Yin Yang Tattoo (26 page)

Agriculture swept over every square inch of the odd-shaped plains that ran between mountain ranges. Painstakingly-maintained irrigation systems flooded rice paddy fields and watered swaying thickets of sweet corn. Giant complexes of makeshift greenhouses shaped like shrunken quonset huts enclosed large pockets of fecund ground. Thanks to these ‘be-neel' (
vinyl
) houses formed from miles of piping and plastic sheeting, the supermarkets of South Korea stocked fresh-cut flowers and strawberries and grapes and fresh water melons, even in the depths of a long Siberian winter, when the daytime high regularly lingered well below freezing.

I tried to keep my mind cluttered with thoughts of the land I was crossing and the route I still had to take, but inevitably the mess that I was fleeing crept up on me. Running away made no sense, but neither did staying in the capital to play a role of my very own in a massive financial fraud. The reward for that would be a one-way trip back to Kwok's place of work, followed by prosecution for murder in a court system not noted for its objectivity in cases involving the death-by-mutilation of beautiful Korean women at the hands of foreigners. I needed time to re-group, to think things through and get on the telephone to anyone who might be able to help. Jung-hwa had tipped me off on the need to get out of town, yet I still didn't know how much I could trust her. Running to the country could buy me some time and, more importantly, would protect Mr Cho and his family, at least for so long as I could elude the authorities.

A loud Korean voice shouted in my face and two hands gripped my shoulders, dragging me up from the depths of beer-heavy sleep. I looked up at a dark uniform, coiled braid, polished badges and silver buttons. Palms to his chest, I surged to my feet and threw him across the aisle where he fell floundering on the opposite seat. The seat was empty. The whole carriage was empty. The train was at rest. I glanced out the window at the surging chaos of a mainline train station. Grabbing my bag I leapt towards the doors, but stopped before I took two steps. Putting the bag down, I turned to the shocked ticket collector and, offering my hand, spoke to him in Korean.

‘I'm so sorry. You gave me a fright.'

He shook off the terrified expression, gripped my hand and pulled himself to his feet, apparently more embarrassed than offended.

‘This is Pusan Station. Please disembark now.'

I backed out the train door still apologising profusely, cursing inwardly. So much for keeping a low profile.

Pusan is a sprawling port city of nearly four million, and I emerged from the station straight into what seemed like half of them stuck in traffic. The ferry terminal I wanted was about a mile away, so I opted to walk along the waterfront, where foreigners from visiting ships commonly wandered. Even in the fading light of early evening, I felt as if the whole city was watching me, the weirdo hiding behind the baseball cap and sunglasses.

I was three hundred yards shy of the terminal when the Angel Ferry slipped away from the dockside. I trudged onwards to discover that I had only just missed the last boat of the day. I bought a ticket for the next day's nine-thirty boat to Tongyeong, and headed back out into the heaving city.

Thinking safety in numbers, I ate at a crowded noodle bar before hitting the back streets, and quickly found a
yogwan
at the quiet end of a dead-end alley. Before settling in for the night I walked the streets for half an hour. Forever looking over my shoulder for I-didn't-know-what, I bought stored-value public telephone cards from three different small shops.

At the corner shop nearest the
yogwan
I picked up four bottles of chilled beer, two packs of biscuits and an apple and a pear. Nightcap and breakfast taken care of, I went back to my room and American Forces television. Sucking beer and munching on biscuits, I watched an entire American football game without properly understanding a single moment of it.

I awoke the next morning to the vague feeling that something was out of place, and it took a while to guess what it was. This was my first morning in ten days without a hangover, and it occurred to me that maybe I should try it more often.

I breakfasted on fruit and biscuits and, looking forward to a coffee on the way to the ferry terminal, took a long hot shower.

