Whispering Shadows (17 page)

XVII

The storm whipped up the sea so much that the
Yum Kee
, with its diesel engine, only made very slow progress. The ferry was almost empty, and Paul, unusual for him, had taken a seat on the upper deck by the window. Heavy waves pounded the side of the ship and made the whole vessel shake. The white spray of the breaking waves slapped against the window with such force that Paul flinched when it first hit.

Everything indicated that a typhoon was on the way. He had not paid attention to the news; the authorities had probably already issued a warning.

Paul wondered if all his windows were closed and if the gutters on his roof terrace were clear. He had left home in such a hurry that he had even left his cell phone on the kitchen counter.

He did not quite know what he was doing. He had lived alone on Lamma for almost three years and had always found his own company sufficient; he had relished the quiet and solitude, had set up his world around him and never had the feeling that he missed anyone or anything, apart from Justin, of course. He was surprised and unsettled by his longing for Christine, his need to hear her voice and to see her, not tomorrow or the day after, but now, immediately. Did she mean more to him than he wanted to admit? Or had the death of Michael Owen, the photos and the letter that he had found on his computer stirred things up so much that he suddenly could no longer stand being alone?

Was missing her a betrayal of his son? What was he to do with
all these new impressions and experiences? They were certainly not going to fall away from him, drop by drop, like the water on the window in front of him. They left traces and awakened longings. Could he stop them from overlaying and gradually dulling his memories of Justin?

He thought about his dark hallway, about the door frame with the markings, the rain boots and the raincoat, and felt that he would like to go straight back there if he could. He felt guilty, as though he had left his son alone at home, breaking his promise. He would have mango pudding with Christine; he would see her and calm down, and if he hurried he could still comfortably make the last ferry back to Lamma.

The journey to Hang Hau took much longer than Paul had expected, and the longer he spent on the metro, the clearer it became to him what he had let himself in for. Hang Hau, of all places. He, who went out of his way to avoid a group of even five or six hikers on Lamma because they were just too many people for him to cope with, was now making his way of his own accord to a satellite town with several hundred thousand inhabitants.

He was to get off at Hang Hau and go to Exit B1, where Christine had promised to pick him up. It had sounded quite simple on the phone. Now Paul stood lost on the platform, confused by the many different signs. He felt as if he were taking the Hong Kong metro for the first time. To the left was Chung Ming Court. Hau Tak Estate. On Ning Garden. Exit A1. A2. To the right for Wo Ming Court. Yuk Ming Court. La Cite Noble. Exit B2. B1.

Paul took the long, seemingly never-ending escalator and went through the turnstile hoping to see Christine immediately. Instead, he found himself looking into the faces of strangers waiting for others, and saw their eyes pass over him. They looked at the other people arriving and one face after the other lit up once they had met the eyes of a friend or acquaintance. He did not see Christine anywhere.

Paul walked hesitantly toward the exit. It had stopped raining, and he walked out onto the plaza but stopped abruptly as though he
had come up against an invisible wall. One high-rise building after another stretched out in front of him in the night sky. He looked left and right: It was the same everywhere. Even though he had lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years, he had never seen such a concentration of tall buildings before. He leaned his head back and tried to count the number of stories in a building but lost count somewhere between twenty-five and thirty and gave up. There had to be fifty, maybe sixty stories.

He turned around and saw Christine coming toward him with quick, light steps. She was smiling at him, and he knew immediately that it had not been a mistake to come. Nothing else in the world soothed him as much as that smile did. He felt as if he had never seen her looking so beautiful before, even though she was wearing just a simple white T-shirt and floral pants in a light fabric that billowed around her legs with every movement. Before she could say anything he had taken her in his arms, feeling her slim, muscular body and her soft breasts. He stroked her hair to one side and kissed her carefully on the neck.

“What a way to say hello,” she whispered in his ear, and he felt her body relax in his arms. They held each other tight for a few long seconds and said nothing. “I'm sorry you had to wait. Josh showed me his homework again, at the last minute, just before going to bed.”

“No problem.”

“What shall we do? What do you feel like?”

Paul shrugged his shoulders. He didn't care what they did as long as Christine was by him. They stood next to each other shyly for a moment like two teenagers on their first date.

“You wanted to have dessert, didn't you?”

Paul nodded.

“There's a pretty good café in the mall. Let's go there.”

They took another escalator up, crossed two streets, and entered a shopping mall. It was thronging with people inside; Paul stopped walking after a few steps, knitted his brows together, and felt goose pimples forming. He would not be able to stand being here even if
he had wanted to. Not for any smile in the world.

Christine saw immediately how he was feeling.

“The old village of Hang Hau is ten minutes away. There are a couple of open-air restaurants there. Do you feel like taking a walk even in this weather?”

“Sure. Let's just get out of here.”

They walked down the main road and were the only pedestrians to be seen far and wide. Only in the small park did Paul see two couples walking around and around having heated conversations.

“This is our crisis park,” Christine explained, when she saw how surprised he looked. “This is where couples come when they are quarreling and don't want the children or the neighbors to hear them.”

