A Killing Air

by Nigel Price

  Once past, Harry and Lisa heard the woman hurrying away from them. The child asked her something. She snapped a reply and jostled him to safety, away from the marauders who only ever brought trouble.

  By the time they reached Herbert’s floor, Harry and Lisa had started to suspect that something might not be quite as before. They stopped dead outside the entrance. The door to Herbert’s apartment had been smashed clean off its hinges. A monstrous crack ran the length of it from top to bottom. The frame itself had splintered and hung off the surrounding brickwork.

  “Good God,” Harry murmured.

  Before he could stop her, Lisa pushed past him and entered the apartment. He followed close behind. He dropped his holdall. His hands were ready, expecting trouble. The room was empty. All of them were. The pitiful kitchen had been ransacked, as had the entire place. Furniture was upended and smashed. The chairs they had sat on were in pieces. The table too. In Herbert’s tiny bedroom his mattress had been shredded as if by a tiger, maddened by confinement.

  “We should never have come to see him,” Lisa said. Harry could tell that she was fighting back tears. “We should not have involved him in this.”

  “We still don’t know what this is,” Harry remarked.

  “Ryder Chau. That’s what this is.” She said the name through clenched teeth. “It reeks of him.”

  “I get the impression you don’t like the fellow.”

  She glared at him. Answer enough.

  Harry sighed. “So where’s Herbert? In jail?”

  “If he’s lucky,” Lisa answered.

  “Surely they wouldn’t be so stupid as to kill him? A lawyer well known for his work against corruption? That would be dumb.”

  “Not dumb. Arrogant. Which is exactly what they are.”

  Harry thought of Clive Miller. Arrogant summed up the man nicely. He could only presume his boss was cut from the same cloth.

  In the absence of a chair Harry leaned on the windowsill. “Okay. No Herbert.” He looked at Lisa. Her expression was stern. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “The village?”

  “Yes. We need to go back and find that woman. See what she wanted. I think that will answer our questions.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “We need a car. Is there a hire car office anywhere that you know of?”

  The answer came from the doorway. “You can have mine.” Their heads snapped round. Herbert Zhu stood in the doorway. His face was a mess. Both eyes were bruised, one lip split. A swelling darkened a cheek and he carried himself with care when he moved into the room.

  “Herbert, what on earth happened?” Lisa rushed to him. She wanted to help him to a chair but there weren’t any. Just matchwood.

  “The police happened,” he replied in his soft voice. Through the bruises Harry could tell that he was smiling.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lisa gabbled. “We are responsible for this.”

  He waved aside her apology. “Nonsense. Not at all. Only the authorities are responsible. No one else.”

  “What happened?” Harry asked.

  “They wanted to know what the two of you had wanted here.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. Which is why they did this,” he answered, indicating his face. “I said I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Are they watching the apartment now?” Lisa asked, frightened. Instinctively she moved away from the window as if expecting a sniper’s shot to ring out and drill her through the temple.

  “No. They have gone. You went to Ryder Chau?”

  “We were picked up by his western assistant,” Lisa said.

  Herbert smiled sourly. “Clive Miller. A nasty piece of work. I’m sorry to be so rude about a compatriot of yours, Harry.”

  Harry waved it aside. “Don’t apologise. I agree with you wholeheartedly. The man’s a pretentious creep.”

  Herbert chuckled. “Lovely phrase. I did think so. I heard one of the policemen say something to a colleague about your visit to the villa. I expect they are content that with Miller on the case, so to speak, they can forget about me for the moment. They will think they have taught me a lesson.” He shrugged. “They do so from time to time. Then I am left alone until they next come calling.”

  He went into his kitchen and surveyed the police handiwork. “You can be grateful that in your country the security services are not like ours. Yours have to obey the rule of law. And in your country the courts are independent of the government. Not so here,” he concluded sadly. “Ours are just thugs and bullies.”

