A Killing Air

by Nigel Price

  “Give the phone to Harry, Lisa.”

  Miller. He sounded stressed. An echo told Harry that Miller had them on speaker phone so he could put all effort into the pursuit. The noise of Miller’s engine provided a backdrop even more threatening than his tone.

  Lisa held the phone halfway between her head and Harry’s. She turned the volume to maximum. “I can hear you,” Harry said.

  “We don’t have to do all this,” Miller started. “This is only going to end one way for you and the girl. Pull over. Give me the file, and the two of you can fuck off. I know you’ve got a gun. I’ll pull up fifty yards short and we’ll do a swap halfway between your car and mine.”

  “We’d never get out of the country and you know it.”

  “Listen, Harry old man,” Miller said, trying for ‘congenial’. “What’s this to you? It’s nothing. I can arrange for you to get out of the country. Lisa too if you want. You’ve got to trust me. Frankly you don’t have a lot of choice. Pull over and give me the file. I’m not so stupid as to kill you. I don’t doubt you’ve got friends who’d ask questions and cause problems. I don’t want a wider investigation any more than you do.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly what I want,” Harry replied. “What do you think Ryder’s chums on all those committees and commissions will think when they learn he’s been importing dodgy medicine for kids? Only problem being that it kills them. And then paying the parents to keep quiet. Except for one who wouldn’t take his cash so his thugs tried to beat her to death. How do you think that’ll go down?”

  He felt his argument impregnable.

  To his discomfort there was a chuckle. “Harry, things like that are not as rare in China as you might think.”

  “Oh really? Then if that doesn’t alarm his chums, how about the fact the stuff was made in Japan? Hardly flavour of the month, are they, the Japanese. I bet that would go down like a ton of bricks.”

  He was concerned that even that didn’t seem to rattle Miller. “What if I told you they’re all at it, Harry. They all have their fingers in various pies. This just happened to be one of Ryder’s. He thought it was a multi-vitamin supplement. Wasn’t his fault it turned out to be contaminated with weed-killer, rat poison or whatever it bloody was.”

  “What a stroke of luck he tested it on the village children then, wasn’t it? How much did the Japanese pay him to conduct a field trial on his own constituents?”

  “Where the hell are you getting this nonsense from? You’re making it up as you go along. In any case, why are you doing this, Harry? What’s it got to do with you? They’re not your people.”

  Harry felt his anger mounting. That wouldn’t help. He needed to keep a clear head. He glared at the phone in Lisa’s hand as if it was a miniature Miller. “Funnily enough seeing an old woman being beaten up in an underpass made me do this. That pissed me off, Clive. And nothing will give me more pleasure than bringing down the bastard responsible.”

  Miller tried again. “Harry, Harry. You’re not listening. Ryder is at the very top. All his mates do the same things. They’re not going to bat an eyelid. Believe me. You haven’t worked out here for years like I have, close to them. Seen the whole rotten lot at close quarters. They probably won’t even shrug. They’ll wonder what all the fuss is about.”

  “Oh will they? Okay. Then let’s see what the people think about it. Let’s see if they take such a laid-back view.”

  There was silence at the end of the line. Got you. Harry knew he was right. There would be outrage in the country. There had been scandals like this before and at the end of them the government only managed to draw them to a close when heads rolled. This time it would be Ryder Chau’s. Harry would make sure of it. He gave free rein to his anger, letting it flood through him …

  The force of the BMW slamming into the back of the little Chery sent the mobile flying out of Lisa’s hand. She and Harry were flung forward, their seat belts cutting into their shoulders. The whole rear of the car was lifted off the ground. When it came back down and thumped on the road, the car went into a spin. Harry fought with the wheel, cursing himself for having taken his eyes off the rear-view mirror.

  Miller’s BMW was alongside them now as Harry regained control of the car. A narrow slip road appeared out of nowhere and without thinking, Harry spun the wheel and hurled the little car down it. The surface was rough and potholed. He swung the car around the biggest of them but the smaller ones smashed and bashed the suspension.

