by Nigel Price
The girl looked around. The diners at the neighbouring tables were all deep in their noisy feasts, shouting at each other with stuffed mouths. She leaned closer. “Did Mrs Yan give you anything?”
“She was in a bad way. She’d been beaten to a pulp. Then she shot herself,” Harry said.
The girl shook her head, becoming agitated. “But did she give you anything? Pass you something?”
It was time to come clean. In a minute. Harry sat back and appraised her. He took a sip of his beer which had lost its chill and was going flat. “What is it you’re after?”
“I don’t know.” The girl looked lost. Her eyes scanned the table, the room, the ceiling. “Mrs Yan came into my office. I work for a newspaper. Well, a website really.” She cut to the chase. “I’m a journalist. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“We investigate stories relating to the environment. Pollution. Stuff like that. We try to publicise them and bring pressure to bear so that politicians become embarrassed enough to do something about it.”
“Embarrassing politicians can be a dangerous pastime here,” Harry said. “Is that what Mrs Yan was trying to do?”
“I don’t know,” the girl answered. “She came into my office yesterday morning. I was at my desk. I saw this old woman standing over by the entrance talking to the receptionist who was trying to get her out. The old woman was stubborn. She refused to go.”
“So you spoke with her?”
“Not for long. I was into another story. About the new ring road and the compulsory purchase of hutongs that stand in the way.” Harry knew about it. It was nothing new. The process had been going on for years, certainly since the early ’90s when China was at the start of its explosive regeneration. The old traditional dwellings which had been a distinctive feature of Beijing and northern cities for countless centuries, were flattened to make way for high-rise buildings and motorways. The owners’ protests were ignored. Now nearly all the hutongs had gone. The authorities couldn’t understand why anyone would want to remain in them rather than move into one of the new featureless concrete breeding hutches they were erecting to replace them.
The girl blanched as she looked down. Her hands worried each other. “I was impatient. A bit rude. I asked her what she wanted and she started to ramble about her home village.”
“Near Chengde?”
“Yes. In the mountains north of there. I’m afraid I cut her short. Then she …” The girl’s voice faltered. “She started to cry. So I was standing there with a deadline to meet, and this old peasant woman with tears running down her cheeks, just staring at me.”
Harry pictured the scene. “And?”
“And I threw her out.”
“Bloody hell.” The exclamation escaped him. He couldn’t help it.
“I know.” The girl’s shame was evident. Harry briefly touched her wrist. She pulled it away and folded her arms across her narrow chest. “I felt guilty the moment she’d left the office, so I went after her.”
“And?”
“And said that she could come back later and we could talk. I explained that I didn’t have time quite then. She said she wouldn’t be able to come again. I don’t know why. So I asked if I could meet her somewhere. She’d thought for a moment and then we’d arranged to meet in Tiananmen.”
“So you’d gone to meet her but seen her bundled away by those two thugs?” Harry concluded for her. The girl nodded. They were both silent for a moment, thinking. “Why not go to the police?” Harry asked. He knew the answer because he’d been through that thought process himself. He just wanted to compare notes.
The look the girl gave him showed her reasons were the same as his. She confirmed it. “I knew they were police themselves. Tiananmen Square is full of plain clothes policemen. They are there to jump on the slightest sign of protest and squash it before it can take root. They learned their lesson in 1989. Now they outnumber tourists.”
“Was she protesting?”
The girl thought about it. “She had some sort of bag with her. I don’t know if she was going to unfurl a banner, hand out leaflets, or what. It didn’t look like it. It looked as if she was just standing there minding her own business, waiting for me, when those two set on her and dragged her away.”
“But you think she had some sort of gripe?”
“Gripe?”
“Issue. Protest.”
“Oh. She must have had. Why else would she be coming to our office? That’s what we do.”
Harry reflected on everything she had said. There was no real point in keeping quiet about the memory stick. He just didn’t want to get involved any more than he already was. “This morning I found a memory stick in my jacket pocket. It wasn’t mine. I think someone put it there. I don’t know if it was Mrs Yan or someone else. I assumed it was her. Possibly.”
