Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  “I don’t doubt it,” Field said easily.

  “I must ask you to leave, or we will have no choice but to register a diplomatic protest.”

  “I wasn’t aware this was diplomatic territory.”

  “I must ask you . . .”

  “Please, Mr. Borodin.”

  The Russian stopped.

  “A Russian girl has been murdered. We believe she worked here from time to time.”

  Borodin stepped back to allow them through the partition, his face still suspicious. A thin, intellectual-looking man with round glasses stood from behind the desk and proffered his hand, but not his name. He was the spitting image of Sergei.

  Chen moved to the back of the room. Caprisi and Field leaned against the glass, opposite Borodin. The walls were lined with more copies of the magazine, except the section behind the editor’s desk, which was covered with pictures of Russian leaders. Field noticed there was not one of Trotsky—just Stalin, in the center, surrounded by Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Lenin.

  “Do you recall Lena Orlov?” Field asked.

  The editor was staring at his desk, and Borodin, who was clearly going to be the spokesman, tilted his head thoughtfully to one side. Field was beginning to see why Granger detested this bespoke revolutionary. “Orlov?”

  “Medium height, blonde, quite pretty,” Caprisi said.

  “From Kazan,” Field added.

  Borodin shrugged. “Perhaps she came to a meeting.”

  “Just one?”

  “Many people attend. There are many people who do not accept the version of the new Russia put forward by your newspapers.”

  “So she came once?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about Natasha Medvedev?”

  Borodin shrugged again, as if not recalling the name.

  “You would remember her,” Caprisi said. “Tall, thin, strikingly beautiful.”

  “There are many beautiful Russian girls here, Officer.”

  “So we understand,” Field said. Borodin stared at him. “What about Sergei Stanislevich?”

  Borodin shook his head. Field turned to the editor. “What about you?”

  “I’m always at the meetings,” Borodin said.

  “You’ve just been in the south.”

  “I am happy to speak for the staff.”

  “Then you didn’t know Stanislevich?”

  Borodin shook his head.

  “You must keep details of those who attend your meetings, names, addresses—”

  “Of course we do not.” Borodin looked horrified. “So that you can harass anyone who wishes to counter the propaganda that you—”

  “Yes,” Caprisi said. “I think we get the message.”

  “Stanislevich, Medvedev, and Orlov all come from Kazan on the Volga,” Field said. “They attended meetings here—and yet they claim not to have known each other well.”

  Borodin was frowning.

  “Stanislevich says he didn’t know either of the women in Russia.”

  “Do you know everyone in London, Officer?”

  “No, but—”

  “Nor do I in Moscow.”

  “Emigrés spend time together,” Chen said, his voice quietly menacing. “These people knew each other well, and you remember them.”

  Borodin stared at the Chinese detective, trying to intimidate him and failing.

  Caprisi sighed and straightened. There was no point in continuing this interview. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Borodin,” he said.

  As they reached the bottom of the stairs and emerged into the drizzle again, Caprisi said, “This fucking city.” He took out his cigarettes, looking across at the consulate. “No one is going to say a fucking thing.”

  Field was silent. The image of Natasha Medvedev hugging her sister and father in front of their home was imprinted on his mind. He recalled the easy warmth that showed in their faces and body language—perhaps, he thought, because it was so at odds with his own experience of family life. He could not match the woman in the picture with the one who could put up with the dour extremism of the office they had just left.

  After they had got back into the car, Field leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes, recalling his father’s face with complete clarity and then his mother’s—the two of them kneeling in church on Sunday.

  Instead of anger, Field felt only a deep, painful sorrow that life had not somehow turned out differently. It was true, he thought, that they were not bad people, just fallible beings, bowed down by the weight of expectation; his father ashamed of his business and social position, expecting and demanding more of himself than had ever really been possible; his mother wanting more from the love she had sacrificed so much for than he had been able to give.

  For a moment Field felt at peace, but the anger at his father soon returned. Expectation was not a burden placed upon you by others; it was a choice you made for yourself. His mother had not made excessive demands; she’d just wanted some sign of the love she’d sacrificed her relationship with her own parents for, because otherwise what was the point in her life?

  Expectation was a choice you made. If Albert David Field had demanded less of himself and put less pressure on all of them, then happiness would have been within reach. They had all been punished because he viewed himself as a failure, a judgment based on criteria that mattered to no one but himself.

  By the time Field had finished with this train of thought, he hated his father all over again.

