Blue Lantern (7 page)

Brodie and Vanessa sat on wooden stools on the footpath, in the gas-light, sipping the delicate-tasting soup. Then they walked silently to the station under the orange sky, hand in hand, and hurried through the stark corridors, past the duty sergeant who looked the other way.

Vanessa surveyed the bed-sitter quietly. “It's a nice room Mike. So white and efficient. And a little shower-room too. It looks as though you've just arrived, or you're packing.”

“Funny you should say that.”

“Are you sure I'm allowed to be here?”

“Women aren't allowed, but it's a rule like so many others, always broken.”

Brodie and Vanessa enjoyed each other without restraints or demands or conditions, sailing close on peaceful water. At four am, Vanessa insisted she had to go. He would normally have given a girl a taxi fare, but perhaps because he liked her so much, he pulled on slacks and a t-shirt, and went with her in the cab. When he returned, it was five am. He slipped out of his clothes and sat on the end of the bed, naked, eating potato crisps, drinking a cold beer and thinking of Helen Lau.

He and Helen were trying to build an understanding with words, and the meaning of every word counted in the structure like a brick in a wall. Wrong words, inept words, thoughtless words, all became part of the structure, cracked, damp, crumbling bricks.

At three o'clock in the morning of the following day, the station was alive as usual; lights burned; waxed floors shone, buffed with a polisher which always seemed to be working somewhere; clerks bent over desks; a typewriter clattered; voices rasped on the two-way radio. It was the hour when the brightness in the station seemed at its most intense. Cantonese voices rose and fell; footfalls echoed on the tiles; papers rustled like wire scraping metal; and the wall-clocks in every room clicked away the seconds.

Brodie, alone in the report room, was completing the papers on a rash of arrests he had made that night. He heard the squeak of heavy shoes, and a laboured breath behind him.

“You've been busy – again, Mike.”

Brodie swung round to the man who administered the work of the station. Senior Sergeant Flinn was tight in his khaki uniform, his black belt like a band on a beer barrel. He had the pouched jaws and lardy chin of a glutton.

“Are you complaining, Barry?”

“Y' makin' work for yourself,” Flinn growled.

“I don't get you.”

“Come and see me when you've finished.”

Flinn was regarded with a mixture of awe and uncertainty by those at Brodie's level. He spent freely, generous to his colleagues. In the office he was all-pervasive, day and night, but quiet in his manner. He was in his mid-forties, unmarried, and lived with a Chinese woman. He had been in the Force for fifteen years, and it was said that he aspired to no more than his position as a senior sergeant. In an indirect way, Flinn controlled the station as Sergeant Lam controlled Brodie's squad. Flinn was an intermediary between the commissioned officers, most of whom were ethnic whites or Portugese, and the Chinese constables and noncoms. He knew the men, and he made himself as much one of them as a westerner could. He spoke fluent street Cantonese, but like most on the streets, couldn't read a Chinese newspaper. Flinn's mastery of administration brought with it a kind of authority. He probably knew more about the relationships between the staff above and below him than any other person at Mongkok. He was reputed to be able to have a commissioned officer transferred or have his duties changed. He could make an officer's path easy or difficult, by holding or moving him. Postings and promotions were dependent on confidential reports, and although Flinn did not write them, he saw them, and was crucial in providing information for them.

Brodie signed off his papers, placed them on the duty officer's desk, and went into the small office where Flinn hunched over empty in-and-out trays. A clean scribbling block and a sharpened pencil lay before him on the blotter; a few files with anonymous spines were on the shelf behind him; all the rest was wood and linoleum and white paint. He picked the fingernails of his fat hands with a paper-knife.

“Siddown, Mike. We need to talk.”

Brodie tried to understand why Flinn should be displeased – and why the man was at his post at this hour. Nothing around Flinn suggested that he had been working. His deeply cratered,
you're lying to me
eyes, were alert.

“What's the matter, Barry?”

Although Flinn was massively superior in influence, he was nominally Brodie's junior in rank, so Brodie felt comfortable being familiar. He found Flinn faintly repulsive, but he had no reason to dislike him.

