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  ‘The northeast.’

  ‘Oh, a beautiful place.’ She began to sing a popular song, tilting her head from side to side to mark the rhythm. ‘Wo shi yige dongbei ren, wo shi yige hao peng you…. I am a northeasterner, I am a good friend to have.’ She had a good voice. He noticed that there was tissue paper tucked into the back of her shoes, to make them fit.

  From her accent, the girl was from central China – he guessed Henan. She had a squat build and a ruddy complexion. Like the barmaid, she had tried to lighten her skin with make-up. Though her nails were long, her fingers were thick and calloused. A peasant girl – you could see her in any small Chinese town.

  ‘We don’t meet many mainlanders. It’s nice to speak real Chinese again. We have to try and learn English.’

  The girl in the qipao said, ‘Would you like a massage?’ and the other girl repeated the statement.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Jian. He pointed at the girl with the jeans on because she seemed more docile.

  ‘How much does it cost?’

  ‘Thirty pounds.’

  ‘Is that all-inclusive?’

  ‘One time. Half an hour. Nothing kinky.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  The girl took his hand and led him down a corridor. The red light here was even dimmer. The floor was tile, and a mop and bucket were propped in a corner. Sliding doors led off.

  The girl knocked on a door, then opened it. The cubicle beyond held a fold-up bed. Jian pretended to stumble, knocking against the plasterboard division. It didn’t feel very strong: he reckoned he could kick through it if he had to.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ she asked.

  He looked around for an alarm button but couldn’t see one. He stood in front of the door.

  ‘Tell me about this place. How many girls are there?’

  ‘Eight. Give or take.’

  ‘How many are here now?’

  ‘Huh? All of them.’

  ‘And are there men here?’

  ‘Why? Do you like men? That can be arranged, but you’ll have to talk to the girl at the front.’

  ‘I want to know how many men are here now and I want to know where they are.’

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you that. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?’

  She took off her T-shirt, revealing a frilly padded bra. Her arms were bony, with a bluish bruise on the inside of one elbow. It looked like the mark left by an injection. He took her arm and rubbed it. Make-up came off, revealing needle scars. A junkie then. Probably they all were, it would help keep them pliant.

  She said, ‘Do you like what you see?’

  ‘I’ll give you money if you talk to me. Tell me where the boss is.’

  ‘I don’t deal with money. You’re going to get me into trouble. Please don’t get me into trouble. Please, I’ll be punished. I can’t help you. I just do massage. I don’t know anything about anything.’

  He guessed that hatchetmen were at the front, and the brains at the back. The building was four storeys high, and now they were on the second. He had to find the stairs.

  ‘I just want you to be satisfied,’ said the girl. She put a finger on the inside of her lip, dipped her head and batted eyelashes gloopy with liner.

  ‘Stay here.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  But she followed him into the corridor. He worried that he was making a mess of this. If he didn’t stop her she’d run straight to the club enforcers. He grabbed her arm squeezed, and showed her his gun.

  ‘We’re going upstairs.’

  She shrieked.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen to you. Shut up.’

  She wet herself. Her eyes were huge with fear and she was gibbering and her legs were trembling so much she couldn’t walk. He let her go. This was not going well.

  (29

  A cubicle door slid open and a girl peeped out. Jian supposed she could not see the gun, but she could see her colleague being mishandled, and that was enough. She ran lightly on bare feet into the corridor and back towards the bar.

  He left the girl and ran the other way, deeper into the building, and found a door at the end of the corridor. It led to a flight of stairs going up. He took them quickly, three or four at a time. He slammed a door open and found himself in another corridor of closed cubicles, just like downstairs. He opened one. A slim girl sat on a fat man. She turned, and gasped when she saw the gun.

  ‘Where’s the boss?’

  The man stopped groaning and raised himself. Struggling to sit up, he tipped the girl over and onto the floor. His condommed penis wiggled as he thrashed around.

  ‘Where’s the boss?’ Jian barked. But either she didn’t understand or was too shocked to speak.

