“The only lucky part is that Chief Inspector Chan is Jonathan Wong’s brother-in-law. The rumor is that Chan himself is a dedicated fanatic, who hates Communists. I don’t know what you expect Jonathan to do.”
“Do? They’re in the same family, aren’t they? Your friend is rich; the detective is poor. How much does he want?”
She watched while he took a long draw on his cigarette.
“I told you, he’s dedicated. I don’t think he takes money.”
The old man kicked the footstool away, turned to look at her for the first time. “Everyone takes money. Anyway, he’s half Chinese, isn’t he?” He laughed again, then made a long retching noise in his throat. About to spit, he remembered that there was no spittoon. He swallowed instead. “Cuthbert will have to deal with it.”
“He won’t. Aiding and abetting isn’t part of the deal; you know that. He’ll turn a blind eye, but that’s all he’ll do.”
The old man had a way of looking with one eye closed, immobile as a lizard on a rock.
“Are you telling me we may be driven to something more decisive?”
Emily felt her cheeks burning. She rose, stood directly in front of the old man, who blinked.
“Can’t you people get it through your skulls that you can’t just kill everyone who gives you trouble? Yes, I’m daring to yell at you; are you going to kill me too?”
He laughed then. “Who said anything about killing? I want the little detective to carry out his investigation. I want to know who died in that mincer. I want him to tell me first-perhaps exclusively.”
He stared at her. She felt the fear again, a sense of doom in the pit of her stomach. Never raise your voice to a psychopath. She sat on the footstool, kept her eyes below his.
“I’m sorry. Everyone thinks you had them killed. Give me another few weeks. I’ll see what I can do. I have a few ideas.”
The old man sneered at her. “What ideas?”
“Wong needs to get to know his brother-in-law better first. They’re not great friends. I’ll try to set it up.”
The old man grunted. “It’s not urgent until the little detective gets close. I want to know what happened to those three before Cuthbert is told.” He stared at her. “D’you still fuck him?” He smirked at her discomfort. “Pity. You could have kept me informed about how much he knows, our little English diplomat. They’re going to make him Sir Milton Cuthbert when he goes back in July. If you’d managed to marry him, you would have been Lady Cuthbert.” He sniggered.
“I don’t understand. Why are you so interested in those killings if you didn’t do it? It was probably just triads; people like that get snuffed out.”
The old man turned his face away from her. “Maybe. See what you can do about the detective anyway-make friends with him, find out what stage he’s at. Fuck him if you have to. And as far as the five hundred million is concerned, I expect results. It’s been hanging around for too long. You don’t want to lose those development rights along the Pearl River, do you? You have a lot of money riding on that. All your money, taking the personal guarantees into account. I don’t think you want to be poor.”
Seeing the expression on her face, he laughed again.
When she had gone, the old man picked up a telephone on a coffee table near his left hand, told his secretary whom he wished to speak to. When the telephone rang, he began speaking immediately in Mandarin, his voice heavy with condescension. At the end of the conversation he said: “By the way, don’t impersonate me again. I want this investigation to continue. I want to know who died and who did the killing.” His reply to the question that followed was to hang up. After a moment’s thought he pressed the intercom button again. “Get me the other Englishman, the one in London. And stay on the line; I’ll need you to translate.”
17
Moira was a generous lover. Generous and adventurous, the beneficiary of a culture that ordained that the over forties must have fun. Chan was surprised she’d had the delicacy to sober up before his return from work and more surprised that she’d been able to arouse him when Angie hadn’t. She was unexpectedly sensitive, and then there was a self-sufficiency to her suffering that attracted him. Half dreaming beside her, he found it possible to believe he lay with a woman whose soul was as big as the world. He liked her breasts. They were large, pendulous, friendly. He formed a spoon around her body to hold them while she slept. She woke up once to say thank you, turned over, fell into a deep sleep.
As usual he remained awake. After a while he slid out of bed, closed the door, sat naked on the couch to smoke. He turned on the television with the sound off. Monks who had perfected the art of kung fu in the Shao Lin Monastery flew through the air, slaughtering their opponents against the usual impossible odds. On another channel an aging landowner in mandarin dress was taking his daughter to market when they were ambushed by a gang of robbers. Fear of rape, pillage and murder was amplified by the makeup. China dramas usually dug into the distant violent past. The recent violent past was too much for most stomachs.
He turned back to the monks of Shao Lin. He’d gone through his karate stage. To perfect the body to the point where you could defy gravity was a legend engraved in the imagination of every Asian boy. He lit another cigarette, coughed, wondered what to do about Moira.
The truth was, she was only the second Western woman with whom he’d been involved. Comparisons were inevitable. He wondered if the learning curve he’d been through with Sandra was applicable to an American. What he remembered most about his English wife was her complaining. She was very different from a Chinese wife; the problem did not seem to lie in lack of material possessions or social status. Sandra’s moans emanated from high moral ground. Hong Kong was shallow and materialistic, greedy, inhuman. Chan deduced that the British Isles were a fortress of psychological depth, moral courage, human kindness. He set himself to understand more, to take advantage of his wife’s wisdom and background. He found that she had an agile wit that ranged over English and American cultures with apparent ease. She used different voices, different accents to accord with certain moods. One funny little voice was used when she wished to convey affection. Chan wondered why she could not express love in her own voice, but he learned to live with it. A phony New York accent was used when she would have liked to be forceful; an upper-class British accent appeared when she thought he was being uncouth.
It was the videos that precipitated the end, though he could never have predicted it. He’d subscribed to a rental shop largely to try to alleviate the homesickness she complained of from time to time. She’d reacted with enthusiasm, renting mostly old videos of English comedy shows with a strong satirical, self-mocking bite. As he’d sat with her night after night, he’d begun to realize where her voices came from. Not only her voices. Her opinions, her moral postures-even her disdain for Hong Kong was a rerun of a BBC documentary. The English, it seemed, in their cold, wet climate spent hours in front of televisions being told what to think and who to be. He was married to a collage of Monty Python, Spitting Image, Black Adder, Not the Nine o’Clock News and a range of similar shows.
At the start she had been vehemently antiracist. Indeed Chan had worried that she had married him out of an excess of political correctness. Little by little, though, odd epithets had poked through the facade, like barbed wire through snow. English mockery was highly developed and embraced the world. French were Frogs, Germans were Krauts, Scandinavians were Hurdy-Gurdies, Italians and Greeks were Dagos, Chinese were Chinks or Chokies, Japanese were Nips. Was it possible that behind the television programs there cowered a mean-spirited people smaller than life?