Refreshed and almost cheerful I set off to walk to the terminal, with one welcome detour into a crowded McDonalds. Big styrofoam cup of steaming coffee in hand, I headed for the stairs in search of a window seat overlooking the harbour. At the foot of the steps stood a newspaper rack, six or more titles suspended from un„wieldy alloy bars clipped to their spines. Without pausing I plucked the Korea Herald from the rack with my free hand, and made it up three steps before stopping dead. I clutched the styro cup so tightly that the lid prised itself open, spilling hot coffee all down my front, but still I didn't move.

Call Girl Murder: Nationwide Manhunt
screamed the headline. Right there, above the fold, smiling calmly at the world, was me.

The next few hours played themselves out like the nightmare that refuses to go away, the one where the bogey man is closing down on you while your legs churn ever-decreasing circles in air thick as melted chocolate.

Double toilet doors dampened the paper rustles and distressed plastic noises of a crowded McDonalds dealing up the usual fare of fats and sugars. Locked in a narrow cubicle I dabbed paper towels at blood-spatter coffee swooshes that covered my trouser legs. I sat on the pedestal and enjoyed a fleeting sense of sanctuary and a powerful temptation to surrender to the cubicle, to curl up in a ball and never leave, but I could think of better places to curl up, and to get there I first had to catch a ferry. Ear to the door, I checked the bathroom was empty before sliding back the lock.

I had one immediate problem, and it stared at me from the mirror over the washbasins.

The photo in the Herald and by now doubtless on every newspaper and television screen in the country, was the smiling portrait from my own portfolio. A three-quarter profile head-and-shoulders, it was beautifully lit and tack-sharp. As it should be, since I set it up and Naz shot it, a world away in our London studio. In the mirror, distinctive curly blond hair, a bit on the unkempt side, surrounded a face with pale-pink Celtic complexion and bright blue eyes. In a country of forty-four million people, every one of them with olive skin, arrow-straight jet black hair and dark brown eyes, I might as well have a flashing light and siren attached.

I stuck my head under the tap and hurriedly combed out the wet curls, sweeping the hair directly back, using an elastic band from my wallet to fix it tight in the shortest of pony tails at the nape of my neck. With collar set high and baseball cap pulled low, the majority of one distinguishing feature nearly disappeared. After a last sceptical glance at the mirror, I picked up my bag and toed open the door.

Head down and nerves bristling, I hustled along the busy pavement, and almost immediately I spotted a parallel movement, another person's pace exactly matching my own. Before I could snatch a better look, I slammed into the rear end of a bus queue, knocking an elderly woman to her knees.

‘Mian-eyo,' I said, offering my hand in apology, scared to look sideways in case the other guy was moving in.

‘Michin-nom,' she hissed, waving my hand away.
Crazy bastard.

I apologised again, stepped aside – and chanced the quickest of glimpses at my pursuer who, like me, wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. I was running from my own reflection in a shop window.

Framed by a display of baby clothes, my body language radiated fear and tension. I turned away to face the wide street, which was congested with traffic, packed buses, chauffeur-driven cars and taxis with front seat passengers reading newspapers I wanted to rip from their hands. My own face stared confidently from behind the windows of at least a dozen gridlocked Hyundais and Kias.

I forced myself to take deep breaths, rolled my shoulders, and raised the skip of my hat. No longer hunched over, no longer with my eyes glued to the ground at my feet like a wanted man, I moved on, desperately trying to emit a carefree confidence that had nothing to do with reality.

I made it all the way to the ferry terminal without being arrested even once, but I got there with a half hour to kill. Half an hour to stay away from the television that blared from a tall stand in the waiting area, and to steer clear of every shop and stall that sold newspapers, and anyone who might be reading one.

I ran my gaze around the busy terminal as confidently as possible, drawing slow deep breaths of air thick with sea salt, tobacco smoke, diesel fumes and my own nervous perspiration. Mental checklists of everything I hoped to get done in the next few hours ran in my head like looped video previews. One of my more pressing worries was communications, a concern compounded by my mobile telephone sitting plugged into the charger at home in London.

