A Killing Air

by Nigel Price

  He made tea. When the three of them were seated, Lisa told him everything that had happened. The package lay on the sitting room table in front of them. Harry followed Lisa’s Mandarin as best he could, getting large parts of it, missing others. When she recounted the death of Herbert Zhu, Hans sank his head in his hands.

  “There was nothing we could do,” Harry added. Hans acknowledged it with a pained expression.

  “When this has been resolved I will try to find out what became of Herbert’s body. I will not rest until he has had an honourable burial. He was a good friend. A trusted colleague. I feel partly responsible for putting him in danger.”

  Harry opened the package, pulled out the thick document and showed Hans the sheet on the back. “There,” he said, pointing out the drug. “Xanitol. That’s the medicine that Chau was importing. That’s what he tested on the village kids. That’s what killed them.”

  Hans was thoughtful. “Imported from Japan.” He looked full of revulsion. “Corruption exists in many of the men seeking power and in many of those who have already achieved it. If this is made public it would certainly create trouble for Ryder Chau.”

  “And bring him down, surely?” Harry asked.

  Hans shrugged. “I would hope so. I have a good idea of who I need to show this to, though they’ll be in the city centre, at the Great Hall of the People by now. It might influence decisions being taken.”

  Harry was incredulous. “It has to, surely?”

  “Harry, this is China,” Lisa said. “Hans has just said, lots of them are at it. Chau just got unlucky trialling a drug that—”

  “That wiped out the children of a whole village,” he finished for her. “And the fact he then tried to buy their silence, and when one of them, an old woman, wouldn’t accept, his thugs beat her half to death in an underpass. All to shut her up. That’ll hardly endear the people to him.”

  Hans put a hand on his knee. “No Harry, it won’t. If we can tie these documents to him.”

  “What do you mean?” Harry asked, alarmed.

  “Chau will have the best lawyers. Even with these documents, he might be able to distance himself from them. Put someone else in the firing line. What’s the phrase? His ‘fall guy’. Perhaps even Miller.”

  “Surely not?”

  Hans shrugged. “It’s hard to say. But if there was something more, something linking him directly to all of this, that would be …” He let a resigned sigh complete his sentence for him. Then he brightened. “But let’s see what we can do just with this. And you’re right. If we can tie this to Chau it won’t help if it was indeed a Japanese company using Chinese citizens for their drugs’ trial. Had it been successful, Chau would presumably have been the sole importer into China. Another nice little income stream for him on top of all his other business ventures. But it wasn’t. It failed with disastrous consequences, so he tried to keep it all quiet. And here we are, the three of us sitting here, threatened with death, as his plans fall into ruins about him.” He smiled. “We hope.”

  He got up. “We need to move fast. Or rather, I do.” He called something to the two boys in the kitchen who had finished the biscuits and were searching through his cupboards for more. They ran into the sitting room. “Can I borrow your jacket, Harry?” Hans said.

  Harry got up and took it off. Hans looked him up and down. “Not quite as tall as you, but with one of them over my shoulder perhaps the police won’t notice.” He grinned at the boys and explained what they were about to do.

  “They wanted a hundred Yuan each,” Lisa said. “I’m cleared out. Can you, Hans?”

  “A hundred …?”

  The boys burst into excuses, explaining their fee structure, cheeks reddening. Hans scowled at them and gave a burst of something too fast for Harry to catch. Instant shame cast their faces at the floor.

  “I’ve said they can keep the money you’ve given them, but let me repay you Lisa,” he said.

  “No, please. It doesn’t matter,” she answered.

  There was a brief exchange between the two of them, at the end of which Harry was none the wiser. Either way, he was still broke. But money was the least of his worries.

  “I must get going,” Hans said. Harry emptied the scant contents of his jacket pockets, putting the few items into the handy pockets of his cargo pants. Hans looked lost in the jacket. “I’ll put the hood up and hope for the best.”

