Read the book: «White Tiger»
KYLIE CHAN
White Tiger
DARK HEAVENS
BOOK I
For my sister, Fiona, my best friend, Alana, and most of all my fantastic kids, William and Madeleine.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
E-book Extra
About the Author
The Dark Heavens Trilogy
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
‘Emma, this is your final warning. If you do not wear a suit to my kindergarten, I will dock your pay.’ Miss Kwok glared at me over her expensive reading glasses. ‘Jeans are not acceptable at any of my kindergartens. More smartly dressed. Remember.’
I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to be out of her office and up to Mr Chen’s place.
‘Your hair is unacceptable as well. You should come with me to the salon. Your hair is messy, you don’t wear make-up – really, Emma, your whole appearance is just not good enough. You should work harder to make yourself more presentable.’
A flood of words hit the back of my throat. I swallowed them all.
‘I have had some complaints from the parents.’ She shuffled the papers on the desk. Her face suggested she was in her early forties – the work of an excellent plastic surgeon – but her hands showed her true age. ‘The parents say you are spending too much time talking with the children and not enough time teaching them the ABCs.’
‘Talking is the best way to learn English,’ I said.
‘Well, make sure they learn their ABCs. They need to be able to recite the alphabet and spell some words to pass the examinations for first grade. They’re here to cram for the best schools, you know that.’
I tried to control my expression as I thought about what I’d like to do to a school that had examinations for entry into first grade.
‘Well?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s your school, Miss Kwok. I’ll do more ABC’s.’
‘I do not like your attitude sometimes, Emma.’ She became more fierce. ‘Oh, and stop wasting the drawing materials. I only budget for one set a year and they’re using them too much.’
I glanced at my watch. ‘Is that all? I’m supposed to be at Mr Chen’s in less than an hour.’
‘How is the work going with Mr Chen?’
‘He’s taken every private spot I have. He’s my only private client now.’
This caught her attention. ‘He is the only client you have outside the kindergarten?’
I nodded.
‘But I gave your number to quite a few people I know. Don’t tell me you’re so lazy you have stopped working for them. You should work until 11 p.m., you make good money. Don’t waste your evenings doing nothing.’
‘As people left Hong Kong and private teaching slots freed up, he took the times. I think he even negotiated with some of the parents to release me so I could look after Simone. Which suits me just fine, really, because she’s the most delightful child I’ve ever worked with.’
She studied me intently. ‘Do you like working for him?’
‘Sure. He’s very nice.’
‘How would you like to earn a little more money?’
‘You already pay me very well, Miss Kwok.’
Her eyes rested heavily on mine. ‘If you tell me about some of his business dealings, the names of the people who go in and out of his house while you’re working there, you could earn even more.’
I stared at her.
‘I could make it very good for you.’
‘No.’
She lifted her head slightly. ‘You will do this for me, Emma.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I resign.’
‘You can’t resign. You will stay with me.’
‘I’ll have a resignation letter on your desk tomorrow morning.’
She grimaced with exasperation.
I met her eyes and held them. ‘I resign.’
‘Nobody in Hong Kong will pay you as well as I do.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’ll find something.’
‘You have to give me two weeks’ notice,’ she said. ‘You have to continue to work for me for two weeks, Emma.’
‘I feel a sudden bout of the flu coming on,’ I said, then rose and went out without looking back.
My friend, April, was sitting at the computer outside Miss Kwok’s office, with her fiancé, Andy, hovering behind her. April was a lovely Australian-born Chinese who worked as a systems programmer in a bank, but occasionally came in to help with the computers at the kindergarten. She had a soft, kind face framed by shoulder-length hair dyed a rich russet brown.
‘Hi, April, bye, April. Gotta run, I’m late for Mr Chen,’ I said as I hurried past.
‘We going for Thai Saturday?’ April called after me.
I stopped. ‘Yeah. Wan Chai.’
Andy, a slim, well-dressed Chinese guy, glanced unsmiling over the top of April’s head at me. ‘I can’t come,’ he said. ‘I have to be in China. Don’t stay out too late.’
I didn’t like the way Andy looked at me. ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ I said, trying to sound disappointed.
‘Saturday, then,’ April said, and turned back to the screen. ‘We should do another backup.’
‘As long as we don’t lose any of the data. It’s very important,’ Andy said.
I leaned against the divider in the MTR carriage and mused. Done it again. But I was thoroughly sick of being bullied by Miss Kwok; no amount of money she paid me would compensate.
I shook my head as the carriage swayed through the darkness of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel. I couldn’t believe her nerve, asking me to tell her about Mr Chen’s activities. I knew she had more business interests than just the chain of kindergartens; she was one of the wealthiest women in Hong Kong. People called her the Merry Widow, the Social Godmother. But asking me to spy on my private clients was way over the line.
I sighed. I had a tidy nest egg saved: the combination of Miss Kwok’s excellent salary with the fat cheques I’d received from private clients over the last four years. It’d keep me going for a while. I wasn’t ready to return to Australia and a mundane life in suburbia. At only twenty-eight I felt no great rush to settle into anything boring.
I tried to tidy my hair – as usual my short brown ponytail had come out everywhere. Nobody took any notice of me; I was just an uninteresting Westerner, the only one on the train. Medium height, about five six; slightly overweight. Plain clothes, plain face, plain brown shoulder-length hair. Nothing special at all. But my skills as an English teacher were highly sought after in Hong Kong. I wouldn’t have any trouble finding something new.
Or maybe Singapore. Gifted English teachers were always welcome in Singapore, and the correspondence course I was halfway through could be taken from anywhere in the world.
The train stopped at Admiralty station and I joined the rush onto the platform. I rode the escalator up to ground level and the terminal where I could take a bus to Mr Chen’s apartment on the Peak. The traffic noise and polluted air hit me like a physical force as I walked out of the station. Chinese New Year had just finished – the Year of the Horse in 2002 had begun. The late February weather was cool, but there was a hint of humidity in the breeze that suggested the presence of the stifling summer just around the corner.
Maybe Singapore.
• • •
‘And then the Dark King kissed the Dark Queen and the baby Princess goodbye,’ four-year-old Simone said, moving the Lego figures around on the cream carpet.
‘Why is he the Dark King?’ I said.
‘Because he is, silly Emma.’ Simone leaned forward as she moved the Lego, and her tawny hair fell over her shoulders. Her mother had been European, giving her flawless porcelain skin and light brown eyes. ‘The bad people came, and scared the Dark Queen, and she ran away.’
She made the Queen figure run, until another block – obviously the bad people – smacked into her and she fell. She picked up a white block and flew it over the figures. ‘The White Tiger came to help, but the Dark Queen was already gone. The Dark King came back…’ She returned the Dark King figure. ‘But the Dark Queen was gone, and the King and Princess cried together, and hugged, and promised to look after each other forever and ever.’
‘That’s a really sad story, Simone,’ I said. ‘Let’s bring the Queen back, maybe?’
She shrugged, and appeared to be about to say something, then froze. Her face went blank, then she lit up. ‘Daddy’s home!’
The complicated gears on the metal gate outside the front door clashed, then the lock on the door rattled. Simone leapt to her feet and dashed through the living room. ‘Daddy!’
Mr Chen came in. Simone’s father was in his mid-forties, and tall for a Chinese, at more than six feet. He wore an old-fashioned Chinese cotton jacket and pants, all in black, and moved with restrained power that hinted at hard muscle. He had very long hair, well past his waist, and as usual it had come out from its tie and fallen over his shoulder. He ignored it as he kicked off his shoes.
When he saw Simone, he bent and held a hand out to her. She raced to him with her arms up and he hoisted her easily with one hand, and with the other snapped the sword he’d been carrying into its clips on the wall.
Simone threw her little arms around his neck and kissed him loudly on the cheek. He smiled at her, his dark eyes sparkling, then saw me over her shoulder and nodded, more serious. ‘Miss Donahoe.’
