The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

10

Jenny Lin Lee had pulled her hair forward and because she sat with her legs folded beneath her it practically concealed her body. He was still able to see that beneath the white silk cheongsam she was naked.

She took the glass from him, making sure that their hands touched.

‘I got the impression last night that you didn’t drink,’ he said.

‘Robert needs a sober guardian.’

‘ Where is he now?’

‘At the weekly dinner of the businessmen’s club,’ said Jenny disdainfully. ‘One of the few places that will still let him in.’

Purposely she moved her hair aside, so that more of her body was visible. She looked very young, he thought.

‘There are some that don’t?’ he asked.

‘Apparently.’ She shrugged, an uncaring gesture.

‘Why?’

‘You mean he didn’t tell you?’ she demanded, revolving the glass so that the ice clattered against the sides.

‘Tell me what?’

‘The great embarrassment of Robert Nelson’s life,’ she intoned, deepening her voice to a mock announcement. ‘He’s in love with a Chinese whore.’

It was an interesting performance, thought Charlie. So it had been a professionalism he’d recognised the previous night. Why, he wondered, had it been so difficult for him to identify? He of all people. Not that he would have used the word to describe her. Because she wasn’t. Not like the girl in front of him.

‘ Say hello to your uncle, Charlie, there’s a good boy… what’s your name again, love? ’

But not a whore. Never have called her that. Not now. She hadn’t even taken money, not unless it was offered her. And only then if the rent were due or the corner store were refusing any more credit or some new school uniform were needed. And she would always describe it as a loan. Actually put scribbled IOUs in the coronation mug on the dresser. He’d found fifty there, when his mother had died. All carefully dated. And dozens more in the biscuit tin, the one in which she put the rent money and the hire purchase instalments. One of the names, he supposed, had been that of his father. She wouldn’t have known, of course. Not for certain. She would have been able to remember them all, though. Because to her they hadn’t been casual encounters. None of them.

He didn’t believe she’d wanted physical love. Not too much anyway. It was just that in her simple, haphazard way, she couldn’t think how else it would enter, except through the bedroom door.

She’d tried to explain, pleading with him. She’d been crying and he’d thought the mascara streaks had looked like Indian warpaint.

He’d been the National Service prodigy then. Transferred because of his brilliance as an aerial photographer from R.A.F. Intelligence to the department that Sir Archibald was creating.

And so very impressed with the accents and the attitudes of the university entrants. Impressed with everything, in fact. And so anxious to belong. He hadn’t challenged them, of course. Not yet. That had been the time when he was still trying to ape their talk and their habits, unaware of their amusement.

And been frightened that the sniffling, sobbing woman who didn’t even have the comfort now of any more uncles would endanger his selection because of the security screening he knew was taking place.

‘ Can’t you understand what it’s like to be lonely, Charlie… to want somebody you can depend on, who won’t notice when you’re getting old… ’

He’d grimaced at the mascara. And called her ugly. The one person who could have given her the friendship she’d wanted, he thought. And he hadn’t understood. Any more than he’d understood what Edith had wanted from him, until it was too late. Why had he never been able to dream Edith’s dreams?

How long, he wondered, would it take Robert Nelson?

‘Strayed outside the well-ordered system,’ he quoted.

She nodded.

‘The Eleventh Commandment,’ said Jenny. ‘Thou shalt fuck the natives but not be seen doing it.’

‘And you don’t love him?’

‘What’s love got to do with being a whore?’

‘Very little.’

‘He’s convenient,’ she said. ‘And the bed’s clean.’

‘Do you really despise him?’

‘I despise being paraded around, to garden parties where people won’t talk to me and to clubs where I’m ignored, so he can show me off like someone who’s recovered from a terminal illness.’

‘Why don’t you tell him that?’

‘I have. He says I’m imagining it and he wants me to be accepted.’

‘Why not leave?’

‘Like I said,’ she sniggered, ‘the bed’s clean. And the money is regular.’

‘But not enough?’

‘There’s never enough money… that’s one of Lucky Lu’s favourite expressions.’

Charlie slowly lowered himself into a chair facing the girl, feeling the first tingle of familiar excitement.

‘I hadn’t heard that,’ he encouraged.

‘You’d be amazed, with all the publicity, at the things people haven’t heard about Lucky Lu.’

The entry into the society that everyone said would be denied him? Charlie frowned. He’d always suspected things that came too easily.

‘Like what?’ he prompted.

‘You got money?’ asked the girl.

‘As much as you want,’ offered Charlie, misunderstanding the demand.

