John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

With a shrug the inspector left the room and closed the door behind him. Siu took up a government issue pencil.

Chan recited: “General Xian, the political adviser, Mr. Milton Cuthbert, two bodyguards belonging to Xian, my sister, Jenny, her husband, Jonathan Wong.”

“That’s a pretty impressive list. Well connected for a humble cop, aren’t you?”

“I told you, she was close to my brother-in-law. He’s a partner in a law firm. It’s his business to know people like that. Also, there were crew for the boat and a Sri Lankan cook employed by Emily Ping.”

“Yes, we’ve spoken to the cook. She was asleep when you paid your visit. Not surprising, it was after midnight.”

“I didn’t see any servants, that’s true.”

“How about opium?”

“What?”

“We found evidence of recent opium use in the house. We expect to find some in her blood. Know anything about that?”

“No.”

“Were you lovers?”

“No.”

“She ever make a pass at you? She had quite a reputation.”

“No, not really.” Chan could not believe he’d said that.

Siu pounced. “Not really?”

Chan felt the blood rising to his cheeks. “She asked me to sleep with her. I refused.”

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

“I’d call that making a pass, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess.”

“And when you refused, she asked you to smoke opium with her?”

“Why d’you say that?”

“We’ve spoken to other men. She was notorious. Sex, drugs-the only Western decadence she didn’t like was rock and roll. You visit a woman like her late at night, it’s not to play mah-jongg.”

“I know nothing about the opium,” Chan said, not knowing why he was lying. Wrong, he knew why he was lying. To admit to knowing about the opium was one step closer to admitting he had smoked with her. He’d caught people that way. If you have no odor, the dogs can’t track you, but he was ashamed to be thinking like that. There was an adage: The line between cop and crook may be too fine to be distinguished.

“Would you say she was going through some kind of change, questioning old values, the worth of her life-that kind of thing?”

“I told you, we weren’t close.”

“But so far as we know you were the last of her friends to see her alive. Did she use expressions of despair: “It doesn’t matter anymore,” “What’s the use?” et cetera?”

“No.”

“Anything in her conversation to suggest she was abusing drugs?”

“No.”

“Do you know of any previous suicide attempts?”

“No.”

“Was she burdened by any heavy feelings of guilt or regret?”

“She never said so to me.”

“Why didn’t you screw her?”

“What?”

“You were free, divorced. She was single, the most eligible spinster in Asia, the world probably. None of the other guys said no.”

“Because none of the other guys said no.”

“You’re special?”

“Particular.”

Siu sat back in his chair, then stood up with his hands in his pockets. He gazed out of the window reflectively.

“She wasn’t a whore; how could you apply that word to a billionairess? She was voracious. She dominated with her vagina; she was like a man, a pelvic colonizer. Maybe that’s what you didn’t like. You have a strong independent streak. Everyone says so.”

“It’s not illegal.”

Siu nodded, forced a smile.

“Have you formed a view yet, suicide or murder?” Chan asked the question in a humble voice.

Sui shook his head. “I’ve never seen a case so finely balanced. To swim down to the drain in the pool, chain and lock yourself to it, then handcuff yourself behind your back”-he shrugged-“you would have to have lungs like bellows, but it could be done. Police cadets handcuff themselves for fun in all sorts of positions. You and I have done it?” Chan nodded at the half question. “Murder is a much simpler explanation, but why would a murderer leave the keys in the pool under her where there was just a chance of her retrieving them before she died?”

“Because the murderer wanted it to look like suicide? Maybe he dropped the keys in the water after she was dead.”

Siu nodded. “Of course, we thought of that.”

“Of course.”

“But if it was murder, why no signs of struggle? She was a strong woman, athletic. Wasn’t she?”

Chan reddened again. “She swam like a dolphin. Good lungs.”

Siu stared at him. “Well, thanks for coming to see us. If we think it wasn’t suicide, we’ll need to speak to you again.”

Chan got up. “Anytime.”

Siu also stood. “How’s the mincer case going, by the way? Are all the rumors true?”

Chan forced himself to brighten. “Rumors are always true, you know that. As a matter of fact I might even have a lead. I’m meeting an informant tomorrow night.”

At the door he wished Siu good luck.

If Chan had not agreed to an evening meeting, he would never have guessed that the Walking Spittoon considered himself a ladies’ man. From a teahouse on Lan Fong Road Chan watched Saliver Kan in white linen slacks, white and blue suede shoes, Gucci multichrome belt, open-neck silk shirt the color of old gold. His left arm encircled a young Chinese woman who wore nothing at all. Well, almost nothing. Straps no thicker than shoelaces held up a kind of bouncing crimson tea towel joined over the buttocks by a short zip. On the other arm another woman complemented her colleague insofar as she was dressed from neck to ankles in a flesh-colored body stocking. Kan had emerged from a taxi and was walking the ladies slowly toward the rendezvous, a hotel of sorts that rented out rooms by the hour.

Such establishments were known as villas and were the brothel owners’ equivalent to a tax haven: No girls were employed on site-customers brought their own-and no offense was committed by renting out the rooms to those with an abbreviated need for shelter. Indeed, Chan knew that it was the proprietors’ constant dilemma whether or not to reduce the rental period to thirty minutes. An hour was too long in roughly 80 percent of cases, but the remaining 20 percent tended to represent the regular trade. Over in Kowloon Tong, where villas were an important factor in the economy, market research had resulted in a compromise: forty minutes with a penalty for staying over the checkout time.

“Give me half an hour after you see me enter the villa,” Kan had said. “Then check into room five. I’ll book it and the room next door. You should bring a girl, to make it look right.”

“No.”

“Okay, then I’ll bring two.”

Chan wondered how the extra pair of hands would improve his cover, since she would be seen only with Kan. He had to admit, though, that the triad had developed a keen sense of security. Telephone calls had become nearly unintelligible because of Kan’s efforts to disguise his catarrh-laden voice. Chan didn’t understand what he was saying; he just knew who it was. Now Kan had insisted on a meeting on Hong Kong side, far from his usual haunts. Chan supposed that the early enthusiasm to use the reward to improve Sun Yee On finances had waned and Kan was moonlighting.

At the check-in desk Chan paid a bored middle-aged woman for an hour in room 5. Waiting for the lift, he felt her eyes upon him. Hers was an economic rather than a moral disapproval; whatever he was going to do alone, he could have done at home and saved five hundred dollars. Her gaze fixed on the flat bulge in his trouser pocket where he had slipped in his Sony Dictaphone.

The room itself was an Asian tribute to Aphrodite. The huge mirror on the ceiling reflected crimson bed linen; a note handwritten in Chinese offered a machine named magic fingers for two hundred dollars an hour, available from reception. An elaborate printed notice recorded the exceptional lengths the management went to in laundering the sheets and pointed out that the cupboard in the closet contained ten varieties of condoms in both Asian and Caucasian sizes, “on the house.” Which size would an honest Eurasian choose?