A Perfect Crime (7 page)

He was dripping with sweat, but he carefully placed the cat on the old man’s knee. He then climbed out and jogged away. I wanted to be sick. The old man was still listening to the radio, stroking his furry companion
whenever they said something funny.

I decided I had to leave this city.

W
hen I left my room the next day the kid was there, waiting for me.

‘How did you know where I was staying?’ I stuttered.

‘I followed you the first day we met.’

He smiled and I felt sick, my hairs standing on end. I decided not to collect the deposit but just take my bag and leave. But he grabbed my sleeve.

‘I’ve got no one else to play with.You’re a good guy. No one else pays me any attention.’

I brushed him off, but he pulled harder as tears and laughter fought against each other on his face. I hit him and he let go, wounded.

‘I knew you’d leave.’

The intimacy of his words knocked me dull and I watched him disappear.

As he walked through the gate, I called down to him. He turned and answered. I motioned for him to speak first.

‘Brother, I know who you are.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘I’ve got money. I made a few
yuan
last night.’

‘Then go and have fun, don’t mind me.’

‘I want to buy you something. Guys like you on TV always wear a tie. I came to ask if you like red.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I have to give it to you. Don’t go.’

He watched me as he retreated, afraid I’d leave. He then turned and ran. I went back to my room and got my bag. By the time I was on the street, he had gone.

I walked for a bit and hid in the shade of a tree. But real brotherhood wasn’t easy to find these days, so I took out my binoculars to look for him. People walked back and forth, forming a moving barrier. I couldn’t see him. I was about to put the binoculars away when the kid hurried into view with three large policemen. They were waiting at a pedestrian crossing. The kid walked with care, smearing his hands on his dirty army uniform. He look looked up at the policemen and chatted. Shameless.

My hands shook and drops of sweat ran across me like hungry mice. I watched his animated expression as he pointed in my direction and I felt I was sinking into the ground beneath me, while the boy, a god, placed a curse upon my head. One of the policemen was tapping at his cheek with his index finger. He looked over and then started waving. The two other policemen took up the flank and charged straight towards me. Only then, as the reality that I was about
to be caught hit me, did I know to put away my binoculars, sling the bag on my back, tighten the straps and run for my life.

My legs thudded against ground. They felt powerless and far too heavy. It was like running on cotton wool, or through deep water. But I kept running. Behind me: ‘Wait! Stop!’ They were flustered. I heard the panting. I was running in the hundred-metre finals at the Olympics: my arms made a scissor motion, my head pecked through the air. People kept stopping to watch. I was the wind against their cheeks.

The police stopped and gasped, ‘Stop or we’ll shoot!’

Go on, then. I was already at one with time and matter, my body running for the sake of running.

I ran at the edge of time itself. Time had to me always felt sticky; the past was the present, the present was the future, yesterday, today and tomorrow were one boundless, mashed-up whole. But now it was an arrow shooting out in front, a point out from which it fired. It was bright, brave, fearless. In the diabolical light of the sun, it pierced through all possible futures, burned up into a black slag heap of the past. I would run, I would crush it. It smelt like a cow condensed into one piece of beef jerky, every bead of sweat suspended in the air collected into one.

A black car crashed and crumpled into pieces like a mirage. It was spluttering like all old cars, old and shabby, as if it could fall apart at any moment and reveal its wounds on the street right there. But it came out of nowhere, came hurtling towards me from a distance. Six seconds. I was forced into a side alley. Interfering busybodies. A swarm of scooters followed me. They smiled covertly at the police, ready to be heroes, but they were pathetic. They forced me to throw coal scuttles, beer bottles, broken chairs and even prams that may or may not have contained children. Every few steps a wooden door was flung open, warm looks of concern, promises of old wardrobes, hidden cubbyholes, secret tunnels, invitations in. But I’d rather die right there on the street.

I trusted no one, not since that dream on the train.

That afternoon, I ran through a labyrinth of alleyways. I remember silence, sunlight through the eaves and spread across walls, my shadow brushing past. It was as surreal as a film. Those scooters (masterpieces of modern machinery) were about to kick their hooves and sink their teeth and claws into my arse.

