Bad Traffic (23 page)

Out in the car park, the peasant said, ‘When did you see a policeman with a spanner on his belt? What do they call down the station? Do they call you Brains?’

‘Hey. They call me Head-cracker because of what I do to funny guys. Do you like my shirt? I bought you one, too. This car here.’

‘You want me to drive?’

Jian realised he’d opened the passenger door. Of course, the steering wheel was on the wrong side – it was easily forgotten. They got in and Jian handed Ding Ming his gift.

‘Good material. Look how stretchy it is… that’s quality. Look at these lions – they’re quite like Chinese lions. I’ve never had anything this nice before. It says it was made in China. I don’t know who Rooney is.’

Jian had his eyes closed to savour his first pull of a cigarette in what felt like weeks. It was a very good smoke, with no rough edges at all. Sparkly sweetness diffused through his body.

‘He’s the young firebrand of Manchester. Very fierce. A good striker of the ball. You should be pleased. Who have I got?’

‘Lampard.’ Pronounced in Chinese,
Lan Pa Du
. The rock of Chelsea, a sturdy man of steady character, and a clinical finisher. That was a good omen.

‘Can I have the coat back?’

‘You know you look ridiculous in it.’

‘I know.’

‘You look like a baby.’

‘I know.’

‘Don’t put the hood up. I can’t hear what you’re saying.’

Jian looked through the window of the coffee shop as he drove past, and saw the woman peering under the table and the man down on his hands and knees looking at the floor. He could hardly believe it: he had got away with it so far and he was
continuing
to get away with it, and maybe he would get away with it all the way until everyone he wanted dead was dead.

He accelerated as he hit the access road. They were back on the expressway. This car was clunky, but much less
obvious
. The radio was on.

‘I like this song. I used to learn English to it.’

‘Look at these maps.’

It took more than five minutes but finally Ding Ming said, ‘I’ve found it – it’s marked. Look.’

Jian pulled up on the hard shoulder. Ding Ming showed him a cluster of brown oblongs on a white ground.

‘That’s the village.’

Jian pointed at a box with a cross on it.

‘What does that symbol mean?’

‘A temple.’

‘You know where we go after we get to the village?’

‘The hill of the bloody gate.’

‘I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re one of the
cleverest
people I ever met. For someone like you to go and get himself an education, that’s amazing. Really. You’re a credit – you know that?’

‘Get there and do what you have to do, then get me back.’

‘I’ll try.’

Ding Ming pointed at a giant plastic strawberry marking a farm turnoff. ‘Imagine having a real strawberry that big. You could jump into it and eat your way out.’

They had left the expressway. Now the land was lush and flat. Houses were far apart and kept private and sheltered by trees. Jian felt more secure on these small roads, but there were lots of the annoying roundabouts. He was careful to keep the speed down, hovering at around fifty, and in the villages even slower.

‘I think you should dip the headlights for oncoming
traffic
. Look, he’s dipped for you, you should do it for him.’

Jian imagined he saw his daughter in the back seat of the passing car. The hypnotism of the road was stealing over him. Perhaps a conversation would keep him focused.

‘What’s your wife like? Apart from modern.’

‘Very lovely.’

‘Pretty?’

‘Very pretty.’

‘Obedient?’

‘Not really.’

‘She speak English?’

‘She left school when she was twelve.’

‘So you’re more educated than her.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Of course you don’t care. But they don’t believe that.’

‘No.’

‘You worry that she worries about it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You miss her?’

‘All the time. I don’t know where she is.’

‘Why not?’

‘They took her away to pick flowers.’

The peasant choked down a sob. His hands fluttered about his face as he fought strong emotion and the map book slipped off his lap. Jian squeezed the steering wheel in
exasperation
. Was there no end to the man’s tales of woe? He wished he’d never started this now.

‘I’m sure she’s fine.’ He put as much honey in his voice as he could muster. ‘She’ll be okay, of course she will, and you’ll see her soon.’

‘You think so?’

‘Definitely. You dropped the map.’

They hit a roundabout with three exits.

‘I’m worried. I didn’t know they were going to split us up. My boss said he would give me a telephone number to call her. But…’ he tailed off. He was sitting on his hands and rocking back and forth.

‘You should both go home. I’ll make sure you’re okay.’

‘Really?’

‘The force needs upright citizens. You’d be an asset.’

‘You mean that?’

They’d been all the way round the roundabout. Much more of this, Jian felt, and he’d be too dizzy to drive.

‘Of course I mean it. You dropped the map.’

This time the lad retrieved it.

‘We’d still owe money to the snakeheads.’

‘They wouldn’t dare touch you if you worked for us.’

‘That exit there.’

Jian could see the man’s mind working, and knew what was coming next before it was said.

‘Don’t kill Black Fort. It won’t change anything. Leave him alone. Go home.’

‘I have to do this. I sent my daughter abroad because she was an embarrassment to me. I took a bribe to let a murderer go.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t want to die a bad father and a bad policeman.’

