Second to sin a blackjac.., p.1
Second to Sin (A BlackJack Thriller Book 2), page 1
Second
To
Sin
Murray Bailey
First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Three Daggers, an imprint of Heritage Books.
1235813221
copyright © Murray Bailey 2023
The moral right of Murray Bailey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by ViknCharlie
Three Daggers
An imprint of
Heritage Books, Cornwall
Chapter One
He’d suppressed the urges for a month. The gambling, the dangerous liaisons, and the free climbing kept the heart pumping. But he knew nothing could beat the ultimate thrill. And the more he forced them down, the more the urges pushed back up.
He’d taken the ferry to the mainland and walked out of Kowloon Harbour, past the Peninsula Hotel, through the commercial sector and into the heart of Chinatown.
The electric streetlights thinned to nothing, but the lanterns burned strongly. Despite the cloud enshrouded night sky, the red glow at street-level provided ample light.
Rowdy sailors lurched across the street in groups. Safety in numbers perhaps.
He bought a double shot of whisky from a bar and moved on. He was soon a solitary white man in a suit, out of place in a Chinese world.
He attracted attention, but they welcomed him in when he watched their game of craps. There was rowdy noise, laughter, hoots and howls. These were men who'd worked hard during the day and were now working hard at forgetting their troubles.
He played a while and made friends with men who were happy to take his money. Then he moved on. He found a bar and drank more rough whisky. A new friend, a wiry man, all twitchy with awkward arm movements, bought him another drink.
“Wacky,” the man said, poking himself in the chest. “My name: Wacky.”
“Charles. Charles Balcombe.”
They knocked back another shot. Then Wacky was taking his hand and leading him to a game, betting and more drinking.
The night wore on. Wacky suggested he get a pretty girl, but Balcombe said no. He needed to get back to Hong Kong Island. To his own bed.
“Clean girl,” Wacky said.
“Not tonight.”
“Another game then, Master Balcombe. This time you will win big.”
Balcombe didn’t win big and was overly generous with his losses. Other men tried to befriend him but Wacky barked and pushed them away.
“They’d steal your money,” the Chinese man said with a grin.
“I’m losing it anyway,” Balcombe laughed. Wacky laughed and twitched.
After two more games, a win then a significant loss, Balcombe said, “I should go.”
“One more game. You have more money?”
“Yes, but…” Balcombe blinked and thought, looking at the few notes he had in his hand. “I should stop now.”
“I will lead you back to the hotel.”
“The island,” Balcombe said, his voice slurred.
“You need the ferry, Master Balcombe?” Wacky said, suddenly solemn. “Too late.”
“A boat?”
Wacky nodded excitedly and waved his hands. “I will find a boat, Master Balcombe. Get you back to bed.”
The twitchy Chinese man led the way, along passageways that smelled of rotten fish and human piss.
“Is this the way?” Balcombe asked, hesitating. The dock was in the other direction.
Wacky pulled his sleeve. “Yes, yes. Don’t worry. Yes, yes.”
As he walked, Balcombe swayed like a man at sea, the peculiar gait of someone whose legs and body weren’t receiving perfect signals from the brain.
One more turn and the alley was dark. A cat wailed and scurried.
“Wacky, I don’t think…” Balcombe began.
A big man pushed out of the darkness.
He was Balcombe’s equal in height, over six feet tall, and he was wide. The big man looked twice the width of Wacky—who had since melted away.
Just the big Chinese man and the white man.
In a dark alley.
“You’re my friend,” the big man said.
Balcombe looked behind him.
No one around. No witnesses.
“I need a boat back to the island,” Balcombe said, his voice slurred.
“It will cost you.”
“How much.”
“Everything you have.” Despite the darkness, the movement of his right hand gave it away. The big man had a knife.
“Is this what you do?” Balcombe asked. His voice now clearer as though he’d suddenly sobered.
“What?”
“Lure people here and take their money.”
The big man grunted, took a step closer. “Is your life worth a few pounds—for a friend?”
“No,” Balcombe said.
He didn’t move.
The big Chinese man didn’t see a smile play on Balcombe’s lips. Blood coursed through Balcombe’s veins.
“Your money!” The knife came up, threatening.
Balcombe stuck a hand in his pocket and pulled something out; a bundle that looked like money in the darkness.
The big man’s other hand came up.
“What?” he snapped as his fingers touched cloth. Not money, but a handkerchief.
The knife came up, thrusting.
Balcombe twisted. The handkerchief flapped open and towards the knife hand. Then he was holding the blade and yanking it.
The unexpected move left the big man gawping.
“Who are you?” the man finally said as he looked into Balcombe’s cold eyes.
“BlackJack,” he said. “I am BlackJack.”
