Snakehead

great painting, despite what I said just now, it is unlikely that I will become a household name. But different people are talented in different ways, and I think I have achieved a certain greatness in crime, Alex. And it’s not surprising that my life story is a remarkable one. How could someone like me have anything else?”
    He coughed, dabbed his lips and began again.
    “I was born in Hong Kong. Although you wouldn’t believe it to look at me now, I began with nothing. Even my cot was a cardboard box filled with straw. My mother was Chinese. She lived in a single room in a slum and worked as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel. Sometimes she would smuggle home soaps and shampoos for me. It was the only luxury I ever knew.
    “My father was a guest there, a businessman from Tunbridge Wells, in Kent. She never told me his name. The two of them began an affair, and I have to say that she fell hopelessly in love with him. He used to talk to her about the place where he lived, this country called Great Britain. He promised her that as soon as he had enough money, he would take her with him and he would turn her into a British lady with a thatched cottage with a garden and a bulldog. For my mother, who had nothing, it was like an impossible dream.
    “As a young person, I’m sure you have no attachment to your country, but the truth is that it’s a remarkable place. At one time, this tiny island had an empire that stretched all around the world. You have to remember that when I was born, you even owned Hong Kong. Think how many inventors and explorers, artists and writers, soldiers and statesmen have come out of Britain. William Shakespeare! Charles Dickens! The computer was a British invention—as was the Internet. It’s sad that much of your country’s greatness has been squandered by politicians in recent years. But I still have faith. One day, Britain will once again lead the world.
    “Anyway, my mother’s affair came to an unhappy end. I suppose it was inevitable. As soon as he found out that she was pregnant, the businessman abandoned her and she never saw him again. Nor did he ever pay a penny toward my upkeep. He simply disappeared.
    “But my mother never lost sight of her dream. If anything, it became more intense. She determined that I should grow up with full recognition of my English blood. She named me Winston, of course, after the great wartime leader Winston Churchill. The first clothes I wore were made in Britain. As the years went on, she became more and more fanatical. For example, one day she decided that I would be educated in a British public school—even though it was obviously quite impossible when she was earning only a few pounds an hour changing beds and cleaning toilets. But nonetheless, when I was six years old, she left her job and began to look for other ways to make money.
    “It took her just two years—a tribute, I think, to her single-mindedness and courage. And that was how I found myself, first in a prep school in Tunbridge itself and later at Harrow School, dressed in their smart blue jacket with the marvelous straw hat. All the boys wore them. On Sundays we dressed in cutoff tailcoats…bum freezers we used to call them. It was actually Winston Churchill’s old school, and I found it hard to believe I was there. I mean, I could actually imagine I might be sitting at his desk or reading a book that had once belonged to him. It was thrilling…and my mother was so proud of me! I did sometimes wonder how she could possibly afford it all, but it wasn’t until my second year that I found out, and I must say, it came as a bit of a surprise.
    “This is what happened…”
    He poured himself some more wine, swirled it in the glass, and drank.
    “You might imagine that I was bullied at Harrow,” he said. “After all, this was back in the fifties, and there weren’t many half-Chinese boys there, particularly with a single parent. But by and large everyone was very kind to me. However, there was one boy…a chap by the name of Crispin Odey. The strange thing is that I rather liked him. He was a pleasant enough chap, very good with money. Anyway, I don’t quite know what I did to upset him, but he made a whole lot of rather hurtful remarks, and for a couple of terms, thanks to him, life was very uncomfortable for me. But then my mother heard about it and I’m afraid she dealt with him very severely. A hit-and-run accident, and they never found the driver. But I knew who it