‘I’ve already told you,’ said Lu, ‘that I’m a very careful man. I begin nothing without the guarantee of success.’
He stopped, waving a flame before his face. Charlie glanced towards the desk. He hadn’t seen Lu turn off any recording device. But that’s what the man had done, he was sure, under the guise of getting a cigar.
‘I’m not arguing you wouldn’t win judgment,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m saying it would be a court action that would destroy you and your reputation…’
‘And I asked you not to treat me like a fool,’ repeated Lu, sadly. ‘We both of us know there will never be a court hearing.’
‘You’ll withdraw the claim?’
Lu laughed at him, in genuine amusement.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t withdraw the claim. I’ll press it, as hard as I am able. Because I know damned well that no lawyer, no matter how much filth or innuendo he hoped to smear, would risk fighting in court the case I am able to bring.’
‘I will…’ tried Charlie, but Lu raised his hand imperiously, halting him.
‘You need evidence,’ said Lu. ‘Better evidence than some doubt about a rich man’s foible in paying more than he should for a policy he needed in a hurry. You’d need witnesses prepared to give evidence about a planned crime. And if you had that, it wouldn’t be you sitting here. It would be the police.’
Gently he tapped the ash from his cigar.
‘Your lawyers might listen to your romanticising,’ said the millionaire. ‘They might even be curious. But they’d never introduce it into a court hearing. Your company will settle. For the full amount. Because they have no option. My policy is legally incontestable. There’s never been any risk of my being humiliated. Nor will there be. Ever.’
He’d lost, accepted Charlie. Completely. Another thought came, suddenly. Robert Nelson had died simply for attempting to establish the accusation at street leveclass="underline" he had actually challenged the man.
‘You checked up on me with my London office before agreeing to meet me?’ he said.
Lu nodded:
‘I told you I leave nothing to chance.’
‘And they knew I was coming here today, to confront you with what I believed to be the truth.’
Lu’s smile broadened.
‘You’re giving me another warning,’ he said.
‘Were anything to happen to me, so soon after Robert Nelson’s death and my visit here, the police might be forced into finding the proof that our lawyers might need to take the case to court.’
It meant admitting defeat. But that had been established anyway. Now Charlie needed protection.
‘Yes,’ agreed Lu. ‘They just might. I’ll remember that.’
At least, decided Charlie, rising and moving towards the door, for the moment he was safe. Safe, from Lu anyway. But there was still Harvey Jones.
‘You’ll recommend your company to drop their resistance and settle?’ said Lu expectantly.
Charlie stopped, turning.
‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘You can’t win, you know.’
‘So people keep telling me.’
‘Perhaps you should listen to their advice.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Don’t become an irritant, will you?’ Lu cautioned him.
Maybe he hadn’t created as much protection as he had hoped, thought Charlie.
‘Unfortunately,’ he said from the door, ‘it seems to be a’ facility I have.’
‘Yes,’ said Lu, determined to master every exchange. ‘It could be unfortunate.’
After Charlie had left the room the millionaire remained seated in the chair in which he had confronted him, and that was how John Lu found him when he entered from the adjoining office.
‘Well?’ asked the father.
‘Kill him,’ said the son immediately.
Fool,’ snapped Lu. ‘You spend so much time with scum that you even think like them now.’
‘But he’s got it. He’s got it all.’
The millionaire shook his head.
‘He’s got nothing. Not a shred of proof. And there’s nowhere he can get it.’
‘What about the woman?’
‘You chose badly there, didn’t you?’ demanded Lu, avoiding a direct answer.
The younger man, who had remained standing, shuffled awkwardly.
‘She’d talk,’ he admitted.
‘About what?’ said the millionaire dismissively.
‘But she knows!’
‘And everything we’ve got is concealed by companies layered upon companies and by nominees operating through other nominees,’ reminded Lu. ‘There is nothing directly linking us to anything. Who’s going to start investigating us, on the word of a whore?’
‘She could still be a nuisance,’ said John, in rare defiance.
‘Oh, I think she should be punished,’ agreed Lu, as if correcting a misapprehension.
The son smiled.
‘But properly this time,’ warned Lu.
‘Of course.’
Jenny Lin Lee would want to know of the arrangements for the funeral, Charlie decided. There was no reply throughout the afternoon to his repeated telephone calls, so after the inquest at which he gave evidence of identification and which returned the verdict which Superintendent Johnson had anticipated, he went to Robert Nelson’s apartment.
The doorbell echoed back hollowly to him.
The caretaker was happy to open the door for fifty dollars and Charlie’s assurance that he represented the dead man’s company.
Already the rooms had a stale, unlived-in smell. Expertly he went from room to room: nowhere was there a trace of the girl. Known in all the bars, she’d said. Which ones? he wondered.
As he turned to leave the apartment, his foot touched something, scuffing it along the carpet. Bending, he picked up a letter with a London postmark and the Willoughby company address embossed on the back, for return in case of non-delivery.
Aware of its contents, he opened it anyway, reading it in seconds. Sighing, he put into his pocket the underwriter’s letter assuring Robert Nelson that his position would not be in any way affected by the Pride of America fire.
‘Not much,’ muttered Charlie savagely, closing the door.
14
Since the encounter with the American, Charlie had become over-conscious of the feeling of being watched, making sudden and too obvious checks, so that had he been under surveillance any observer could have easily avoided detection. Desperation. Like trying to bluff Lu. And this new idea. Further desperation, he recognised, forced upon him by the difference of the past from the present.
Before, the only consideration had been Charlie’s rules. Now it was Judge’s Rules, the need not just to learn the truth and then act to his own satisfaction, but to that of barristers and law lords. It imposed a restriction to which he was unaccustomed: like trying to run with a shoelace undone. There seemed a very real possibility of falling flat on his face.
People spilled from the pavement into Des Voeux Road, slowing the cars to a noisy, protesting crawl. Charlie used the movement of avoiding people to check around him, then abandoning the futile attempt, knowing that in such a throng any identification would be impossible.
He had expected the legation of the People’s Republic of China to be an imposing building, perhaps even with a police guard. But so ordinary was it, slotted in among the shops and the cinema, that he was almost past before he realised he had found it.
He pushed slowly forward through the milling Chinese, smiling at his first impression: it was just like a betting shop. Even to the counters round the sides, at which people were filling in not their horse selections but their applications to return to mainland China.
He ignored the side benches, going straight to the reception desk. It was staffed by three men, dressed in identical black-grey tunics.
‘I wish to see Mr Kuo,’ said Charlie. When the clerk did not react, Charlie added, ‘Mr Kuo Yuan-ching.’
‘He knows you?’
‘I telephoned. He said I was to call.’
The man hesitated, then turned through a small door at the rear. Charlie moved to one side, to make room for the continual thrust of people. A hell of a lot of the five thousand seemed to regard it as a wasted swim.