The Solitary Man (29 page)

The dogs continued to bark aggressively. She turned around and called them and they trotted obediently to her side. From where she was kneeling she couldn't see the kitchen door. She leaned forward cautiously. The man had his hand through the window and was reaching towards the key. Chau-ling clicked her fingers to get Mickey's attention. He looked at her, ears up. Both dogs were trained to obey hand signals as well as voice commands. Chauling pointed at the arm and made a clenched fist gesture. Immediately the Dobermann sprang into the kitchen. Minnie stayed where she was, watching Chau-ling intently.

Mickey leaped at the arm and gripped it with his teeth, his paws crashing against the door. The weight of the dog pulled the arm on to the jagged glass that was still in the frame and the man screamed. He jerked his arm back but the Dobermann hung on.

Minnie growled but Chau-ling silenced her. 'Trousers,' she said. The dog stopped growling but took a step towards the kitchen, keen to help her mate. Something crashed in the living room and Chau-ling whirled around. It sounded as if a window had been smashed. There were more crashing noises, then the sound of splintering wood. Someone was forcing their way into the front of the house.

Chau-ling began to tremble. A knife, she had to get a knife from the kitchen. She got to her feet, restraining Minnie by her collar. The knives were on a rack fixed to the wall to the left of the sink, in the corner furthest away from the back door, where Mickey was still holding on to the intruder for all he was worth. Through the smashed window, Chau-ling could see the man outside, his face contorted with pain and rage as he tried to free himself from the dog's grip.

'Come on, Minnie,' said Chau-ling, and she half-led, half-pulled her towards the sink. She'd only taken three steps when the man used the gun in his free hand to smash another pane of glass.

Chau-ling ducked as the man thrust the gun through the hole. He fired but the bullet went wide, shattering a toaster. The gun made surprisingly little noise, more of a cough than a bang. She dragged Minnie back into the hallway. As she reached the relative safety of the hall, she looked back over her shoulder. The intruder had pointed the gun down so that it was aiming at Mickey's flank.

'No!' screamed Chau-ling, but it was too late. The man pulled the trigger and the gun coughed again. The bullet blew a chunk out of the dog's side and blood sprayed across the linoleum. Chauling screamed hysterically. Mickey was still hanging on to the man's arm but his back legs had stopped moving. The man fired again, there was more blood, and the Dobermann finally released its grip and slumped lifelessly to the floor. The man's bloody hand began to search for the key again.

Chau-ling ran down the hallway, towards the front door. She was at least five paces away from it when the door to the living room opened. It was the man who'd been^at the front gate, now holding a handgun. Chau-ling screamed again. Minnie growled and leaped forward. The man took a step backwards, raising his gun, but Minnie was too quick for him. She cannoned into his chest, her teeth snapping at his throat. The gun dropped from the man's hand as he tried to push the Dobermann away. Minnie bit his ear and shook her head savagely. Blood poured down the side of his neck and over his shirt. Minnie snapped again and this time she caught his throat. Her jaws clamped shut and the man went down with the dog on top of him.

Behind her, Chau-ling heard the kitchen door crash open. She ran for the stairs. She tripped on the bottom stair and banged her elbow as she fell. Minnie lifted her head, her teeth smeared with blood. The man on the floor was still alive, but his eyes were closed. Chau-ling heard footsteps running across the linoleum and she used the banisters to pull herself up. She scrambled up the stairs. When she reached the top she looked down. Minnie was still standing over the man. The gun was to the dog's left, lying close to the front door. Chau-ling pointed at the gun, then placed her hand over her heart. The dog reacted immediately. She dashed oyer to the gun, picked it up gingerly, then raced up the stairs to Chauling.

'Good girl,' said Chau-ling, grabbing the weapon and holding it in both hands. She's never fired a gun before, never even held one, but she assumed that the man had taken the safety off and that all she'd have to do was to pull the trigger. The man in the suit came running down the hall. Chau-ling slipped her finger inside the trigger guard. Her hands were trembling.

The man in the suit jumped over his prostrate colleague and turned to go up the stairs. He stopped dead when he saw Chauling. His eyes narrowed as he weighed up the situation, then he fell into a crouch and aimed his gun at her chest.

