The Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  “What is the Electrical Company?” Caprisi asked.

  “Subsidiary of Fraser’s. Makes electrical goods here, ships them back to Europe. All these . . .” He looked down again. “They’re consignments of sewing machines, mainly. There are some other goods as well, of course, from the same company, but sewing machines provide the bulk—I would say eighty percent—of these ships’ cargo.”

  “Sewing machines?”

  “Yes.”

  Caprisi looked at Field, but he could think of no explanation and shook his head.

  “Why would a Russian tea dancer want to make secret notes about shipments of sewing machines?”

  Jenkins shrugged.

  “Speculate.”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Field could see he was as mystified as the pair of them. “What about the last entry?” he said. “The Saratoga on the twenty-sixth.”

  Jenkins returned to his study of the ledger, running his finger down the pages until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, thought so. The Saratoga came in yesterday, from India. Empty.”

  “Empty?” Caprisi asked.

  “I thought ships generally took goods both ways,” Field added.

  “Generally. Not always. Maybe she took cargo from Europe to India, had a contract out of here. Didn’t want to wait for something out of Bombay.”

  “Must be a lucrative contract here to make it worth the rush,” Caprisi said.

  “Fraser’s is a big company. The lure of regular work, I should think.”

  “If the Saratoga is in,” Field said, “can we inspect her?”

  “Of course.” Jenkins stood and opened his drawer, pulling out a Smith & Wesson revolver and putting it in his holster before leading the way down the staircase and through the throng that was still emerging from the exit.

  It was less busy on the wharf inside, though there were small groups of passengers waiting in the shade of the customs inspection area as coolies hauled their baggage onto carts, or, in some cases, their backs.

  Jenkins walked briskly out into the sunshine. Field squinted until they reached the shadow of an iron-framed shelter. There were fewer people here: some coolies squatting, a small group loading sacks onto a river steamer. The farther they went, the larger the ships became. The Saratoga was moored about halfway along the wharf.

  It was a white ship with two yellow funnels. A dirty blue lifeboat hung above a gangplank with a rickety handrail covered in white canvas. Jenkins led the way.

  They stepped onto the wooden deck and looked about, sheltered by an awning. There were two circular portholes ahead of them on either side of a wooden door. Jenkins walked down to a big cargo deck in front of the accommodation area, below the bridge. As they rounded the corner, a young Indian, who had been lying out in the sun, leaped to his feet and eyed them warily. His shorts were scruffy and his vest stained.

  “Where’s the captain?” Jenkins demanded imperiously, but the man shook his head.

  Jenkins led them back through the wooden door and up some steep iron steps to the bridge. The inside of the ship smelled of ingrained grease and the corridors were dark, like the lower decks of the vessel in which Field had set out from London earlier in the year.

  There was no one on the bridge, which was small. “Only just got in,” Jenkins said. “I suppose they’ll be down Blood Alley.”

  “What about searching belowdeck, in the bow?” Field asked.

  Jenkins grunted and retraced his steps once more. He pulled open a wooden hatch in the middle of the deck, watched nervously by the Indian, who made no attempt to help or intervene, and descended into the darkness below.

  The three of them looked around the cavernous hold, but there was little to see. They were standing on an iron floor, ropes and winches and disused tools strewn around them, along with the other detritus of a working ship. It smelled of grease and salt.

  “It would be a good cover for smuggling, wouldn’t it?” Caprisi said.

  “What would?” Jenkins asked.

  Caprisi took a step forward. “What could be more harmless than a batch of sewing machines shipped by a subsidiary of Fraser’s?”

  “I’m not following you,” Jenkins said irritably.

  “If you wanted to smuggle something into Europe, you’d choose a shipment of goods that customs officials were unlikely to be in a hurry to check thoroughly. You could hardly find anything more harmless than a bunch of sewing machines.”

  Jenkins frowned. It occurred to Field, as it had perhaps to Caprisi, that any operation of the kind they were talking about would be unlikely to leave the activities of customs officials to chance.

  “I think we’d better find the captain,” Jenkins said. “Come back to my office and give me a number—I’ll contact you when he turns up.”

  Field was the last to come down the gangplank and he hesitated for a moment at the bottom. The sky was still a clear, bright blue. A huge Union Jack above the dome of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank was slack in the still air. A flock of seagulls circled “Big Ching,” the clock tower of the Customs House, before breaking out across the river, as if something had startled them.

  Field looked back. The deckhand was still watching him.

  Thirteen

  Sergei lived above the Siberian Fur Shop in the heart of Little Russia, in a tiny apartment with paint peeling from its walls.

  He was the image of a radical student intellectual, with long, unwashed hair, a narrow face coated with stubble, and small, round glasses.

  “Have you got a minute?” Field asked.

  “Who are you?”

  Field reached into his pocket and flicked open his wallet.

  “Which branch?”

  “It’s on there.”

  “It doesn’t say.”

  “S.1.”

  “Special Branch.”

