The Blue Place

by Nicola Griffith

  “Miebach. Linda.”

  “Miebach, go get your weapon.” I let her see I meant it. She practically ran and came back with the heavy belt with gun, cuffs, baton and extra clips. “Put it on.”

  She buckled on the belt.

  Everyone was watching. “The only safe place to be when someone is about to draw a gun is behind them. Everyone stand behind Miebach.” They did, looking nervous. “Now, Miebach, draw your weapon. Eject the clip.” She tucked the clip into her belt. “I’m glad to see you have the safety on. Now take it off.”

  “But—”

  “Take it off. Reholster the weapon. I want you to draw and try to shoot me.”

  “I—”

  “This is not the police academy. This is what it’s like out there. Do it.”

  So she tried, and I took it away from her and put her down and touched the cold metal ring to her forehead. “Better not move, Miebach. You didn’t check to see if the chamber was empty.” A bead of sweat trickled into her eye but she didn’t dare blink. I don’t think anyone in the room breathed except me. I stepped away and worked the chamber. A round shot out and tinkled on the wooden floor.

  There was absolute silence. “She could have shot you,” someone said in a shocked whisper.

  “No. But I could have shot her. Remember that. Never draw your weapon when the perp is within reaching distance. Miebach, put that belt away and collect yourself.” I fished out my watch. Twenty minutes to go. “You.” One of the muscle guys. “Come here.” He stepped up warily. “Miebach seemed to think that her weapon would protect her from anything. Guns can be taken away. Now let’s take a look at strength. This man is bigger than me.” He was certainly wider. I held out my wrist. “Try manhandle me.”

  He didn’t want to, I could tell, but he tried anyway. I slid my hand over his, sidestepped past him on a diagonal and, going to one knee, brought him down in a back-arching bow over my thigh. He breathed fast and shallowly, toes just touching the floor. “If I sneeze, I break his back. He’d never walk again. If I move him a few inches higher…” he gasped, “he’d never feed himself.” I rolled him off and looked around the white faces. “There will always be someone bigger than you. Muscle is not the answer. All of you, try it again.”

  The two most inept rookies had paired up. It usually happened that way. I watched them flailing uselessly at each other and wondered why I bothered doing this.

  “Break,” I said. “Let’s take it one step at a time.” I held out my wrist. I gestured for the pale-haired one with the freckles to take it. He looked terrified. “We’re going to do this in slow motion, one stage at a time. I won’t throw you. I won’t hurt you. Reach for me slowly.” He grabbed nervously. I just smiled encouragingly and moved my arm as slowly as treacle, twisting up and over his. I stopped just as the tendons began to pull tight in his forearm, before he started to hurt. “See how I’m keeping my elbow tucked into my waist? All the movement is in the lower arm. And the pressure goes on there, on your wrist. Remember, where there’s a joint there’s a weakness. Again.” I showed him twice more. “Now you try it.” I reached for his wrist. He jerked in panic. “Slowly for now. Let’s try again. That’s right…no. Let go a second. Have you ever drawn a circle using a pin and a piece of string tied to a pencil? Well, imagine your elbow is the pin at the centre of the circle. Your forearm is the string, and you have a pencil fixed to the tip of your middle finger. Keep the elbow still, tucked in, and draw that circle perpendicular to the floor.” I demonstrated. “That’s the basic movement. Let’s try again.”

  And on the third try, he got it. He smiled tentatively.

  “Good. Very good. Now let’s try a bit faster, about a third speed.” It was still right. “Half speed.” It got a little raggedy as he tensed up. “Remember to keep those shoulders relaxed. A bit faster.” He did it as fast as he could and got me in a very respectable arm lock. He grinned like an idiot. “You can let go now.”

  He did, and swung his forearm in a circle a couple of times, as pleased as if he had discovered a cure for AIDS.

  He was wearing a Braves T-shirt. “It’s a bit like pitching: get your elbow in the right place and everything else follows. Now show your partner how it works.”

  I surveyed the room. They all seemed to have the basics, now.

