Ghostwritten (13 page)

Who are you to tell anyone they are ill, Neal?

Katy had phoned that evening. The maid had left two minutes before. I was just climbing into the shower, still sticky. How do women manage to time these things? She spoke to my answering machine. She was drunk. I let her speak to it, listening in, standing stark bollock naked in the living room, smelling of multiple sex with the maid Katy had hated.

‘Neal, I know you’re there. I can tell. It’s five in the afternoon here, dunno what that makes it there, eleven I suppose.’ I didn’t know what the time was either. ‘I’ve been watching the Brits get slaughtered at Wimbledon . . . Wanted to say hello I s’pose, dunno why I’m phoning really, I’m well, thanks, how are you? I’m well. I’m flat-hunting. I should be closing on a little flat in Islington this time next week. The pipes are noisy but at least there aren’t any ghosts. Sorry, that’s not funny. I’m doing a lot of P.A.ing for Cecile’s Temp Agency, just to keep my hand in. Vernwood’s left for Wall Street. Some hotshot fresh from the London School of Economics has been given his desk. I was wondering if you could get the Queen Anne chair shipped back sometime, it’s worth a bob or two, you know. Spoke with your sister last week, bumped into her in Harvey Nic’s funnily enough, quite by chance . . . She said you’d just extended your contract by another eighteen months . . . will you be coming back at Christmas? Might be nice to meet up, I just thought, y’know, but then again you’ll probably have people to meet and all that . . . And some of my jewellery is still in your apartment. We wouldn’t want that maid getting her hands on it and running back to China, eh? I don’t think I ever got those keys back from her. You’d better change the locks. I’m okay, but I need a holiday. About forty years would do me. Well, if you’re not too tired when you get in give me a call, I’ll be watching the doubles finals for the next couple of hours . . . Oh, and your sister said to tell you to call your mother . . . Your dad’s pancreatic thingy has come back . . . ’bye then . . .’

I never got round to returning that call. What would I say?

A grave. Its back to the mountain, its face to the sea. The sun was high and pestilent. I took off my tie and hung it on a thorny tree. No point trying to read the name of the grave’s occupant. There are thousands of these Chinese hieroglyphs making up the world’s clonkiest writing system. I knew five: alcohol, mountain, river, love, exit. I sometimes think, these hieroglyphs
are
the real Chinese, living down through the centuries, hiding their meanings in their similarities to outwit the foreigner, by and large immune to tampering. Mao himself failed to modernise his language.

I’d followed the path down from the last peak. There’d been a brackish stream, a bush of birds, a butterfly with zebra stripes on wings wide as side-plates. I’d lost the path once or twice, and it had come back to find me once or twice. It reminded me of the Brecon Beacons. I grew up when I realised that everywhere was basically the same, and so were the women.

This time there was no way on. A false trail. I’d have to backtrack, through the maze of thorn bushes and couch-grass. I sat down and looked at the view. Another extension to the new airport was being built out there on reclaimed land. Little bulldozers played in the glistening silt-flats. Sweat trickled down my wrists, my chest, down the crack between my buttocks. My trousers clung to my thighs. I should be taking my medication about now, but all that was in a briefcase in the bottom of a bay somewhere.

I wondered if anyone had been sent to come and get me. Ming, probably. Avril was no doubt busy probing deeper into my hard disc, with Theo Fraser at her shoulder? Where might that lead? All those e-mails from Petersburg, all those see-no-evil-hear-no-evil seven-and eight-figure transfers of funds to out-of-the-way places?

Unless you’ve lived with a ghost, you can’t know the truth of it. You assume that morning, noon and night, you’re walking around obsessed, fearful and waiting for the exorcist to call. It’s not really like that. It’s more like living with a very particular cat.

For the last few months I’ve been living with three women. One was a ghost, who is now a woman. One was a woman, who is now a ghost. One is a ghost, and always will be. But this isn’t a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she’d be a person.

Katy and I had come back from some stupid Cavendish party. We’d come into the lobby together, I checked our mailbox, putting down my briefcase. There were some letters. We got in the elevator, ripping open the envelopes. Halfway up I realised I’d left my briefcase down in the lobby next to the mailbox. When we got to the fourteenth floor, Katy got out, and I went back down, got my briefcase, and returned to our floor. When the elevator doors opened I saw Katy still outside the apartment, and I knew something was very wrong.

