China Wife (14 page)

The houseboat seemed quiet and deserted when Julie eventually made her way back to it. Set against the overriding quiet of the section of the Murray River where they were moored, it unnerved her for reasons that she couldn't explain. Her relationship with Mr Kim had changed; it was more equal, but whether that was going to make the next phase in the action any easier she was doubtful. Mr Kim on edge was a far less attractive prospect to deal with than the enigmatic one that she had first known. And Mr Kim was on edge, having had to endure the incomprehensible football commentary on the taxi's radio on the journey back from town.

Julie moved carefully on to the afterdeck and listened. There were faint sounds from within.

For goodness' sake, she told herself. Of course it was quiet – Kim was hardly going to be discussing the latest sporting news with Alice.

The entry door was unlocked. This wasn't usually the case.

A moment of panic overtook her. What if he had come back and taken Alice away? He could easily have hired another car.

People's National Daily
English-language Beijing Edition – Monday, 26 July 2010
TRIAL OF ARRESTED BANKER

The banker arrested in June 2010, while meeting a young Chinese woman arriving from Melbourne, was put on trial at the Number One People's Intermediate Court in Beijing.

He is charged with several offences relating both to his banking activities and to the importation of prohibited goods. The People's Judge ordered that the nature of the goods imported should not be made public. The banker, whose name is also being withheld until further investigations into his links with criminal gangs in Shanghai and Beijing have been completed, is also charged with an offence under Chinese immigration laws.

The young woman, who was also arrested at Hong Kong International Airport as an illegal immigrant, is understood to have originally come from either Argentina or Brazil. The People's Police claimed that she is the seventh young woman that it is aware of over the last two years who has been trafficked into China after a complicated journey from their countries of origin via the USA or Canada and Australia to the PRC. While it is alleged that these women were kidnapped and forcibly transported to the PRC, evidence only exists on the present whereabouts of two of them. One woman is alleged to be married to an industrialist in a northern city that the police wouldn't name. The second is thought to be married to a businessman in Beijing who is reported to have links with senior members of the Communist Party hierarchy. The police have also refused to name this man. As a result of the arrest of the banker in Hong Kong, investigations are now under way to discover whether these marriages were forced on the women in question.

The possibility that the other young women may have illegally entered China for the purposes of enforced marriage has been raised with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The People's Judge in the trial of the banker is expected to defer
consideration of the charges under the immigration laws until the Ministry has made its own investigations.

If the banker is found guilty of charges of illegal banking activities and of prohibited importation, he is expected to be hanged.

22

David was surprised to find Susie nervous. Susie Peveral, high-flying Assistant Secretary fully in command of her world, was the last person that he would have expected to be nervous. But, with her lust for David turning into something deeper, she was desperate not to put a foot wrong, even over the most innocent things.

‘It's not exactly my thing,' was his response to Susie's invitation to a concert at the Barbican Hall.

Since, however, he virtually lived over the top of the concert hall, he agreed and invited Susie back for drinks afterwards.

They both knew that drinks weren't all that was on the agenda.

The concert was as hard-going as David had expected. It was in the lift to his flat that David noticed Susie's state of mind.

The sex was more sedate than it had been on some previous occasions but no less satisfying for that.

Her lying in his arms after the repeat performance that was becoming their trademark, David, with the cynicism bred of experience, waited for Susie to open the conversation on illegal immigration or people trafficking of women, or whatever her current preoccupation was. She didn't – at least not directly.

‘I think I'm going to have to go to Australia.'

Maybe David's likely reaction to this statement was what was making her anxious.

Since Australia seemed to be popping up in his investigations
in ways that he was beginning to find baffling, somehow Susie's pronouncement didn't surprise him.

Her next statement did.

‘It would be great if you could come with me.'

Once she'd made the invitation, she relaxed. Perhaps that was what she was nervous about.

‘I'm due some leave. We could lose ourselves somewhere in the wide open spaces of Oz and …'

David kissed her quiet. He was tired and he knew that, if she persisted, they would be at it again and he doubted his strength to satisfy her for a third time.

He distracted her.

‘And have sex in a billabong under the shade of a coolibah tree,' he muttered.

