by Ciaran Nagle
'Yeah, I'll say.' He looked up, concentrating. 'Thing is,' he continued, 'I don't know how much I can tell you.'
'Oh,' replied Dan, hoping for more.
'Yeah, look, let's put it like this,' said Pete, choosing his words carefully. 'There is a headquarters unit that's aware of Brother's meteoric rise. It's gathering information behind the scenes that will be used to put Brother leaders away for a long time.'
'Gosh,' said Dan, genuinely shocked.
'Yeah, but they're not ready to strike yet. In fact, given the evidence requirements of the Supreme Court and the need to build an absolutely watertight case against them, it's still going to be quite some time till they're ready.'
'Who is they exactly?' asked Dan.
'Good question.' Pete acknowledged with a raise of his eyebrows that Dan was being persistent. 'They is me and my team.'
'You?'
'Mm hmm.'
'So you must be very interested in all the duty reports I write about Brother,' asked Dan.
'Got them all here, every one,' Pete indicated a cabinet loaded with large files.
'Oh, good.' There was a pause. 'So what do you want me to do? I mean, shouldn't we be working closely together?'
'We are working closely together. And I'm very glad that you took the time out to come and ask me. But I need you to just keep sending through all that you see about Brother in your reports. There are spies here, even in Kowloon Headquarters who would tip off Brother that we're onto them if we start doing anything unusual. And remember, I'm gathering information from all over, including DIs on Hong Kong Island, in the New Territories and from sources in other agencies internationally.'
'You mean, the FBI?'
'Among others,' replied Pete tersely.
'So…'
'So thanks for coming, Dan. You need to know that we're on top of Brother and taking strategic action and you must continue to send us everything you get. It's really important that you do.'
'Ok then, well, that's great.'
'Have a great day, you just come off shift?'
'Yes, just a couple of hours ago.'
'Great,' smiled Pete. 'Fight the good fight. We'll nail Fatty Lo and all his crew as soon as we can. We're compiling evidence of conspiracy to defraud involving massive amounts of money. Smaller charges of racketeering won't stop him for a moment. He'll just sacrifice some junior gang leader to take the rap. This needs a major initiative and it's happening. I need you and the dozens of other DIs in the Colony to just keep doing your jobs. Ming baak?' Pete finished with a commonly understood Chinese phrase meaning 'understand?'.
'Ming baak. OK thanks Pete, I'll be off then. I'll keep sending the reports.'
'Best wishes, Dan.'
Luke's Farm, Mountain Meadows, Paradise
Luke, Ruth and Agatha were meeting, in the flesh, at Luke's farm in a vast area of rolling pastureland in Heaven's green belt. To the west and south were more farmsteads and ranches whose buildings and barns were constructed of pillars made of local marble infilled with timbers of white oak and topped with thatched roofs that curved upwards in praise. Each one's unique design reached out and interlaced with the beauty of its neighbour and then carried on the pattern to the next, building the whole community into an eye-catching configuration. To the north and east were mountains with glaciers reaching down to their foothills and pine forests reaching up like green fingers. The mountains gathered snow in the winter time and released it gradually over the rest of the year, frothing the rivers and canyons with white water and tickling a hundred species of fish as it flowed down to irrigate the fields below.
But on this occasion the mood inside Luke's farm was not as bright as the sunshine outside. The quartet was a trio and the trio were in mourning for their missing player and his eager, if sometimes naïve, leadership.
For once Ruth was dressed down, wearing a simple white dress but no colour to her wings and no jewellery. Agatha as usual was in denims with a blue and white hooped mariner-style top while Luke was in lumberjack shirt and jeans. His Stetson hung at his back.
It was Luke's pad so he was first to speak.
'Well guys, we've been punched right in the nose by Hades. Our brother Jabez is missing as a result. Ruth, you were right to say that we should concentrate on solving the problem, not on blaming ourselves and I agree with you. It's hard to be optimistic and carry on, but I know that we must. Sometime in the future when Jabez is back and we've concluded this project successfully we can conduct a fail review to work out what went wrong at this point. But for now, we have to put aside our misery. We still have a mission to carry out.'
