by Nick Macfie
“Are we talking about the same place?”
The best laid plans of Hadley, Stone and Baxter. What a team. I realised I had reduced a beer mat to pulp. I let the dust pour through my hand into the ashtray and reached for a cigarette. As I raised my Suzie Wong Bar lighter, I saw through the open window a Chinese man at the bar. Old, stained, dishevelled, grey hair shooting up into space like a hedgehog. He was staring right back, a comfortable, lived-in smile on his face. Purple lines held his nose together like some elaborate Anglo-Saxon brooch. He pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at me.
“Who the fuck is that?” I asked out loud, but not loud enough for George to hear. Another Chinese connection.
“I have an A-to-Z map of Bratislava at home. If that helps.”
“What?”
“You don’t sound very confident, Percy, if you don’t mind my saying so. About your own city. Perhaps you’ve been away too long.”
“You want me to go back to your place to look at an A-to-Z of Bratislava? How many times do you get to use that line?”
“Oh Percy, don’t be like that.”
I looked through the window into the bar again. The old man had gone. The entrances were now jammed again with women flinging back their boas in each other’s faces, ordering “gin and its” and telling camp jokes from the first half of the show. There was no way I could have reached the old man and asked him what he was up to. Even if I cared.
“I’ve been playing with you, George,” I said.
“No shit.”
“If I tell you where I’m going, can you keep it quiet?”
George gave a quick smile and a wink and pulled his bench closer to the table. I didn’t spill all the beans. I merely said I had worked in Hong Kong in bars and wanted to go back and was maybe interested in getting a job in Macau, the Las Vegas of the East, except doing much better business than Vegas and much tackier. It was one of my favourites places.
“A few of the dealers from the Silver Star have gone over to Asia,” George said. “Not the usual places.”
“Is that right?” I resisted the urge to reach for a notebook, which I didn’t have anyway. I didn’t want to sound too interested.
“I know a couple who went,” George said. “Never heard from them again. Really strange, that.”
Mystery and possibly horrific violence. Wonderful stuff. Keep the questions general, I told myself.
“How do you mean?”
“Two I know went to China. Beijing, I think. Maybe Hong Kong.”
“But there aren’t any casinos in Beijing and Hong Kong.”
“These aren’t your usual casinos. Not your usual ones. It was all underground stuff. Bandit country.”
Bandit country. I said it to myself a few times. I had to remember the phrase to attribute to “an inside source” in what was going to be my ground-breaking, lid-lifting expose. Give me more of that Old Speckled Boiler.
“How did they find out about these places?” I asked.
“Punters told them. The dealers got to know the punters. The punters like the babes.”
“The babes?”
“They like the pretty ones. There’s one in your block who’s thinking about it.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Word gets around, man.”
“So if I wanted to get in on this shit, how would I go about it? Is it well paid?”
“It’s meant to be well paid. But as I said, I’ve never heard back from any of the dealers. They just vanished. Left the business altogether as far as I can tell. But if you’re interested, and you’re planning to go out that way anyway…”
“Yes?”
George lifted his glass. “Well, word gets around. Maybe you could get in on the act.”
I ground my cigarette under foot as the end of a pink boa flashed in front of my eyes.
“Sorry, cock,” a large fiftysomething brunette standing behind me said. She turned back to her mates: “I just said ‘sorry, cock’. What was I thinking?” And this in turn prompted more unabashed, shrill peals of laughter. They were all pumped.
“The Chinese girl in your block,” said George. “Her name is Scout. She’s lovely. Works the late shift.”
“I don’t know her. Roulette?”
“Blackjack. Occasionally dice. You can talk to her, but don’t tell her I pointed you in her direction. I know she’s got serious money problems.”
“Her name’s Scout? Like in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’?”
“No need to show off. I just told you her name, as it happens.”
“It’s a nice name, as it happens. Unusual.”
