Bad Traffic (24 page)

Jian advanced along the verge, bending low to minimise his silhouette. Grass swished and dew dampened his trousers. As his night vision grew sharper, he made out flowers and berries. Moonlight filtered through overhanging trees and dappled the track. The muddy surface had been recently churned by thick-wheeled, heavy vehicles. A black shadow hurtled past his ear and he ducked. It was nothing, merely a bat, and he ordered himself to be calm.

His sleeve caught on a thorny branch and he stopped to pull it loose. He was pleased to discover no mental snags to his progress. But he was a little detached, an observer of himself. He tried to put thought away and concentrate on sensation. Leaves rustling in the breeze, his rapid breath and heartbeat, the pressure of plastic handles on the pads of his fingers. He peered round a clump of thistles and
considered
a dilapidated farmyard. Black Fort’s car was parked before a two-storey house. Two lights were on downstairs, and one up.

He stepped carefully over rubble to a tumbledown barn. He crept past a corrugated-iron sheet blocking off an entrance and he kept his mind busy estimating distances to and between yard, car and house. At least there did not seem to be a dog – it would have barked by now.

He skulked to the house and peeked in a window. A
yellowing
net curtain hung with its ragged edge a few
centimetres
above the sill. A bare bulb illuminated a tatty
kitchen
. The floor tiles were peeling or loose and the surfaces
splotched with mould. The only signs that it was not
disused
were the fridge and portable hotplate, and dirty cups and bowls beside the sink.

The windowframe was speckled with woodworm. It would split easily, but make a lot of noise in the process. The windows were not double-glazed, so he could hurl a petrol bomb in without worrying about it bouncing back or breaking on the window.

The front door creaked open. Jian flattened himself against the wall. He was completely exposed. He put his bag down and slid his hand around the cold gun. Had they heard him?

A torch beam wavered over the yard, across the yellow car, a heap of rusty poles, a stack of tyres. It found the sheet of corrugated iron and held there. Two men strolled out. Jian recognised a ponytail and a bristling flat-top. He had seen these men outside the Floating Lotus restaurant – they were Black Fort’s henchmen. The bigger man, flat-top, held the torch. He yawned and covered his mouth with his hand while his companion tugged the metal aside. They went into the barn.

This was a good chance. Jian stepped towards the dark entrance. The gun in his pocket was reassuringly hard and heavy. If things went wrong he could show it to frighten them. It was easy to be quiet on the concrete but he watched his step for puddles and loose stones.

Light flashed round inside the barn. Standing at the side with the hammer raised, he thought about how he’d do it. He’d take the bigger one first, then catch the second before he could run. It would be tricky, and these things came down to luck, but it was possible: they’d have no night vision because of the torch and after the first strike the second man would freeze. He just had to make a good first strike.

His heart was pounding and he was gripping the hammer so hard that he felt it in the tendons on the back of his hand. The contradiction between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie
is resolved by the method of socialist revolution. The unbidden words trilled. He heard scraping, footfalls, the men chattering in Cantonese. The hammer was
shaking
and he willed them to come out, just come out. The contradiction between the working class and the
peasant
class in socialist society is resolved by the method of collectivisation.

The men came, dragging a slight and skinny girl. Her ankles were tied with a rope that forced her to take
mincing
little steps. Wails of complaint were muffled by a gag. A length of electric cable bound her wrists and the bigger man was pulling her along the way you’d lead a donkey. He held the torch and, as he yanked the girl, the light played over the house. The second man guided her by tugging her hair. They moved fast and the big man was already too far ahead.

Jian swung the hammer at the back of the second man’s head and caught it where the skull joins the neck, beneath the band of his ponytail, and there was a crack and he went down. His hand was still holding the hair of the girl and he dragged her down. Now she was between Jian and his new target. The man let go of the rope and ran for the house and torchlight swung wildly.

Jian shoved the girl out of the way and drew his gun. But his target made the front door and slammed it shut. He cursed and put a hand on the back of the felled man’s neck, behind the comma of black hair. A mental picture came of the last time he had seen him – staggering drunkenly with his friend’s arm round his shoulder, his cheeks red and his mouth hanging open. Now his spine was cracked and he was dead. This was an ugly business.

The girl was shuffling away. He caught up and took her by the elbow. He swept bedraggled hair out of her face. She was Chinese, only young, with small frightened eyes. He tugged her gag down and held her head level with a hand on her chin and said, ‘How many of them are there?’

She looked at him blankly and he worried that perhaps she did not speak Mandarin or was insensible. Her face was filthy except below the eyes, where tears had washed it. Her cheek was livid with bruises.

‘They said they were going to break us.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know.’ She began to sob. ‘Have you come to save us?’

‘No. Run away.’

Jian let her go and turned his attention to the house.
Surprise
had been his only advantage and he had squandered it. They knew the ground and perhaps they had weapons. He had to act while they were still shaken.

He had to concentrate. First, where to put the hammer while he lit the bombs. He clamped it between his teeth and tasted mud and blood. The lighter, where was that? In his pocket. Now get it to light. It seemed smaller than he
remembered
, his fingers bigger and clumsier. The flint sparked twice, and on the third attempt a ghost of flame appeared.

