Blue Lantern (11 page)

The third of Vanessa's regular customers was younger, a real estate dealer, tall and thin, with a hollow chest and one protuberant front tooth. He was a bespectacled forty-five, and had something good natured, and gentle about him. They talked well together. He was not married, and never had been. Unlike the others, he never spoke of his women, and this made him more acceptable to Vanessa. He spent most of his time at the office, and only came to the ballroom briefly to relax. He was a fine dancer.

When Harry Lu finally asked her to go out to supper with him, Vanessa asked Vicky. Vicky not only agreed, but implored Vanessa to be very kind. Vanessa had fetched her bag from the powder room, and the two women were alone for a moment. Vanessa was surprised to be told that she would get an extra thousand for the evening, and that it was a big opportunity.

Harry Lu took Vanessa to her first nightclub. In the taxi he gave her two bills saying they were a present. She tried to tell him she was already amply rewarded, but he wouldn't listen. Inside the club, at first, she was attracted by the food in so many delicate dishes, the scintillating walls and ceiling, but the band – she counted more than twenty Filipinos – began to deafen her, and the floor show of near naked white girls from Australia was a sight she looked away from. Harry Lu said they weren't really girls at all, which he seemed to find amusing. Waiters kept filling her glass with sparkling wine. Harry Lu was saying nothing much, laughing occasionally to himself, his tooth glowing in the dark. In the toilet Vanessa unfolded the money Mr Lu had given her, and found two five hundreds. That meant she was getting two thousand for the night. It was absurd. She danced with Harry Lu. He held her very tight, quite unlike their posture at the Majestic. Coloured dots from the sparkling ball in the ceiling flew all over the room. The light turned the white shirts blue, and hurt her eyes.

Then Harry Lu took her to a black cellar with a jazz band. She was getting tired of his smile – and his bad breath. Two thousand or not, she said they ought to go after half an hour. Lu grinned agreeably, and helped her into a taxi. But the taxi did not go north to Sham Shui Po; it went south to Tsim Sha Tsui. When Vanessa protested, Lu merely smiled. The cab stopped at a hotel, a big, hotel with marble columns and a uniformed doorman. Lu paid off the cab and pulled her out. Vanessa wanted to ask questions, but she was towed past the leering doorman, across the lobby, through glass doors, over carpets, up elevators, beneath arches, past floor-boys with bowed heads, into a luxurious scented bedroom with gold silk bedcovers. Vanessa felt that the glistening ball which turned in the ceiling of the nightclub, was turning in her head.

Lu closed the door, his lips parting to reveal his tusk fully. He began to pluck his clothes off and motioned her to do the same. Instead she sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. Lu's skinny body with a small pot belly emerged. It was her own fault. She had known, and yet not known, or wanted to know. Lu fumbled with his wallet, and dropped more bills on the side-table. He pointed fiercely to them, and to her. And then he came around the bed to her, put his fingers in the front of her dress, and split it open. He pushed her back on the bed, tearing at her brassiere and pants, scoring red marks in her flesh with his long fingernails. She hardly resisted. He puffed in her face, pressed his tooth against her lips. His hard little round belly bore down on her, and after a few seconds his face crumpled up silently, and he was done.

When Harry Lu got off her, and went round the bed to climb in the other side, Vanessa went to the bathroom, which gleamed like an operating theatre. She showered, and then pulled the remains of her torn clothes about her. She returned to the bedroom, to sit with her back against the bed-head for most of the night, her mind blank, but sharply awake. In the morning, Lu was polite and smiling and did not touch her. She continued to sit silently by the bed-head, her unfeeling fingers resting on the embroidered velvet. Lu made a phone call which produced a silver-covered tray of food which neither of them touched, and a man with a rack of five dresses, and a box of underwear. Vanessa picked up a dress at random, and put it on in the bathroom. The man left the rest. She had already taken the bills from the night table while Lu was in the bathroom, and put them in her purse, another thousand. Harry Lu dressed and faded away with a murmured courtesy.

