Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (9 page)

Robin whistled. “The only footprints are ours—you’re right.”

The three of them knelt and examined the earthen floor in the light of Robin’s pocket flash. “They really made a mistake here,” Robin said. “Someone either didn’t think ahead, or they panicked, because these tiny swirls and ridges in the dust are the marks of a broom, aren’t they? He has to have been killed somewhere else and brought here.”

Mr. Hitchens shivered. “I don’t like this.”

Mrs. Pollifax said tartly, “One has to wonder how on earth they managed to carry him so far, and over that bridge, but in the dark of night I daresay anything’s possible.” She turned and looked at Inspector Hao’s body. “The police can’t possibly overlook there being no footprints, can they? I mean, Inspector Hao didn’t simply drop through the roof, how can they possibly buy the suicide theory?”

Robin shrugged. “It depends on just who among the police Damien Hao didn’t trust, and I’d say it depends, too, on just who
wants
it to be a suicide.”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Then it’s up to me, Robin, since you’re Interpol, and I don’t like the way this has been arranged either.” She crossed the floor, knelt beside the body and pried loose the gun from Hao’s stiffening fingers. “Beretta nine-millimeter Luger,” she announced, and dropped it into her purse. Removing the suicide note from Robin’s hand with equal dispatch she dropped it, too, into her purse. “I think,” she said in a clear firm voice, “that in a situation like this it’s kinder to remove all doubt about its being anything but coldblooded murder.”

“Good girl,” said Robin with feeling.

Mr. Hitchens looked at her with admiration. “You dared—just like that! But you’re right, you know, I feel it. I feared—felt ill—as soon as I saw the hut. But where Alec can be—” His voice trailed away anxiously.

Robin said soberly, “What I don’t like is feeling that someone’s way ahead of us in knowing what comes next. I think someone
knew
you’d come back here this morning, Mr. Hitchens, giving them an excellent opportunity to arrange Inspector Hao’s body here for you to discover and report.”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked Hitchens alertly.

“That you very obediently discover and report the body.” Robin nodded. “Yes, I think this is where you go public, Mr. Hitchens: U.S. PSYCHIC IN HONG KONG TO FIND MISSING POLICE INSPECTOR—that sort of thing. Just leave us out of it, Mrs. Pollifax and me? You woke up this morning in your own hotel room—after being hit over the head yesterday—and you returned this morning to this hut to look for Alec. You don’t even
know
me.”

Mr. Hitchens nodded, looking boyish and excited again. “I can do that, yes.”

Mrs. Pollifax, watching Robin, said, “You have something in mind for us, I’m thinking?”

He grinned. “You bet. I’ll wipe away our footprints now—dragging my jacket across them should do it, although I shudder at the cleaning bill—and after Mr. Hitchens has established his footprints on the floor we’ll go back to the car, all of us, and take Mr. Hitchens to a telephone. After that he’ll be on his own.”

“How did he get here?” put in Mrs. Pollifax quickly.

“Taxi,” said Robin, ushering them out into the sunlight and removing his jacket.

“Taxi,” repeated Mr. Hitchens. “Never heard of you … came alone in a taxi …”

“Your turn now,” said Robin, emerging from the hut. “Walk inside, discover the body, do a little pacing back and forth and walk out.”

Once Mr. Hitchens had complied, still murmuring “Taxi … never heard of you …” they prepared to leave. But Mrs. Pollifax, the last to go, lingered for just a moment on the threshold of the hut and looked back at the huddled body of Inspector Hao in the corner.

“God bless,” she whispered to whatever spirit might
be lingering, and silently pledged her help to find his killer and his son.

They left Mr. Hitchens in Yuen Long, where he practiced his new role by thanking them loudly for giving him a ride when he had flagged them down. “But you
will
be looking for Alec now?” he asked in a lower voice, anxiously.

“Yes,” promised Robin, “but it’s better you not know how or where, because you might let it slip.”

As Robin gunned the motor, Mrs. Pollifax leaned forward to call to him, “Leave messages—knock on my door—keep in touch, Mr. Hitchens! Oh dear, he
does
look lonely,” she said as Robin turned the car and headed back toward Hong Kong, leaving Mr. Hitchens standing uncertainly beside a stall heaped with vegetables.

