Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“No thanks. I’m parked round the corner,” he lied.

“Okay. Take care, Joe. And if you ever do decide you’d like a tryout at my club, you’ve got my number.”

He watched the car lights vanish out of the yard, then took a deep breath of the lovely cold odourless night air. It felt good to be out here alone, with Mandy Levine moving away from him at a rate of knots and a strong locked door between himself and that coffin with all its grisly freight...

And the thought put him in mind of Mr. Tooley’s ashes, resting quiet in their urn, back inside on the workbench top where he’d left it.

“Oh shoot!” said Joe Sixsmith.

Next morning he stood with old Miss Tooley in front of Starting Gate 3 at the Luton Dog Track.

Joe tested the wind with a damp finger and said, “I think we’d be better the other side.”

“I take your point,” said Miss Tooley. “Dearly though I loved Daniel, I don’t fancy taking him home in my eye. Give us the urn, Joe.”

He handed it over.

She said, “Thanks, Joe. And thanks for everything. You’ve all been so kind to me. I’ll miss you all like my own legs. But it’s no distance at all now I’ve found you. Tell Mirabelle I’ll be back to see her as soon as I can manage.”

“She’ll look forward to that,” said Joe.

“I know she will. Soul of hospitality, your aunt. I didn’t think I would take to her so much at first, but it shows how wrong you can be about people, doesn’t it, Joe?”

“It certainly does,” said Joe. He was thinking of Mandy Levine. Okay, he wouldn’t have liked to have given her the choice of himself dead and David Tallas alive. But he could admire a realist, someone who could look at how things stood and accept whatever the fates threw up with a smile. She’d taken his trick with the formalin pretty well considering he’d ruined what must have been close on a million quids’ worth of dope, street value. Yes, a feisty lady, as they said. Perhaps he would take up her offer of a spot at her club... after all, it had been made before any of that business last night...

Miss Tooley had unscrewed the top of the urn and was peering inside.

“Ah, that’s good,” she said. “You hear such tales of people finding eggshells and clinker, but I see that Daniel’s burnt down to a fine white ash, just as I’d have expected. You can see the pure living just by looking at what he’s become.”

She held out the urn so Joe could share the experience.

He looked at the fine white powder it contained with the rapt expression of a man seeing eternity.

What he was actually seeing was Mandy Levine when he first interrupted her in the funeral workshop. She’d been holding an urn which she had then placed on the workbench. Where he later had placed Mr. Tooley’s remains.

No wonder Mandy had taken his sabotage of her hopes of great profit so well! Not trusting the slippery Tallas to give her the promised split, she’d already stashed herself a nice little nest egg in the nearest handy receptacle. But she’d picked up the wrong urn.

Joe hoped that she’d discover her mistake before she tried to trade old Mr. Tooley on to some hardnosed dealer.

Whatever, he thought it best to postpone his professional singing debut just a little while longer.

He settled down to watch that remarkable old lady, Miss Tooley, scatter about a hundred grand’s worth of pure smack into Trap 3. The wind carried most of it away, but not all.

They stood with their heads bowed for a moment.

Old Miss Tooley said, “I’d have liked him to have some sort of lasting monument, but this is what he wanted. And I’m sure his friends will not forget him.”

“No indeed,” said Joe. “In fact, I was thinking I might come here tonight and back the 3 dog through the card, just as a kind of tribute.”

“Now that’s a lovely thought,” said old Miss Tooley. “You’re a darling boy, Joseph. Put a fiver on for me, for I’m sure the Lord will be after smiling down on such a kind and loving gesture.”

And Joe, looking down at the scattering of white over the ground inside Trap 3, said, “I think He’s smiling already, Miss Tooley.”

© 1996 by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

This second installment in the adventures of Mongolian police detective Dorj finds the inspector back from his posting in the Gobi desert for a short holiday in his home city, Ulaan Baatar. But its the time of the Chinese New Year celebrations, and in Ulaan Baatar’s Chinatown, Dorj’s detecting shills are called into play. The authors, a team of Rochester writers, beautifully evoke the color of the occasion.

In Ulaan Baatar’s Chinatown, a crisp staccato of firecrackers welcomed the Year of the Dog. To Inspector Dorj, making his way slowly down the crowded street, it seemed that every one of the thousand Chinese who remained in the Mongolian capital had turned out for the celebration.

Swept from Ulaan Baatar to the Gobi Desert by the twin cold winds of social revolution and reassignment, Inspector Dorj felt something of that hunger for home which all exiles know. But now that he had returned for a long-awaited visit he felt like a stranger. Was it the Chinese faces, or was Dorj becoming accustomed to the sparsely inhabited desert outside his new posting at Dalanzadgad?

The city felt as cold as the desert. Around him, smoke from firecrackers mingled with the crowd’s frozen, misty breath. Red banners decorated with gold ideograms snapped in the same bitter wind that plastered his thin trousers to the backs of his legs.

Dorj stopped and stood with his back against the concrete-block wall of a bicycle shop. Across the wide avenue from him loomed one of the capital’s ponderous Soviet-built apartment blocks. Could it be the one he had come looking for?

Over the entrance someone had constructed a makeshift red canopy, decorated with red bats. Was it part of the celebration? Dorj reached back into his memories. The red bats, he recalled, symbolized happiness and joy. A wedding was planned, that was it. White was not associated with Chinese weddings. It was a funeral color.

A young Chinese girl passed through his line of vision and for a moment he mistook her for someone else. He was a rookie policeman again. And his eyes were suddenly wet. It was the cold wind, he told himself. He removed his eyeglasses and ran a gloved hand across his eyes. When he looked back at the apartment block he returned to the present. The bride had arrived in a red bridal chair, borne on poles by four young men. Another young man was aiming a bow at the chair.

Ceremoniously, he shot three arrows under the chair. What was it Mai had said, years ago? It was against any evil entering with the bride, something like that.

More firecrackers exploded. Larger ones this time. Dorj had watched long enough. He moved away from the bicycle shop and continued down the avenue. If anything, the crowd seemed even noisier than it had before. Someone shouted something in Chinese. There seemed to be some disturbance near the Dollar Shop at the corner.

Even on vacation, Dorj was prepared for police work. The inspector forced his way through the crowd with practiced skill.

A knot had formed halfway down the alley beside the shop. Dorj pushed aside one of the celebrants who stood slumped, his red banner dragging on the ground.

The crowds had not trampled all the snow out of the alleyway yet and around the crumpled body lying there, the snow was stained with blood which was very red, and very real — not symbolic of anything.