Dragon Breath

by Valerie Goldsilk

  “Where are you Marie-Tess? Could you sort of call me tomorrow? It might be more convenient then.”

  “You’re not alone?”

  “Sort of,” he avoided the question for unknown reasons. How had the girl got his home phone number? He asked her.

  “Oh, I check the telephone directory. Only one man with your name is living in Tai Koo Shing. I remember you told me you had a flat there.”

  “Yes, that was very clever of you.”

  “Can you come and have a drink with me?”

  “Some of us work during the day time and have to sleep at night,” he said in a way one speaks to someone at the kindergarten.

  “But this is important,” Marie-Tess insisted. “And I feel so lonely and I’m afraid. I want to see you.”

  “Not now. How about tomorrow?” Scrimple tried to remember what the girl looked like. He had no recollection but he knew that all the girls who worked at the “Firehouse” were pretty horny. The owner was an ex-copper who made sure they all had long legs, ample breasts and generous lips.

  The girl wasn’t giving up and she pleaded a bit more but Scrimple was adamant. Finally she gave up but forced him to take down her mobile number. He turned on the light and wrote it on the cover of an FHM magazine he’d been reading.

  It was two-thirty. He lay with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling for a few minutes and then suddenly said, “Fuck it.”

  Tomorrow he’d be on sick leave. Nobody would die or have their place burgled or be arrested or released or convicted if Senior Inspector Scrimple didn’t report for duty tomorrow. He’d go on a sickie and screw Harriet Cheung. Not literally but she could go and screw herself along with her friends at the ICAC who’d wasted his leisure time earlier and now he was going to reclaim it.

  He called back Marie-Tess and arranged to meet her at “The House of Doom” in Wanchai. He asked her why she wasn’t dancing on the stage in the club where she worked. She explained that someone had paid her bar-fine and so she was free for the rest of the night and that’s why she wanted to see Scrimple.

  In the taxi going along the highway running along the harbour he told himself that he could do whatever he wanted now. Technically he was free and single since Freda had dumped him earlier in the evening. In fact he would be in his rights to bring back the little Filipina if she was interested. And usually they were. Not that he would. That would be quite a scene. Two women in his flat. The CD’s would be flying and the crockery would be smashed. It would be a territorial battle, not really about Scrimple—The Man.

  His biggest problem would be recognising her. But he’d play it by ear. He hoped she’d got the right guy when she called him. Every night there were scores of men who probably chatted her up and watched her dancing. How could she remember a drunken, overweight policeman?

  The real name of the pub was “The Horse and Groom” and it wasn’t one of the most swinging places on the Wanchai bar-strip of Lockhart Road. It was a place one went for a quiet drink and a greasy sandwich in the early hours. It was a place of respite and also a good place to snuggle in an alcove with a girl one had found somewhere further up the road.

  Scrimple needn’t have worried. As he came in, a young girl with big eyes and a bigger chest began waving at him enthusiastically. He sauntered over and recognised her vaguely. She had hair tinted chestnut hanging half way down her back. Her high cheekbones framed a set of dark, sensuous eyes with long lashes and her skin was the colour of Dairy Milk chocolate. She looked good enough to eat.

  Scrimple slid into the booth opposite her and noticed the two empty Tequila glasses and the salt shaker before her.

  “San Miguel,” he told the ancient Chinese waiter.

  “You remember me now?” the girl said, her eyes glowing with excitement or more likely from the Mexican liquor.

  “Sure, how can I not remember someone as pretty as you?” Scrimple fell into the banter. “And you remember me?”

  “I know you. Fat and cute.” The girl giggled.

  “So, what’s up?” He didn’t like the way she’d described him. But it sounded like she was up for it so he wasn’t going to get annoyed.

  Her face clouded up with sudden memory. “It’s terrible. I have to tell you. Something terrible happened and I’m so afraid.”

  Then she giggled again and asked the waiter who was bringing Scrimple’s beer, for another Tequila and a plate of french fries.