Susie's carefully controlled demeanour was lost in a bout of giggles that ebbed and flowed for nearly ten minutes. The giggling was yet another surprise of the evening, generating unexpected images of his pigtailed schoolgirl sister for David. He held Susie tightly to him until she subsided. Then, little girl-like too, she curled herself up beside him and before he knew it the gentle rhythm of her breathing was all that he was aware of.

At no time did it occur to David that he wouldn't go with her to Australia.

The Australia–China axis was the key to much of what was beginning to emerge into the full light of his investigative day. But it was also raising more questions than it answered; questions, he suspected, that some would not want to be answered.

Over breakfast the conversation that they didn't have the previous evening resumed.

‘There's still one more step in the chain to investigate,' David said. ‘The link to China always seems to be via Australia or an Australian Chinese man. And, as you predicted, at every turn I keep stumbling on this business of women being trafficked for
something else than the sex trade. Everything else I think I have a handle on.'

‘Yes.' The high-value women trafficking was very much Susie's ‘thing'. ‘We just got some information from Brazil. A woman from São Paulo who was trafficked to Canada, initially in the usual way of paying the traffickers to get to a better life, has alerted the Australians to several more of her ilk who have been transported there but have disappeared from view.'

‘Have you heard about this from other sources?'

‘Oh yes, David, it's confirmed. The Home Office and Border Agency have got something going with the Australian Security Service, can't say more, and the Australians have names for at least three other girls who were spirited into Australia and have gone to ground there. And there's a link both to the mainland Chinese and illegal labour trafficking that you have been investigating, as we know.'

The mayhem in the illegal labour trafficking that had followed Joe Kim's and the mysterious young Chinese woman's visits had spilled over into such violence that the Home Office was reluctant for David to continue his official investigation for the moment. Since he felt that he had probably obtained sufficient information to produce a preliminary report, an approved digression to Australia seemed very attractive.

Among the mandarins, the opportunity this presented to delay or bury a report that seemed likely to jangle nerves with the Chinese Government was quietly but silently welcomed. Even Susie recognised that protesting about this inevitable Whitehall response would be unfruitful. A business trip to Australia with David to pursue the only aspect of the work that really interested her she was sure would be worthwhile.

23

After his weekend with Susie, David was exhausted, amazed and fascinated all at the same time.

He knew why he was exhausted! His amazement and fascination represented a jumble of feelings that, in a rare fit of self-analysis, he put down to his growing attraction to Susie and to his respect for her intellectual capabilities as well as her physical ones.

‘So I've got a free trip to Australia,' he remarked to his shaving mirror. ‘She really means to get stuck into this high-class women trafficking thing then.'

Unfamiliar with the hidden ways of Whitehall, David nonetheless assumed that Susie must have had tacit approval from a higher level for what she was doing – not that there was much officialdom above her.

His preliminary report was stored on his laptop and safely backed up. He had hurriedly dumped his brain on to his computer after Susie had left and while he could still recall the details in sufficient clarity of their disorganised conversations.

Jesus
, he had thought as he was doing it,
I doubt if I could shag and prepare an inter-departmental brief at the same time!

Of course, Susie couldn't either, but it was her chameleon-like ability to switch from lovemaking to the Chinese role in people trafficking, without missing a beat, that so attracted David.

Interesting they've got an insider in the Chinese game in Melbourne
.

Susie had been careful to avoid saying anything that might indicate both who ‘they' were and how they got their nameless insider into place. But her bed companion knew enough to make some educated guesses.

Our Mr Kim has fingers in many pies
, David thought,
as I interpret what Susie wasn't telling me. Somehow the Aussies, or she, have got some sort of agent hooked on to him.

Shit, that sounds like a guarantee of a short life!

Although Susie had no idea that Linda Shen had taken over the link role to the Chinese gangs in Britain involved in illegal labour trafficking, her instinct that Mr Kim was key to the women trafficking was entirely correct.

‘Follow Mr Kim. That's what she seemed to be saying,' David confided to his kitchen at large as he conjured up his breakfast.

But he had another trip to Lincolnshire first as his police contact there had some information that would fill in the final gaps in his report.

Train travel in the UK was something of a mixed feast, and East Anglia and Lincolnshire weren't always in the premier league when it came to consistent performance. Based on his experience in obscure places in Africa and Pakistan, David had come to hate trains.

