Blue Lantern (13 page)

“By whom?”

“By me or Staff Huang.”

“And if I don't?”

“You won't be suitable in this division. You'll only cause trouble.”

“I'll get a bad report and be transferred?”

Flinn wasn't interested in elaborating. “That's about it. If you want to take on the system, try it.”

“I'd like to…think about it.”

Flinn looked at him suspiciously. “What's to think about? You want a career in the Force or not?”

“Suppose I decide not to take the money, but to follow your instructions. Is that OK.”

Flinn's laugh had a grinding sound. “No, it isn't sonny boy. Not in your case. You've crossed me up once and you'll do it again. And you'll come up high and mighty about why. For you, it's in or out.”

Sherwin came out into the yard in grey slacks, collar and tie, with a blazer over his arm. He was carrying his leather music case. He started to come toward them.

“And by the way,” Flinn said, seeing they would be interrupted, “until you tell me your decision, you do as you're told, right?”

“OK,” Brodie said reluctantly, wanting to end the conversation, but flustered that he'd taken a step in a direction he didn't want to go.

Flinn stopped. “Remember there's a packet in a locked draw in my desk for you, as of now.”

He turned away before Sherwin was within earshot.

“Charming guy, isn't he?” Sherwin said, frowning at the rear of Flinn's thick form. “What's wrong? You look pale, Mike.”

“Not sleeping.”

The lies and half-truths came so quickly, even with Paul Sherwin. He wanted to tell Sherwin what Flinn had said, but he couldn't face the innocent pressure which would follow.

Sherwin was cheerful. “I've got news for you. I've joined the bomb squad.”

Brodie was incredulous. “You volunteered?”

“Yes. It's a useful job, and not too dangerous if you're careful. I think I'll enjoy it.”

“Enjoy? Seriously?” Brodie asked, remembering the impotence of attempting to probe and disarm a deadly package in a public place; the vulnerability of a human body clad in padded metal and plastic. Like Sherwin, he had been trained in bomb disposal; it was Russian roulette.

“Well, to be frank, it was one of two options offered to me.”

“What was the other?”

“Records at HQ,” Sherwin smiled, as though his rejection was natural.

“Uh-huh,” Brodie muttered, not so sure. “It's a choice between nerve-wracking danger, and perfect safety.”

“Mike, if I'd wanted an office job, I would still be in Ludlow, England.”

What disturbed Brodie, and he thought Sherwin, although they did not discuss it, was that both bomb disposal, and records, were dead ends. To get a promotion you had to perform in the mainstream where influential superiors could see you.

“Will you be able to get out of bomb disposal later, when there's less concern about Chairman Mao?”

“So Freddie says. But at the moment they need to strengthen the units. It's a worthwhile job.”

That word again. Brodie was sceptical but silent. Sherwin started to talk about the choir, how well it was coming on, and the concert they were going to give at City Hall before Christmas.

Marsden treated Brodie to dinner at the Lotus; they had a cubicle, and the girls sensed that the men wanted to talk rather than be entertained, and stopped pestering them for drinks.

“Of course it's a genuine offer,” Marsden said. “Take it. Don't be a fool. You get a pittance for what you do. Oh, I know you can call it a dirty name. But be realistic. Flinn is right. Hong Kong only functions because of the system. A British cop couldn't find his hip pocket in this place without paying a nark. Gambling, whoring and narcotics peddling are going to go on whatever the police do. This is better than having every beat copper putting on the squeeze.”

Brodie stabbed at his french-fries. In the way Marsden explained it, there were practical advantages. He looked toward the bar where a collection of westerners, soldiers and civilians, were talking to the girls. The dining tables were occupied by middle-aged tourists. The males tried to conceal from their grey-haired partners that their sight-line led straight to a bar-girl's cleavage, or the shady aperture where her frock ended.

“Why deliberately set up a corrupt system? Surely we could enforce the law without it?” Brodie asked.

“Don't put a tag on the system. If you want a pure life, go into a monastery. Hong Kong is a trading post. Nothing has changed since 1850.”

“Paul said something like that.”

