A Deadly Injustice

TWENTY-ONE

Once on a tiger’s back, it is hard to alight.

There was nothing else for it – we had to arrest Geng Wenbo. The evidence was now piling up against him. The existence of the incriminating play script in the Geng household could have been said to be circumstantial on its own. And the ‘testimony’ of Nu within it was sketchy to say the least. But put together with Sun’s evidence, it all added up to a very sound case against the boy. It was in fact a much stronger set of facts than those which the prefect had lined up against Jianxu. Of course, Li Wen-Tao would be our major stumbling block, and Lin recognized that.

‘What are we going to do about Li? He will seek to undermine our case when we present it to Taitemir, the Mongol governor.’

I gave a short, barking laugh.

‘Don’t you worry about Li. His authority is compromised totally. I have evidence he has been running an illegal scam involving burglary and payment for the return of the stolen goods.’

Lin looked shocked, his face turning pale.

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because I set up the scam, and then Li took it over. He even used two heavies to beat me up and warn me off.’

Gurbesu gave me a strange look.

‘So that’s why you came home with bruises all over your body that night. But excuse me for stating the obvious. If you set up the scam – which I can well believe – you can’t bring Li down without incriminating yourself. And that smear will stick to Master Lin too. So there’s no point in revealing it.’

I had to admit I felt smug at that point. I smiled sweetly at Gurbesu, who scowled, spoiling her pretty looks.

‘You’ll have to bear with me on this. Just trust me that Li has been neutralized as a force in this city. We can move forward unhindered. So let’s go now and take the boy.’

Lin wasn’t so sure, being as ever the cautious one in our partnership.

‘It’s getting late. Wenbo and Madam Gao may have gone to their beds for the night.’

I rubbed my hands together at the thought.

‘All the better for us. He will be so shocked to be arrested, he might break down on the spot. In fact, let’s rouse the prefect and take him with us. He may hear a confession with his own ears.’

Lin reminded me that we still had the doctor on our hands. We had locked him in a spare room at the top of the house. But the walls were flimsy, and unless we left a guard behind, he might break out and flee. Tadeusz volunteered for the duty.

‘I will redeem myself by keeping an eye on Sun whilst you have the pleasure of taking the real murderer into custody.’

I patted the silversmith on the shoulder.

‘You have no redeeming to do, Tadeusz. However, I will take you up on your offer. It would not go well with us to lose our star witness at this stage. He is such a weasel, I can imagine him sneaking away if he thought we had all gone out together. And we can’t expect Po Ku to take on such an onerous task. We will be back as soon as we can.’

Leaving Tadeusz on guard, Lin, Gurbesu and I marched across the town towards Li’s riverside residence. Flaming torches lit some of the main streets, and pretty, white-faced girls lounged provocatively outside certain establishments. The noise inside, and the girls’ presence on the street, suggested that rowdy taverns and brothels were to be found in Cathay just the same as in Venice or Genoa. In any big city in the West, in fact. I might have dallied, but Gurbesu took a firm hold of my arm, and walked me past the alluring girls. I wasn’t attracted anyway – the white make-up on most of them clearly hid a ravaged skin, and the teeth I saw when one girl smiled were blackened stumps. We hurried on, but Gurbesu had a question for me.

‘What was all that about Tadeusz redeeming himself? He has been behaving very oddly lately. Is there something you are not telling me?’

‘So many questions! But seriously, I think you should ask Tadeusz about it. It is his story to tell, and I think you will find him not unwilling to unburden himself to you. He is in love with you after all.’

Gurbesu snorted in derision at this suggestion of mine. But then she gave me a quizzical look.

‘Are you being serious?’

I nodded solemnly.

‘I will just tell you that Tadeusz was tempted for very good reasons to spy on us all. But he came to Lin and me and told us the truth, and we trust him now as strongly as before.’

I left out the part where we had backed Tadeusz into a corner before he confessed. I would leave it to him to consider the extent of his confession Gurbesu.

Li’s house was all quiet when we reached it. The night porter tried to insist his master had retired to bed and could not be disturbed. But I could see a dim light on in his reception rooms, and was not to be put off. I brushed past the porter, and my companions followed, ignoring the servant’s protests. Through the open doorway, I could see that Li sat at a low table, a look of pleasure on his face. With her back to us and facing him knelt a richly robed girl. She was pouring tea into a bowl set before the prefect. I stepped forward into the room.

