Bad Traffic

by Simon Lewis

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t. Do you want a cigarette? Last meal and a last smoke. I figure it’s the least I can offer.’

  ‘Last? Oh, please.’ She coughed. It was not easy to talk, her words seemed to take her breath away with them. Hot tears welled. It was better when she was numb.

  ‘I guess not. Then we’ll get on.’

  He laid the spoon down between a candle and a little plastic bottle shaped like a lemon. Next went a hypodermic needle in a transparent plastic cover, a blue packet of cotton balls and a baggie of beige powder. He laid it all out neatly, in two rows, like instruments in a hospital.

  He held an oblong of white card up to her face. The strain of her eyes refocusing hurt. She made out her own surname, Ma, under the PSB logo of Tian’anmen Gate. It was her father’s namecard.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  He struck a match and lit the card and held it by the corner. She watched Tian’anmen blacken and curl, then the name.

  ‘He got here very quickly. I guess you managed to call him after all. Bad luck for him.’

  With the flaming card he lit the candle. He shook the card and the flame went out and black flakes swirled. He dribbled wax onto the windowsill and stood the candle in it.

  ‘He drowned in a lake.’

  He squirted drops of liquid from the lemon-shaped bottle into the spoon, then added powder from the baggie. His movements were precise and patient, as ever.

  ‘So no need to get your password out of you. It doesn’t matter any more.’

  He moved the bottom of the spoon over the candle flame and the metal glinted, and shadows on the walls loomed and receded.

  ‘When things are messy, I feel itchy. You know that feeling? Maybe you don’t.’ His voice was as steady as his hand. ‘Very uncomfortable.’ He pinched cotton off a cotton-wool ball, rolled it between his fingers, and dropped it in the spoon. ‘Itchy,’ he repeated.

  Focusing her energies, she stumbled through a prepared statement – ‘I beg you, think about what you’re doing and remember all the good times we had and trust me as I’ve… trust me as I trust you.’

  ‘Huh?’

  She realised she had addressed him in Mandarin and began to repeat herself in English. He hit her with an open palm. ‘You don’t say anything. Every word I hit you again.’ Finally his voice had an edge to it. ‘You fucked this all up, not me. All I’m doing is cleaning up.’

  She lay and sobbed and watched him put the needle of the hypodermic against the cotton. He pulled the plunger, held the syringe upright and tapped it.

  ‘A hot shot. Smack and strychnine. You’ll just float away.’

  He freed her ankles and pulled her legs straight and she gasped as pins and needles prickled in her hips and thighs. Her feet were very pale and the paint on the toenails was chipped. There was so little feeling in them, it was quite possible they were someone else’s. She mustered all her strength and kicked out at him, but he batted her legs aside with ease.

  ‘No. No.’

  He pulled one leg of her jeans up and tied a belt around her calf. She could see her flesh constricting but hardly felt the squeeze. She drew the other leg back, lashed out and caught him across the face. He reeled and dropped the syringe. She pulled her other leg out from under him and rolled off the mattress onto her stomach. She groped for the syringe with a foot. She had the idea that she could grab it between her feet and stab him with it.

  He straddled her, grabbed a hank of hair and yanked her head back.

  ‘Move again and I smack your face into the floor.’

  She felt him lean back. He was retrieving the syringe. She tried to wriggle, but he held her fast between his thighs.

  Waiting for the prick of the needle, her senses seemed to sharpen, and she considered the immense rich detail of the scene – the grain of the wood on the floor, the wallpaper design, the splotches of mould. An oblong of yellow light flitted across the wall, as someone outside swept a torch across the face of the house. She heard running feet, then the sound of glass smashing, then the rumble of an explosion, just beneath her. Still the jab did not come.

  Black Fort clambered off her and went to the window. She rolled over and laid her cheek against cold wood. What a stupid little girl she was. She realised she was going to die miserable and desperate, and this seemed a shame. A second explosion thundered, this one closer. Black Fort cursed and sprinted out. She raised her head.

