Chapter 19

[Food is life; the wise man enjoys his life] Ancient proverb.

‘One moment please, Docta,’ Lee said, and then he disappeared into some bushes.

Kreeger was alone for a moment on the water’s edge as Lee noisily relieved himself. Behind him the morgue crumbled into its own shadow and behind the building again he could hear the hum of the wide-awake city. In front of him the river was also busy and he stood, watching small figures clambering over a large wooden cargo boat, moored downstream of an immense sandbank. A rat scurried along the bank, breaking the doctor’s reverie. He stepped back as a second, bigger rat gave chase. Somebody yelped on the boat.

‘This city never sleep, Docta, like New York, eh?’ Lee had materialised out of the shadows and was standing at his shoulder.

Kreeger didn’t answer.

‘You hungry? I’m starving.’

‘I’m mostly tired, Jon, but also a little hungry. What do you suggest, sandwiches at the all-night deli, a snack at the nearest burger joint, a pizza at Gino’s?

‘Ha, no real fast-food here yet, Docta. Maybe next year. We have one McDonald’s but it’s a pirate; better not eat there—they put rat in the burgers. Never mind, we have our own special food. Come, I will show you one of the most famous night-markets in the city.’ Lee’s perpetual smirk was close to becoming a smile as he turned to lead the way. He seemed to come alive at the mention of food, suddenly animated like a drop of batter sizzling in hot fat; he almost skipped along the path.

Street food: globules of fat swam in the cracked bowl of the doctor’s mind, amongst tepid, stringy noodles and chunks of gristle. He didn’t groan: he was hungry and anything would do—anything within reason. Unlike Lee, he had no excitement to keep under control and followed cautiously along the dark, stony path, stepping over heaps of litter, cans, soiled rags, and rotting vegetation, disturbing busy rodents that scurried out between his feet. The silent river flowed past, its murky water giving up the odours of a septic tank. Nothing was conducive to the building his appetite. Occasionally he would start at the sound of whispering voices in the shadows or crackles in the undergrowth but would relax when he caught sight of Lee, who would be waiting ahead, throwing something into the river or hawking into the bushes. Seeing the policeman’s ease, Kreeger would shrug off his tension and try to catch up.

But fear snapped back into Kreeger as he stepped through an unlit breach in the riverbank—a pool of turbid darkness in which sandbags slumped on the slippery sod like engorged corpses waiting for the water to rise and carry them away. He looked ahead for Lee but could not see him through the dim light. He tensed, trying to pick his way across the breach on stepping stones. The fourth stone was rounded, more like a pebble, and his foot began to slip; desperate to avoid a soggy end, he jumped onto the next one but missed in his panic and put his foot into the side of a sandbag. He lost his balance and stumbled forward, hands first, onto something wet and slimy. He swore loudly.

‘You ok, Docta Kreega?’ Lee called back from an invisible body.

Kreeger wasn’t hurt, but as he pulled himself up he suddenly felt very alone. ‘Can you wait a moment Jon,’ he managed to say, ‘I’ll be right there.’ He tried to brush away some of the dirt on his knees, but his hands were filthy and it just made the mess worse. He was out of his depth and he knew it: far from home in a strange and dangerous place; helpless but for an unknown local detective, whose attitude was inscrutable at best. Maria flashed before him adding pity to his swimming emotions.

‘It’s just up here, Docta, not too far,’ came Lee’s voice again.

Kreeger gathered himself as best he could and scrambled up out of the gap in the riverbank.

‘Oh, Docta, I’m so sorry,’ Lee said when Kreeger came into view, looking down at the doctor’s muddy clothes. His sympathy was swift and as shallow as the stagnant water in which Kreeger had just fallen; he turned and hurried on.

Lee was waiting for him at a fork in the path. Further on upstream Kreeger saw more boats, this time next to some kind of a pier. Bent-over figures waddled over the concrete beneath heavy bags of what might have been rice rice.

‘Wharf One,’ Lee said, noticing the doctor’s interest and pointing over at the bobbing confusion of moored riverboats. ‘We don’t go over there in the dark. I’ll show you some other time, maybe, when it’s light.’

Lee’s perception of danger again confused the doctor. They had just walked along the dark water’s edge, with whispering voices in the shadows, where anything might have happened; and over there was a well lighted, busy wharf that Lee considered to be a threat!

‘This way please,’ Lee said, walking away from the black river, towards the beginning of some monstrous buildings that loomed up from the city’s edge.

