Crimson Dragon

ONE

August 2019

Standing.

That’s all anyone could do. Stand. Within minutes, you may as well have been standing in the shower wearing your clothes. In the forty-degree heat and rampant humidity of Hong Kong’s hottest summer on record, Detective Inspector of Police Mandy Lee was standing.

Standing.

In the morning, in front of raw recruits telling them about her role in the Hong Kong Police murder squad.

Standing.

On the edge of the parade square outside the Hong Kong Police College junior officers’ canteen.

Standing.

By her Toyota Prius CID car, she wanted to get in and switch on the air-con. To feel the cooling breeze around her. To dry her clinging white blouse. It would be disrespectful to get into the car before her boss, Detective Superintendent of Police, William Ho, returned.

Standing. Standing and waiting.

However, she was anxious to get back to the real world of policing. She’d only done the job at the college as a favour to her senior colleague, Detective Senior Inspector of Police, Martin Cheung. But what did she know? She was the latest recruit to the murder squad. A post she had unsuccessfully applied for on several occasions - until now.

Now, she was a murder detective. Her delight at getting the job was short-lived. A rift had developed between her family due to her choice and her other childhood traumas; she could not be sure of them ever being resolved. She doubted that she could ever treat the family in the way a daughter should and knew she never would.

As she stood, leaning on the car, she shaded her eyes and watched her students sitting in the sun outside the canteen as she recalled her time at the college. Proudly joining as a junior inspector with one star on her shoulder. She had marched from class to class in her plain green fatigues. She had been up with the sunrise to run up the hill behind the college, past the gun range. It all seemed so long ago.

Lee was brought up to recognise Hong Kong as an independent and democratic outpost of Great Britain. And recent democracy protests seemed to echo her views on the matter. Not that she could make that known with her colleagues. But since the handover to China and latterly changes in the security law, Beijing had begun the slow, inexorable creep of Chinese communist capitalism. It was now clear that even before 2047 when the Sino-British Treaty expired, Hong Kong would be unrecognisable as a former British colony. At least she was in agreement with her father on this subject, except that his motivation for staying as a British democracy would only assist his activities better than being under the rule of communism.

She leaned into her car and removed a packet of tissues from the pocket of her jacket that she’d put on the back seat. Retrieving one from the pack, she wiped the sweat from her brow and glanced at her Apple watch, wondering how much longer she would have to wait for Ho.

Looking at her watch again, she considered telephoning her boss but then saw him across the other side of the football-sized pitch parade ground making his way towards her. From this distance, she noticed for the first time that his gait reminded her of a waddling duck and a fat waddling duck at that. Ho would have her marched out of the department if he knew that such a thought had crossed her mind.

He had not been present at her lecture, something for which she was both grateful and disappointed. She had wanted to show him what she was capable of, but she was also glad that he would not be able to critique her knowledge or delivery in the car on the way back to headquarters.

Ho arrived out of breath and apologised for keeping her waiting as he got into the car. Lee climbed into the driver’s seat next to him and started the engine. The quiet hum of the electric motor and the lights on the dashboard display were all that indicated the engine was running. She drove away, acknowledging some of her students, who waved to her as she left.

Other than an occasional comment, the journey back to headquarters mainly was made in silence. Lee’s boss was, it would seem, preoccupied with his thoughts.

***

Hong Kong Police headquarters is situated in the Wan Chai district on Hong Kong Island. It is a fifty-storey, modern skyscraper overlooking Hong Kong Harbour and has a vast Hong Kong Police badge high on the wall. Driving into the underground car park, she stopped. Ho got out, leaving her without a further word. She knew he had a reputation. His silence was not to be thought of as rude. It was just the way he was.

She parked her car in the allocated bays and made her way to the large air-conditioned open-plan office in the west wing, on the fourteenth floor of police headquarters. Lee went to her desk, which looked out across the Convention Centre, where the handover ceremony was held. She was too young to remember anything about it, other than the pouring rain.

The office is deserted by the time Lee arrived. Most of her colleagues had finished. She was the duty officer for the whole of the weekend and knew that the heat, the tourists and the local gangs were an explosive mixture, so something was bound to happen. She could almost guarantee it.

Sighing deeply, she pushed her jet-black hair out of her face and rubbed her eyes. She was tired.

Sitting back in her chair, she opened the top drawer of her desk and took out a bar of chocolate. She removed part of the wrapper, pleased that the bar had been kept in a semi-solid state by the air-con, but it was still softer than she preferred. She stared out of the window across the bay and ate the chocolate bar as she watched the growing twilight over the harbour’s panorama. She never got bored of the way Hong Kong lit up at night.