  He heard running feet behind him. He turned and a man shouted – some threat or curse, probably. Dragon tattoo on the arm, four gold rings. No leather coat now, just a T-shirt, and the tattoo could be seen curling all the way to his shoulder. Yes, he had seen this man before, stumbling along the pavement outside the Floating Lotus.

  He aimed and fired. The man looked shocked, then worried. He put a hand on the wall. Jian moved close enough to smell the booze on him and shot him again, and the man fell down. He felt a light sprinkle on his face and wiped it with his sleeve. It was blood. He looked down and saw that his clothes and shoes were similarly spattered. He felt the wooziness of shock steal over him and in his mind babbled to keep from freezing up. Sometimes in the revolutionary struggle the difficulties outweigh the favourable conditions and so constitute the principal aspect of the contradiction.

  A door slid open and a girl peeked out. Her eyes widened. She ran out, naked and squealing. Jian forced himself to focus. He had to find Black Fort, and flashed the two characters of the name across his mind. Where the girl had run, there must be more stairs.

  He found a dim stairwell with bare tile steps. Yellowish light spilled from the floor above, red from below. The walls were mildewed concrete. He could hear the naked girl padding down and now he became aware of more sounds, of pounding feet and shouts and screams. He wondered how long they had been going on for and how he had not become aware of them before. A clanging alarm started to ring.

  A portly middle-aged man, naked but for a towel held over his crotch, shuffled in from the corridor. Jian waved the gun at him and he dropped the towel in fright and ran out again. The stairs up led to a dingy stairwell with a normal bulb, not a red one. The shift was abrupt, like breaking out of water into sunlight.

  Blinking, his gun raised, Jian banged a door open with his shoulder. The layout of the corridor here was the same as downstairs – plasterboard divisions and sliding doors dividing the space into cubicles. But here there was no attempt at decor. Unshaded bulbs lit a scuffed laminate floor and unpainted walls.

  Jian slid a door back. The room beyond was the same dimensions as those downstairs, and held two double bunk beds with just enough space to move sideways between them. Girls’ clothes hung from the metal bedframes and from pipes running along the ceiling. Towels and make-up were scattered over the floor and across the beds.

  A window was boarded with rotting planks. Underwear hung from the blunt ends of the nails. A picture of green trees and hills, ripped from a magazine, was tacked to the central board. The place reminded him of a cell, and stank of bodies and perfume.

  He closed the door out of instinctive politeness and strode past more cubicles. The only proper door opened into a rank little bathroom. A hose with a showerhead attached ran from a tap on the sink. The porcelain was streaky with brown mould. Lines of drying laundry criss-crossed the ceiling. A window was nailed shut and black paint had been slapped over the glass.

  This was no good. This was where the girls lived, the boss would be far from here. He should have gone to the front, not the rear. Worrying that he’d missed his chance, he rushed back to the stairs and dropped into the red glow. The clamour of the alarm continued.

  Hurtli
ng back along the corridor he almost stumbled on a body and it took a moment for him to realise that he had made the ugly thing. The face was slack, the mouth hung open and the tongue flopped out. Someone had trodden in the pool of blood and now dark footprints led away, partial prints of the balls and toes of small, bare feet. He followed them towards the bar.

  (30

  The soft-focus ladies still grinned from the walls but the real girls had gone. The table lay on its side and fake fruit rolled back and forth. A bloody smear near the skirting board told him that the barefoot girl had run round the cardboard cut-out of the actress. Strangely, the name of this actress now came to him – Monroe. Behind her, a door hung ajar.

  Jian was breathing heavily and motes of light flickered before his eyes. He was thinking in fragments, but screaming at himself to stay sharp. He stood against the wall and extended his toe to poke the door open.

  An explosion made his head ring. Stings pattered his side and he flinched, raising his arms to cover his face. Part of the ceiling trellis collapsed with a snap and plastic grapes fell and bounced.