'That's right,' agreed Agatha, 'Nancy is still there on Earth and, unfortunately, what happened to her in San Po Kong is even more likely, not less, to drive her into the enemy camp. Any trust she ever had in others, especially men, is gone. That doesn't bode well for our plan for her to meet up with Dan.'
'There's an added complication you two might not be aware of,' said Ruth with a sigh.
Luke and Agatha regarded her with foreboding.
'The enemy want Dan's life. They want him to die soon, in pain. They've also offered to give us back Jabez, but only if we agree to something else they're asking.' She sighed, unable to continue for a moment. 'I'm under orders not to tell you what that is, at least for now. Anyway, Augustine says we are running out of time. Jabez is very sick and we need him back soon. If we agree to what they want, there may not be enough time to arrange the all-important meeting between Nancy and Dan, the one where she discovers the meaning of 1.11.'
'That's bad' said Luke. 'But there's something else about Nancy that worries me. She's alone and far from home, with few friends around her. Apart from Jenny Ling. I'm seriously worried that she may take her own life. I mean, she's just had this horrific thing happen to her, a gang rape. She must be very low indeed. Obviously if she dies she can't take over Brother, as the enemy wants. But right now we need to fight for her soul. That comes first.'
'Let's also remember that the entire region around Nancy is now highly dangerous and infested with demons,' said Agatha. 'None of us must go there unless accompanied by a strong armed escort. Luke, you went to Yaumati with a dozen cavalry, but even you nearly got trounced.'
'That's right,' smiled Luke, bringing the first warm note into the conversation. 'I'll remember that fight for ever. The challenge by Bohemond. That brute Baalbul. The satyrs reaching to light their arrows. Then the full-on cavalry charge as our forces crashed into the enemy lines and destroyed their formation. I was way below them heading for Nathan Road but there were lights flashing in the skies for many minutes. Hong Kong citizens probably thought they saw UFOs above them.'
'Well that's a lesson to us. No visits to Earth without a guard,' said Agatha.
'Amen to that,' agreed Luke.
Ruth was silent.
'Ruth, do you agree?' asked Agatha.
'Oh ah was just thinking that we need to continue with Jabez's work, even if remotely, from Paradise. In fact ah think we might be able to encourage Nancy out of her depressed state and deliver one more of Jabez's prepared 1.11 messages at the same time. Jabez got it all set up before he was captured. It just needs activating and we can do that from here.'
'OK,' said Agatha, 'just so long as none of us goes down to the Fourth alone. That's really important.'
'Uh huh,' agreed Luke.
Ruth said nothing.
Golden Luck Casino, Yaumati, Kowloon
Nancy sat on her bed with her legs drawn up beneath her, staring into the emptiness in front of her. Jenny Ling and the two other girls slept and snored in the narrow beds beside.
Then the emptiness took form and became an entity in itself. It separated itself from the rest of the room, became real, took on boundaries and moved closer. It promised that it would not hurt her. It crept up the bed and swept over Nancy like a cloudy eiderdown, untouching, covering her like a mother's scent at tucking-in time. The emptiness brought with it an anaesthetic that envel
oped her mind like a warm breeze on a Caribbean afternoon. The stinging pain in her woman's body retreated. It vanished like an army of tiny spearmen lost in fog, their cries muffled, distant, then gone.
Sleep was out of reach, but on its borders where waves of memory roll and crash against consciousness and the soul stretches out to reshape its understanding of the world after a tragedy, Nancy had a vision.
She was back in London, outside the travel shop. Her eyes were drawn to the sky and she saw a fearsome angel of death that flew forward and back over all the Earth, causing a noise like thunder.
As the angel passed overhead it called out loudly 'time's up and you can't put no more money in the meter' and she saw one man throw his shoe at it and heard other people cry out as they do in the moment before a road accident. She looked around and saw men and women staggering along the street as if heart-attacked. Some were shouting in fear and they seemed to be looking for places to hide, but they didn't know from what. Two people unhooked man-hole covers in the road, peered down into the circular darkness for a place of refuge and then abruptly ran away.