I rose and nodded back to him; I was always careful to treat Chinese employers with respect. Employer. He was the only one left now.
‘And what have you been doing?’ he asked Simone.
‘Ngoh tong Emma–’ Simone began.
‘English, Simone,’ he said with mock ire.
Simone giggled and started again. ‘Me and Emma are playing Lego. We’re having fun.’
‘Good.’ He lowered her carefully. ‘Go and play with Miss Donahoe.’ He turned to the door in the hallway behind him. ‘Monica!’
Monica, the Filipina domestic helper, opened the kitchen door part-way and poked her head out. She saw Mr Chen, threw the door open, and came into the hallway, wiping her hands on a towel. She was short, round and middle-aged, with a kind face. ‘Sorry, sir, didn’t know you were home.’ She saw the Lego strewn on the living room carpet. ‘Sorry about the mess, sir, I’ll clean it up.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘Make me some noodles while I take a shower. Ho fan, soup, choy sum. Not too much, I may go out again later.’ He stopped and a look of concentration passed across his face. ‘Why is Leo downstairs?’
‘He’s washing the car,’ Monica said. ‘It was very dirty, sir.’
‘Call him on his mobile and tell him to come back up right now,’ Mr Chen said.
Monica disappeared into the kitchen.
Mr Chen turned back to me. ‘How long do you think you can stay, Miss Donahoe?’
‘As long as you like, Mr Chen,’ I said. ‘I resigned from the kindergarten this afternoon, so I don’t need to be in early tomorrow.’
‘You’ve found a new job? You’ll be leaving us?’ he said, concerned.
‘Don’t go, Emma!’ Simone cried.
‘I won’t go, I was just tired of working for Kitty Kwok. I’ll find something else, but don’t worry, I won’t leave you.’
‘Good,’ Simone said, and returned to the Lego.
‘So how long will you need me?’ I said.
He smiled gently. ‘About fifteen years. How about coming here full-time?’ He raised his hand. ‘Wait, don’t answer, let me shower and change first, and then we can talk about it.’ He strode down the hall towards his room.
‘You can stay forever?’ Simone said, wide-eyed with delight.
‘I don’t know, Simone,’ I said. ‘I’ll need to think about it.’
Her little face screwed up with hope. ‘Please say yes.’
The gate and the front door opened and Leo, Mr Chen’s driver, came in. He was a black American, nearly six and a half feet tall and a wall of muscle. He had a spectacularly ugly face, the centrepiece of which was an artistically broken nose, but he had a kind smile and adored Simone.
‘Hi, Leo,’ Simone said.
‘Hi, Simone, Emma.’ Leo kicked off his shoes at the front door then poked his nose into the living room. ‘Where is he?’
‘Having a shower,’ I said.
He nodded.
Simone jumped up from her Lego. ‘Guess what, Leo?’
His small brown eyes sparkled at her. ‘What?’
‘Emma’s going to stay forever.’
Leo glanced sharply at me. ‘Is that right?’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘He just asked me to go full-time. But I have to think about it.’
Leo came into the living room and towered over us. He crossed his massive arms over his chest. ‘Actually, Emma, it would be a good idea if you came full-time. You’re the best teacher Simone’s ever had.’
‘Thanks, Leo, that means a lot to me.’ I glanced down at Simone’s hope-filled face. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Mr Chen came down the hallway barefoot, towelling his damp hair. He always wore incredibly scruffy clothes at home, and this evening was no exception. His black T-shirt was faded and frayed, and his black cotton pants had a large shredded hole in one knee.
He had unusually dark eyes, nearly black, and the sculpted face of a Southern Chinese, with prominent cheekbones and a strong chin. He pulled the towel from his hair and threw it over one shoulder, then ran one hand through his long hair, tossed it back, and smiled into my eyes.
Suddenly Singapore didn’t seem so good.
Then Mr Chen saw Leo and scowled. ‘You. In here. Now.’ He turned and went into the dining room across the hall without looking back.
Leo bowed his bald head and skulked into the dining room after Mr Chen.
‘Leo’s in big trouble,’ Simone confided to me. ‘My dad’s going to yell at him a lot.’
‘Why? He just washed the car. That’s what a driver does.’
‘He’s not supposed to leave us alone,’ Simone said, deadly serious. ‘We could get hurt.’
‘Hurt? Who by?’
She leaned closer and whispered, ‘Bad people.’
Good god, Leo wasn’t a driver; he was a bodyguard. Kidnapping didn’t happen often, but it did happen; all children of rich families in Hong Kong were targets. Of course Leo was a bodyguard, it was obvious. No wonder Mr Chen was so upset about him leaving us in the apartment alone.
Simone’s eyes were wide. ‘That’s why Daddy carries his sword everywhere. Bad people.’
‘Sword?’ I said.
She pointed towards the sword on its clips next to the front door.
I jerked back with shock. What was he doing running around with a sword in his hand? And why the hell hadn’t I paid the sword any attention before? I had been working part-time there for six months, and I hadn’t thought to question why my employer needed to carry around a sword.
‘Why does he need a sword, Simone?’ I said. ‘Does he work with the movie studios? Or teach martial arts?’
‘Arts.’ Simone shrugged. ‘Stuff. Daddy’s stuff.’
I suddenly realised that I had no idea how Mr Chen made his money, and he was obviously extremely wealthy. He could be involved in organised crime. He didn’t seem like that sort of person to me, but I had to wonder.
‘What kind of stuff does Daddy do?’
Before Simone could answer, the dining room door opened and Leo came out, looking cowed and miserable. He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Your turn, Emma. Simone can go to Monica for a bath.’
‘I want Emma to bath me!’ Simone yelled.
‘I have to go and talk to your daddy about working full-time, remember?’
‘Ooh, yes.’ She pushed me towards the dining room. ‘Go and talk to him.’
Mr Chen had tied back his long hair and was checking the mail as he ate a bowl of noodles.
‘Sit, Miss Donahoe.’ He pushed his ho fan noodles aside.
‘Eat,’ I said. ‘You look starving.’
He smiled and his eyes wrinkled up. ‘No, no, it can wait. Full-time. Yes or no?’
‘You haven’t said how much you’ll pay me or what hours I’ll be working, Mr Chen. I can’t decide until you tell me.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right. How about six days a week, live-in, full-time? Sunday off – that’s Monica’s and Leo’s day off. I can probably give you a few extra days off a month as well. Five thousand US a month.’
I fell back slightly. ‘Five thousand US?’
He nodded. ‘I think it’s a generous offer. Room and board as well. Is that acceptable?’
Sixty thousand US a year to be a nanny? I studied him. He seemed genuine. I’d worked for him for six months and he’d been perfectly honourable in his dealings. There was just one question I needed answered.
‘Mr Chen,’ I said, then finished the question in a rush, ‘are you involved in anything illegal?’
He stared at me, his expression completely blank.
‘I mean, is the ICAC likely to burst in with guns and drag you away?’
He stared at me a little longer, then snapped out of it. ‘Nothing I am involved in is illegal. The ICAC could not possibly be interested in me. All of my activities are perfectly legal. I would never put Simone’s happiness in danger.’
‘Why do you have a bodyguard then?’
He watched me silently for a while, then said, ‘Leo protects Simone.’
‘Are there people after you?’
His eyes were very intense. ‘I am powerful. That makes me a target. You don’t need to worry – you will never be in danger if you work for me.’
‘Is that why you carry a sword around? Don’t the police stop you?’
‘I never carry the sword in the street. It stays in the car when I go out.’
I leaned over the dining table. ‘What do you do for a living, Mr Chen?’
His dark eyes looked straight into mine. ‘I will tell you after you’ve worked here for a while. If you decide to stay.’
‘Why wouldn’t I decide to stay?’
