hand.
Even a technological Neanderthal like Chan had come to pronounce one acronym with awe: CAFIS. With imported software Chan could use the computer assisted fingerprint indexing system to cross-check in seconds with every print known to central records, a task that in his early years with the RHKPF had taken days with a high risk of error. All you needed was the print from which to start the inquiry.
Here there had been advances too. Dusting powder was still extensively used, but many of its limitations had been overcome through the use of other techniques: the marvelous Magna Brush, the astonishing argon-ion laser, iodide fuming, silver nitrate, ninhydrin and superglue. With each new invention the rate of detection spiked for a while, until the crooks caught up.
With tweezers Tsim lifted the plastic bag (emptied of its contents, which had been sent to the chemists at Arsenal Street) out of the cardboard box that carried the case reference number and Chan’s name. With Chan watching intently by his side, Tsim jammed the top of the bag in a clamp on a small tripod. He lifted the tripod into a glass box the size of a small wardrobe and closed the box door. From outside the box Tsim was able to adjust the focus of the barrel of the laser that was inside. Also inside were a camera that automatically focused with the laser and a metal dish of superglue. With the laser focused Tsim pressed a switch that heated a hot plate under the superglue. Fumes rose and clung to tiny impressions on the plastic bag, which impressions were enhanced by the laser. Tsim pressed another switch, and the camera flashed several times.
The technician peeled a pair of plastic gloves onto his hands, took a small retractable cutter from a drawer and sliced off the cover of
At a chair further along the bench he used Chan’s cigarette lighter to light a small spirit lamp under a glass box. At the bottom of the box was a grill under which iodine crystals had been placed. He opened the lid on the box, inserted the front cover of the book. When violet fumes rose from the grill, Tsim blew out the spirit lamp. Chan watched while fatty matter absorbed some of the fumes. In a minute the secret record of the book’s handlers appeared: a mass of prints one on top of another as if a word-hungry army had fought over it. It was unlikely that Tsim would be able to retrieve ten clear points of identification from the chaos, but he took a photograph anyway. He removed the cardboard cover and replaced it with the first page that he had cut out.
As Tsim worked, Chan saw that at its heart the book, handled by many, had known only one lover. The same fine finger- and thumbprints appeared at the top or bottom of each page. In the bottom corner a slim thumb had spread the spine. Chan held his breath. Here she was at last, that troubled young woman with the short hair. Still calling for help? Chan continued to look even after Tsim had taken all the pictures he needed. The violet whorls were like ridge lines on an ordnance survey map; each print was a tiny mountain of identity.
Back in his office in Mongkok, Chan remembered to ask Aston to find the telephone numbers of the New York Police Department and New York University.
By midafternoon Chan was restless. Moira hadn’t telephoned. That was understandable; what was there for her to say to him? But still he worried. How to explain the suicide of a victim’s mother in the apartment of the investigating detective? His twitch was at maximum mobility by the time he reached his apartment, sweating from the effort.
She was sitting on the couch poring over the file and only grunted when he entered. He stood behind her, tried to see how far she’d read.
“It’s all right. I already read it twice. I appreciate you doing it this way-much better than to have to break down in front of you. I already did that too-break down, I mean.” She looked up. “But you do good work over here. File’s in better shape than I’ve seen in a long while. Real quality control.”
He glanced at the floor. The bottle of scotch was half empty.
“I’m sorry.” His English was perfect but, on occasion, stale. There must be some other phrase
She grunted, stood up. Her legs were not as steady as her voice. She staggered a little on the way to the window.
“No.” He started forward, but it was too late. She swung the window open until it crashed against the frame.
Essence of Mongkok flooded the flat: diesel, burned monosodium glutamate, fried rice, fried noodles, dry cleaning fluid, burning rubber, burning petrol, fumes from the underground railway ventilator, hamburger, cooking oil, every human odor. In Mongkok nobody opened windows.
Moira leaned out, screamed at the world once at the top of her lungs, coughed violently, closed the window.
“That’s what I was waiting for you for. Didn’t trust myself to do it alone.”
She walked back across the room toward him, steadier now. Her arms embraced him, clutched him tight. Her tears flooded down his neck. She made hardly any noise apart from the soft sucking sound of the sobs. It was minutes before he heard her voice, her face in his ear so close he could feel the fine hairs around her mouth. The voice was soft, caressing, comforting, as if the pain was his.
“I’m going to ask you to do a terrible thing, Charlie. You can say no. But when you come home tonight, will you make love to me? I think if I don’t do one life-affirming thing today, I’ll just dry up forever.”
15
Although by no means the largest law firm in Hong Kong, Jonathan Wong’s catered exclusively to CIPs. As a litigation partner Chan’s brother-in-law divided the commercially important people who sought his advice into three groups. There were the rich, the very rich and the fabulously wealthy.
Only the rich paid for their own lunches; the higher categories expected to be wined and dined, Emily Ping in particular. She was fabulously wealthy on a number of counts, but most recently her friends in Beijing had appointed her managing director of a PRC-owned development company registered in Hong Kong. The new company would raise funds in Hong Kong to develop large tracts of land along the Pearl River. As proof of her faith in the project she had put a huge slice of her own money into it.
The Wong-Ping relationship was of a kind better understood in Asia than the West. Their families were distantly related, and they were lifetime friends. They had sat together in primary school, they had been close at grammar school, they had taken exams together and they had studied in England together, although at different universities (Emily at Cambridge, Wong at Oxford). They had never been lovers. Emily had acted as “best man” at Wong’s wedding to Charlie Chan’s sister, Jenny. In Asia some aspects of human life could still be innocent, if innocent meant uncontaminated by sexual innuendo.
Money was different. Although Wong was from a wealthy family and would one day inherit more than a million U.S. dollars, she was infinitely richer. He owed his partnership in his firm to Emily, who insisted on channeling all her commercial work through him. In the circumstances Wong didn’t mind buying her lunch, which was on the firm in any case.
Wong waited for her in the China Club, which occupied a complete floor in the old Bank of China building. The waiters dressed in Red Army uniforms; a huge portrait of Chairman Mao stared down on the diners; Democracy Wall posters competed with more abstract paintings from Beijing. Wong was fond of Chen Guanzhong and other PRC artists who painted with Chinese sensitivity in a Western style. The furniture was blackwood with marble. Everyone said it was a clever idea, to invoke nostalgia for Chinese communism before it was officially dead.
Wong ordered a Bloody Mary. At a table nearby he recognized the English wife of one of his partners, to the other side of him a table for six included two lawyers and three businessmen all well known to him and in the far corner he saw his intellectual property partner, a slim Englishman with the embarrassing habit of wearing a monocle. Hong Kong was a small town where the superrich occupied a social archipelago in which they bumped into one another all the time. As Wong sipped his drink, he saw an Englishman whom he knew to be the political adviser to the governor walk in with the mayor of Shanghai. Behind them was Emily.
Her black Chanel suit with wide gold belt matched black stockings and black and white high heels, her substantial bust filled out a white blouse with gold buttons, she walked as straight as a ramrod and what one
