the filth involved. We look after our own. Calling the Old Bill is dead man’s talk.’
Sarp stared at Alfie furiously. ‘Well, tell me what I’m supposed to do then. ’Cos I don’t see any of you lot giving a flying fuck what happens to Soho. It’s going to rack and fucking ruin, like the rest of the country.’
Alfie raised his eyebrows. ‘There’s always Turkey.’
‘Don’t give me that, Alf. This is my country too. I’ve worked hard, like my parents did when they came over in the Fifties. Tell me something, is it really too much to ask to be able to sleep in my own bed at night without myself or my wife being dragged out by a bunch of hammer-wielding maniacs? You need to do something, Alfie and quick, otherwise I swear I’ll go down to the cop shop, and I won’t give a shit what any of you lot think.’
‘Sarp, just hear me out; don’t be doing anything rash. It ain’t just me who won’t like it. It’ll be the others. Do you really want to cross swords with the likes of Del Williams and Vaughn Sadler? Give me time to sort this out.’
‘And what am I supposed to do in the meantime, hey? Perhaps I should go and speak to the Taylors.’
Alfie pounced on Sarp’s words. ‘No!… No! Don’t do that. Leave it to me and I’ll sort it, but I’ll sort it my way … I promise.’ He stared at Sarp. There was no way he wanted him to go to the Taylors, or any other faces for that matter. Alfie needed to sort something out first or rather, he needed to go and see somebody first.
Sarp looked unsure. ‘They said they’d come back. If I didn’t have the money to pay them, they’d come back and really do something. They ain’t messing about, Alfie.’ The restaurant owner dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘I’m not ashamed to tell you I’m scared; really scared. Those triads mean business.’
‘Okay, you might not like this suggestion, but you need to pay them …’
‘No fucking way, Alf. No way. The minute you start paying them; that’s it. It’s over. I’ll be forever in their pocket, and they’ll just keep wanting more and more until I’ve got fuck all left.’
‘If you’re six foot under you won’t need to worry about money. Pay them. Keep them sweet for now.’
‘No. I worked hard to get where I am, and there’s no way I’m going to give tea money; protection money to people. It’s crazy.’
‘I know it is, but ain’t nothing I can do at this moment. I’m not saying pay forever; of course I’m not, but it’ll keep you and your missus safe for now.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, I am. You came to me for a reason. Pay up, and I’ll have it sorted for you in a week.’
Sarp glanced at his wife, who looked anxious. Alfie went into his pocket and brought out a roll of fifty-pound notes. He pushed the money into Sarp’s hand who nodded gratefully.
‘Okay Alfie. A week, but no more.’
‘Just hold on tight. I’ll make sure everything is sorted.’
Sarp fell silent for a moment before saying, ‘They said something. Something about me speaking to you about breaking rules. What did they mean?’
Alfie looked uncomfortable. ‘I dunno. They’re just talking shit. Can’t listen to anything they say.’
Sarp looked suspicious. ‘It’s funny, they seemed so sure I should talk to you.’
Alfie said nothing, just got up to go and headed towards the door. He turned to Sarp, talking to him quietly, his voice full of reassurance. ‘Listen, forget what they said. We need to concentrate on sorting you out, mate. You did the right thing by calling me. But listen, I don’t want you mentioning we had this conversation. And I don’t want you mentioning what happened to your restaurant to anybody. Do you understand?’
‘I dunno, it seems odd.’
Alfie looked exasperated. ‘It ain’t odd. The less people know the better. I don’t want word to get out we’re on their case. I’ll speak to the Taylors. You know Johnny and Frankie.’
‘Yeah, they’re good people.’
‘Well I’ll see what they think about it all. I’ll make sure they keep an eye on things as well. Just trust me. Everything is going to be fine.’ Alfie smiled at Sarp, patting him on his back as he went.
He opened the restaurant door, walking out into the bright light. He wasn’t quite certain of what he was going to do but one thing Alfie Jennings did know was that there was no way he’d be talking to the Taylors. This was something he needed to sort out by himself.
‘I’m impressed, Lin. You did well. The fire was only a warning, but one they’ll take seriously. It’s only a shame I couldn’t have been there to see their reaction.’ Mr Lee, a small unassuming-looking gentleman who’d just celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday, smiled darkly at his second-in-command. His accent, a surprise to those who met him and far removed from the obvious assumption of a heavy South-East Asian one, was Etonian in sound, and certainly not representative of his rural upbringing.
Chang Lee had been born to impoverished but hardworking parents in the poor, yet beautiful town of Zhouzhuang in the Jiangsu Province of China, which had a rich 900-year history. It was a place surrounded by water, often dubbed by the Europeans as the Oriental Venice.
Growing up in Zhouzhuang, the young Chang Lee had despised the poverty and hardship which seemed to determine and limit his family. With the harsh and controlling idealistic socialist regime of the people’s republic of China, led by Mao Zedong, Chang saw the widespread famine and perishing of families due to Mao’s land reforms which formed the basis of the infamous and disastrous Great Leap Forward campaign.
The Great Leap Forward had been an economic and social campaign that was supposed to change China from an agrarian economy into a leading, modern society to rival and compete with other industrialised countries in the world within a five-year time period.
From the beginning it had been a disaster, with the Maoist regime forcing millions of Chinese citizens to move and work in communes on farms or in manufacturing. Private farming was prohibited, and those who did it were assumed to be counter-revolutionaries and were either tortured or executed for it.
As a consequence of the Chinese people being forced off the land and into the factories to try to produce steel, the crops were neglected and along with the compounding effects of the floods of 1959, within the three-to four-year period during which the campaign ran, the estimated death toll was between twenty to thirty million.
When the campaign was brought to an early halt, Mao Zedong was forced to resign from his position as Head of State, but the damage had been done.
All around him Chang saw the devastating effects of abject poverty, hating, yet strangely admiring, Mao Zedong. He’d looked with disdain at his parents who had nothing and were certain to die that way, and then he’d looked at the tyranny of power and fear Mao had implemented in a once-great nation. Although Chang could see that Mao’s campaign had
