The stranger named Helio related the instructions sotto voce to Arthur and departed. In compliance with them, Arthur lobbied successfully for an extended lunch break. At precisely two-thirty in the afternoon he set off with Poppy for the Magnolia Snack Bar next to the Cold Storage self-serve mart, a 15-minute walk away. Both joints were on the ground floor of a pair of flagging shophouses. Dark clouds were gathering even though the afternoon baked. It was a fifteen-minute walk.
With three scoops of vanilla ice-cream Arthur negotiated a deal with Poppy to wait at the snack bar because he was required to rendezvous alone. The child had sufficient wit to comprehend the deal, and though swayed by the rare treat he was palpably distressed over the prospect of being left alone. Arthur paid the man behind the counter and got him to dispense the triple treat one at a time. But as he turned to leave, Poppy lashed out at his leg and stubbornly held on to it.
Twice Arthur coddled him, and at the third attempt Poppy finally lowered his teary gaze into a dubious glare and gave approval for him to depart. In his pudgy fingers Poppy clasped the icy steel cup and refused to touch the ice-cream until Arthur was out of sight.
The Cold Storage wasn’t crowded at this time of the day and there were a few empty tills where cashier ladies sat nattering to one another. Arthur went up a narrow wooden staircase, and at the top he found the boutique called Hilda’s. It was furnished in dark oak, had a British flair to it and had neat rows of fabric displayed across the length of its rear wall. Behind an oak-panelled counter a woman was leaning over a newspaper. She had hair like a beehive and glasses shaped like owl’s eyes.
She looked up and Arthur cursed his moth-eaten memory. He stole a glance at a piece of paper and tentatively recited the words, “I need buttons for an Arabian fabric.”
“What kind?” she adjusted her glasses.
“Al Chalka.”
The woman called out a name and a gaunt man appeared from a side door that led to the back of the shop. He had a tape measure around his neck and the shirt he wore hung on him as if it was emptied of a body.
He beckoned Arthur over without a word and led him through a poorly-lit corridor flanked by high shelves bulging with fabrics and sewing paraphernalia. A rickety wooden door at the end opened to the muted, cloudy daylight, and there a serpentine concrete staircase wound to the car park below.
The gaunt man pointed to a black Chrysler Plymouth idling a few yards away from the staircase.
As Arthur approached the Chrysler the window on the driver’s side rolled down and Helio’s smiling face appeared. A toss of his head indicated he wanted Arthur in the back. Arthur warily obliged and found someone inside with him—a small-shouldered young man with ruffled hair and a face shaped like an olive. He regarded Arthur with sharp, witty eyes and a slight, amused smile.
Arthur addressed Helio. “I can’t stay. Got someone waiting.”
“It won’t take long,” said the stranger in the backseat. “I’m Thaddeus.”
“Arthur.”
The handbrake released with a metallic crank. A shift of gears, and the car began rolling forward. It turned onto the main road and Arthur perked up, alarmed.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Nowhere,” said Thaddeus. “Just throwing off curious stares.”
Arthur began mental rehearsals of how he should bail from the car if he had to. “So what’s the business?”
“Survival.” Thaddeus unsnapped a compact steel briefcase. It opened to a flat glass screen of very high gloss and two horizontal mirrored discs that resembled vinyl records cast in glass. Automobiles roared down their way along the opposing lane of Orchard Road and the Pavilion Cinema panned slowly past them. Rain began pelting down the car windows.
“Your hands.”
Arthur lifted both of them, palms upturned.
Thaddeus pointed to the mirrored discs. “Verification.”
They looked innocuous enough. Arthur placed his hands over them and at once a magnet-like force held them in place. The surface of the discs glowed where it made contact with skin. Arthur howled as his fingertips sizzled. Thin trails of smoky residue rose and for the first time he caught the stench of his own burning flesh.
At last the discs released their grip and Arthur, in a sickened grimace, examined his raw fingertips against the pale daylight.
Thaddeus took his hands and applied little swabs of translucent material to the blistering wounds. “Keep them on for a few minutes.”
It’ll take more than a few minutes. Arthur stared at him, aghast. “What the devil is this?”
“New fingerprints.” Thaddeus punched a few invisible keys on the screen and the device whined down to silence. He snapped the briefcase shut. “We’ll have to do a little splicing to your passport.”
“Passport? I didn’t give you any passport.”
