The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (60 page)

In front of the shop was a line of cages raised off the ground, full of clucking chickens. A housewife opened a hatch on the top of one of the cages and reached in to pull out a bird by its wings. I’d seen the SPG use a similar grip on a student protesting against apartheid in Trafalgar Square a few years back, in the days when students were more concerned about politics than whether or not they’d get a job after graduating. It squawked angrily and tried to peck her as she squeezed its breast between her bony fingers. Satisfied with her choice, she deftly swung the bird upside down and held it by the legs before paying one of the butchers with coins from a small purse.

One chicken had managed to escape from its cage but it stayed close by, pecking idly at grain on the pavement as it waited to be returned to its mates.

The next building was a tall factory, and water dripped down from the air-conditioners high above and then trickled along the pavement and into the rubbish-filled gutters.

The space alongside the wall wasn’t wasted, though, hawkers had pulled up their barrows and were selling British Home Stores shirts and Charles Jourdan belts and silk ties, their wares displayed on circular trays the size of dinner tables, protected by umbrellas to deflect the falling water.

A key-cutter had set up his grinding machine and was idly exploring his mouth with a toothpick as he waited for a customer. Down on the floor by his side sat a woman of indeterminate age with short frizzy hair and a purple birthmark the shape of a lizard stretched across one cheek, the tail nestling against her upper lip. In front of her was a low-sided wooden box, about three feet square, filled with small cars with red flashing lights that buzzed around, reversing each time they hit the wall. They seemed to be making more of an attempt to escape than the chickens.

The factory building curved around to the right and we followed the bend past the last of the shops and turned into a narrow alley, dark and dank despite the heat. Twenty feet into the passage was an open doorway which led to a flight of stone stairs. As we climbed them in single file the air was filled with clicking noises, like a geiger counter gone mad.

The stairway led into a hall and at the end of the hall was an ornate wooden entrance that opened into a room the size of a small tennis court pitch packed to the edges with small square tables and men and women playing with small ivory tiles. Around the edge of the arena were dozens of private rooms with their own games going on.

A great deal of effort was being put into making the games as noisy as possible, the players were banging and crashing the tiles onto the tables, rattling them around, or just tapping them together while they planned their next moves. There were four at each table, but three times as many spectators crowding round, chatting to each other and by the look of the wads of notes that were being handed around, gambling furiously. Old men shuffled around pouring tea or brandy into glasses, emptying ashtrays into metal buckets and sweeping the floor with battered brooms. Just like a casino there were no windows and no clocks, no sense of time passing.

I looked at Rotten Teeth and he shrugged. He didn’t have to put it into words – we didn’t have a hope in hell of spotting Ho among the hundreds of mah jong players and spectators. Even assuming he was one of the three men who’d beaten me up – I was getting past the stage of thinking of it as a fight – I would be hard pushed to pick him out of the crowd, especially as most of the players had their heads down scrutinizing their tiles.

I motioned towards the door and this time we left with me leading the way. The three cops were talking quickly among themselves, but I guess they realized I knew what I was doing so they kept up with me.

Back in the car I managed to explain to the driver that I wanted him to call Lai and when Lai answered there was a disappointed edge to his voice as if we’d taken him away from a good meal or a favourite film.

I explained the problem and I asked him to persuade Yip to give us Ho’s bleeper number.

‘No problem,’ he said, and he left the phone switched on as he went back to the hanging man. I heard the blowtorch roar and then a far-off scream before Lai picked up the telephone again. ‘I have it,’ he said, his breathing even, completely calm. I thought I could hear moaning in the background but it could have been my imagination.

‘Give us ten minutes and then call the paging company,’ I said, and rang off.