“Then he's more shrewd than I believed. The British sold their opium with the help of the British Fleet. The Chinese dealers couldn't get enough. The same trades go on today. Unstoppably. If we didn't licence them, the triads, or some other mafia would.”

“You are the mafia.”

“Watch your words, my friend. You're a Blue Lantern yourself. If the tag is corruption, Mike, this place was founded on corruption. It's at the heart of any free market.”

On his return to the station, Brodie was given a message by the duty sergeant to see Freddie Hudson. Brodie went to his office the next day. Hudson's bulk was stuck behind a small desk, wheezing.

“It's about the extra duties I mentioned to you the other day, Michael my boy. I've put you in one of the emergency squads.”

Brodie felt a chill. “What squad?”

“Bomb disposal. Not too onerous. A couple of afternoons a week. Don't look so pleased.”

“I thought bomb disposal was only for volunteers.”

“Up to now, but we anticipate an emergency. Scared? I don't blame you. If you don't want to do it, I'm sure we can…”

“I'll do it,” Brodie snapped. “How long?”

“Ask Chairman Mao. Aren't you coming off patrol duties? I heard something about that.”

Hudson gave him a quick look, blood vessels trailing across his eyeballs like red ribbons. Brodie was conscious that Flinn must have already started the process of moving him, perhaps to the bomb squad full time – unless he accepted Flinn's offer. He felt Flinn's fingers inside his collar, tightening.

Brodie had a date with Helen at a concert to be given by the visiting London Symphony Orchestra at City Hall. Brodie waited patiently in the crowd outside, where they had agreed to meet, until the performance bell started to ring. The crowd disappeared, and just seconds before the doors closed, Helen appeared. They found their seats after the lights had gone down. The programme was a Mendelsohn piano concerto, and Beethhoven's Pastoral Symphony. Helen had invited him to the concert and bought the seats. She had said she wasn't concerned about being seen here, but he had to keep his hands off her.

They settled into the darkened hall. Helen appeared to understand the music and was absorbed. She had looked disappointed on an earlier occasion when Brodie confessed that, although he had heard the two pieces on the radio, he had never been to a symphony concert, and had no technical understanding of any kind about music.

“It's one of our great cultural legacies,” she said painfully, as though he had deliberately neglected to learn to read.

During the interval Helen insisted that she didn't want a drink, and was happy to remain in her seat. He noticed for the first time that the spectacles she was wearing – she sometimes wore spectacles – were tinted, and shaded her eyes from any viewer.

After the concert they slipped away from City Hall into the darkness, and got a taxi to Drummond Street, near the apartment Brodie had borrowed. He had called at the property earlier in the day, and spoken to the amah who was expecting them. They had a bowl of noodles at a street stall in a nearby market before going upstairs. Helen's appetite was small and selective. She had already surprised him by relishing street food, and making an occasion of a bowl of soup in the market. Under her guidance, he was beginning to appreciate some of the finer points of the street cuisine.

The rooms on the sixth floor were a standard government type with wood-block floors, white plaster walls, noisy air-conditioners and two bedrooms; they were on offer to lower grade civil servants. The Police Force tenant, a friend from Training School was in Macao for a gambling weekend. Ted Wells was a bachelor, and the rooms contained little more than the regulation issue furniture, and a few vases and rugs. The second bedroom had a made up double bed, a dresser, and a large wall mirror; Helen summed up that it was clean. She was uneasy with the old amah, a Hakka woman from the New Territories, wreathed in black, with sunken features like raisins in a loaf of brown bread. The amah questioned them about breakfast, but Helen whispered to Brodie that she had to leave before breakfast. Freed from any duties, the amah quickly retired to her room near the service well of the building.

“I don't want that old woman fussing around me in the morning,” Helen said, and laughed. “She's curious.”

Now that the bedroom door was closed, the air-conditioner and lights switched off, and the curtains drawn back, to reveal the glowing brazier of the lights of the city, the uncertainties about the apartment were gone. They had hardly spoken all evening, but the threads which held them were tightening.

