Mystery Man (18 page)

That evening we were to begin our trawl through the city's numerous Chinese restaurants. I was at home getting ready to go pick up Alison when the doorbell rang. I let it ring, because I tend not to answer doors when I can avoid it. Besides, I was halfway through shaving. Whoever was there was persistent, however. And I am obstinate, so it would have continued to be an impasse if Mother had not yelled from upstairs, 'Answer it, you little shit!' with such venom that my Mach 3 blade skidded along my top lip and caught the edge of my left nostril, opening up a slit that immediately began to bleed profusely. This was, understandably, distressing for someone suffering from haemophilia and with an exceedingly rare blood group to boot, but nevertheless I hurried as instructed to the front door, dabbing at the cut with a white towel and with red-tinged lather still caking my cheeks. When I opened it, Alison was standing there.

She smiled widely. 'Hey, Freckles, who's been slapping you around?'

'No one. What are you doing here?'

'We have a date. Or a job to do. I thought I'd pick you up. I'm hungry.'

'But . . . how did you know where I live?'

She laughed. 'Why, is it a closely guarded secret? I used my
detective skills.
Are you not going to invite me in?'

'No.' I had instinctively adopted a defensive position, both physically and mentally. 'Mother . . . she has a migraine . . . lying down . . . any noise sends her . . . you know how it is. Why don't you wait in the car and I'll be out in a minute?'

Alison raised an eyebrow. 'Are you sure you haven't some other woman in there?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Yes you have, or yes you haven't?'

I was dripping blood on to the doorstep, it was no time for word games. 'I really haven't some other woman inside. Now I'll just be a minute.'

I turned back inside and closed the door behind me. From upstairs Mother shouted, 'Who was it?'

'No one.'

'It was some little slut, wasn't it?'

'No, Mother.'

Five minutes later I joined Alison in her car. It was a Mini and it suited her. The number plate was RLC 216 L which sounded like it
could
be an ego plate, but clearly wasn't. As she started the engine she looked at me and nodded approvingly. 'I like it. But I'm not sure if it'll catch on.'

I pulled the passenger mirror down and studied my reflection. The bleeding was liable to start again with the slightest encouragement, like breathing, so I'd cut an Elastoplast down to a narrow strip and stuck it across the slit in the edge of my left nostril to stop the flow. To keep it in place it arched over the tip of my nose and was secured on the other side.

'It looks suitably
mysterious,'
said Alison.

'It's practical,' I said. Then I showed her my wristband. 'If anything happens to me, all the relevant information is in here.'

Her brow furrowed as she glanced at the plastic band. 'Anything happens?'

'If I faint or collapse or lose too much blood, it's all in here – my blood group, the fact that I'm allergic to penicillin.'

She nodded. 'Are you expecting to collapse or lose too much blood?'

'Forewarned is forearmed,' I said.

There are one hundred and twenty-six Chinese restaurants in Belfast, three hundred and eight Chinese carryouts, and no Chinese plumbers. If you asked me, they were putting all their eggs in one basket. They may have also been running opium dens and gambling houses, but they weren't advertising. However, the sheer volume of eating establishments meant that we were on a hiding to nothing unless we were able to somehow narrow it down. This was where Jeff came in. During another relentlessly quiet afternoon I got him to phone as many restaurants in the immediate downtown area as he could pick out of the Yellow Pages, and to come up with some pretence to ask for the family name of the owners and then match it with May's own surname. I was fairly certain that if she'd transferred to another restaurant she'd have used a family connection. Jeff managed to track down eight restaurants and three carry-out establishments that carried May's name, and it was on these that we concentrated our attentions.

We ate lunch, we ate dinner, I discovered a certain tolerance for curry, we put on weight. We studied the ears of waitresses. We got nowhere fast. But it was not a waste of time. I got to know Alison, and she did her best to prise information out of me.

'Sometimes,' she said, 'it's like getting blood from a stone.' Then she smiled and said, 'That sounds like the title of one of your books.
Blood From a Stone.'

'By Donna Leon, actually. Just a couple of years ago.'