  Rugby was usually a game for the winter in Shanghai, as it was in Europe. Field had not really considered this until he arrived in the changing room at the police academy. As he pulled on his black shorts and thick woolen socks, he remembered Caprisi saying that it was supposed to be an endurance test, a trial of strength between the two competing branches of the force. Last year an overweight Italian had collapsed in the heat and been carried from the field unconscious.

  Field didn’t recognize at least half the men in this room, and realized most of them had been drafted in from outside the force, to improve the odds. He introduced himself to a burly Irishman from Belfast who turned out to be one of the managers of the Cathay Hotel and, Field assumed, a friend or acquaintance of Granger’s.

  He laced his boots, then walked through to the shower area and poured himself some water from the purified jug in the corner. He washed his hands and looked in the mirror, grateful that he’d had his dark hair cut very short the previous week. The clean-cut face that stared back at him hadn’t changed much, though he felt he’d aged more in the last few months than in the previous five years.

  He wondered what was going through Natasha’s mind as she attended Borodin’s meetings. What he hated most about the Bolsheviks, and about extremists in general, was their overwhelming certainty.

  The tunnel emerged at the bottom of a wooden stand and Field turned to see Granger sitting with his wife about three rows up, wearing a trilby and a dark brown trench coat. Granger beckoned him over and Field turned, his boot studs making him unstable on the stone steps.

  “Caroline, this is one of my new boys,” Granger said, standing and taking off his hat. “Field, this is my wife.”

  The woman smiled. She reminded him of Penelope Donaldson, but was broader and plumper, her face and smile warmer. She had black bobbed hair and wore vivid lipstick and a bright red dress. She was a vibrant and, judging by the gold bracelet on her wrist, wealthy woman. Field wondered who the blond girl in the Cathay Hotel had been.

  “Good luck,” Granger said, his voice low as he turned and saw Macleod rounding the far corner of the stand. “And watch the Yank.”

  Field walked back down the steps and out onto the pitch. He nodded to Macleod as he passed, without any visible sign of response. The grass was thin, the earth beneath it hard.

  The man from Belfast was throwing the ball to one of his colleagues, and Field jogged over to join them in the far corner. No one from the opposing team had yet emerged.

  “David,” the man
said, “this is Field, our open side flanker.”

  Field was thrown the heavy leather ball and caught it, then kicked it into the air.

  After a few minutes they jogged down the pitch, passing the ball along the line and back again.

  At the end, Field found he was perspiring gently. He was grateful that the white-and-black-striped shirt he’d been given was made of cotton. He caught the Irishman’s eye. “Too much time on the boat and not enough exercise since.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “You’re the picture of bloody health compared to the rest of us. We’ll watch you do the running.”

  Some of the opposition emerged, Caprisi among them. The American was tying the knot on his shorts as he approached. “Ready for this, Field?” he asked quietly.

  “I suppose so.” He hesitated. “The prints are in. They came up to me for some reason. They’re in my tray. No obvious match from the bedroom, Ellis says, and he’s still working through the living room, but at least we have them if we can find a suspect.”

  Caprisi didn’t answer. He was looking at the referee, who had just ambled out of the tunnel. Field watched, too, as the man put his whistle slowly to his lips and blew loudly.

  “The search begins,” Caprisi said.

  “The search?”

  “The search for knives.” Caprisi’s expression was a mixture of weary cynicism and amusement. “An Italian team got razors onto the pitch a couple of years ago, so now everyone gets frisked.”

  Field’s captain was Eccles, the fly half, an Irish inspector from the Hongkew district with a fearsome reputation for drink and a nose to prove it. He exhorted them to “show the fuckers who’s in charge of this force.” His breath reeked of whiskey.

  There was no discussion of tactics. Everyone automatically assumed his position as the whistle went and the ball was kicked high into the air in Field’s direction. He called “mine” loudly, caught it, and looked up to see the oncoming wall. He dodged an enormous lock forward and ran back toward the center of the pitch, only to see Caprisi sprinting toward him, his ears pinned back and his mouth open, like a predator closing in for the kill.

  Field attempted to prevent the tackle, but Caprisi caught him around the middle and he lost his balance, hitting the earth hard. Both sides piled on top of them.

  Field tried to free the ball but couldn’t. Caprisi tugged at it with one hand and pushed hard into his face with the other. Field was kicked in the leg, the knee, the groin, the stomach, and then the head. Someone grabbed his hair, someone else had an arm around his neck.