She heard the lift door open and realised she had been dozing. Several detectives came into the office, laughing and joking. They acknowledged Lee as they did so. A detective sergeant wandered over to her.

‘You look a bit lonely sitting there, Inspector,’ he said in Cantonese, ‘we’re all going into Central for dinner. Do you want to come along?’

‘Thanks, you go, I’ll sort myself out. I’m on duty all weekend. I wouldn’t be much company anyway.’

‘OK.’ The sergeant gave Lee a mock salute and strolled back towards his colleagues at the other end of the office.

Lee thought about his invitation after they had left. She should have gone with them, but she really couldn’t pretend to be sociable, so she decided to go home.

TWO.

The Same Day

The honeymoon suite of the Oriental Harbour hotel looked out across the same picture postcard Hong Kong vista as Mandy Lee’s. Gibson’s suite was well placed to view the rising sun making the waters glisten and sparkle as the ships, boats and old dows plied their trade.

Brian Gibson had been awake since before the dawn. Unwanted memories were crashing into his dreams, turning them into nightmares. Hot sweats, the calling out at night. At some point, he would have to explain the real reasons to his new wife lying beside him instead of passing it off as no concern.

He’d risen, being careful not to wake her. He opened the window blinds and pulled back the balcony door to let in the fresh dawn air. He looked towards Andrea; she stirred momentarily then turned over. He poured himself the last dregs from the second bottle of champagne he’d ordered, both having consumed the first bottle on their arrival. It was warm and had lost its fizz overnight. He looked at the glass and grimaced but still drank it and returned to bed to watch the dawn.

Andrea was younger than he, and as she snuggled up towards him, he sighed with the delight of a man in a new all-encompassing relationship.

His decision to come to Hong Kong was not only a result of what had happened with Alex Shipley, but it was also a bucket list location for both of them. They’d been married for all but a few months, and the circumstances back home made him aware of the fact that they needed to get away and hide. It was in the forefront of his mind as an influence on their getaway. And anyway, the fact that Andrea was working on something here in Hong Kong, his decision to choose this place was, she had told him, lucky.

The sight of Alex being struck by the underground train whirled around in his brain like an old reel to reel film. An explosion of red, screeching brakes, shouts and screams, were there in his head every time he closed his eyes.

With the difficulty of the last eighteen months, it was hard for him to explain to someone who was not in the “police family” why everything took so long to get sorted. It’s just the way they work, he’d explained. He’d also told Andrea that they couldn’t leave the country, but he couldn’t care less now in deciding to fly BA out of Heathrow and limo pickup at Hong Kong International’s Chek Lap Kok Airport.

They had received the warmest welcome from the front of house manager, and a bottle of champagne, a bouquet and a bowl of local fruits were in the suite when they arrived at their first hotel, The Intercontinental. They then stayed in the New Territories for a while before returning to the hotel they were in now. It had, despite everything, been a wonderous few days. Gibson had tried to put all his troubles behind him while they were there and enjoy the moment.

The fact that his new wife had brought her laptop and some work with her didn’t detract from their enjoyment of the province. Well, not so far anyway. It wasn’t as if she was on it twenty-four hours of the day. A few hours in the morning before they went out, and that was it until the next day. He was happy with that, knowing how she worked and her subject matter.

As he looked out over the Hong Kong scene, he couldn’t help but think about his situation. It was in the forefront of his mind all the time. Any moment of quiet reflection was interrupted by the never-ending incident that forced his suspension and, most probably, the end of his career - the job he loved.

He looked to his wife; he knew that under the sheets that defined the outlines of her body, she was naked, and the previous night’s lovemaking was soft and warm with all the passion he hoped would never diminish.

He felt that familiar longing for her, and he wanted to wake her and take her again, but he knew to let her sleep. There would be plenty of time for that in the future. He smiled, watching the slow rise and fall of her breasts.

Meeting her was one of the better things to come out of his problems. They had felt an immediate attraction to one another, and it was not long after they met that they began to see each other socially, despite the seventy-odd mile distance between them.

He would never have believed that he’d be lying in bed with her. Married to him and in Hong Kong. He cannot remember being happier with someone in such a long time. There was an age difference between them; he knew that of course, being somewhat older than her. But isn’t age only a number, someone had told him on his wedding day. However long they had together, he knew would be the best of times.

Conscious that he had been dozing, he became aware of a knock on the hotel room door.

