Yin Yang Tattoo (29 page)

The card slid silently from the public telephone. I pushed it back and dialled the studio. Same thing. Except this time I listened to myself tell me to please leave me a message and I would get back to me. Since I hoped Naz would be there some time soon, I did.

‘Naz, it's Alec. Sorry I haven't called for a few days but, well, I'm in trouble, a lot of trouble. The assignment's gone to hell and now the police are looking for me. You've probably heard about it already, but I didn't do what they're saying. I'm still in Korea, because the police have my passport. I'm pretty safe now, just trying to work out what to do next. When I've got a better idea what's happening, I'll call again. Bye.'

I clattered the receiver into place, spun outwards and pressed my face against the cold glass of the booth. Choking sobs slowly died away, tears, salty and full of shame, ran down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth. Lights in the village flared and merged into watery starbursts.

I flopped onto a dew-soaked bench and fought the urge to lean back and wail at the sky. I had put off talking to Naz out of dread at the thought of her voice, normally so full of spirit and mischief, reduced to a one-dimensional squawk by the transcontinental phone line and the news I had for her. Dread at the image of her, wide-eyed and wordless at the latest shit I was dragging my feet through.

Not that she would stay wordless for long – and that was where the tears came from. I ached for her friendly voice, even if it did rail at me for being a fuck-up.

I dug the purple phone from my pocket, thumbed the power button and dialled the number for Jung-hwa's mobile. After a few seconds of electronic limbo, the connection came through.

‘Yoboseyo.'
Hello.
Jung-hwa's voice. Sleepy and irritable.

‘It's me. Can you talk?'

‘Wrong number,
asshole
.' In Korean. Convincingly angry, playing to the audience I had hoped might not be there.

‘Call me back,' I said, just before the line went dead.

I walked down to the village as the rising sun shot fiery stripes into the sky. Cockerels wandered narrow lanes, their discordant wake-up calls echoing off flinty stone walls.

Five wooden fishing boats with boxy cockpits sat motionless in the fuel-rainbowed water of the miniature harbour, decks cluttered with the gear of their trade. Spiders' webs of ropes and pulleys secured batons of tungsten lamps in giant stainless reflectors the size of umbrellas.

On one boat deck, a man in patched overalls sat deep in concentration. The nub of a cigarette smouldered in the corner of his mouth while, from gnarled hands, fluid blue stitches flowed across a sun-bleached net.

Another fisherman stood on the stone jetty and wielded a sturdy bamboo pole with a heavy loop of thick rope fixed to one end. With each downward swing he drove the rope onto a fishing net spread out across the pier. Plumes of dust and salt rose with each strike. Enshrouded by a particle cloud and backlit by the rising sun, the man became part of the landscape, a vision of ancestors who had worked this coastline for thousands of years before him. Deep-rooted instincts of my own took over, and while I perched unnoticed on a rope-wrapped bollard I calmly shot frames with the rangefinder from my belt pouch, freezing a dark sinewy silhouette against the dawn sky. The old camera was near-silent, and if he picked up on my presence, the man paid no heed, until the tinny wailing din of a Korean pop song from the purple phone in my pocket destroyed the moment for us both. Pole in the air, he stopped in mid-swing and looked at me, expressionless.

Thumb on the green button, I read the number flashing on the small display. Jung-hwa's mobile.

‘Jung-hwa? Are you OK? Has he gone?'

‘Let's take your questions in order, shall we? No, it's not Jung-hwa. Yes, she's fine, thank you, sound asleep, in fact. And no, you prick,
I
am right here.'

Schwartz
.

‘What's wrong? Don't tell me that for the first time in your miserable existence you're stuck for words?'

‘Any misery going around is of your making.'

‘Good for you. The slightest little thing goes wrong, and somebody else has to get the blame. You got yourself into this mess, remember.'

‘Slightest little thing? Like cutting a young woman to bits?'

‘Life goes on, man. Can't turn the clock back.'

‘Screw you, Schwartz. I've heard enough.'

‘No. Wait. Where are you now? My guess is you're still in Seoul.'

He was fishing.

