The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (54 page)

‘Will you take me to see the mine?’ I asked Seligman, and I could see from the look on his face that he was going to say no, so I decided to appeal to his better nature and offered him money. A lot of money.

‘When do you want to go?’ he asked.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Do you have a visa to go into China?’

I shook my head. ‘How long will it take to get one?’

‘Normally takes two days, but I have a contact who can get it done within a couple of hours, at a price.’

‘How much?’

‘Three hundred bucks – Hong Kong.’

‘OK, we can get it tomorrow and go straight to Ningbo.’

‘There’s no problem getting to Shanghai, but it might be difficult arranging the flight from there to Hangzhou. We won’t know until we get there. And you’ll need cash, your credit cards won’t get you anywhere in Hangzhou or Ningbo.’

‘That’s easy enough, I’ll draw cash on my Amex card tomorrow morning.’

He leant back in his bean bag and ran his fingers through his short hair. ‘You’ll need to change the Hong Kong dollars into FECs – foreign exchange certificates. You can do that at the Hong Kong Bank, or at the airport. You can’t use Hong Kong dollars on the mainland. And foreigners aren’t allowed to use the renminbi, the Chinese currency.’

‘Anything else I need?’

‘How long do you plan to go for?’

‘I just want to follow Sally’s route, see what she saw, do what she did. In and out.’

‘That’s it then, passport, visa and FECs. I’ll meet you at the Star Ferry terminal, Hong Kong side, at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. That’ll give you time to get your money sorted out and for me to get the tickets. Then we’ll go to Tsim Sha Tsui and sort out the visa and go to the airport from there.’

I stood up and as the muscles in my stomach tightened I felt the bruises where I’d been hit.

‘Thanks, Tod, I really appreciate it,’ I said, though I was well aware of the fact that he wasn’t doing it for me, but for my money. Still, when you get down to it I suppose we’re all mercenaries at heart. Take the money and run. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ he waved his glass in farewell. ‘See yourself out.’ Just as I figured, he knew he’d have trouble getting out of his bean bag.

As I walked down the corridor his voice followed me, telling me to borrow one of the umbrellas hanging there if it was still raining. It was, an avalanche of water pouring from the heavens. An old woman hobbled along the pavement, seemingly oblivious to the downpour, so wet already that a few hundred gallons more didn’t matter. Other pedestrians sheltered in doorways, watching the skies for any sign of a respite. But there was no break in the cloud cover above, and the air was thick with moisture, warm and clammy. The rain didn’t make the pitter-patter of an English rainstorm, it came down in one solid sheet, like Niagara Falls, and the noise was the same, a single roaring note that went on and on. A taxi drove slowly past, the windscreen wipers totally ineffective against the mass of water. I put up the umbrella but it was no use because the wind was driving the rain horizontally. I got soaked.

The following day the sky was bright blue and cloudless and the air felt cleaner, all the pollution and impurities washed out by the storm.

I wanted to phone Jenny but realized I didn’t know her number. I dredged up the name of her company from the dark recesses of my memory and used the telephone directory in my room to look up the number. She wasn’t in the office but a secretary there took my name and said she’d pass on a message. Five minutes later Jenny rang. I had been in the shower and stood dripping onto the carpet as we talked.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Hi. How are you?’

‘All the better for hearing from you. How’s the face?’

‘Only hurts when I laugh,’ I said. I always seemed to be using cliches with her. She made me nervous. ‘Seriously. I’m healing nicely. I’m going to China.’

‘You’ll hate it,’ she said. ‘When?’

‘Today.’

‘Have you got a visa?’

‘A friend is going to fix one up for me.’

‘Is it business or pleasure? Cancel that, stupid question. Nobody but nobody goes to China for pleasure. How long will you be away?’

‘A day or two at most. I’m following in Sally’s footsteps.’

‘Well take care. And call me when you get back.’

‘Of course,’ I said, pleased by her concern. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

‘Anything,’ she said, and she sounded as if she meant it, as if I was a friend she’d known for years.

‘Can you get hold of Dennis Lai and ask him to see if any of Sally’s files were about diamonds. Diamond prices, diamond supplies, diamond mining. Especially diamonds in China.’

