The Norway Room Read online

  Benjy tried to nod, but the gun prevented him. ‘Yes,’ he said to the barrel of the gun. Just a flutter of the lips, like he was praying. As they stilled, the gun rested against them. Benjy flinched. The lips tightened.

  The Chinese whispered some more. ‘You keep your mouth as shut as it is now. Forget all about whatever brought you here and never come back. Never come anywhere near this kid. That way – you will live. But that’s the only way. Got it?’ He moved the gun far enough away for Benjy to nod. ‘Now fuck off.’ The Chinese lowered the gun, let Benjy stumble away. They heard the front door bang.

  Free of Benjy, Ashley’s relief was gone in an instant, as he looked at the man with the gun. Now it was he who was trying to make sense of it all. But he wasn’t shaking like Benjy. He noticed he wasn’t shaking. Then Kieran appeared in the doorway. ‘You little tosser,’ he said to Ashley, ‘didn’t I tell you stay out of trouble? A right fuck-up you’ve made now.’

  SHUKO

  6

  My name is Shuko, in the English tongue Bonebinder. It is an ancient name, given to healers. There is no word in Chinese for irony.

  I serve Hsinshu, Emperor of the Ninth Dragon. For him I fulfil many roles. There is nothing he could ask of me I would refuse. And he sets me many tasks. At their tribunals all seven Lords of the Ninth Dragon assemble in the red room above the casino, seated three each side of the long table, Hsinshu at its head. I stand behind and to the left of him; this is my honour and a statement of my servitude.

  The energy that drives my nature belongs to the element of Wood, and I, like each tree of the forest, stand alone. When meetings are concluded and the first six Lords of the Dragon have left the room I remain in position. I stand and watch the hours Hsinshu sits in silent thought – his responsibility is great. The principal energy of his nature is Metal; it is the source of his strength. He sits. I stand. The sounds of the casino beneath us belong to another plane, the voices beyond the great door of the red room to another world.

  The element of the Ninth is Fire. For this reason we kill with guns. It was wise of Hsinshu to choose me to serve the Ninth – it is in the order of things for Wood to serve Fire.

  Sometimes even Metal must move. When an important decision is close, Hsinshu will rise from his seat at the head of the table and collect three arrows from beneath the dartboard that hangs on the wall at the back of the red room. He will pace back to the line and stand, focused on the board. This is often the way when he is making big decisions, and I love to see it. He did this before the order on the Norway Room was given. It was the only subject on the agenda that evening: Should the Dragon Move to Take the Norway Room?

  Some around the table were against. One club, they sneered, however successful. An immediate decision became necessary when Ding Chuang informed the Dragon that there were now others intent on taking the club: some legitimate, operating in the British way, others not. Ding Chuang has humour in his character and showed this when he referred to those others as our friends we love to hate.

  But Reng Zan was not convinced. ‘It is only one club. Why get involved in what may become a turf war? We know Mr Stretton, the proprietor, doesn’t wish to sell. We know there are those who will try to make him, or take the club anyway. Why involve ourselves? It is only one club. It will make no difference to the Emperor’s personal reputation in this city or beyond, or to that of the Dragon. The success of the casinos, the dogfighting, and our import business are all well known and admired, as is the Emperor’s facility for fearless and ruthless action.’ Reng Zan should have stopped there. ‘If the Dragon attempts to take the club and fails, that would be damage indeed, not just to the Dragon’s standing in Birmingham, but also to the Emperor’s reputation beyond.’

  The word fail should not have been used. It was offensive to the assembly of the Dragon, and particularly to its Emperor. Ding Chuang paused, sensitive to the unease that had been created, before speaking. ‘It is not just another club. The Norway Room is the most fashionable and profitable of the clubs in Birmingham. Most importantly it is in the Eastern triangle close to Chinatown and the only establishment here of any importance that we don’t control. But of equal importance – at least in my opinion and experience,’ and at this point there was the smallest of bows towards Hsinshu, a humble gesture and a clever one, ‘if we don’t take it others will. And soon. If someone, Crawford for example, with his ambitions, were to take the club, enter our territory, it could not be tolerated.’ Sensing the feeling of the table was with him Ding Chuang went on to urge the Emperor that the business be completed before the Year of the Boar started in just a few weeks. It is unlucky to leave business unfinished as the year turns.