  “Okay, people. Now that you understand how it’s supposed to work, let me tell you that it often doesn’t. When you get someone who is dusted, or a certifiable lunatic, they don’t care whether you rip their arm off. They don’t feel it. So when you’re faced with someone like that, you disable them.”

  I had their attention.

  “Captain Denneny wouldn’t approve of what I’m going to say but he’s not here. If you’re not sure you can handle a suspect, hit them a good one in the stomach. About here.” I pointed to my solar plexus. “It won’t bruise or swell so you can deny it later if you have to. Use the tip of your baton. If you’re too enthusiastic you could damage them. Then you say they fell onto the corner of an open door of your vehicle as you were trying to restrain them.”

  Red was looking around uneasily. The two muscle guys were impassive. Miebach seemed to be listening to her internal organs.

  “If you want to knock someone senseless without leaving a bruise, go for a palm strike to the forehead. Then there’s the knee. They can’t run after you if they can’t use one of their legs. Some places you must never hit: the throat and neck, the eyes, the back of the head, the genitals. If you get hauled up on a case with the perp showing injuries in those areas, you don’t have a chance. And remember this.” I smiled. “Any perp could be someone important. If you hurt them, their lawyers could take your badge or maybe even put you in jail. And we all know what happens to police officers in jail. Be clear on this point: if they’re not crazy or dusted and you hurt them, you’re incompetent. All your fellow officers will know that. They won’t want to work with you because if you’re incompetent you won’t be any good in a situation. So don’t hurt a perp if you don’t have to. And if you have to hurt them, don’t hurt them more than necessary. And don’t get caught.”

  I looked at my watch. Seven fifty-five. “Okay, people, that’s it. Next time I want you warmed up by the time I arrive.”

  I sent them on their way. They wouldn’t have time to shower before reporting to the squad room for day shift. Too bad.

  When they had gone, I took off my shoes, stood in the middle of the floor and closed my eyes. Soft hiss of air-conditioning. Faraway rumble of East Ponce traffic. Slow-turning thump of my heart. I breathed deeply, in and in until my belly swelled with air, out again through my nose, in, out, letting my hands rise a little with each inhalation. Then I stretched up, and up farther, held it, came down, palms to the floor. Held it, held it, and on the outbreath bent my elbows farther.

  I moved through my routine automatically, stretching tendons and ligaments and muscles, and after twenty minutes I was as flexible as a whip.

  There are only four schools of Shuto Kai karate outside Japan. I had learned it in England, on Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings in an old community centre whose concrete floors were always still sticky with spilled beer and cigarette ash from the event the night before. I had studied with five men under the instruction of a truck driver with a sturdy Yorkshire accent and a real love of the art. He taught me the way of the empty hand. I would kneel in zazen on that unheated concrete floor in the middle of winter and extend my arms. He would lay a heavy pole across my wrists, and the battle would begin, the battle of breath and pain and will. The first five minutes were easy, the next ten just about bearable, the next thirty a nightmare. Sweat would roll down my neck, and Ian’s voice boomed from the walls and rattled the children’s drawings pinned there. “Breathe through the pain! Breathe! With me, in and out. In and out.” And my shoulder muscles, which had already taken me through two hundred push-ups and an hour of sparring, burnt dully, then sharply, then with pain bigger than the world. And the only way through it was the breath. In
and out. Falter and you are lost.

  And after forty or fifty minutes, the endorphins kick in and the childish drawings on the wall assume a crystalline edge, the colours deepen and bloom, and my face relaxes utterly. All there is, is a tide of breath, sweeping up and down the beach of my body, until each cell is as distinct as a grain of mica and I feel washed clean. I sometimes wondered what would happen if I just…stayed there; whether the endorphin high would burn itself into my cells permanently and for the rest of my life I would smile gently around the edges, even when I was breaking someone’s legs. But then Ian would take the pole away, shout, and we would run around and around the hall. Twenty minutes. Two or three miles, usually. Then we would do a kata.

  Katas are choreographed series of fight moves against one or more imaginary opponents. Done well, they are a meditation and a dance. They range from the most simple, railway-straight line moves against only one opponent where you use nothing but punches, to the flying, whirling battle-an-army dance of the Basai Dai. You don’t learn the Basai Dai until you get your black belt.

