Bad Traffic

  That hadn’t worked, what now? He opened the police car boot and found a medical bag and a toolkit and a couple of traffic cones. His mood of fragile optimism was waning. He had made a hash of this, the logistics were a nightmare, the whole operation was a mess.

  Back in the squad car he got a police utility belt out and found a stubby metal key on a chain. He got into the back seat and pushed the peasant’s face against the window.

  ‘So you phoned your boss.’

  Ding Ming’s cheek was pressed against the glass. He blurted out of the side of his mouth, ‘When you took me, he told the snakeheads in China and they tied up my mother and I called her—’

  The handcuffs chinked as slender hands shook. Beneath the coat Jian could feel the bobbles of his spine and he realised how malnourished the lad was. Poor kid was just a civilian, hapless and unlucky, and he felt a twinge of guilt.

  ‘How did you contact him?’

  ‘I called him.’

  ‘Will you call him again?’

  ‘Of course not, no, no.’

  He unlocked the handcuffs and the kid scrambled into the front passenger seat. He envied the lad his youth and his future and his innocence and even his fear. To have fear was to have hope.

  Jian got out and into the driver’s seat. The peasant was pointing a gun at him. He groaned with exasperation. He recognised the gun – he’d shot that hoodlum with it… was it only yesterday?

  The peasant said, ‘Take me back to the mud.’

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘In the glove compartment.’

  ‘I wondered where it had got to.’

  Ding Ming held it with both hands and still the barrel shook.

  ‘Take me back to the mud, now. Take me back.’

  ‘Or what? You’ll shoot me?’ He leaned forward and pointed as he said, ‘Did you see any cigarettes in there?’

  He knocked the peasant’s arm away and grabbed his wrist. With his other forearm he forced the lad back against the door, rising off the seat to get his weight behind it. But the idiot still didn’t let go of the gun, so he headbutted him.

  The peasant cried out, dropped the weapon and slapped both hands over his face. Jian fished the gun out from under the handbrake, checked the safety was on, and put it in the driver’s door pocket.

  The peasant said, ‘Ow ow ow. Stop hitting me.’

  ‘Let me look at it.’ He prised Ding Ming’s fingers away. ‘Can you see okay? Any sparkles in your vision?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any disorientation? How do you feel?’

  ‘Tired, hungry, terrified.’

  ‘You’re fine.’

  It would sting for a few more minutes and he’d be dazed, and soon enough have a bump and a bruise. The lad’s eyes were watering, with pain or possibly frustration.

  ‘Stop hitting me, just stop hitting me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.’

  Jian pointed at the glove compartment.

  ‘Is there a map in there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  (56

  Jian was pleased to see the peasant pull out a road atlas. The lad said, ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Hijack a car. One with no kids in it.’

  But he drove for minutes and saw no other traffic. He didn’t like not knowing where he was going and losing time. The next vehicles he saw could be a posse of police cars.

  The peasant said, ‘You can’t just stop someone and take their car. People have guns.’

  ‘Is that so? Look at the map. Find out where we are.’

  Ahead, a car was turning off. Jian accelerated to catch it, but overshot the narrow sideroad and had to brake and reverse. The car was a few hundred metres ahead but he could see its brake lights winking as it travelled the winding lane.

  It was a good location – the hedges were high, there were no buildings around and there were fields either side he could dump the police car in. He gained on the vehicle, it turned again, and he followed it into a secluded car park fringed with trees. His quarry slowed.

  Jian shifted in his seat, psyching himself up. He would be ruthless, whoever was in there. He reached to turn on the siren but paused when he saw the odd, busy scene. Six or seven cars were parked up. A gaggle of men bent to peer into a roomy estate, and one aimed a video camera through steamy windows. The back door of a van hung open and a man knelt on the tarmac before it, his head and shoulders inside, moving rhythmically.

  The squad car lights swept across an interior painted red and a tangle of pale arms and legs. Why, there were naked people in there. They seemed even more surprised than him.

  The sight of the police car spread panic. Half-dressed figures scattered for cars, the van door was pulled shut, a man shuffled, holding up his trousers.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said the peasant.

  Car doors slammed and engines started. Headlight beams swiped back and forth as cars rushed away.

  Jian put the siren on and took the squad car forward. A white van and a black sports car were parked side by side with their front doors hanging open. In the front of the sports car, three figures hastily rearranged themselves. Doors were pulled shut, the vehicle reversed and swung around, and, as it shot past, Jian glimpsed a bare-chested man driving and an awkward couple with flushed faces squeezed into the passenger seat. He slid the squad car towards the only vehicle remaining, the abandoned van.

  ‘A sex party,’ said Ding Ming. ‘They were having a sex party.’

  ‘Stay here.’

  But, though the van’s front door was wide open, there was no sign of the keys. Presumably the driver had been driven off in the sports car. He cursed. He’d wasted so much time. He’d get back on the main road, set up a roadblock and hijack the first vehicle that came along. Or break into a house and steal some car keys. The thought of terrorising more civilians, and the logistical hassles any plan he might come up with would entail, caused dismay.

