Kiss Me, Hadley: A Novel

by Nick Macfie

  Oh Sparky. “Don’t fence me in,” I wrote back, trying to be whimsical and funny when really I found the line of questioning quite chilling.

  “What makes you think I would want to fence you in?” Sparky posted back within seconds, before I had even started to think about turning off my phone. Then: “I’m not an arbitrary small woods holder. Would you like to have a tangible picnic ‘underneath the larches’?” No I fucking wouldn’t.

  HONG KONG IS A PATCHWORK of red taxis, dark green hills, sometimes leaden skies and white mist. It is a mystery of winding back alleys and red lights, the smell of fried tofu in the winter (an acquired taste) mixing with the smell of dried fish (another acquired taste) and the sound of ship horns as fog envelops the harbour.

  The journey from the airport, as the crow flies, to my home is a short hop from one outlying island to another. But the quickest route is to take the train into town and then take a ferry all the way back. I lived on Lamma, a busy island of beaches, tiny homes, bars and restaurants a thirty-five-minute ferry ride from Central in down-town Hong Kong. It’s famous for a power station on its best beach, a terrific walk across to the other side of the island, an expat community of mums, dads and kids who live happily in the tiny houses and apartments, with kids’ games on the beach. It is also famous for an expat community of middle-aged men, many of them journalists, who have been there forever. I ticked those boxes except for not having lived there forever. I had been there two years, swapping two floors of a thin village house in the rural New Territories, not far from the border with mainland China, for two floors of a thin village house a twist and a turn off Lamma’s main street. When I moved in, the air-conditioner in the main bedroom had yet to be installed, leaving a hole in the wall about two feet by a foot and a half and a small ledge. I once returned home by that hole after a night at Diesel’s, a bar set higher and back from the main street about a hundred yards away. I climbed a bamboo ladder I found behind the house and went in head first. It struck me, half way through the operation, not only how ridiculous I must have looked from the outside, but also how I resembled a giant, blue and grey cock going drunk into unknown territory, unsure if it would be a safe landing the other side. I couldn’t remember how high the chest of drawers was and whether it would be an easy tumble on top that and then on to the bed. I had to wriggle my way against the dry walls, pulling un-cock-like from the front, and then I was in like Flynn, tumbling fast and vaguely safely on to the bed, an alarm clock with two bells jamming my ribcage. There’s a first time for everything.

  The main bedroom and the living room were ten foot square, as was the glorious flat roof, with light globes on each corner, where I would spend the autumn evenings looking across blue and green canopies protecting similar roof hideaways from the sun and rain, listening to the gentle hubbub of village life and putting away half a bottle of gin. The bathroom and kitchen were half the size of the bedroom, but everything was clean and worked. With the metal front door painted dark red and sealed with a giant bolt, and two steep flights of tiled stairs from the ground floor to the roof, it was a bit like living on a compact ship with decks. When the wind was blowing in the right direction, you could even smell the sea.

  The ferry pulled in at Yung Shu Wan, or Banyan Tree Bay, where the pier is lined with rusting bicycles, their front wheels pointing into the air against the metal railings. I walked rather gingerly past the first bar on the left where just one expat, a bald ex-banker in his fifties with a pencil moustache, sat nursing a Skol, or at least a beer in a Skol glass. I knew him enough to nod to but he wasn’t looking my way, so there was no point nodding. He was dressed in biker gear and was watching a couple of expat women tourists taking pictures.

  “Is this the real life,” he sang. Just the one line, but enough to make the two women turn and snigger. “Take a picture, my lovelies. Go on. Stick it in your album.”

  What a banker. In the ten seconds or so that I was within earshot, another elderly expat in a suit arrived and said goodbye to him. The banker was taken aback and started to press his moustache with his fingertips.

  “You’re not going for good, for heaven’s sake?” he said.

  “Fuck off. I’m just going into town to have my nipples pierced.”

  “You had me worried for a minute. No one actually leaves Lamma.”

  Either this guy said that to everyone, or I had witnessed, in a snapshot of conversation that could have blossomed any time over quarter of a century, a chilling exchange in which the two men’s fate was sealed.

  I carried on down the main street, actually a pathway with noodle shops, air-con repair shops, property agents, bars, holiday lets, a glorious vegetarian restaurant and one or two incongruous boutiques full of bangles, beads, Tim Hardin CDs and various hippie tat, stinking the place out with incense. I turned left on the path towards the beach with the power station and my tiny apartment. Another colourful gweilo commonly known as Bob-a-Job came striding towards me in a strange sideways gait. He wore red shorts and a white linen jacket and was carrying a half-empty bottle of rose wine in his hand.

  “Hadley. Prick.”

  “Bob.”

  He was walking shoulder first as if… well, as if he were completely pissed. I stepped out of his way as he blundered forward. Maybe he was off to get his nipples pierced too. Maybe he would do it himself and was just steeling himself to the task. Maybe he had just done it and was drinking off the pain. A minute later, he was coming back, shoulder first, swinging the bottle in his hand. He passed without so much as glance in my direction. He was making a long and low raspberry noise like a 1960s Citroen. Fuck the nipple piercing, he had decided.