He smoothly avoided the question. ‘Will you take the job, Miss Donahoe?’
I hesitated. Sixty thousand US dollars a year, a delightful little girl and a handsome mystery man. How could I say no? ‘Yes.’
He smiled, full of warmth and good humour. ‘When can you start?’
‘I could start tomorrow, but I’d need to sort out my rent first. Oh,’ I said as I remembered, ‘I have to give Miss Kwok two weeks’ notice.’
He waved it away. ‘I know Kitty Kwok. She gave me your number in the first place. I’ll sort it out with her, and I’ll fix it up with your flatmate. You can move in tomorrow if you like. You can live in?’
‘Sure.’
He rose and held out his hand, and I shook it. He had surprisingly cool hands, with hard calluses on his fingers. ‘Leo will help you move your belongings tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Welcome aboard.’
I shook my head as I went down the hall to say goodnight to Simone. Done it again. Two snap decisions in one day. That was a new record, even for me.
CHAPTER TWO
It took me more than an hour on crowded MTR and KCR trains to make it home to Sha Tin. I stopped at the shopping mall under our apartment block to grab some takeout, and when I was home I sat at our tiny four-seater table and pulled the foam box out of the plastic bag. ‘Louise, come and sit down,’ I called. ‘I have news.’ Louise poked her head around the doorway from our minuscule kitchen. ‘Wait till the water boils.’
‘Okay.’ I used the plastic cutlery provided by the fast-food place to attack the baked pork chop on its bed of rice.
Louise came out of the kitchen with a mug of coffee and sat across from me. Her blue eyes sparkled under her short, spiky blonde hair. She was about the same height as me, and Australian like me, but the resemblance ended there. She was thin, blonde, bony and covered in freckles; I was soft and round and not nearly as good-looking. People noticed her and ignored me, and that suited me just fine.
She gestured towards the takeaway box. ‘Where’s mine?’
‘You starve,’ I said. ‘Where’s my tea?’
‘You die of thirst,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m moving in with Mr Chen,’ I said. ‘I’ll be full-time–’
I didn’t have a chance to finish because she flew to her feet and yelled with delight. ‘Way to go, Emma!’
I stared at her.
‘That hunky guy on the Peak? The Chinese widower? The really rich one? What a catch!’
I sighed with exasperation. ‘Full-time, live-in nanny.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said suggestively. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘That’s all it is, Louise. Nanny. That’s all.’
She sat down again. ‘Geez, Emma, can’t you do better than that? You have a freaking degree, girl. Go out and work for a bank or something.’
‘What, like you?’
‘Yeah, like me. I meet heaps of guys in the bank. Lots of traders from Europe. Really cute. What about Miss Kwok?’
‘I already resigned from the kindergarten.’
‘You could do a lot better than being a nanny, Emma. I’m on nearly twenty thousand a month.’
‘I’ll be on five thousand US a month. That’s nearly forty thousand Hong Kong.’
Her mouth dropped open.
‘I’ll be moving out tomorrow,’ I went on.
She shook her head. ‘Okay. Tell me all about it. Will it be just you and him? There is some hope for you, isn’t there?’
‘Me, the bodyguard, Monica the domestic helper, and of course Simone, his daughter.’
‘Bodyguard? Is he cute?’
‘God, Louise, is that all you think about? Leo’s a big black American, lovely guy. But I don’t think he’s into chicks.’
Her eyebrows creased. ‘Wait a minute. Leo, you said? Big American guy? Black?’
‘You know him?’
‘Not personally, but I’ve seen him at the Last Hurrah. Really popular. Knows everybody.’
‘What the hell were you doing at the Hurrah?’ I demanded. ‘You won’t find a date there, none of them are into chicks.’
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to have a quiet drink in a place you won’t be hit on. Scenery’s always good, too.’
‘That sounds like fun. Let me know next time you’re going.’
‘We’ll still go out on the town together, right?’ She was sounding concerned. ‘I mean, we’re going for that Thai meal with April tomorrow night. We can still go out, can’t we?’
‘I don’t think Mr Chen will stop me,’ I said. ‘If he tries to he’ll get a piece of my mind.’
‘I believe it.’ She leaned back. ‘You’ll need to keep paying your half of the rent until I find a new flatmate. But on your salary that won’t be a problem.’
‘I’ll make sure you don’t lose out,’ I said. ‘He said he’ll look after you anyway.’
‘He’d better,’ she growled. Then her face lit up. ‘Way to go, Emma. What a catch.’
‘Nothing there.’
‘Yeah, right. You haven’t stopped talking about this gorgeous man with the long hair since you started working for him.’
I sighed. ‘Yeah, I know, but he’s the employer. Not going to happen. I’m more professional than that.’
‘Geez, you’re cold-blooded.’
‘I wish you people would stop saying that.’
The next morning I sat in the front of the car alongside Leo, who drove me and my stuff up to the Peak in Mr Chen’s monstrous black Mercedes.
‘How long have you worked for Mr Chen?’ I said, making conversation.
‘About six years,’ Leo said, ‘but I worked for Mrs Chen before that.’
‘You always been a bodyguard?’
He glanced at me, then turned back to the road. ‘Done some other things.’
‘Like what?’
He sighed. Then he obviously decided to tell me. ‘In the Navy for a while. Bouncer for a while, but that was really tough, I didn’t like it. Sorta fell into the bodyguard business by accident.’
‘That was nice, what Mr Chen did for Louise. He didn’t need to pay her out for the rest of the year like that.’
‘It was the least we could do, hiring you and having you move out so quickly.’
‘We? You and Mr Chen?’
He glanced away from the road to me. Then grinned as he looked back at the road. ‘Absolutely not.’
I stared incredulously at him and his grin widened.
‘ Absolutely not,’ he emphasised, without looking away from the road. ‘Not Mr Chen.’ He glanced at me again, then turned back to the road. ‘Not Mr Chen.’
‘Okay, okay.’ All right, not Mr Chen.
He was still grinning as he shook his head. He deliberately changed the subject. ‘How long have you been an English teacher?’
‘About four years. I just sorta fell into it when I arrived in Hong Kong,’ I said, intentionally echoing him. ‘Very lucrative, easy work, hours aren’t very long.’
He nodded. ‘Seems to be the way with most people here. Just find themselves doing something after they arrive. Where you from originally?’
‘Australia.’
‘Oh. I hear it’s nice there.’
‘Nice does not begin to describe it,’ I said with feeling. ‘You have no idea. You’ve obviously never been there.’
‘Nope.’
‘What does Mr Chen do for a living?’
Leo watched the road silently.
‘Leo, what does Mr Chen do for a living?’
He grinned at the road. ‘You’ll have to ask him that. I’m just the driver.’
‘Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Sheba.’
The minute I had Mr Chen pinned down I would ask him. I spent a few quiet moments enjoying the delightful concept of having Mr John Chen pinned down. And then I pulled myself together. Keep it professional, Emma.
Leo froze and his eyes glazed over. He continued to drive, but appeared not to be paying any attention to the road.
‘Are you okay, Leo?’
He raised one hand to stop me, still with his eyes unfocused. Then he snapped back and quickly poked the hands-free earpiece for his mobile phone into his ear.
The phone rang and he pressed the button and spoke without hesitation. ‘We’ll be coming into the tunnel very soon, we’re in Kowloon City. I think it’ll be about another thirty, forty minutes, then you can have it, sir. Is that all right? Should I hurry?’
He nodded, listening, then said ‘Sir,’ and hung up.
‘Mr Chen wants the car?’ I said.
Leo glanced at me. ‘Yes. But he’ll wait, no great rush.’
‘So he only has one car?’
