Free Hungry Ghost by Stephen Leather

then? This wasn’t a James Bond movie, one man couldn’t storm a fortress alone, no matter how heavily armed. The thought of free-falling in from 25,000 feet made him smile, bringing back fond memories of his days with the SBS. But even then it wouldn’t have been considered without a team of four and stun grenades and Uzis and whatever else they could hold on to at 120 mph during the long drop. No, while he was at home, Ng was safe. Howells drove back to Kowloon deep in thought, whistling quietly to himself through clenched teeth.

    Hot Gossip was jumping. It was one of Dugan’s favourite bars and a hangout for many of the unmarried cops, gweilo and Chinese. A bar where you were reasonably sure of picking up a girl and reasonably sure of not picking up something contagious, where the food wasn’t bad and the music was loud and the drinks were expensive enough to keep out the rabble. It was on two floors in Canton Road, the bar and dining area above and a trendy disco below. Dugan was upstairs, priming himself with half pints of lager before diving into the flesh market below.
    He was standing by just about the longest bar in Kowloon, a polished black job that could seat a couple of dozen people without looking the least bit crowded. And behind the bar, at intervals of ten feet, were wall-mounted television screens all showing the same music video. At the far end of the bar, where it curved around to the left to the nook where the barmen mixed their high-priced cocktails, was a cluster of tables with pink tablecloths. They too were surrounded by television sets. No matter where you stood or sat you could see a screen without moving your head.
    Dugan had left the office early and had walked in on his own but soon found friends in the form of three officers from the anti-triad squad who were also on the police rugby team. They’d begun teasing Dugan about his work, as they always did, and asking when his next quarry would be taking a one-way trip to Taiwan. Dugan was used to the ribbing, in the same way that he was used to suspects disappearing from Hong Kong as soon as the Commercial Crime boys got anywhere near ready to make an arrest.
    ‘It’s all right for you bastards,’ he said, waving his half-filled glass at them. ‘You can catch them with a gun in their hand or a pocket full of dope. Or you can kick down the door to a fishball stall and catch them with underage girls.’
    ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ howled Colin Burr, a hefty scrum-half with shoulders that looked as if they were made for bursting through doors.
    ‘Deny it,’ said Dugan. ‘Deny it if you can.’
    ‘You pen-pushers ought to give it a try some time,’ said Nick Holt, a lanky Scot with a Hitler moustache who’d only been in Hong Kong three years.
    ‘Yeah, have a go at real police work for a change,’ echoed Jeff Bellamy, the oldest of the group and, like Dugan, starting to lose his hair. Unlike Dugan, though, he’d given up trying to comb what he had left over the bald patch and instead had it cut short, a brown fringe that ringed the back of his head.
    ‘Real police work?’ sneered Dugan. ‘Don’t make me laugh. When was the last time you put away one of the Dragon Heads? Name one.’
    ‘Cheung Yiu-chung,’ suggested Holt. ‘He went down for seven years.’
    ‘Bastard,’ conceded Dugan. ‘OK, name five. Go on, name me three.’
    ‘Oh piss off, Dugan.’
    ‘You know what I mean. Sure, your arrest records look better than ours, but almost all yours are small fry. Foot soldiers. But we go after the big fish. The real criminals, the ones who steal billions at a time.’
    ‘Yeah, but Dugan, how many do you actually catch?’ sniggered Burr as he drank.
    ‘It takes time to build a case,’ said Dugan. He fell silent and watched Patsy Kensit prance around on one of the screens behind the bar. She was gorgeous. What made him so argumentative was that he knew they were right. In the first place it often required months of