When she pulled away, Peter had tears in his eyes too.
“God, I’m a sook. If Will was here, he’d bash me.”
“If Will was here, he’d want to reward all of you,” said Aileen. She gestured to the table. “Please sit, eat, as a start.”
“Before I scoff the lot,” said Robert, starting on a second helping.
The five of them sat at the table, Aileen seeing to drinks.
Peter opened the conversation. “I’d like to thank each of you. What you’ve done, all of you, was exceptional. I paid a fortune to get hold of this type of information and came up with nothing but a suspicion there was something odd going on.” He sighed, looked across at Bo. “Something odder even than you and Will being kidnapped.
“The village closed ranks. I didn’t think anyone with a camera and a notebook could possibly do any better than my money on the table to get people to talk. I was wrong.”
“Bo is a very clever man. This is his triumph, because of Bo we got lucky,” Darcy said.
Peter acknowledged Bo with another glance down the length of the table and returned his eyes to her. “And I didn’t trust you not to cause more trouble. Aileen says I’ve got to stop blaming you for putting Will into this position in the first place.” He looked at Aileen.
“We were going to put him in front of the press anyway for Avalon,” she said.
“But not like...” Peter shook his head. “I have a way to go with forgiving you for that, Darcy. I assume that was you behind the profile story on Will? And you Bo, I know it was you too.”
Darcy nodded. Did turning up evidence to free Will mean wiping her slate clean, or would Peter still want to pursue her about using that off the record material? He was clearly emotional, relieved, but there was anger simmering there. “Are you going to empty my bank account over it?”
“I thought about it. We had an agreement. But Will would have my head for it.”
She sighed. Her own relief an u
nknotting of muscles in her chest.
“What you’ve uncovered is enough to kickstart a legitimate police investigation which Parker will back up with one of our own. The truth won’t hide now. Tomorrow we start the process of getting Will released.”
Robert banged on the table with a soup spoon in approval and Peter smiled for the first time since they’d arrived.
“Let’s run through what we know,” he said. He looked at Darcy. “This is your story.”
Her eyes went to Bo, got a tight nod, to Robert and got a grin around a mouthful. It was her story, and when she was sure the details were squared away she’d file it with the wire service and watch it explode. And this time she could be sure she was doing the right thing for Will.
“This is what we know. Feng Kee was born in the village of Tengtou into a ruling class family. His father and grandfather before him were leaders of the village. The family was wealthy, the source of their income coming from rentals from real estate, both in Tengtou and in Shanghai. Village legend holds that the men of the Feng family were gangsters and standover men.
“Feng rented office space to Will. At the end of the twelve month lease, Will moved the office to alternative premises.”
“Because Feng tried to extort him,” said Peter.
Darcy acknowledged that new piece of information with a nod. It made sense. “The charge report says Feng Kee confronted Will about an unpaid rent agreement on January tenth. They fought and Will beat Feng to death.”
Peter flinched and Aileen lent across and patted his hand. “I hate hearing it said like that,” he said.
Darcy went on, her eyes down on a translation of the Ministry of Justice charge. “It says Feng died the next week in his village of injuries sustained in the beating. It says the family was unable to identify the mystery business partner until they recognised his name in newspaper stories.”
She looked up. “What it doesn’t say is that, being a family of gangsters, they went about getting retribution in their own style by kidnapping Will and Bo, and hoping to continue the family practice of extortion in a big way.”
“Friggin’ idiots,” said Robert.
Peter was watching her intently. “Go on.”
“What we know is Feng returned to the village around January fifteenth. He attended a wedding on February fourteen.” She tossed the wedding picture on the table and Peter picked it up and peered at it, Aileen leaning over his shoulder to look too.
“He looks drunk but not at death’s door.”