The Fan Tan Players, page 10
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The following morning Iain, Costa and Peter Lee boarded a ferry to Taipa Island, the rural retreat a mile to the south of the Macao peninsula. They went swimming, diving into deep water off the rocks nearest to the boat jetty. Iain was an able, spirited swimmer and was not afraid of choppy seas. Costa, too, was accomplished in the water. Lee, however, never having learned to swim, remained on dry land, his light flannelled trousers rolled up to the knees.
As soon as they had established a beach towel camp, under a lean-to amongst the shade of some trees, Lee extracted the binoculars, charts and maps from the canvas grip, while Iain went to change in the nearby Nissen huts. He burst into laughter when Costa appeared, sporting a striped one-piece swimming costume with shoulder straps that hugged his grotesque belly like a dark, greasy merman’s skin. ‘‘Christ almighty!’’ Iain roared. ‘‘A hippo in a leotard!’’ Costa was having some trouble with the garment catching at the cleft of his buttocks. ‘‘Your arms and legs look like giant cocktail sausages!’’
Iain, by contrast, preferred to swim in a pair of old long johns. And despite the salt-sting to his neck wound, he loved the feel of the cool water as it coated his body, the freedom of the tides caressing his muscles, his limbs rejoicing in the challenge as he fought against the swells. Below the tide level Iain chanced upon clusters of sea urchins, and on the rocks that made up the small cliffs he found slippery weeds and several delicate flowers which succeeded in growing in the little crannies: a type of purple gerardia, a species of sea lavender, and tiny yellow flowers with indigo leaves often too small to see with the naked eye. Iain snatched a long train of gerardia from the rock face and kept it in his hand.
When Costa climbed out of the water, scrambling across the shingle of loose pebbles, bedraggled and panting, Iain offered the big man his shoulder for support. With Costa clambering to his feet, Iain surreptitiously slipped the trailing loop of gerardia he’d kept in his hand into the V-shaped ravine of Costa’s ass cheeks. The gerardia drooped down the backs of Costa’s oily-smooth thighs like a purple tail. It gave Iain a curious pleasure to see his friend, his face framed by sea-weed hair, advancing up the beach like a huge, capsized troll, the thin purple plant jutting out from what looked like two over-ripe glistening guavas. Iain listened to the giggles. He tried not to laugh. Only when he heard the guffaws from the local fisherwomen, perched on the edges of their sampans, did Costa reach behind him with a curse.
The surf washed Iain ashore. Out of the water, he laid his hands on the sand and proceeded to perform fifty press-ups.
‘‘What are we doing here, Vermelho?’’ asked Costa, slumped on the dune like a marooned sperm whale.
‘‘What does it look like we’re doing?’’
‘‘Right now it looks like you are fucking the ground.’’
‘‘It’s called blending in. If we’re being watched, I want it to look as though we’re enjoying an outing.’’
‘‘Oh, you mean like a company field trip. How shweet! I should have brought some teacups and a leetle cake!’’ He scrubbed sand off of his belly as if they were sugar grains. ‘‘Tell me,’’ he said. ‘‘What wass the final verdict from the coroner?’’
Iain hissed with the intensity of effort, relishing the hot burn racing through his muscles. ‘‘Koh thinks our victim, B 188, was probably suspended by the wrists, his mouth stuffed with rosaries. Somehow he drowned in fresh water.’’
‘‘A cruel way to die. How many is that?’’ said Costa.
‘‘Thirty-four … only sixteen more. Shut up and let me finish!’’
‘‘Vermelho, why do you have to be so intensh about everything, eh?’’
‘‘Why? Because somebody booby-trapped my house and tried to take my head off. And they’re bound to try again.’’
Costa glanced at Iain’s neck. ‘‘A mere scratch.’’ He looked up into the cloudless sky, at the early pinkish sunlight, then quickly down to his toes. ‘‘Argghh! Crab!’’
‘‘Stop whining you old lump, it won’t bite.’’
Costa started hopping from foot to foot.
‘‘Can’t you just act like any normal person would at the beach?’’
‘‘Sorry, Vermelho.’’
‘‘Now when I’m done I’m going to race you down to where Lee is …’’ as he said this, he realized that this was how he loved to live his life – to the full. Whether it was performing press-ups, or preparing poached eggs for breakfast, or taking a walk in the mountains, or delivering a speech to the ombudsman, he did it as best he could, never one to cut corners. It wasn’t in his nature to do otherwise.
