John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

When she saw that the chief inspector had slipped away into an hallucination, Emily stood up. She stared at him transfixed. Under the influence of the drug the tension that normally afflicted him had fallen away. He looked boyish, naive-and beautiful. For a moment she toyed with a wicked thought, before discarding it as impractical. Some sins really were for men only. With a sigh she walked slowly toward the swimming pool. The problem with opium was the speed with which one built up a resistance. She would need ten pipes before she could reach Chan’s rapturous state. But for that kind of excess, one paid a price. Sometimes in place of rapture these days she often found demons: a line of gray, emaciated Chinese slaves with their hair in queues, stretching to infinity. Before each ghoul she knelt to ask forgiveness, and each one promised to forgive her as soon as she had been forgiven by his neighbor. It was a form of mental torture by repetition that exhausted her, when in the past the drug had always left her refreshed.

Even with the low dosage of the drug in her blood she could feel the slave-ghosts around her, a whispering army no more substantial than wind and just as persistent, calling her name with voices dry as grass. Quickly she returned to the table and her opium pipe. The only cure for opium phantoms was more opium. Sherlock Holmes and Thomas De Quincey both knew that.

Chan emerged from the opium dream in exactly the position in which he had entered it: elbows on the marble table, leaning forward eagerly, determined not to miss some compelling drama taking place in the middle distance. Even his brow was furrowed in the same way as five hours before. It was daylight now, and as the drug receded, he began to sweat in the glare of the sun. He searched the house, which was empty. Not even a servant appeared from the quarters at the back. Suddenly remembering and delving in his pocket, he found that the miniature microphone and transmitter were gone. The black briefcase that had contained the receiver and tape recorder was under the table where he had placed it. It was open-and empty. For ten minutes he stood motionless while every word and event from the previous night, both imagined and real, faded like a construction of mist even as he tried to grab at it with the open fingers of his mind. She had made a fool of him, this billionairess who was above the law, but he was still too opiated to care.

The swimming pool was empty too, and more tempting than money. He stripped, dived naked into the perfect blue: down, down. The beauty of opium was that the next day you felt as if you’d had the best sleep of a lifetime, even if someone did steal your dignity while you were dreaming. Still beautifully relaxed, he dressed and went to work.

By early evening, though, the drug had leached every ounce of energy from his body, and concentration had evaporated. He went home early, lay down on his bed and fell into a heavy sleep.

In the middle of the night it seemed he reeled himself back from limitless depths toward a droning that grew louder as he approached full consciousness. He shook his head, levered his body out of bed, using an elbow, and groped his way to the telephone in the living room. Naked, he leaned against the wall while an English voice spoke in his ear. The voice belonged to an inspector called Spruce from Scotland Yard who wanted to know what the time was in Hong Kong. It was a question the English often asked, as if deviation from Greenwich mean time was hard to believe.

“Seven hours later than it is there.” Chan, who had left most of his mind in the deep faraway, had no idea what time it was.

“Not too late then, it’s just turned four in the afternoon here.”

“Ah.”

“I hope you weren’t asleep. I’ve been asked to communicate the findings of our forensic laboratory to you, concerning a murder inquiry, it says here. I tried to reach you at Mongkok Police Station, but you’d left, sir. They said you wouldn’t mind if I telephoned you at home. I’ll be sending the full report, but it’s a bit lengthy. I thought you might want to have the gist over the phone, to see if I can help any further. Shall I read the summary?” Chan grunted. “Not very exciting, I’m afraid.” Spruce’s voice dropped to a monotone as he read. “The samples which are water-resistant proved on examination to consist mostly of natural resins, probably derived from pine, and a variety of synthetic latex. The latex has probably been introduced in order to attain a specific degree of plasticity. Titanium dioxide was also found in a small quantity.”

“I’m sorry,” Chan said, “I think I lost you at ‘water-resistant.’ ”

“We seem to be talking about a form of gum, sir.”

“Huh?”

“Resins give the consistency, latex holds it all together in one lump in your mouth and titanium dioxide provides coloring. I don’t know the case, of course, but the likely explanation is that the victims shared a packet of chewing gum before they died.”

“Chewing gum?” Cops were inured to trivia, but it could still hurt.

“Afraid so. Of course there may be more to it; it’s hard to say from here. What’s the weather like over there?”

“Hot.”

“I was wondering if you needed any assistance at the scene of crime itself?”

So that’s why you phoned. Chan had wondered why Spruce hadn’t sent a fax. “No.”

“Oh, well, just a thought.”

“Is it cold there?”

“Fairly chilly. And raining.”

“Next time.”

Spruce perked up. “You’ll see the number for my direct line on the covering letter to the report, sir.”

“Thanks.”

Chan hung up, then lifted the receiver and let it dangle. In the dark he groped his way back to the bed, lay down and instantly fell asleep again. Then he woke with a jolt. Gum? He switched on a light this time, padded back to the telephone. It took half an hour for the Scotland Yard switchboard to locate Spruce.

“You didn’t mention flavoring,” Chan said. “That titanium, for coloring, right?”

“Correct.”

“And the resins and the latex, they would be tasteless in themselves, I guess?”

“Correct. No flavoring is recorded here as being found on the specimens. Flavoring is the first to dissolve, though. I took up gum when I gave up cigarettes. It can be very disappointing after the first three minutes. Monotonous and tasteless. I suppose you don’t use chewing gum yourself, sir?”

“I’m still with nicotine.” Chan reached for a pack of Bensons on the coffee table. “Suppose there never was any flavoring. What would that give?”

“Flavorless gum, sir. No tasty lead-in period. Not an attractive commercial proposition, I would have thought. An acquired taste anyway.”

“Or a specialized use. You’ve been a great help, Spruce. Next time I’ll ask for you to bring the report personally, business class.”

“Oh, thank you, sir.”

Nine thirty A.M. in the car park of the University of Hong Kong Chan and Aston waited for Dr. Lam. Only five minutes late, the dentist’s black Mercedes drew up. Lam spoke a few words to his driver, then climbed the stairs with the two policemen to the radiation laboratory. Vivian Ip was waiting. She gestured to the lead-glass cabinet. “All yours,” she said to Chan.

Chan pointed to the small reddish-colored block in the far corner on the other side of the glass. “What’s that?”

Lam peered through his thick spectacles. “May I?” He slipped his hands into the concertina arm sockets and manipulated the metal instruments until he was able to lift the block. He used the pincers to squeeze it and observed the dent that was retained by the material. He withdrew his hands.