‘OK, sounds very mysterious.’

‘Could be something, could be nothing. I’ll explain when I get back.’

‘OK, bye for now.’ I was the one to hang up first.

Tod was early or I was late, because when I arrived at the ferry terminal he was looking in a bookshop window. He saw my reflection and turned to give me a half-wave. He was wearing baggy linen trousers and a white shirt without a collar and he was carrying a small red nylon rucksack.

‘You OK?’ he asked, looking at my suit. I didn’t look so bad. At least my FCC tie looked clean and new.

‘Only outfit I’ve got,’ I said. ‘Did you get the tickets?’

He raised the bag. ‘All arranged,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ll go second class.’

He took me to the turnstiles and gave me a bronze-coloured coin to drop in the slot. At the far end of the walkway was a traffic light, red and green but no amber. As we walked the green light winked off, the red light came on and a hooter bellowed. Seligman walloped me on the shoulder and shouted ‘Run’. We rushed through a green-painted metal barrier just before it closed and down to the lower deck of the departing ferry. Seconds after we had sat down on a hard wooden bench gasping for breath the ramp was raised by a Chinese boy in a dark blue sailor’s outfit pulling hard on a thick hemp rope.

Three-quarters of the bench space was taken up, mainly by middle-aged ladies with bags of shopping and old men reading Chinese newspapers.

‘The tourists are upstairs,’ grinned Seligman. ‘This is one of the best views in Hong Kong,’ he added, nodding towards the towers of Central. I’d seen it before from the Hong Kong Bank’s junk, but I made all the right appreciative noises. While the ferry chugged across the harbour Seligman prattled on like a demented tour guide, frequency of trips, number of passengers, how cheap it was, how profitable, how it was ultimately owned by Sir Y. K. Pao’s family firm which also ran the trams that clattered through the main streets of Hong Kong island. I let it wash over me, at least I didn’t have to speak, there was no conversation to join in, just a one-way flow of information.

The seven-minute crossing ended when the ferry bumped into the huge wooden beams of the Kowloon terminal. The sailor released the rope, the ramp thumped down and we joined the flood of passengers that poured into the terminal. Packed together as we were, it didn’t seem particularly crowded because Seligman and I were a head taller than most of the crowd. We swept through the building and out onto the pavement like a river widening into a lake.

The crowds were too thick to walk side by side so I followed in his wake, past shop windows crammed with televisions, videos and expensive electronic toys. Every second shop seemed to sell cameras, and the rest sold watches. There was a scattering of fashion shops, but nowhere sold food or drink or household stuff. The area was mainly for tourists and it was full of them, mostly middle-aged, overweight and sweating like pale-skinned pigs. The only customers inside the shops seemed to be tourists sitting on stools while assistants flitted around them like moths about a flame, pulling equipment from boxes, offering to do them a deal, latest model, best price.

None of the goods in the windows had prices on them, and the shoppers were doing their best to haggle in pidgin English, no matter where they came from. Walking past the open doorways it sounded like a United Nations economics conference, with British, American, Japanese, French and German accents all spouting numbers and discounts.

We crossed a main road and ducked under bamboo scaffolding that crawled over a modern shopping centre that was having its signs repainted. No space was wasted; even the alleys between the tall buildings were lined with open air shops, small barrows selling T-shirts with ‘I love Hong Kong’ or compact discs or toiletries. In front of a hi-tech computer shop an old man had set up his shoe-shine business, squatting next to a line of well-used brushes and cans of Kiwi polish as a customer stood with one foot on a small wooden box. The old man leant forward, spat noisily onto the gold-buckled shoe, and then vigorously worked in the saliva and polish with a yellow dust cloth.

‘This is it,’ said Seligman, and led me through a shopping arcade to a lift lobby.

‘What’s this place called again?’ I asked him as we waited for a lift to arrive.

‘Chung King Mansion,’ he said. ‘It’s a rabbit warren of cheap guesthouses, Indian restaurants, tailors and shops. It’s one of the cheapest places to stay in Hong Kong, so long as you can put up with the rats, insects and bloodstains. There’s usually at least one stabbing here over the weekend.’

