by Tom Bradby
“You are a knight in shining armor, is that it?”
“No one is unassailable, Maretsky.”
“Then how little you really know.”
Ten
As Field and Caprisi stepped out of the car in front of the Happy Times block, a few rays of sunshine broke through the clouds, giving the yellow stone a mellow glow. The building had wide, circular stone steps at its entrance, with a small area of garden on either side, the trees now in bloom, the pink petals of their flowers thick on the ground, where they’d been swept up by the winds that sometimes accompanied the summer monsoons.
In the lift Caprisi checked his hair and turned to Field as they reached the top floor. It was just the two of them. According to the American, Chen had gone off before the briefing to try to establish the identities of the men who’d seized the doorman.
Field thought that Natasha Medvedev had been expecting them, because she was already dressed—in a long, floral skirt, with a simple white blouse—and they were ushered in without any resistance. Natasha ignored him and focused her attentions on Caprisi. She seemed different—quieter, shorn again of the air of sophistication and weary cynicism. All Field could remember was his anger at the sight of the old man clawing her buttocks the previous evening, light from the chandeliers reflecting off the sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Some water, please.”
She turned to Field, without expression, but he shook his head.
Natasha came back with a glass of water and handed it to Caprisi.
“You were a friend of Lena Orlov?” Caprisi asked.
“Yes.”
“How close?”
She shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re both Russian girls. Did you know each other before you came to Shanghai?”
“Yes, we were at school together in Kazan, on the Volga. Our fathers were friends.”
Caprisi got out his notebook, taking the stub of a pencil from the top pocket of his jacket. “Does Lena have any relatives here in Shanghai?”
Natasha shook her head. “No. Most of her close family perished.” She looked at her feet, which were in open sandals. She moved them to and fro, before crossing one long, slim leg over the other, the skirt riding up the smooth skin of her calf.
“Did you see or hear anyone coming to the apartment the night before last?”
She looked up again. “I was out.”
“All night?”
“More or less.”
“What time did you leave?”
She thought for a moment. “About eleven.”
“And you didn’t hear anyone coming up the lift?”
“No.”
“You didn’t drop around before going out?”
Natasha shook her head.
“You went out . . . where?”
“The Majestic.”
“So when was the last time you saw her?”
Natasha hesitated. “In the afternoon.” She sat up straight, flicking her hair from her eyes. “I went for a walk on the recreation ground and, as I returned, Lena was coming in below. She’d been shopping on Nanking Road.”
“How was she?”
“She was . . .” Natasha shrugged. “She was okay.”
“Only okay?”
“What do you want, Detective? Her life wasn’t a picnic.”
Natasha was staring at both of them now, her brown eyes angry.
“She went into her flat,” Caprisi went on, unruffled, “and you into your own, and you heard nothing more until you went out again in the evening?”
“Yes.”
“And what about after your return that night? What time did you come in?”
“Between three and four. I don’t recall exactly.”
“On your own?”
She stared at him. “Yes.”
Field took out a cigarette and lit it. The others ignored him.
“And you . . . There was nothing unusual?” Caprisi asked.
“I was tired, Officer. I went straight to sleep.”
“Did you see anyone arriving or leaving her apartment?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anyone inside?”
She shook her head.
“And, when you awoke, you went over to borrow some milk?”
“Yes.”
Field had been watching Caprisi taking notes. The pencil stub was so thick that it would have been impossible to write neatly, even if that had been his natural disposition. Caprisi’s handwriting was the worst he’d ever seen.
The American looked up, putting the pencil between his lips, as if it were a cigarette. He leaned back in the chair. “Did Lena have a regular man, Miss Medvedev?”
Natasha stared at her feet again. “Yes, there was a boy in the band at the Majestic . . . Sergei . . . but it was not—”
“There were other men?”
“I don’t know.”
“Men who paid for her favors?”
“She has a sister . . . in Harbin.” Natasha looked up, face burning with righteous anger. “She’s only seventeen. Lena did it so that her sister didn’t have to.”
They were silent.
“This sister,” Caprisi said quietly. “She is the only other survivor from the family we saw in a photo next door?”
“Yes.”