‘Does it matter where I am?'

‘We could meet and talk.'

‘Give me a break.'

‘I'll come alone. We can help each other, trade.'

‘Trade punches, maybe.'

‘What about the video tape?'

‘Christ, you too? You just don't get it, there
is
no video tape.'

‘Now who's taking who for a fool. Meet me. Maybe we can help each other out.'

I let the silence stretch for a few seconds:

‘My location, my terms.'

‘No problem.'

‘I see one face in the crowd I don't like, I'm out of there.'

‘You have my word.'

Like I could take that to the bank.

‘Han Il Kwan restaurant,' I said.

‘Myoung dong, right? Between Midopa department store and the Cathedral?'

‘Twelve-thirty.' I hung up and switched off the mobile. Along the pier, the fisherman resumed his attack on the net, muscles gleaming with sweat and speckled with salty dust rendered warm-earth brown by the rising sun.

From a tight curve of rocks and discarded scallop shells in the lee of the harbour wall I picked up a handful of pebbles and launched them, one at a time, at a soft drink carton that bobbed in the tide. Once or twice I came close, but with every miss I became ever more exasperated, my efforts increasingly erratic. I threw and threw until the sinews in my shoulder began to complain.

Schwartz was still after a video tape that he could not be sure existed, and the only satisfaction I could derive was from sending him on a wild goose chase through one of the country's busiest restaurants in the grips of the lunchtime rush.

I watched one last stone rip through the water's surface three feet from the unaffected target and turned to find Rose so close she could have reached out and touched me. Twenty feet of rocks and shells stood between us and the nearest pathway.

‘How the hell did you manage that? I didn't hear a thing.'

‘Grow up with three older brothers, you develop any number of survival skills. You were so far gone, a herd of elk could have snuck up on you. I thought I'd take you up on that offer.'

‘Offer?'

‘Last night, you mentioned a walk.'

‘Last night you didn't seem very keen.'

‘I had a lot on my mind.'

You and me both.

‘When do you want to start?'

‘Meet you in an hour at the
yogwan
?' She spoke over her shoulder as she glided towards the footpath, creating barely a rustle.

‘I'll see you there,' I shouted at her back.

At the village's cramped little supermarket I bought mineral water, bread rolls, cheese, fruit and biscuits. Back at my room I loaded them into a daypack and slipped the purple mobile into the belt pouch beside my camera.

I stepped outside to find Rose relaxing on the same bench that I had collapsed onto a couple of hours before.

‘This way.' I pointed to a path that left the south end of the car park.

I did this walk a couple of times with Jung-hwa. A few minutes of steep pathway wound a tight line through a stand of pine trees until we broke out onto a miniature patch of open farmland clinging to the hillside. On a muddy ridge that enclosed a terraced plot half the size of a basketball court, an infant sat on his heels, five thousand years of ancestral impassiveness already writ plain on his stoic young features. He watched a grizzled little man work a wooden plough pulled by an ox, man and beast struggling across deeply rutted soil. We stopped beside the boy and sat on our heels. The child leapt to his feet and treated us to a deep, respectful bow. He nervously tongued a gritty stripe of dried snot that occupied his upper lip.

We waved to the farmer who waved back, seemingly unsurprised by two foreigners popping up at his remote workplace.

Rose dipped into her backpack and came out with a gleaming slice of water melon. She had to coax the boy to take it, but when he did, his face shone with pleasure, and soon shone with water melon juice as he attacked the bright red fruit. The man left his ox in mid-field and walked towards us, and the boy came over all shy again until Rose once more did the backpack trick and presented the man with a melon slice. His weathered face broke into an even white smile as perfect as anything you ever saw on a toothpaste box.

I listened to Rose converse easily with the kid and his father until the Dad went back to his ox and we walked on. We turned inland onto a narrow wooded path that quickly became little more than a goat trail through dense vegetation. Tiny gaps in the foliage teased us with glimpses of startling coastal views, until at last we crested a mini-summit and shed our packs.