Chau-ling pulled the trigger. It wasn't like it was in the movies, she realised. There was hardly any recoil and the intruder didn't fly backwards through the air. He didn't even cry out, he just v sagged against the banisters as if all the strength had gone from his legs, then he slowly crumpled to the floor. Chau-ling sat down, keeping her gun aimed at him. He was breathing heavily, his eyes half-closed. He turned his head to look at her. There was a small hole to the left of his tie, black in the centre, from which blood ^ gushed, thick and treacly and not at all how Chau-ling imagined blood would look like. It wasn't as red as it was in the movies. The man looked as if he wanted to say something, but when his mouth moved, no sound came out. He swallowed, coughed, and then his head fell forward and he went still. Chau-ling waited until ' she was sure that he was dead before putting down her own gun and hugging Minnie to her chest. She began to cry, huge sobs that wracked her whole body. Minnie whined and licked the tears as they ran down her cheeks.

HUTCH LAY ON THE concrete floor, curled up on his side, his head resting in the crook of his left arm. There was no position in which he was comfortable for more than a few seconds. His fingers were red raw from the day's sanding, his ankles burned and every time he moved his legs the scabs opened. The scraps of rags he'd wrapped around the inside of the manacles were soaked in blood and he knew that if he didn't get hold of antiseptic or clean dressings THE SOLITARY MAN 235 his ankles would soon be infected. Overhead the metal-bladed fan spun noisily, but it provided little relief from the unrelenting heat and humidity. The air was thick with the scent of human bodies and the stench of the open toilet. The fluorescent lights burned through his closed eyelids, making sleep impossible.

A rising feeling of panic kept threatening to overwhelm him and he forced himself to relax. He filled his mind with calming images, memories of happy times. He thought of his son, whom he'd last seen in the flesh when he was barely two years old. He thought about walking his dogs, watching the rugby, his early morning swims, anything to take his mind off the bars and the walls and the guards with shotguns. But no matter how he tried to occupy his mind, he kept returning to Billy Winter and the betrayal that had set him on course for a fifty-year sentence. It didn't make any sense to Hutch; he could think of no reason why Winter would have gone to such trouble to set him up.

Hutch turned over, trying to find some relief from the hard floor. One of the first things he intended to buy was something to sleep on, a mat or a piece of foam rubber. And food. The food served to the prisoners was inedible. After they'd been locked in their cells in the late afternoon, they were given their second meal of the day: scraps of chicken, barely two ounces per man including the skin and bone, and the same rice soup they'd been given for breakfast. A dog wouldn't be able to survive on the basic prison diet, let alone a human being. Some of the prisoners had paid for extra food and it was delivered after the meal: boiled rice wrapped up in newspapers, baked fish in foil, and fruit. Joshua's friend Baz had even bought a bottle of Thai whisky.

Hutch thought about Ray Harrigan. He couldn't understand why the Irishman hadn't been more enthusiastic about his arrival. Maybe Harrigan had become as disillusioned with Winter as Hutch had. Hutch hadn't been able to say much before Harrigan's Canadian cellmate had returned, but even so, the Irishman didn't show any interest in Hutch at all. Hutch ran the conversation back in his mind. Maybe he hadn't expressed himself properly; maybe Harrigan hadn't understood what Hutch had said. No, Hutch had explained that he was a friend of Winter's and he'd told him that he was there to help him escape. There could have been no misunderstanding.

Hutch had met prisoners who had become so institutionalised that they were unwilling or unable to live outside of prison, men who'd served such long terms that they knew no other home, but that didn't apply to Harrigan as he'd been inside for less than a year. Whatever the reason for Harrigan's lack of interest, it wasn't that he'd gone stir crazy. He had made one good point, though: until Hutch came up with some sort of workable plan there was little point in discussing escape with the Irishman.

