Bad Traffic (17 page)

Headlights swept across the beach and spotlit the two men in a yellow glare, and their long shadows fell shimmering over the water. The tyres crunched pebbles and the engine cut out.

Ding Ming stepped away and implored, out of the
corner
of his mouth, ‘Run!’ If Jian left now, there was still time. He’d be swallowed by the darkness and perhaps they would never find him.

But instead the man grabbed his jacket, swung it, and plunged his hand into the pocket. Consternation crossed his face when he found it empty. He must have realised what had happened, but he did not even look at Ding Ming. He picked up the litter bin, turned it over and shook it out. Cans clattered, packaging drifted. He grabbed a bottle and smashed it against the side of the picnic table. Jagged glass glinted.

The doors of the truck opened and two figures got out, things like men but with huge heads, giving them the proportions of monstrous children – and one had a brutal spike in place of a hand. This one pointed at Ding Ming and a deep voice said, ‘You, go and wait in the van.’ The second aimed a shotgun at the policeman and said, ‘You’re going to fucking get some, you fucking fuck. Down on the ground.’

Jian hurled the jacket and lunged after it. He knocked the gun barrel aside and rammed broken glass into a neck. The gun roared and shot made momentary fountains on the lake.

The thing dropped slowly to his knees and clawed at pebbles and said, ‘Fuck, I’m stabbed,’ and blood splashed
over his fingers. Ding Ming saw that they were, of course, only men, given a fierce aspect by the motorcycle helmets they wore and the tools they carried.

The second figure swung a spanner and the policeman stepped away. But now another man was coming down from the truck carrying a bat. Jian retreated into the shallows and the men closed on him with their weapons raised.

Ding Ming pulled himself away and sprinted to the van. He fumbled the passenger door open and sat in the dark, gnawing at his knuckles, his head bobbing.

He could not see the fight now, the truck was in the way – all he could see of it was ripples spreading on the water. He remembered the awful weapons those men
carried
. They meant to kill, there was no mercy in them, they would batter and gouge and smash, and the body of the Chinese policeman would be ruined. And it would be his, Ding Ming’s fault, as much as if he had wielded the
instruments
himself.

Ding Ming realised that another man was sitting in the truck, in the driver’s seat, hunched over the steering wheel and watching the fight. The man turned and looked at the van, and Ding Ming recognised him, and just for a moment Ding Ming and Mister Kevin locked gazes. Kevin winked.

Ding Ming shrank from that podgy face and scrambled over the seat and into the back of the van, where the
darkness
was complete and welcome. He curled up on the floor with his arms around his knees. His stomach was tight with cramps. He wanted to be sick, and he wished he could be sick because then the feeling might stop.

He heard running feet. It was over, then, the white men were coming to take him away. The front door of the van opened and Ding Ming wondered what he could possibly say. But it was the policeman, dripping wet and panting.
Cursing under his breath, he started the engine. The van lurched off the verge and into the road.

Ding Ming, terrified, bit on his hand to stop a gasp
escaping
. The man would want revenge. He cracked open the back door and jumped out, hands raised to protect his face. He glimpsed the grain of the road between fingers before impacts jarred his arms, then his side, then he was sliding on tarmac, then rolling on grass. He came to rest on his back, looking up at throbbing stars.

He heard gruff voices, speaking English.

‘Quick,’ said Kevin, ‘Get him in.’

‘He’s bleeding loads.’

‘Just get him in. Come on.’

Ding Ming found a host of new pains laid over his old ones. His arms were burning where they had scraped the road. His head felt like it was splitting open. He touched it and screwed up his face at the pain, then looked at his finger. Thankfully, there was no blood. Something lumpy was
jabbing
into his side. He rolled over and realised it was the gun in his pocket.

He got to his hands and knees. He was sore but he was functioning. He winced and told himself, ‘I’ve got to stop jumping out of moving vehicles.’ The thought made him giggle. Of all the times to start laughing, part of him observed. He thought that he was very silly, and that made him
giggle
again. Pain slammed down and he had to lie grimacing on the cool grass. The stars stopped moving and behaved themselves.

He rolled and looked at the road. The truck shot past him. Someone had written ‘cleen me’ with a finger in the dust on its rear. Beyond it, the van sped away, engine roaring. The back door swung, then, as the van turned onto the ridge, slammed shut.

The green truck accelerated after it, its engine noise a high whine. The van sped up and the truck sped up, too, and the engine noise dropped to a rumble. The truck got faster and bumped into the back of the van and the crunch of metal carried across the water.

