Hungry Ghost (26 page)

One of the ways he tried to dampen his newly acquired fear of flying was to concentrate on work for as long as possible during the flight, and he sat with a Toshiba laptop computer in front of him, checking and cross-checking his accounts. At first he’d had great doubts about trusting the micro-computer with information about the family business, the drugs, the extortion, the money laundering, the dummy corporations and bank accounts that now spanned the world. He dreaded to think what would happen if it ever fell into the wrong hands. But one of his programmers had devised a foolproof security system that would immediately delete all the information it contained if the correct password was not keyed in. And at regular intervals the machine would ask questions that only Ng could know the answers to. A wrong answer, or a delay in keying in the information, would also delete the on-board memory and clear the disk. And one of the control keys had been reprogrammed so that if Ng was ever surprised while using the machine he could press it and render it useless. Ng made regular copies of the files on floppy disks which were stored in safety deposit boxes in banks in Hong Kong and San Francisco. It was an empire that Thomas Ng was proud of, one that he’d created. If it hadn’t been for him the Ng fortune would still be nothing more than money from vice, confined to Hong Kong, and with little or no future after 1997. His father had given no thought to the future other than to ensure that his three sons were well educated at overseas universities. Thomas had studied accountancy at Columbia University and had spent a year at Harvard, and he’d been keen to put his knowledge to good use. Over seemingly endless cups of insipid tea he’d managed to persuade his father that the way ahead lay overseas – overseas property, overseas investments, preparing for the day when the Communists took back Hong Kong. As far as cash flow went, Thomas had realized that it was the drugs business that was the crux of the whole operation, master-minding the export of heroin from the Golden Triangle and distributing it in Hong Kong. Without too much effort that distribution could be extended to the West Coast of America, especially in cities like San Francisco which had bent over backwards to welcome Chinese immigrants. The growth of Chinatowns also allowed the triad to expand its prostitution and extortion activities overseas, and they, too, were good revenue generators. In fact, it was the huge amounts of money generated in the United States that had led to the legitimate side of the Ng business empire.

Whereas Hong Kong banks and deposit-taking companies were quite accustomed, and happy, to handle cash, the US institutions were bound by law to report all cash transactions of over $10,000. But $10,000 didn’t buy much of the white powder, and a half-decent hooker could pull in that amount in one day.

There were a number of ways the cash could have been laundered, and in the early days Thomas Ng had simply used his triad soldiers to pay the money into various accounts in small amounts, but as the criminal empire grew that became too time-consuming. He’d had a team of twelve working throughout the day but it still wasn’t enough.

He put money, again always less than $10,000 at any one time, into tax-free bonds through a number of stockbrokers, and then once he’d amassed a sizeable mountain of cash he had the brokers transfer the balance to their bank account. The bank then cashed the bonds and passed the money through to an account in one of several tax havens the Ng family used. But before long that, too, became time-consuming and involved too many people.

Thomas Ng hit on the idea of setting up legitimate businesses with a high cash flow and pumping the dirty money into them. He started off with video rental shops, big operations with thousands of videos in stock. Nobody ever checked on how many of the videos were actually rented out, and nobody cared, but each year the carefully tended accounts of each shop processed hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then he set up a chain of quality car rental outlets, offering Porsches, Rolls-Royces and Ferraris. Nobody knew how many of the cars were actually being driven around by customers and how many were simply parked in garages. Nobody cared, but the books showed a very healthy profit curve. High class bakeries were next, shops selling overpriced speciality breads and cookies at exorbitant prices.

When Thomas set the businesses up, their main role was to act as a conduit for money pulled in from the illegal sources, but before long they were thriving in their own right. The money, legal and illegal, was funnelled through a daisy chain of companies that spanned the world, from bank accounts in Switzerland to a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands to a discretionary trust in Vanuatu, most of them little more than brass plaques on a wall. Thomas moved into property then, first buying the leases on his shops, but soon moving into hotels and residential blocks. And he’d now got to the stage where the legitimate side of the operation was on a par with the vice activities. In fact, Thomas was now giving serious consideration to pulling out of drugs and prostitution altogether. What he really wanted to do was to move into banking and financial services, maybe insurance, that was where the really big money lay – big and legal. But how to persuade his father that that was the way to go? He was a man who was devoted to tradition, to his ancestors, and to his family. A man who humoured his Number Two son by letting him run his own business in America – except that the Number Two son was now Number One son, as of eighteen hours ago.

