IT WAS DARK when they landed in Hong Kong but Rachel had told him what to expect. ‘I’d hate you to miss the joys of the Kai Tak shuffle,’ she whispered. ‘People have screamed coming into Hong Kong. What we’ll do is fly down the verge of the harbour with the runway on our right. We come to Checkerboard Hill, and it really is in checkerboard colours – red and white. So you don’t fly into it, I suppose. Then you make a hard forty-degree turn right, over Kowloon. You’ve got to get below cloud height – 500 feet – at this stage because you’re flying manually; you’re following these sodium lights down there, aiming straight at every one of them. Which is when the shuffle comes in because you’re weaving from one light to the next – it’s illegal to have flashing neon lights in Hong Kong, in case pilots start following them and drive you into a department store. You go past one every twenty seconds, then you’re into the canyon. There’ll be some lights on in the canyon, but not many, so you won’t get the full effect this time of the morning. Anyway, you’ll see lighted windows below you. Then – wait for it – you’ll see lighted windows above you! Then the buildings stop and you’ve got two miles to dump this crate onto the shortest international runway in the world – the universe, probably.’
He’d watched in hypnotised horror as all this came to pass. Would Linda Harvey cry this time? Maybe she was so pissed off with him for running away that she’d be pleased he was dead? He spent the tingling minutes of the landing in alternating visions of Linda Harvey weeping on his empty bunk on the Aurora and mountains of red tuna flesh lying like Welsh football jerseys at the crash-site on Runway 13.
He hadn’t known the cabin crew would change at Hong Kong – Rachel sure as hell hadn’t told him. She vanished goodbyelessly from his life for ever. Women. Life, since the catching of the fish, had been lived in a climate of high treason.
The nice fish professor was leaving the flight at Hong Kong and caught up with Royce on a horizontal elevator trip to what turned out to be a holding bay for transit passengers. ‘Hope you got your problems resolved with the vegetarians. By the way, just to clear a slight misunderstanding, there’s thirty species of tunny and they all – including bluefin – operate in shoals. They herd fish like sheepdogs, swimming round and round them in formation, spinning them, turning them into a kind of tornado of fish. Then they attack. Wham, smack into the middle of the tornado. Appalling – controlled carnage. The speed and precision with which they snatch fish is astonishing. Either your fish was a hermit, or you’re soon gonna have a new industry off Westport. Congratulations.’
He stepped off the elevator at ARRIVALS. Royce kept on for IN TRANSIT.
NIKKI WAS ONE of the new crew of air hostesses. She was pretty but uninteresting. He’d gone off air hostesses anyway.
‘The fish is checked through to the market and will go with one of the accredited transporters,’ she said – with just a hint of that ess whistle that Karen Phibbs had. ‘We send a lot of stuff to Tsukiji – usually from the cargo hold, mind you! Anyway, they’ll take you as well – have to get the exporter to market with his export, eh?’ She smiled. ‘And it will save you an absolute fortune in fares, believe you me. Where are you staying in Tokyo?’
Good question. ‘At the market,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay at the market till the deal is done, then I’ll come back here.’
‘Not going to look around? If you want to see the night-life go to Roppongi – there’s a bar there called the Quest. It’s run by an Aussie but lots of Kiwis go there.’
‘Thanks, I might. I’m not thinking any further ahead than the market at the moment.’
‘Right. Well, good luck. When we land at Narita, you’ll have to get off with everyone else. You can’t go through Freight with the fish but there are established procedures for dealing with it, so it’ll be quite safe. All you have to do is get to Customs and show them your documentation and they’ll do the rest. The trip to market takes over an hour, but fortunately it’s on this side of town, so you won’t have to go right through Tokyo. You’ll be in Tsukiji by … Are you all right?’
White electricity had blasted through his mind, dizzying him. No, he wasn’t all right. He was as unright as humans get. Documentation. He didn’t have documentation! Betty had the bloody documentation! ‘I’ve just remembered,’ he gasped in a whisper, ‘I haven’t got all the papers I need. Jesus wept, I’ve spent the whole trip forgetting the papers were still in New Zealand!’
‘Oh dear. Well, can you get them?’
‘No,’ he said with miserable certainty. Betty passing over the papers? Fat chance! He was shivering; the world was falling apart. ‘I’ve got one copy of a Fish Landing Document in my name – do you think that’s enough?’ God he must look pathetic.
‘Goodness, I’ve no idea. I’m certainly no expert in fish, but I know you’ve got to have export papers for most things coming in through Narita.’ There was a whiteness of pessimism on her face. She didn’t think he had a show in hell. It was very good and brave of her not to retreat from a stranger’s crisis. ‘Look, in emergencies we can get radio messages through. But whether the captain would consider this an emergency I don’t know. Frequencies are gold up here.’