  In the passenger seat Lisa clung on tight. “I don’t think Susan is going to be very happy with us.”

  “No, it’s David who’ll face the music. He’s the one who gave us the keys.”

  “What music?”

  “Never mind.” Harry had noticed in the rear-view mirror that Miller had joined them on the side road. He was some way behind having had to turn and retrace tracks, but with the big 4x4 he was gaining fast, making light work of the potholes, the suspension barely noticing.

  “There,” Lisa called, and pointed off to the right. They were running parallel with the airport expressway. Alongside them, cars choked all lanes. Engines idling, they belched carbon monoxide into the million other gases cloying the air. Faces turned in their direction as they shot past. She consulted the map David had marked. “I think this track joins a slip road that gives a way up onto the expressway.”

  “But it’s solid. We’d be sitting ducks.” Harry glanced sideways and caught the question in her expression. “Targets.”

  “Yes, I got that!” she shouted angrily. “There, there, there!” Her hand pointed fiercely. “Just do it, trust me.”

  “But—”

  “Do it!”

  He swung the wheel and shot the car up onto a metalled slip road and a second later, into the line of stationary traffic. “If you think Miller’s thugs won’t shoot us dead just because there are other people around …”

  “There,” she said again, once more pointing.

  Harry followed the direction of her hand. He broke into a slow smile. “Sorry,” he said.

  The traffic clogging the motorway was solid. All lanes were choked with nose-to-tail cars and vans, and even the hard shoulders had been filled. There was no way forward for a car. At least not for a big 4x4. The little Chery on the other hand was a different matter.

  Shoving it into a low gear, Harry aimed for the gap between a van and the barrier bordering the hard shoulder down his right-hand side of the expressway. The fit was tight but passable. And so with the next vehicle. A driver wound down his window and screamed obscenities at them as they knocked his wing mirror.

  Harry took a second to check in his rear-view mirror. Already a hundred yards back, Miller’s 4x4 was stuck behind the van. He was blowing his horn and flashing his lights but the van driver simply replied with his middle finger out of his side window.

  Lisa looked at Harry beaming. “This is better than Grand Theft Auto.”

  “I couldn’t say,” he replied. “I’ve never played it.”

  “Never played …?” Her astonishment silenced her.

  Car by car they made their way forward, the Chery sliding through gaps, at times clunking into wing mirrors or scraping the barrier, but always making progress in the direction of the city, and away from Miller and his thugs.

  Forty Seven

  It was mid-afternoon by the time they arrived at the apartment of Hans Zhang. Making their way painfully down the clogged expressway, eventually even the Chery had got stuck on the wrong side of a gap too narrow even for its slim, scratched, dented waist. They had to sit it out, taking their turn with the flow as it inched along. All the while Harry kept checking the road behind them in case Miller and his men had somehow found another way of closing the distance. They were nowhere to be seen.

  “Pull over here,” Lisa said. Her eyes were everywhere. “If the police are watching they usually just sit in their car. There’s no reason they’ll be expecting anything. Hans always knows when he’s confined to his apartment.
He knows he has to stay there and so he does. It’s never worth the trouble of getting caught and all the rubbish that follows.”

  Harry drew over to the curb, found a space and slipped into it. “Okay then. How do we do this? Are you sure he’s the best person to give this to?”

  “I can’t think of anyone else,” she replied. “Hans knows everyone.”

  “In government?” Harry asked, surprised.

  “Of course. They’re not all ‘waxworks’, as your Royal Prince-man called them. Most of them perhaps, but not all. Hans knows who the reformers are. He’s frightened of someone like Ryder Chau taking power. He’ll know who else in the Politburo feels the same. There will be someone who will love to get their hands on anything like this to keep Chau from power. With luck there’ll be a whole group of them. Hans will get it to them. You’ll see. Besides, it’s all I can think of.”

