Black Horn (3 page)

"I
think I've told everything I know to your assistant, Inspector Lau."

"Yes,
you've been very co-operative, but I would appreciate just a few minutes of
your time." He gestured across the road at a tea house. She sighed and
glanced at her watch.

"Just
a few minutes then," she said reluctantly.

She
ordered jasmine tea and he had a San Miguel beer.

"I
must first offer my condolences," he said. "It was a terrible tragedy
for you."

She
took a sip of tea and looked at him. It was noisy in the tea shop. She glanced
around the large room. Chapman was the only foreigner in the room and probably
within a square mile. She felt her resentment rising and let it come out.

"I
find it very strange, Chief Inspector, that an Englishman should be the head of
such a sensitive department. It would be rather like sending a German to Sicily
to head the Anti-Mafia department there. Surely, it would be impossible for a
foreigner to understand the minds of these people." She gestured around
the room. "Even of these people here. Oh, I'm sure that you passed your
Cantonese language examinations and speak it well enough to impress the
bar-girls in Wanchai. How old are you, by the way?

He appeared to take no offence. She noticed that his eyes were very dark brown.

"I'll be thirty-five next week," he said, pulling a ball-pen from the breast
pocket of his safari jacket. He reached for a napkin and pulled it towards him,
and very quickly drew on it with the pen. She watched in puzzlement. He put the
ball-pen back in his pocket, turned the napkin and pushed it across the table.
She looked down at it. After five seconds, her eyes narrowed in deep
concentration. Ten seconds later, she felt her skin prickling. She was looking
at six Chinese characters drawn by an expert calligrapher. Her skin had
prickled because she could not interpret the characters. Slowly she looked up
at him. His brown eyes gazed back.

To read a Chinese newspaper requires the knowledge of approximately seven hundred and
fifty characters. A university graduate would be satisfied to know three
thousand characters. Lucy Kwok Ling Fong was a graduate of the Hong Kong
University and was proud of her knowledge of over four thousand characters. She
could not read the six characters in front of her.

"What do they mean?" she asked.

"In which dialect?" he replied in his Yorkshire accent.

She smiled slowly and answered, "Cantonese."

In flawless Cantonese he told her: "'Not every stranger is completely
stupid'."

Her
smile widened and she asked in the same dialect, "Is that Confucius?"

He
shook his head.

"That's
Colin Chapman." He switched to Shanghainese, which again was flawless.
"Or would you prefer to talk in your mother dialect?"

She
lifted her head and laughed, and said in Mandarin, "Very clever, Chief
Inspector, but surely you agree that somebody can be stupid in many languages.
After all ... a parrot is just a parrot."

For the
first time, he smiled. He took a sip of beer and said in English, "That's
very true, Miss Kwok, and I don't blame you for having doubts about a gweilo's
capability to understand a Triad's mind, but I've had more than ten years'
experience. The subject fascinates me and, without any false modesty, I would
rate myself as one of the top three experts in the world."

"Who
are the other two?"

"My
assistant Inspector Lau, who interviewed you extensively, and a Professor Cheung
Lam To at Taipei University."

She was
looking down again at the napkin. She tapped it with a long red fingernail.

"How
many?" she asked quietly.

"About
eighty thousand," he answered. "But of course, one never stops
learning."

She
smiled again and said, "May I borrow your pen?"

He
passed it over. She wrote something along the bottom of the napkin and pushed
it across. He looked down and read: "Dis girl vellee solly. She will talk
to you."

He
smiled again and said, "Perhaps we can do it more privately in my office,
this afternoon. I need at least two hours of your time."

"You
have it, Chief Inspector."

The
Doberman greeted him like an old friend, despite the fact that some years
earlier Creasy had put her into an undignified sleep with an anaesthetic dart.
She wagged her stumpy tail and licked his hand.

Senator
Grainger gave a firm handshake to Creasy and to Michael, then he kissed Juliet
warmly on both cheeks and said, "Welcome. I hope you'll be happy
here."

