The Year of Dangerous Loving

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997

Copyright © John Gordon Davis 1997

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

John Gordon Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007574377

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008119331

Version: 2014-12-19

Dedication

To Buck and Diana Buchanan

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part Two

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Three

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part Four

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Part Five

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Part Six

Chapter 27

Part Seven

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part Eight

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

1

‘Send a policeman to arrest me – I’ve just shot my husband!’

That was the dramatic announcement Elizabeth Hargreave made when she telephoned Jake McAdam at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club that hot Friday night. McAdam thought she must be drunk and he asked to speak to Hargreave.

‘He’s driven himself to hospital,’ Liz said, and hung up.

Then McAdam took it seriously. He went back to the bar and asked Max Popodopolous to go to her immediately and keep her away from the police while he went to look for Hargreave.

McAdam traced him at the Jockey Club Clinic. Ian Bradshaw was in attendance, and said that Hargreave would be all right: the bullet missed the lungs.

‘Thank God for that. How did you get involved in this?’ McAdam asked. Ian Bradshaw was an expensive surgeon who did not hang around casualty departments of hospitals.

‘Called me at the yacht club – he refused to let a government doctor treat him, he doesn’t want any official reports. You can’t see him, he’s still under anaesthetic.’

‘Did he tell you how it happened?’

‘Says it was an accident. Gun went off unintentionally. Don’t say anything to the police. Nor to the press.’

‘Of course not. But the press are going to love this.’

‘How embarrassing,’ Ian said. ‘Did you know the marriage was rocky?’

‘No.’ McAdam added in Liz’s defence: ‘She sounded as if she’d been drinking.’

‘Al had been drinking too. We all drink too much in this town but we don’t wave guns at our spouses. He doesn’t play around, does he?’

‘No,’ McAdam said, ‘nor does Liz.’

‘What will the police do about this?’

‘Nothing, if it was an accident.’

‘But pointing a gun at somebody is a crime, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s the sort of thing that can happen in a marital row. The police can’t do anything if Alistair doesn’t lay a charge – which he certainly won’t; he’ll want it hushed up.’

‘I hope you’re right, I like Liz. And Alistair. Amazing, isn’t it, what can go on in a marital bedroom without anybody else suspecting? Just goes to show, marriage can be one of the most stressful of undertakings. Well, I’ll go’n finish my dinner. You can see him in the morning.’

McAdam then telephoned Hargreave’s apartment. Max answered.

‘Okay, she’s gone to bed with a sleeping pill, the neighbours have been looking after her. I’ve fended off the cops, told them she’s not in her sound and sober senses and can’t make a statement.’

‘Any press around?’

‘Somebody alerted them; they’ve been clamouring at the door. I fended them off too.’

‘And what’s the scene-of-crime look like?’

‘The bullet hit the book Alistair was reading before hitting his chest. Another bullet-hole in the wall above the bed.’

‘Jesus, she fired two shots?’

‘After the first shot Al grabbed the gun, they struggled for possession of it and it went off a second time, hitting the wall.’

‘Al was reading?’

‘Apparently he was lying in bed, pretending to read, ignoring her. They’d been quarrelling.’

‘Did you find out what about?’

‘Not really, she was crying. Bits about how infuriating Al is, how he used to be life and soul of the party, now he doesn’t want to go anywhere, just work work work, et cetera.’

‘So she pulls a gun on him? There’s more to it than that.’

‘Oh, she’s convinced he’s seeing another woman, that’s all I got out of her before she passed out. She was furious because he was drinking in Wanchai this afternoon – she found lipstick on his ear. And he disgraced himself at the Chief Justice’s dinner party by falling asleep. They were both the worse for drink probably, Al’s been hitting the bottle of late – overwork. Do you think there’s another woman involved?’

McAdam sighed. ‘No. Al’s too honest a soul to lead a double life. Too much of a worrier.’

‘But how did he come by the lipstick?’

‘In Wanchai? Easy. I’ve come by a bit of it myself down there over the years. He probably picked it up dancing.’

‘Al dance? In Wanchai? Come on. Anyway,’ Max sighed, ‘I’ll spend the night here to make sure she doesn’t blab to the police when she wakes up. Will you look after Al in the morning?’

‘Sure, first thing.’

‘And Jake? Don’t go back to the club now, you’ll only be asked a lot of questions by the press boys.’

History is confused on the earlier events of that afternoon, avid gossip making hearsay more confounded.

One version of the story has Alistair Hargreave carried shoulder-high into the Pussycat Bar in Wanchai by the police after the jury returned a verdict of guilty in the big heroin case he had just successfully prosecuted; another is that the police even instructed the manager to get the bar-girls out of their beds to entertain the Director of Public Prosecutions because Wanchai does not warm up until night; another is that he was so drunk that he took several off to bed at once; yet another is that his wife found him in bed with one of them and shot him in flagrante delicto.

