Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  He rose from the seat and started for the gate. ‘I’m going to have to think about this. It’s weird. You’re weird. You must know nothing’s going to stop me and Nancy. Not now.’

  I tugged at his sweater. ‘Of course, I know it. But I have to do this… for me. Family’s important and anything that jeopardises it… well, I’ve just tried to keep you close. It wasn’t important that you cared whether we were related but it matters to me.’

  He looked at his watch and shivered. ‘I’m cold. Come on. I ought to be getting back.’ He led the way to the gates and flagged down a passing cab.

  I checked my watch. We’d been gone long enough.

  19

  ‘Would you like to meet Nancy?’ he asked as the taxi approached the International. ‘Either that or you keep the cab.’ It was as if the conversation in the cemetery had never happened.

  ‘Can I come in? I’d like to meet her if she’s up.’

  We crossed the lobby towards the reception desk together. The clock told us it was nearly five. Mick took the key and the lilies and we waited silently as the lift took us to the eighth floor. My stomach was churning and I regretted not having eaten since I left London.

  Mick knocked on the door and said, ‘Nancy, it’s me,’ before opening it and stepping inside. He turned back. ‘Wait here.’

  I held the door ajar and peered in.

  Then came the startled shout. ‘Nancy!’

  I followed Mick, half-expecting to see Nancy’s body on the bed. It was empty, its duvet half-strewn on the floor.

  ‘She’s gone!’ He barged through the open bathroom door, came back wide-eyed, looked around frantically and tossed the flowers on the bed.

  I stood, not knowing what to say or do.

  ‘Come on!’ He rushed out to the corridor and I ran after him as he sped to the lift. He pressed the call button as if he was sending an urgent message in Morse code. His lips were drawn back against his teeth. His face was pale as if dusted with chalk powder. ‘Come on!’

  He shoved through the still opening doors and stabbed the ground-floor button and another to close the doors. ‘Come on!’

  The receptionist was cool and calm. ‘Yes, we saw Ms Lee leaving about thirty minutes ago. She looked distressed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop her?’

  ‘We had no reason to. She was in the company of two businessmen – men in dark suits.’ She leaned across the desk and whispered. ‘They were of Eastern appearance like her. Perhaps they were relatives. I wondered whether they had brought her bad news.’

  ‘Did they say where they were going?’

  ‘No, sir. They walked straight out and went off in a limousine.’

  ‘What do you mean limousine?’

  ‘Not an ordinary car. Not a taxi. A black limousine. I could see it waiting.’ She indicated the glass frontage with revolving doors.

  A man whose lapel badge identified him as the duty manager approached. ‘May I assist you?’ he asked, as he signalled to the receptionist to move along the counter and deal with another guest.

  Mick turned to him. ‘My… fiancée… Ms Lee. She’s staying here with me. I think she’s been kidnapped.’

  The manager gestured that we should follow him to the quieter end of the reception desk. ‘I’ll call the police,’ he whispered.

  ‘No!’ Mick held up a hand. ‘Not yet. We have to find out what’s happening first.’

  The tall, grey-haired concierge signalled from his post by the doorway. The manager excused himself and went to join him.

  Mick pulled me towards the lobby entrance. ‘It’s probably her family,’ he whispered. ‘That’s why I don’t want to involve the police. They must have tracked her down. How could they have done it so quickly?’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe they traced her tickets. She hasn’t used a credit card since she arrived, has she?’

  He looked at me as if I’d had a lobotomy. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the duty manager returning. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been talking to the concierge—’ he gestured to where he had been standing ‘—about your fiancée’s leaving, sir. He suggests that you might go to an area of Lisbon where the Chinese trading companies have businesses. They are in the few streets north of the square called Martim Moniz. If she’s been taken by Chinese people perhaps she will be there. That’s all I can suggest short of calling the police.’

  ‘Where did you say?’ Mick said.

  ‘The streets north of Martim Moniz Square.’

