Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  “Natasha . . .”

  “My life is not my own.”

  “There must be—”

  “An escape?” She stared at him. “Don’t you think I have tried?”

  “Dreams are what keep us alive.”

  “When I was a girl,” she said, “my father took me to the circus. There was a hall of mirrors.”

  “Yes.”

  “There are no dreams here. Only illusions.”

  “Then we can go somewhere else.”

  “Where?” Her eyes narrowed. “Where do I belong now? Nowhere, and nowhere more than here. I have no passport, no money.”

  “I can help.”

  “No one can help.”

  Field stared at her. His heart was thumping again.

  “No one can help me. There is nowhere we can go. But I will do what you ask. I will try to help you.”

  “Natasha . . .”

  “Please. You may contact me by letter to tell me what you wish me to do. I will telephone when I am summoned to his house, but please do not come to the apartment again.”

  “What about last night?”

  “Richard . . .” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Last night was . . . it was not just for you.”

  Natasha glanced across the road and suddenly stood. Field followed the direction of her gaze. Sergei was outside his apartment on the far side of the street, staring at them.

  “Wait.”

  “No.”

  She walked away.

  Field stood, then sat back down as she hurried past the window.

  He lit another cigarette and smoked it. Sergei had gone.

  Field left some money on the table and walked across the road. He climbed Sergei’s gloomy stairwell. At the top he knocked and waited.

  Sergei opened the door a few inches. He was in a long white nightgown.

  “Just getting in from work, Sergei?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been talking to yet another of your compatriots who has told me nothing, but if you speak to Lu, Sergei, you can tell him I’ll get to one of you in the end.”

  “I have nothing to do with Lu.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  Sergei shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You looked very . . . close.”

  Field stepped forward. “Want to see how close I can get?”

  Sergei tried to shut the door, but Field pushed it open and barged his way in, forcing the Russian back to the center of the room. “You’re frightened of Lu, like the Medvedev woman and the rest of them.”

  Sergei’s head drooped. “I’ve been working all night.”

  Field looked at him, relieved. He did not think Sergei had seen anything that could have compromised them.

  Thirty-one

  Field walked into the station slowly and stood in the center of the lobby on the ground floor. He looked about him, as if taking in his surroundings for the first time.

  A dial above the lift swung to indicate it was descending. He glanced up at the clock. It was half past seven.

  Field stepped forward and surveyed the curved dome of the ceiling with its gables and ornate stonework. This was a grand building, but it felt gloomy and neglected, designed for a greater purpose than it had achieved.

  Field hesitated before hitting the button for his own office on the fourth floor.

  The room was empty, the frosted glass grudgingly letting in the daylight. Field walked to his desk, his footsteps noisy on the parquet floor. Yang had left two notes: Stirling Blackman called. And: Penelope Donaldson telephoned—three times. Beside them, half hidden beneath a small mound of paperwork, Field noticed two envelopes. The first was addressed to him in neat, tiny handwriting. It was from the account monitoring manager at the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, number 12 the Bund, Shanghai. The letter inside had been typed.

  Dear Mr. Field, it read. One of my senior clerks responsible for handling new clients has drawn my attention to the state of account. I enclose balance for your convenience.

  We aim to provide very best service for very best customer and I esteem an honor if you would in future contact me directly if need assistance.

  Yours very respectfully,

  Chen, C.W.

  Field held up the thin sheet of paper attached. Under his account number were two lines:

  New credit: $600.

  Account Balance: $1,012.

  The other envelope was from Jessfield Properties Limited, Jessfield Road. It advertised a property on Foochow Road, close to the racetrack, set back from the street, with elegant facilities. Three reception rooms, charming, well-kept garden, tennis court, and spacious veranda.

  Field folded it and slipped it into the bin. He picked up the first letter and tucked it into his pocket. He got up and headed back to the lift.

  The sixth-floor corridor was dark. Maretsky was not yet in his office, but Field did not have long to wait. Maretsky bustled along a few minutes later, not noticing him until he had the key in the lock. “You again,” he said.

  Field followed the Russian inside. He closed the door behind him and waited until Maretsky had lifted himself onto the high stool in front of his desk.

  “I need a map,” Field said.

  “I believe stores—”

  “One of Lu’s women is caught red-handed distributing Bolshevik propaganda.”

  “No pun intended, presumably.”

  “She faces a minimum fifteen-year sentence and may be able to help with an investigation into a series of murders—”

  “Natasha Medvedev. I have warned you, Field.”