  “We’ll give you plenty of time to get clear, then leave ourselves,” Harry said.

  “Nonsense, stay here,” Hans replied. “In fact, you’ve got to. There’s nowhere else for you. Chau’s men aren’t likely to check here and if they did, the police outside have been watching it so it couldn’t be better. Stay away from the window, but when it gets dark, make sure you put the lights on and draw the curtains. That way it’ll look as if I’m still here, going about my business as usual.”

  “What if they ring or come to the door to check?” Lisa asked.

  Hans smiled. “They never do. Such is their arrogance that they just assume they have browbeaten me into submission. It serves my purpose to keep them thinking that way.”

  Taking the boys, he left the apartment and with a wave over his shoulder, set off down the stairs. Harry and Lisa went to the window and, standing as far back as they could, looked down into the street. The unmarked Santana sat exactly where they had seen it last, windows fogged. A few moments later, they saw a slightly shorter Harry emerge from the atrium, hood up, one boy over each shoulder, legs kicking playfully, faces laughing, as their father went in the direction of the playground. The car remained immobile at the kerb, doors and windows shut against the air which was already starting to darken into evening.

  Forty Eight

  When they were sure that Hans had got away, Harry put on the lights to fight back the gathering shadows. Standing to one side of the curtains to remain out of sight, Lisa drew them, making sure a crack remained so the room light could be seen from outside.

  “So. Early supper?” Harry said. “I’m starving. Didn’t have any breakfast or lunch. You must be too.”

  Lisa was already on her way to the kitchen. The apartment was larger than both Herbert Zhu’s and David Lin’s and in considerably better shape. They were close to the third ring road and the constant drone of traffic provided the backdrop to everything they did and said. Harry wondered how on earth Hans could stand it. He supposed that eventually a person became inured to most things. Like living under an airport flight-path. He had once visited John o’Groats on a foggy day. The foghorn had sounded at regular intervals and it had been deafening. Yet in the grass around the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, small children played, seemingly oblivious to the noise. Of course it was possible they had long ago been deafened, but Harry felt not. The human animal could accustom itself to extraordinary things.

  As a precaution, he shifted a small sideboard against the front door. It wouldn’t withstand a full-on assault, but perhaps buy them time to … what? With it in place, he considered the options. Looked around the apartment. They had painted themselves into a corner. There was no other way out of the flat. But what alternative was there? They didn’t have anywhere else to go except perhaps Lisa’s apartment, and Miller would most likely already know the location of that. Indeed, Harry reckoned that was where he and his thugs were checking right now.

  “There’s plenty of rice, and tinned fish,” Lisa called from the kitchen. Harry heard one cupboard door opening after another as she trawled through the lot. “Sweet and sour sauce. Spices.” She sounded less than impressed. “I really need to speak to Hans about his eating habits.”

  “That sounds fine. Shall I cook?”

  “I’ll do it. I want something edible. Turn on the television and see if there’s anything on.”

  Harry did so, hopping through the channels. There were Chinese soaps, a historical drama about Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation in the 1940s, and the usual martial arts rubbish, combatants flying through the air
in prolonged defiance of gravity. And news channels. Several of them. He briefly found BBC World and CNN but neither made any mention of the National Congress which was due to start the next day.

  On a Chinese channel he saw a report from outside the Great Hall of the People. Flags were fluttering and uniformed men and women were making final preparations for the big occasion. Coach loads of delegates were filmed at their hotels, while others from outlying provinces went on sight-seeing trips around the great capital. All the pieces were slotting into place for Ryder Chau’s move on power.

  With the rice on the hob to cook, Lisa came in beside him, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She joined him looking at the screen. “I don’t know that Hans can do anything,” she said. “I’m afraid we are too late. Chau will be untouchable by now.”

  “Then the most we can hope for is some way of getting out of the country,” Harry replied.

  Lisa was despondent. “For you maybe. This is my home. Where can I go?”

