Chan, twitching, lit a cigarette.
“Well, since neither of us is on duty—you mind?” She held up the scotch. “It’s been a long day—and night. Hate to think what time it is in New York.”
“About twelve hours earlier than now. Two, three in the afternoon. Yesterday afternoon. You better open the scotch.”
“Right.” She undid the screw cap. “Wow, yesterday afternoon. That’s how it works? I must seem awfully ignorant to you. Never traveled out of the United States before except once to Acapulco to divorce Clare’s father. But you don’t need to hear about that. Want some scotch?”
Chan declined, went to the fridge to fetch some beer. “You better have this with it. Neat it won’t last.”
“Thanks. What you want is fingerprints, right? Clare’s dead, I guess, or you wouldn’t be going to all this trouble? Didn’t say so
on the fax, at least not on the sheet I got out of them on the sixth floor. I bought this book Clare read all the time when she was staying with me—
The Travels of Marco Polo.
I guess she and I are the only ones who have ever touched it, other than the bookseller. If you take my prints, you’ll be able to work out which ones are hers. I brought dental records too.”
“You did?” Immediately he regretted his enthusiasm.
Moira’s face fell. “That bad, huh? Man, it sure hurts even to contemplate what might have happened. Don’t tell me yet, though. I need to be real drunk.”
Tears streamed as she poured the whiskey down her throat. Somehow she managed to keep the emotion out of her voice. “Don’t mind me, please. It’s just a reaction. Americans are encouraged to let it all out. All means all too. Over here you do it different if those kung fu movies are to be believed. Never show weakness, huh? Might be right. Never saw tears get anyone anywhere, and I’ve seen a few. Manhattan these days is a jungle, a jungle. Say, what do I call you? Chief? Chief Inspector?”
“Charlie. Everyone else does.”
“Charlie? Like Charlie Chan?”
“British humor. I’m a detective, they couldn’t resist. Look, Mrs. Coletti, we don’t know if we’re talking about the same person at all. You just saw an artists’ impression.”
“Call me Moira. That’s what I’ve been telling myself. But you tell me, what would you think if you saw a fax like that? Ever since Clare disappeared, I’ve been making them give me every Identi-Kit from Asia that comes in. I bet I can check out artists’ impressions as good as anyone.”
Out of her money belt she took an envelope with photographs.
“This is her at sixteen. I brought it for me really.”
Chan saw a thin-faced girl in a purple and green tracksuit, dark blond hair falling over one eye, large trees in the background, trees of a kind he’d never seen except in pictures. He paused over the smile. Perfect American dentistry.
Moira took back the picture, stared at it. “Central Park, 1986.”
“A jogger?”
“Skateboard. Now, here she’s twenty-one. Graduation. NYU. That stands for New York University. B.A. in sociology.”
Chan glanced quickly at the scotch bottle. He didn’t need another drunken woman on his hands; she took the scotch well, though, apart from a single burp half suppressed. Her eyes and hands were steady. He picked up the photograph. The child had turned into a young woman in cap and gown. She was gazing not into the camera but into a future full of promise. Only Americans smiled like that. Only Americans had that kind of future.
“Now here’s the most recent. Two years ago, when I went to see her in San Francisco.”
Something had gone wrong. Only a few years down that sunny road life had failed. She was still smiling, but it was wan, uncertain. Her hair was brutally short; two dabs of silver shone in each ear. This time she was looking straight into the camera, trying to say something to whoever was going to see the picture. Help me?
“I know what you’re probably thinking, Charlie. Any cop would. But it wasn’t drugs. It was just the tail end of an affair with a married man that was chewing her guts out. She snapped out of it pretty soon afterward. It’s just that I haven’t got any pictures more recent than that.”
Chan nodded. No point in asking questions until after positive identification. He placed the most recent photograph next to the fax that Moira laid out on the floor. Photographs could be as deceptive as eyewitnesses. The human eye saw what the mind told it to see. Urban Man spent his life trapped in an internal dialogue from which he emerged only for the purposes of survival. On the fax sheet he covered over the hair that Angie had given her: a possible identification. If anything the young woman in the photograph was better-looking with a finer chin, chiseled nose, large eyes. A beauty.
“How long has your daughter been missing, Mrs. Coletti?”