Alison smiled. 'Was there ever,' she asked, glancing around this latest restaurant, the Hong Kong Palace, at the bottom of Great Victoria Street, 'a Chinese detective? I remember one on TV, don't I?'

'The Chinese Detective.
David Yip starred as Sergeant John Ho on the Beeb. It was the early eighties – you were probably about three years old.'

Alison shook her head. 'Repeats, then. But boy, you're a mine of useless information, aren't you?'

'No information is useless. It all has a purpose.'

'God, and now you sound like a Chinese cracker.'

I nodded around the restaurant myself. 'Then there was Charlie Chan.'

'Shhhh,' said Alison. 'You can't go saying Charlie Chan in a Chinese restaurant, it's offensive.'

'Why?'

'Because it is. Wasn't he just some fat white guy with his eyes taped back?'

I sighed. 'I'm not talking about the rubbish movies. I'm talking about breakthrough novels – Earl Biggers wrote them just after the First World War. He was in Honolulu and read in the local newspaper about the exploits of a detective called Chang Apana. He wrote six books about him all told; it was only when the movies got hold of Charlie Chan that . . .'

'Shhhhh . . .'

I don't know why she was bothering to
shhhh
me. She was the one who'd gone on at length about cripples. How was this any different?

This was the sixth out of the eight restaurants. As the waitress set down our starters, Alison studied her intently. When she'd gone I continued.

'. . . he became the clown we all remember. But the books are actually still surprisingly readable, though they're quite difficult to come by . . .'

Alison nodded, but also reached for her handbag and took out May's photo and her artist's impression of her ears.

'But of course,' I said, 'it was still a Western take on Chinese culture, and a somewhat Westernised version of that culture. If you go back far enough, it turns out that some of the first detective stories came from China. We tend to think of Poe or Wilkie Collins as the originators of the genre, but in fact there is a strand of ancient Chinese detective fiction –
Di Gong An,
if I'm not mistaken, which translates as
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee
– that was extremely popular in the seventeenth century. Of course, as you might expect, they're very different from our detective stories – they're what is known as inverted detective stories, with the criminal and the reasons for his committing his crime introduced right at the start. There is also quite often a supernatural—'

'Would you ever
shut up
?' Alison hissed. 'I think that's
her.'

It was good timing, actually, because I was starting to reach the bottom of my well of information on Chinese detective fiction. Instead I studied our waitress, who was just crossing to a nearby table. She lifted two plates, then turned and walked past us, face-on. She certainly looked very similar to the May in the photograph, which Alison quickly rechecked then surreptitiously showed to me. Yes, indeed – but she was wearing her shoulder-length black hair over her ears, so it was difficult to be absolutely certain.

We ate our first course, then our main course, all the time with our eyes on the waitress, waiting for a moment that we knew would come: the big reveal. She was sure at some point to sweep her hair behind her ears, or to even just reach up to fix it or scratch her head, any movement that would reveal the hidden appendages. Eventually, when we were ordering dessert, and Alison asked for something off-menu, the waitress had to think for a moment to see if it was possible, and in so doing slowly pushed her hair back behind her left ear.

We only saw it for a moment. It was larg
ish,
but flat against her skull.

It was a very disappointing ear.

We changed our minds about dessert and quickly settled up.

I drove Alison home. We sat in the No Alibis van outside her apartment. She said, 'Do you want to come in?'

I shook my head.

'I don't bite, you know.' I stared at the dash. 'Or perhaps that's what you'd like.'

I glanced at her. 'Do you have any idea how many germs there are in the human mouth? If you bite someone you might as well inject them with botu—' I cleared my throat. I smiled. 'Only teasing.'

Of course, I
was not.

'You're playing hard to get,' said Alison. 'Usually it's the other way round.'

I shrugged.

'But I like that in a man. I like a challenge. I don't like everything on a plate right from the start. There are girls out there who'd give you a blow job on your first date as easy as a kiss on the cheek. But I say one swallow doesn't make a summer. Do you know what I mean?'

I had an idea, but was too flustered to respond coherently. I grunted.