  Someone had fired a shotgun at the door. Slithers of wood hung from the hinges, the rest had been blown into the room. The lampshade was torn to shreds, the bulb shattered.

  Jian had been hit by splinters and deafened by the noise, nothing more. He dropped to his haunches and knocked a chair over. He hoped its thunk sounded like a dying man. He straightened and took a big, careful step back.

  The only light now was a dim red glow from the corridor and Jian almost did not see the shotgun barrel nudging through the doorway. He grabbed it with his free hand and the heat of the barrel was painful as he yanked it, pulling its bearer forward.

  Black Fort was on the other end, and now the two men were shockingly close and Jian could see into his yellowish eyes. All he had to do was bring up the gun and it would all be over. He pulled hard on the shotgun barrel and Black Fort lurched forward and Jian’s hand came up and his finger was tightening on the trigger.

  But Black Fort let go of the shotgun and dropped, and now Jian was off balance, and a jutting elbow struck his gun arm on the wrist and knocked his hand up and the gun fired into the ceiling. Burning powder from the discharge stung his eyes. Black Fort grunted – it had hurt him, too.

  Jian was back against the bar, and Black Fort was moving forward, and in a moment he’d banged a bony shoulder into Jian’s chest and headbutted his jaw. Jian raised his leg and turned his hips and a knee strike aimed at the crotch whacked his thigh. He brought the butt of his gun down hard on the back of Black Fort’s head and the impact jarred his elbow.

  Black Fort put his hands either side of Jian’s head and fumbled his thumbs into Jian’s eyes. Jian beat the gun against Black Fort’s back. Black Fort let go with one hand and with the other slapped Jian’s gun arm away and pinned it to the desk. The other thumb kept burning into the screwed-up eye. Jian thrashed – death or blindness was a moment away.

  Desperation gave him strength, and he leaned right back over the bar, kicked his legs up and carried Black Fort up and into the air. He twisted and turned right over the bar, and with a succession of bruising jolts crashed down onto the other side.

  He was lying on the floor and still holding the gun. His eyes were raw and full of water and he couldn’t see. He hauled himself to his feet and gritted his teeth against the pains gathering in his ankle and elbow and back.

  Leaning against the wall, he pointed the gun and tried to keep it straight. He was aware of a dark form moving in the red light. It went away.

  He dragged himself through the open door and around dark shapes that might be furniture. A stereo was playing a catchy ditty, one he had last heard blaring out of a clothes shop back home, and the words came at him clear and distinct. ‘Wo zhende ai ni, ni shi wo superstar… I really love you, you are my superstar.’

  He wished his eyes would stop streaming. A square of white light floated before him, rising from the vague redness all around. He dragged himself up to it and realised everyone had gone through this open window and left him alone.

  With the gun raised, he felt his way back down the stairs and out the front door. They would return in force, with more weapons, but he supposed he was safe for a few minutes. In an alley he slid down a wall between plastic bins until he was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him. Pains crowded for attention. He ignored them and reached for a cigarette and was annoyed to find out that his pack wasn’t there, it must have fallen out in the fight. All he had in his pockets was his daughter’s mobile phone and Black Fort‘s namecard. He contemplated the phone number scrawled on the back, and waited for his eyes to clear so he could read it.

  (31

  Mister Kevin drove the migrants to the seaside. Ding Ming reflected on what a long day it had been. It would be very good to lie down. He just needed a corner to curl up in and he’d be sleeping like a baby. But he could not rest yet. He contemplated a bleak plain of mud that shaded, far away, into a black sheet of water broken only by the rippling reflection of the moon. He wondered what sea he was looking at.

  A Chinese man got down from a tractor and introduced himself as shift supervisor. He handed out boots, rakes and waterproofs and explained that they were going to pick shellfish from the mud. It was very easy, even in the dark, the experienced workers would show them the ropes. They had five or six hours yet before the tide came in, a half-shift. He was from Fujian, and so too, he said, were most of the workers out there, so there was nothing to be afraid of.