  When all had offered their thoughts to the Emperor the Lords left the room. Hsinshu sat for a long time, considering. Twice he lit and smoked an American cigarette, but these actions were executed with such exquisite slowness they hardly seemed like movement at all. The smoke seeping from each cigarette snaked languidly up above the Emperor, to curve and rest for a second like a crescent moon before fading.

  Eventually Hsinshu rose. He stood uneasily for a moment, as if his spirit were returning from a trance – this is not uncommon among those of the Metal element – and collected his darts. When he was ready he turned to face his target and placed his left hand inside his shirt to rest on the Chinese character for power tattooed in black inside a blue circle in his lower jia, just beneath the umbilicus. Taking his energy to his right hand, he breathed deeply, breathed again, then fired the arrows one by one. All three reached the House of Twenty and stood quivering together in the board as close as Siamese brothers. Hsinshu relaxed; he was a true leader.

  He returned to perch on the corner of the table, and taking a third cigarette from his silver case he offered me one. American cigarettes are not to my taste, they are too smooth, too sweet, but this was an honour. I lit Hsinshu’s cigarette and then my own. Then a further honour: I was to be the first to learn of his decision.

  ‘I think Ding Chuang is right, Shuko.’ Hsinshu spoke now in English. ‘If Crawford should take the Norway Room it will not be good for us. Ding Chuang is right – it makes economic sense. It was weak and foolish of my predecessor to let the Lopez brothers have the protection rights on the Southside clubs when they were already losing their grip in the city and Crawford was waiting in the wings. Stretton is no longer contracted to anyone; he claims he will pay no one. If Crawford intends to move then we should go before him.’

  I nodded. There was nothing useful I could say, so I said nothing.

  ‘I will put you in charge of this business and will talk with you tomorrow about how we will proceed.’ The words were a joy to me, as such words always are. It is not boastful to report that he places many responsibilities upon me.

  7

  It is less than two years since Hsinshu called me to his side. ‘The gambling is good business here in Birmingham, Shuko. Lucrative.’ As he finished the word, which he always pronounced slowly, breaking it apart to three syllables, a small smile took his mouth; very satisfying to see.

  ‘Shuko, there is a market for another sort of gambling, that could also be very lucrative.’ I waited. There was a task coming.

  ‘There are those who prefer a more dangerous way to lose their money. They tire of cards, dice, the wheel.’ He looked at me. ‘Dogs I think will take their fancy. Fighting dogs. To the death.’

  I use two white English women, Diesel and her partner Pauline. Diesel, who is built like a sumo, sources suitable venues. It is of amusement to me that despite the money our venture has brought her she still keeps her snack wagon near the M40. It is called Bite-Inn and is popular with lorry drivers. Her grey hair is cut very short and she wears dungarees. I can rely on her to find venues that are ideal. They are usually old industrial spaces where three or four hundred may gather. There are many such places in Birmingham.

  The dogs used to come from a variety of sources. Pauline raised a number of both pits and tosas, but these
were unlucky dogs – unlucky for her; destroyed too quickly for her to replenish her stock. Now I use Knighton, a white English from the Mendy. He is reliable, and provides good fighting dogs of several aggressive breeds, mostly Staffs, very strong dogs, admirably stubborn. I don’t know where he gets them from, nor do I need to, for he never lets me down.

  We are neighbours of sorts, Knighton and I. I live on the sixteenth floor of Nimrod House; Knighton in one of the streets of houses that circle the tower. It is not inconceivable that a firecracker thrown from my back window could be carried by the wind to his home. Or is that just fancy?

