Bad Traffic (8 page)

Wei Wei did not want to serve at the banquet. He said he’d double her wages for the night and she pouted and crossed her arms and said that it wasn’t about the money, she just did not want to see that unsavoury character again, she’d been disturbed by his behaviour and didn’t want anything to do with him. Li offered lengthy assurances, and fifty pounds for the night, and she agreed.

Black Fort and his hatchetmen arrived a little early, at a few minutes to seven. Mister Li escorted them into the private banquet room. Black Fort was cordial but cold – certainly he was wary. Mister Li was tireless in his efforts to show that he had no hard feelings, refilling Black Fort’s glass often and placing the tastiest morsels in his bowl.

His best dishes were there, a full and complementary range of flavours, among them fish rolls, crisp skinned pork, lemon chicken and sweet white fungus and wolfberry soup. Mister Li was very proud of his food and his Hong Kong-trained chef. Wherever possible, his dishes were made fresh on the premises, and he disdained those competitors who had
everything
delivered frozen from a warehouse – they were not restaurateurs, he would joke, but reheaters.

They discussed matters such as horse racing and weather and talked about the food a great deal. The
conversation
was not lively but at least it was there, and Mister Li curtailed any awkward pauses by proposing toasts. They drank pungent Chinese whisky out of thimble-sized glasses. Mister Li was spilling much of it, letting it flow
down his chin and jaw and a little later wiping it away with a napkin.

He was introduced to the other gang members. A
rather
chubby half-Vietnamese man was known as Caterpillar. Though a little slow, and the butt of most of their jokes, he certainly looked the part, with the leather overcoat, the rings and the dragon tattoo. Ponytailed Six Days spent most of the time on his mobile. The third gang member, Blue, didn’t talk much. He observed laconically that it got in the way of
eating
and smoking.

Wei Wei brought in a tureen of egg and tomato soup to
finish
the meal and tea was drunk as a digestive. Black Fort said, ‘I have almost forgiven you for your stubbornness.’ This was the first time the business in hand had been
alluded
to. Mister Li said, ‘Likewise,’ and they both chuckled, and Black Fort complimented Mister Li on the quality of his banquet. They lit cigarettes.

Mister Li asked Wei Wei to leave the room.

Black Fort said, ‘Let’s open the door and see the mountain. The premium is one hundred and twenty pounds a week.’

‘But at that amount I would go bankrupt in months. I can show you my books. I can afford only two hundred pounds a month. At that, I think I can stay in business – just.’

‘I must stand firm by my original premium, or you will make me lose face. You must see that?’

‘But I think to lower it would show that you are a man of knowledge who understands the world of business, which is about compromise. A friend is someone who can be
compromised
with. Compromise makes friends. And a friend is more valuable than gold.’

Black Fort slapped Six Days on the back. ‘Listen to this guy. Are you hearing this? A man of knowledge? More
valuable
than gold? I love this guy. Because I’m drunk, and your
soup was so good and your waitress so pretty, I suppose we could accept a reduction to the original amount asked for, which was one hundred and eight pounds.’

‘But I cannot pay even that amount. There’s the rent, there’s food, wages, stock, bills. I have a host of overheads.’

‘So put your prices up.’

‘Then I would lose all my customers to my competitors.’

‘Use cheaper ingredients, they won’t notice.’

‘I would have to fire my chef and go into the reheating business.’

‘You are not in a position to negotiate. The matter is
finished
. Don’t bring it up again or the price will go up again. You are spoiling a pleasant evening. Let’s get the cash and go.’

The tong stood, an intimidating presence in the small, smoky room. They might be drunk, but they retained their senses and their faces were hardening.

Mister Li led them out. The restaurant tables had been cleared to the side. Thirty or forty Asian people, mostly middle-aged men, stood in a tight crowd. Mister Li jogged over to stand at their head. He turned around and faced the gang with chest up and chin jutting.

Two of the men behind him unfurled a banner and held it high. Red letters on a white background read, in Chinese and English, ‘EAST ASIANS STAND TOGETHER AGAINST GANGSTERISM’.

Li watched with satisfaction the hoodlums look at the
newcomers
, then at each other, and the cocky self-assurance was wiped from their faces.

Except for Black Fort. His expression was fixed. He laughed as if he had been playing a game, and his opponent had revealed a cunning stratagem, and now he had to hold up his hand in wry acknowledgement. He broke a toothpick in half and plugged it between lips which glistened with oil from his meal.