‘Yeah, we only need one. There’s only four of us: him, me, Simone and Monica. Most of his staff make their own way. I drive Simone out for her lessons and I take Monica to the market.’ He glanced away from the road and became more serious. ‘After you’ve moved your stuff up there, we’ll go through Simone’s routine. She has lessons outside, and quite a few at home as well, and you’ll be in charge of making sure she gets to them on time.’
‘You’ll need to show me where everything is, as well,’ I said. ‘And make sure you give me a set of keys.’
Leo nodded. ‘Sure. Forgot about that. Tell me if I miss anything, okay?’
‘Okay, Leo.’
Mr Chen’s apartment building was very high on the Peak, much higher than the Peak Tower. When Leo reached the gates at the end of the overgrown drive they swung open and the security guards waved him in.
The building was eleven floors, with two enormous flats to a floor. It wasn’t new, and pollution had turned the light brown tiles dingy grey with patches of mould from the damp. Hong Kong’s clouds come down very low sometimes, swathing the Peak in moisture that makes everything dripping wet both summer and winter.
The view from the building was spectacular. One side overlooked Hong Kong Harbour, which was packed with highrises on both the Hong Kong Island and Kowloon sides. The other side of the building faced south, with a view over the crammed boats in Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter to the ocean stretching beyond.
An open car park surrounded the entrance lobby on the ground floor. Parked cars covered most of the land around the building. Every second one was a huge Mercedes; there were a couple of monstrous Rolls-Royce and a few exotic, extremely expensive European sports cars.
Leo parked the car, and helped me carry my boxes up in the lift to Mr Chen’s apartment.
‘How many square feet is this apartment, anyway?’ I said when we reached the front door.
‘Big enough.’
The front door was a standard wooden one, but as usual in Hong Kong it had a large steel gate in front of it. Leo entered the code for the security gate into the pad next to the wall and opened it outwards. He unlocked the deadbolt on the wooden door and held it open for me.
We kicked off our shoes at the entrance, then Leo led me down the main hall and turned right. He passed the first door and opened the second on the left. ‘This is your room.’
I went in and stopped dead. It wasn’t a room, it was a suite. The huge rectangular space had been divided in two: the first part was a living room with a comfortable leather couch, a small television and a desk with a computer. Further in, the bedroom had a trim modern double bed and a door on each side.
Leo lowered the box he was carrying. He opened one of the doors. ‘This connects with Simone’s room.’ He closed the door and went to the other one. ‘Your bathroom.’
‘I get my own bathroom?’
‘Yep. Anything you need, tell me.’
I looked around. ‘This is terrific. I wasn’t expecting anything as good as this.’ The large picture window overlooked Hong Kong Harbour and the highrises of Kowloon beyond. ‘What a view.’
‘Let me show you around,’ Leo said, ‘and then we’ll get the rest of the boxes.’
‘Thanks.’
He took me out to the hallway, which ran the full width of the apartment, and pointed to the doors on the same side as my room. ‘Mr Chen’s bedroom. Mine. Simone’s. You.’
I nodded.
‘All of ours are the same size; Mr Chen’s is slightly larger,’ he said. He opened the door opposite. ‘This is the music room.’ The room had a piano, a table holding a Chinese musical instrument called a guzheng, which was something like a zither, and a black electric guitar in one corner. ‘Next to the music room, the TV room. The surround sound is really good. You can use it if nobody else is.’
He stopped at the door next to my bedroom and hesitated.
‘What’s in there?’ I said.
‘You might as well know, you’ll be living here. Here goes.’ He opened the door.
At first I thought it was a dance studio. Soft white mats completely covered the floor. One wall was mirrors from the floor to the ceiling.
And then I saw the other wall. A fearsome array of martial arts weapons sat on racks on the floor and hung off hooks on the wall. Swords, staves, chucks, knives, axes, everything.
‘Holy shit,’ I said softly.
Leo crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘Use language like that in front of Mr Chen and you’ll be out the door before you know it.’
I wandered closer to the weapons. I bent to lift a sword from the rack but Leo put his hand on my wrist to stop me. ‘Don’t touch anything. All of these are extremely sharp and you could easily get hurt. Don’t come in here if the door is closed, or you could be seriously injured,’ he said. ‘Stay out. Okay?’
I nodded. ‘Whatever you say.’
He took my elbow and gently led me out, closing the door behind us. He gestured towards the end of the hall. ‘Mr Chen sometimes has…’ he hesitated, searching for the right word ‘ people come here to learn from him. They stay in two rooms at the end of the hall there. Don’t try to talk to them, they are here to…ah, learn and not socialise. So don’t talk to them, okay?’
I shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
He glowered down at me. ‘I mean it.’
‘I won’t talk to them.’
‘Good.’
He led me back up the hall to the main corridor. ‘Linen closet and powder room on the corner.’ He gestured to the doors on the left, across the hall from the large living room with its twin cream couches and picture windows overlooking the spectacular South side of Hong Kong Island. ‘Mr Chen’s…’ He hesitated again. ‘Study.’
‘Disaster area,’ I said, looking through the open door. He made a soft sound of amusement. ‘I’ve seen some messy offices, Leo, but his absolutely has to win first prize.’
‘I’ll tell him you said that. Dining room next, then the kitchen.’ He took me into the kitchen, past Monica who was cutting up some vegetables on the counter. He led me to the back. ‘Monica’s room’s in the back here. Next to it, the storeroom.’
I went into the storeroom and looked around. Most of the stuff seemed to be poles covered in cloth. An enormous glass jar, easily up to my waist, sat in the corner. It appeared to be full of large black beads, like olives, and had a complicated metal seal. I bent to study it, curious.
‘Don’t touch that!’ Leo grabbed my arm and pulled me away. ‘Don’t ever go near that. If you open it, it could kill you.’ He released my arm. ‘Don’t ever go anywhere near that.’
‘What the hell’s it doing here if it’s toxic?’ I said. ‘Simone could get into it.’
‘She knows better, and now so do you,’ he said. ‘Stay away.’
‘What is it? It looks like preserved fruit.’
‘I think you’ve seen enough.’ He closed the door behind us after we went out of the storeroom. ‘We’ll bring up the rest of your boxes, and then, if you don’t mind, we’ll go through Simone’s schedule. She’s a very busy little girl.’
‘Sure.’
After dropping the boxes in my room, Leo led me into the dining room. It had a round rosewood twelve-seater table and a rosewood side table. A couple of fluid ink paintings adorned the walls.
He went out and came back with a large folder bulging with coloured paper. He thumped it onto the table between us. ‘Thank God you’re handling this now – this schedule is enough to drive anybody crazy.’
He opened the folder and handed me the papers one at a time. ‘Chinese lessons. Violin. Piano.’ He put one paper aside. ‘Not singing any more. You’re here full-time, so no English either.’ He raised a pink piece of paper and studied it, expressionless. ‘Ballet. Damn.’
‘What?’
He put the paper on the table, then ran his hand over his bald head, finally dropping his hand onto the table with a slap. ‘Please don’t be too freaked out by this, Emma.’
‘Freaked out?’
‘Ballet is in Central. You’ve worked out that I’m a bodyguard. Okay. I’ll take you down in the car and wait. You are not to take her anywhere without either me or Mr Chen along. It’s because of who her dad is.’
‘Who is he?’
Leo smiled slightly. ‘Don’t take her on public transport. She must be driven by me or Mr Chen, and one of us must be with her at all times to guard her. I know it sounds strange, but her safety is paramount.’
‘Who’s after her?’
Leo pushed the papers over to me. ‘And that’s all. Oh,’ he said, suddenly remembering, ‘she goes out to Lo Wu on Saturday mornings to ride a pony. Any questions?’
I studied the huge stack of papers on the table. ‘I thought he was paying me well. Now I think he’s not paying me enough.’
‘Don’t worry, as long as one of us is with you, you’ll be perfectly safe.’
‘Tell me, Leo.’
‘Right now, just settle in, get the feel for the job. I’ll tell you more later.’
