Bad Traffic (3 page)

‘I hope you find her,’ said Song, seeing Jian out. ‘I hope nothing bad has happened.’

It was getting dark and the streetlights were on, glowing orange and not the white he was used to. He approached a pedestrian walking a dog and held up the flyer, but the guy just babbled and walked away.

After ten minutes he still hadn’t seen a taxi. They did not seem to be as prevalent here as they were at home, and no wonder, when they cost so much. He supposed they didn’t cruise residential areas. Frustrated and at a loss, he got on a bus, hoping it would take him back to the centre of town. At least he knew there was a cab rank outside the station. Even buying a bus ticket required educated guesses and keen observation – no conductor, so does money go to the driver or into a machine? How much money? These chunky gold ones? How many? He was given novel coins in his change – hexagonal ones, copper ones.

He hadn’t been on a bus in a decade, it was not done for a man in his position. Tired, he pressed his fingers against closed eyes. It was the early hours of the morning back home – he should be tucked up in bed with some chick to warm his feet. He didn’t feel right and wondered if he’d caught an
illness
. Perhaps he just wasn’t used to this climate or this air. He spat on the floor, smeared the goo with his heel, then lit a 555.

He didn’t know why his daughter had gone wayward. Probably she blamed him for the car crash that had killed
her mother. He’d been driving a station Toyota and he’d been drunk and pushing it hard, but the lorry hadn’t even bothered to indicate, and its driver had been even drunker. Whichever way you looked at it – and he’d looked at it from all the ways you could look at it – it wasn’t his fault.

He’d made sure the lorry driver had got a harsh sentence. Now, though, he envied that driver. The man had served his time and paid his dues. How was he supposed to pay his? He blinked hard and rubbed his face to jolt his mind out of that particular, well-worn, track.

Two women were looking at him and tutting. He scowled right back and in his head confronted them, saying, ‘What? Am I in a zoo? You never seen a Chinese guy before?’ The bus was passing fields and trees, which couldn’t be right, so he dropped his cigarette and got off at the next stop.

It was dispiriting. If he couldn’t even get around, or have a conversation, how could he conduct an investigation? Jet-lag, fatigue, all-pervasive foreignness, the unique and unsettling experience of anonymity and powerlessness – it was affecting the way he thought. He did not feel like a successful, wealthy and high-ranking policeman any more. He put his hand in front of his face. He was this dense flesh and nothing else, a middle-aged man, big but running to fat, with a lot on his mind.

He stepped into the street and a car honked at him and he had to scuttle forward sharply. Traffic here came from the wrong direction. He’d remembered fine earlier, but now he was slipping. He got the same number bus going the other way.

He counted out three hundred and sixty pounds and wondered who the figures depicted on the notes were. The woman on the back of them all was presumably the
Queen or Madam Thatcher. It was a beautiful currency, very artistic, but he was getting through it at a frightening rate.

He got off at a stop he recognised and rang the bell at number thirty-four. Song answered.

He said, ‘It’s not an official investigation. I’m Wei Wei’s father.’

Embarrassment, then consternation, passed across her features.

‘This is the rent she owed.’

He gave her the money. Some people would just pocket it, but he was sure she was an honest citizen. It would go where it was supposed to and a wrong would be righted. Now she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.

‘There’s one condition.’

‘Which is?’

He held up the flyer for the Floating Lotus.

‘Come and have a drink with me.’

‘My daughter called and begged me to help her. Now I don’t know where she is.’

‘Oh dear.’ Song bit her fingernail. His distress had made her sad.

Now that Song was leading him, Jian was passive, and instead of trying to figure out his environment he just let it happen. The illuminated signs outside the bus window all said the same thing – ‘You do not understand.’

‘She’s probably just ashamed that she dropped out and wanted to spare your feelings. And now she’s got into some little trouble. There’s probably a man involved,’ she said, with the confidence of youth and inexperience. ‘Women do stupid things over men. If she’s at this restaurant, I’ll take off, okay? Leave you alone for a reunion.’

Indeed, it was quite possible that Wei Wei was working at the restaurant. Maybe she was doing well, had found
something
she could throw herself into. He pictured her waiting tables, dreaming of stardom as an actress or model, living with some guy. A local difficulty had occurred – jail,
pregnancy
, a perception of failure – and she’d called him in a moment of weakness, then lost her phone or her nerve.
Perhaps
she’d called during a bad trip, and afterwards forgotten she’d called at all. She’d be so surprised to see him, she’d drop a plate.

The more he thought about her, the more elusive she seemed. He could conjure her features, but not arrange them into an expression. He could remember her character –
moodiness, kindness, thoughtlessness, romanticism – only in the abstract, without the accompaniment of illustrating incidents. He saw her doing little things that meant
nothing
– washing, humming, tapping her feet with her
headphones
on. The dumbest of details came to mind – a
smiling
sunflower, a fake bag, that green gonk that dangled off her phone. He couldn’t place her in this environment at all – walking these roads, talking in that jabber to these people.

‘Do you want a cigarette? 555. English brand.’

‘They’re not English.’

‘It says on the packet they’re English.’

