The middle-aged woman sitting opposite him in a thick tweed coat and a fake fur hat had bought her council house by mortgaging herself to the hilt. Her son had helped out with the payments until they’d had a row and he’d left home. Now the building society was threatening to evict her. If she sold the house would Sir John be able to get her into another council house? The MP smiled benignly and told her that there were people at the centre who would help her negotiate with the building society and have the payments frozen or reduced. He motioned at Ellen and introduced her to the woman and then stood up to shake her hand, patting her on the back as he ushered her to the door. Ellen took her down the corridor into another room and left her with one of the advisers there. Teflon Time strikes again, she thought. There were half a dozen people sitting on a line of chairs in the corridor outside the office commandeered by the MP. There was an old couple, a young man in jeans and a motorcycle jacket who looked like he might be troublesome, two housewives, and a Chinese man in a blue duffel coat. He was muttering something, reading from a small piece of paper in his hands and repeating something to himself over and over again. As she walked past him it sounded as if he said ‘elected representative’.
‘Next please,’ she said, and the old man stood up and helped his wife to her feet. Sir John greeted them with his hand outstretched and a caring smile on his face.
Ellen sat behind her own desk, to the left of Sir John’s and at right angles to it, and watched and learned. She had hopes of one day following him into the House of Commons. Her degree was in political science and she’d been chairman of her university’s student union, but what she needed now was hard, political experience. Sir John Brownlow was providing that, even if it meant that she had to tolerate the occasional wandering hand on her buttocks or suggestive remark, but so far she’d been able to fend off his passes without offending him. Besides, he’d stopped being quite so chauvinistic once she’d become a good friend and confidante of his wife and taken his two teenage daughters to the cinema a few times. Ellen knew what she wanted, and how she wanted to get it, and what she didn’t want was to get her ticket to the House by lying on her back with the Honourable Member between her legs.
He spent half an hour with the old couple, and then Ellen took them out and called for whoever was next. The Oriental man looked around, saw that everyone was looking at him, and got to his feet. ‘I think it is my turn,’ he said quietly.
She asked his name and then he followed her into the office. Sir John was already in position to shake hands and Ellen saw his jaw tighten when he saw Nguyen, but only for a second. Then the teeth flashed and the eyes crinkled into the face that smiled down from the posters at election time. Sir John was nothing if not professional.
‘Mr Nguyen,’ she said by way of introduction. The MP shook the man’s hand firmly and he waited until Nguyen was seated before going back behind the desk.
‘How can I help you, Mr Nguyen?’ he said, steepling his well-manicured hands under his square chin.
In a low, quiet voice, Nguyen told him what had happened to his wife and daughter, about the bomb, and the conversations he had had with the police and the Anti-Terrorist Branch. ‘My family died more than three months ago,’ he said. ‘And still the men responsible have not been caught.’
Sir John nodded understandingly. ‘But what is it that you want me to do?’
‘I wrote to you many times, Sir John. Many times.’
The MP gave Ellen a sideways look and she nodded quickly. Yes, she remembered his letters now. Carefully handwritten, every word in capital letters. She had drafted sympathetic replies promising nothing and Sir John had signed them without reading them.
‘I asked you to help bring the men to justice,’ Nguyen continued. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Bromley said that the capture of the men was a political matter.’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Bromley?’
‘He is a policeman who catches terrorists. But he told me that he could not force the men in the IRA to tell him who killed my family.’
‘That is probably true, I am afraid,’ said Sir John. ‘There are many people who probably feel that the police and the army should have stronger powers, but we are, when all is said and done, a democracy. We cannot torture people or imprison them simply because they do not give us the information we seek.’ He looked concerned, but to Ellen he sounded pompous and uncaring.
‘But could not the Government change the law so that such things could be done? So that the police could force others in the IRA to tell what they know?’
‘In theory yes, but it would not happen. I am afraid you must allow the police to do their job, Mr Nguyen. I am sure that they are doing their best.’