  The first few months I studied, the katas were my reward: the fluid dance, the grace, the hot whistling power of punching tight air, of using my whole body. It was only after my blue belt, the second kyu, that I learnt that the real reward of Shuto Kai was understanding my will. I learnt that pain is only pain: a message. You can choose to ignore the message. Your body can do a great deal more than it wants you to know.

  And so, although for all practical purposes Shuto Kai is not a particularly good martial art, I still dance its katas.

  I did the fourth, which has all those difficult kicks, and the Basai Dai. My breathing was as smooth as cream, my blood oxygenated and rich. I was probably smiling.

  I moved on from karate to kung fu, a Wing Chun form, the Siu Nim Tao, or Simple Idea. I was on the second round of pak sao, the slapping hand, when the door opened. Even with my eyes closed I would have known who it was. Her scent was a little more pronounced today, even though her hair was dry. I nodded very briefly but did not stop. Ding jem. Huen sao. She started stretching. Bill jee. Moot sao, the whipping hand. She was wearing black spandex pants and an emerald body sheath. I concentrated on the form.

  When I took the last slow breath and released it, she straightened. “First form?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to chi sao?” It was a challenge.

  “Take off your shoes.”

  “My shoes?”

  “I value my feet.”

  That angered her. It was meant to. Always take the advantage. I extended my right leg, and my right arm, elbow down and in, wrist level with my sternum. She did the same. The backs of our wrists touched. Well-shaped nails, no wedding ring. Her skin was dense and fine-grained, taut over smooth muscle, and her bones slender. She looked the sort of woman who has studied ballet for twelve years. Her eyes were blue, the deep blue of still-wet-from-the-dye denim, with lighter flecks near pupils tight with concentration. Her hair was in a French twist. A French twist for the gym.

  Chi sao means sticky hand. The wrists stay touching. All moves are in slow motion. It’s a game of chess using balance.

  I moved my hand forward, the first inch of what could have become huen sao, the circling hand, but she stepped smoothly to the side and, without even moving her arm, countered. But the counter of course became her own move, which was to keep stepping, trying to lead my arm away from the centre of my body and leave me unbalanced. So far, all beginner’s moves. Her baked-biscuit skin slid back and forth over her collarbone. As the pace intensified, I wondered how women got those tans. The colour was delicate, never too heavy, never too light, and they had it in February and November yet they never seemed to use tanning salons. Their eyebrows always arched perfectly and their hair was never out of place.

  Who are you? Blank concentration for a reply.

  She was good: well balanced, smooth, knowledgeable about the connections between feet and belly, wrist and elbow and shoulder. She centred well and breathed unhurriedly.

  I wanted information, and stepped back, signalling a pause. “Sern chi sao?”

  She merely nodded and extended both arms. Double sticky hands.

  We moved faster this time, our legs bent lower, circling around the gym in jong tao, a deadly waltz. A woman’s centre of gravity is generally about two inches below her navel, just where the belly rounds. No matter how fast you travel across the floor, that point should move in parallel. I was taller than her but having one’s centre of gravity higher is a disadvantage, so I moved in a lower stance. We were both sweating lightly now, and our breath came faster. Her skin felt marvellously alive beneath mine. We moved back and forth, and my belly warmed, and I knew hers warmed, too, as we revolved around the gym and each other, a planet and its satellite turning about the sun.

  Time to let her know which was which, to show her I didn’t much appreciate having my wallet stolen at the scene of an arson and murder. I moved more strongly, breathed in great long gushes, as though my breath alone would move her aside. Her body sheath was dark under the arms. My belly burned hotter. She began to move just a little out of balance. I made a slow biu tze, the shooting fingers, up towards her eyes, with my left hand, and a going under hand with my right. Being out of balance, even so slightly, meant she had either to let me through or speed up to regain the advantage. To speed up meant it would become almost a sparring session.

  She sped up.

