Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  Field nodded, turning away, assuming it would be better to return to his own desk on the fourth floor to fill this out.

  “And, Field . . .”

  He stopped and turned back.

  “Please get yourself a new suit. It’s painful to see you dressed like a polar bear in the desert.”

  Field looked at his new partner. “The doorman was killed because he saw the murderer entering the apartment block.”

  Caprisi nodded his head slowly. “Correct.”

  “The murderer was Lu, or someone else who had received Lena as a ‘gift.’ ”

  “Probably.”

  “Or someone with whom she had made a private arrangement.”

  “Lu looks after his goods, so she’s unlikely to have taken that risk.”

  “A boyfriend, a . . . lover.”

  “It cannot be ruled out, but, as I said, she’d have to have been a brave woman.”

  Field turned around, got back into the lift, and went to his own office on the floor above. The only natural light up here was from a series of windows set high on the wall, all with frosted glass, as if the work of the department was best kept from prying eyes. Granger’s office was exactly the same as Macleod’s, though he’d resisted the temptation to engrave his name in the glass. There was no light on within, but as Field walked down past the bank of secretaries—all Chinese in his department—toward his tiny cubicle in the corner, Granger opened his door.

  He was a huge man, even bigger than Field, six feet five or six, with a broken nose and a handsome, craggy face. His hair was unconventionally long and disheveled.

  “What happened?” Granger still spoke with the thick accent of his native Cork.

  Field stopped. “We saw the doorman of the building being bundled into a car and taken down into the Chinese city, so we followed and witnessed him being beheaded.”

  Granger frowned. “Outside the Settlement?”

  “Yes. They took him out.”

  “Who?”

  “Caprisi said it was Lu’s men.”

  “Did you see them?”

  Field shook his head. “Not really.”

  “What did Macleod say?” Granger asked.

  “About the doorman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing. I haven’t seen him since we got back.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “It doesn’t look political. Maretsky said he thought it was sexual, but I’ll . . .”

  Granger nodded, as if satisfied. “Stick with it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And stop calling me ‘sir.’ ” Granger was looking distracted. “What did Macleod say about the woman?”

  “Nothing . . .” Field had to struggle to prevent adding “sir” again. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Stick with it,” Granger said again. “It’s Caprisi?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he handle himself?”

  Field frowned.

  “Forget it. Give me a shout if you have any trouble.”

  Granger turned and shut the door quietly behind him.

  Four

  Field’s cubicle was as spartan as his life here. Apart from his telephone and Lena Orlov’s file, which he’d taken out of Registry earlier, there was a huge pile of papers and journals that he was required to “keep an eye on” with “a view to censorship,” as Granger had put it. Apart from the China Weekly Review and the Voice of China, Field was required to read Shopping News and the Law Journal. It was tedious work. Detective Sergeant Prokopieff, his neighbor here and in the housing complex, did most of the big newspapers and journals and all the ones that might conceivably be of any interest, leaving Field with the dross.

  On top of the file was a letter that he’d written earlier to his sister and he decided to check through it before dropping it into the mail room on his way down to the registry and the fingerprint lab. He gazed into the middle distance for a moment, then shook his head and took out his fountain pen, ready to make corrections.

  Dear Edith, he’d written, I’m so sorry it has taken me all this time to put pen to paper. I have penned a note to Mother, but don’t know whether she will have passed it on or if you’ll have had time to get up to see her.

  In case you haven’t, I’ll give you as much of the story as I can manage. Apologies if I’m repeating myself.

  I arrived here three months ago and went straight into basic instruction, which involves everything from weapons training (necessary) to the rudiments of the Chinese language (hard, but essential, as our pay is based, to a degree, on our proficiency) to the topography of the city and even the mysteries of street numbering.

  I ought to tell you a bit about the journey out, but it was uneventful. I shared my cabin with an Indian and all his luggage(!) and I can’t say it was the most comfortable voyage, but it was good to see Colombo, Penang, and Hong Kong.

  I’m now working in the Special Branch, the “intelligence” department. I’m surprised to be here, but I’ll come to that in a minute.

  I want to tell you something of this city, but it is hard to know where to begin or what to say. It is like nowhere else I’ve ever been, a cross between the solid majesty of modern Europe or America and the worst kind of barbarism of the Middle Ages.

  Field looked up, confronted again with an image of the doorman’s head rolling in the dirt. The doorman, Lena, his father . . .

  It is true to say that, though the city assaults your senses at every turn, it is what I’d expected. It is exciting in a way that is hard to do justice to in a letter. It pulses with life and a sense of the possible. I feel I should be more shocked than I am by the poverty and violence, but so far it only adds to a sense of the exotic.

  I think of it as like Venice in its heyday, the source of all the art you so love, a mercantile metropolis—the city of the future in the land of the next century, as people here like to say.