  * * * *

  Against his better judgement Jim had asked Doris out for dinner and the movies. She was dressed in a shocking-red outfit that appeared to have been painted onto her and somehow Jim got the feeling that tonight she wanted to make up for the grief she’d caused him with her cousin and his gang.

  They watched a new Schwarzenegger movie which was set in Thailand and had the muscley Austrian posing as an ex-policeman who infiltrates a German gang controlling nightclubs and prostitution in a sleazy seaside resort. In the end everyone got shot up and Arnie dived around in slow motion blasting with two automatic pistols, rarely missing as he floated through a hail of other people’s bullets.

  “Best not go to Thailand for a holiday,” he said as they came out.

  “It’s not really like that you know.”

  “I know. I did live in Asia for a short time,” he said.

  “Did you go to Bangkok? When was that?” she asked.

  “Once, it was a few years ago. About twelve years actually. I was still a student and bumming around.”

  “And what do you think of Hong Kong when you go and visit?” she wanted to know.

  “I only go once a year for a week so it’s fun. But it would get irritating to have to live there. Pretty crowded and all your relatives scurrying around like hyper-thyroidic rats.”

  “What?” she said, turning on him and digging long, red fingernails into his arm.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry. It’s just not my scene. I like London.”

  “But London is also hectic and everyone’s rushing around like crazy. And in Hong Kong the underground is clean and runs fast. It doesn’t break down every second day like the Jubilee line does and people don’t go on strike.”

  “No one’s been on strike for ages in Central London.”

  “The ambulance drivers?”

  “Oh, yes, well I forgot about those.”

  “Where are we going?” she said, holding on to his biceps as they walked. Her heels were high and made her nearly as tall as him because she had long legs.

  “I thought we could go for a Chinkie…” he started.

  “Stop it!”

  Jim laughed and she laughed as well and they got a nice table at a Japanese restaurant where he ordered Tempura and the full slab of sushi and sashimis. They shared a flask of sake and after the second glass her eyes glazed over and her face flushed the same colour as her dress.

  Later as they were talking she said, “You have to understand that the Chinese have this superiority complex. We truly believe that we are the master race and that all the rest of the world are smelly barbarians. We have an expression in Cantonese for white people: Gwai-lo. Foreigners think it means ghost-man but in fact it implies creatures that are not human. You know what I mean? We Chinese are ‘Yan,’ we are people, human, but you foreigners, big noses, red-haired creatures, are less than…not even human.”

  “That’s nice to know,” Jim said and studied her face which gazed back at him seriously. She shrugged, perhaps giving up on her explanation, and reached for a piece of eel with her chopsticks.

  “You need to understand these things if you want to know the Chinese,” she added.

  “I’d just like to know one little Chinese girl. Not the entire race.”

  “I know that. But you must be patient, gwai-lo.”

  He smiled, light-headed from the strong rice wine. The girl had switched to water already.

  “Yes, my little China-doll.”

  She said, “I’m going back to Hong Kong when I finish this temp job. My family wants me to be back
there. Do you think I can get a job in the office of McPherson Ferguson there?”

  Jim frowned. “You don’t want to be doing that.”

  “What? Going back to Hong Kong?”

  “Yes that. I’m just getting to know you. You can’t disappear suddenly. But also you don’t want to be working for our office in Hongkers.”

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  “You know, you’ve seen all the documents I’ve been going over. Because it’s all a bit of a mess there. That’s why Dougie Campbell is flying down. To sort things out.”

  The Chinese girl smiled at him coyly. She shook her head, like one does at a small boy who has done something silly but cannot comprehend what it is. “That’s right,” she said with sarcasm, “The big gwai-lo will go down to Asia and sort out all those bad, dishonest Chinkies.”

  “Well, not exactly like that…” Jim heard himself apologising.

  “It’s alright. I know what you mean. But you just don’t understand. It’s just not as simple, like things are here in the West.”

