Peter May - The Firemaker

She sat down quickly, getting there just ahead of a group of two girls and a sullen youth who had been standing at the foot of the stairs. They glared at her resentfully and moved away. She looked around and realised she was causing a bit of a stir. As far as she could see, she was the only Caucasian in the place, and for all she knew the only one who’d ever been in it. It didn’t look like the kind of stop-off that would be on the tourist itinerary. Faces at the tables around her were turned in her direction, gazing with glazed and unselfconscious interest, until she smiled and they became suddenly embarrassed and returned shy smiles like coy children.

On stage a stunning-looking girl in a sexy silk dress with daring splits up either side sang a mournful melody to the accompaniment of a guitarist, and a keyboard player triggering pre-programmed, synthesised computer music. The backing sounded professional. The singer was awful. Margaret watched her with a mixture of horror and embarrassment. She had no talent for it whatsoever. But no one else seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t care. Li arrived with her vodka and a large brandy and sat down opposite her. She flicked her head towards the stage. ‘Pretty face. Shame about the voice.’

Li smiled. ‘She’s my best friend’s girl.’

Margaret almost choked on her vodka. ‘You’re kidding me.’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. I don’t like her much either.’

She looked at him curiously. ‘And she’s really your best friend’s girl?’ He nodded. ‘So is it her you don’t like, or her singing?’

‘Both.’

‘Why don’t you like her?’

‘Because she’s a prostitute, and he’s mad about her, and he’s going to end up getting hurt.’

Margaret looked at the girl in astonishment, and with fresh eyes. ‘But she’s… beautiful. Why would she throw herself away on prostitution?’

‘You’ve heard her singing,’ Li said. ‘And anyway, she’s not some street-corner hooker. It’s all private deals behind closed bedroom doors in high-class joint-venture hotels. She probably makes a lot of money.’ He shrugged. ‘A girl like that, she’s just making use of the one asset she has — while she still has it.’ He looked at her on the stage, eyes closed, living out some sad fantasy, giving her heart and soul to the cheap lyrics of a popular Taiwanese ballad. What arrangement, he wondered, had she arrived at with the manager that allowed her to sing here, escaping for a time from the sordid world of clawing, pawing, sexually frustrated foreign businessmen? He almost felt sorry for her. He had believed her when she told him she loved Ma Yongli. He treats me like no one’s ever treated me before. Like a princess . What he hated was the effect she had on him , turning him from a confident, cocky young man with a wicked, if juvenile, sense of humour into a sycophantic and simpering acolyte, all confidence lost in a welter of self-doubt. There was something going on in Yongli’s head that told him she was too good for him. He couldn’t believe his luck, or that it would last. It was pathetic, and Li hated to see it, and blamed Lotus when perhaps the fault was Yongli’s.

‘Well, well, well. I see you took my advice and got yourself a woman after all.’ Li turned to find himself looking up into Yongli’s big, round, smiling face. But the smile vanished almost immediately. ‘In the name of God, what happened to you? Don’t tell me she’s beating you up already?’

Li grinned. ‘I got on the losing end of an argument with a villain.’

Yongli shook his head in amazement. ‘Must have been a big bastard to put one over on you.’

‘Caught me off guard,’ Li said ruefully.

Margaret watched the exchange with interest. She could make an educated guess about the topic of conversation. For a moment she had been nonplussed to find that there was something familiar about the face of the big, bluff man who had arrived at their table. And then she had placed him. He had been with Li that first night at the duck restaurant. The affection between the two men was obvious. He turned and grinned at Margaret, and she grinned back, attracted by the infectious quality of his smile and the laughter in his eyes. ‘So are you not going to introduce me?’ he said to Li in a heavily American-accented English.

‘Ma Yongli, this is Dr Margaret Campbell.’

Yongli took her hand and kissed the back of it lightly with full lips. ‘ Enchanté, madame ,’ he said. ‘I learned that in Switzerland. It’s French.’

‘I know,’ Margaret said. ‘ Et moi, je suis enchantée aussi à faire vôtre connaissance, monsieur .’

‘Hey. Woah.’ Yongli held up his hands. ‘I only know Je suis enchanté, madame . No one’s ever talked back to me before.’ He laughed. ‘I’m impressed.’ Then he leaned over confidentially. ‘Actually, I do know one other phrase, but it’s not the sort of thing you would say in polite company. And Li Yan is a bit sensitive. It’s way past his bedtime, you know.’

‘I know. It’s my fault,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m keeping him out late. But his uncle’s away, so he won’t get into any trouble.’

‘Oh.’ Yongli looked at Li knowingly. ‘When the mouse is away the cat will play.’

Li said, ‘I think that’s the other way round, Ma Yongli.’

‘Ah,’ Yongli said to Margaret, ‘I always get my cats mixed up with my mice. What will you have to drink?’

Margaret lifted her glass. It was almost empty. ‘Vodka tonic.’

Yongli pointed at Li’s glass. ‘Brandy,’ he said. And to Margaret, ‘We have to celebrate. It is so long since I saw Big Li with a woman I was beginning to think he was gay. Back in a minute.’ And he headed for the bar.

Li grinned, a little embarrassed. ‘Ignore him. He’s an idiot.’

‘He’s nice.’

Li felt a pang of jealousy. ‘You probably think he’s good-looking. Most women do.’

‘No.’ She shook her head solemnly. ‘But he’s attractive. What was he doing in Switzerland?’

‘Training as a chef. He spent time in the United States, as well.’

‘Oh,’ Margaret said, cocking an eyebrow. ‘He cooks, too? That makes him very attractive.’ She had been immediately aware of that defensive look men got when they were jealous, and she enjoyed the fact that Li felt that way about her. If only he knew that Yongli wasn’t half as attractive as he was — at least, not in her eyes.

She was beginning to relax, the alcohol easing away some of the tension of the night. It also seemed to be going very quickly to her head. Perhaps it was the tiredness. She had slept for only a handful of hours during the last seventy-two.

Yongli returned with the drinks and sat down at their table with a beer. ‘So,’ he said to Margaret. ‘Cut up anyone interesting recently?’

‘Oh, just a burn victim, a stabbing, an Alanto-occipital disarticulation. Would you like me to go into the gory details?’

Yongli shook his head and said firmly, ‘No thanks.’

‘That’s my trouble,’ Margaret said. ‘The only interesting people I ever get intimate with are dead. The live ones tend to lose interest in me as soon as they hear what I do for a living. They think I’m only after their bodies.’

Yongli laughed. ‘You can play with my organs any time.’

‘I’m more interested in a man’s brain,’ she said. ‘Only the sound of the saw cutting through the skull usually puts them off.’

‘Hey.’ He put up his hands and grinned, shaking his head. ‘I’m not going to win this one, am I?’

‘Nope.’ She raised her glass. ‘Cheers.’

They all drank. Li enjoyed the way Margaret had dealt with Yongli. He was usually too quick for most people. And women preferred to laugh at his humour, rather than compete with it. She caught his eye over the glass, and they shared a moment.