She was white and trembling. ‘It’s locked. It’s bolted. From the inside.’

Burglars. On the fourteenth floor? They must still be in there.

It’s not burglars, and we both knew it.

She had come back.

I don’t know how I knew what to do, but I took out my own keys, and rattled them a few times. Then I tried the door.

It swung open into the darkness.

Katy didn’t speak to me, even though I know she was awake for most of the night. Looking back, that was the beginning of the end.

So I backtracked.

A bus full of curious people drove past, packed as usual. Fuck, the way that the Chinese will just stare at you!
So
rude! Have they never seen a sunburning foreigner in a suit out for a midday walk before?

The sun! The smack of a boxing glove. I was parched. The helicopter came back. The sides of the valley hummed and swished. I should have come here months ago. It was waiting, and I’d done nothing but truck to and fro from the office, on that turbo ferry across the River Styx.

What kind of place did the maid live in? In Kowloon, or the New Territories somewhere? She’d get a bus or a streetcar from the port, and get off far beyond where the decent shops finished. The same sort of place Ming lives in, I suppose. Down a backstreet, its walls crowded up to fifteen floors with dirty signs for sweatshops and stripclubs and money changers and restaurants and God knows what. Nothing more than a rafter of mucky sky. The noise, of course, would never stop. The Chinese brain must be equipped with a noise-filtration device, that allows them to only listen to the one band of racket that they want to hear. Taxis, cheap little ghetto blasters, chanting from the temple, satellite TV, sales pitches floating aloft through megaphones. You’d go down an alley, there’d be the smell of grime and piss and
dim sum.
People would be hanging about in doorways needing new shirts and a shave, selling drugs. Up stairs – the elevators in those kinds of places never work – and into a tiny apartment where a family of seven bicker and watch TV and drink. Strange to think I work in the same city. Strange to think of the little palaces up on Victoria Peak. That’s probably where the Japanese kid is getting over his jet lag now. His girl bringing him lemon tea on a silver tray. Or more likely, her maid bringing in the lemon tea. I wonder how they had met. I wonder.

There are so many cities in every single city.

When I first came to Hong Kong, before Katy joined me, I was given one day’s holiday to get over jet lag. I felt fine, so I decided to use it exploring the city. I travelled the trams, jolted by the poverty I saw, and walked the overhead walkways, feeling safe only amongst the business suits and briefcases. I took the cablecar up to Victoria Peak, and walked around. Rich wives were strolling in groups, and maids with the children, and teenage couples walking arm-in-arm looking at all the other teenage couples. There were a couple of stalls mounted on wheels, the sort of set-up my father used to call market barrows. They sold maps, peanuts in their shells, and the bland salty snack things that Chinese and Indians are so fond of. One of them sold maps in English, and postcards, so I bought a few. Suddenly a pile of cans next to the stall moved and barked something in Chinese. A face caked in grease and creased with age emerged and looked at me with loathing. I jumped out of my skin. The stall-holder laughed, and said, ‘Don’t worry. He’s harmless.’

The garbage man growled, and repeated the same words, slowly, and louder, at me.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He’s begging.’

‘How much does he want?’ A stupid question.

‘He’s not begging for money.’

‘What’s he begging for?’

‘He’s begging for time.’

‘Why does he do that?’

‘He thinks you’re wasting yours, so you must have plenty to spare.’

My tongue was parched. I hadn’t drunk for hours . . . since that bowl of water at breakfast. Usually, I only ever drank coffee and whisky. An old farmer was burning something that popped like firecrackers. Bamboo? Grainy mauve smoke drifted across the road. My eyes were watering. I was under a vast tree that fanned out across the sky and hid it incompletely as words will hide whatever is behind them.

Red roses grew wild up the brick wall crumbling back to sand. A roped-up dog went hysterical as I walked past. A flurry of fangs and barks. It thought I was a ghost. Futons, airing. A Chinese pop song. Godawful and tinny. Two old people in a room devoid of furniture, steam rising from their teacups. They were motionless and expressionless. Waiting for something. I wish I could go into their room and sit down with them. I’d give them my Rolex for that. I wish they would smile, and pour me a cup of jasmine tea. I wish the world was like that.