She stood, smiling.

‘You spend a lot and you get a lot,’ she promised, walking towards the bedroom.

Charlie remained crouched forward in the chair, momentarily confused. Before Edith’s death, there had been many affairs, the sex sometimes as loveless as that being offered by the woman who had disappeared into the bedroom. But for almost two years there had been a celibacy of grief. He’d always known it would end. But not like this. Mechanically almost. But she had hinted a knowledge about Lu of which even Nelson seemed unaware; a knowledge he’d never learn if he rejected her.

‘I don’t believe you can reach from there,’ she called.

He grimaced at the awkward coarseness, then stood hesitantly, walking towards the bedroom. There was nothing, he realised. No lust. No feeling. Certainly not desire. Just apprehension.

She’d discarded the cheongsam and was sitting back on her heels, near the top of the bed. She’d swept her hair forward again, covering herself except for her breasts, which pouted through like pink-nosed puppies.

‘You only keep your clothes on for short-time. You don’t want a short-time, do you?’

Rehearsed words, he thought. Like prompt cards in a child’s classroom. Would his mother have ever been like this? No, he decided. She wouldn’t have even known the expressions. He was sure she wouldn’t.

Reluctantly he took off his jacket and tie, edging on to the bed.

‘What do you know about Lu?’ he asked. He wouldn’t be able to make love to her, he knew.

She put her hands on his thigh, feeling upwards, then gazing at him, pulling her mouth into an artificially mournful expression.

‘That’s not very flattering for a girl,’ she complained. Immediately there was the prostitute’s smile.

‘We’ll soon improve that,’ she promised.

She moved her hand up, reaching through his shirt, then stopped.

‘What’s that?’

Charlie looked down.

‘String vest,’ he said.

‘A what!’

‘String vest. Supposed to keep you cool in hot weather.’

‘Good God!’

She began to laugh, genuinely now, and he smiled with her.

‘Doesn’t seem to work, either.’

‘Let me see,’ she insisted.

Feeling foolish, he took off his shirt and she began to laugh even more, pointing at him with an outstretched finger and rocking backwards and forwards on her heels.

‘You look ridiculous,’ she protested. ‘Like a fish, a fish wrapped up inside a net…’

He did, thought Charlie. A flat fish. Very apt.

He reached for her outstretched hand, intending to repeat the question about Lu, then realised that the amusement had changed, becoming more strident, edging towards hysteria.

‘What…?’ he began and then saw she was crying, her eyes flooded with emotion.

‘Oh fuck,’ she said desperately. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

She pumped her hand in his, in her frustration, and then came forward, pressing her face into his shoulder. Charlie put his arms around her, holding her against him. Her skin was very smooth and he could feel her tipped, soft breasts against him. There was still no reaction within him.

‘It was a good try,’ he said quietly. Normally there was anger at realising he had been wrong. This time it was relief.

She sobbed on.

‘Why?’ he said.

‘Robert’s so worried,’ she said, her voice uneven and muffled against his shoulder. ‘He’s convinced he’ll be dismissed, because of the premium.’

‘But why this?’

She pulled away from him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘It wouldn’t have worked.’

‘I could have pretended… whores do all the time.’

‘I couldn’t.’

It was a sad smile, but controlled now.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t, could you?’

‘I still want to know why.’

‘Wanted to compromise you… then plead for Robert. Ask you not to recommend that he be fired. Blackmail you even. Another whore’s trick.’

‘He’s not going to be sacked,’ insisted Charlie. ‘I’ve told him that, more times than I can count. In a few days, I’ll get Willoughby to reassure him by letter.’

She was back on her heels now, gazing at him. Crying had puffed her eyes, he saw.

‘It’s my fault, you know,’ she blurted suddenly.

‘What is?’

‘The fire… everything, all because of me.’

Charlie leaned forward, taking her hand again.

‘Jenny,’ he said urgently, ‘what are you saying?’

‘Lu’s people are talking openly to the Chinese about it. They have to, you see. For Lu’s family to recover face, it’s important that everyone knows…’

‘Jenny,’ he stopped her. ‘Tell me from the beginning. Tell me so that I can understand…’

She sniffed and he groped into his pocket for a handkerchief. She kept it in her hand, tracing her fingers over his wrist, a little-girl gesture.

‘Lu doesn’t just get his money from shipbuilding and property development and oil,’ she began slowly. ‘That’s crap, part of the great benefactor publicity machine…’

‘What else?’

