Yin Yang Tattoo (16 page)

Chang's face gave nothing away.

‘So why do you need me? Schwartz got it right. I'm a nobody here.'

Chang went on as if I had said nothing. ‘I want an answer. Will you cooperate with us and do what is required? We – ' A telephone rang next to his elbow. He put up one palm, picked up the phone, and listened carefully before responding.

‘Ee boon.'
Two minutes.
He turned back to me.

‘Detective Kwok is here, and wishes to speak to you immediately.'

He looked to Schwartz and Martinmass, who were visibly angered by the interruption. They picked up their coffee cups and papers and left by way of Chang's office. There was a tap at the corridor door and the detective and his two sidekicks came straight in. Kwok pulled a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and held it in front of me. Inside were the wrappings from a video tape.

‘This was found behind the curtain in your hotel room. We are going to search the room and your equipment cases again.'

If they had just found the wrappings, that meant they had already been back at the room, where they had found the equipment cases securely locked. Breaking into the cases might render evidence obtained inadmissible.

Kwok waved a hand at me. ‘Come with us, please.'

‘We will see you again tomorrow,' said Chang. Like it was a done deal.

 

Half an hour later I sat on my hotel room bed as the two detectives rummaged through my equipment cases while Kwok and I looked on. Kwok pulled out the evidence bag with the video wrappings.

‘What can you tell me about this?'

‘Nothing.'

One of the policemen called out.

‘And this?' said Kwok, chin pointing at his colleague, who held up a layer of cut foam from one of the cases. Beneath the layer, lying across a wide slot was an unused video tape still in its cardboard wrapping, identical to the wrappings Kwok held in an evidence bag. Next to the tape, a neatly cut cavity in the foam lay empty.

‘I sometimes carry a video camera on assignment.'

‘Where is it now?'

‘London.'

‘I can have you arrested at any time.'

‘I sometimes carry the video camera to make records of locations and lighting set-ups in case we have to re-create the same lighting at another time or in another location. But on this trip I was travelling alone, and my luggage was overweight, so I left some things behind in London. The camera was one of them. I must have missed the tape when I re-packed in a hurry.'

‘So how did this get to your room?' He waved the evidence bag of tape wrappings.

‘It may have been in one of my bags, from an earlier shoot before I came to Korea; it could have fallen out when I was checking my equipment.' Hypothetical situations can work both ways. So far, they had no evidence to disprove this possibility, and if I had anything to do with it, that would continue to be the case.

The detectives had finished their search, and had nothing new to crow about. Kwok looked pissed off, his suspicions alone not enough to act upon.

‘When this camera turns up,'
When
. ‘It will be further evidence against you. Hiding it from us will only make things worse.'

They walked out, and I buried my face in my hands. For the first time in days, maybe I just did something right.

I savoured the quiet of the room for a moment. Apart from an alcohol-soaked nap in the small hours of the morning I had not slept in thirty-six hours, but right now, sleep was the last thing I could afford. The brushes with Chang and Kwok had been fortunate for me in their brevity only. The morning was not yet over and, so far as I knew, my clients would not be requiring my services today. Tough luck if they did.

Two minutes under the shower freshened me up and gave me the chance to change out of the beige trousers and off-white shirt that Kwok and his boys had last seen me wearing. I pulled on a pair of dark chinos and zipped a black cotton bomber jacket over the top of a grey polo shirt. I checked the peephole in the door. Nothing. I opened the door in one smooth move and stepped confidently into the corridor. If Kwok had anyone watching for me I would go looking for the chambermaid and ask for some toiletries to replace the ones his detectives had confiscated. The corridor was empty, except for the chambermaid's trolley sitting outside a room fully thirty yards away.

Credit card at the ready I turned towards the store-room. I hoped to repeat my earlier easy victory over the lock, but it refused to budge, the door rattling in its frame as I jiggled the card and pushed and pulled at the handle. From the corner of my eye I caught movement at the end of the corridor. I tried to shrink into the shallow recess, one cheek flat against the door. The chambermaid came out of a room with her arms full of soiled linen which went into a bin on the trolley. Only when she retreated back to the room with fresh sheets under one arm could I return my attentions to the lock. This time it gave way, and I was in the store-room, door pushed gently closed behind me. Five seconds to regain my package from high on the shelving, twenty seconds with my ear to the door, and I was back in the corridor and straight across to my room. I transferred the package to a waist bag that I clipped into place beneath the folds of the bomber jacket. I picked up a small backpack and slipped it over one shoulder. Now came the hard part.

I took the lift directly to the basement and walked quickly into JJ's. Five paces inside the bar I spun around and looked straight into the gaze of a blue suit following in my tracks. He immediately cut left through a swing door marked ‘Staff Only'. Either he was very good or he actually did work here. From an exit onto the hotel patio I looked towards the pool deck where the only figures visible were uniformed hotel staff and an elderly Japanese couple in matching Burberry bathing suits and sun hats. I hugged the building all the way around to the edge of the car park on the other side, senses alert for any signs of urgency. Just when I was about to relax, Blue Suit cut out of the main entrance and ran towards the pool deck. I nicked around the end of a dividing wall and was gone before he looked my way.

I kept well apart from the traffic headed for the main entrance, and when the driveway was clear, slid around the gate pillar and slipped into the nearest alley. Fifty yards on, I looked back along the deserted lane as I emerged onto a busy suburban street to find a deluxe taxi parked, driver smoking, the car's polished nose pointing uphill towards the hotel. Just as I spotted him, the driver picked up on a potential fare. One twitch of my eyebrows and his cigarette was rolling in the gutter. I slipped into the back seat.

