The Snowfly Read online

  “Her Majesty within rights!” Chen-Jones shouted. “Devil Mao and Red Guard make civil disobedience! Cannot allow Reds this!”

  I explained patiently, “I’m not interested in the reasons for the situations, only what happened during them.”

  “No help!” Chen-Jones said. “You must go now!” He pumped his hand at the door, trying to encourage me along.

  In the vestibule of the church a man stared at me and followed me outside.

  “I hear,” he said, shaking his head in distaste. “Chen-Jones only care about reputation. Tonight you come number fourteen Eatery Lane. You come alone, okay? Nine?”

  I agreed, not because I thought it would bear fruit, but from desperation.

  That evening I met my mysterious benefactor, who introduced me to a nervous man named Li, who in turn took me through dark and odiferous streets to a dank flat to meet a woman called Jen Chia Yi Yi. She was twenty-six, a diminutive woman with long black hair and a disfigured face that defied description. Her cheekbones had been crushed, her nose mashed to a lump that barely protruded from the plane of her face; both of her eyes hung to the outside of their orbits. She could see, but without depth perception. Li said she had to be led everywhere.

  Li served as translator.

  “What do I call you?” I asked.

  Li translated and the woman answered in halting English. “I am Joy, please. Jen Chia Yi Yi has gone to Father Christ’s Heaven.”

  “You were in the riots.”

  She nodded once.

  “I waiting for boat to Kowloon for work,” she said. She switched to Chinese with Li and he continued the story.

  “She say angry crowds come running and they are very loud; these people followed by police firing crying gas and shooting wooden bullets.”

  “You were struck by a wooden bullet?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Did you seen who shot you?” I asked her.

  “Yes, very close,” she said softly.

  “What distance, twenty feet, thirty?”

  She had a quick discussion in Chinese with Li.

  Li explained. “She say, arm length.’”

  I reached toward Li to approximate the distance. “Like this?”

  The woman nodded.

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Please, I want go work. No trouble.”

  “And he said?”

  They conferred quietly and Li looked befuddled as he tried to sort it out.

  “Not exact translation,” he said apologetically. “Miss Joy say policeman say no more yellow Blackamoors make baby with God’s white people.”

  “Blackamoor?” I repeated.

  “Negroes,” Li said.

  She nodded solemnly.

  I had a pretty strong suspicion she had been targeted by the Hong Kong constabulary for racist reasons. Never mind Mao and Red politics.

  I explained as delicately as I could that the baton round that had injured her might be used in England. Did she want others to suffer what she had gone through? It took a great deal of convincing, but in the end Jen Chia Yi Yi agreed to pose for photographs. Charlie and I went to see her a couple of days later and she posed for nearly an hour.

  •••

  I assembled photos of the sheep carcasses and interviews with Shelldrake and Jen Chia Yi Yi, and from these wrote the first draft of my story, which I showed to Joe Daly. He read the draft without comment, gave it back, and went through the photographs, grimacing as he studied the woman’s disfigured face. When he was done, he carefully stacked them on the edge of my desk.

  “Okay, these bullets are shitty things. But will the government use them, and if so, where and against whom? Right now all we have are allegations and we can’t really grade the validity of our sources.” I liked his choice of pronouns. What a change from Del Puffit. “I think we need to confront the government,” Daly continued. “Let’s see what sort of reaction we get.”

  I told him I had an appointment with Gerow Hedge, deputy commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.

  “Why Hedge?”

  “He’s responsible for special actions and technical support.”

  Daly nodded. “You think he’s responsible for the development program?”

  “That’s one of the things I want to find out.” I had also asked Dolly about Hedge and she told me that he was new to London, having been brought in from Hong Kong—a fact that irritated a great number of senior London police, who felt they deserved the job. I wondered if this included Shelldrake, who remained a shadow.

  “If we’re on to a government plan, they aren’t going to take kindly to us,” Daly said.

  “Are you saying drop it?”

  “Nope. Go get ’em but get it right. That’s our job.”

  Two years before I got to London, the city’s Metropolitan Police had relocated to the Westminster district in old Victorian buildings next to the Thames. The new offices were referred to as New Scotland Yard. Gerow Hedge initially asked me to meet him at his offices in the Yard, but at the last minute switched the venue to a building called the Sanctuary, which was not far from Scotland Yard and kitty-corner to Westminster Abbey.

  Hedge was a short man with a wrestler’s neck, dark eyes, and a pugnacious countenance. He wore a black cashmere overcoat, a white silk muffler, and a black bowler hat pushed down so far that it bent his ears. He puffed on a brier pipe with audible sucking sounds. Three large and foreboding men loitered nearby trying to look like they weren’t with him. Bodyguards.

  “Commissioner,” I greeted him.

  “Rhodes,” he said in an almost estrogenic voice. He did not offer to shake hands. “Shall we get to the point?”

  “Mister Hedge, it’s being said that Scotland Yard is developing baton rounds made of new substances, that tests show these substances equal to teak in their lethality, and that these weapons will be employed by the British government to quell civil disorders.”