They skirted the first warehouse along a gravel path that reeked of urine, crunching up towards a row of smaller, connected buildings that could have been shops during the day. The door of each building had been secured behind a metal grill, pulled down like a portcullis, making the storefront look like a goofy child whose mouth has been imprisoned behind a metal brace by a sadistic dentist. The higher windows—the eyes above the fortressed mouth—were barred and caged.

An animal, a small cat or a large rat, skittering away to the right, distracted the doctor; and when his shoe next hit the gravel, something exploded under its sole, petrifying his progress in an instant. ‘What the . . .’

Lee looked back over his shoulder. ‘Just a wish, Docta, don’t worry.’

Kreeger didn’t ask what he meant; he crouched to look at the shards of glass in the gravel where his foot had just been and noticed more glass, unbroken, in the shape of small phials, scattered around him.

‘They contain Phant,’ Lee said, ‘Break the glass and make a wish, eh? Don’t pick one up.’

Thanks for the warning, Kreeger muttered under his breath, wondering how much intelligence the detective gave him credit for. But he was intrigued and poked at a few of the glass phials with his penknife. He could see where the necks of the small cylinders had been snapped off—break the glass and make a wish, he repeated to himself.

‘Come on; I’m hungry,’ Lee pleaded.

*

Ahead of them, a glow pushed out into the mute darkness, a side street, cutting their grim alley at its neck. They quickly closed the distance, seeing nobody until they rounded the corner. Kreeger was already expecting something different—the noise had been increasing and the glimmer had been getting brighter—but he was not ready the confrontation, the damned light and colour that suddenly broke its confines and crashed onto him as he entered. He stopped, pulled off his hat, and put a muddy finger to his brow.

The market before them jumped with the hubbub of rowdy eaters and noisy vendors, who fought for the spaces between the ramshackle food-stands and broken trolleys. Neon blazed from the buildings, the stalls, and even from the handcarts that were pushed along by decrepit old hawkers. Kreeger was mesmerised for a moment; it all seemed stage-managed and he felt as if he had just walked into the first dress rehearsal of a poorly-produced amateur-dramatics production, where a cast of hundreds had been thrown together in a confined place to pretend to do things that they would not normally do. Beyond the stage he would again find silence and darkness; normality.

Jon Lee smiled and put his hand on Kreeger’s tense shoulder. ‘I told you it was good,’ he said, grinning. He snorted loudly through his upturned nose, as if he were trying to sniff out some particular delicacy for his stomach. ‘I hate this city, Docta,’ he said, deciding on a direction to take, ‘but I love the food, and I love this night-market. Everybody know Jon Lee here.’ He sniffed again, on his chosen bearing, patted Kreeger’s back, then floated away. It was as if he had miraculously returned to childhood and had just discovered a magic garden to play in. He almost danced from side to side, calling out to people he knew, putting things into his busy mouth.

Kreeger slowly followed, attracting even more attention than his playful host.

Halfway through the rambling market, Lee side-stepped a beggar and moved under a huge awning of plastic sheeting and sisal; he twirled around a stool and sat down at a makeshift table that had been rammed up against a wall. Almost at once a rat darted out from the table legs and ran up a cable that stretched diagonally across the brickwork. ‘Come, Docta, noodle supper,’ he said, paying no attention to the vermin at all. He unsheathed a pair of cheap chopsticks by stabbing them against the tabletop, their ends ripping through the paper wrapper, which he swiped to the floor. He then noisily split the sticks apart. He must have already ordered because no sooner had Kreeger sat down than the stall-holder slid along the greasy tabletop two large china bowls, both slopping soup over their cracked rims as they came to rest. Lee’s eyes widened as his mouth immediately dropped to the bowl that stopped in front of him. He noisily slurped up a long noodle, helping it along with the flick of a chopstick.

Kreeger was not as eager to attack his meal. He felt filthy: clothes, shoes, and worst of all hands—he hated to eat with dirty hands. He tore a few pieces of tissue paper from a roll that sat in the middle of the table and tried to clean up a bit. He soon gave up and instead used the paper to mop up the spilt soup. It quickly became swamped, forcing him to abandon that attempt at hygiene as well. He picked up a pair of chopsticks, tore off the paper covering, and faced his noodle supper.

‘Did you know Nathan Blye?’ Kreeger asked. He tapped the side of his bowl with his chopsticks.

‘Mmm,’ Lee slurped up a noodle, ‘no I didn’t know him. But I saw him once or twice; first when he arrived in the city, eight or nine months before. Again a few months ago, came down into the city for something; shaved head, grey robes; very funny, you know?’ He tipped more soup into his mouth, this time by lifting the bowl off the table. ‘Eat Docta. Very delicious.’

