A Calamitous Chinese Killing

by Shamini Flint

  ♦

  The airport gave Singh his first inkling that he had stepped outside his comfort zone. Instead of queuing for the train, a horde of people pushed past him just as the doors opened. He was left clutching his small case to his chest as the train drew away from the platform. The policeman gritted his teeth. He would have to do better than that if he was to reach baggage claim. He sat down and waited for the next train, noting the sign that read, RELAX – TRAIN COMES EVERY 3 MINUTES. Easier said than done if one had to physically battle to get on. The next time, however, he was more successful, using his case and his bulk to achieve access. The inspector permitted himself a small smile. He was learning quickly. The question was – would he be such a quick study when it came to investigating this murder? In his own experience, painfully earned, a policeman out of jurisdiction was a fish out of water. And Superintendent Chen had only given him a week. He reminded himself that the Chinese police were most likely correct in their conclusion. He wasn’t really on a mission to investigate a murder, but to comfort a mother.

  The immigration queue was long but efficient and he whiled away the time reading billboards that mostly seemed to feature the Olympics, now some years past and various ancient buildings like the Summer Palace and Great Wall.

  He dragged his small wheelie bag out through the glass sliding doors that separated passengers from those waiting for them. A smart young man in a long-sleeved, well-ironed blue shirt held a sign with his name on it, correctly spelled. Or at least the English bit was correctly spelled. He had no idea about the Mandarin. He looked at the squiggles. He assumed it was phonetic. Not that it helped.

  “Inspector Singh?” asked the young man. The policeman would have been more impressed at his acumen if he hadn’t been the only Sikh at the airport.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Benson. I have instructions to take you straight to the Embassy of Singapore. It’s in Chaoyang.”

  “Certainly,” he agreed.

  “Let me take your bag.”

  Singaporean accent – did the Embassy import drivers as well? That seemed a waste of taxpayer dollars. Singh wondered if he should write to his MP.

  He sat back and decided that such a smartly dressed and well-spoken young man was likely to be some junior member of the staff rather than merely a chauffeur.

  “You know the First Secretary?” he asked, once he had bisected his middle with the reassuring seat belt. They were overtaken aggressively on either side by taxis with their suspension a few inches off the ground. His own driver weaved between lanes like a fighter pilot avoiding enemy fire.

  “Susan Tan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m taking you to see her now.” Benson noticed Singh flinch as a van veered to close for comfort. “Takes a while to get used to the driving in Beijing,” he explained. “Shanghai is even worse.”

  “Let’s not go there then,” growled Singh, whose life had flashed before his eyes three times already. A mosaic of hot curries and cold beers punctuated by murder.

  “Tell me about Susan Tan,” he demanded, more to distract himself than anything.

  “What would you like to know, sir?”

  “Anything and everything.”

  “She’s been in Beijing for two years. She’s married and has two children.” He corrected himself. “One child.”

  “Her son, Justin, was killed…you know about that?” demanded Singh.

  “Yes, sir. We were all very shocked.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “The staff at the Embassy.”

  They were now stuck in traffic, rows of stationary cars and frustrated drivers as far as the eye could see. “Bad traffic,” grunted Singh.

  “It’s always like this, sir.”

  All things considered, the policeman felt safer when they were inching forwards. There was less likelihood of becoming roadkill. On the other hand, he’d need the toilet soon. He noted the number of luxury vehicles. The Chinese economic miracle was clogging up the streets.

  “What happened to Justin?” he asked.

  “He was attacked by a bunch of ruffians…they beat him to death. Apparently it was a robbery gone wrong.”

  Not a pleasant way to go – terrifying, agonising and always the knowledge of how it was going to end.

  “Gone wrong?”

  “Nothing was taken.”

  “Is that sort of thing common in Beijing?”

  “It is very rare for foreigners to be targeted.”

  “They might not have known he was foreign? He’s Chinese after all.”

  “The locals can always tell, sir.”

  Singh remembered Mrs Chong the neighbour. She seemed to have no difficulty distinguishing between China girls and the rest.

  “So Justin was just an unfortunate young man?”

  “It seems that way, sir.”

  “So why does the mother think there’s more to it?”

  Benson drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as if considering his answer. At last, he said, “I guess it is difficult for the family to accept what happened…”

  The inspector nodded his great head. That was the crux of the matter. A grief-stricken family did not want to believe that their boy’s death was nothing more than very bad luck.

  “We’re here! This is the Singapore Embassy,” exclaimed Benson, as if they had suddenly come upon one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  Singh rolled down the window and stared at the plain three-storey building with dark windows, obscured to some extent by trees and a high wall. A policeman stood to attention directly in front of the gate, narrowed eyes watching the car as if he intended to sacrifice his life rather than allow ingress.

  “It’s big,” remarked Singh.

  “There are staff residences as well,” explained Benson.

