by Nigel Price
A Killing Air
Nigel Price
© Nigel Price 2018
Nigel Price has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
Thirty Nine
Forty
Forty One
Forty Two
Forty Three
Forty Four
Forty Five
Forty Six
Forty Seven
Forty Eight
Forty Nine
Fifty
Fifty One
Fifty Two
Fifty Three
Fifty Four
For Bluebell
One
He knew that sound. Fists hitting stuff. Probably a body. It was more muffled than a punch bag. Less thwack. This was deliberate too. Not the frenzied series that would indicate the onset of a fight, accompanied by strained grunts and foot shuffling. This was the concentrated working over of someone. Thud. Pause. Thud. Longer pause. Thud.
He stopped in his tracks. Stood where he was, considering. He was a long way from the hotel. His head had been a mess when he had walked out. But then it had been a mess for ages. Too long to tell. Or care.
He glanced over his shoulder, checking the way he had come. The broken pavement invited him back. All would be forgiven. Nothing to lose. Some yards away it disappeared into the darkness that stank of petrol fumes, then reappeared some way beyond that where the sickly pallor of a streetlamp exposed it like a flasher opening his mac.
Thud. What to do? Thud.
Go back. The voice in his head spoke calmly but firmly. Turn round. This is nothing to do with you. Your fighting days are over. You’re in enough trouble as it is.
He took a step forward. The path he found himself on continued for a further ten yards, then dipped down and round into an underpass, cutting beneath the airport motorway that buzzed with intermittent traffic even at this lost hour. A moment later he was at the sharp concrete edge. He took a deep breath, despairing at the motivation that propelled him, failing to understand it yet again. Moth to flame.
There they were. Pretty much as he had imagined. About thirty yards away towards the further end of the underpass, two thugs and their piece of meat, the sounds of their industry magnified by the walls of the concrete tunnel. Their backs were to him. The body they were working on seemed to be propped against the wall. Perhaps his coat was hooked on something, holding him semi-upright. Yes, that must be it.
Shit, shit, shit! He cursed himself for a fool. Images of his hotel room popped like champagne corks, celebrating the uncomplicated return he could have made. Instead he took another breath and launched himself forward, moving swiftly but steadily, avoiding a run. As he did so, his hands withdrew from his pockets like a brace of pistols. His jacket was buttoned against the cold. It wouldn’t obstruct him. His shoulders lowered, head too, eyes looking up from under his brow like the fighter he had been all those years ago. Another age. Another life. This was stupid. But too late now. His approach had been sensed. The closest of the two thugs started to turn.
Harry closed the final yard and slammed a fist into the side of the man’s head. His aim was good. He felt the impact, the full satisfying jar of it. The man’s partner spun, shock registering on his thin, mean features. Another Harry-punch fired at him, a straight this time, setting him up, followed by a savage right hook. A real haymaker. Everything behind it.
But these weren’t youngsters. No opportunistic muggers. They were adult males, and strong. Already the first of them was struggling back, staggering for balance and swinging a return punch. Harry felt the first twinge of regret at his lost hotel room. The first inkling of self-doubt. Fatal at a time like this. Luckily he knew it and stuffed it back in its box. Slammed the lid on it. He steadied his feet and let rip. One-two. Then again. One-two. The punches told. This time the man went all the way down and stayed there.
Harry spun to the companion and saw him fumbling with something at his trouser belt. Fuck. It was a gun. Who the hell were they? He went in hard then, throwing everything he had at Gun Man. He caught him right in the indecision – whether to use gun or fists. Harry made full use of the opening. He knew he wouldn’t get another. Not with these guys.
A right to the jaw did the job, sending the man to his knees. Then another put him flat on the ground and shut his eyes with a slow exhalation of breath. That was it. A quick check. Yes. Both down. His heart was racing, banging against his ribs like a prison drunk wanting out.
Whatever had been supporting the victim no longer did so. The body sank to the floor, knees going one way, feet and torso the other, head slumping onto the chest. Harry stooped to check for injuries but something shouted for more urgent attention. He hunted around until he saw the dark outline of the gun against the background of the litter-strewn paving slabs. He picked it up. It wasn’t a make he knew. Something local, tinny. A piece of shit, his old sergeant-major would have called it. Probably a Type 77. There was a press-stud safety catch behind the trigger. He pushed it home before stuffing the weapon in his jacket pocket.
He stooped over the crumpled remains of the victim. Put fingers to the throat. The pulse was strong. The man coughed, bringing up blood. He moaned, a strange sound, high and eerie. Harry frowned. Stooped lower. He gripped the man by the lapels of his quilted windcheater, yanking him upright. The head fell back, exposing the face. Harry squinted at it in the stingy light.
