In Denial (22 page)

‘
I’m being pestered.’

‘
By whom?’

‘
By you.’

‘
By me? Am I to play both parts? Am I to question and cross-examine myself and ask why the delectable lady thinks I am pestering her?’

‘
You’re mad,’ Gabrielle said but she couldn’t resist smiling. She could see right through him but to her surprise his little-boy-lost tactic had a certain amount of charm.

‘
I suppose I am, just a little. It’s what being a solicitor does to you.’ He leant across the table and took both of Gabrielle’s hands in his. ‘If I promise to be a good boy and behave myself impeccably may I divert the coffees and brandy to your room? What I have to tell you will sound a lot more convincing in the privacy of one of The Station Hotel’s more superior rooms than in here, in a crowded dining room.’

The waiter arrived at the table.

‘
What is it to be, delectable lady? Here or …’

Gabrielle looked from Jeremy to the waiter and then back again. She knew if she wanted to hear what Jeremy had to say she had no choice. ‘Room twenty-one,’ she said, ‘but -’

‘
Room twenty-one it is,’ Jeremy said, smiling at Gabrielle and then to the waiter. ‘Please ask room service to deliver the coffees and brandy to Room twenty-one and put the bill on my account.’

‘
Certainly, Mr Jacobs,’ the waiter said, looking sideways at Gabrielle as he spoke.

A few minutes later she was standing at the window in her room looking down Station Road towards Church Street. Room service had delivered the coffees and Jeremy’s brandy. Jeremy removed his jacket and tie and was lounging in one of the two easy chairs either side of a coffee table.

When she’d booked in, Gabrielle was surprised by the quality of the room: an impressive oak panelled four-poster bed, a chaise longue, and a genuine looking Victorian dressing table with everything on it she could have wanted.

‘
So, delectable lady, do you want to know?’

‘
I wish you’d stop calling me that,’ she said, ‘and I also wish you’d start being serious.’

She saw his reflection in the window as he crossed the room and stood behind her. She froze. He put his hands on her hips and gently brushed his lips against the back of her neck.

She shuddered.

She could not remember the last time she’d been touched in that way and regardless of all the promises she had made to herself she found that she enjoyed having Jeremy standing so close, his lips brushing against her skin. As his hands began to move upwards over her ribcage she wanted to scream at him to stop, but she couldn’t. She felt his warm breath on her neck as his hands cupped her breasts. She felt him pushing himself against her.

But suddenly he took his hands away and she heard him re-cross the room to the chair. Gabrielle stayed looking out of the window but could no longer focus on anything. She closed her eyes.

‘
Right, delectable lady, as you suggested, it’s time for me to be serious. Come and make yourself comfortable.’

She opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in the window. She could see that he was watching her from the other side of the room. Why had he stopped? There was no need for him to know what she really did for a living. She was a woman who had been starved of physical affection for years. Previously she had deliberately steered away from any chance of an encounter because she was devoted to her calling. Then Adam Harrison walked into her life and stirred something within her that had lain dormant for so long. And now she was with a man she really didn’t know, had let him touch her intimately and had not stopped him. She wanted to be hugged, she wanted to be held, she wanted to be made to feel as though she was a woman and not just God’s guardian. Just as she did not know who he was, he did not know anything about her. Tomorrow she would be gone. Tomorrow he could sit in his office and think about her as another conquest because that’s all she would be to him.

‘
Are you going to join me? Your coffee’s getting cold.’

She took a deep breath, turned round and walked unsteadily across the room without making eye contact with Jeremy. It must not happen. Regardless of how much she wanted it to happen, it must not happen.

She sat down in the chair on the other side of the coffee table.

‘
That was just to say thank you for a lovely meal,’ he said.

She still could not make eye contact. ‘A simple thank you would have sufficed,’ she said in a slightly husky voice. She coughed.

‘
I don’t think you mean that but … are you going to look at me? That moment of intimacy was supposed to lower a few barriers, not create more. Come on, you can look at me. I’ll begin to feel a little foolish if you don’t.’ He leant across the gap between them and put his finger under her chin. ‘That’s better.’ He smiled that smile. ‘We are two grown adults, Gabrielle. If at any stage you want me to stop talking, touching, whatever, you just have to say so.’

‘
I shouldn’t have to say stop in the first place,’ she said. ‘I told you downstairs not to misread the situation. You already have.’

Jeremy inclined his head a little and raised his eyebrows to let her know, once again, that she did not mean what she’d just said. He picked up his brandy and swirled the contents round the glass. ‘Did you know your accent is as attractive as the rest of you?’

‘
Jeremy, stop it. Please, stop it.’

‘
Right, compliments have ended,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘How much did Adam tell you about his childhood days in Hong Kong?’

She hesitated for a few seconds before answering, still thinking about what did happen and then could have happened. ‘He told ... he told me about why he was adopted, his childhood, the way he and Lucinda became inseparable, and the day their mother discovered them in bed together and what happened after that.’

‘
He really opened up to you, didn’t he? Did he mention Patrick, his … er … brother, I suppose you’d call him?’

‘
Only in passing really. Although he didn’t say as much I got the feeling they didn’t get on too well. He implied that Patrick objected to Adam and Lucinda being such good friends and, as it turned out, more than just good friends.’

‘
I think what you’ve just said may be the other reason Adam has gone to Hong Kong.’

‘
What do you mean exactly?’

‘
Did Adam tell you he thought Patrick might have joined a Triad when he was still only sixteen?’ Jeremy took a sip of his coffee and screwed up his face. ‘It’s cold. Would you like me to order some more coffee?’

‘
No, not for me, thank you.’ She thought for a moment. ‘No, he made no mention of a, what did you say, a Triad?’

