Chinese Whispers tct-6

by Peter May

  Sunlight slanted obliquely across the courtyard to shine through the smudged, filthy windows of the Guo house. Li knocked several times and got no response. He shaded his eyes from the light to peer inside, but there appeared to be no one there.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Li and Wu turned at the sound of a woman’s harsh voice, her tongue rolling itself around a very distinctive Beijing r. She wore a dark woollen hat, an old blue Mao jacket over a long pinafore, and woollen leggings under thin cotton trousers, and stood in the doorway of the tiny apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard.

  ‘Public Security,’ Li said. ‘We’re looking for Mrs Guo.’

  ‘Do you people never talk to one another?’ she asked, her voice heavy with contempt. ‘There was one of your people here looking for her an hour ago.’ She looked the two detectives up and down. ‘And he had a uniform.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’ Wu asked.

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Yes, we can see that.’ Wu controlled his impatience. ‘Do you know where we can find her?’

  ‘Panjiayuan. She and that girl of hers sell antiques down there.’ She snorted. ‘Antiques! Hah. Junk, more like. What do you want her for?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Li said.

  As they made their way out into the hutong, they heard her shout after them, ‘And you can stick your public security up your arse!’

  Wu and Li exchanged glances that turned into involuntary smiles. Li shook his head. ‘Whatever happened to public respect for the police?’ he asked.

  * * *

  The Panjiayuan Market did its business behind low grey walls in the treelined Panjiayuan Lu, just west of the East Third Ring Road. A vast covered area of stalls played host to the Sunday fleamarket, but lay empty during the week. A fruit and vegetable market did brisk business in an open cobbled area at the west end of the compound. Stalls selling traditional paintings and antiques were sandwiched between the two, washed by dull sunlight filtered through a plastic roof. In a cul-de-sac opposite the main gate, a trishaw driver sprawled sleeping in the back of his own tricycle under a candy-striped canopy as Li and Wu drove in. A banner was strung across a wall just inside the gates. Gather all the treasure and make friends in the world. Which Li took to be a euphemism for Collect all your junk and sell it to the tourists. Some of the older buildings that lined the outer wall of the market had been restored to their original splendour, and several traditional Chinese shopping streets had been constructed within, in the shadow of the twenty-storey apartment blocks that grew like weeds here in this south-east corner of the city. Empty shop units, empty apartments, populated only by the ghosts of the people whose homes had been razed to make way for them. Building, it seemed, was outstripping demand.

  Li and Wu wandered between stalls peddling paintings and wall-hangings, watched by suspicious, dark-eyed vendors nursing glass jars of green tea or sitting around fold-up tables playing cards. It was clear the two men were neither tourists nor casual Chinese. Which could only mean one other thing. At the far end of one of the aisles, a group of tourists was gathered around a table watching an artist at work, carefully crafting a pen and ink scene of ancient China. Next to him a group of men and women, wrapped up warm against the cold, was playing Great Wall on a rusted metal table. Li interrupted them, flipping open his ID. ‘I’m looking for Mrs Guo. She sells antiques.’ One of them nodded towards the far aisle, but none of them spoke.

  ‘Chatty types,’ Wu muttered to Li as they passed a big-bellied shiny Buddha on a plinth. A wooden pig rose up on its hind legs snorting its derision, and a line of bronze warriors gazed upon them impassively. They turned into the aisle at the end and it stretched ahead of them in gloomy half-darkness for sixty or seventy metres. There were stalls and tiny shop units and tables groaning with junk: teapots and door-knockers; small figurines in armour; inlaid wooden boxes; wristwatches displaying Mao heads that nodded away the seconds. Behind glass, shelves of traditional chinaware, ornate wooden carvings. Two teenage girls sat beside a table of polished gramophone horns. ‘Looka, looka,’ one of them said, not yet savvy enough to recognise police out of uniform.

  Wu said curtly, ‘Mrs Guo.’

  The other one nodded towards a shop unit two doors along. ‘Police there,’ she said conspiratorially.

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ Li said.