  “Okay, so all we’ve got to do is get it to him somehow. And then get him out of here without being seen. What could be simpler?” Harry’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel as he tried to come up with a plan. “The first thing is to identify the cops.”

  They got out of the car and locked it, trying not to look at the damage or think about David Lin’s girlfriend. “I’ll pay for the repairs,” Harry said as they walked away. Lisa held the package under one arm, her collar pulled up high as she tried to bury her mouth and nose in the material. Harry similarly hunched into his. He found press studs in his jacket collar where a hood was scrunched. Undoing them, he pulled it up and over his head, hunching down in an effort to make himself smaller. Hands sunk deep in pockets, the feel of the gun was a reassuring presence.

  Mid-afternoon in a residential area of central Beijing. Smog. People were out and about because they had to be. Pedestrians moved across the pavements, faces muffled. A small square with cracked, uneven paving stones. Restaurants and small supermarkets. Coffee shops and a school. Busy. Or as busy as the conditions allowed. Harry took it all in. Hunched beneath his hood, he sauntered with Lisa, criss-crossing the site as if intent on some purpose. Which of course he was. Just not the normal activity that other passers-by were engaged in.

  “There,” he said after a third pass of the square.

  He indicated a parked Santana with misted window. Fumes pumped from the exhaust as the two occupants kept the engine running to drive the aircons. The aircon kept them cool and filtered the air inside, but misted the windows with condensation. Swipe marks on the insides of the windows showed where from time to time they had wiped a hole to check on the housing block across the road from them. Hans’ block.

  “How do we know if there are more?” Lisa asked.

  “Fancy a coffee?”

  He led the way to a coffee house and they went in. While Lisa ordered two, Harry chose a seat as close to the window as possible. It too was misted with breath and aircons, but as in the car, people sitting closest to it had wiped gaps to look out on the gloom.

  “Okay, how do we get past them without being seen?” Lisa said.

  “I’m working on it,” Harry replied. “Back entrance?”

  “If there is it’ll be watched too. More likely they’ve sealed it up, making everyone use the one front entrance. That’s what they usually do.”

  “What happens if there’s a fire? Bit dangerous, isn’t it?” Harry said.

  Lisa gave him a look by way of answer. This is China.

  “We could create a diversion,” Harry suggested as an opener. “You know, blow up a car, start a fire in a rubbish bin. Something like that.”

  “They wouldn’t give a damn. Probably wouldn’t even notice. They’re not ordinary police. They wouldn’t see it as anything to do with them.”

  “You’ve got to be joking?”

  Again the look. This is China.

  Harry thought again. How to get past the cops?

  To one side of the square, a playground sat beside the school. The school looked deserted, closed, entrance chained shut. But in the playground a group of children were playing on the swings and a slide.

  “Drink up,” Harry said. He got up.

  “But it’s hot. I’ll burn my mouth.”

  “Bring it then.”

  They exited the coffee shop and Harry led the way towards the playground. He pulled up his hood again and shrank into it. They reached the edge of the playground. Lisa looked at him, wondering.

  “Rent-a-brat.”

  “What?”

  “We need a kid each. Small enough to carry, old enough to bribe. And so they don’t go screaming to their parents that they’re being abducted. Can you do the explaining?”

  She stared at him. “You’re mad. We can’t just pick up a couple of children and walk off with them. That’s illegal. Even in China.”

  To one side of the playground, two boys sat on bikes, watching Harry and Lisa watching them. “Them,” Harry said. “How much do you reckon we should offer? Twenty Yuan?”

  “You can’t just—”

  He turned to her. “Listen. We’ve got to get this package to Hans. Now, I can create a diversion, but you tell me the cops won’t budge because it’s nothing to do with them. You say any back entrance will be locked. So we need some way of getting past them unnoticed. It’s a large block. Lots of apartments. So lots of people living in it. The cops can’t know them all. So we’ll be just another family coming back from a shopping trip.”

  “But what can I say to the boys? They’ll think I’m mad. Or worse.”

  “Let’s tell them the truth.”

