They were heading down to the harbour. So it seemed she had been searching in the right place. In the world of no-names. No laws. Where weapons ruled and money talked. Yes, Mr Liu had been right. Chang was here. Close. She could feel him waiting for her. Breathing in her mind. She tugged at Tan Wah’s tunic to hurry him because without Liev at her side she was uneasy down in this world. The risk was high.
She had grown accustomed to the smell of the streets now. The quayside was teeming with people, pushing and jostling each other, dodging around rickshaw wheels, shouting and spitting, heaped wheelbarrows and shoulderpoles barging a path, all a swaying seething mass. Lydia wasn’t looking at their faces this time. That’s why she didn’t see it coming. An old man, bent double under a mound of firewood on his back and with lank sparse hair falling around his face, merged into the grey swirl of humanity around her. She didn’t even glance at him. Not until he stopped right in their path. Then she noticed the black eyes looking up at her bright with greed. His head was twisted sideways to peer around the massive bundle on his back.
He made no sound. Just swept out a thin-bladed knife from under his padded tunic and without a word sank it up to the hilt in Tan Wah’s stomach.
Lydia screamed.
Tan Wah coughed and sank to his knees, his hands scrabbling at the sudden scarlet stain. Lydia seized his arm to support him, but as his face fell forward the old man sliced the blade expertly across his throat. Blood sprayed in a wide arc. Lydia felt it hit her face, obscenely warm in the cold air.
‘Tan Wah,’ she cried out and knelt on the filthy ground beside his limp body. His bloodshot eyes were still wide open and staring, but already the film of death had settled on them.
‘Tan Wah,’ she gasped.
A hand was tugging at her shoulder. She leaped to her feet, pulling free of the grip, and shouted out to the faces in motion around her.
‘Help me. This man is dead, he needs… Please, fetch police… I…’
A woman under a thick headscarf and a coolie hat was the only one to stop. She had a child strapped to her back. She ducked down, tapped Tan Wah’s cheek as if that could check whether his spirit had fled, and then started to rifle through the dead man’s rags, seeking his pockets. Lydia screamed at her, thrust her aside as rage ripped through her throat, robbing her of words, so that only a primitive animal growl escaped.
The woman melted back into the indifferent crowd. Hands were clutching at Lydia, but her mind was spinning and at first she thought the hands were there to help. To steady her. Then it dawned. The old man with the firewood was undoing her buttons. He was stealing her coat. Her coat. That’s what he wanted. Her coat. He had killed Tan Wah for a coat.
She spat at him, and from her pocket she yanked out the open penknife. With a separate part of her mind she registered that his blackened hands stank of tar as they tore at her buttons and that he hadn’t stabbed her because he didn’t want to ruin the coat. She drove the penknife with all her strength into the top of his arm and felt it scrape bone. His mouth opened in a high wailing toothless screech, but his hands released the coat.
Lydia threw her weight against the bundle of wood on his back, sending him sprawling onto the cobbles like an upended turtle. Then she turned and ran.
A white face. It leaped out at her. A Western long nose. Short blond hair greased flat on his head. A uniform. Among all the black oriental eyes, this pair of round blue ones made Lydia throw herself across the street and hold on to the arm of the man coming down the steps of a rowdy gaming house. She could smell whisky on him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, breath like fire in her chest. ‘I’m sorry but I… ’
‘Hey there, little lady, what’s got you all rattled? Ease up now.’
He was American. A sailor. U.S. Navy. She recognised the uniform. His hands soothed her as he would a fretful mare, stroking her back and patting her shoulder.
‘What’s up?’
‘A man. He killed my… my… my companion. For nothing. Stabbed him. He wanted my… ’
‘Calm down, you’re safe with me, honey.’
‘… wanted my coat.’
‘Fucking bandits. Come on, we’ll find a cop and get this mess sorted out. Don’t you fret yourself.’ He started walking her up the street. ‘Who was this companion of yours? I sure hope it was a guy because I’d hate to think of a pretty lady…’
‘It was a man. A Chinese.’
‘What! A goddamn Chink. Well, we’d better take a rethink here.’
He stopped walking and, with his arm firmly round her waist, elbowed his way past a goat that was dangling by its feet from a pole and bleating pathetically. He pulled her into an arched doorway where they could talk more easily.
‘You’ve had a fright, miss. But look, if it’s just a stinking Chink we’re talking about, you’d do better to let the local Chink cops sort this one out.’ He smiled, his blue eyes reassuring, his teeth white and well-cared for, his soft Southern accent as smooth as syrup.
Abruptly she tried to break away from his grip on her waist.
‘Let go of me, please,’ she said curtly. ‘If you won’t help me, then I’ll find a policeman myself.’
His mouth crushed down on hers.
Shock and revulsion rocked her. She fought wildly to free herself, dragged her nails down his cheek, but with a curse he pinned her arms behind her back, pressed her tight against the wall where the bricks crushed her wrists, and started to pull and yank at her skirt. She kicked and struggled. Writhed away from his hands. But it was like fighting against one of America’s battleships. His fingers were thrusting under the elastic of her underwear, his tongue invading her mouth like a slug.
She bit hard. Tasted blood.
‘Bitch,’ he growled and hit her.
‘Bastard,’ she hissed through the hand clamped over her mouth.
He laughed and snapped the elastic.
‘Stop right there.’ A male voice spoke coldly in the American’s ear.
All Lydia could see was the tip of a gun barrel pressed against his temple. The click of the hammer being cocked sounded like a cannon in the sudden silence in the doorway. She seized her chance. Lashed out, kicked hard, caught the American’s shin a vicious crack. He grunted and backed off.
‘Kneel down,’ the voice ordered.
The sailor knew better than to argue with a gun. He knelt. Lydia slipped out onto the busy road, ready to take to her heels again, indifferent to her rescuer. Chivalry seemed to come with a high price these days.
‘Lydia Ivanova.’
She halted. Stared at the man in the heavy green jacket, his face creased with concern. It was familiar. Her mind groped through the rush of blood to her head and the animal urge to flee.
‘Alexei Serov,’ she said at last in astonishment.
‘At least you recognise me this time.’
Relief came in a warm thick wave. ‘May I?’ She held out her hand for the revolver.
‘You’re not going to shoot anyone.’
‘No, I promise.’
He released the hammer safely and allowed her to take the gun from his grip. She crunched the heavy metal butt of it down on the American’s skull, then returned it to Alexei Serov.
‘Thank you.’ She gave him a wide smile.
He looked at her oddly. His eyes scanned her face, her hair, her clothes. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you home.’ He offered her his arm with extreme politeness. ‘Hold on to me.’
But she backed away. ‘No. No, thank you. I’ll just walk beside you.’ Even she could hear that her voice was not normal.
‘You’re very shaken, Miss Ivanova. I don’t think you’ll manage it on your own.’
‘I will.’
He stared at her again, nodded.
‘But there’s been a murder,’ she told him rapidly and pointed back down the street, though she knew it was hopeless.