“How many men . . . I mean was Lena a—”
“No.” Natasha shrugged. “When she felt she had to.”
“One consistent man?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about the last few months? Was there anyone—”
“I don’t know. We . . . never talked about it.” She shook her head.
“What work do you do, Miss Medvedev?” Caprisi asked.
There was a long silence.
“If you think it should be obvious to us, then you’re wrong.”
“I sing at the Majestic.”
“Just sing?”
She didn’t dignify this with an answer.
“That was where Lena worked.”
“Well done, Detective.”
“So you would have known . . . would have seen which men she was . . . making an arrangement with.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“How does it work?”
“Some of the men are married . . .” She sighed. “A girl may dance with a hundred in an evening, hints exchanged in whispers. The arrangements you are referring to are not made on the dance floor of the Majestic.”
“How are they made?”
“Lena had a telephone. A man might call on her.”
“But you didn’t see any particular man calling?”
Natasha shook her head.
Caprisi had the pencil in his mouth again. “These flats are owned by Lu Huang.”
She didn’t react.
“So what brings you, or Lena, to live here?”
“We pay rent. To a company on Bubbling Well Road. If they’re connected to Lu, then I’m not aware of it.”
Field did not think Natasha was a good liar. Caprisi must have agreed, because he was looking around the flat, clearly wondering how she could afford to live in such surroundings.
“You must be aware of what happened to the doorman.”
She nodded, again dropping her gaze.
“We believe that Lu’s men were responsible.”
Field looked at her right hand, which was pointing at the ground, her wrist limp. She was wearing a gold bracelet.
“Can you think of any reason,” Caprisi went on, “for such drastic action?”
Natasha shrugged. “They say he was a communist.”
“Like you,” Field said.
She stared at him.
“How does the daughter of a tsarist officer,” he went on, gesturing at the photograph on the bookshelf, “come to attend meetings at the New Shanghai Life?”
“My father is dead.”
Field felt his face reddening. “So you have decided . . .�
�
“So it’s none of your business.”
“On the contrary,” Caprisi said slowly. “It’s very much Mr. Field’s business. The Settlement takes a very . . . strong view of émigrés who abuse its hospitality by using this as a base to export political ideas to the Chinese. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr. Field?”
“Yes.”
Caprisi turned back to face her. “So what does Pockmark Lu get in return for allowing you to live here?”
“I told you. We pay rent.”
“I can check that.”
“Well, check it, then.”
“Was Lena his girl . . . I mean his exclusively? Did he let her go with others?”
She shook her head in anger and frustration.
“Did he give her to someone as a favor, or a reward?”
She stared at both of them. “Have you finished?”
Caprisi hesitated. “Lena Orlov was stabbed. You saw the body. You were—”
“Friends, yes, but life has to go on.” The hostility disappeared and Field saw again in her eyes the same deep hurt and fragility that he’d witnessed the day before. “Lena did what she had to do, that’s all.”
Natasha dropped her head again, her long hair tumbling down and obscuring her face.
Caprisi stood, but instead of moving to the door, he went to the window and looked out toward the racecourse. “Lena was stabbed almost twenty times.” He put his hands in his pockets and turned toward her. “In the stomach and in the vagina. It looked worse after they’d cleaned off all the blood.”
Caprisi looked at Field.
“You know, some of the wounds . . . Around the top of the vagina, for example, there were so many, so close together, that they created deep craters, right down to the bone.”
Natasha appeared transfixed by a point on the wall opposite.
“Lena was Lu’s girl, Miss Medvedev, as you certainly know. Can you be sure you or one of your colleagues won’t be next? With that level of anger . . .”
She shook her head, then turned to look at Field. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. Perhaps Caprisi was moved by this, too, because he appeared thoughtful and suddenly more sympathetic. He pulled out Lena Orlov’s notebook and walked over to hand it to her. “We found this hidden inside one of the leather-bound volumes in her bookcase.”
Natasha took it and glanced over the entries, wiping her eyes. She did not look at Field again.
“It’s a list of ships, departure dates, and destinations,” Caprisi explained. “There’s one leaving at the end of this month.”
She handed the notebook back to him.
“You’ve no idea why Lena would have been hiding this?”
