The Hungry Ghost Murder

by Chris West

  The Hungry Ghost Murder

  An Inspector Bao Zheng Mystery

  Chris West

  © Chris West 1995.

  Chris West has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published as Death on Black Dragon River by Collins Crime in 1995.

  This edition published in 2020 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  The young man’s hands twitched on the club handle.

  ‘It’s no use,’ the old man told him. ‘You’ll only make it worse.’

  The little girl just watched, cowering in the corner.

  ‘Come on out and answer for your crimes!’ These words came, brash and screeching, from a megaphone outside the building.

  ‘Long live Chairman Mao Zedong!’ added a furious chorus of unaided voices, also outside, and, it sounded, completely surrounding the small, traditional-style Shandong Province farmhouse.

  ‘You have two minutes,’ the megaphone continued. ‘Otherwise we will burn your house down, with you inside it.’

  ‘Death to all Capitalist Roaders!’ the chorus put in.

  The old man shuddered. The girl began to sob. The young man raised the club above his shoulders.

  ‘Ninety seconds!’

  Old Yeye stared round the room. ‘Take everything off the walls!’ he shouted.

  ‘You can’t think of those things now,’ the young man began.

  ‘Do as I say!’ the old man snapped, then called out of the window. ‘Wait! We’re coming!’

  ‘You have one minute.’

  ‘Here.’ Yeye held out his arms to make a kind of cradle, and the young man began taking the long parchment scrolls off the walls, rolling them up and placing them in it. Grandfather’s calligraphy, the two door gods …

  ‘That one, too,’ the old man said, nodding at the view of boats on a river.

  The lad did as he was told, but there was particular pain on his face as he did so.

  ‘Get those petrol cans ready, Comrades!’

  ‘We’re coming!’ Yeye called out again.

  A jeer went up as the family opened their ancient oak front door to be confronted by the village brigade of the Red Guards. Their leader, a man known as the Red Tiger, stepped forward.

  ‘Take these,’ Yeye told him.

  The Red Tiger glanced at what was being offered and sneered. ‘What are the Four Olds?’ he asked.

  ‘I … don’t know.’

  ‘You’re ignorant as well as wicked. Old customs, old habits, old culture, old thinking. What does Chairman Mao Zedong want us to do with them?’

  ‘Change them?’

  ‘Destroy them!’ The Tiger shoved Yeye away and the scrolls tumbled out of the old man’s arms. ‘Make a pile of these hideous things. We’ll have a bonfire tonight!’

  As Yeye began to pick them up, a squat man approached the leader and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I suppose so,’ came the reply. ‘It’s not for us to question Comrade Kang Sheng. But not too many. We want a good fire!’

  The squat man rifled through the collection and took a selection of items away. A teenager doused the rest in petrol.

  ‘Let’s punish the reactionaries!’ shouted someone who wanted more from the evening than some old scroll-paintings going up in smoke.

  ‘Send ’em on a jet-plane ride!’ added a tall, thin young man in particularly thick glasses. The Guards’ favourite torture involved making people stand bent forward, arms straight behind their backs, for hours on end.

  ‘Put ’em in the cowshed!’ cried the young woman beside him.

  ‘All in good time, Comrades,’ said the Red Tiger. ‘Tonight we have cultural work to do.’ He took a torch from one of his followers and held it aloft.

  The crowd fell silent. Zhang lowered the flame with great deliberation, clearly relishing the moment. It reached the pile, and for a second nothing happened. Then the old parchments burst into flame and began to writhe like demented, glowing snakes as the fire took hold. Then, as suddenly, they disintegrated into curls of ash spiralling up a column of fire into the night sky. Then they were nothing.

  Yeye fought back the tears. He must not be seen to react.

  ‘You were wise to hand over these reactionary objects,’ said Red Tiger Zhang. ‘But don’t think all your crimes are forgiven.’

  Yeye shook his head humbly. The Tiger turned away and began to recite a section from Mao’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art from memory. His young Red Guards joined in, those who didn’t know the passage mouthing along, hoping nobody would notice.

