The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (53 page)

‘If you don’t get on that sodding bike and get on your way I’ll ram it up your arse,’ I said. Maybe he understood English but more likely he just got the drift from the way I said it. Anyway he went, almost colliding with an old lady laden with carrier bags as he looked at me over his shoulder.

There was no blood but even if there had been it wouldn’t have mattered. I took my jacket off and draped it over her, gently, the way you’d cover a sleeping child.

She lay still then, purring loudly. A young couple walked past, dressed in identical denims and chatting loudly in Cantonese. He pointed and she laughed but they didn’t stop, just hurried on to wherever it was they were going, arm in arm.

‘Lie still, it’s all right,’ I whispered, kneeling forward and picking her up, wrapping the jacket around her and putting her in the box. She shook her head once and lay still, breathing like a crotchety old asthmatic.

I sat back on the pavement, giving her time to get used to the new environment and me the chance to work out where I was going to take her. It was late evening in a city where they’re more used to eating cats than caring for them, I needed a vet in a place with no livestock. The hotel seemed the best bet so I waved down a taxi and gently picked up the box, closing the flaps so that she’d be in the dark, sliding onto the back seat with it on my knees.

‘Excelsior,’ I said, but the middle-aged driver with a huge black mole to the right of his nose looked at me blankly.

‘Excelsior Hotel,’ I repeated, and this time he managed a ‘Huh?’ and the third time I screamed the words at him and she moved in the box, just once.

He shrugged and turned back to the wheel but at least he started driving.

I raised the flaps and spoke gently as the driver eyed me nervously in the mirror. I moved my hand to stroke her but when I pushed her head there was no resistance and it flopped sideways, her small pink tongue protruding between her sharp, white teeth.

I told the driver to stop and I got another ‘Huh?’ so I slapped him on the shoulder and threw him ten dollars and he hit the brakes.

I walked along the bustling road with the box under my arm, getting knocked and banged but not caring because she was dead now and there was no point in being gentle with her. The street was alive with noise, with housewives shouting at each other even though they were just feet apart, with children running between their legs and old women haggling and cackling with hawkers who’d set up their wooden stalls on the pavement, selling cheap clothes and toys, and frying food. An alley appeared on my left and I turned and walked down it, a dark place with the fetid stink of rotting vegetables, but at least it was quiet. There were stacks of wooden crates and metal bins and piles of rubbish waiting to be collected. I put the box down by the side of a black plastic bag full of what looked like fish heads and I stood there with my back against the rough brick wall and I looked up, through the network of fire escape ladders and air-conditioners, to the sky and the storm clouds above. I shook my head from side to side and closed my eyes, unable to understand how I could be so affected by the death of a cat. At least I’d tried to help, at least she hadn’t died alone in the street, at least at the end she’d known that someone cared. The tears came then and I slid down the wall until I couldn’t go any further and my arms were folded across my knees and I cried. She was my sister and I should have been there.

By the time I’d felt ready to go back to the bar Howard was on his fourth or fifth drink and was being entertained by a tall, willowy Chinese girl with long hair and a mouth wide enough to swallow a frisbee. He didn’t mention my absence, or ask about the box, and seemed more concerned with the zip on the back of the girl’s skin-tight tigerskin patterned jump suit. Almost as an afterthought Howard told me that Seligman had left a message – he was going to be late and could we go to his flat instead. Howard seemed to be in no hurry to leave so I got the American’s address from him and left him to it.

Seligman lived in a basement flat a couple of hundred yards from the FCC in a ramshackle three-storey colonial building tucked away at the end of a narrow, twisting cobbled alley.

Grey clouds lay thickly across the sky, unmoving, waiting to pour down and wash the air clean. Above my head the gap between the houses was criss-crossed with washing lines, bare of clothes as the housewives prepared for the coming downpour. Windows began shutting and air-conditioners buzzed into life as the first drops of rain began to fall. I climbed down the roughly-hewn sandstone steps to the green wrought iron gate that guarded the entrance to his flat. There was a metal bell-pull set into the wall and when I gave it a tug there was a dull thud from somewhere in the bowels of the dark corridor that lay beyond the gate. A young Chinese boy wearing white shorts and nothing else padded out of the gloom and let me in.

