Peter May - The Firemaker

He frowned. ‘What for? You’re the one who’s helping us.’

‘For getting me out of that police cell,’ she said.

He looked at her blankly. ‘What police cell?’

Yongli’s voice came out of the darkness from across the room. ‘She got picked up by Public Security, remember? I came and asked for your help. You said you would see what you could do.’ There was a tone, a hint of accusation in his voice.

Li remembered now with a pang of guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I never got the chance to do anything.’

Lotus frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘But they let me go. They said there had been a mistake. I thought…’

‘But it was a mistake, wasn’t it?’ Yongli said.

Lotus looked very directly at Li. It seemed important to her that he believe her. ‘They said there was heroin in my bag. But I have never taken heroin in all my life, Li Yan. I swear to the sky.’

Li was uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. ‘Then, like Yongli said, they must have made a mistake. Maybe it was someone else’s bag.’

‘What’s going on?’ Margaret asked, disconcerted that the conversation had lapsed into Chinese. She sensed a tension in their words.

‘It’s nothing important,’ Li said. ‘History. We’re only looking forward now, not back.’ His words were for Lotus and Yongli more than for Margaret.

A terrific crash from outside startled them all. Li sprang forward and immediately extinguished the candle. The darkness that engulfed them felt almost tangible, as if they could reach out and wrap it around them. All they could hear was the pounding of the rain on the roof and the tug, tug, tug of the wind at the wooden boards on the window. Margaret heard someone shuffle carefully across the floor and into the outer room. Lotus’s breathing was quick and close beside her. She reached out and found her hand and held it, and felt Lotus grasp her arm with her other hand, fingers squeezing tightly.

The faintest grey light gave form to the room around them as they heard the front door scrape open. Margaret saw Yongli cross the room to the inner door, where he stooped to pick up a length of wood and hold it like a club. Then the door banged shut and they were plunged again into a darkness that was frightening in its density. The rasp of a match on sandpaper, a tiny explosion and a flare of light burned into the black, and Li came back through shielding the flame from the draught of his movement. ‘Tiles off the roof,’ he said, and stooped to relight the candle. None of them had realised, until then, just how stretched their nerves all were.

Yongli dropped the chunk of wood he had been clutching and squinted at his watch. ‘Anyway, it is time we were going,’ he said.

Rain continued to fall on the sodden capital. The streets were shiny wet, reflecting all the night colours of the city, like fresh paint that had not yet dried. Thunder rumbled distantly amidst the occasional flash of lightning. The police presence seemed, if anything, greater than it had earlier in the day. Li knew that Public Security expectation of a quick capture and arrest would have been high, and that with political pressure being brought to bear by interested and increasingly desperate parties, the hunt would have been stepped up. He took some grim satisfaction from the fact that their continued success in eluding the police would be creating growing panic in the breasts of Pang and Zeng and the executives of Grogan Industries. But fear of exposure would make them even more dangerous, like wounded tigers. The greatest immediate risk for Li and Yongli and Margaret would be at the station. All points of departure would be under close scrutiny. Li thanked the heavens for weeping on them this night.

He wondered, briefly, where Johnny Ren was. Now that he knew who had employed him, it was no surprise to Li that Ren had been able to move about so freely, evading detection. No doubt he was long gone, safe in some place beyond the reach of the Middle Kingdom.

He stroked the whiskers that adorned his upper lip and chin, a strange, unaccustomed wiry sensation between his fingers, yet another acquisition from Lotus’s theatrical friend. He felt guilty now at the way he had treated her in the past, his lack of concern when Yongli had come looking for his help. They could not have got this far without her.

They parked the car a couple of streets away from the station and, huddled in waterproofs under black umbrellas, hurried through the dwindling late night traffic. The concourse was deserted. A few travellers, waiting for taxis, sheltered under bus stands and the awnings of kiosks that during the day would sell fruit and vegetables and cold drinks to thirsty passengers. A queue trailing back into the night had formed at the main entrance to the station, where baggage was being checked through X-ray equipment, and officers of the railway police were randomly scrutinising passengers’ papers.

‘We’ll never get past them,’ Yongli whispered as they approached the back of the queue. ‘If they check our papers…’

But Lotus had more fortitude. ‘You said it yourself, Ma Yongli. They are looking for Li Yan and a yangguizi . Not two Chinese couples.’ She glanced at Margaret. She had a waterproof scarf tied down over her wig. Her make-up was crude, but in the bad light of the station entrance, she would pass for Chinese at a glance. Li Yan’s whiskers were convincing. Lotus only hoped that the brim of his hat and his umbrella would shield them from the rain. She had little confidence that the gum would hold in the wet.

More travellers joined the queue behind them as they shuffled forward, making slow progress to the baggage checkpoint. The rain still battered down on them, dampening conversation in the queue. But it was also making the officers checking the queue, after long hours of toing and froing in the wet, less conscientious than they might otherwise have been. They made a cursory check of the documents of a young couple in front of them, and then waved Li and the others through without a second glance. Yongli checked through their holdall and they were into the station. He was pale and trembling, and enormously relieved. They didn’t stop to look back, but hurried forward to the gate that opened on to their platform. The train stood huffing and chuffing impatiently, great clouds of steam rising into the night. The platform was heaving with passengers searching for compartments, friends and relatives hugging and kissing them farewell, children waving to aunts and uncles or parents embarking on long journeys, all under the watchful eye of a stern-faced female attendant at the ticket barrier. Li knew her type at a glance. Officious, bureaucratic, unbending. She would slam the gates closed at three minutes past midnight exactly, shutting out all latecomers, even if the train itself were late in departing. She examined their tickets and waved them through brusquely.

On the platform Lotus gave Yongli a long hug and then kissed him and held his face and told him to be careful and come back to her safely. He was choked, almost tearful. ‘I’d do anything for you, Lotus,’ he whispered. ‘Anything. I love you.’

She gave Li a kiss on the cheek and told him to look after her man. Then she embraced Margaret in a long, desperate hug. When they broke apart she said simply, ‘Good luck.’ She bit her lip as she watched them climb aboard. Yongli leaned down and kissed her again. A whistle sounded, and reluctantly she turned and hurried away into the station before the gate clanged shut. Yongli watched her go with moist eyes. He turned at last, and the three of them made their way into the crowded Hard Class compartment to find their seats among the damp travellers who squeezed into every corner, opening baskets of food and flasks of tea, making themselves comfortable and preparing for the long journey ahead. Margaret heard someone noisily dragging phlegm up from their throat and gobbing it on to the floor. She shivered with disgust, but didn’t dare look, keeping her head down, face shielded by the black hair of her wig. She prayed no one would speak to her and was startled when Li whispered, ‘If you can sleep, lean against my shoulder.’ She nodded and he put an arm around her. He touched his whiskers self-consciously to make certain they were still there, and glanced at Yongli. But Yongli was lost in a world of his own, pressed up against the window, wiping a hole in the condensation to try to see out. There was little to be seen, though, in the dim lights of the empty platform.