I WAS STAYING in a tiny company flat in Camden Town. A Silver Star flat, not Shrubs. It had tall Georgian windows with wooden shutters that looked out on to a small, damp churchyard of black earth and dark green stinging nettles and other weeds littered with beer cans.
This is where I managed to put two and two together and not make anything of it.
On a fresh late September morning, I had in my hand a cup of instant coffee with just a splash of Black Label. I could smell a bonfire from nearby and was wondering if there were any horse chestnut trees around. I hadn’t seen a conker for close to twenty years. I looked across the churchyard and allowed myself a few soppy reminiscences about autumns in England which, truth be told, had been miserable in the flat eastern Fens (where I really came from). Wet and freezing. Horse chestnuts? Don’t make me laugh. There were barely any trees, and those there were grew sideways, bent by the wind, and looked barking mad.
Then the mystery began. If I were to name a starting point, the time when I realised something dodgy was up, this was it.
I didn’t see him at first, or rather I had seen him but must have mistaken him for a tree. Standing on a churchyard bench was the old Chinese man from the pub with the spiky grey hair shooting up into space. And, it occurred to me, perhaps this was the same bloke in the back of the car that trailed me that night in Soho. The one I had only seen from behind. All I had seen was the spiky hair, and this was highly unusual hair. He was scowling at me. He pointed his forefinger and middle finger at his eyes and then pointed them at me. Then he gave me the finger..
“What the fuck?”
I immediately had him down as some high-ranking Triad officer put on my trail because of my undercover investigation into illegal casinos. He was going to get me. He was going to tackle me to the ground with some old man’s kung fu and once he had got me there, he was going to jam chopsticks into my ears with the heels of his hands until they met in the middle. His hair was standing on end as though the church bench was plugged into the mains. Now he was drinking from a can or bottle inside a brown paper bag, with battered sports shoes peeping out from under baggy brown trousers soiled black. A tattered overcoat was drawn tight at the collar. Then someone I couldn’t see was shouting at him.
“Oi, old Chinaman. What you looking at? Piss off.”
I winced. The man held up a hand to fend off the abuse, smiled and looked away. And then he looked back at me. He was resolute.
I heard the building’s front door slam and a girl swear. I forgot the old man. I was waiting for Scout, the girl with money troubles George had told me about, and I had seen what looked like a Chinese girl from behind go out earlier. I wanted to make some progress in my investigation so the next time I was “debriefed” by Stone, I would have something to offer.
I stepped outside into the hall. A thin beam of sunlight streamed in from a small, led-framed window above the front door, illuminating thousands of specks of dust against tall, dark walls. It also caught the face of the most dazzling girl I had seen in a long, long time. At least a week. She flashed a smile which made me go all funny. She had a full, oval face with smooth, olive skin and a high forehead. She had sensuous lips and a perfectly placed beauty spot to the right of her chin. Her black hair fell thickly over her right shoulder beneath a multi-coloured woolly hat. She was good enough to eat, but now was not the time. Her ey
es looked like she had been crying. She was picking up envelopes from the hall table, the beam of sunlight losing her face and catching it again. The sight was so remarkable it took me a while to realise she was carrying a baby in a harness on her back which she hadn’t been carrying before.
Scout had a habit, George had said. Nothing specific. Could have been crack cocaine or biting her nails. She dropped her baby’s plaything, a set of large plastic keys on a ring.
“Let me get those,” I said. “Let me get those, Scout. Baby would be lost without his keys.”
“Her keys.”
“Her keys. Of course.”
“Thanks.”
Scout was in her early twenties and would have been at home on a scooter dodging through 1960s traffic in Rome. She was gorgeous. Georgy Porgy was right.
“And I’ve just the thing for her,” I said. “In my flat.” I barely had a thing for myself in the flat. “Please, come in for a moment.”
“What for? How do you know my name?”
“Well, I have something for your baby. Christmas is a long way off, but come in and have a cup of tea.” I fumbled with my own keys, having managed to lock myself out, and opened the door. “I know your name because someone told me. Please come in.”
