The Year of the Woman by Jonathan Gash

Author:Jonathan Gash [Gash, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780749013240
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2005-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

The man seated inside the door of KwayFay’s shack was desperate to smoke. He had a small gold cigarette case, but smoking would wake the sleeping girl whose twitchings and moanings were almost sexual. She was being tormented by some ghost. He knew that. He made a mental bow to her small house god, with its red tinsel reflecting the feeble red glow. His gold case was made twenty years before, somebody said, in a shop in London where princesses went for rings and bangles. The trouble was, it clicked when he opened it for a Chesterfield, made in America where the best tobacco came from. The click would sound like a thunderclap in this confined space. The girl would wake up, maybe talk to Tiger Wong, as he was to be known from last week. Tiger Wong did not tell why his name changed. That meant some ghost had ruled it should be so. On account of this, the old man, Business Head of the great Triad, had ordered that this girl be protected from harm.

It would have been enough, the watching man thought, had new-name Tiger Wong ruled that one man must visit Mount Davis and tell the squatter camp to protect KwayFay. Then life would be easy: any harm to her, multiply by however much rage Tiger Wong felt if injury, harm, or bad luck befell her. Easy way, hard way. He shrugged mentally, watching KwayFay become more peaceable. The troubling ghost must have gone to wherever ghosts went for a rest.

He felt no animosity towards Tiger Wong, for the Triad master was there to give orders. Explanations were frivolous and not to be thought about. Easy way, hard way. They were all the same in the end, bearing no relationship to consequences. If the outcome of a given rule was success, good. If failure, then payment was due from whoever had been ordered to carry it out at the time of failure.

Easy way, hard way.

The watcher’s name was Tang. He came from the harbour at Tai Po, over beyond Kowloon at Tolo Harbour. He almost chuckled at the memory of how as a boy he’d played the game of Giant Striding Earth in the market there. How they used to laugh! Giant Strides is what Tai Po’s original name meant in the old language, folk said, so naturally it was right to stride with enormous steps, which is the proper way to avoid snakes and tigers who then can’t keep up with you because they’re easily tricked. They always think you’re moving fast, when in fact you’re not. Dumb fucking snakes, dumber fucking tigers. There must have been lots of wild animals about Tai Po back then before the trees were chopped down.

Not that his boss, now to be known as Tiger Wong, was simple, no. Tiger Wong could never be tricked. He said this girl was immediately to spend much of the money she had been given. And she had not yet spent a cent. Failure loomed ahead for somebody.

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