INCARNATION (17 page)

Old Wu grabbed David’s jacket from behind and pulled it hard.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘if we don’t leave now there will be a curfew. They’ll cut off all the streets round here until this is tidied up. If you don’t come with me now you’ll end up in the same state as those people out there.’

David turned to Nabila. She was still clutching his hand, and all the while tears were pouring down her cheeks.

‘They’re not human,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said a voice behind her, ‘but they are human. That is why they do what they do.’

She stood up and looked at Old Wu. His frightened, tired face brought her to herself.

‘Take us out of here,’ she said. ‘We’ve seen all we need to see.’

The Rose Clinic, Esher

W
hen Elizabeth turned up on the arm of a tall, grey-haired man, Maurice Rose’s stomach performed a speeded-up version of the hokey-cokey. He knew the Laings had separated, of course. After all, that’s what had driven the unfortunate Maddie back to him in the first place. He looked them both up and down, and decided that "unfortunate" was not an epithet that would sit easily on either pair of shoulders.

‘Dr Rose, this is my partner,’ she began, broadening her smile beyond what was strictly human. He watched her, wondering when she would crack. ‘Anthony Farrar. I brought him along for moral support.’

Farrar stretched out a lovingly manicured hand. Outside, the light dwindled from the sky as hope from a bereft heart. In the corridor, a trolley shuddered past.

‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Rose said, though he was not.

‘Likewise.’ Farrar seemed to carry the Mandate of Heaven on his person. Rose was used to dealing with powerful men, from politicians to gangsters, but he’d never felt vulnerable until now.

‘I take it you’ve come to see your daughter, Mrs Laing.’

‘Quite right. And Sir Anthony ...‘ 

‘Goes nowhere near her.’

She started and looked round her, as though a suitable retort lay near to hand. She’d been here before, she’d been here many times; but the room had frozen solid around her, there was nothing she could get a grip on. What she found was lame enough; but she’d never been particular or wise.

‘I don’t think I like your tone, Doctor.’ 

‘It’s the only one I have. Your daughter is my patient, which means I’m one hundred per cent responsible for her.’

‘Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but Anthony ...’

‘Is part of the reason Maddie’s in here. I think we should talk about that. Let’s start with the evening she arrived here.’

He talked at her until she tired. Elizabeth had no powers of endurance. She wilted at every mention of the problems Maddie was facing, and refused to accept any responsibility for her condition. Anthony watched the proceedings with an air of resigned remoteness.

‘Have you quite finished, Doctor?’ she said when Rose came to an end.

The light slipped and slipped. All things were leaching into an uncertain darkness. In the clinic, no one sang or screamed or cried out of love. But behind closed doors they contemplated suicide and the imperfection of their lives. 

‘For the moment, yes,’ he said. 

She looked at him steadily. ‘Then I insist on seeing my daughter now.’ 

‘That’s out of the question,’ Rose replied, shaking his head sadly. ‘You do not insist here. This is my clinic. Only I can insist here.’

‘Well, if that’s how you want to play it, I’m off. But you can be the one to tell Maddie that she’s out of here tomorrow, because that’s when I stop paying your bills.’

‘That’s your privilege. But Maddie’s father has insisted she be treated here, and I rather think ...'

Farrar broke in, as though this was no more than a fractious meeting of desk heads he’d been asked to chair.

‘For God’s sake, why don’t you two stop bickering? Doctor, if you would kindly allow Elizabeth to have a word or two with the troubled soul upstairs, perhaps you and I could have a little chat about how to get on. Like yourself, I’d like to make sure the bills for Maddie’s stay get paid regularly.’

With a few well-modulated sentences, Rose was pacified. Strong in his own sphere, the doctor lacked the finesse to resist a man like Farrar. A quick phone call brought a nurse, a small Japanese girl with frightened eyes. Her name was on a blue badge above her small right breast, Keiko. She bowed ingratiatingly.

‘Nurse, will you please take Mrs Laing upstairs? She’s Maddie Laing’s mother. Let her have five minutes with her daughter. Then bring her down again. Five minutes, remember. Tell Maddie I’ll be up with her soon.’

