The Fireman by Stephen Leather Page B

to cover her with.’ She didn’t move, her mouth open like one of the frozen corpses. ‘Now,’ I shouted at her. ‘I want her covered, now.’ She ran from the cold room, coat flapping around her legs. I took Sally’s hand in mine and it felt like wax. Her breasts wobbled grotesquely as I raised her arm and pressed her palm against my cheek. The ring wasn’t there.
    ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here,’ I said to her quietly, then as an afterthought I added, ‘Sleep well, love.’ I put her arm back alongside her body and walked away without looking back. Howard followed me out of the fridge and closed the door behind us. I didn’t even notice the heat as we stepped into the outside air, though within seconds I could feel the beads of sweat collecting on my brow. Condensation was starting to collect on the inside of the polythene bag. I’d forgotten I was still holding it.
    ‘We’re going back to the Excelsior?’ said Howard, as he pushed me into the back of a cab.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to see where it happened.’ He didn’t argue, just gave the name of the hotel to the driver and then settled back into the plastic seat, eyes closed like a Buddha in repose.
    It was a modern glass and steel structure, flanked by shops filled with cameras and Gucci bags, places where tourists could be fleeced by professionals. The pavements were packed with people, moving slowly, knocking and banging gently into each other in the afternoon heat. Young Chinese couples walking arm in arm, sweating tourists in brightly coloured holiday outfits, schoolchildren in white uniforms with book-filled rucksacks on their backs, and a seemingly endless supply of old ladies in virtually identical flowery cotton shirts and trousers. There were old men in shorts and plastic sandals, fit young men in dark suits with slim briefcases, middle-aged men carrying birds in small cages, and women with babies strapped to their backs with strips of cloth, a tidal flow of humanity that coursed through the arteries of Kowloon.
    The taxi door was opened by a youth in a scarlet outfit that looked like it belonged in the Charge of the Light Brigade. I left Howard to pay the fare and walked into the lobby through two huge frosted glass doors, each held open by a young boy. They seemed to go for door opening in a big way in Hong Kong, probably a combination of cheap labour and expensive automatic doors. The atrium seemed to stretch up forever, it was square with ranks of internal balconies crawling with ivy. Four cylindrical see-through lifts glided silently up and down while below them a bustling coffee shop was entertained by a gorgeous Chinese girl in a white dress playing a grand piano. I craned my neck back to watch one of the passenger-filled lifts soar up as Howard arrived at my side.
    ‘Impressive,’ I said.
    ‘Aye, it’s one of the best. Not up to the standard of the Mandarin or the Regent yet, but they’re getting there. They’ve got the prettiest girls in Hong Kong in reception. Just look at the bonny wee lassies.’ He was practically salivating as he ogled the rank of young girls behind the marble counter.
    ‘You’re a dirty old bastard, Howard,’ I said.
    ‘Aye, maybe you’re right. But don’t tell me you’re immune to yellow fever. It gets us all in the end. They’re soft and gentle, it’s like making love to butterflies. Have you ever had a Chinese girl?’
    ‘I once went out with a girl who had jaundice,’ I said. ‘Come on, leave it out.’ The last thing I wanted right now was a session swapping sexual memories with a lecherous old hack. But maybe Howard was being kind, trying to take my mind off the hell-hole of a mortuary and the fall that had killed Sally. Christ, I needed a drink. We walked to the lift and went up to the top floor, the fifteenth. The label by the button said ‘Health club and swimming pool’. I watched the girl in the white dress get smaller and smaller as we rose up. When the lift doors opened we