The Chinaman

by Stephen Leather

  In a corner by a small window was a semi-circular table on which stood a group of framed photographs of Nguyen with an old woman and a young girl. Edgington walked over to the table and studied the pictures as Griffin sat down with the old man. Most of the pictures were of the girl, she was obviously the focus of the family. In the most recent photographs she looked to be in her mid-teens and she was absolutely gorgeous, long black hair and flawless features. She could have been a model. There were pictures of her in a school uniform and even in those she looked sexy. The old woman was obviously her mother, but there was little or no physical resemblance. The girl was tall and straight and the woman was small and stooped. The girl’s skin was smooth and fresh and the woman’s dark and wrinkled. The girl had eyes that were bright and sparkling while the woman’s appeared lifeless. As he studied the photographs he heard Griffin explaining about the bomb. Edgington did the calculations in his head – if she’d had the child when she was twenty she’d be under forty, and even if she’d given birth at thirty the woman couldn’t be much older than forty-eight and yet she looked much older. In one of the photographs, the biggest of the collection, the girl was sitting in a chair, her parents behind her. Nguyen was smiling proudly and had a protective hand on her shoulder. They looked more like her grandparents. Something else struck him. There were no pictures of her as a baby or a toddler. In none of the photographs was she any younger than seven or eight. Curious.

  ‘Please,’ said the old man behind him and Edgington turned round to see him holding out his hands. ‘Please, the picture.’

  Edgington took over the big framed photograph and handed it to him. He didn’t speak, he didn’t know what to say.

  The old man cradled the frame in his arms and then hugged it to his chest. There were no tears and he made no sound, but the intensity of his grief was painful to watch.

  ‘Who did this to my family?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘The IRA,’ said Edgington. They were the first words he’d spoken in the room and his voice sounded thick with emotion. He cleared his throat and Griffin looked up, surprised that he’d spoken. ‘The IRA have claimed responsibility,’ he said.

  ‘IRA,’ said Nguyen, saying each letter slowly as if hearing them for the first time. ‘What is IRA?’

  Edgington looked at Griffin and she raised her eyebrows. Was he serious? He sat down next to the old man.

  ‘Terrorists,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What do they want, these terrorists?’

  Edgington was stumped for an answer and he looked helplessly at Griffin. She shook her head, knowing that what the old man needed was sympathy and a sedative, not a political discussion. The man turned to her. ‘What do they want?’ he asked her.

  ‘They want British troops out of Ireland,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘How does killing my family do that?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Is there someone I can get to come and take care of you?’ she asked. ‘Do any of your family live nearby?’

  ‘I have no family,’ he said quietly. ‘Now I have no family. I am alone. These IRA, will you catch them?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking him in the eye.

  ‘And will they be punished?’

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated. Lying was coming easily to her today.

  ‘Good,’ said the old man. He nodded as if satisfied.

  The second edition was coming off the presses when Woody finally got back to the office. He slumped in his chair still wearing his raincoat. He’d spilled something down the front of it and when he dropped his head on his chest he could smell whisky. ‘What a waste,’ he mumbled.

  The reporter at the desk next to his leant round a potted plant and said: ‘Simpson is after your arse, Woody.’ There was more than a hint of sadistic pleasure in his voice as he passed on the bad news. Like Woody he was a freelance and each time a freelance was shafted there was more work to go round for everyone else.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Woody, determined not to show how worried he was. He needed the work, God he needed the work, and he’d been banned from most of the London papers over the last twelve months or so. He was finding it harder and harder to get through a shift without drinking, and that didn’t go down well in the new high-tech world of modern newspapers. In the old days, the days when reporters looked like reporters and they worked on typewriters that sounded like typewriters, then the Street was full of characters – men and women who could take their drink and whose work was better for it, and who would be fondly forgiven if they were found late in the evening, flat on their backs under their desks. The news editors then would call for the office car and have them sent home. If they were really badly behaved then perhaps a just punishment would be handed out, a nasty door-stepping job in the pouring rain or a night-time road accident in the middle of nowhere, character-building rather than malicious. Not these days. These days most of the journalists seemed to be straight out of university with weak chins, earnest eyes and stockbroker voices. Few of them could even manage shorthand, Woody thought bitterly, and it was a common sight in the newsroom to see them plugged into tape-recorders transcribing their tapes and breathing through their mouths. Woody remembered the purgatory he’d gone through to get his own spidery shorthand up to the required one hundred words per minute, and the rest of the shit he’d had to go through before he got to Fleet Street. Now the papers were all staffed by kids, kids who if you managed to drag them bodily into a bar would drink nothing stronger than bubbly water. Ian Wood was forty-two years old but at that moment he felt he was going on eighty.