I stopped suddenly. As if God had spoken to me. I slipped into a dark corner. A motorbike came driving towards me, ridden by a smart-looking cop. He came through the narrow passage as if he was on an open
road. A siren followed. I waited for the whirlwind to break on top of me, then rushed forward and pushed. The bike veered towards the wall like a decapitated dragon. Its front wheel chomped through a pile of bricks before coming to a halt. The body of the bike spun one hundred and eighty. The policeman fell like a sack of cement and there he lay by the wall, battered and flattened, until the bike grew bored and spun aside. He sat up, brushed away the dirt and tried to get up. But his eyes rolled back and he slumped. A drop of water fell from the sky and cracked in front of him. He closed his eyes. His chest heaved. People came rushing out.

‘Someone went running that way. Quick!’ I said.

I walked away briskly, then spotted an unlocked bike. I rode furiously towards the market, threading through the crowd and into a busy grocery shop. From inside I spotted a taxi. I pulled open the back door.

‘Where to?’ the driver asked.

I took out my phone and secretly pressed it between the cushions in the back seat. I made my excuses and got out. I waited for the taxi to pull away and then started in the direction of the train station freight yard.

I followed the path by the tracks, my back to the station. They would close all roads, but they wouldn’t
think of the train tracks. That that’s how criminals like me escape. Right now they’d be asking themselves a stupid question: save their colleague or go after me?

Suddenly, I felt all grown up.

B
eing on the run is like playing a game of hide-and- seek. I’d knock on doors and run away, then they’d come running after, a wildness in their eyes. But I’d leave them in the middle of nowhere. I lost a shoe in my escape. Until the day I saw the sign for T— City. I stopped short, numb. So this had been my destination all along, the day I killed Kong Jie and boarded the train. This was where my cousin lived. I thought I’d been moving without a plan, but my subconscious had been drawing me here. I was so tired I could barely control myself, like an ox after a day toiling in the fields that in the distance makes out the outline of the village.

I caught a bus to the outskirts of town and then scrabbled across a small mountain covered in scrub and trees. In the distance, a winding road cut across the plain. Every now and again a vehicle would speed along it like a ghost. To the west sat an orphaned house. My cousin’s marital home, one floor had now become two. But they had yet to clad the top storey with the requisite ceramic tiles. I could see the dark red bricks and the aluminium windows set into them. A melon shack stood beside the road and four bare-chested, rugged
men sat playing poker. They looked like plain-clothes policemen to me. The first one cooled himself with an electric fan, drawing electricity from the shack. Another bore his back, pink and delicate.

The door to the house was pulled shut and no one seemed to be at home. I waited until midday, when smoke started puffing from the chimney. Insects began hopping like tightly wound springs. I felt cut off, as if I was hanging from one of the beams, my mouth taped shut, watching as my family sat round the table at dinner, talking.

Knowing I could die at any moment, I had to see her.

She hadn’t changed since the last time I was here to attend her wedding: two puckered hard pears for breasts, a body shrivelled and legs crooked with rickets. She walked us along this road to say goodbye, turned back for one last look, a wave, her eyes filled with tears. Her wave slowed, before resting in mid-air. A forever goodbye. But she came back when Pa died, with Auntie on her arm. Auntie’s cancer was worse than Pa’s, but she held on to life more firmly. With her white hair and determined expression, she would never surrender. My cousin cried until her eyes were puffy like peaches.

I didn’t know what to do at the funeral, but I was pushed up on stage against my will. I should cry, I knew
this, but my eyes were dry. Ma and Uncle were the same. Uncle sat by the coffin, smoking cigarette after cigarette (he would later quit, when we realised the smoking caused his cancer). Ma seemed to waver, her steps heavy. The other women in the family were embarrassed to cry when they saw her. The funeral was an obligation. Once my cousin led away the heft that was my auntie and the spattering of fireworks had been let off, the guard of honour made its way from the bridge. Only then did I let the tears come.

I watched the funeral procession approach. Pa was gone. My one and only pa, dead. My cousin dried her silent tears, tucked my head into her armpit and protected me. She held away that place, those people, the black night. Her eyes were heavy. She looked at me as if she was my mother, as if I was now an orphan, her tears frothy.