Thomas Ng sat in the aeroplane and scanned the columns of figures on the screen in front of him, but his thoughts were miles, and years, away. His thoughts were of his older brother, the man who’d stayed behind in Hong Kong while Thomas made his way in the world with the sanctuary of a United States passport. Simon Ng, who had been unable to get US citizenship, or citizenship anywhere outside Hong Kong, because of a criminal record acquired when he was nineteen years old and Thomas had been fifteen. Simon, who’d stood in the dock in front of a gweilo magistrate and confessed to slashing an 18K Red Pole with a machete and Simon who’d paid the fine, in cash. Except that it hadn’t been older brother who’d lost his temper and pulled out the knife, it had been younger brother. And it had been younger brother who’d drawn blood and dropped the weapon and run away, and older brother who’d picked it up and been caught by the police trying to wipe off the fingerprints. Simon Ng who’d taken the blame and Thomas Ng who’d got the passport. It was a debt that Thomas had never been able to repay, and now he would not have the chance. His older brother would be avenged, that much Thomas Ng could promise.

Howells had nearly passed out when he bent down to get into the cab outside the Washington Club. His knees sagged and Amy had moved forward to support him; thank God she’d grabbed his left arm. She moved on to the back seat next to him.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked. Howells nodded. ‘Are you still at the Mandarin Hotel?’

Christ, she had a good memory, even he’d forgotten he’d told her he was staying there.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Look, Amy, I really do need your help. Can we go to your house?’

‘No,’ she said, shocked. ‘Of course not. You are gweilo, you cannot come to my home. What would my neighbours think? Aieee yaaa! You are crazy.’

‘I’m hurt, Amy. I’ve been shot. I can’t go back to the hotel and I can’t go to hospital.’

She looked confused, and frightened, and before he could stop her she put her hand forward and grabbed his right arm to shake him. The pain was excruciating but before he could scream he passed out, his face white. His head pitched forward and banged into her shoulder. She put her arm around him and cradled him. His right hand lay in her lap and for the first time she saw the trickle of blood crawling over his wrist. She wiped it with her handkerchief.

The driver impatiently asked her where she wanted to go.

Amy sighed and told him her address.

Dugan was having a hell of a time, flat on his back with a Filipina each side, one with a mug of warm tea, the other with a glass of cold water. They were doing terrible things to him below the waist, and the alternation between hot and cold was driving him wild, until the jangling bell of the telephone dived down into his subconscious and dragged him kicking and screaming out of his dream.

He opened his eyes a fraction and squinted at his watch. It was six o’clock in the morning. It had to be a wrong number and he was sure that when he picked up the receiver a voice would go ‘Waai?’ and then hang up. Phone etiquette was not something they went a bundle on in Hong Kong, where good manners were not one of life’s priorities. He tried burying his head under the pillow but the phone was insistent. He groaned and rolled over on to his stomach and groped for the receiver. It was Bellamy.

‘Dugan?’

‘Yeah. Do you know what time it is?’ he moaned.

‘Pull yourself together, you drunken bum. Petal’s been hurt.’

‘What?’ The mention of Petal cleared his head a little. He pushed himself up and sat on the bed, his feet on the wooden floor. His stomach heaved but he managed to stop himself from throwing up.

‘She’s been beaten up, badly,’ said Bellamy. ‘She’s in Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, room 241.’

‘What happened?’

‘We’re not sure, Pat. It’s a complete fucking mystery at the moment. She was found in a room at the Hilton, along with two bodies.’

‘Bodies?’