  “What?” She stared at him, eyes wide enough to fall out. “Now I know you’re mad.”

  “Well, almost the truth. Tell them you have a friend in the block who owes the two men in the car money. You’re trying to help your friend escape. Something like that.”

  “But—”

  “Lisa. Please. We have to do this. If you can think of a better way in—”

  “This is madness,” she muttered, but started across the playground towards the two boys who suspiciously watched her approach. Harry saw her stoop to talk to them. They fired questions back at her. Looked at one another. Lisa spoke again. They spoke back, both at once. Then she was on her way back to Harry.

  “Well? What did they say?”

  “They called me a liar. They said the two men in the car are policemen. That they’re watching Hans Zhang, the trouble-maker.”

  Harry’s face fell. “Oh.”

  Lisa continued. “They live in the apartment under Hans’. Their father knows him. He is a friend of Hans. They said they’ll do it, but they want a hundred Yuan.”

  “What?”

  “Each.”

  The two boys materialised behind Lisa, looking up at Harry. Sly smiles lit their faces. Harry reached for his wallet. It was empty.

  Lisa sighed. “I know. It was my fault, even if it did save our lives.” She took out her purse and rummaged inside. “It’s pretty much all I’ve got.” She took a fistful of notes, counted them, then shared them equally between the two grubby hands held in front of her.

  While she did so, Harry went to a bulging rubbish bin, picked out two plastic shopping bags, and stuffed them both until they were full. “Shopping,” he said when he returned to his new family. The boys wrinkled their noses at the smell of festering vegetables.

  “Okay. We’ve been shopping. The kids are bored. They’re giving their parents a hard time. Translate to them,” Harry said.

  Still barely believing what they were about to do, Lisa gabbled the explanation to get the boys in character. “Got it?” she concluded. The boys were all smiles, thinking it a fantastic game, and being paid for it too.

  “Let’s do this,” Harry said, gathering his family around him and setting off for the apartment block entrance. The pavement led right past the unmarked police car. The occupants were smoking.

  “Take his hand,” Harry said to Lisa. “Tell them to play up a bit.”

  She did as he said. A few words to the boys and they were
whining and grinning. The one closest to Harry levelled a kick at his shin. As they came to the car, Harry picked him up and swung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. The kid loved it, hammering on Harry’s back, his swinging body obscuring Harry’s face from the car’s window. One of the cops rubbed a hole in the condensation and looked up at the passing family. Two disgruntled parents, laden with shopping, trying to control a pair of unruly brats.

  Once in the gloom of the block’s atrium, Harry put down his ‘son’. The boy loved it and kicked Harry again. The other one said something to Lisa and set off up the stairs.

  “He insists on taking us up,” she said with a shrug. “I told him I know the way but—”

  “Let him. We’re going to need them again in a while.”

  “What?”

  “Hans has got to get out somehow. These two are professional actors. They’re brilliant. Hans can play being me, taking them back out to the playground.”

  Lisa explained to the boys. They replied, grins broader still. “They want another hundred.”

  “Each?”

  She nodded. This is China.

  “God, it’s no wonder your economy’s booming, with entrepreneurs like them.”

  They arrived outside a door on the eighth floor. Harry found a bin and stuffed his bags of rubbish into it. Lisa rang the bell and knocked. From inside they heard the sound of footsteps. The door opened and a round, middle-aged man looked out suspiciously. Seeing Lisa, he undid a chain and opened the door wide. The two boys burst into an explanation of the excitement they had just had. Hans Zhang looked on, mouth open.

  “You’d better come in,” he said.

  Once inside, Lisa introduced Harry. Hans shook his hand. “Pardon me for just a minute,” he said. He led the two boys into the kitchen, gave them each a fizzy drink, sat them at the table there, and planted a packet of chocolate biscuits between them.

  “Both their parents work. When the school’s closed, they run amok.” He smiled. “What a clever idea of yours, Harry. Lisa has a good instinct for people she can trust.” He looked at her, master to acolyte.