Vanessa threw her old clothes in the waste basket, and took the four new garments over her arm. She looked around the bedchamber, with its white and gold ornamentation; it was more like a mausoleum. She avoided her reflection in the obtrusive mirrors, and shook her hair into place. She was awkwardly trying to get through the door with her arms full, when a room-boy saw she was leaving, and rushed in to hold the door. She looked back into the room, and lying crumpled on the floor, was the bedspread, flecked with small red stains. She fled from the doorway without looking at the boy.

Six weeks later Vanessa was dismissed from the Majestic ballroom for being rude to a customer.

One of the jobs assigned to Brodie by Staff Huang was a raid on a brothel and gambling house at Shek Kip Mei, in a rundown area beyond Boundary Street. Brodie's experience of these assigned raids was that they were stage directed performances. He believed that the operators were tipped off in advance, and what was left for the police was a stash of drugs or betting slips, and sometimes a more or less willing culprit, who could be arrested. The results looked good on paper.

Brodie's squad were hardly into the raid before he knew that the Nam Chung gaming house was going to be different. It was on the second and third floors of an old building on the Man Hing Road, near a high-rise resettlement estate with thousands of tenants. The Nam Chun building looked abandoned on the ground floor, with boarded and empty shops. The squad approached quickly, and broke into the ground floor. When they were on the first level stairs, somebody on the stairs shouted in Cantonese, and opened fire with a light pistol. One of Brodie's men went down. The squad returned the fire, and slowly advanced up the stairs, and along the hall, to the door of the gaming house; it was solid steel. Brodie called for backup with special cutting tools, and dispatched Sergeant Lam with half the squad to scour the back yard for a secret exit. It was common to hold off the police while the patrons and management escaped from another exit. The back-up arrived in ten minutes, fired tear gas through the first and second floor windows, and cut the door open with a blowtorch.

When Brodie's squad entered there was no sign of resistance. He was astonished at what he saw. Making allowance for the smoke, broken glass and other damage done by the tear gas shells, he was in comfortably appointed rooms with a restaurant, gaming rooms, and bedrooms with well fitted bathrooms. All the signs showed the guests had abandoned the premises in a hurry; tables scattered with cards, half empty drinks, the remains of meals on plates, and bedrooms with tousled beds. The girls were crying, and a few waiters were trying to clean up; Brodie's business wasn't with them or the customers. He headed for the manager's office. A man sat on the guest's couch there. He mopped his eyes with a handkerchief. He was a well-barbered, moon faced Cantonese of about thirty, with jewelled cuff links and designer shoes. Brodie sized the man up.

“You're under arrest for running a brothel, and an unauthorised gaming house, and there'll be other charges.”

The man revealed his teeth like a shark. “I'm Jimmy Wey, Inspector. I deny any charges. And I want a word with you, off the record.”

“I don't talk off the record.”

“Please yourself. I'm prepared to make a deal. Tell your boss. We talk a little, reach a figure. OK?”

Brodie heard the splintering of wood outside. Jimmy Wey leaped to the door and tore it open. “For fuck's sake, haven't you done enough damage?”

Brodie saw two of his men tearing down the drapes, another splintering tables with an axe. “What's going on, Sergeant?”

“Make sure rooms cannot be used,” Sergeant Lam said.

“Don't smash my place up any more. We make a deal,” Wey shouted.

Brodie yelled at the constables in Cantonese, and the destruction stopped.

“Thank you Inspector. You will be well paid.”

“I don't take any pay from you. Do you want to be charged with attempted bribery?”

“You making funny joke, Inspector?”

“You'll go inside for this.”

Jimmy Wey's cheeks were flushed, and his hands darted about. “I don't know what is the law. I get a lawyer tell me that. What I know is I don't pay you, so you hit me! I prepared to pay. We don't finish talking. You hit me. Shit, man!”

“I think we take him now,” Sergeant Lam said, moving between them.

“In a minute, Sergeant. Who were you talking to in the police, Mr Wey?”

Jimmy Wey looked more carefully at him.

“Who were you talking to?”

Then Wey looked at Sergeant Lam who said something cryptic, and almost inaudible, only understood by Wey. Wey removed his spectacles, and wiped his forehead with his white handkerchief. His eyes flickered nervously between Brodie and Lam. He replaced his glasses.