‘Tod won’t be long,’ he told me over his shoulder as he led me down the corridor to a gnarled oak door at the opposite end. Uneven beams ran along the length of the ceiling and the floor was bare concrete, so I guess it used to be the cellars of the building, or maybe the servants’ quarters.

The boy looked to be about sixteen or seventeen but he had the sort of pretty face that made guessing his age difficult. The body below it was hard and muscled as if he lifted weights, yet he moved like a ballet dancer, gliding along on the balls of his feet. He pushed the door into a large room, surprisingly light and airy considering it was below ground. The walls had been painted white, the ceiling grey, and a large metal-bladed fan kept the air circulating. The light in the room came from a series of spotlights dotted around the walls, mainly used to illuminate a series of black and white prints of 1940 movie stars. One wall was lined with bookshelves, the books, almost all of them, Chinese, and the ones with titles that I could read dealt with Chinese political figures or analysed the mainland’s economy. Deep, deep, deep.

The electrical stuff was all top quality, TV, video, full stereo system and a respectable collection of CDs, light on pop, heavy on the jazz. I found Winelight and after I’d slid it into the player and hummed along to a few bars I started to feel at home. I was pretty sure I’d like Tod Seligman, CIA rump-rustler or not. I think it was the bottle-filled drinks cabinet that won me over.

I turned to find the boy watching me like a tailor eyeing me up for a suit.

‘Tod rang to say I should look after you,’ he said, stretching his arms up to the ceiling and standing on his toes. I had a sudden vision of the fan slicing through his wrists and the blood jetting over the virgin walls, but then he put his hands on his hips and began lifting his knees to touch his shoulders, left, right, left, breathing deeply like a sprinter warming up. I couldn’t place his accent, it wasn’t British but it wasn’t American either.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked.

‘Gin and tonic, please.’

‘Ice and lemon?’

I nodded and smiled a thank you, wondering as I did if he took it up the arse and if it was Seligman who gave it to him. Homosexuality is still a crime in Hong Kong, even between consenting adults, but that’s like saying you can’t get a drink in Riyadh or a bonk in Brunei. It’s done, but behind securely closed doors.

The drink he gave me had all the qualities I admire in a gin and tonic – it was long and cold and it came in a glass that didn’t bang the end of my nose when I drank from it. And he used a fresh bottle of tonic.

Dotted around the floor were large blue and white chequered bean bags, the sort that are supposed to mould themselves to your body and do terrible things to your back. The boy was touching his toes now, and keeping his legs straight while he did it. I was impressed. He’d be able to tie his shoelaces without bending at the knees. I wondered when was the last time Howard had seen his knees, or his feet for that matter. He was probably now lying flat on his back while the Chinese girl did terrible things to him with her generous mouth. I asked the boy if I could use the toilet and when I got back he’d re-filled my glass.

I was just getting into the third track of Winelight when footsteps rang along the corridor and a soaking wet Tod Seligman walked into the room.

‘I forgot my umbrella,’ he said by way of apology.

I raised my glass. ‘I’d never have guessed,’ I said.

Seligman spoke quickly to the boy in Chinese and he scurried off to return with a large green towel that the American used to dry his hair.

‘Have you been here long?’ he asked.

‘Long enough to go through two gins,’ I said. He took the hint and gave me my third, pouring himself a vodka and tonic at the same time.

‘Is it raining?’ the boy asked Seligman. Who said beauty and brains don’t go together?

‘Pouring,’ he said. ‘There’s a typhoon close to the Philippines and it looks as if it’s heading this way. It’ll be raining on and off for the next couple of days.’ He turned to me. ‘Excuse me while I change.’ The shoulders and trousers of his light blue suit were dark with water stains and his white shirt was translucent, a gold medallion on a thin chain showing through. When he came back he was still wearing the chain, but the wet shirt and suit had been replaced by a black kimono with a red and gold motif on the back and black kung fu slippers. His hair was neatly combed and he carried with him the smell of a freshly cut Christmas tree. He picked up his glass and flowed down into one of the bean bags. He actually looked comfortable. I was even more impressed than I had been when I’d seen his friend touch his toes.

‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ said the boy and he flounced out of the room. Seligman did look like the archetypal CIA agent, with his steel-framed glasses, crew cut and intense blue eyes.

‘Howard told you what I wanted?’ I asked him. He nodded.

‘He said you wanted to talk about what happened to Sally. I’m sorry. She was a good friend.’

There were those words again. Sorry. And was.

‘When did you go to China with her?’

‘About a week before she died. There was a diamond mining operation on the Yong River she wanted to look at.’

‘In Hunan province?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Barry Fender.’

Seligman relaxed and grinned. ‘That’d be right. Once he’s outside Pat Pong or Wanchai he’s lost. No, Sally and I were in Zhejiang province, on China’s east coast.’

‘Where was this mine?’

‘Mine probably isn’t the right word, they were dredging up mud from the river bed and sifting through it.’

‘How did you get there?’

‘We flew to Shanghai on a scheduled service and hired a small plane to fly us to Hangzhou. From there we paid a taxi to take us to the mine. The journey took about six hours in all.’

‘And what was she looking for?’

‘She didn’t say.’

I raised my eyebrows and gave him the look that said, ‘Come on, we’re both men of the world, you can tell me’, but he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘No, seriously. She was very secretive when it came to work.’

‘So why did she want you to go with her?’

‘She would have preferred to have gone alone, but she couldn’t speak Mandarin. I was useful, that’s all. But she was a friend so I could put up with being used.

‘I wasn’t being completely altruistic though. The mine isn’t far from Ningbo, the fishing town where Sir Y. K. Pao was born. I’d never been before and I wanted to see it so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.’

I could see he regretted using the word ‘kill’ by the way he looked away and carefully studied a crack in the wall by the television set.

‘The story was to do with diamonds, but from what her news editor told me it was just an advertising feature, a free puff for the diamond industry and the bourse,’ I said.

I could see the word ‘puff’ didn’t cause any resentment, maybe it’s not a word that Americans understand. ‘I don’t see how an advertising feature would merit a trip to the middle of China,’ I added.

‘Ningbo isn’t actually in the middle of China,’ said Seligman. ‘But I hear what you’re saying. She paid for all the expenses, too.’

Winelight came to an end and he leant over and instead of slotting in another CD he just pressed the replay button. Maybe he was a Washington fan, too, or maybe it was because the pile of CDs was just out of reach and he knew he couldn’t get out of the bean bag with as much grace as he’d sunk into it.

‘So who would have reimbursed her?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on whether the editorial was being supplied by the paper or by the advertisers.’

‘I think John Healy said the advertising department of the
Post
had asked her to do it.’

‘They’d have picked up the tab, then.’

The door opened and the boy walked in with a Sony Walkman clipped to his shorts and earphones plugged in, buzzing like a trapped fly. He walked over to the drinks cabinet, clicking his fingers softly to a tune we couldn’t hear, picked up a can of 7-Up, smiled at Seligman, and waltzed out of the room.

‘You see, I can’t see why a paper would pay hundreds of pounds for the two of you to fly to a diamond mine when she could churn out a feature in Hong Kong on the back of a few phone calls. Did you take any pictures?’

‘She had a camera, one of those autofocus, auto-exposure jobs. She used up a couple of rolls of film while we were there.’

‘Maybe that was it,’ I said. I swirled my gin and tonic around in the half-empty glass and watched the melting ice cubes bump together. ‘Maybe they were planning to use a spread of pictures.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Seligman, folding the kimono primly across his legs. ‘But you’re right, it’s not very likely. Sally was always contemptuous of advertising features, she only did them for the money.’

I tried to read his eyes, to see if he knew about Lai because if he knew about him he’d know that Sally didn’t need money so there was no reason for her to be selling her soul to the advertisers. If she was doing a story on the mine then it was because it was something that interested her, a story that would give her a kick. That’s why most of us do the job, not for the money or the freebie trips, or to see your name in print, but for the knowing, the putting together of individual facts and opinions until you have the complete picture. The kick comes from having the story before anyone else, and being able to reveal it to the world. Look dad, no hands. Look what I found out. So what had Sally found out that had made her so keen to go to China?