James Chase - A Coffin from Hong Kong

“Did he come back?”

“Oh, he came back from time to time.” Leila pulled a face. “Men come back when they want a change. He only came back for a night now and then.”

“What did Jo-An do when he left her?”

“Do?” Leila stared at me. “What could she do? She worked as before.” 75

“Entertaining gentlemen?”

“How else could she live?”

“But if Jefferson was making money and she was his wife, surely he gave her something?”

“He gave her nothing.”

“Do you know where he lived after he left her?”

“Jo-An told me he had rented a big villa belonging to a Chinese gambler at Repulse Bay. I have seen the place.” Leila heaved an envious sigh. “It is very beautiful… a big white villa with steps leading down into the sea with a little harbour and a boat.”

“Did Jo-An ever go there?”

Leila shook her head.

“She was never asked.”

The waiter came in smiling and bowing. He gave me the check. The price of the meal was ridiculously cheap. I paid while Leila watched with a happy expression on her face.

“You are pleased?” she asked.

“It was a wonderful meal.”

“Let us go back to the hotel then and make love.”

I was in Hong Kong. There was this odd atmosphere of surrender to the senses that made argument difficult. Besides, I had never made love to a Chinese girl. It was something I felt I should do.

“Okay,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let us go back to the hotel.”

We went out into the noisy dark night with the clatter of Mah Jongg tiles following us.

We began to walk down Nathan Road.

“Perhaps you would like to buy me a little present?” Leila said, taking my arm and smiling persuasively at me.

“I could be talked into it. What had you in mind?”

“I will show you.”

We walked a little way, then she steered me into a brilliantly lit arcade of small shops. Before each shop stood a smiling, hopeful Chinese salesman.

“I would like to have a ring to remember you by,” Leila said. “It need not be an expensive ring.”

We went into a jewellers and she selected an imitation jade ring. It wasn’t much of a ring, but it seemed to delight her. The salesman asked forty Hong Kong dollars. Leila and he spent ten minutes haggling and finally she got it for twenty-five dollars.

“I will always wear it,” she said, smiling at the ring on her finger. “I will always remember you by it. Now let us go back to the hotel.”

It was after we had left the ferry boat and I was waving to a taxi that I lost her. It is something I haven’t been able to understand even now. Three heavily-built Chinese, in black city suits, jostled me as the taxi moved towards me. One of them bowed and apologised in imperfect English while the other two surrounded me, then the three moved off to a waiting car. When I looked around for Leila she had vanished. It was as if the sidewalk had opened and had swallowed her up.

I spent fifteen fruitless minutes walking up and down the vast approach to the Star Ferry without seeing Leila, then with a feeling of uneasiness mixed with irritation I took a taxi back to the hotel.

The old reception clerk was dozing behind his counter.

“Did Leila come back?” I asked him.

He opened one heavy eyelid, stared blankly at me and said, “No speak English.” and the eyelid snapped shut.

I went to my room. Leila’s door was shut. I turned the handle and the door swung open into darkness. I groped for the light switch and turned it on. I looked into the clean little room: no Leila.

Leaving the door open and the light on, I entered my room, also leaving the door open. I sat on the bed, lit a cigarette and waited.

I waited a little more than an hour. Then because it was more comfortable, I stretched out on the bed. In half an hour, lulled by the heat and the heavy eating, I went to sleep.

I woke, feeling hot, damp and uncomfortable. The early morning sun was filtering through the shutters. I raised my head and looked at my strap watch. The time was twenty minutes to eight. I sat up and stared across the passage into Leila’s empty room. A creepy sensation moved icily up my spine. I had a sudden feeling that something bad had happened to her. She hadn’t run away from me. I was sure of that. She had been spirited away and I could guess why. Someone had decided she not only knew too much but she had been talking too much.

I considered what to do. I got off the bed, closed my door, shaved and washed as best I could in the cracked basin. I put on a clean shirt, then feeling slightly better than a dead man, I stepped into the passage, locked my door and went to the head of the stairs.

A Chinese boy sat behind the counter: probably the reception clerk’s grandson.

“Leila hasn’t returned to her room,” I said.

He giggled with embarrassment and bowed to me. I could see he hadn’t understood one word I had said.

I went down the stairs, waved away an eager rickshaw boy and signalled to a passing taxi. I told the driver to take me to police headquarters.

I was lucky. Chief Inspector MacCarthy was getting out of his car as I arrived. He took me to the police canteen where we were served with strong tea in thick white mugs.

I told him the whole story.

I found his attitude infuriating. This was the first time I had ever done business with a British cop. His calm stolid don’t-let-panic manner made my blood pressure rise.

“But something’s happened to her,” I said, trying to keep from shouting. “I’m sure of it! One moment she was right with me- the next she had vanished and she hasn’t returned to the hotel.”

He produced his Dunhill pipe and began to fill it.

“My dear chap,” he said, “you don’t have to get worked up about it I’ve had fifteen years’ experience handling these girls. They are here today-gone tomorrow. She probably saw someone she thought had more money than you. It is a well-known dodge with these girls. They get what they can out of you-then they disappear.”

I drank some of the tea and fought against grinding my teeth.

“This is different. We were going back to the hotel-oh, the hell with it! Someone thinks she’s talking. She’s been kidnapped.”

“Talking about what?”

“I’m trying to solve a murder case,” I snarled at him. “She was giving me information.”

MacCarthy blew expensive-smelling smoke at me. He smiled the way a parent smiles when his first-born has said something cute. I could see he regarded me as just another American screwball.

“What information could she give you to solve a murder that happened in America?” he asked.

“She told me Herman Jefferson rented a luxury villa at Repulse Bay. She told me he suddenly began to make money three months after he married and because he was making money he left his wife.”

He smiled that bright Britannic smile that has even fazzed the Russians.

“My dear chap, you shouldn’t pay any attention to what a Chinese prostitute tells you-you really shouldn’t.”

“Yeah. I guess I’m simple. You think she was kidding me and was staying out of her room just to give me an uneasy night?”

He blew smoke at me.

“It’s part of a prostitute’s job to stay out all night.”

“Do you know of any Americans living out at Repulse Bay?”

“I believe there are quite a few.”

“Would you know if Jefferson had a place out there?”

“If he had, I would have known, but he hadn’t.”

“So she was kidding me?”

He smiled his diplomatic smile.

“That of course could be the explanation.”

I got to my feet. I knew I was wasting time.

“Thanks for the tea. I’ll be seeing you.” 79