  “Can we change the subject?” Jim said. “I’m sick of talking about work and the Hong Kong office. It gets to me.”

  “Here try this,” Doris said and placed a piece of sushi in his mouth with her chopsticks. It was an intimate gesture somehow and he enjoyed it. Would tonight be the night?

  * * * *

  “So which guy was it that said the thing about the chopping?” Scrimple was trying to understand the confused explanation coming from the slightly drunk Filipina bar-girl. By now he was sitting next to her and had a hand on her stockinged thigh. Her skirt was as short as they come and there was a heat which he could feel coming from somewhere which was exciting and inviting.

  The girl stared at him, her face scrunched up in concentration.

  “I can understand Cantonese. I used to work for a Chinese employer before. They couldn’t speak English. So I know this guy said he will kill the other guy.”

  Scrimple nodded with exasperation. “Yes, but who said he’d kill the other guy? The one who paid your bar, or what?”

  “Yes, him.”

  “But he’s a friend of your boss?”

  “No, maybe just know him. A customer.”

  “So let me get this straight. Three Chinese blokes came into ‘The Firehouse’ and then one of them bar-fined you and then you went off to a Chinese karaoke place where they talked about this thing?”

  The girl moved her head up and down. Scrimple didn’t believe that part of the story. The girls who worked in Firehouse were mostly former maids who’d come to Hong Kong to do a decent but back-breaking job. Somehow they would have been tempted to make some money faster by dancing in swimsuits, chatting with clients for drinks and once or twice a week leaving the club to go to a hotel with a customer who was willing to pay over the odds for an hour of sexual entertainment. Marie-Tess had probably entered into a sham marriage with a local Hong Kong man in order to permit her to get an ID card and remain indefinitely and work legally. Immigration were always on the look-out for maids who’d overstayed their domestic helper contracts or were moon-lighting in other jobs, but they could do nothing about girls who were legally married. And dancing in a nightclub wasn’t illegal. Nor was going with a man for money. It was only illegal if there was a pimp involved who took a cut of the money. By paying a bar-fine to the establishment the customer effectively released her from her obligations to dance and in this way the bar made a reasonable commission on whatever activity the girl and the customer chose to indulge in.

  So Scrimple assumed that Marie-Tess had gone off to a short-time hotel and somewhere there had overheard the conversation she was trying to tell him about.

  “Had you seen these men before?” he asked.

  “No, never. But they looked like Triads. Nasty guys.”

  “What do Triads look like then?”

  “Oh, tattoos over their bodies.”

  “On their chest and their back?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you see the guys’ chests?”

  The girl blinked at being found out but ignored it. “I could see. The shirts was open.”

  “And they were just talking like that about killing someone?”

  “Of course.” Her hazel eyes were wide and calling for his trust. “They don’t know I could speak Chinese.”

  “Right, they didn’t. And no idea whom they want to kill?”

  “They said Mr. Chen. He’s a businessman who cheated them. And they would do it this week. They would chop him outside a nightclub where he always goes with his customers.”

  “Just Mr. Chen?”

  Marie-Tess nodded and glanced around for the waiter. She could take her Tequila well although Scrimple had a sneaky suspicion she might be one of those girls who just switched from on to off, slumping drunkenly into his arms if one more shot-glass passed her lips.

  “There must be about half a million Chens in Hong Kong. Well, half a million Chans and about a hundred thousand Chens. Didn’t they say his full name? You know, Chen Bing Bong or something?”

  “They just called him Chen Saang.”

  Scrimple scratched an itch on his neck pensively. That certainly meant Mr. Chen. Not much to go on. Then it suddenly struck him that this was really none of his business. Why should he worry about some guy called Chen who’d double-crossed some Triads called Wong, Wong and Wong? It was nothing to do with him. The only thing that interested him at the moment was how to get Marie-Tess into the sack. He couldn’t really bring her home and she might be a bit leery if he suggested a love hotel. After all he wasn’t intending to pay for it.

