The Fireman

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘Hi. How are you?’

  ‘All the better for hearing from you. How’s the face?’

  ‘Only hurts when I laugh,’ I said. I always seemed to be using cliches with her. She made me nervous. ‘Seriously. I’m healing nicely. I’m going to China.’

  ‘You’ll hate it,’ she said. ‘When?’

  ‘Today.’

  ‘Have you got a visa?’

  ‘A friend is going to fix one up for me.’

  ‘Is it business or pleasure? Cancel that, stupid question. Nobody but nobody goes to China for pleasure. How long will you be away?’

  ‘A day or two at most. I’m following in Sally’s footsteps.’

  ‘Well take care. And call me when you get back.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, pleased by her concern. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

  ‘Anything,’ she said, and she sounded as if she meant it, as if I was a friend she’d known for years.

  ‘Can you get hold of Dennis Lai and ask him to see if any of Sally’s files were about diamonds. Diamond prices, diamond supplies, diamond mining. Especially diamonds in China.’

  ‘OK, sounds very mysterious.’

  ‘Could be something, could be nothing. I’ll explain when I get back.’

  ‘OK, bye for now.’ I was the one to hang up first.

  Tod was early or I was late, because when I arrived at the ferry terminal he was looking in a bookshop window. He saw my reflection and turned to give me a half-wave. He was wearing baggy linen trousers and a white shirt without a collar and he was carrying a small red nylon rucksack.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked, looking at my suit. I didn’t look so bad. At least my FCC tie looked clean and new.

  ‘Only outfit I’ve got,’ I said. ‘Did you get the tickets?’

  He raised the bag. ‘All arranged,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ll go second class.’

  He took me to the turnstiles and gave me a bronze-coloured coin to drop in the slot. At the far end of the walkway was a traffic light, red and green but no amber. As we walked the green light winked off, the red light came on and a hooter bellowed. Seligman walloped me on the shoulder and shouted ‘Run’. We rushed through a green-painted metal barrier just before it closed and down to the lower deck of the departing ferry. Seconds after we had sat down on a hard wooden bench gasping for breath the ramp was raised by a Chinese boy in a dark blue sailor’s outfit pulling hard on a thick hemp rope.

  Three-quarters of the bench space was taken up, mainly by middle-aged ladies with bags of shopping and old men reading Chinese newspapers.

  ‘The tourists are upstairs,’ grinned Seligman. ‘This is one of the best views in Hong Kong,’ he added, nodding towards the towers of Central. I’d seen it before from the Hong Kong Bank’s junk, but I made all the right appreciative noises. While the ferry chugged across the harbour Seligman prattled on like a demented tour guide, frequency of trips, number of passengers, how cheap it was, how profitable, how it was ultimately owned by Sir Y. K. Pao’s family firm which also ran the trams that clattered through the main streets of Hong Kong island. I let it wash over me, at least I didn’t have to speak, there was no conversation to join in, just a one-way flow of information.

  The seven-minute crossing ended when the ferry bumped into the huge wooden beams of the Kowloon terminal. The sailor released the rope, the ramp thumped down and we joined the flood of passengers that poured into the terminal. Packed together as we were, it didn’t seem particularly crowded because Seligman and I were a head taller than most of the crowd. We swept through the building and out onto the pavement like a river widening into a lake.

  The crowds were too thick to walk side by side so I followed in his wake, past shop windows crammed with televisions, videos and expensive electronic toys. Every second shop seemed to sell cameras, and the rest sold watches. There was a scattering of fashion shops, but nowhere sold food or drink or household stuff. The area was mainly for tourists and it was full of them, mostly middle-aged, overweight and sweating like pale-skinned pigs. The only customers inside the shops seemed to be tourists sitting on stools while assistants flitted around them like moths about a flame, pulling equipment from boxes, offering to do them a deal, latest model, best price.

  None of the goods in the windows had prices on them, and the shoppers were doing their best to haggle in pidgin English, no matter where they came from. Walking past the open doorways it sounded like a United Nations economics conference, with British, American, Japanese, French and German accents all spouting numbers and discounts.