  My salary is, as yet, very poor, allowing me to survive, but no more. I will get on, though, and make some money here. I will send some to Mother as soon as I can, since I know you . . . well, I know how it is (please don’t show this letter to her).

  I will return to take you and Arthur to Venice.

  The same foolish fantasy of our childhood, you may think, but I can tell you, Edith, that, out here, I feel you can dare to dream and anything seems within reach. The city has an energy that is hard to describe—don’t they say the same of New York, that it is built on quartz? Nobody has done us any favors in life, but I intend to make my own luck.

  I do my duty and I take pleasure in bringing justice to a land where it would be all too easy for there to be none, but more than that, I feel I belong. Maybe it is because no one really does belong here.

  Am I making any sense?

  I was trying to explain the city. The big groups here are the Americans and British and they’ve built the great houses and offices of the Bund—the waterfront—which makes the city feel like Paris or New York. Together, in the last century, they were awarded this concession of land, which is now called the International Settlement (I’d like you to tell me to stop if you know some of this, but since there are thousands of miles between us, I’ll err on the side of caution) and which is effectively a piece of America and Britain run by the big business interests here and their chiefs. Geoffrey is the secretary to the Municipal Council, an important job that has prompted a lot of “chat” amongst uncharitable police colleagues (the police are low down the social order here, on the whole). I dropped Geoffrey a line when I arrived, but he said he’s been very busy, so we’re only getting to meet tonight.

  Field wondered again why this meeting with his uncle had not come sooner, but he blamed his father, not Geoffrey.

  Alongside the International Settlement is the French Concession, which is run by the French, so I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. A lot of the White Russians who fled the Bolsheviks live there and have shops and small businesses. There are thousands of them here now,
most in a desperate situation—all former army officers and their families, or professionals, or aristocrats. A lot of people like the idea they can take advantage of these people. I mean the women, especially. Well, you know what I mean. There seems nothing you can’t buy here and there is so much for sale.

  Field looked up, pulling his collar away from his neck and trying not to think of Natasha Medvedev, with her white gown and tumbling hair and the morning sun caressing her legs.

  Foreigners living in the Settlement or French Concession have the right to live by the laws of their own countries—a unique situation in history—but Chinese people living in these areas and the foreigners who don’t enjoy these rights (Russians, Bulgarians) are subject to the Chinese law of the “mixed courts” in the Settlement, which makes their position precarious. Sometimes, Chinese wrongdoers are just ejected to the Chinese city itself, where they are brutally dealt with by local warlords. This is especially true if their crime is “political.” Anyone caught trying to sow Bolshevik ideas is in deep trouble.

  The Chinese city is outside the International Settlement and French Concession. This is the beginning of the real China, where everyone lives under Chinese law, not that there is much. Ever since the fall of the imperial dynasty, the whole of China has been controlled by competing warlords, and Shanghai is no exception. Foreigners are mostly okay, but many of the local Chinese do have a rough time of it.

  Field thought again of the sound of the doorman’s head hitting the ground, echoing through the silence of the crowd.

  I’ve found myself in the Special Branch, as I said. I’d like to report that this was because my superiors spotted a vein of natural genius, but actually it is because Mother is a Catholic and because of my rugby. I’ve already found this to be the most extraordinary force. It’s made up primarily of Americans, Brits, and Russians (and the locals, of course), but it’s controlled by two factions, the Scots and the Irish, and everyone—American, Russian, English—has to fall into one camp or other, like it or not. The commissioner is from New York but is too fond of the bottle and is rarely seen out of his office on the sixth floor. The real power rests with my boss, Patrick Granger, who is head of Special Branch, and with Macleod, head of Crime.

  Granger is from Cork and fought with the IRA after 1916. They say he was a friend of Michael Collins and that the two fell out. I don’t know. Like everyone else here, he doesn’t talk about his past (it’s a strange city like that—I’ll tell you more next time). Macleod, by contrast, is a Protestant (Presbyterian, I think) from Glasgow, who scowls a lot and gives the impression he thinks the city is a mess and a discredit to all concerned. Both men are rugby fanatics and where you end up is largely down to religion and sport, though there are some exceptions. Granger found out that I’d played flanker at school and my mother was a Catholic and that was that. I have my first game for his team this week against—yes, you guessed it, Crime Branch. The two men seem to have a deep-seated enmity and rivalry that everyone has a theory about, not always convincing. You are expected to show loyalty to your faction and I suppose I’m Granger’s man now. He’s a big fellow, in every sense, and gives the impression of looking out for his men, though he also always talks to you as if his mind is elsewhere and sometimes looks right through you. I think you’d find him quite handsome—he certainly dresses well. Hardly like a policeman at all. Macleod has been perfectly friendly too, but it doesn’t do to even contemplate loyalty outside your faction.