  He picked one or two items from the floor. The cupboards had been emptied of their meagre contents. “I’m afraid I am unable to offer you tea.”

  The room had grown darker. Harry looked up at the sky. “Looks like we might be in for rain. Perhaps we should get going.” Herbert came back into the room and started hunting around for his car keys amongst the strewn detritus of his belongings. He found them under some cushions that had been disembowelled. Harry stopped him. “Herbert, listen. I don’t think you’re in any fit state to drive.” He squared off in front of him and squinted into his face. “Your eyes are almost closed.”

  Herbert managed a grin. “Nonsense. This is how I always look. It’s a Chinese characteristic.” He chuckled hugely at his own joke. Harry joined in out of politeness. “I remember that quip of your Duke of Edinburgh when he visited our country. Something about ‘slitty eyes’.”

  “We try to forget it,” Harry said.

  “You shouldn’t be so sensitive. He was a breath of fresh air. While others tiptoe around being so polite but insincere, he just said what he thought.”

  “And got into trouble for it.”

  “Well … what can I say?”

  They left it there. Herbert hefted his car keys in his hand, looking around for anything else to salvage. He found a coat and a briefcase. Empty. He put on the coat and tossed the briefcase into a corner. “Let’s go.”

  When they exited the block Harry looked around, checking every parked car, every loitering pedestrian, every overlooking window. From that quick examination he thought Herbert might be right. The police were not obviously watching them. And Lisa was right about the arrogance. Had they been watching, Harry felt sure they would have wanted to be seen. To make a point.

  “This way.” Herbert led them along the road, his rapid, bird-like steps reminding Harry of a moorhen, each stride a little too long for his legs. His head nodded on its slender stalk in time with his pace. He was skin and bone, his clothes little more than rags. To Harry they might as well have been shining armour.

  Herbert’s car came as no surprise. It was as smashed about as his flat, though not by the police. Harry suspected that Herbert was not the most proficient of drivers. The age of the car no doubt also had much to do with its dilapidated state.

  At first Harry had trouble identifying the model. It was something Japanese. A Nissan Bluebird. When they got in, noisily wrenching open the ill-fitting doors, Harry saw that it was an ex-taxi, retired from service and flogged to Herbert after a long, long life of hard labour on Chinese roads. The seats were lifeless buckets. A strange smell pervaded the interior. Rust had eaten holes in the floor through which he could see the road. It was a far cry from Clive Miller’s BMW X6M. The journey this time would not be in such comfort. The company, on the other hand, would be considerably more enjoyable.

  The sky grew darker still and it wasn’t long before the first raindrops smashed themselves to smithereens against the windscreen. Herbert turned on the wipers. Both blades were badly worn and did a poor job of keeping a clear view ahead. Herbert leaned forward, hunching over the steering wheel. The rain was soon coming down with such force that it bounced off the tarmac like ricocheting machine gun fire. Water was coming in through the holes in the floor.

  The windows started to mist up. “I’m afraid the heater doesn’t work,” Herbert said by way of explanation.

  O
ut of the city, the car rumbled along the same roads that Clive Miller had taken. Here and there Harry recognised the occasional landmark. It was going to take much longer. They might be pushed for time to get there and back before nightfall. Harry doubted there were any hotels or guest houses anywhere near the village. It could be a long cold uncomfortable night. He wasn’t sure he trusted Herbert or the car to drive in darkness.

  The road began to climb. Farmsteads appeared and rolled by. Few people were out in the storm. Then the lightning started. Harry checked Lisa was okay in the back. She managed a brave smile.

  “Do you know how many people die on Chinese roads each year?” she asked.

  Harry didn’t.

  “Neither does anyone. They stop counting, the figure gets so high. But it is around a quarter of a million. Deaths. Each. Year.”

  “Thanks for that, Lisa.”

  “You’re welcome. And of course the number of injured and maimed is much higher. Each. Year.”

