Trial of Lester Chan

Wilson Martin

Description

When Lester Chan, the 'Jewellery King' of Hong Kong, is charged with a banking fraud, Jonathan Savage, a middle-ranking QC who is used to a professional diet of murder and mayhem, and who has never before worked outside of England, is sent out to defend him. Also caught up in the defence case is Frank Grinder, a retired solicitor. For the Prosecution, Graham Truckett, a member of the Hong Kong Government Legal Department, has been put in charge and is completely out of his depth. The trial judge, Mr Justice O'Brien relishes his reputation for efficiency, but trouble at home keeps him preoccupied.In this light-hearted novel, a host of humorous characters reveal what it is like to be involved in a criminal case against a backdrop of life in Hong Kong.

Sujets

• Hong Kong

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 24 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838597405
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 Martin Wilson

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire, LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks


ISBN 9781838597405

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Martha Kate whose name links four generations.
A letter of credit is a document provided by a bank which guarantees that a seller will be paid on time and in the full amount agreed between the seller and the purchaser. If the purchaser defaults or for any reason does not make payment in full the bank is obligated to pay the full amount or any outstanding balance to the seller. Until the sale is complete, the bank has title over the goods which are the subject of the contract between the vendor and the purchaser. If the purchaser cannot or for any other reason does not reimburse the bank, the bank can legally seize the goods in order to protect its own position. A letter of credit transaction presupposes that there is an underlying and genuine sale and purchase of commodities.

Martin’s International Dictionary of Finance, 17th Edition


What the fuck is all that about?

Australian lawyer in the Commercial Crimes Unit of the Legal Department of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Contents
part one
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

part two
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

part three
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38

part one


1
So, here he was again. Sitting at the table in the kitchen, staring at the tea stain that he had made days, weeks, months ago. Of course, it was only four days since she had left. But it was four days in a row that he had woken, alone, in their bedroom, and four evenings when he had come back from the pub, destroyed a ready-meal in the microwave and sat, a bottle of red wine at the side of his plate, forking frozen brown lumps from the scalding, runny sauce and wondering whether he would be able to stay awake long enough to call her at a decent time, allowing for the eight hour time difference.
He looked at the kitchen clock. Quarter to six. Quarter to two in the morning in Hong Kong. She would be fast asleep now, those soft, innocent, gentle breaths that, in his insomnia, he would lie and listen to. Those slight shudders as she rolled towards him when he stretched out his hand to her. If he had a quick Scotch now before going out and perhaps another, or maybe a beer at The Unicorn, he could waste an hour or so before coming back to his empty home to have something to eat, watch some mindless crap on the television whilst drifting in and out of consciousness and, somehow, keep going until it was quarter to midnight, when she would be up and waiting for his call. She would still be drowsy from her long and deep sleep. He would, he knew, be mildly incoherent from fatigue and drink. But still, they would be able to talk.
The visit not been, he conceded, an unmitigated success. A Chinese family, coming for a couple of weeks to see their married daughter in Cheltenham when none of them had set foot outside Hong Kong before was always going to be a risky proposition. And when their daughter was married to a Yinggwok Gweilo , an Englishman who was much older than her, the fact that he had brought face to the family by his being a solicitor, albeit now retired, was not enough to make them feel at ease in such foreign surroundings. So it was not altogether surprising that they had cut short their holiday and that Winnie had been persuaded to go back with them for a while.
He looked out of the kitchen window. A light drizzle was falling. Enough to put off walking to the pub. But if he started on a Scotch now, he might want another at home and then be stuck in for the evening. What was a little rain? He needed some company, even if it was the old soaks who leant against the bar and the pond life who played the gaming machines; even if there was no-one else but the landlord, that oleaginous fake.
He switched on the hall light, grabbed a coat from the stand and locked up. He had not gone far before he realised that it was anything but a drizzle. The rain was coming down hard, and by the time he reached the door of The Unicorn he could feel the wet on the back of his neck and the soles of his feet.
‘Good evening, good evening, good evening,’ the landlord called to him. ‘Another fine night. Seems to have kept my regulars away. You’re the first one here.’
Frank Grinder glanced around the empty pub. Hell, it was going to be an evening of anecdotes from behind the bar. And did he really think that he was a regular? He supposed that, coming four evenings in a row, it was not an unreasonable assumption.
‘And what will it be this evening? Your fancy as per usual, the Gold Cup bitter, or some other tempting tincture, perhaps?’
‘Just a pint of bitter, please,’ he said. And a large strychnine for yourself, he thought.
As the landlord pulled the beer handle he turned towards Frank. ‘I gather your wife has gone back to… Singapore, is it?’ He gave him a studied look of sympathy. ‘Mine left two years ago. Probably much the same reason – cultural differences and too big an age gap.’
He assumes that she’s a mail-order bride, thought Frank. Of course, he is just the sort of oaf who would.
‘It’s Hong Kong, actually. And she hasn’t left me. Well, just for a holiday with her family.’
The landlord smiled, conspiratorially, to show that he understood the excuse. Frank caught his breath and felt the ire rising in his throat.
‘And I am going out to join her as soon as I can get away,’ he added to his own surprise, and took his beer to a table as far away from the bar as he could.
‘Of course, you used to live there, didn’t you?’ mine host called over to him. ‘Is that where you met her?’
Bur Frank was thinking about what he had just said. It more or less made sense; and even if it did not, it was what he knew he wanted. He would suggest it to Winnie when they spoke later. He drank his beer in silence. There was no need to talk to the few people, all of them men, damp stragglers who had come into the bar. No need – nor, now, the slightest inclination.
He finished his drink, got up and, ignoring the landlord, set off into the rain.
As soon as he had got through the doorway he checked the time. It would be three in the morning over there. He pulled off his wet coat, slung it over the banister finial, went into the lounge, poured himself a Scotch and sat on the settee. There really wasn’t any good reason why he should stay here on his own. Winnie had not asked him to go back with her, probably, he hoped, because her parents’ apartment high up in a tower block in Yuen Long, in the New Territories, was so small with barely enough room for her to stay in; but was there, possibly, a chance that she wanted to get away from him for a bit, to get back to a completely Cantonese environment, where she could eat and talk and laugh noisily without the inhibition that his presence might create? It was odd that she hadn’t even suggested that he might like to join her, had not raised the possibility and given him the chance to demur. Maybe she did need to be away from him for a while. Maybe she was not happy with the way things were. She had never given any sign of that; but she was very attractive and the appeal of marrying a mature solicitor, and her boss, might have worn off.
His glass was already empty. He poured another, much larger this time, and assuaged his conscience by taking it into the kitchen and topping it up with tap water before bringing it back to the lounge. She couldn’t possibly have met someone else, not here at home. But that was it, Hong Kong was her home: her family was there, living and dead. It had not previously occurred to him that she might be disturbed by being so far away from the graves of her ancestors, not being able to visit the cemetery and to take part, with her relatives, in the Ching Ming grave-sweeping ceremony every year. However Westernised she may have seemed, it was always there, beneath the surface. In every temple in Hong Kong, young people in jeans and designer sunglasses, with the latest smart phones, could be seen lighting incense and supplicating before some god or other and shaking chim sticks out of their pots so that they could take them to the resident fortune-teller for an interpretation of their future. And she was not much different from them; she looked so attractive in jeans and a cotton shirt that so suited her slim, firm body; indeed, when she w