  (76

  Wei Wei scanned the room for the needle, but he seemed to have taken it with him. Fear of it gave her strength. She pulled herself to her feet and staggered to the window. The sky was just beginning to silver – it would soon be dawn. A sputtering orange light, coming from the downstairs windows, lit the yard. His car was parked there, looking incongruously urban. The metal sheet that covered the barn door was off, and a figure lay near it, and by the awkward arrangement of its limbs looked to be injured or dead. Movement caught her attention, and she saw a slim girl shuffling away with an odd, mincing gait.

  She followed a flickering shadow back to its source and saw a thick-set, hooded man, standing with one hand shielding his face and a hammer raised in the other. The front door opened and a figure staggered out, beating at the flames that wreathed his shoulders. The hammer swung, the figure fell. Wei Wei flinched.

  The man looked up. Dirt smeared across his face gave him a demonic aspect. Dark eyes blazed up at her, then he staggered backwards as if punched. He shouted her name.

  Alarmed, she shied away. When she returned he had gone. Adrenaline was giving her strength. She could move, she could think, though she was aware that she was drawing on the last of her reserves and complete collapse was not far away. The candle still burned on the windowsill. She turned and pulled her hands up behind her until her shoulder blades were crunched together. Leaning back, she tensed in anticipation of pain. At the first scorch of the flame she jolted away, but thoughts of the needle pushed her back. She quivered as her skin seared, and gritted her teeth. She could smell acrid plastic as the tape burned. She cried out – this was as much as could be borne – and tumbled forward. The tape parted as she brought her hands round to break her fall. The skin of her wrist, on either side of the black ring of tape, was red and enflamed.

  The door was locked, and too sturdy for her to break. The window was divided into panes too small to fit through. She yanked at the windowframe and it rattled and shook but didn’t budge. In frustration she rested her forehead against one pane of glass and slapped another. The side of her hand caught on a nail-head and she realised the frame was nailed to the sill. Disappointment drained her, and she slid down the wall.

  Smoke was coming under the door. The house, she realised with a start, was on fire. Wood snapped and split and the room grew hazy. Inhaling brought a tickle to her throat. Down here it was easier to breathe and her eyes didn’t smart so much. She slumped to the floor. It would be good to curl up and close her eyes. No, she barked to herself, she had to get out. But now she was coughing, and the effort of it was stealing her energy.

  Something smacked into the door from the other side, and the wood vibrated and the handle shook. The frame split with a crack, splinters flew and the door swung inwards. A figure lurched in, borne on a billowing tide of smoke and sparks, emitting a ferocious coughing and spluttering. It became her father.

  Her mind was stretched too thin to register much of an emotional response. He rammed the claw end of his hammer under the windowframe and tugged until the wood split. He smashed and jabbed to knock out glass splinters and wooden crossbeams. She wondered what to do to help, but he was so furiously busy she did not want to get in his way. He picked up the mattress, and, grunting with the effort, folded it and heaved it out. She was grabbed and borne aloft and a breeze touched her face. He was straddling the sill, half out of the window, and taking her along with him.

  Her insides lurched as she fell. Sh
e opened her mouth to scream, but her body smacked the ground and the air was knocked from her lungs. A detonation went off in the back of her head and hip. She took a juddering breath and pains ground over her. She took shallower breaths and they ground harder.

  She was lying on the mattress, half on top of her father. He must have turned as he fell so that his body would cushion hers. When they’d hit, her head had smacked him in his face. She shook him and called his name but he did not respond.

  A black blizzard of sooty flakes churned. Sparks burned her legs and she yelped and scrambled forward. They had to get away from the fire. She tugged at the mattress, until it seemed her shoulders would be ripped from her sockets, and it slid for a couple of metres before catching on uneven ground.