  Home sweet home.

  Walking to the ferry for my first day back at work, I witnessed something I had heard about, been warned about on TV, but never actually seen. A small crowd had gathered, looking over the seawall at something below on the rocks. I went to have a look, standing next to a Chinese man, craning to get a better view. That’s what I thought at first. He had a coat over his left forearm and his right was reaching below that arm and through the curtain of the coat into a girl’s bag. I could see it all. His hand was in the open, expensive-looking leather satchel and he was having a good feel around while people jostled in front and behind and the man himself was still straining to see what everyone was looking at. He was a real pro. I watched in fascination and then it was all over and the man turned, catching my eye briefly and walking casually away back towards the bars and shops.

  You won’t climb the ladder at Shrubs unless you raise your head above the parapet, Baxter was always telling me. He meant doing something bold and individual which would ensure you got shot in the temple by a French archer. Well now I had my own little parapet and I kept well and truly below it. It was none of my business. So what if the Chinese girl, wearing the uniform of one of the posh international schools, had lost her wallet or her iPhone? None of my business. The girl, all of fifteen, turned, a big smile on her face, chatting with her mate about how perfect things would be when she married Justin Bieber. She lifted the bag higher on her shoulder I saw an Abbey Road sticker on the strap as she headed towards the ferry, the opposite way to the pickpocket.

  I started following her on to the ferry. None of my business. I had to think about my first day back at work, seeing the deskers again. Seeing the hills of Kowloon across the harbour again. Seeing… seeing… Oh bollocks.

  I turned on my heel and fought through the commuters and set off at a run the way the pickpocket had gone. There were still a few minutes before the ferry left. I could confront the thief, get back whatever he had taken, and get back on the boat in time to give it to the pretty Chinese girl. But was I doing the right thing? I remembered a Shrubs story about how these thieves worked in gangs, all controlled by the Triads, with everyone watching everyone else’s back. One guy gets confronted, then three or four of his mates emerge from nowhere with baseball bats. Shouting “stop thief” was as effective as standing arms akimbo an
d pissing in your pants. But there he was in front of me, walking slowly past Diesel’s, his head down. As inconspicuous as could be, the bastard.

  “Stop thief!”

  A few people turned and looked at me. No one stopped, certainly not the thief.

  “Oi, you!”

  I ran up and pulled him round by his shoulder.

  “Stop right there,” I said. “I saw what you did.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  The perfect English was a surprise. “I’m going to report you to the police. I have an ear for faces. If you give me what you took from that girl’s bag, I will let you go. Otherwise…”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “Otherwise, you’re in big trouble. If not for you, rather if not from me, then from the police. I saw what you did. I never forget a face.”

  “You have an ear for faces?”

  “An eye. I have an eye for faces. I saw you.”

  “Well you can search me if you like. But I have nothing on me. I did have a nice iPhone, until I dropped it into my daughter’s bag.”

  “Yeah, right.” The doubts clicked in. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because it’s her birthday. She will find it when I call her after the ferry has left and you have stopped bothering me.”

  “You had your hand in her bag.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “You were giving her a present.”

  “A very expensive present. I hope no one steals it.”

  I looked at my watch. A couple of minutes until the ferry left.

  “You are telling me that you were putting something into her bag. Not taking something out.”

  The man smiled coldly.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I saw what I saw and…”

  “You put two and two together and made four.”

  “Exactly.” I wasn’t going to correct his idiomatic English.

  “Apologies accepted. I guess we’re lucky to have such civic-minded people in our midst.”

  “I am so sorry. So very sorry. Next time I will mind my own business.”

  Swearing under my breath, I ran back the way I came and boarded the ferry just in time. I climbed upstairs into the freezing air-conditioning and made my way to the stern where you could sit outside. Most of the passengers, commuters in suits, were inside with the air-conditioning. But outside with me, I now saw, was the girl with the long pony-tail chatting with her mate. I sat down a couple of rows behind her. She turned and I gave her a knowing smile. She frowned and turned away.

  The girl reached into her bag and I smiled again. I would wish her happy birthday when the journey was over. She fumbled around and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and again caught my eye.

  “What you looking at?” she asked.

  “Nothing, sorry. You’re too young to be smoking.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re too old to be eyeing up schoolgirls.”

  Children these days. If only she knew what I had been through on her behalf. I got up and sat down on the other side of the boat, watching a Macau jetfoil overtake us at speed.

  And then the cry went up.

  “My phone! It’s gone! Someone’s stolen my phone!”

  I turned and saw the girl rummaging through her bag frantically. Two and two did make four after all. The girl was not the only one to get conned.

  In the pickpocketing line of business, it was one of the oldest tricks in the book.

  I RETURNED to my twenty-third floor Hong Kong office for the first time in months. There was something reassuring about settling into the familiar swivel chair, looking out over the glistening harbour and at the hills of Kowloon (Gau Lung, or Nine Dragons) beyond. I checked my bottom drawer. The Black Label was still there.