‘He owns a good third of the bars and brothels in Wan Chai,’ announced the girl. ‘Maybe more. They’re quieter, now that the war in Vietnam is over and the Americans aren’t coming here… and the Sixth Fleet has gone. But there’s still enough business. Not that they matter, by themselves. He’s got at least two factories here in Hong Kong manufacturing heroin from the poppy resin that comes in from Thailand and Burma… it’s called Brown Sugar. Or Number Three…’

She paused, then went on, ‘He’s the biggest supplier in the colony and ships to America and Europe as well…’

Another pause.

‘You know what a Triad is?’

‘Something like a Chinese Mafia?’

She nodded.

‘Lu’s a paymaster for at least three Triads, with branches not just here but in Europe as well.’

‘How do you know all this?’

She ignored the question.

‘And then there’s the name. Lucky Lu. It doesn’t come from the luck he had on the Hong Kong stock market, like all the publicity says. He runs the casinos and mah-jong games throughout Hong Kong and Kowloon…’

The sad smile again.

‘The Chinese are the biggest gamblers in the world,’ she said. ‘Only Lucky Lu is always the winner.’

‘How do you know all this?’ repeated Charlie. Almost enough to return to Johnson, he decided, though he still wanted a link with the 12 per cent premium.

Her head was pressed forward now, so that she didn’t have to look at him, and when she spoke her voice was muffled once more.

‘Before meeting Robert,’ she said, ‘I was with Johnny Lu… the son that controls Lucky’s vice businesses. I was his number one woman…’

‘I’ve seen his pictures,’ said Charlie. ‘He seems to be almost his father’s shadow.’

She hesitated.

‘Johnny told me not to go,’ she remembered distantly. ‘Told me I wouldn’t be accepted. He was right…’

‘Why was the ship fire your fault?’ demanded Charlie.

‘Robert didn’t get the major share of the insurance because he was better than anybody else,’ said Jenny. ‘He got it because Lu planned it that way… planned it so that the man who took his son’s woman and caused the family loss of face would be the greatest sufferer when the ship burned… that’s why the premium was higher.’

At last, thought Charlie. It was all so remarkably simple.

‘Lu did it himself?’

She shook her head at the naivety of the question.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if you knew more about the Asian mind you’d know that loss of face is the worst insult a Chinese can suffer. Something that’s got to be avenged…’

‘And having ensured that it wouldn’t cost him a penny, he even managed to stage it so that his famous anti-communist campaign would benefit?’ he said, in growing awareness.

‘Because he is such an avowed anti-communist, it made the story even more believable, didn’t it?’ she said.

‘What about the shipyard workers, and the prison cook?’

‘Chosen because they were mainland refugees,’ she said. ‘Frightened people who’d got deeply into debt at Lu’s gambling places and were given the way to settle…’

‘And as a safeguard against the shipyard men recanting on the rehearsed story, which they would almost certainly have done in court, he had them killed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Robert all this?’ asked Charlie suddenly. ‘Why wait so long?’

‘And let him know that the Chinese as well as the European community in Hong Kong were laughing at him for falling in love with a whore? He’s suffering enough as it is.’

‘But it means we can contest the claim. Robert would have realised that.’

‘Oh, you poor man,’ she said. ‘This is street gossip, bar talk. The only proof is the cook, who’s probably in Hunan by now. Or dead, like the other two. This isn’t anything you can fight Lu with… he’s won. Like he always wins.’

She was right, realised Charlie. About the proof anyway. He still had nothing.

‘I’m buggered if he’ll win,’ said Charlie.

‘I told you to show how Robert had been tricked,’ said the girl. ‘To show why he shouldn’t be fired. Not to fight any court hearing.’

‘There’ll be a way,’ promised Charlie.

‘I’d like to believe that. God, how I’d like to believe that.’

Charlie heard the noise first. He spun off the bed, crouched towards the linking door and then remained there, staring up foolishly at the figure of Robert Nelson framed in the doorway.

‘Oh no,’ said the girl quietly. ‘Dear God, no.’

‘If you set out to do this sort of thing, you should ensure your corridor doors are secured,’ said Nelson.

He was striving for enormous dignity, realised Charlie. A nerve twitching high on his left cheek was the only hint of the difficulty he was having in controlling himself.

Charlie motioned towards the now cowering girl. At last she’d tried to protect herself with the bed cover. She was crying again, he saw, softly this time.

‘We didn’t… there was nothing…’ he started, but the broker talked over him.

‘That’s not really important, is it?’

