YOU ARE NEVER alone in Hong Kong. Almost everywhere you go, there is bound to be someone watching. Thousands of people are tucked into the city's dank crevices; they live crammed into high-rise buildings, often three generations under one roof. But Lam Kwok-wai felt alone.
Tuen Mun was a late-1970s dream town. The lofty plans of distant architects envisaged a town in which 'its citizens will enjoy a life with some dignity and a little more spaciousness than is possible elsewhere in Hong Kong'. Sadly, the reality did not match the promise and Tuen Mun's people became labelled by critics as 'citizens of cemeteries with lights' for the bleakness of their cityscape.
On April 24, 1992, Lam walked aimlessly towards the sea, over a bleak stretch of land reclaimed in the early 1970s and turned over for housing estates and industry. Among the estates on the stunted outcrop was Oi Ming Estate, another series of uninspired concrete structures. It was late and the streets were deserted, most people already tucked into the building's pockets. The hum of a taxi as it pulled up outside the estate caught Lam's attention. A door swung open and a young girl got out. She looked as though she was in her early 20s, but in fact she was 19 and a virgin. Lam watched her walk quickly across the concourse. In a trance-like state, but with the conviction of someone who knew what he was doing, as though he had been waiting for her, he followed.
Her footsteps echoed in the cavernous foyer, an ugly grey chamber made worse by harsh fluorescent lighting. It could have been the entrance to a block in George Orwell's 1984, the stench of boiled cabbage replaced with the lingering smell of sweat and stir-fry.
An anti-litter poster taped to the rough wall depicted a pair of eyes, brows drawn together in a knot of disapproval. The caption read: 'Hong Kong is watching'. But no one was watching, no one saw the girl press the button to summon one of the four lifts, no one except Lam. He waited for the doors to jerk open and for the girl to get in, and then, just as they were closing, he jumped in after her.
As soon as the doors had shut, he swung around and grabbed the girl's throat, his fingers clasped around her neck. She struggled and he squeezed tighter, tiny blood spots forming in the whites of her eyes. The attack was frenzied and within seconds she had slumped to the floor. When she regained consciousness, she was lying in a pool of blood on the tiled floor of a stairwell. She was still dressed, but her shirt had been pulled up over her breasts, her jeans caught around her ankles. She had been raped.