A thought came into Royce’s mind – not so much a thought as a mood. That mood of calm amidst chaos he’d felt in the Doo Duk Inn when he’d told Linda Harvey he didn’t have a girlfriend. ‘Well, I don’t know if the captain thinks it’s an emergency either,’ he said slowly, ‘but I think Mr Ross would.’
‘Benjamin Ross?’
‘Yes. It’s because of him I’m here. After all the trouble and expense this airline’s gone to, I think he’d be pretty cheesed off if the fish didn’t get to market in the end.’
Nikki stared thoughtfully, then nodded. ‘That’s a very good thought, actually,’ she said. ‘A pretty damn cheeky one, but right on the button. I’ll put it to the captain.’ She stood up. ‘Wish me luck.’
HIS WHOLE ROW of newspaper readers, nuns and sour women had been replaced, since Hong Kong, by Oriental people: a man, a woman and a girl of about eleven. Japanese, heading home. He was heading with them – to their place. For the first time in his life he was going to be a foreigner.
Nikki was smiling from way down the aisle as she returned so there were no surprises about good news.
‘I had no idea – the captain’s your fish’s number one fan,’ she said. ‘He saw it during loading. He says we can have a go at making HF R/T contact with our company frequency. I hope it works – when you get a frequency you’re usually sharing it with a dozen other voices. But HF communications to New Zealand are good – and we’ve got SSB, so that helps. Now, we can leave a message with Ops to contact someone who can send the documents on. If they’re in Auckland they could come up on the next flight.’
‘Hey, yes they are. In fact the people with the documents are only about ten minutes from the airport!’
‘Great, now, let me write this down.’
‘Okay, it’s MAF International in Onehunga … Um … Miami Drive.’ Great, what a memory! Shit – what was the guy’s name? ‘Ask for Kevin. Kevin – I don’t know his other name, but anyway, they’ll have it on their records. Tell them to say it was the big bluefin tuna that was nearly too big for his instruments. He’ll remember. And there was a woman called Betty Rodriguez there, who gave him a hard time. And we just need another copy of the export certificate. If he puts it in a taxi I’ll pay him when …’
‘No, no, we have our own couriers, don’t worry about that.’
‘Oh God – what time is it in Auckland? It’s probably the middle of the night?’
Nikki shook her head – she sure was beautiful. ‘No, it’s eight in the morning in Tokyo so it won’t even be midday at home – about ten past eleven. Anyway, I’ll get on to this.’
Fifteen minutes later, after dazing him with more initials, Nikki reported that Kevin had been at lunch but that the woman in the office had said don’t worry, she’d tell him soon as he got back, and he’d get straight on to it. The woman knew all about Royce and the fish because she’d seen the item on TV.
Air New Zealand would pick up the certificate and make sure it was on the plane. It would be here this time tomorrow.
Another day. That made five. Three left in Phase One. Plenty of time. Air New Zealand had access to a coolstore in Tokyo airport, so storage was no problem. Only problem left was that he might have to bunk down in the goddamn coolstore with the fish – right now he had nowhere else to go.
‘Where do you stay when you’re in Tokyo?’ he asked Nikki.
‘With my boyfriend,’ she answered crisply.
HE GAVE HER a really deep hug of gratitude at the door. She had her little hat on, but he tried hard not to find it silly.
‘Best of luck!’ she called.
And one of the others said: ‘From all of us.’
Passport control was no problem: he soon had a big blue foreign stamp in his book. He was a ‘temporary visitor’ for ‘duration 90 days’. Ironically, Customs wasn’t going to be a problem either, because the fish wasn’t going anywhere.
He headed down to Baggage Claim. There were these big treadmills with millions of cases on them. How the hell did you know which one was yours? … Oh yes, the treadmills had the flight numbers above them.
NZ 207, and there were the people he recognised from the flight. He nodded to the unforeign family he’d sat next to; they nodded back. To a foreigner.
Problem was, there weren’t any officials. And there weren’t any doors into the back where the baggage was coming from. He waited. A small man in white shirt and black pants came along: an official.
‘I need to get in there,’ said Royce.
‘You wait.’
Damn it, couldn’t this guy see he was waiting? He waited some more. Until there was no one else at the treadmill.
A little flutter on the number board and ‘NZ 207’ disappeared. His flight, and all its people and packages, no longer existed. Time for action. He walked to the hole through which the treadmill disappeared and shouted: ‘Hello in there?’ There were clatters behind, but no response. He stuck his head through the little plastic strips like the ones at the Doo Duk Inn – and nearly into the face of a bloke in white overalls who was just going to respond.
‘No come in here. Off limit.’
‘Were you working on the Air New Zealand plane just now? NZ 207?’
‘NZ 207, yes. You lose baggage?’
‘No, not lost. It’s in the coolstore. A big coffin. I need to get at it to change the ice. See, you can’t freeze it … jeepers, I hope it’s not in a freezer, is it?’
‘Coffin? You want coffin?’