We were joined by a group of Indian teenagers as the lift doors opened and we all crammed in. As the doors began to close a Chinese family, mother, father and three children slipped in and we were shoulder to shoulder as the lift jerked up, a constant shuddering motion that did nothing for my nerves. My nose was about two inches from the head of one of the teenagers and the smell of spices and garlic on top of the aftershave and sweat was playing havoc with my stomach. I looked at Seligman and grimaced. The lift juddered to a halt, the Chinese family squeezed out and then we were off again. There was a typewritten certificate Sellotaped above the panel of floor buttons saying that the lift and its safety mechanisms had been inspected two months earlier and I wondered who had looked after the inspector’s guide dog while he’d checked this one over. Seligman and I got out on the ninth floor and he took me down a dingy corridor to a door with frosted glass. Beyond was a small waiting room with half a dozen blue plastic bucket seats facing a wall in which was set a small serving hatch. The American took my passport and handed it along with his to the man sitting on the other side of the hatch. He passed through a handful of red notes and then asked me if I had two photographs of myself. I did, in my wallet, and I gave them to him. They too went through the hole in the wall.

‘Now we wait,’ he said, and we sat and watched the hatch. Not a lot happened for an hour and a half during which time Seligman did little else but talk, about his college days, how much he loved China, the politics of Hong Kong, where you could get the best Peking duck (I asked him if that was Cockney rhyming slang but he didn’t seem to have a sense of humour) and where the best hi-fi bargains were to be had. Time dragged. A young couple, Germans or Dutch, I couldn’t tell which, came in and handed their passports and money through the hatch and then sat down and began talking together quietly. I was just toying with the idea of introducing them to Seligman so that I could leave the three of them to it when a hand appeared in the hatchway clutching our passports. Seligman took them, spoke to the man in Chinese and then we left.

‘How does he do that?’ I asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Get the visas so quickly?’

‘Normally you go to China Travel Service but the little guy back there has a cousin or something in the visa department. Saves a lot of time. Hong Kong’s built on the principle of it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Or even better, who you’re related to.’ He flagged down a taxi and we drove to the airport, getting there just half an hour before the Dragonair flight was due to leave for Shanghai.

Shanghai airport was basic, surly immigration officials, clumps of inert porters and damp-eyed relatives. It was missing a few things, like signs pointing to the exit, but Seligman knew which way to go. Outside it was every bit as hot and clammy as Hong Kong, and I took my jacket off and slung it over my shoulder. We walked alongside the terminal building and turned right, across a grass strip to a line of four hangars. All were empty. The American spotted a mechanic in oil-smeared blue overalls and he went over to speak to him. I stayed in the shade while Seligman got into an animated conversation, pulling out his wallet, waving notes around and at one point seizing the man by his shoulder. It didn’t seem to be doing much good because the mechanic kept on shaking his head and shrugging.

Eventually he gave up and walked back.

‘No can do,’ he said. ‘All charters are out and they won’t be free for the next two days.’

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘How long will it take by road?’

‘To Ningbo? Three and a half hours, maybe four.’

‘What about hiring a car?’

‘We could, but I’m not sure of the way.’

‘Let’s take a taxi then.’

‘I doubt if one of the airport taxis will want to go all that way. I’ll ask, though.’

We went back to the taxi rank and when we had reached the head of the queue Seligman stuck his head through the passenger window and spoke to the driver. When he pulled his head back out he was smiling. ‘He says he has a cousin who’ll take us. Get in.’

The air-conditioning was full on and my temperature soon got back to normal. Shanghai was noisy and dirty and packed with people and cars. There were none of the tall glistening skyscrapers that gave Hong Kong its impressive skyline, just grubby store buildings that looked more like Aberdeen than how I’d imagined a Chinese city would be. The cars were constantly honking at each other and swerving to avoid pedestrians who were forced off the mobbed pavements and into the rubbish-littered gutters. We drove alongside a river that was every bit as busy as the roads, with barges, steamers and pleasure boats all jostling for space among the floating garbage.