The girl became eager. “Where is it? Can I see it?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I checked it. It was empty. There was nothing on it.”
The girl looked as puzzled as Harry had been. “Have you got it with you?”
“No, it’s back at the hotel.”
“Can I have it?” She saw him about to repeat what he’d said about ‘empty’. “Just let me check. There might be something. I just want to double check.”
Harry shrugged. “Okay.” He looked at his watch. “Want to come and get it now?” He saw a flicker of doubt cross her face. He smiled. “So long as you promise not to assault me once you’ve got me alone in my room.”
She looked puzzled. “I’ll wait in the lobby if you prefer. You can bring it down. Why would I assault you?”
He should have known irony wouldn’t be her strength. She might have got his James Bond quip, but this new hilarity was beyond her. “Okay, never mind. I’ll bring it down.” He signalled for the bill. “Let’s pay and go.”
He took out his wallet. He looked up when he heard her chuckling. Her face was bright. She pointed one slender forefinger at him. “You were making a joke.”
Ten
While they had been eating, the night had thickened like soup left too long on the heat. They stepped out of the restaurant and pushed their way into it, each holding their breath until they realised the futility. Neither was equipped with oxygen. At some point they would have to inhale the stuff.
Harry stopped dead in his tracks, thunderstruck. “I don’t know your name.” These last days he’d felt as if he was moving through a fug of his own, a dense, cloying mist more pervasive than the wretched air they were all having to breathe. It had clogged his senses and wit.
The girl giggled. Her alcohol-stunned prawns had gone to her head. That and the Tsingtao’s formaldehyde. Harry had noted with interest that after eating the creatures, she had spooned up the pure alcohol, enjoying every last drop. “Lisa Tang.” Like many young Chinese, she had chosen a western tag to accompany her family name. Harry wondered why she had settled upon Lisa. It was slightly disturbing. It was the name of a girl he had briefly adored at university a million years before. Images of his past love flooded his brain, jarringly out of context in the filth of a Beijing night. Fumbling sex in spartan student quarters. A discovery of Love and of Life. How long ago it all was. His student self waved fondly at him and withdrew.
He looked up and down the road for a taxi. There was nothing to be seen. Just a shifting wall of gas. He turned to her and held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Lisa.”
She giggled again. “You too, Mr Brown.” She paused, summoning the greatest joke ever. “Charlie Brown.” Huge guffaws erupted from her slender frame which bent double, shaking with the genius of it. “Charlie Brown,” she repeated in case he’d missed it the first time.
They walked away from the restaurant, stepping into the mist as into jungle. The night around them was quiet. It was a dead part of the suburbs. Here and there, streetlamps launched pathetic assaults on the foggy gloom. Dim bowls of brightness clung to the bulbs as if frightened of the dark. Out of nowhere, a gaggle of you
ng men lurched, half-drunk, from the opposite direction. They leered at Lisa as they sauntered jauntily past. Comments were made. Then louder.
One of them shouted something. Another took up the cry. They had seen Harry. His hand was on her arm, guiding her unsteady gait over the shattered disaster of a pavement. They seemed to take offence. Harry had seen this before. In a country where the one-child policy had resulted in millions more young men than women, there could be resentment if one of their own was seen with a gweilo. A foreign devil. A ghost man. This was not good.
He glanced at Lisa. Her expression had sobered into ‘serious’. She was angry too. Before Harry could stop her, she let rip with a burst of Mandarin’s finest in the direction of the youths. Clearly not afraid. Shit, thought Harry. That wasn’t clever.
He tried to quicken the pace. He checked over his shoulder. The youths had stopped. They were looking after him and the girl. Bugger. He checked his arcs. Nothing but foul mist. No sign of a structure. Nothing to put his back against if it came to a fight. Not a single goddamned thing. Time to make a stand.
