John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

In the small hours of the morning the streets of Mongkok were less crowded. It was possible to distinguish individuals as opposed to clumps of humans, although it was not in the nature of Asians to be solitary. The heat upset everyone’s sleep rhythms. Lovers walked hand in hand as if on an early-evening tryst; children played; an old woman in rags begged. A swarm of starlings chattered around a streetlight while small bats swooped. Only Chan was entirely alone, walking quickly toward a small supermarket near his block that sold English cigarettes. Only Chan and a Western woman, in her late forties or early fifties as far as he could tell, who emerged from the shadows as he passed.

A habit from his patrolling days produced an automatic description: about five eight, dirty blond, baggy black shorts and red T-shirt, no bra, an extralarge money belt slung around her waist, slight stoop, slim with heavy breasts. Sensual. She wore sneakers and socks and was therefore American. In this heat every other nationality wore plastic thongs, but Americans feared foreign soil. Morose but healthy. Not lost, for she was not examining street signs; purposeless. She didn’t fit. Tourists stayed on Hong Kong Island or in Tsim Sha Tsui, not Mongkok. He turned once to catch her face in the glare of a streetlight. Possible drink problem.

She followed him into the supermarket. He walked to the end of an aisle to pick up some Rickshaw tea bags. The cigarettes were behind glass at the cash desk at the other end of the aisle. Looking up into a convex security mirror, he saw her pocket a quarter bottle of whiskey. By holding her arm against the large pocket in her shorts, she disguised the heavy weight of the bottle. Chan paused over the tea bags. A civic duty was being invoked, but on the other hand, the owner of the store was a wealthy Chiu Chow named Fung who could look after himself. Also, it was late, and he could do without filling in reports for the rest of the night. He looked up again into the mirror. This time it was a toothbrush and toothpaste. Such huge pockets on those shorts.

Chan shrugged. Fung was rich enough to be able to afford electronic security. Chan had told him so more than once. He strolled to the cash desk, pausing as he passed her. They exchanged glances. Tired eyes. Very, very tired eyes. No sign of fear. It was a mystery too many for one night. He bought five packets of Benson & Hedges, carried them in a plastic bag back to his apartment block in a side street off Nathan Road.

In the ground-floor hall he paused to open his thin steel letter box: an electricity bill and a postcard from Sandra. In his Chinese way he had assumed that divorce meant finality, but the English tended to cling to their failures as proof that all effort was futile. The cards arrived at about three-month intervals from exotic beaches where drifters gathered. They could be wistful (“last night I dreamed of you riding on a Chinese carpet”) or slashing (“so glad you’re not here to frustrate me”). This one was from Ko Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand: “Not missing you at all.” He categorized it as one of the slashers, put it in the bag with the cigarettes.

Running his hand around inside the box, he crumpled a single sheet that was almost stuck to the back. He saw it was the cheapest paper imported from the PRC. In the center of the page in Chinese script there burned the single word Laogai . Underneath in English handwriting: “Please don’t forget Thursday.” Chan stared at it for a moment, then threw it into a waste bin that was bolted to the floor between lifts.

All his life Hong Kong had been a magnet for different political movements. The British commitment to freedom of speech meant that just about any fanatic could buy a printing press and develop a cause, although the big struggles for hearts and minds were inevitably between the local Communists and the Kuomintang, those losers of the Civil War who now ran Taiwan. He had received pamphlets, though, on paper of similar quality, from Seventh-Day Adventists, Buddhists, an animal action group trying to wean aging Chinese men off powdered rhinoceros horn, Muslims from the extreme south of the Philippines, Moonies, someone selling fresh monkey brain-another illegal, and probably ineffective, cure for impotence. He took the lift to the tenth floor.

Three keys tumbling three dead bolts let him into the 450-square-foot cubicle. The kitchen barely accommodated a fridge and a double-ring gas burner. The living room was filled by the television set and one couch. In the bedroom he had to climb over the bed to reach the other side. He was glad he hadn’t invited Angie back. Where would he have put her? In Hong Kong only the rich had space for plump lovers.

His jacket was soaked through. He threw it over the sofa, peeled off the Saran Wrap shirt, trousers that stuck to his thighs. Naked he faced the Mongkok dilemma: stew or freeze? On all but the hottest nights he managed without the window-mounted air conditioner with its chamber music like a canning factory.

As always his exhaustion on the street failed to conjugate smoothly into sleep. As he lay on the bed, naked except for a cigarette, his mind accelerated in tightening circles. He was in a museum full of white busts of Western women, Sandra, Polly and Angie in particular. They spun in front of him demanding a decision, but his only response was dizziness. Then the door buzzer rang. He jumped; a facial muscle twitched.

He pulled on a pair of shorts, padded barefoot to the front door, looked through the dirty spy hole. Distorted by the fish-eye lens, the American woman was a demon from Chinese opera. A huge face leaned forward hungrily, orangutang lips curled under a squashed nose, hands like claws folded over the money belt. He opened the door to the limit of the security chain.

“Chief Inspector Chan?”

Chan nodded.

“Maybe you could let me in. I have some information for you.”

Now that she had spoken a full sentence he could identify the kind of accent American actors assumed when they made a film about the Bronx, a curious drawl that threatened to make a syllable last for minutes.

“Information? At this time?”

“It’s important.”

Chan stared.

“I’m Clare’s mother.”

“Clare?”

She opened the zip on her money belt, took out a crumpled sheet of paper. It was a fax with the Royal Hong Kong Police letterhead on the top. She held it up. On the top right-hand corner the words “All enquiries to Insp. Aston, Mongkok CID,” and in the center a blurred picture of Polly. Chan felt a blip of the hunter’s excitement at the first faint scent of quarry; he repressed it, though. Patience was the only virtue worth cultivating; he was with the ancients on that. He closed the door, released the chain, let her in.

She held out her hand. “Moira Coletti. Pleased to meet you. I apologize for being here so late, but the plane didn’t get in till this afternoon, and when I tried the station, they said you were out for the night. I’m afraid I spun them a yarn to get your private address. I even got to see your desk and that big photograph of you receiving an award for bravery from the governor. Easy to recognize you from that. Didn’t figure on you being so late, though.”

Chan gestured to the sofa, sat down on the coffee table.

She looked at the floor. “You saw me in the supermarket, right?”

“Quarter bottle of scotch, toothbrush, toothpaste. I should have reported you.”

“That was the downside risk.” She took the items out of her pocket as she spoke, placed them on the floor. “I paid for them, of course, right after you left. See, I know cops. I don’t know Chinese, but I know cops, and there aren’t many homicide detectives going to start filling in arrest statements for a minor larceny after two in the morning.” She paused, looked him full in the face. “Sorry about that. I just wanted to know how good you were. American arrogance, I guess. We just don’t want to believe that any nation is anywhere near as good as the old U.S. of A. at anything. Damn near ruined Detroit till they had the sense to admit the Japanese could make better cars than them. Now you get Japanese quality control even at GM.” She paused, sighed. “I’m rambling. That’s always been my problem. Reason I never made it higher than sergeant. You’re good, though, really good. Even got the toothbrush. I was especially careful with that.”