Despite his hunger, Kreeger could not bring himself to touch the meal before him; it was everything he had imagined, and more: a dirty bowl of lukewarm, oily, and mostly unidentifiable slop. He kept his mind on the dead American. ‘Nobody knew who he was?’

Lee closed his chopsticks into his fist, stopped chewing, and looked up at Kreeger. ‘No, nobody knew who he was. Why should they? Even you don’t seem to know who he was. He was just some young white boy alone in a big city. Look how many people here, Docta, so many. Now that he’s dead, some people talk about him; but nothing special, so many people die here—you see some already.’ Lee went back to his noodles with renewed energy.

Kreeger stared at the slurping policeman, wondering how he could remain so detached and aloof from his work. Of course Kreeger had no right to expect any special sympathy for the death of an American and Lee was right, the doctor too did not know Nathan Blye (he had felt nothing when Filcher had described Blye’s demise). Seeing him lying there on the slab, however, vulnerable and hurt, had changed everything: Nathan Blye was no longer just a couple of smooth words tripped off the charming tongue of Maynard Filcher or a name scribbled on a Majestic Hotel napkin. Now he was . . .

‘Do they all come to you in that condition?’ Kreeger suddenly said.

‘No, certainly not. In that way Blye he is special case.’

‘But you think he was also killed by addicts, like the others.’

‘Docta, the addicts here don’t always kill each other: sometimes kill themselves, sometimes kill innocent people. Always violent. Blye was the worst so far, but I’m sure there will be more like him soon; everything getting worse here. Every day worse.’

‘I might still be able to find something at the crime scene,’ Kreeger said, quickly changing the subject.

Lee looked up and put down his eating implements. ‘I . . . what . . . the crime scene . . . you . . .’ He tried to get something out but for the first time he fumbled his lines.

‘Yes,’ Kreeger interrupted, ‘I will need to go up to the hill, or the mountain, or whatever it is, and see exactly where he was killed. It may be a little late but if we do it first thing in the morning you never know—I might still get something to help us along.’

‘But I have already investigated the crime scene; nothing there.’

Kreeger looked at the detective, the scene on the pavement outside the hotel flashing back into his mind, but this time he would not be tempted into words. He poured his face into a serious, fierce mould, and with it menaced the small man.

Lee squirmed on his stool, which rocked under his shifting weight; the chopsticks were suddenly back in his hands, rolling between glistening palms. ‘Eh . . . you said you want to do the autopsy tomorrow . . .’

‘The body is on ice so the autopsy can wait; it’s more important to get to the crime scene.’ The expression held.

Lee had lost his voice and was looking from side to side, as if he were trying to find someone. Finally he summoned a slow-motion shrug and seemed to pull himself back together. ‘Ahh . . . ok, I will see what I can do for tomorrow,’ he said before repositioning the chopsticks between his fingers and getting back to work.

The tension seemed to have broken: Kreeger had recast his countenance into one of serious contemplation but was still not eating. ‘I don’t know anything about Long,’ he said, ‘but did Blye come all the way out here just to find him?’

This time Lee talked through the noodles. ‘I don’t know, maybe. Masta Long is a very good man, good teacha. Many come to him; used to be many, many more. But the people in this city don’t like him any more, he is a dark angel to them now.’

‘Why, what happened?’

‘Before Long came here, Abbot Fang, he was the, how you say … the number one. Fang take care of the religion here. But Long was already famous monk, lived in a cave up in the mountain, and when he showed up in the city he was very popular. Fang was not so happy. Nobody knows what really happened, many rumours, gossip. Long lost his reputation and disappeared back up the mountain to run the monastery. Very ancient monastery. Now Fang is number one again.’

A squall at the far end of the street interrupted the two men’s meal. Lee immediately grabbed his bowl, as if he were anticipating a tornado to sweep through the market and take everything with it; Kreeger rose from the table, leaving his food. The throng of people in the road parted in terror as a screaming youth blew past, blood trickling out of a dirty shirtsleeve, his crazed eyes moments from eruption. He disappeared into the dark alley from which Kreeger and Lee had entered the night-market. Kreeger turned his eyes back to Lee, as if he was expecting the policeman to do something, but Lee kept his hands on his bowl.

‘Don’t worry, Docta, it’ll pass.’ Lee said.

Moments later the street again billowed up as a pursuing gang of teens sped through, hands and feet flaying at the ends of stretched limbs, yelling wildly. A table on the corner spilled as they disappeared into the night.

‘Drugs,’ was all Jon Lee said before hastily resuming his meal.

Kreeger was still trembling as he re-seated himself on the uncomfortable stool; his supper waited, unspilt and untouched, before him.