Elizabeth got to her feet like a snake shedding its skin.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later, Anthony.’

At the door, Rose called to her.

‘Mrs Laing, be sure you say nothing about your son. Be very sure of that. I consider it important.’

She turned and gave a smile, as if to say, ‘Don’t take me for an imbecile,’ and proceeded through the door. The nurse followed her, and they went upstairs.

Maddie was sleeping, her face turned from the soft light that burned on the bedside table. The nurse made to wake her, but Elizabeth prevented her.

‘Just leave me with her,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to wake her.’

The nurse did not really understand, but she took the sense of Elizabeth’s directions and went out to wait in the corridor.

Elizabeth went across to Maddie and knelt beside her. With one hand, she reached up and moved a long tress of auburn hair out of Maddie’s face. She was desperate for Maddie’s love, but frightened of the intensity of the younger woman’s rejection of her. For her five minutes, she sat with the back of her hand against Maddie’s cheek. When the nurse returned, nothing had been said, nothing had been changed. Elizabeth went back downstairs and left as she had come, on Anthony’s arm.

Urumchi, Sinkiang Province

H
e woke abruptly, already struggling to fight off whatever was pushing his head back against the pillow. It was pitch dark; he could see nothing, but he could feel a hand pressing against his mouth. Fully awake now, he swung with one hand, grabbing his attacker’s wrist and pulling down hard. He came up and round, grateful that the stifling heat had forced him to sleep without covers. A second quick movement brought his arm round to catch beneath his assailant’s chin.

‘
Bie nuo
l’ he snapped. As he did so, he reached behind his back, scrabbling beneath the pillow to find the gun he’d placed there before going to sleep. ‘I said, don’t move,’ he repeated, bringing the gun up and holding it hard against the stranger’s temple.

‘David? Please let me go. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

He took a deep breath and released it, fighting back the adrenaline that was flooding his system.

‘Nabila?’

‘You’re still choking me. Please.’

He took his arm away, and she moved back into the room. A moment later, the light went on. David’s heart was still slamming against the wall of his chest as if intent on killing him. He looked down at the gun in his hand, and dropped it back on the bed.

‘I think you’d better put on some clothes’ she said. Only then did it sink in that he was stark naked.

‘Keep your eyes closed,’ he ordered as he leapt off the bed, trying to find his trousers. When he’d put them on, along with the shirt he’d tossed over the chair a few hours earlier, he went back to the bed and sat down.

‘Perhaps you’d better explain to me what all this is about,’ he said, nodding to the chair as though they were about to have a friendly chat at two in the morning.

She didn’t move. He noticed that her hair was a mess, that her clothes weren’t half as neat as they’d been earlier.

‘I need your help,’ she said.

‘Look, I’ve already explained

She shook her head vigorously.

‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean that. Something has happened at my hotel, something that could put me in great danger. I want you to come there with me.’

He sensed a trap. This was a woman he hardly knew, and here she was in his hotel room, inviting him back to hers. There was nothing overtly sexual about the invitation, but in China there didn’t need to be. Even as things stood, they could both be arrested for flagrant immorality.

‘What’s wrong?’

She shook her head. For the first time, he noticed she was visibly upset. Something had happened, and he didn’t think she was setting him up.

‘Will I need this?’ he asked, holding up the gun.

The sight of the gun seemed to terrify her.

‘I ... I don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘It’s up to you. But maybe it’s best. You shouldn’t leave it here.’

They were about to leave when she turned to him, a worried look on her face.

‘Do you have any other identification with you? Other than the passport you handed in here?’

He hesitated, not knowing if it was wise to let her know just what he did and did not have.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s important. You have to get into my hotel.’

“Very well. But if anything happens ...'

‘It’s all right. No one else will know. But, please hurry.’

He went to his suitcase and found a second passport in the lining. It was an Australian passport in the name "Harry Kirim" and was filled with stamps and visas from the Central Asian republics. Next to it were some identity cards. He slipped them all into his back pocket and followed Nabila through the door.