  “At times she appears to be . . . coming over. But then we lose her again. I think she’s terrified that she may be the next victim.”

  “Perhaps she isn’t terrified only for herself.”

  “Who else?”

  “Does she have a child?”

  “No.”

  “Brother? Sister? Father? Mother?”

  “No.”

  “Or so she says.” Maretsky stared at him through dirty round glasses. “For a Russian, certainly, the penalty will be death, for all connected.”

  “So when they talk about impaired circumstances . . .”

  “They mean points of influence. Loved ones. I would say she has a child.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible.”

  Field straightened. He paced to the other side of the tiny room and back again. He looked at the picture of Lu Huang presenting a check to the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. “So if she appears,” he said, “to want, somehow, to break away from him . . .”

  “You are in love with her.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Field. You can’t say I haven’t warned you.”

  “You misunderstand.”

  “She’ll manipulate you, if she has not already.”

  “To what end?”

  “To his end. She belongs to Lu, Field. Please listen to me. About this you don’t yet understand as much as you should.”

  “And it’s impossible to break this?”

  “Yes.”

  “So his control is absolute?”

  Maretsky sighed. “Not absolute, no. He does not control you. You are here without family—at least, only an uncle that even Lu might balk at challenging. If you do not give any hostages to fortune . . .” Maretsky cleared his throat. “He will try to buy you, of course, through his operatives in the force. Through the cabal. Perhaps he has already.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will when the time is right. And you probably do already, even if you won’t admit it to yourself.” He shrugged. “The woman, Medvedev, is trapped, so it is possible that she is not manipulating you; possible, of course, that in a wild moment she toys with the idea of escape, of romance, of being her own woman. But if that is the case, Field, then the dangers for you both are greater still.”

  Maretsky sighed deeply, reached over, and took a buff-colored folder from the top drawer
of his desk. “Come on.” He held the folder up. “Against my better judgment, I have helped you. Let’s go downstairs to Crime.”

  Maretsky had set out the three pictures from the folder on the coffee table in front of Macleod’s desk downstairs. Caprisi had his arm around Field’s shoulder in a gesture of easy comradeship.

  Field found the pictures difficult to look at.

  The first woman was in a position strikingly similar to Lena Orlov’s. She was handcuffed to a brass bed, the sheet rumpled, her body half-turned. She wore a black garter belt and stockings but was otherwise naked, her breasts and nipples small. Like Natasha, she had strong, well-toned arms, one of which was thrust across her stomach, as though in a last-ditch attempt to shield herself from the knife. There were perhaps ten or fifteen stab wounds in her breasts and belly. This girl’s hair was long, like Natasha’s, her face turned away from the camera.

  Natasha. Natasha would look like this. For a moment Field had to fight to prevent himself from being sick.

  The second woman had short, straight, black hair. She was completely naked. She wasn’t handcuffed, and her body lay flat on the bed. The last photograph was of Lena Orlov.

  “Which do you think was first?”

  Neither of them answered, reluctant to turn this into a game.

  Maretsky pointed to the one without handcuffs. “This woman. This is Irina. She was, I believe, a prostitute out-and-out, not a tea dancer.” Maretsky paused, a chubby finger to his lips. “Murdered at home, not in the brothel, so an outside arrangement. Neighbors saw and heard nothing. Didn’t know her, never spoke to her, rarely saw her. So they say. That is, so the French detectives say.”

  “One of your contacts?” Macleod asked.

  Maretsky did not answer.

  “The French did not try to solve the murder?” Macleod went on.

  “It would appear not,” Maretsky said.

  “This girl, the first one, belonged to Lu also?” Caprisi asked.

  Maretsky shrugged. “How can we know, when the French do not pursue these things? A grubby apartment—not one of his regular girls, I shouldn’t think, but I’ll talk about this in a minute.” He looked at the photograph. “The second girl, the one with the long hair, was Natalya Simonov, also a prostitute. Like Lena, she was handcuffed. There was more . . . scene setting. What’s the point here?”

  “Irina was not dressed up,” Caprisi said. “Not handcuffed.”

  “Yes.” He put his finger on Irina’s picture. “Irina was the beginning, I think. It feels—to me, it feels rushed. There is no scene setting, no planning, it is just a sudden, violent act.” Maretsky pointed at the other two photographs. “Afterwards, he gets to Natalya and then Lena, and by now he knows what he wants. Now he is more confident, in control, more able to exactly dictate how he wants the evening to unfold.”

