The Firemaker (20 page)

Yongli raised his hands defensively. ‘Okay, okay. So you love the old guy. It doesn’t stop him driving you crazy.’

Li’s anger diminished as quickly as it had flared up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it doesn’t.’

They sat in thoughtful silence for a full minute. Then Yongli said, ‘So, this American pathologist … An old battle-axe, is she?’

Li was evasive. ‘Not exactly.’

‘But she’s old, right?’

Li shrugged. ‘Not exactly.’

A worm of suspicion started to wriggle its way into Yongli’s head. ‘Well, if she’s not exactly a battle-axe, and she’s not exactly old … would you say she was young? Attractive?’

‘I guess. Sort of.’

‘Sort of young? Or sort of attractive?’

‘Sort of … both. She was the
yangguizi
at the banquet McCord gatecrashed last night at the Quanjude.’

‘Ah.’

‘What do you mean, “Ah”?’

Yongli waggled a finger at him. ‘It’s beginning to fall into place.’

‘What is?’

‘Your little head started expressing an interest and your big head put a stop to it.’

‘Oh, crap!’

‘Is it? I know you, Li Yan. I’ve known you for years. You’re scared of having a relationship, even if it was just sex, in case it interfered with your big career plan. First it was the university, now it’s your job.’ Yongli jumped down off the worktop. ‘You know what you need?’

‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘You need to get yourself laid a little more often.’ Yongli tossed his tall white hat across the worktop and started untying his chef’s apron. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re coming with me.’

‘Where?’

‘The Xanadu Karaoke Club.’

‘What?’ Li looked at him incredulously. ‘You’re winding me up.’

‘No, I’m not. It’s a new place, off Xidan. Open from eight at night till eight in the morning. The booze is cheap, the women are plentiful, and it’s not all karaoke. There’s live music, too.’ He hesitated. ‘Lotus is singing there now.’ And he saw Li’s face darken immediately. ‘And don’t start preaching at me, all right?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Ma Yongli, she’s a prostitute! A whore!’

Yongli looked at him dangerously. ‘I’ll take your fucking head off.’ His voice was barely a whisper.

Li softened his tone. ‘I just don’t understand how you can go with her when you know she’s been with other men.’

‘I love her, all right? Is that such a crime?’ Yongli looked away, clenching his jaw. ‘Anyway, she’s giving all that up. She’s making a career for herself as a singer.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Li slipped down off the worktop. ‘I think I’ll pass, though. Wouldn’t exactly do me any favours to be seen consorting with a known prostitute.’

Yongli turned on him. ‘Can’t you stop being a cop for two minutes?’

‘No. I can’t ever stop being a cop. Because it’s what I am.’

‘Yeah?’ Yongli pushed his face into Li’s. ‘But you can stop being my friend, right? When it suits you. When you don’t like my girl. That how it goes? Well, fuck you!’ And he turned and stormed towards the door.

Li stood staring after him, his heart battering his ribcage. ‘Ma Yongli,’ he shouted. Yongli kept going. ‘Ma Yongli!’ This time he positively bellowed.

Yongli stopped at the door and turned, his face livid. ‘What?’

They stared at each other for fully a quarter of a minute. Then Li said, ‘I think it’s your round.’

*

By the time they reached the Xanadu, their spat at the hotel was forgotten. Or, at least, each kept up that pretence for the other’s benefit. It was about the last place in the world Li wanted to be right now, but he was trying to be a full-time friend as much as he was a full-time cop. Sometimes it wasn’t easy being either.

There was a queue to get in, and they stood for nearly twenty minutes, smoking and watching life drift by on the streets, talking about nothing very much. Groups of sullen youths stared lasciviously at groups of giggling girls in miniskirts and Wonderbras who flaunted their sexuality with a carelessness that, in the West, would quickly have led to trouble. They made Li feel old, disconnected somehow from their world, as if it were so much different to his. And, of course, it was. In thirteen years the world had turned and was no longer the same place he had inhabited as a twenty-year-old. He didn’t recognise the kids of today as being like he had been. They belonged to a new age. Everything – values, expectations, earnings – was different. He was still linked to a troubled past that owed more to the excesses of the Red Guards and the Smashing of the Four Olds.

