. ‘They spotted me before they reached where they were heading. Fooled me almost all the way to the border and then it was either them or me who went off the road. It was them.’
Chang was going through the contents of the wallet in the light from the interior fixture. There was not much light and not much in the wallet. Four five and two one dollar bills. A driver’s license and Diner’s Club card both in the name of Chan Hai. Two photographs—of a nice little old Chinese lady and a not very attractive girl in her twenties, also Chinese. A grubby, sweat-stained card advertising the Stardust Hotel on Lockhart Road in Wanchai. Just the name—nothing else. And nothing else in the wallet
‘You know the place?’ Crown asked when Chang had switched off the interior light.
‘Come on, Mr. Crown,’ the Chinese defended.
‘Just asking.’
Hong Kong Chinese businessmen catering to the wants of the consumer society were nothing if not adaptable: always having an eye to the main chance. So they were inclined to change the names of their establishments at the drop of a hat to capitalize on a new fad. Thus, when Richard Mason published his famous novel about a Wanchai bar girl, almost every street in Hong Kong spawned the Suzie Wong this and the Suzie Wong that. And when NASA landed men on the moon, the Apollo bars, clubs and hotels made an overnight appearance. Just the same old places with shiny new signs over the doors.
‘Could be nothing,’ Chang said. ‘His license says he lived in the Sookunpo Resettlement Area.’
‘It could be something,’ Crown countered. ‘Especially since a girl was hacked to death in the Stardust tonight.’
Chang gave a low grunt that said he was prepared to go along with the start of a theory. ‘When tonight, Mr. Crown?’
The Australian had taken a wrong turn somewhere and they were rolling along Butterfly Valley to enter the metropolitan area on Castle Peak Road north of the Standard Oil Depot. ‘She was found about forty-five minutes ago—and I don’t have extra sensory perception. I did have an audience out in the sticks where Chan Hai and his buddy went off the road. One of them was public-spirited enough to get to a telephone and call the cops. I used their radio to get a message to Colony HQ and they came back with a murder report.’
Chang and Crown had worked together for a long time. A side effect of their close partnership was an ability for each to know something of what the other was thinking. Now, Chang sensed there was more to come and he waited patiently to hear it while the Australian negotiated the fork from Castle Peak to Tai Po Road and picked up speed south down the Kowloon peninsula.
‘Inspector James thinks he has an open and shut case. He’s got a Dutch seaman with a sore head from booze and a sapping.’
‘He could be right,’ Chang pointed out.
‘He just could,’ Crown replied sourly. ‘But you know how I feel about coincidences, Po.’
The Chinese detective also knew how Crown and James felt about each other. Never more than colleagues who happened to be members of the same police force, a bitter enmity had developed when James discovered Crown was sleeping with his wife. Crown was already divorced from Anne who had gone back with their son to live in Sydney. James had thought he was happily married and might have killed the Australian for shattering the illusion: except that he found out his wife was indulging her nymphomania with half a dozen men besides Crown. Crown had not known about that, either. Now the over-sexed ex-Mrs. James was doing her thing back in England. It was a mess which left a hangover of bitterness between the two men who happened to be colleagues in the same police force.
It was after one o’clock when Crown drove the battered VW into the car park of Police Colony Headquarters at the western end of the Wanchai sprawl. The yellow lights dripping from the windows of the police buildings looked jaded in comparison with the vivid colours of the advertising come-on signs winking and flashing along the streets. But inside the buildings the air-conditioned atmosphere which carried a hint of disinfectant immediately made the two detectives feel fresher. Another contributory factor was the relative peace after the clattering engine of the VW and traffic and music noises which had accompanied Crown and Chang along the streets of the twin cities.
Inspector Eric James had been transferred from HQ General Investigation Office to Island Division CID. He had an office of his own and it was here that the Special Assignments men found him—questioning the hapless Hans de Jong while two burly Chinese PCs looked on impassively.
‘Come in!’ he yelled irritably when Crown rapped on the door and started to open it before the first word of the reluctant invitation was uttered. ‘He’s still maintaining he’s innocent,’ the British Inspector said, and blew his nose on a damp handkerchief.
