The Fireman

by Stephen Leather

  I was going to miss her sense of humour. She caught me with a belter one afternoon, chewing gum at the counter of an all night chemist in Hampstead where we’d gone to buy Alka Seltzer and anything else that might help relieve what I thought was an upset stomach but which turned out to be the first sign of an ulcer that’s been playing me up for the best part of four years now.

  ‘What’s the date?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Fifteenth, I think. Why?’

  ‘We’ll be needing these then,’ she replied, and picked up a handful of contraceptives from a display box. ‘Pay the lady, then,’ she said, opening her eyes in mock horror. I was stunned and it was a toss up who was the more embarrassed, me or the grandmother behind the counter. Sally just stood there looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, revelling in my discomfort. Bitch. Then there was the time she sent a dozen red roses to the office with a card that said, ‘To the man I love most in all the world’ and signed it ‘Reggie.’ She’d been pulling strokes like that on me ever since she was 13 years old and I could never get angry at her because she was the one bright shining star in a life that I found grey and bleak. If you think I’m cynical now, you can’t begin to imagine what I’d be like if Sally wasn’t part of my life.

  ‘I’m going to miss you, Sally,’ I whispered, and this time didn’t care that the words came out.

  The stewardesses served dinner and then the lights were dimmed and a film flickered on. I finished another gin and tonic (fourth or fifth? Maybe the sixth. Who’s counting anyway?), and reclined the seat and slept.

  The ever efficient stewardesses woke us up two hours before landing and gave us breakfast and then I used the freebie washing kit, dumping it in the bin in the toilet cubicle. I wanted to arrive in Hong Kong with nothing, and I planned to leave the same way, the only thing I’d bring back would be the knowledge of what happened to Sally. Anything I needed while I was there I’d buy and leave behind. Don’t ask me to explain why, it just felt cleaner that way. I didn’t want to arrive with a suitcase like a tourist, or with a briefcase like a businessman. I simply wanted to find out what had happened and then get back to London.

  I read the Cathay inflight magazine from cover to cover and tried to absorb as many facts and figures about Hong Kong as I could. Population six million or thereabouts, ninety-eight per cent of them Chinese, Chinese and English the official languages, shops open seven days a week, principal exports clothing, toys and watches, a Crown colony due to be handed back to China in 1997. That sort of stuff. Then my ears popped and the seatbelt light was on and we were flying between, not above, the tower blocks and then the 747 banked sharply to the right and we were dropping down to the finger of reclaimed land sticking out into the harbour.

  Fifteen minutes later I was standing in one of the immigration queues, waiting impatiently midway down a line of a dozen people. The speed the lines moved varied with the efficiency of the immigration officer who was stamping the passports and our line was being dealt with by a young Chinese girl who gave all the indications of having terminal sleeping sickness. Eventually I got to the head of the queue and she took my passport without looking at me, then scrutinized every page, every visa. My passport is nine years old and I’d spent most of them flying around the world for various newspapers so I had almost as many stamps as Stanley Gibbons. She checked every one, then she squinted up at me through a pair of lenses that looked like the bottoms of milk bottles. The girls in Hong Kong are the prettiest in the world the man in the seat in front of me had said as we’d taxied down the runway to the terminal building. He should have seen this one, with her badly-permed hair and a dimple in her chin big enough to grow potatoes in. This girl was ugly; her eyes were too far apart, her ears stuck out like mug handles and her skin was marked with old acne scars. She probably had a great personality, was an absolute dream with children and small animals and would make someone a wonderful wife and mother, but I doubted it. I think her plainness was more than skin deep.

  ‘How long will you stay in Hong Kong?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. As long as it takes.’

  ‘Business or holiday?’

  ‘Holiday, I suppose.’ I reached for the passport but she moved it away.

  ‘You have been to Hong Kong before?’

  ‘Only in transit.’

  She flicked through the blue and white pages at a painfully slow rate until she got to the personal details at the front.

  ‘You are a journalist?’

  ‘That’s what it says.’ I was starting to get angry at her time wasting. I was in a hurry.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She looked puzzled and studied the immigration card I’d filled in before landing. The space marked ‘Address in Hong Kong’ was blank. I gave her a warm friendly smile, showed a bit of teeth and crinkled my eyes, the smile that says what a great, honest, open chap I am.

  ‘I’m being met by a friend. He’ll have arranged a hotel for me.’ If I’d been a woman and she’d been more of a man I’d have undone a few buttons and fluttered my eyelashes. I just wanted to get the hell out of this airport.

  She paused, and then she stamped my passport and banged it down on the counter which was level with her forehead.

  ‘Next,’ she said, and I blew her a kiss as I walked past.

  I headed for Customs, past the crowds huddled around the metal conveyor belts awaiting their luggage. I went through one of the ‘Nothing to declare’ passages but a tall, thin Chinese waved me back.

  ‘You must wait,’ he said, and pointed to a thick yellow line on the floor. He was obviously a chief something or other, an organizer rather than a doer. His men were busy checking the baggage of passengers from an earlier flight, opening suitcases and unpacking cardboard boxes.

  ‘I haven’t got any bags,’ I said, and held my arms out at my sides.