Nguyen smiled nervously. ‘What I would like, Sir John, is for you to change the law.’
Sir John snorted. ‘Come, come, Mr Nguyen. What makes you think I can do that?’
‘Because you are my . . .’ The old man seemed to stumble on the words before finishing the sentence. ‘My elected representative.’ He seemed to take pride in the fact that he had remembered the words. ‘You are my MP. I wish you to change the law so that the killers of my family can be brought to justice.’
‘You have a strange idea of the powers of an MP, Mr Nguyen. I cannot change laws just because you think justice has not been done.’
Nguyen hung his head and said something quietly.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Sir John, leaning forward to listen.
Nguyen looked up. There were tears in his eyes and Ellen’s heart went out to him.
‘What am I to do?’ he asked the MP. ‘My family is dead. What am I to do?’
Sir John leant back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Ellen recognised his defensive position. There was nothing he or anyone else could do. The IRA was an insurmountable problem. Even if they were to catch the men behind the latest series of bombings, it would not stop, another active service unit would come to life. The killings would never stop, not until the British pulled out of Northern Ireland. And there was little likelihood of that happening.
‘How long have you been in this country, Mr Nguyen?’ Sir John asked.
‘I have been a British citizen since 1982. Very long time.’ He reached into his duffel coat pocket and took out a passport, the old type, dark-blue with the gold crest on the front. He held it out to the MP but he seemed reluctant to take it and kept his arms folded. Nguyen put it back in his pocket.
‘From Hong Kong?’ Sir John asked. Ellen realised then why he was so defensive. He had been one of the most outspoken critics of the Government’s offer of passports to the colony’s middle classes.
‘Do you not have family back in Hong Kong? Can you not go back there?’
The old man looked surprised. ‘Hong Kong? Why I go back there?’
Sir John appeared equally confused. ‘That’s where you came from,’ he said. ‘Surely you still have family there?’
‘I not Hong Kong Chinese,’ Nguyen explained. ‘I am Vietnamese. From Vietnam.’
Realisation dawned on the MP’s face and he sighed audibly. He was, Ellen knew, even more vehemently against Vietnamese boat people being offered sanctuary in Britain. God, the number of times she’d listened to him address meetings on the difference between political and economic refugees and how Britain couldn’t offer homes to everyone in the world who wanted a better standard of living.
‘North or south?’ asked Sir John.
Nguyen smiled. ‘Today there is no north or south. Only Vietnam.’
‘When you escaped,’ the MP pressed. ‘Where were you from then?’
Nguyen shrugged. ‘Both,’ he said. ‘North and south.’
‘And why did you come to England?’
‘Because I could not live in Vietnam. Because the Communists persecuted me and my family. I helped the Americans in the war. When the Americans go they put me in prison. So we escaped. To Britain.’
‘Why Britain?’
‘Because here we ca
n be free.’
The MP nodded. ‘But do you not see, Mr Nguyen? The reason that you can be free in this country and not your own is because we have laws for everybody here. Nobody is above the law. But equally nobody is denied its protection. That is what makes democracy work. That is why you wanted to come here in the first place, to be free. You cannot now ask for the laws to be changed, to take away the rights of others.’
‘Even if they have killed my family?’
‘You must allow the police to do their job. You must have faith in our system, Mr Nguyen.’ He put his hands on the desk top and pushed himself up. Nguyen tilted his head up and for the first time it gave him a more confident, vaguely arrogant look. Then he stood up and he became once more the stooped old man, alone in the world. Sir John patted him on the back as he guided him through the doorway and into the corridor and then he slipped back into the office.
‘Christ, Ellen, these people. They come over here, we give them homes, we give them money, and still they want more. If they don’t like this country the way it is, why don’t they just get the hell out and go back to where they came from?’
‘He’s still in shock, poor man,’ said Ellen. ‘His whole family was wiped out. Think how he must feel.’