“He won’t be lonely for long,” Robin told her, “he’ll shortly be surrounded by police and newspapermen—this is going to be very big news on the island.”

“And you and I?”

“We,” said Robin, “are going to burgle the Hao residence.”

She laughed. “How smoothly things go when one knows a cat burglar! You’re amazing, Robin, but won’t there be people in the house?”

“He and Alec lived alone,” explained Robin. “Wife dead, older daughter married and living in Bangkok, second daughter in college in Europe somewhere, Alec newly graduated from college and back home to job-hunt. The house is off Lion Rock Road in Kowloon and the important thing is to get there before the police.”

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “Hoping, I suppose, that Damien
Hao left behind some clue to all this that Alec may have missed … Have you visited the house before?”

“Only to knock—twice as a matter of fact—when no one was at home. I seem to recall a lavish amount of shrubbery for concealing nefarious people like myself but if you’ll put that fantastic hat back on your head, dear Mrs. P., it will add a marvelous note of respectability to our mission, because no burglar would ever dare to wear such a hat, believe me.”

When they reached the Hao’s neighborhood and Robin pointed out their target Mrs. Pollifax saw that he was certainly right about the shrubbery. There was a six-foot wall around the house and the outline of a tile roof nearly hidden by trees, among them, noted Mrs. Pollifax, a mimosa. Robin parked discreetly across the street and they approached the gate in the wall quickly, with the confidence of two people given every right to be there. Four minutes later, following Robin’s expertise with a set of delicate lock-picking instruments, they were inside the house.

It was dim inside, the matchstick shades at each window sending alternating lines of sun and shadow across the tile floors. There was a living room, a dining room, a small kitchen and a screened porch in the rear. It looked like any suburban house in America to Mrs. Pollifax, except for a niche in the living room that bore a large gilt Buddha smiling serenely down at their feeble worldly struggles, and at their entrapment in anger, greed and delusion: The Eightfold Path, she remembered with a smile.

“Upstairs,” Robin said impatiently. “We need a desk, a study, a safe.”

A moment later they had entered Inspector Hao’s study at the top of the stairs and were staring at a room
swept by chaos: at a steel file cabinet battered open with a sledgehammer, at a desk whose drawers stood open with half their contents strewn across the floor.

“I was afraid of this, damn it,” growled Robin. “With Alec out of the way someone had carte blanche here.”

“They,”
echoed Mrs. Pollifax, beginning to feel a presence and wondering if a personality would eventually arrive, too. “Well, whoever they are they were certainly in a hurry. This must be how and where they found that slip of paper to use for a suicide note. What are we looking for?”

“Anything with words written or typed on it—and we’re in a hurry, too,” said Robin grimly. “You take the desk, I’ll take the floor and the two filing cabinets.”

“Treasure hunt,” murmured Mrs. Pollifax, and sat down at the desk to sift what remained in the drawers: a bottle of ink, an abacus, a snapshot album, a few pencils, loose photos and a thick stack of white typing paper.

“Nothing,” said Robin angrily, slamming shut the last drawer of the file cabinet. “They took everything of any importance, damn it, and there are only bills on the floor.”

Mrs. Pollifax had carefully exhumed the neat pile of typing paper from its drawer; now she gripped the sheets firmly at one corner and waved them back and forth to see if anything had been caught among them. A torn fragment from a newspaper fluttered to the rug, and putting down the sheaf of paper she picked it up and looked at it.

“Good heavens!” she said in a startled voice.

Robin was at her side at once. “What is it?” and then, “Good God!”

It was the photograph of a man that had been roughly torn from a newspaper some time ago, for the newsprint was yellowed with age, and across the top of the clipping someone—undoubtedly Damien Hao—had angrily scrawled WHEN? The man in the news picture faced the camera squarely, as was the custom in prison photos, and there was an identifying prison number across his chest, but no name. The face was wooden, every feature sharpened by the bright lights bent upon it; there were no printed words included with the photo to explain the man but Mrs. Pollifax had recognized him at once. “Robin,” she said, “I know this man, but what is he doing in Inspector Hao’s desk drawer?”

Robin turned and looked at her strangely. “You mean, of course, that you know who he is.”

Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. “No of course not, I mean I just keep running into him.”

