The Chinaman Read online

  While the third coat dried he transferred the tool box, bottles and bags from the garage, methodically crossing the contents off the list in his exercise-book so that he was sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. It was all there, the acids, the bags of fertilizer, the bottles of antifreeze and cans of oil. He’d forgotten nothing. When he’d finished he used a screwdriver to prise the lid off the can of black paint and, resting a brand new artist’s brush against a piece of garden cane, painted on a new set of letters and numbers. As he worked he suddenly felt as if he was being watched and he turned and looked at the upstairs window. A curtain twitched. It could have been Pham wondering what he was up to, or it could have been the wind. Nguyen stared up at the window but saw nothing so he returned to the painting.

  When the final letter was in place he stood back and admired his handiwork. It was good. Almost as good as before, even though it had taken him about half as long. ‘Green Landscape Gardeners’ it said, along with a London telephone number he’d taken from the Yellow Pages. The white paintwork around the lettering looked whiter than the rest of the van, but driving through the city streets would soon fix that up. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he whirled around, but this time the curtains weren’t moving and there was still no one there.

  He went into the house through the back door and up the stairs. His suitcase was already packed. He picked it up and was on the way to the door when he had a sudden urge to kneel and pray before the shrine. He got down on his knees and used his Zippo to light a stick of incense. He closed his eyes and breathed in the perfume and tried to empty his mind, to steel himself for the trials to come.

  The incense filled his lungs. It was the same rich scent that always reminded him of his parents’ farm, the room where he’d been born so many years ago. When was it? Could it really have been so long ago? Could it really have been 1943? Where had the years gone, how had they slipped by so easily? He could still picture every inch of the small family farm, close to the Gulf of Tonkin in North Vietnam.

  Nguyen shuddered and opened his eyes. They were moist and he wiped them with the back of his hand. It was time to go.

  He carried the bag downstairs, not bothering to say goodbye to Pham. He put the case in the back of the van, locked the doors and drove the van out of the yard. He headed north, towards Stranraer in Scotland and the ferry to Northern Ireland. Before he left London he stopped at a garden centre and loaded up the van with bags of peat and more fertilizer, a selection of bedding plants, and a spade and a fork.

  It was a long, tiring drive to Stranraer, but Nguyen knew there was no real alternative. He needed the equipment and supplies in the van, so flying was out of the question. He had thought he’d be able to take a ferry from Liverpool direct to Belfast, but he’d discovered that the route had been cancelled some months earlier. The only car ferries now operating seemed to be from Stranraer to Larne in County Antrim, north of Belfast, or from Holyhead in Anglesey across to Dun Laoghaire, near Dublin in the South. Either route would mean hours behind the wheel, but he had reservations about driving through Southern Ireland and across the border. Better, he thought, to go direct to Northern Ireland and not worry about Customs or passports. He drove through the night and slept in the van during the morning before catching the ferry.

  When he arrived at Larne he saw two men in a Ford Granada being taken to one side and their car searched by four men in bottle-green uniforms while a Labrador retriever sniffed around and wagged its tail, but he wasn’t even given a second look. He knew why, it was nothing more than racism working in his favour. He was Oriental and the fighting in Ireland was between Caucasians.

  He drove the van from the ferry terminal south to Belfast city centre. It was late evening and he had to find somewhere to stay. He stopped at a filling station and filled up with petrol and then bought a street map. He asked the teenage girl if she knew where there were any guest-houses but he couldn’t understand her when she replied. He asked again and this time she spoke more slowly, as if he were a child, but the accent was so strange he couldn’t follow what she was saying. He smiled and paid for the petrol and the map and left, none the wiser. He was starting to realise that he was, after all, in a different country.

  There were other reminders. The police wore green uniforms and drove around in heavily fortified blue-grey Land-Rovers with metal screens protecting the sides. And there were soldiers everywhere wearing camouflage uniforms and helmets and carrying automatic rifles at the ready, barrels aimed at the ground. The army used green Land-Rovers, open at the top so that the men in the back were exposed but able to react quickly. It made good sense, Nguyen thought.

