CHAPTER 21
“Professor Higgins? I’m Jeffrey Lim. Mark asked me to meet you.”
“Call me Eddie,” Eddie replied holding his hand out to be shaken. “How did you recognise me?”
Jeffrey glanced at the grey-haired old man in the grey shorts, walking boots and socks who’d just emerged into the arrival’s hall at Kuala Lumpur airport. “Mark gave me a description,” he said. “Do you have any luggage?”
“Only a few things in this bag.”
“Mark said you wanted to go to Malacca, so we’ll drive. It’s about two hours, but you know that of course, you’ve been there before.”
Eddie, having left a dull, grey Oxford in wind and rain was glad of the change of scenery that Bangkok and KL offered. Here it was bright, hot, humid, lush and green. There were flocks of white egrets in the fields, rows of fan palms along the highway, hibiscus, flame trees and frangipani. In Blake Street in Oxford he felt lucky if he passed a box hedge or saw a robin although the hedge sometimes sprouted a polystyrene carton on a Sunday morning.
“You don’t look like a Malaysian private investigator,” Eddie said.
“What is one supposed to look like?”
“I’m not sure though I assume you are quite rare. Tell me what you’ve been doing on this case.”
That started Jeffrey on a description of a year spent trying to understand counterfeiting, in particular Kenny Tan’s Red Power energy drink.”
“Do you drink such things, Jeffrey?”
“Strong coffee for breakfast and water during the day.”
“Sensible man,” Eddie said. Jeffrey looked healthy enough. He was slightly shorter than Eddie but a good deal younger. About forty-five Eddie thought. Smartly dressed. Long, grey trousers and a white open necked shirt with sun glasses and sensible black shoes on his feet. He drove well. “Hospitals now report overdosing on energy drinks, did you know that?” Eddie continued. “They’re mixed with alcohol and users then experience palpitations, seizures, chest pains and high blood pressure. What do they expect? Why would anyone do that?”
Jeffrey shrugged. “The kicks, I suppose.”
“Kicks? I get kicks by day dreaming about the fungicidal properties of krabok seed oil. No, it’s human weakness, Jeffrey. It’s just not necessary. Just look at the ingredients of these canned and bottled drinks – taurine, sodium benzoate, phenylalanine and guaranine. All are poisons in quantities. The best solution is a sensible, balanced and nutritious diet and a good night’s sleep. A cup of hot, milky Ovaltine at night is all I ever need for seven hours of refreshing sleep.”
As Jeffrey drove, Eddie moved on to cosmetics, anti-ageing treatments and food supplements. He was working towards discussing population growth and environmental destruction when they reached the outskirts of Malacca and Jeffrey interrupted him.
“First we’re going to the old Min Hin warehouse where we think they bottle counterfeit Red Power. It’s run by Russians with Chinese Malays.”
“I’ve already been there,” Eddie said. “There’s another warehouse close by, yes?”
“A small one, Eddie, but the biggest is in Johor Bahru just across from Singapore. That’s where the Indonesian raw materials, palm oil and coconut oil arrive.”
“Remind me about the Chinese man called Ho Chiang,” Eddie said.
“Top man along with the Russians. He might well be there today. He drives a white van. Ho is also involved with PJ Beauty Supplies in KL, the Vital Cosmetics agent and distributor. It’s complicated, Eddie. I’d like to get inside the Min Hin building and the others but they all have twenty-four-hour security. I daren’t even risk my manufacturing standards inspector’s badge and business card.”
Jeffrey laughed. Eddie looked at him in astonishment, amazed at the tricks private investigators used.
Approaching the area of the Min Hin building, Eddie began to recognise landmarks. His last visit had been after a tip off from a senior National Parks manager involved in tracking illegal logging. He remembered wondering what he’d do if he found something. He never came to a conclusion of course because, after putting a dent in the white van, he’d left the scene fairly rapidly. It had been long enough though to find piles of krabok wood bark in an open air shed and grab a few samples. “Don’t they see you watching them?” he asked.
“Not from where I park the car.”
Close to the Min Hin building was a place that dealt in old tyres. Jeffrey manoeuvred the car into a gap between a high pile of them, stopped and then reached for binoculars on the back seat.
“There you go, Eddie. As good a view as if you were parked right outside and I can already see Ho Chiang’s white van. The motorcycles belong to staff and the three cars belong to the Russians. I’m so used it, it’s monotonous. I’ve told Mark it’s now pointless. I’ve photographed people coming and going and we think we know who they are. I’ve photographed deliveries and collections and followed Ho Chiang all the way back to KL to PJ Beauty Supplies. I’ve followed the Russians to houses where they stay in Malacca and to the airport when they fly to Bangkok or Singapore or Jakarta. In Bangkok Sannan takes over and he follows them. We need a break.”
He handed the binoculars to Eddie but Eddie was distracted by a pair of mynah birds squabbling on the roof of the white van. “Mmm,” he said after a while, “Nothing much to see.”
Jeffrey took the binoculars back and focused on the building once more. “The side door’s opening,” he said. “And there’s Ho, followed by a fork lift truck loaded with boxes.” He handed the glasses back to Eddie.
A Chinese in shorts and tee shirt, presumably Ho Chiang, was leading the fork lift truck to the back of the white van. He opened the rear doors and a pallet was pushed inside but it stuck. The fork lift pulled back and the top boxes then fell to the ground and broke open. Bottles fell and smashed on the concrete. A big, bare-chested man, red and sunburned, came out, waved his arms and angrily pushed the fork lift driver who had jumped down to clear the mess.
“Trouble,” Eddie said to Jeffrey. “Who’s the big man?”
Jeffrey took the glasses. “Interesting. I’ve not seen him for a while. We think that’s Sergei Mironov another Russian who also uses other names. If it’s him he’s also wanted by Singapore police.”
“Have you told the police he’s here?”
“And ruin our own investigation? Mark is firmly against it at present.”
“Don’t the Malay police take an interest in Russians working here?”
“That depends,” Jeffrey said. “Show them passports, some immigration papers, give them a nod, a wink and an occasional tip for keeping an eye on the place and no problem. No-one ever goes inside the building to check and even if they did, they’d probably see nothing unusual. Here they’d probably see a bottling plant and packing, labelling and boxing machines.”
“How exciting,” Eddie said taking the binoculars back. He was also scanning the sky and surrounding area looking for wildlife and anything else that grabbed his interest. Then he returned to ground level. “Why is a taxi parked there?” he asked.
“A taxi? Where?”
Eddie handed the glasses back. “Beneath the coconut palms.”
Jeffrey frowned. “I don’t know. There are two men inside doing exactly the same as us. Watching.”
“Police?” Eddie asked excitedly.
“In a registered KL taxi?”
Eddie took the glasses back.
The loading finished. Ho Chiang said something to the Russian then got into the van and slammed the door. The fork lift driver produced a brush and started to pick up the smashed boxes and bottles. Then the one Jeffrey had called Sergei looked up, saw the taxi beneath the trees and pointed.
The white van with Ho inside drove off. Mironov, though, walked towards the taxi as if to check who it was, but the taxi drove away before he reached it.
“Ho is probably returning to PJ Beauty Supplies in KL,” Jeffrey said, “But I’ve never seen a taxi here before.”
“Let’s follow,” Eddie said.
It was a good decision. It turned out to be the break Jeffrey and Mark had needed.