Blue Lantern (18 page)

“Seriously. I want a lead. What do you think?”

“I think it's a filthy idea,” Brodie said, going inside, and leaving Parker standing.

Brodie sat on his bed in his room, with a bottle of beer, and smoked. He drank several bottles of beer, numbly, and watched the clock. At seven thirty he went down to see Flinn. The senior sergeant was at his desk, belted into a starched khaki uniform. When he saw Brodie through the open door of his office, he presciently dispatched the constables and NCOs around him, and invited Brodie to sit in privacy. Flinn's baggy face flickered with amused anticipation.

“You know what I've come for,” Brodie said, aching too much to pretend.

“I do. Smart guy.” Flinn said, unlocking a drawer and taking out three envelopes which he pushed across the table, “We have a deal.”

Brodie paused, and Flinn frowned at him, and tapped the envelopes with a finger.

“Go on, pick them up.”

“Take me off bomb disposal.”

Flinn's features did not change. “No problem. You'll be off in a week or so.”

Brodie, grey-faced with fury darting at the edges of his exhaustion, reached out; his fingers touched an envelope, felt the bulk of notes inside. Then Freddie Hudson, in a civilian suit, with a red handkerchief fluttering from his breast pocket, walked in without knocking.

“What's going on?” he demanded lightly, sensing the tautness, and assuming the right to be a party.

Flinn barked a laugh. “Just welcoming a new recruit, that's all.”

Hudson saw the envelopes, understood with buttery satisfaction. “Uh-huh, good.”

“One of us,” Flinn chimed, his lips twisting to reveal his crooked green teeth.

“I always knew Michael was one of us,” Hudson smarmed.

Brodie snatched the money like a hungry jackal, and went out of the office. He heard their jeering laughter as he ran up the stairs.

In his room Brodie fell on the bed. His head ached. He had no sensation of drifting off to sleep. He slept as he lay, fully clothed. It was noon when he awoke. He showered, changed into cotton slacks and a t-shirt, and went out of the station, avoiding everybody, one envelope of the money pressing urgently in his back pocket. He was light-headed. He stopped at a bar for a beer. He walked for a while. He desired a woman, but other desires pressed him. He walked into a shopping arcade near the Peninsula Hotel. In a chemist's shop he hurriedly bought soap, shampoo, sun-tan cream, expensive after-shave lotion, and sun-glasses. In the menswear shop next door he bought two t-shirts, a towel robe, striped swimming trunks, half a dozen silk ties, hardly stopping to choose between the items offered, and never asking the prices.

He retired to a bar and had three or four more beers. His head started to ache again. He headed back toward Mongkok Station. On the way, he stopped at a shoe shop, and tried on a pair of soft moccasins by Gucci. He bought them. It excited him to shovel out the notes, as though the supply was endless. He stopped to look at a window display of cameras in Nathan Road. He knew the camera he wanted, the latest 35mm Canon single lens reflex. He went inside. He watched, without following the dexterous fingers of the Asian shop assistant demonstrating the functions of the black and silver mechanism. He bought the camera, and dropped it into one of his laden carry-bags.

As Brodie came out of the photography shop he saw a jeweller's window with rows of glittering watches on satin cushions. He entered, swaying over the showcases. In a few seconds he selected an all-steel Rolex, and carelessly pushed a fistful of notes across the counter. The big eye gleamed conspicuously on his wrist as he came out into the street.

In his room, he emptied the contents of the bags on the table, slipped off the wristwatch and dropped it on the pile, and stood over his booty, soaking with sweat, his head pounding. The spending mania was waning into leaden sobriety. He took a whisky bottle from the cupboard, and swallowed from the bottle.

It was ten o'clock when he awakened on his bed that night. The afternoon was a haze, a kind of feverish orgy; he wasn't even quite sure of what he had done. But the pile of goods on his table was not imaginary.

He had to see Vanessa. He washed, and put a suit on; but before he could leave the room, there were heavy steps outside the door and Marsden appeared in the frame. Brodie was caught. Marsden's eyes swung around the room as they always did. He noticed the watch before their greetings were over; he fingered it.