Chapter Two
Fear is for pussies. It was a message Balcombe had heard in the army. Sergeant majors shouted it at raw recruits. But it wasn’t true.
His friend had told Balcombe the truth.
He’d said, “Fear is God giving you the opportunity to be brave. What you feel is adrenaline getting you prepared. Don’t worry, welcome it.”
His name had been Charles. The real Charles Balcombe. Although Balcombe thought of him as Eric these days.
Eric had known excitement while free climbing. And he’d died doing the thing he loved more than anything else in the world.
“That feeling is what makes you live life to the full,” Eric had said. “Fear is what proves you’re alive.”
Balcombe tossed the knife into the sea and washed blood off his hands. The tingle was still there. It would flow though his veins for days. Fear combined with death was the ultimate rush. One day it would be his own death, but not today.
Albert looked at him askance, reading his face as he approached on the dock. Everyone thought the rickshaw boy just had an effeminate face. He was lithe, young and strong. But he was really a young woman.
“You found what you needed,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a flat statement with no hint of judgement.
Balcombe said, “Get me home, Albert.”
A sampan was at the dock, and they climbed aboard. With no instruction, the pilot of the boat untied it and headed across the strait. Moonlight danced over the gentle waves as Balcombe stood alone at the prow.
Dozens of boats moved across the water between the island and peninsula. Thousands more were moored along the coastline, behind and ahead. Sometimes as many as ten vessels deep. Referred to as the Boat People, they appeared to be an extension of the land. An amorphous mass that rarely stayed still.
On the island they were kept away from Victoria Harbour and the commercial docks. The marine police mostly left them alone providing they weren’t blocking the waterways.
Balcombe could see their lights and hear the murmur of voices from almost half a mile away. The pilot steered for them, appearing to be another anonymous boat in the night.
Undoubtedly there was petty crime committed out there but providing the island inhabitants were safe the police didn’t want to know. That was Balcombe’s impression, anyway.
However tonight he was mistaken.
Detective Inspector Munro stood on the quay, his eyes sweeping over the sampans strung along Causeway Bay. Lanterns swayed in front of each one, creating ribbons of pale orange light. Beyond them he could see a handful of small boats crossing from Kowloon. None of those had lights. He saw their curved sails dance in the moonlight. There were probably ten times that number coming from the mainland, Canton and beyond. Boat People looking for a better life.
And some poor souls finding only death.
Munro removed his round spectacles and rubbed his eyes. It was midnight and he’d been working for a day and a half.
“We’ve recovered the body, sir,” his sergeant said, stepping from the marine police boat and pointing behind him to a covered shape.
“Anyone see anything?” Munro asked.
The sergeant chortled and then stopped himself. They both knew these people wouldn’t volunteer information. They wouldn’t talk to the police for fear of depor
“Not a word, sir.” The sergeant took a breath. “If you ask me, the body could have travelled quite a way. These people will shove a body further along rather than report it.”
“Someone else’s problem,” Munro said as he watched the body stretchered ashore. He could feel his chest tightening. Was this a BlackJack killing?
“He was floating in the shit,” the sergeant said. “There’s an eddy of it out there.”
A Black Mariah waited with the back doors open. Munro stopped the men who stretchered the body then lifted the sacking that covered it.
He held his breath, not because of the odour but in case there were the tell-tale signs. He knew what a BlackJack corpse looked like.
The body was that of a malnourished Chinese man, his body white and bloated. Munro breathed. He could see a puncture wound in the man’s side, deep and wide.
“All right, Sergeant,” he said, dropping the sacking back over the body. “Let’s get him to the morgue.”
After the police van had left, Munro stood on the dock and rubbed his stiff leg that ached when there was a change in the weather on the way.
The distant sampans kept coming, although one caught his attention. It had veered off, now going West. Did they think they could pitch up in Victoria? He chuckled mirthlessly. If it didn’t get mown down by a ship or ferry, an overenthusiastic citizen would put a hole in it. The police moved the boat people away, but sailors and others could take more permanent action.
The solitary sampan disappeared beyond the bay and Munro wondered if he’d be hearing about it in the morning.
The wind had picked up and rain pelted him as Munro mounted the steps of the hospital. He shook out his Mackintosh before going down into the morgue.
“Good morning, Inspector Babyface,” the assistant pathologist called cheerfully. Fai Yeung was in his early forties, the same as Munro, but looking ten years older with thinning hair and heavy eyes. However his demeanour was forever positive. A solidly built man, he had a thick neck and broad smile.
Everyone called Munro Babyface behind his back, except for Yeung. He said it to his face. In fact, Munro was sure his old friend had been the one to christen him with the name.
“Busy night, Fai?” Munro asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I only started an hour ago. But a busy hour. Then again, when is it not busy? You police should stop picking up dead bodies.”
