Bad Traffic (12 page)

Kevin began to slip down his tracksuit bottoms. Abruptly he stopped and gripped the wheel, and peered forward,
frowning
. He said, ‘Oh Christ.’ And wriggled them back up again.

A colourful car was pulling up, white and black with yellow stripes. A man in a black uniform, some kind of official, got out.

‘It’s bill. Police.’

Ding Ming blanched. They would ask to see his papers and he would be arrested. They might imprison him, steal his organs. Perhaps he would end up casually shot, like the man he had buried.

He checked that his door was unlocked. If it came to it, he would jump out and sprint. He rested his palm on the handle.

‘Stay there,’ growled Kevin out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t do anything. You look a state. Put this blanket over you.’

The policeman’s body so bristled with equipment, he looked military. He walked steadily, taking his own good time. A foreboding creaking sound was Kevin rolling down his window.

‘What’s up, officer?’ His voice was light and obsequious.

The policeman stared right across Kevin and straight at Ding Ming. Ding Ming cast his eyes down, afraid to catch the man’s eye. His hand tightened on the door handle. He had the blanket pulled right up to his neck, and it
completely
covered his arms, but he could not hide the smears of dirt on his face, nor his ethnicity.

Ding Ming figured that, with all that equipment, he might be able to outrun the man. But there would be another in the car. And they would call more, who would come in
helicopters
. Others would bring dogs.

The policeman said, ‘Can I ask what you’ve been doing?’

Kevin said, ‘He’s been with me all night.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, officer.’

The policeman addressed Ding Ming.

‘Are you alright, sir?’

‘Yes.’ Ding Ming felt sweat prickling on his brow. His mouth was dry and he suppressed an urge to lick his lips and swallow.

‘You look a little distressed, sir. Are you sure you’re alright?’

‘He gets nervous,’ said Kevin.

‘I can see that.’

‘Tell the policeman you’re alright, William.’

‘Yes.’ Ding Ming grinned with fear.

‘Hold up your right hand,’ said the officer.

‘Excuse please?’

‘Hold out your right hand.’

Ding Ming obeyed. He saw that it was shaking. A smear of the dead man’s blood was clearly visible on his thumb.

‘Alright, put it down. You’re in the clear.’

‘Excuse?’

‘We’re investigating an assault on a taxi driver by a man of Chinese appearance. But not one who speaks a word of
English
, so your friend is off the hook.’

‘What happened?’ asked Kevin.

‘Seems he couldn’t pay the fare, and an altercation
resulted
in a serious assault. Busted the guy’s nose and ran off.’

‘Ooh, nasty.’

‘Have you seen anyone acting suspiciously?’

‘No, officer. But if we do, we’ll certainly call it in.’

‘Have a good morning.’

‘Thank you, officer. We will.’

The policeman walked stiffly away.

Kevin leaned back and breathed out heavily. ‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘Christ.’ He watched the police car drive off. ‘You did alright there, William.’

Ding Ming’s relief was tinged with anxiety. He had been lucky now, but how often would this happen? He might not be so fortunate next time.

Kevin was drumming on the wheel. He watched the police car drive away, let a silence stretch, then turned and said, ‘Finally. Come on, then. Suck me off.’

At college Ding Ming had taken up running, he would do laps of the campus. It gave him a feeling of lightness. He thought how lovely it would be to run away, to put his head down and drop into that rhythm where all you knew was pounding feet, heart, breath. The flatness of the landscape invited it. He would take his shoes off and the sand would spurt under his feet. He would run to the horizon. He would run all the way home.

‘You don’t have a choice, William.’

Kevin sat with his thick legs wide apart and his arms spread across the back of the seat.

Ding Ming saw what he had to do in his mind’s eye, and it gave him a cold shiver of disgust. Worse, he saw the whole scene as it would appear to invisible watching eyes, to the ghosts of observing ancestors.

What a big house he was going to build. What a lovely wife he had, would soon be talking to – worth any sacrifice. In a few years, his time in this odd little country would be forgotten, like a dream he had woken up from.

‘You could kneel down in front of me here. Or I could lie down in the seat and you could sort of arrange yourself across me, like… no, I don’t think that would work.’

The man might be repulsive, but he was better than the alternatives.

He muttered, ‘Hand is okay.’

‘Hand is okay, is it?’ Kevin rubbed his chin and pulled faces, twitching first one cheek then the other, which carried his pursed lips with him. What was that expression supposed to mean?

‘Alright.’

Ding Ming’s teeth were clamped so hard he could feel the tension in his neck. What a terrible thing to be poor, he reflected, as Kevin slipped the grey pants down and a greasy cock sprang free. What was most noticeable about it was how white it was. It flopped about like a dying fish as it swelled before his eyes.