She shook her head again.
“There is a note at the bottom: ‘All payments in ledger two.’ What could that mean?”
Natasha shrugged.
“What is ledger two?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never heard Lena talk about any shipments?”
“No.”
“Was she involved in any way in any kind of activity that you think this might refer to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never talked about anything like this?”
Natasha shook her head.
“What do you think ‘ledger two’ might be a reference to?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Speculate.”
She shrugged.
“It just seems odd, doesn’t it? Notes that were sensitive enough to be hidden. Shipments of something that obviously suggests some kind of criminal activity, and a reference to ‘payments.’ You must be able to make a guess.”
Natasha looked straight at Caprisi. “You can go on asking all day, but I’ve already told you. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
Caprisi stared at her. “We’ll leave you, Miss Medvedev,” he said quietly, walking to the door. “I can understand your distress, but . . . I’ve been doing this a long time.” He sighed. “And I sense you could help us more than you’re letting on.”
Eleven
Downstairs, Field almost choked on the thick, sulfurous air. The wind had changed direction again and strengthened, bringing thick fumes from the factories across the river.
They climbed straight into the car and wound up the windows. Caprisi took out a white handkerchief and put it across his mouth. “This city is a cesspit,” he said as the driver turned the car around. “Can’t you tell your uncle?”
“What do you mean?”
Caprisi sighed and looked out of the window. “It’s not exactly a democracy, is it? A small group of men who own the big businesses run the council, with your uncle at their head . . . No wonder the air is poisonous. It’s poisoned by money, money, and more money.”
“Isn’t New York polluted? Or Chicago?”
“No. Anyways, not like this.”
Caprisi crossed his legs, placing his notebook on his knee and flicking back through it. “What did you think?”
“About what?”
“About her. Natasha.”
“I think she’s frightened.”
“I’d say so.” He looked down at his notes again. “What’s Lu’s interest in these girls? Why is he paying for them?”
“The obvious interest.”
“Natasha maybe, but there are hundreds of girls like Lena, and boys, of all ages.” Field blanched again at this thought, but Caprisi didn’t appear to notice. “Lena was nothing special, was she? He could have screwed her if he’d wanted. He didn’t have to go installing her in a penthouse apartment. Natasha—now, there’s a different story. That I can see. She’s got class. She’s special, a trophy, but not Lena.”
“Perhaps Lena was a useful gift.”
“Perhaps that was it.”
“Or had useful information.”
“On what?”
“On the communists.”
Caprisi turned toward him.
“I don’t think,” Field went on, “that there is any doubt Lena Orlov was attending meetings at the New Shanghai Life and at the Soviet consulate. So was Natasha.”
“So they’re Lu’s agents?”
“It’s possible.”
“But it can hardly be a secret that they live in his apartments. So what use are they?”
“Go-betweens.”
Caprisi nodded.
“The communists are gaining power in the south,” Field said. “Quite soon they’re expected to advance north. Lu likes to have as many fingers in the pie as he can get. He’s not going to be attending meetings himself, and these girls could provide information on what is discussed and planned amongst the Bolshevik underground here. Or perhaps the ownership of these apartments is not as commonly known as you suppose. We are only aware of it because of Chen, and he seems to know everything.”
Caprisi nodded slowly again, staring out of the window. “Natasha Medvedev is frightened, but she’s making no attempt to help herself.”
“She doesn’t trust us.”
“She’s lying about those notes.”
Field nodded.
“How much do you think she knows about the shipments?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It must be opium.”
Field shrugged.
“Lu controls the supply line into the city from central China. He gets together with others to export the drugs to Europe. It’s a whole new market. That’s a departure for the Green Gang, but it would be incredibly profitable, wouldn’t it?”
“I imagine so.”
“Lu has a brilliant mind and total control of the underworld here, but he’s going to need expat help to build a European operation. So . . . somebody else is involved. A syndicate, perhaps. Lena gets to hear of this, perhaps from Lu. She sees that it’s explosive and begins to make secret notes. Dates, shipments.” Caprisi looked down, deep in thought. “Lena and Natasha are friends. Does Lena talk to her, do you think? Are they close?”
