Yellowthread Street (15 page)
The neon sign finally broke or repaired itself and shone a steady wan light across the roof. Spencer peered out from behind the stove. There was no one. He listened. Nothing. The Chopper Man was behind the table. He had pulled a blanket over himself and he lay very still. He had almost chopped a cop. He fitted a new magazine into the Thompson and inched his fingers forward to work the cocking handle.
‘I don’t see it,’ Feiffer said. There was only the broken body of The Club (With Nails) and the club itself on the corridor floor. The Mongolian was nowhere to be seen.
‘What?’ O’Yee asked. His eyes flickered towards the second and third rooms where Sun and Lee were.
‘Didn’t you hear it?’
‘Hear what?’
‘A bloody machine gun!’
‘No. I heard your man shooting and then you shoot and someone get the axe up here. That’s all.’
‘I heard a machine gun.’
Constable Lee and Constable Sun came out of the second and third rooms simultaneously. They had found nothing. The Mongolian had gone.
Feiffer said, ‘Where’s Spencer?’
‘Roof,’ Auden said.
Feiffer looked at him. He
had
heard a machine gun. He knew a machine gun when he heard one. He said, ‘The roof!’
Constable Lee said, ‘One of the windows to the fire escape
was open. There was nobody on it.’ He said, ‘He must be on the roof.’
They went as one to the stairs to the roof. They found the inside door to the roof locked. They kicked it down. On the roof was the Mongolian.
The Mongolian was the biggest anything any of them had ever seen. He was over six foot three inches tall and he must have weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds (two hundred and eighty-five). He stood in the middle of the roof and he looked at them. He looked at their guns. He looked at the constables’ uniforms. He looked at Spencer’s gun trained on him.
Spencer said, ‘I’ve got him. He came up from the fire escape. He just appeared out of nowhere. And I’ve got him.’
The Mongolian looked at Spencer and he laughed.
‘Holy Mother of God!’ O’Yee said, ‘you got him.’
Constable Sun and Constable Lee drew back a little. They knew Mongolians. They drew back.
‘He’s under arrest,’ Spencer said, and the Mongolian began to come towards him. Spencer said to the Mongolian, ‘You’re under arrest.’
The Chopper Man tried to draw back the cocking handle of his chopper. It wouldn’t move. There was a cartridge jammed in the breech. He worked to clear it.
‘Don’t move,’ Spencer said to the Mongolian. The Mongolian stopped. He smiled at Spencer.
‘Handcuffs,’ Feiffer ordered Auden. Auden didn’t look happy. He said to Spencer, ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’
‘Handcuffs,’ Feiffer ordered Auden.
‘He was unarmed,’ Spencer said to Auden authoritatively. ‘Police officers don’t shoot unarmed men.’
‘Handcuffs!’ Feiffer said again.
Auden said, ‘He’s Spencer’s prisoner, not mine. He’s got his own bloody handcuffs.’ He holstered his pistol.
‘Do what you’re told!’ Feiffer ordered. He and O’Yee put
their own guns back. He said to Auden, ‘Don’t you argue the toss with me.’
The two constables put their guns away too. They looked at the Mongolian the way anglers look at a dead fighting fish. He
had
been a big one all right.
Auden pouted and drew his handcuffs. He glanced at Spencer unhappily and went to do his little part in Spencer’s big glory. He said to Spencer, ‘Beginner’s luck,’ and then the Mongolian caught hold of him and threw him at Spencer. The Mongolian charged. He caught Constable Lee on the bridge of his nose with his fist-hammer and broke the septum. Constable Lee fell against Constable Sun and the Mongolian kicked Constable Sun in the groin.
Feiffer grabbed for his pistol. The Mongolian caught his hand and crushed it. The gun came out of its own accord and clattered on to the roof. O’Yee reached for it and the Mongolian stamped on his hand with his boot and dislocated three of O’Yee’s fingers. Auden was back on his feet. He had the Python out. He thought, ‘Now, you bastard!’ and levelled the gun at the Mongolian’s back a fraction before the Mongolian turned and kicked him against the upturned plywood Mah-Jong table. The Python crashed against the side of Spencer’s head and he only vaguely saw someone stand up from behind the table with something in his hands.
Feiffer saw the machine gun. His hand was useless. He tried to pick up his revolver with his left hand. He dropped it. He saw the machine gun and shouted, ‘Get down! Get down!’ He tried to get the gun with both hands.
The Thompson’s mechanism would not work. The Chopper Man was wrenching at it to clear the action. He swung the muzzle towards Feiffer and O’Yee and the two uniformed men. A single shot went off and cleared the mechanism. The bullet smashed into the pot-bellied stove and whanged off over the roof. He pointed the muzzle of the machine gun at the Mongolian. Spencer had Auden’s Python in his hand. Feiffer shot The Chopper Man between the eyes and The Chopper
Man staggered to the edge of the roof and went over. Feiffer’s smashed hand dropped the revolver.
The Mongolian’s eyes turned themselves on to Spencer. The Mongolian drew his kukri. Spencer aimed the Python at the Mongolian. The Mongolian came forward. Spencer pulled the trigger. The regulation .38 calibre bullet went into the Mongolian’s mass of flesh and disappeared. The Mongolian came forward. Spencer pulled the trigger a second time. The gun kicked high in his hand and there was an explosion that echoed across the roofs. The Mongolian started going backwards. He moved the kukri in a funny arc and Spencer shot him again.