  “Why the . . .” Field looked at Maretsky. “Why the stockings and the handcuffs?”

  He shook his head. “This is about sexual inadequacy, I think. This is what arouses him, or once did, but he has had a bad experience. He is immature or angry emotionally; he blames others for this inadequacy, which he feels deeply. It is not his fault, but that of the women, and . . .” He gestured at each of the three photographs in turn. “You see, these are not girls, these are women. All are in their twenties, at least, all fully grown, mature.”

  “So these are the women he blames?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Maretsky hesitated. “We are outside the realms of modus operandi.”

  “So this stuff is a hobby,” Caprisi said. “We know that.”

  “Perhaps such theories have no place in a police investigation.”

  “Get on with it, Maretsky,” Macleod said with impatient affection.

  Maretsky sighed. “I would have to be familiar with the precise nature of his sexual inadequacy to tell you why. All I can say here is that he feels this inadequacy deeply, and an accompanying sense of rage. The way the girls are asked to dress, the handcuffs, that is part of the picture.”

  “I think,” Field said, “that Lu Huang may be impotent.”

  They all looked at him. Maretsky frowned.

  “The Medvedev girl?” Macleod asked.

  “Yes. She is summoned to his house in Rue Wagner, then made to wait for up to two hours in the living room on the first floor. Eventually, a housekeeper comes to fetch her and takes her to the bedroom on the second floor. She is required to stand in front of the bed and take off her clothes. Slowly.” Field was trying not to show any emotion, but he could feel his cheeks reddening again. “Lu lies on the bed, an opium pipe next to him.”

  “And then what?”

  “When she is naked, she stands there.” Field hesitated, reluctant to share these intimacies. “He looks at her with glazed eyes and then she retrieves her clothes from the floor, goes to a dressing room, dresses again, and leaves by a separate door.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “That’s what she told you?” Macleod smiled at him, benignly but with more than a hint of disbelief.

  “Why would she lie about that?”

  “He doesn’t touch her, ask her to come over?” Maretsky asked.

  Field hesitated. “I don’t think so, no.”

  “She says not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think she is telling you the truth?” Macleod said, daring him to be naive.

  “I don’t see why she would lie about it.”

  “To manipulate you, Field,” Macleod said. “Which appears all too easy.”

  Maretsky was thinking, eyes narrowed behind his still-greasy glasses. “Has he ever asked her to wear anything in particular?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Not that you’re aware of, or definitely not?”

  “She says not.”

  Maretsky crossed his fat legs, his trousers only reaching two-thirds of the way to his feet. “The impotence would fit. He has become impotent, but does not blame himself and his addiction to the drug, but rather the women who once aroused him. He wants them to dress in the manner he once found so appealing, so that their punishment is more satisfying. It is one explanation.” He looked around. “But only one.”

  Field leaned forward in his seat. “But why does he invite Natasha—the Medvedev woman—to his house at Rue Wagner? The others were all murdered in their own apartments.”

  “They were killed at home,” Maretsky said, “but we do not know what occurred in the weeks or months preceding their death.” He shook his head. “Whoever it is, he must wish to get to know his potential victims. There may have been previous occasions on which he asks them to strip for him—to attempt to arouse him. Perhaps he believes on each occasion that this girl is the one to excite him and to revive his performance, and his anger is therefore all the greater when it does not work. Perhaps he likes them to perform to stoke that anger, so that the murder is all the more satisfying.” He uncrossed his legs.

  They digested this. Field willed Maretsky to gather up the pictures and put them back in the folder.

  Caprisi stood and leaned against the wall, beneath a shield from the New York Police Department. “The girl Irina was the first victim. The naked one.”

  “Yes. The first one took some savoring. It was exciting. Satisfying, but it probably took him time to bring himself to the point where he needed to do it again. Now he is into the habit of it. He is addicted. The intervals between are likely to get a little shorter; each one is not quite as thrilling as he anticipates. A law of diminishing returns.”

  “Unless there were others we don’t know about,” Caprisi said.

  Maretsky turned toward him. “Yes.”

  “But why Russian girls?” Macleod asked. “He could kill any number of Chinese out there and no one would bat an eyelid. Why Russian girls in the Concession, and now the Settlement?”

  “Testing the limits of his power. Perhaps also part of what excites
him.”

  “But if it is Lu . . .” Field looked at each of them in turn. “Given his reputation for ruthlessness . . . I mean, why now? He could have been doing this for years.”

  “Dispensing death with an order to a subordinate is not the same as plunging the knife in them himself.”