None of this is correct. The truth is that, after the jury returned their verdict, Hargreave went with the police investigation team to have a Chinese meal in Wanchai to celebrate; that a good deal of booze was drunk and that later they adjourned to a nearby bar called the Pussycat to have just one more; that the place was jumping, despite the comparatively early hour, because a shipload of American tourists had arrived; that Hargreave met some of his journalist friends there and had several drinks; and that he somehow acquired some lipstick on his ear whilst successfully resisting the blandishments of a bar-girl. When he finally emerged into the garish Wanchai sunset, he couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car and ended up taking a taxi home. His wife was very angry because he was late for a dinner party, because he had been drinking in Wanchai, because he was drunk, because he had lost the car, and she became angrier still when she discovered the lipstick. They arrived in a borrowed car at the Chief Justice’s party when everybody was already seated, and Hargreave promptly fell asleep, because he had been up most of the previous night preparing his closing address to the jury. He had to be kicked awake several times before his wife took him home in disgrace: and then, ten minutes later, two shots rang out.

The next morning the front-page headline of the South China Morning Post read: LEADING LAWYER SHOT.

Mr Alistair Hargreave QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, last night drove himself to the Jockey Club Hospital suffering from a gunshot wound to his chest.

Friends immediately rushed to the Hargreave home where a spokesman for the family, Mr Max Popodopolous, also a lawyer, refused to allow Mrs Elizabeth Hargreave to answer questions from either the press or the police. At the hospital another spokesman for the family, Mr Jake McAdam, told both police and the press to ‘get lost’.

Police enquiries continue.

Mr Alistair Hargreave is a former Commodore of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, a fine tennis player, and a leading member of the legal community. Last year his yacht, Elizabeth, won the Hong Kong–Manila race under his captaincy in record time in very bad weather …

The front pages of the Hong Kong Standard and the Eastern Express were in similar dramatic vein. Hargreave had them all on his bed when McAdam arrived the next morning.

‘Thanks, pal,’ Hargreave said, ‘for pulling me out of the soup. Max too.’

‘How you feeling?’

‘Just a flesh wound, Ian says I can go home next week. Home …?’ He snorted softly.

‘You can stay with me,’ McAdam said, ‘until this blows over, whatever it is.’

‘Thanks, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Just before the fireworks she announced she was going home to the States forthwith.’

McAdam sat down in a chair. ‘What’s the story?’

Hargreave slapped the newspapers. ‘The police were here earlier. Told them to take a powder, it was an accident. They didn’t believe me but there’s nothing they can do if I won’t testify. She won’t blab anything to the cops, will she?’

‘No, I’ve just spoken to Max on the phone; Liz is all weepy and remorseful. The cops have called again and Max fended them off.’

‘Remorseful?’ Hargreave closed his eyes. ‘What’s Max talking to her about?’ He shook his head. ‘No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear what a shit I am.’

‘You’re not, you’re a hell of a nice guy.’

‘Sure.’ Hargreave was silent a moment, then: ‘Old Liz, you know, she’s not such a bad old stick. In fact she’s a very good old stick. She’s just unhappy.’

And she’s not an old stick, McAdam thought, she’s damned attractive. He waited, then said: ‘Why’s she unhappy?’

Hargreave sighed. ‘Don’t want to talk about it. You playing marriage counsellor?’

‘You’ve got a bullet wound – we don’t want you to get any more.’

Hargreave sighed again, eyes still closed. ‘Accident. Won’t happen again.’ There was a silence; then he continued with reluctance, ‘She’s unhappy because the marriage has been going downhill for several years. And that’s my fault.’

Downhill for years? The Hargreaves had always presented a solid matrimonial front to the world. McAdam waited again, then asked, ‘How is it your fault?’

There was another silence. Then: ‘Oh Lord, how can one summarize marriage failure in a sentence? Don’t want to talk about it.’ He sighed. ‘It’s my fault because I’m bored with life here, because I don’t want to have anything to do with the bullshit Hong Kong social scene any more. So she’s bored, because I’m boring. The marriage is therefore boring. Worn out. Don’t do anything together any more. And that’s all I want to say.’

‘You’re not boring.’

Hargreave snorted softly. ‘I even bore myself. I’m bored, Jake. I’m bored with the Law. Been there, done that, every case is just more of the same old guff. I’m bored with lawyers and most of all I’m bored with His boring Lordship. I’m bored with witnesses, with juries. I’m bored with Hong Kong.’ He sighed. ‘About the only thing I’m not bored with is booze.’ There was a pause: then before McAdam could say anything Hargreave continued: ‘What else is there at our age? Got all the money we need – even if we’d like more — but we’ve got enough. We’ve got the success we strove for. So what else is there?’