  We crossed a main road and ducked under bamboo scaffolding that crawled over a modern shopping centre that was having its signs repainted. No space was wasted; even the alleys between the tall buildings were lined with open air shops, small barrows selling T-shirts with ‘I love Hong Kong’ or compact discs or toiletries. In front of a hi-tech computer shop an old man had set up his shoe-shine business, squatting next to a line of well-used brushes and cans of Kiwi polish as a customer stood with one foot on a small wooden box. The old man leant forward, spat noisily onto the gold-buckled shoe, and then vigorously worked in the saliva and polish with a yellow dust cloth.

  ‘This is it,’ said Seligman, and led me through a shopping arcade to a lift lobby.

  ‘What’s this place called again?’ I asked him as we waited for a lift to arrive.

  ‘Chung King Mansion,’ he said. ‘It’s a rabbit warren of cheap guesthouses, Indian restaurants, tailors and shops. It’s one of the cheapest places to stay in Hong Kong, so long as you can put up with the rats, insects and bloodstains. There’s usually at least one stabbing here over the weekend.’

  We were joined by a group of Indian teenagers as the lift doors opened and we all crammed in. As the doors began to close a Chinese family, mother, father and three children slipped in and we were shoulder to shoulder as the lift jerked up, a constant shuddering motion that did nothing for my nerves. My nose was about two inches from the head of one of the teenagers and the smell of spices and garlic on top of the aftershave and sweat was playing havoc with my stomach. I looked at Seligman and grimaced. The lift juddered to a halt, the Chinese family squeezed out and then we were off again. There was a typewritten certificate Sellotaped above the panel of floor buttons saying that the lift and its safety mechanisms had been inspected two months earlier and I wondered who had looked after the inspector’s guide dog while he’d checked this one over. Seligman and I got out on the ninth floor and he took me down a dingy corridor to a door with frosted glass. Beyond was a small waiting room with half a dozen blue plastic bucket seats facing a wall in which was set a small serving hatch. The American took my passport and handed it along with his to the man sitting on the other side of the hatch. He passed through a handful of red notes and then asked me if I had two photographs of myself. I did, in my wallet, and I gave them to him. They too went through the hole in the wall.

  ‘Now we wait,’ he said, and we sat and watched the hatch. Not a lot happened for an hour and a half during which time Seligman did little else but talk, about his college days, how much he loved China, the politics of Hong Kong, where you could get the best Peking duck (I asked him if that was Cockney rhyming slang but he didn’t seem to have a sense of humour) and where the best hi-fi bargains were to be had. Time dragged. A young couple, Germans or Dutch, I couldn’t tell which, came in and handed their passports and money through the hatch and then sat down and began talking together quietly. I was just toying with the idea of introducing them to Seligman so that I could leave the three of them to it when a hand appeared in the hatchway clutching our passports. Seligman took them, spoke to the man in Chinese and then we left.

  ‘How does he do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Get the visas so quickly?’

  ‘Normally you go to China Travel Service but the little guy back there has a cousin or something in the visa department. Saves a lot of time. Hong
Kong’s built on the principle of it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Or even better, who you’re related to.’ He flagged down a taxi and we drove to the airport, getting there just half an hour before the Dragonair flight was due to leave for Shanghai.

  Shanghai airport was basic, surly immigration officials, clumps of inert porters and damp-eyed relatives. It was missing a few things, like signs pointing to the exit, but Seligman knew which way to go. Outside it was every bit as hot and clammy as Hong Kong, and I took my jacket off and slung it over my shoulder. We walked alongside the terminal building and turned right, across a grass strip to a line of four hangars. All were empty. The American spotted a mechanic in oil-smeared blue overalls and he went over to speak to him. I stayed in the shade while Seligman got into an animated conversation, pulling out his wallet, waving notes around and at one point seizing the man by his shoulder. It didn’t seem to be doing much good because the mechanic kept on shaking his head and shrugging.

  Eventually he gave up and walked back.

  ‘No can do,’ he said. ‘All charters are out and they won’t be free for the next two days.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘How long will it take by road?’

