Chinese Whispers

II

Li had spent most of the last hour just driving aimlessly through the city, letting the traffic flow carry him where it would. He had driven a couple of times around Tiananmen Square, then turned north up Nanchang Street, flanked on one side by the Forbidden City and Zhongnanhai on the other. Trees on either sidewalk grew across it to intermesh and create a tunnel shading it from the late season sunshine. People were going about their everyday lives, cycling to and from work, shopping, walking, chatting idly on corners or on benches, playing chess, flying kites. It seemed wrong, somehow, that their world kept turning as it always did, while his had turned to dust under his feet. His inertia, his inability to decide his next move, was building a frustration in him that was threatening to explode. He beeped his horn fiercely at a cyclist who turned out of the Xihuamen intersection and Li accelerated past him into Beichang Street. There was nowhere else for him to go but Section One. Even if he was impotent to do anything, to be in any way pro-active, Qian and Wu were not. They were still actively involved in both the Ripper case and the Lynn Pan murder. They could still make a difference. He had to talk to them.

Another fifteen minutes found him on Dongzhimen, heading east, past all the red lanterns hanging from the trees, past street vendors steaming huge trays of dumplings in preparation for the lunch trade that was already starting to gather pace. Men and women in suits streamed out of office blocks and shops and into restaurants, wrapped in warm coats against the cold of the wind, wearing sunglasses to protect them from the blinding autumn sun. Li saw Mei Yuan on her corner as he turned into Hepinglidong Street. He remembered her wet face and red eyes and her distress while Li Jon was still missing. In their own distress, both he and Margaret had not fully appreciated the hell that Mei Yuan must have gone through, believing it all to be her fault. He could see that her eyes were still swollen and red as she served a queue of customers. She did not see him as he turned north, and then west into Beixinqiao Santiao to park in the street outside section headquarters.

He had already reached the top floor and was striding towards his office when the duty officer caught up with him. ‘Chief,’ he called twice, before Li stopped and turned.

The duty officer was a man in his fifties, in charge of security, administration and firearms. ‘Yes, Tao?’ Li said, although in his heart he knew what was coming.

Tao was red-faced and embarrassed, breathless from having run up the stairs after Li. ‘I’m sorry, Chief Li,’ he said, and he genuinely was. ‘But I’m afraid I can no longer allow you access to the building.’

He took a half-step back, almost as if he was anticipating an explosion. Li was angry, and frustrated, but he knew that Tao was only doing his job. He said, ‘I just need to get some stuff from the office.’

Tao seemed almost ashamed. ‘Afraid I can’t let you do that, Chief. You can’t touch anything in here. And I’m afraid I’m instructed to ask you to return any files or documents that you may have taken home with you.’

‘In the name of the sky, Tao, I’ve got personal stuff in there.’ He jerked his thumb towards his office, and became aware for the first time that a group of detectives was gathered in the doorway to the detectives’ room. He saw a grim-faced Wu amongst them.

‘I’m sorry, Chief.’ Tao cleared his throat and held out his hand, ‘And I’m afraid I have to ask you for the keys to your car.’

Li stared at him. They really were stripping him of everything. No office, no car, no job. No way to fight back. He put his hand in his pocket and took out his car keys and slapped them into Tao’s outstretched palm.

‘And your tag.’

It was a small, electronic identifier about the size of a cigarette lighter that was read by an infrared security scan as you came in the main door. Li dug it out of his breast pocket and handed it to Tao. Now it was just humiliating. He glanced at the watching detectives. But none of them said a word. He brushed past Tao and headed back towards the stairs. ‘I really am sorry, Chief,’ he heard Tao calling after him before his footsteps echoing on the stairs drowned out everything else.

In the street outside, he just kept walking, blinking hard to stop the tears from filling his eyes. He was oblivious to everything around him, blinded by anger and fear and impotence, and an acute sense of loss. It was extraordinary how easy it had been to render him powerless. And completely harmless.

In Hepinglidong Street, Chinese flags whipped in the wind outside a barber’s shop opposite a huge construction clad entirely in green netting and bamboo scaffolding. A worker with a red hard hat stood on the top of it, a green flag raised in one hand, a red one poised in the other, as a huge steel girder was lifted slowly up the outside of the building by a crane that dominated the sky above it. Its shadow followed at a discreet distance. As far as you could see, looking north, blocks of flats wrapped in green net were in various stages of construction. Li passed the entrance to a crumbling old siheyuan courtyard where rusting bicycles nestled under buckled corrugated roofing. There was a tree in the centre of the courtyard, and beyond it you could just see, through its leaves, the windows of Section One.

Someone tugged at his arm. ‘Chief.’ He looked around and saw Wu struggling to keep up with him.

Li did not break stride. ‘What is it, Wu?’

‘They told us we weren’t to talk to you, Chief.’

‘So why are you disobeying orders?’

‘You know I never liked taking orders, Chief.’ Li heard his grin, and the open-mouthed chewing of his gum. ‘Except from you, of course.’

A blue and white wall had been built around the gap site left by the demolition of what had once been a covered food market. Li missed the old Beijing. It had all been comfortingly familiar. Now he felt like a stranger, displaced in an alien city.

‘Chief, I can’t keep up with you.’

Li stopped and looked at Wu who staggered to a halt and stood gasping for air.

