by Simon Lewis
The peasant stood close. ‘Then this is a shrine to the god of the dead.’
‘He’ll look after us as well as anyone else. Maybe better.’
‘There are ghosts. Let’s go.’
The headlights of a passing car flashed across the angel, illuminating spots of lichen on her cheek and the chiselled feathers of her wings. Jian glimpsed a tinted windscreen, a yellow roof and a gaudy fire design above a rear wheel arch. An ache tweaked his hip and he remembered how that vehicle had smacked him. He grabbed the peasant’s shoulder and tugged him behind the grave and hissed, ‘That’s him. That’s Black Fort.’
(65
Jian ran to his car and started the engine. But the peasant was still crossing the graveyard, scurrying left and right. It was like watching a rat navigate a maze. The idiot didn’t want to step on any tombs. He got to the path and sprinted. As he scrambled in, Jian accelerated hard and cursed him. The peasant lurched, the passenger door swung onto his leg, and he cried out in pain.
The road was narrow and winding, so Black Fort should not be too far ahead. Jian bent low over the wheel. He swung the car round a corner, the wheel clipped the verge, and the door slammed shut. The peasant rubbed his shin and, with his other hand, braced against the dashboard.
They passed pretty houses decorated with hanging baskets. Low walls of red brick lined the road and behind them great blooms flourished in gardens.
At the next corner he thought he saw a flash of a yellow roof, some two hundred metres up ahead. The gun, where was the gun? In his waistband. And the spray was in his pcoket. The rest of his weapons were in the golf bag on the back seat. It was a pity he was not in a larger vehicle that could ram and crush. He felt his armpits prickling and licked his lips. His fatigue had vanished.
The road widened as they came into the village. They passed a red booth and a stone sculpture on a lawn and came to a duck pond. On a lane just beyond it, a brake light winked. Jian followed. The hedge was thick and high and he could not see far. His enemy might be just around the next corner. But when he turned the car into a straight that canted uphill, there was no sign. He squinted for the gleam of moonlight on metal and squirmed in agitation. It would be very annoying to lose the man now.
Ding Ming was sitting on his hands and rocking.
Jian said, ‘Put your seat belt on. If there’s contact, keep your head down.’
But when the car breasted the rise, Jian saw only trees and empty road. Perhaps the man had grown aware that he was being followed, and was lying in ambush. He stopped, turned off the engine and the radio, and wound the window down.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Be quiet. I’m listening. Stop breathing so hard.’
‘Sorry.’
There. It was the throaty hum of a powerful engine in low gear, far to the left and some way behind. Jian reversed for a hundred metres or so and now he saw the turnoff. The entrance was partially obscured by a stunted tree, and easy to miss.
The hedges were so overgrown there that twigs buffeted the car. The tarmac was worn and spotted with clumps of grass. Not wanting to make too much noise, Jian kept the car at walking pace. His quarry would be far ahead now. Never mind, he would catch the man at his destination. He turned off the lights. The peasant shifted uneasily.
‘What’s that?’
An unsurfaced track wound away.
‘This might be it.’
Jian stopped the car.
‘Stay here.’
He got out, closing the door softly. Branches stirred in the breeze and night creatures called. There was not a building in sight. They could be anywhere, any time. The thought brought a flash of identification with a remembered figure from a TV drama – a disgraced mandarin, his pigtail shorn and his robes of office stripped away, tramping in lonely exile through the void beyond the Great Wall.
A sign lay in the verge. Two short words were burned onto rotting wood. He gestured for the peasant to come out and have a look, motioning him to be quiet.
‘This is the place,’ whispered Ding Ming. ‘The farm of hope.’
‘Get back in the car and keep quiet.’
He reversed and eased the car onto the verge, against the hedge. He had time now, he must prepare himself. He clambered into the back seat and filled the two glass bottles he’d bought at the service station with petrol from the can. They were a nice shape – good for throwing. He tore the polystryrene cups to shreds and dropped those in.
The peasant watched in the rearview mirror. ‘Why the plastic?’
‘Makes it stick like napalm.’
A sulky little arsonist had told him that trick. Bright lad, but he wouldn’t stop setting fire to public buildings. They’d had to put him away in the end.
Jian tore two strips off his shirt, soaked them in petrol and jammed them in the end of the bottles. He hadn’t made a petrol bomb since he was a Red Guard, but you didn’t lose the knack. They stank, and he reminded himself to leave it a while before having a cigarette.
It was good that his hands weren’t shaking. He didn’t feel ready, but he knew from experience that you never felt ready. You just had to know what you had to do and maintain enough presence of mind to do it. He clipped the police utility belt on. The two gas sprays went in there, and the handcuffs and the torch and the extendable baton. He took a hammer from the toolkit and secured it in the belt. He wrapped the petrol bombs in his shirt so that the glass did not clink, and put them in a plastic bag from the service station.
He became aware of squeaking plastic. The peasant was rocking harder. He put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Hide. When I’m sure I’ve killed them all, I’ll come back to the car and shout your name.’
‘What if you get killed?’
‘Go to the temple. Maybe they’ll help. Or the police. They’re not as bad as you’ve been led to believe.’