  ‘I could maybe start it,’ said Ding Ming. ‘There are four wires under the ignition, you have to bind three of them and then touch them to the fourth. Don’t tell anyone I helped you. Tell them you did it yourself.’

  ‘How long would it take?’

  ‘I’d have to have a look.’

  Together they considered the housing behind the steering wheel.

  ‘First, you have to get that off. Fiddly. Needs a screwdriver. Then you can get to the wiring.’

  Jian found a hammer in the squad car toolkit. He smashed the housing until it cracked, then turned the head and wrenched it away with the claw. Underneath the gouged plastic, coloured wires ran along a metal shaft.

  ‘If anyone finds out I did this, you forced me to help you,’ said Ding Ming. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘That’s right. I said I’d break your fingers if you didn’t.’

  The peasant squatted and poked his head under the steering column. Jian stood behind him pointing a police torch.

  ‘My cousin showed me. He’s a lorry driver. They all know how to do it because they get drunk and lose their keys. Can I have more light, please? There’s the wires.’

  ‘Can you start it or not?’

  ‘It’s fiddly. What about all those people, having a sex party out here? I feel sorry for them. They can’t have loving spouses.’

  ‘Get it started. Someone is going to come back for this soon.’

  But the peasant stopped work.

  ‘I’ll start the engine if you grant me a favour.’

  ‘Cunning peasant.’

  ‘Can I call my mother? Please. I’m worried about her. They’ve tied her to a chair.’

  ‘I’ll get you back to your boss and everything will be straightened out.’

  ‘I want to make a phone call.’

  ‘Your mother is fine. Think about it. Your boss and his men saw the van go into the water. They thought you were in it with me. They think we’re both dead. Your boss will have told the snakeheads ba
ck home, and they’ll have told your mother and left her to her grief.’

  ‘I must call her, I must call her.’

  A vehicle was approaching. The headlights were white and low. It was the sports car.

  ‘Get that van started,’ barked Jian. ‘You can call her. But you will speak only Mandarin to her and you’ll say nothing except that you are alive.’

  ‘She doesn’t understand Mandarin.’

  ‘She’ll understand your voice.’

  He leaned into the police car and turned the siren on. The flashing rooflights illuminated the scene and the peasant could be clearly seen tinkering. So Jian turned the headlights on full beam to dazzle the new arrivals.

  The sports car stopped and a man got down from it and stood shading his eyes and calling out.

  ‘Tell him to stay back,’ said Jian. ‘Sound like you mean it.’ The peasant shouted at the guy, who took a couple of steps closer. Ding Ming said the same thing, louder this time, and now the man stopped. He was wearing a shirt but no shoes or trousers, and was hopping from one foot to the other. Perhaps the tarmac was pricking his feet.

  Ding Ming said, ‘He wants to know what we’re doing. He said he wants to get into his van. And some other stuff, but I didn’t catch it.’

  ‘Tell him to turn round and put his hands on his head.’

  Ding Ming relayed the order and the man obeyed and Ding Ming returned to fiddling with the wires. But now a woman was coming out of the car and calling. Jian said, ‘Tell them to lie on the ground with their hands on their heads. Sound annoyed.’

  The man got down on his front but the woman stepped forward. She wasn’t buying it.

  Ding Ming said, ‘They want to know if we’re Chinese police and what we’re doing. They say they were just having a party and it’s not against the law, and some other stuff I couldn’t catch.’

  ‘Tell them we’ve found a bomb.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say that in English.’

  Jian ran a hand through his hair. So here I am, he thought sardonically, trying to steal a car from a bunch of sex maniacs on the wrong side of the world.

  ‘Then tell them there’s a man with a gun. He’s hiding around here somewhere. For their own safety they must lie on the ground.’

  ‘That’s difficult.’

  But Ding Ming leaned back out of the van and shouted, and at least now there was some authority to his voice. The woman obeyed and a second man got down from the sports car, and he lay down, too. The lad went back to the wires. The engine of the van caught and he grinned in triumph.

  Jian got in. An image of his daughter rose unbidden. She was sitting in the passenger seat talking about a film she’d seen. She put the seat belt on and tugged to check it was secure. Her voice and her deft hands were as vivid as if she were really there, but the image vanished and a sense of emptiness welled. She was not an absent presence but a present absence. So was her mother. What great gaps he carried.

  Ding Ming said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’ He wrenched the steering wheel. It did not obey, and he slapped it in frustration. It was locked – it would move a few centimetres then freeze. Some kind of security device. He should have known, they had the same thing on the squad cars back home. Ding Ming’s smile faded.

  (57

  ‘Fuck this,’ said Jian. He got out of the van and pointed his gun at the figures on the ground, holding his arm out straight to make sure they saw the ugly thing. The woman gasped, and a man reached across and grasped her hand.

  The keys to the sports car were still in the ignition. Black leather creaked as Jian got in. He was reclined far back and much lower than he was used to, and the pedals were small and close together.

  ‘Quickly, quickly,’ said Ding Ming, clambering in.

  Jian ran from first to third and back again, getting used to the tight shifts, and varied pressure on the pedals to get a sense of the engine’s response. The thing was so powerful and sensitive it would take some getting used to.

