My Favourite Wife Read Online Free PDF

DeutscherMonde, were investing billions of RMB in the Yangdong project. The company had already built an identical development in the suburbs of Beijing. And yet, as the Germans sat with their expensive lawyers across the dinner table from the local government officials of Yangdong – five men with cheap suits and soft flesh and bad teeth, accompanied by their own lawyer, a bird-thin man of sixty with a shock of dyed black hair, and a slab-like stooge who looked like some kind of bodyguard – it was as if the Germans were the supplicants, the ones most desperate for the deal, the beggars at the feast.
    Courses came and went. The Germans sipped their mineral water. The Chinese chain-smoked high-tar cigarettes and swilled soft drinks. The conversation ebbed and flowed from English to Shanghainese, much of it concentrating on the glory of the Green Acres development, and how it would enrich the community.
    The oldest of the town’s representatives said the least. With his hooded eyes, long upper lip and frog face, Bill thought he looked like a mini Mao. They called him Chairman Sun. He smoked constantly, even when the chopsticks in his spare hand picked at a dish. Sun made no eye contact, yet still managed to convey the impression that he was mildly dissatisfied with everything, including the project, the food, the choice of restaurant, the presence of so many foreign devils, and possibly life itself.
    Only Bill had turned off his phone, and tinny snatches of familiar tunes punctuated the lunch. The
Mission Impossible
theme, the opening chords of ‘Brown Sugar’, niggling soundbites from Beethoven and Oasis and Faye Wong. Shane pushed his plate to one side and placed his laptop on the table.
    ‘What do you keep on that thing?’ Bill asked him.
    ‘The truth, mate,’ Shane told him. ‘The brutal truth.’
    Chairman Sun called for the waiter and gave him his instructions. The waiter went away and came back with the wine list. Sun chose a bottle and Shane ingratiatingly smiled and mumbled his compliments in Shanghainese at the excellence of the choice.
    Everyone fell silent as they watched the ritual of the waiter returning with the bottle of Burgundy, presenting it to Chairman Sun, who – after a tense moment – nodded his faint approval.
    The waiter removed the cork and delicately poured a splash of red wine into Chairman Sun’s glass. His frog face twitched with suspicion as he smelled the wine, tasted it and – after another breathless moment – nodded his approval.
    The waiter half-filled Chairman Sun’s glass with Burgundy. Then the Chairman topped it up with the can of Sprite in front of him, took a long slurp and exhaled with pleasure.
    Bill glanced across at Shane and Devlin and Nancy and the two Germans.
    But they didn’t even blink.
    * * *
    On Saturday afternoon he came home to an empty apartment.
    He placed the stack of files he was carrying on the table, tore off his jacket and tie, and read the note Becca had stuck to the fridge. She had taken Holly to ride the bumper cars at Fuxing Park. He had promised to go with them, if he could get away in time. But Saturday was a work day at Butterfield, Hunt and West.
    Bill had spent the afternoon going through paperwork with Shane and Nancy. The contract between the Germans and the Yangdong officials was in Chinese and drawn up under Chinese law, but the deal was structured so that all the important commercial rights were offshore, governed by Hong Kong law with documents in English.
    ‘It makes the deal easier to enforce,’ Nancy had explained.
    ‘When someone steals all the money,’ Shane added.
    Bill took a bottle of Evian from the fridge and crossed to the window. The courtyard was empty apart from a silver Porsche 911. It looked like a shark waiting its prey on the bottom of the ocean. A 911, Bill thought, yawning as he stretched out on the sofa. A 911 in China…
    He woke up with his daughter’s face pressed close, and he could smell the sweetness of