  “Hadley, I never touched your Scotch.” This was Fagin, a middle-aged Scot and mainstay of the Shrubs Asia-Pacific Desk. A Canadian sub was facing the corner of the room with the least light, bent over double and apparently talking to his feet. An English sub, Marcus, was taking a hammer to the notice board and making a lot of noise and raising a cloud of dust.

  “It’s good to be back, Fagin. I see little has changed.” I nodded in Marcus’s direction. “What is he doing? There’s a limit to how much my head can take of that before I go over and kick him.”

  “He needs to get out more. How’s the casino business?”

  “It’s fun. The croupier bit is fun, anyway. Haven’t made much progress on the story.”

  “Aye, well, it’s good to ha’e ye back.”

  “It’s good to what?”

  “It’s good to ha’e ye back.”

  “Okay. What’s the goss, then? What’s new since I’ve been away?”

  “There’s a new lad, an American. Bit of a fucker, between you and me. Couldn’t spot a story if it crawled up his arse.”

  “The glass is always half full for you, isn’t it, Fagin?”

  “That’s the wee lad over there. He won’t win any awards for sociability either.”

  I followed Fagin’s line of vision and saw a dark, sulky-looking man walking down the side of the room, talking to himself. Then I realised he wasn’t talking to himself. He was talking into a remote plug stuck on his ear like a huge deaf aid. He was walking round the room so everyone in the office could hear him speak. And then, twenty feet behind him, there was an Asian woman, also someone I didn’t know, doing exactly the same thing! She was following in his footsteps. They were like planes circling before being given landing permission. They were walking the walk and talking the talk.

  “What’s his name?”

  “But that will give the whole game away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s Zeb.”

  “You’re kidding. Zeb Shrubs?”

  Fagin smiled. “The very same.”

  Zeb was the grandson of the long dead founder of the agency, an American called Josh Shrubs. Zeb was famous for being a complete fuckwit interior designer who did too many party drugs and was once arrested for dealing cocaine, though charges were dropped. He slouched from one no-good job to another and the only reason he was here, I guessed, was that Shrubs was doing the family a favour. Black sheep Zeb had no background in journalism.

  “Between you me,” Fagin said. “He’s a bit of a political hot potato.”

  I turned. “A political hot potato?”

  “Now I know it’s you,” Fagin said, grinning. “That was a wee tease. To see if you still had your testicles.”

  “That was brilliant, Fagin. Thanks. Who’s the woman?”

  “Someone new on the econ side. Don’t know.”

  The hammering stopped and Marcus returned to his desk, waving in my direction and giving me a wan smile. “Hadley,” he said.

  “Marcus.”

  The trained journalist at his most alert. Wired to the world around him. Marcus sat down, slumped forward in his seat, put his hands in his pockets, looked up at the ceiling and whistled tunelessly. It was a sight to behold. But it was a very comforting sight to behold. . I slag off Shrubs at every opportunity, but what we get pretty much right is that we are anonymous. Generally speaking, we are not prima donnas. We do all the dirty work, the newspapers and packagers pay for our stories, they give them to their reporters who usually can’t improve on them but nevertheless put their bylines on top. It’s the way of the world.

  Baxter appeared from nowhere, his hands in his trouser pockets.

  “Great to see you Hadley. You can help us out immediately.”

  “With what?” I said shaking his hand.

  “I want your opinion. I want to see your eyes pop out of their sockets. It’s the Four Floors. You can’t believe what the bureau has done to the story.”

  “What’s the story? Is it a great story?”

  Every respectable journalist working in Asia knew the Four Floors in Singapore. By day it was full of electronic shops and travel agents and other grey and dusty businesses with stickers in the windows. By night, it was famous for four floor
s of bars with names like Top Five and Crazy Horse and the assortment of lady boys and Filipina, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian hookers.

  “Of course it’s a great story. The Four Floors of Whores are up for sale. But the bar owners don’t want any part of it. It’s a story that writes itself.”

  “Sure.”

  “Look what the bureau has done with it.”

  Baxter handed over a print-out. The headline set the tone perfectly: “Singapore building up for sale.”

  “An office building on Singapore’s famed shopping street of Orchard Road is up for sale, property dealers said on Friday.”

  “This is awful.”

  “Read on.”

  “The office block, which is home to offices and light entertainment establishments, as well as many apartments, a pharmacy, a supermarket and roomy car parks, has been a feature of Orchard Road ever since it was built in the mid-nineteen seventies.”

  “Light entertainment? I can’t read this, Rodney.”

  “Of course you can’t read it. How can anyone read it when the bureau doesn’t even know how to fucking write it? I’d like to stick a supermarket up his roomy car park…”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “New bloke. English. Telecoms correspondent.”

  “Well, didn’t you suggest he should spice it up a bit? Explain why anyone would be interested?”

  “I did. Light entertainment, my arse. I told him to tell the story like he would tell a friend in the pub. I don’t think he even knew the story, the precious fucker. I don’t think he has any friends. But he went ahead anyway. I told him this was a colour story. All we needed was the colour. Take a look at this.” Baxter handed over another print-out.

  “An off-cream office building with dark brown window frames on Singapore’s famed, black tarmac-coloured shopping street of Orchard Road is up for sale, property dealers said on Friday.”