Hiroshima Joe by Martin Booth Read Free Book Online Page B

shifted her handbag from her lap on to the back of her chair. It was an English-made bag of dark brown leather with long handle-straps.
    Choosing his moment carefully, and watching all around him with a skilfully controlled series of glances, Sandingham lifted the bag clear of the chair back, and at once put his newspaper over it, ensuring that the straps did not show. Then he tucked handbag and newspaper under his arm and rose to leave. Safely outside, he turned left up Pedder Street, continued across several junctions into narrower streets and soon arrived at Albany Road. From there it was only a minute or two’s walk into the Botanical Gardens.
    Seated on a bench, under the shade of a traveller’s palm, he unfolded the newspaper and, careful not to be observed, snapped open the brass clasp on the handbag. He quickly rummaged inside. A used handkerchief; two lipsticks; a base metal powder compact that sprang open as he touched it, tipping fine talc over him; a packet of State Express 555 cigarettes and a stainless steel Ronson lighter, both of which he removed and pocketed; an address book; a Hong Kong driving licence and a military pass card – the woman was obviously a service wife, which accounted (in his mind) for the fact that her children were unpleasant little bastards; a diary; a batch of letters with British stamps on the envelopes; a comb and a small mirror … one by one, he removed these items of feminine clutter and tossed them into the thick leaf debris at the base of the tree where fibrous leaves had fallen and matted together. He even found a pair of sunglasses, but as they were a lady’s pair in faint blue plastic he could not wear them and reluctantly tossed them into the undergrowth, too.
    Finally, in a side flap, he discovered the purse.
    The woman being a service wife had had him worried. They weren’t anywhere near as wealthy as the wives of local civil servants or businessmen. But this woman must have been an officer’s spouse: in the purse was a lot of loose change – he counted over five dollars before tipping it all into his jacket. In a billfold within the purse was just over four hundred and fifty Hong Kong dollars and eighteen pounds in sterling.
    His hands shook as he transferred the money to the inner pocket of his jacket and then rammed the handbag well down into a low, thorny bush. It was a pity, because the bag itself would have fetched a bit in a pawnshop; but a European man pawning a European woman’s handbag would have aroused suspicion, and he was sure the police kept tabs on pawnshops here just as they did in Britain. Now it would be some time before it was discovered, and by then the damp, the heat and the ants should have reduced it to a state of fragile decomposition.
    He knew that he had been very lucky. He had expected he would have had to steal at least three such bags to make up his rent, but at once he had enough and some to spare even without cashing in the sterling. In comparison to what he had been two hours before he was rich.
    *   *   *
    The green tram pulled up at an island stop in the middle of Johnston Road near a playground which, every evening, attracted hoards of ragamuffin children from the surrounding sidestreets of Wan Chai. Sandingham stepped down and the tram, with much grinding and howling of metal and humming of static electricity, surged off along the sunken road rails towards Causeway Bay and North Point.
    He negotiated his way through the heavy evening traffic, crossed Hennessy Road and walked down a narrower street consisting of overcrowded three- and four-storey buildings that were of pre-war construction, and showed it. Their deeply-set balconies provided the pavements with square-pillared arcades: in them collected rubbish, small urchins and elderly Chinese men who seemed to congregate always in twos and threes, seated upon wicker chairs or wooden boxes, chattering and playing tin kau.
    There were shops here, too, mostly selling food. The