The Dragon Head of Hong Kong Read Online Free Page B

direction. It never ceased to amaze Ava how efficient it all was.
    It took only twenty minutes to get to Kowloon. Ava exited at Olympic station. The Mong Kok neighbourhood was to her east; to her south was Tsim Sha Tsui with its five-star hotels, expansive malls, and breathtaking view of the Central district of Hong Kong, across Victoria Harbour.
    The air was cold and damp when she walked out of the station. Winter in Hong Kong was bone-numbing. Few of the homes — more than ninety-five percent of them apartments — had central heating, and inside and out the chill was pervasive. She took a cab to the Oriental Crocus. Mong Kok was fully alive with the morning commute, and as the cab inched eastward on Cherry Street and then north on Tong Mi Road, she began to wish she had taken the MTR .
    Mong Kok was a working- and middle-class neighbourhood of modest-sized office buildings and older apartments lined up along narrow streets, interspersed with storefronts and restaurants that catered strictly to the locals. The driver had seemed to know where he was going when Ava mentioned her destination, but he still almost drove past the hotel. Its façade was no wider than two small storefronts, and if Ava hadn’t spotted the name above the doorway they would have missed it. The moment she did see it, she wished she hadn’t allowed Mr. Lo to make the reservation. On her trips to Hong Kong with her mother they had always stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Central — a true five-star hotel that epitomized unobtrusive luxury. The Crocus was merely unobtrusive.
    She walked into the lobby and was relieved to see that it was clean and airy. The hotel had nine floors and her room was on the eighth. When she opened the door, she felt a surge of regret. The room wasn’t much bigger than a jail cell. It had a double bed, a small dresser, and a folding table and chair. She knew she would have to slide her luggage under the bed if she wanted room to turn around. She unpacked, putting her clothes in the dresser, pushed her bags under the bed, and then headed to the bathroom for a shower.
    When she came back into the room, she sat on the bed and thought about what to do. Part of her was tired and the idea of crawling under the duvet was appealing, but she remembered from her previous trips how necessary it was to try to stay awake if she wanted to avoid serious jet lag. She reached out and took Lo’s envelope from the table. She had printed out a map of Mong Kok and had marked where Kung’s office was. It didn’t look like more than a ten-minute walk from her hotel. It was time to put Plan A into action.

( 6 )
    KUNG’S OFFICE WAS in the Serenity Building on Bute Street, which was a few blocks south off Tong Mi Road, close to the Nathan Road intersection. Ava knew of Nathan Road. It was one of the major north–south routes in Kowloon, and its southern terminus on Victoria Harbour was in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui — home of the original Peninsula Hotel and some of the best shopping in the world. In Jennie Lee’s mind, no trip to Hong Kong was complete without high tea at the Peninsula and a day spent shopping in the neighbourhood. Ava and Marian both lacked their mother’s shopping gene, but they had gone with her and in the process got to know the south end of Kowloon.
    Bute Street wouldn’t hold Mummy’s interest for a minute , Ava thought as she trudged along. It was all noodle restaurants and discount shops on the ground floors, with apartments in need of repair on top. The Serenity Building was just as shabby. It was six storeys of nothing but offices, and its grey stucco exterior was flaked and broken from street level to as far up as she could see.
    The building lobby didn’t inspire confidence either. Its tiled floor was sticky and littered with cigarette butts. To the left of three elevators she saw a company directory. Kung Imports was listed as an occupant of suite 612.
    As she stepped out of the elevator that had creaked