possible identification. If anything the young woman in the photograph was better-looking with a finer chin, chiseled nose, large eyes. A beauty.
“How long has your daughter been missing, Mrs. Coletti?”
“Please call me Moira, Charlie.” She touched his hand. “It feels funny not using first names in this tiny apartment. The British really did a job on you people with the formality, didn’t they? About two years.” She swallowed. “No, I’m kidding myself. Must be two years six months since I saw my Clare.”
“But you spoke to her on the telephone, received letters?”
“Oh, sure. Sure. All the time. Look, we both know you’re going to see your forensic department tomorrow with whatever I’m able to give you-”
“Everything can wait till after that. Sure. I’m sorry.”
She waved a hand at the same time as blowing her nose on a man-size handkerchief. “No, no. I shouldn’t have rushed it, but what else could I do? Haven’t thought about anything else since I saw that fax.”
Chan saw that the whiskey bottle was empty. In an ashtray he saw a nest of butts that had collected since her arrival. With a hand she covered a yawn. He felt tired himself; perhaps even tired enough to sleep. “You want another beer before you go?”
She nodded. “That would help.”
“Where’s your hotel?”
She coughed. “Haven’t had time to get hold of one. Haven’t even thought of it.”
She waited. Chan looked at his fake Rolex, which he’d left on the coffee table: 3:20 A.M. In Hong Kong it wouldn’t be difficult finding a hotel, even at that time, but what would be the point? It would be 4:30 before she could lie down, and she’d want to be in his office by 9:00.
“That couch doesn’t open up into a bed. You’ll have to put the cushions on the floor. If you want to stay.”
“Oh, that’s real kind of you, Charlie. Real kind. I won’t make a sound once I’m settled.”
“There’s a bottle of vodka in the fridge, if you need it. It’s the only spirits I keep.”
She looked away with a grunt. “In the morning I’ll go straight to the identification bureau with your fingerprint samples. And the dental records. May as well take them just in case the prints are smudged.”
She was already making up her bed on the floor, kneeling and placing cushions from the couch end to end. She lay down with a sigh. “You’re a kind man, Charlie. You don’t look kind, but you are. As one damaged person to another, let me give you one word of advice: You smoke too much. Good night.”
He lay on his bed, smoking. He could hear her snoring on the floor while he lay wide-awake. It was possible to envy her. His mind flicked from the case to other things. Angie, Sandra. What had the postcard said? “Not missing you at all.” That was because like all Chinese, he was emotionally stunted. She had been careful to explain that to him before she left. She would be surprised that a total stranger had called him kind.
13
At his desk at Mongkok Police Station, Chan played with a black government ballpoint. As yet he had told no one about the American woman and her dental records except Lam, the odontologist. Ninety percent of detection was waiting. At his flat Moira Coletti was waiting too. On the other side of the office Aston sat at his desk, also waiting.
There was a knock on the door. Chan looked at Aston. In Mongkok nobody knocked.
“May I come in?”
Riley’s face was almost featureless, like a description by a myopic witness. On it he inscribed the mood of the moment. He was tall, slim, stooped with hands that flapped at the wrists.
“Good morning, sir,” Aston said.
“Morning, Dick.” Riley rubbed his hands together. “Morning, Charlie.
“Fine, how are you?” Chan did what he could to discourage the chief superintendent’s Cantonese.
“What?”
Chan looked at Aston.
“It’s Cantonese,” Aston explained, “for ‘good.’ ”
“Oh-
Aston busied himself with
“I was just passing,” Riley said. “I thought I’d pop in.”
Chan waited. It was important to know which Riley one was dealing with.
“Heard you’re having a little trouble with the investigation. Perhaps a little brainstorming would help?”
Chan lowered his head in a controlled nod. “Sure.”
Riley stood in the middle of the room. Chan stared at him. He was not sadistic by nature; it was rather that self-doubt was the only part of Riley he could relate to. The temptation to draw it out was usually irresistible.
“D’you know what DNA stands for?” Chan asked with a smile.
“Deoxyribonucleic acid.” Riley smiled back.
Chan bit his lip: Never underestimate an Englishman in a quiz. “We already have the results of the PCR.”
“Good.”
“The heads fit the bodies in the vat.”
Riley’s face lit up. “That’s what the PCR says? Excellent! Bob’s your uncle! The crime’s as good as solved.”
“Not quite. All we’ve done is restore three heads to three bodies. Their ghosts can rest in peace. On the other hand, both the minced and the unminced share the same anonymity. Faceless, you might say.” Chan let a beat pass in case Riley wanted to change personalities. “The DNA doesn’t tell us their names, you see.”
Riley blinked. “Sure, sure.” He wrung his hands. “What about fingerprints?”
Chan scanned the room for a moment, saw that Aston was suffused with a sympathetic blush, then returned his attention to Riley. He held up both hands. “No fingers, no prints.”
Riley’s beam leaked like a punctured tire. “Quite.” He wrung his hands again. Sweat exploded in small pods over his forehead. “Anyway, you’re making progress. That’s what counts.” He twisted in his seat, searched the wall for relief from Chan’s gaze. “Triads.”
Aston lowered his book.
Chan watched the two
“Did you know that Sun Yat-sen was a Four-eight-nine?” Aston asked. Chan noticed how anxious he was to relieve the chief superintendent’s discomfort. There was a social worker in most Englishmen.
“I’m going to buy some cigarettes,” Chan said. “Then I’m going to the scene of crime.” He turned to Riley. “Why don’t you join me there?”
Chan was prepared to bet that the “scene of crime” was the only empty space in Mongkok. The building was about eight years old, ten reinforced concrete floors suspended from a reinforced-concrete structure 130 feet high. For the owners it was a 96,000-square-foot money box. At the lift area on the eighth floor police No Entry signs painted on barricades that rested on trestles still guarded all four gates. Chan had calculated that the owners must be losing ten thousand Hong Kong dollars a day in rental income.
Moving the barricade to one side, he pushed open one of the large steel doors.
“Hello? Hello?”
He called out just in case Riley and Aston had already arrived. There were no windows; his greeting fell into a black void. He remembered a heavy-duty switch at shoulder height on the wall near the entrance. All over the floor fluorescent tubes flickered into life. Over the area where the vat had stood the strip light flashed on and off and made a sound like hornets buzzing. At the far corner Chan found a stepladder with the letters RHKPF engraved on