“Nice model, but I prefer my his own,” Marsden said, pushing back the cuff of his suit to reveal the solid gold equivalent. He had a wide smile of enlightenment.

“Hey, you've been spending.”

He picked over the pile on the table and nodded approvingly at the camera. “Same as mine. Just the best.”

“I thought I'd spend a bit of the money I've saved for Manila. I'm maybe not going now,” Brodie lied guardedly.

But Marsden, smirking, wasn't listening.

Brodie pounced on Vanessa out of the shadows of the Lotus.

“Sorry, I haven't time now, Mike,” she said, floating past.

He followed her.

She turned to him coolly. “Do you want to get me into trouble?”

“Look,” he said, pushing the envelope at her.

She took it, walked to a side of the room that was less occupied, and he followed. She felt the envelope. She gave no sign. She slipped the envelope into the pocket of her dress. “One moment,” she said disappearing into the darkness at the rear.

A few minutes later she came out, her street jacket on, swinging her handbag. She rubbed against him. “Come on.”

“How did you get the time off?”

“They owe me.”

She led him along crowded footpaths to the old building which contained Yulinda's tiny apartment. She had a key. They were alone.

“I'm yours, Mike,” she said, stretching her arms above her head and tossing her hair back.

She threw off her clothes, and let them lie where they fell on the floor of the front room. Their bodies, too, subsided on the cheap carpet square. She was ecstatic and cried out. For him it was a more distant experience, despite his yearnings of the morning. He was thinking about the aphrodisiac effect of money on Vanessa, and why she had a key to Yulinda's apartment. Afterwards, he continued to lie on the carpet staring at the yellow ceiling with its peeling paper and brown watermarks.

Vanessa, in contrast, took a moment in the bathroom, and then pulled her clothes on quickly. She shook her hair into place instead of combing. She dabbed her face with a tissue, wiped her palms, and sat down at the table with her handbag in front of her. She didn't look at the naked Brodie.

She opened her handbag, and drew out the envelope. Her long fingernails split the paper. She straightened the notes by tapping the edges on the table, like a pack of cards. Then she bent her head, holding the pile down with the heel of her hand, while she flicked through them rapidly, snapping each note with the fingers of her other hand, like a cashier at a bank. When she was finished, she neatened the pile again, and returned it to the envelope. She dropped the envelope into her open bag. Brodie was waiting for her to ask where the money came from, whether he could afford it, and perhaps comment whether it was too much or too little. Instead, she picked up the bag and swung it gently by its handle, humming a tune quietly to herself.

She looked at Brodie. “Want some more?”

She made sex sound like soup in a pot.

She noticed his watch, and giggled. “I'd like a nice watch too.”

“I'll get you one.”

“If you want to, but you'll be giving me something every month now, won't you Mike?”

He nodded agreement. He was looking at this scene from afar, peering through a small window, with no thoughts or feelings.

“Oh, I know you will!”

She bent down, kissed him lightly on the penis, and then sprang up, skipped a step, and sang a few bars from the Beatle's ‘Yesterday'. The song always disturbed Brodie, but she didn't know that.

“We're going to have such wonderful times together, Mike. I just know we are!”

13

The violence of the mobs abated over several days. With the stress reduced, the pleasure of things as they had been before the troubles seemed more acute; even the dust-laden cypresses and the diesel fumes were welcome. Brodie was feeling more at ease with his extra duties. Flinn had confirmed that he would be staying with Bravo 2, and although they hadn't removed him from bomb disposal yet, he was being rostered for a minimum of duties, and the bomb scares were lessening.

He had not come to terms with his capitulation to Flinn, although it had yielded him the advantages he sought; his action remained in his head like a latent fever. He contended to himself, that he had made a temporary move to help Vanessa, and to stop Flinn moving against him; it gave him time to think.

Vanessa was affectionate and devoted. Her father was mending in hospital. The amahs in the ward had been given tea money. A servant had been engaged to attend the Chan apartment to take care of Gary and the boys while Vanessa was away. The compensation for the broken engagement had been paid, and the brandy-bottle waving Mrs Chan placed on probation, and ordered not to enter the apartment building or accost Vanessa or her family. The son had vowed vengeance, but he was discounted as a fool.