He opened the door.
‘Wait. Look at the time. Wait one minute, please.’
The peasant was pointing at the dashboard clock. Blue figures said four four four – si si si – it sounded like death, death, death. ‘It’s an unlucky time. Wait a minute.’
Jian got out. Was it his imagination, or did the breeze carry just a tang of the sea? His body was stiff from all the driving, but he supposed it would soon loosen. He hoped his knees would hold up.
‘Don’t kill anyone. Please. Take me back.’
‘I’ll do my best to stay alive.’
The peasant opened the passenger door. His face was damp with sweat or tears. ‘You said you wanted to be a good policeman. That isn’t just killing criminals. You kidnapped me, so you should get me back.’
Jian took him by the neck.
‘If I think you’re going to go and warn him, I’ll kill you now.’
‘No, no – not at all.’
‘Go and hide.’
He watched the peasant scuttle forlornly away. He rubbed earth on his face and over the hammer, so that they didn’t shine, and put the hooded top over his football shirt and pulled the hood up. He mumbled ‘surmount every difficulty to win victory’, and set off down the track.
(66
Jian advanced along the verge, bending low to minimise his silhouette. Grass swished and dew dampened his trousers. As his night vision grew sharper, he made out flowers and berries. Moonlight filtered through overhanging trees and dappled the track. The muddy surface had been recently churned by thick-wheeled, heavy vehicles. A black shadow hurtled past his ear and he ducked. It was nothing, merely a bat, and he ordered himself to be calm.
His sleeve caught on a thorny branch and he stopped to pull it loose. He was pleased to discover no mental snags to his progress. But he was a little detached, an observer of himself. He tried to put thought away and concentrate on sensation. Leaves rustling in the breeze, his rapid breath and heartbeat, the pressure of plastic handles on the pads of his fingers. He peered round a clump of thistles and considered a dilapidated farmyard. Black Fort’s car was parked before
a two-storey house. Two lights were on downstairs, and one up.
He stepped carefully over rubble to a tumbledown barn. He crept past a corrugated-iron sheet blocking off an entrance and he kept his mind busy estimating distances to and between yard, car and house. At least there did not seem to be a dog – it would have barked by now.
He skulked to the house and peeked in a window. A yellowing net curtain hung with its ragged edge a few centimetres above the sill. A bare bulb illuminated a tatty kitchen. The floor tiles were peeling or loose and the surfaces splotched with mould. The only signs that it was not disused were the fridge and portable hotplate, and dirty cups and bowls beside the sink.
The windowframe was speckled with woodworm. It would split easily, but make a lot of noise in the process. The windows were not double-glazed, so he could hurl a petrol bomb in without worrying about it bouncing back or breaking on the window.
The front door creaked open. Jian flattened himself against the wall. He was completely exposed. He put his bag down and slid his hand around the cold gun. Had they heard him?
A torch beam wavered over the yard, across the yellow car, a heap of rusty poles, a stack of tyres. It found the sheet of corrugated iron and held there. Two men strolled out. Jian recognised a ponytail and a bristling flat-top. He had seen these men outside the Floating Lotus restaurant – they were Black Fort’s henchmen. The bigger man, flat-top, held the torch. He yawned and covered his mouth with his hand while his companion tugged the metal aside. They went into the barn.
This was a good chance. Jian stepped towards the dark entrance. The gun in his pocket was reassuringly hard and heavy. If things went wrong he could show it to frighten them. It was easy to be quiet on the concrete but he watched his step for puddles and loose stones.
Light flashed round inside the barn. Standing at the side with the hammer raised, he thought about how he’d do it. He’d take the bigger one first, then catch the second before he could run. It would be tricky, and these things came down to luck, but it was possible: they’d have no night vision because of the torch and after the first strike the second man would freeze. He just had to make a good first strike.
His heart was pounding and he was gripping the hammer so hard that he felt it in the tendons on the back of his hand. The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is resolved by the method of socialist revolution. The unbidden words trilled. He heard scraping, footfalls, the men chattering in Cantonese. The hammer was shaking and he willed them to come out, just come out. The contradiction between the working class and the peasant class in socialist society is resolved by the method of collectivisation.
The men came, dragging a slight and skinny girl. Her ankles were tied with a rope that forced her to take mincing little steps. Wails of complaint were muffled by a gag. A length of electric cable bound her wrists and the bigger man was pulling her along the way you’d lead a donkey. He held the torch and, as he yanked the girl, the light played over the house. The second man guided her by tugging her hair. They moved fast and the big man was already too far ahead.
Jian swung the hammer at the back of the second man’s head and caught it where the skull joins the neck, beneath the band of his ponytail, and there was a crack and he went down. His hand was still holding the hair of the girl and he dragged her down. Now she was between Jian and his new target. The man let go of the rope and ran for the house and torchlight swung wildly.
Jian shoved the girl out of the way and drew his gun. But his target made the front door and slammed it shut. He cursed and put a hand on the back of the felled man’s neck, behind the comma of black hair. A mental picture came of the last time he had seen him – staggering drunkenly with his friend’s arm round his shoulder, his cheeks red and his mouth hanging open. Now his spine was cracked and he was dead. This was an ugly business.