Eventually Yongli caught the eye of a bouncer he knew, and they were waved in. There was a ten-yuan entrance fee and the first drink was free. A circular red symbol, impossible to read, was stamped on the back of their right hands, and they passed on through a cloakroom area to the bar, which stretched the length of one wall. A large floor area was crowded with tables and chairs, all filled by animated youths drinking and smoking. At the far end was a raised platform with microphone and speakers and a karaoke screen. A spotty boy with a shock of thick, coarse hair that fell across his eyes was singing some unrecognisable Taiwanese pop song. No one was listening to him. Wooden stairs led up to a gallery that ran around three walls, overlooking the floor below. It, too, was crowded. The noise was deafening.

They made their way to the bar and Yongli waved their tickets at the barman, and they got two half-litre glasses of Tsing Tao beer. Li looked around as he sipped his. Where did all these kids get the money? This was not a cheap night out. ‘You want to try and find a table?’ Yongli bellowed in his ear.

Li nodded, and followed as Yongli climbed the stairs to the gallery two at a time. At the top Yongli spoke to a waitress. Whatever he said, she laughed loudly, and from the way her eyes were fixed on him it was clear that she found him attractive. He grinned back at her and squeezed her around the waist and winked, and she flushed red. He had such an easy way with him. Li wondered, as he had often done in the past, what it was that women found attractive about him. He was far from conventionally good-looking. But there was something about his eyes, and his smile. Something roguish. He could have had almost any woman he wanted. And yet he had fallen for Lotus.

The waitress weaved her way to the far side of the gallery and bent over a table to speak to the group of kids that sat around it. They glanced over towards Yongli, then shrugged and reluctantly moved away, taking their drinks with them, in search of standing room somewhere else. The waitress beckoned Yongli across, and Li followed him to the table. She gave him a big smile, wiped their table clean and placed a fresh ashtray in the centre. ‘You give me a shout when you need a refill,’ she said.

‘You bet.’ Yongli grinned and winked again, and she flushed with pleasure, hurrying away through the tables. He flicked a cigarette across at Li. ‘Helps when they know you,’ he said.

Li laughed. ‘It’s got nothing to do with knowing you. All you’ve got to do is smile and you’ve got half the women in Beijing fawning at your feet.’ He lit both their cigarettes.

‘True,’ Yongli said modestly. ‘But it doesn’t do any harm that Lotus is a regular on-stage here.’

The music stopped then, and the sense of relief Li felt was enormous, like stopping banging his head against a wall. They no longer had to shout at each other to make themselves heard.

‘So, when is she on?’ Li asked.

Yongli checked the time. ‘About half an hour. There’s a guy plays keyboard, and another on guitar. And they’ve got one of these computerised drum things. They sound like a fifty-piece orchestra. They’re good.’

Li had never had much time for music, and he couldn’t imagine what Yongli’s idea of ‘good’ was. It was a measure of how far they had grown apart in recent years that a club like this was a familiar part of Yongli’s life, and completely alien to Li. He drank his beer and watched the faces all around him, high on alcohol and who knew what else, talking animatedly. Young men and women, drawn to this place in search of different things: romance, sex, a partner, an end to loneliness, an escape from the banality of their daylight lives. The ritualistic search of a boy for a girl, a girl for a boy, and perhaps for a few something in between. But there was a sad quality, desperate and slightly shabby, about it all. Painted and unreal. A gloss for the night on dull lives, which would have worn off by morning, when the veneer of partners picked up in this ersatz twilight world would not have quite the same sheen as the night before. Li felt only relief that he had missed out on this, was no part of it. And yet, was his world any better? he wondered. A world of murderers, pimps and drug dealers. A world in which, only a few hours before, he had stood watching a poor burned man being clinically dissected, had traced his last hours of life from a bloodstained carpet in an apartment to a fiery and agonising death in a park.

‘Hi.’ Li was startled out of his thoughts by a woman’s voice. He turned as Yongli’s chair scraped back and the big chef got up and put his arms around Lotus’s slender frame. His body seemed to envelop hers, and she looked up at him, smiling with clear affection, before he lowered his head to kiss her. He took her hand and stepped back.

‘You remember Li Yan.’

Li stood up and shook her hand awkwardly. ‘Of course,’ she said, smiling as if they were old friends and Yongli had asked a stupid question. A full-length green silk dress clung to every contour of her body, split on either side from ankle to waist, bare arms exposed by a sleeveless top, her shoulders and neck, by contrast, modestly hidden by a high choker neckline. Beneath her heavy make-up it was clear she was actually very beautiful. She was quick to notice Li’s appraisal and, as if by way of apology, said, ‘My stage outfit.’

