The Hungry Ghost Murder

by Chris West

  ‘It’s better this way.’

  Chai sighed. Bao rarely wasted his time, just took a lot more of it than his superiors liked. ‘I’ll try. As usual. Tell me more about him.’

  Bao did so. ‘Thanks, brother,’ he concluded.

  ‘I can almost taste that bottle of best maotai you’re going to buy me.’

  *

  Bao and Rosina weren’t sure they had a right to attend Wu’s cremation, a quieter, more intimate affair than the Memorial Meeting and the meal – but Deputy Yao insisted. They rode into Wentai in a Red Flag limousine and watched a simple wooden coffin vanish down a squeaking conveyor belt.

  ‘He’s gone to meet Marx,’ muttered the official who had officiated at the ceremony.

  Bao looked round, to see if anyone registered the irony of this comment. Nobody seemed to. Wu’s sister was in tears, but she had been on the verge of crying all morning. Wu Weidong looked as unmoved as he had done the previous day.

  When the ashes were ready, they were placed in an ornamental urn with a picture of a phoenix on. The party then drove back to Nanping, parking at the end of the tarmac road. The last part of the journey was uphill, and made on foot.

  The group soon strung out into a line. Assistant Xia and the sexton, a small, wrinkled man in a Mao suit who came from a long line of Daoist priests before the Party did away with such things, led the way. Bao and Rosina followed, then Wu’s sister, still in tears. Station Chief Huang and the Yaos followed them, together with representatives of local Party organizations. Wu Weidong and his partner brought up the rear.

  ‘You didn’t say we were going mountaineering!’ Francine complained. High heels and a tight skirt weren’t ideal for hill-walking.

  Finally they reached the summit of Snake Hill. A glorious view spread out in all directions; north over Weipowan, southwards towards Wentai, east and west across dragon-back hilltops towards the Yellow Sea and China’s ancient capital of Xi’an respectively. The road they had just taken, wriggling off into the late-summer haze, seemed to be waving a farewell to the man who had fought so hard for its improvement. Bao had to admit this was a beautiful spot to rest. Good feng shui, too, facing south and with water nearby.

  The sexton began to scrape at the rocky earth with his spade. When a small hole had been dug, Wu Weidong placed the casket in it. Everyone went to collect a rock to set around it, and a small cairn soon built up. Weidong found a long flat stone to put over the top, then produced a wodge of paper from his pocket.

  ‘Feudal superstition!’ Mrs Yao tutted in a stage whisper.

  Weidong bent down and placed the wodge in front of the cairn. This was his parting gift to his father, who would need them in the next world: the notes drawn on the Bank of Hell, the depictions of goods and provisions, the replica Party card. The sexton just happened to remember a Daoist prayer and began chanting it. Even Mrs Yao was silenced by this.

  The Secretary’s son struck a match and set light to the papers. The flames leapt up and consumed the offerings in an instant, presenting them to the complex bureaucracy of spirits waiting to receive Wu Changyan in the next world. A little plume of smoke drifted out from the hillside, west towards the millennia-old heart of China.

  *

  ‘How’s this for a scenario?’ said Rosina. ‘Francine catches herself a nice Party Secretary’s son. He’s besotted; he asks her to marry him. Father steps in, saying no. So he has to be got out of the way.’

  They were sitting on the guesthouse verandah, looking up at the hill where Secretary Wu’s ashes now lay, and drinking plum cordial, an old favourite drink of Bao’s that Rosina was slowly getting to like, too.

  ‘Plenty of people marry without parental permission nowadays,’ Bao replied stiffly.

  Rosina frowned, then fell silent. Mrs Li appeared and announced that dinner was ready.

  ‘I’ve upset you, haven’t I?’ said Bao, once they were at the dinner table.

  ‘Yes. I thought that was a perfectly sensible suggestion I made about Wu Weidong’s partner. You acted like it was stupid.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t stupid. But I don’t see how she could have got to the house.’

  ‘She’s got legs. As she’s keen to show everybody.’

  ‘She’d need transport. And it doesn’t really account for the Secretary’s mood just before the killing, either. Not if Wu didn’t like her.’