  A taxi was disgorging passengers on the forecourt. ‘Quick, we can take that cab,’ Mick ordered.

  I dived into the taxi after him and he called out the name of the square. ‘North side!’ he shouted. He jittered and fidgeted while the driver waited for the traffic to clear so he could pull out. ‘We’re in a hurry!’

  ‘Try and calm down,’ I said.

  ‘Calm down! They’ve taken Nancy. She’ll be on a plane back to Kuala Lumpur before we can blink. We’ve got to stop them.’

  ‘How do you know it’s them?’

  ‘Who bloody else would it bloody be? But if it is, when they see how much I care… Can it be that bad marrying a gweilo? I’ve got money for Christ’s sake. It’s not as though I’m some sort of bum.’

  ‘Just be careful.’

  When the taxi stopped by the narrow streets at the top of the square, it was obvious why the concierge had suggested this area. The names of various companies were spelled out in Chinese lettering with English translations using the words ‘trading,’ ’import’ and ‘wholesale’. Mick led the way along the widest street looking for signs of a black limousine. The entrances on both sides had closed double doors. The car could have been parked beyond any of them.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ I said. ‘We’re not going to find it.’

  The street lights were beginning to come on. I shivered. We turned into a street called Rua Calçado Mouraria. There, a hundred metres along, was a red sign with yellow Chinese lettering and the translation: Leeyate Trading.

  Mick dragged me by my sleeve. ‘Leeyate! That’s the name of their hotels. Come on!’

  He ran up to the sign. The frontage was uncannily like the entrance to the factory yard of the old Kellie’s premises in Richmond. The wooden, triple-garage-width sliding gate boasted a Judas door. Mick banged on it with his fist. Nothing happened. He bashed it again, rattling the hinges. There was a sound from beyond and a spy panel opened at chest height. Mick stooped to see who it was. ‘I’ve come for Nancy. I know you’ve got her. If you don’t open up I’ll call the police.’

  The spy hole slammed shut. Nothing happened on the other side for perhaps thirty seconds while Mick paced in a circle wringing his hands and banging on the door every time he passed it. ‘Okay. I’m calling the police now. This is kidnap!’ he shouted.

  Again, there was no movement. Mick was about to turn away when we heard bolts being drawn back. The Judas door opened to reveal a cobbled yard with a black Mercedes parked in the middle. Mick ducked in under the lintel and I followed.

  A Chinese man was stationed at each corner of the car, two in business suits and two dressed like peasants in a paddy field. All four nonchalantly dangled pick-axe handles from their right hands. My heart raced. My throat felt blocked as if I’d half-swallowed my tongue.

  A small man in his sixties stood in front of the car’s radiator grille. He bowed his head but there was no politesse here. Despite his age and the fact that he held no weapon, he looked ready for violence. ‘You must be Mr Kellie,’ he said, his voice reedy. ‘Well, Mr Kellie, my daughter has decided to return Malaysia of her own free will. She not kidnapped.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I want to see her – to hear it from her,’ Mick said. He unzipped his jacket and allowed his hat to slip from his hand. It fell to the cobbles between us. Was he seriously contemplating taking them on?

  The man, I assumed him to be S Y Lee, ignored him and turned to me. ‘And who you?�
��

  ‘I’m a friend. Just a friend.’

  ‘Then I suggest, Mr Just-a-friend, you step back. Leave. This not your quarrel. You both no understands Miss Lee. She is very loving daughter. She wants to be with family. She has responsibilities in family business. She knows these duties and she wants go back home.’

  ‘She’s old enough to make up her own mind,’ Mick said.

  S Y Lee nodded as if conceding the point. ‘She is old enough and she chooses go home.’

  ‘Let me see her,’ Mick’s voice wavered. He was beginning to understand the hopelessness of his case.