“Please call me Moira, Charlie.” She touched his hand. “It feels funny not using first names in this tiny apartment. The British really did a job on you people with the formality, didn’t they? About two
years.” She swallowed. “No, I’m kidding myself. Must be two years six months since I saw my Clare.”
“But you spoke to her on the telephone, received letters?”
“Oh, sure. Sure. All the time. Look, we both know you’re going to see your forensic department tomorrow with whatever I’m able to give you—”
“Everything can wait till after that. Sure. I’m sorry.”
She waved a hand at the same time as blowing her nose on a man-size handkerchief. “No, no. I shouldn’t have rushed it, but what else could I do? Haven’t thought about anything else since I saw that fax.”
Chan saw that the whiskey bottle was empty. In an ashtray he saw a nest of butts that had collected since her arrival. With a hand she covered a yawn. He felt tired himself; perhaps even tired enough to sleep. “You want another beer before you go?”
She nodded. “That would help.”
“Where’s your hotel?”
She coughed. “Haven’t had time to get hold of one. Haven’t even thought of it.”
She waited. Chan looked at his fake Rolex, which he’d left on the coffee table: 3:20
A.M.
In Hong Kong it wouldn’t be difficult finding a hotel, even at that time, but what would be the point? It would be 4:30 before she could lie down, and she’d want to be in his office by 9:00.
“That couch doesn’t open up into a bed. You’ll have to put the cushions on the floor. If you want to stay.”
“Oh, that’s real kind of you, Charlie. Real kind. I won’t make a sound once I’m settled.”
“There’s a bottle of vodka in the fridge, if you need it. It’s the only spirits I keep.”
She looked away with a grunt. “In the morning I’ll go straight to the identification bureau with your fingerprint samples. And the dental records. May as well take them just in case the prints are smudged.”
She was already making up her bed on the floor, kneeling and
placing cushions from the couch end to end. She lay down with a sigh. “You’re a kind man, Charlie. You don’t look kind, but you are. As one damaged person to another, let me give you one word of advice: You smoke too much. Good night.”
He lay on his bed, smoking. He could hear her snoring on the floor while he lay wide-awake. It was possible to envy her. His mind flicked from the case to other things. Angie, Sandra. What had the postcard said? “Not missing you at all.” That was because like all Chinese, he was emotionally stunted. She had been careful to explain that to him before she left. She would be surprised that a total stranger had called him kind.
13
A
t his desk at Mongkok Police Station, Chan played with a black government ballpoint. As yet he had told no one about the American woman and her dental records except Lam, the odontologist. Ninety percent of detection was waiting. At his flat Moira Coletti was waiting too. On the other side of the office Aston sat at his desk, also waiting.
There was a knock on the door. Chan looked at Aston. In Mongkok nobody knocked.
“May I come in?”
Riley’s face was almost featureless, like a description by a myopic witness. On it he inscribed the mood of the moment. He was tall, slim, stooped with hands that flapped at the wrists.
“Good morning, sir,” Aston said.
“Morning, Dick.” Riley rubbed his hands together. “Morning, Charlie.
Nei ho ma?
”
“Fine, how are you?” Chan did what he could to discourage the chief superintendent’s Cantonese.
“Ho ho.”
“What?”
“Ho ho.”
Chan looked at Aston.
“It’s Cantonese,” Aston explained, “for ‘good.’ ”
“Oh—
ho ho.
I’m
ho ho
too. Dick—
ho ho
?”
Aston busied himself with
The Murder Investigator’s Bible.
“I was just passing,” Riley said. “I thought I’d pop in.”
Chan waited. It was important to know which Riley one was dealing with.
“Heard you’re having a little trouble with the investigation. Perhaps a little brainstorming would help?”
Chan lowered his head in a controlled nod. “Sure.”
Riley stood in the middle of the room. Chan stared at him. He was not sadistic by nature; it was rather that self-doubt was the only part of Riley he could relate to. The temptation to draw it out was usually irresistible.
“D’you know what DNA stands for?” Chan asked with a smile.
“Deoxyribonucleic acid.” Riley smiled back.
Chan bit his lip: Never underestimate an Englishman in a quiz. “We already have the results of the PCR.”
“Good.”
“The heads fit the bodies in the vat.”
Riley’s face lit up. “That’s what the PCR says? Excellent! Bob’s your uncle! The crime’s as good as solved.”