  ‘To Ningbo? Three and a half hours, maybe four.’

  ‘What about hiring a car?’

  ‘We could, but I’m not sure of the way.’

  ‘Let’s take a taxi then.’

  ‘I doubt if one of the airport taxis will want to go all that way. I’ll ask, though.’

  We went back to the taxi rank and when we had reached the head of the queue Seligman stuck his head through the passenger window and spoke to the driver. When he pulled his head back out he was smiling. ‘He says he has a cousin who’ll take us. Get in.’

  The air-conditioning was full on and my temperature soon got back to normal. Shanghai was noisy and dirty and packed with people and cars. There were none of the tall glistening skyscrapers that gave Hong Kong its impressive skyline, just grubby store buildings that looked more like Aberdeen than how I’d imagined a Chinese city would be. The cars were constantly honking at each other and swerving to avoid pedestrians who were forced off the mobbed pavements and into the rubbish-littered gutters. We drove alongside a river that was every bit as busy as the roads, with barges, steamers and pleasure boats all jostling for space among the floating garbage.

  I made the mistake of asking Seligman what the river was called and he launched into a geography and history lesson, starting from its beginnings as a fishing village on the Huangpu River in 262 BC and working up to its present fourteen million population. I lost interest when BC became AD. God, he could be a boring fart at times.

  He was giving me a breakdown on the twelve urban districts when we stopped in front of a rundown garage with an old-fashioned petrol pump in front of it, like a sentry on guard duty. Our driver sounded his horn three or four times and a wooden door creaked open to reveal a worried-looking middle-aged Chinese, bare-chested and wearing the bottom half of a green track suit. The door he’d opened led to a workshop with a table full of car parts and tools.

  Seligman paid off the taxi and began talking to the garage owner. Again there seemed to be a lot of head shaking and shrugging and I was expecting the worst until Seligman turned to me and said, ‘He said he’ll take us, it’s just a matter of how much we pay him.’

  ‘Whatever he wants,’ I said, impatiently.

  ‘That would take all the fun out of it, for both of us,’ he said, placing his rucksack on the ground. They argued fiercely for a few minutes and then the deal was obviously done because the American turned round and gave me the thumbs up.

  ‘Way to go,’ he said. ‘He says he’ll drive us, but he wants his brother to come as back up. The two of them will take it in turns.’

  ‘Can we leave now?’

  ‘Straight away. By the way, his name’s Wah-yim, his brother’s called Elvis.’

  ‘Elvis?’

  Wah-yim shouted into the workshop and Seligman didn’t have to explain because the boy who came out carrying the top half of the track suit was obviously Elvis. His hair was lacquered into a backswept quiff that bobbed as he walked and he’d been trying to grow sideburns but without much success. His jeans were skin-tight and over a white T-shirt he wore a black leather jacket with the collar up, like something out of Rebel Without A Cause. As he threw the track suit top to his brother the sun glinted on the lines of chrome studs that spelt out ‘ELVIS’ on his back. The kid had style all right. He was chewing gum and trying to sneer at the same time as Wah-yim explained the deal to him.

  They led us through the workshop and out into a courtyard beyond, where chickens pecked at the floor, a pig wallowed happily in a mud bath and an old dust-covered Mercedes Benz estate sat in the sun and brooded.

  It looked like a clapped out pile of scrap in a breaker’s yard but the tyres had plenty of tread on them and the engine started first time when Wah-yim turned the key. The exhaust came out black for a few seconds and then the engine purred quietly while Elvis opened a pair of wooden gates that cut the yard off from the road.

  The chickens scattered noisily as Wah-yim guided the car out. Seligman and I walked by the side and Elvis closed the gates behind us. Wah-yim set the wipers going and jetted water onto the windscreen until the dust became mud smears and then disappeared. Elvis took a couple of red metal petrol cans and a tin funnel out of the back of the car and took them to the pump, returning five minutes later smelling of petrol. The cans and funnel went back into the car, next to a crate of local beer and cartons of Marlboro cigarettes.