“Well, just for a minute. But I’m not standing for any monkey business.” She walked to the middle of the room, took a long look at a bleak Lowry industrial scene above the fireplace. All chimneys, satanic mills, desperation and tuberculosis. England at Christmas not so long ago, basically. The baby started to cry. “In fact, I ought to go… she needs changing.”
“Maybe the painting has scared her. Just kidding. But wait.” I went to my desk-cum-dinner table and pulled open a drawer. Something for the baby. Right. A box of Swan Vestas matches. A packet of Marlboros. The pewter hip flask with the “born to be wilt” inscription, a subtle comic device likely to be lost on a babe in arms who was now staring at me as if I had two heads. There was also a red Swiss army knife. Things weren’t looking up. Then I saw it, peeking out from under a battered copy of “The Silver Star Etiquette and House Rules”.
“This is it. It brings good luck.”
“It’s a chip.”
“It’s a chip, yes. How do you know?”
“It’s a Silver Star chip, Blue Nose. I work there too.”
“Of course. I should have known. I shouldn’t really have it.” Why did she call me Blue Nose? “They are meant to be cashed in at the end of each day, as you know. But I found it on the floor of the changing room. But it’s yours now. For the baby. It’s a nice bright colour.”
“Thanks… I suppose I can keep it.”
“Yes. And it’s red. Red is a lucky colour in China. As you must know.”
“Only in China? I could do with some luck.”
“Well, in our casino too, I hope. Lots of Chinese punters. Look, I’m Hadl…” I recovered in time to remember my new name. “…I’m hardly the person to be going on about luck. I’m Percival.”
“Percival?”
“Afraid so, yes.”
“That’s a daft name. You should get that changed straight away. What were you parents thinking?”
What were a completely plastered Hadley and Harriet Stone thinking? Not much, it has to be said.
“It is a bit embarrassing.”
“Yeah, well. I’m Scout, as you know. And the baby is Eve.”
“How sublimely biblical.”
“You what?”
“Eve. Adam and Eve. Of an eve.”
Scout was frowning. “Of an eve? What are you on about? Are you a barmy old bender? Are you all right in the head?”
“Sorry. A lovely name, all the same.”
“Yeah, well.” Scout gave the chip to Eve who promptly stopped crying and tried to stuff it in her eye. Then her mouth. Too big to choke. “Eve’s a good girl. You look too old to be in our business. You’ve got a red nose, so I’m going to call you Blue Nose. What’s your game?”
“Roulette.”
“Blackjack, me. Roulette’s for mugs.”
I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass covering the Lowry matchstick men outside the factory. I could not disagree that in my satin shorts and back-to-front tee-shirt, messed up hair and unshaven face, I did look like a complete berk. A barmy berk, even. But Scout had offered what some journalists, not many, called an “in”.
“Well, I don’t know how much longer I will be in the business,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Thinking of heading out to Asia. To try my luck there.”
“Oh, right.”
“Have you ever thought about travel? I’ve heard there’s good money to be made in Asia in our business.”
“I’m half Chinese. My mum and dad worked in Hong Kong before I was born. Are you the complete prick who almost killed someone with a roulette ball?”
“Well, it wasn’t quite like that.”
“I was just coming on shift. Classic. What was it you said? Can I have my ball back, mister? Classic.”
Oh boy. I had to try to get some information. I was undercover, after all.
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. When I get out to Asia.”
“Too right.”
“Have you ever thought about going back to Hong Kong?”
“I’ve thought about it.” Eve was frowning at her present now, holding it in both hands like a steering wheel. “It wouldn’t be a case of going back, though. I’ve never been there. Look, I’ve got to go.”
“To Hong Kong?”
“Don’t be a berk. I’ve got to go. To leave.”
“Of course. How stupid I am. I was going to make some tea.”