  ‘People get moods for all sorts of reasons. They’re not exactly hard evidence, are they?’

  ‘No,’ Bao replied quietly. ‘Aiya, I find this case so difficult. It ties in with so many personal things. That old man is right about ghosts. But they’re not out there, they’re in here.’ He tapped himself on the head.

  Mrs Li came in with some bowls of rice and a plate of salted duck. She placed them on the table, turned to go, then turned round again.

  ‘You’re a detective, aren’t you, Mr Bao?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She grinned, embarrassed. ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with the local police for the last two days, but I just get a very stupid constable who says the station chief will call back. Then nobody does. I’m … getting worried about Mr Lian.’

  ‘Lian?’

  ‘Your fellow guest. I haven’t seen him for several days.’

  ‘He seems to like his privacy.’

  ‘Yes, but he always told me when he was going to miss his meals. I cooked him a lovely fish on Wednesday, and he wasn’t around to eat it. Since then, nothing.’

  ‘Wednesday … ’ said Bao, suddenly intrigued. ‘And there’s been no sign of him since then?’

  ‘No. It sounds silly, but I’m worried someone may have killed him.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I don’t know why anyone would want to kill Secretary Wu.’ The manageress glanced nervously round the room. ‘They have them in the West, you know. Maniacs who go round murdering people for no reason.’

  ‘They have all sorts of unpleasant things in the West,’ the inspector replied. ‘We are a civilized country.’ He picked up a chopstick and began spinning it in his fingers. ‘Did Mr Lian have roots here in Nanping?’

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say much.’

  ‘And he didn’t … ’ Bao paused, thinking as he spoke, ‘remind you of anyone from around here? Someone maybe who left a long time ago?’

  Mrs Li shook her head. ‘I only came here in 1982. I grew up in Xibai. I ran the guesthouse there. When Mrs Fu died, I was posted here. I’m still an outsider.’

  Bao nodded. Xibai was only a handful of li away, but such was village life. ‘Do you have any idea what Mr Lian was doing here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did he fill his days?’

  ‘I don’t know. He used to walk a lot: he’d leave a pair of muddy boots outside his door every evening to be cleaned.’

  ‘What sort of mud?’

  ‘Difficult to get off.’

  ‘Was he the guest of the local Party?’

  ‘No. The order came from Jinan. Deputy Yao just put a rubber stamp on it.’

  ‘Yao? Not Wu?’

  ‘Secretary Wu was too busy to do routine work like that.’

  ‘Shame. I’d like to see the order sometime, if that’s possible.’

  Mrs Li nodded.

  ‘Did Mr Lian receive any visitors?’ Bao went on.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nobody called for him, or wrote, or left any kind of message?’

  ‘There was a letter that morning. Wednesday, I mean.’

  ‘Ah. What kind? Official? Private?’

  ‘The address was handwritten.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything about the characters?’

  Mrs Li paused. ‘A woman’s hand, I’d say. Middle aged.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve seen a lot of people filling in forms over the years.’

  ‘Excellent. Did you see the postmark?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was a Chinese stamp, though?�
��

  ‘Oh, yes. We don’t get foreign letters here,’ Mrs Li added with a touch of pride.

  ‘And Mr Lian made no comment on it to you?’

  ‘No. I’ve said – he wasn’t the communicative type. I respect that.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. In the meantime, keep trying the local police. I’ll mention it to Station Chief Huang if I see him.’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ said Mrs Li.

  *

  The lock opened easily. Bao and Rosina tiptoed into the room and flashed torches round it.

  ‘Tidy fellow, wasn’t he?’ Rosina whispered.

  The letter was the obvious thing to look for, and the desk – Lian’s room was a mirror image of theirs – the obvious place to look for it. It was locked. Try somewhere else before getting the picks out. The bin? Empty. The bedside table. No, though there was a book on it: The Battle for Jinan. In the book? No. In the bedside drawer? No. Try the wardrobe. Go through all the pockets of everything in there.

  ‘Nice clothing,’ Bao commented.

  ‘Very old-fashioned,’ Rosina replied. Tailor-made Mao jackets, trousers in drab colours, a Western suit.