“Not quite. All we’ve done is restore three heads to three bodies. Their ghosts can rest in peace. On the other hand, both the minced and the unminced share the same anonymity. Faceless, you might say.” Chan let a beat pass in case Riley wanted to change personalities. “The DNA doesn’t tell us their names, you see.”
Riley blinked. “Sure, sure.” He wrung his hands. “What about fingerprints?”
Chan scanned the room for a moment, saw that Aston was suffused with a sympathetic blush, then returned his attention to Riley. He held up both hands. “No fingers, no prints.”
Riley’s beam leaked like a punctured tire. “Quite.” He wrung his hands again. Sweat exploded in small pods over his forehead. “Anyway, you’re making progress. That’s what counts.” He twisted in his seat, searched the wall for relief from Chan’s gaze. “Triads.”
Aston lowered his book.
Chan watched the two
gweilos
exchange a common gleam. He remembered the adage: Put three Chinese together and you have two conspiracies; two Anglo-Saxons and you have a secret club.
“Did you know that Sun Yat-sen was a Four-eight-nine?” Aston asked. Chan noticed how anxious he was to relieve the chief superintendent’s discomfort. There was a social worker in most Englishmen.
“I’m going to buy some cigarettes,” Chan said. “Then I’m going to the scene of crime.” He turned to Riley. “Why don’t you join me there?”
Chan was prepared to bet that the “scene of crime” was the only empty space in Mongkok. The building was about eight years old, ten reinforced concrete floors suspended from a reinforced-concrete structure 130 feet high. For the owners it was a 96,000-square-foot money box. At the lift area on the eighth floor police No Entry signs painted on barricades that rested on trestles still guarded all four gates. Chan had calculated that the owners must be losing ten thousand Hong Kong dollars a day in rental income.
Moving the barricade to one side, he pushed open one of the large steel doors.
“Hello? Hello?”
He called out just in case Riley and Aston had already arrived. There were no windows; his greeting fell into a black void. He remembered a heavy-duty switch at shoulder height on the wall near the entrance. All over the floor fluorescent tubes flickered into life. Over the area where the vat had stood the strip light flashed on and off and made a sound like hornets buzzing. At the far corner Chan found a stepladder with the letters
RHKPF
engraved on every step. He carried it to the chalk square that marked the position of the vat at the time of first discovery, climbed up to extract the fluorescent cylinder. It was held by two plastic clips containing the electrical outlets. He pulled out a long plastic plate to reveal the starter and electric cord above it. Next to the starter someone had taped a small plastic bag. He used a handkerchief to remove the bag. There was a movement on the far side of the warehouse near the door.
“Wai? Wai?”
Riley’s Cantonese reminded Chan of a cat fight.
“Over here.”
Aston followed Riley to the center of the empty floor. They stood under Chan’s stepladder. A patina of sweat covered Aston’s face. Lakes stained the chief superintendent’s shirt under the arms and contributed to the inland sea on his back. Chan replaced the plastic strip and the light. He held the handkerchief with the plastic bag in one open palm while he descended. He showed them the bag, then snatched it away from Riley when he tried to touch it.
“Prints,” Chan said.
Cradled in his handkerchief, he held the bag up to the light. A white powder too fine for sugar or salt, too coarse to be flour. If Riley was the next person to speak, it was number four heroin.
“What is it?” Riley said.
“My guess is number four heroin. Pure. Finest quality. But we’ll have to check with forensic.”
“Funny it wasn’t found before.”
“The tube wasn’t flickering before.” Chan disguised his professional shame with an aggressive tone.
He picked up the ladder. As he did so, he noticed the blue-black corpses of beetles scattered around the perimeter of the white rectangle. The light caught them and transformed them into tiny iridescent carapaces, like beads from a broken necklace. He saw Riley staring at them too. He put down the steps, picked one up, beckoned to Riley.
“Clue,” Chan said. Riley blinked. “The beetles told us the remains had been here for about seven days. Day one, flies arrive to deposit larvae. Word passes to the ants, who eat the larvae. The ants attract the wasps. By day five or six the feast’s in full swing. People who never gave dinner parties in death feed millions. Beetles are slow, though; it takes them about seven days to get here.” Chan held the beetle like a toy car. “Here they come now, trundling over rough terrain. The best has already been eaten, but they don’t mind. They prefer dry skin. When we took the vat away, they died of starvation.”