The first thing that David noticed was the cosmopolitan mix of people who were travelling. And when he noticed that he had seemed to have attracted the interest of a group of Chinese youths, he was beginning to think that it was because he was about the only white Caucasian within their vision.

He was wrong. He hadn't seen the frantic surge of activity at the London station before departure or been aware of the barrage of mobile phone calls that had been exchanged as his progress to the rail terminal had been shadowed.

He was picked up in an unmarked police car. The driver's grunt alerted David.

‘What?'

‘A load of Chinese men got off the train and into a couple of mini-vans. I'd say they were following you and now us.'

‘They can't be. How could they have known I would be on that particular train?'

But the policeman was right: they were following them; he'd just done a couple of manoeuvres to check.

The police driver was on the radio. It was probably too late.

Perhaps sensing that they had been detected, the first of the mini-vans suddenly accelerated and tried to pass the police car. The driver wasn't successful but the van did manage to get alongside.

‘Hang on.'

Knowing the road better than their pursers, David's driver suddenly started to pull across the line of the van. He accelerated. Holding his position he was almost inviting the van driver to smash into his side. The road took a tight left turn. Still holding his line and still accelerating, the driver swerved at the last minute. The rear of the vehicle took a couple stomach-churning wiggles before it straightened out. The police driver's grunt was a mixture of satisfaction, anxiety and then resignation.

The satisfaction was obvious; it was a brilliantly executed piece of aggressive driving of the type taught at police anti-kidnapping classes. The anxiety was more understandable; the mini-van careered on in a straight line and crashed over the verge of the road and disappeared down an embankment. The driver had no way of knowing the extent of the injuries that the van's occupants would necessarily have sustained.

The resignation signified that the second mini-van was still following them.

The driver was on the radio again.

‘Settle down, sir. We'll just have to outrun them for the moment.'

Jerking the stinger into place after the police car had passed
the roadblock required split-second timing.

The Chinese driver of the mini-van was clearly expecting some sort of ambush when he hadn't been able to catch the car he was chasing. His instinct to brake caused the van to slither sideways into a line of bollards at the side of the road. The bollards didn't do the van's bodywork much good but they did arrest the vehicle without serious injury to its passengers.

David Hutchinson was in Inspector Woodward's office.

‘The Somali gangmaster was asked some apparently innocent questions about you after your last visit and about today's meeting with her. She didn't see any reason to lie. It didn't take the Chinese too long to work out what was happening. The rest was intuition, train timetables and simple planning.'

The inspector had cancelled the meeting with the Somali gangmaster. He now had more things to ask her, but his trust had been destroyed by the car chase incident.

David asked the obvious question.

‘But what was that all about?'

‘They were planning to warn you off.'

‘Warn me off what, Inspector?'

‘You're a journalist. Journalists asking questions all over the countryside excite suspicion.'

‘All over the countryside – again, what does all this mean?'

‘It means, Mr Hutchinson, that they have unintentionally confirmed the link for us between the ubiquitous Mr Kim and the local Chinese gangs.'

‘How come?'

‘According to the Somali gangmaster, when she said that you were coming the Chinese man she was dealing with checked names and details. There had clearly been a lot of emailing and mobile phone calls after your first visit and the questioning that you were clearly involved in. Out of the four Chinese you saw that day only Kim was a principal; the others were the driver and two bodyguards. When the woman fed back you
were returning, only Kim, or someone in his confidence, could have understood the significance. The rest was the usual reaction of the local Chinese gangs.'

‘Hell,' said David, ‘they're a lot better organised than I would have expected.'

‘Big money,' was all the inspector said.

David didn't challenge the analysis.

The incident gave David a useful hook to lead into the conclusions of his report.

The preliminary draft was delivered to Susie Peveral's office the day before they flew to Australia. Unvarnished and as yet not in its final ‘diplomatic' version, it gave Susie some interesting reading as they headed south.

David, who had upgraded Susie to Business Class, looked on with amusement as her facial expression displayed a whole range of reactions. The report was clearly what she had wanted.

The second part of David's investigation, which would be much more difficult, was less likely to lead to such a definitive report, but for Susie it was more about getting the women trafficking issue further up the main political agenda.