‘‘Again with the competitiveness. When we play golf or tennish, you try to thrash me. When we go out drinking, you drink like a sailor in a rumshop, always wanting to get me ass-hole drunk. And what is that Scottish saying you taught me? The one I now yell at my neighbours at three in the morning?’’
Iain completed his forty-third press-up. ‘‘Slainte mhath!’’ he grunted.
‘‘That’s right – ‘Slainte mhath!’, ‘Let’s have a kiss! Now, it is like a reflex for me, I yell it every time I arrive home! My neighbours think I am a hooligan!’’
Iain started laughing. His laughter grew infectious. Soon Costa was laughing too. ‘‘You are a shtrange potato, Vermelho. Sometimes you make me shout for joy and I adore you like I adore a child, other times I can wring your neck.’’
Iain carried on laughing. ‘‘Forty-nine. … I’ll give you a five second head start. Loser pays for lunch. Ready?’’ Costa thundered away.
Iain completed his fiftieth press-up and scurried after him.
As soon as he and Costa got to the lean-to and beach towels, Lee was talking excitedly. He’d unfurled one of the Public Works Department maps and pinned it down with stones. ‘‘Look at this, lo baan!’’ He was trying to draw attention to several points on the map all at once. ‘‘These are the four areas where the storm sewer flows out into the sea. One, in north side, flows into Canal dos Portos,’’ he jabbed his finger at the top of the folded sheet. ‘‘Another, we have it coming into the Porto Interior, the third,’’ he moved his hand to the right, ‘‘we have Porto Exterior. And last one is this,’’ he stabbed at the expanse of water between Taipa and Macao. ‘‘Barra Point, at the southern tip.’’
Iain stood in the sun, drying his hair. ‘‘Four exit points. Yet if you study the sea currents, only one of them fits the criteria. Only one could have taken the body to where it was eventually discovered.’’
‘‘Barra Point,’’ trumpeted Costa, panting, still pulling his swimming costume from between his ass cheeks. A shower of sea water droplets fell from his arms and splattered the map.
‘‘That’s right. The undertow from the Taipa Strait kept the body from floating out to sea.’’
Costa picked up the binoculars and peered through them, searching for something across the stretch of water, towards the column of Indian fig trees. ‘‘So what necksht?’’
‘‘We search every storm drain that runs its pipes through to Barra Point.’’
The rolls of fat seemed to quiver about Costa’s jowls. ‘‘I’m not going into any fucking shoe-wer.’’
‘‘Yes, you are fat boy. An old turd like you ought to see the sewers.’’
‘‘Can I come too?’’
‘‘No, Lee, you go home and spent time with your mother. This is big boy’s work.’’
‘‘I fucking show you I big boy too!’’ Wind-tossed and shirt flapping, Lee jumped to his feet, spraying sand across the maps and towels. ‘‘You look! Haaa-chaaa!’’ He snatched at the air with his hands, coiling his left knee. ‘‘Praying-mantis kung-fu! Horrr-chorrrr!’’ He kicked at the sky and fell over.
Costa shook his head and sighed. ‘‘Deus! The lunatix you hire, Vermelho!’’
That night Iain stood alone in the darkness, trying not to make any noise. The Rua da Barra was a narrow, quiet avenue on the waterline that marked the southern fringes of the city proper. Beneath an inclining umbrella of Indian fig tree, Iain drew on a cigarette. He had advanced cautiously, eased himself silently into the shadows to observe the coolies loading wooden crates off the pier. By Ponte No. 23 the sampans and wallah-wallahs knocked against each other as they slid with the glassy current. Delicate leaves littered the ground. Looking not at the floor but at the brittle tide, he watched a pair of kerosene lamps emerge from the black water in the distance like pinpoints, growing closer all the time. The swollen yellow lights danced and blurred soundlessly, making their easy approach to the shore. A little way away, a heavily muscled man in a singlet threw a coir rope into the water. Iain saw the ridges of sinew on the man’s shoulders pull taut as he anchored the sampan to the pier. And then, quite abruptly, the lamps were extinguished.