‘Promise?’
He smiled. ‘Promise. Mr Chen teaches her Wu shu as well – he’ll tell you when they have a session. Drop her off in the training room, come back half an hour later…easy.’
‘What’s Wu shu?’
‘Martial arts. Kung fu. Ask her to show you; she’s really cute.’
‘It’s normal for children to learn off their parents, isn’t it?’
‘If there’s a family tradition, then it’s absolutely expected. He teaches me too.’
‘Mr Chen learnt from his father?’
‘What an interesting idea,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think so.’
‘Leo?’ I tapped on his bedroom door.
‘Come on in, Emma.’
Leo sat at his desk reading a website on his computer.
I raised the pile of books. ‘Someone left these on the desk in my room.’
‘Oh.’ He spun in his chair to face me. ‘The last nanny must have left them there. You can have them if you want.’
‘This one looks valuable,’ I said, indicating the large illustrated compendium of Chinese gods.
He shrugged. ‘Keep ’em.’
I shrugged as well. ‘Okay. I’m interested in Chinese mythology, anyway. I go with my friend April when she has festival stuff to do, it’s really interesting.’
That caught his attention. ‘You’re interested in the Chinese gods?’
‘Yeah.’ I raised the books again. ‘This is a good collection. I borrowed some of these from the library before.’
He turned back to his computer. ‘Definitely keep them then. They’ll be useful.’
‘How come all the furniture’s new? Even though there was someone there before?’
‘Just is,’ Leo said.
I shrugged again. ‘Whatever.’
When I returned to my room I put the books on the desk and did an internet search on John Chen. It was a very common name and produced more than a million hits. When I narrowed it with his address, ‘One Black Road, Peak’, I found a news story in the English newspaper, a translation of an article in one of the Chinese tabloids. Apparently Mr Chen’s building was widely considered to be haunted because many people had seen dragons flying around the top floor. The reporter had asked the opinion of a number of local experts in the supernatural. Three said it was because the building was cursed; two said it was because the building had exceptionally good luck; and one said it was the spirit of a dragon that had died when the building was constructed.
I shrugged, and opened the large compendium of Chinese gods. It was a good one; the introduction explained how Chinese mythology was a mishmash of Confucian precepts, Taoist alchemy and Buddhist philosophy. All three religions existed side by side in Chinese society (although Confucianism was widely regarded as a set of social rules rather than a true religion). Confucianism had sets of gods that were rather like saints: deified humans. Buddhism taught reincarnation and karma, and the eternal search for freedom of the soul and attainment of Nirvana; but there were also Buddhist gods who returned to Earth to help people attain Nirvana themselves.
I found Taoism the most interesting. Taoism’s basic principle was similar to Buddhism, in the search for the Tao, or the Way, and attainment of Immortality, something similar to Nirvana. But Taoism also taught a variety of ways to gain Immortality, including physical and elemental alchemy and magic.
I put the book down and returned to unpacking the last of my stuff from the boxes. I didn’t really have much to show for my four years in Hong Kong; I’d never had space to store very much in any of the places I’d lived. But it looked as though my life had taken a turn for the better: a tremendously attractive employer and his daughter, who was a delight to be with.
CHAPTER THREE
Later in the afternoon the door slammed and Simone yelled, ‘Is Emma here?’
I went out to find them taking their shoes off at the front door, Simone and Mr Chen together. He hadn’t taken his sword, he’d left it on its hooks near the front door. Simone carefully put her little shoes in the shoe cupboard, then did the same for her father. He watched her with delight, then smiled at me. He looked right into my eyes, and for a split second those gorgeous dark eyes hypnotised me; then Simone charged to tackle me, nearly knocking me over.
‘Hello, Emma!’ she yelled. ‘Are you here all the time now?’
I bent and picked her up, warm with pleasure at the thought of being full-time with her. ‘Yes, sweetheart, I’m all yours.’
She threw her little arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. Then she rested her forehead against mine and looked seriously into my eyes. ‘Good.’
She wriggled out of my arms and took my hand. ‘Have you seen everything?’
‘Yes I have, Simone. Leo showed me around.’
She screwed up her face. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Dinner will be soon, Simone, don’t ruin your appetite,’ Mr Chen said from the doorway where he was watching us with amusement. ‘Did Leo tell you about meals, Miss Donahoe?’
‘No, sir.’
‘When I am home at dinner time, we’ll have a family dinner together – me and Simone, you and Leo. We can discuss what we’ve done during the day. Is that acceptable?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Will I be able to go out occasionally? I’m supposed to be having dinner with some friends this evening. I usually go out on Saturday night.’
‘Of course. We don’t want to impinge too much on your private life. If you want to have dinner with someone outside, of course, go.’
Louise didn’t bring a guy along for me for a change. She seemed to know every unattached male in Hong Kong and constantly set me up. Sometimes it worked and I would spend a few months in a pleasant casual relationship; sometimes it didn’t and I was left to my own devices. Either way suited me just fine. I couldn’t keep a relationship in Hong Kong for long anyway; people were always coming and going.
We all drank far too much and stayed well past our welcome in the Thai restaurant in Wan Chai, but we continued to order food so the staff tolerated us.
‘You should go and see Miss Kwok,’ April said. ‘You should have talked to me if you were unhappy there. She’s very upset that you left.’
‘Of course she’s upset.’ I sipped my beer. ‘She’ll lose half the kids without me working there.’
Louise’s blue eyes sparkled. ‘Don’t go back to working for that bitch, Emma. You can do better.’
April was offended. ‘Don’t be mean. Miss Kwok is a nice person. She’s very rich; you should respect her.’
‘You’re just saying that because your fiancé’s related to her,’ Louise said. ‘She doesn’t even pay you to fix the computers at the kindergarten.’
‘How is Andy anyway?’ I said, attempting to change the subject.
‘The wedding’s all planned – we’ll have it with my family in Sydney.’ April was obviously happy. ‘I’m looking forward to it. My family is so pleased. Andy’s family are very wealthy. Very prestigious.’
‘God,’ Louise said under her breath.
‘When is it?’ I tried to appear interested, but I agreed with Louise. Andy was always perfectly polite to us but there was something about him that I just didn’t like.
‘Next month.’ April leaned back and smiled with satisfaction. ‘It was easy to get a ceremony on a good day in Australia. The date will be very auspicious.’
‘God,’ Louise whispered again.
April didn’t seem to hear her. ‘I’m going to the temple tomorrow to get the…’ she hesitated, searching for the English word, ‘blessing from the ancestors.’
‘Which temple?’ I said, interested.
‘The one in Pokfulam.’
‘The one in the cemetery?’ Louise said.
April nodded.
‘Can I come along and have a look?’ I said.
April shrugged. ‘Sure. Not much to see, though, just tablets. Ancestors and stuff.’
‘What time?’
‘After yum cha. About twelve, one.’
‘Can I meet you there?’
April nodded, then leaned forward and rapped her fingertips on the table. ‘You should go back to Miss Kwok, Emma. She says she needs you at the kindergarten. Go ask the fortune sticks. They’ll tell you that you should stay with her.’
‘I already have a new job.’
‘But you only resigned yesterday,’ April said.
‘She moved out today,’ Louise said. ‘Fastest damn thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘You’ll be live-in?’ April said.
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Live-in nanny.’
‘You can do better than that, Emma. Go back to Miss Kwok.’
‘You kidding?’ Louise said. ‘Nearly forty thousand a month, living with this gorgeous rich dude? I’d do it in a second.’
‘Strictly professional.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Forty thousand a month?’ April said, shocked. ‘Yep,’ Louise said.
April scowled. ‘Everybody will think that you are more than nanny if he pays you that much.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said.
‘Geez, you’re definitely the most cold-blooded chick I’ve ever met, Emma,’ Louise said. ‘Don’t even care.’