‘Come on,’ said Kevin. ‘It won’t bite.’

Ding Ming looked away out of the windscreen as his left hand closed over it. He could see the thing out of the corner of his eye, and the red lump on the end seemed to be
looking
at him. It was soft to the touch, but rigid underneath and surprisingly hot. He started moving his hand up and down.

‘Yeah,’ said Kevin, ‘yeah. Slower. That’s right.’ Ding Ming’s arm was already sore from all the digging, and it quickly grew tired, so he shifted to bring more muscles into play.

It was more comfortable in the new position, but it did mean he had to look at what he was doing. Kevin’s thing extended out of a prodigious tangle of curly brown hair. More hair grew on the man’s stomach, below a tattoo of what seemed to be some kind of bird.

Kevin braced one hand against the side windscreen and the other on the dashboard, and settled down in the seat
and Ding Ming realised the picture was of a swallow. That seemed an odd thing to have a tattoo of. Perhaps it was lucky in this culture.

Anyway he seemed to be doing it right as Kevin was
groaning
. ‘There’s a chinky monkey,’ said Kevin. ‘That’s the way.’

Ding Ming was glad he did not have to put the thing in his mouth – that would be much more unpleasant. He felt he’d been cunning in finding this halfway measure that was less disagreeable and would, it seemed, still get him what he wanted.

It reminded him of milking a goat. Not that he had ever done so, but he had seen a documentary about Tibetan nomads, and what he had seen the women on that doing to their placid animals was not dissimilar to what he was doing now to Kevin. Those women came vividly to mind, with their rosy cheeks and wide smiles and exotic ethnic costumes. Ah, the noble life of a nomad. He tried to
remember
details from the programme. They cooked on fires made from dried yak dung and put yoghurt on their faces to keep their complexions fair. They put salt in their tea. They were happy as children, living a simple, poor but carefree life on the majestic high plateau of Chinese Tibet.

The more excited Kevin got, the more noise he made. A lot of it wasn’t words, or was distorted half-words that Ding Ming did not understand, but he did catch a few adjectives – ‘faster’, ‘harder’ – and an imperative command – ‘come on!’

Kevin began to slap the window. His face had gone red. His right hand left the dashboard and grasped Ding Ming’s shoulder.

More imperatives, and Kevin yelped and his grip
tightened
until it grew painful. His goo spurted from the end of his thing and fell onto Ding Ming’s hand. It was hot and seemed to sizzle there.

Ding Ming let go and the thing spasmed jerkily as more goo dribbled out. He wiped the side of his hand against his trousers, waited what he considered a decent interval, then recited a sentence he had thought about carefully.

‘Can I please have the phone number for to call my wife now?’

Kevin was getting his breath back and cleaning himself with tissues. He pulled his tracksuit bottoms up.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it? Easy. Should have got some cream, though, you were getting rough.’ He sighed,
indicating
a sudden dip of mood. ‘I’m not some woolly woofter,’ he said. ‘Not some fucking… queeny limp wrist.’ He dropped balled-up tissues out of the window. ‘It’s hot in here. Are you hot? I’m hot.’ He took off his parka.

‘Number, please.’

‘Next time.’

Next time? Next time?

‘Telephone number.’ This was his right, a promise had been made.

‘Well that wasn’t the deal, was it?’ Kevin circled his
shoulders
and sniffed. ‘The deal was mouths. I can’t very well go back on that, can I? Hand and mouth, it’s not the same thing. I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding. Your English isn’t good enough.’

Ding Ming felt his neck muscles tightening. How could this be borne? ‘You said.’

Kevin pinched his cheek. ‘I’m just fucking with you.’ He opened his black book and ran his finger down a list of names. ‘Let me see, let me see…’

Ding Ming leaned forward to get a closer look, but Kevin tutted and raised the book, in the manner of a child
withholding
a toy from a playmate. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you one digit each time.’

Ding Ming craned closer to look at the precious page, but Kevin pressed it to his chest. ‘Naughty. And the first number is… zero.’ Kevin snapped the book shut.

Ding Ming gathered that he had been cheated, that he would continue to be cheated, that this repulsive scenario would be repeated over and over again. He found himself breathing rapidly and shallowly, and his pectoral muscles tensed. A whine escaped gritted teeth. Before he knew what he was doing, he had snatched the book away.

‘Tell me where my wife is.’

‘Don’t get uppy with me, son. Give me that back.’

Ding Ming opened the address book and its pages
fluttered
.

‘What number? What number?’

Kevin punched him, but Ding Ming ducked the blow, and it struck the top of his head. He fumbled the van door open and ran towards the sea. He didn’t look back, so he didn’t even know if he was being pursued.

