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And yet, I have half a pot of dark brown honey remaining in my bag; a half a pot of honey that is worth more than nations. (I was tempted to write, worth more than all the tea in China, perhaps because of my current situation, but fear that even Watson would deride it as cliché.)

  And speaking of Watson …

  There is one thing left to do. My only remaining goal, and it is small enough. I shall make my way to Shanghai, and from there I shall take ship to Southampton, a half a world away.

  And once I am there, I shall seek out Watson, if he still lives – and I fancy he does. It is irrational, I know, and yet I am certain that I would know, somehow, had Watson passed beyond the veil.

  I shall buy theatrical makeup, disguise myself as an old man, so as not to startle him, and I shall invite my old friend over for tea.

  There will be honey on buttered toast served for tea that afternoon, I fancy.

  There were tales of a barbarian who passed through the village on his way east, but the people who told Old Gao this did not believe that it could have been the same man who had lived in Gao’s shack. This one was young and proud, and his hair was dark. It was not the old man who had walked through those parts in the spring, although, one person told Gao, the bag was similar.

  Old Gao walked up the mountainside to investigate, although he suspected what he would find before he got there.

  The stranger was gone, and the stranger’s bag.

  There had been much burning, though. That was clear. Papers had been burnt – Old Gao recognised the edge of a drawing the stranger had made of one of his bees, but the rest of the papers were ash, or blackened beyond recognition, even had Old Gao been able to read barbarian writing. The papers were not the only things to have been burnt; parts of the hive that stranger had rented were now only twisted ash; there were blackened, twisted, strips of tin that might once have contained brightly coloured syrups.

  The colour was added to the syrups, the stranger had told him once, so that he could tell them apart, although for what purpose Old Gao had never enquired.

  He examined the shack like a detective, searching for a clue as to the stranger’s nature or his whereabouts. On the ceramic pillow four silver coins had been left for him to find – two yuan coins and two silver pesos – and he put them away.

  Behind the shack he found a heap of used slurry, with the last bees of the day still crawling upon it, tasting whatever sweetness was still on the surface of the still-sticky wax.

  Old Gao thought long and hard before he gathered up the slurry, wrapped it loosely in cloth, and put it in a pot, which he filled with water. He heated the water on the brazier, but did not let it boil. Soon enough the wax floated to the surface, leaving the dead bees and the dirt and the pollen and the propolis inside the cloth.

  He let it cool.

  Then he walked outside, and he stared up at the moon. It was almost full.

  He wondered how many villagers knew that his son had died as a baby. He remembered his wife, but her face was distant, and he had no portraits or photographs of her. He thought that there was nothing he was so suited for on the face of the earth as to keep the black, bullet-like bees on the side of this high, high hill. There was no other man who knew their temperament as he did.

  The water had cooled. He lifted the now solid block of beeswax out of the water, placed it on the boards of the bed to finish cooling. Then he took the cloth filled with dirt and impurities out of the pot. And then, because he too was, in his way, a detective, and once you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth, he drank the sweet water in the pot. There is a lot of honey in slurry, after all, even after the majority of it has dripped through a cloth and been purified. The water tasted of honey, but not a honey that Gao had ever tasted before. It tasted of smoke, and metal, and strange flowers, and odd perfumes. It tasted, Gao thought, a little like sex.

  He drank it all down, and then he slept, with his head on the ceramic pillow.

  When he woke, he thought, he would decide how to deal with his cousin, who would expect to inherit the twelve hives on the hill when Old Gao went missing.

  He would be an illegitimate son, perhaps, the young man who would return in the days to come. Or perhaps a son. Young Gao. Who would remember, now? It did not matter.

  He would go to the city and then he would return, and he would keep the black bees on the side of the mountain for as long as days and circumstances would allow.

  SIMON LEWIS works as a screenwriter and travel writer, as well as writing crime fiction. He is the author of three novels: Go, Bad Traffic and Border Run. His science fiction feature film The Anomaly, his heist film Tiger House, and his travel thriller Jet Trash, are all due out in 2014. He was born in Wales in 1971.