The breath caught in his throat. It was a woman. She looked old but it was hard to tell through the darkness, the bruises and the blood. One eye opened and focused on him approximately. The mouth said something. A gurgling in her throat told a story of internal injuries. Her hands came up, grasping at Harry’s jacket, fumbling with it for purchase. He thought twice about helping her stand in her current state, but they could hardly stay where they were. For a moment he considered going for help. Police cars usually patrolled the airport highway overhead. He could flag one down.
A groan from one of her assailants sounded a warning. They wouldn’t be out for ever. Harry knew he couldn’t leave her there.
He hauled her upright. Her legs gave way. She retched and he only just managed to shift aside as a thin dribble of vomit erupted down her front. The exit from the underpass stood some yards away. Their progress towards it was an awkward scuttling motion like two crabs locked together. The woman tried to say something. She kept repeating the same thing over and over. Harry couldn’t understand a word of it. He tried to comfort her with assurances. Whatever came into his head. “You’ll be all right.” … “We’ll get you to the police.” … “You’re safe now.” … “We’ll find a hospital.” To himself he mumbled, “What the hell am I doing?�
��
Out of the underpass the track led sharply upwards. There were trees on either side, poor lifeless things dry as bone. Once upon a time they had been planted en masse in an attempt to brighten the prospect of the drive from airport into town. Pollution and long waterless months had made their life a survival hell.
Harry stared hard. Beyond them he could make out a car. There was a road on the other side of the thin plantation. A parked car sat at the kerb. Street lights illuminated the road both in front and behind it, leaving the car itself in shadow. But the outline was clear. He angled towards it, dragging and encouraging the woman along with him. He pointed towards it, indicating their salvation. The thought crossed his mind that it might have belonged to her assailants. So what? There might be keys in the ignition. Failing that, he could hot-wire it. So long as it wasn’t one of the modern types with a push button starter and tedious layers of security.
Every few yards they paused to rest against the trees. The woman’s condition was worsening. Whatever damage the men had done was taking its toll. She needed help soon. A hospital. Did the city have such things? Harry had never had cause to find out, only ever having been a visitor. It must have, surely. In any case, the police would take care of that, just as soon as he had handed her over. Of course her assailants might have recovered by then and made off, but that wasn’t his concern. That would be a problem for the police.
They broke from the tree-line some yards from the parked car. The moment the woman saw it she burst into life. Her strength came as if she was drawing on the last reserves billeted on the brink of exhaustion. She struggled and kicked and groaned. Harry understood. It was her assailants’ car. Perhaps they had brought her in it. Perhaps not a chance encounter between her and the men.
“It’s okay,” he said lamely. “We can use it to get away.” He added, “We can get you to a hospital. Get help.”
He realised she probably couldn’t understand a word he said, just as he couldn’t understand her mutterings. He tried it again in Mandarin, but her dialect was from somewhere way out in the country, thick as a bog. They were like two animals of different species meeting at a water hole on the savannah, stalked by lions. Their cooperation was an attempt to come out of the lethal business alive. He had been in situations like this before, at the dubious fringes where life and death walked arm in arm, mingling with the guilty ease of client and whore.
The closer they got, the more she resisted.
“God’s sake,” Harry protested. “I get it. It’s their car.” He yanked on her arm, closing another yard towards the parked vehicle. “I’m not going to leave you here. We’ll use it to get away.”
For a moment she seemed to understand, surrendering to his greater physical strength. Their eyes met. Through the timeless gloom of the night’s emptiest hours he looked into her face. Saw there the bottomless pit of whatever. Her blank eyes looked back into his, foreign as those of a cat. Communication between the two of them was as hopeless as reaching to touch the moon. Yet somehow there was a communion. Living, sentient beings crossing some cold, blank void and finding one another against the odds.
“Come,” Harry said softly, and led her the final yards to the car.
He tried the door. It opened. He looked inside. On the front passenger seat lay a big blue light. The round black base looked like a magnet. A long coiled wire connected it to the dashboard. Harry frowned, puzzled for only a second. It was a police light. In an unmarked police car. The woman’s attackers were cops.
Oh, thought Harry. Right. He rearranged scraps of thought like ornaments on a shelf, trying to gauge which display best suited. They were all pretty shit.
Foremost among his thoughts: What have I got myself into? He turned to the woman but she was no longer at his side. She leaned against the boot of the low, harmless car. Her face looked blankly at his, her expression as deep and impenetrable as the Mariana Trench.
His hands went instinctively to his jacket pocket, though he already knew he would find it empty. He knew because he could see the pistol in the woman’s hands.
She said something. Harry couldn’t understand. He spoke one version of the language, she another. Also her words were muffled. They were muffled because the barrel of the pistol was in her mouth, her thumb stabbing at the safety.
Harry made one move towards her, his mouth opening like a landed fish choking on air. His supplication and imprecation made it only as far as his lips.
Her eyes were deep in his as her finger tightened on the trigger and she blew her brains out of the back of her head.
