FEARLESS FINN'S MURDEROUS ADVENTURE (17 page)

“Why are you going to all this bother?”

“To tie up as many leading law firms and accounting firms as we can. If they’re acting for your companies they can’t represent anyone against you. So if anything goes wrong…which it won’t…no one will be able to find a top-notch lawyer or accountant to take legal action against you. Or, I should say, against the shelf companies our Taiwanese clients are paying so handsomely for,” he replied, with a boyish grin.

I’m impressed at the way he’s thought this through, but I also understand that tying up professionals doesn’t restrict a police investigation.

After finishing our tea we boarded a tram at Western Market; we squeezed in amongst the cages of chickens, geese and other feathered creatures. For a twenty cent fare we travelled in Victorian style to the Landmark, in Des Voeux Road Central. I suggested getting a drink at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental, but Gerry said he has ‘people to meet and places to go.’ He handed me the documents from his briefcase – tucked safely inside an envelope so I won’t have to touch them – before heading off towards the Ritz-Carlton.

I decided to walk over to Tivoli Mansion on Wyndham Street. Sui-Lin and my dispatch manager will be gone for the day, but I feel better about leaving the documents in the office, rather than in my suite. I said hello to ex-Colour-Sergeant Singh as I passed him on my way into the old lift – the one my dispatch manager has no interest in using.

As I unlocked the office door I heard my direct line ringing for the second time.

“Finn, my darling, I’m glad I caught you at this late hour. I’m up to my tits in work…but I should have your stationery delivered in the morning. It’s being printed overnight by my little man in Wan Chai,” said Susie.

“That’s great….And lucky the work that gets up to your…well, you know what I mean.”

“Bastard!” she giggled.

“Bastard? Now, my dear, you’ve yet to meet my sainted mother, and she’ll assure you that she was a married lady when I was conceived…and when I was born,” I laughed.

It’s been a slow enough start in the so-called fast-moving Far East. But I’ll soon have business cards to hand out, and with an office to go to, work to get on with, and a well-endowed girl to chat up, things are on the move for me. On the move to where…who the feck knows? Certainly not me!

HONG KONG and LAMMA ISLAND

Gerry and Earl
are as true as their word. I receive ten thousand US dollars every week or so, and sometimes twice a week – depending on how many accounts we open. We already have trading accounts with private banking at JPMorgan Chase Bank, Citibank, Bank of America, Barclays, Crédit Lyonnais, BNP, Société Générale, ABN, Paribas, and NAB.

Opening accounts at American, European and Australian banks is easy enough. Sui-Lin organises everything and handles all the paperwork. I just go to the banks to sign the papers, and all the banks are within walking distance of the office in Wyndham Street – not that I walk. Hong Kong Central is wall-to-wall with taxi cabs, day and night; raise your hand and there’s a maroon Toyota taxi pulling in to pick you up. Anyway, Sui-Lin knows people working in three of the banks we’ve already dealt with, so I didn’t have to make a single appearance to open those accounts, as she had the paperwork sent to the office.

With Sui-Lin doing all the work, I was beginning to wonder what Gerry and Earl actually need me for. I figured it out when we began approaching Asian banks. The Chinese Mainland banks – these are affectionately known as the ‘seven sisters’ – and the Hong Kong banks seem to prefer dealing with a male foreigner, rather than a female who speaks Cantonese and Mandarin. So I have to do all the initial business with these banks meself. I suppose it has something to do with the mysterious Eastern matter of face.

I’m happier now that I’m doing a bit more to earn my ‘walking-around’ money. And the steady income motivated me to cross Statue Square and move into another five-star hotel…where I pay my own bill.

The Ritz-Carlton is not as grand as the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. Nevertheless, it’s a newly built hotel, and the interior designers were obviously given a generous budget. The hotel is full of fine reproduction furniture, elegant fittings, artworks, and tastefully colour-coordinated wall and floor coverings. It’s not to my taste, mind, but I’m sure it appeals to the international high-flyers who frequent the suites and executive rooms.