Ding Ming stood. Now he couldn’t see much more than the slashes of distant headlight beams. The truck, big and dark and loud, bore down again, and rammed the back of the van, and metal crumpled and the lights burst with a pop.

The van veered off the road and dropped bonnet first into the lake. A splash, and in a fraction of a heartbeat it had
vanished
. A ripple fringed with foam swelled, smaller
undulations
followed, and the moon’s reflection wavered.

Ding Ming watched in distress. He had the impression that the ripples were not going to stop, they were going to come all the way across the lake and up the shore and overwhelm him. A voice in his head said, that policeman is drowning and it is all your fault.

The wave subsided and Ding Ming realised the truck was receding. He stood and shouted and waved his arms. ‘Mister Kevin! Wait! I’m here!’

It seemed impossible that they could not hear him. But the truck did not stop: its headlights dimmed, and the drone of the engine faded away.

‘I’m here!’

He shouted himself hoarse, but the truck was gone. The only sound was the slosh of water and the tick of insects. The only light came from the empty petrol station and the moon and the stars. He crossed the road, sat at the
picnic
table and drank a long glug of water from his bottle. It chilled his stomach. He had never been so alone. He drew the coat around him and shivered.

When Mark came into the Happy Duck chippy, Joy caught her breath and turned so that he wouldn’t see her flush. She hadn’t seen him for three days, not since they’d swapped spit on the bench by the lake.

He’d said he really liked her and that he’d certainly be dumping that Jessica, and he’d stroked her face and looked into her eyes. The moon had been almost full, the stars had been glittering and she hadn’t felt the cold at all.

She’d wondered how it would feel when she saw him again, and now here it was. It was a jittery, pre-exam feeling.

He strolled to the counter. In real life he was more
commonplace
than the Mark she’d built in her head. He was only okay-looking with his small features and gingery hair. But he was solid and the fact of his presence thrilled her. It was his confidence that made him appealing, really. You could see it when he moved.

She caught his eye and grinned and turned aside. She looked a right state, in her work apron, no make-up on, tired. It was unfair of him to walk in on her like this – she almost resented him for it.

‘Alright?’ he said.

‘Alright.’ The last time she’d seen him his lips had been glistening, his mouth hanging half open, tongue heavy and wet. She was glad now that she hadn’t let him touch her tits, though it had been a close thing at the time.

Any sort of flirtation was out of the question in front of her father. She looked sidelong at him, then back at Mark to
signal the danger. To her dad she was still a girl who played with plastic ponies.

Mark put both hands on the counter and repeated, ‘You alright?’ He was looking her in the eyes, and she ordered herself not to wilt beneath that clear-eyed cheeky gaze.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Yourself?’

‘Alright.’ He looked around the shop.

‘What you want?’ asked Joy’s father.

Mark looked disconcerted for a moment, thinking perhaps that the old man had sensed something he disapproved of. In fact, he always sounded abrupt when he spoke in English.

‘A small portion of chips please, sir,’ said Mark.

She liked it that he called him ‘sir’. The opinion of her friends was that his manners were rough, but around her he was courteous.

Joy’s father scooped chips. Joy put her hands in her apron pocket and wrung them. She wondered what she could do – pass Mark a note with the ketchup?

‘That’ll be eighty pence, please,’ she said in a voice that was sterner than usual. She didn’t call him ‘duck’, which was how she usually addressed customers.

‘Have you got change?’ He was holding up a five pound note. There was something suggestive, almost rude, about the way he wiggled it back and forth. She plucked it and held it to the light to see if it was fake.

Having checked that her father was busy wrapping, she pressed coins one at a time into his cupped palm, each a
stolen
kiss. His hand closed and he winked at her. He took his chips and she said, in a softer voice, ‘Salt is here.’

‘Have you got any… mayonnaise?’

He checked that her father wasn’t looking and blew a kiss. She snatched it and swallowed it – was that what you were supposed to do?

‘We do not have mayonnaise. But we do have… garlic sauce.’

‘Thank you. I’m a big fan of… garlic sauce.’

‘Good.’

‘Well, I’ll be seeing you. Thank you,’ he said.

‘No problem at all.’

The bell above the door tinkled as he exited, a
fluttering
tinkle like her heart. So that was it, then. It was official. They were going out.

It was quiet – probably that on-off drizzle was keeping people at home. She had a textbook open, with a sheet of transparent paper over it to protect it from spatters, but however hard she looked at it, nothing was going in. Her euphoria began to be tinged with anxiety. Should she have been more forward? What if, in fact, he was still going out with that Jessica? He’d not said clearly that he wasn’t.
Perhaps
, after all, she was reading too much into things and he had only come in because he was hungry? Why had he
specified
a small bag of chips?