  There were three people squeezed around a wooden table in the tiny, cluttered shop unit. A woman with long dark hair who looked in her middle forties, a very old man in a wide-brimmed hat drowned by a heavy coat two sizes too big for him, and a young uniformed community police officer. The shelves were lined with blue-ink china vases, and the ceiling was hung with dozens of bells on chains. The young policeman looked up with what seemed like relief when Li and Wu arrived. The old man stared into some unseen place with glazed eyes, and a large, clear drip of mucus hung from the end of his nose. The woman’s eyes were red, her cheeks blotched and tearstained. Li saw something like hope in her eyes when she looked up at them, as if she thought that somehow they might have come to say it had all been a terrible mistake, and that Guo Huan was really alive and well. He ached for her, and the false hope she was conjuring out of the depths of her despair. He said, ‘I’m Section Chief Li Yan, Mrs Guo. Detective Wu and I are investigating your daughter’s death.’ And whatever hope she might have fostered, he knew he had just stolen away.

  He saw her face go bleak. ‘The uniform says she was murdered,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Found her up Silk Street Market,’ the uniform said. ‘Isn’t that right?’ He looked to Li for confirmation, not remotely awed by the presence of superior ranks. ‘Hacked to pieces apparently.’

  The girl’s mother gasped her distress and tears blurred her eyes.

  Li glared at him. ‘I think you can go now, officer.’

  ‘That’s alright, Chief. They said I should stay down here and offer support. It’s part of the job in the community branch.’

  The mother turned to Li. ‘What was she doing in a place like that at night, alone with a man?’

  ‘Well, you should know,’ the uniform said, wearing his disapproval like a badge.

  Li turned to Wu. ‘Get him out of here.’

  Wu grabbed the uniform by the arm and yanked him out of his seat. ‘Hey!’ the officer protested. But Wu had him out of the door and into the alley before he could give further voice to his indignation.

  Mrs Guo looked at Li in consternation, her cheeks shining with silent tears. ‘What did he mean?’

  Li shook his head and sat down where the uniform had been. ‘He doesn’t know what he means,’ Li said. ‘These community police are just messenger boys. They don’t know anything.’ Outside in the alley, they heard raised voices, and the sound of something breaking. Li glanced at the old man. He hadn’t moved since they came in. ‘Is he alright?’

  A dead look fell across the mother’s face. ‘Who knows? He’s my father. He’s been like that since he had his stroke ten years ago. And what does the State do for him? Nothing. I have to pay for all his medical care. I have to nurse him at home. Me and Huan, with one bedroom among the three of us. That’s why she had to work nights. We needed the money.’

  ‘Where did she work?’

  She shrugged. ‘Different places. Bar work mostly. She said there was always casual work in Bar Street up in Sanlitun.’ Her face crumpled in consternation. ‘Is it true? Was she really … cut up?’

  Li nodded. There was no way he could conceal it from her. She would have to identify the body. ‘I’m afraid so.’ And he wondered if Guo Huan’s mother really believed that she was working in bars in Sanlitun all those nights she went off on her own. But, then, if her daughter was bringing in good money, perhaps she didn’t want to know any different.

  Wu reappeared and stood in the doorway. He nodded to Li almost imperceptibly. Li said, ‘Did she ever tell you she was meeting anyone? Ever mention a name, a rendezvous?
’

  The mother held her hands out helplessly. ‘We didn’t talk much,’ she said. ‘About anything. She left school four years ago, and we’ve been working in the shop here together every day since.’ She glanced at her father. ‘With him.’ She paused, dealing with some painful private memory. ‘We ran out of things to talk about a long time ago.’

  Li nodded and allowed her a little space before he said, ‘Mrs Guo, I’d like your permission for a team of forensics people to go into your house and go through all your daughter’s things.’

  Her mother sat upright suddenly, as if offended by the idea. ‘I don’t think I’d like that. What difference does it make now anyway? She’s dead.’

  Li said patiently, ‘She might have known her killer, Mrs Guo, in which case we might find some clue to his identity among her things.’ He paused. ‘She wasn’t his first victim. We want to stop him from doing it again.’