  ‘You must wait,’ he said emphatically, and started making small brushing movements with his left hand, the sort you’d use to shush away a cat.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said and stood behind the line until they’d finished with the family of four holidaymakers in front of me, a husband and wife and two young children complete with four suitcases, three travel bags and a large teddy bear that was examined in as much detail as an illegal immigrant. Swear to God, he looked up the bear’s arse and prodded it. The labels on the suitcase said Bangladesh so I guess they were worried about drugs, but even so.

  Eventually it was my turn, and the chief whatever-he-was walked over to watch his junior question me.

  ‘Anything to declare?’ he asked. A ‘Sir’ would have been nice.

  ‘Such as?’ I asked.

  ‘Spirits, cigarettes, perfume, electrical goods …’ he rattled off a list.

  ‘Where would I put them?’ I asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I haven’t got any luggage.’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘I’m glad to see that the education standards in Hong Kong are every bit as high as they are back in Britain.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That’s all right, can I go through?’

  I walked past, nodding at his superior. I turned left, following the sign pointing towards the greeting area, through a double door which opened electronically for me and down a ramp towards a sea of faces. There was a mass of people and I swept them with my eyes, not a difficult task because most of them were Asian and I was looking for someone called Howard Berenger. I saw my name in capital letters on a piece of white card, held at waist height by what appeared to be an off-duty monk in a light blue safari suit. His face was well scrubbed and as hairless as a young girl’s, his eyes were bloodshot and his nose had a bluish hue. The hair on his head formed a thick ring and was as white and fluffy as cotton wool around a virtually circular bald patch.

  His lips were thick and red as if he’d been rubbing Vaseli
ne into them, and his teeth were pure white. He must have been in his early fifties but he’d run to fat which had smoothed out the wrinkles on his face and he had the glossy sheen of a freshly picked apple. He’d obviously come to terms with his expanding waistline because his trousers looked as if they’d been specially made and were held up with a thick brown leather belt that could have been used to saddle a Shetland pony. Our Howard obviously liked his drink, and his food.

  He’d seen my look of recognition when I read the card and he dropped it into a bin and came over, hand outstretched.

  ‘Berenger’s the name, laddie,’ he said, in a thick Scottish accent. ‘Howard Berenger.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Howard,’ I said, shaking his hand. It was cool and coated in a thin film of perspiration. It felt like a piece of raw liver and I had to stop myself wiping my hand on my trousers when he let go.

  ‘No luggage?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, let’s go. I’ve fixed you up at the Excelsior.’ He led me through the waiting crowds, and within six steps he was three feet ahead of me, moving gently and surely, negotiating his way with practised ease, while I was bumped and jostled. His hips and shoulders moved independently and there was no effort in his movements, despite his bulk he just glided along. He stopped to let me catch up, but after a few more steps I was lagging behind again. No one apologized when they banged into me, there were no smiles, just mute acceptance of physical contact which could not be avoided. I slipped behind Howard and coasted along in his slipstream as he carved through the chattering, noisy crowd. We went through another set of electronic doors and the heat hit me like a wet towel. I sucked in humid air that immediately soaked my face and hands, and I gasped. I took off my jacket and carried it over my shoulder.

  ‘God it’s hot,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve come at a bad time,’ he said, then looked away embarrassed as he realized what he’d said. Yeah, I guess it was a bad time. ‘It gets better though, and then we hit the typhoon season.’

  ‘This is like being in a sauna,’ I said, and loosened my tie.

  ‘You get used to it,’ he replied as we walked towards a waiting queue of taxis, red Toyotas with grey roofs.

  We got into the back and Howard leant forward and spoke to the driver.

  ‘Mandarin?’ I said as we drove off.

  ‘Cantonese,’ he said. ‘But I only know a few words. I can speak a bit but I understand hardly any of it.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Hong Kong?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Twenty-three years, on and off. I spent a couple of years in Indonesia somewhere along the way. Oh, I see what you’re getting at – why don’t I speak more of the language? Because it’s a bitch to learn, that’s why. It’s tonal, the meaning of the word changes with the tone you use, and it’s damn near impossible for a gweilo to learn.’

  ‘Gweilo?’

  ‘That’s what the Chinese call us Westerners. It means ghost man or white devil or something. It’s meant affectionately. Unless they call you “Say Gweilo”. That means dead gweilo and isn’t quite as friendly.’ He laughed. ‘It’s made harder by the fact that the written language is so different from the spoken. Look at the signs above the shops.’

  The pavements were thronged with a seething mass of humanity that ebbed and flowed from shop to shop like a living tide. I could see what Howard meant, the signs were in Chinese picture writing, strokes and lines that meant nothing to me, the only way I could find out what the shapes said was to look in the windows.

  ‘Suppose you were in a French supermarket and you picked up a can of beans. You’d be able to read the French for beans on the label, and you’ve learnt another word. That doesn’t apply here. The written and spoken languages are completely independent. In fact the written language is the same throughout China, no matter what they speak, be it Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, or whatever. They might not be able to understand what they say to each other but they can always communicate by writing. And the only way to learn to read and write is to commit several thousand characters to memory. It takes years.’ He pointed out of the window at a crocodile of small children in matching white uniforms, all carrying big rucksacks on their backs.