“Fuck you, Inspector, you tell your boss.”

9

Nine-thirty am. Brodie was sitting at a desk in the report room, clear-headed, unready for sleep. A night had passed since the Jimmy Wey raid; that arrest had slipped into the shadows, officially removed from his schedule, like the morphine shipment.

He had just completed the details of the arrest of three men on charges of conspiracy to foment civic disorder, following a raid on premises in Tsuen Wan. The raid had been timed for the relative quiet of the small hours. The occupants of the rooftop shack had not shown any opposition. Brodie had arrested three tired clerks, seized a printing press, and reams of inflammatory pamphlets urging a strike against the colonialist oppressors. The activities of the gang seemed to support Parker's dire prediction that they could be a signal of civic disturbances to come.

Over the past few days Brodie had noticed a subtle change in the atmosphere in Kowloon. It was like the warning of an approaching typhoon on a fine day. Immediately the pace quickened; shopkeepers started moving their vegetables inside, closing their sacks of grain, folding their stalls, and shuttering their shops. The air was heavy with apprehension. There was no typhoon warning on this occasion, but the effect was the same in the Chinese city. At about the same time intelligence reports were issued confidentially by Special Branch. The newspapers were silent; there were no official announcements. The word alone spread like a ‘flu virus.

The sun burned as fiercely as it had in previous days. At the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, and around Queen's Road Central on the island, the signs flashed without inhibition, and juke boxes hammered obliviously; buses and ferries carrying the press of people plied without rest; tugs travelled up and down the harbour guiding the tall hulls of cruise liners. The noon gun sounded.

And yet there was apprehension in the Chinese city. It was hard to think of anything that could mute the chatter of the people. The locals did not usually stand on street corners and stare, they were busy, gossiping as they worked. The markets and the tea-houses bubbled with voices. All this was chastened. Voices were stilled. Something was going to happen.

Brodie rang Helen Lau and spoke to her briefly; another of those breathless conversations, more strangled feelings than a logical exchange. She was on duty and had to run. He ended the call with an uncertain commitment from her, to meet at an apartment which he thought he could arrange for the night. The coming troubles gave him a feeling of urgency; they might make a meeting more difficult than it already was.

On the morning of the day the judge was to sum up for the jury in the case involving Sherwin, Brodie went to his room. Sherwin was sitting with his music sheets, absorbed; he had resolutely drawn himself above the turbulence of the case. He put the music aside to talk. Brodie wanted to be with Sherwin at court, and to support him in what Brodie thought would be the inevitable collapse of the case. The subject was a sensitive one between them, because of Brodie's lack of sympathy for the underlying issue. Instead of referring to the case, Brodie started to talk about Vanessa. He had never talked to Sherwin in any detail about his exploits with either Helen or Vanessa. Sherwin was a chaste person; he would join in the bar-room entertainment with hostesses, but he had formed no discernable attachments to women. However, in his keen, bird-like way, Sherwin appeared to understand what a sensual drug Vanessa was.

“You'd never marry, I suppose?”

“No. A temptress in squalor.”

“I know a few police who have married bar-girls and they seem quite happy,” Sherwin said.

“Marriage to her never occurred to me. Vanessa is sexually alluring, but for me she exists only for now. I couldn't project her from now into the future, as my companion.”

“She might easily misunderstand your intentions,” Sherwin said, looking at Brodie critically.

Brodie didn't defend himself. Chicanery with women was something many of them practised without a thought.

“And what about Helen?”

Sherwin knew Helen from the choir, but only as a demure chorister almost indistinguishable from her fellows.

“Helen makes me feel like an amusing, and attractive, member of another race. Somebody she finds exciting, and interesting, but is slightly ashamed of knowing, and doesn't want to be associated with publicly.”

Sherwin smiled, “You are a gwailo cop and she's a respectable girl. Can't you take the friendship as it is, without wanting more?”

Perhaps Sherwin was right. He was being offered a lot but it wasn't enough. “She seems to have seeped into my pores. I think of her all the time.”

“If you both want to be together, that's different.”

“I don't think she sees me as a gwailo cop. I see her as a person before I see her as Chinese.”