I wanted to see her.

I waited for the men by the melon shack to switch off the fan and leave in a minivan before coming down from my vantage point. That’s when I saw her, carrying a large bundle of hay. She had her back towards me, her head bent low. She was out making hay. Fields to both sides of the house were planted with it and one section by the road had already been harvested. Insects leapt in the ploughed mud and a
gust of wind sent the shiny leaves swirling. It was so quiet I felt a shiver go through me. My cousin worked quickly: one swish and the grass landed in her basket, then another. She was lost in the rhythm.

I heard my hesitant footsteps in the sandy dirt.

She was bait. All living things were prophets at that moment, watching me in amazement, as if I was walking step by step into a trap. I approached halfway, but stopped. A pulse of cold energy shot up my back. At that moment, she seemed to feel something, as she stopped cutting and slowly turned around.

‘Who are you?’ she managed to ask. She opened her mouth to scream, but it was as if she was paralysed. She could make no sound. Trembling, she retreated and grabbed hold of a bundle of hay by the high table behind her.

I watched her brandish the dry stalks as a weapon. It was pathetic, but nothing could be more hurtful. I reached out, my fingers spread, and walked towards her, but she was petrified. I didn’t know it would turn out like this.

Then I understood, I understood it all. I wasn’t going to stay here, where I wasn’t wanted. I waved.

‘I was just going to ask for some water.’

I’d drink and leave.

It was a predicament for her. She didn’t move. The
sun was hot and illuminated her wrinkles and clumsily applied make-up, which looked threaded and bobbly. Her chest was extravagantly displayed (like two plates), her jeans barely able to contain her hips, the seams popping, her yellowed calves and ankles showing. She was a middle-aged woman gone sour.

‘I’ll leave as soon as I’ve had something to drink. I won’t bother you.’

She looked sideways, her lips trembling. At first I thought she was scared, but then I realised she was mouthing something. Her freshly painted lips were speaking.

‘Run. Quick.’

It was a painful reminder of my current reality, but I turned and ran. I slid on the gravelled surface and, almost falling over, ran up onto the main road. I heard the sound of a thousand safety catches being pulled back and a growling pack of wolfhounds (their breath stank). A car was approaching.

I nearly choked on the thick stench of petrol.

I tried moving my legs clumsily, hopelessly, and collapsed against a slope at the side of the road. Lights flashed across my crazed mind. But the car came screaming towards me, a speeding box in my vision. As if it was the one trying to escape.

The road was empty. Not a soul. Not a living
creature. No sirens in the distance. The sun caught on the tarmac, as if glimmering on the tops of lethargic waves. I looked into the distance: the door of the house was already firmly shut, blinds pulled down. The hay in the fields danced in the wind. She had become fat, wrinkled and a mother; she was a woman of small riches who put everything into pleasing her husband, cooing over him as if she owed him, cooking for him, earning money to give to him. And I was a devil who had disturbed her peaceful existence.

I climbed back up the slope and watched. Hours later, a man with a round ball for a belly and puffy lips hobbled into view. He was calling her name. She opened the door with trepidation, looked at him and suddenly took him into her arms. He clapped her on the back; tears rolled from her eyes and bubbles formed in her nostrils. He then released her, lunged and with a
pa!
he clapped his hands together, reaching his left hand out and his right up into the air before bringing it back down in a beheading motion. She laughed. The move had taken her by surprise and she stopped crying. He picked up a stone, flung it with force out into the road and this made her laugh harder. I threw away my binoculars and let them slide down the slope.

I
was now completely on my own, isolated, as if I’d woken from surgery to discover I was missing my legs. Or maybe my dick. I was afraid and couldn’t believe I had fallen into a void like this. There was no way out. But at this point my guts broke in and I went to find food.

At the supermarket, the boss (also known as the cashier) was drinking from a large Thermos of boiling water and chewing on a roll. There were at least four or five more packets beside her. She kept eating and it reminded me of Ma. She would always sit at home alone, eating the out-of-date food she brought back from work.