He picked up a petrol bomb and lit the soaking rag. His instinct was just to get the thing away but he fought that, took aim, and hurled it as hard as he could. It revolved in the air and he saw its looping path as a retinal streak. The kitchen window smashed and the bottle shattered against the far wall. With a sucking sound, a fire whumped into being, and heat pressed a moment on his eyebrows. Now that it was going on he was glad. He stepped back and
planted
his feet wider to throw the second bottle. It went through the other downstairs window and flame blossomed.

Stepping forward he held his arm up to shield his face. Fire tendrils jumped and snatched and a flurry rushed up the curtains. A crackling sound, and the house shimmered in the heat.

The door was thrown open, and the man with a flat-top haircut ran out, his head bent low and his arms raised high. Screeching, he turned on the spot and beat at the flames flickering round his shoulders and down his back. Jian smacked him with the hammer and he fell and was still as fire played over him.

Movement glimpsed in his peripheral vision made him look up. A figure looked down from an upstairs window. A pale face was framed by black hair parted in the middle, and lit from below by the gentle glow of a candle, which
accentuated
the elegant cut of the jaw and the high cheekbones.

Jian gaped at that silent, motionless form, more familiar than his own reflection. He felt as if he had been punched in the stomach and staggered back.

‘Wei Wei?’

The features did not add up to an expression, her face was as vacant as those of the statues in that temple. It wavered in the heat haze. The big dark eyes were giving nothing away. Jian called again to the image of his daughter.

‘Wei Wei?’

But the face retreated into darkness.

When Wei Wei walked into the Floating Lotus and asked about the job advertised in the window, she knew that she would get it. She was not sure, though, that she wanted it. She told herself that the discipline would allow her
monkishly
to discover a new aspect of herself and, thus romanticised, it did not seem so bad, at least for the first couple of weeks.

Bending to clear the plate of a solitary Chinese diner, she felt a hand slide across her thigh. She slapped him on the cheek. He did not seem disconcerted, but held a hand up in obviously unfelt apology. Only now did she notice the birthmark under his lip, the jade jewellery, the attractively dishevelled hair. Actually this guy was quite good-looking. When he said he was sorry, he was smiling, and the
toothpick
he was chewing rose suggestively.

He left her a twenty-quid tip. She was not impressed, she thought it vulgar. She palmed the note and replaced it with coins. That was one skill, at least, that the Moping Locust had taught her.

When she finished work, this guy was waiting by a flashy yellow car parked across the road. He got out and addressed her in English.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m getting a cab.’

‘Would you like to go out?’

‘Do you have nothing better to do than hassle girls?’

‘I don’t do it often – you should be flattered.’

‘I’m not, and I’m not cheap enough to be bought.’

She felt his eyes on her as she walked briskly away, and resisted the urge to look back.

At the house she ate her takeout in the dingy kitchen. Someone had left textbooks on the table. Feeling a guilty twinge, she moved them out of her eyeline. Dropping out of college had not been a conscious decision, she had just stopped attending. Back home, as a student of English, she had excelled – it was the first requirement of the world she wanted in on, so she had worked hard. But Tourism and Leisure? It seemed commonplace, marginal. The idea of opening a tourist agency had been little more than a whim and it had evaporated as soon as hard graft was required. The hospitality industry seemed, on closer examination, to be all tedious practicality and distasteful servility. She knew she didn’t have the temperament for it.

She flipped through a fashion magazine. It was full of promise. ‘Be all you can be, discover the new you’ – even the ad copy seemed to speak to her. This glossy world was what she wanted. She had no idea how to get there, though. She had sloughed off her unwanted identity – the
policeman’s
girl from the cold backwater – like an old skin, but no new one had grown.

Song came in. Wei Wei supposed they ought to share a bond, being the only Chinese girls in the house, but she found her housemate haughty and dull. Her white
boyfriend
was with her. Annoyingly, he was quite presentable. She was pretty sure he was called Paul. They were always watching TV curled up together on the couch, in a state of what looked like comfortable mutual boredom. Now they were making cocoa. Just for something to say, Wei Wei
complained
about how cold her food was.

Song said, in Chinese, ‘Why don’t you heat it in the microwave?’

‘Oh yes, I’ll do that.’

It was typical. The girl was always offering advice, and Wei Wei sensed a familiar subtext – You’re just a hick, I’m a proper city woman.

‘Not that one. You press this button here.’

‘I know,’ said Wei Wei.

Paul was considering the magazine. ‘She is far too skinny.’ He looked at Wei Wei as he said, ‘I like curvier girls.’

‘Nice dress,’ said Song.

Wei Wei said, in English, ‘It’s pleasantly understated.’

‘Huh?’

‘It means simple and uncomplicated.’

‘Not showy,’ said Paul. ‘Just elegant and sexy.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And ridiculously expensive,’ said Song. She took the drinks out and the boyfriend said he would follow her up in a minute, he was just going to root round for some biscuits.