‘Of course it’s important,’ shouted Charlie. ‘She came here because she loves you.’

‘It looks like it.’

‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’

‘Like the Chinese think I am, as well as everybody else?’

‘You heard…’ started Charlie but again Nelson refused him.

‘Enough. And I’m as determined as you are that Lu won’t succeed in his claim.’

He looked to the girl.

‘I don’t want you back at the apartment,’ he said evenly.

‘Please…’

‘Just pack your stuff and get out. Tonight.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ protested Charlie. ‘This is ridiculous. What’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Nelson. ‘Not any more. And when I establish that Lu’s claim is false, there won’t be any more laughter either.’

So Nelson didn’t understand. Any more than he’d been able to, all those years ago.

The broker turned away from the bedroom, but Charlie called out, halting him.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To find one of the Chinese spreading the story she recounted and get him to swear an affidavit incriminating Lu,’ said Nelson, starting towards the outer door again.

‘Stop him!’ begged Jenny.

‘Robert,’ yelled Charlie, hurrying into the adjoining room. ‘That won’t work. Wait. We’ll go to the police first. They’re the people…’

Nelson slammed the door, without looking round, leaving Charlie standing near the tiny bar.

‘Assholes,’ he said.

She was at the bedroom door when he turned. Because she had only worn the cheongsam it had taken her seconds to dress. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were still swollen.

‘Your handkerchief,’ she said, holding it out.

‘You can keep it if you want.’

She shook her head.

‘Whores don’t cry for long.’

She shrugged, a gesture of defeat.

‘He expected to catch us,’ she announced.

‘What?’

‘Robert. He expected to find us. He never really trusted me… He thought I couldn’t forget the old ways. That’s why he came in without knocking. Always unsure…’

Just as Edith had always been unsure, thought Charlie, never quite able to believe their marriage was for him anything different from everything else he did, another way of proving himself equal.

‘But why me?’

‘You’d have been the obvious choice.’

‘He’ll have recovered in the morning,’ said Charlie hopefully.

Jenny shook her head.

‘No.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘I’m known in all the bars,’ she said bitterly.

‘Wait. Until tomorrow at least.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’ll contact you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘After I’ve seen the police.’

She gave him a pitying look.

‘You don’t stand a chance,’ she insisted.

‘People have been telling me that for as long as I can remember,’ he said. It was good to feel confident again. It had been a long time. More than two years, in fact. Not since he’d started to run.

Charlie’s second telephone call stopped Willoughby as he was leaving his Knightsbridge flat for the City. The underwriter listened without interruption as Charlie repeated what the girl had told him, without naming her as the immediate source.

‘Dear God,’ said Willoughby softly.

‘There’s still no proof,’ warned Charlie, immediately detecting the feeling in the other man’s voice.

‘It would mean we wouldn’t have to pay a penny…’

‘I said there’s no proof.’

‘But you can get it, surely?’

‘I can get the police to investigate. To be produced in court, it will have to be something official.’

‘Do that then. And, Charlie…’

‘What?’

‘Thank you.’

There was no way to prick the man’s optimism.

‘Something else,’ Charlie said.

‘What?’

‘I want you to write a letter to Nelson, assuring him that his job is safe.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s important.’

The inner council were impressed, realised Chiu Ching-mao, looking around the faces before him.

They had remained unspeaking during the playback of Charlie’s bedroom discussion with Jenny Lin Lee and for those who did not speak sufficient English, Chiu Ching-mao had provided Cantonese transcripts.

‘The encounter was excellently monitored,’ said the chairman, when the tape ended. ‘Congratulate your people upon installing the devices so well.’

‘Thank you,’ said Chiu. ‘I will.’

‘So now the Englishman knows the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder what action he’ll persuade the police to take?’

Chiu knew he wasn’t expected to give an opinion and said nothing.

‘Why did the girl try to seduce the Englishman?’ asked the chairman suddenly. ‘Why didn’t she just tell him about the fire?’

‘I assumed what she said on the recording was the truth… that she wanted to compromise him into protecting the employment of the man she’s living with,’ suggested Chiu.

The chairman shook his head.

‘Stupid woman,’ he said. ‘Will Nelson cause any problems?’

‘I’ve tried to use it to our advantage,’ said Chiu.

‘How?’

‘John Lu hasn’t the cunning of his father,’ said Chiu. ‘I’ve calculated upon him panicking.’

‘By doing what?’

‘Letting Lu’s people know what Nelson is trying to do in the waterfront bars.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the chairman. ‘It can’t do any harm.’