  So it had to be the desk. The pick made short work of its lock: it was either not expected that visitors to the Government Guesthouse would be spied on, or intended that this should be easy.

  Inside were more books. A History of the Shandong Campaigns, 1945-9. Revolutionary Memoirs. They were well thumbed and annotated. Was the letter in any of these? No. Bao pulled open the desk drawers one by one, but they were empty. He even checked the space behind the drawers.

  ‘I’ll check out the bathroom,’ he said.

  ‘For a letter?’

  ‘It’s possible. Anyway, you can learn a lot from a bathroom. You keep hunting around here.’

  Rosina frowned but did as she was asked; Bao went into the bathroom. Lian’s toothbrush, razor, soap, towel-flannel were all present, so the old man had either gone out intending to return or had left in a hurry. Odd. The cabinet produced a bottle of Tiger Balm, half a box of Deer Brand Virility Tablets and a bottle of Longevity Hair Restorer. No serious medication, the kind that might indicate a sudden death out walking.

  ‘Zheng!’

  Rosina’s voice sounded urgent: Bao’s immediate thought was that Lian had chosen this minute to reappear. He began concocting a face-saving story.

  ‘Come and look!’ Rosina went on.

  Bao went back into the main room. Rosina was holding open one of Lian’s books.

  ‘It was open at this page. This text has been underlined. Read it!’

  Our forces suffered a small setback when a column of a hundred guerrillas from Yan’an and seven local guides was ambushed in Snake Valley, near Nanping Village, Wentai County. Forty-two guerrillas and three guides were killed.

  The Guomindang had shown no interest in Snake Valley until that fateful evening; they took no interest in it afterwards. Their troops were carefully stationed, so there is no possibility that they just stumbled on the Communist forces. The question is how the enemy knew the column was going to be there. Either its progress was secretly observed, or someone who knew the plans betrayed them. The former possibility, while it cannot be discounted, is unlikely, as commanders took great care to conceal their movements. Regrettably, treachery remains the most likely explanation.

  This had been doubly underlined.

  ‘Now look at this!’ Rosina went on, turning to the back of the book. On the endpaper, someone had scribbled some characters. Names. Four of them. One of them was Wu Changyan.

  10

  Bao phoned Beijing next morning.

  ‘You’re in a hurry,’ said Chai.

  ‘Yes. Er, I need some more information. On a second individual. His name is Lian Gang.’

  ‘Lian Gang. Sounds like one of those aliases that Party members took in the old days.’

  ‘Could be. He might well have been a partisan in 1947.’

  ‘That should narrow it down to several hundred thousand. I believe the Emei Shan do a very nice banquet for two. It’s aimed at young men who want to impress young women, or people who owe friends for particularly big favours.’

  *

  ‘The Snake Valley ambush,’ said Acting Secretary Yao, shaking his head. ‘Now there was a terrible tragedy. Of course, I wasn’t in Nanping at the time: I was in Manchuria under Lin Biao.’ He spoke the name of the great, but later disgraced, general with hesitant admiration. ‘So I can’t tell you much about it. Don’t know who could, really.’ He stared out of the window. ‘They got the traitor, of course. Your father was on some kind of enquiry board, back in the fifties.’

  ‘My father? D’you still have a transcript?’ said Bao eagerly.

  ‘I don’t know. Better ask young, er, what’s his name. Fellow who looks after the filing … ’

  *

  ‘When?’ said Assistant Xia.

  ‘The nineteen-fifties,’ Bao replied.

  The young man looked disapproving, as if Bao had asked for some material from the Tang Dynasty. ‘We had a clear-out a year or so back. Secretary Wu went through anything pre-1976, kept a few things and said we could throw the rest away.’

  ‘Why did he do that? There seems to be plenty of space.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But I think it was sensible. Who needs a load of old papers?’

  ‘I’d like to see what he kept,’ said Bao.

  ‘No problem.’

  Several hours of burrowing in the cellar of the main offices revealed nothing except puzzlement. Bao understood that you couldn’t keep every piece of paper that came into a Party office. But a report on a major local incident?

  ‘The police might have something,’ Xia suggested.