  He parked the car and opened Singh’s door even before he’d managed to locate the seat belt ejector. Benson waved his hand with a flourish as if welcoming Singh onto Embassy grounds – ‘some corner of a foreign field’ that was forever Singapore? It didn’t have quite the same romantic appeal. And the building was almost entirely lacking in character. Mind you, wasn’t that what foreigners said about Singapore?

  The inspector extricated himself with some difficulty from the car, wished that there had been time to supplement his breakfast on the plane with a snack at the airport and mentally girded himself to deal with the grieving mother.

  ♦

  Luo Gan looked up at the sky and decided it was around eleven o’clock in the morning, the time of his original arrest at Tiananmen Square a few weeks earlier – he’d already lost count of the exact number of days. He squinted up at the sun, feeling the crow’s feet tighten around his eyes. Luo Gan carefully placed the hammer with its dusty worn head by his feet, stood up and walked away from it at a slow deliberate pace. He knew that numerous pairs of eyes, guards and prisoners alike, were focused on him – he was the rock in an eddy of work. They knew what was coming because he had done this every day that he had been well enough to return to the quarry after the beatings. In his mind, he could hear screams, shouts, a few coherent words begging for mercy, for life, and then a sudden silence that lasted mere seconds but felt like an infinity. He didn’t know how it had happened, perhaps Justin had been trying to call for help, perhaps the ‘last dialled’ number had been accidentally depressed when he was attacked. All he knew was that he’d listened in on the slow death of a young man.

  Luo Gan began the movements that formed the opening sequence of the falun gong spiritual exercises. He heard the guards shouting and their heavy-booted steps as they ran towards him but he ignored them. Around him, he saw other falun gong prisoners follow his lead for the first time and he felt pity and admiration for them. They were inspired by his courage in defying the authorities but only he knew that his own so-called bravery was built on a foundation of guilt and remorse.

  By the time the guards reached them, more than half the prisoners were performing the
ritual movements so that they looked collectively like an ill-trained ballet troupe. The other prisoners, petty thieves, prostitutes and corrupt officials, stood and watched in silence. Luo Gan knew there would be hell to pay. He’d been a rebel and that was bad enough. But now he was a leader.

  Three

  Susan Tan stood up as Singh came in and walked around the bureau towards him. As she reached him, she held out her hand and shook his. A firm handshake, almost masculine in the manner it conveyed decisiveness. Good body language all round, thought Singh – not a woman who needed protection or the implied authority of a big desk. She was not what he’d expected. Somehow, he’d assumed the First Secretary would look like a pen-pusher – small, bespectacled, bookish – or like a middle-aged headmistress of an all girls’ school: matching twinset, skirt just below the knees, pearls, pursed lips and face powder. Susan Tan was a tall – almost six feet – ethnically Chinese woman who was also stick thin. She wore a trouser suit in some sort of shimmering grey material and a snowy white shirt. Her shoes added unnecessary height as far as he was concerned. She would have towered over the inspector from Singapore without them. Her dark hair was greying at the temples in a matching shade to her clothes. Her jaw was firmly set and dark shadows suggested that all was not well in her world. She must have been formidable once. Now she just looked exhausted.

  “Inspector Singh, you’re not what I expected.”

  “Madam First Secretary?” said Singh, ignoring the comment. After all, what could he do? Apologise for being short, fat, scruffy and turbaned? For having chickpea curry on his tie? For wearing white trainers instead of the sort of glossy black shoes favoured by this woman and Superintendent Chen? Besides, he’d just come to the same conclusion about her.

  “Call me Susan,” said the woman and ushered Singh to a section of the office where there was a deep sofa and an armchair around a glass table. Coffee and a plate of paus were ready and Singh fought the urge to grab one.

  “Thank you for agreeing to come, Inspector Singh.”

  Singh did not respond. He’d been strong-armed into coming to Beijing so it would be mendacious to claim credit for the decision.

  A hint of a smile disappeared quickly. “I don’t suppose you had much choice?”

  “I’m happy to do what I can,” said Singh cautiously.

  “But you’re not sure what help you can be…”

  “Exactly.”

  “My son deserves justice.”

  “Tell me what happened,” asked Singh mildly. He sensed this woman might shatter into a million metaphorical pieces.

  “Justin joined us here in China a few months back. He’d just completed his National Service in Singapore.”

  At the raised eyebrow from Singh, she walked over to his desk, flipped open a large diary and said, “Three months two days exactly.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “He was attending a course at the University of Peking to brush up on his Mandarin and learn a bit more about Chinese history. He was due in Oxford to do PPE…”

  “PPE?”

  “Politics, philosophy and economics. The same course I did many years back. It is good preparation for the diplomatic service.”

  “So he was destined to follow in your footsteps?”

  “He didn’t seem that sure about what he wanted. He obtained a deferment from Oxford for a year while he tried to figure it out.”

  “And you were comfortable with that?”