  He drove by what he thought was a prison until he saw a sign that said it was a police station. He was so surprised that he stopped to look at it. He had never in his life seen such a thing, not even in Saigon. Thick metal mesh fences surrounded the building which had what appeared to be a gun turret on one corner. The top of the fence was a tangle of barbed wire and all the windows were firmly shuttered. It was a fortress. He had been considering asking a policeman to suggest a place to stay, but from the look of it the police in Northern Ireland were not geared up for handling general enquiries from the public. They were in a state of siege.

  There were posts at each corner of the building, and on the top were surveillance cameras covering all the approaches.

  There was a metallic rap against the passenger window of the van and Nguyen jumped. An unsmiling face under a peaked cap glared at him. He knocked on the door again with the barrel of his handgun. Nguyen leant over and wound down the window.

  ‘Can I be of help to you, sir?’ the policeman asked. Another officer appeared on the driver’s side of the van. In the rear-view mirror he saw two more.

  Nguyen smiled and waved the map at them. ‘I need somewhere to stay tonight. Do you know anywhere?’

  The officer was already relaxing. He slid his gun back into his holster.

  ‘Give me the map,’ he said. Nguyen switched on the small reading light and the policeman jabbed a finger in the bottom left-hand corner. ‘See this road here, Wellington Park?’

  Nguyen nodded.

  ‘There are a few places there, quite cheap.’ He handed the map back to Nguyen. ‘You’d best be on your way. And in future don’t hang around in front of police stations in a van. We’re a touch sensitive about that sort of thing. Understand?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Nguyen. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  The policemen grouped together and watched him go, four stout figures in dark-green bullet-proof jackets.

  Nguyen followed the map until he reached Wellington Park. He drove slowly down the road, looking left and right. He soon saw a guest-house but it had a sign in the window saying ‘No Vacancies’. Further down the road there was another house with a sign saying ‘Vacancies’ and Nguyen stopped the van in front of it.

  It was dark now and the van appeared yellow under the streetlights. Nguyen pressed the doorbell and waited. The front door was wooden with two vertical strips of dimpled, frosted glass. Through the glass he saw a light come on and a figure ripple towards him. The door opened to reveal an overweight elderly woman with close-cropped grey hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. She was wearing a blue and white diamond-patterned dress and a plain white apron and was drying her hands on a red tea-towel.

  ‘Do you have a room?’ Nguyen asked her.

  She looked him up and down and then scrutinised the van over his shoulder, screwing up her eyes to read the lettering.

  ‘How long would you be wanting it for?’ she asked.

  Nguyen had difficulty understanding her accent but she spoke slowly enough for him to get the drift.

  ‘Two nights, that is all. A room with a bath.’

  The old woman sucked her teeth and shook her head. ‘No baths in the rooms, but I do have one with a shower and a toilet. And a small wash-basin. It’s right at the top of the house, very cosy.’

  Nguyen said he’d take
it and the woman seemed doubtful, but then he pulled his wallet from his jacket and offered to pay her cash, in advance, and she smiled and ushered him inside. On the way up the stairs she introduced herself as Mrs McAllister as the notes disappeared behind the apron. He told her his name and she tried to repeat it, but gave up. The room was small with a single bed, an old wooden wardrobe, a dressing-table with an oval mirror, and a bedside table with a brass lamp with a pink lampshade. There was an ornate crucifix above the bed and to the left of the dressing-table was a black-framed photograph of John F. Kennedy. The ceiling sloped down to a window overlooking the street. Opposite the window was a door leading to a tiny bathroom with a tiled floor, a shower cubicle, a wash-basin with a cylindrical gas heater on the wall above it, and a low toilet with a black plastic seat. It was perfect.