We went back to the mah jong club and spread out among the crowds of spectators, trying to cover as big an area as possible so that hopefully one of us would be within earshot of the bleeper when it went off. The three cops attracted no attention at all as they stood and watched the games but I was on the receiving end of a lot of sidelong glances as we waited. I guess it wasn’t the sort of place that gweilos normally went, and it probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I looked like a policeman myself. That’s partly deliberate. After working the crime beat for a while you start to look like you work in CID, you dress in the same clothes, have a similar hair style, talk the same slang. You have to if you want to be accepted, it’s the camouflage that lets you get in close. Some papers take it even further, and make sure that their office cars are the same colour and model as their local CID uses, even down to the same aerial configuration. It makes it a lot easier to get to the scene of a crime, and with the right look on your face you can often get waved through roadblocks and the like. I’ve had more than my fair share of salutes from zealous uniformed cops, too.

Looking like a copper also helps when you’re sniffing around an accident asking questions. If you don’t identify yourself everybody assumes you’re a cop. People talk to the police whereas they might tell a journalist to go fuck himself. Camouflage.

But looking like a cop in a triad haunt probably wasn’t too smart a move, a bit like being disguised as a turkey on Christmas Eve.

The bleeper when it did burst into life was on the belt of a young Chinese guy at the table next to the one I was standing at, and as I turned my head towards the sound he looked up and we recognized each other immediately. The last time I’d seen him he’d been lying flat on his back in the Excelsior Hotel, clutching his balls and squealing. He jumped to his feet, his chair tipping back, hands moving up to grab the table. I started to move towards him but he heaved the table over, and the spectators scattered, falling backwards to avoid being hit. The tiles slid against each other and then avalanched to the floor. I was bumped and jostled, maybe because there was so much confusion but more likely because they realized that I was an enemy after one of their own.

Suddenly I was in the middle of a crowd, not hostile, just passively blocking my way. There was no point in shouting ‘Stop’ or ‘Wait’ or anything, but I yelled anyway, to express my anger and to get my three little helpers over to where the action was. I tried to push through the human wall but the more effort I made the more resistance I met.

‘Immigration,’ I screamed at the top of my voice. That seemed to do the trick. I immediately knew how Moses felt when he waved his staff over the Red Sea. The crowds began to pour out of the doors and within seconds all that were left were the staff, my three helpers, and Ho. Yeah. OK. So I lied. The cops were laughing and Rotten Teeth clapped his hands together to show his appreciation, but they stopped when Ho reached into his jacket and pulled out a knife. I recognized it. The look on his face was pure hate as he stepped forward waving the knife, his feet crunching on the fallen mah jong tiles and broken brandy glasses. One of the old men was busily sweeping up the breakages with a straw broom, head down and seemingly oblivious to the conflict. He cleared his throat noisily and spat, a white, frothy blob hitting the ground about six inches away from my left foot. I grabbed the brush from his hand and it was like stealing a rattle from a baby. He saw my anger and backed away, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. I hefted it in my hands, felt the weight and swung it gently from side to side as Ho moved in. Rotten Teeth and the other two kept their distance, hands on hips as they watched Ho weighing me up. Rotten Teeth was laughing gently, as if refusing to take the fight seriously.

I had the advantage when it came to reach, but if it came to a choice between being stabbed in the stomach or belted on the head with a stick, I knew which I’d go for. He kept the blade low, holding his free hand out towards me with the fingers twitching up and down as he made a hissing noise through pursed lips. He got to within three feet of me before Rotten Teeth pulled a pistol out of the back of his trousers, pointed it at Ho’s head and spoke to him in rapid Cantonese. I could appreciate the joke now, and saw why they hadn’t rushed to help me.

Ho grunted and threw the knife onto the floor and raised his arms above his head. I stepped forward, dropped the broom to one side and kicked him in the crotch, hard. I got a round of applause from the three cops for that and they helped pick Ho up off the floor, his hands once again clutched to his private parts, and carried him back to the Mercedes.

I sat in the front passenger seat while Rotten Teeth drove and the twins worked Ho over in the back, nothing serious, just enough so that he’d tell them where he lived. It didn’t take long and, to be honest, I would have been quite happy to have given them a hand. Or a foot.