  “Thanks again.”

  A lightning bolt fractured the sky directly overhead, followed immediately by booming thunder. Harry felt it through the floor. Herbert was staring grimly ahead. He flicked a switch. The wipers momentarily sped. Then stopped altogether. He pulled the car over to the side of the road. There was a blast from a klaxon and a truck that had been following veered around them, narrowly avoiding a rear-end collision.

  “I don’t think we can just sit here,” Harry offered helpfully.

  “Just a minute,” Herbert replied. He was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Passing the time. “Okay,” he said, when a few moments had elapsed. He flicked the switch again. The wipers juddered into life, but at an even more pedestrian pace than before. Nonetheless, between each pass across the windscreen, they gave sufficient glimpses of the road to enable Herbert to set off again. He navigated as if sailing a dinghy. Peering into the dense spray, tacking to and fro across his side of the road.

  Harry heard laughter from the rear seat. Lisa was in stitches. “I think we are all going to die.”

  “I’m glad you find it so funny.”

  “Well at least the police are unlikely to track us in this. They’ll be nice and snug in their station. Drinking tea.”

  Harry sincerely hoped so.

  It was a long while before the car started up the last incline leading to the village. Harry recognised an arched bridge over a stream adjacent to the road. It looked like something out of a classical Chinese painting. Now it was only used by pedestrians. The road that had once been new, had by-passed it long ago. It stood there as a symbol of an ancient kingdom, long gone. Yet the new China had done little to replace it this far out in the countryside. So far. While the cities had grown at a phenomenal rate, impressing the world with the speed of their development, the countryside was much as it had been for more than a thousand years. Peasants scratched out their poor living. Most of the young men and women left to flock to the cities in search of work, leaving behind the old people. Infants too. Except in Mrs Yan’s village. Where there were none.

  The car stopped. The engine died. Herbert applied the handbrake, yanking on it until it seemed he would pull it from its mounting. They had arrived. Through the rain-gushing window panes, the three occupants peered out at the water-blurred buildings standing off from the square. Not surprisingly there didn’t seem to be anyone out and about. It looked like an underwater ghost town.

  “So what now?” Lisa said. She leaned forward, elbows on the front seats. “Wait for the rain to stop?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to,” Herbert replied. “Look.” He pointed across the square. Visible through the water sluicing down the windscreen, a lone figure was making its way towards the car. To get a better look, he turned on the wipers. They made a single pass across their field of vision. The figure was that of an old man. In one hand he held a black umbrella. The wind caught at it, trying to turn it inside out. Each time it did so he stopped and wrestled with it, getting soaked in the process. Harry stared hard, wondering why the man was having such trouble controlling the thing. It was more than the wind and rain. It was because his other hand was also holding something. It looked like a cup. Or a book.

  The wipers did another pass of the windscreen. It was a gun.

  Twenty Four

  Herbert turned the ignition key. The engine coughed like an old smoker. Even after the long drive the battery sounded as if it had been standing unused for a year. He tried again. Weaker still. Harry put his hand on Herbert’s. “Leave it.”

  The old man was getting closer. He shouted something. No one in the car could make it out. The shout came again.

  “I think he’s telling us to go,” Herbert said.

  “That’s a polite way of translating it,” Lisa added.

  Harry was more concerned about the gun. It was a pistol. Now the man was closer he could make it out more clearly. “He’s aiming at us,” Harry observed calmly.

  “Look how his arm’s waving around,” Lisa said. “I don’t think he could hit anything.”

  “But does the gun know that? Any old fool can get lucky.” Harry opened his door. Rain blasted into the car.

  “What are you going to do?” Herbert asked.

  “Show him the error of his ways.” Harry got out. The old man was thirty yards off. Harry ran in a wide arc towards him. The old man’s extended arm tracked him away from the car. A blast of wind snatched at the umbrella, ripping it from his grasp. Harry saw his moment. He charged straight in. As he did so, he bent low like a rugby player going for a tackle. In the final yards the old man’s arm found the aim and pointed directly at him. Harry braced for the impact of the shot.