  Yeye sighed, with pain but also relief. He had saved the lives of his family tonight. For how long, of course, was a different matter. But now, in 1967, in the middle of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, people like him could only live a day at a time.

  1

  Detective Inspector (Second Class) Bao Zheng of the Beijing Xing Zhen Ke (CID) relaxed into his soft-class seat, put down his paper and returned to staring out of the train window. Dirt tracks, wheatfields, arrow-straight canals lined with poplars: the rural province of Shandong. This was the place he still regarded as home, as a bastion of the kind of values his father had taught him: hard work, common sense, justice. That last one above all. What a contrast with the wild, grab-what-you-can capital where he now worked!

  They passed through yet another village. The main street was empty. The inhabitants were enjoying a siesta from the late-summer sun. Only the walls had stayed awake to clamour their bright, hand-painted slogans. A generation ago, these would have been political. Criticize Confucius and Lin Biao! Now they fanfared the Scientific Design and Outstanding Value of Long March Brand Electric Fans.

  The village was gone. More fields and, now, a distant pencil line of hills on the horizon. Nobody could daub any slogans on this.

  The woman asleep beside him stirred, turning further into his shoulder. For the ten thousandth time the inspector asked himself if Rosina would really enjoy this trip. One of the many things he loved about her – how strange and wonderful it still felt to use that word with himself as the subject – was her dislike of snobbery. But how would it be, when she actually met the people of Nanping village, among whom Bao had lived the first sixteen years of his life? Lao bai xing, ‘old hundred names’ – peasants.

  He picked up the paper again. The news these days! More criticism of China from America’s new president Ke Lin Dun. More trouble with Fat Peng, the last British Imperialist governor of Hong Kong. A cache of guns found in a house in Tianjin – guns seemed to be getting everywhere, especially in the wrong hands.

  But this was city stuff. For the next two weeks, he and his wife would be away from all this, in the countryside – the place that he still believed was the true heart of China.

  *

  The jeep that picked them up from Jinan station stank of chickens. Sacks of fertilizer added an extra, chemical smell. The cargo, in cardboard boxes, took up all the space except for one seat, on to which the inspector and his wife had had to squeeze. The driver, a lad of about twenty, handled the vehicle as if he were at one of those Japanese-style amusement arcades, turning the journey into a war with cyclists, donkeys, pedestrians and fellow maniacs at the wheels of trucks. Once they had entered the hills and passed the
town of Wentai, there was less traffic, so instead the lad got his kicks by hurling the vehicle round each bend. Bao tried protesting, but the driver said he had a schedule to keep to.

  ‘This road was just a track last time I came here,’ the inspector said wistfully, after one corner taken with particular recklessness.

  ‘That’s Secretary Wu’s doing,’ the young man replied. ‘He got it tarmacked – well, it must be five years ago now. Maybe more.’

  Bao felt a pang of guilt. Was it really that long since he’d been here?

  Round another bend, and a gaunt brick needle came into view on the skyline. ‘We call that the hundred-Buddha pagoda,’ Bao told Rosina proudly.

  ‘The no Buddha pagoda, it’s called nowadays,’ the driver cut in.

  More guilt, this time for Bao’s generation.

  ‘It could have been a tourist attraction,’ the driver went on. ‘People from the cities would have come to see it. Overseas Chinese, too. Maybe even big-noses. But of course those idiot Red Guards smashed them all.’ A look of embarrassment suddenly crossed the driver’s face. ‘You weren’t involved, were you?’

  Bao smiled. ‘No, I was in the Army. The one place where you didn’t have to do that sort of thing.’

  The young man looked relieved. ‘I thought so. You got a medal, didn’t you? Then you became a gold-badge. Solving murders and so on. Assistant Xia told me all about you.’

  Another lurch round yet another corner, and a valley spread out ahead of them, flat and fertile at the bottom with hills rising above it on three sides. At the far end lay Nanping.

  Home.

