Blue Lantern Read Online Free

squaddies’ knives.”
    She disappeared behind the curtain before he had a chance to put on his shirt.
    The Land Rover turned into Cameron Road. Brodie reported all clear to control. It was a summer night, with only the faintest prickle of stars. The humidity induced torpor. Brodie dozed, lulled by the hum of the radio, and the deft movements of the driver, like a mechanical doll at the wheel.
    In these few square miles, amongst the dilapidated tenements and factories and shops, the main part of the population lived, refugees or fugitives from the mainland, millions crammed into cavities of wood and concrete. Most of the people found something useful to do, living off each other by the magic of trade. It was a crowded and decaying place, energised by the people; they worked with concentration, minded their own business, and when work was done, gathered indoors, or at a restaurant with their families, ignoring the streets and all those who stumbled in them. Brodie thought the streets were like flood drains, strewn with waste, the territory of thieves – and the police. On the first of October some people put red flags out of the windows of their tenements. On the tenth of October others put out the red and blue of the Republic, now a remnant in Taiwan. Most people put out their washing; the garments hung on poles in the streetlight, like roosting vultures.
    Brodie removed a letter from his pocket that he had received that morning, written on a small piece of yellow notepaper. He smoothed it out, and strained to read it again in the map-light on the dash-board. Dear Inspector Brodie, I hope you don’t mind me using this rather undistinguished piece of paper to address you, but it is all I have at hand. I’m in my sleeping room at the hospital. It’s a fresh evening, the air is soft. I’m going out for a walk to the post office in a moment. I want to stride freely along the road. I want to see people scurrying around out there. I want to glance up and see the stars or clouds, instead of fluorescent light. I’m going to take a good look at a flower stall and buy some for my room. I hope I didn’t hurt you too much when I took your stitches out – Helen.
    He had pondered on a reply. Helen was exposing a little more of herself and he ought to respond. But when he had tried to, his handwriting was ugly and untutored compared to Helen’s flowing script. His thoughts seemed artificial. A second attempt had followed the first into the rubbish bin. He decided he would use one of the typewriters in the duty room when he had arranged his ideas.
    Brodie jerked, fully awake when the Land Rover groaned to a stop. A constable ran into the headlights, thin, tightly belted into his khaki uniform, with the big holster on his hip. Brodie leaned out and asked what was happening in Cantonese.
    â€œBody in lane,” the constable replied in English, and pointed.
    â€œA drunk?”
    â€œChopper job.”
    Brodie reported on the radio, and called for an ambulance. Then the squad, apart from the driver, jogged down Cameron Lane. The constables shouted at the crowd to disperse. Brodie pressed into the centre of trouble, jamming his stick into the backs of those who stood in his way. When the throng parted he looked down on a supine, blood-soaked body, dressed in the tunic of a waiter or messenger. The victim had broad bare feet with dirty toenails. The chopper had sliced him on the arms, shoulders and chest, and almost severed his head. Blood spread beneath the body like a cloak.
    â€œHe dead, I think,” Sergeant Lam said, his finger on the man’s throat.
    Sergeant Lam and the corporal began to make enquiries for witnesses from the onlookers and stall-holders; but it would be a fruitless search; nobody ever saw anything. Brodie’s first revulsion at the sight of violent death on the street had passed quickly. Now, only the occasional grotesqueness of a particular death might be the