THE moment he saw her, he knew she was the mother of the hour-old baby lying dead on the lobby roof 11 floors below. She vehemently denied it, but her face said it all.
The girl had given birth alone. Her only witnesses had been the toys that sat on her bedroom dresser in her family's 400-square-foot housing estate flat. Her parents - who work 12-hour days - had not even known she was pregnant. Their only concern was thattheir daughter was top of her class every term. So, after school finished, the girl was required to return home, complete her homework and then do extra study until bedtime. As a result she was top of her class. She knew a lot of facts, but she knew nothing about life. One night a classmate, also 14, had studied with her. One thing had led to another. The baby's life is over, and if it were not for Detective Senior Inspector Tony Lam, 33, hers would be too.
Hong Kong law is black and white, but Senior Inspector Lam and his Criminal Investigation Department (CID) colleagues who police the housing estates of Shamshuipo see only shade after shade of grey.
'If she had been a bad girl, it would never have happened like this,' he said. 'If she had been like most housing estate girls her age and hung around video arcades and with older kids, she would have known about sex, contraception and abortion. But her parents had never told her and there was no one else.' The law demands she be prosecuted, but Senior Inspector Lam takes a different view. 'What would it achieve? A criminal record? More trauma for the girl? Shame for the parents? The total breakdown of their relationship with her? She is bright and, with counselling, could put this behind her and still make something of her life.' So he did all the paperwork, and then wrote a letter to the Department of Public Prosecution recommending the case be dropped.
As Senior Inspector Lam tells you this story you realise there is something odd about him. It is not only that he clearly loves his work, or that he feels passionately that police should strive for positive results. Nor is it that he wears hip clothes - designer jeans, waistcoat, Armani eyewear, a Rolex - instead of a uniform.
It is this: he and most of his CID colleagues are among the few people you have met in Hong Kong who are not in it for the money. Ten years ago he graduated as an accountant and when he bumps into old colleagues they inevitably point out they are earning four or five times more than him, but he is never fazed. 'They don't understand how much I enjoy this work,' he says. 'They don't understand what it means to work with people.' Another thing they don't understand is the intellectual kick that comes with solving a difficult crime. 'Accountants deal only with the facts they are given and work within a given framework, police have to find their own facts and make of them what they can.' For example, in a recent case two men dressed in overalls attacked and killed a man in a fast food shop. 'I couldn't find a motive. I went through all possibilities in the order of priority: women, gambling, triads, drugs. We interviewed everyone he knew. Went through all his paperwork - there was nothing. All I had was the fact his killers wore overalls.' The case almost drove him insane. 'I would sit at home going through every detail trying to work out what I had missed.' It turned out the man had been killed because he had pushed into the queue. Inspector Lam got his men by interviewing every building site worker in the area. There were 5,000. His record for solving murders remains 100 per cent.
The CID officers are as far from the cardboard cut-out cops of shopping malls and cinemas as it is possible to get. Their only brief is to solve the crime they are assigned to, pursuing whatever line of inquiry it takes. They do not wear uniforms or identification. They have the power to pull people in for questioning on the flimsiest of reasons ('Sorry sir, we are looking for a burglar with dark hair and I'm afraid you fit the description'). This is a tactic which can make them unpopular, but there is nothing like it for jogging the memory of a reluctant witness.