‘I had to run to catch you up,’ he said by way of explanation.

‘Maybe you should give up smoking,’ Li said.

‘What, and miss the fun of coughing my lungs up every morning?’ They stood just looking at each other for a moment. When Wu’s smile faded he looked faintly embarrassed. ‘We all know you didn’t sell that story to the Youth Daily, Chief.’

‘You know about that?’ Li was taken aback.

‘Someone’s doing a pretty good job of character assassination, Chief.’ Then he winked. ‘A few of the boys are going to have a quiet word with that journalist. And as for that shit community cop, I’ve already called CID to tell them it was the other way around. That guy assaulted me.’ He paused. ‘The boys are going to have a word with him, too.’

Li shook his head. ‘I don’t want anyone getting into trouble.’

‘You’re the one that’s in trouble, Chief.’

Li said, ‘Wu, I’m not your chief any more.’

Wu’s jaw kept grinding away steadily on his gum. ‘Yeah, you are. Qian’s taken over as acting Chief, but everyone knows it’s just temporary. He’s staying in his old office. And no one’s getting to touch a damned thing in yours until you’re back.’

Li felt unaccountably moved, and had to blink back the tears he felt pricking his eyes. He looked away towards Dongzhimen so that Wu wouldn’t see them. ‘I appreciate it,’ he said. He pushed his hands deep in his coat pockets and felt awkward. He looked at the ground. ‘So what’s happening?’

Wu’s face clouded. ‘Something you need to know, Chief.’ He hesitated and Li looked up, frowning.

‘What is it?’

‘They’ve arrested Margaret.’

Li couldn’t believe it. ‘What?’

‘It’s really stupid,’ Wu said. ‘Everyone knows she’s been living with you for the last year. But officially she’s still supposed to be in that apartment across town at the University of Public Security.’

Li looked towards the heavens. ‘In the name of the sky, Wu, they allocated that apartment to someone else more than six months ago.’

Wu shrugged. ‘The thing is, officially she never informed her local PSB office. So technically she’s in breach of regulations.’

‘Which everyone knew about. From the tea boy to the goddamned minister!’

‘I guess it’s just another club to beat you with, Chief.’

Li saw a taxi in the line of traffic crawling past. He waved it down. ‘Where’s she being held?’

‘Yuetan police station. That’s the headquarters for the Western District. It’s where she’s still registered.’

Li opened the door of the taxi, but paused and turned back. ‘Thanks, Wu,’ he said.

‘Hey, Chief,’ Wu said, ‘I’ll be expecting a big promotion when you get back in the hotseat.’

* * *

Li sat in the back of the taxi watching the city drift past him without seeing it. Someone was trying to dismantle his life, piece by piece by piece. And they were succeeding. He had no job, no car. The life of his child had been threatened, and his lover had been arrested. He felt like a man falling down a mountain, hitting off the rocks, unable to get a hand or a foothold to stop the fall and start the long climb back. He just kept falling. And every time he looked up another rock would smash him in the face. His cellphone trilled. He took it out of his coat pocket and pressed the handset symbol. ‘Wei?’

‘Li Yan?’

He knew immediately that it was his father. And he knew that something must be wrong, for his father never phoned him. ‘What is it, Dad?’ It felt odd to call him dad. He never usually addressed him as anything, and father seemed absurdly formal. But the telephone seemed to require some form of address. He heard a child crying in the background. ‘What’s happened?’

His father seemed disorientated, his voice shaky and uncertain. ‘I’m going to miss my train back to Sichuan,’ he said. ‘Your sister did not come home for lunch. I thought maybe she and Xinxin were eating out somewhere and had forgotten to tell me. So I was fixing something to eat for myself when the school phoned.’

‘What school?’

‘Xinxin’s school.’ He sounded indignant. ‘What other school would it be?’

‘What did they say, Dad?’ Li contained his impatience.

‘They said that Xiao Ling never came to pick up Xinxin. She always picks up Xinxin at lunchtime. They thought maybe something was wrong.’

‘Dad, just tell me what happened.’

‘I went to the school myself. In a taxi. And when I got back here with Xinxin I telephoned Xiao Ling’s work. The neighbour across the landing gave me the number.’ Li bit his tongue. Details he did not need to know. ‘When I phoned, they said she had been arrested.’

For what seemed like a lifetime, Li could not even seem to draw a breath. When finally he did, all he could say was, ‘What?’

‘The police raided the Jeep factory this morning and searched all the staff lockers. In Xiao Ling’s locker they found cocaine.’ The incredulity in the old man’s voice found an echo in Li’s brain.

‘That’s not possible.’

‘She’s a good girl, Li Yan. She would not use stuff like that.’

‘Dad, she couldn’t afford stuff like that,’ Li said. Yet another piece of his life being taken apart. Another demonstration of the power his unknown enemy had over him. Another rock in the face. It was not just Li who was being targeted. It was his whole family. He wanted to punch the roof of the taxi, kick the seat in front of him. He wanted to yell and hit out. But instead he held it all inside himself, seething, dangerous.

‘Dad, just stay there with Xinxin. Don’t answer the door to anyone except me.’

He heard the fear in his father’s voice. ‘Li Yan, what is happening?’

‘Just sit tight, dad. I’ll be there as soon as I can. But it’s going to be a while.’