  Mrs Guo sank back into her despair and nodded desolately. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And if you have a recent photograph of her, that would be very helpful.’

  She reached into a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard shoebox tied with pink ribbon. She placed it carefully on the table, undid the ribbon and lifted the lid. It was full of photographs. ‘I always meant to put them in an album.’ She looked around her shop. ‘I sit about here all day and do nothing. The more time you have, the more time you waste.’ She started taking out pictures and laying them in front of her.

  They didn’t appear to be in any date order, as if they had been taken in and out of the box often. There were family groups, taken in happier times, a man on Mrs Guo’s arm whom Li took to be her husband. There were pictures of a little girl smiling toothily at the camera, cheap prints on which the colours were faded now. Guo Huan in school uniform — a blue tracksuit and yellow baseball cap. Guo Huan with short hair, Guo Huan with long hair. All appeared to have been taken several years earlier. Her mother fingered every photograph with a kind of reverence, each with its own memory, every one with its own baggage. And then she pulled out a strip of four photographs of a much older Guo Huan. She handed it to Li. ‘These were taken a month or two ago. In one of those booths.’

  Li examined them closely. The smile was self-conscious, and each photograph in the sequence was almost identical. She had shoulder-length hair, and a pretty face all made up for the occasion. Having seen her in Silk Street and at the morgue, Li would still never have recognised her. She had a freshness about her, an absence of cynicism, the anticipation of youth for a life ahead. A life that would never be. ‘May I take these?’ he asked. ‘I promise to return them.’ The mother nodded and he handed the strip to Wu. ‘And I’m sorry to ask, Mrs Guo, but we will need you to make a formal identification of the body.’

  A look of panic flitted across her face. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Is there someone else, then?’

  She thought for a moment, and then her face collapsed into resignation as she shook her head. ‘When do you want me?’

  ‘I’ll have a car come and pick you up in the next hour.’ Li glanced at the old man. ‘Will he be alright?’

  ‘I’ll have someone watch him,’ she said. And Li saw her lower lip start to tremble as she tried to hold back the tears. But they came anyway, big and silent, making wet tracks down her cheeks. ‘They only let you have one child.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m too old to start again.’ She looked at her father, and Li was sure it was resentment he saw in her eyes. ‘He’s all I have left.’

  As they made their way back through the gloom of the antiques alley, Wu said to Li, ‘That goddamned community cop was determined he wasn’t leaving. Actually put up a struggle. Bust a vase.’

  ‘Put in a complaint,’ Li said.

  Wu grunted. ‘Not worth the paperwork, Chief.’

  But if Wu was content to put it behind him, the community cop was not. He was waiting for them out front, lingering in agitation beneath a moongate leading to a neighbouring compound. He came chasing after them. ‘Hey,’ he said, catching Li’s arm. ‘Your detective assaulted me.’ He barely had time to draw breath in surprise before Li wheeled around and pushed him hard up against the wall, his forearm against the officer’s throat. The hapless policeman’s hat went spinning away across the cobbles.

  ‘You’re lucky I don’t break your neck,’ Li hissed at him. ‘I guess you were off the day they taught sensitivity at cop school.’ He released him. ‘Don’t go near that woman again.’

  The incident had lasted only seconds, but already a crowd was gathering. It was unheard of for a police officer to be handled like that, and those who had been witness to it were enjoying the moment. The officer straightened his coat and stooped, with as much dignity as he could muster, to retrieve his hat. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ he called after the two detectives. And then he turned and glared at the crowd. ‘What the fuck are you looking at!’

  The trishaw driver was still asleep under his candy-striped canopy as Li and Wu turned out of the main gate. Wu was chewing furiously on his gum. ‘I don’t know about you, Chief, but I’m starving.’ He checked his watch. ‘How about we stop somewhere for a bite of lunch.’

  Li said, ‘I’m never hungry after an autopsy.’ He sighed. ‘But I’ve got a lunch appointment at twelve, so I’m going to have to find an appetite from somewhere.’

  Wu was not impressed. ‘Lucky you. Who’s buying you lunch?’