  The two pirates stood by the bar, tapping their feet to the driving beat of a pop song that Woody only vaguely recognised as they sipped orange juice from tall glasses. One of the pirates was middle-aged with a greying beard and a black patch over one eye, the other was younger with curly blond hair and flushed cheeks, but they wore matching outfits, baggy white shirts, red scarves around their necks, tight black breeches, white socks and shiny black shoes with big brassy buckles.

  ‘Pirates?’ said Maggie as she followed Woody to the bar.

  ‘Yeah, they’re with the pirate ships,’ said Woody, squeezing in between two stockbroker types and trying to catch the attention of the young barmaid.

  ‘They would be,’ said Maggie, still mystified.

  Woody pointed over her head, towards the large windows at the far end of the bar. ‘Pirate ships,’ he explained. ‘They’re a tourist attraction. A sort of cross between Madame Tussaud’s and the Cutty Sark. Those guys are sort of tour guides, cross their palms with silver and they’ll take you below decks and tell you bloodcurdling tales of life on the salty sea.’ The barmaid finally saw his plaintive look and came over. She gave him a beaming smile which faded a little when she saw that he was with a girl. Woody tended to attract barmaids, but was never sure why. He was still good-looking, he knew that, though he had allowed himself to go a bit recently. It was his eyes, an old girlfriend had told him. ‘Your eyes make me go weak at the knees, they’re hot. Really hot,’ she’d said. Woody reckoned it wasn’t anything to do with his looks, though. He thought it had more to do with the way he made them laugh. Sometimes he laughed them into bed before they realised what was happening. Woody winked at the barmaid, ordered drinks and carried them over to an empty table, close by the window so that Maggie could look at the sailing ships.

  ‘They’re not real, are they?’ she asked, sitting down.

  ‘I don’t think so, they were built to pull in the punters to Tobacco Dock.’

  He raised his glass to her and she smiled. He was glad he’d taken her to Henry’s Bar in Tobacco Dock because at least they could sit in comfort. Standing at the bar was essential when you were with the lads, but Maggie demanded a higher standard of comfort. No, that wasn’t right, she didn’t demand it. She deserved it.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘Just thinking how pretty you look,’ he said.

  ‘Why thank you kind sir,’ she laughed. ‘You look exhausted.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sleeping well. It’s the heat.’

  She frowned. ‘It’s not that hot at the moment,’ she said.

  Woody laughed. ‘No, it’s my place. I’ve a bedsit in a house with about a dozen others, and mine is right next to the only bathroom. The landlord has fitted a hot-water tank as big as a Saturn rocket and my room is always in the high eighties. I have to have the window open even in winter.’

  Maggie smiled and shook her head. ‘Why don’t you move, you daft sod?’

  Woody shrugged. ‘It’s cheap.’

  ‘You’re not short of money, are you?’

  Woody was immediately embarrassed because the answer was yes, he was bloody short of money. Always was. And always would be unless he got a staff job. The shifts weren’t coming as often as they used to, he was overdrawn at the bank, yet he still had to stand his round at the pub while he brown-nosed his way back into the good books of the guys on the news desk. ‘No, it’s convenient, that’s all.’ Sure, if you fancied an hour on the bus to get into work.

  ‘So is LA still an option?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. Sure it is.’

  They drank and sat for a while looking at each other in silence. Woody spoke first.

  ‘Now it’s my turn to ask what you’re thinking about.’

  Maggie pulled a face. ‘I was actually wondering why you didn’t get a better job, why you waste your time on a comic like the Sunday World.’

  He sighed deeply, and explained that he didn’t even have a job with the Sunday World, that he was only a freelance, dependent on shifts, and that even that didn’t pay particularly well, not since the print and journalists unions had been broken along with the dockers and the miners and any other groups that had once been able to withhold their labour. She listened patiently and then reached over and touched his shoulder, a friendly nudge that showed she understood. Maybe even cared. She asked him why he couldn’t get a staff job. At first he didn’t want to tell her, but she pressed, pointing out that he was obviously bright, she’d begun reading his stuff and she could tell that it was good, so what had happened? She wormed it out of him eventually, his time on one of the broadsheets, the investigation into high-level corruption within a north of England police force, the drive home along the motorway, the blue flashing light in his rear mirror, the two surly traffic cops and the discovery of two hundred grams of cocaine under the passenger seat of his office car.