  I do not spend much time in my flat. I keep very little there. My needs are simple. A bed. My shrine. A chair, a low floor table, and a television. Some books: classics in Mandarin, modern works in Cantonese, the I Ching of course, some English books on chess and poker, both interests of mine. I rarely eat there so there is little in the kitchen. Teas. A bottle of vodka, some beers. I buy my Chinese cigarettes in bulk, through the Dragons, cigarettes without filters, and it is the blue-and-gold packs of these that occupy most of the space in the kitchen cupboards.

  It is the flat in which we executed Jimmy Slim, and I have lived there since that night. After Jimmy Slim, bound and gagged, had been thrown from the window into the silent blackness of the night, collected from the ground below and disposed of, I set up within the room a small shrine beneath the window from which we threw him, which was only right and respectful, and part of the Code of the Dragons. Having behaved treacherously, working as a spy for one of the black gangs in the city, the Dobermans, he tried to hide in this flat on the Mendy. At that time it was completely empty. Jimmy Slim sat hiding on the floor here for many hours before we found him.

  The term on the Mendy is interesting. It is used obviously to refer to the Mendelssohn Estate, which is on the west side of Birmingham, but it is also a term used frequently in the city to refer to the practice of sub-letting a flat or a house while its legal tenant is in prison; a practice that apparently started here, and continues, although it is just as prolific on other estates.

  My flat was empty for a long time before Jimmy Slim sought refuge there. My feeling is that its last tenant died in jail. A feeling only, for I have not investigated the matter. I pay no rent. No one bothers me. It must have been sorted. At some time someone has been paid – or threatened – to see that it drops off the city council’s records. There are a lot of sorted flats on the Mendy, as there are on all the estates. Jimmy Slim’s friends from the black gangs must have told him about it. The three other flats on this floor are unoccupied, and have been for a very long time, at least by human beings. The smell and the heat emanating from them suggest other living forms flourish.

  The 16 button in the lift does not work, so it never stops here. It is no bother for me to climb the stairs from the fifteenth floor. Sometimes if I have occasion to return here in the daytime I may see some hooded figure entering or leaving one of the other doorways of the sixteenth; youths not much beyond school age. We Chinese are more careful of our youth I think.

  Since I supervised the clearing away of Jimmy Slim from the tarmac at the side of Nimrod House I have never seen any connection between my life serving Hsinshu and my sleeping arrangements, for that is pretty much all they are, here on the Mendy. There are a few Chinese in this vicinity; Feiyang, who keeps the takeaway on the estate, and to whom I am related. Feiyang himself is British-born Chinese but his mother is the cousin of my father. There is also Pian Li, who is known to the English around here as Charlie Chann and keeps the gym on the estate known as The Works, and Zusanli who runs the martial arts centre. Wei Lin, the hairdresser.

  Occasionally I visit my relatives: at New Year of course, and at Ching Ming each April; six months ago I attended Feiyang’s wedding. I do what is right by custom but no more.

  8

  Envoy. It is a special word. For a special role. Hsinshu was speaking English. ‘You will be my envoy. Go as a businessman. Offer Mr Stretton the sum agreed; it is not ungenerous. Explain there is time. A month for a decision. Two further months to vacate. There will be a generous bonus if he agrees to go immediately.’

  And so it was – businesslike. That word is correct for Stretton too. Not hostile, not aggressive, but cold, abrupt; short words, quickly spoken, quietly spoken – no nonsense. There is certainly something of the Metal element about Mr Stretton, but that is not, I think, his true element. I believe that his principal energy, like my own, is Wood, but whereas mine is of the strong tree, his is of the seed, full of potential, full of plans, consumed by the instinct to grow.

  There was no doubt that the beautiful woman beside Mr Stretton was of the Metal element. She sat at a desk side-on to Mr Stretton, her blonde hair seeming to glow in the gloomy room; scarlet fingernails. I told Mr Stretton that I would to prefer to speak with him alone. ‘There is no need, Mr Wood,’ he said, using the name with which I had made my appointment. ‘Trudy is my assistant. She knows everything about the business. I wouldn’t make any decisions without discussing them with her.’