He did a quick head count. Four. No, five. All young, fit-looking, but no bulk to them. And pissed. So, not too bad then. Knives? Who could say?
He looked at Lisa. Anger was masking her fear, but fear was there. Just a little. She caught his eye. He realised then that she was more embarrassed than scared. And something else. Ashamed. These were her countrymen making tits of themselves.
“We need a taxi,” she said.
“I think it’s a bit late for that,” Harry replied, noting the boldest of the gang making a bee-line for him. The Tsingtao had barely touched Harry. His liver resembled Mars. Pitted, rock-strewn, lifeless. He steadied his breathing and got ready. Pushing Lisa gently a full pace ahead of him, he turned to face whatever was coming.
The first one was the man of the group. The Alpha. Slim and broad-shouldered. He had the dark, flat face of a wheat-eating northerner. Nasty. Harry knew he had to put him on the ground. And fast. Opening with a smile, Harry held out his arms in supplication, palms open. What’s the big deal, chaps?
He could see something dangerous working its way through the man’s haze of drink and cigarettes. Something basic. A survival evil. Luckily the man’s fellows were hanging back. Leaving him to it.
For a moment Harry wondered if he could get away with playing the dumb western tourist. Plaster a big smile across his mug, bow to the local’s far greater importance, and give the man lashings of face in front of his peers. It had worked for him before. Usually everyone ended up laughing, deriding the ignorant gweilo who had debased himself but otherwise defused the situation. Here though there was something else. This man wanted blood. The look in his eyes screamed it. Whatever shit had happened to him today or this year or this lifetime, was going to be offloaded onto this hapless diner and his Chinese bird.
Harry went into action. Still smiling, he stepped right into the man’s stride. His open palms came up, turning from supplication into hand-holds. His left gripped the man’s upper sleeve, his right took hold of a lapel. Harry’s body dropped and twisted in a spinning turn, executing a perfect throw. Tai Otoshi, if memory served. His opponent’s face barely had time to register alarm before his body slammed into the ground. Winded and stunned, the big northerner lay inert, eyes staring at the absent sky.
There was a moment of near perfect silence followed by a howl of outrage from his mates. With flailing arms and legs they rushed at Harry. Watching them come on, the image of an old ’60s movie flashed through his mind. Jason and the Argonauts. As Jason reaches for the Golden Fleece, a Hydra-type monster lurches from its cave in clunky stop-motion animation, all hisses, tongues, teeth and tails. Nasty. Jason wore a sort of ‘Oh shit’ expression. Much the same here.
With neither sword nor shield, Harry squared off. Before he could prioritise the men, their order of march decided it for him. First up was the fastest. Harry ignored the lashing fists and planted a straight, bang on his nose. Stopped him dead and down he went, blinking as he spouted blood.
Then it became a whole mess of punches and kicks. Harry felt a couple strike him. He had tensed his stomach muscles and rode with the blows, giving better than he was getting. By far. They were tough but an evening of booze had addled their senses. Try as they might to sober, time was against them. Harry wasn’t going to wait. Their number tilted the scales in their favour, but also against them. As each tried to get at Harry they clashed and tangled. Harry on the other hand, dodged and darted, picked his targets, and planted strike after strike, all of them telling. The gang had expected easy meat. Instead they found a man used to a brawl. Comfortable with the trading of blows. Bad ones. He was using a range of them, closed fist and open hand, like an artist selecting brushes for the various strokes, laying the colours on canvas with a professional grace.
The last two of the gang to find themselves standing, surveyed their three comrades on the ground, Harry to one side, watching. Unalarmed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to have been. They spat out curses. Sticks and stones. One of them was verging on tears as frustration, confusion and alcohol stirred up a messy cocktail in his thwarted soul.
Harry was about to withdraw when, from the flank, Lisa tore into them. With punches and kicks she lashed out at the attackers, including the prone ones in her assault.
“I think we’re done here,” Harry chided, annoyed. He grabbed her arm and pulled her off. She was shouting something at the men. They shouted back. It looked to Harry as if the whole dull business was about to rekindle.