‘Climbing the Andes? Sailing round the world in your yacht? Buying that ranch and raising those cattle?’

‘But that’s several years down the line, till I’ve recovered from my last stock market misadventure. Meanwhile I have to soldier on.’ He grimaced, eyes closed: ‘And that’s why old Liz pulled the gun on me. To shake me up, give me a fright. It went off, that’s all there is to it. Don’t want to talk about it.’

Like hell that’s all there is to it, McAdam thought. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘boredom happens in marriage.’

Hargreave did not open his eyes. ‘Does it? Or just happens to me? I think it just happens to me. Out there all the other guys who’ve been married twenty years are still happily screwing their wives every night. And old Liz, you know, she’s a very attractive woman.’

Oh dear, McAdam thought – so this is it? He ventured: ‘I doubt all those married men out there are still doing it every night, Al, I was married once myself.’

‘And evidently I’ve got unhealthy appetites. Like booze and gambling.’ He paused. ‘How can you make love to a woman who’s always fed up with you? Always telling you what a washout you were at the dinner party last night, you don’t tell funny stories any more, all you talked about was politics.’

McAdam wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Well, maybe you should spend more time together, take her out for a few romantic dinners.’

‘Bit late for that – don’t feel very romantic with a bullet in my chest.’

‘But you love her.’ He added: ‘Don’t you?’

‘Ask me another one. Right now I’m angry, mortified. Whole town knows. Wish the earth would swallow me up.’

‘Do you think she loves you?’

Hargreave snorted again. ‘She’s too angry with me for that. Fed up with me. This fed up –’ He indicated his chest – ‘even though it was an accident. When people do that, raise their hand to strike, or pick up a weapon, it means they’d really like to do it, even if they stop themselves.’ He sighed grimly. ‘I almost wish she’d had an affair, maybe that would have made me less intolerable.’

‘You told her to have an affair? Last night?’

‘No. She accused me of having an affair. Oh,’ he shook his head, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Utterly untrue. God, who with? Friends’ wives? Don’t want a guilty conscience as well as being bored.’

McAdam hesitated: ‘Apparently she found some lipstick on your collar?’

Hargreave groaned and opened his eyes. ‘Oh Christ. That was just some Wanchai whore trying to be persuasive. Nothing happened, didn’t even buy her a drink. The cops were with me, they’d bear me out.’ He closed his eyes again. ‘But Liz was furious, yes, accused me of having it off down there, accused me of all kinds of womanizing for years.’ He sighed angrily. ‘Utterly untrue.’

‘So what happened with Elizabeth? You told her you were innocent. Then?’

Hargreave sighed. ‘Furious with me for being late for the CJ’s dinner party. And drunk. I wasn’t really drunk, just exhausted after the case. Fell asleep at dinner. Snored, apparently. Gave me hell coming home, particularly about the lipstick. I refused to fight, went to bed, started to read while she ranted on about Wanchai whores. Next thing she’s standing at the end of the bed with the gun shouting “Answer me!” Then, bang! Bullet knocks the book out of my hands and hits my chest. I sat up with a certain alacrity. Couldn’t believe it.’

‘Jesus. So?’

‘So I leap off the bed, spouting blood. Grabbed the gun. We wrestle for it. Thing goes off again, punches a hole in the wall. She runs to the telephone and calls you. Drama. Then the neighbours come rushing in. While I stagger out and drive myself to hospital. Now the whole fucking town knows.’ He slapped the newspapers. ‘What did she say to you?’

McAdam hesitated, then said, ‘“Send a policeman to arrest me, I’ve just shot my husband.”’

Hargreave groaned. ‘Drama. She knew the cops weren’t necessary – that gun’s got a light trigger.’

‘I didn’t know you had a gun.’

‘Hangover from our days in Kenya. When we were seconded there ten years ago I bought a gun in case of burglars. It’s quite kosher, fully licensed.’

‘Where is it normally kept?’

‘My bedside table. Didn’t notice her get it, she was striding up and down giving me a bollocking.’ Hargreave sighed. ‘She didn’t intend to shoot me – just being dramatic.’

‘Okay, but this doesn’t look good from a police point of view. She fires, then she struggles to retain possession of the gun? That would sound like serious intent to the jury.’

Hargreave took a deep, tense breath. ‘No jury, no cops. Natural reaction to struggle over a weapon once you’ve produced it to be dramatic. I just hope she goes back to America and cools off.’

