China Wife (15 page)

24

The houses on the northern, New South Wales, shore of Lake Mulwala would have reminded Julie Li of Sandbanks in Dorset. Visits there to her godfather were among her fondest memories. With the same sort of mix of TV personalities, football and other sporting celebrities, the similarities were compelling. Whether Sandbanks had a darker side she would have doubted. That the Lake Mulwala settlement had was as yet beyond her knowledge. But, based on the fact that one of the most isolated houses belonged to a Chinese businessman whose normal address was in Shanghai and the assortment of nocturnal comings and goings, the locals would have certainly suspected that it had.

And they would have been right.

Permanently manacled at the wrists and ankles, Janice Liang, supposedly late of Calgary, Canada and earlier unwilling travelling companion of Alice Hou, provided domestic services of all varieties to a range of Chinese men who came and went from the isolated house at irregular hours.

‘She's not a virgin.'

The painfully intrusive and contemptuous medical examination that Janice Liang, Alice and their other companions had been subjected to on first arrival in Melbourne had separated Janice, April Cheng and Patience Zhang from Alice, who was the only one seemingly innocent of any sexual encounters.

In the complex market that the girls were being trafficked into, the price for Janice, April and Patience was no lower than
that for Alice or the half-dozen or so girls who had gone before them. Contrary to the prevailing Western wisdom, virginity was a specialist taste among those in the market for wives; sexual experience was just as highly prized.

Protected by his reputation as a fashionable private consultant, making such inspections on young women was not uncommon for Dr Wu. The young of the Melbourne Chinese community were no more and no less promiscuous than any other group of young people. Dr Wu's assistant, a man with huge gambling debts and a fine disregard for the ethics of the medical profession that supported him, reported the findings to Mr Xu's agent in Melbourne. Mr Xu set about marketing Alice. The fact that at the time she wasn't his to market hadn't presented itself as a problem to him.

‘Convincing the buyer won't be that difficult,' was Mr Xu's opinion as he had made his plans.

He already had had contact with at least one of his clients with an interest in acquiring a partner of known sexual purity. The loss of Patience Zhang in the raid on the gang holding Alice Hou had been an irritation, but a subsequent ambush of one of the gang's vehicles also saw the transfer of Janice Liang into Xu's ‘protection'. The potential repercussions of his actions didn't unduly bother Xu; he was confident that Mr Kim would be able to deal with any.

However, the girls still needed to be held somewhere until a buyer could be found. With the Australian authorities having gone up a gear in their efforts to identify, follow through and break up the trafficking chain ‘storing' the goods was an increasing problem. Working in isolated groups helped, but Mr Xu's habit of hijacking the best girls from competing Chinese gangs if he thought he could make a good profit rather undermined this policy. The subsequent warfare was something that had started to concentrate official minds. And debriefing the released Patience Zhang had been particularly helpful.

Although it wasn't very far from Echuca to Lake Mulwala, Mr Kim maintained his overall control of what was going on at Mulwala by mobile phone. He had never visited the area and had very little knowledge of the lake and its particular features. Mr Xu's cell system meant that Kim only knew the man in charge at the remote house and even then only by a name that he knew full well was false.

The mobile phone conversations were careful and coded, but since Mr Kim's recent arrest in Echuca the authorities were now at least able to listen in and to gather what gems of intelligence they could.

‘We will need to move your merchandise within the next two days,' Kim said in an early-morning conversation.

Julie had noticed Kim's habit of making his calls early, assuming that she or Alice weren't yet up and about. It was usually around seven o'clock. But since Alice was responsible for breakfast and cleaning chores, Kim's assumption was often wrong. As an evening waitress in her more recent past she found getting up early a struggle. It was Julie who generally had to force her out of bed and who as a consequence was able to take her time in the shower while she eavesdropped on Mr Kim as he talked outside on deck.

God, I wish he wouldn't keep switching between English and Mandarin!

Interpreting half a conversation was hard enough without worrying if you'd understood the words properly. On this occasion, Julie need hardly have worried.

‘We're going to have to move from here,' Kim announced to Julie once their meal was complete and Alice had been despatched to other domestic duties.