Two
The first bite of Scotch was pure balm. He had selected the bottle at Duty Free before leaving Bangkok. Bruichladdich. Liquid fire. You just had to ignore the fact that the ten-year-old malt was the colour of urine. Now, back in the shelter of his hotel room, the door closed and locked, ice in the tumbler and Scotch to the brim, Harry drank deeply and imagined the whole vile escapade had been a dream. Mouthful after mouthful reinforced his suspension of disbelief.
He had left the woman where she had fallen. His open hands had hovered above her for an instant, like a stage magician’s over the assistant he is about to saw in half. It had been one of those moments when you think that by an effort of will you can reverse time. Back it up just a couple of seconds to undo what has been done. Stuff the brains back in the head. What can two harmless seconds do? Surely they can be bypassed? Ignored? How many times had he felt that? But time was a ratchet. And that was that.
So he had backed away. Instinctively he had checked his surroundings. There had been no one within earshot. No one he could see. Then he had run. No pussy-footing around this time. No stealth or guile. Just a headlong flight from the scene. And not back through the underpass. He had assumed the two cops were still down and out but who could tell? His route had taken him parallel to the expressway looking for another underpass. As the minutes had ticked by he had realised it could be miles to the next one. So he had moved up the grassy bank to the road’s edge, checked for a gap in the sparse traffic, then clambered over the crash barrier and sprinted to the far side, repeating the clumsy vault and tumbling down the bank in a tangle of limbs and curses.
When he had drawn near to the hotel, the reception foyer had been a blaze of light but empty. Only behind the desk was there a living soul, head down, buried in some task or other. Thinking it best to avoid notice, Harry had moved round the sides of the building, hunting through the car park until he found a service entrance standing open. A cart full of dirty laundry for collection was propping the door ajar.
The service lift was bare of security cameras. He took it up to his floor, then went swiftly to his room and let himself in. And so to the bottle of Scotch.
He sat deep in an armchair, the refilled tumbler in hands which had briefly shaken, then stopped as suddenly. His mind was surprisingly clear, calmed by the drink. Not yet muddled. What the hell had just happened? Police. Police had killed an old woman. Murdered her. Okay, she had shot herself, but if Harry had not intervened it seemed clear to him that they would have finished the job themselves. As near as damn it.
What the hell had they been pulverising an old woman for? It was madness. Utter madness. Were they police? Perhaps that was just an assumption of Harry’s. But the blue light. Then again, there was something about the woman. Something in her whole attitude and mien. A complete and all-absorbing hopelessness. So much so it had resulted in her suicide. She had known she was up against something unbeatable. There had been no way out for her. No possibility of rescue or escape. Hence her final choice.
Harry regretted not going back to the two fallen men. He could have checked them for identification. If policemen, they would presumably have been carrying some form of ID. He supposed they did that even here in Beijing. But what good would that have done him? He had been to China countless times over the years. More than he cared to remember. He had seen firsthand the changes that had transformed the country. From his first visit back in
the ’90s. It had been like the Wild West in those days. No fin de siècle ennui there. Rather, a burgeoning dynamism as the sleeping dragon bestirred itself. Point was, he knew enough to understand that the police here were not the politically correct, touchy-feely do-gooders of home. The ones here were more akin to a praetorian guard, maintaining the de facto power structures regardless of the public, rather than on their behalf.
So what good would a couple of ID cards do? Did he imagine he would just turn up to a police station and turn them in, together with an account of the night’s proceedings? He would most likely end up in another underpass or prison cell, probably being attended to by the same two cops. And in the same manner as the old woman. And with a similar ending.
Even as a westerner? Surely his status would safeguard him? He smiled, hard and cynical. Not if he had uncovered something underhand. And the near beating to death of an old woman could hardly be described otherwise.
So his only option was to keep quiet? What about the embassy? He could make his way there and spill the beans. And what did he expect would come of that? There’d be a pained expression of sympathy perhaps. Shock and revulsion even. Would they advise him to go and report it to the police? They could hardly be expected to tell him to keep it to himself. They would do what they always did in cases like this – obey the rule book. And what would that dictate? Harry imagined it would have little to do with his own welfare, and more to do with maintaining the status quo. The embassy’s status quo. That was the way it always worked. Do nothing to rock the boat. Respect the ways of the host nation. One thing was certain. The most likely result would be the raising of Harry’s head way, way above the parapet. And he quite liked his head. It was the only one he had. It was going to have to see him out. Hopefully for a long time yet.
A long time. Where had that idea come from, creeping up on him unawares? It stopped him dead. He glanced towards the glass door across the room, the balcony beyond it in darkness. The balcony that earlier in the day had seemed so attractive. The vertiginous drop on the other side of the slender railing luring him like a Siren. It would always invite him. It was no big deal. That too was locked in its box. Harry had a lot of boxes. He shook his head clear and downed another slug of whisky.