  Buy and Bust

  Simon Lewis

  DC Ashton opened the Cherokee jeep passenger door and said to the driver, ‘I’m Chris. I understand you have some metalwork I might be interested in.’

  The driver nodded. Jesus, the arms on the guy, muscles like knotted rope. Ashton scanned the car as he got in: no one hiding in the back seat, both the driver’s hands visible – resting on the wheel – door lock a catch by the handle, windows automatic and controlled by a switch beside the gearstick, now half-hidden by empty crisp packets. More junk food wrappers in the passenger footwell: Ashton trod them to make sure they were empty. Place smelled of sweat and feet.

  The driver said, ‘I want you to take off your clothes.’ He talked slowly and without much inflection, with an eastern European accent.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You get them back later.’

  ‘Boxers too?’

  ‘You can leave them on. But your shoes and socks yes.’

  ‘We going dogging?’

  ‘No.’

  As Ashton pulled his trousers off, twisting in the narrow space, he saw glass ampules rolling in the footwell. He guessed they were steroids, and looked again at the guy – yeah, he had that big gut roiders get, acne on the back of his neck above his t-shirt there, a good pair of tits too.

  ‘It’s not every day I get into a car with a strange man and take off my clothes. Once a month, at most. What about my money? I’ve got a big wedge, and I’m not minded to be parted from it right away.’

  ‘It’s in a wallet?’

  ‘No. A rubber band around it.’

  ‘Keep it.’

  Now Ashton in the passenger seat was naked except for his boxers with his tight block of cash between his thighs. The driver looked him up and down then put a big hand on the back of his neck, under the ponytail.

  ‘See? No surprises. And nothing under the hair. You should take up a more touchy feely profession, you have such delicate hands.’

  ‘Clothes in here,’ giving Ashton a coolbag. ‘And the ones that are in there, you put on.’

  Grey sweatpants, identical to the driver’s, and a t-shirt.

  ‘Your old gym clothes, nice. Do I get to keep them? Only there’s this film premier I’ve been invited to later.’

  ‘You can keep them.’

  The guy’s face hardly moved, even when he spoke. High cheekbones and prominent bridge on a nose that had been broken a couple of times. Hard to tell but he looked short, maybe five foot six, and he would be eighteen stone at least. No visible tattoos or scars but stretchmarks on the arms, an effect, presumably, of rapid muscle growth.

  The driver put Ashton’s clothes into the coolbag, zipped it shut and velcroed the cover down, then tossed it onto the backseat.

  ‘Soundproof, yes? In case I’d left a cheeky recording device in a pocket or suchlike. This is really taking precautions. I never been through a rigamarole like this before. Well, you like to be careful and that’s sending all the right messages to me and my people. I know a guy does all his meetings in a sauna, same reason.’

  Ashton never liked to wear a wire. He’d insisted on heading bare into this assignment, and clearly that was just as well; if he’d worn any kit he’d be a bloo
dy pulp already.

  The driver took the jeep down the A508 towards Pitsford. Ashton resisted the urge to look out for the surveillance teams. Somewhere in the light Sunday night traffic were five or six unmarked cars and over a dozen cops, many of them toting Heckler and Koch machine guns, Glok pistols and tasers. Not that they or any of their fucking gear would be any use if it kicked off ’cause the lumbering fuckers always arrived five minutes too late for any action.

  Ashton worried about breaking the ampules with his bare feet so he fished them out and put them in the glove compartment. He said, ‘I understood I would be dealing with a lady?’ The driver said nothing and a silence stretched.

  Ashton’s legend was based on a career burglar he’d nicked a few times back when he was still uniform. The guy had been mouthy, always dicking around, but sharp; good company, which was a rare quality in burglars. Real life Ashton didn’t feel like talking, was scared and uncomfortable and thinking this was a shit way for a family man to make a living: so he put himself aside, and tried to channel the legend: he rolled his head a little, stuck his tongue in his cheek, and blathered. ‘This fucking rain. Lashing it down. We heading into Northampton? I always thought it was a shithole but the countryside around’s not bad, is it? I enjoyed the drive up. This is a nice ride, mate. I rate the Cherokee.’

