Yin Yang Tattoo (24 page)

I checked the foaming bath water. Almost too hot to bear. Perfect. It took several slow-motion minutes to lower myself into its scalding aromatic embrace. Shiny reflective bubbles popped, releasing sickly pockets of artificial sweetness. Beads of condensation ran down every wall. Steaming froth overflowed and coursed down the outside of the tub, across the tiled floor and out of sight down the corner drain. All very civilised, no danger of flooding the downstairs neighbours. As if I gave a shit about the neighbours.

With the hot tap drip-replenishing the bath's therapeutic powers, I lay back, head on a towel, sucked on mineral water and let the scorching bath and the painkillers do their best for me.

Ninety minutes later, I still felt like I had spent a week hanging from the ceiling of a kick-boxing gym, but the hot bath and food had done me good. I could now move around without wincing. I plugged the phones back in and checked for messages, but there were none. I tried Jung-hwa's mobile again, and once more hung up on her voicemail service. Whatever she had in mind when she called earlier, it wasn't important enough to keep her phone switched on, and somehow that made me feel better. Right now, I would take reassurance from anywhere I might imagine it.

It was still only ten o'clock, and since sleep was out of the question, I carefully pulled on a fresh pair of trousers and a loose shirt and headed for JJs, where at least I could still sign for the beers. Now that I was resigned to a hotel bill that I would never pay, the thought of adding a few zeros to it held no new fears.

Liberated by the notion that the more I drank, the more money I saved, I sucked on one frosty overpriced Heineken after another. All around me the nightly procession of life in JJ's fast lane buzzed. Middle-aged business execs with corned beef complexions sweated into ugly shirts and uglier ties as they tried their damnedest to look cool and failed. All around them high class, glossy-painted whores with ice in their veins did their best to look hot and succeeded. I did my best to become invisible, enjoying the feeling of being an uninvolved fly on the wall, until a waiter tapped me gently on the shoulder.

‘Telephone call for you sir, this way please.' He led me to an extension stretched out from behind one end of the bar.

‘Hello?'

‘Alec?'

‘Jung-hwa? How did you find me?'

‘There was no answer in your room, so I called around. I didn't even have to tell the waiter your name.' In the background, an electric Chicago blues version of ‘Key to the Highway' interfered with the microphone on her mobile.

‘Where are you now?'

‘Can you come down to Itaewon? I'm in the Blues Room. Do you know it? Near the
Seo-bang-so
.' The fire station. I could find it.

 

Outside the hotel I clambered aboard the first Deluxe taxi in the line and told the man to get me to Itaewon. We were still in the hotel car park when I knew which Hyundai was following us, two different-sized shadows in the front seats. I took my driver through the centre of Itaewon, got him to hang an abrupt left at the lights in front of the Hamilton Hotel, and another quick left into a narrowing alleyway. Here, twisted lanes picked their way through a thicket of churches that occupied the upper floors of ordinary concrete buildings marked with red neon crosses on their roofs. Korea has the fastest-growing Christian population in the world, and its cities blaze with gaudy red crucifixes.

Very soon we were less than two hundred yards from the fire station, but separated from it by a maze of footpaths too narrow for anything wider than a bicycle. I overpaid generously and high-tailed it from my cab even before it came to rest. Ignoring my groaning innards, I took ten seconds to put half-a-dozen right-angle turns between me and whoever was following. From there, I could be headed for any one of a hundred clubs and bars and cathouses.

Two minutes later, and satisfied that I was alone, I climbed the dusty stairs towards the welcoming sounds of The Blues Room. The live band's extended version of Key to the Highway was still playing. This sounded like my kind of bar, and waiting for me was my kind of woman. Maybe, just maybe, things were looking not so bad.

The Blues Room was a long rectangle with a tall bar at one end and a low performance area at the other. High-mounted floods blasted the stage with harsh cinematic light and shade, and at the opposite end of the room the bar was backlit by mini spots set into the undersides of shelves groaning with bottles. Floating candles bobbed in heavy glass jars set on steel tables watched over by a slim Korean who inhabited a dark shadow by the door like The World's Most Low-Key Bouncer. Customers sat in deep aluminium chairs, faces flickering in the candlelight, heads nodding in time to the music.

Alcoves lined the far wall under blacked-out windows that allowed liberties to be taken with whatever this month's licensing restrictions might be, and from one alcove Jung-hwa signalled, not to me, but to a waitress, who headed directly for the bar. Before I negotiated the shadowy aluminium maze, the waitress was already there, small round tray held lightly, tall bottle opened, beer glass fresh from the freezer and starred with a patina of ice.

Jung-hwa stood up to meet me, a vision in black silk that stripped away the years taking me back to the night I first saw her, no more than fifty yards away from where we stood now. Tonight's black two-piece was more modest than the one she wore then, but all the more alluring for it. The top had a high mandarin collar and a sweeping diagonal line of fabric loops and knotted textile buttons that clutched it tight to her lean figure. The skirt, a continuation of the same, clung fast to her hips and ended abruptly half-way between knee and ankle. Her greying hair was butterfly-clipped high at the crown, and her make-up bright and immaculate as ever.

I kissed her gently on the cheek and she spoke in my ear.

‘Ore-gon mannae pohmnida.'
Long time no see.

A whole forty-eight hours had slipped by since we spent the night creating nightmares for the Hyatt chambermaid
.
She sat down and I gently lowered myself onto the padded bench beside her.

‘Did they hurt you?'

‘You heard?' Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

‘Ben said you had been arrested for questioning. What is going on?'

‘He didn't tell you?' I could not imagine Schwartz missing the opportunity to gloat.

‘Tell me what?'