  My mind, sharpened by adrenaline, was honed like a razor. I considered the options. I had no wish to be beaten up alongside my cousin. But I couldn’t allow him to doubt me. I stood firm. The different paths the immediate future might take were clear. Neither of them saw Mick and me leave that yard with Nancy. We could either leave in an ambulance or with our faces and limbs intact. The latter was preferable; it was up to me.

  I had to extricate my cousin from danger. I looked around. My line of sight took in the bottom of a flight of wooden steps and followed them up to a half-paned door. A tall Chinese woman stood watching. She raised a hand and pressed her palm against the window-pane.

  Back by the limousine, none of the four young men had lost their menace. S Y Lee shifted his hand from his pocket to behind his back and I heard the click of what I assumed was a switchblade.

  This was what it had come to. This was a fated moment. All the possible futures detonated after Mum’s death had collapsed into this one pinhole of now. There were only five words of the English language that I could utter that would be appropriate to this place, to this time.

  I picked up Mick’s hat and dusted it off, feigning nonchalance. I gripped his elbow and shoulder, twisted him away and steered him towards the street. Never have I said five words with such feeling.

  ‘Forget it, Mick,’ I said. ‘It’s Chinatown.’

  PART THREE - 1995-1996

  1

  Back in Martim Moniz Square, Mick turned to face me, his features twisted with contempt. ‘What the bloody hell did you have to say that for?’

  I could only shake my head and shrug. It had seemed like a moment of destiny. How often are you able to quote the immortal last line of a classic film in exactly the situation for which it was written? It was foolish. But it had worked. He had allowed me to lead him through the Judas door and away.

  He pressed his fingers against his temples and drew his hands downwards. For a second it looked as if he would drag his eyes out of their sockets. ‘If only you hadn’t come here. That ridiculous charade with the grave; what was all that about?’

  I knew better than to answer.

  ‘If you hadn’t taken me away—’

  I couldn’t let him get away with it. ‘They would still have come for her. You’d have been beaten up at the hotel.’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  I touched his arm. ‘Why don’t you go back to the International and rest? I’m sorry about the cemetery thing. It was stupid. But how could I know what was going to happen? I needed to let you know what you’re dealing with…’

  His cheeks were wet and he wiped the end of his nose with a sleeve. ‘You go back to The Film Factory. You shouldn’t have left it. I’ll try to work out if I can do anything here.’

  I put my other hand on his shoulder. ‘Is there anything—?’

  He shrugged me away. ‘Yes! You can fuck off back to England!’

  A week later, Mick called me to arrange a cinema meeting. I unlocked the glass door of the foyer and pushed the buttons for two cappuccinos so that the drinks were on the table between the sofas for when he arrived.

  While I was waiting for the coffees, I looked around. The white and silver Christmas decorations conveyed the subdued but classy effect I had been aiming for. When I saw Mick’s face, it was obvious he wasn’t in the mood to notice the tinsel. He was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eye sockets were dark hollows.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ I said.

  ‘Course I’m not bloody okay. I’ve lost her.’

  We weren’t going to be talking much about the cinema. ‘You don’t know that.’

  He stabbed a finger at me across the table. ‘You don’t know anything. She’s told me. She has no choice. She does what her father says. She wants to get away from the whole family thing but it’s too powerful.’

  ‘She won’t run away again, then.’

  He shot daggers with his eyes. I took it as a no.

  ‘You’re still in touch with her, though?’

  He nodded. ‘By e-mail. She says her dad isn’t monitoring it. But it’s his company’s computer. Who knows?’

  ‘It’s a good sign that she does—’

  ‘But it’s not going anywhere…’

  We moved on to discussing the film programme and the cash flow but his interest was perfunctory. I shuffled together the spreadsheets.

  ‘Look, before we go,’ he said, ‘we ought to talk about what you told me in Lisbon – before they kidnapped Nancy.’

