A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG Read online

  He puffed smoke and looked bored.

  “She was a prostitute, of course. That is a problem we’re trying to cope with, but it isn’t easy. These refugee girls have great difficulty in earning a living: prostitution is the easiest way out for them. We are gradually cleaning up the city, but it is uphill work.”

  “I’m trying to find out why she was murdered.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “I can’t help you there.” He looked hopefully at a pile of papers on his desk. “I’ve given all the information I have about these two to Lieutenant Retnick. There’s nothing more I can add.”

  I can take a hint as well as the next man. I stood up.

  “Well, thanks. I’ll nose around. Maybe I’ll turn up something.”

  “I doubt it.” He pulled the papers towards him. “If there’s anything I can do. . . .”

  I shook hands with him and went out onto the busy Queen’s Road. The time was now hah past six. The American Consulate would be closed: not that I had much hope of getting any useful information about Jefferson or his wife from them. If I was going to get the information I wanted I would have to rely on myself to do the digging, but where to begin for the moment foxed me.

  I wandered around the town for an hour, looking at the shops and absorbing the atmosphere of the place and liking it a lot. I finally decided I could do with a drink and I made my way along the waterfront towards Wanchai. Here I found a number of small bars, each with a Chinese boy squatting outside who called to me, inviting me in with a leer and a wink.

  I entered one of the larger establishments and sat down at a table away from the noisy juke­box. Half a dozen American sailors lounged up at the bar, drinking beer. Two Chinese business men sat near me, talking earnestly, a file of papers between them. Several Chinese girls sat on a bench at the back of the room, giggling and talking to one another softly with the twittering sound of birds.

  A waiter came over and I asked for a Scotch and Coke. When he had served me, a middle- aged Chinese woman, wearing a fawn and green Cheongsam, appeared from nowhere and took the vacant chair opposite me.

  “Good evening,” she said, her hard black eyes running over me. “Is this your first visit to Hong Kong?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Do you mind if I keep you company?”

  “Why no. Can I buy you a drink?”

  She smiled: her teeth were gold-capped.

  “I would like a glass of milk.”

  I waved to the waiter who seemed to know what to get for he nodded, went away and came back with a pint glass full of milk.

  “The food here is good,” she told me, “if you feel like eating.”

  “A little early for me. Don’t you go for anything stronger than milk?”

  “No. Are you staying at the Gloucester? It is the best hotel.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She eyed me speculatively.

  “Would you like a nice girl? I have a number of very young and pretty girls. I have only to telephone and they will come here. You don’t have to have any of them if you don’t care for them. I will send for them, but they won’t worry you. You have only to tell me if one of them pleases you and I will arrange everything.” “Thanks, but not right now. Do you have trouble in finding girls?”

  She laughed.

  “I have trouble in not finding them. There are too many girls in Hong Kong. What else can they do except entertain gentlemen? Hong Kong is full of pretty girls eager to make a little money.”

  The Celestial Empire Hotel was only two or three hundred yards from this bar. It seemed reasonable enough that if this woman controlled the local prostitutes, she might have known Jo-An.

  “A pal of mine when he was here last year met a girl he liked very much,” I said. “Her name was Jo-An Wing Cheung. I’d like to meet her. Do you know her?”

  For a brief moment, her black eyes showed surprise. If I hadn’t been watching closely I would have missed the quick change of expression. Then she was smiling, her thin amber- coloured fingers playing a tattoo on the table.

  “Yes, of course I know her,” she said. “She is a fine girl . . . very beautiful. You will like her very much. I could telephone her now if you like.”

  It was my turn to hide my surprise.

  “Well, why not?”

  “She is my best girl,” the woman went on. “You wouldn’t mind going to a hotel with her? She is living with her parents and she can’t take gentlemen to her apartment. It would be thirty Hong Kong dollars for her and ten dollars for the room.” She showed her gold-capped teeth in a smile. “And three dollars for me.”

  I wondered what old man Jefferson would say if I itemised these charges on my expense sheet.

  “That’s okay,” I said, and it was my turn to smile at her. “But how do I know this girl is Jo­An? She could be someone else, couldn’t she?”

  “You make a joke?” she asked, looking intently at me. “She is Jo-An. Who else could she

  be?”

  “That’s right. I make a joke.”

  She got to her feet.

  “I will telephone.”

  I watched her cross the room to where the telephone stood on the bar. While she was telephoning, one of the American sailors moved over to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She waved him to silence and he looked across at me and winked. I winked back. The atmosphere in the bar was friendly and easy. There was nothing furtive about this transaction. By the time the woman had replaced the receiver, everyone, including the waiters, knew I had ordered a girl and she was on her way. They all seemed genuinely happy about the event.

  The woman talked to the sailor and then picked up the telephone receiver again. Business seemed to be getting brisk.

  I finished my drink, lit a cigarette, then signalled to the waiter for a refill.

  Two Americans in violent beach shirts, came and sat at a table away from mine. When the Chinese woman had finished telephoning she came over to me.

  “She will be only ten minutes,” she said. “I will let you know when she comes,” and nodding she went over to the two Americans and sat with them. After a five-minute conversation she got up and went to the telephone again.