THREE

The humid night air made it difficult to sleep. Lee’s air-con unit had packed up days ago, and she was still waiting for maintenance to come and fix it. Her apartment, away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Island, was of moderate size in the Sha Tin District, with one bedroom, a kitchen, and a separate living room. It was economically furnished in a traditional and on-trend Hong Kong style, with splashes of red – for good luck. Her double sized bed was the only concession to space in her bedroom. She had bought it simply because she knew that it needed to be comfortable when she did get to sleep.

It didn’t help, though, that the air-con was bust, so Lee spent the muggy night drifting in and out of light sleep. At one point, she removed her nightclothes and just lay naked on the bed. She was almost relieved when she received a call at 5:24 am from her colleague Cheung. Born and bred in Hong Kong, they both spoke in perfect English with each other, switching effortlessly between colloquial Cantonese and English.

‘What’s up?’ She asked.

‘We’ve got a sus death in Lockhart Road. I need you here.’

‘OK, where exactly?’

‘You’ll see, you can’t miss us. I’m here already,’ Cheung sighed, ‘I’ll wait for you.’ He ended the call.

Lee had a quick cool shower and dressed. Leaving her apartment, she picked up the early MTR train into Admiralty station. The Mass Transit Railway line was quiet, and Lee had the carriage to herself. Walking from the MTR station into headquarters, she collected a pool car and drove to Lockhart Road, although she could have walked. The area she was destined for in Lockhart Road was only two blocks from headquarters.

Lee knew the area well. It had an array of pubs styled in the same manner as those back in England and designed to make the ex-pats feel at home – or so she’d been told, never having visited the UK. There was also a mixture of pole-dancing bars and nightclubs, some seedier than others. And she knew there was a much darker side, a part of the city catering for the intimate desires of the lonely man or woman.

Lee grew up knowing that prostitution in Hong Kong was legal; with her slim physique and natural beauty, she got very close to being forced into that business herself. But these clubs all got plenty of trade, particularly when a visiting navy was allowed shore leave, quite enough to cause plenty of trouble.

Despite the hour, red urban taxis were milling around, touting for trade from a mixture of tourists and business people. Clubs had started to close, and the clientele was drifting home, the most drunk, few still sober. Some other clubs though were open twenty-four hours.

The club where Lee was going was one of those clubs. As she approached, she saw several police vans, the Scientific Evidence unit and Cheung’s battered old Toyota Comfort sitting on the corner.

The police activity had already caused a great deal of interest. Pockets of onlookers stood outside the bars and on the street in front of the club. Some were taking pictures on their phones. Uniformed officers had cordoned off the area so that no one could get into the club. They silently stood guard, watching the crowds.

Cheung stood outside the club, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He had both hands stuffed into the pockets of his white linen suit. Even from a distance, she could see that there were patches of sweat under his arms. She subtly checked her appearance as she parked opposite the club and then walked across the road.

‘What do we have, Inspector?’ She asked as she approached him.

‘Hooker. Dead. Upstairs.’ He indicated in the general direction of inside with a thumb movement, then put his hand back in his pocket.

‘Have you been up?’

‘Briefly.’ His voice was flat.

‘Seen the body?’

He nodded.

‘Who’s up there now?’

‘Got a uniform on the door. SEOs waiting till we’ve done our preliminaries.’ Cheung’s gaze wandered around the whole area in front of him, watching the gathering crowd on the other side of the street. He seemed indifferent to the reason as to why they were both there.

Lee took a step closer to him as he stood on the edge of the kerb. He pulled on his cigarette, the end glowing a bright orange, then blew the smoke out into the air, away from Lee.

‘Have you been home since last night?’ Lee knew that the question was probably impertinent towards her senior, but he just didn’t seem to be … here.

Cheung turned and looked at Lee. She could see that he was thinking about a reply, but he said nothing. She asked a more relevant question.

‘Is the doctor coming?’

‘No, told me he’d examine the body at the morgue.’ Cheung took another pull on his cigarette.

‘He’s not coming out?’

Cheung shook his head.

‘Are we going up?’

Cheung shrugged.

‘Well, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’

Lee looked at Cheung. Although she’d been working with him for the twelve months she’d been on the unit; she had seen a distinct change in him in recent weeks. He looked constantly tired, sometimes withdrawn, appearing burdened with something he would not share. And that ever-present cigarette.

She had asked him on several occasions why he was so dispirited, but he just passed it off as tiredness. Perhaps if she got to know him better, he might take her into his confidence. It had been difficult enough trying to get him to engage with other jobs they had been on recently, and his unwillingness in wanting to confide with her was frustrating. She thought that she was getting to know him better. Suddenly closing down was a worry, mainly when they needed to work together as partners. The one thing that she did know was that she wouldn’t have been partnered to work with him if he wasn’t good at his job.