‘You will have time for tea later, Master Li. But now, you have an arrest to witness.’

Li’s face fell, his mouth an open wound expressing shock. His cheeks turned bright red and I thought he might explode. The girl, also surprised by our bursting in, turned to look behind her. She had the white-painted face of a lady of pleasure, but beneath it her looks were finer than those of the street whores. I knew from stories told by Lin, that a Chinee’s preferred sexual encounter began with a song and the serving of tea. Unfortunately, Li would not now be able to consummate his drawn out dalliance. I picked up the strange-looking stringed instrument lying at the girl’s feet. It made a noise like a strangled chicken when I thrust it at the girl.

‘I hope he has paid you, miss. Because your services are no longer required.’

She looked me in the eye for a moment, then, seeing I was in earnest, stood and gathered up the hem of her long robe. She left the room quietly on dainty steps. Li, meanwhile, had boiled over. He waved at the harassed servant who had scurried in on our heels, and the man helped Li to his feet. Once he had regained his dignity, Li was all bluster.

‘How dare you enter my house unannounced and order my servants around. The girl is a perfectly respectable entertainer and will be shocked at your innuendo. I shall have to pay her more to placate her now. So leave before I call in my bodyguard.’

I grinned in what I hoped was a wolfish manner.

‘Oh, please do. If they are the two youths who gave me a few bruises the other day, I want them present to hear what I have to say.’

Li looked at me suspiciously, but sent his servant off to fetch the two bodyguards. Lin, meanwhile, intervened in an attempt to calm the situation down. He cast a quizzical glance at me and then stepped forward.

‘Forgive our abrupt entrance, Master Li, but we have urgent business with you that cannot wait. We have discovered the real murderer of Geng Biao, and perhaps of the actor P’ing-Yang Nu also.’

Li’s little piggy eyes narrowed.

‘I hope you are not going to cast doubt on my judgement, Lin. I care nothing about the death of the actor, which was probably the result of an argument over drink or money. As for the murderer of Geng, she is in jail awaiting execution. It is only the formality of your… investigation that has delayed the matter. I had expected you to confirm my decision.’ He turned his gaze on to me, while still talking to Lin. ‘If not, some unpleasant information about your man, here, may come out.’

I think Li felt very comfortable about accusing me of the confidence trick involving Ho’s thefts and the return of stolen goods by the agency of the priestess in the Temple of the Earth Goddess. He thought my accusing him of being involved would not be believed in the circumstances. And if the situation had been as he imagined, I would have agreed with him. I would sound like a trickster trying to shift the blame. But he was unaware of one thing.

A con is nothing more than a play. Everyone knows it is a play except the victim, until he is stung. But sometimes the con is more convoluted, and involves the victim thinking he has seen the trick. At this point the victim is dragged into joining in the con. This is where the real con starts. Li had willingly joined the stolen goods scam, and had missed the real con. He didn’t know it, but he was still playing a part in my play, even though we were not in a theatre. I addressed those present.

‘Master Li is going to accuse me of having been involved in a confidence trick concerning burglary, and the return of stolen goods for money. I think he is the one who planned the scam, however.’

Li looked at me angrily.

‘Very well, if you wish to force my hand, I will unmask you. Lin, you can ask my men what they witnessed in the theatre the other night, when your man tried to bribe me with money obtained by his trickery.’

At this point, the two bodyguards appeared in the doorway – the same two guards I had trusted, and who had then turned on me. Lin looked at the two bodyguards, a truculent smile on his face. He asked them what they had seen happen in theatre. One of them looked at Li questioningly.

‘You really want us to say, Master Li?’

The prefect lifted a hand, giving his man permission to speak.

‘Tell him what you saw.’

The two men grinned at each other, and the taller one spoke up.

‘Master Li, we saw you trying to bribe this man–‘ he pointed at me – ‘who said he knew about your scam. You offered him the money the priestess gave you as her pay-off for the scam. When he refused to be bribed, you told us to beat him up, so we did. That was all right, wasn’t it?’