  Beyond the crumbling concrete edge of the yard, long grass sloped down into a tangle of bushes. She heaved him off the mattress. Another roll took him to the edge and she winced as his head bumped. She scrambled down, grabbed a leg and pulled, and he tumbled past her and settled in the undergrowth.

  Black Fort came round the house. She lay beside her father in the long grass and watched him open the back door of his car and pull a shotgun off the seat. He loaded it and it clicked as he snapped it shut. He crouched and swivelled. The smoke was obscuring his view, or he would have seen them for sure.

  She lowered her head and it touched her father’s dirty cheek. His chin prickled with stubble. He smelled of soil, smoke and blood. He’d come so far to help her and she had done so little to deserve it. Never mind her fatigue. She was going to be strong and if necessary she was going to fight. They were going to get out of this. At least then she’d get the chance to apologise.

  (77

  Ding Ming waited in the verge. The hatchback was around fifty paces away, just around a bend. He didn’t feel safe near it, as the policeman’s enemies might find it, but he didn’t feel any safer away from it in the wilds, either. The call of an animal made him uneasy, and he imagined he was being watched by the twinkling eyes of wolves and snakes.

  With every passing minute it seemed more likely that the policeman would never return. He would have to give up this vigil at some point, and then what would he do? He would have to try and find Mister Kevin by himself, no easy prospect.

  He contemplated a smear of roadkill. A man could live off such fare, perhaps if all else failed it was possible just to survive. He imagined living in a cave or dell, trapping rabbits and drinking from streams, tending a secret vegetable patch, picking wild fruit and mushrooms. He might be happy doing that, he considered. But even that option was not open to him – it was doom for his family, saddled with their crippling debt.

  He heard a car approaching. Some night animal scuttled away. A rat, he was sure of it. It was busy, he should be too. Thinking would not get him very far, he had done too much of that in his life already. It was time to be practical.

  He stepped into the road and waved his arms. A van stopped and a man got out. The sight of a uniform was dismaying: it was just his luck to have stopped a policeman. But he spotted ‘Post’ written on the side of the van and hoped it meant what he thought it did.

  His encounter with the temple caretaker had altered his opinion of the natives. Perhaps they were not all bad, and he had merely been unlucky with the specimens he had encountered. He was not quite so scared of them any more. Still, he could hardly believe he was being so reckless.

  ‘Excuse me? Hello?’

  He was like a boy approaching a big creature, not sure if he was going to get a lick or a bite. He took off Kevin’s parka and held it out.

  ‘Would you like to buy this coat?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I have to call China. I need small money for telephone. Please buy this coat.’

  ‘China?’

  ‘It’s a very good coat.’

  ‘You’ve been in the wars, haven’t you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Keep your coat, you’ll need it. I’ve got about a quid in change. Here.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  ‘England fan, are you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You like football. Your shirt.’

  ‘Yes. Rooney very good. Good kicker of the ball.’

  ‘He is that.’

  ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘You mind how you go.’

  The man took his leave. Ding Ming considered for a moment the unexpected benevolence. ‘Mind how you go’ – take care in the manner of your passing. It was a beautiful phrase.

  He ran to the village. It was good to feel the jar of the road on his feet and his body settling into a rhythm, if only he could outrun his difficulties, if only it was a simple matter of will, pace and endurance.

  He rushed into the red phone booth and called his mother. He imagined the mobile ringing, and with each trill the picture expanded. There was the phone sitting on the shelf, there was the photo of a car he’d cut from a magazine, mud walls covered with newspaper, a calendar advertising a button factory, chillis hanging from the rafters to dry, a naked bulb, a boarded-up window, sink, pots, oven, radio, stool, bed. The phone was answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mum? Mum, it’s me. Are the men there – the snakeheads?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s me, Ding Ming. I need to talk to the men.’

  ‘It is not possible,’ she wailed. ‘You are dead. You’re a ghost because you died hungry in a foreign land, and now you are tormenting me on the telephone.’

  ‘It’s really me. There has been a mistake. What did those men say?’