  ‘This is a Cherokee Grand, not a Cherokee.’

  ‘Yeah well, it’s smooth.’

  I don’t rate the Cherokee. Usually with American cars, you put them up against the Germans in the same class, and they don’t have the build quality. But this one is a match for a German car. Or a Japanese. Got a quadra drive, you know it? Transfers torque between the front and rear axles. Eight speed transmission, six point four litres, two hundred and fifty horses.’

  ‘It holds up offroad?’

  ‘Good enough.’

  ‘That’s important right, out there in Eastern Europe?’

  The driver turned his head to look at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Well the roads aren’t that good, are they? You got a lot of dirt tracks right? Going through the forests?’

  ‘We have metalled roads. You think we ride donkeys and watch black and white TV? When we see a toilet we wash our hands in it?’

  ‘No offence, I’m just winding you up. I went to Vilnius once. On a stag. Like a fairy land, cobbled streets and churches everywhere. Beautiful.’

  ‘Cheap beer and cheap women.’

  ‘Not always. One of mine was very expensive. She ran off with my wallet.’

  Ashton found himself once more considering the driver’s horrible arms: like baseballs stuffed in a stocking, meandering veins, as random as rivers on a map. Roiders were unpredictable and aggressive, but at least he would be slow.

  The driver pulled up, and a black lady stood up from a bus shelter bench and got into the back of the jeep. She wore a long black skirt, shapeless woolly cardigan and had thick straight hair that was likely a wig. Ashton shifted round, and noted fake eyelashes, rouged cheeks, a couple of fake beauty spots. She was middle aged, probably weighed as much as the driver, and had an inch on him in height. She carried a covered woven basket, both hands on the handle. She could have been on her way to church.

  Ashton said, ‘Hello,’ and she said, ‘You better put your seatbelt on, darling.’

  Before Ashton had time to respond, the driver accelerated hard, then yanked down on the wheel, and swung the jeep screeching onto a side road. Ashton braced an arm against the dashboard. They took a swift left, then another, then a right, and now they were speeding through an estate of bland low rise. Lots of narrow winding roads and cul de sacs – good spot to lose any vehicular surveillance. Ashton noted signposts: Anhyo Walk, Charlcombe Avenue, directions to the university. More lurching manoeuvres, then they were crossing back over the A508.

  Ashton said, ‘Nice.’ He had to reckon the SO19 units had been shaken off. Still, maybe the jeep’s high profile would make it easy to pick up again. He wished he’d worn one of those little GPS devices, could have hidden it in his shoe. But there hadn’t been a working one in stock when he’d got to operations and the CO has told him not to sweat it. Fucking typical, another dream factory balls up, always winging it, going off half-arsed. But this kind of thinking was taking him out of character, and that was dangerous, so he shook his head and he was back, and looking at the black lady and saying, ‘Bad news is, he’s going to make you wear his old clothes.’

  ‘Look at you,’ she was saying, ‘like a baby in a sack. I’m sorry, he’s paranoidal, it’s the anabolics, they’re not good for his mental health.’

  ‘You must be little Red Riding Hood. We having a picnic?’

  ‘I am wet and it is late and I need to get home.’

  She opened the basket and took out a shoebox, handed it across.

  ‘I look at it, here, now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the driver.

  Ashton opened the box. The pistol lay in a crudely cut block of polystyrene. He had never been taught a thing about firearms. The thinking went, teach undercovers how to handle a gun and they’d do it on the street and betray their training. Looking at the thing now, he realised what a dumb rule that was. He didn’t have a clue what to do with it. He didn’t know where the safety was or even how to load it, let alone disassemble it. He held the pistol by the barrel, turned it over and over, nodded and frowned. The main thing to notice was how small it was.

  ‘It’s a package,’ the driver was saying. ‘You get the silencer and one magazine of ammo too, they’re there in the bottom.’

  ‘Homemade bullets?’

  ‘Factorymade. The silencer is homemade, but you don’t need high tolerances for a silencer. It will only suppress the first few rounds.’