They walked hand in hand down a narrow path that was barely lit. When an occasional, especially strong gust of wind blew, they stopped in their tracks and Christine sought protection behind Paul. After a few minutes they came to a traffic junction with several unremarkable restaurants around it. Their kitchens were on the sidewalk. Bare-chested men were standing in front of open fires clanging away at woks with ladles and chopsticks. They were clearly good at what they did, Paul thought, for there were many customers. The diners were sitting under tarpaulin coverings that were flapping vigorously in the wind, chattering away loudly. The air was filled with the smell of hot groundnut oil, stir-fried vegetables, and soy sauce.

Christine got them a table and two stools. Paul ordered tea, a mango pudding, and sticky rice dumplings filled with black sesame.

“Tong yuen,”
Christine said, smiling.

Paul knew what she was hinting at. The roundness of the rice dumplings signified unity and togetherness.

“You can decide whether I've ordered them for their taste or for their symbolic value.”

“I'll tell you after I've tried them.”

They looked over at the high-rise buildings of Hang Hau, which looked even more impressive from where they were sitting, but at
the same time as unreal as a film set for a science fiction movie.

Christine watched him for a while, leaned her head to one side, and asked, “Why have you come all the way to Hang Hau? Something must have happened.”

“I don't know,” he replied hesitantly. “I felt alone on Lamma. For the first time. I sat at the kitchen counter listening to the wind rustling the bamboo leaves and . . .” He fell silent.

“And missed me?” she said, finishing his sentence with a question.

“And missed you,” Paul repeated, smiling. He had not missed the trace of irony in her voice.

“That makes me glad,” she said, waiting.

“And there's also a new development with this murder case.”

Christine's lips thinned and her eyes narrowed; she lifted her head and straightened in her seat.

The waiter brought them their desserts. Paul cut a rice dumpling in two, took a spoonful, and offered it to her. She opened her mouth slowly, but kept her eyes fixed on Paul as she did so. If he was doing this to distract her or calm her down, it was not working. She knew that this was not the whole story yet.

“The police in Shenzhen have arrested a suspect.”

Paul waited for a reaction, but there was none forthcoming.

“Apparently, he's admitted to the murder.”

“What do you mean ‘apparently'?”

“Zhang himself is not sure. He knows very well how some of these confessions in China come about. I just took a look at Michael Owen's computer and . . .”

“What did you do?” she said, interrupting. “How did you get that?”

“The first time I went to his apartment I took a few things like Zhang told me to. One of them was a hard drive and . . .”

“You've committed a crime, Paul. Do you know that?”

“Why do you think that?”

“You removed a hard drive and goodness knows what else from
an apartment!”

“A police detective asked me to.”

“That has nothing to do with it. That was theft.”

“I just borrowed it. I'll return everything to his parents. Don't worry.”

“At the very least, you tampered with some potential evidence,” Christine retorted. “I don't think the Hong Kong police will have much understanding for that.”

“They won't know anything about it.”

“Paul, stop it with the excuses.”

They said nothing for a few moments, feeding each other spoonfuls of dessert until they had calmed down a little.

“Okay,” Christine said, when both plates were almost empty. “What did you find on the hard drive?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I wouldn't ask otherwise.”

“Most of the folders and documents were locked with a password, but the ones I could open were interesting enough.” He leaned forward and added in a whisper, “Michael Owen clearly had a girlfriend in Shenzhen.”

Christine looked at him as though he was trying to make fun of her, but then she realized that he was being serious, and started laughing so loudly that the diners at the neighboring table turned to look at them curiously. “That doesn't really surprise me. I know one or two people in Hong Kong who have girlfriends there. Like my ex-husband.”

“But his family knew nothing about it.”

“Yeah, that's really unusual. If that doesn't make him a suspicious character . . .” She practically choked out her reply, and Paul had to join in laughing at the clumsy way he was telling this story.

“He was with her in Shanghai on a building site.”

“A building site? And in Shanghai too? I thought there weren't any of those in Shanghai?”

“Christine, stop it,” Paul asked halfheartedly. She seemed to find
his efforts at playing the assistant detective amusing at best.

Maybe she was right and he was overestimating the importance of the information he had found.

The only really unusual document he had found was a letter Owen had written to Victor Tang last week.

“I also found a letter to his business partner. In it, Michael Owen is threatening him with legal action. It seems Tang tried to intimidate him in some way.”

“Is that all?” she asked.

“Yes, but the letter shows that there was a pretty serious disagreement between them.”

“What about it? Even business partners can have a fight without murdering each other as a result. You should take a look at some of my business correspondence sometime. If that were proof of anything, I'd have been in jail long ago.” She spooned up the last of the mango pudding, waved the spoon in front of Paul's face, and put it into her own mouth. “So that doesn't sound especially suspicious, Mr. Detective.”

“Maybe not suspicious, but it's a start on finding out what else Michael Owen did in China.”

“Why do you want to know that when someone has already confessed to the murder?”

He took a deep breath preparing to explain Zhang's doubts to her in detail once again, but he exhaled without saying anything at all. If he were honest with himself, he really had no answer.

“Paul, I've already pleaded with you not to travel to China on this matter anymore,” she said in a serious but quiet tone. “You know why. You know I'm frightened.”

She pushed the plates aside, took his hands in hers, and looked straight into his eyes. “It's because of the things I have lived through, which my family suffer from even today, which I can't forget and don't want to forget. Not ever. That would make me feel as if I were betraying my father and my brother, and siding with the murderers. They want us to forget but I will never do that. Do
you understand?”