The Mongolian fell dead.
Spencer looked at the dead Mongolian. He went to help Auden to his feet. Auden said, ‘Thanks,’ and looked at the dead Mongolian.
‘I’ve never shot anyone before,’ Spencer said. He saw Feiffer and O’Yee helping the constable with the broken nose. He said to Auden, ‘Really. I’ve never done anything like this before.’ He looked at the big gun in his hand. He said, trying to make up for something, ‘I suppose something like this must have cost a fortune.’
Auden looked at the Python. He looked at Spencer. He looked at the dead Mongolian and he looked at the Python again.
He said, ‘Keep it,’ and went to join the casualty group.
Spencer thought, ‘I always thought if I had to shoot anyone I’d be sick, or I’d break down and cry.’ He waited. It was odd. He didn’t do either.
It was Minnie Oh ringing from the Station. Nicola Feiffer said, ‘Yes?’
‘They’re all right,’ Minnie Oh said. ‘There was some trouble, but they’re all all right.’ She said, ‘Constable Cho was killed.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Inspector Feiffer is all right. He’s hurt his hand, but it’s
only a minor injury. He should be home in a few hours. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’
There was a pause.
Minnie Oh said, ‘I thought you’d like to know.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’ll be home in a few hours,’ Minnie Oh said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Feiffer said, ‘it was kind of you to—’
‘I have to go now.’
‘Of course,’ Mrs Feiffer said. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘Goodnight,’ Minnie Oh said.
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Feiffer said. She put the receiver down very gently. It only made a very slight click at Minnie’s end of the line.
Minnie looked at the Station clock. It was almost morning. She thought it would be nice to have someone to go home to.
‘There’ll be riots today,’ Sister Sung said. The victims of the Camphorwood Lane battle occupied all the casualty treatment rooms. She finished tying a neat bow in the wrist sling at the back of Feiffer’s neck and looked at the X-Ray pictures of the fractured right-hand carpus and metacarpus bones. She said, ‘It’ll be back to normal in a month or two.’ She said, ‘We’ll have a busy day here tomorrow with the riots.’
‘They’ll turn the water on again in forty-eight hours,’ Feiffer consoled her. He said, ‘They always do.’
‘It’s a great pity,’ Sister Sung said. ‘Why do the Communists cause so much trouble?’
‘They’re not the only ones,’ Feiffer said. His fingers hurt.
‘Do you like being a policeman?’ Sister Sung asked pleasantly. She checked the bow she had made and thought it was quite neat.
‘Yes.’
She smiled at him. She said, ‘I think you’re a very good policeman. We all do.’
‘Thank you,’ Feiffer said. His fingers were very painful.
‘Yes,’ Sister Sung said. She smiled at him for the second time in as many seconds. She said, ‘Do you think you could possibly do something about our wheelchair, Inspector Feiffer?’ She said, ‘Perhaps on your way home?’
Feiffer’s fingers hurt like hell.
While he was alive, Bill Marshall relished writing this series—he loved playing with the foibles of humanity in its struggle to get through life. We hope you enjoyed the novel as much.
One of the joys of partly humorous fiction—and the Yellowthread Street Mysteries offer more than a pinch of humour and human empathy for every moment of shock value—is sharing the reaction of others.
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Thank you for reading, and here’s to Harry Feiffer and his motley crew of detectives . . .
OUT NOW
The Hatchet Man touched his face. It was smooth. He believed his real face was under the smooth skin and that it had yellow eyes and bared teeth. He believed his real hair under the oiled and brushed mask-hair was wild and on fire.
He went to his bedside table and took out an Italian copy of a four-shot Sharp’s derringer and a box of hollow-point bullets. He fitted a round into each of the barrels. He snapped the breech shut and slipped the gun into his pocket. He looked in the mirror. He touched his face, his hair, his rib cage, and knew what was there, out of sight. Then he went out of the room and into the city . . .
COMING SOON
Feiffer saw the flash. There was a brilliant white glare radiating out from a tiny pin point in front of the Post Office and a sudden note of high static as the air around the pin-hole was wrenched violently aside. Then there was a sound like a very loud pistol shot or a huge chain snapping and then the concussion roared down the street and blew people walking along the pavements to their knees.
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Set amidst the urban fantasia of Hong Kong, William Marshall’s Yellowthread Street novels raise crime fiction to a high art form. Surrealistic and suspenseful, vivid in their procedural details and brilliant in their scope, they are the work of a uniquely gifted writer.
Reviews of the Yellowthread Street series –
“Marshall has the rare gift of juggling scary suspense and wild humor and making them both work.”
Washington Post Book World
“Marshall’s style—blending the hilarious, the surreal, and the poignant—remains inimitable and not easily resisted.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Marshall has few peers as an author who melds the wildest comedy and tragedy in narratives of nonstop action.”
Publishers Weekly
“Marshall is building a growing, iconoclastic body of work that mixes weird fantasy [and] wayward characterization . . . to produce a subtle, charged, atmospheric, lush fiction hybrid sure to satisfy those with a taste for mysteries on the far edges.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
