Bad Traffic

by Simon Lewis

  Twisting the receiver’s metal cable with his free hand, he imagined his request shooting into the night sky and being picked up by a satellite and hurled back down and hitting the bottom-of-the-range silver flip-top mobile with the scuffed case.

  His call was answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mother? It’s me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Ding Ming? Is that you?’ There was a slight delay but the voice was as clear as if she stood beside him. He cupped his hand over the receiver and hissed, ‘Mother, has Little Ye made a call home? I need to know where she is.’

  ‘My son? Where are you? You have to go back. Please.’

  ‘What?’

  Another voice came over the line, gruff, male, speaking Fujian dialect. ‘Is that the foreign guest worker Ding Ming?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Never mind who I am. What do you think you’re playing at? Listen to me. We’ve been here for hours and we’re bored and angry. Your mother’s not having any fun, either. We’ve got her tied to a chair.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to strap this phone to her head, and then I’m going to pull out the teeth she’s got left and you can listen to her screaming. And then we’re going to find the rest of your family and do something worse.’

  Ding Ming reeled as if he’d been hit. His hand squeezed the cable. His throat seemed lined with thorns.

  ‘Stop,’ he croaked.

  ‘This is what happens to runaways. We fuck their whole family. You owe us a lot of money and we’re not going to let you run away from your debt. We own you, do you understand? Is that clear?’

  Something scraped above and the policeman shouted. ‘Hey. You.’

  Ding Ming supposed he had been discovered. He dropped the receiver and it clattered against the wall, and the way the cord lashed as the receiver swung reminded him of an angry snake. It even glittered like snakeskin.

  ‘Ding Ming,’ shouted the policeman. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He backed into the forecourt until that thing was out of sight. He was unsteady on his feet and could feel blood draining from his face. He couldn’t think, his head was full of static. He looked dumbly up. The policeman was frowning at him. He supposed the man would punish him but he didn’t care about that now. He only cared about what was happening to his mother.

  ‘I need something to lever it. Go back to the van and fetch that spade.’

  Ding Ming continued to stare. The man was a black silhouette against star-sprinkled blueness.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘I… I saw a snake.’

  ‘Get the spade. Hurry.’

  Ding Ming turned and ran. He could see the scene: toughs arriving on a motorbike, his mother wringing her hands, and then the cord, the feeble struggle. He even knew the chair she was tied to, the cracked grey plastic one with the metal legs – it was the only one with a back. With every pounding step his mind added a detail, and each was a twist to his guts. Minute after minute, she had sat terrified, and the toughs had lounged around, bored, cracking sunflower seeds with their teeth and spitting the husks on the floor. They’d told her he had run from his boss, from his debt, and what a bad son he was.

  When he reached the van, he fought back the desire just to keep hurtling on down the road and into blackness. He tugged the spade out of the back. The blade was grimy with earth and touching the handle brought an image of the lolling tongue of the dead man he had buried. What viciousness the world contained – he was surrounded by it. The sound as he slammed the door seemed doleful.

  But he was not a bad son, and not a runaway. The policeman had stolen him away, so it was all that man’s fault. Anger brought some mental clarity and he resolved to sort this nonsense out. His two remaining coins chinked in his pocket. He would call those men again.

  The forecourt cameras made him self-conscious, and he pulled the hood tighter over his head, which narrowed his vision still further, to a tunnel. To look round he had to move his whole head. The policeman stood on the roof, smoking. As Ding Ming climbed onto the bin, a crack in the lid widened and he smelled a fetid odour. Hands snatched the spade away.

  ‘If I can just get this grille off, I’m in. An alarm will probably ring, ignore it. You stand outside peeking through the shutters, and point out the map book. When you see I’ve got it – and only then – run to the van. Alright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Say it.’

  Fearing that his turbulent emotions were written all over his face, he looked aside at the wall as he mumbled, ‘I point out the book and wait till you’ve grabbed it.’