‘Well, when I spoke to Max an hour ago he said she was packing her bags.’

Hargreave opened his eyes and raised his head. ‘Really?’

‘But it might be bravado. Want me to go around there and pour oil on troubled waters?’

Hargreave looked at him, then slumped back. ‘No,’ he said tremulously. ‘It’s for the best. Let her get out of this bloody awful town for a while …’

2

In the Hong Kong summer your skin is oily, your hair is oily, the sun beats down oily maddening hot on this teeming city on the South China coast: on the frantic money-making, the towering business blocks and the apartments crowding along the manmade shores and up the jungled mountains; on the myriad of resettlement blocks and the squatter shacks, beating down on the sweeping swathes of elevated highways and byways and flyovers and underpasses, on the buildings going up on the mountains that are chopped down to make more land for teeming people, on the mass of factories and the shops, the jampacked traffic carbon-monoxidizing everywhere, the narrow backstreets and ladderstreets and alleyways, the jostling sidewalks, and the signboards fighting each other up to the sky. It blazes down upon the mauve islands and mountains surrounding the teeming harbour, with its container ships and freighters from around the world, and its cargo junks and sampans and jampacked ferries, beating down on the noise and work and money-making. But it is China’s money-making that comes first and foremost in this clamorous, anachronistic, capitalistic, British colony on the crazy-making China coast: Hong Kong is Communist China’s capitalist colony – it is only Great Britain’s in name. Hong Kong is a very unusual, dramatic place.

And this year it was even more dramatic because the question on everybody’s mind, the question everybody had to answer was: ‘Shall I go or shall I stay? Shall I leave this crazy place and start life over again, or shall I take a chance on China and trust in the Lord?’

Ten years ago they had trusted in the Joint Declaration – in which Great Britain and China agreed that ‘only the flag will change’ when the territory reverted in 1997 – ten years ago they had trusted in China’s avowed policy of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, trusted in the internationally-binding agreement that the new Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong that would come into being would be autonomous and governed democratically, that British law would continue to apply, trusted in the Basic Law which China had drawn up enshrining these principles. Ten years ago there had been hope, and that hope had got stronger when Communism collapsed in Russia and eastern Europe, stronger yet when Premier Deng of China declared that ‘to become rich is glorious’. In those days even Alistair Hargreave, who trusted Communists only as far as he could kick them, had resolved to stay after 1997. And then had come the massacre in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, where thousands of Chinese were gunned down by the People’s Liberation Army tanks for demanding democracy; Hong Kong’s hope was trampled into the blood of Tiananmen.

‘Communism is dead,’ Hargreave had said. ‘Long live the fucking Communist Party!’

There was little hope after Tiananmen; thousands of business people left Hong Kong for Canada, Australia, England, America. And now, in that long, hot, maddening summer of 1995, Great Britain was timidly trying to enforce the Joint Declaration by holding the first fully democratic elections for the Legislative Council, and China had announced that she would destroy the new Council when she took over, Joint Declaration or no. There is no democratic nonsense in the paradise of the People’s Republic of China and there would be none in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong: there would be no independent judiciary and no freedom of the press either, Basic Law or no Basic Law, United Nations or no United Nations.

It was a bad time for Hong Kong, that long hot summer of 1995. Shall I go or shall I stay?

It was a bad summer for Alistair Hargreave, although it had nothing to do with China’s treachery. Within a week of being shot by Elizabeth he was back at work, showing a brave face, but he was very embarrassed. Lord, he hated the solicitude, the polite circumlocution, he hated people feeling sorry for him: most of them believed that Liz had shot him deliberately, that he had come by the lipstick the usual way. He went to work early, came home late and did more work with the help of whisky. He declined all social invitations. Occasionally he had to meet Jake McAdam or Max or Bernie Champion for a drink, and even those encounters were embarrassing: these guys were his closest friends and expected him to open up to them, but Hargreave did not want to open up to anybody, he wanted to turn his face to the wall. As they said, there were plenty of women out there who would be pleased with his attentions, but he could not bring himself to go through the bullshit involved; he would feel a fraud. And, oh yes, he missed Elizabeth, even though he knew the marriage was a certifiable failure now. Sometimes, in the long hot nights in the empty apartment he considered taking some leave and flying to California to see if they could try again: but in the cold light of hungover dawn he knew it couldn’t work. Finally, towards the end of that long bad summer he decided what to do: pull himself together, stop feeling sorry for himself, take early retirement after he had had his next annual leave and get the hell out of this bloody embarrassing town whether he could afford it or not, and start life anew somewhere. He felt better after he had made that decision. Then the letter from her Californian lawyers arrived.