Brodie and Sherwin, conscious of their shortening time together, had made a number of trips to outlying islands; they had climbed bare hills and followed trails through villages; they had explored temples and lain in the sun on the beaches drinking wine, and swimming. Brodie had talked more freely of his passion for Helen Lau, but was silent about his pact with Flinn. He was fearful of forfeiting the high regard Sherwin had for him. Every time Brodie ratcheted up the nerve to tell Sherwin, he baulked. What Brodie had done and agreed with Flinn, coagulated into a hidden barrier between him and Sherwin.

Sherwin noticed the Rolex one morning, in his room, when they were preparing for one of their expeditions. Brodie had tried to keep it out of sight. Sherwin admired the watch without the slightest suspicion. The camera, the watch and the shoes, a couple of new tailored suits, the snappy shirts, had all generated excitement in Brodie at first, but the novelty of possession had dulled. He wore and used the articles covertly, keeping them out of sight of anybody who might suspect the truth. Marsden of course had known in an instant.

And the money wasn't the only thing he couldn't admit to Sherwin; it was the work he was required to perform under Flinn's orders. Brodie, like his colleagues, had accepted at first, that random arrests were not appropriate to tackle organised crime, but he had come to recognise the sham. A gambling house would be raided, and a few gaming boards seized. The so-called manager arrested would in reality probably be a waiter repaying a favour for his family or friends. On a narcotics raid, blocks of morphine and packets of heroin of high value would be found, and a hopeless addict would submit as the dealer, in return for an unknown favour from those manipulating him; future drug supplies, payment of his wife's hospital bill, a place for his children at school, a job for his son. In a case where the accused person was the enemy of the Force, he would, although innocent, be effectively crucified by false evidence.

Brodie's charge sheet was full, and his cases read impressively in the newspapers, but in truth, many were faked. He could never reveal this to Paul Sherwin.

Brodie continued to oppose the idea of presenting Sherwin with a girl as a present. He knew that Sherwin had won the respect of their class; they realised that he had run foul of the establishment, and leaving was an act of self preservation rather than cowardice. But the girl idea, with its humiliating overtones, would not fade away. Brodie pressed for a camera or a watch to no avail. There was nothing malicious in the young inspectors' choice. Some might have liked to sully Sherwin's purity a little, but essentially it seemed to them both a good joke and a good turn.

Brodie was deputed to make the presentation and flatly refused, but this wasn't taken seriously. A Saturday night three weeks before Sherwin's departure was chosen for the party; it took place in one of the dining rooms at the station. Drinking proceeded at a fast pace. Perfumes, and brightly coloured women's dresses usurped the masculine place, but there were no wives or girlfriends present; it was billed as a stag affair. The girls were all hostesses, hired to serve drinks, and bestow favours later by private arrangement.

The girl chosen for Sherwin was beautiful; she was eighteen, tall for a Cantonese with long hair which almost reached her bottom. She looked unspoilt, happy and pleased with Sherwin. Although she had been introduced to him as his girl, he didn't yet know how much she really was his. Brodie hoped that there would be no open presentation. His skin crawled at the thought. The party was so raucous that a pause in the proceedings seemed unlikely. But after a few hours, Parker banged a glass on the bar, and shouted for silence. He called on Brodie, and a space cleared round him.

“Paul has decided to leave Hong Kong,” he said, dry-mouthed, “something many of us have thought of doing, and might do yet.”

Cries of “Shame!” interrupted him.

“I'm sure Paul's decision is right for him. We've enjoyed knowing you, Paul. We wish you the very best of luck for the future.”

Brodie sat down after one of the briefest speeches they had ever heard, but that did not diminish the cheers, catcalls and whistles demanding a response from Sherwin.

“Wait!” Parker shouted. “What about the presentation, Mike?”

More cheers and whistles, but Brodie remained seated.

“I'll do it myself. Paul, we wanted to buy you a parting gift you'd remember. Some said a clock. Some said a book. But what we finally decided upon is a little piece of China. All to yourself. For one night. Carol. She's yours. Enjoy!”