James had a sinus condition which gave him all the symptoms of a permanent head cold. His voice was always thick, his nose running and his eyes red-rimmed. But his rundown appearance was deceptive. His build was big and he could be very tough indeed when the circumstances demanded. Physically or otherwise. There was no overt violence in the functionally furnished office. Members of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force do not use force in interrogating suspects: at least, not in the staid and hidebound surroundings of Police HQ. James was seated in an upholstered swivel chair behind his neat desk and de Jong’s flabby form was uncomfortably folded on a hard-seated, straight-backed chair in front of it. The two police constables flanked the doorway. The ceiling and desk lights were switched on but the shaded desk unit was not directed into de Jong’s pale and frightened face. He was fully dressed in shoes, jeans and jersey shirt and there was a clean, professionally applied dressing on his left temple.
‘Don’t they all?’ Crown allowed, and trapped the Dutchman’s weary gaze with a penetrating stare. ‘What’s the two lots of gen, Inspector?’
Crown’s use of the title indicated he was pulling rank. James grimaced and looked down at an open manila folder on the desk blotter.
‘Radio room got a 999 call from a woman known as Momma Kwok. Proprietor of the Stardust Hotel. The local police know the place to be a brothel. She claims it’s a legitimate hotel. She reported finding a dead girl and a passed-out man in one of the rooms. Both naked. A patrol car was sent to investigate. The man—Hans de Jong here—was awake and dressed when the officers reached the room. He attempted to resist arrest.’
James looked up from the file and discovered the Dutchman and Crown were still locking eyes. Crown’s expression remained impassive. De Jong seemed close to tears.
‘That how he got the crack on the head?’ Crown asked
‘Somebody hit me,’ the Dutchman blurted out. ‘Not the cops. Somebody when I found the girl. Not my girl.’
‘The part about somebody hitting him is the only true statement I’ve been able to get out of him,’ James said, and sniffed wetly. ‘He claims he bought the time of another girl at the Stardust. He had to go to the lavatory. When he got back he either went into the wrong room or his girl had been moved out and another one planted there. Already dead. He was smashed on San Mig and rice wine. He can’t remember clearly. Only that somebody hit him.’
Crown showed a sour grin. ‘Maybe it’s because that left an impression on him.’
Nobody—least of all James—appreciated the sardonic humour. ‘It’s the sight of the girl which left an impression on me. It was a spite killing. At least twenty stab wounds and a slash from neck to abdomen. It seems to me de Jong and the whore had an argument. She hit him and he went over the edge.’ He shrugged and sniffed again. ‘The drink and the sight of all that blood caught up with him and he passed out.’
‘The weapons were in the room?’
A nod from the English Inspector. ‘A Japanese dagger and an empty bottle of Jinying Jiu.’
‘What do you have on the suspect?’
‘Deckhand off a Panama-registered tramp steamer tied up over at Kowloon Docks. He started out on a drinking binge with three friends and lost them along the way. A regular visitor to the Colony and no previous arrests.’
‘The dead girl?’
‘Unidentified as yet. Momma Kwok says she never saw her come into the hotel. Forensic have her clothes and the pathologist is examining the body.’
‘Nobody heard screams?’
A shake of the head and blow of the nose. ‘There’s a bruise on the girl’s neck. Looks as if he knocked her out before he went to work with the knife.’
‘Not me!’ de Jong protested weakly. ‘I didn’t kill her. Not my girl.’
Crown looked away from the Dutchman and his expression became edged with disappointment.
‘Open and shut case, Mr. Crown?’ Chang suggested.
‘Looks like, son,’ Crown replied softly.
‘What’s your interest, Superintendent?’ James asked.
‘The man in Macao,’ Crown replied, and shot a glance towards the Dutchman. But there was no reaction. De Jong had returned to his slumped posture on the chair, head hung with chin resting on his chest. Only James was intrigued, but his tacit query went unanswered as Crown swung towards the door. ‘A lead in my case points to the Stardust Hotel,’ he said. ‘When you hear Chang and me are poking around down there, you won’t sound off about us treading on your toes?’
He glanced at James, who looked suspicious, but then covered his lower face with the handkerchief to catch a sneeze.
‘You’ll do what you have to do, Superintendent,’ James replied sadly.
‘Hey, mister!’ de Jong called, and captured the attention of everybody in the office. ‘My girl, she was big.’ He cupped his meaty hands to his chest, indicating large breasts, then ran them down his body to suggest broad hips. ‘And she had coloured birthmark. Here.’ He half rose from the chair and pointed a finger at his own buttocks.
