Blue Lantern (5 page)

Brodie tried to talk to Vanessa. She was the older of the three and spoke better English. “What do you do at the Lotus?”

“I'm a manageress. I look to see the girls are working. I can come to the beach in the mornings because I work late.”

He groped for a few simple questions. “Where do you live?”

“With my family. Are you a cop?”

“Sure, like Andy.”

“CID?”

He was surprised that she had some grasp of police divisions. “No. I'm on the night patrol in Mongkok.”

“A Blue Lantern, eh?” Vanessa mused, using the English version of the street slang.

The blue lamp, symbol of security in Victorian London, had undergone a subtle change in Hong Kong which every police probationer soon learned. Blue lantern was the translation of a derisory phrase from Cantonese, meaning ‘the light which gives no illumination'; the police were sinister, feared as much as Triads. To Brodie, the phrase was harsh, false, an insult. He wanted to tell Vanessa she'd got it wrong, but he doubted whether she'd understand.

He invited her to swim, leaving Marsden with his pair. She carefully donned a bathing hat, but when they were in the water it was evident that she couldn't swim. He took her hand, and they waded out chest deep. They laughed, and he put his arms around her, and felt her satin thighs against his. She neither encouraged or restrained him. She gave him a private glance suggesting that this was a familiarity for him alone.

Afterwards, the five of them lay on the sand, talked daft trivia and ate ice-cream. Brodie and Vanessa were prone, their heads close. The other three were chattering in Cantonese.

Vanessa lowered her voice. “What made you come here?”

“I wanted a good job.”

“Isn't it good? You're making plenty of money, aren't you?” Vanessa said, widening her eyes in a rare smile.

“Sixteen hundred a month. I don't call that plenty.”

“Sixteen hundred? Sure, I believe you,” she scoffed.

He was taken aback by her ready rejection of his word.

At four the girls had to go. Marsden swapped address cards with Wendy and May in a ritual.

“Fools,” Vanessa whispered to Brodie. “Come and see me whenever you like, but after ten, at the Lotus.”

“Sure.”

Brodie felt no excitement at the invitation. He had already met half a dozen Vanessas at various bars and clubs, and received and accepted similar invitations. When the girls had gone, he bought two bottles of cold San Miguel beer from a stall, and he and Marsden drank them in the coolness of the shadows that were starting to move from the hills.

“Did you hear that remark of Vanessa's about graft? She assumes I'm on the take, Andy.”

“Are you?” Marsden asked in an amused voice.

“Of course I'm bloody well not! What kind of question is that?”

“You've led a sheltered life, Mike. You don't think so, but you have. Experience has taught these girls not to believe anything.”

“I don't like the assumption that I'm…”

“You're what?”

“Rotten, I suppose.”

“You needn't worry. They'd regard you as smart. Don't you want to be smart? Vanessa's a nice piece, isn't she? You want her to like you?”

“Uh-huh,” Brodie said, silently comparing her with Helen Lau.

Vanessa was from a world of which he already knew something; physically beautiful, yes. She was like the shop-girl who would stay the night with him for the price of a meal, or a film show or an afternoon at the beach; a plaything who had a depressingly unspoken hope that the romance would deepen. Helen Lau wasn't a plaything.

“Nice tits, Vanessa,” Marsden said, his eyes sparkling.

“You sound as though you're selling a cow.”

“Come on, these girls are alive. Maybe they mean more to me because I speak the language.”

“It doesn't matter, Andy. Fucking them seems like masturbation.”

“Call it what you like. You want a soul-mate? I intend to have fun while I'm waiting for my soul-mate to come along. Where, I ask you, would you find femininity and delicacy to match these three this afternoon?”

“I agree they're very feminine,” Brodie replied, trying to appease Marsden.

“Western women are hairy, hair on their legs, hair on their chins.”

“You've got a fixation about hair. It doesn't bother me.”

Brodie found the hirsute Marsden's dislike of feminine hair curious, and amusing; his attitude made Marsden more strident.

“A woman should move like a ballet dancer in bed.”

“So get a ballet dancer. I wouldn't mind meeting a western woman here.”

Marsden spoke with the certitude of years of party-going. “You won't find much in the way of western women, unless you pick off someone's nice little wife. Otherwise they're all second-hand or dead stock. Spavined mares. Trouble. Neuroses. Pretending they don't give a damn, and plotting at the same time to ensnare.”