“Running into him?” Robin gripped her arm, his voice incredulous and urgent. “What do you mean,
running into him?
Where? For God’s sake—”

She stared at him in astonishment. “Why, he was on the plane with me from San Francisco—we flew into Hong Kong together, and yesterday morning I saw him in Dragon Alley when I was watching for the young man I was to contact at Feng Imports.”

Robin said in a strangled voice, “Plane … Feng Imports … Mrs. Pollifax, I think it’s time you tell me exactly what your job is here in Hong Kong. This photo—this man—
this is Eric the Red
.”

A chilly finger of shock touched the base of Mrs. Pollifax’s spine. “The terrorist? The head of the Liberation 80’s Group? The Cairo assassinations, the French hostage affair?” Her shock moved into horror as she remembered the latter: those endless agonizing days, the
miscalculations that culminated in the escape of the Liberation 80’s Group and the bloody massacre they left behind …”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Robin fiercely. “Let’s get out of here and
talk
. My God, Mrs. Pollifax, if Eric the Red is in Hong Kong—”

He scarcely needed to complete the thought, Mrs. Pollifax had already slammed shut the desk drawers and was reaching for her purse. They fled, not speaking: down the stairs, out of the house and through the garden, into the street and to the car; and just in time, for as they drove away a police car turned into the street and passed them.

Glancing back Mrs. Pollifax saw it come to a stop in front of Damien Hao’s home: the inspector’s death was now official.

R
obin drove quickly and skillfully toward the tunnel that would return them to Hong Kong, his face set in grim lines and his mind obviously occupied.

Mrs. Pollifax was grateful for the silence, for if Robin was considering all the ramifications of Eric the Red’s being in Hong Kong, placing these beside the facts he’d already garnered, she in turn was considering the ramifications of a known and dangerous terrorist making his first stop in Hong Kong at Feng Imports … Feng Imports, where Mr. Detwiler was already under suspicion of betraying Carstairs and the Department, where she had not been allowed to see Sheng Ti, where she’d been given a costly Buddha and promptly placed under surveillance.

It was possible, she thought, that her assignment and Robin’s assignment were dovetailing, and that a great deal more was going on at Feng Imports than anyone had guessed.

Robin said abruptly, “We’ll go to my rooms, it’s time you meet Marko.” He leaned over and switched on the car radio and they listened to a crisp male voice announcing the death of Inspector Hao.

“…  discovered by Albert Hitchens, an American psychic brought to Hong Kong by Inspector Hao’s son, Alec, to find his missing father. Mr. Hitchens had visited the shed yesterday afternoon with Alec Hao, and police are looking into his story that he was assaulted there and Alec Hao kidnapped, leaving Hitchens to find his way back to his hotel alone last evening.”

“A new Learning Experience for him,” quoted Mrs. Pollifax dryly.

“This morning,”
continued the voice,
“once recovered from the attack, he took a taxi back to the shed to look for Alec Hao and found instead the body of the missing police inspector. Police estimate that Damien Hao’s death occurred sometime between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. this morning. He was shot at close range with a nine-millimeter gun. There is no suggestion of suicide.”

“Good—
that
should startle his killers,” put in Robin testily.

“Damien Hao was fifty-five, a member of the …”

Robin snapped off the radio. “And Alec still missing! If it’s the Liberation 80’s Group that has him—”

“In general,” said Mrs. Pollifax in a kind voice, “I think it better not to allow the imagination to take over at moments like this; it drains the energy.”

Robin gave her a wan smile. “Experienced, are you?”

“Mildly,” she admitted. “Much better to use energy looking for him, because whatever hell he’s going through now it’s his hell, and we can’t manage or change it for him.”

“Point well taken,” said Robin as he edged the Renault into a parking space at the rear of the hotel. “All right, let’s take ourselves to the freight elevator again and have that desperately needed conference, if you please.”

“And meet Marko,” she added.

“Yes, and meet Marko,” he assured her.

Ten minutes later, in the sumptuous suite provided for Lars Petterson, Mrs. Pollifax was meeting Marko Constantine.

“So you are the cupid-playing and fantastic Emily Pollifax of whom I hear,” he said, gravely studying her face as he held her hand in a warm grip. “The look of the innocence and of the great earth mother, and the spirit of a boy shinnying down ropes and knowing the karate.
Saluté!
” he murmured, and kissed her hand.