He lived on the twenty-eighth floor of a high-rise block five minutes’ drive away from the mah jong hall. Ho sat on a grey plastic sofa and gently rubbed his groin, his eyes full of resentment. I wanted to make a joke about red poles but I knew he wouldn’t understand so I helped the cops rip the flat apart instead. The kitchen walls were thick with grease, and as I went through the cupboards I was watched by a lazy cockroach which stood on an unwashed wok in the sink. Nothing, just bottles of strange vegetables, packets of freeze-dried soup and a big polythene bag of Australian white rice with a red kangaroo on the front. There was a small fridge rattling away in the corner but all it contained were cans of San Miguel and a half-empty bottle of Kowloon Dairy milk.

Back in the small lounge Ho was screaming at Rotten Teeth who was merrily pulling everything out of a teak veneered wall unit and throwing the contents over his shoulder. By the time he’d finished the floor was littered with comics and dirty magazines. The twins had started on the main bedroom, grabbing all the clothes from a closet set into the wall and going through the pockets. One discovered a roll of red notes and he pocketed them without a word.

They started on the bed then, slashing the mattress with a wicked-looking carving knife from the kitchen. The air was soon filled with white fibres that made them cough and wheeze. I closed the bedroom door and left them to it.

I found the briefcase under a small bed in the second bedroom. I carried it into the lounge and showed it to Rotten Teeth, who smiled, nodded and dropped an ornate glass vase onto the floor with a crash. He kicked over the television set and overturned a large fish tank that was standing in a corner by the window. Ho’s colourful collection of exotic fish flopped around on the floor and then lay still among the bits of broken glass and plastic castles. The bedroom door opened and the two cops came out like a couple of asthmatic snowmen, trying in vain to brush the white stuff off their clothes. They helped Rotten Teeth turn over the rest of the flat, not because they were looking for anything, just for the malicious fun of it. I helped smash up the stereo.

By the time we’d finished Ho’s shoulders had slumped forward and he was holding his head in his hands and moaning. The cops picked him up and took him back down to the car while I followed with the briefcase. We parted company then, I caught a taxi to the Excelsior while they drove off with Ho. I guess they were taking him to see Lai. I didn’t care. The briefcase was empty.

She looked good enough to eat in a black sleeveless dress with a thick brown belt that sat on her hips. She was carrying a black briefcase.

‘Hi,’ she said, and kissed me on the right cheek, close to my lips.

‘Hi yourself,’ I said. She smelt fresh and clean, no trace of perfume.

‘You look shattered,’ said Jenny, climbing onto the stool next to mine.

‘Vodka and tonic,’ I told the barman.

‘You remembered,’ she teased, pushing her hair behind her ears. She looked suddenly serious, I guess the look on my face showed that something was wrong. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I have to go back to London.’

‘You what?’ she said, flustered. ‘Why?’ she put both her hands on my knee, obviously worried. My heart lifted, despite the fact that I was going to have to leave her.

‘I’m being run out of town,’ I said, with a grin.

‘By whom?’

‘The sheriff,’ I said.

‘Be serious.’

‘I am. Inspector Hall.’

‘Why?’

I told her about Seligman, and as I did she sagged on the stool, hunched up like an old woman. ‘God, I knew him,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I heard about the explosion on the radio. I never dreamed it . . .’ She mumbled the rest and so I missed it. I put my arm around her and held her close.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘We used to work together, he was a sweet, sweet guy.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I said. Part of me wanted to ask if she knew about Sally and Seligman, but I didn’t think it would serve any purpose. Another part of me wanted to ask her how well she’d known the American, but I killed that thought, too.

‘Tell me the rest,’ she said, and I did. I told her about going to the mine, the chase, the shitty hotel. I told her about arranging to meet Seligman to collect the briefcase, about the bomb, and being hauled in by the police. And I told her about meeting Lai, and finding the empty briefcase. I didn’t mention Lai’s torture chamber, I didn’t think she could handle that, not after she’d just heard about Seligman’s death. I’d leave that part of it for later, and maybe I’d never tell her.