Li was speechless, gasping for breath as though someone had punched him in his not inconsiderable stomach. I told the bodyguards to leave, and pushed my face in Li’s.

‘Now, don’t imagine for one moment that you will try to impede our search for justice in the case of Jianxu and Old Geng. Just come with us, and watch us take the real killer. Then you can release the girl.’

Jianxu sat up on her cot where she had been lying. The sun had just set, turning the blood red colour on the wall of her cell to grey. She listened for a while, thinking she had heard the cry of a wild beast as she lay half asleep. Whatever had roused her, the sound did not come again. The countryside beyond the walls of her grim cell was silent. Not even the chirp of a bird or the call of a wild creature stirred the darkness. But as she sat, now alert to the turning of the world around her, she knew her time had come. As long as Wenbo stuck to what they had agreed, she would be free soon. She recalled the dream she had been having in which the boy had been stumbling through the woods of the place where she had been born. He was scared and didn’t know that hunters used the woods to catch game. He was lost and afraid, stomping carelessly through the long grass. Somewhere behind him, the cries of the hunters could be heard. She knew the dream’s interpretation. It meant that Wenbo had been found out. And that she would soon be freed. The sound that woke her had been the scream of the boy as the trap snapped viciously closed, trapping his leg.

Li was reluctant to come with us to that part of Pianfu where the Geng house stood. It had once been a prosperous district, but now the encroaching houses told their own story. Geng lived amidst poor people, their shanties leaning against his walls for support. It was not a place where the prefect wished to be after dark. But come with us he did, as he now had no choice. As we marched grimly through the town, Gurbesu came to my side.

‘Now I see what you were up to. I recognized those two bodyguards as actors from the play we saw. I would know those manly torsos anywhere.’

I grinned at her recollection of the half-naked acrobats she had ogled that night when we watched ‘The Three Princes at Tiger Palace’.

‘I thought you might. They were out of work, so were glad to play a part for me. They were my bodyguards until Li thought he had turned them against me with money. But that was all part of the plan too. Mind you, they did get a bit carried away with the fake beating.’ I touched my bruised body and winced. ‘But the clincher as far as Li was concerned was when they kicked my teeth in, and drew blood from my mouth.’

Gurbesu was horrified.

‘They hit you hard enough to draw blood?’

I laughed.

‘No. Before we started our little charade, they gave me a bladder with chicken’s blood in it. At the right moment, I slipped it in my mouth and bit down on it. Lots of blood to spit out, and a pleasant sight for Li.’ I shuddered. ‘Mind you, the chicken’s blood was so awful, I had to drink two goblets of wine before the taste was washed away. Li was completely taken in by greed, as you always hope a mark will be. He didn’t see the inconsistencies in my scam, which I had to put together very quickly.’

I looked back at the prefect to make sure he was still behind us, and had not sneaked away. His cheeks wobbled, and his face was red with the exertion, but he was still there glaring at me as he strove to keep up with our fast pace. Finally, we stood in front of Geng’s house in all its run-down glory. A light burned dimly in the courtyard, but no servants were in evidence. I knew they had all gone, as there was no one in a position to pay them any more. I strode towards the range of rooms that I knew was where Old Geng had lived. Wenbo was bound to be in there somewhere. I slid the outer door open and began searching the rooms leading off the long corridor. The others would have followed, but Lin raised a hand to stop them.

‘Let Zhong Kui do his job. He is good at winkling out little devils.’

He was right, in the second room that I looked in, I found Wenbo huddled in a tangle of blankets. He was barely awake, having only just been roused by the noise I had made upon entry to his quarters. He scratched his head, and yawned.

‘What…?’

I grabbed him by his grubby shirt and hauled him to his feet.

‘You are coming with me, Geng Wenbo.’

He turned a ghastly shade of green, perhaps thinking he was having a nightmare. After all, he didn’t seem truly awake yet. He rubbed his eyes, but the demon didn’t go away. Flame-haired and big-nosed, Zhong Kui, as Lin was fond of calling me, had come for the boy.

‘You are brought to account for the murder of your father. And for the death of the actor too, I have no doubt.’

The boy’s legs gave away, and he fell to the floor, vomiting his stomach’s contents between his knees.