  A little over a quarter of an hour later, the bar door pushed open and a Chinese girl came in. She was tall and well built. She was wearing a black and white tight-fitting European dress. A black and white plastic handbag dangled from a strap she had wound around her wrist. She was attractive, sensual and interesting. She looked at the, Chinese woman who nodded towards me. The girl looked at me and smiled, then she crossed the bar, moving with languid grace while some of the American sailors ‘whistled to her, grinning in a friendly way at me.

  She sat down beside me.

  “Hello,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “Nelson,” I said “What’s yours?”

  “Jo-An.”

  “Jo-An—what?”

  She reached out and helped herself to one of my cigarettes from the pack lying on the table.

  “Just Jo-An.”

  “Not Wing Cheung?”

  She gave me a quick stare and then smiled. She had very beautiful white teeth.

  “That is my name. How did you know?”

  “A pal of mine was here last year,” I said, knowing she was lying to me. “He told me to look you up.”

  “I’m glad.” She put the cigarette between her painted lips and I lit it for her. “Do you like

  me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shall we go then?”

  “Okay.”

  “Will you give me three dollars for Madame?”

  I gave her three dollars.

  The middle-aged Chinese woman came over, showing all her gold-capped teeth.

  “You are pleased with her?”

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  She collected the three dollars.

  “Come and see me again,” she said. “I’m always here.”

  The girl w
ho called herself Jo-An got up and sidled towards the exit. I went after her, nodding to the sailors. One of them made the letter ‘O’ with his finger and thumb and then pretended to swoon into the arms of his pals. I left them horsing around and moved out into the hot bustling night where the girl was waiting for me.

  “I know a clean cheap hotel,” she said.

  “So do I,” I told her. “I’m staying at the Celestial Empire. We’ll go there.”

  “It would be better to go to my hotel.” She gave me a sidelong look.

  “We go to my hotel,” I said, and taking her elbow in my hand, I steered her through the crowds towards the hotel.

  She moved along beside me. She was wearing an expensive perfume. I couldn’t place it, but it was nice. There was a thoughtful, faraway expression on her face. We didn’t say anything to each other during the short walk. She mounted the sharp flight of stairs. She had an interesting back and nice long legs. She waved her hips professionally as she moved from stair to stair. I found myself watching the movement with more interest than the situation required

  The old reception clerk was dozing behind his barricade. He opened one eye and stared at the girl, then at me, then shut the eye again.

  I steered her down the passage. Leila was standing in her open doorway, polishing her nails on a buffer. She looked the girl over and then sneered at me. I sneered back at her, opened my door and eased my girl through into the hot, stuffy little room.

  I closed the door and pushed home the flimsy bolt.

  She said to me, “Could you ewe me more than thirty dollars? I could be very nice to you for fifty.”

  She pulled a zipper on the side of her dress to show goodwill. She was half out of the dress before I could stop her.

  “Relax a moment,” I said, taking out my wallet. “We don’t have to rush at this.”

  She stared at me. I took out Jo-An’s morgue photograph and offered it to her. Her flat, interesting face showed suspicious bewilderment. She peered at the photograph, then she peered at me.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “A photograph of Jo-An Wing Cheung,” I said, sitting on the bed.

  Slowly she zipped up her dress. There was now a bored expression in her black eyes.

  “How was I to know you had a photograph of her?” she said. “Madame said you wouldn’t know what she looked like.”

  “Did you know her?”

  She leaned her hip against the bedrail.

  “Is she all that important? I am prettier than she is. Don’t you want to make love to me?”

  “I asked if you knew her.” “No. I didn’t know her.” She moved impatiently. “May I have my present?”

  I counted out five ten-dollar bills, folded them and held them so she could feast her eyes on them.

  “She married an American. His name was Herman Jefferson,” I said. “Did you know him?” She grimaced.

  “I met him.” She looked at Jo-Ann’s photograph again. “Why does she look like this ... she looks as if she’s dead.”

  ‘That’s what she is.”

  She dropped the photograph as if it had bitten her.

  “It is bad luck to look at dead people,” she said. “Give me my present. I want to go.”

  I took out Herman Jefferson’s photograph and showed it to her.

  “Is this her husband?”

  She scarcely glanced at the photograph.

  “I am mistaken. I have never met her husband. May I have my present?”

  “You just said you had met him.”

  “I was mistaken.”

  We stared at each other. I could see by the expression on her I was wasting time. She didn’t intend to tell me anything. I gave her the bills which she slipped into her handbag.

  “There’s more where that came from if you can give me any information about Jefferson,” I said without any hope.

  She started towards the door.

  “I know nothing about him. Thank you for your present.”

  She slid back the bolt and with a jeering wave of her hips, she was gone.

  I knew I had been taken for a ride, but as I was spending Jefferson’s money, I was a lot less depressed than I would have been if it had been my own money.

  Later, I got tired of lying on the bed and I decided to go somewhere to eat. As I opened the bedroom door, I saw Leila, propping her body up against her door-post across the passage. She had changed into a scarlet and gold Cheongsam which gave her a very festive air. She had put a white cyclamen blossom in her hair.