  ‘They framed you?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘Yeah. I managed to avoid being sent down, but I lost the job and for a few years I couldn’t get any sort of work. The papers didn’t trust me, partly because of the drug thing, but I know for a fact that the cops were putting the word around, too. I stuck with it, though, went to work in the West Country for a while, and then some of the nationals began taking my copy again and now at least I’ve got my foot in the door. I’m lucky to have that, I guess.’

  ‘Jesus, Woody, that’s terrible. That’s appalling.’

  ‘That’s life, Maggie.’

  She forced a smile. ‘I suppose the Sunday World isn’t that bad,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Do they let you travel much?’

  ‘Oh sure, we get around. There are always lots of freebies to be had.’

  ‘And do you get political stuff to do?’

  ‘Sure. That’s one of the good things about working on a Sunday paper. They have small staffs so there isn’t too much specialisation. I mean, I have to do a lot of showbiz crap and weird stuff, but we get to help out with the big ones too.’

  ‘What are you working on at the moment?’ she asked.

  Woody coughed.

  ‘Pardon?’ she asked.

  Woody looked shamefaced. ‘Vampire cats,’ he said. Maggie collapsed into hysterics.

  The man approaching the churchyard was short but powerfully built and even in the dark it was obvious he was not a man to get into a fight with, not by choice anyway. He was wearing a brown leather jacket, scuffed and cracked with age, and dark-brown corduroy trousers. He carried a small sack, tied at the end with a short length of rope, and in one of the pockets of his jacket there was a flashlight and half a dozen metal snares. He’d done a fair bit of poaching in his youth, but he wasn’t looking for rabbits, the snares were just cover in case he was discovered. In the back pocket of his trousers was a short-handled knife with a wicked blade which he was quite prepared to use if anyone saw through the poacher’s disguise.

  Somewhere in the dark he heard a hedgehog snuffle then squeal and he stopped and listened but heard nothing other than the night sounds of the English countryside and an airliner rumbling high overhead, red and green lights flashing.

  He swung easily over the wall and landed silently in fresh
ly dug soil. He was standing within inches of a new grave, a gaping black rectangular hole that seemed bottomless. He breathed a sigh of relief, if he’d vaulted the wall just a couple of feet to the right he’d have pitched headlong into it and broken a leg, or worse. The luck of the Irish, he thought with a smile. He stepped off the mound of earth and used the sack to smooth away his footprints before moving on. He skirted around the church and headed for the five tombstones.

  He knelt down and lifted the stone that covered the stockpile, pushing hard with his legs. He carefully leant it against the wall and then stood still, counting off sixty seconds in his head as he listened for anything out of the ordinary, because there was no way a poacher would be able to explain what he was doing lifting a gravestone, especially a gravestone that concealed IRA explosives. Still nothing, even the hedgehogs had fallen silent.

  He dug into the earth with his hands and pulled out three polythene-covered packages, working quickly but carefully. If he was surprised to see half of the Semtex explosive missing, his face showed no sign of it. He rewrapped the parcels, replaced the soil and dropped the stone back over the hiding place. He brushed the dirt from his hands, checked that the surrounding area was clean and then walked down the gravel path and out of the churchyard.

  Beth McKinstry was on the telephone when Nguyen walked into the office. He stood in front of her desk and waited. He was wearing his only suit, a grey one that was starting to go shiny at the elbows. He had on a white shirt and a blue V-necked pullover with three white skiers across the front. He was holding a white carrier bag in both hands, clasping it to his chest like a baby. Murphy was sitting on the sofa reading a magazine and massaging his aching shoulder. He’d looked up when Nguyen entered, but immediately dismissed him as any sort of potential threat and carried on reading.