  ‘You’ll notice a lot of changes,’ the driver said as they sped past the first houses. ‘Look at the hillsides.’

  Bao did. They had sprouted clutches of villas: double-storied, garishly painted and in their own walled plots of land.

  ‘I’m going to have one by the time I’m twenty-five,’ the young man went on.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Hard work! To get rich is glorious!’ he added, quoting Deng Xiaoping.

  They passed the old bell tower on its brick plinth – that had been too solid even for the Red Guards – and entered the main street. The buildings all seemed to have grown a storey or two since Bao’s last visit. The road was now crammed with bikes, trucks, wooden handcarts and three-wheeled ‘iron cow’ tractors. Pedestrians, a few in the old Mao suit but most sporting bright T-shirts or fancy, embroidered blouses, mingled among them, either to cross the road or because they had had to step off the pavement because it was filled by stalls and vendors with piles of produce. The young driver stuck his hand on the horn and ploughed into them. Everybody scurried out of his way, seemingly unconcerned about this aggressiveness.

  The inspector disliked the driver’s attitude, but the scene as a whole lifted his spirits. The noise! The life! Only down the alleyways off to the left was there anything to depress: glimpses of the poor quarter of Nanping, the ‘old village’. From what he could see, nothing much had livened up there.

  His brother lived down one of those alleys.

  ‘I’m seven minutes late,’ said the driver. ‘All right if I make a delivery then take you to the guesthouse?’

  Bao reached for the letter from the local Party Secretary promising ‘special transport’ from Jinan station. Then he nodded his head. He had worked hard accumulating extra leave, and he wanted to make this visit relaxing and trouble-free. Starting an argument did not fit this plan.

  They carried on up the main street, past Yang’s Boarding House and the walled compounds of Police and Party HQ, to North Square, a paved area at the top of the village. The tin-roofed factory on the far northern side had been Wentai Brigade No. 9 Agricultural Implements Plant. Now, a banner announced it as Nanping Village Industries Corporation.

  The driver stopped by its gate and got out. ‘Won’t be long.’

  Silence fell. Bao turned to his wife and said: ‘Welcome to Nanping!’

  She opened the door, half climbed, half collapsed out of it and was sick.

  In the middle of North Square was a fountain that hadn’t worked for years, two cypress trees and a millstone on which Bao had ground corn by hand as a teenage boy. The last of these was now a seat, and Bao led Rosina towards it.

  ‘I’m… fine,’ she said blearily.

  ‘Sit down and rest. I’ll tell that stupid driver to take the cases up to the guesthouse, and we can get a taxi later.’ Bao had no idea if there were any taxis in Nanping, but he’d find a vehicle somehow.

  ‘I’ll walk. When I’m feeling a bit better. You know I like to walk.’

  Bao nodded. Rosina disliked making a fuss, even when she had every right to.

  An old man was sitting on the stone, smoking a pipe. Bao thought he recognized him and tried to remember his name. The man looked up. Lao Wang, that was it. The family had lived in –

  ‘Aiya!’ The man was staring at him with a look of horror. The inspector opened his mouth to speak, but Lao Wang had already turned his back and was hobbling away as fast as he could.

  Bao tried calling, but this only seemed to make Wang move quicker. So he gave a shrug and helped his wife the last few steps to the stone. Rosina sank on to it and hid her head in her hands. Her body began heaving as if she were suddenly racked with tears. He sat down beside her, put an arm round her shoulder and whispered reassurances.

  ‘I know this hasn’t been the best start.’

  Rosina lowered her hands and turned to him. ‘That man’s face!’ she said. ‘He looked like he’d seen a ghost!’ Then she resumed her helpless laughter.

  *

  The government guesthouse was halfway up the hillside, a location it now shared with the homes of the newly rich. The inspector and his wife, who had obtained directions from a man selling noodles and had walked up to it, were greeted on the front steps by the manager, Mrs Li, who showed them to their room. They didn’t have to present any ID or sign any book: everything had been arranged by the local Party Secretary, Wu Changyan.