‘About a prostitute called Miss Hong who is missing, and probably dead.' My eyes never left her face, but all I saw was confusion.

‘I was one of the last people to see her alive.' I explained about the two nights spent with Miss Hong, and her later disappearance. Pangs of guilt over the admission that I had shared the same bed with a whore only the night before Jung-hwa visited my room were short-lived. For all her seeming enthusiasm, Miss Hong was a professional who insisted on condoms at all times and, in any case, Jung-hwa seemed unconcerned by such niceties.

‘What has it got to do with you?'

I told her about the gruesome late-night delivery, and how Detective Kwok and his boys were brought in but kept at arm's length by Chang until today, when they dragged me in for questioning, probably at Chang's instigation. She looked puzzled.

‘Why today?'

‘They wanted to ask me about a video camera.'

Her expression betrayed just a hint of wry amusement. It was a knowing glance that in the past would have us making a beeline for the nearest horizontal surface, discarded clothes forming an untidy trail behind us.

‘You video-taped yourself and Miss Hong?'

I was ready for the question and met it with a shake of the head. Alec Brodie, practised liar. Shameless.

‘No. I left the camera in London. But Kwok found the empty spaces in my case, and some old tape wrappings.'

‘He wanted the truth about the video camera?'

‘Do
you
think I'm lying too? I already told you, it's in London.'

‘I was only asking.' She straight-fingered me playfully just above the beltline, expression flashing from amusement to near-panic in the instant before I pitched forward, elbow to the table, head on forearm. As I sucked deeply and tried not to scream she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and leaned her head next to mine. Deep breaths picked up the mixed scent of make-up and soap and expensive shampoo. I raised my head to find Jung-hwa's eyes full of fear and concern. She took my face between her soft, cool hands.

‘I'm sorry.' Like a mother kissing away her child's pain, she pressed her lips to my forehead. It worked for me.

I told her about the telephone books and the near-drownings, and she kissed me some more and I kissed her back. Stares bristled at us from nearby tables, but they couldn't hurt me, and I learned years ago that they did not bother Jung-hwa in the least. Onstage, the band's rendition of Jimmy Rogers'
Blue Bird
never missed a beat.

The next hour passed slowly. We drank and talked and enjoyed the band, four long-haired Korean misfits whose enthusiasm for the blues was not only palpable but contagious. Star of the show was the lead guitarist and singer who, Jung-hwa told me, owned the bar and called himself Junior Kim.

He waved to a pasty Westerner loitering expectantly at the edge of the stage.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, Harmonica Luke.' The introduction scared up a sparse round of applause.

The big Westerner seemed nervous. In his twenties, he stood about six foot three in grey snakeskin cowboy boots that leered from beneath faded, threadbare Levis. A washed-out Monterey Bay Blues Festival t-shirt hugged a muscular frame. He stuck his acne-scarred face next to Junior Kim's ear. Kim nodded and passed the word to the rest of the band. I was not optimistic.

‘
Since I Met You Baby
,' said Kim into the microphone, as he led them off with a wailing guitar intro that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. When Kim nodded, Harmonica Luke bowed to the mike and surprised me with a soulful baritone, his diction clear, perfectly inflected, rhythmically precise. I raised my head towards the tiny dance area that was already beginning to fill, but Jung-hwa looked uncertain, so I tugged at her hand and she followed me. Before we even got to dance, the big man brought the first verse to a close and broke seamlessly into twenty-four bars of blues harp, if not straight from the heavens, then at least straight from the South Side of Chicago, as near to heaven as mattered in the modern blues world.

Jung-hwa folded herself into my arms like she belonged there. This was one of ‘our' songs, the one that shook the long-gone Cowboy Club as I did my jokey Korean doorman routine for Jung-hwa the night we met.

Junior Kim led the band through a good six minutes of the song before thrashing it to a close, only to open immediately with the Elmore James classic,
The Sky is Crying.
It was a song that defined blues irony for me ever since, a few years after he made it his own, Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash. Harmonica Luke stepped back to let Junior take over on vocals, filling every momentary silence, cued or otherwise, with dead-on harp riffs. The man was a natural.

Back at our alcove, Jung-hwa summoned up fresh drinks.

‘Cheers.' I raised my glass to meet hers. She looked tense.

‘We have to talk.'

Here we go
.

‘I have been worried about things I hear from Ben.'

‘Things to do with K-N?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm not surprised. You're married to one of the guys at the centre of it.' She looked hurt. I laid my hand on top of hers. ‘Sorry. Go on.'

‘Just Ben is so busy with this new business, the GD-something – '

‘GDR. It's a stock market thing, a big deal.'

‘Ben is so busy with it, and I keep hearing your name, and what he is saying sounds scary.'

‘It is scary.' The words came out before I had time to think. I still didn't have a clue how much I could trust Jung-hwa, but there was one thing she should know.

‘You remember Bobby Purves, married to Myong-hee who used to work in the Cowboy Club?'

Of course she did. There was a time when the four of us shared a table at the Bavaria Bar almost every Friday night.

‘I had lunch with Bobby today. I have seen him a few times already this week, and you know he works for a Korean stockbroker? I've been asking him about the GDR, trying to learn more about it. Bobby gave me some background information – nothing secret or anything, just things that nobody at K-N would tell me.'

‘So?' I was evading the issue, and she knew it.

‘Early this morning Bobby got a phone call warning him to stop hanging around with me, then later his little boy Min-tae went missing, taken away in a car by strangers for a couple of hours.' I explained about the message written on his chest.

‘Poor Myong-hee.' She looked genuinely shaken, and I felt guilty for doubting her. I remembered something she said earlier.