“A lot of western men here are spavined horses aren't they? Misfits who can't handle life back home, can't manage a one-to-one relationship with a woman of their own culture?”

Marsden's confidence in himself enabled him to admit, with humour, that this was a fair point; and Brodie laboured to explain a simple specification.

“I want a woman I can talk to. I wouldn't mind a Chinese girlfriend, somebody who's had an English education.”

This was the closest he wanted to get to defining Helen Lau to Marsden.

Marsden was contemptuous, his blue jaw jutting. “Somebody you can talk to! Oh, shit! No classy Chinese bird is going to look at you, mate. You're a gwailo, and worse you're a cop, a Blue Lantern. But there are plenty of simple Chinese girls who are exquisitely fuckable and loving. OK, they don't have double degrees from Oxbridge. But I want a woman who's a hundred percent for me. I don't give a toss if she's never heard of William Shakespeare. A Chinese woman makes a man feel like a benefactor. Our kind give the impression that they're sacrificing themselves.”

“Being able to be intimate is…” Brodie started reflectively, trying to parry Marsden's antagonism.

“You can't get much more intimate than fucking. The rest is imagination, pure bloody imagination,” Marsden said emphatically.

He raised his eyebrows like an auctioneer clinching a top bid. Brodie could think of no way to contest Marsden's conviction without riling him further. The shadows had lengthened across the bay. Orange tinged clouds were puffed up over the islands. A chill stirred on the beach. Brodie and Marsden had one more short swim, braving the jellyfish. The darkening water hissed on the sand at their feet. They drove back to the Mongkok station without speaking, in the windy open car, huddling their damp shirts and towels around their shoulders.

4

Brodie, who had a night off duty, was planning to telephone Helen Lau when they returned to the station. Marsden followed him upstairs, saying he would stop for a shower. Brodie didn't object, although he felt claustrophobic with the two of them using the small bed-sitting room. Afterwards, as they were dressing, Marsden announced their schedule. After calling at his apartment for fresh clothes, they would go to the Dragon Bar at the Hilton, on Hong Kong side for a drink, and then to a ‘decent' restaurant.

“I don't feel like it,” Brodie said, wondering how he could make his phone call privately.

Once Marsden knew of Helen he would pry into the relationship, stand in judgement, and rule prejudicially against Helen.

“I'll pay, Mike. Don't let money bother you when you're with me.”

“It isn't the money.”

There was a knock at the door, and an unsmiling triangular face in the doorway. Brodie beckoned Paul Sherwin inside, taking advantage of the intervention. “Come in and have a beer.”

“It's my day off,” Sherwin said, looking uncertain when he saw Marsden, and remaining by the door, pale and crumpled in his sports jacket and grey slacks.

“Join us, Paul,” Brodie said.

“I've been having an interesting time lately,” Sherwin said, glancing at them awkwardly.

“What's up, Paul?”

“I thought I'd come over. I couldn't get you on the phone…”

Marsden who squatted morosely in a chair could see Sherwin's guardedness. He stood up. “I'll go. You two want to talk.”

“Nobody moves,” Brodie said, and fetched a carton of San Miguel from the cool box. He uncapped three of the bottles, and tore open a packet of salted peanuts. Marsden resumed his seat. Sherwin pulled up a chair, and Brodie sat on the bed.

Brodie was closer to Sherwin than anyone else at the School. Sherwin had arrived there looking fragile, with intense brown eyes and a thin plaster of ginger hair, more like a scholar or a priest. He was an unlikely recruit with interests that were unusual in their sphere. He arranged music, and conducted a Chinese choir. He was the butt of many jokes; his allegedly effeminate interests, his inadequacy in the gym; his effortless written work, and a candid wit helped to isolate him. Brodie was won over by Sherwin's good humour, and his resolute determination to get through the physical ordeals of the course. Sherwin had hardened physically in the past eighteen months, gained weight, and his preoccupied air was less apparent, but he retained a simplicity that Brodie regarded as more than naïveté.

While the three men gossiped, Brodie realised that Sherwin was calculating whether he could speak in Marsden's presence. When there was a pause, Sherwin said, “It's finally happened, I've been offered a bribe.”