  Hedge didn’t bat an eye. “Ah, we English so love rumors,” he said. “We adore conspiracies. Psychology of a monarchy, I think. Could make a smashing academic inquiry. There are no such rounds in development, sir.”

  “But the British did employ teak baton rounds in Hong Kong.”

  “The Hong Kong constabulary utilized them.”

  It was standard political tactics to shift blame, to shed responsibility on a technicality.

  “Mister Hedge, Hong Kong is a British colony. The governor is appointed by the queen. The vast majority of senior positions go to Brits. The cops in Hong Kong report to Brits.”

  Hedge showed no emotion and I knew he wasn’t going to budge from his position.

  “Let me get this right. You insist there are no such rounds under development? That is, no such things as the Relative Incapacitation Index and sheep being slaughtered by government scientists?”

  Hedge remained impassive. “You say ‘government scientists,’ which takes in a great deal of territory. I can speak only for the Metropolitan Police and in that context I can assure you that we are absolutely not developing such weapons.”

  “But another government agency could be doing the development on your behest.”

  “I repeat,” he said, “Scotland Yard is not involved in such research and development.”

  This angle wasn’t going anywhere. “Mister Hedge, you worked in Hong Kong before moving to London. Were you involved in the riots there?”

  “My position was entirely advisory and observational. The riots there were nationalistic, stimulated by mainland China.”

  “But baton rounds were employed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you personally witnessed injuries incurred by such rounds?”

  “I have,” he said.

  “Closely?”

  “Yes, sir.”

&
nbsp; “You endorse the use of such weapons?”

  “It was not my decision. You must remember that Hong Kong is a different culture with different values. Officials faced with civil disruption must weigh many factors: the magnitude of the threat, the estimated size of the force needed to restore peace or prevent the problem from escalating. Such decisions are invariably agonizing.”

  “You agreed with the decision to use teak rounds?”

  “I did not say that, sir. Such decisions are not taken fatuously. There are established rules of engagement.”

  “Such as?” He was starting to talk.

  “The rounds must be used only to break up a congregation, aimed only at the lower halves of targets, never discharged from more than twenty meters, and not discharged at all unless lives are threatened.”

  “Were all these guidelines adhered to in Hong Kong?”

  “I cannot say they were.”

  “Would such rounds be used here?”

  “Teak would never be used in England,” he said. “Not against Englishmen.”

  “By that you mean white Englishmen?” I said.

  “English is not a color,” he said with the slightest hint of irritation.

  I had spent a great deal of time reading the clippings given to me by Shelldrake at our first meeting.

  “Press reports claim high rates of head injuries, extensive firing when lives were clearly not in jeopardy, and the targeting of people who were not involved in the disorders.”

  “I pay no attention to press reports,” he said sanctimoniously.

  He would soon, I hoped.

  “You’re quite new in London,” Hedge said. “Do you know this building?”

  “No.”

  “It was at one time a place where criminals could hide to escape justice.”

  “Convicted criminals or alleged criminals?”

  Hedge smiled maliciously. “Anyone who hides must be guilty. There are no more sanctuaries, Rhodes. Not in England.”

  “Is that a message?”

  “Think of it as a history lesson.”

  I was tired of warnings disguised as history lessons.

  “You say no rubber or plastic bullets are being developed by the government.”

  “I am saying that Scotland Yard is not involved in such a thing,” Hedge answered as he sauntered away. His muscular companions walked to his sides with one in front, like a small squadron of aircraft.

  •••

  I called Joe Daly from a pay phone. “I just talked to Hedge.”

  “He give you anything?”

  “He denies that Scotland Yard is involved in developing the weapons. He doesn’t deny that the government is involved.”

  “He can’t speak for the entire government.”

  “Joe, I can keep talking to politicians and officials and getting denials or we can run the story and see what happens. We have the photos.”

  “Write it,” Daly said after a pause.

  The story went on the wire two days later and the next afternoon I found a bleeding sheep carcass on the landing outside my flat. There was no note; there didn’t need to be.

  One week later Jen Chia Yi Yi was found dead in an alley in Limestone.

  I went to see her companion, Mr. Li, who said he had left her alone for two hours to conduct some business and found her gone when he returned. He said she never went out without him.

  An autopsy concluded that she died of a blow to the neck from a blunt object.

  I went to see Deputy Commissioner Hedge, but his assistants and supernumeraries blocked my way into his office.

  I also went to see the medical examiner who’d performed the autopsy. She was in her sixties, squarely built, the sort of person who made direct eye contact.

  I presented my credentials and launched right into my questions. “Reports say you’ve concluded that the cause of death was a blow from a blunt instrument.”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” she said.

  “Was the damage significant?”

  “Quite,” the doctor said.

  “Anything odd about the injury?”

  She looked hard at me. “There were some oddities, yes.”

  “Did you consider the possibility that the blunt instrument in question was in fact a teak baton round fired at close range?”