‘We will none of us pay you anything,’ said Mister Li.

‘I will pay you nothing,’ said one man. ‘I will pay you nothing,’ said the next. They raised their right fists, and chanted together, as Li had schooled them, ‘We stand together against tongs in our community.’

Loudest in their shouts were the three ladies, here to back up wavering husbands. A lot of the men had required a great deal of persuasion. ‘Why do we have to be brave?’ they had complained. ‘We just want a quiet life. Let them have a cut.’ But the gang’s greed had worked in his favour. Someone had made inquiries and discovered that the big tongs usually asked for less.

‘We will not let you feed on this community,’ said
Mister
Li. ‘None of us will give you anything. Not the
restaurant
owners or the shopkeepers or any of our businesses. We stand united.’

‘Get out,’ shouted a lady. ‘Get out, you worms.’ Mister Li had asked that there were no insults. Always it was the
women who were quickest with the insults. There was a way to do these things and it would go easier without such talk.

‘I ask you to leave this premises, and never to return,’ said Mister Li, projecting his voice to fill the room.

Black Fort walked back and forth before the line, looking all the men in the eye. ‘I know who you are,’ he said, ‘I know you all.’ He jabbed a toothpick at them.

‘And we know you,’ said the lady, ‘you leeches.’

‘You will have reason to regret this action,’ said Black Fort. Mister Li realised that he was clamping his jaw and consciously relaxed it.

He asked that the men with the banner move aside so that the tong could get to the door. The men shuffled, and their banner drooped in the middle, so Mister Li asked one of them to take a few steps to the side to make it taut again. Black Fort yanked the banner down so that it fell to the floor, and trod on it as he left.

Now, of course, the difficult bit started. It was easy to feel brave in a big group of men when you were facing only four. But the gang might come at them individually. If a few broke then the whole group was back where they started. If he was lucky the gang would decide that this community was not worth the effort, and move on. If he was not lucky they would try and chop him, perhaps burn down his restaurant. He did not mind the risk for himself, but he cared for his family. That night he sent his wife and daughter and elderly mother to stay at an aunt’s house.

He had bought a gun. It was surprisingly easy, a friend of a friend of a friend had sorted it all out in a couple of days. He’d met the vendor, a young man in a duffel coat, in a
suburban
pub, in the single cubicle of the gents’ toilet.

The squat black Italian-made six-shooter cost him four hundred pounds. The six bullets cost more. They were for a
smaller-calibre pistol and had been wrapped in cellophane so that they would fit the larger chamber. Your pea-shooters were easy, the man had hissed, but you couldn’t get ammo for love nor money.

Mister Li suspected that he had been passed unreliable merchandise. He didn’t like touching the cold, greasy thing, so he put it on a bed of tissue paper in a briefcase, which he kept under the bed at night and in the restaurant kitchen during the day.

He found it hard to concentrate, and swung between
trepidation
and rage. When he walked into a room he made a mental note of the location of objects that could serve as weapons – ashtray, pen, statuette – and he got into the habit of turning round quickly to see who was behind. Let them come, he would bark at himself. He was ready, he was a tenacious fighter with a will of iron. They had bitten off more than they could chew in daring to challenge Mister Li.

Nine days after the banquet he was woken by a noise downstairs. He knew it was them and he took the gun out of the briefcase. He decided not to put a dressing gown over his boxer shorts and vest, as opening the cupboard might alert the intruders. He determined to shoot that leech Black Fort right between the eyes. But he could not stop his hands from trembling.

He took the stairs one at a time, and there seemed to be more than he remembered. The noise came again. Someone was in the kitchen.

His vision grew used to the darkness. As he approached the bottom step and the point of no return, he wondered if he should not go back to get his glasses.

But he went on. Perhaps, after all, it was only a stray come through the cat flap – then, wouldn’t he laugh? He tried to remember what the young man had said about the gun and
clicked the safety catch. He was sure that he had turned it to the off position, but it occurred to him that perhaps it had been off all the time, and now he had turned it on, rendering the gun inactive. However he reassured himself, the
possibility
nagged.

In the hallway he called out, in English, ‘Alright you
bastards
. I’m going to get you.’ But his mouth was so dry it came out as a series of rasps.

He kicked open the kitchen door. There was no one there. He went into the dining room, and through to the lounge, stalking with the trembling gun held aloft, and there was no one there. He could not even find how they had got in. He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water.