She
looked around the opulent hallway of the mansion and then at the plump Mexican
maid, waiting to take her suitcase.

"I'm
sure I'll be happy," she said. "It's very kind of you to take me
in."

Five
minutes later, they were seated next to the pool with long cold drinks in their
hands. The Senator glanced at his watch.

"Your
flight was a bit delayed," he said, "and Gloria will be here quite
soon, so I'll brief you right away." He took a sip of his drink,
absent-mindedly patted the Doberman, and let his mind go back over the years.

"Gloria
Manners came from a poor background. Southern white farmers whose farm was too
small and the family too big. She got a job as a waitress in a good restaurant
here in Denver. That's where she met Harry, who was a regular there. He came
from a good property-owning Colorado family, which objected strongly to him
marrying someone as low down the totem pole as Gloria. He went ahead anyway,
and his Pa cut him off without a cent. Starting with nothing, Harry went right
on to build a huge fortune in real estate and oil rights speculation."

"Sounds
like quite a guy," Creasy commented.

Grainger
nodded. "He was a hell of a guy. We had big battles on some real estate
deals. He was tough but he was honest. Anyway, he was killed in a car crash
about three years ago. Gloria was crippled in that same accident. She's
paralysed from the waist down and spends her life in a wheelchair."

"What
sort of woman is she?" Creasy asked.

The
Senator took another sip of his drink and answered, "I never got on well
with her. To be honest, I always thought she was a bit of a bitch who got
lucky. Since the loss of her husband and her paralysis, she's got worse. She
has a mean streak in her... but she loved Harry... and he loved her ... so me
and most of our friends put up with her, I guess, originally, for the sake of
Harry, and now for his memory."

"Age?"
Creasy asked.

"Early
sixties, but looks a lot older."

"Money?"

The
Senator thought for a moment and then answered, "At least a hundred
million dollars. She worked with Harry in his business, and I can tell you that
she's shrewd and tough. They only had the one child, Carole, who was a fine
young woman. Not at all like her mother, although strangely, they got on very
well together. Carole's body was flown back for burial in Denver. I went to the
funeral. Gloria's face showed no expression. She just sat there in her
wheelchair, as though she was carved from stone, but I guess she was hurting
bad inside. She's determined to find the people who killed her daughter."

Michael
joined the conversation. "Jim, if you dislike this woman, why are you
helping her?"

Grainger
glanced briefly at him and then looked back at Creasy.

"Two
reasons. Firstly, because Harry Manners was a friend of mine and Carole was his
daughter as well; secondly, because I happen to be the Senior Senator for
Colorado and Gloria is one of my constituents. It's my duty to help her."

Creasy
had the open file in front of him. It was all too brief. He flicked through the
few pages while everyone looked on silently, then he said to Grainger, "I
have some strong contacts in Zimbabwe. Even now, all these years after
independence, and even though I spent some years fighting the present
government as a mercenary." He studied Grainger and then asked, "What
will the deal be, Jim?"

"I
guess, any deal you want," Grainger answered. "With her wealth and
her desire for justice, she'll do anything to find out who killed her
daughter."

As he
finished speaking, they heard the chimes of the doorbell. The Doberman growled
softly in her throat. Two minutes later, Gloria Manners was being wheeled
across the patio by a middle-aged nurse in a starched white uniform. Creasy
noted that Mrs Manners' face was etched with many furrows and lines, distorting
what had once been a face of immense beauty. Her grey hair and thin face also
depicted her tragedy. Despite the heat of this early summer day, she wore a
heavy black crocheted blanket around her now useless legs.

Her
eyes settled immediately on Creasy and she studied his face in silence. Creasy
gazed back at her, looking directly into her bitter blue eyes. She glanced at
Michael and Juliet and finally turned to Grainger and said, "At least he
looks the part." She lifted her head and said to the nurse. "Run
along, Ruby, and come back in exactly half an hour."

The
nurse turned and went back inside the house.

Grainger
leaned forward and asked, "Would you like a cool drink, Gloria?"