  “If we can get you out, come with me,” Harry said. “I’ll look after you. I’d take you to the GT racing at Silverstone. You’d love it.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank you. That is very kind. But I’d never get out.”

  “Let’s wait and see, shall we? There must be some way you could claim asylum.”

  “I don’t know how that works. Do you?”

  “Not really. It must be possible though. We have to try and escape. Things won’t change in China that quickly?”

  “It’s impossible to tell. Chau will want to consolidate his hold on power. He will have to. There will be arrests. Competitors will be charged with corruption. There will be trials. They will all be found guilty. That’s what usually happens.”

  “And the people will believe it?” Harry asked, incredulous.

  “Some. Not most. But it’s the way. The people are used to it. And there is a strong rise in Nationalism at the moment which Chau will feed. He will use the Japanese as a focus for public rage, then stoke it.”

  “Then let’s just hope that Hans finds the right person to give the documents to,” Harry said.

  Lisa went back to the kitchen and finished preparing the meal. A while later she brought a bowl and plates into the sitting room and laid it out on the table facing the television. She ladled out helpings onto the plates and handed one to Harry. They sat to eat, the news continuing to unfold.

  And then he was there again. Ryder Chau. Another shot of him stepping from a gleaming black limousine as sleek and shiny as his suit and hair. He raised a statesmanlike hand to acknowledge the cameras. His teeth caught the spotlights accentuating the dazzle of his smile. Even his eyes were not as cold as when Harry had looked into them. He looked every inch the cat that had just been stuffed with cream.

  The television screen went dead. Lisa put down the remote. “I can’t watch any more of this.”

  “This is good,” Harry said, trying to change the subject to food. They finished their meal, washed the dishes in the kitchen and then started to dry them.

  “Might as well try to get some sleep once we’re done here,” Harry said. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day, I’d guess.”

  Lisa paused. Did a quick calculation. “It will be exactly a week since we met.” Harry thought about it and smiled, remembering the ominous figure with the covered face and the broom who had tailed him to the car park.

  “I wonder what your friends would say, if they knew what you had been doing the past week?” Lisa said. “The ox.” And she did her Brannigan impression. Harry laughed.

  “You have a nice laugh, Harry Brown.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said. “You make me laugh, Lisa Tang.”

  He could see Lisa trying to work out how to take this.

  “I mean, I haven’t laughed like this – normally, genuinely, easily – for a long time.”

  She understood. “And it feels good?”

  “Really good. I’d forgotten just how good.”

  Lisa put down the tea towel. She took Harry’s face between her hands and looked into his eyes. “As good as this?” She kissed him on the mouth. Harry tasted rice, sweet-and-sour on her lips, and beyond that the whole weird splendour of her. It was like standing on the border of old colonial Hong Kong and looking into the vast wonder and mystery of continental China.

  He put his arms around China and embraced her. With every continuing second of the long, deep kiss, he felt himself being handed back. Two related but different cultures mixed themselves together, becoming one.

  Which was pretty much where the metaphor ended and something more primitive and feral took over.

  Bustling through to the spare bedroom, they broke off from kissing only long enough to worry their clothes free. A pathway of littered garments was created from kitchen to bed, the breadcrumb trail through an increasingly wild wood. Items lay like stepping stones across the centre of the sitting room floor. The largest of them first, smallest last. Tiny scrunched things lying like fragile blossoms at the side of the thumping mattress.

  The air too joined in. From the drone of the initial conversation, to the long immense quietness of the kiss, to the cry and moan and cry and moan that crammed the spare room’s space; tore at the duvet’s ruptured calm; tested close to failure the springs’ flex and give.

  And afterwards? It was a long time before an afterwards arrived. For Harry and for Lisa, both, there was an ocean of catching up to do. Reclaiming territory long lost. Rediscovering paths through jungle. Abandoned temples, overgrown. Treasures deeply buried in body and in soul.