  But he discussed nothing with her. ‘The club is not for sale, Mr Wood. Nor is it going to be. It’s my business and that’s the way it will stay. In fact, I may shortly be looking to expand. You might slip me the word if you are aware of anything coming on the market.’ There was a roughness of tone in Mr Stretton’s voice, as if the words were churned out industrially from some workshop located at the bottom of his throat.

  ‘It is possible that this offer, although already generous, may be improved upon, sir.’

  ‘Not interested. No deal, Mr Wood. You’ll have to tell your boss, it’s no can do. See the gentleman out, Trudy.’

  ‘It is a very good offer,’ I said to Trudy as we made our way downstairs. ‘And as I said, financially it is not the last word.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But what Mr Stretton says is. He’s not a man to change his mind.’

  Usually I have no difficulty at all in keeping my mind on my work. There is little else I wish to think of. But as I made my way back to the casino I found that the image of Trudy had found a place in my brain; one which I feared would be difficult to dislodge.

  I am wary when it comes to women, and try now not to follow inclination. From the time he was a very young boy my brother, whose birth contravened the family laws of our country, was with the Chinese Circus of Chengdu Province. At eighteen he married Tai Yuan, a former Young Pioneer gymnastics champion, three years his senior, who joined the circus as a tumbler. I met her for the first time on the day of her wedding. I was not prepared for my feelings. Lust certainly, a mountain of it, but besides that, and more alarming for me at that time, a lake of tenderness. Within a few weeks we were making love whenever we could. I looked at my brother’s face of happiness and felt nothing, but for Tai Yuan it was an agony.

  She was sure the son she gave birth to a year later was mine. ‘Break the law,’ I told her. ‘Soon it will be spring and the circus will be on the road again. Have another child. Your husband’s child.’

  It was towards the end of summer when I visited them in Guillin. From the audience I watched her throw her body into the air, turn it into a circle, leap high through hoops and raise it from the ground straight and true and at an angle to her head. The audience cheered loudly.

  The next day when we met in some place I could make love to her, I had condoms. ‘There is no need,’ she said when she saw them. ‘I am sterilised now. I am a tumbler. I don’t want to stop my work again. I don’t want to break the law.’

  On the fourth day of my stay I sat in a practice tent watching Tai Yuan throw herself around the sand circle there, yelling as she did so, fierce as the tigress. And as she paused for rest, slumping forward so that her arms swung beside her legs, and breathing deeply, she raised her head and caught sight of me. It was not hatred in her eyes as she rose to an upright position, but it certainly was not love. And now the word people use, certainly in the West, when they speak of right, of wr
ong – moral. If I can find meaning in what those eyes conveyed, it was something to do with that word, moral. But alone it is not enough. Moral something. Moral exhaustion? Perhaps. It is close. Or possibly that other word they are so fond of here, disgust.

  *

  It was not the last time I saw her. I saw all three of them each New Year at my parents’ house. I used to watch Tai Yuan looking at her husband playing with his son; the boy up on his shoulders, throwing him into the air. The boy’s birthday fell too close to New Year to justify a special visit, so I waited until the August Moon Festival when I could take gifts for the boy. And it was not the last time I made love to Tai Yuan. It happened every time we were together, and I do not regret it. They are memories I love. But with each visit we spoke less, and nothing of consequence, and so I do not know whether she intended to kill the boy or not. The van she was driving went over a cliff edge in Fujian Province. There was only her and the boy in it.

  My brother now has another wife, and another son. It was in the year of Tai Yuan’s death that I left China and came to find my friends here, so I have never met my brother’s second wife, or their son, although each New Year I receive a photograph of all three and their good wishes. It would be unlucky for them not to send it, and I in my turn send gifts and wishes. I have now passed forty and so can add the word blessing to my greeting to my younger brother. There is no need for a photograph, he knows how I look.

  CARROW

  9