She
shook her head impatiently. "Thank you, no." She was looking again at
Creasy. She said in her Southern drawl. "I understand you're from
Alabama?"

"A
long ways back, ma"am."

"Can
you help me?" she asked.

"I
can try."

"What
will it cost?"

Grainger
sighed and started to say something. Creasy held up his hand.

"I
have no idea," Creasy answered. "It will cost you about fifty
thousand Swiss francs as expenses for myself and Michael to go down to Zimbabwe
and look around. If, after a couple of weeks, I think there's no chance, I'll
tell you that and we'll go on home."

She
moved her gaze to Grainger.

"A
few days ago, I talked to a couple of guys that Harry's brother-in-law sent me.
They asked for three hundred thousand dollars as an upfront retainer... your
guy comes cheap."

The
Senator smiled slightly.

Creasy
said, "Ma'am, I don't take money for nothing." He tapped the
folder in front of him. "The Zimbabwe police came up with a dead-end and
they had a lot of pressure from the American Ambassador down there. I guess
there's only a slim chance of finding anything out."

"And
if you do?" she asked.

"Then
I'll start charging. I might have to bring some other guys into it. I might
have to pay some folding money to get information."

Now the
Senator interjected. "I have personal proof of Creasy's honesty,
Gloria."

Creasy
was still looking at the woman. He went on, "If I find out who did it,
without doubt, I'll charge you half a million Swiss francs."

"Still
cheap," she said. "What if you find out who did it and they have
political or other kinds of protection? Understand, Mr Creasy, I want
justice." She spoke the last words quietly but with great intensity.

He
leaned forward and also spoke quietly and again tapped the file.
"Ma'am, my intuition is that whoever killed your daughter, did so
because she happened to be with that guy Cliff Coppen. I guess he was their
target and, for them, her death was incidental."

"In
a way, that makes it worse."

"I
agree. If I find them and they have such protection that they cannot be brought
to trial, I'll kill them myself. That will cost you a further million
francs."

There
was a silence around the pool and around the garden. For the first time, her
ravaged face showed slight animation. She glanced down at the gold watch on her
bony wrist, and then said to Grainger, "Jim, if you're serving lunch, I'd
like to stay."

They
had cold meats and salad, together with an ice-cold bottle of Frascati, served
to them at the pool by the Mexican maid. Creasy told Mrs Manners that he would
need a full personal history of Carole and plenty of photographs. She assured
him that he would have everything he needed later that afternoon, and asked
when he would leave for Africa.

"Tomorrow,"
he answered. "Via Brussels, where I have to confer with a friend."

The old
woman nodded her head and said, "The sooner the better. I wish I could go
with you."

For the
first time, Juliet joined the conversation. "Why don't you?"

The
woman looked at her and, with her fist, hammered the arm-rest of her
wheelchair. "Isn't that obvious?"

Juliet
shook her head.

"No,
it's not. You got from your house to this house. From what I know and have
seen, you're paralysed only from the waist down."

"Only!"
the woman snapped.

"Sure,"
Juliet answered. "You can use your arms and your brain, and the wheelchair
looks like the top of the range model to me. It will work as well in Zimbabwe
as it does in Colorado."

Grainger
saw the anger building up in the older woman's eyes and said quietly,
"Juliet, perhaps you don't understand... Maybe you will when you are a
little older." Abruptly he saw the anger growing in the girl's eyes.

"Mr
Grainger, I don't have to be one day older to know about suffering. You know my
history."

Total
silence, and then Juliet turned to the woman again.

"Mrs
Manners, we learned earlier that you have a fortune of over one hundred million
dollars. Creasy could have ripped you down for a couple of million at least.
You have enough money to take your nurse along and even hire a back-up, and to
travel first-class and have your wheelchair shipped along with you. I'm told
they have good hotels in Harare." She paused, and then said quietly,
"I don't know how it feels to rear an only daughter and then have her shot
for no apparent reason, but I do know that if it was me and I had a hundred
million dollars, I wouldn't just hire a top pair of mercenaries ... I would
want to be close to the scene."