  ‘Woody!’ screamed a voice from the far end of the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  The question was rhetorical, Woody realised, because it was swiftly followed by a torrent of abuse. He heaved himself out of the chair and ambled over to the source of the noise, hoping that if he got close it’d cut down the decibels and reduce the embarrassment factor. Simpson was sitting back in his reclining chair with his expensively shod feet on the desk. The news editor spent twice as much on a pair of shoes as the paper paid its freelances for an eight-hour shift. They were well polished and gleamed under the overhead fluorescent lights and Woody looked down involuntarily at his own soaking wet, brown Hush Puppies. Woody began to explain but Simpson cut him off and told him that he should have been back hours ago and that he was to get the hell out of the building and not to bother coming back, that he’d got pissed on the job once too often and that there would be no more shifts for him on the paper. Woody could feel that he was being watched by everyone in the newsroom, and he could tell without looking around that more than half the voyeurs were grinning and enjoying his discomfort. His face reddened. He knew there was nothing he could do, he’d have to wait until Simpson had calmed down, maybe some time after Hell had frozen over, but he couldn’t face the walk to the door, not with everyone staring at him. He opened his mouth to speak but Simpson waved him away and turned his back on him.

  Woody stood there swaying for a few seconds and then with every ounce of control he could muster he slowly walked across the newsroom, his head held high and his eyes fixed on the purple door that led to the stairs and the street and the pub. There was only one thing he wanted, other than a double Bells, and that was to get out of the room with what little dignity he had left intact. He almost made it. He didn’t notice the overflowing wastepaper bin and he crashed over it and sprawled against the door. He pushed the door but it wouldn’t budge so he pushed harder and then he saw the sign that said ‘Pull’ and cruel laughter billowed around him as he eventually staggered out into the corridor.

  He headed for the sanctuary of the King’s Head but realised that there would be other reporters there, probably knocking back Perrier with the way his luck was going, so instead he walked to the Coach and Horses. They wouldn’t cash cheques for him there, not since the bank had bounced one, but at least he wouldn’t be laughed at.

  It started to rain so he put up the collar of his coat and hunched his s
houlders and he stuck close to the wall until he reached the pub. It was fairly busy with closing time fast approaching, but Woody knew that the landlord paid little attention to the licensing laws and that it would be many hours before the last customer left. He took off his coat and shook it before hanging it up by the fruit machine.

  ‘Evening, Woody,’ said the barman, a teenager whose name Woody couldn’t remember. ‘Usual?’

  Woody nodded and the barman poured a double Bells. A woman sitting on a stool looked at the Bells bottle and then up at Woody. She shuddered. ‘You should try a real whisky,’ she said. She was sitting next to a man in a brown leather jacket and they both had glasses of amber fluid in front of them. Woody reached for his glass and toasted them.

  ‘This will do me fine,’ he said, and drained it in one.

  ‘Now I’ll have one of whatever they’re having, and one each for them, too,’ Woody said, mentally calculating how much he had in his wallet. They were drinking a ten-year-old malt the name of which Woody didn’t recognise but it was smooth and mellow and warmed his chest. He fell into amiable conversation with the couple, talking about the weather, about Docklands, about the Government, anything but what he’d seen that evening.