  ‘An American polygraph expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He’s set up a demonstration this afternoon for a group of top Ministry of Public Security people.’

  Wu was unimpressed. ‘A polygraph demonstration?’

  ‘No,’ Li said. ‘It’s a new thing called MERMER.’

  ‘Mermer?’ Wu pulled a face. ‘What the hell’s a Mermer when it’s at home?’

  ‘Some kind of foolproof way of detecting guilty knowledge in the brain,’ Li said. ‘At least, that’s what they claim.’ He cast a wry smile in Wu’s direction. ‘A good job your wife never had access to it.’

  Wu laughed. ‘If she had, we’d only have got divorced all the sooner.’

  III

  The Mo Gu Huo Guo mushroom hotpot restaurant stood on a corner, in the shadow of the tall cylindrical tower of the Central Music Conservatory, just off Pufang Lu. Its speciality was mushrooms from Sichuan and Yunan Provinces. Margaret stood on the steps in the sunshine with Li Jon in her arms. The American polygraph expert had wanted to meet her. He had married a Chinese cop and thought that the two couples might have quite a lot in common. She watched as the Santana pulled up under the trees, a chill wind rustling stubborn leaves that refused to fall. As Li climbed out, Wu slipped into the driver’s seat and drove off.

  Margaret eyed the father of her child as he approached her across the broad curve of pavement, his shadow falling away to his right. He looked good in his long coat, tall and broad-shouldered, his black hair cropped in its distinctive flat-top crew cut. His pants were still sharply creased, although a little crinkled around the knee, and his white shirt was tucked tightly in at his impossibly narrow waist. Clothes hung beautifully on the Chinese frame, and Margaret marvelled at how she was still attracted to Li, even after all this time. Her stomach did a little flip, and she remembered how their passion had been frustrated by the call on his cellphone in the early hours of that morning. And she saw a weariness in his face that she recognised as owing more to what the call had led him to confront than to the simple interruption of his sleep.

  He smiled and stooped to kiss her, and ran a hand through the black hair beginning to grow more thickly now on his son’s head. ‘Been waiting long?’

  ‘Just arrived.’

  ‘They’re probably already here then. We’d better go in.’

  He wasn’t volunteering anything about his call-out this morning, and she knew better than to ask.

  The restaurant was drum-shaped, like its taller neighbour, the Central Conservatory. It had dining halls on three floors,
with private rooms around the outside on the second and third. A pretty waitress in a red jacket and skirt led them up a circular staircase and around a pillared corridor which skirted the second-floor dining room. The American and his wife were waiting for them in a private room about two-thirds of the way around. They stood up from a table with a large pot sunk into its centre, over a concealed gas ring. Steam rose from bubbling stock. The room was ablaze with sunlight, and Li and Margaret were dazzled by it, entering from the dark inner hall.

  The polygrapher was tall and slim, a man in his forties with a head of thick, greying hair. He wore a baggy brown suit and checked shirt, with a tie loose at the neck. ‘Yeh, blinding isn’t it?’ He grinned at them as they shaded their eyes. ‘But, then, I always figure I look better when you can’t see me.’ He shook Li’s hand warmly. ‘Good to see you again, Li Yan. You haven’t met Chi Lyang, have you?’

  ‘No.’ Li shook hands with a slight, but attractive-looking Chinese woman in her mid-thirties. Her long black hair was drawn back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and sneakers and a white blouse. ‘Ni hau,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘Hi.’

  The American turned to Margaret, extending his hand. ‘And you must be Margaret. My name’s Bill Hart. I have heard so much about you, Margaret.’

  ‘All of it bad, no doubt.’

  He shrugged a shoulder. ‘Pretty much. But I figure, hell, with a reputation like that, you gotta be worth meeting.’

  Margaret raised an eyebrow. ‘I hope I won’t disappoint you, then.’

  He grinned. ‘Don’t you dare.’ And he turned to his wife. ‘This is Chi Lyang.’

  Margaret shook hands with her. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear about me,’ she said. ‘Since I became a mother I’ve retired from hostilities.’