A foreman who stood by the godown across the street shouted a question in harsh Cantonese syllables. Voices murmured then died away, footsteps sounded on timber and vanished. For a while Iain turned the cigarette around in his hand, hiding the crimson glow within his palm. He’d learned to smoke this way in Amiens, concealing the cigarette within his hand, to prevent snipers from homing in on him at night. He waited for the godown doors to open and shut, for the trolley cart to drive its deep grooves into the beaten-earth ground. He made out four, perhaps five head-shapes, but then the night clouds came over the moon, and made everything turn pitch. There was a momentary stillness. Iain remembered it being like this during the war, when every branch that the wind lifted, every rustle of a leaf, sent a whistle of alarm through his chest. Even the cicada’s chattering sounded like the feathery scrape of a knife. Someone lit a tiny flare and he saw now that the trolley cart had been pushed to the end of the small pier; it gaped empty and forlorn. They were working quickly.
When the wind shifted direction, the salt air spray blew directly at Iain; he let the spume cool his face, then glanced furtively around to see if he was being watched. The light improved as the moon reappeared in the sky, freeing itself from behind the clouds. The alleyways were deserted. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the water’s edge. He looked at his watch – a quarter to two. All about him the croak of tree-frogs began to fill the air with loud reports. Iain glanced sharply round. He saw that the men were using ropes to lower the crates into the little craft, which seemed to ride lower under their weight. There was a cough of diesel, a compression of air in cylinders, a chak-chak-chak of metal-on-metal. The engine spat into life with a cackle and with a pronounced shiver the sampan began to move, parting the thick, dark water of the bay like the head of a Yangtze alligator. It cut into the low swell, squirmed and creaked, dwindling, before losing itself in a knot of blackness.
Despite the breeze, the night was hot, the humidity close to ninety percent. Sutherland removed his jacket and held it with two fingers over his shoulder. He was perspiring freely, the sweat covering his chest and neck forming prickly heat spots. He left the security of the Indian fig tree and circled around, retreating fifty yards to a spot where a stationary vehicle was parked. Just as he got to the Packard Sport Phaeton it started to drizzle. He climbed in, left the door open and squinted through the windscreen.
‘‘What do you think?’’ he said.
Costa was leaning an arm against the window, cradling his head in his hand. His melon-bellied gut was growling and so was he. ‘‘What do I think? Filho da puta! I think we are crazy to even consheeder going down the shoewers at night. There might be river alligators down there!’’ The colour had gone from his face. ‘‘Do you have a gun?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Here, take this. It’s A Webley Mk VI.’’
‘‘I don’t need a revolver.’’
‘‘Vermelho, have you any idea how big those shoewer rats are? You remember what they did to that man’s foot? They’ll go right through your shoes and nibble away your toes. Nibble, nibble, nibble!’’
‘‘All right, give it here. What about you?’’
Costa flourished a Colt 0.45. He waved it towards the warehouses. ‘‘What makes you think this is the shpot.’’
‘‘Those men from the godown are up to something. I think we’re getting very warm,’’ was all Iain said in reply. He took the metal hand crank resting by his feet and walked round to the front of the automobile. A few seconds later, the double-beam headlamps blazed awake and the eight cylinder engine shook to life.
In the darkness, nineteen feet underground, Iain and Costa made their way through the subterranean ducts, flashlights in hand. Every step took them deeper into the main tunnel, passing under brick arches that rested on brick buttresses. A rivulet of black water rippled past them, full of fast-flowing solid matter. The walls dripped with moisture, rats scuttled along the handrails. The stench of shit grew stronger with each passing moment.
‘‘Join the Breetish Colonial shervice,’’ Costa’s breath quivered. ‘‘Enjoy the glamour of the Empire. Journey to fascinating, exotic play-shes …’’
‘‘Quiet!’’
Iain raised his torch. They were climbing a gradual slope.
They reached a drain duct where it appeared as though some of the exterior wall had broken loose and the innner pipe had been damaged. Iain shone his torch at it. ‘‘What do you make of this?’’
Costa stooped in order to get a closer look. ‘‘I’d shay either extreme water pressure hazh caused this or something big and solid was clogged here. It’s bent the mouth out of shape.’’
‘‘Do you think you can fit inside?’’
‘‘Me? In there? These are brand new trousers!’’
‘‘Come on you fat lump, if they get ruined I’ll buy you a kilt to wear.’’ He pulled on Costa’s arm. ‘‘Follow me.’’
The pipe was 40 inches in diameter, just large enough for Costa to squeeze through on his haunches. They entered the narrow tomb in a crouching walk.