The door to the rear exit was halfway along his corridor. It led on to what was really no more than a service stair. For a lot of residents, it represented the only way in and out that was not supervised either by the reception desk downstairs or the furen on each floor.

Suddenly, his earlier suspicions returned.

‘How did you get past the furen?’ he demanded, stopping her on the next landing down. ‘And how the hell did you get into my room?’ Room keys were kept by the furen, who let guests into their room every time. This was a police state, and very strict controls were kept over who could handle dangerous objects like hotel keys.

‘Don’t be so suspicious,’ she said. ‘Obviously you’ve never been a real doctor. It does things to the mind, lets you see solutions to the strangest things. I could have gone straight to the furen, had her wake you up, talked with you in the corridor. But she’d have asked for my ID, and she’d have remembered me afterwards. That could have got you in a lot of trouble.

‘So all I did was show her my ID with my name covered up. I told her her mother had been taken to the Minorities Hospital out past the reservoir. I made it sound urgent, and she hared off, leaving her keys. Sometimes being a doctor has its uses.’

He laughed.

‘What if she hadn’t had a mother?’

‘Everybody here has some sort of mother. It was a risk, but it paid off.’

He looked at her, impressed by her resourcefulness. Uighur girls weren’t brought up to be resourceful. His own mother couldn’t have walked past a blind and deaf furen if her life had depended on it. As they made to set off again, he caught her wrist.

‘Have you been crying?’ he asked.

She bent her head, turning her face away from him, then nodded silently.

‘Has someone hurt you? A man?’

He was frightened that this unknown woman might be pulling him into something unpleasant, something that could compromise him and his mission. He felt himself drawn to her, and he wanted to do what he could to help her. But lives depended on the success or failure of his mission here, and he could not afford to take unnecessary risks.

She straightened up and looked at him.

‘A man, yes,’ she said. ‘I think he’s dead. I think I killed him.’

‘How did this happen?’ he asked, but she was already hurrying down the stairs again ahead of him. He gave up and followed her.

Outside, she led him through a maze of back alleys.

He noticed that she didn’t ask about the pistol. Had she expected it? How much did she really know about him? They finally came out at the other end of Shinhua Lu right under the shadow of Hong Shan, the three-thousand-foot-high mountain that squatted in the heart of the city.

‘This is my hotel’ she said, pointing to a tall building named after the mountain. ‘My room’s on the fourth floor.’

He looked at the hotel entrance and saw two men in trenchcoats, smoking and chatting, as though waiting for someone. Plain-clothes policemen, ostensibly there to keep an eye on conference delegates, but more probably to watch out for anyone who might have been involved in the meeting at the Shaanshi Mosque earlier in the day.

‘I’ll go in first,’ she said. ‘Come in about ten minutes. Make sure they don’t see you before that. Say your transport broke down on the way in from Turfan. You went there earlier today and you’re just getting back now. Your case is on the minibus, but you’ve got to be at the conference in the morning.’

‘I get the idea.’

‘My room’s number four thirty. As soon as the furen leaves, come round.’

‘What if ...?’

‘All the empty rooms are at the rear.’

She started off, then turne back.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for trusting me.’

This time she went straight in. The two policemen followed her with their eyes. When she was gone, he saw them making ribald gestures, and heard them laughing. He went back down the alley and cut through so he came out lower down the main street. As it was, he wasn’t quite sure where he was supposed to be coming from.

Taking him for a Uighur, the two policemen tried to harass him as he made for the entrance, but he pulled out his passport and hung it open in front of them. They pulled back apologetically, and one held the door open for him. After all, the conference was about building good international relations. And showing how well minorities were treated in the People’s Republic.

The large foyer showed clear signs of moving in the reverse direction to China’s economic boom. The colour scheme was built around dark brown and sickly green, and everything that should have been wood or leather was plastic. Over the entrance to the restaurant, silver and red decorations screamed sixties glamour. He trudged to the desk and banged loudly on the bell until someone came.