Helen removed all her clothes quickly, casting them carelessly over a chair, and stood in the moonlight for a moment, turning around as though for inspection. Brodie simply watched. She went into the bathroom. He undressed more slowly and slid between the cool sheets. The sensuality of the previous moment was gone. The room smelt of sandalwood. The amah flicked into his mind as a censorious figure. And Helen's ruses, earlier in the evening, to avoid them being seen together, galled him.

When Helen returned, instead of lying beside him, she sat gently on the edge of the bed. She drew back the sheet. Then she threw herself on top of him, like a beast with its prey. Her lips crushed his; her pelvis ground against his; her fingernails lacerated his back.

After the selfish ferocity of the encounter, Brodie could see Helen's sad face in the moonlight, and the wetness on her cheeks.

“Why are you crying, Helen?”

“Tears of joy, Mike, and tears of regret.”

“What do you regret?”

“That we can't have something like this always.”

“But we can. I'm going to be around, aren't I?”

She turned her head toward him, but didn't answer; then she turned away. Her large, wide-open eyes appeared to see years into the future.

10

Brodie pulled the venetian blind down, and lay naked on his bed. Until noon, when duties changed, the barracks would be less noisy. The room was lit by gashes of sunlight. He dozed in unpleasant fitful stretches, plunging deep into sleep, and then being borne upwards against his will, into the light, and the grinding of traffic in the street.

He was more than ever sure that he had been posted to bomb squad duty to force the decision he had to make for Flinn; and there was the coincidence of Hudson's remark that he was coming off patrol duties; it remained a rumour but created pressure. The telephone rang. His head was thick. The bell jangled interminably before he could pick up the receiver.

“Yulinda Chan, Mike” said a confident boyish voice. “Sorry to wake you, but it's afternoon.”

Yulinda Chang was a senior hostess at Chang's, one of the more touristy bars where you could go without being hustled by the girls. She was a close friend of Vanessa's.

“Come over and see me, Mike.”

She made it sound like a sexual invitation, and then added, “It's about Vanessa. She's very sick.”

“I don't want to talk about Vanessa,” Brodie said, lying back in the bed and listening to Yulinda's throaty tones. He finally agreed to go.

“But just to see you.”

Yulinda laughed playfully and put the phone down.

Brodie showered, dressed in a light tan suit, one of three tailored in a back alley; it was already losing its shape around the shoulders. He selected a soft cream shirt and a pale green silk tie purchased for a few dollars in the Yaumati market. The whole effect, if you didn't know your fabrics or tailoring, was stylish.

He went to the mess for a snack. Andy Marsden had called on business and stayed for lunch.

“I've got plenty of time,” Marsden said. “These street shenanigans mess up CID work. Why are you all dressed up?”

“I'm going over to Chang's to see Yulinda Chan.”

“Yulinda? Now there's one I never had any luck with. You'll have to spend a year convincing her of your bona fides. And she's getting on a bit.”

“It's about Vanessa. She's sick.”

Marsden concentrated on the dim sum selection on the trolley. The steaming baskets were full of delicacies, from prawn pastries to custard tarts. “Sick of you?”

“I found she has a kid.”

“Nothing unusual in that,” Marsden said casually. “ A girl can get a hundred buck abortion, or give in to the mother feeling. I pity the Eurasian kids, nobody wants them.”

“How did you know Vanessa has a Eurasian kid?”

“I don't know anything except that young women are baby factories yearning to get into production!”

Brodie selected a few dim sum cakes, pulled out a chair near Marsden's and sat down.

“You shouldn't be going out,” Marsden said. “Haven't you read the notice board? Nobody to leave the station unless it's essential. There's going to be trouble today.”

“I know,” Brodie said, agreeing unenthusiastically to try to get to Marsden's apartment later for a drink. He left the station after lunch.

The quiet in Nathan Road made Brodie uneasy. The few people on the street were hurrying, heads down. Hardly any cars were moving; not a taxi or bus to be seen. Most shops were shuttered. After a half mile of striding, Brodie was beginning to enjoy the new aspect of the streets. The rosewood and cypress trees, usually huddled under a coat of dust, reached out and sighed. The light breeze and small clouds lessened the burning effect of the sun. At last a taxi approached, but when the driver saw a gwailo he accelerated away. In the distance Brodie could hear the cries of a crowd, like a distant football match.