  “Correct. My colleague here is from Crime. Can we come in?”

  Sergei’s eyes darted between them, but Field could not tell whether it was because he had something to hide or because he was nervous of visitors. He stepped back and allowed them to enter.

  Inside, it was even smaller than Field had first guessed, and filthy. An unmade bed alongside the far wall jutted out into a sea of discarded clothes and dirty plates, glasses, and coffee cups. There was an abstract oil painting above the bed of St. Basil’s Cathedral just south of Red Square. On a small table an overflowing ashtray rested against the base of a shabby lamp. The flat stank. A violin and trumpet were propped up in the far corner.

  Sergei sat down on the bed. Field and Caprisi declined his invitation to take the ragged sofa opposite. Caprisi walked over to the window and, without asking, opened it. He turned back to see if there was any reaction, but Sergei was examining his long, manicured nails.

  Sergei looked at Caprisi, then back at Field. “You’re from the Settlement.”

  “This is a murder investigation, Sergei,” Field said.

  “I don’t want to get into trouble with the French authorities.”

  After appraising it distastefully, Caprisi sat down on the sofa. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

  Sergei flexed his fingers.

  “When did you last see Lena Orlov?” Caprisi asked.

  Sergei thought for a moment. “The night before . . .” He shrugged. “You know.”

  “The night before she was murdered?”

  “Yes.” He nodded for emphasis.

  “Where?”

  “At the Majestic. I play—”

  “You play there, we know.” Caprisi leaned forward. “I’d like you to take this opportunity to tell us anything that you know about Lena that might be relevant.”

  Sergei shrugged.

  “You were her—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “Friends.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At the Majestic.” He nodded again.

  “How long ago?”

  “Tw
o months, three, four. I don’t know.”

  “Which?”

  “Four, maybe.”

  “So you didn’t know her in Russia?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No.”

  “You met her at the Majestic?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t know her before then?”

  “No.”

  “You’d never seen her before?”

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

  “You don’t think so, or no for sure?”

  “No.”

  “So you came here . . . how many years ago?”

  “Four.”

  “Four years ago. Nineteen twenty-two. You’ve lived here in Little Russia all that time?”

  “Yes.” Sergei looked uncertain. “Not always in this apartment.”

  “Where else?”

  “Farther down, with some others.”

  “Also musicians?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why did you move here?”

  “I had more money since the Majestic.”

  “Where did you play before?”

  “The Excelsior.” He shrugged again. “Other places.”

  “So when did you join the band at the Majestic?”

  “Four months ago.”

  “And you’d not met Lena or seen her before then?”

  Sergei shook his head. Field was certain he was lying.

  “Did you know she was working for Lu Huang and living in one of his flats?”

  Sergei sensed danger. “You must understand, we did not talk about her . . . work. We didn’t talk about anything like that. The ground was always kept neutral.”

  “Did you go to her apartment?”

  “No.”

  “So what was your interest in her?”

  He shrugged. “She was not a bad-looking girl . . . You know, from Kazan. I mean . . .”

  “Did you fuck her?” Caprisi asked.

  Sergei smiled, a tight weasel grin, revealing a mouthful of decaying teeth. “Sometimes, you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “She liked a bit of Russian meat.” He smiled again. “Liked a man to speak Russian to her.”

  “So she never talked about Lu Huang?”

  He shook his head.

  “She never talked about any other boyfriends or other men that she slept with?”

  “No.”

  “You knew she was a prostitute?”

  He grinned again. “I fuck her sometimes. She likes a Russian who doesn’t pay, then she doesn’t feel like a whore.”

  “So you weren’t friends?”

  “Sometimes she comes here and cries and I let her, then I fuck her some more.”

  Caprisi stood, sensing Field’s anger. “Easy, man,” he whispered, “we’re out of bounds.”

  Field breathed out, unclenched his fists, and tried to force himself to relax.

  “So,” Caprisi went on, “when you slept together, it was here, in this apartment.”

  “Yes.”

  “You never went down to Foochow Road?”

  The Russian shook his head.

  “But you knew that was where she lived?”

  Sergei hesitated again. “She may have mentioned it.”

  “She may have, or she did?”

  “She did.”

  “But you never went there?”

  “She didn’t want me to.”

  “Was she in love with you?”

  Sergei smirked again but didn’t answer. “Cigarette?” he asked, offering the packet. They both declined.

  Sergei was not wearing socks or shoes, and Field noticed his feet were as long and bony as his hands. Like his forearms, his legs appeared to be hairless.

  “Did you know she slept with Lu?”

  He shrugged.

  “She moved into one of his apartments a few months ago. You knew where she lived, but she never mentioned that she was his woman?”

  “I said we never talked about it.”

  “You didn’t know she slept with him?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “The question was: did you know?”

  Sergei shrugged again. “She liked to talk about Russia. I fucked her sometimes. That was it.”

  “So she never mentioned Lu?”

  “No.”

  “Or any other man she was sleeping with?”