The girl was shuffling away. He caught up and took her by the elbow. He swept bedraggled hair out of her face. She was Chinese, only young, with small frightened eyes. He tugged her gag down and held her head level with a hand on her chin and said, ‘How many of them are there?’
She looked at him blankly and he worried that perhaps she did not speak Mandarin or was insensible. Her face was filthy except below the eyes, where tears had washed it. Her cheek was livid with bruises.
‘They said they were going to break us.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know.’ She began to sob. ‘Have you come to save us?’
‘No. Run away.’
Jian let her go and turned his attention to the house. Surprise had been his only advantage and he had squandered it. They knew the ground and perhaps they had weapons. He had to act while they were still shaken.
He had to concentrate. First, where to put the hammer while he lit the bombs. He clamped it between his teeth and tasted mud and blood. The lighter, where was that? In his pocket. Now get it to light. It seemed smaller than he remembered, his fingers bigger and clumsier. The flint sparked twice, and on the third attempt a ghost of flame appeared.
He picked up a petrol bomb and lit the soaking rag. His instinct was just to get the thing away but he fought that, took aim, and hurled it as hard as he could. It revolved in the air and he saw its looping path as a retinal streak. The kitchen window smashed and the bottle shattered against the far wall. With a sucking sound, a fire whumped into being, and heat pressed a moment on his eyebrows. Now that it was going on he was glad. He stepped back and planted his feet wider to throw the second bottle. It went through the other downstairs window and flame blossomed.
Stepping forward he held his arm up to shield his face. Fire tendrils jumped and snatched and a flurry rushed up the curtains. A crackling sound, and the house shimmered in the heat.
The door was thrown open, and the man with a flat-top haircut ran out, his head bent low and his arms raised high. Screeching, he turned on the spot and beat at the flames flickering round his shoulders and down his back. Jian smacked him with the hammer and he fell and was still as fire played over him.
Movement glimpsed in his peripheral vision made him look up. A figure looked down from an upstairs window. A pale face was framed by black hair parted in the middle, and lit from below by the gentle glow of a candle, which accentuated the elegant cut of the jaw and the high cheekbones.
Jian gaped at that silent, motionless form, more familiar than his own reflection. He felt as if he had been punched in the stomach and staggered back.
‘Wei Wei?’
The features did not add up to an expression, her face was as vacant as those of the statues in that temple. It wavered in the heat haze. The big dark eyes were giving nothing away. Jian called again to the image of his daughter.
‘Wei Wei?’
But the face retreated into darkness.
(67
When Wei Wei walked into the Floating Lotus and asked about the job advertised in the window, she knew that she would get it. She was not sure, though, that she wanted it. She told herself that the discipline would allow her monkishly to discover a new aspect of herself and, thus romanticised, it did not seem so bad, at least for the first couple of weeks.
Bending to clear the plate of a solitary Chinese diner, she felt a hand slide across her thigh. She slapped him on the cheek. He did not seem disconcerted, but held a hand up in obviously unfelt apology. Only now did she notice the birthmark under his lip, the jade jewellery, the attractively dishevelled hair. Actually this guy was quite good-looking. When he said he was sorry, he was smiling, and the toothpick he was chewing rose suggestively.
He left her a twenty-quid tip. She was not impressed, she thought it vulgar. She palmed the note and replaced it with coins. That was one skill, at least, that the Moping Locust had taught her.
When she finished work, this guy was waiting by a flashy yellow car parked across the road. He got out and addressed her in English.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m getting a cab.’
‘Wo
uld you like to go out?’
‘Do you have nothing better to do than hassle girls?’
‘I don’t do it often – you should be flattered.’
‘I’m not, and I’m not cheap enough to be bought.’
She felt his eyes on her as she walked briskly away, and resisted the urge to look back.
At the house she ate her takeout in the dingy kitchen. Someone had left textbooks on the table. Feeling a guilty twinge, she moved them out of her eyeline. Dropping out of college had not been a conscious decision, she had just stopped attending. Back home, as a student of English, she had excelled – it was the first requirement of the world she wanted in on, so she had worked hard. But Tourism and Leisure? It seemed commonplace, marginal. The idea of opening a tourist agency had been little more than a whim and it had evaporated as soon as hard graft was required. The hospitality industry seemed, on closer examination, to be all tedious practicality and distasteful servility. She knew she didn’t have the temperament for it.
She flipped through a fashion magazine. It was full of promise. ‘Be all you can be, discover the new you’ – even the ad copy seemed to speak to her. This glossy world was what she wanted. She had no idea how to get there, though. She had sloughed off her unwanted identity – the policeman’s girl from the cold backwater – like an old skin, but no new one had grown.
Song came in. Wei Wei supposed they ought to share a bond, being the only Chinese girls in the house, but she found her housemate haughty and dull. Her white boyfriend was with her. Annoyingly, he was quite presentable. She was pretty sure he was called Paul. They were always watching TV curled up together on the couch, in a state of what looked like comfortable mutual boredom. Now they were making cocoa. Just for something to say, Wei Wei complained about how cold her food was.