Julie waited for the inevitable instructions. She had already learned that Kim didn't do explanations and to ask was to invite his anger. And his anger was now never far from the surface. Irritatingly, Julie had to rebuild trust with the man on an almost daily basis. Nonetheless, if they were to move on,
she needed to know as much as possible about when and where.

‘We need a different car,' Kim said.

‘You want me to return this one and get another one?'

‘Yes, you stupid bitch. You put the dent in it; you can sort it out with the hire firm.'

‘OK, OK.'

Julie couldn't believe her luck.

‘I'll go to Bendigo, different renting office. But I'll need to know for how long and where we're going.'

‘Get it for a month. We aren't going off-road.'

It wasn't much help, but annoying Mr Kim still wasn't on the agenda.

Getting arrested again for speeding, however, was.

Several hours later just as it was getting dark Julie was back on board the houseboat. The police might not have known where Julie, Alice and Mr Kim were going but their tracking device again would give them a good chance of being close behind when they arrived.

‘Today?'

Mr Kim had identified the premises of a well-known local farmer on the Victorian side of Lake Mulwala as a place to meet. Access to the farm was off the beaten track but achievable from two directions. It was just the sort of rendezvous that suited Kim's purpose.

‘Before the match.'

Kim had already established with the leader of the group holding Janice that the farmer was an Australian Rules fan and a supporter of Carlton and would be well away from the rendezvous area when they arrived.

Time and place were fixed. The Victorian Police had a few guesses about the details aided by the abysmal record of the farmer, who was recognised from the phone transcript and known to them for his inability to restrain his aggression once
drunk. And getting drunk was a regular habit on match days, whether Carlton were playing or not. The police took some precautions in case they had wrongly interpreted the telephone conversation, which included alerting their colleagues in New South Wales to the possibility of action on Lake Mulwala, since the lake was not actually a part of Victoria, and prepared themselves for what was to come.

They didn't have to wait for long at the Echuca end. Bundling Alice quickly into the station wagon that Julie had hired before any Saturday afternoon idlers along the historic wharf might wonder what was wrong with the young woman being half carried to the vehicle, they drove off towards the highway.

Even during the winter months there was still a range of pleasure boats that cruised the waters of the lake. Essentially formed by restricting the flow of the River Murray, Lake Mulwala was man-made and as a consequence something of a tourist attraction. Large areas of the lake were navigable, hence the pleasure boats, but, equally, large areas were not – at least not to the commercial vessels as a result of the huge number of dead trees that grotesquely populated these areas. These remnants of the forest that had been flooded formed a bizarre backdrop for boat trips but posed a major hazard to those unfamiliar with the lake. Iceberg-like, the root structures and lower limbs of the trees below the waterline made straying off the marked channels unwise. However, for locals, navigating through the exposed trees away from the marked channels was a skill that was widespread and used and abused as the need arose.

And as Mr Kim approached the rendezvous point on the Victorian side of the lake in good time, the priority for the kidnappers of Janice Liang, the pseudonymously named ‘Heng Sun' included, was to get across the lake as quickly as possible.

‘They're on the move!'

It wasn't possible for the New South Wales Police observers to get too close to the remote Chinese-owned house as its grounds were open and extensive and provided little cover, but once the group of three people had embarked in the rigid inflatable it was easier to keep them in view without creating suspicion.

‘We'll let them out into the main channel and then follow.'

The police patrol boat nudged its way from behind the jetty of a house adjacent to the one under observation.

‘Looks like three on board. Two seemed to be active in managing the boat; the third seems to be passive in the well of the inflatable.'

At the distances involved, it was enough to confirm that Janice Liang was on board but restrained.

As a large tourist riverboat ambled its way in a long loop to show off the various houses that none of the gaping visitors would ever be likely to be able to afford, the second police patrol boat headed out from the Victorian side, cutting off access to a large area of the bank, much of which was not available to public access anyway. They watched as Heng Sun directed his steersman to head into the edge of the dead forest area.

‘He's heading out of the channel.'

The inflatable edged away from any of the tourist-frequented parts of the lake and towards the Victorian shore. Equally and initially imperceptibly the inflatable increased its speed and headed further into the danger area.

The clatter of a helicopter began to dominate the normal quiet of the lake, its clear police identification showing on its underbelly.

‘He's off!'

The officer in the patrol boat that had followed the Chinese group across the lake didn't seem surprised.

