The Ghost Marriage

Chapter Nine

They could hear voices raised in anger as they stood on the fourth-floor landing outside the door of the Jiang family apartment. Li’s three sharp raps on the door were followed by a sudden silence. Then footsteps.

The door opened to reveal the flushed face of Meilin’s mother, long, greasy hair pulled back from her face. She seemed surprised to see Li and Margaret, the shadows of Wu and other officers behind them. There was a dead quality in her eyes, which had lost their brightness from the moment Li brought her the news of her daughter’s death. Her mouth opened, but it was some moments before she spoke. ‘What’s happened?’

Li said, ‘May we come in?’

‘Of course.’ She held the door open, and Margaret followed Li down the dark, narrow hall to the living room at the end. The other officers remained on the landing.

The faces of Meilin’s father, still in his singlet and shorts, and her boyfriend, Lao Rong, were turned expectantly towards the door. Li looked at the boy. ‘What are you doing here?’

But it was Jiang Jin who answered. ‘He thinks because he knew her for a month and called her his girlfriend, that he has some rights. The right to be at her funeral, the right to question how we treated her. Our daughter!’

‘You weren’t her parents, you were her jailers. She was terrified of you, you know that? Terrified to bring me home with her, terrified of how you would react.’ Passion and pain coloured Lao Rong’s face.

Jiang Jin’s lip curled in contempt. ‘Yes, because she knew we wouldn’t approve of scum like you. And she was right.’

‘That’s enough!’ Li stepped between them.

Margaret pushed past the small group towards the single bed in the corner. Meilin’s bed. Sheets and blankets neatly folded, a pillow untouched since the girl’s disappearance. She drew two photographs out of a large manila envelope and laid them side by side on the bed. They were the photographs, taken under ultraviolet light, of the impressions left by the coins on Meilin’s eyes. But they weren’t coins, she knew that now.

Li opened the door of the medals cabinet where they kept her photograph. It seemed more like an altar now. He scanned the array of medals on the shelves, before selecting two and carefully laying one alongside each of the photographs. It was easy to see, even at a glance, that they were an exact match.

Li turned towards Jiang Jin. ‘Seem familiar?’

Sweat began to appear on the man’s forehead as he stared with rabbit eyes at the pictures and medals lying on the bed. Suddenly he turned, running past his wife and Lao Rong and vanishing into the darkness of the hall beyond. They heard a struggle and raised voices at the door before Jiang Jin, his arm locked behind his back, was marched back into the room by Wu. He was ghostly pale, and sweat trickled down his face. Defeat already in his eyes. He knew it was over.

His wife turned towards Li, face filled with fear and confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’ They flickered towards the photographs, then back again.

‘Your husband killed your daughter, Mrs Jiang. For twelve hundred dollars.’

Her eyes opened wide now, incredulous. She turned them on her husband, and he visibly recoiled under their gaze. ‘They said they were going to kill me if I didn’t pay up.’ A feeble, desperate attempt at justification.

‘Who?’ Li said.

Anger and hatred fought for dominance on his wife’s face. ‘You bastard! You killed our daughter to pay off your gambling debts?’

Li’s mouth set in a grim line. Now he understood why. He said, ‘You couldn’t supply a dead girl for the minghun, because you had just lost your job at the crematorium. So you turned to a live one. Your own flesh and blood. And did the deal yourself.’

‘It was my only way out. She was my daughter. I gave her life. Why shouldn’t I have the right to take it?’ Defiance now.

Before anyone could move, Jiang Ning flew at the man she had married, tiny clenched fists hammering at his face and chest. Mucus frothed around her mouth as she screamed and cursed at him. Li stepped quickly forward to put his arms around her and control her flailing arms. She fought him for several moments, before going suddenly limp, turning to bury her face in his chest. He held her like a child.

Jiang Jin was breathing hard, his face red and stinging from the ferocity of his wife’s attack. ‘You did nothing but complain all these years that we never had a son!’ As if somehow it were all her fault.

She half-turned her head towards him. ‘That never meant I didn’t love our daughter. She was my life. And you’ve taken both.’

‘You shit!’ Lao Rong took a step towards him, but a single word from Li stopped him in his tracks.

‘Don’t.’

The boy looked at him, rage and hurt burning together in his eyes.

‘Justice will take its course.’

Wu turned Jiang Jin towards the door.

‘Just one question.’ Margaret’s voice stopped them. ‘Why did you put the medals on her eyes?’

Jiang Jin looked at her resentfully. ‘I couldn’t get them to shut. She kept staring at me, the whole damned night, till I couldn’t stand it any longer. Everywhere I went in the room her eyes were following me. In the end, I took the medals from the cabinet to cover them and keep them closed.’ He was lost for a moment in the memory of it. ‘Didn’t do any good though. I knew she was still looking at me. Watching. Wherever she was, her eyes were on me. I could feel them.’ A sob caught in his throat. ‘I still can.’

Neighbours had gathered in the courtyard of the apartment block to watch with naked curiosity as Jiang Jin was taken away by uniformed public security officers. Li and Margaret stood on the sidewalk with a dejected Lao Rong. Li glanced at him and felt a pang of pity for the boy. ‘What did you fight about that night, you and Meilin?’

‘I wanted her to run away with me. She wouldn’t.’

Margaret said, ‘Where would you have gone? How would you have lived?’

‘I have an aunt in Datong. And I’d saved money. Enough to get us there, and to live on until I could find work.’ He kicked at a loose stone and sent it clattering across the hot macadam. ‘If I’d only known about her father’s gambling debt, I could have paid it off myself and she would still be alive.’

Li raised an eyebrow. ‘You’d saved that much?’ The boy cast him a brief sideways look. ‘Where would you have got that kind of money, Rong?’

Now the boy turned dark, sincere eyes on him. ‘You don’t want to know, Section Chief.’

And Li knew that the boy was right. He didn’t.