  I must go. I’ve endless journals to look through, which seems to be my task (all publications in the Settlement are censored for Bolshevik propaganda, which certain Russians living here are secretly trying to export to the Chinese masses). I will try to tell you more of this strange city next time. Sometimes I wish you could see it and sometimes I’m glad you can’t. Opium dens are illegal and we sometimes raid them, but you can get heroin from room service in all the best hotels. You can get anything on room service. No one who has money wants for anything. Anyone who hasn’t money wants for something.

  One last thing might interest you. A mythical Chinese gangster—I’ve not met him or seen him—but they say this man called Lu, who lives in the French Concession, controls much in the city and nothing happens without his knowledge and say-so. I find it hard to believe and accept the level of influence ascribed to him, but he appears to have taken the lead in fighting Bolshevism. Whenever they suspect a local Chinese, even if he’s in the Settlement, of working for the Bolsheviks, they expel him to the local warlords in the Chinese city, who cut his head off. This is seen as a necessary expedient on behalf of the British and American authorities in order to persuade local Chinese not to spread Bolshevik propaganda—Lu is making too much money to want a Bolshevik revolution—but there is also a feeling I’ve picked up amongst police colleagues that Lu is getting too big for his boots and shouldn’t be allowed—literally sometimes—to get away with murder. He’s using the well-founded fear of Bolshevism amongst foreigners here to get away with doing anything that he wants and undermining (some feel) the authority of the big international powers.

  Field looked up again, running his hand through his hair.

  He picked up his pen and wrote, This is a dangerous city, but I’ll do my best to keep safe. Love to Arthur . . . isn’t it about time I was an uncle?

  He found he was smiling and was tempted to write that he’d “met” someone very beautiful today, but thinking of Natasha Medvedev and the misleading boast he’d been about to make suddenly brought down a familiar blanket of loneliness and depression.

  He still did not believe that a woman like that could submit herself to a man against her will.

  Field began to sweat again, the blood pounding in his head. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, fumbling around his throat until he found the silver cross. He took it off and held it in his palm, tightening his fist until it hurt.

  He fought to contain the anger that still came upon him when his confusion was complete, knowing what his father would have made of the city and of Natasha and Lena and the women like them.

  Field had a sudden, clear image of his father, with his trimmed mustache, neat hair, and carefully polished shoes. He could see the waistcoat and the shirt that his mother had starched, the chain of the silver cross just visible above the collar. For a moment he allowed himself to hate the man, for his unyielding, obstinate, puritanical priggishness, for his cane and the power with which he had wielded it.

  He gripped the cross more tightly, thinking of his mother and the quiet shock with which she had met his decision to join the Shanghai police force.

  Field breathed out and opened his eyes. He was here now and it was his life. He put the cross in his left hand and ran his right through his hair. He put the chain back around his neck, did up his collar, and tightened his tie.

  It was all in the past now. That was the point of being here. It was why he’d made the journey.

  Field wrote, Your loving brother, folded the letter and put it in the envelope, sealed the back, then wrote her address in his careful, flowing hand.

  He turned and saw Yang looking at him. She was “his” secretary, his and Prokopieff’s, a tiny, slim dark girl with a neat, pretty face and an upturned nose. Her gaze was steady, and for a moment he thought her mind must be elsewhere, but she shifted her head a little, without looking away, and he knew that she was still appraising him. She wore a short cream skirt, without stockings, the thin cotton hem rumpled halfway up her thigh.

  Field found it hard to take his eyes from the smooth skin of her legs.

  He turned back to his work, distracting himself by reading a memo pinned to the corkboard on the side of his cubicle, which was from Commissioner Biers’s office and instructed them to ensure all files removed from Registry are forwarded to other personnel complete, with cover correspondence detailing any removals. Anyone forwarding a file MUST inform Registry in writing who the file was forwarded to and upon which date. It added: All envelopes will now be open
ed in Registry, rather than the relevant sections, unless addressed directly to individuals.

  Field had never met Biers. He’d only ever seen him once, coming into the lobby, in uniform, his nose and cheeks red from, Prokopieff said, a night’s hard drinking. Field thought he’d seen him stagger, but later decided it might have been his imagination.

  He pulled forward the form in front of him. It was form number 6.3000–3.23, the number listed next to the logo of the Shanghai Municipal Police, a star with the words Omnia Juncta in Uno inside it. Field’s Latin was shaky, but he assumed that meant “all acting in unison.”

  In the box marked Made by he wrote his own name, and in the one marked Forwarded by he crossed out the “by,” wrote “to,” and wrote Caprisi’s name, before going on to fill out the address at which the fingerprints had been found and the nature of the crime—murder. He left the time blank, not certain whether this referred to the time of discovery or of the murder itself, which had not yet been determined. Caprisi hadn’t mentioned the pathologist, but Field assumed they would go and see him together.