Hiroshima Joe by Martin Booth Read Free Book Online

the sea bed thirty feet below.
    The ferry was nearing the side of the jetty. There was a fierce whirling of water and foam under the pier as the boat reversed its front propellers. Puffs of sooty smoke rose from the thin funnel, to be dissipated in the humid air. Passengers on the decks had stood up and were crowding around the top and bottom gangways, causing the vessel to list gently. A khaki-uniformed sailor threw cord lines on to the narrow parapet of the jetty where they were caught by another sailor who hauled in the thick mooring ropes and secured them round a bollard. The ferry edged into the side and finally bumped against the wooden piles, making the entire structure reverberate and rock slightly. At this, the child started to prattle with excitement.
    Following the crowd, Sandingham went down the slope and stepped over the gangway on to the ferry’s upper, covered deck. He sat on the open part of the deck, on one of the long, wooden-slat benches, first pushing the angled backrest over the seats. The seating was in this way reversable, so that everyone could face the direction of travel: the ferry had neither bow nor stern, being able to go in either direction without turning.
    A crewman pulled the gangway up on a rope and secured it in place to act as a door. Then he peered over the side and signalled a comrade below who cast off and waved to the pilot in the lower deck steering cabin. The water surged at the end of the ferry as it glided away from the side of the pier.
    Having cleared the shadow of the roof, the boat was bathed in brilliant sunlight but it was no longer hot. The movement of the ferry had caused a soft breeze to blow across the deck, which was to Sandingham’s advantage. He did not want to appear too scruffy where he was heading, and sweat had a way of making even the most scrupulous dresser look less than smart.
    He regretted not owning sunglasses. He had once had a pair – good ones, with Zeiss lenses – but had long since pawned or lost or sold or exchanged them for a bowl of rice.
    Now the sun scored into his eyes, as if seeking to burn his retinas. He felt giddy and sick and put his hand on the painted rail along the edge of the deck to give himself support. The feeling passed, but it worried him. He had had such giddy attacks increasingly of late.
    Sandingham leaned over the rail, hoping the breeze would drive away his sense of nausea. Before him lay the business centre of Hong Kong: Central District, with its banks, merchant company and shipping line offices and its shops for the wealthy lining the waterfront of Connaught Road.
    As the ferry neared the Hong Kong-side pier he could see along the low grey cliff of the quay rickshaws and cyclists amid the traffic. Lorries, their tarpaulin covers stretched tight over bamboo frames above the truck beds so that they looked like motorised prairie wagons, wove and steered between the cars and pedestrians. Towards Sheung Wan the waterfront was crowded with Chinese cargo junks, off-loading goods trans-shipped from vessels swinging at anchor or buoys in the western section of the harbour. All was bustle and maritime activity.
    Lifting upwards, almost sheer from the business district, were the slopes of Victoria Peak, one and a half thousand feet high, with the residential Mid-levels crowded between its business district and the steeper parts of the mountain. In the midst of this Sandingham could clearly make out the central tower of Government House, the governor’s residence, with its flat, pagoda-like tiled roof.
    Silhouetted along the skyline of The Peak, and the ridge running eastward from it, were the blocks of flats and private houses of the very rich or very fortunate, or an amalgam of the two. He could see, creeping up the mountainside, the green and cream-coloured car of the Peak Tram, the semi-alpine railway that went from Garden Road to Victoria Gap, with a few precariously perched stations en route.
    At the Hong Kong-side pier the ferry