  ‘I said we’d be well looked after,’ said Bao, as they took stock of their accommodation, a spacious suite with dark, heavy old-fashioned furniture: a silk-covered bed, two chairs, a writing desk by the window, a massive wardrobe and chest of drawers.

  ‘I want you to make friends here,’ he went on. ‘Not just people I knew, but new people. You must feel free to do that.’

  ‘I shall,’ said Rosina. ‘But I specially want to meet your brother.’

  Bao grimaced. ‘Ming can be very difficult sometimes.’

  ‘I spend my life with difficult people. Now let’s get unpacked. I want to feel at home.’

  *

  Once they’d settled in, the couple walked up a path that led from the back of the guesthouse to a pass at the top of the valley. For much of the walk, they held hands – something Bao had not felt at ease with when they had first got together, but which he now enjoyed, as long as other people weren’t around (he was fiercely proud of his wife, of course, but hadn’t been brought up with public intimacy of this kind). At the crest, they sat on a rock and gazed down over the village: concrete and straight lines in the new parts; angled bricks, tiles and corrugated iron roofs in the alleys of the old. Around it were chequerboard fields and farm buildings, and surrounding the whole scene were the hills, stretched out like protecting arms around the village, jagged outcrops in some places, gentle cultivated terraces in others.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Rosina. ‘And so green. I was expecting something much … starker.’

  ‘We’re lucky,’ Bao replied, dropping into a proprietorial ‘we’ as if he’d never left this place. ‘We’re always well-watered. We’ve got some natural springs up here.’ He smiled. ‘Ming and I used to play in them, racing toy boats, swimming in the pools. Frog-hunting – if we caught one, we’d take it home. Chun hated frogs. Sometimes we’d play a trick on her, which wasn’t very nice but – ’

  ‘Good for her self-reliance,’ Rosina put in. Her sister-in-law
, Bao’s younger sister Chun, who now worked for a major bank, was always going on about self-reliance.

  ‘Then we’d have frog for supper,’ Bao went on.

  Rosina grimaced, and pointed into the valley on the other side of the pass, a steeper, narrower feature than the generous horseshoe around Nanping. ‘What’s down there?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s Snake Valley. There are some more fields just round the corner, and the track leads on to Weipowan, the next village. There’s a Revolutionary memorial, too. It’s a nice walk – if I can remember the way. Fancy a try?’

  Rosina glanced at her watch. Made in Europe, it had been a wedding present from her colleagues. She had contemplated not bringing it, unwilling to be seen as showing off, but her husband had said she should be proud of it.

  ‘We’ve time. Why not?’

  ‘There was a gun battle here back in forty-seven,’ said Bao as they began descending the path into the new valley. ‘The Guomindang troops were waiting in some trees. Those ones there, I think. A lot of partisans were killed. We put up a memorial in the early fifties. Father used to take us there every year on the anniversary of the battle. He’d give us a lecture on duty, patriotism and so on. He meant it – not like so many of the speech-makers you hear nowadays.’

  The inspector paused, and closed his eyes. ‘Father really worked for this place and these people! I remember him getting home from HQ just in time to tuck us into bed. Then more work. The light from his lamp would be burning all hours of the night, with the wick on low because he didn’t want to waste paraffin, which belonged to the People. Mother never complained. They were doing their duty, to China, to the Revolution, to the Party. Not like modern cadres.’

  ‘No,’ Rosina replied, then added. ‘There are other reasons to live, Zheng.’

  Bao pondered the comment for a while. ‘You’re right,’ he said finally. ‘It killed him. He’d sometimes go days without rest. Mother said that during the Land Reform Movement he didn’t sleep for a week.’

  Rosina nodded. She knew in outline what had happened in that campaign, but no more. Her family were city people, and Land Reform had been a rural affair, way back in the early 1950s. Peasants, she’d been told, had been classified. If they belonged to the ‘black classes’, landlord or rich peasant, any land that they owned was reallocated. Her husband’s father had been village Party Secretary then, so would have been in charge of this process.