The British ex-spymaster had relayed that it sounded like they were calling from a bar, so with little else to go on, Court decided he’d ask around at the bars here in the bay to see if anyone remembered the three Englishmen.
A few minutes later Court stepped up to the door to the Ming Kee Seafood Restaurant, right on the beach next to the kayak renters. Bright English signage welcomed tourists, and Court planned on entering right behind a group of Austrians from the ferry, but he stopped abruptly at the door when he noticed the hours of operation posted there. He saw that the place closed at nine p.m., just before the last tourist ferry left the island.
If Fitz’s boys didn’t make contact with him until eleven p.m., and they did so from a bar, this seemed like the wrong place to ask around about the three Englishmen.
Court decided to go to the more rustic establishment on the far side of the bay, thinking it might cater to anyone who lived in the shacks and any boaters anchored overnight nearby.
It was just a five-minute walk around the water to the footpath that led to the restaurant. The sun’s heat scorched his arms and lower legs, but his ball cap shielded his face. He walked just behind a few tourists from the UK heading to the temple, and he listened in while they considered dropping into the restaurant ahead for a beer before continuing their walk.
As a group they decided against it as they got closer; the place really was a ramshackle and unwelcoming hole-in-the-wall.
Court saw no English-language writing anywhere on the small sign in front of the little establishment, but he did see from the hours posted on the door that the place was open till midnight each evening. If Fitz’s men had been here following Triads, and if no other part of the island was built up, then it was quite possible, likely even, that Fitz’s men had come to this bar.
As he entered the corrugated tin — roofed building, he expected to be the only Western face in the place, so he was surprised to see a pair of young Caucasian girls sitting at a table along the railing, looking over the side, down to the water ten feet below. Each of them had a bottle of Tsingtao beer resting on the railing in front of them. Other than the two young women, a man behind the bar sitting on a stool and playing a game on his phone, and a mature woman at a table reading a newspaper, the dark little establishment was empty.
Court scanned for security cameras as he moved along the chipboard-and-plastic-sheeting walls of the dive and towards the bar, and he decided quickly that the proprietors of this joint had spent the full measure of their technology budget on the three bug zappers hanging from the ceiling; certainly not on any sort of a CCTV security system.
Court sat quietly at a stool at the bar for thirty seconds, just feet from the bartender, but the young man remained huddled over his phone. Moving purposefully low profile around the world meant sometimes Court didn’t get the best service, but he took advantage of the moment to continue checking out the facility: a couple dozen plastic tables surrounded by three or four dozen plastic chairs, some sturdier aluminum bar stools around the cheaply made wooden-topped bar with a warped surface that indicated it had seen a lot of spilled beers in its time, and likely some monsoon rains dripping down from the bad roof, as well.
Court was certain the builders of this place had violated every single building code known to man. There was some concrete-block construction in the corners here and there, but the overwhelming majority of this little dump seemed like it could have been built in a day by Boy Scouts rushing through the obligations of their woodworking badges. It looked to the American like a firetrap, a collapse risk, and a germ haven all in one.
Court eyed the two Caucasian women again, checking them as potential threats — not out of any real suspicion, rather simply a force of habit. One of the two was tall and thin, with white-blond hair in long braided pigtails and tattoos on both arms; her large backpack was on the floor next to her. She wore a cutoff Bob Marley T-shirt over a black tank top and worn-looking capri pants.
The other woman was of average height and had an athletic build, and she wore big black sunglasses. Her dirty brown hair was rolled into braids and wrapped in a simple leather headband, and she had a tie-dyed T-shirt and baggy pants rolled up to her shins. Her hemp sandals were cinched around her calves with leather ties.
Court put them in their late teens or early twenties, and Western European, for sure.
Neither girl had even glanced up at Court since he’d entered; they just gazed out at the water as they chatted and laughed, enjoying the view and their beers.
Court looked back to the bartender, a young Chinese man of no more than twenty-five, with a round face and thinning hair. The man noticed Court finally and put his phone down.
“Tsingtao, please.” Court said it with a British accent.
When the man returned with the beer, Court kept up the ruse that he was a Brit. “Is it always so slow around here?”
The bartender chuckled, completely at ease. “Yeah, man. During the day it is. At night the boats in the marina and the bay come in, gets kind of busy. Usually it’s just my mom here during the day.” He nodded over to the middle-aged woman reading the paper at the table across the room.
Court hadn’t seen much of a marina here, but he had seen a few slips near the pier, all of them empty.
The bartender started to turn back around to the cash register to ring up Court’s beer, but Court spoke.
“Any chance you were here Sunday night?”
The man cocked his head, surprised at the question, then thought back. His expression seemed to darken somewhat. “Yeah. Till close. Why?”
Court pulled out five hundred Hong Kong dollars, the equivalent of a little more than sixty U.S. He said, “I had some mates here on Sunday, around eleven. Two white, one black. British. They would have been together. See anyone like that?”
The man looked at the money on the bar for several seconds, then back up at the American offering it. Court detected a slight twitch, a microexpression, on the man’s face. “We don’t get many Westerners here.”
Court looked back to the white girls, then down at himself.
The bartender said, “At night, I mean. They all go back up to HK with the last ferry. Try the Ming Kee. You passed it coming from the ferry dock.”
Court replied, “I tried the other place. But the Ming Kee was closed at eleven p.m.”
The bartender nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“I was supposed to meet my friends here, but I didn’t make it. Having a hard time running them down since then.”
The man shook his head and glanced up and to his right. “No, I don’t remember them. Sorry.”
Court affected nonchalance to the man’s answers, but he was well trained to scan for clues of deception. While Court’s easy smile did not waver, he noticed the fidgeting nature of the bartender; his hands played with the bottle opener now, turning it over and over, and he shifted a little from one foot to the other. Court had established a baseline for the man’s mannerisms during their earlier conversation, just so he could pick out any changes when he began his interrogation. When he’d spoken about how slow the restaurant was and how it picked up at night, he’d not been fidgeting at all.
The Chinese man turned away quickly and rang up the beer, then put the tab in front of Court.
“Sorry I can’t help you.”
“Not so sure that you can’t, mate. Anyone else working I can ask? Was your mom here then?”
Court saw the man glance a second time out to his right, not to his mother, who was sitting back over his shoulder, but to a point in the distance. Court knew eyes tended to flitter during deception, but it almost looked to Court as if the man was fixing his gaze to a specific point both times. A spot out in the bay? Court had seen a few fishing boats out there when he arrived on the ferry, but he hadn’t paid much attention to them. Now he would have given anything to turn around and scan the exact area the man had looked off to.