'Shopping again? Drifting?'

'Yes. Once she stayed overnight at -'

'Overnight?'

'Yes, last Sunday, at the Golden Sands Hotel.'

A break in the pattern and I pressed him on this, did she stay there alone, meet anyone, talk to anyone in the lobby, in the bar? Not that he saw.

'What was her room number?'

'One hundred and ninety-two.' A notebook, yes.

Went on pressing him, what time did she get there, what time did she leave, got him to think up a few of the questions for himself before I had to ask, finally drained him dry on the routine stuff like where she bought her petrol, what hairdresser, did she go to theatres, walk alone in the streets at night, ever take a taxi instead of the car, watching her from where I sat and trying to learn the things I couldn't see, the things I'd have to know to reduce the risk of losing her when I took over the tag for a stretch. Then I let him go.

'All right Flower, where are you based?'

'The Wanchai.'

'Hotel?'

'More of a boarding-house really.'

He gave me the address and I said: 'Listen, you're off-duty from now on till I contact you, but you're on stand-by so don't leave your base at any time except between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred hours on any day, repeat, fifteen and sixteen hundred and at no other time. Understood?'

'Understood, sir.'

'Leave here now and don't look around.'

'Where can I contact you if I have to?'

'You won't have to.'

I hung up and put the phone on the banquette and watched him pay his bill at the bar and go through the curtains. The thin Chinese with the glasses was watching Nora Tewson and nobody else and I relaxed.

'Change this for me will you? There's gin in it.

'I'm sorry, sir, I thought you asked for gin and tonic.'

'No, Indian tonic.'

'I'll fix it right away.'

Eurasian with a United States accent out of Taiwan, they all ought to be like that instead of the ones we've got in Accounts. In three minutes she was back and in fifteen minutes I saw the Tewson woman ordering her third drink and I began working out what to do.

The George Henry Tewson dossier gave me quite a lot, from his schooldays on, through Cambridge but missing out his job, filling in relations, contacts, interests, addresses, vacation movements, the marriage of course, everything I'd need if I wanted to go across there and say well well well, long time no see, you're looking marvelous and tell me, how's old George these days, there was nothing she could do about it because I even knew his golf scores.

But it wasn't the way in, for a lot of reasons. London said they'd closed the enquiry into Tewson's death so the thin man over there shouldn't be Special Branch, and the police-trained thing didn't add up to a lot because most of the Asian cells used people from official departments and he could be anyone, anyone distinctly dangerous if I didn't wipe my feet.

Her waitress had reached the bar.

Of course he could be insurance because a couple of years ago Tewson had been overdue with his fees at the golf club and his Austin was three years old and they'd come out here on a package trip and by the way she was enjoying her widowhood he'd either carried heavy life assurance in the UK or had known how to use a piggy bank or had taken out a short-term big-figure policy here in Hong Kong, which might explain why the thin man was Chinese.

I didn't think he was insurance.

Her waitress was leaving the bar.

The long way in was to keep up the tag till I found out enough to signal London and ask for further briefing but that would take time and if Nora Tewson was the key figure in Mandarin they wouldn't want me to sit back: they'd pulled me in halfway through a ten-day call and pushed me on to a plane and that could have been partly because they couldn't get anyone else to take this one on but it could have been totally because they wanted me to go very fast now they'd lit the fuse.

The thin Chinese could be on the tag to see if she made any contact with anyone who knew George Henry Tewson or knew anything about his death or who wanted to know something about it: so the only foolproof way in that would be fast, effective and noncommittal was to make first contact as a complete stranger and in public, going in deliberately under the opposition surveillance and making it quite clear that I knew nothing at all about Tewson, Tewson's death or Tewson's wife.

I got up, timing it so that as her waitress reached the table I was there too, pressing my way through the people towards the dance-floor and catching my foot on a chair-leg. The whole tray went down with a crash, not just the glass, better than I'd expected.

Chapter Four.

MING.

ROYAL HONG KONG POLICE Fixed Penalty (Traffic Contraventions) Ordinance 1970 Notice of Opportunity to pay Fixed Penalty (Section 15 (2)) Motor vehicle registration Mark, Code, Disc No, was seen in ... at . . . hours on 79 ... in circumstances giving me reasonable cause to believe that a contravention of the Ordinance, particulars of which are given at () overleaf, was being or had been committed.

$30 I took it off the windscreen and got into the Capri, starting up and moving off past the club, looking for the Jensen as soon as I was round the corner. She'd put it neatly in between some railings and a sand-bin alongside the garden of someone's consulate: the flag over the building hung like a rag in the humid air. There wasn't a parking slot anywhere so I took one end of the chain off the post in the side entrance to the consulate and ran the Capri in there, a dozen yards or so from the Jensen and facing the right way in case I couldn't make final contact with her before she left the club.

Then I walked back round the corner and through the ornate doors.

'The gentleman forgot something?'

'What? No, I was double parked, that's all.'

I went to the bar and took a stool at the end near the heavy curtains: in this area there was no backwash of light from the floor-show and I could watch the Tewson woman and the Chinese couldn't watch me because the ceiling-high papier-mache dragon was in the way.

'Indian tonic.'

'Gin and tonic? Yes, sir -'

'No. Listen. In-di-an tonic.'

'Excuse me.'

I 'You're perfectly welcome.'

From here I could see the magnum of Veuve Clicquot and the dozen gardenias on her table but couldn't at this distance tell whether she was pleased with them or not. The flying tray trick hadn't gone down too well.

'Christ,' she'd said, 'did you have to do that?'

'I'm terribly sorry -'

'That's not the point-look at this!' Indicating her model lame sheath, patches of scotch all over it, the waitress on all fours between us looking for the glass, Nora Tewson with her hands on the edge of the table as if she were going to make a speech because the banquette was behind her knees and she couldn't stand up straight without support, did I know how much this dress cost, couldn't I see where I was going, so forth, really am very sorry, such an exquisite dress, be delighted to pay damages, so on, till she went off to 'clean up', the waitress on her feet again, excited because it had broken the monotony and this called for a suitable tip, yes, fifty Hong Kong dollars and this hundred is for a magnum of champagne, look, let's go to the bar, I want it done before she comes back to her table.

The magnum hadn't been opened and she wasn't smelling the gardenias but I suppose she could have thrown the whole lot at the band.