‘They cheat you. They’re Chinese. And you’re not allowed to smoke on here.’

They got off and Jian began to recognise logos, on clothes and adverts – McDonald’s, KFC, Nike – each a small reassurance in the ocean of the unfamiliar. The change in his pocket jangled. He never carried a wallet, Chinese money being mostly notes, but he might need one now.

Here was a shop selling shoes and another selling
newspapers
, and in between was the Floating Lotus. It looked like a fancy concern, with lanterns hanging outside and a neon sign. They went in and a bell tinkled as the door closed.

More than any restaurant back home, this place advertised its Chineseness. Limpet-shaped hats and idealised
landscape
paintings hung above a bamboo skirting, and pride of place went to a back-lit relief of a waterfall. Yet there were no clue as to which part of China the proprietors were from. It was very quiet, there wasn’t even any music playing, and the place was so dark Jian wondered if there had been a power outage. There was none of the boisterous vitality he looked for in a restaurant. There were ten or so tables, but only three were occupied. All the customers were white.
Neither waitress was tall enough to be his daughter. No, she was not here, and again hope was cruelly extinguished.

A waitress approached, a slim Chinese girl in a red uniform with nails and lips painted to match. She said something in English, and he asked if she spoke Mandarin Chinese. She looked blankly back – she didn’t.

‘They’re Cantonese,’ said Song. ‘Like most Chinese people in this country. From Hong Kong originally, I expect. They won’t speak Mandarin. You won’t meet many Mandarin speakers here at all.’

He instructed her to inquire after his daughter, and opened the vanity book. Wei Wei posed by a balance beam in pink tracksuit, hair tied back, not much make-up. It was the homeliest of all the pictures, and the one he liked best. The inviting smile of the girl in red vanished and her face closed shut.

‘She says she doesn’t know her,’ said Song.

An old man stood at the back trying not to look like he was watching them. Like the girl he had a high forehead, full lips and a receding chin, and Jian guessed he was her father, and the owner. He said, ‘Let’s ask him.’

Jian pushed the vanity book across the counter. He thought of the Cantonese as cunning, but this old man was no actor. He looked at the picture, scratched his balding pate as if thinking, cast his eyes to the ceiling as if
thinking
some more, looked at the picture again from
another
angle, turned the page to look at another picture, then shook his head.

Song translated. ‘He says he’s very sorry, but he has no idea who that girl could be. He’s never met her.’

The old man looked as if he regretted terribly being unable to help. He closed the book and pushed it firmly back.

‘He wants to know who she is.’

‘Tell him some friends of hers need to talk to her, but they’re having trouble getting in touch. Don’t say I’m her father.’

The old man was trying hard not to look too curious.

‘He wants to know what it is about.’

‘Tell him it’s a love story – it’s about a boy, he’s looking for her, the parents don’t approve. Tell him the boy is right now on the other side of town doing other Chinese restaurants. Make sure he understands that, that someone is out doing other restaurants.’

‘He wants to know who we are.’

‘We’re concerned friends who want to see true love run its proper course. Tell him we’ll have a table for two.’

The mask slipped and the owner looked crestfallen, just for a moment. He escorted them with overdone courtesy to a table far from the counter.

The lighting was arranged so that patrons could see their own tables and little of the rest of the room. It was like going to eat in a cave. The menu was in English and Chinese. Jian read the names of all the dishes because it was good to see words he understood for a change. It was all southern stuff and staples.

‘Why did you make me lie to him?’ said Song. ‘I didn’t like it. I thought he was a nice old man.’

‘I wanted to test his reactions.’

‘Did you think he was lying?’

‘A policeman doesn’t think, he establishes facts.’ Which was rubbish, but the sort of reply that satisfied the public.

He was pleased to discover that they had Tsingtao beer, though at ten times the usual price. He was shocked when it turned up to see how small the bottle was. He ordered crispy fried duck, sweet and sour pork balls, beef and
peppers
and fried rice. The girl had a glass of orange juice. She said, ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I have other lines of inquiry.’

‘You must tell the local police.’

Jian had no confidence in that. He knew how missing persons went. You opened a file, sent a rookie out to do interviews, and took the rest of the afternoon off. Every cop knew, missing persons was hopeless. They either turned up or they didn’t.

He excused himself. The toilets were downstairs, and there was another door beyond them. It was locked, but only by a catch, so Jian slipped his Bank of China Great Wall debit card into the crack. Back home they called these locks the housebreaker’s friend, they were no
security
at all. But this version was sturdier than its Chinese equivalent and, however he wiggled, the card the catch wouldn’t click.

He wiggled harder, a crease in the card whitened and cracks appeared. He imagined a cluttered staffroom beyond the door, and perhaps it had evidence inside and probably not, but he wanted to know one way or the other. The card snapped in two and the broken half flipped back into the corridor. He sighed in exasperation. Things were so much easier in China.

Someone was coming down the stairs. He supposed it was the old man checking up. A lighter footstep was the new arrival stepping off the bottom stair and onto carpet. It was too late to look for the broken half of the card. He stepped into the nearest toilet and got the door closed just as
someone
padded round towards him.