Jeremy nodded. ‘Yes, they’re called Triads. Before mentioning what the connection might be with Adam, I want to tell you what I found when I did a bit of research on what these Triads are because I wasn’t too sure myself. Do you want to hear what I discovered? What I found out made fascinating reading.’

‘
Will it help my understanding of what you’re going to tell me about Adam?’ Gabrielle asked.

Jeremy nodded. ‘Yes, I think it will.’

She folded her legs under her and saw Jeremy’s gaze drop to her knees as she did so. ‘Then tell me,’ she said.

He took a sip of brandy. ‘Well, after the Japanese invasion of China during World War Two, the Triads, which had existed for centuries and about which there was much folklore, offered to work for the invaders. In Hong Kong the Triads operated criminal enterprises for the Japanese but they were disorganised so the Japanese united the gangs and called them the "Hing Ah Kee Kwan" or the
Asia Flourishing Organization
. The ...’

‘
I’m impressed,’ Gabrielle said. But bored already, she thought.

‘
There’s no need to be, I’m merely repeating what I read on the Internet. Anyway, although the united Triads, let’s call them the AFO, was a criminal organisation, ironically its main role was law enforcement. It contained and reported any anti-Japanese activity. Evidently as an organisation it was effective and ruthless, a bit like their masters. After the war and after the Japanese had gone, the threat of internal Communism began spreading across China but especially in the northern regions. Communism was something neither the Chinese Nationalist Government based in the south or the British and the rest of the West wanted. As with the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government saw the Triads as an asset to be used against this new threat from the north. It gave the Triad movement a more reputable identity and by 1947 and in Hong Kong alone, Triad membership is thought to have risen to over three hundred thousand. Unfortunately in 1949 Mao Tse Tung's communists won the day and the Triads became disorganised once again. Many fled the country although some stayed in Hong Kong as it was a British Protectorate and didn’t come under the communist umbrella. Some Triads also went to Macao, Thailand, America, Canada and Australia. Chiang Kai-shek's Army and Nationalist supporters moved the Nationalist Government to Taiwan. You may remember from your history lesson it was also called Formosa.’

‘
You’re ringing bells,’ Gabrielle told him, ‘but it’s an area of history I never really studied.’

‘
No, neither did I, but once I started researching the subject I very quickly became absorbed.’

‘
That’s obvious,’ Gabrielle said, smiling.

‘
Am I boring you?’

‘
No, not at all.’

‘
Well, in 1956 there were riots in Kowloon ...’

‘
Kowloon?’

‘
Hong Kong is an island and Kowloon is on the mainland across the harbour between the two. Along with the New Territories it was ceded to Britain by China in the late 19th Century, but that’s a different story.’

Gabrielle frowned.

‘
I am boring you, aren’t I?’ Jeremy said.

‘
No, not boring me exactly but you said this was all relevant and I -’

‘
Okay, I’ll stop airing my knowledge.’ He drank the rest of his brandy. ‘Basically, Gabrielle, by the time the UK handed Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories back to China in 1997, the Triads as criminal organisations were much reduced but they still existed. Any capital city in the world will have an element of one Triad or another operating in it. They deal in drugs, prostitution, gun running, murders and any other criminal activity you can think of.’ Jeremy paused.

‘
And?’

‘
Patrick, Adam’s brother, could well be a member of one of these Triads.’

‘
He’s a criminal?’

‘
There is that possibility, yes.’ Jeremy looked at his empty glass. ‘I’m going to have another. Would you like one?’

‘
No, nothing for me.’ She waited while Jeremy called room service to order another drink before she asked: ‘Did Adam tell you about his brother and these Triads?’

There was an obvious hesitation before Jeremy said, ‘No, it was Lucinda.’

‘
Lucinda?’

‘
It was a couple of years ago. We were at a dinner party in Clifton and Lucinda and I were sitting next to each other. She opened up to me about their time in Hong Kong. She seemed really worried about her brother.’

‘
So she knew he was a member of this Triad you’re on about?’

‘
I wouldn’t say she knew but she had her suspicions.’

‘
So ...’ There was a knock on the door. Jeremy collected his brandy and then resumed his seat.

‘
You were asking?’ he said. His eyes narrowed as he sipped his drink.

‘
I was going to ask whether you’d heard the same from Adam.’

He shook his head. ‘No, he’s never mentioned it.’

‘
So why the connection?’

Jeremy sat back in his chair. ‘Obviously I can only go on what Adam did tell me, but it appears as though from the moment he moved into the Yong house after his mother and father were killed, Patrick became the poor cousin of the family. He was side-lined. Whether Adam was considered a novelty or whether his new mother and father needed to prove to society and to him, that what they had done was right, I have no idea, but something certainly happened. I would guess that Patrick’s nose was put out of joint in a big way. Before Adam came along he was the second man in the house with two women to protect, then suddenly there was this stranger, and a white boy as well.’ Jeremy paused, the glass against his lips. ‘Imagine the situation: Patrick puts up with it for year after year but it’s like a cancer. The hate grows and grows. At a very young age, fifteen or sixteen I think Lucinda said, a friend of his takes him along to this Triad and it becomes a catalyst. From what Lucinda told me, the initiation ceremony alone was gruesome enough without trying to second-guess what they do for real. But then their mother found her daughter and adopted son … well how can I put it … in flagrante delicto would be appropriate, don’t you think? ... which was followed by Adam’s banishment.’ Jeremy leant forward, his face serious. ‘But, and I fully appreciate that I let my imagination run away with me here, there is still the fact that Patrick’s brother violated his sister. He saw the way his father had reacted and knew that at some stage his brother would have to be punished. I would guess that Patrick was being taught some weird and unimaginable ways of inflicting pain. Ring the two together and bingo!’