Mud sucked at his feet. Perhaps he was crying out, but he didn’t know because the wind snatched his voice away. It picked at his hair and clothes, and gulls jeered.

What had he done? Why was he here? Home seemed so far away, it was almost unimaginable. What was he doing, here, now? There had been a grotesque error, a farcical mistake of enormous proportions. His fever dampened, and he stopped and stood disconsolate with hands on knees.

He had watched many counterfeit English language DVDs in the college TV room, with his dictionary on his knee and his finger hovering over ‘pause’. Often the films had glitches, and one disc’s strange error came to him now. He’d been watching ‘Speed’, which starred Keanu Reeves, and
without
warning it had turned into ‘The Matrix’, also starring
Mister Keanu. It was an analogy for his present disorientation. Like Mister Keanu, he had crossed over into the wrong film.

Though he knew that his only course of action was to turn right round, he could not bring himself to do it yet. He looked about. He could not discern where mud, water and sky began or ended – the entire landscape was a grey sludge, as if he were inside a sodden thundercloud. The only details he could make out were the tractor, piles of sacks and stooped men, and a line of rotting wooden stumps parading down the mud like a lesson in perspective.

A man was watching him. A burly Chinese man in black clothes stood perfectly still, pressed against the back of the nearest stump. His presence was so unexpected that Ding Ming wondered if this was not some malevolent phantom, summoned by his distress. He raised an arm to shield his eyes and saw the ominous figure do the same.

The stranger leaned out from his hiding place, looked around the stump, then stepped forward.

He was no spirit, but still odd. An imposing figure, tall and broad, he wore a leather jacket with a fur collar, and on his belt a pouch for a mobile phone and a clutch of keys. He was boss class. But though his clothes were expensive, his hair was disordered and there was something wild in the set of his features. One eye was completely bloodshot. Clearly he did not care about the ruin of his shoes and trousers as he strode across the mud.

‘
Ni hao
,’ he called. ‘
Ni shi shei?…
Who are you?’

‘
Wo shi gong ren
,’ said Ding Ming, growing conscious of his own wiry frame and bedraggled clothes. ‘I’m a worker.’

‘I talked to you on the phone.’

Yes, the man who had called Kevin last night.

‘The labour organiser. Is that him there?’

Ding Ming looked back. There was Kevin leaning against the bonnet of the van and smoking a cigarette.

‘That’s him.’

How stupidly he had behaved, Ding Ming reflected – like a petulant child. He hadn’t thought, he’d just panicked, and now he’d made things worse for himself. He had done
himself
no favours. He grew ashamed. In future he would think carefully before acting.

‘Let us go to see him.’

‘Yes.’

‘You speak English,’ the man said.

‘I can get by.’

‘You’re an illegal?’ He used the derogatory Chinese
nickname
–
renshe
, a snakeman.

‘Yes. Today is my first day.’

It was good to talk to someone, but the more he saw of this man, the more intimidated he felt. The man’s fine clothes were filthy and his expression was a scowl.

‘I’m Ding Ming. What’s your name?’

‘What’s that book?’

‘It’s his address book.’

‘You took it from him?

‘Yes.’

‘Can you read it?

‘Yes. I should give it back.’ He did not want to explain further, out of embarrassment.

‘Give it to me. My name’s Jian.’

If this man returned the book, Ding Ming would save some face from the situation – it was certainly preferable to personally handing it over. Perhaps Kevin would pretend that the burst of ill temper had not occurred, and would not mention it. He hoped so. Pretending it never happened was certainly the best course of action. He handed the black book over and the man put it in his jacket, and now Ding Ming noticed the grazed knuckles.

He said, ‘Did you take a taxi here? Did you attack the driver?’

But the man did not reply. He was moving faster, with his shoulders set and his head lowered. Ding Ming hurried to keep up.

Mister Kevin came away from the van and stood with his arms crossed. ‘I’m afraid I have no alternative but to consider docking your wages.’

Jian stopped, turned and said, ‘I have to do this now.’

‘You have to do what now?’

He punched Ding Ming in the head.

Ding Ming fell over, too surprised to cry out. Dazed, he watched his attacker walk up to Kevin and hit him. Kevin staggered backwards and put his hands up.

Ding Ming’s lip was split, and he tasted the coppery tang of blood in his mouth. He blinked. He couldn’t believe it. He got shakily to his feet and croaked, ‘What are you doing?’

Jian back-handed Kevin and followed it with a swinging left. The fat man hit the ground with a dull thud. Jian
riffled
through his pockets and took out car keys, wallet and a packet of cigarettes.

Ding Ming gathered his senses. He was horrified. This man was dangerous, probably insane – he had to run. He got to his feet and stumbled away, but Jian stepped up, pulled him round and hit him again, and the sky went out.