  ‘They said you were killed in a car accident. Are you ringing me from heaven or from Gold Mountain?’

  ‘I am in England. I was not in that car, mother.’

  He wanted to say, ‘Many things that I was told about Gold Mountain are not true. My boss is not a good man and I want to go home.’ But he did not. He said, ‘I am fine. All is fine.’

  ‘I thought you were dead. Look at this – I cried when the men told me you were dead, but I am bawling even harder now.’

  Tears pricked his eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I tried to phone before, but there was no reply.’

  ‘I went to the temple. But I was so blind in my grief I walked without knowing where I was going and I walked and walked. I miss you so much. My son, my son.’

  A set of pips sounded, and Ding Ming realised he had better be quick.

  ‘I miss you too. Do you have the phone number for my boss?’

  ‘I can’t believe it. I’m so happy. You can’t imagine what it was like. The men said that even though you are dead our family still owes them the money. Oh, I can’t believe you’re alive. Tell me again it is you.’

  ‘I’m not dead, everything’s going to be okay, I’ll earn the money to pay off the debt.’

  ‘You have to go back to your boss.’

  ‘I know, I’m trying. Give me the num—’

  The line went dead.

  Ding Ming ambled in a daze to the village green and put a hand against the war memorial for support. A wreath of plastic poppies sat at its base. That blood-coloured flower of tragedy was more appropriate than the gaudy blooms in their baskets. He was deeply ashamed for all the hassle he had caused and the upheaval he had put his family through. He was here to try and help – their hopes rested on him – and now he had done this to them. He would make amends. He’d work until his hands bled, and if it was necessary for him to suck on another man’s part then he’d do that, too. He was a poor man and the lot of a poor man was the consumption of bitterness, he would suffer so that others might be more fortunate.

  The rumble of an engine drew him out of himself. A green truck slowed to take the turnoff past the duck pond. The interior light was on and the passenger was talking on a mobile phone. He looked remarkably like Mister Kevin, and even wore a similar shirt. But, of course, all white people looked fairly alike, with their big noses and round eyes, and fat people i
n particular all looked the same. It really did look like Mister Kevin, though. The truck turned. ‘Cleen me’ was written in the dust on the back. He had seen it at the mud, and again last night by the lake. It really was him.

  The familiar face was as reassuring as a hug. At that moment, Mister Kevin the abuser was his guardian angel, who could guide him out of this wilderness. He stepped out and waved.

  ‘Mister Kevin! Mister Kevin!’

  But the truck roared on. Ding Ming ran after it. He tripped on a bollard, fell into reeds, and when he got up he saw the back of the vehicle fade into the gloom.

  Better not to have seen the man at all than glimpsed him and lost him. Twice now he had been taunted by a view of that truck’s rear end. It was cruel beyond endurance. It was a bad joke, more monkey tricks. The universe was a bully with a poor sense of humour. He slapped the ground in frustration.

  Then the truck’s brake lights burned new holes in the darkness, the engine note lowered as the gears were changed down, and the truck took the turn towards Hope Farm.

  Ding Ming ran after it. He grew giddy with excitement as he realised that a way out of his mess had improbably opened up for him. Mister Kevin must be protected from the mad policeman, he must be warned. Mister Kevin’s life was there to be saved, and perhaps his reward would be his wife.

  (78

  Ding Ming hurtled down the track. An odd crackling sound ahead of him rose in volume, but he did not realise what it was until he rounded a curve and the cover of trees parted onto a confused and disturbing scene. Tongues of flame lapped from the windows of a house and churning smoke formed a black column against grey sky. He was too late – the murderous business was in hand.

  Shading his eyes he peered harder. Through a shimmering heat haze he saw the green truck and Black Fort’s yellow car. There was Black Fort and, yes, there was Mister Kevin, that bulk was unmistakable. He was fiddling with some kind of stick – no, he was loading a shotgun. There were two other men there, and they had guns too. He felt a twinge of dread. He stepped back and a twig snapped.