Wei Wei watched her food rotate in the microwave,
drumming
her fingers. ‘Root is a verb?’

He put a hand on her arm and whispered, ‘I’m crazy about you.’ The hand moved to her shoulder. She consciously
emptied
her face of expression as he blundered on. ‘The way you move, the way you look in that nightdress, how you tip your head when you’re thinking.’ His fingers touched her cheek. ‘I totally agree with what you say, about living like an artist. Living in the moment.’ She was backed against the counter, there was nowhere to retreat to. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think about that?’

The microwave pinged.

‘Excuse me. Dinner.’

He moved in to kiss her. His greedy tongue reminded her of a cow’s. Two in one day – it was unprecedented. But neither, of course, was suitable. His chin was stubbly and he
had an offputting odour. She thought of kisses as having a colour – she’d read it in a book – and this one was definitely pale green.

She grew aware of movement in her peripheral vision, then squealed as she was drenched with cocoa. A cup
clattered
to the floor. Song had returned, and caught them, and now, having hurled her drink, was standing with her knees together, her face crinkling. Wei Wei brandished her
magazine
, swatting at the air with the confused idea that this troubling couple could be made to disappear like wasps.

Song’s expression hardened and she pointed an accusing finger at her boyfriend. To avoid a tedious scene, Wei Wei ran to her room and propped her table against the door. It wasn’t as if she asked for this, she reflected, it was just the sort of thing that seemed to happen to her. She was still hungry but thought it best to avoid the kitchen for the time being, so she skinned up a joint and watched a recording of ‘EastEnders’ on her little television. She liked that there were all these strong women who castigated wavering menfolk, and hoped that Song was giving Paul a similar hard time.

But when she came down for breakfast the next morning to closed, hostile faces, she discovered that a picture of the drama in which she was cast as a rapacious harridan had been circulated and accepted. She was informed with a note, written in red capitals, and signed by all her housemates, that she had been ‘sent to Coventry’. What a phrase. It seemed that English, just like Chinese, concealed unpleasantness with quirky euphemism. Well, she told herself, it wasn’t as if she spoke to those dullards anyway.

Her what-the-hell defiance lasted the restaurant’s evening rush, but as her shift wore on she felt her spirits sag. Her qipao dress was constricting, the customers banal, the tips measly. Perhaps recent experiences had left her more
sensitive to certain signals, but it occurred to her that she really didn’t like the way twinkly-eyed old Mister Li watched her. Really, it was too much. This was not the sort of place a girl might be discovered by a model scout or acting agent. She was just wasting her time. Skulking in the ladies – it was the the only opportunity to sit down – she expressed her feelings by writing ‘My boss is a colour wolf’ in the grouting between wall tiles. She was dull, the job was dull, she was not being all she could be, and had no idea how to start discovering the new her.

So she was almost pleased when, leaving the
restaurant
, she saw the yellow car again. The Chinese guy leaned against it with one ankle tucked behind the other and hands behind his back.

‘Why didn’t you come in?’

‘I wasn’t hungry.’

‘Then your trip is wasted. You’re not my type.’

He gave her a red rose. It was not the usual cheap article guys fobbed you off with, but the real deal, a full bloom with a heady scent. ‘Thanks. Not sure what to do with it, though.’

‘Keep it by your bed.’

‘Maybe in the bathroom. Goodnight.’

‘At least tell me your name, beautiful stranger.’

‘You can keep calling me that.’

She walked away. She heard footsteps behind her and planned her next move. It was hard to strike the right balance, in English, between cutting and flirtatious. Perhaps she should say ‘Can’t you take a hint?’, or just ‘What is it now?’ as if he were a pesky puppy.

When her pursuer was right behind her, she swivelled on one heel, affecting weary resignation with head cocked to one side. But it wasn’t the handsome Chinese man. It was creepy Paul. He looked broody and furtive.

‘How did you find out where I work?’

‘You left a flyer. Me and Song split up. So we can go out.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Hey, you can’t just—’

‘Yes, I can.’

He gripped her elbow and squeezed and she smelled booze on him. She wriggled. ‘Let go.’

‘Yesterday you wanted to—’

Paul jerked as he was grabbed from behind. His arms flailed as he was twirled round. The Chinese guy punched him with the base of an open hand and Paul fell, clutching his face. The Chinese guy cracked him with an elbow. His expression was impassive, like that of a man solving a problem. She grabbed his arm and placed herself in his eye line.

‘Don’t. Please don’t. Stop it.’

The guy jabbed a heel into Paul’s foot.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

He stepped back and ran his hands through her hair. They watched Paul stagger away. She felt giddy. Something dark in her had liked what she had seen and she was angry about it.

‘My name’s Black Fort. Come for a drink.’

‘I’m going to see that he’s alright.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’

After that he picked her up most nights. He took her to hotels, which was a lot better than going home. It turned out he was a hoodlum, with a gang and dreams of
unlimited
wealth and respect. His unsuitability was exciting, it made her feel like a tragic heroine. Every song now seemed addressed to her. Nothing was banal any more. Perhaps, after all her false starts, her life here really was beginning.