Marsden gave a low groan. “Big surprise.”

“Not just a few bucks. A regular payment. Three hundred a month,” Sherwin said, his gaze simmering as he watched the reaction of the other two.

Brodie whistled, really surprised. “What for?”

“Shutting my eyes on brothels and gambling.”

“Brothels and gambling on Lantau? It's a joke,” Marsden said, his mouth twisting.

Marsden acted as though he had already heard the story. He clasped his lips around the neck of the beer bottle and tilted it upward. The fishing village where Sherwin was posted was remote; he was the only non-Chinese officer. The one other westerner in the village was a Polish Roman Catholic priest.

“I thought I ought to familiarise myself with everything in the village, and I started poking around. I found two small brothels and a gambling house, all very seedy, and in business for years. There aren't more than about six thousand people in the area and a few hundred on the fishing fleet. I didn't do anything. I wanted time to think. A day or so later the station sergeant and the corporal approached me.”

“This is what we speculated about,” Brodie said. “The taxing of crime.”

“What do you expect? This is Hong Kong, not fairyland!” Marsden said, crunching peanuts impatiently.

“How did they actually approach you, Paul?” Brodie asked.

“That was amazing. The sergeant and the corporal, like a deputation of important businessmen. Up to then, they had always treated me as a superior officer, you know, standing up and saluting. But on this occasion they came into my office grinning, shut the door, sat down uninvited, and said trade had to go on. They expected me to recognise that they were making a generous gesture.”

“And how did you
repel
them?” Marsden asked, tossing peanuts in his palm.

“By taking the first installment, locking it in a drawer, and telling them that I would make an immediate report, and close the businesses. They left the room without even changing their benign expressions.”

There was a short silence while both men absorbed this.

“You fool! You bloody fool!” Marsden said, in a low but emphatic voice.

“What do you expect me to do? I'm supposed to be a goddam policeman!” Sherwin fired, red blotches on his cheeks.

“Do you seriously think closing those places will make any difference? They'll start somewhere else if they haven't already. They're social amenities, offensive as they may be to you. We're here to keep the peace. We're not reforming angels.”

“Security guards for the traders?” Brodie queried.

“Crudely, yes, if you want to put it that way.”

Sherwin smoothed a strand of red hair from his brow. “I went to Voight who had the posting before me. He's at Victoria HQ. He said it was my problem. Literally. Looked at me as though I was an idiot. He wouldn't even discuss it.”

Marsden gave a hacking laugh. “You are an idiot!”

“You think Voight was in on it?” Brodie asked.

“I couldn't tell. I guessed he was.”

“You want some help, Paul? Some good advice?” Marsden asked, taking a warmer tone.

Minds gridlocked, the three paused. Sherwin sceptical about advice from Marsden; Brodie, trying to comprehend; and Marsden bearing down upon both.

Marsden had the stage. He eyeballed them. “Either return the money, or take the money, but don't do anything else. Don't file a report.”

“How can you suggest taking the money?” Sherwin burst out.

“Don't be childish. It's an option.”

“We serve different masters,” Sherwin said.

Marsden rose dramatically from his chair, bending his muscular torso over them, menacingly.

“Cool down, guys,” Brodie said.

A vein stood out from the bridge of Marsden's nose, forking up his forehead to his scalp. He shook his head in a gesture of hopelessness before sweeping out, and slamming the door. His violent shadow darkened the room with its two bowed occupants.

“Are you going to put in a report?” Brodie asked, when the only sound was Sherwin's hasty breathing.

“I already have.”

Brodie sat in the guest lounge at the Mandarin Hotel in his gray cotton lightweight suit, fashioned in hours by an Indian tailor, crisp white shirt – the work of an amah at the station – and a red paisley tie, trying not to feel out of place. In the black and chrome room, white-jacketed waiters moved silently between the tables like altar boys. Brodie didn't look out of place. He was appropriately, even fashionably dressed, with a figure to make the best of his clothes; the kind of prosperous and competent looking person you might expect to see in a first class hotel; but he
felt
out of place. The price of one drink, or a cup of tea, was more than he would spend on a whole meal. He felt excited too, moisture cooling on his brow in the chill interior. He refused service, and kept his eyes toward the entrance.