In front of each person in the street, as if they had burst out of their chest, were balloon-like shapes that displayed all the bad things that they had ever done, all the spiteful words, all the mean sneaky things, the plans to hurt others and all the hidden deceits, the ones that they thought no-one would ever know about. All of these balloon shapes smelt of rot and buzzed with fat black flies. They were displayed in front of each person like cinema screens which you could watch. The angel flying over them had made this happen. Nancy was amazed for she looked at each person's balloon screens and was able to see their life’s deeds and misdeeds in one glance. The deeds came out from each person in these balloons of words, images and moving pictures, some of them so hideous and shameful that it hurt to look at them. Nancy fell to her knees, she thought some of the pictures were so unspeakably horrible that she did not know how their owners had kept them hidden.
All of the balloon-shapes showed acts of caring or of uncaring, but in almost all the people in the street the hurtful, selfish actions they had made in their lives far outweighed the caring ones. There was something more. Each balloon-shape showed images of the victims who had been hurt by the balloon-carrier’s misdeeds and just how much they had been hurt. Some of them showed how the victims had been brought low, to sadness, anger, suicide or murder by the balloon owner's words or acts.
The angel came over again shouting, 'It's J-Day. Make way for the assizes to end all bloody assizes. Take your places. Everyone gets to see everyone's show'.
Yet Nancy could hardly take her eyes away for the balloon-shapes were as fascinating as they were grotesque. They were so detailed that it was like watching a million films all at the same time but with the same clarity as if the events were happening right beside you.
Nancy knew that she was looking at Judgement. The Big Judgement. But it was not like a court scene with God as judge, wielding a gavel and sending people to heaven or hell with a Roman tilt of his thumb. It was more down to Earth than that. This wasn’t judgement imposed from outside. It was judgement that came from the inside of each person, from all the stored up memories that lay inside each one’s soul. All the actions, thoughts, words and deeds of each man and woman which were indissolubly and irreversibly held inside them had now been spilled out into the open. All knew that the balloon-shapes in front of them, with their words, images and moving pictures, were real and unarguable. There was no denying them. No disputation was possible. All that men thought was hidden was now visible to all.
The people were crying and casting about fearfully. Their despair lay in the knowledge that their chance for remorse and a promise to change their ways was gone.
'The exam is over, close your answer-books and hand them in please, no more writing,' bellowed the angel. People could not bear to look at the coloured cloud-balloons and shapes in front of them. But these visual tormentors were unavoidable, attached to them as if for eternity and constantly swinging around as though blown by a malevolent wind so they were ever in front of the person’s gaze no matter where they looked. People saw their own life histories and they saw their neighbours’ and friends’ past lives laid out. Many were as amazed and stupefied at others’ laid-bare stories as they were appalled at the revelation of their own. Nancy saw one man whom she recognised as a librarian from the library she used as a girl. He had always seemed harmless; she had never thought badly of him. But now Nancy saw the librarian as he really was and was horrified and astonished at the same time as she saw his entire life in front of him, hanging from his chest in all its grotesquerie. She could see the thousands of boys and girls he had hurt, some with his body, some with his words and many, many with his eyes and his will. The damage the old librarian had caused to so many young lives was so great that Nancy didn’t know if even Hell could take it all in.
Then Nancy realised she was being pulled away. She was not part of all this, she was just witnessing it, looking into a vision that may or may not have been real, may or may not have meant something.
She was back in her dormitory. The emptiness began to retreat. The eiderdown cloud fell to the floor and dissipated like theatre dry-ice. The sweet scent of a long-forgotten mother was gone. The bed and doors took shape again. The vision was over. Nancy looked at the beds around her and listened.
For once, the sound of women breathing loudly nearby was oddly comforting.