A pink mobile phone lay on the counter, a clamshell, open. It wasn’t his. It was splattered with some dark-red
substance
. He picked it up. The red stuff looked like blood. He pressed a button. The screen brightened and showed a brick wall. It was the paused start of a film. He pressed ‘Play’.

A brick wall. The camera moved to the left, to show more wall and a corner. It was a wobbly picture, handheld, and the light, coming from above, a bright bulb perhaps, was harsh and flattening.

The camera shifted further and there was Wei Wei
cowering
, legs drawn under her, arms behind her back, ankles tied with electric cable. The image blurred as the camera was brought closer, then snapped suddenly into clarity. Her lip was split and blood trickled down her chin. Her eyes were bright and damp. She was talking, but there was no sound on the film, her mouth was making the same shapes again and again, she was repeating something over and over.

She slid back, away from the camera, propelling herself along the concrete floor with bare feet until she was pressed against the wall. The camera came in closer until her white face filled the frame. Because of the lighting, all that was
visible
was big black eyes and the dark gap between her open lips and the black gap between the two front teeth.

A gloved hand grabbed a hank of hair and pulled it up and away from her face and yanked her head back. Her nostrils quivered. She was looking fixedly to the side, at something offscreen.

The hand let go of the hair and it flopped back across the face, and whoever was holding the camera stepped back to widen the frame.

A figure stepped up to the trembling girl, dressed in baggy black clothes, a scarf across his face, a woolly hat pulled
down low over his forehead and wraparound plastic
sunglasses
over his eyes. A knife blade gleamed. He leaned over and down, and with a rapid underhand motion drove the knife a dozen or so times into her torso.

The girl’s mouth opened and closed and a shudder passed across her, then she slumped. Blood pooled rapidly beneath her and the knife wielder stepped away.

The picture wavered, then settled, to show the concrete floor and the dead girl and the spreading blood pool. The blank white face of the dead girl grew bigger as the phone holder leaned in towards it, until it filled the screen. Abruptly, the screen blanked.

Jian blinked hard and saw that his hand was shaking. The screen was a tiny thing, much smaller than his palm, but it had swallowed him completely. He was aware of a great heat building in his face. He looked up. He was in a
darkened
restaurant and an old man was pointing a gun with both hands and the barrel wobbled with his nerves.

He dropped the phone and swept the skinny outstretched arms aside and rammed the little man up against the
restaurant
wall with one hand and punched the bamboo facing by his head with the other, again and again, until the bamboo crackled and split.

He dropped the old man among the splinters. He looked inside himself and found his body filling with despair. He looked outside, and it was ridiculous and unfair that
nothing
was different. Here was a restaurant and here he was in it, here was a pink phone, here a hand with scuffed and bleeding knuckles. It was all the same, but it didn’t mean anything any more.

The old man was crawling across the floor. Still keeping the gun pointed, he began to fumble with the phone. The film’s last frame was a close-up of Wei Wei’s blank eye. He
was blowing up the picture. He stood and thrust the phone at Jian and retreated to the corner of the room and hid behind his gun.

Wei Wei’s pupil filled the small screen. In the corner of the black iris lurked a blurred and distorted reflection of the bottom half of the face of the man holding the camera phone. Almost nothing could be discerned except a dark patch beneath his lip, a birthmark.

Jian put his hands on a counter, then on his face, back on the counter, back on his face, now digging his fingers into his cheek. It was good to have the bamboo splinters burning in his hand, it took the real pain away.

He wanted to think about it. He knew she was dead but he couldn’t accept it, because in his head she was alive. But she wasn’t alive, she was dead, and there was nothing he could do to change it. He remembered her mother, in the glare of a lorry’s headlight, the head lolling, eyes open, blood running down her cheek. In death they were more alike than when they were alive. Mother and daughter – four empty eyes to watch him now.

The old man approached with faltering steps and put the gun down by the candle. He took a black namecard out of his wallet, put it down next to the gun and retreated nervously.

‘Black Fort’ was written there, by an image of lips and a glass. The old man came forward again and pushed the gun towards Jian’s hand, pushed it millimetre by millimetre, until the handle was facing him.

‘I get it,’ snapped Jian. ‘I get it. He killed her and now you’ll help me kill him.’

Jian picked the gun up. The old man tapped the
namecard
. He was pointing at what looked like an address.