  “I wasn’t delighted,” said Susan, her clear brown eyes meeting Singh’s. “I thought it was high time he got on with things. But he seemed happy here in China and was reluctant to leave.” She closed her eyes for a long moment as if the memories were imprinted on the insides of her eyelids. “If I’d forced him to go, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” said Singh automatically. How many grieving mothers had he spoken to in a lifetime of hunting murderers? More than he cared to remember. All of them, without fail, found some way to blame themselves. Did it make it easier to do that? Was it better to assume some fault than to imagine that one’s child was a victim of arbitrary fate, of capricious gods?

  Susan Tan was struggling to master her emotions. It showed in the way her jaw was working although she remained dry-eyed.

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “His body was found in a back street that runs along a hutong in Dazhalan Xi Jie, south of Tiananmen Square.”

  “Hutong?”

  “A sort of old Chinese residential area. Courtyards, homes, shops, narrow streets. Dating back a few dynasties. A lot of them have been torn down but a few remain.”

  Singh nodded and tried to look as if he’d known all this beforehand.

  “He was beaten to death,” she continued. And then, as if she expected scepticism, she added, “That’s what the autopsy report said. I have a translated copy for you.”

  Singh nodded his thanks. “And the Chinese police?”

  “They said it was a robbery gone wrong – he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “And you accept that?”

  “No,” her voice was loud, angry. “I don’t accept that at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for starters nothing was stolen.”

  “They might have been frightened off before they had a chance to rob him?” suggested Singh.

  “They had time to beat him to death but not to rob him?”

  “It doesn’t take as long as you might think to kill someone.”

  She flinched at his words and the hairs on Singh’s neck stood up along the base of his turban. Suddenly, it was as if Justin was a presence in the room, a wraith come to demand that the policeman from Singapore do his duty and not be so keen to accept the official version of events. It did not take long to kill someone. But she was right, it took even less time to make off with a wallet.

  “Do you have a picture of him?”

  Susan Tan went to the desk. There was a framed shot on her table that had been facing away from Singh, for the eyes of the woman who sat behind the desk. She picked it up, hesitated, opened a drawer and recovered a file, and then walked over to Singh. She handed over the picture and Singh took the heavy frame. Justin Tan had been a handsome young man. One day he might have developed the gravitas of his mother, but in this picture he looked like a youth with the world at his feet, and as if he knew it. The grin was mischievous; the army cap pushed back, the green fatigues neat but a couple of buttons undone revealing a shadowed hairless chest. In uniform, but not constrained by it. He must have been a handful for a commanding officer. On the other hand, decided Singh, looking at the open, handsome face, he might have inspired loyalty. There was gravity about the eyes despite the wide smile. Officer material? Maybe, but it was not something Singh intended to extrapolate from a well-taken photograph. Although there was a strong physical resemblance to his mother, the open trusting expression was diametrically opposite to the shuttered face of the woman with him.

  “The picture was taken the last time I was in Singapore, just before his term in the army was over,” said Susan.

  “So he looked like this?”

  “His hair had grown out a bit, but yes, that’s how he looked the day before he died more or less.”

  She opened the file and extricated another photo that she dropped on the table between them. “And this is how he looked the day after.”

  Singh picked up the picture. He was not squeamish by nature and not even violent death in all its bloody glory could upset his equilibrium. Even so, he felt a pang of regret for a young life taken, and with such brutality. Justin’s face was puffy and bruised. Both eyes were swollen shut. His cheeks were raised and darkened along the ridge of his cheekbones. His nose was badly lacerated. A patch of blood along his hairline suggested that a fistful of hair had been yanked out. He would have been better off maintaining the army crew cut, there would have been no grip for his assailants then. Only his jaw, by acci
dent rather than design, was unmarked and Singh saw that the son had a cleft chin. He looked over at the mother and saw that she shared the same feature.

  “Are you really trying to tell me that that – ” she gestured at the photo – “was a robbery gone wrong?”

  Singh put the picture back down carefully. He leaned back against the sofa and felt a sharp pain between his shoulder blades. Even in business class, a night flight was uncomfortable and he was too old for it – and much too old for this.

  “The level of violence does seem excessive,” he agreed.

  “So it can’t just have been a robbery gone wrong.”

  “There are other factors that might have played a part,” said Singh, as gently as possible.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I agree that the crime looks disproportionately violent but there are potential explanations for that of which the most likely are drugs or alcohol.”

  Her shoulders slumped but she did not give any other hint that she had taken his words on board. Was it because she recognised the truth of what he was saying or was she disappointed that he was toeing the official line?

  “Do you know what I was doing the night he was killed?” she asked. “I was hosting a function here at the Embassy. Can you believe it? I was at a party while my son was being…assaulted…murdered.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, although he could guess what the answer would be. It was always the same request, demand, order, plea – from the bereaved. This mother, unusual in so many other ways, did not break the mould.