I watched the cars, people, and stories trundle up and down the night road. In the distance a giant bicycle pump was cranking itself up and hissing itself down. I watched the neon signs intone their messages, over and over. The Japanese kid and his girl had disappeared fuck knows where, and Lionel Ritchie had dissolved in his own saccharine bathtub. My second burger had gone cold and greasy, I couldn’t finish it. A version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was playing, unbelievably sung in Cantonese. I should be getting back to Mr Wae’s briefings or Avril will start the Sacred Martyr Act. One more song; and one more mega-sugar coffee, then I’ll go back like a good boy. It was ‘Blackbird’ by The Beatles. I never listened to this one properly before. It’s beautiful.

‘Neal Brose?’

A Welsh voice, unknown and familiar. A short, Mr Mole-ish bloke, with horn-rimmed glasses.

‘Yeah?’

‘My name’s Huw Llewellyn. We met at Theo and Penny Fraser’s New Year Party.’

‘Ah, yeah, Huw . . . Sure, sure . . .’ I didn’t know him from Adam.

‘Mind if I pull up a pew?’

‘Sure . . . If you can say that about moulded plastic seats bolted onto cast-iron frames. You’ll have to forgive my frazzled memory, Huw. Who are you with?’

‘I used to be with Jardine-Pearl. Now I’m at the Capital Transfer Inspectorate.’

Fuck. Now I remember. We’d talked about rugby, then business. I’d dismissed him as a born compromise candidate. ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper, eh?’

Huw Llewellyn smiled as he unloaded his tray, and wriggled out of his corduroy jacket, with leather pads on the elbows. So fucking Welsh. A veggieburger and a styrofoam cup of hot water, with tea bleeding out of its bag. ‘People usually say “It takes a thief to catch a thief.”’

Dad used to say that. ‘I’ve read about your raids on – who was it? Silk Road Group?’

‘Yep. Would you pass me a sachet of ketchup, please?’

‘I’ve heard some interesting rumours about them money laundering for Kabul’s biggest drug exporter. Is it true? Go on, I won’t tell a soul.’

Huw bit into his veggieburger, chomped a few times, smiling, and swallowed. ‘I’ve heard some interesting rumours about Account 1390931.’

Fuck. I suddenly wanted to vomit my shitburger. I laughed lightly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Fuck. That’s exactly what liars say.

Huw squeezed the tea-bag with a plastic fork. ‘Go on, I won’t tell a soul.’

‘Is it a bicycle combination lock?’

‘No, it’s a Cavendish Holdings Account that only you have the keys to.’

He had upped the stakes. ‘Is this a fishing expedition, or do you have a warrant for my arrest?’

‘I prefer to see this as a friendly chat.’

‘Mr Llewellyn, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.’

‘Mr Brose, I know far more about Andrei Gregorski than you. Believe me. You’re being set up. I’ve watched him do it before. Why do you think neither his name – nor Denholme Cavendish’s name – appears on not one single document, not one single computer file? Because they like you? Trust you? You are their bullet-proof vest.’

How much did he know? ‘It’s just a hush-hush hedge-fund for—’

‘I don’t want to watch you zip yourself up in lies, Mr Brose. I know your personal life is in tatters. But unless you co-operate with me, by the weekend things are going to take a sharp turn for the worse. I am your last way out.’

‘I don’t need a way out.’

He shrugged, and swallowed the last morsel. He’d put that away without me noticing. ‘Then our friendly chat has come to an end. Here is my business card. I strongly recommend a change of mind, by tomorrow noon. Goodnight.’

The door swung. I was left looking at the wreckage of my shitburger.

I went back into Cavendish Tower, but changed my mind in the lobby. I asked the nightwatchman to wait five minutes, then tell Avril I’d gone home. I waited twenty minutes at the harbour for the next ferry, looking across the black water at all the shining skyscrapers. Back on Lantau Island – just as a precaution – I emptied three quarters of my account from the bank’s cash machine, in case my cards got frozen. There wasn’t another bus for 30 minutes, so I walked back to Phase 1 through the chilly night.

She was waiting in the apartment. The air-conditioner was belting out frigid air.

‘For fuck’s sake, I’m sorry! I had a lot of work!’