  He jumped down and hurried round the corner and saw the phone receiver hanging. Right, more cunning was required. He noted with consternation that his hands were shaking even more this time. Softly he slid his second heavy, shining coin into the slot and winced as it clinked through the innards of the machine. He dreaded hearing the crunch crunch of footsteps on the roof – that man only had to take three or four steps and look down and the subterfuge would be discovered. But all he heard above was clanging and grunting.

  He called home again, and settled the receiver deep into the fur-lined hood to muffle it. The plastic grew warm with his panting breath. The call was answered, but all he heard were vague shuffling sounds.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Mother? Is that you Mother?’

  Abruptly she was screaming at him. ‘Oh, my son, my son. I can’t feel my arms any more, they tied the rope so tight.’

  His stomach lurched. He scrunched up his face. He guessed a hand was holding the phone up to her mouth. ‘They say they’re going to pull my teeth out and other things. He wants to talk to you. You have to do what he says.’

  ‘Guest worker?’ a male voice drawled.

  ‘I didn’t run away. I was kidnapped…’

  ‘Shut up. Ring this number.’ He began to dictate. Ding Ming put his finger into his mouth and wrote the digits in spit on the wall. He pictured a substantial figure, red-faced with booze, speaking without hardly moving his lips. ‘One five three nine…’ Such a casual tone – it was the voice of a man dealing with a minor nuisance at work.

  His mouth was parched, he could work no more spit into it. ‘No, wait – the last four again.’

  The phone cut off and buzzed tetchily in his ear. He found and pressed a ‘next call’ button. He could only see his spit-drawn digits by laying his cheek against the wall and looking at them obliquely so that the liquid caught the light. With shaking fingers he dialled the new number. It was difficult to see the keypad through his tears and he fumbled the second 6, hitting 5 by mistake. He depressed the receiver’s cradle so that he could start again, and the machine hiccuped and the display flipped down to zero. He put his last coin in.

  Was it 2265 or 2256? His numbers were already fading. A phone began to ring. It rang a long time and Ding Ming looked at the lake. The water was black and still. Even to drown himself would not help, money would still be owed. Up above, the policeman cursed, and metal rasped.

  ‘Hello?’ A sleepy voice, speaking English. Ding Ming whispered, ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Who is this?’ He knew that tone, and the lazy way those syllables ran together to make ‘hoossiz’ – Mister Kevin.

  ‘My name William.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I work in mud. Touch your… little brother with my hand. Got take away.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the little Chinky takeaway. I’ve got some nasty bruises off your friend. You’d better get back right away.’

  ‘He no my friend. He take me. I no… I no can choose. I want go back. Please, understand. I no want my mother be hurt.’

  ‘Are you still with that guy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the van?’

  ‘Excuse me please?’

  ‘The car, he took my car, where’s my car?’

  ‘Car is here.’

  ‘Tell me where you are, we’ll come and get you. I’ll make sure eve
rything is smoothed over back in Chinkyville and we can pretend none of this happened. Okay?’

  He felt a surge of gratitude. Mister Kevin was harsh but fair, a lonely figure in need of love, a reasonable man of his word, soon to inform him where his wife was.

  Something clanged into the forecourt and Ding Ming caught his breath. He turned his head and saw the spade skitter across concrete and come to rest against a petrol pump. The policeman yelled, ‘Fuck. I can’t get in. We’ll stay the night and come back in the morning and buy the fucking thing.’

  Now his feet could be heard scrambling for a footing on the lid of the bin. He was climbing down. Ding Ming realised he was too late, the man would be round the corner in a few seconds. He winced at a sharp crack. The policeman swore again. He was very close, but there were no footsteps. Ding Ming put the receiver on top of the phone and scurried to peek around the wall. One of the policeman’s legs had plunged through the broken lid, and with much grumbling and swearing the man was clumsily extricating himself. He ran back to the phone.

  ‘At petrol station,’ he blurted.

  ‘I need more than that.’

  Where were they? He had no idea. He rummaged his head furiously for the right English words, hopping from one leg to another in his haste.

