Epilogue

—one week later—

There were phone calls to New York all week. Harris tied up the loose ends of the paperwork attached to Vic’s demise one week after doing much the same for Hager, and personnel officers from the US Consulate in Guangzhou drove to Cha Ling for his body. They found it in a shallow grave behind the compound’s clinic.

MacGinnes was arrested and charged with the manslaughter of Vic and first-degree murder of Hager the day after Claire returned to Hong Kong. An expensive San Francisco lawyer was flying in to prepare the American’s defense side by side with one of the colony’s top barristers, a Queen’s counsel, and a team of three local solicitors.

Harris filled her in over the phone before he headed off to give a speech on ‘Old Chinese Politics and the New Chinese Economy’ at the East-West Center in Hawaii. ‘I gather MacGinnes is pleading not guilty to Hager’s murder, and he alleges Vic’s demise resulted from a misadventure by his Chinese joint-venture partners.’

Senior Superintendent Slaughter had disappointing news. ‘There’s no tape to be found. And it’s going to be hard to prove anything regarding Hager. MacGinnes left no fingerprints and what’s the point of searching his office or home for a knife? Even if we found it, the corpse was too damaged by its time in the sea to do a reliable forensic match. He was a real pro even though he was taken by surprise. Chew Lo-man admitted that he shot and dumped the body into the sea.

Claire was angry. ‘Vic always used a tape recording. MacGinnes had it.’

‘He got rid of it. You haven’t got enough to hang the man.’

‘Then I’ll hang him in print.’

Harris warned, ‘Watch out for libel.’

‘I saw it! I saw the camp myself. Vic is dead, and Cecilia witnessed that. I’ve got the ownership records from the company registry. Fresnay has the Chinese records of the camp’s history, thanks to the demonic efficiency of the Communist postal system. We can finish tracing the electronic cargo from Cha Ling via the Brainchild Singapore export firm. We’ll do a sidebar on Dr Liu’s story of his stepsister with photos of her and the documents showing she was transferred to Cha Ling from the Women’s Detention Center in Guangzhou. Jason Ng has confirmed his side of the kidney deal, provided I don’t use his name. And I’ll report how Vic died and how nobody in that camp knows they work for a Woodland Hills company, but instead still think they’re prisoners in the Chinese gulag.’

‘And you can build a story around that? Even without the Hager murder?’

You bet I can,’ said Claire. ‘Have a good time in Hawaii.’

McDermott scheduled Claire’s story for the following week’s edition. New York held six columns open, eight if Claire could get pictures of the camp. They had good file photos of MacGinnes sitting on his desk, one hand resting on a ‘Lychee PC.’ Claire hired a top photographer, Ho Ping-peng, known as ‘Ping-Pong’ to his friends, to spend the day in Punyu, photograph the offices of P. C. Wong and shoot the exterior of Cha Ling with a wide-angle shot of the camp clinic where she’d found Cecilia.

She recommended Ping-Pong hire a driver named Albert Wong.

‘Here’s Albert’s card. Tell him I’m covering all his expenses. Note his bank branch for payment is right here. And don’t forget to take earplugs for the ride.’ Claire added.

There would be a follow-up story after the Guangdong authorities released MacGinnes’s ‘prisoners,’ Harris told her. Already some five hundred Cha Ling detainees had been told that they were no longer detainees—their years of misery were a ‘political error.’

Preparations for returning these ghosts to their families took time. One man serving a life sentence had divorced his wife only so she could marry his brother on the promise of taking care of her. He’d committed suicide at the prospect of further disrupting the lives of two people he still loved. Two other prisoners had sold one kidney each for cash to support their children. They were preparing a lawsuit against MacGinnes’s headquarters in Hong Kong. Claire would report these and other sad consequences in a few weeks’ time.

Xavier returned Tokyo from a tiring series of seminars on development projects in Cambodia. He heard her tale with incredulity and admiration.

‘I thought you worked for a quiet business journal,’ he said. ‘Since when did you need a gun to meet your deadline?’ But joking was over that night when he held her tightly. More than once he woke up to embrace her quietly and protectively all over again.

Claire wasn’t ready to tell him the biggest news of all. Her bouts of nausea had continued. She could no longer blame bumps on the head or bloated corpses. Ten minutes with her doctor, the precise and soft-spoken Dr Helen Wing, had explained all her fatigue, nausea, and heavy sleep.

She was carrying Xavier’s child. She was happy. She’d botched responsibility before. Somehow this felt different already. Vic would haunt her conscience for a long time to come and sometimes she could expect nightmares of Chen’s eyes and voice. She could feel the exhausted weight of Cecilia in her arms still.

Now she had a different kind of weight to carry. Instead of hiding behind a facade of professional coolness, she felt a warm confidence deeper inside.

She nestled down into Xavier’s arms.

Claire went into the office to write her exposé on the same day Cecilia was scheduled to come back to work. The Queen Mary staff said the trauma of Cecilia’s time at Cha Ling would fade faster if she could settle right back into a dependable routine. That morning Cecilia was already at her desk, her handbag hung carefully over the back of her chair and her beige cardigan thrown over her shoulders.

She’d cleared off Claire’s desk to ready it for a day of writing. To one side of her chair stood a tall pile of newspapers ready to be marked and clipped. Another pile stood on the other side. More than ten days’ worth of BBC Summary of World Broadcasts waited to be examined for the minutiae of shifts in the Chinese political scene. Some invitations had been saved and Cecilia had put question marks on two others with her yellow marker.

But all that had to wait. Claire felt like a matador about to do battle with an invisible bull named MacGinnes. She switched on her computer screen, but nothing came up. She pressed all the buttons, but there was no green light.

‘Cecilia, call Compu-Fine right away! The system’s crashed,’ said Claire with exasperation. She wanted to scream with frustration.

Cecilia came over to Claire’s desk and looked down at the mute black screen.

‘The biggest story we’ve had in a long time, and now the computer goes bust on me,’ said Claire, pointing at the dark monitor window with disbelief.

‘Claire,’ Cecilia shook her head in mock despair. The slim girl reached down behind the printer and a moment later the disk drives gave a reassuring whirr and the screen turned bright green.

‘The cleaning amah knocked the plug loose.’

‘Thank you, Cecilia.’ Claire rolled her eyes in embarrassment.

‘It’s my pleasure.’

 

 

The End