“Please give it.”
There was a pause. “Your brother expresses his devoted and honoured duty and sends you ten thousand blessings… for the anniversary of Chung-Hua Jen-Min Kung-Ho Kuo.”
“Thank you.”
Dr Tien rang off, glanced at a calendar in confirmation of what he already knew. The anniversary of the People’s Republic of China was — to-morrow. He felt a quickening of his pulses but his lined face was mask-like as he lifted the receiver again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shaw crossed the Domain and went along Macquarie Street into Martin Place and picked up a taxi, told the driver to take him over the harbour into Cremorne.
They drove out across the bridge, above sparkling blue water kicked up by a light wind into little ruffles. The Manly ferry, top-heavy looking as she started out across the harbour, pulled away from Circular Quay. The water, which seemed almost to wash the ends of Sydney’s main streets, was full of small craft with white wakes streaming out behind them, and the place was fresh and gay in the good keen air as they came into Milson’s Point and North Sydney. They turned right for Cremorne and Shaw stopped the driver some way before they got to the road where Tommy Foster had lived, paid the man off and told him not to wait. Then, getting his bearings from his mental image of James’s street guide, he walked quickly along to Hawks Street and Tommy’s flat, went up the stairs and let himself in. Tommy Foster, like Shaw, had been a bachelor and the flat had probably once had that kind of look about it — comfortable in a masculine sort of way, but bare and unimaginative.
But not any more.
The place was a shambles.
Shaw stared in dismay. The flat had been torn apart. The furniture was all upended, drawers hung out of the desk in the sitting-room, stuffing had been ripped wholesale out of chairs. Tommy’s suits, heaped near the wardrobe, had been torn into shreds. This obviously wasn’t the work of James’s department. There wouldn’t be much left now for Shaw to find, but nevertheless he went carefully through everything in the place, inch by inch, and it took him a long time to do the job properly.
And he found precisely nothing.
He was about to leave the flat when the telephone rang and he went over and answered it. Captain James came on the line, said:
“Still there — good. I rang on the chance. Save you coming back here. Look, I’ve fixed with the mortuary for you to see the body at three o’clock this afternoon. That do?”
“Yes, that’s fine—”
“You found anything meanwhile?”
“Not a thing, sir. Except a shambles — some one’s been through here like a dose of salts.” He described what he had found, and James gave a long whistle.
The Australian said, “I’m not sticking my nose in. Police job! Anyway, what are your plans now?”
Shaw hesitated. “Don’t know yet, sir.”
“Well, just let me know if there’s anything you want me to do. I can’t say much on this line, but I’m getting things organized — you know what I mean — and I’m standing by for any word from Canberra. Right?”
“Right, sir.”
“Good-oh! Well — see you here at, say, two-forty-five.” The line clicked off.
A feeling of utter hopelessness came over Shaw, the pain gripped his guts. He wasn’t going to get anywhere…
And then, as he put the receiver down, he saw it.
A faint mark on the top of Tommy’s desk, near the knee-hole. It was no more than a scratch in the varnish, but…
Shaw bent, examined it closely.
It seemed to be two capital letters: L I.
L I for Ling? Was this, in fact, where they’d got Tommy Foster, sitting at his desk? Held him up, unwittingly given him time to scratch that almost invisible warning with something he already had in his hand, then hustled him away to his death before he could finish it?
It could be. Shaw’s mouth hardened.
The lead to Ling was still pretty vague, but sometimes the vague leads paid off. This time it was all he’d got, so he had to follow it up. And if he didn’t get anywhere, then maybe he would have to ask for police help and accept all the consequent red-tape delays and infuriating official routines.
Shaw glanced at his watch. It was getting on for an early lunch-time anyway… he decided to get over to the Cross and take a look at Ling’s.
From a telephone box Shaw rang James’s office, spoke to Mary Harris, and told her what he was doing. Coming out again into King’s Cross he found the streets gay, noisy, colourful, crammed with little eating-places and snack bars and coffee bars, crowded with youngsters in jeans and a handful of arty-looking men and women. Juke boxes blared out from seedy dives. The atmosphere was cosmopolitan, and down-at-heel in an attractive kind of way. As Major Francis had said, the comparison was with London’s Soho. Shaw asked a man howto get to Ling’s and he soon found the place; he studied the menu casually, where it hung in a frame behind the steamed-up glass front. Ling’s, he saw, didn’t serve afternoon tea… Ling’s 4:30… Australians were early diners, yes — but not that early. He walked in.
The place was crowded. Too few Chinese waiters in white coats and black trousers squeezed in and out of the over-closely packed tables. Although it was middle day the place was dim, lit with small, coloured wall-lights in brackets, and it was noisy and rather too warm.
With the assistance of a waiter, Shaw ordered.
While he waited, and later as he ate the Chinese food, Shaw watched his surroundings carefully. He noticed that there were no Chinese among the customers. It was all very innocuous, and there were none of the sort of people that Mary Harris had said Tommy had contacts among — and none of the sort who’d be a girl-friend of that body up on the Bandagong track either. As he watched, Shaw’s mind flew momentarily across the five hundred and seventy-six sea-miles to Melbourne. Soon now — to-morrow in fact — the New South Wales would be waiting for the tugs to take her off the berth, off from Station Pier, Port Melbourne. Sir Donald Mackinnon would be climbing to his navigating bridge and the New South Wales would move out past Gellibrand, and then out along the forty-mile stretch of land-locked water to Port Phillip Heads, and so to the Bass Strait — and Wilson’s Promontory. In less than twenty-four hours from there, she would berth at Pyrmont, here in Sydney.
Was Wilson’s Promontory, he wondered, to be the place?
Anyhow, according to Karstad, the point of danger to the world would come at any time after the liner cleared from Melbourne. At any time after to-morrow morning. He had to act fast now, not waste one precious minute. He ate quickly, finishing his meal so as not to arouse premature suspicion, and then, feeling for the comforting pressure of the revolver in his armpit, he signalled his waiter, lit a cigarette and paid his bill.
Then he asked casually, “I wonder if Mr Ling is free? I’d like to have a word with him…"
Shaw was taken behind the counter and led down a long, dark passage into a back room which looked out on to a dirty yard littered with packing-cases and broken crates. The waiter went away and Shaw looked quickly round the room. In a minute or so a Chinese came in, a short, stout man with an over-large head and broad forehead, wiping his moist-looking hands on a white apron.
He said, “I am Ling. You wish to speak to me?”
Shaw nodded easily. “I think you may be able to help me.” He paused, looking straight into the man’s slit eyes. Then he asked directly, “Do you know a man called Lubin?”
The eyes shifted a little and there was a sudden tenseness. “Lubin? No. I know of no one called that. I have never heard of him. May I ask—”