‘Don’t be mean,’ April said. ‘Emma is a lovely person.’
I raised my beer. ‘Oh, no, April, I think I’m the most cold-blooded chick I’ve ever met too.’
Louise snorted with amusement. ‘Sure you are. Look at how you adore his little girl. You have a soft spot for kids, Emma, don’t deny it.’
‘This one is special,’ I said, studying my beer. ‘She always worries about everybody else. She was really concerned that other children were missing out because I was spending all my time with her. She felt guilty about hogging me.’
‘Yeah, she’s a perfect little angel.’
‘In this case, I think she really is.’
It was very late when I arrived back at the apartment building on the Peak. I hopped out of the taxi and it reversed away down the drive. I walked up to the gates, waved to the security guards and they opened the pedestrian gate for me.
I saw the lights and turned. Another taxi pulled up. A smart-looking young European stepped out of the car, and Leo came out the other side. Leo stopped when he saw me, then walked up the drive to the gates.
I held the gate open for them. Leo didn’t say anything, just nodded to me and went through.
‘Hi, I’m Emma, a friend of Leo’s,’ I said to the young man.
‘Hello.’ He held his hand out and I shook it. He was quite good-looking, tall, blond and slender. Looked to be in his mid-thirties, about the same age as Leo. He had a definite American accent. ‘Rob.’
Leo walked in front of us and opened the ground-floor door to the lift lobby.
We all entered the lift together.
‘You live here too?’ Rob said.
‘Yep, I’m the nanny.’
Leo gazed at the numbers above the lift door without saying a word.
‘It’s really humid,’ Rob said.
‘Yeah. Summer’s here, all right.’
‘You been in Hong Kong long?’ Rob said.
‘About four years,’ I said. ‘But I never get used to the humidity in the summer.’
‘Are you English?’
‘No, Australian.’
The lift doors opened and the three of us entered the lobby of the eleventh floor. Leo unlocked the gate and opened the front door for us. We went in and removed our shoes at the front entrance, then walked together down the hall towards the bedrooms.
I stopped at my bedroom door. ‘Nice to meet you, Rob. Night, Leo.’
Rob nodded and smiled, and followed Leo to his room. Leo still didn’t say a word.
I went into my room, carefully closed the door, and collapsed onto my bed laughing.
‘Emma?’
I stopped laughing. I’d woken Simone.
I opened the door between our bedrooms a crack. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I woke you up.’
Simone sat up in her bed, her face swollen with sleep and her honey-coloured hair tangled around her head. ‘Oh. Okay. Can you sit with me while I go back to sleep?’
I slipped in and sat next to her on the bed. ‘Did you have a nightmare?’
Simone slid under the covers and rolled onto her side. ‘Leo brought his boyfriend home again,’ she said. ‘He’s funny.’
I rubbed her back under the covers.
‘I’m glad he has someone to love,’ she said, her voice sleepy. ‘It makes him happy.’
‘I’m glad too,’ I said softly.
‘Bad people take away the people you love.’ She curled up into a ball. ‘I hate the bad people.’
‘I’m here,’ I said softly, at a loss. I wondered what had happened to her mother. All I knew was that she had died. I opened my mouth to ask and closed it again.
Simone sighed under the covers. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no bad people? If nobody had to be scared of them any more? If Daddy didn’t have to stay here and get hurt all the time to look after me, if he could go back to his Mountain and be happy, like he used to? Before–’ She choked it off, then her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Before the bad people came. We had a lot of fun. He did lots of secret stuff all the time, and we laughed.’
‘What secret stuff?’
‘You have to ask Daddy. I’m not allowed to tell you.’ Her voice filled with her cheeky smile. ‘Both Leo and Daddy said I’m not allowed to tell you, so you have to ask. Ask them about the secret stuff, it’s really fun.’ Then her voice saddened again. ‘I just wish we could have the secret stuff, and all of us together again, and no more bad people…and…’
She sighed and curled up tighter. ‘Ask Daddy. I’ll be okay now, Emma, you go to sleep. I’m sorry I made you come in. Go to sleep, and we’ll have fun tomorrow, you and me. I’m glad you came to look after me. We’ll have fun.’
‘Yes, we will,’ I said, still stroking the covers. ‘I can stay here until you fall asleep.’
‘Ask Daddy,’ she said, almost a whisper, then her breathing softened and deepened into sleep.
A taxi pulled into the lay-by outside the temple the next afternoon and April stepped out holding a large plastic shopping bag. She saw me and waved.
‘What’s in the bag?’ I said.
‘Stuff for the ancestors. So they bless my marriage and make it good. I’ll put it in front of the tablets.’
‘The ancestral tablets?’
She nodded a reply.
I stopped at the front gate to the temple and grinned. The wrought-iron fence and gate had swastikas worked into the metalwork. They were the reverse direction from the Nazi swastika, but still recognisable, picked out in red paint against the black fence.
I pointed at one. ‘In the West, that’s a symbol of Nazi Germany and sort of…’ I searched for the word. ‘Bad.’
April looked at the fence, bewildered. ‘What is?’
I outlined the swastika on the gate with my finger. ‘This symbol.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s just good luck.’
‘Do you know anything about the Nazi regime in Germany? Hitler?’
She hesitated, thinking, then said, ‘Hitler was a great European General, right? He conquered most of Europe.’
I suppressed the laugh. ‘That’s one way of describing him. He tried to kill a whole race of people.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that. We didn’t do much European history in school.’
‘Didn’t you go to school in Australia?’
‘No, I went to Australia to study IT at university, then got citizenship, then took my parents out there after Tiananmen.’
She pressed the intercom button next to the gate and it unlocked for us. We went inside.
The temple sat on top of the Pokfulam hill, overlooking the steeply terraced cemetery that led down to the sea below us. A few highrises were scattered at the base of the hill, mostly inhabited by expatriates who didn’t care about the bad fung shui of living near the cemetery.
April led me past the main hall and towards the steps down to the tablet rooms.
‘What’s in the main hall?’ I said, pointing towards three huge statues inside.
‘The Three Big Gods,’ April said. ‘You know, the gods in charge of everything.’
‘This is a Taoist temple, right?’
She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Just a temple.’
‘But the Three Big Gods are Taoist?’
‘I don’t know,’ April said. ‘They’re just the big Gods, but they’re different from the Buddha, so I suppose they are.’ She moved closer and whispered, ‘It’s all just old people’s superstition anyway, but it’s important to worship the ancestors, otherwise they get mad at you and you get bad luck. And I want good luck for my marriage.’
We went down the steep steps to the tablet rooms at the back of the temple. Dark green and brown mosaic tiles covered the floor and walls, with a bare painted concrete ceiling. A family sat on grimy vinyl couches to one side, folding squares of gold paper into the shape of ancient gold bars and stuffing them into paper sacks.
‘Funeral,’ April whispered, and passed the people without glancing at them again.
The rest of the offerings were ready for the funeral in the main hall of the tablet rooms. A house stood in the middle of the hall, about two metres high, made of flimsy bamboo bracing and covered with paper. It had three storeys, with tiny air conditioners in the windows and a mah jong table in one room. A male and a female servant and a guard dog stood in the front garden. Next to the house was a Mercedes, with a driver made of paper, and stacked next to the car was a variety of day-to-day necessities, all made out of paper: a portable stereo, a mobile phone, clothes, a television, a tea set with a vacuum flask for the hot water, and more servants. The whole lot was waiting for the main funeral ceremony, when it would be thrown into the furnace in the garden next to the tablet rooms and burned. The essence would travel to heaven for the use of the dead relative.
April moved to the next room. The walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets, with rows upon rows of ancestral tablets inside, rising all the way to the ceiling. There must have been a thousand of them. One wall had larger tablets for the more wealthy, but April’s ancestors inhabited one side cabinet and were smaller. The tablets were each about ten centimetres high and five wide, made of red plastic. The name of the ancestor was in raised lettering picked out in gold.