  The gun went off as Harry slammed into the firer. He swept his arm up and under the old man’s wrist, knocking the gun aside. He felt the blast of the shot hot on his face. The noise was a detonation in his ear, setting his head ringing. Locked together, the two men went sprawling in the water-logged mud.

  There was the sound of running feet. Harry lifted his head, dazed. Lisa and Herbert were beside him. He felt them pulling him to his feet. Next to him the old man was trying to pick himself up.

  The gun. Where was the gun? Harry saw it at the same time as the old man. It lay where it had been flung, several feet away. They both scrambled after it. Harry got to it first and snatched it up. The old man sat back in the mud and glared at him. Rain lashed against them.

  “We have to get out of this. Find shelter,” Lisa called above the noise of the wind.

  “This way.” Herbert had seen a door open, inquisitive faces peering out at them. Harry checked the pistol. A Type 77, same as the policeman’s in Beijing. Nothing remarkable about that. It had been the standard side arm of the People’s Liberation Army and police forces for decades. He pressed the safety stud home and slipped it into his jacket pocket, the old man’s eyes following his every move.

  “Get up,” Harry said in Chinese. He gripped the man by the elbow and half-helped, half-dragged him to his feet. “This way.” Together with the others he went towards the open door, leaning into the lashing rain.

  There were three women crowded in the doorway. As they saw the little group approach they shouted at them, waving fiercely for them to go away. Herbert replied to them, calling through the wind. They screamed back at him. Herbert stopped. Turned to Harry. “I don’t think we are very welcome here.”

  “No kidding.” Undeterred, Harry pushed the old man ahead of him towards the house. At the doorway he thrust him inside, forcing his way past the women who fell back, shouting but frightened. Lisa and Herbert came in behind him, slamming the door shut, the wind and rain trying to follow them inside.

  They stamped the mud and water from their shoes and clothes. Harry projected the old man into a chair. “Stay,” he commanded. The old man got the message and sat there glowering up at the newcomers. One of the three women stepped forward and let rip with a burst of outrage. The man in the chair smirked.

  Then another woman
who had hung at the back of the three said something quietly. The old man snapped at her. Instantly she was silent and shrank back.

  “What did she say?” Harry asked.

  None of them had caught it. Herbert asked her to repeat it. The old man stared his message at her. She deferred to him silently and remained quiet, head down.

  “Tell her not to mind about this old bugger,” Harry said.

  Herbert did so. The woman looked up uncertainly, wanting to speak. Her two friends closed in on either side of her, whispering furiously. She shrank into silence again.

  Harry noticed a side room. “Watch him,” he said to Lisa, steering her towards the old man. “If he makes one move, shout.” He took the brow-beaten woman gently by the arm and led her into the next room. Her companions tried to follow. Harry stopped and faced them. “Back,” he commanded. Reluctantly they did so. “Herbert, come too.”

  Alone with the terrified woman, Harry got Herbert to ask her to repeat what she had said. From the far room one of the other women called out.

  “Shut up!” Harry yelled. He turned back to the woman. But the threat had struck home. She stared glumly at the floor and wouldn’t open her mouth. Herbert tried, with the same result.

  “She’s frightened,” he said. “She knows that we will go in a little while. Then the others will punish her for speaking to us.”

  The woman heard what he said and looked up. Her face remained a blank but Harry could see the struggle in her eyes. She looked around, towards a filthy window. Almost imperceptibly she jerked her chin towards it.

  “What’s she pointing at?” Harry asked.

  “I don’t know.” Herbert moved to the window. With a corner of his coat tail he rubbed a hole in the grease and dirt. Looked through it. There were no buildings in that direction. He looked back at the woman. Her eyes were glaring into his. Her chin jerked again.