  The door stood ajar, light from the sitting room muted into a clean cut across ceiling, wall and floor. In the greater darkness, Harry lay at last looking up into space, Lisa folded into his side as if part of his body he had only just remembered.

  With one hand she stroked his chest and stomach, deep in thought. She seemed a million miles away. Harry regarded her, enjoying her eyes focused on everything and nothing. She was humming. The tune was wholly alien to him, and again he was struck by the image of an unexplored but exotic continent. Of course he knew any notion of China being either unexplored or exotic was fanciful, but for now he was happy to apply both terms to the woman whose long naked body pressed against the full length of his.

  “What’s the tune?” he asked at last, as the dirge circled for the umpteenth time like goldfish round a bowl.

  She chuckled and swung one leg across his body, sitting up to straddle him. Her hair hung down as she leaned forward. “It is an old folk song.”

  “About a conference delegate who meets a beautiful girl in a car park and gets caught up in a life-or-death chase across the country as they try to battle corruption in high places?”

  She stared at him aghast. “You know it?”

  They collapsed with laughter like teenagers. Whereupon they were kissing again. But this time the kiss died a natural death. To Harry’s disappointment it didn’t lead to further rediscoveries; nor to temples and treasure in the wild jungle depths. For Lisa sank back against his side, deep in thought.

  “What is it?” he asked. He ran his hand through her hair, stroking it back from her face.

  “I was thinking of Yan Yajun.”

  “Ah.” An unwelcome image came into his mind. Also the most unpleasant of sounds. The ones that had alerted him exactly a week ago. “What of her?”

  “Her life was just rubbed out. And so easily. Now it is as if she never existed. Miller – when he held me captive – called her a common thief.”

  “Why? What had she stolen?”

  Lisa shrugged. “The poor old woman. I suppose she was so poor. He said she stole his phone. It is pititful. She lived in that awful village and had nothing. She probably wouldn’t even have known how to use a phone. When she went to see Ryder Chau, and saw Miller instead, he listened and then just sent her away. I suppose when he wasn’t looking she snatched the first thing she could see, to get something, anything from the meeting. A phone she could sell. She had
nothing of her own. It would have been some way of getting back at them. However pathetic.”

  “The poor old thing,” Harry said. A deep sadness came over him, sweeping aside the joy of only moments before.

  Lisa rolled onto her back. The two of them lay looking up at the dark ceiling. Once again, parallel like the Knight and his Lady. Only no longer stone or alabaster. But flesh, warm and soft and alive.

  “His phone?” Harry said.

  “Hm.” She turned her face to him. “What of it?”

  “Miller’s phone,” Harry said, more to himself than to her.

  He got off the bed and went back into the sitting room, screwing up his eyes until reacquainted with the light. For a moment he looked for the jacket he had borrowed from David Lin. Then recalled that he had given it to Hans.

  Lisa came into the room behind him.

  He located his trousers, awkwardly splayed on the sitting room floor like the chalked outline of a dismembered murder victim. He snatched them up and hunted through the pockets. Passport. Wallet – empty. Handkerchief. A couple of coins that Lisa had missed when throwing his wealth at the villagers.

  The memory stick.

  He looked at Lisa. “What?” she said.

  He went through to the kitchen, Lisa close behind. Laid it on the working top. Found a small knife in the cutlery drawer. He stuck the sharp point of the knife into the slender telescopic sleeve, wedging and working it between sleeve and stick inside. With a twist, he popped it open. The plastic sleeve split and fell clear.

  Wedged beneath it, a tiny SIM card tipped onto the working top.

  Carefully, Harry picked it up between forefinger and thumb. A nano SIM. He held it up to the light.

  “I don’t think that’s how they work,” Lisa said. “That’s not how you read the contents.”

  But when he looked at her, a grin split her face from ear to ear. It spread to Harry.

  “Clever, clever, clever Mrs Yan,” he said. “Miller sent her away with nothing. So she took the very thing that just might destroy the whole bloody lot of them.”