“Let's talk over lunch. Day after tomorrow. Meet here, twelve thirty.”

Flinn made the invitation sound like an order, and in a way it was an order. Brodie was immediately uneasy, although lunch sounded friendly. Flinn showed no feeling. Years in the east had taught him impassivity. He was not regarded as clever, but the few ideas in his head had evidently been honed into effective tools which made him formidable.

“Have I done something wrong?”

Flinn had seen plenty of rookie inspectors like Brodie, and he perhaps liked to see a new boy on edge, sweating for a couple of nights; it might be more effective than just talking.

“We need to straighten out a few things about your work, that's all.”

“What things?”

Brodie had a stab of irritation. He'd been as meticulous as he could be about his duties. He hadn't stinted in taking trouble, or giving time. He'd learned the book and followed the book. He thought he'd been doing well.

“Lunch, Inspector Brodie. Day after tomorrow,” Flinn said with disdain.

6

On a sultry afternoon with thunder rumbling in the distance, Mike Brodie and Andy Marsden walked down Lo Shek Street in Kowloon. Marsden had assured Brodie that that they would visit a genuine massage establishment dedicated to the art. He had given the assurance because Brodie complained that the massage parlours were really brothels. They passed a number of shops advertising every possible variety of massage, and claiming amazing benefits for the health, as well as entertainment. Marsden ignored the touts, and led the way to conservative office-like premises with frosted windows and a brass plate on the door. Inside, the tiled lobby had potted palms, a glass cubicle containing a receptionist, a list of prices on the wall, and whiff of chlorinated steam in the air. A white-jacketed male attendant escorted them to a deserted locker room, and handed over the keys. The place seemed long established; the damp wooden duckboards had absorbed the cheesy tread of years of bare feet.

Marsden began to undress, and returned suddenly to a subject which had been preoccupying both of them. “You know, your friend Sherwin is crazy to have filed a report.”

“I suppose he feels he has to react honestly,” Brodie said, selecting a locker.

Marsden paused, watching Brodie. “It'll do no good. You either conform here, or leave. It's no use trying to crusade. Look about you, Mike.”

Marsden waved an arm around the stifling locker room, and embraced the whole crowded island and peninsula.

“You have to bend to fit into this environment. You have to accept things you wouldn't accept in Pall Mall or Sauchiehall Street. If you don't want to accept, you have to ignore. Europeans have been making a good living here for a hundred and fifty years. They don't get into a sweat about conditions.”

Brodie nodded uncertainly, and followed Marsden along a passage, rank with a contest between the odour of the male, and disinfectant. Brodie touched Marsden's arm and stopped him, the two of them naked, facing each other, one fair and shining, the other dark and hairy. Brodie felt an intimacy between them as Marsden's black eyes softened on him.

“Would you take the money, Andy?”

Marsden raised his eyelids expectantly. Then he smiled. “Mike, you disappoint me. I thought you were …going to say something personal.”

Brodie caught the minty breath, saw the red purse of lips, and turned gently away. He thought that there was secret coin, of which he saw the merest flash in the feeble light of the corridor, money nobody would speak of, which passed in silence to a chosen few.

He stood at the edge of the indoor pool; it contained a group of fat, naked men, brown, black, white, caramel and oatmeal skinned, soaping each other's backs. He thought of the grime filtered from so many bodies into the water, silting up crevices between the tiles, and coagulating in corners of the pool.

“No girls,” he said.

“Take your pleasures one at a time,” Marsden laughed, pushing him into the hot, opaque, green water.

A bald pot-bellied Indian waved Brodie forward, grabbing his neck, and began to soap his chest. The onlookers laughed. The sight of the lean, golden body charmed them. The Indian put an arm-lock on Brodie from behind, while the others joined in the soaping and groping, and then he was dunked in the scalding water like a child; it was playful, and Brodie didn't show the discomfort he felt. He scrambled out of the pool, and was beckoned into a massage cubicle by a heavily muscled Chinese youth, naked except for bathing trunks and wooden clogs. Brodie, enervated, climbed on to the table submissively.

“I want girl to do massage, OK?”