  They asked him what he did and he told them he was a journalist. Her name was Maggie and his was Ross, he sold fax machines and she worked for an insurance company.

  As the level of whisky in the bottle dropped Woody began opening himself up to them, about how unhappy he was in his job and his plans for a new life in Los Angeles. An old pal of his had gone out to LA a couple of years ago and had set up an agency specialising in showbiz features and oddball stories for the tabloids, and he’d been pestering Woody to go out and join him.

  ‘You know, I think I will go,’ Woody said, and they nodded in agreement and Maggie bought a round. Some time later the man slapped Woody on the back and said he had to go. He kissed Maggie on the cheek, a brotherly peck Woody noticed, and left. Woody was surprised as he’d assumed they were married or lovers, but Maggie laughed and said no, just friends. He slid on to the stool vacated by Ross, even though he generally preferred to stand while drinking. He was quite taken by Maggie. She had shoulder-length red hair and grey eyes, and the freckles of a teenager even though she must have been in her early thirties. She spoke with a faint Scottish burr and laughed a lot and told jokes dirtier than even Woody thought was proper.

  ‘Are you serious about LA?’ she asked, and Woody said he was. She told him that she had a friend living there, and that if he did go she’d put him in touch. She asked for his telephone number and he gave it to her. Eventually she said she had to go. Woody offered to walk her home but she thanked him and said no, she only lived around the corner. Woody shrugged and said goodbye, wondering how she’d react to a brotherly peck on the cheek from him but deciding against it. After she went he finished his whisky and left the pub in search of a black cab. Ten minutes later he was back for his raincoat. It wasn’t his night.

  Sergeant Fletcher’s heart sank when he saw The Chinaman walking slowly up to his desk. He kept his eyes down on his paperwork and wished with all his heart that he’d go away. Nguyen Ngoc Minh coughed quietly. Sergeant Fletcher ignored him. Nguyen coughed again, louder this time. The policeman knew he could put it off no longer. He looked up and feigned surprise.

  ‘Mr Nguyen,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’ His fingers tensed around his ballpoint pen.

  ‘Sergeant Fletcher. Is there news about the bomb?’ said Nguyen slowly. He stood in front of the desk, his head bowed and his fingers clasped together below his stomach. He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn on his four previous visits to the police station, brown woollen trousers, a blue and green work shirt and a thick quilted coat with a hood. His dark-brown boots were scuffed and worn and if Sergeant Fletcher hadn’t known better he might have assumed that the man was a down-and-out looking for a warm cell for the night.

  The policeman shook his head slowly. ‘I am afraid not, Mr Nguyen. But we are doing everything we can, believe me.’

  The look in The Chinaman’s eyes suggested that he did not believe the sergeant, but he smiled nevertheless, his face wrinkling into deep crevices. It was an ingratiating smile, an eager-to-please look that for some reason made the sergeant immediately feel guilty.

  ‘Do you know who exploded the bomb?’ Nguyen asked.

  ‘As it says in the papers, the IRA has claimed responsibility.’

  ‘And do they know who in the IRA is responsible?’

  ‘No, Mr Nguyen, they do not.’ Sergeant Fletcher fought to keep himself from snapping at The Chinaman, but it was hard, bloody hard, because every time he came and stood in front of the desk he asked the same questions with the same inane grin on his face. He realised that the man must be devastated, losing his wife and his daughter, and God knows Fletcher wanted to help, but there was nothing he could do. Nothing.

  ‘How long will it be, Sergeant Fletcher?’ Nguyen asked quietly.

  The policeman shook his head sadly. ‘I wish I knew,’ he said.

  ‘The lady policeman who came to see me last week said that the men would be caught.’

  ‘I am sure they will be.’

  ‘She said that they will be punished.’

  The silly cow. Fletcher wished she’d kept her mouth shut and not raised The Chinaman’s hopes. He made a mental note to find out who she was and give her a piece of his mind.

  ‘I am sure that when they are caught they will be punished, Mr Nguyen,’ agreed Sergeant Fletcher.