‘Yes, it’s got a bluefin tuna in it. It’s got to stay here an extra day and I’ll need to change the ice at some stage. I just wanted permission to get at it.’
‘Ah, tuna coffin. Okay, we change ice. When arrive?’
‘Today. Just now. On NZ 207.’
‘No.’
‘No? How do you mean no?’
‘No tuna.’
‘Yes, there is. It wasn’t in the cargo hold, you see. It was in the cabin.’
‘Cabin? No. Onry cargo. No tuna. Tuna not come from New Zealand this time of year.’
‘Yes, it did.’
‘Tuna from Sri Lanka, Vermont, Madagascar. Sometime. Today no tuna any place.’
‘A bluefin tuna arrived here from Auckland just now! I was with it.’
‘No tuna today.’
‘Where is it, fuck it?’ hissed Royce. He sort of dived through the opening in a western roll, skidded on his shoulder along the treadmill, then righted himself to his feet. The guy in white overalls was terrifyingly small. ‘I want my fish. It came in on the plane all this stuff was on, so where is it?’
‘No place for you – irregal for you here.’
‘Where’s my fish?’
‘Okay, okay. You want fish – find. You look. Here cooler, here freezer, here what you see. You look. No tuna.’
He stood at angrily discomfited attention while Royce scoured the joint. The fish was nowhere. And there was nowhere else out here it could be. It had gone.
Royce marched up to the little guy, rage rolling over him in judders. ‘So where’s it gone? If you were working on unloading that plane you must have seen it.’
‘No, I not unroad all time here,’ said Mikio. ‘Most time stacking container in coorer. Not see here velly often.’
Nothing moved on his face. This must be what inscrutable means.
The fish wasn’t here, he knew that. So being here himself was a waste of time. He had to be where the fish was. He had to get there. He tried to be calm in chaos again. It didn’t work. He felt lonely, scared, sick, angry, sad, lost and overwhelmingly tired. At a time like this you can either speed up or stop completely. Be manic or be crushed.
If it wasn’t here, there was only one other place it could be.
He burst out through the apperture and down the corridor towards the terminal entrance.
Fuck it! Fuck it! Customs! Two men and a woman. They were surprised. All other passengers had been processed and they’d relaxed out of officialness, believing themselves alone at the end of the zig-zags of blue rope. The two men disappeared while the woman wasn’t looking. Big joke – they’d lumbered her with Royce.
‘What flight?’ said the woman.
‘Air New Zealand. I was held up.’
‘Have you lost your luggage?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t have any luggage.’
‘You came from New Zealand without luggage?’
‘Yes. I thought I’d buy some here.’
Her eyes were changeless hazelnut, her lips were firmly poised in nothing. She wanted to arrest him for something – she wanted to rummage through his bags, check his rectum for toothbrushes. This was beyond her experience, he could see it in her silence. Not only was she confronted with her first tourist without luggage, but he seemed legally to be without luggage. There was nothing unpleasant she could do.
‘THERE’S AN IMPORTANT message for you, Kevin,’ said Alice.
Kevin scrabbled for a loose peppermint in his pocket. He’d had two beers with his pie and chips at the Manukau and Alice didn’t like staff drinking at lunch. She was only a secretary but the sort of secretary that tells the boss. Why couldn’t she just have an affair with him like real secretaries did? Alice was a bitch.
‘Aw, yeah? What’s that, then?’
‘Air New Zealand want another copy of an OCE you made out for that bluefin tuna. The one on the TV the other night.’
‘I didn’t see it. I heard about it. Mention us?’
‘Get off the grass. The girl from Air New Zealand said the plane had got in touch with them – from over Tokyo. Far out, eh?’
‘Bloody far out. What happened, they lose the OCE?’
‘Must of. They want to pick one up this afternoon.’
‘Right.’
Hey, hang on – this was the fat-arsed black woman’s fish. The one that’d come in with Stan. The one that had made a dick out of him with her big Japanese words. Well, stuff her. Yeah, but what if Stan finds out? – Stan might well be his stepfather one day. Nah, Stan’s got his cut – what was that about a dishwasher? Stan wouldn’t buy his mother a dishwasher out of his own salary – tight as a salmon’s arse was Stan. He’s got his cut and she’s in Tokyo. So, lost the OCE, has she? Well, she’s in shitter’s ditch without it.
He held his boozy breath as he went into the office, sidling innocently past Alice the bloodhound and plucking an Official Certificate for Export from the tray.
‘Well, we’re in the big-time aren’t we?’ said Alice. ‘Messages from aeroplanes about fish that have been on the telly.’
He nodded, straining in his lungs. He went back to the workroom, gushed out spent air and filled out the form, precisely as before … except for his signature.
They’ll be very lucky to get this form back to him – ‘Christ, forgot to sign it, did I? Christ, sorry, how stupid!’ – before TCU 001 went into Phase Two.