Chapter eighteen
The next day I decided to make a few inquiries as ‘Ma’s Café’. Somehow I had to find out the reason for the furtive meeting between Park and Joo-young at such an improbable rendezvous. If Joo-young had named any one of a dozen cocktail bars it might have made some sense, but for them to meet in a transport cafe sounded too incredible.
As I drew into the vehicle park of the cafe I wondered still more. ‘Ma’s Cafe’ was a single storey wooden hut standing just off the Seouloegwaksunhwan expressway. It looked ramshackle and depressing, and seemed to offer little in the way of welcome to the traveller. A sign above the door told me that hot meals were available at any time of the day or night, and that the proprietor’s name was Mrs Park Seong-Heon. I parked the car and went in.
The interior was no more attractive. There were half a dozen old tables with rough wooden benches, and on each table stood a bottle of sauce and a cheap plastic cruet set. A tea urn and some tired looking bowls of rice under glass covers. Behind the counter, reading a newspaper, sat a large and blowsy woman whom I took to me ‘Ma’ Seong-Heon.
Like her establishment ma was rough and not over clean. Her hair was grey and straggled untidily about her head. She had three chins and a vast and pendulous bosom, and her piggy little eyes, screwed up against the smoke from her ciagarette, were bright and watchful. She looked to me a pretty hard case and I found myself wondering once again what she could possibly have in common with Park and Joo-young.
Ma glanced up and eased her large bulk out of her chair, then wiped her hands on her liberally stained overall and pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. ‘Yes, love?’ she asked.
I ordered a cup of tea and Ma busied herself at the urn. She pushed the cup towards me, with a dirty thumb in the saucer, spilling some of the contents in the process. Then she reached out a fat and mottled arm and propelled a cracked sugar bowl towards me.
I sipped the tea. It had obviously been brewing for hours. ‘You’re very quiet today’, I remarked. ‘We liven up later, love’, she said. ‘Be busy tonight, I shouldn’t wonder’.
I looked round to make sure the place was empty, then said tentatively: ‘I wonder if you could help me?’
She screwed up her eyes in a grotesque parody of coquetry. ‘Always happy to oblige a gentleman’, she said.
‘I wonder if you can remember a lady coming in here on Friday night?’
‘A lady’ Ma vibrated with laughter: ‘We don’t get many of them, love; leastways, not what you’d call a lady. Friday, you said?’ She scratched her chin contemplatively. ‘Now I come to think of it, a lady did come in. Very high-class bit of goods she was an’ all. Nice with it, mind, but very high class’.
‘Did she meet anyone?’
‘Yes, now you come to mention it, she did. A gentleman – one of our regulars’. Surprised, I queried: ‘One of your regulars?’
‘S’right, love. He often pops in for a cuppa and a sandwich. Surprised he ain’t bin in this afternoon, s’matter of fact’.
I felt a sudden surge of excitement. ‘Does he live round here?’
‘Dunno where he lives, dearie’, replied Ma. ‘Never ask questions about your clientelly, that’s my motto’.
‘Of course’, I agreed. I drank some more tea and watched Ma guardedly. ‘You say he often drops in?’
‘He was in almost every day this last week’, said Ma. She leaned forward with a grunt and lifted one of the sandwich covers. ‘Blimey, they’re about ready for someone’s chickens’. ‘D’you think he might come in today?’ I persisted.
Ma cocked a shrewd eye at me. ‘If you were to sit down and enjoy your cuppa in peace, you’d probably see him. This is just about his time’.
‘Thanks’, I said. ‘I’ll do that’. I wandered over to one of the tables and picked up a fortnight old magazine.
Ma returned to her reading. Once or twice I noticed her glance over at me over the top of her paper, then she got up from her chair and disappeared into the rear regions of the cafe.
When she returned to the counter a few moments later I bought another cup of tea and a packet of cigarettes and sat patiently at my table. One or two customers drifted in from time to time, but there was no sign of Park Song-yong …
Well over an hour later a young man pushed open the door and strolled towards my table. He was slim, of medium height, and moved lithely. He wore a short white raincoat, narrow trousers, and pointed Italian shoes. I could not suppress an immediate dislike and distrust.
He sat down opposite me and said in a clipped, high-pitched voice: ‘You’re Moon, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right’, I said coldly. ‘And who are you?’
‘You can call me Si’, the young man said. He seemed very sure of himself. I said: ‘What can I do for you?’
Si admired his fingernails. ‘In case your interested’, he said, ‘I'm a friend of a friend of yours’.
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘And who is this friend?’
He looked at me straight in the eye. ‘Park Song-yong’, he replied calmly. ‘What is it you want?’ I asked.
‘Well, I don’t know that I want anything in particular’, he said amiably. ‘I’d just like to give you a piece of advice, that’s all’.
I lit a cigarette with studied nonchalance. ‘Go ahead’, I said, ‘but I think I’d better warn you that I’m not very good at taking advice – particularly from strangers’.
Si’s smile seemed permanent. ‘That’s all right, Mr Moon. You don’t have to take it’. ‘Well, let’s hear this advice of yours’, I said.
The smile disappeared suddenly. ‘We want you to stop looking for Park Song-yong’. ‘Why?’ I asked bluntly.
The smile reappeared. ‘Because you’re making him very nervous. We don’t like that’. ‘And who’s “we”?’
‘Park Song-yong and me’.
‘Let’s get something straight, shall we?’ I said ‘Is it Park I’m making nervous, or you?’
‘It’s Park’, answered Si. ‘You don’t worry me, boy. It takes a lot to make me nervous’. ‘I can imagine that’, I said.
Si rose to his feet. ‘Well, that’s the advice’, he said affably. ‘I hope you’ll take it. I know I would, if I were in your shoes’.
I looked at him cautiously. ‘Would you now?’ I said.
‘I certainly would’. Si produced a comb and ran it casually through his heavily creamed hair. ‘After all, why be a sucker? Park’s paid you the money he owes you, so you’re in clover. Why should you worry?’
‘I’m not worried’, I told him. ‘I’m just curious, that’s all’.
‘Well, I’d stop being curious if I were you, chum. D’you know what I’d do?’
‘No, you tell me’.
‘I’d take a nice little trip to Jeju if I were you’.
‘It’s the wrong time of the year for Jeju, isn’t it?’ I suggested mildly, Si’s smile broadened. ‘Not for you, it isn’t’.
‘I’ll think about it’, I said casually.
‘Well, don’t think about it too long, chum’, he said, starting to walk towards the door. ‘Hasta la vista!’
I stopped him. ‘Just a minute, Si’, I said. He turned round. ‘Yes?’
‘You forgot to tell me something’. ‘Oh, and what’s that?’
‘What happens if I don’t go to Jeju?’
‘I should have thought you’d have known the answer to that one’, said Si smoothly. ‘Well, I don’t’.
He suddenly came close to my table and leaned across it, his face very near to mine. He said softly: ‘What happened to Jo Yun-je?’