  And if they worked hard they could earn as much as one pound an hour. Ding Ming was very pleased. That was fourteen and a half yuan, an enormous amount, and just for foraging in mud. Gold Mountain deserved its name. Why, if he was given the opportunity to work ten or twelve hours a day for seven days a week, as he hoped, he’d be earning as much as eighty pounds a week, more than a thousand yuan. Four thousand yuan a month – it was scarcely credible. Back in the village, only a boss or an official could hope to earn so much.

  The shift supervisor ordered the migrants onto the tractor’s trailer and started the noisy engine. The men whooped to raise their spirits and somewhere a dog barked. Kevin called Ding Ming back. ‘Oi you. William. Over here a sec.’

  Ding Ming watched the tractor chug away. He wanted to be given his chance to earn fourteen and a half yuan an hour. He feared another sexual overture and wrung his hands with nervousness.

  But Kevin thrust a mobile phone at him. ‘I think he’s Chinese. What’s he saying?’

  ‘Hello?’ said Ding Ming.

  ‘Hello?’ A man, his syllable a snap of inquiry. ‘Ni shi shei?… Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Ding Ming. Who are you?’

  ‘Who have I called? Whose phone is this?’

  ‘A labour organiser. An English man.’

  ‘A labour organiser… Are you a worker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. Tell him… tell him I’m looking for a job.’

  The brusque statements gave Ding Ming the impression of someone used to wielding authority. The accent was northeastern, the Mandarin very clear. This was someone with education.

  Ding Ming said to Kevin, ‘He say he want job.’

  ‘Tell him to fuck off.’

  ‘He says no.’

  The northeasterner said, ‘Tell him that a Chinese man called Black Fort gave me this number. Tell him that Black Fort said that I was to ring this man, this labour organiser, and that he was to give me a job. Tell him that.’

  Ding Ming translated into English, acutely aware that he was making some shocking grammar mistakes.

  Kevin sighed. ‘Is he ringing from a mobile?’

  Ding Ming inquired. Yes, the man was ringing from a mobile.

  Kevin said, ‘I’ll text him where we are. Tell him to turn up here round about dawn. Give me the phone.’

  ‘The labour organiser is going to text you an address.’

  ‘Can he be more specific?’

  Kevin took
the mobile and sent the caller a text message. It must have been stored, as it only took a moment. ‘Anyway, he’ll never find it.’

  Ding Ming looked out at the puttering tractor.

  ‘You’ll be out there soon enough,’ said Kevin. ‘When he’s dropped that lot off, he’ll load up with sacks and come back.’

  ‘One pound for one hour?’ It was still scarcely believable.

  ‘But of course we have to shave something off that to cover accommodation, food, work permits, transport to the site, hire of the equipment, administration costs and so on and such like. Then the money that is left is going towards paying off your debt. You won’t actually see any money as such for a little while.’

  Ding Ming grew aware that Kevin was looking him up and down, and shied from the scrutiny, lowering his eyes. The white man’s feet, considered as part of the legs, looked all out of proportion. He supposed a foot didn’t get chubby when the rest of you did, it was left behind.

  ‘Of course, certain considerations can be made for good workers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I believe we were discussing your wife.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how keen you are to talk to her again.’ There was a familiar leer on Kevin’s face.

  Not this again.

  (32

  A dog barked, very close and loud, and Ding Ming spun around, expecting to be bitten.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Kevin, and fumbled his mobile out of his pocket. The dog bark repeated. In fact it was nothing but a customised ring tone.

  ‘What?’ said Kevin into the mobile. As he listened his eyes widened and mouth opened. ‘Christ. You’re fucking joking. Shot? With a gun?’ Pressing the mobile hard against his head, he hurried into the van. ‘Fuck. Well who? Yeah.’

  Suddenly it was as if Ding Ming were not there at all, which was a relief, but Kevin’s tone was so disturbed and his actions so agitated that he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of alarm. This was a serious phone call, dealing with dramatic events. Ding Ming hoped none of that drama would touch him. He sidled away. All forms of trouble were to be avoided.