He considered a vase of plastic flowers on the cistern and a poster of a Hong Kong heart-throb. He did not like
skulking
around, and especially not in toilets and especially not in the ladies. Really though, what did he expect to find? A rota with his daughter’s name, her bag hanging on a hook,
her picture in the staff outing photo album? He didn’t need evidence, he knew the old man was lying.

Someone still loitered outside, so he put the remains of the card on the edge of the sink and flushed the loo and ran the taps. The card slid off and twirled into the corner. The broken card was bad news, it meant he couldn’t use an ATM. He’d be stuck for money as soon as his slim wad ran out. He bent to pick it up and paused. Chinese characters, barely half a centimetre high, were written along the
grouting
between wall tiles. ‘Dull dull dull’ – then a doodle of a sunflower with a smiling face.

He spotted another strip of discreet graffiti: ‘My boss is a colour wolf’ – a sleaze. There was more, but he did not need to examine it. It was just like his daughter, he could see it – the resentful waitress, stretching out a toilet break, venting her frustrations on the only receptive surface.

The owner stood outside, trying to look like he had
something
to do. Jian nodded and went upstairs.

‘How about this,’ said Song. ‘She started a career as a model because she could, she was very good-looking, and she didn’t want to tell you because she knew you wouldn’t approve. Then she went out to… some desert island on a shoot, and she got into some little trouble and called you, and she dropped her phone, with all her numbers in… She was on a yacht and she dropped it in the sea.’ She had come up with a pleasing story to lighten the mood and seemed tickled at her inventiveness. ‘I did that once, I mean lost my phone, it was a nightmare.’

She was so happy and straightforward. Jian knew her type. The modern urban Chinese girl, a doted-on only child, well educated, used to getting her own way, brought up in a cosy world that just kept on giving.

Was there ever such a gilded generation as the urban
Chinese
born in the Eighties? Their whole lives they had surfed the edge of a glorious wave of progress. Taught to aspire to a bicycle and a watch, televisions and fridges had come, then cars and computers. For them, the world could be trusted to just keep on delivering the goods. They had known nothing but bounty, so there was something green about them. They were as alien as foreigners.

His own generation had been blighted, scarred by the Cultural Revolution. In the seventies, Jian had been a Red Guard. Intent on building socialism, he’d got good at hitting people with a brick-filled satchel, as most of his energy had been taken up with fighting other Red Guards.

He’d also put time in humiliating intellectuals, smashing ancient statuary and burning books. He’d smeared ink on the faces of teachers and paraded them with ‘cow demon’ and ‘snake spirit’ written on signs hung around their necks.

He had loved and hated as directed and worshipped Mao without reservation. There’d been songs and passion and a sense of purpose. Then times had changed, and the lights he’d been brought up to live by had been shown to lead nowhere. Past struggles had been revealed as a tremendous waste of time, his idol Mao was an old fuck and a fraud. Well, he would not be fooled again. He believed in nothing now – there was only luck and money, and you’d better have one or the other.

He took out a cigarette. It was still a disappointment to learn that 555 was not really English. What about
Rolls-Royce
, then, and Clarks shoes and gentleman culture?

‘You can’t smoke in here.’

‘What? This is a restaurant.’

‘Yes, and you can’t smoke in restaurants.’

‘What kind of country is this? The bus, I can understand. But a restaurant?’ He twirled the cigarette between his
fingers
and thought how pretty it looked before slotting it back in the pack. ‘You’re supposed to smoke after eating. It helps the digestion.’

He looked round. The waitress’s face was a carefully composed blank, but her fingernails tapped nervously on the counter. The owner was making a call on a mobile. For a moment the men caught each other’s eyes and the owner shied away and turned his back. It was good to unnerve them. But it was not wise having civilians around to complicate things. He said, ‘I want you to go home, please.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ She was only discomfited for a moment. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing more I can help you with?’

‘Give me the number of your mobile. I may call tonight, possibly very late. Please keep your phone close.’

As soon as she had gone, he missed her. Bright, sensible, a good citizen – he wished his daughter was more like that one, then guiltily ushered the thought away.

The food was a disappointment. The meat was dry and tasteless, the vegetables chewy, and everything was
smothered
with starchy sauces. It was a gaudy parody of proper food. He ordered another Tsingtao to wash away the taste.

A couple on the next table paid up and left, and now he was the last customer. He pretended not to notice, got a Beijing Youth Daily out of his case and read a story about a German footballer who might change clubs.

The door opened and a Chinese man strolled in. Leather jacket, jeans, jade and gold jewellery – he looked like an antisocial element. Better dressed than the ones back home, with better manners maybe, but the same attitude. He idled to the counter. The waitress slipped through the door behind it and the old man came out, grinning and rubbing his hands.

Jian watched out of the corner of his eye. They began to chat in Cantonese like the best of friends. But the old man’s smile was unnatural and his quickly moving eyes looked scared. The new arrival turned side-on and his eyes
wandered
. They wandered all the way over to Jian, and for a moment the men locked glances.

The guy ambled over. He was chewing a match. He said around it, ‘I hear you’re looking for a girl.’