Follow the Money

'Thank you,' I said.

'You might like to help me with the paperwork.'

'We're getting whispers that Freddy Wong's not around, and now his crazy brother comes after you. We also know Sabatini flew back home today.'

'Is this a formal interview?'

'No, come on, Hardy. You're up to your balls in something too big for you. I had to talk fast to keep DI Caulfield off your case-being present at two violent deaths tends to make people suspicious. Sheer stroke of luck that now you're not just down the way from your place in the bloody morgue.'

All true, and Malouf/Habib hadn't rung. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe Lester's death, which was bound to be on the news that night, would scare him off. When I thought about it, our plan for something Sabatini could write was our best chance of provoking him and that would bring the police running anyway. It was time to come clean-well, cleanish.

I told them Freddy Wong was definitely dead, and that three people (that was stretching it a bit) whom I wouldn't name were present. I said it was somewhere between an accident and self-defence.

Ali shot an astonished look at Chang. 'Can you believe this guy?'

'There's more,' I said.

I told them that a man calling himself Richard Malouf had spoken to me on the phone, the deal he'd proposed and that he said he'd be in touch. I said that I was working with Sabatini and that we'd uncovered evidence to suggest that his real name was William Habib. I started to talk about the plan Sabatini and I had, but Ali cut me off with a snort of derision and an angry slap of his hand against the wall.

Chang, making notes, fiddled with his pen. 'You didn't think to get in touch with us when you got this call?'

'Thought about it, but, no, I didn't.'

' Why not?' Ali snapped.

'I got into this to try to get a couple of gangsters off the back of a client…'

'You don't have the right to have a fucking client,' Chang said.

'A certain person, then. To help someone in a difficult situation.'

'And recover the money Malouf stole from you,' Ali said.

I shrugged. 'If it worked out that way, sure. But that's not the real reason.'

Ali shook his head. 'All right, what is?'

I knew. It was to do with a missing person, a false identity, something unknown at the heart of the matter. And it was about doing something I'd been doing for a long time and was good at; about not feeling useless. But it was difficult to put all that into words.

'Curiosity,' I said.

Ali walked out of the room.

Chang leaned back in his chair. 'What am I going to do with you? Cancerous-that was the word he used, right?' 'Right.'

' What does it mean?'

'It's a metaphor.'

'I know it's a fucking metaphor. So?'

I shrugged. 'Something that'll eat… away at society.'

'Doesn't cancer sort of overwhelm the other cells in the body?'

'I think you're right. Whatever it refers to it's something very big. He sounded serious. I've been thinking about you and the sergeant: a special unit to combat Chinese and Lebanese crime? There have to have been whispers, signs of something brewing. Look, without giving you the details, Freddy Wong was prepared to do something horrific to another person just to get some information. And this Malouf/Habib-he knows what's going on, he has a connection to Houli and is prepared to double-cross him. That takes guts and it suggests that the business, whatever it is, has got too big, is getting out of control.'

Chang glanced down at the notes he'd been scribbling while I talked. 'Tell me again about this deal.'

I went over it but I'd remembered another detail.

'He knew your name and the name of your bad-tempered mate-not that I'm not grateful to him for saving my life.'

'But he hasn't called you back. We can't find any trace of that boat. It could be registered in Panama or Tuvalu, where they don't give a shit about any rules or regulations.'

'He knew too much about our movements to be somewhere offshore. He's around, watching, listening, waiting.'

'So he could know that you're here, talking to me?'

I said nothing but I looked at the door Ali had slammed behind him.

Chang closed his eyes. Without those keen eyes enlivening his face he looked older, more weary. 'He's a good man. He saved your life.'

'He shot a Chinaman. Where did he get him?'

'Head and heart.'

'Head to kill; heart to be sure. Would he shoot a Malouf or a Habib?'

'You're a pain in the arse, Hardy,' Chang said, 'undermining the integrity of a trusted officer.' He looked at his notes again. 'He cut you off when you started to talk about your plan with Sabatini. If he's… on the other side, why wouldn't he want to hear all about that?'

'Because he wouldn't want you to hear about it, and he would want to catch me on my own.'

Chang glanced around the room as if help could be found in the filing cabinets, the bookshelves, the citations on the walls. There's no help there as we both knew: it comes down to decisions, guesses, risks to be taken. I knew then, as I'd always known, that he was a good man who'd put the right thing to do up at the top of his agenda. But I had to give him a nudge.

'Stephen,' I said, 'I couldn't help noticing that you wrote your notes on our interview in Chinese characters. Do you always do that?'

'Sometimes,' he said. 'Just sometimes.'

Chang called Ali back and we discussed the plan to provoke Malouf/Habib through an article Sabatini would write and post as a blog. We also talked about the possibility of striking a deal with Malouf/Habib in exchange for his exposing the grand scheme.

'Cowboy stuff,' Ali said. 'We can't guarantee immunity or anything like that.'

'Why not?' I said. 'You've done it before.'

Chang nodded. 'True, but by Jesus the information better be good.'

I said, 'He'll want details and help-a passport probably, maybe money, maybe a hostage.'

'You seem to know a lot about his thinking,' Ali said.

'I'm just putting it together how I'd want it if it was my way out. If what he can reveal is as big as he says, he'll have to run a long, long way.'

Chang smiled. 'And not to Hong Kong or the Emirates. Where would you guess, Karim?'

I studied Ali closely. Was he thinking about how to deliver this information to Malouf/Habib, or were our suspicions all wrong? Impossible to tell; his handsome face was set in its customary sceptical expression when I was in the picture. He shrugged. 'South America.'

'Right,' I said. 'Brazil. The new Ronnie Biggs. The difficult part is to get a hint in Sabatini's piece that the police are considering a deal. Just a hint.'

'This is bullshit,' Ali said. 'I vote we round up Houli and Talat and tell them what we know and get them to tell us what this is all about. Do a deal with them if we must and fuck Malouf… or whatever his name is.'

Chang looked at me. 'Hardy?'

'It's not a bad idea, but my guess is after what happened to the Wong boys, Houli and Talat will be very hard to find.'

Ali pulled out his mobile phone, wandered off to the other side of the room and made some calls. His responses were negative grunts.

Closing the phone, he said, 'I hate to admit it, but you're right-they're lying very low.'

Chang looked down at the characters on his notepad. 'Well, this looks like the only game in town, but I'm warning you, Hardy, you contact us the second you hear from Malouf. I'm calling him that until I learn otherwise. Try playing some independent smartarse game and you'll have your next heart bypass in gaol.'

Ali liked that; it was the first time I'd seen him smile.

26

What we were proposing wasn't really all that unusual or outrageous. There were journalists virtually embedded with the various police forces and intelligence agencies, and others who were leaked to systematically and operationally. There was a recent case where someone on the police or the intelligence strength had leaked to a paper about a planned raid on terrorist suspects. The paper did a deal with the operations leader not to publish until the raid was underway. Somehow the story got into print early, and the raid had to be moved forward. Things in that kind of world can go seriously wrong.