  “She didn’t stay long,” she said. “Why did you bring her here when I’m here?”

  “It was strictly business,” I said, closing the door and turning the key. “I just wanted to talk to her.”

  “What about?” she asked suspiciously.

  “This and that.” I looked her over. She was really a very attractive little thing. “How would you like to have dinner with me?”

  Her face brightened.

  “That is a very good idea,” she said. She darted into her tiny bedroom, snatched up her handbag and joined me in the passage. “I will take you to a very good restaurant. I am very hungry. We will eat a lot of good food, but it won’t cost you much.” She started off down the passage to the head of the stairs. I followed her. We passed the reception clerk who was doing a complicated calculation with the aid of a bead calculator. His old yellow fingers flicked away at the beads with astonishing speed. He didn’t look up as we went down the stairs.

  I followed Leila’s sturdy little back across the road to a taxi station.

  “We will have to take a taxi to the Star Ferry,” she said. “The restaurant where we will eat is on the mainland.”

  We picked up a taxi and drove to the Star Ferry, then we got on the ferry boat. During the trip over, she told me about a movie she had seen that afternoon. She said she went to the movies every afternoon. The Chinese, she explained, were very interested in the movies and they went as often as they could. From the queues I had seen outside every movie-house I could believe that. Leila said they began to queue at eleven in the morning to get the best seats.

  When we reached the mainland, Leila suggested we should walk up Nathan Road. She said the exercise would sharpen her appetite.

  It was not possible to walk two abreast and still more impossible to talk to her. At this hour the streets were crammed with people. Walking in the streets of Kowloon turned out to be quite an experience. Everywhere were glaring neon signs. Chinese characters, I decided,

  made the best and most interesting of any neon sign. They lost the vulgarity of a sign you can read and became works of art. Cars, rickshaws and bicycles swarmed along the broad street. The sidewalk was packed with a steady flow of humanity : all as active as ants.

  We finally came to the restaurant in a side street which was crowded with children playing in the gutters, vegetable vendors packing up their wares for the night, parked cars and the inevitable blaze of neon signs.

  “Here we eat very well,” Leila said, and pushing open the swing door she entered the restaurant that emitted a noise like a solid punch on the ear—stunning and deafening.

  We could see nothing of the diners. Every table was hidden behind high screens. The rattle of Mah Jongg tiles, the high-pitched excited Chinese voices and the clatter of dishes were overwhelming.

  The owner of the restaurant opened two screens, bowing and smiling at Leila, and we were immediately submerged in noise and privacy.

  Leila set her handbag down on the table, adjusted her brassiere, shifted her solid little bottom firmly in her chair and showed me her beautiful white teeth in a radiant and excited smile.

  “I will order,” she said. “First, we will have fried shrimps, then we will have shark’s fin soup, then we will have beggar chicken—it is the speciality here. Then we will see what else there is to eat, but first we commence with fried shrimps.”

  She spoke rapidly in Cantonese to the waiter and then when he had gone, she reached across t
he table and patted my hand.

  “I like American gentlemen.” she told me. “They have much vitality. They are very interesting in bed and they also have much money. ‘

  “Don’t count on either of those statements,” I said. “You could be disappointed. How long have you been in Hong Kong?”

  “Three years I came from Canton. I am a refugee. I only escaped because my cousin owns a junk. He took me to Macau and then I came here “

  The waiter brought us Chinese wine. He poured it into two tiny cups It was warm and reasonably strong. When he had gone, I said. “Maybe you know Jo-An Wing Cheung who is also a refugee.”

  She looked surprised.

  “Yes. I know her very well. How do you know her?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  There was a pause as the waiter set before us a bowl of king-size shrimps cooked in a golden batter.

  “But you know her name. How do you know her name?” Leila asked, snapping up a shrimp with her chopsticks and dipping it in Soya sauce.

  “She was married to a friend of mine who lived in my home town,” I said, dropping a shrimp on the tablecloth. I nipped it up again with my uncertain chopsticks and conveyed it cautiously to my mouth. It tasted very good. “Did you ever meet him? His name’s Herman Jefferson.”

  “Oh, yes.” Leila was eating with astonishing speed. Three-quarters of the shrimps were gone before I could spear my third. “Jo-An and I escaped from Canton together. She was lucky to find an American husband even though now he is dead.”

  The waiter came with a bowl of fried rice in which was mixed finely-chopped ham, shrimps and scraps of fried egg. Leila filled her bowl and her chopsticks flashed as she whipped the food into her mouth. I lagged behind. To do justice to this meal, you had to have considerably more experience with chopsticks than I had.

  “He lived with her at your hotel?” I asked as I dropped rice onto the tablecloth in a vain effort to keep pace with her.

  She nodded.

  The shrimps had disappeared and more than half the rice. She certainly had the technique of getting the most inside herself in the shortest time.

  “He lived with her in a room next to mine for three months after they married, then he went away.”

  A large bowl of shark’s fin soup appeared. Leila began to fill her bowl.