desk. ‘Please wait here. The inspector will be in to see you shortly,’ he said in accentless English, and left us alone in the room. A gun in a glistening holster bumped against his hip as he walked. From the size of it he’d need both hands just to aim it.
Howard was totally unashamed. ‘Maybe his mother hasn’t got round to sewing them on yet,’ he laughed and flopped into one of the seats.
On the wall behind the paper-strewn desk was a map of Hong Kong, dotted with pins of various colours, and with police mugshots stapled haphazardly around it. The filing cabinets were made of the same grey gunmetal as the desk with identical rust stains. There was a carpet of indeterminate colour on the floor, dotted with small flecks of plaster that had fallen from the damp, peeling ceiling.
The window obviously hadn’t been washed for years, it was streaked with grey and made the outside look as foggy as a winter’s day on the Isle of Dogs. A small air-conditioner set into a hole in the wall next to the glass did its best to keep the temperature of the room below boiling point, but it was failing miserably and groaning like a sick horse.
Leaving a journalist alone in an office is asking for trouble. I began idly flicking through the green folders and sheafs of typed papers, looking for anything interesting. Looking for Sally’s name. I’d just started to open the top right hand drawer when the door opened and two men walked in, one Chinese, one European.
I gave them a winning smile and walked back to the side of the desk where I belonged, dropping into the chair next to Howard.
The European was Hall. He didn’t offer to shake my hand so I didn’t bother to stand up. I guess he was a bit pissed off at my attempt at breaking and entering. Hall was a shade under six feet, brown hair cut to regulation length and wearing a grey off-the-peg suit with trousers that were just a bit too tight around the groin. His tie was dark blue with a coat of arms on it.
He had the same wary world-wise look that plain clothes policemen all over the world have after they’ve been lied to so many times that they expect to come across the truth about as often as Halley’s comet.
It was also a look that said that the last thing he wanted to do at the moment was to talk to the brother of a girl who’d just been scraped off a Hong Kong pavement.
His companion was harder to read, tall for a Chinese and well built, wearing faded jeans and a black leather jacket that was scuffed around the elbows. His hair looked as if it had been cut with a set of blunt shears and a pudding basin and his nose had obviously been broken a couple of times. The tie was a masterpiece of bad taste, bits of purple, green and Picasso-type shapes in black and white. He obviously had no mother, no girlfriend, and no sister, because no girl would allow someone she loved to dress that way. He wore a thick gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand and a bulky gold chain on his right wrist and as he listened to Hall he toyed with the ring and studied me.
Hall didn’t introduce him, but they both nodded at Howard. Hall had brought a file with him, identical to those already littering the desk, and he opened it as he sat down. He interrogated me for the best part of an hour, and he was good. He followed up several lines of questioning, checking the spelling of all names, cross-referring on times and dates, when I’d last seen her, who her friends were, former colleagues, present lovers. He wrote everything down, filling two A4 sheets with his small scribble.
When he’d finished he opened a drawer in the right hand side of his desk and took out a large polythene bag containing a leather shoulder bag, a navy blue dress and a pair of white shoes. Hall took them out, placing them on his desk top one item at a time. He opened the flap of the bag and took out a thin gold watch that I’d never seen before, a money clip, a Gucci purse and a set of keys.
‘These