‘‘What if I get stuck?’’ said Costa.
‘‘Than I’ll fetch a corkscrew.’’
‘‘You are a fucking bastardo, you know that don’t you, Vermelho?’’
‘‘I know.’’
Their voices echoed within the piping. A stream of cool, clear water ran past their ankles. Costa grunted hard each time he drove his knees forwards. Happily, the conduit seemed to widen the higher they climbed the gradual gradient. Costa started coughing. ‘‘No air down here. How much further?’’
‘‘Ten feet, maybe twenty, and then it should lead into an internal catchment basin.’’
Iain pushed forward. The walls of the slender tunnel were getting slippery. He had to dig his fingers into the glazed clay grooves of the pipe to get any purchase at all.
A few minutes later they flopped into a reservoir of stagnant rain water, holding their arms above their heads to keep their flashlights dry.
Like a pair of soggy spaniels, they pulled themselves out of the water and shook themselves dry, walking along the narrow perimeter, feeling their way through the darkness. Rats plopped in and out of the water. Cockroaches and white millipedes dribbled up and down the slime-encased ramparts. Iain aimed his torch towards the ceiling.
‘‘What are we looking for?’’ asked Costa. Both men were perspiring heavily.
‘‘A large metal hook.’’
Iain crouched, looked along the line of his torchlight. ‘‘There,’’ said Costa, pointing with a fat, wet finger. Iain trained his eye.
On the far side of the tiny reservoir, hammered into the brick wall, were a series of elongated iron spikes.
‘‘Keep a look-out for king rats,’’ Iain ordered. He skirted around the outer edge of the water. Brushing close to the wall, he placed the ends of his fingers against the smooth upsweep of a spike, and said over his shoulder, ‘‘They’re like meat skewers.’’ Costa’s flashlight bit sharply in his eyes. ‘‘And what do you suppose is this?’’ His hand tugged at a loop of knotted cord-like fibre.
‘‘Part of the rope that held our drown veectim.’’
‘‘Exactly.’’ Iain’s mouth tingled. Twinges of fear, no more. ‘‘So this is where they killed him.’’
He felt Costa squeeze his arm. ‘‘I theenk I know what happened.’’ The fat man looked from an open storm duct to Iain then back to the open duct again. ‘‘Over here,’’ he stomped forward, illuminating the wall directly above with light, ‘‘on the night of the beeg typhoon, the water came rushing though from the street. It wash like a river, powerful, strong, tearing our dead man off of his hook. He must have fallen face down and drowned in the fresh water. Later, the shtorm drains must have clogged. The water level started rising. Remember all the rats? They were in a panic. Somehow they must have eshcaped through the maintenance tunnels.’’
‘‘But why would the storm drains clog? Our friend, B188, didn’t clog the drains otherwise he wouldn’t have been flushed out into the sea. No, there’s something else.’’
‘‘Look!’’ said Costa. His torch shone on a flat metal panel, about half way up the wall.
‘‘It’s a kind of floor hatch or trap door. I’ll bet that’s not in the Public Works records.’’
Hoisted on Costa’s shoulders, Iain tugged at the iron facing. ‘‘Jammed shut. Probably locked from within.’’
‘‘Can you shee any hinges at the edges?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Shoot out the hinge barrels,’’ said Costa, holding Iain’s ankles. ‘‘And for punheteiro’s sake hurry up! Your shoes shmell of sheet!’’
Iain paused, handed Costa his torch, rebalanced himself on the big man, before unclipping the revolver from his belt. He grasped the joists of the door with one hand to stop himself from being thrown backwards and lined up the gun muzzle to the hinges. He fired three times. The gun’s recoil threw him sideways. He almost overcompensated but corrected himself just in time. Seconds later, the twin hatch panels squealed obdurately and the trapdoor dropped out, falling into the reservoir below with a splash.
‘‘What’s up there, Vermelho?’’
Craning forwards, Iain broke the news in a whisper. ‘‘Looks like a laundry chute. Here,’’ he uncoiled a rope-ladder that was fixed to the wall, ‘‘come see for yourself.’’ His voice echoed in the hollow chamber. Costa climbed the rope-ladder and together they pulled themselves up the chute. Iain’s heart was pounding, the gunshot was still buzzing in his ears. ‘‘Where the hell do you think this leads to?’’