  ‘Got lake, close by town. Town got Chinese restaurant name Happy Duck.’

  ‘Happy Duck? That’ll be in the phone book. Alright… me and the lads will be down soon as. Sit tight. Stay out of the way when it kicks off.’

  He heard a thud. The policeman had jumped down from the bin. Footsteps – now his tormentor was walking in the forecourt. They came unhurriedly closer. A few more steps and his captor would see him.

  ‘No hurt my mother. Tell me where my wife is.’

  ‘Huh?’

  Ding Ming put the receiver back and hurried round the corner and walked right into the policeman. Feeling that just to catch the man’s eye would be to give himself away, he lowered his head, and saw that one of the fancy leather shoes was filthy with crud. It had packaging stuck to it and what looked like smears of banana.

  ‘What’s up with you? Seen more snakes?’

  ‘They’re everywhere.’

  (45

  Ding Ming and the policeman returned to the van. Ding Ming figured that when Mister Kevin and his lieutenants arrived, the important thing would be to get quickly out of the way. Perhaps, after it was over – the van returned, the policeman punished – Kevin in his gratitude would let him talk to his wife. He looked forward to returning to a world that might not be pleasant or comfortable but was at least safe and familiar.

  He regretted his earlier hesitation at performing the action Kevin had asked of him. If he’d just done that then, perhaps this wouldn’t be happening now. His predicament could be seen as an instructive tale about the consequences of disobedience. Well, he’d learned his lesson. Those people owned him, he had to do what they wanted. His spirit was sick at the thought of that greasy cock in his mouth, but he imagined such troublesome selfishness would diminish over time.

  He said, ‘Let’s go to sleep.’

  ‘My body is on Chinese time. It thinks it’s the morning. It’s telling me I should be getting up.’

  ‘If you get some sleep you’ll feel fresh tomorrow. I’m very sleepy. So tired. So sleepy.’ He conjured the term and, imagining his eyes a projector and the head of the policeman a screen, beamed the characters across: shui jiao, shui jiao. He heard tapping and rustling. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve run out of cigarettes. I’m trying to build new ones by collecting tobacco from the butts in the ashtray.’

  ‘You could go to sleep and buy more cigarettes in the morning.’

  ‘Back home, the old guys smoke tobacco in rolled-up newspaper. When I was growing up, that was normal, we didn’t know any different. It’s harsh but you get used to it. I’ll smoke that page you were looking at… that picture of the lady with the huge tits. Might make for a smoother smoke, what do you think?’

  He would return to Kevin, and he would be welcomed back, and after a rocky start that in years to come he would laugh about, his life here could begin. After some weeks he and his wife would be put on the same work detail and allowed to toil side by side. Their debt would steadily diminish and the money that they sent home would pay for all sorts of treats. ‘Good old Ding Ming,’ people would say. ‘A man at last, earning for his family.’ A burst of coughing and spluttering hacked the reverie apart.

  ‘Wo cao!’ said Jian. ‘This is rough.’ He coughed again. ‘Fuck me, this is rough.’ He looked gloomily at his cigarette, a tube of rolled newspaper, cocked upright to stop tobacco falling out of the end.

  ‘Stop smoking it, then.’

  But the man persisted. It took him more than ten minutes to consume the thing, and when he finally stubbed it out and stopped coughing, the van was full of smoke and smelled of rank tobacco and burning paper.

  ‘My mouth is raw. I’m going out for a drink.’

  Left alone, Ding Ming squatted on the seat with Kevin’s parka wrapped round him, and waited for Kevin and his lieutenants. He hoped there were many of them, that they would come suddenly, and that whatever was to happen, happen quickly.

