Free Blue Lantern by Gil Hogg

evidence.”
    â€œI’m not questioning that. There’s a larger picture, and you’re getting in the way. If every inspector fresh out of the School arrested everybody he could, we’d have chaos. You see a street dealer, you collar him, and maybe screw up the plans we have to get at the people behind him. Get it?”
    Brodie considered this; it seemed reasonable. “So how do I know when to act?”
    Flinn returned a complacent smile. “Simple. Trouble with Yanks or Brit soldiers, tourists, street fights, robberies, domestic arguments, shoplifting, assaults – your problem. And it’s a big problem. There’s a hell of a lot of work for you out there. For the rest, wait until I tell you, or Staff Huang tells you.”
    â€œIf I see someone pushing drugs, I don’t arrest them. I ask you or Staff Huang?”
    â€œRight. Stay out of anything to do with narcotics, prostitution or games. Most street crime is yours. God knows there’s enough of it. Anything else, and any doubts, see me or Staff Huang. This is the rule.”
    â€œI never heard of the rule. And who says I have to follow it?”
    Flinn wrestled with a belch which contorted his oleaginous features. “I say, and the whole way we work here says.”
    â€œOK.”
    Brodie could see the sense in coordinating action on organised crime. He believed, now he came to think of it, that it must happen. And he had unwittingly been frustrating it.
    Flinn settled the last potato in his cheek and pushed his plate away. “Right. Smart thinking. We’ll tell you who, and where, and when. A nice selection.”
    â€œWhat happens if do arrest somebody I see pushing, or pimping or running a game? I mean there isn’t always time to come back to the station and discuss it. If you don’t move, you lose the collar.”
    Flinn looked at him sullenly. “Don’t do it.”
    Brodie was having supper at Marsden’s apartment. Marsden lived in a spacious private tower in Tsim Sha Tsui looking across the wharves and harbour to the high-rises of Central District. The living room was plastered white, with wide windows like movie screens. The rooms were furnished with pieces acquired by Marsden rather than the cheap white pine supplied by the Force. Brodie had been given a tour on an earlier occasion. Marsden had pointed out then, that the Bang & Olufsen stereo, the Dolby tape recorder and the Bosch air conditioners were the best of their kind. The other criterion which Marsden allowed for his possessions was exoticism; this applied to the geisha doll in a glass case, the carved wood chests, the Japanese sword, and the brass Buddha lit from within by an electric lamp. Brodie concealed the fact that he felt no enthusiasm for Marsden’s acquisitions.
    The other feature of the apartment which struck Brodie was order. The leather bound classics on the bookshelf were neatly in line by author; even a pile of Time magazines was straight-edged. The perfumes in the bathroom were graded in colour and size. Marsden knew where everything was, from a volume of short stories to a bottle of after-shave lotion. Brodie had been introduced by Marsden to a rational world where correspondence was kept up to date and filed; bills were paid on time; suits were dry-cleaned in rotation, and dental appointments made at regular intervals. Marsden handled the minutiae of everyday life with gusto, while Brodie fell behind, and beat himself with the stick of what other people might think of his lapses.
    The amah had prepared small dishes of rice, noodles, tuna and pigeon. Marsden opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon from his native Australia, and talked learnedly about the vineyards of New South Wales and Adelaide. He had read and appreciated and remembered it all.
    â€œTo me wine is either plonk, or palatable,” Brodie confessed.
    Marsden ignored the remark. He was expansive, and anxious to show he believed in living