The masseur grinned and agreed, but proceeded with his job. He kneaded Brodie's shoulders and knees, flattening him out like a lump of potter's clay. Staring at the ceiling, with the masseurs rippling torso rising above him, Brodie did not give up.

“You savvy girl?”

The masseur seemed to assent readily, seizing Brodie's arm, and cracking the joints; then he pounded Brodie's chest with the heels of his hands, and even attempted to bend Brodie's knees in reverse. “Girls like you pretty good after this,” he said.

“You don't understand – I want the massage done by a girl.”

Brodie got the words out between blows as a kind of self-defence. He knew this was a male establishment, and he was helpless in the grip of a masculine machine. The masseur nodded happily, flipped him over like a pancake, on to his belly, and began to hammer his back. Then the masseur slipped off his clogs, and sprang on to the table. He kneaded Brodie's calves with a big-toed foot. Then the man jumped on to Brodie's back with both feet. Brodie groaned at the crushing weight centred over his shoulder blades. The masseur's foot pads pulverised his muscles. Pains ran down his spine like electric shocks. The masseur made satisfied grunts, treating Brodie's cries as expressions of pleasure. Brodie tried to tip the masseur off his back, but the man was as sure of his balance as a tightrope walker. At last the massage, if it could be called that, came to an end.

“OK. Stand up now. Get showered, ready for girl, eh?”

The masseur revealed his broken teeth as Brodie levered himself up from the table, quivering, his head watery.

“You also give me tipsy? Ten dollars.”

Brodie dressed gingerly after a shower, paid his bill including the tip, and stepped into the street. Marsden came out in a few minutes, combed, pink-scalped, and radiating good humour.

“Never again!” Brodie said.

“Ah, there are some things a girl can't do for you,” Marsden declared.

Flinn took Brodie to a restaurant near the Mongkok station; they could not have dined together at the station because commissioned officers had a separate mess. Brodie tried to think of something beyond pleasantries as they walked together in the street, but they had nothing in common but their work. The restaurant was evidently one where Flinn was amongst friends – two CID inspectors, a Portugese accountant, and three Chinese businessmen. Brodie missed the names in a hurried introduction.

As a preliminary it was drinks and poker for small sums. Brodie didn't play and the others didn't press him. Their party occupied the corner of an upstairs room, by the windows, screened from the other tables. After twenty minutes the food was served, six dishes; prawns, corn soup, baked grouper, crumbed crab claws, goose, and duck's feet with plain rice and tea. Bottles of gin and brandy were on the table. Brodie stuck to beer. The Chinese took plenty of liquor and became red faced and noisy.

The pace of the meal was that of men who could afford a couple of hours at ease in their group. The conversation, mostly in English, was about cards and horses and the financial indiscretions of people unknown to Brodie. When the meal concluded, Brodie was left with Flinn as the others conversed with their neighbour or moved to the card table. Flinn's order of grilled steak, a special favour for a special customer, had been late in arriving. Flinn had picked at the Chinese dishes, but mainly consoled himself with brandy. Now Brodie watched while Flinn ate. He consumed the meat and green vegetables first, gulping without tasting, and left the potatoes. He contemplated the four ovoids swimming in gravy. He held his knife and fork each in a fist pointing at the ceiling. He squinted at Brodie, and rearranged the four potatoes. He sliced one in half and examined the circle of white flesh. He forked the chosen half on to a grey carpet of tongue. Flinn swallowed the lump with a quick bow of his head. He removed gravy from the crack at the corner of his mouth with a finger. He wiped his finger on the side of the plate, and studied the Chinese character he had inadvertently produced on the glaze.

“Y'know Mike, we have a system here. We can't keep control of the Colony with a handful of police. Cooperation. We have to have the cooperation of the Chinese cop on the beat, and the people. Don't forget the people.”

“Sure,” Brodie said, watching as Flinn foraged in the gravy for another potato.

“Y've got a good record. I've seen your report. Don't be too impetuous. Don't rush out into the street and arrest everybody. Go gently.”

“I don't get it. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“You've been causing us some embarrassment is what I would say, some of your arrests.”