More time passed and for several hours Nancy didn't think of very much. A clock ticking. The traffic on the street. A burglar alarm somewhere. Street lights finding the flaws in the room's defences and streaming through like a yellow disease. Crumpled sheets. A bug patrolling the skirting board. Cockroach? Don't care. Come here, my lovely and I'll give you a cuddle. You'll die of surprise. Monkey. Damn him. Chu. Cheat. Why me? Jenny's hair, so silky. Foot itch. Snoring from girl three. Wossername?
I can't pretend it didn't happen. They all know I was there. With Monkey and Chu dying it will all come out. The others will talk. Word will get about. If I don't speak up they'll think I wanted it. They'll snigger at me behind my back. Cockroach. Creeping into crevice. Want into my bed? Want nice, warm crack to crawl into? Not mine, you wouldn't want mine. Not now. Men are cockroaches. No, cockroaches are men. Disgusting, furtive creatures. Leave interesting colours on the wall when you splat them. All they're good for. Who, men or cockroaches? You know damn well.
Razor in the bathroom. Proper blades, not safety. So tempting. End it. Let's do it now, no-one will miss you. Street lights have gone out. Room's gone dark. Nearly dark. Single light outside. Pattern on the window blind. Shining through the pattern. Wall. 1.11 on the wall. Someone trying to tell me something. But I'm so tired. And sore. Tired of it all. Unequal struggle. 1.11 All right, I'll try again. Once more into the breach. Who said that? One more try. Then it's razors into wrists at dawn.
Nancy unwound her tight legs and slipped off the bed. She swung herself across the gap and perched on the edge of Jenny's mattress. 'Jenny,' she whispered.
Nothing.
'Jenny, wake up. Jenny, you know you said I could talk to you any time. Now's the time.'
'Huh?'
'Jenny, if ever I needed a friend I need one now. Jenny, wake up.'
Nancy pulled the covers gently away from Jenny's shoulders.
'Jenny, something happened tonight. Something bad. I need to tell you.'
Then Jenny roused herself from her dream of bright futures and dingy pasts, of families and feasts, of fortunes and cookies and sat up there in a shabby dormitory of the lowest form of business life, a girly gambling den, the cockroach of commerce and took the hand of her friend and listened and became in that moment the stepping stone that Nancy needed to continue her walk of life and not slip and fall and finish it far from friends and home. So Nancy did not come to The End. Not then anyway. No razor skated her ivory wrists that night leaving its violent red tail disgorging into a basin. She went on the wa
y she was meant to simply because one woman chose her friend above her comfort and in such small, huge gestures are heroines made and heroes saved and empires lost and won.
Chopper Kwok's Apartment, Ho Tin Girl Friend Bar and Film Club, Yaumati, Kowloon
Chopper Kwok dug his fingers into a bowl of peanuts beside his bed and forced some into his mouth. His other hand held a phone to his ear. Beside him naked on the bed lay two girls, sisters, who had been lent to him by Wonton Chiang.
The sisters, Mei-Lien and Mei-Xhen had travelled from cold Harbin province, further north even than Russian Vladivostok, to try their luck in the prosperous British colony of Hong Kong where legend said all rice bowls magically refilled themselves three times a day and even the poor lived in sun-sparkling penthouses high above the earth.
They had journeyed more than 18 months through China, dodging corrupt police, people traffickers and prostitute traders. They had slept in old buses, disused factories and occasional warm barns. Frequently they had slept with the policemen who arrested them for vagrancy in order to win their release. For several months they had worked the grim drinking sheds of Beijing where soot-faced pottery workers paid for sex with a half bowl of rice.
Through it all the teenage sisters had encouraged each other with stories of happy faces, full wage packets, considerate bosses, prosperity, boyfriends, husbands and a life of plenty different from that of their parents who had died of hunger during the disturbances after Chairman Mao's death in 1976 and the rise of the Gang of Four soon after.
They finally crossed over the border into Hong Kong one summer night, evading the patrols of British army gurkhas who could hide motionless for hours waiting for transients whose fung shui meters were on empty. Once past the border guards, Mei-Lien and Mei-Xhen hugged each other and swore they were now on the road to happiness. No more hunger, they said to each other, no more abuse, no more fear.