  Minutes passed, and he grew anxious at the policeman’s continued absence. What if he had taken it upon himself to go for a walk? The man was restless, it did not seem unlikely. If he’d wandered away, then he’d see Mister Kevin and company arrive, and would hide from them, and Kevin would come up to this van and he would ask Ding Ming, ‘Where’s the other guy?’ and Ding Ming would have to say that he didn’t know, that the man had decided to wander off. ‘In the middle of the night?’ Kevin would say. And the suspicion would be there: ‘You warned him, didn’t you? You told him we were coming.’ And Kevin would be angry with him, and perhaps he would say, ‘I’m disappointed in you, William, so I won’t tell you where your wife is.’

  He decided to look for the policeman and encourage him to return. His excuse for going out would be, he wanted a drink too. He took the empty cola bottle, he could fill it up. He was relieved to discover the man standing barely twenty paces away, throwing stones into the lake.

  Ding Ming splashed a scoop of water into his face and rubbed it about with his hand. He could feel the pebbles beneath the thin canvas of his shoes. Bending to dip the bottle, his feet grew damp. He had holes in both soles.

  ‘Fill it right up,’ said Jian. ‘I don’t know if I can afford to buy anything for us to drink, I might have to spend all the money on petrol.’

  ‘So what will we do for food?’

  ‘Maybe we’ll see an orchard.’

  ‘Or get invited to a feast.’

  ‘I could do with a steamed bun.’

  ‘Beef noodles.’

  ‘Hotpot.’

  ‘Fish soup.’

  ‘Just a proper cup of tea,’ Jian said.

  Ding Ming realised this was a good place to be when Kevin and his men came, he’d be able to run away. He’d head left, along the pebble beach, then turn onto the road and run uphill where it curled around the lake and up a ridge. If he got on that road he could outrun anyone, and from that ridge he’d be able to see everything that transpired.

  He looked at the policeman’s big hands and remembered how they had struck him and probed his split lip, still sore, with his tongue. Yes, much better to be out here than confined with him in the van. All he had to do, then, was keep the man talking.

  He brought up a topic that was much on his mind. ‘Have you ever…’ It was difficult to give it voice, but he forced himself on. ‘Have you ever had a woman suck on your… little brother?’

  ‘What a question.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘There is no greater joy.’

  ‘Was it your wife?’

  ‘You won’t get a wife to do that. You have to pay a whore.’

  ‘Do foreign men do it? Is it something that they do to each other? I mean, is it normal?’

&n
bsp; ‘Who can say what the habits of these people are? Why are you asking?’

  ‘I saw it in a film.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Your boss asked you, didn’t he?’

  Ding Ming lowered his gaze. The policeman was astute. What else had he noticed? ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s why you were running away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suggest you bite it off. He won’t ask again.’

  ‘Thank you for that advice.’

  ‘I’d get another job if I were you.’

  But Ding Ming, writhing with embarrassment, was desperate to change the subject. ‘What’s being a policeman like?’

  ‘It’s a job. At least I don’t have to suck cocks. Well, not literally.’

  ‘Lots of banquets?’

  ‘Invitations most nights.’

  Ding Ming knew the kind of banquets policemen held – dozens of courses, as much booze as you could drink, and all on state funds.

  ‘But… Sometimes you have to let the villains go, just because someone with clout told you. These days it’s all the wrong way round. I see scum driving big cars and being the big boss when they should be in jail.’

  He threw a stone. Ding Ming threw one after it and was disappointed to see that his went barely half as far.

  ‘Sometimes we get told when to hold executions by the hospital. They’ve some guy in, he’ll pay a lot for new corneas, can we shoot one of our rapists? You start to lose… you get lost… everyone’s making money, you want to be in on it. Everyone else has an Audi, you want one too. I found out about this colleague of mine, guy under me… he took a bribe off a murderer to get the charge dropped. The victim’s family bribed him even more to reopen the case. He went back to the murderer, got even more money. You know what I did when found out?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I took a cut.’

  Ding Ming threw another stone, a little further this time.

  ‘How glorious to be an official.’

  ‘When I was young I wanted to make a difference. I was stupid and wrong, but I cared. I wanted to build socialism – we all did. Then you find out it’s just another racket, and you’re a foot soldier for the biggest tong of all.’