  *

  ‘Snake Valley ambush?’ said Station Chief Huang. ‘No, we haven’t got anything on that. Why should we? It’s ancient history. Try Party HQ in Jinan.’

  *

  Next day, Rosina had organized to observe some traditional medical techniques at the clinic. Bao went to the state capital.

  The jeep wasn’t heading into town that day, so Bao had to travel by bus. Whole families had crammed on to the unpadded double seats; the aisle was blocked with strap-hangers. Three people were crammed onto the seat for two on which Bao was sitting.

  He’d made journeys like this as a boy. He loved every moment of this one.

  *

  The guard outside Party HQ in Jinan glanced at Bao Zheng’s Police ID then waved him in. Inside the building, a receptionist sat behind a desk, under a large five-pointed star and a photograph of Deng Xiaoping on a recent visit to Shenzhen.

  ‘I wish to see the archivist,’ Bao told her.

  ‘Why?’

  He produced his ID. ‘Security.’

  She nodded and reached for a phone.

  *

  ‘That’ll be ten yuan,’ said the archivist. ‘We have to charge nowadays.’

  Bao gave her a ten-yuan note. It was one of the new ones with Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi on. Bao thought of the last of these men, how as a youngster he had read Liu’s How to be a Good Communist, then how shocked he had been in 1967 to hear Liu denounced. Now here Liu was, back on the nation’s currency.

  ‘Ghosts,’ he muttered, as he sat down on a blue plastic chair to wait.

  And wait.

  Ai, how long was she going to be?

  The librarian was back, holding out a small manila envelope. Bao took it with all the reserve he could muster, then opened it.

  RECORDS OF OFFICIAL ENQUIRY

  DATE: June 5th, 6th, 7th 1952

  LOCATION:Party HQ, Jinan

  SUBJECT:Ambush at Snake Valley

  LEADER:Comrade Hu Fenglao

  Team Members:Comrade Shi Yibing (People’s Liberation Army, 34th Division), Comrade Bo Rui (Cadre, Jinan Party), Comrade Bao Jingfu (Secretary, Nanping Branch).

  There was an introductory address by Comrade Hu on the importance of unmasking traitors
at this time of national emergency. There were expressions of support from the committee. Including Comrade Bao Jingfu. The transcript seemed to be verbatim.

  My father’s actual words, Bao thought.

  Members of the ambushed force then presented themselves before the committee and were given an initial cross-questioning. Comrade Hu had an aggressive style, bordering on the accusatory, but nobody admitted anything significant.

  Written submissions followed, from other partisans now unable to attend. All of these expressed shock at the ambush. Nobody had expected anything or had any idea as to how it had come about. Then the local guides took the floor. There were four of them, and they were the four names Lian had scribbled in his book. Apart from Wu, Bao did not recognize any of them.

  Wu had been the last to be questioned. Bao did a quick sum: the tetchy old man Bao had faced in his villa would then have been a lad of about twenty. He tried to imagine what Wu Changyan would have looked like, standing there, before Bao’s own father, and how the young fighter would have felt.

  Maybe this was the reason for Wu’s antagonism towards him, four decades on. An old resentment, long buried but suddenly brought back to life by the appearance of the living ghost of one of his accusers.

  ‘I agree that treachery is the most likely cause of the tragedy,’ Wu had told the enquiry. ‘But I am unable to suggest who might be responsible. My comrades from Nanping are of excellent character, and it would be disgraceful even to suspect the fighters from Yan’an who helped us liberate our province. For myself I can only swear my innocence.’

  ‘This is not as full or frank an answer as I had hoped,’ had been Comrade Hu’s reply.

  ‘I cannot implicate anyone. I have no information.’

  ‘A true lover of the Party seeks out its enemies with unceasing energy, Comrade Wu.’

  Next day, the tribunal had asked specific individuals to submit to questioning in greater detail, particularly about their past. One man, not a local, called Shen Zirong had been forced to admit to a particularly poor personal history. He had absented himself from duty on several occasions. He was known to have relatives who supported the Guomindang. He had once been heard to question the authority of Chairman Mao.

  Bao read this part of the transcript with gathering unease. His father played a minor role in the questioning, but he was still partially responsible. Shen Zirong was being set up as a scapegoat.