‘Two Chinese. They’d been killed by some sort of kung fu expert by the look of it, a real professional job.’

‘Some sort of triad thing?’

‘Fuck, we just don’t know. The room was booked in the name of a gweilo, and he’s disappeared. At the moment he’s our prime suspect, or another victim. At the moment it looks as if they were trying to inject the gweilo with something; the lab is checking it out, but it sure as hell isn’t distilled water. Look, I’ve got things to do, Pat. I just called to let you know where she was. If I were you I’d get down there straight away. I’ll call you later this morning. See if you can find out what happened to her.’

‘Sure, sure. Will do.’

He hung up and sat with his shoulders on his knees, taking deep breaths to quell his queasy stomach. If he had the choice between two sexy young Filipinas or the glass of iced water it would be no contest. His mouth felt like a ferret’s den. He opened the bottle of water and poured it on to the orange crystals. They bubbled and fizzed and frothed and he drank it in one go before groping his way to the bathroom, a thousand questions fluttering around his skull like trapped butterflies.

The doorman who was supposed to be standing guard over the entrance to Amy’s block was asleep as usual, slumped on a rickety wooden chair, his head back, mouth open showing rotten teeth as he snored. She led Howells down a corridor, cracked tiles of dirty-white with a brightly coloured motif composed of bowls of grapes, towards the stairs. At the bottom of the concrete steps she held him against the wall and whispered urgently: ‘There’s no lift, Tom, and it’s four floors up. Lean on me.’

Howells had kept his eyes shut ever since he’d fallen against her in the cab. He was so white, Amy thought, as white as freshly boiled rice, as if all the blood had oozed out of his head and down his arm. His sleeve was wet with blood and it was staining her own clothes. She hoped to all the gods in heaven that her neighbours were sleeping as deeply as the old doorman.

Howells nodded and grunted and put his good arm, the left one, around her shoulders. Together they scaled the stairs, Howells putting first his right foot on a step, then his left, shuffling up one step at a time. At the top of each flight Amy let him rest, encouraging him to take deep breaths to clear his head, but he seemed to get weaker the higher they climbed.

Eventually they were outside her door, and Amy made him stand by the wall as she went through her bag for her keys. She opened the door and switched on the light before helping him in. The living-room was small and square, a tiny kitchen to the left and a bathroom to the right. It took only a dozen of Howells’ small steps to cross the room to the bedroom door, which Amy nudged open. His legs began to buckle and she barely managed to support his weight until they reached the bed. It was a single bed with one pillow and a thin quilt. Amy did not bring customers home – ever. She would go to a hotel, or if they were local she would go to their flat. That was all. Howells was the first man she had ever allowed through the door, except for the plumber who once fixed a leaking tap for her.

Howells pitched forward and lay face down on the bed, head turned towards the wall. She felt his forehead. He was very hot, the flesh damp with perspiration. Her small flat did not have an air-conditioner but there was a floor-mounted fan under the window. She switched it on and directed the cooling breeze at the injured man.

Amy went back into the lounge, dropping her bag on the one small sofa there. She closed and locked her front door and slipped off her shoes. In the kitchen she filled a blue plastic washing-up bowl with warm water and took it along with a small bottle of disinfectant and a roll of paper kitchen towel into the bedroom. She tried to get the cotton jacket off Howells but as soon as she moved his right arm he screamed involuntarily. She took a large pair of kitchen scissors from a drawer under the sink and used it to cut off the jacket, piece by piece, and she placed the bits gingerly on to a newspaper on the floor. The shirt was rust-coloured, but the area around his right shoulder was darker than the rest, and when she touched it her hand came away stained red. She cut the shirt along the back, up through the collar, and then down along the seam to the cuff. She gently pulled it away and gasped as she saw the blood-soaked material wrapped around his shoulder. She removed it and put it on the newspaper. Blood seeped out and was absorbed by the newsprint. She used pieces of the kitchen roll to clean up his torso, starting from the waist and working up. She was amazed to find that all the blood had come from one small hole just below his shoulder, about the size of a one dollar coin.