  He drove to the police car, and got out and chucked the utility belts, the medical kit, the tool kit and the map into the cramped space behind the bucket seats.

  ‘Hurry – they’re getting up.’

  Jian put his foot down, sweeping the car right around the car park, and glimpsed upraised puzzled faces as he turned into the road.

  ‘This is a car,’ said the peasant. ‘Will you look at this? There’s a button here to change the angle of the wing mirror. That’s a CD player. I think this is air con. It’s like a spaceship.’

  ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  Tilted back in the bucket seat, surrounded by illuminated dials and readouts, Jian felt more like a pilot than a driver. The thing ate up road, but he still didn’t know if he was going in the right direction.

  ‘Get on and read that map. Find out where we are.’ He pointed. ‘There’s signs everywhere.’

  ‘That’s an advert. Keep going – we’ll come to a town, and then I can look it up in the index and work it out. Can you put a light on in here?’

  Stealing this car had solved nothing. Those sex maniacs from the car park would ring the police and a call would go out, would be going out now: Chinese hostage-taker now travelling in black sporty number registration whatever whatever, take him dead or alive. Across the force, the crime would be taken personally. Every cop in the country would yearn to catch the man who’d stolen a squad car.

  ‘You said I could make a call. Can I borrow your phone?’

  ‘No.’

  Jian no longer had his daughter’s pink mobile. He’d lost it in the lake, along with the wallet. It must have slipped out when he was swimming. He’d been concentrating on keeping the address book, he hadn’t given those others a thought.

  ‘You said as long as I spoke Mandarin to her, you’d let me. We had an agreement that, if I started the engine of that van, you’d let me phone my mother. I started the van.’

  ‘But it wasn’t any good, you set off the steering lock. Our agreement is void.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘My mobile is out of charge.’

  Which, he told himself, wasn’t really a lie.

  ‘I have to call my mother. They tied her to a chair.’

  The man was like a scratched record. Jian repeated his earlier argument, working to keep the impatience out of his voice.

  ‘Think about it. They thought you died, with me, drowned in that van. There’s no longer any reason to threaten your mum. Or any of your family. You’re free. You know what? You pulled off a great trick. They think you’re dead, so they won’t collect the money you owe.’

  ‘Oh no – they told us quite specifically. If we die we still owe the twenty thousand. They’ll collect from my family.’

  ‘It’s going to be fine. Everything will work out so long as you help me get where I’m going.’

  He injected an upbeat tone that he did not feel. This was like talking to children, something he had never been good at. He gave the peasant the address book. ‘Find this place.’

  Out of the corner of his eye he checked that the lad was considering the road map. He would rather they travel in silence, but he couldn’t afford for the lad to start sulking.

  ‘Have you found it yet?’

  ‘The village isn’t marked. I think the scale is too big. This map only has towns.’

  ‘Find the province.’

  Ding Ming showed him the back cover, a picture of the whole lumpy island.

  ‘It’s here. See? England is shaped like a squatting woman, and we’re heading to her big bottom.’

  ‘And which direction is that?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? When you take me back,’ said Ding Ming, ‘do you think they’ll punish me?’

  ‘What’s in it for them? They’ll put you straight to work.’

  ‘I’m worried they’ll realise I helped you.’

  ‘Your story is, I abused you, then you escaped and made that phone call to your boss. After the
van went in the water, you got that nice Chinese girl from the restaurant to help you find your way back.’

  He prattled on, trying to sound convincing.

  ‘Just have that straight, and stick to it. Be glad you’re so beaten up – that’ll help convince them. They’ll see you’ve had a very bad time.’

  Ding Ming fingered the bump on his forehead.

  This was a future so distant it wasn’t worth thinking about, the peasant’s concerns were touching but absurd. The poor lad believed everything was going to work out. They’d get where they were going, and the peasant would wait in the car twiddling his thumbs while the people who needed to be killed got killed, and then they’d just drive back. As if this was all some country jaunt.

  ‘Everything is going to be fine. Can you work out what road we’re on?’

  ‘I’m looking, it’s difficult. You go so fast I can’t finish reading the signs. What are you going to do after?’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After you drop me back at the mud.’

  Jian reflected guiltily that, without the texted address stored in the pink phone’s memory, it would be much harder for him to return the peasant. In fact, it would be almost impossible.

  ‘That’s no concern of yours.’

  Jian hadn’t thought about it and didn’t care to start thinking about it now. When he imagined the killing of the men who murdered his daughter, he could see possibilities, strategies and outcomes. But he could not envision a life afterwards. The prospect of more days to fill wasn’t pleasing. He realised that he expected to die.

  (58

  Jian accelerated but he hardly felt it at all. Looking out of the windscreen was like watching TV, the car handled as if it was on rails.

  ‘This is a lovely car. She drives like a bullet. Chunky in lower gear, but when she gets over fifty she’s flying. Listen to that purr.’

  A sniff made him look across. Ding Ming was gripping the edges of his seat and looked like he was about to cry.

  ‘What’s the problem now?’

  ‘I never thought I could be sitting in such a wonderful thing, but it isn’t making me happy.’