“I don’t know if you’re stupid but don’t worry about the tea. Thanks for the chip. Say thanks to Blue Nose for the chip, Eve. And thanks for not trying any funny business.”
“Like what?”
“Coming on all smooth and suggestive, like. I can see you’re a strange one. So thanks for that.”
“Suggestive? I can offer you a McVitie’s digestive?”
“You’re a bit of a nutter on the quiet, aren’t you?”
I stepped towards the door. “Not really. I like you. I couldn’t help hearing in the pub the other night that you had some money problems.”
She was about to be thrown out of the block. I’d heard this from some dodgy neighbour, it was true, this time with a pint of Ye Olde Whittle Arse in front of me. A lighter beer than the Old Speckled Boiler, with a thin, frothy head that looked like slurry. She couldn’t even make the Silver Star’s subsidised rent and needed about twenty thousand pounds to pay off debts.
“How do you know it was me?” Scout asked.
“Well they said you were very beautiful.”
Scout looked me in the eyes, sending a tiny shiver down my spine, and shifted Eve in her arms. “Well, we’ve all got our crosses,” she said. “Is that sublimely biblical enough for you? I’ve got to go.”
SCOUT WAS LIKE a tall flame - hot, dazzling, dangerous in close proximity to bed linen and soft toys and an affirmation of everything energetic about life. I saw her the next morning arguing with a bald man in a suit brandishing a copy of a tacky tabloid (which I had worked for fifteen years earlier). Their voices went quiet as I passed in the hall. No one is free when others are oppressed, someone had once said. She smiled warmly.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Blue Nose.”
“It’s not really Blue Nose,” I said to the man, instantly regretting it. He looked at me as though I had just pissed in his Rottweiler’s face. I thought it best not to mention my real name - or at least the name Scout knew me by.
Scout’s body was full and willowy and the way she was standing, one leg crooked at the knee, made the jumper ride up above her right hip to show an inch of flesh. I opened the front door and left, giving the man a second, withering look. Scout had her arms crossed and was flashing me another smile, showing sparkling, laughing teeth
. They looked like they were made out of mother of pearl. Boy oh boy oh boy.
I closed the door, wondering where the baby was and if Scout’s mum was looking after her. I heard Scout raise her voice a little, but not necessarily angrily. The words were muffled. It could have been “I knew you would say that”, or “I thought you’d pay it back”. It could have been “I am sure you’re good in the sack”. Nothing to ring alarm bells. I breathed in the crisp, cold air and looked across the churchyard. Standing on the same bench was the old red-nosed Chinese man. He raised the brown paper bag to his lips, took a long, unhurried swig, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and sighed a long, white cloud of fumes. Then he did that thing with his fingers, pointing them at his eyes, then at me. I shook my head as if to lament such a sad state of affairs. As if to say: What a lush. I kept walking down the street when a stone landed hard and fast about two feet in front of me, splitting in two.
“You fucking arsehole,” I heard someone shout.
I turned and saw the old Chinese guy bending down presumably looking for more stones. He found some.
“Stick this one up your arse,” he shouted as I watched a bigger stone this time come sailing towards me. It hit the side of a parked car and set off a whelping alarm. A second came close and then I was out of range. What a loopy old fucker!
I saw Scout again on a Sunday morning in the lobby, drunk.
“You look lovely,” she said. “Blue Nose. Do you fancy a drink? Eve’s with my mum who always says, don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink to excess.”
“Is she in the church?”
“Are you eyeing up my bod? You wouldn’t be the first. People call me luscious, they do. Classic. Just make sure your man doesn’t drink to excess on Sunday mornings, she used to say.”
“Sunday mornings?”
“Long but luscious. Like a red apple. Juicy. Don’t tell me you drink on Sunday mornings as well.”
“As well as what?”
“She’s not in the church right now. I owe everyone buckets of money.”
“Scout, who was that man you were with the other day in the hall?”
“Yeah, him too. He’s after my bod and all.”