Public telephone cards were fine for calling anyone who posed no threat – Naz in London, or Mr Cho in Seoul – but for everyone else, they were not only useless but a liability. Caller ID was common in technology-savvy Korea, so any call I made could be used to trace my location. Purchasing a new mobile was out since I had no idea if a pay-as-you-go service was available and, even if it was, how much ID was required to make the purchase. Now that my face was all over the news there was no way to find out; if it took only five minutes to buy myself a mobile, that was five minutes too long.

The answer presented itself a few minutes later, a mobile telephone peeking from the side pocket of a hold-all on a bench, its owner, a middle-aged Korean man, dozing, chin on chest. I sat down gently and placed my bag beside his. As I pretented to rummage through the outer pockets of my bag, I quickly palmed the phone – just as he shouted out. Caught red-handed, clutching another man's property. Except he was talking in his sleep. His chin lowered back to his gently moving chest.

The terminal's public toilet was a stinking nightmare, but at least it had a cubicle door that locked. The display on the shiny new Samsung telephone was blank, so I pressed the power button and got the one thing I didn't want to see. Korean script, surely a request for a security code. I wiped the phone with paper tissue and left it on the cistern.

My ferry was beginning to board before another chance cropped up. A trio of well-off young females, expensively dressed in new brand-name leisurewear. I watched one of them talk excitedly into a mobile, then slip it into a neat pouch clipped to a shiny new rucksack. The group huddled around a vending machine well apart from their luggage, which sat piled on a bench. Sometimes it's just too easy to be a bastard.

On the way to the boat, I put coins in a box and picked out copies of two English dailies, the Times and the Herald.

Squeezed into a front-row window seat I checked the phone. The battery indicator showed it was fully charged. I pressed the power switch to close it down, then fired it up again, and to my relief it came alive without the need for a security code. OK, the damn thing was a garish purple and covered in cutey-pie stickers, but it worked. I switched it off to save the battery and because I didn't need incoming calls from a tearful teenager.

For the duration of the sea journey I stayed in the seat, my back to the other passengers. Sensational accounts in the two newspapers were predictably, depressingly alike, and contained only one piece of real news, something that I had known would come, yet hoped I would never hear. Miss Hong's mutilated naked body had been found tangled in rusted junk in shallow waters by the banks of the Han River, less than a mile from the Hyatt. Now the police and the media were all over the case. So much for Chang's ability to keep it under wraps, I thought. I read on. The foreigner suspected of killing Miss Hong was on the run, somewhere in Korea. Police were posted at all international departure points, and citizens were asked to watch out for the man in the photograph, who had a Scottish accent and spoke some Korean. A substantial cash reward was offered. Nowhere was there a single mention of Chang or K-N Group. Maybe Schwartz's PR efforts were reaping dividends.

As I watched scenery peel past the salt-smeared window my thoughts drifted to Jung-hwa. It was thanks to her that I had escaped from Seoul, and not a moment too soon. I yearned for the woman's gentle touch and mischievous smile.

Powerful diesels pushed us south-west across calm seas that glinted in the morning sun as we followed a low-lying coastal plain speckled with factory stacks and fishing villages that barely registered on my consciousness.

I brooded until the ferry pulled into the southern port of Tongyeong. Dense housing, no two homes the same, clung to steep slopes that looked down from three sides over a harbour basin packed tightly with fishing boats, ferries, and rusty coastal puffers, all function and no form.

I prowled the aisles of a modern supermarket and filled a hand basket with a variety of lightweight snacks while I scanned the ceilings and shelf-tops for security devices. I saw only one small CCTV camera covering the check-outs and a mirrored office window that would allow staff to monitor parts of the store. When one corner display put me momentarily out of sight, I slipped a bottle of men's hair dye and a pair of scissors into an inside jacket pocket, then joined the short line at the check-out counter.