A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

“I don’t think I can.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and stared at the smoking bowl. “He wasn’t my headache fortunately. He kept clear of us. Out here we don’t interfere with people unless they make a nuisance of themselves and Jefferson was careful not to do that. Every so often we got word about him. He wasn’t a desirable citizen. There isn’t much doubt that he lived on the immoral earnings of his wife, but here again, we don’t interfere with an American citizen if we can help it.”

“Any angles on the girl?”

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.