A large laminated dining table sat in front of the tablets, with an incense burner holding a stick of incense and a red plastic plate of oranges on it. The room smelled strongly of incense, and the ceiling was black with smoke.
While April fiddled around placing plates of oranges, apples and roast pork and chicken on the table, I wandered around the temple, carefully avoiding the grieving family and their paper-folding.
Another table with a cabinet above it stood next to one of the temple’s peeling mouldy walls, under a heavily barred window. The table and cabinet were packed full of statues of gods, many of them an identical statue of a woman in flowing robes carrying an urn.
A small elderly man, one of the temple attendants, approached me, grinning broadly. They obviously didn’t get many Westerners in this temple, it wasn’t on the main tourist route.
‘Who is this?’ I said, pointing at the goddess statue.
He shook his head, still grinning. No English. I asked in Cantonese, ‘Nidi hai binguo?’ and he nodded. ‘Kwan Yin.’
‘Ah, m’goi,’ I thanked him. Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, a Bodhisattva of the Buddhist faith who had attained Nirvana and then returned to Earth to help others achieve the same goal. The book in my room was good: its picture of Kwan Yin was almost identical to the statue.
The attendant pointed to a fierce-looking, red-faced god holding a halberd, a broadsword blade on the end of a pole. ‘Gwun Gong.’
I nodded, recognising the statue. The God of Justice was worshipped throughout Hong Kong, with altars in shops and restaurants as a protector against demons and bad luck.
Then I saw a statue in the corner whose image resonated with me, making me shiver. It was a small statue of a middle-aged man with long wild hair and black robes. He held a sword in his hand, ready for battle, and his bare feet rested on a snake and a turtle. ‘Nidi binguo?’
The attendant nodded wisely. ‘Pak Tai.’
‘On Cheung Chau?’ I asked, naming the outlying island that had a temple devoted to Pak Tai and was a popular tourist destination.
He nodded, grinning widely.
‘M’goi sai.’
‘M’hai,’ he said, and wandered off.
I studied the statue for a while, wondering why it made me feel a prickle at the back of my neck. It was simply decorated in black, unlike many of the Kwan Yin statues which were awkwardly splashed with a variety of garish colours and picked out in gold. I shrugged. I’d look him up in the book later.
When I returned to April she had finished kneeling on the cushion provided and bowing to her ancestors with the incense in her hands, and was putting the food back into her bag.
‘Do you know anything about Pak Tai?’ I said.
‘He has a temple on Cheung Chau,’ she said.
‘What else?’
She shrugged. ‘I think he has something to do with water, or rain, or something. Not sure. Let’s go to Central for afternoon tea.’
‘Sure.’
As we walked back through the temple’s courtyard I noticed a small concave mirror above the main entrance, with the eight Pa Kua symbols around it in a red octagonal frame. Demons couldn’t stand to see their own reflection, so the mirror was a barrier to them approaching the temple. The large screen just inside the door of the temple was another demon barrier: demons were well known to be unable to turn corners and could only move in straight lines.
‘Kwan Yin is a Buddhist icon. Why’s she in a Taoist temple?’ I asked April as we waited at the taxi rank for a passing cab.
‘She looks after people. If you buy a statue of her and donate it to the temple, you get good luck,’ April said.
‘Old people’s superstition?’ I said playfully, teasing.
She shrugged again. ‘Can’t hurt to get a little extra good luck.’
After dinner, back in my room I checked the Chinese gods compendium for Pak Tai and was referred to H’suantian Shangdi. Pak Tai was his name in Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong and Southern China. In Northern China and in the standard Mainland dialect of Putonghua, he was called Xuan Tian Shang Di, the Supreme Emperor of the Dark Northern Heavens. There were a variety of legends about him, many of them conflicting, but he was credited with controlling weather and destroying demons, and he was also the Supreme Warrior and God of Martial Arts.
A fascinating deity. The book described his exploits at length; apparently one of the Chinese classics of literature was his story, how he had lived through more than a hundred incarnations before achieving Nirvana and being promoted to Heavenly Emperor.
I could see why he resonated with me now. The similarities between him and Mr Chen were obvious. Both in black, both with long hair, both involved with martial arts. Mr Chen probably took Xuan Tian as a role model to the point of making his appearance similar. I wondered if I should be concerned about this obvious piece of eccentricity, but Mr Chen was too delightful a person to let it worry me too much. He was as generous and caring as his daughter, and both of them were great fun to be with.
Simone squealed and water splashed in her bathroom next to my room. I closed the book. I hadn’t even heard them come back. I wanted to go in and see them, maybe help with Simone’s bath and putting her to bed. They were in there together, father and daughter, both of them adorable.
Then I shook my head. Keep it professional, Emma, and besides, it’s Sunday, the only day they can have some private time together without the rest of us hanging around.
I opened the book again to find out more about Xuan Tian Shang Di. Maybe there was information about him on the net as well.
CHAPTER FOUR
Simone was still sleeping when I headed to the kitchen for breakfast on Monday morning. Monica was busily frying eggs for Leo as he sat at the small kitchen table nursing his coffee. He didn’t look up from his coffee as I walked in, but the expression on his face was priceless.
I found a mug in the cupboard and poured myself a cup of tea from the urn on the kitchen bench. ‘Can I make you anything, Miss Donahoe?’ Monica said. ‘Just Emma, Monica, and I can make my own toast, thanks. Does Mr Chen have peanut butter?’
‘Yeah, in the pantry,’ Leo mumbled into his coffee. ‘But no bread, nobody eats bread here. Monica will have to buy it for you.’
‘I’ll buy you bread, Emma,’ Monica said. ‘Milk bread?’
‘No, wholemeal if you can get it, please.’
Monica nodded. ‘I’ll see if I can find it in the Western supermarket when I buy food for Leo.’
‘Yeah, Leo has exotic tastes,’ I said, then sat at the table next to him and grinned. He looked as if he’d like to climb into his coffee cup. ‘Does Mr Chen know about your nocturnal activities?’ I asked.
He studied his coffee carefully. ‘He’s caught me too.’
‘And he’s okay with it?’ Sometimes Chinese tradition wasn’t very accepting.
‘Yeah, he’s okay.’ He smiled up at me. ‘Actually, he’s great.’
‘Does Rob have a brother?’
Leo shoved me playfully. Then he became more serious. ‘He’s okay with you bringing people home, but you have to check with me first. Call me on my cell phone and I’ll clear them before they come in.’
I stared at him.
‘I have to, you know?’
I shrugged. ‘Yeah, okay. But the way my social life is right now, I’d be lucky to bring home a stray dog.’
‘That is way too much information.’
I leaned over the table. ‘So tell me, what’s the big secret?’
He looked piercingly at me for a moment, then down at his coffee again. ‘Can we wait a while before we talk about it? Until you’ve decided that you really want to stay?’
‘Okay. So what does Mr Chen do for a living?’
He turned the coffee cup in his hands, then nodded thanks to Monica as she put a huge plate of greasy eggs and ham in front of him. ‘That’s part of the “later” thing too.’
‘What’s the thing he has with Xuan Tian Shang Di?’
Monica dropped the frying pan into the sink and froze completely.
Leo looked sharply at me and opened his mouth to say something, then relaxed when Simone came in. She was still in her little Hello Kitty pink nightshirt, her hair mussed from sleep. She hugged Leo and kissed him on the cheek, and he wrapped one huge arm around her and kissed her back.
She came to me and kissed me too. ‘Good morning, Emma.’
‘Good morning, sweetheart.’
‘What are we going to do today?’
‘Well, yesterday I bought some paints and paper and scissors and glue and stuff, so I thought we might make things today.’