Yongli seemed almost nervous in her company. Gone was the easy self-confidence and the twinkling smile. ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he said, and he pulled up a chair for her.

‘Something soft,’ she said as she sat down. ‘Don’t want to be slurring my words when I’m singing.’ She smiled warmly at Li.

Yongli was looking around for the waitress from earlier, but she was nowhere to be seen. He seemed uncommonly agitated. ‘Where’s that damn girl gone?’ He tutted with irritation. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘No hurry,’ Lotus said. ‘I’m in good hands.’ She did not take her eyes from Li. Yongli hurried away across the gallery towards the stairs. ‘You got a cigarette?’ she asked. Li was aware of her strong Beijing accent, tongue curled back in the mouth to create the distinctive ‘R’ sound that formed almost in the throat. He held a pack open for her. She took one and he lit it. She drew deeply on it, threw her head back and blew a jet of smoke towards the ceiling. Then she levelled her gaze again and said, ‘You don’t like me much, do you?’

Li was taken aback by her directness. He had only met her a couple of times previously. He had always been polite, keeping, he had thought, his disapproval to himself. Perhaps Yongli had spoken to her of his friend’s feelings, or maybe she simply knew, by instinct, how a policeman might regard her. There seemed little point in denying it. ‘No,’ he said bluntly.

No sign of emotion rippled her exterior calm. She maintained a steady eye contact. ‘You don’t even know me.’

‘I know what you do. And I know what you are. That’s enough.’

When Yongli met her she had been working the joint-venture tourist hotels, raking in a high dollar income from wealthy businessmen with a taste for Asian girls. She had been based at the Jingtan when he started there as a chef the previous year, and he fell for her immediately.

‘What I
was
,’ she said evenly. ‘What I
did
.’

‘I see,’ Li said coldly. ‘So what you earn here as a singer allows you to maintain the same income and lifestyle as before? That what you tell Ma Yongli, is it?’

She suddenly leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Don’t you dare judge me!’ she snapped. ‘You know nothing about me. You don’t know what kind of life I’ve had, what kind of shit I’ve been through. I do what I have to do to survive. I don’t always like me. But Yongli does. He always has. And he’s never judged me. He treats me like no one’s ever treated me before. Like a princess. And there’s not many girls get to feel like that in their lives.’ She leaned back in her chair, breathing deeply to regain her composure. Then she said, quietly, ‘So if you think I’m bad for him, or that I don’t love him, you’re wrong. I’ve never loved anyone so much in my life. And I’d
never
do anything to hurt him.’

With a tiny jab of remorse, Li heard an echo of himself in this, how he felt about his uncle, the passion with which he’d defended him to Yongli just an hour earlier. He heard the same passion in Lotus, and couldn’t doubt the sincerity in her eyes. He nodded and said, ‘I don’t want to see him hurt either.’

‘Fresh orange juice and ice, is that all right?’ Yongli put the glass on the table in front of her and sat down. ‘Sorry it took so long.’

Lotus smiled at him. ‘Fresh orange is fine,’ she said. She took a long draught, then put it down again, half finished. ‘But I’m sorry, lover, I’ve got to go get ready.’

‘Hey, that’s okay.’ He leaned over to brush her lips with his. ‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ She stood up and smiled at Li. ‘See you later?’

Li shrugged. ‘Maybe not. I’ve got an early start.’

‘Next time, then.’ She touched Yongli’s face lightly with her fingers and moved away, gliding elegantly between the tables towards the stair. Yongli watched her go, doe-eyed and smitten, before becoming suddenly self-conscious and turning back to Li.

‘So what were you two talking about?’ There was a hint of anxiety in his voice.

‘You.’

‘Pretty boring topic of conversation.’

‘That’s what we decided, so we stopped.’

Yongli grinned. ‘You’re not really going to bail out early, are you?’

Li smiled and nodded. ‘I really am.’

Yongli shook his head. ‘You know, what you
really
need is to get yourself laid.’

‘You already told me.’

‘No, but
really
. I mean, what about this “young”, “attractive” American pathologist of yours? Sounds to me like she could get your juices flowing.’