The inflatable had taken fright at the sight of the helicopter, but it was only when the steersman wound up the two
outboard engines and headed into the morass of tree stumps that it was apparent that the fugitives knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going.

A chase was on. But it soon proved to be a one-sided one.

The inflatable sped away, skimming the surface, its bow clear of the water, seemingly mocking the more cautious police steersman. He had no choice but to follow. Beginning to weave an erratic course between the tree stumps, the fugitive inflatable had a head start. Seeking to cut the vessel off, the police steersman accelerated into an equally erratic and convoluted passage through the dead forest. More substantial than the trailer-loadable inflatable, the police patrol boat drew more water as a consequence of its much more powerful and larger outboard motors. But in the restricted confines of the dead forest it couldn't use its superior capability. The inflatable easily out-distanced it.

The juddering crunch that projected the police boat into a half-circle and brought it to a standstill justified Heng Sun's confidence in entering the morass of dead and broken trees.

As the inflatable reached open water on the Victorian side of the lake, its scything telltale wake spreading out into the forest on one side and the shallows on the other, the second police patrol vessel signalled that they had lost contact with the Chinese party.

It was many days before the joint police investigation could put together a complete picture of what happened next.

25

‘Linda Shen?'

It was almost a smile of recognition; that worried her.

And had she known of the level of interest in her comings and goings to and from Britain and within, she should have been worried.

This was the fourth visit that she had made to Britain in almost as many months. The police and Border Agency might have admired her devotion to family in Manchester had they not known that she never in fact visited any of them. Having been steeped in the public-service ethos from her police and Border Agency days, spinning a story for the immigration officers went against the grain and usually put her on edge for a few hours after her arrival. But thoughts of her hostage son ensured that she adhered to her role.

The flight from Shanghai had given Linda plenty of time to think about what she was doing, why she was doing it, and the rights and wrongs of it. Her anger and bitterness at being press-ganged into marriage far from home had long since given way to a grudging and necessary acceptance of a life of luxury that otherwise would have been totally beyond her. She preferred ‘press-ganged' as a description to ‘kidnapped' even if the latter was closer to the truth; it didn't make her seem quite so much a victim. Nothing material was denied to her; her husband, like most of the Chinese men that she had met saw their world very much in terms of possessions, including their wives. Procured by Mr Xu specifically because she not only
had an unblemished British passport, but also because she was supposedly intelligent and well versed in British culture and administrative practices, she had soon gained her husband's reluctant and un-admitted trust. She was just the sort of working companion he needed, even if his inherent arrogance and male-oriented outlook made him unable to recognise this openly.

But Mr Shi was increasingly disconcerted to find himself on occasions acknowledging his wife's capabilities and deferring to them, if only subconsciously.

High over Eastern Europe on her way to London, Linda was ready to admit that her life wasn't that bad. She found the separation from her son irksome and on occasions extremely painful, but she reasoned that back in the UK she would have had to work to support him and would have been equally absent from his life for long periods while he was cared for by his grandparents. That was not to say that she didn't acknowledge that she was being crudely blackmailed into what she was doing because of him.

But now that the obnoxious Mr Kim had been removed from the scene she knew that her activities in Britain would be easier to manage.

Serving her husband's interests was ostensibly her prime purpose for visiting Britain. And she would have been the first to admit that Kim had indeed successfully knocked heads together and that her husband's syndicate's grasp on a significant amount of organised crime in the West Midlands, Manchester and East Anglia was well established. It was Linda Shen's subtle and careful encouragement of the local Chinese groups to overreach themselves by expanding into new areas of activity like computer fraud that had come to the attention of the British authorities. With her knowledge of how things worked in the UK, she ensured that there was sufficient transparency about these new endeavours for the police experts to detect them and to eventually deal with them.

‘So what crime have I committed?'

Sensing the beginning of the descent into Heathrow, she tried to pull her thoughts together. From her training she knew that conspiracy in various forms was the principal thing that she might be guilty of; however, she was not involved in those things that her husband was doing that caused harm to people.

Crap! Guilt by association!

Much to her initial mortification, she realised that her moral standards had been undermined both by what she was doing and the new luxury that she had rapidly become used to. Something of her husband's simplistic view of the world had rubbed off. The little subversions of the local Chinese groups that she was supposed to be supporting salved her conscience, but until a real opportunity to escape from China emerged she wasn't going to be doing anything to rock her husband's boat.