She chided herself and wondered if it was going to be like this all the time from now on – queasiness, difficulty
concentrating
, fluffy dreaminess alternating with spiky
paranoia
. She told herself she would not be letting her college work suffer. But here was another voice, a whole unexplored aspect of herself, saying ‘Bugger work – open your mouth in the rain, watch flowers turn to the sun, laugh, sweat, snog.’

Around ten o’clock the Community Support Officer came in, a chunky girl called Sandy. Joy knew she wasn’t proper police, she couldn’t even make an arrest. Her job was telling underage drinkers to go home and being a highly visible use of taxpayers’ money. She wore lifts in her shoes.

She was escorting two real policemen, a man and a woman with radios attached to bulletproof vests and utility belts as
big as Batman’s. They had flat hats, which perhaps meant they were a higher rank than your usual tithead.

Sandy the CSO nodded good evening, and called them Mister and Miss Cho, showing off to the regulars how well she knew her beat. She asked how business was.

‘So-so,’ said Joy’s father. He was stiff and suspicious around anyone in a uniform, even parking attendants, so she wondered how he would handle this.

The policeman took off his hat. ‘We’ve had reports of
suspicious
behaviour by two Asian-looking gentlemen up at the lake.’

‘I went to check it out,’ said Sandy the CSO, ‘and I found a broken bottle with blood on it. Someone’s been stabbed.’

She looked puffed up with self-importance, or maybe she’d put bigger lifts in. Real trouble would look great on her CV – she probably dreamed about it at night. She looked at the proper policeman keenly, like a faithful dog. She either fancied him or, more likely, his uniform. He was quite good-looking, this policeman, but he had a moustache.

The real policewoman glared at Sandy, obviously for
saying
too much.

‘A broken bottle?’ said Joy. ‘That sounds terrible.’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman. ‘Our witnesses said that that the suspicious characters were… Chinese in appearance.’

So of course you came here, thought Joy, though she didn’t say anything.

‘We were wondering if you had seen any… people of
Chinese
appearance tonight.’

Again the pause. The policeman seemed aware that ‘
people
of Chinese appearance’ was a clunky term. Perhaps he was wondering if it might even cause offence.

Joy recalled the mainlanders who had come in earlier, a big old one and a skinny young one. They had looked furtive, but
they hadn’t looked like criminals. She composed her features into what she hoped would be read as blank indifference.

‘You mean, apart from each other?’ she said.

Joy’s father said, ‘No.’

Joy said, ‘No.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, how many people are in your family?’

‘Dozens,’ said Joy.

‘Living here.’

‘Only us.’

‘How many members of your family live in the area?’

‘None, nobody,’ said her father. ‘We no got anybody since my wife pass away. Not another Chinese family near.’

‘Have you seen anything out of the ordinary today?’

‘No.’ Joy was nodding, pouting a little, trying to look as if she would love dearly to be able to help. ‘What happened exactly?’

‘We’re not sure.’

‘So we’re talking to everyone,’ said the policeman.

‘Should we be worried?’ said Joy.

‘Be alert and aware,’ said the policewoman, ‘but don’t get anxious.’ She had a surprisingly high-pitched voice. ‘Please give us a call if you see anything odd – anything at all out of the ordinary, however small.’ She opened the door.

‘And don’t go down to the lake,’ said Sandy.

‘We certainly won’t,’ said Joy. She thought that was it, but the policeman looked determined to prolong the encounter.

‘Those chips look tasty,’ he said. Joy offered him some and he refused. The women left, but he took his time. He
suspected
something, she could tell, and she had to suppress gestures of nervousness and impatience as he looked round, stepped towards the door, looked round again, put on and adjusted his hat.

When he reached the door she expected him to do a Columbo, come back with a finger raised saying, ‘Just one more thing…’, but he didn’t. The bell tinkled, they were gone, and she puffed out her cheeks.

Joy’s father said, in Cantonese, ‘I think it’s slow tonight because of the weather.’

‘Yes.’ Joy waited but there was nothing more. She wasn’t going to bring it up if he didn’t. The matter, then, was closed. They were co-conspirators now. She reflected that if she had been with any of her friends, and they had lied to the police, they would afterwards acknowledge and discuss the transgression. But to her father, who after all had come from a very different world, it was just a simple fact, not even worthy of note, that you did not talk to cops.