  Elvis got into the front passenger seat and shoved a cassette into the player as Seligman and I slid into the back. The real Elvis began belting out of four speakers that You ain’t nothing but a hound dog. Our Elvis began backcombing his quiff with a steel comb while Seligman lay back and closed his eyes as he tapped out the tune with his fingers against the door. And you ain’t no friend of mine.

  It took about ten minutes to drive out of the city and we were soon on a four-lane road that cut across the countryside through flat fields and sparse woods. Elvis turned round in his seat and pointed at the crate of beer in the back and I handed a couple of bottles to him. He smashed off the metal caps on the dashboard and handed one to Wah-yim before draining his in two swallows. He dropped the empty bottle on the floor and then settled back in his seat and was soon snoring loudly. I dozed in and out of sleep for two and a half hours until the car turned sharply to the left and the hypnotic vibration of the tarmac road was replaced with the rough rumble of a cobbled road that wound its way between two granite-topped hills. Seligman opened his eyes and rubbed the sleep out of them like a small boy. ‘Nearly there,’ he said. Elvis was still snoring, his knees wedged up against the dashboard. Wah-yim spoke to him a couple of times, but getting no reply he banged him on the top of his head with his fist.

  Elvis shot upright in his seat, his hands reaching for his head, and he yelled at the driver. I couldn’t understand the words but I got the drift – ‘Lay off the hair, sonny, or you’ll be eating hospital food for a month.’ He began pampering his quiff as if he was preparing a Yorkshire terrier for its first show.

  When he was satisfied he gestured for another two bottles of beer. He smashed them open but this time made to keep them both until Wah-yim grabbed him by the ear and pulled hard. Elvis thrust one of the bottles at him and grinned.

  The air was thick with the smell of beer and sweat and fumes from the petrol-filled cans behind us so I wound down the window and sucked in some warm air from outside, though as we were driving past a sprawling pig farm at the time it wasn’t much of an improvement.

  The road we were on linked a series of small villages like pearls on a chain, and as we drove through children and dogs would watch us go past. One small boy scraped a stick alongside the Merc as Wah-yim slowed to let a sunbathing dog haul itself to its feet and amble off. Wah-yim yelled at the boy and the boy screamed back and the dog barked. It re
minded me of the Gorbals.

  Seligman was fully awake now and looking intently through the side window. ‘There’s a turn off somewhere near here,’ he explained. ‘It’s very easy to miss.’ We were rattling through rice fields now, women in circular straw hats standing knee deep in brackish water were doing something with wooden hoes but they were too far away for me to see what. Seligman pointed and spoke to the driver in Chinese and we turned off the cobbled road onto a raised mud track that cut between two massive fields. Looking sideways gave the illusion of the car driving across the surface of the water as it lurched from pothole to pothole. Wah-yim slowed right down but even so the rear wheels kept sliding as they lost traction on the slippery surface. Elvis wound down his window and threw his empty bottles out one by one, doing his best to hit the farmers but all he managed to do was splash a young girl with pigtails that reached to her waist. She stood glaring at the car, her hands defiantly on her hips, and it was obvious even at a distance that she was cursing us loudly. Elvis threw his head back and laughed, and then waggled his leg out of the window.

  After half a mile or so we slid down off the track and back onto another cobbled road, this time a single track that twisted and turned through hills dotted with spindly ill-nourished trees.

  Seligman leant across and tapped the driver on the shoulder and we slowed to a halt.

  ‘Why here?’ I asked.

  ‘The site is about a mile further along this track, but we can get a better view from the top of this hill.’

  We left Elvis and Wah-yim opening another couple of bottles and lighting cigarettes, oblivious to the smell of petrol.

  The hill wasn’t too steep, but even so I had to reach forward with my hands in a few places to steady myself. Sir Edmund Hillary I’m not, and I gave up any exercise that involves wearing shorts when I was eighteen so I took it slowly, while Seligman scampered up to the top. He looked the sort who’d do five hundred push-ups every morning before taking an icy shower. I could have kept up with him if I wasn’t still feeling the effects of the kick in the stomach. That’s what I told myself anyway.