I’m standing at the window in my suite, watching the comings and goings of all the inter-island ferries. This is something I couldn’t manage from my suite at the Mandarin Oriental; my view was blocked by Jardine House.

Hong Kong is surrounded by islands, and there’s one really cool little island about half an hour away from Central. Lamma is groaning under the weight of left-behind hippies – just like the Greek island of Corfu before package holidays ruined the place. I like to get the ferry to Lamma, wander through the village and make my way to the Waterfront Bar.

The Waterfront’s run by a crazy red-headed fellah by the name of Flick – no one knows his real name. He’s from Yorkshire, but he has a grandmother from Castlebar in Ireland’s County Mayo. Flick is an original. He came to Hong Kong to work in the fashion industry, but he gave up that business the minute he made enough money. He left his luxury apartment in Mid-levels, bought a run-down building on Lamma’s waterfront and transformed it into a bar and restaurant. He did most of the work himself, but he paid the village fishermen to drop large boulders into the sea alongside his building. Claiming these boulders as his own, one night Flick poured quick-setting concrete over them and got himself a sea front terrace.

The Waterfront Bar is my kind of place – no pretensions. Flick couldn’t give a fiddler’s elbow whether you’re a pauper or a billionaire; everyone gets the same pot luck treatment. Most afternoons or evenings at the Waterfront feature a famous film star, singer or writer. It’s not unusual to see Rolf Harris drawing cartoons, Richard Harris downing jugs of Tsingtao Beer, or his mate Oliver Reed – the film star – reading poetry to an audience of puzzled fishermen. Even some renowned hard-nosed business magnates like to slum it out there.

I haven’t been to Lamma in a few weeks. I may as well get the ferry over and pay Flick a visit.

———

I rambled off the ferry and over to the Waterfront Bar to join Flick on the sea front terrace. The sun is a huge red ball sinking slowly on the horizon over Peng Chau and Cheung Chau Islands. We’re nattering away, eating whatever delicious side dishes the kitchen sends out.

Larry Hagman, Victoria Principal and the rest of the
Dallas
cast just walked in. They were brought over to our table and introduced to the owner, and me, before their party took up the other end of the sea front terrace.

Flick eased back on his rattan chair and sucked deeply on his spliff.

“You know Finn…there was a man in his early twenties, from here on Lamma Island, who was sentenced to death in the southern Chinese Province of Guangdong. They sentenced him for attempting to smuggle heroin out of China, but it was a complete crock of shit. Heroin is smuggled into China, not out. Plus, I knew the bloke, and he wouldn’t even touch a spliff. His arrest was a joke, but what happened afterwards was shameful…tragic. The whole thing was a scam.”

My interest in this poor fellah was piqued. “Well, go on…tell me more,” I encouraged him.

“The young man’s grandparents were retired property developers in Hong Kong, and after he was put in prison his mother begged the grandparents to help him. Through their business contacts in China the grandparents were able to reach the prison governor. They offered the corrupt governor five grand US, which was equal to about two years’ salary. So the guy agreed not to send their grandson with the next batch of prisoners going to the local sports ground to be shot dead.”

Flick paused to take another toke off his spliff.

“This expensive farce was repeated every month for two years, until the grandparents had spent all their savings. Then they sold their investment properties to raise money for the monthly payments to the prison governor…who was already an immensely rich man by Mainland Chinese standards. The grandparents finally begged him to accept one last, large payment, and to release their grandson. The greedy pig eventually agreed on a substantial figure and took the last of their money. Then he let the young man escape on his way to the next sports ground execution.”

Flick took a long pause, and I thought the story was finished.

“Well, at least the fellah got away,” I said.

“He didn’t…I’m not done. The prison governor tipped off the police about the escapee. They arrested the young man again, dragged him back to the sports ground, tied a placard around his neck spelling out his crimes and shot him dead.”