“Or people should stop dying.”
“Now that would be good,” Yeung said. “Although then I’d be out of a job.”
“And me too, probably.”
“Then again, we could get better jobs. We could be wine tasters.”
“I thought you wanted to be a chicken farmer.”
“Or a fisherman or anything, providing I can sit back, watch other people do the work while I taste the wine.”
“Tell me about our friend here,” Munro said, pointing to the body on the slab—the man who’d been fished out of the sea seven hours earlier.
“He’s called John Zeng, aged twenty-three, has five children but recently divorced his wife.”
“Really? You know all that?”
“No.” Yeung chuckled. “Except for the approximate age and the mark where he had a wedding band.”
“Which was probably stolen.”
“Most likely.”
Munro walked around the body. He still only saw the one stab wound.
“Is that how he died?”
“Yes, although his head shows signs of a beating.” Yeung parted the hair to expose lacerations. “Three blows pre-mortem, I think. The stabbing is deep, with a diameter that suggests a spear. He’s been dead a couple of days and probably died slowly from the blood loss. He might have drowned, but I won’t know that until I slice him open. Is it worth it?”
Munro nodded. Even though the examination would likely lead them nowhere, everything needed to be done properly. They’d have the record even though they’d have no perpetrator. Another statistic that the Chief of Police would be unhappy about.
“Did you hear about the murder last night?” Yeung said as he recovered the body.
Munro looked at his friend and wondered if this was going to be another joke.
“Over in Kowloon,” the assistant pathologist said.
“No,” Munro said cautiously.
“I’m being serious, Babyface.” He paused, looking earnest. “I don’t know any details, but it’s another unusual killing.”
Munro took a breath.
Yeung said, “Remember we thought a surgeon might have killed someone a month ago—the end of December?”
Munro said nothing. His mouth was becoming drier by the second.
“You know: the one with the chest incision and squeezed heart? Well, it sounds like they found another one like that last night.”
Chapter Three
At the end of his shift, Inspector Munro caught the ferry to the peninsula. As he left Star Ferry Pier, he wondered about the boat he’d seen last night. There was no sign of a rogue sampan here, and there had been no reported incident of one being maliciously damaged. Clearly it must have been travelling further around the coast, although he pondered at the unusual route it had taken. To head for Causeway Bay and then cut across towards Victoria, so close to shore, struck him as odd. Someone avoiding the marine police, but unlikely to be a smuggler. They wouldn’t risk coming so close to the centre or passing the naval base.
A late-night passenger, he decided. Someone who’d missed the ferry. But that still didn’t explain the subterfuge.
In Kowloon, Munro went into the police station asking about last night’s murder. He expected to find the body in their morgue, but it wasn’t there.
The police pathologist could only deal with two bodies at a time and the dead fat man found in Kwun Tong District had been number three. His body had been taken to the hospital on Waterloo Road.
“Busy night,” Munro said to the police pathologist.
“Always a busy night,” he grumbled. “You’ve got it easy on the Island. I need a bigger morgue and two more of me.” He shrugged resignedly. “Give my regards to Fai. Tell him he’ll get fat if he doesn’t work any harder.”
Munro laughed and said he would pass on the advice. Once outside, he hailed a rickshaw to take him to the hospital on Waterloo Road. Regardless of its proximity to colonial developments, the civil hospital, more formally called Kwong Wah Hospital had been built by the Chinese for the Chinese. It didn’t have the grandeur of the British-run hospitals, nor did it appear to have the discipline and organisation. However, Munro suspected it was a matter of volume versus capacity. The building was smaller than any of its counterparts and dealt with many times the number of people.
It further differed from the British hospitals, having its morgue above ground rather than below. The effect wasn’t good despite the morgue being separate from the rest of the building. Munro could have followed the scent of death instead of the written signs to the morgue.
Before entering, he inserted the obligatory Vaseline into both nostrils.
When Munro asked to see the body, the assistant pathologist sighed hopefully.
“You’re taking him now?”
“I’m afraid not,” Munro said. “The police morgue is still occupied.”
The other man shook his head. “Then why are you here?”
“Curiosity.”
The assistant pathologist waited for more explanation. Eventually he shrugged and led Munro to a gurney and whipped back the sheet.
“Are you all right, Inspector?”
The tell-tale sign was there: a neat incision on the chest and no other obvious damage. Munro cleared his throat.
“I’m fine,” Munro said. “The Vaseline blocks the smell, but I can taste the death in the back of my throat.”
The assistant pathologist’s face showed no sympathy.
Munro pointed to the body. “This just looks like a cut. What other injuries did he have?”
“A few cuts like he’d been in a knife fight. All superficial. He also took a blow to the head.”