The rocky perch gave us 360-degree views that stretched for miles. Inland to the north, thick foliage held off ever-spreading tendrils of agriculture. To the west and east, pitted stony coastlines surged and dived from sheer precipice to rock-peppered shoreline. To the south, a hillside draped in a hundred shades of green tumbled over an invisible cliff-edge into a blue-white seascape dotted with rocky outposts too tiny to be called islands, large enough to support a few hardy trees and little else.

Pooled candle wax and spent matches and names scratched in stone marked a flat rock as the obvious picnic spot. I set my backpack down.

‘Ready for something to eat?'

‘Thirsty.'

‘I brought mineral water.' I opened my bag.

Droplets splashed in the dust at my feet and I looked up to see a six-pack of beer dangling from Rose's hand.

‘Freshly cut fruit
and
cold beer? You can join me on walks anytime you like. Got anything else I could really use?'

‘Just the one more thing, Alec.'

Alec
. My stomach folded in on itself. She put the six-pack on the rock and dipped two fingers into the breast pocket of her cotton blouse. They re-appeared holding something pen-like, slender and black, silver lettering along its side.

‘You could use this.'

She placed it in my hand. The lettering was in Korean, a brand name that meant nothing to me, and towards one end was a pen-like cap. I pulled, and it came away – long, thin, inky and brush-like. Mascara.

‘You forgot about the eyelashes.' She pushed a cold beer into the crook of my arm. I popped the seal, drained half the can, edged sideways until my legs hit the flat rock, and sat, waiting. Rose took her cue:

‘Yesterday, when I saw you at the
yogwan
and later at the restaurant, I was certain I knew you from somewhere.'

I recalled that she had vaguely reminded me of someone, too. Perhaps we did see each other in a Seoul taxi line.

‘And then there was the bullshit about your accent.'

I looked away.

‘My brother married a Glasgow woman, and if your home town is more than a few miles from hers, I'll be surprised. But you told me you were Irish. And after you left me in my room last night I took my first good look at yesterday's Herald.'

I was rumbled.

‘At first I was scared witless, until I realised none of this explained where I knew you from. But when I read the story, I called my parents, and the penny dropped.'

This made no sense. After she discovered I was a murder suspect, she spoke to her folks
then
volunteered to accompany me on a stroll up a lonely hillside?

I sucked the last of the beer from the can. ‘What do you mean the penny dropped?'

‘Yesterday, I was Rose, right?'

‘Don't tell me you were lying, too?'

‘I never did tell you my full name. It's Rosemary Daly.'

Rosemary Daly. Korea. Canadian.
At last, pennies of my own began to fall into place. When I flew into Korea for the first time in 1989, I sat next to a family of Canadian missionaries. At first I mistook them for Americans, but they soon put me right. Mum and Dad and four kids. Three boys and a girl.
Grow up with three older brothers, you develop any number of survival skills.

The Dalys, the Christian Dalys, as I always thought of them. I was the newcomer to Korea and they were the experts, fluent in Korean, completely at one with a culture that I had yet to experience. Rose's father Vincent and I shared a passion for photography, and like all photographers we also shared a love of the equipment involved. He proudly showed me his latest acquisition, a sturdy Canon SLR in its stiff leather ‘never ready' case, and pulled out a pocket album of family portraits taken during their period of leave in Canada; three generations of loving extended family beautifully photographed at ease in an Ontario suburb. They were about as far as they could get from the few remaining blurry Instamatic shots of my dysfunctional childhood in Central Scotland.

Over the following months and years I saw Vincent and Jemma regularly, usually with the family in tow, other times alone. They were always delighted to see me and never showed a moment's discomfort over the chasm that separated their evangelical Christianity and my unspoken but avowed atheism. We always managed to keep in touch, and though I hadn't seen them in over ten years, they still sent me Christmas cards. Sometimes I even sent one back, usually around the middle of January. I looked around me at the beauty of Haekumgang, and another element fell into place: about a year after we met on final approach to Kimpo Airport, they recommended a quiet get-away holiday spot on the south coast. Geoje Island, Haekumgang fishing village. That was the start of several visits in the company of Jung-hwa to the very place where we stood now.