John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

Aston asked: “Is it true that organized crime started in China?”

“Don’t you know?”

Usually English recruits came equipped with detailed knowledge of triads: the rebellion of the black monks of the Shao Lin Monastery, the ancient triad city of Muk Yeung Shing and all the medieval paraphernalia of bloodstained white robes and the initiation ceremony that went on for days. Half the gweilo detectives who had passed through his hands planned to write novels featuring the triads and the drug trade.

“Well, I know about the rebellion of the monks at the Shao Lin Monastery, the Five Tiger Generals-all that.”

“Of course you do. Have you started your novel yet?”

Aston blushed.

Chan leaned back in his chair, looked up at Aston. “China didn’t need to start organized crime; people did it all over the world all by themselves. Our triads authenticate themselves through history because they’re Chinese. But it’s easy, you just find someone who knows the story and appoint him the incense master. If it wasn’t easy, there wouldn’t be so many of them.”

Next to the diagram was a list of most of the known triad societies operating in Hong Kong: Sun Yee On; United Bamboo; 14K; Fei Lung…

“But they do go back a long way, the triads. They were political, right?”

“So they say. Certainly they supported the Kuomintang during the Civil War. But then organized crime and Communists usually hate each other.”

“Is that still true? The Commies hate the 14K and all that?”

“They’ve always loathed each other. The 14K is huge; worldwide it’s as big as the People’s Liberation Army. Maybe bigger. And they’re sophisticated capitalists these days. Sure, they despise the Communists, and the Communists hate them.”

Chan was aware of Aston’s continued gaze. Fascination was so stubborn in the young. No use explaining that the exotic was a function of ignorance and distance; sooner or later the Chinese screen would rip, and that gleam in Aston’s eye would fade.

“So there’ll be some fireworks in a couple of months if the 14K are still here?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.” Aston raised his eyebrows. “I’m not an expert, but the rumor is that they’ve found some kind of uneasy accommodation. After all, now that the Communists are not really Communists and the 14K are sophisticated businessmen, maybe they’ve seen the wisdom of working together.”

“Really?”

“It’s just a rumor. In Hong Kong rumors are usually true.”

Aston stood when he saw Chan do so and inwardly girded himself for the coming struggle. It had taken him a while to accept that certain acts that were simple enough in less crowded places in Hong Kong required mental preparation; leaving the police station was an example. Even the compound was crowded day and night with police in and out of uniform: antitriad squads; regional traffic teams; community relations and staff relations officers; police tactical unit; narcotics bureau members; and of course civilians who were allowed to join the mess and who would come and go in various states of inebriation at any time of the day or night.

Mongkok is the most populated part of the earth; Chan supposed it offered humans what the caves of North Borneo offered bats: low rent, zero unemployment, refuge from predators. Ninety percent of those who lived there had either fled the PRC or were the children of parents who had fled. With numbers of refugees during the Cultural Revolution reaching tens of thousands per week there had been no time for town planning. The residents were thankful that the sewage system was still functioning.

Every Chinese clan or tribe was represented, from the Muslims of Kashgar in the west to the Chiu Chow from Shantou in the south, from Mongols of the far north to Shanghainese from the coast. Then there were Sikhs from the North-West Frontier, Gurkhas from Nepal, Filipinos, English, American, French. Japanese was the only nationality Chan never came across in Mongkok. There was no golf course.

Many buildings were illegal structures, and those that were not housed illegal businesses. Restaurants flourished over pet shops; car repair workshops ventilated dry cleaners with exhaust fumes; clothing factories the size of living rooms produced copies of designer brands as good as the original; garages housed watchmakers who would produce a thousand copies of any timepiece you liked within forty-eight hours. Pharmacies sold prescription drugs whether or not you had a prescription, and there wasn’t a narcotic in existence that you couldn’t buy if you knew where to go. Chan and the other homicide detectives agreed in private that theirs was the easier job on the force. Suppose you were trying to stop drugs, smuggling or forgery when your suspect list included every inhabitant?

Mongkok Police Station dominated the corner of Prince Edward and Nathan roads. As far as Chan knew, Edward was the English queen’s youngest son, who had yet to turn his private life into an international soap opera; he had no idea who Nathan was: someone grand, white and elsewhere, no doubt. The white man’s genius for misnaming the lands he stole was well documented: New York for the Algonquians’ country; George Town for everything that was not called Victoria or Albert; America for an Italian who thought he was in India. Did Edward and Nathan know they were trampled day and night by a million larcenous Asians? Or care? He and Aston emerged from the station gate into the crowds and were instantly separated. Like the corpses in the vat, they found it hard to maintain the frontier of self; the river of bodies took you, a corpuscle in a hemorrhage of humans gushing through streets, sidewalks, alleys, basements, shops, buses, cars, taxis. Lunchtime was a locust storm of people choking every orifice of the city, and Chan was suddenly part of it, indistinguishable. Thank god for DNA, the inner proof of personal existence, though rats had it too. He bought his cigarettes from his usual street corner vendor, waited for Aston at the underground.

Aston was searching for him, trying to see over the crowds. They descended the escalator together, slipped through the queues. The underground railway was the only form of transport not gridlocked at this time of day.

On the train the benches were stainless steel. Without other passengers a person would slide from one end to the other, but that circumstance seldom occurred. Chan and Aston were locked in standing position, every motor option paralyzed by the pressure of other bodies. Only eye muscles could move without restraint. Chan found his face twisted slightly upward, condemned to read the underground map over and over. English colonial names competed with Chinese names and lost: Lai Chi Kok, Waterloo, Diamond Hill, Mongkok, Tsim Sha Tsui, Tsuen Wan, Choi Hung.

From Admiralty they walked. The crowds over on Hong Kong Island were less ferocious, but not much. The four-building complex of Arsenal Street Police Station with its conical gun towers grafted onto the perimeter walls of the compound was a magic castle where a policeman could find refuge from the surging masses. It had air conditioning too.

Chan paused for a moment in the reception area in Arsenal House. He had asked for three-dimensional impressions of Polly, Jekyll and Hyde, in the form of plaster busts. This was expensive, and he’d expected to be refused. But the request form had returned the same day with an endorsement by the commissioner himself.

He telephoned Angie, the forensic artist, whose studio formed part of the corridor occupied by the identification bureau, then asked a female constable at reception to ring down to forensic. The dentist, a part-timer who ran his own private practice two blocks away, was waiting for them. They took a lift, emerged into a government issue corridor: linoleum the color of lead, cream paint that had oozed down the walls like lava and dried in waves. At the end was a door marked “Government Laboratory.”