She kissed me on the lips. Just quickly. She looked at me again and nodded. 'Yes, indeed,' she said, 'you're
definitely
a challenge.'

Then she slipped out of the van.

She phoned me at three a.m. I was still up looking for patterns, but faked a yawn for her benefit. She told me we had to go back to the Hong Kong Palace.

'Why? The food wasn't that—'

'The waitress. It's her. I'm certain.'

'But you saw her ear . . .'

'I know. But we still have to go back.'

She didn't give it a name, but it was a woman's intuition.

Naturally I mocked it, but she was convinced. And I was quite happy to go along.

She then said, 'So are you in bed now?'

'Yes.'

'What do you have on?'

'My pyjamas.'

'Do you know what I have on?'

'No.'

'The radio.'

'Why?'

'I don't really. I have no clothes on. I am naked.'

'Okay.'

There was a long pause.

Eventually I said, 'What time tomorrow?'

'Lunchtime.'

'I have to go now,' I said. 'Mother's calling.'

'I don't hear anything.'

'She may have fallen out of bed.'

'If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears, does it still fall?'

'What?'

'It doesn't matter. I'll see you tomorrow. Don't be going to sleep thinking about me being naked.'

'Okay'

I put the phone down. There was no doubt about it. She was as odd as begot.

The Hong Kong Palace was a good-sized restaurant; busier at lunchtimes than it was at night; upholstery like a hoor's handbag. We had to wait a goodly while for a table. When we were eventually seated, Alison said she had a plan, but refused to elaborate. Instead we talked amiably while we both kept a watchful eye on our waitress. Alison told me about the unusual customer she'd had that morning – an absolute gentleman, charming, well mannered, well dressed, actually listened to advice, handsome too.

'And what was unusual about him?'

'All of the above,'
Alison laughed. 'It was so refreshing.'

'Did he buy anything?'

'No, no he didn't.'

'There you go.'

'But he did ask me out on a date.'

My blood froze. My throat contracted. I managed a raspy, 'Really?'

'Of course I said no, but even so, it was rather nice. Don't you think the standard of people has gone down in recent years?'

'I don't think it was ever particularly high.'

She had turned down a charming, well-mannered, well-dressed, handsome man, for me.

They're ignorant, and smelly, and devious,' Alison said.

'They're loud, and arrogant, and opinionated.'

'They steal and swear and . . .' She turned suddenly to one side, just as our waitress passed. '
May . . .
'

The waitress's head snapped towards us.

'. . . we have a menu?'

'Yes . . . yes of course.'

She gave one to each of us. As she left, Alison grinned across the table at me. 'See?'

'Proves nothing,' I said, though in truth I was impressed.

'It's her.'

Today the waitress's hair was back in a ponytail, allowing us to see both ears. Neither of them was sticking out. Nobody was going to mistake her for the FA Cup, or any kind of silverware with handles. Alison was watching her closely, nodding almost imperceptibly as she finally understood – something.

'The son of a bitch,' whispered Alison.

'Excuse me?'

'Don't you see? Look what he made her do.'

'You've lost me.'

'Staring right at you. Look at the way she's tossing her head from side to side. The way her hair is tied right back. She's showing off her ears. She's had them done. Pinned back. The son of a bitch hurt her so much she went out and had plastic surgery on her lugs.'

I studied the waitress as she went about her work, but really couldn't tell. 'Are you sure?'

'Certain. That's her. Yesterday she had them covered up, they were probably still sore from the op. I know girls who've had it done. It isn't pleasant.'

'God. Do they cut them off and sit on them for a while and stick them back on?'

'No. You idiot. She's had them cut and sliced and pinned back and today is the grand unveiling.'

'Well, she seems happy with them.'

'Yes, of course she is. But that isn't the point. He made her feel so bad, she thought she had to do it.'

'I'm not sure I agree. He liberated her. He gave her the confidence to go and make a change.'

'So if you didn't like my nose you'd make cracks about it until I had it straightened. Do you want to liberate me through verbal abuse?'

'I like your nose the way it is. It doesn't need straightening, much.'