  Nguyen began wringing his hands as if washing them. ‘When will that be, Sergeant Fletcher?’ The smiled widened, the lips stretched tight across his yellowing teeth.

  It was a nervous smile, Fletcher realised. The policeman put his palms down on the desk. ‘I do not know. I simply do not know.’

  ‘I know you and your men are doing their best. I know they want to catch the men who killed my family. But I wonder . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished, his eyes fixed on Fletcher’s face.

  ‘Yes?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘I wonder if there were any other policemen on the case. How do you say, specialists? Policemen who hunt the IRA. The terrorists.’

  Fletcher suddenly felt the sky open and the sun beam down. He saw a way of getting The Chinaman off his back once and for all.

  ‘There are such policemen, Mr Nguyen. They are called the Anti-Terrorist Branch.’

  ‘Where do I find the Anti-Terrorist Branch?’

  Fletcher found himself grinning. ‘Mr Nguyen, stay right where you are. I’ll go and write down their address and telephone number for you.’

  Elliott Jephcott drove the white Rover off the main road and into the small cobbled mews. He switched off the radio and looked at his watch. It had just turned 8.30 a.m. and he didn’t have to be in court until 11.00 a.m. He had plenty of time. He checked his hair in the driving mirror and then reached into the glove compartment for his breath-freshener aerosol and gave his mouth two minty squirts. He put the aerosol back and as he did he saw that a streetsweeper was watching him while he attacked the cobbles with a long-handled brush. Jephcott blushed like a schoolboy caught with a dirty magazine and was immediately angry with himself. A High Court Judge feeling guilty under the scrutiny of a roadsweeper in a filthy donkey jacket? Ridiculous, he thought. He locked the car and walked to the door of Erica’s cottage. It opened just as he was reaching for the brass knocker.

  ‘I heard the car,’ she said. She looked ravishing, her blonde hair carefully arranged so that she gave the impression that she’d just got out of bed. She moved to the side to let him in and he smelt her perfume. It was the one he’d bought her last month and he was pleased that she’d worn it for him. She was wearing a purple blouse with a high collar and pockets over each breast, and a purple, green and pink flower-patterned skirt that reached halfway down her calves, and around her waist was a purple leather belt. On her left wrist was a thick gold bracelet and around her left ankle was
a thin gold chain. He’d bought her the jewellery, too. And the Alfa Romeo outside. That had been a twenty-first birthday present. She was worth it, God she was worth it.

  She closed the door and stood behind him, helping him to remove his jacket. She took it and put it on a hanger before putting it away in a cupboard by the front door.

  ‘What time do you have to go?’ she asked. He knew that she wasn’t nagging, not the way his wife did when she asked the same question, she just wanted to know how much time they had together so that she could plan accordingly. He turned and smiled and slipped his arm around her waist.

  ‘Not long enough,’ he said and kissed her.

  She opened her lips as their mouths met and he felt her soft tongue and heard her moan. She took him by the hand and led him upstairs. ‘Let’s not waste any of it,’ she said.

  Outside in the mews, the roadsweeper worked carefully, pushing the litter and dust into small, neat piles before using his shovel to scoop it into the plastic bag on his cart. He whistled quietly as he worked, his breath forming white clouds in the cold morning air. The collar of his donkey jacket was turned up and he was wearing thick, woollen gloves. On his head was a blue bobble hat that had seen better days. He stood up and surveyed the area he’d cleaned and nodded to himself. He clipped the shovel to the side of his cart and moved it further down the mews, stopping next to the Rover. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the upstairs curtains being closed.

  He began to sweep around the car, slowly and conscientiously, still whistling. He moved between the cart and the car and knelt down to unclip the shovel. As he did he took a metal box, about the size of a box of chocolates, from the rear of the cart and in a smooth motion slipped it up under the wheel-arch of the driver’s side of the Rover. There were two large magnets on the box and they latched on to the metal of the car through the underseal and its coating of mud. There was a small chrome switch on one side of the box and he clicked it on as he pulled his hand away.