  He waited for the whistle, but it didn’t come, and the ball was wrenched from his grasp. The figures on top stood and ran off one by one, leaving him facedown in the dirt in more pain than he could remember.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and was hauled to his feet. He turned to see Caprisi.

  The American smiled and patted him on the back.

  Two hours later Field was sitting in a chair in the corner of a tavern, clutching a full tankard of beer and feeling dizzy from exhaustion and alcohol.

  Patrick Granger was standing on a table in another corner of the room, reciting, in full, Yeats’s “Easter 1916.” His melodic voice was resonant with emotion, as the last of the evening sun filtered through the frosted glass window, touching the side of his face.

  “Now and in time to be,” he said, his eyes scouring the room, “Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

  He raised his tankard. “To the martyrs!” He drained the contents and then burped loudly. “And to grudging forgiveness of English bastards!”

  As Granger stepped down from the table, the team captain broke into another rendition of a rebel song. It was quickly taken up by those around him.

  “Drink up, Field,” Granger shouted as he stumbled toward him. He placed a protective arm around Field’s shoulder and waited for him to finish his tankard. “You may be English,” he said, slumping down on the seat beside him, “but you know, I forgive you.”

  “You were there in 1916, weren’t you?”

  “I was indeed. Michael and I were not important enough, thank the good Lord . . . a short spell in North Wales . . .” Granger was looking at him. Field could see how drunk he was. “But that’s enough about me.” He grabbed Field in a rough embrace. “Glad you’re one of us, Dickie. You should be one of us. You are one of us, aren’t you?” Granger was looking at him oddly.

  “Of course,” Field said.

  “Right! Fine player. Waiter!” Granger stood, holding up his tankard in the direction of the bar. He crossed back to the other side of the room and joined in the singing.

  Field pushed his own tankard away and reached for his cigarettes. He looked up to see Caprisi smiling at him.

  The American was leaning against the wood paneling on the far side of the room, on the periphery of the gathering, a long glass in his hand. When the singing died back down, he came over and took one of Field’s cigarettes.

  “Well played,” Field said.

  The American shrugged.

  “You’re not drunk, I see. I thought it was mandatory.”

  Caprisi didn’t answer.

  “How come you’re here, anyway?”

  “I’m a Catholic. It’s allowed.”

  “Let me get you a drink.”

  “No thanks.”

  Field stood. “Come on, you can’t drink water all night.”

  “I said no thanks.”

  There was steel in Caprisi’s voice and Field sat back down. On the other side of the room, Granger was building a pyramid on the table with full tankards. “You don’t drink.”

  “No.”

  “There’s no prohibition here, Caprisi.”

  “Back off, Field.”

  Field paused. “You are a man of mystery . . .”

  “Mysteries are not always interesting.”

  “To the curious, they are.” Field smiled. “I’m still not sure I understand.”

  “All you need to understand here is who your friends are, Dickie.” He glanced across at Granger’s group. “Macleod thinks you have an honest face. He doesn’t want you to join the cabal and neither do I. Unless it’s already too late, of course.”

  Before Field could answer, Caprisi got up and walked swiftly away.

  Twenty

  Later that evening Field moved very slowly into the darkened Special Branch office, trying to determine whether there was any bit of him that wasn’t in pain.

  He flicked on the light in his booth and sat down. He stretched his legs, straightened his back, and put his hands behind his head, then slumped forward and fiddled with the light switch.

  The buff-colored fingerprint file lay in his in-tray and he flicked the corner of it, ignoring the pile of publications to be censored that had been placed in the middle of his desk. He decided to splash a basinful of cold water over his face before giving the file a closer look.

  On the way back from the washroom, Field poured himself a drink, then returned to his desk.

  For a moment the significance of the empty tray did not register. The folder had been taken, no note left in its place.

  Field stood and took the stairs to the fingerprint bureau two at a time, forgetting his bruises.

  Ellis wasn’t there. An elderly Sikh frowned at Field’s inquiry. “No, sahib,” he said. “They have not come back here.”

  “Check the originals, will you?”

  The man walked over to a row of cabinets. “What’s the name again?”

  “Orlov, Lena.”

  Field waited, drumming his fingers. Eventually, the man turned. “No,” he said bluntly. “There’s no record of prints for a case under that name.”

  “Where is Ellis?”

  “Ellis is on leave.”

  “On leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I believe he has gone to San Francisco. He will be
back in three to four months.”

  Field took the stairs down to Crime, but the office was as dark and deserted as his own, thin shards of light from the street cutting across the empty desks. He walked to Macleod’s office and back, but there was no one there.