‘That was four months ago, Ellen. And there have been what, two or three bombs since then. And how many other victims? Yet you don’t hear their relatives demanding that we pull in IRA members off the street and pull out their fingernails.’
‘He wasn’t actually saying that, Sir John. He was . . .’
The MP snorted angrily. ‘Bullshit! That’s exactly what he wanted. And can you imagine what the Press would do if they even thought we were considering something like that? They’d scream “Big Brother” and “Violation of Human Rights” and you know they would. Remember Gibraltar? They don’t think about the people whose lives were saved when the SAS stopped the car bomb from being detonated. All they remember is the IRA being shot while they were on the ground. Remember the uproar over the Belgrano?’
Ellen didn’t argue. She knew full well that there was no point in taking sides against her boss. She was there to learn from him, not to antagonise him. She smiled and brushed a loose strand of hair off her face. ‘I’ll get the next one in for you,’ she said sweetly while wondering how such a racist could ever get elected. There was so much she still had to learn, she realised.
Jon Simpson took the call from the uniformed security guard at reception. ‘There’s a chap down here wants to speak to a reporter,’ he said gruffly.
‘What about?’ asked Simpson.
‘Dunno,’ said the guard.
‘Do me a favour and ask him, will you?’ sighed Simpson. The security guards weren’t paid for brain power, just for bulk, but there were times when Simpson wished they were a mite brighter. There was a pause before the guard’s laconic voice returned.
‘Says it’s about the bombs.’
Simpson felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The IRA bombing campaign had been going on for more than four months and the police seemed to be no nearer catching the bombers. Maybe the punter downstairs held the key, it was amazing the number of times that they came to the paper rather than going straight to the police. Or perhaps it wasn’t so surprising – the paper paid handsomely for information. The news editor looked around the newsroom to see who was free and his eyes settled on Woody who was reading the Daily Star and picking his teeth with a plastic paper-clip. It had taken Woody weeks of plaintive phone calls before Simpson had allowed him to start shifting again and only after he’d promised not to drink on the job. Not to excess, anyway. Expecting Woody not to drink at all was asking the impossible. And he was a bloody good journalist.
‘Woody!’ he yelled.
Woody’s head jerked up and he came over immediately, pen and notebook in hand. He was still at the eager-to-please stage. ‘There’s a punter downstairs. Something about the bombs. See what he’s got, will you?’
Woody nodded and headed for the lift. The man waiting downstairs was Oriental, wearing a blue duffel coat with black toggles, faded jeans and dirty training shoes. He was carrying a plastic carrier bag and was wiping his nose with a grubby handkerchief. He snorted into it and then shoved it into his coat pocket before stretching his arm out to shake hands. Woody pretended not to notice the gesture and herded the old man towards a group of low-backed sofas in the far corner of the reception area. Carrier bags were always a bad sign, he thought, as he watched the man settle into a sofa next to a large, spreading tree with weeping leaves. Punters who arrived at newspaper offices with carrier bags often produced strange things from them. During his twenty years as a journalist Woody had just about seen everything. There were the paranoids who thought they were being followed and who would produce lists of numbers of cars that were pursuing them, or taxis, or descriptions of people who had appeared in their dreams, or lists of MPs who were in fact aliens operating from a base on the far side of the moon. There were the punters who felt they’d had a raw deal from one of the big international companies and had photocopies of correspondence going back ten years to prove it. There were the nutters who claimed to have written Oscar-winning film scripts only to have their ideas stolen by a famous Hollywood director, and they’d open their plastic bags to show their own versions. Sometimes they were written in crayon. Not a good sign.
‘How can I help you?’ asked Woody, his heart heavy.
‘My name is Nguyen Ngoc Minh,’ the man said, and Woody scribbled in his notebook, just a random motion because he didn’t reckon there was going to be a story in this and he didn’t want to go through the hassle of asking the guy to spell his name.