She was met at Heathrow.

The face over the crumpled sign was smiling. She had never been confronted with the inevitable ill-written ‘Linda Shen' sign
and
a smile. Her first reaction was relief. Her usual minder was not there to meet her. Then came the questions. Why not? What had happened to him. Who was this new guy?

‘Linda Shen?'

She eventually decided that it was nervousness rather than deference that the man was displaying. She didn't bother to wonder why.

And a suspended sentence for assault in exchange for a minimum of two days of keeping his eyes and ears open was worth a smile to Li Chang.

‘OK, Mr Li,' Linda said, once the man had introduced himself. ‘Change of plan, we're not going to Birmingham; we're going to the Big Smoke. Ever driven in London?'

Li Chang thought it better to be honest. He hadn't.

‘OK, I'll drive.'

The report to the Border Agency was confused and disjointed. Li Chang had no idea why Linda had first driven
around the City of London before parking and then walking, or why she had just stood idly in front of various banks and other financial institutions. She said nothing and did nothing, and after half a day headed out to a country house hotel in Kent hoping that everybody who wanted to know she was in Britain now knew.

‘I have a new minder. Why?'

The conversation on her satellite phone from the hotel's extensive garden was irritable and revealing.

‘What new minder?'

Mr Shi's question was enough for both of them. Which bit of British officialdom had made the substitution didn't bother either of them, only that it had happened.

‘Do we call it off?'

The plural escaped Mr Shi, but he was concentrated on whether the risk was too great to continue with the London-based activities that he had planned. The irritation that his wife detected stemmed from the fact that he couldn't make the decision on his own: he needed her input. And she knew that.

They didn't call it off.

Li Chang accomplished the trip from the Kentish hotel to Canary Wharf more easily than either of them had expected considering the early-morning traffic. Linda Shen needed him to be occupied and herself to have maximum freedom of action. Knowing that parking at Canary Wharf was no easier than in the City, she directed him to drop her in a particularly complex area of the district and directed him to a car park at the other end of the built-up area.

Li Chang was in a dilemma. He had no choice but to move off after she had got out of the car and no opportunity to see where she was going.

Linda had no problem with the UK authorities knowing what the bulk of her visit to the banking heart of London was all about, but she had some private arrangements to make on
her own behalf and that of her son that she didn't want anybody to be aware of.

The private arrangements didn't take long.

The arrangements on behalf of her husband equally didn't take long.

‘This is nice!'

It was the sort of inanity that Linda knew that the over-brained Chinese banking types that she was now dealing with would expect from a mere woman.

The view from the offices of the small Russian bank was indeed spectacular on a clear cold day.

Having made herself intentionally memorable in an abundance of black leather, she knew that she was having a disturbing effect on the young banker. She didn't care. It was important that her husband knew that she had been there and completed what was for her a new and entirely different task.

A member of the Shi extended family placed there like a number of other young bankers with similar ties to mainland China, Mark Shi knew what was going to be expected of him. Why else had he been placed where he was?

‘Your uncle greets you,' Linda Shen said formally.

The next twenty minutes were intense, unscripted and only on record encrypted into Mark Shi's computer. No transaction was attempted but codes and the means of recognising them were discussed and revisited until Linda was satisfied that the young man was clear on what he had to do and how and when he would have to do it. The system of part-electronic and part-human intervention was something that her husband had successfully developed and sold at substantial profit to his fellow businessmen.

Checking her watch, Linda knew that she had another ten to fifteen minutes to kill before seeking out the minder. Her day's activities had gone well.

‘Another motorway failure,' she said to her companion. ‘What must people think here?'

The spate of motorway bridge and other construction failures was a big issue in China. Poor-quality materials and skimped workmanship were widely blamed.

‘The Russians have stopped buying steel for construction works,' Mark said guardedly. ‘That's bad news. It brings the issue into the public domain.'

And what Mark Shi knew that his visitor didn't was that her husband was one of those guilty of thinning steel reinforcing rods and weakening the mix for pre-mixed concrete. The audit trail back to his company had yet to be established, but Mark was sure that it would be. Sometimes he didn't mind being tucked away far from home!