  Hoping he wasn’t betraying his ignorance, Asthon said, ‘What make is it?’

  ‘Baikal. It’s converted from an 8mm gas pistol. In Russia you buy those in a shop. It fires tear-gas pellets: big noise, big scare, lady keeps her handbag.’

  ‘Or maybe the mugger is holding a real gun, and she gets shot in the face. So this is just another dodgy conversion that will blow your finger off if you try to fire it. I was told you had good stuff.’

  Ashton was just talking, spinning things out. SO19 should be moving any moment: vehicles would slew across the road, pinning them in front and back, then there would be a lot of shouting, lancing torch beams and waving gun barrels. But more likely the arseholes were looking for him, haring round Northampton in a tizzy, barking into radios.

  ‘Same materials, same tolerances as the real Baikal pistol,’ said the driver. ‘That’s good Russian engineering, solid steel. It is converted by reliable people. They make some changes to the magazine and put a 9mm barrel on, properly rifled. Then you have a very good pistol. A serious thing. For close work. You won’t win a target shooting competition. But if you want to kill someone, it is very good for that.’

  ‘I don’t want anything that’s been used before.’

  ‘It has no history. It was fired once, twice maybe, to test it. It is clean.’

  ‘So this box, all together, is …’

  ‘Two thousand.’

  ‘I’ve been offered cheaper.’

  ‘Of course, you can get something that will blow your hand off or jam for a few hundred pounds. Or something with a bit of history, you can get it for fifty quid. Might even work. But if the police find it you’re tied to seven murders you never heard of.’

  ‘Okay you got a deal. Let me count out the money here.’

  He handed the gun back to the black lady.

  ‘I’ll put it in the bag with your clothes.’ She spoke up again as he was counting out twenties. ‘Have you heard anything from Trayvon?’

  ‘He talked to someone, who talked to the people I represent …’

  ‘I mean personally, I want to know how he’s doing. Anything.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

  ‘You know how many socks they are allowed a week? Two pairs. You want to get high
in there, that’s no problem, any drug you like, there it is for you, can get it delivered to your cell. But you can’t get clean socks.’

  ‘It’s a mad world.’

  Ashton wondered if these two were a couple. They must be something to see, in bed. Brick shithouse bumping around on a bouncy castle.

  ‘Have you done time?’ asked the lady.

  ‘Nothing hard, a shit and a shave.’

  ‘How did you get through it?’

  ‘I read. You keep your head down, you front when you have to, and all it is is boring.’

  ‘What did you read? Did they have good books? Improving books?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, ma’am, I studied Spanish.’

  ‘Did you. Well that is excellent. I hope Trayvon can put his time to some good use, in that way. And come out with some improvement in his character.’

  ‘I hope so too ma’am.’

  ‘Cynthia please.’

  ‘I’m Chris.’

  ‘He put his hand across the seat divide to briefly clasp hers.

  ‘Nice to see a bit of courtesy,’ she said, ‘you don’t get that much, in this business.’

  The driver said, ‘You talk too fucking much. Shut your mouth.’

  ‘See this,’ said Cynthia, ‘the abuse I put up with. He gets so ratty. Imagine being stuck in here with him for days. There’s always an atmosphere.’

  DC Ashton looked at the junk food packets. Some unfamiliar brands there – Zchilu, Estrella, Tayto. Eastern European, he guessed. He’d hazard a guess that these jokers were picking up the weapons themselves – driving all the way to Lithuania – and they had just come back from a run. Plenty of places in a big car like this to hide a few guns, they could use a lead-lined battery, say. But you wouldn’t drive all that way for one or two, you’d bring back a dozen. Two dozen.

  Ashton, handing his cash across, said, ‘I want some more. Right now.’

  ‘This wasn’t mentioned before,’ said the driver.

  ‘This life is tough, and it’s tougher if you’re stupid. If I told you in advance I was rocking up with an utter shitload of cash, there’s going to be a temptation there. I didn’t know how on the level you are. Now we’ve made the connection, I can see you’re decent people and I can show my hand. You have got more, haven’t you?’