Simone lit up as she pulled herself onto her chair. ‘Really? We can make things? And paint?’
I nodded. ‘And then if Leo doesn’t have to go anywhere, we’re going to teach him how to play snap.’
Simone squealed with delight. ‘Are you going anywhere today, Leo?’
‘I’m taking Monica to the market this morning, but after that I can play while Mr Chen goes out to a meeting,’ Leo said, his deep voice warm with pleasure.
‘Mr Chen’s going to a meeting?’ I said.
Leo nodded. ‘He’ll be back after that and he’ll spend the afternoon in the training room.’
‘Guarding his energy?’ Simone said.
Leo frowned and shook his head.
Simone’s little face fell. ‘Sorry.’
Leo took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Yes. Then he’ll teach you at three o’clock, and Emma can take a break.’
Simone lit up again, and turned to me with a broad smile. ‘It’s going to be so fun having you here, Emma.’
‘I think so too, sweetheart,’ I said.
‘Gin,’ Simone said triumphantly and laid her cards on the table.
Leo threw his cards down. ‘Not fair, you keep beating me.’
‘Leo.’ Simone bent forward, her little face intense. ‘Please stop letting me win, it’s not fair. It’s not fair on you and it’s not fair on me. I don’t want to win all the time, and it makes you sad when you lose.’
Leo grinned broadly. ‘You know what, Simone?’
‘What?’
He bent to look mischievously at her. ‘I’m not letting you win at all.’
Her little eyes unfocused for a second, then went wide. ‘You’re telling the truth!’
He leaned back, still grinning. ‘That’s right. You’re winning fair and square.’
Simone giggled and patted his arm. ‘Then I have to let you win sometimes, silly Leo.’
I gathered the cards together. ‘Didn’t you just say that it’s not fair to let someone win, Simone?’
Simone’s eyes unfocused again for a moment. ‘Miss Lee is here.’
I checked my watch. ‘No, she isn’t due for another ten minutes or so.’
Monica tapped on the door and opened it. ‘Piano teacher’s here, Emma. She’s in the music room waiting for Simone.’
Simone sighed. ‘I’d rather play with you and Leo.’
I looked at her. ‘Remember what I said, Simone. If you ever want to give up piano or violin because it’s not fun any more, you just say so. Your dad doesn’t want you doing anything you don’t enjoy.’
Simone pulled herself to her feet. ‘No, I like playing the piano, it’s fun. It’s just that the practice gets a bit boring sometimes.’
‘I have a session with Mr Chen in the training room,’ Leo said, and rose to tower above me.
Simone’s eyes unfocused again. ‘Yep, he’s waiting for you, doing katas.’
‘Wait.’ I raised one hand. ‘You know where your dad is without looking, Simone? And you knew Miss Lee had arrived?’
‘I have to go to piano lesson, Emma,’ Simone said cheekily. ‘Ask Leo.’
Leo moved to the doorway. ‘Ask me about it later, Emma.’
I snorted with exasperation. ‘When later?’
‘Oh…’ He waved one hand airily. ‘In about three weeks?’ He turned and went out, still grinning.
I slapped my forehead with the deck of cards and put them back into the box.
After I’d tidied the rest of Simone’s toys I went up the hall to the kitchen to get a cup of tea.
The door to the training room was ajar and I stopped to peer in without being seen. Leo and Mr Chen were there together. Only glimpses of them were visible as they moved around the room, but their reflections appeared in the mirrored wall as well.
Leo had a sword, and he fiercely attacked Mr Chen with it. Mr Chen was unarmed and I felt a jolt of concern for him, then saw with relief after a couple of minutes that he had no difficulty at all evading Leo’s attacks; he even managed to strike Leo a few times.
Leo moved with the grace of a cat. He was extremely fast and flexible for such a big guy.
But Mr Chen would have made a cat look clumsy. He was magnificent. He moved so fast he was a blur. His long hair flew behind him as he spun and kicked Leo in the abdomen, knocking him flat and spinning the sword out of his hand.
Leo pulled himself to his feet. ‘What level would that have been equivalent to?’
‘Forty,’ Mr Chen said.
‘Damn.’ Leo retrieved the sword. ‘I need to be able to take at least up to sixty. What if a Mother comes after her?’
‘You are human, Leo,’ Mr Chen said. ‘You have human limitations.’ He saw me watching through the gap in the doorway and his face went rigid. He came to the door and closed it with a click.
I wandered back towards my room, deep in thought. Leo was human?
About two weeks later, two teenagers turned up to learn from Mr Chen. They were about sixteen years old, a Chinese boy and a European girl. I didn’t see them arrive; it was as if they’d always been there. I couldn’t get a single word out of either of them when I tried to talk to them; they both pointedly ignored me.
After they’d been there a couple of days, sharing meals with us and still not talking to me, Leo pulled me aside. ‘Stop talking to them.’
‘I was just being friendly.’
He grimaced. ‘They’ve given up a lot to learn off Mr Chen. It’s the most important thing in the world for them. And they’ve been told that if they talk to you, they’re out.’
‘What?’
‘They’re here to learn, Emma. Leave them alone. If either of them says a single word to you, they’ll lose it all.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘That’s the way it is. Stop trying to talk to them; you’ll only get them into trouble. Okay?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s very fair, but okay, if that’s what everybody wants.’
‘It is.’
‘Going to tell me how they fit into the big secret?’
‘Nope,’ he said, and gestured down the hallway. ‘Simone’s waiting for you to bath her and read her a story.’
I poked him in the chest with my finger. ‘You will tell me what’s going on here, Mr Alexander.’
‘Yes, I will, Miss Donahoe, but not right now.’
I snorted with exasperation and stomped off to Simone’s room.
‘Can you tell me anything at all about what your dad does, Simone?’ I said as I tucked her in and pulled out her favourite storybook. ‘When he’s at home, he’s either locked in the training room or in his office. I hardly see him to ask him. And Leo won’t tell me.’
‘I promised them I wouldn’t,’ Simone said, snuggling further under the quilt. ‘You have to ask them.’
I sighed. ‘I want to know what’s going on.’
‘I want you to know too. None of the aunties and uncles can come over ’cause you don’t know about them. I miss Uncle Bai. We can’t do any of the special fun stuff. Daddy even had a big argument with Leo about getting the students in ’cause Leo said they’d do something special and you’d see it.’
‘What sort of special stuff can they do?’
She shook her head with a small smile. ‘I promised.’
When Simone was sleeping I went up the hallway to the kitchen and stopped. The door to the training room was glowing; a golden light leaked around it.
Mr Chen charged out of the dining room, threw open the door of the training room and slammed it shut behind him.
The light blinked off and I heard excited voices inside, but couldn’t understand what they were saying.
Mr Chen came back out, and stopped when he saw me. ‘Is Simone all right, Miss Donahoe?’
‘I just put her to bed. I was going to the kitchen for a cup of tea.’
He nodded and continued up the hall towards the dining room.
The two teenagers came out of the training room. The girl was helping the boy; he was leaning heavily on her. His face was ashen. They moved away from me, not noticing my presence behind them.
‘Go and rest,’ she said.
‘I can’t believe I did it,’ he said. ‘After trying for so long. Finally.’
‘You must recentre it.’ She helped him to the end of the hall. ‘Don’t want to kill yourself now that you’ve finally gained the skill.’
‘Did you hear what the Dark Lord said?’
‘Which part?’ She was obviously amused. ‘The part about trying it alone again and he’ll throw you out, or the part about being one of the best energy students he’s had in a while?’
They turned to go into the student rooms, saw me and clammed up completely.
I stood speechless, wondering. She’d called him the Dark Lord. One of the titles for Xuan Tian Shang Di was the Dark Lord of the Northern Heavens.
I returned to my room and flipped open the book. I referred to another one. Yep, definitely Dark Lord.
No way.
The free sample has ended.