“You are going to London.”
Arthur shot him an incredulous look. “When?”
“In a couple of days.” The man stowed the briefcase under the seat. “For what you did it is better to hide out a few years, until the investigation concludes and things settle a bit.”
“Wait, I don’t get it. What if I don’t want your help?”
“We’d gladly leave you alone if you were in control,” said Thaddeus. “But now you seem to be screwing up rather badly.”
He snatched up Arthur’s hands and began ripping off the membranes, one piece after another. At first Arthur gaped and flinched, then it amazed him to see that the wounds did not look as bad as when they had first come off the stove.
Out of nowhere, a little red book bearing the embossed, golden coat of arms with two tigers appeared. With Arthur’s right palm and wrist locked in his grip, Thaddeus deftly pushed Arthur’s thumb into an inkpad, flipped to a page, and made a print at the bottom of it. In his free hand a fountain pen appeared, its cap already unscrewed. He handed it to Arthur and pointed at a spot above the thumbprint.
“Sign here.”
Arthur complied, and Thaddeus released his wrist and clamped the passport shut with a triumphant little smirk.
The car pulled over behind an Australian Trade and Commission station wagon and Helio put up the handbrake. Arthur had not realise how far they had travelled, but they were in front of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building at the east end of Orchard Road.
A lean, swarthy man passed in front of the Chrysler, briefly peering through the windscreen at its passengers. Helio looked away, and so did Thaddeus. Arthur met his gaze: it burned with tension, as though the man were anticipating something tremendous and imminent. The man loped away, turned back once more to glance at Arthur, before nimbly vanishing across the street amid falling rain and oncoming traffic.
“Curious people,” Helio muttered at the rear view mirror.
Thaddeus gave a quick laugh. “It’s the car, Helio. We should use a less expensive one next time.” He turned to Arthur and waved the red passport in his face. “We’ll hold this for now. Meanwhile keep your lips sealed and we’ll contact you in the morning.”
That’s it? Arthur stared at him. He needed more answers. His gaze flitted pleadingly over to Helio at the driver’s seat. The only response was a desultory smile in the rear-view mirror.
“I…” Arthur suddenly had trouble with speech. “I can’t go alone.”
Thaddeus reached over and opened the door on Arthur’s side. The roar of the rain grew loud. “I’m afraid you’re very much alone in this, Mr Lock. The gallows remain a very real possibility.”
Still, Arthur hesitated. Did he expect them to get Poppy and Hannah passports and sneak them out like exotic pets? Besides, Hannah had been missing for months. Or she could be behind all this. There was no telling…
“Please.” Thaddeus gestured at the door.
Arthur stepped out onto the sidewalk and scurried under the covered walkway before the rain could drench him. Dolefully he watched the black Chrysler pull away and merge into the flowing motor traffic. He looked around as if aware for the first time of his surroundings and, with a lugubrious sigh, accepted all that would befall him. I am told to go where I do not want to go, to live a life I know nothing of. I am endowed with years of a lowly existence whose purpose I do not know, and by day I bleed memories.
Just across the road a row of shophouses housed motorcar showrooms. They would offer a sheltered route back to the ice cream parlour, if only Arthur could get across to them. He stepped into the rain and passed behind a red Volvo coupé.
Flash.
The right side of Arthur’s vision erupted in white just before it went dark. For an instant gravity abandoned him. His back stung with the pain of a thousand needles that came with a shockwave. The left side of his body hit something hard and his hands touched wet asphalt. He lost all sensation in his right arm. He heard nothing but an incessant, hollow roar that sounded like winds bellowing through a cave. His vision alternated in flashes of darkness and wan, smoky daylight.
The burrs of something broken ground against his back. His wounded sight drew slowly into focus. A man writhed on the ground near him, his face studded with crystalline shards. Blood dripped from the lacerations in slick, dark strands.
Amid a host of muffled noises came the screech of tires, and then Helio filled Arthur’s sights, saying something about how miraculous it was that the coupé had been between him and the blast. A pair of strong arms lifted him and dragged him over a distance, his bare heels scraping the asphalt. He was back in the Chrysler, his eyes stinging with blood. Hands ran across his brow, mollifying his brutalised senses. Something hissed and stung the side of his neck.
“The law of a demented world as old as Creation itself.” Arthur heard someone say before he lapsed into unconsciousness. “Murphy merely attached his name to it.”