  Dr. Haley Patrickson didn’t respond right away. “We never considered that,” she answered pensively.

  I said, “You might want to take another look.”

  When I got back to my office, I called Hedge’s office and told them I had asked the medical examiner to look into the possibility of a baton round having killed Jen Chia Yi Yi.

  That night I got a call at home. It was Shelldrake. “Well done, Rhodes.”

  “It cost a woman her life,” I said.

  “War entails costs,” Shelldrake said.

  “There is no war,” I countered.

  “Says you, boyo.”

  I drank the better part of a bottle of Scotch that night to try to rid myself of the terrible feeling that I had been used in some way I could not yet comprehend.

  Sheep continued to be dumped weekly on my landing for the next month.

  •••

  My work over the next few months was not the least bit taxing. The row over baton rounds continued quietly as I tried again and again to meet with the medical examiner, but she continually refused. I suspected the government had gotten to her under the subterfuge of national security. I was haunted by my sense that I had been the cause of Jen Chia Yi Yi’s death. Meanwhile, I learned the haunts of England’s up-and-coming musicians, went to art and style shows, met artists and eccentrics and architects and anarchists, hung out with Charlie, and essentially enjoyed myself. Daly said he liked my work and I was happy enough. Whenever I needed something for work, Dolly Aster got it for me.

  I got copies made of the Vijver-Key article and sent the journal back to Danny. She wrote a letter back saying that her search for further information was leading nowhere, but that she would keep digging and wished me well.

  In mid-May Charlie showed up at my office one morning, his smile even more intense and animated than normal. “Mayflies are risin’, chum. Time we headed southwest, eh?”

  We left on Thursday evening, to avoid the “Friday Jam,” taking a train across the southern part of the country. We got a direct from London to Exeter, and then a branch line from there to Penzance, a name I had always thought was fictional. It took us many hours to cover a distance we might have done in half the time in an automobile. I didn’t ask why we were using the train. Charlie always had a reason for the things he did and I knew that in time all would be revealed.

  The station in Penzance was small and old but brightly painted. We unloaded our bags and a woman came across the platform and presented her cheek to Charlie for a ceremonial kiss. She bent over and Charlie had to stand on tiptoes to reach her. She was dark skinned, Indian I guessed, and wearing Wellies and faded bell-bottom blue jeans. She was six-three, reed thin, with cascading black hair, intelligent eyes, and an enchanting smile.

  “Anji,” Charlie said, pronouncing it Angie. “Meet Mister Bowie Rhodes. He’s American.”

  We shook hands and I felt her eyes appraising me.

  “Anjali Toddywalla,” she said. “Welcome to Cornwall.”

  We drove in her old dust-covered Land Rover for about thirty minutes along narrow lanes, first through forests and then into more barren land, and stopped at a two-track to lift an unadorned gate. Anjali drove through, Charlie shut the gate behind us, and we headed down into a valley, which I didn’t see until we were in it. It was dark and I couldn’t make out the landscape, but I saw lights ahead, some small ones in a cluster below and, high above them and beyond, a brightly lit sprawling house that dominated the side of the hill.

&
nbsp; We parked in front of a thatched cottage stuck in a grove. The headlights shone on thick clusters of huge rhododendrons.

  The cottage was that in name only. The interior was expansive, with a large foyer opening to a massive room decorated with paintings, bronze and porcelain statues, and framed photographs, mostly black and white. There were fly rods in a rack along one wall and a fly-tying bench cluttered with feathers and fur patches. The floors were dark green slate but covered with thick carpets. The furniture was soft and looked well used. No television in sight. No stereo. Built-in shelves overflowed with books.

  Anjali brought us tea and a platter of cucumber sandwiches, which Charlie and I consumed ravenously.

  “So,” she said, “what makes you mad for trout, Mister Rhodes? Charlie’s always been that way.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I had never really thought about my motivation for fishing.

  “Pity,” she said.

  “Don’t mind her,” Charlie said with his mouth stuffed with tiny sandwiches. “She’s got her own madness.”

  “Piss off,” she said in a polite tone and Charlie laughed his laugh.

  I wondered what their relationship was. They obviously knew each other well, but there were no physical signs of affection. Many Brits I had met were this way, but Charlie wasn’t one of them. One night in a cab he undressed a woman he’d met in a bar and had her right there beside me. He was forever pawing and kissing women we met at various functions I covered. His attentions were rarely rebuffed.

  “I feel like a bloody matador ready for the first bull of the season,” Charlie announced. “Shall we organize our gear for the morning?”

  It took us about an hour. I noticed that he had an eight-foot rod like mine, what the Brits called a one-hander (as opposed to the much longer two-handed spey rods often used for salmon). Charlie had box after box filled with thousands of flies.

  “Bit of a collector,” he said, grinning.

  This was like calling John Paul Getty a little rich. “Got a snowfly?” I asked casually.

  Charlie gave me a quizzical look. “Never heard of it.”