  He had another San Miguel, listened to her story one more time, told her he’d take care of it all and then he got an idea on how to solve his problem.

  * * * *

  They’d gone back to Jim’s place for a coffee although Doris had warned him that all she wanted was tea.

  Within a minute of walking in the door they were on the sofa and he had his tongue deep inside her mouth. They kissed and kissed until he felt the urge to go to the toilet. He hadn’t moved his hands from around her waist as she sat on his lap but he was intending to later. He was going to take it slowly. He didn’t want to scare her off. That’s the way Asian girls liked it, he recalled. You couldn’t just say, “let’s go into the bedroom.” You couldn’t say anything. You just had to gently move ahead until you hit a point of resistance, then carry on slowly until their resistance melted away.

  He whispered to her that he wanted to put the kettle on and moved her gently so that she lay fully stretched out across the cushions. Her hair had come undone and was fanned out around her face and, in the red-hot dress, the slit riding high up on her alabaster thigh, she looked wanton and made the blood rush down to his loins.

  Jim went quickly to the toilet. He had some difficulty peeing as he was excited and had to bend forward in order not to make a mess on the floor. It was awkward but there was no choice. The thought of her kept him hard.

  He flicked the switch on the electric kettle and filled the tea-pot with Jasmine tea. On the sofa, the girl lay, her hair less messy now and her eyes closed. She looked like a child who had come to his house to rest for a while. He knelt beside the sofa and began kissing her neck until she made soft moaning noises and pulled his face towards hers and their mouths met again.

  But when he began running his hand up her thigh he finally encountered resistance.

  “No,” she said quietly. “Not tonight. I need to go home. Just kiss me, it’s so nice to kiss you.”

  Half an hour later he drove her back to her parent’s house, where she lived. It was only just after midnight.

  “I’m sorry, Jim. I may seem modern and westernised but I’m still a conservative Chinese girl.”

  “That’s okay, it’s been lovely,” he replied. He felt cheated somehow although it really wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t indicated that she might want to sleep with him. She’d only shown him that she liked him and for Ji
m to expect more was probably unreasonable. He tried hard to hide his frustration because he didn’t want to upset Doris.

  “I’m sorry, Jim.” She kissed him damply on the lips, leaning into him while resting her small hand on his left thigh. “I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.” She showed her perfect, pearly teeth and pushed open the door, then ran, with short dainty strides up to the steps of her house.

  Jim let his head fall back against the headrest of the Saab. Damn women but he deserved it. He’d really wanted to bury his head in her tonight. He’d wanted to share an original pleasure with her, a hint of danger given the violence that lurked over her shoulder in the shape of her cousin and his gang-bangers.

  He turned the key in the ignition and slowly pulled the car out. Deciding that he was too wound up to go to sleep right away he drove down the Finchley Road until he came to where he wanted to go and have a drink. He parked around the corner and walked back to the main road.

  A big barn of a bouncer stood outside the club called “Secrets” and greeted Jim by name. He didn’t go often but he did go regularly. It was one of the new lap dancing bars that had sprung up in London and various of its boroughs. England had always been staid and buttoned up in its approach to sex but these days some brash Americana was creeping in and Lap Dancing was the latest Yuppie post-work entertainment. Naughty without being debauched. Wicked without being sleazy.

  He paid ten pounds entrance fee to the black girl who was reading the Financial Times and chatting on a phone at the same time, then went downstairs.

  It was quiet because on Saturdays most men stayed at home with their wives, went out with their girlfriends or hit the dance clubs with the rest of the lads. This kind of place was mainly for week-nights.

  Jim went to a corner table and the waiter, a small man of great girth and without a noticeable neck approached him.

  “Hey, Charlie. How’s tricks? I’ll have a beer.”

  “Your mate’s here,” Charlie said and jerked with his thumb in the direction of the backroom where some guys enjoyed some more private dancing with the girls.