“Jaysus!” I said.

“That’s not all,” said Flick, getting up from his rattan seat. He sat back down and resumed his story after organising refills for Larry Hagman’s group.

“The family only realised the guy wasn’t coming home when they received a bill from the Chinese Ministry of Justice for the cost of the bullet used to execute him.”

“Fuck me! And I thought the Brits were heartless bastards!” I said, feeling a bit sick to my stomach.

“The police and the prison governor were working together from the beginning. They found out the young man had wealthy relatives, and they hatched their plot to extract ransom money from them…but he was as good as dead all along.”

In the end, whether what Flick believes about the prison governor is true or not, the Chinese central government under Deng Xiaoping cracked down hard on corruption. Regional governors were executed, and the likes of the corrupt prison governor and the corrupt chief of police were sentenced to prison and stripped of their ill-gotten gains.

Two bowls of steaming Singapore noodles were delivered to our table with a newspaper. “I just noticed an article here, in this English-language Chinese newspaper….Another wretched incident, but this one in Xi’an Province. Are you up for it Finn?” Flick asked.

“Go on, ruin my lovely dinner then.”

Flick began reading through the article and summarising it for me. “A small girl was playing on a frozen lake when the ice gave way, and she fell in. The fire brigade arrived, but the head fireman demanded tea money from the girl’s father before they would rescue her. Not just that, he wanted tea money for each bit of the job. He told the father so much to get the ladder off the engine, more to carry it to the lake, a larger amount to get the girl out of the water and so on…well, you get the idea. The money they demanded was equal to a whole year’s income for the father. So if he paid them he wouldn’t be able to buy rice seed for the next year…and his family would starve. He chose the family’s survival and stood silently by the side of the thawing lake while the firemen drove away and his daughter slipped below the ice. The bloody bastards!”

We sat in silence for some time. When Flick spoke again his anger had faded a little, and he continued in a wistful voice.

“The reporter maintains that if it was the farmer’s son stuck in the icy water they’d have paid the firemen’s price. But daughters, no matter how cute, aren’t as valuable as sons in a one-child only society…even though rural couples are allowed to have more than one child,” said Flick.

“Jaysus!”

“The tragedy doesn’t end there. When the lake thawed in the spring the young girl’s mother cleaned her house from top to bottom, left cooked rice on the stove for her husband and son, walked to the lake and threw herself in.”

I’m silent with disgust, and I can’t finish my bowl of Singapore noodles.

Flick folded up the newspaper, placed it on the seat next to him and looked over at me. “Come on Finn, don't take it so personal my friend. A giant like you with tears in his eyes? That's life for too many dirt-poor farmers, not just in China either, but at least they're doing something about it. The bastard money-grabbing fireman is in jail where he should be.”

I get outrageously angry at disgusting, petty public servants. Flick’s haunting stories are so dreadful, and so true, that I know I’ll never forget them. I know it’s a cruel world…but it’s worse when you’re so poor you can’t even feed your children.

His second story reminds me of the time I was in Rumania with Mac in the early 1970s looking for bomb-making nitrate. We were approached by a woman dragging a beautiful girl of about twelve or thirteen years of age behind her. The child had raven-black hair, high cheekbones, shapely red lips, and turquoise-blue eyes. She was dressed in a light cotton frock and plastic open-toed sandals…shivering with the cold and whimpering like a scolded puppy.

We couldn’t believe our ears when the woman offered us her daughter for a hundred US dollars.

“No! Go away!” I yelled.

“OK…OK. I take fifty dollars. You take girl. You like, she is virgin. Fifty dollars!”

“FUCK OFF away from us!” I roared as loudly as I could without completely scaring the shite out of the child.

The old hag spat and swore at me – at least that’s what I think she was doing. Her English was limited to the words required to sell her child to a stranger for sex…and forever.