One of the Hong Kong Chinese began coughing on the other side of the cell. It was a throaty cough that sounded like the onset of something serious. Disease was rampant throughout the prison, where the lack of ventilation and sanitation facilitated the spread of germs. Hutch had seen at least a dozen men who were little more than walking skeletons, victims of some wasting disease that could well have been AIDS, and he'd seen rashes and skin infections on the majority of prisoners. His own groin itched and he rubbed it. He'd been wearing the same clothing for more than a week. That was something else that he planned to buy as soon as possible. Joshua had told him that he'd have to buy himself a brown Tshirt and shorts for court appearances. The prisoners were allowed to wear whatever they wanted while in the prison, so long as the shirts had short sleeves and the trousers ended above the knee, but they had to be in uniform when they were in court. The guards would provide a uniform if Hutch didn't have his own, but the communal ones were old and worn and were never washed. Hutch balked at the thought of having to pay for his own prison uniform, but he hated even more the thought of wearing clothes that had been handed from prisoner to prisoner.

He shifted position again. Sleep wouldn't come, and the more he tried to force it, the less sleepy he became. He put a hand over his eyes, trying to blot out the light. He pictured the prison, starting from the outside. He imagined himself walking under the arched entrance, through the main gates and into the garden courtyard. He pictured the walls, and the guard towers, and then he imagined himself going through the second set of gates, and into the compound containing the cell blocks and the factory. In his mind he walked into the cell block, up the metal stairway and along the catwalk until he was standing at the door to the cell,

looking in at his own body, lying on the floor like an animal in a cage. At some point during the imaginary journey, he fell asleep, and was unable to tell which was the real man: the one in the floor or the one outside the cell door, looking in.

CHAU-LING SAT IN THE back of the limousine, her arms folded across her chest. The tears had stopped but she was still in a state of shock and had no idea where they were going other than that she was away from the house and the men with the guns. Minnie was on the seat with her. Her father had wanted to leave the d^g behind but Chau-ling had insisted. Just then it seemed terribly important that Minnie stayed close by. Minnie had saved her life. Mickey, too, but Mickey had died. There had been no room on the back seat for Chau-ling's father so he'd ridden in the front, next to the driver. From time to time he turned around to see how she was but she avoided eye contact with him.

Minnie sniffed and nuzzled Chau-ling's leg. She reached over and stroked her absentmindedly. There was something wet on the dog's head and she looked down. It was blood. The man's blood. She took her hand away and wiped it on the seat. Her father twisted around in his seat to see what she was doing.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbled. 'I've got blood on the seat.'

'It doesn't matter,' he said.

'I'm sorry,' she repeated, then the tears started again.

The limousine was following a white van with the name of one of her father's companies on the side. There were two big men in the front of the van, men that Chau-ling had never seen before but whom her father seemed to know well. There were two more men in the back of the van, one barely alive with a hastily applied bandage to his neck, the other dead.

TSANG CHAI-HIN SWITCHED OFF his mobile phone and handed it to Ricky Lim. 'Wake him up,' said Tsang. Lim slid the telephone into the leather holster on his belt. Tsang stood with his arms folded as Ricky went over to the man who was tied to the wooden chair in the centre of the office. Blood was seeping through the bandage on the man's neck and it occasionally dripped on to newspapers that had been placed on top of the sheet of thick polythene spread over and around the chair. Tsang was using his own office and he had no wish to stain the carpet.

Ricky Lim was a big man for a Chinese: he stood well over six feet and had the broad shoulders and well-muscled arms of an American football linebacker. Lim had been born in Chicago and had benefited from an American diet and health system before moving back to Hong Kong with his parents in the early 1980s. He had strong white teeth, a wide jaw with a dimple in the centre and spiky black hair cut close to his scalp.

Tsang in contrast had spent his early years in the north of China and was barely five feet seven inches tall and beanpole thin. He had a receding hairline and most of his teeth had long ago been crowned, porcelain at the front of his mouth, gold at the rear. Every year one of the local Chinese newspapers printed a list of the top one hundred richest men in Hong Kong. It had been more than twenty years since Tsang Chai-hin had not been in the top half of the list, but the one thing his wealth could not buy him was a new body. To compensate, he surrounded himself with men like Ricky Lim. Not that Tsang Chai-hin needed to use their muscle to get what he wanted: his money and reputation were enough for that.

Lim slapped the man across the face, quite gently considering the size of his shovel-like hands.