Jian wondered if any more arguments would come up. He could think of plenty. The fact that he was one against many, for example, and of course the old ‘it won’t bring her back’ and the ‘forgive and move on’ stuff. But the peasant didn’t push it.

‘What was your daughter like?’

‘She was trouble. She was wild.’

‘Like her dad.’

‘She hung around with the wrong sort.’

‘Like her dad.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘A policeman spends his time with criminals, doesn’t he?’

‘Arresting them, not… You don’t know a thing about it.’

‘I expect she just wanted you to pay her more attention. You only noticed her when she did wrong. That’s why she went wild.’

‘Your opinion has been duly noted, Granny Wang. Read the map. Think about strawberries.’

Jian decided he didn’t like hedges. They turned the road into a tunnel. It was like being a rat in a run, scurrying through undergrowth. A rat… Perhaps he had heard the
peasant
talk about it too often, he was starting to think like him.

Ding Ming pointed at what looked like a fortress. The crenallated battlements of a tower were crisp against the sky.

‘That’s it. That’s the temple.’

Jian stopped the car.

‘Definitely? That’s it?’

‘The village is just up ahead.’ The peasant was excited. For him it was merely a step on the way to his objective.

An old man was approaching, the first pedestrian they had encountered in a hundred kilometres. Jian watched,
mentally
ushering him away. He was stooped and his round glasses gave him an owlish look. He opened a wooden gate and shuffled between stone stele in the temple garden, and gave no indication of having seen them at all.

‘Where now?’

‘There should be a road round here. The name is the hill of the bloody gate.’

‘What do you mean round here? Where is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Look at the address, then.’

‘It’s all blurred.’

Jian closed his eyes and rubbed his face, working to keep irritation out of his voice.

‘You can’t read it and you’ve forgotten what it says.’

‘I got you this far. It’s really close. It’s just… round here somewhere.’

Jian looked balefully across and the lad shied away. Over his lowered head Jian could see the temple. The garden was unkempt and its stele jutted like bad teeth. With narrow windows and rough stone walls, the place really looked like a citadel. The old man was unlocking a door.

‘You’re going to ask him.’

The gloomy worshipping hall emanated a forbidding silence. Above the altar hung a macabre effigy, a hanging man, dead or dying. The old man sat on a bench with his head lowered. Jian walked up the central aisle, with the peasant hanging close behind. Their footsteps rang on the stone floor and even the sound of their breath seemed a noisy imposition.

‘
Lao tian a
,’ whispered the peasant, and crossed his arms.

‘Just ask how to get to the hill of the bloody gate – that’s it.’

The old man looked harmless, though anyone could phone the police. Jian pushed the peasant forward. While they
conversed
in hushed tones, the peasant bowed and the old man bobbed clasped hands. He got the impression that they were trying to outdo each other in politeness.

He turned his back on the unhappy image of the dying man with his crown of thorns. He had no time for theology. It was a ruse by the ruling classes to justify their wealth and power, it was nothing but superstition, people succumbed to its allure from fear of death and an inability to accept that they were not important. Modern people should learn to overcome this weakness. He did not fear death and he knew that there was nothing after it and he knew he was nothing and he was not afraid to face that, either. His gaze passed over baffling accoutrements of worship – a wood carving of a lamb carrying a cross, statues of men in dresses – and
settled
on the homely sight of dried flowers.

The peasant bowed some more and took his leave.

‘Well?’

‘He said he was happy to meet such early-rising worshippers. He said—’

‘Did he give you directions?’

‘He thinks it’s on the other side of the village.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Please don’t swear.’

‘Let’s go.’

‘Wait.’

The peasant kowtowed before the altar, touching his
forehead
three times against the floor. ‘Give something,’ he urged.

‘Do you even know what this religion is?’

‘They’re the gods of this place. We should leave them an offering for luck. Please.’

There were two notes left in the wallet, a twenty and a five. He slipped one out, and saw it was the twenty. He picked out the five, but realised it was too late: the gods who were not there would remember only his parsimony and not his generosity. He put the twenty-pound note on the altar and asked that this god that he did not believe in look after him and his cause and, in particular, look after his daughter in a spirit world that did not exist.

As an afterthought, he put the wallet down. It would be returned to its owner, who’d be glad to get back his credit cards and pictures. Yes, he was glad that had been done. He left feeling naked, and told himself he was ready for battle and death.

Outside in the garden the peasant said, ‘Do you know what he said? He said the name ‘rings a bell’. I think it’s an idiom meaning to remember something but not clearly.’

Jian pointed at steles. ‘These are graves.’

‘Who would surround a temple with graves?’

‘They are. Look, there are dates on them.’

Jian considered a headstone topped with a statue of a winged woman. She had closed eyes and an expression of serene repose. So humans everywhere tried to gloss their brute end with prettiness. It reminded him of a Buddha statue he had seen many decades ago. Red Guards had
toppled
it and he had stood on its shoulders and smashed that composed face away with a sledgehammer. He’d felt good about it at the time, and sour ever since.

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.’

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.