The old man thrust his hand into the carrier bag and took out a colour photograph and handed it to Woody. It was a family portrait of the man, an old woman and a pretty young girl. Woody raised his eyebrows inquisitively.
‘My wife,’ said Nguyen. ‘My wife and my daughter. They were killed this year.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Woody, his pen scratching on the notebook. He wasn’t using shorthand, he just wanted to be seen to be doing something so that he didn’t have to look the man in the eye. The brown eyes were like magnets that threatened to pull him into the old man’s soul and several times Woody had found himself having to drag himself back. They were sorrowful eyes, those of a dog that had been kicked many times but which still hoped one day to have its loyalty rewarded.
‘They were killed by IRA bombers in January,’ continued Nguyen. He delved into the bag once more and pulled out a sheaf of newspaper cuttings and spread them out on the low table in front of Woody. Among them he saw the Sunday World front-page story on the Knightsbridge bombing and the pictures they’d used inside. Strapped along the bottom was a list of the reporters and photographers who’d worked on the story. The intro and a good deal of the copy was Woody’s but his name wasn’t there, Simpson had insisted that it stay off. Another punishment.
‘I remember,’ he said.
‘There have been many bombs since,’ said Nguyen, and he pointed to the various cuttings. The judge blown up outside the house of his mistress, the bomb at Bank Tube station, the police van that had been hit in Fulham, the Woolwich football bombing. Good stories, thought Woody. He waited for the old man to continue.
Nguyen told him about the visit by the police, of their promise that the men would be caught. He told him about what he’d later been told at the police station, and by the Anti-Terrorist Branch and finally of his conversation with his MP, Sir John Brownlow. ‘They all tell me the same thing,’ he said. ‘They tell me to wait. To let the police do their job.’
Woody nodded, not sure what to say. He’d stopped writing in the notebook and studied the cuttings while the old man talked.
‘I want to do something,’ Nguyen said. ‘I want to offer money for the names of the men who did the bombs. A reward.’
Woody looked up. ‘I don’t think the newspaper would be prepared to offer a reward
,’ he said. Too true, he thought. A right bloody can of worms that would open up. It was OK to offer money for the return of a stolen baby, or to pay some amateur model for details of her affair with a trendy businessman or a minor pop star, but he could imagine the response to a request for a reward in the hunt for IRA killers. Put the paper right in the firing line, that would.
Nguyen waved his hands and shook his head.
‘No, no, you not understand,’ he said. ‘Reward not from newspaper. From me. I have money.’ He picked up the carrier bag by the bottom and tipped the rest of its contents on the table. It was money, bundles and bundles of it, neatly sorted into five-, ten- and twenty-pound notes, each stack held together with thick rubber bands. Woody ran his hands through the pile and picked up one of the bundles and flicked the notes. They looked real enough.
Nguyen read his thoughts. ‘They are real,’ he said. ‘There is eleven thousand pounds here. It is all the money I have.’
Woody saw the guard staring at the money open-mouthed and so he began to scoop it back into the plastic bag. The old man helped him.
‘You shouldn’t be carrying so much cash around with you,’ whispered Woody. ‘Why isn’t this in the bank?’
Nguyen shrugged. ‘I not trust bank. Many people have money in bank when Americans leave Vietnam. They would not give money back. They steal. I take care of my own money. This all I have. I want paper to use it as reward. Can do?’
Woody pushed the bag across the table. ‘I’m sorry, no. My paper wouldn’t do that sort of thing. And I don’t think that any newspaper would.’
The old man looked pained by what he’d been told and Woody felt as if he’d just slapped him across the face. He stood up and waited until Nguyen did the same, the bag of money held tightly in his left hand. He offered the right hand to Woody and this time he took it and shook it. He felt intensely sorry for the old man, sorry for what he’d been through and sorry that there was nothing that could be done for him. He heard himself say: ‘Look, why don’t you give me your phone number and if I can think of anything I’ll call you?’
The Chinaman Page 5