  He shook his head.

  “So you slept with her, but you knew nothing about her life and weren’t curious?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know about her family?”

  “She mentioned a sister in Harbin. The rest, I don’t know.”

  “Do any of them live in Shanghai?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Who were her other friends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about Natasha Medvedev?”

  He began to smirk again.

  “What’s so funny?” Caprisi asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Sure.”

  “Were they friends?”

  Sergei sucked heavily on his cigarette. “Sure.”

  “Who else?”

  “No one else.”

  “So.” Caprisi sighed. “Let’s get this straight. You were her boyfriend, but you never went to her apartment, you know nothing about her life in Shanghai.”

  “She was a whore.”

  Caprisi stared at Sergei for a long time, forcing the Russian to lower his head and study the floor. “What did you talk about, then?”

  “We only fucked.”

  “Where are you from in Russia, Sergei?”

  “Moscow.”

  “Your father was an army officer or . . .”

  “A doctor.”

  “Did you and Lena ever talk about the revolution?”

  He shook his head.

  “What do you think of the new Soviet Union?” Field asked.

  Sergei looked from Field to Caprisi and back again, suspecting a trap. “Bolshevism is not the answer.”

  “And what is?” Field smiled encouragingly at him.

  “My views are my views.”

  “Were they the same as Lena’s?”

  The Russian didn’t answer.

  Field smiled again. “You surely don’t believe the current situation here is tolerable.”

  Sergei regarded him warily.

  “I mean, if there has ever been a case for the redistribution of wealth, this is it, isn’t it? Here, in this city, with so many families sleeping—dying, even—on the streets.”

  “I see inequality, but I’m not a Bolshevik.”

  “A reformer, then?”

  Sergei nodded.

  “You’d like better conditions for the workers. Shorter hours, better pay.”

  Sergei sucked his teeth nervously.

  “Do you think the system can be reformed, or does it have to be changed entirely?”

  “I don’t live in the Settlement.”

  “Have you attended meetings at the New Shanghai Life?”

  The Russian frowned. “No.”

  “Can you explain why Lena was doing so? After all, her father was an army officer.”

  “I’m not a Bolshevik.”

  Field paused. “I never said that you were.”

  “Their hearts were not in it.”

  “Their hearts?”

  “Lena . . . Natasha.”

  “Why were they doing it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Presumably they were gathering intelligence for Lu?”

  Sergei sneered. “No one would ever tell them anything.”

  “Then why was Lu paying for their apartments?”

  He smiled again. “They are women.”

  “So it’s about sex?” Caprisi asked.

  “Isn’t everything?”

  Caprisi stood. “We’ll want to speak to you again.” He walked toward the door. “And next time, you’re coming down to the S
ettlement.”

  Outside, Caprisi lit up first, inhaling deeply and running his hand through his hair. He paced to and fro by the car, occasionally glancing up at the window above the Siberian Fur Shop. Field scanned the signs in Russian script outside the shops that stretched away down Avenue Joffre. They were all small concerns—one selling Shanghai borscht, another a hairdressing salon, a third specializing in wedding dresses.

  “Jesus, you get yourself worked up,” Caprisi said.

  Field didn’t answer.

  “I thought you were going to hit him.”

  Field put his cigarette to his lips. He couldn’t see Sergei in the shadows behind his window, but he knew the Russian was there. “I don’t like it when women aren’t treated right.”

  “Then maybe you should go someplace else.”

  Field sighed. “My father hit my mother, all right? I don’t like the way Sergei talks.” He tried to change the subject to cover his embarrassment. “Did Lu not know she was coming down here? Is that why Sergei is so nervous?”

  Caprisi resumed his pacing, then leaned back against the side of the car. “I can’t see Lena taking that sort of risk.”

  “Unless she was desperate to have something—anything—that stopped her feeling like a whore.”

  The American looked up at Field. He flicked his cigarette away into the street.

  “Is that why Lu killed her?” Field asked.

  Caprisi shrugged, then shook his head. “I doubt it.”

  Fourteen

  Caprisi instructed the driver to take a detour down the Nanking Road and wait for him alongside the Wing On store.

  Field opened the window an inch or two as the American got out. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and undid the top button of his shirt, holding it away from his body to try and dry the large patches of sweat. He took off his holster and placed it on the seat beside him, then pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  “Hot,” the driver said, smiling.

  “Yes.” Field wondered how old he was. It was hard to tell. The average life expectancy for a Chinese was only twenty-seven, and many of them looked old before their time.

  “Summer . . . hot!”

  Field nodded and grinned, fanning his face theatrically. Then he reached for his cigarettes and got out.

  The banners above him swayed gently as two trams passed each other in the center of the street, but the air was still. A buxom, middle-aged woman walked out of the Wing On with an armful of boxes and headed for a gleaming Buick. Her driver leaped out of his seat to open the back door for her, and a small Pekingese escaped, yapping around her feet as she settled herself on the cream buckskin seat.