said?’
‘I spoke to Harry, shortly before he died,’ said Charlie. ‘He told me how much he wanted to go to England … why it was necessary.’
‘They dispensed with him, too. Maybe they’re glad he’s dead.’ Her voice was leaden with bitterness.
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s not so; neither’s true.’
‘How do you know!’
‘I want you to come with me, now, to the High Commission,’ said Charlie, ignoring the question. ‘There are documents there: the documents to get you and …’ He searched again for the name and failed. ‘And the baby into England.’
For the first time the lassitude went from the woman, some animation reaching her face, but she still had the caution of someone expecting to be betrayed. ‘To live in England!’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, still not knowing how he could guarantee that. He went on: ‘Britain hadn’t dispensed with him.’
She became further relaxed. ‘You are from London?’
Charlie hesitated, then said: ‘Yes.’
‘You said you were a friend?’
‘I worked with Harry, in the past.’
‘Why didn’t he mention your name?’
‘It wouldn’t have been right. Did he tell you the names of other people he worked with?’
She nodded her head, in slow agreement to the point he made. ‘Not
There was the sound of a distant bell in Charlie’s head. He said: ‘Working against here? Or in London?’
‘He was very upset at how he was treated,’ she said, avoiding the straight answer.
‘Who treated him badly?’ persisted Charlie.
‘One particular man, called Harkness.’
‘How?’ asked Charlie.
‘Harry had to review his work: account for what he’d done,’ explained the Chinese woman, unknowingly using the accurate word.
Charlie isolated the accuracy, seeing a bargaining point. He said: ‘Harry had to write reports?’
‘Very many, going back over years.’
‘These reports,’ tempted Charlie. ‘How many were there? Copies, I mean? Just one? Or more than one?’
Indignation settled on her increasingly mobile face. ‘You’ve said what sort of man he was; how properly he operated! Just one, of course!’
Shit! thought Charlie. Was she clever enough to bluff, if she had to? He said: ‘I was not suggesting criticism of Harry. There was a reason for my asking.’
‘What reason?’ she asked.
‘Later,’ avoided Charlie. ‘You can come now?’
‘At once?’
She seemed uncertain, then she nodded. She said: ‘The police, when they came: they said I was to tell them if anyone approached me.’
‘I see,’ said Charlie.
‘Am I to tell them about you?’
Charlie’s impression had been of a mourning woman, erecting barriers behind which to hide her grief, but now he wasn’t so sure. He said: ‘It would not be wise.’
She nodded and said: ‘I understand. But the papers I am to get – they are for permanent residency?’
Now it was Charlie who understood; just as he understood she would not have any difficulty bluffing, if the need arose. He said confidently: ‘Yes. Permanent residency.’
‘Then we should go,’ she said, eager now.
The visa section of the High Commission was crowded, as they always seem to be in embassies and consulates everywhere, so Charlie demanded to see a counsellor, glad he had accompanied her and not left the woman to come alone; there were Chinese sitting around on benches with the attitude of people who had been waiting for a long time. He wondered if all were those being pushed aside with the dismissive description of British Overseas Citizens, effectively making them stateless. It was an opinion easy to reach from the official High Commission attitude, which began as one of impatience and only changed when Charlie demanded, with matching brusquesness, that the unwilling clerk check the degree of authorization from London. And then the change was quite dramatic: what Charlie anticipated would be a protracted formality was completed in under an hour, so quickly that the woman was suspicious.
She looked between the entry stamps in her passport to Charlie and then back again, and said: ‘Permanent?’
‘If anyone officially approaches you from the department, in England, tell them about the report that Harry was asked to prepare,’ said Charlie.
‘That is not clear to me.’
‘It doesn’t have to be,’ said Charlie. ‘Just talk about the report. And insist that a copy was kept.’
‘It
‘You know how Harry contacted the department? The numbers?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Contact me the same way, if it happens.’ Charlie realized he was rapidly getting into some sort of guardianship relationship, but he felt very sorry for her. Angry, too: for his own brief attitude towards the man, but more positively for the way London – but more definitely Harkness – had behaved. Charlie suddenly got the recollection and said: it’s Open Flower, isn’t it; the translation of your daughter’s name?’
She frowned at the abrupt switch in the conversation. Unused to making the translation, she said: ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘Harry told me.’
‘Was it bad?’ she demanded, suddenly.
Charlie hesitated, then decided he couldn’t lie and bugger how he was supposed to reply. ‘No,’ he said.
‘I must know the truth.’
‘That is the truth.’
‘He would never talk about it … the possibility of it happening,’ she remembered. ‘Whenever I tried to discuss it, he always said it couldn’t happen.’
It shouldn’t have done, thought Charlie. He said: ‘It was the truth about being a friend, too.’
‘I thought there weren’t supposed to be any, among you people.’
‘There aren’t,’ admitted Charlie. He was glad he had remained within the building: there was something he’d overlooked.
‘What do I have to do now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Charlie. ‘You can go to England as soon as you like. Providing the police do not object.’
‘I can’t imagine their bothering, from the way they’ve behaved so far,’ she said. ‘And thank you, for being Harry’s friend. My friend, too. I was rude today. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s forgotten,’ promised Charlie.
‘Will we see you in London?’
Why not, thought Charlie. He said: ‘You’ve got the number.’
Charlie stood in the foyer, watching her go out into the skyscraper area, glad there had been no hitch: his luck really was holding. Definitely with the business about Harkness and the report: prissy bugger was going to regret that.
Charlie had to ask directions for the reference library, where the assistance was much more immediately courteous than it had been in the more public section. It only took him fifteen minutes to get the names he wanted from the out-of-date but retained diplomatic registers, including those from an old guide to the official Chinese news agency through which Beijing – when it had been called Peking – had maintained representation before the 1997 agreement with London.