“Leave them!” He yanked her away. They started to back off. He kept his eyes on the two men. They were reviving their chums. Scraping them off the floor.
“In any case, what was that?” He mimicked her flailing hands and kicks. “If this was a movie you’d be an expert in Kung Fu or something. In there from the start, putting me to shame.”
“Fuck your movie.”
Impressed that her English extended to such niceties, Harry chewed back a grin. She was muttering viciously, casting evil glares at the five men as they drew further away.
In her frenzy she had twisted an ankle so leant on his arm. She tested it as she walked, slowly returning it to full use. “Taxi,” she said, simultaneously question and statement. Also magic summons, for out of the mist a lone Toyota Corolla cruised towards them, the ‘For Hire’ sign presenting its beacon of hope. Harry flagged it down and held the rear door open for Lisa. She got in and slid over to the far side of the springless bench seat to give him room to follow her. He said the name of the hotel. Then again. Then a third time, until Lisa shouted it at the driver with sufficient venom for him finally to understand.
Harry became aware that she was studying him. He turned to her and saw that she was smiling. “What?”
“Nothing.” Of course it was though. “You fight like Rocky.” She threw a couple of exaggerated punches at the air. “With Chuck Norris add-ons.” Her slim hands karate chopped the air that was still reeling from Rocky Balboa.
“Too bad you weren’t a bit more Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger yourself.”
She burst out laughing. “Wrong way round. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Her eyes were bright, her anger gone. “I did a little bit as a girl. At school. But I didn’t have any interest in it. I preferred tennis.”
“That must have been unusual for your school,” Harry remarked. He had the view that Chinese schools generally sat their children in rows and threw maths at them until they were able to take their place as productive colony drones.
“China is changing, Harry. We don’t all have pigtails and bound feet.”
He smiled. She was funny. And it was nice hearing her speak his name.
The hotel soon rolled towards them out of the night. Blurred lights pushed aside the swirling darkness to spell out the name in vast letters. Then the foyer’s blaze was close behind. Towering above, some of the rooms showed signs of occupation, each a tiny beacon of life-in-a-box. The higher floors q
uickly disappeared into the smog.
Harry paid the driver and led the way into the hotel. From behind the reception desk a clerk inspected the couple, frowning darkly at Lisa. Harry could imagine what he was thinking. So could Lisa. She glared back twice as darkly until she won the contest and the clerk looked away, accepting defeat.
“Would you like to wait here?” Harry asked. Lisa thought about it. She shrugged. “I can bring the stick down to the lobby with my laptop. I can show you here.”
“We’d might as well see it in your room. It might be best to do it in private.”
They went towards the lift. Harry pressed the button. They waited. The lobby was empty. Harry remembered there was a function on that evening. The conference delegates were being wined and dined. And bored. Some cultural display or other. Dancers and traditional musicians had been coached in, dogged up in some gaudy inauthentic costumes, and told to entertain the gawping idiots arrayed before them. He was delighted to have had reason to duck out of it. It would also be convenient not to run into Brannigan or anyone else he knew. There would be all the leaden jokes and smut and innuendo if Harry was seen ushering a young woman to his room.
He looked at Lisa who looked back at him. He reckoned she was probably thinking the same stuff. They were lucky. They could do this unobserved. It would save them both the embarrassment.
The lift arrived. The doors opened. Brannigan stared out at them. Dave and Neville peered from behind him, one to the left, one to the right. Like spare heads.
Eleven
“Evening, Harry.” The smug tone and look said it all.
Harry looked levelly back. Poker face. Of all the people at the conference. Brannigan. “Evening, Jim. Not at the show?”
Brannigan’s eyes were on Lisa. Then flicking to Harry. Then back to Lisa. Then …
Of course, they could have been just two random strangers about to share the same lift. It was not unknown. Except that Harry’s hand was on Lisa’s elbow. Guiding or proprietary? Harry knew it looked like the latter.
