I sit there, looking at him.
Ah, here they come, he says.
And just then, Zit Boy brings a platter of eight doughnuts to the table. Musty body odour wafts out of his short sleeves and gets stuck at the back of my throat.
Please, says Charles, Charlie, Mr Hu. An open hand, palm up, points towards the platter. A thin rectangular watch with a black crocodile leather strap peeks out of his cuff. Nothing chunky, or extravagant. But expensive-looking.
A pink one with sprinkles for me this time.
I say, You don’t like doughnuts much do you?
I’m celebrating, he says, as his finger hovers over the remaining seven, one by one, before settling on a glazed doughnut.
I say, How’d you know I’d be here?
A feeling, he says.
He wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
I take it, he says, that you’re accepting my offer?
S
EVEN
Mr Police Officer barks something from behind his high-up mahogany desk, separated from the rest of the room in his glass cubicle.
I have no idea what he is saying.
He’s looking at me, so I get up from the bench and walk up to the perspex box in the middle of the room.
He barks at me again.
I shrug my shoulders and I say, English. Do you speak English?
Mr Police Officer lifts his hand to his ear in the universal sign for I can’t hear you.
So I shout, I don’t speak Mandarin! Do you speak English?
He’s pointing down at the bottom of the window, no idea why.
So I shout even louder, ENGLISH. DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?
At this point, the police station busy with cops and criminals is standing still, getting an eyeful of me and Mr Police Officer here.
I get back a load of eye rolling and some violent huffing, and he’s now pointing like a madman to the bottom of the window, and I look to where he’s pointing but I don’t see anything except a little grey box.
Is this guy deaf?
I’m thinking what kind of idiot hires deaf police officers, and now the whole dumb situation is pissing me off, and Mia is pissing me off, and the stale, rancid air in this place has got me hot and sweating, and before I realize what’s happening I’m yelling and swearing at this pig motherfucker in front of me, and I must be flailing around aggressively because now another Mr Police Officer is shoving my hands behind my back and I feel the cold shock of steel on my wrists.
And then this triad, he’s tattooed all over, holding his shaved head where blood oozes from a dent made by a big blunt object, probably, comes up and points to a little button on the little grey box, which, now that I’m looking at it more closely, turns out to be some sort of intercom-speaker job.
Oh, nice one, I say.
The triad nods at me and goes back to his seat.
Original Mr Police Officer barks again, and then in the universal sign for Fuck off, we’ll deal with you later, has me dragged away past my bench, past the old homeless guy, past the high-class hooker hugging herself.
Let’s skip back a little bit.
Back in the doughnut shop, when Charles Hu says he takes it I’m going to accept his offer, I’m literally about to say, Why yes, I would love to accept your offer, when I feel a hand on my shoulder.
I look at this hand, then the arm it’s attached to, then the shoulder, then the face, and it’s a policeman in a blue shirt and cap.
Right next to him, is the nerdy young guy in the wheelchair and his girl that I, let’s say, innocently hassled into leaving.
This lame couple are pointing at me and talking rapid fire, and next thing I know I’m being hauled up and out of my seat and shoved into a cop car.
How was I supposed to know he was disabled?
Now I’m on my way to a police station in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, and I left my camera on the table in the cafe.
No playing, how I’m reacting is I’m about to lose my shit, on account of that camera (and the lens on it) costing thousands and thousands of pounds.
I say, Hey, did you pick up my camera in there?
The cops in front ignore me.