‘Where you go?' He looked at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘City Hall.' Ten minutes away – and in the opposite direction to where I was headed. I checked my watch. It was tight, but I should make it.

He set off back towards the hotel and I sat low in the seat, peering around the door-frame. As we passed the main gate Blue Suit came running up the driveway, chest heaving, head sweeping from side to side. I ducked lower in the seat. In the mirror, the driver fired me a glance heavy with unasked questions. I pretended to doze off, questions ignored, and he said nothing. He was a taxi driver. Being treated like he didn't exist went with the job.

At City Hall I waited until the taxi disappeared around a corner before dipping downstairs into the subway system. Three minutes later I was aboard a train heading south. Instinct sent my hands to check that the video camera fixed to my waist was safe. It was. The subway journey would take about twenty minutes. I scanned the faces of my fellow passengers, but recognised no-one.

The video business was yet another worry, and with Kwok suspicious about the tape wrappings and the empty space in my equipment case, leaving it in the maid's store-room for much longer was not a sensible option. All it took was for someone to stumble across them and Kwok would think he had even more evidence of a guilty conscience. Mine.

Not that there was anything untoward about the videotape itself. I don't see anything wrong with enjoying tapes of me having sex. It's a personal thing, consenting adults doing something that gives them pleasure, an innocent turn-on that hurts nobody and breaks no laws. So what if Miss Hong didn't know about the small camera that I fixed high on a curtain rail while she showered. The way she went along with the Polaroids two nights earlier, I am sure it would not have bothered her. I had known a few women who had participated willingly, even encouraged it, and shared the turn-on of snuggling up to view the resulting show.

Jung-hwa introduced me to this pleasure source. She arrived at my flat one night with a box in a carrier bag, a clunky video camera that belonged to a family member who was unable to get it to work – or so she said. It took me a couple of minutes to seat the battery and find the correct switch. A little red light blinked above the lens, a grainy black-and-white viewfinder came to life, and I pointed the camera at Jung-hwa, who stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Still looking through the camera I followed her to a cassette tape player that sat on top of the television. She hit the play button and tinny speakers filled the room with the sound of canned sex: Sade's
Smooth Operator
. Jung-hwa danced a sinuous weave, palms painting the contours of her tight top and even tighter jeans. I yelled encouragement and painted nails moved teasingly to the buttons of her blouse. She started to strip slowly, playing to a rapt audience of one, carelessly flipping clothing over her shoulder, where it came to rest on the TV, on a lampshade, on the floor. When all she wore was a pair of flimsy white underpants, I carefully set the camera down on a coffee table. I walked into shot and was welcomed into Jung-hwa's arms for a long, hungry kiss. Without breaking away she lowered her hands between us and started to undress me. With a wriggle, she pulled free of my embrace and sank to her knees.

Fourteen years later, I could replay every last frame of that video in my mind.

An announcement crackling from muffled subway train speakers jolted me back to reality. I pushed through the crowd to the carriage doors, joined the busy station platform, and began to work my way back above ground.

Bright sunlight washed over the southern suburb of Seogyo dong. From the station exit I imagined that I followed my own well-worn tracks from years ago to a three-storey concrete building in a crowded lane parallel to the main road. On the second floor, whitened window frames were filled by bold red Korean lettering. Tae Kwon Do.

The old man at the local store by the building's entrance did a double-take as I nodded to him and skipped up the stairs. I was excited in that way when you are about to be reunited with a dear friend after a long absence. He was a creature of habit and, six days a week, this was morning work-out time. Later would be time for a sauna and perhaps a massage followed by a rich lunch of
bulgogi
, but at noon, I was certain he would be in the
dojang
working out. As I tripped up the stairs, the sounds exploding from the gym told me my guess was correct. I slipped quietly along the corridor and put my head around the door jamb.

Mr Cho wore a fresh
tobok
held in place by a black belt worn grey from years of use and thousands of washes. He was practising a three-kick attacking combination. A right front snap-kick, followed by a left front side-kick feint that morphed into an airborne spinning right back kick, a deadly
tui-dollyo-chagi
that folded the heavy leather bag in half, rattling the sturdy chains that attached it to the ceiling. Even before the bag began to unfold itself Mr Cho was back in the ready stance, gauging the bag's movement, preparing for the next explosion of strikes.

I stepped into the doorway and my reflection in the full-length mirror on the far wall immediately caught his attention. He stopped in mid-kick and walked over, hand outstretched. Pushing fifty, he had the body and feline grace of a young Jackie Chan. His face was unlined and he still wore his jet-black hair long. He shook my hand hard and pointed to the backpack hanging from my shoulder.

‘Your
tobok
?'

‘Yes.'

He welcomed me to his gym. I paused in the doorway and, from etiquette engrained by years of training, bowed deeply to the
Taegukki
. I tried not to dwell on the last couple of times I had looked closely at that flag. While I stretched and warmed up, Mr Cho continued to beat lumps out of the bag, talking to me calmly between strikes.

‘When did you arrive in Korea?'

‘A couple of days ago. I'm here on a photography job, and I didn't call because I wasn't sure when I would have time to visit.'

We caught up on what he had been doing since I last saw him during a trip to London three years before. He told me of his son and daughter, now both in middle school – I was living in Seoul when they were born – and of his wife, recently taken to classical flower-arranging lessons. He rolled his eyes at that one. Mrs Cho was a lovely woman, but given to immersing herself in one expensive pastime after another, none of which lasted more than a month or two. Not that Mr Cho couldn't afford it. He assured me his three bars and two nightclubs were doing just fine.