Hungry Ghost by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

hot sun. The strings ran from platform to platform so that they could be pulled from the shade but at this time of the morning there were no sudden movements, just gentle swings in the wind. The wind blew through tin cans nailed to wooden posts making an unearthly wailing noise, another way of keeping the birds at bay.
    It was three days since he’d killed Donaldson, now safely buried three feet below the courtyard, close to the pool. Howells had sent the two girls back to their village, promising them that he’d return in a few days and knowing it wasn’t true. It felt good to be working again, to be following orders, to be able to use his initiative and his skills. He felt free. He stroked his chin, enjoying the feel of the bare skin now that he’d shaved off the beard and moustache. His hair was still longer than he liked, but he’d change that when he got to Hong Kong.
    He’d been to Hong Kong twice before, but both times en route to other destinations. He’d never worked there, just visited a few bars and toured the shops. He remembered buying a camera there, a Pentax, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what had happened to it. Not that it mattered any more. Howells began whistling to himself quietly, his face a picture of contentment.
    In his back pocket was the envelope from Grey that Donaldson had so faithfully delivered. It contained two photographs of a man called Simon Ng, three closely typed sheets of background information on him and ten thousand American dollars in large bills. Slightly less actually, because he’d used some of the cash to buy a ticket to Hong Kong. A one-way ticket.
    Howells started smiling as he whistled, and the smile quickly widened into a grin. He began laughing out loud, an unnerving, disjointed sound.

    It was eight o’clock in the morning when the QE2 dropped its anchor above Patrick Dugan’s head. That’s what it sounded like anyway. The rattle of metal links against hard wood went on for twenty seconds or so and then stopped dead. God knows what they were doing, but whatever it was they did it every morning. And last thing at night it was furniture-moving, or footsteps, or the shower running. And sometimes it was at three or four o’clock in the morning. But always the anchor dropped at eight, on the dot. Dugan groaned and stuck his head under the pillow. He felt, rather than heard, the sound of lift doors closing several floors below him and knew that he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.
    His block was twenty-eight storeys high, and there were eight flats on each floor. If each flat had a average of one point five wage-earners, and most had two or three, then that meant 336 people would be leaving for work of a morning. And assuming they all left between 7.30 a.m. and 9.30 a.m., that meant an average of one every twenty seconds or so. And each departing resident meant a lift door opening and closing twice. There was no way he’d get back to sleep, not with the noise and the sun streaming in through the bedroom window.
    ‘Shit,’ he said with venom. He decided to make an effort to blank out the sound of the lift but the more he tried to ignore it, the more the vibration through the pillow annoyed him. He tossed on to his front and tried resting his forehead on the mattress. No good. He tried lying on his back. No good. ‘Shit,’ he said again. He decided to get up and groped for a towel to wrap around his waist. It was a thick blue and white striped one he’d stolen from the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok and he tied it around his thickening waistline. He’d never got around to buying curtains for his shoebox of a flat and he could be observed by the occupants of at least three dozen other homes during the short walk to the bathroom. He’d got used to the lack of privacy very quickly; it was just the noises which annoyed him now.
    When he’d first moved into the flat the one above him had been empty and he’d actually enjoyed waking up in the