  Blood rushed to my cheeks. ‘It’s okay…’

  ‘No. Obviously, it would have been better if you’d been straight about it all from the start. But, the family stuff over there in Malaysia, it means nothing to me. For me, Malaysia means Nancy, nothing else. Now I’ve got to find a way…’

  ‘I understand. But, if I’d told you about Luis and his visit, maybe you wouldn’t have gone and you wouldn’t have—’

  He put up a hand to stop me. ‘Don’t try and make it better. It won’t get better. And as far as us being cousins is concerned, well, I understand it’s important to you because you never had a family but for me our partnership in the cinema is what counts. Sometime maybe, you can run the family tree by me again… if we’re cousins, we’re cousins. What difference does it make?’

  I nodded. Okay, for him it didn’t mean much; to me it was… I was part of a family again. What do families do at Christmas? ‘Have you got anything planned for Christmas Day?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve been going to a pub for Christmas Dinner since my dad died. Why?’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to come to mine. We could have couple of pints in The King’s Head while the turkey cooks and I’ll do the traditional thing: roast potatoes, sprouts, stuffing. The full hit.’

  He sighed and agreed cheerlessly.

  As soon as Mick left, I started planning the lunch. I’d make sure that his Christmas dinner would be better than anything he’d have had in a pub. Perhaps it would help him come to terms with the fact that the cinema and I, we were his future, not Nancy.

  2

  The Film Factory showed It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve. We only had the main screen open and it was a full-house. As George Bailey’s family and friends jostled around him, handing over their money and singing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, I found it hard, as always, to hold back the tears.

  Mick had stood with me in the foyer to wish the audience members Happy Christmas as they left and we closed down the building together. I set the alarm and we stood outside listening for the warning beeps to stop. We turned in unison to face the street and he twisted up the collar of his overcoat. Blobs of watery snow fell around us like May blossom. My blouson jacket wasn’t warm or waterproof enough for this weather, but I only had to walk a few yards to the house next door.

  ‘See you tomorrow, then, Steve,’ Mick said, ‘Happy Christmas’ and hands in pockets, he sauntered off towards Vineyard Passage and the town. His shoulders were hunched against the cold and he carried a heavy sack of grief on his back.

  It must have been the scream of the racing car engine and the squeal of brakes that woke me because I’m sure I was already out of bed when I heard the crash and felt the house shiver. I jumped to the window as the alarm started screeching.

  With my cheek against the glass, looking down I could see the tail end of a hatchback sticking out from t
he front of the cinema. A spiral of dust and smoke rose around the car’s rear end. I ran downstairs and out onto the street in time to see two men scarper around the corner into Onslow Road. A second car flashed across the junction. By the time I had passed the wrecked cinema doorway and reached the corner, the two men and the second car had gone.

  I retraced my steps and edged past the hatchback’s rear end, shattered glass crunching underfoot. The bonnet was doubled back against the open windscreen. The engine compartment breathed electric-smelling smoke. I grabbed the foyer extinguisher and dusted the engine block. I went back to the house, called the police first and then Mick.

  The blue lights scanning the house fronts reminded me of the night Mum died. A few gawkers had gathered on the opposite pavement and watched while a tow-truck tugged the hatchback, screeching and tearing, back into the street. Sharp-edged stones of glass and twisted lengths of aluminium fell around it. Officers from a police patrol car had visited us briefly. They put the crash down to joy-riders, saying they’d investigate the ownership of the car, already assuming it had been stolen. They said we would hear from the station in the morning. I called the insurance company’s 24-hour helpline and was given the name of a glaziers who would come out straight away and secure the premises. They were not due for another hour or so. It was after 2am. Mick and I both had pyjamas on under our overcoats.

  ‘Did you see what happened?’ Mick asked.

  ‘I heard the crash and looked out of the window.’ I signalled in the general direction of my bedroom with my thumb. ‘I saw two guys running away. A car picked them up around the corner.’

  ‘What about the CCTV?’

  We both glanced up at the camera set on the wall of the house that pointed at the cinema doorway.