  Differences in skill become more apparent with speed. I harried her round and round the gym, in no hurry, enjoying testing her. She began to spar in earnest. She snapped a punch at my head, which I palmed away easily enough, then launched into a series of battle punches, hoping to drive me off balance. I centred, then stepped right through her with a double circling hand—and in my head, for a split second, moved over both her wrists and dumped her on the floor—but in actuality let the moment pass.

  She felt it, felt the moment when I could have thrust the heat of my belly against hers and taken it all, and now the whole character of our sparring changed. I led, she followed. It became a dance, teacher and pupil. I would ask, she would answer.

  When we came to a halt, wrists still touching, in the centre of that beautiful gym, her face was as smooth as butter. We bowed to each other. I waited.

  “Can I buy you coffee?”

  The Beat Bean on Monroe is the kind of place I hate: seamless period decor of the fifties, orange chairs and Formica tables, the goateed servers wearing all black. The confectionery she bought for herself looked dry enough to be forty years old, too; the coffee determined and without grace. I like French roast, myself, but there are few places, these days, that serve it.

  She chose the mustard vinyl sofa, I took the distorted design nightmare opposite.

  “My name is Julia Lyons-Bennet.”

  I wasn’t a bit surprised. “I gather you already know mine.”

  She flushed, a quick hard colouring that turned her high, golden cheeks the colour of Madeira. “I hope you found your wallet.”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

  “You want something.”

  “I want to know why you were lurking fifty yards from Jim’s house, in the rain, after midnight, five minutes before his house exploded.” It came out as a challenge. She was breathing hard with some righteous emotion and her flushed cheeks made her look quite, quite determined.

  “I was out for a walk.”

  “That’s about as informative as telling me you were breathing!”

  “Like saying the cause of death was heart failure,” I agreed.

  “What?”

  “Look, Julia, I was out for a walk. Nothing more. I understand that the deceased was a friend of yours, and you must feel terrible, but I had no more connection to his murder than the fact that I was outside his house when it went up. I’m sure the police have already told you that drugs were found on Mr. Lusk’s property, that they believe his death w
as some kind of message to the drug fraternity in this city.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe that garbage!”

  “Not particularly. But I still want to know what you want from me.”

  “I found out about you. You used to be in the police, but then your father died and left you money. I read your record.”

  My record. Lists of deaths, the innocent and the guilty, and she had been paddling about in it. I stood.

  “Please. I want your help.” She pushed her coffee cup to one side and lifted a worn pigskin briefcase onto the table. “Can you just spare ten minutes to listen?”

  The briefcase was old, worn and comfortable. It spoke of a real person with a real life, real feelings.

  “Please?”

  Ten minutes is a very small fraction of one’s lifetime. I sat down.

  “I run an art acquisitions and security business: buying and selling for corporations, mostly. Sometimes I set up corporate museums; on occasion I advise on the transport and security of travelling exhibitions. Two weeks ago I was approached by a man, a banker. He had a valuable painting, a Friedrich, to ship to France. Discreetly. Normally, of course, I don’t do that penny-ante stuff, but he was referred by a very good client of mine—the man to whom I had brokered the Friedrich in the first place. And so, as a gesture of goodwill, I agreed. In fact, I oversaw the packing personally.” She reached for her coffee, then changed her mind.

  “I’m going to order some mineral water. You?”

  “Thank you. Yes.”

  The water came, we fussed with slices of lemon.

  “Now, as you can probably appreciate, I very rarely do this kind of work myself, but I was in the building when the painting was delivered, so I went to take a look at it before it was recrated. It’s a lovely painting, lovely. I watched as my assistants took it out of its old packing case. They barely glanced at the painting, but I did. As I’ve said, it was a lovely painting, Luminous work. I had brokered it to the client I mentioned, the one who sold it to this banker. I wanted to see it again.” In this light her eyes were the rich blue of twelfth century stained glass. “I looked at it, and it made me uneasy. I brokered it two years ago. I know more now than I did then. I looked at this painting and knew it wasn’t a Friedrich. What I don’t know is if it was the same painting I had sold as a Friedrich two years ago.”