  ‘See those bags? They’re full of school books. The sheer volume of information that’s shoved into those brains is frightening. And that’s just to learn their own language. They learn English too, and with 1997 fast approaching most of them are studying Mandarin as well. Just to be on the safe side.’

  Despite several hours’ sleep on the plane, I felt dog tired, and the weariness compounded the feeling of unreality that made everything seem like a dream. Sally’s death still hadn’t sunk in, part of me was sure that she was still in my life, that I was on my way to see her and not to find out why she’d died.

  ‘Have you been to Hong Kong before?’ asked Howard.

  ‘No, first time, though I’ve passed through the airport a few times. It’s not the sort of place I’d come to on holiday and I’ve never been here on business.’

  The taxi slowed at a line of toll booths before we drove down through the cross-harbour tunnel, the perspiration clearly visible on my hands under the harsh fluorescent lights as Howard continued his thesis on the difficulties of Cantonese.

  ‘It’s the tones that make it really difficult,’ he said. ‘Each word can be said nine ways, in a high, low or medium tone, rising, falling or level. And each tone gives the word a different meaning. Take the word “cheung”, for instance. It can mean long, wall, window, rob, gun, or to change money. Gow can mean enough, dog, teach, nine or prick. In English it doesn’t matter how you say the word, dog is dog is dog. But in Cantonese you have to be able to simultaneously hear the word and the tone in which it is spoken. It’s almost impossible for a gweilo unless they spend months on an intensive training course like the cops do.’

  He was nervous and talking too much. That could have been because I represented the paper that paid him a big slice of his income, or it could have been that it wasn’t the most comfortable assignment he’d ever been given, shepherding a man whose sister had fallen to her death.

  ‘Twenty-three years is a hell of a long time.’ I said.

  ‘Aye, I came out here just after I turned thirty. I was working for a local radio station in Devon and getting nowhere fast. I took two weeks’ holiday, came out here and never went back. I got my first job on RTHK, the Government radio station, and spent a few years with TVB, the bigger of the two television stations here. I even spent a couple of months in public relations for my sins.’

  We burst out of the tunnel into the open air again, and cars started fighting for position now that they were freed from the constraints of the single file tunnel lanes. Towering above us was a tall white building with a convex façade, and atop in large blue letters was the word ‘Excelsior’.

  ‘I moved to the South China Morning Post about eight years ago as a feature writer, but knocked that on the head when the paper was taken over. Now I string for your paper and a couple in Australia. I do a monthly column that’s syndicated to half a dozen Scottish papers, and the odd radio report for the Beeb. And if I’m really desperate I do a bit of PR. There’s plenty of freelance work to make a decent enough living. Most of the papers just pay lineage, and there are plenty of slack periods when nothing much happens in Hong Kong, so I wish more papers were like yours and paid monthly retainers.’

  ‘Yeah, well I heard that our Foreign Desk has been told to review its costs,’ I said. Howard looked as if I’d stabbed him in the chest. ‘But that’s nothing new,’ I added, ‘they’re always threatening cutbacks. You know how it works.’ He didn’t look any happier.

  The taxi joined a queue waiting to pull in front of the main hotel entrance. The cars weren’t going anywhere so I reached for the door handle but it was locked and when I unlocked it the driver started jabbering and pointing to the road. I managed to get the door open but he pulled a lever und
er the dashboard and it slammed shut again.

  ‘I’m not going to sit here with the meter running, I don’t mind walking twenty feet,’ I said and put my shoulder against the door and pushed, but the little sod had managed to lock it again. Now he was shrieking and stabbing a bony finger at me and then pointing to the road again. The nail on the accosting digit was black and rotting and flecks of spittle splattered onto my face as he shouted.

  Howard put his hand on my shoulder. ‘He can’t let you out, laddie. We’re on a yellow line. If a policeman catches him he’ll be fined on the spot.’

  ‘Well why didn’t he tell me that?’ I asked, and even before the words left my mouth I realized how stupid that sounded. He had been telling me – in Chinese.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said and the driver grinned, showing me a mouthful of teeth every bit as black and rotten as the fingernail.

  We eventually reached the front of the queue and the door was opened by a turbaned Indian in a black and gold uniform. The lobby was nothing special, functional rather than inspiring, and packed with Chinese and American tourists with a sprinkling of British Airways crews. I signed in and the receptionist asked me if I had any luggage and I said no. She said she’d get someone to show me to the room and again I said no.

  ‘Just give me the key,’ I told her and she looked at me as if I’d stolen her puppy or her handbag or her virginity or whatever it was she prized most. I thought she was going to burst into tears but she held out the electronic key card. The room was on the nineteenth floor and Howard had already started to walk to the lift, dodging in and out of a minefield of suitcases. The lifts were like the lobby, clean and functional and packed with tourists, and we seemed to stop at every floor on the way up.

  The room was OK, one largish bed and one single, a phone on a table between them, middle of the range television, and a fridge. The bathroom was small with marble and red granite and it had another phone by the toilet but even so it was comfortable rather than luxurious.