Chinese Whispers

V

The two security guards who looked after the carpark on the west side of the flower market blew smoke into the freezing air and shook their heads. Neither of them had seen anything, they said. They’d noticed the yangguizi arriving in a taxi with the older woman, because you didn’t often see people with gold hair and blue eyes. But it had been busy, cars coming and going. One of them had gone into the carpark to settle an argument between two drivers fighting over the same space. The other had been warming himself over a small paraffin heater they kept in the hut at the gate.

Li felt something like despair. The police activity had prompted the gathering of a large crowd of curious onlookers. And the local police had not arrived quickly enough to stop potential witnesses from slipping through the net. It was a busy time of the day at the flower market. There had been hundreds of people coming and going. A small fruit and vegetable market outside Durty Nellie’s had also been attracting custom. Mei Yuan had left the buggy at the foot of the steps and wandered off through the Christmas trees, wondering if she should buy one as a present for Margaret. When she looked around the buggy was gone.

Li had found it difficult to get a coherent story out of her. Through her tears she had managed to tell him that she had run through the crowds looking for the buggy, and then fearing she’d missed it somehow, turned back to where she’d left it. It was then that fear had taken over, and she had screamed, a part of her hoping that it might be enough to stop people in their tracks, and that the whereabouts of the buggy would become magically apparent. Instead, she had drawn only looks of amazement. People had thought she was a mad woman, and then been startled when a yangguizi came running from the market and started shaking her by the shoulders.

When Li arrived at the market, Margaret was in shock, sitting in the back seat of a black and white, eyes red and blurred, clutching a soft toy she kept in her purse for Li Jon. A small, grey mouse that he loved to swing by the tail and let fly in whatever direction it would go. He had controlled an initial urge to be angry at her for losing his son, but her pain was too apparent in her face, and he knew that it was not her fault.

He slipped into the car beside her now and held her for a long time, pressing her head into his chest, feeling the silent sobs that punctuated her breathing, and let his own tears run free. The world outside seemed a distant place, like a film projected on a screen, the sound turned down, muffled so that you could barely hear it. You could touch it, but it wasn’t real. You could watch it, but didn’t feel part of it. As if they were insulated from it all in a bubble of their own pain.

Li had let Wu take charge of the local cops, organising the corralling and questioning of witnesses, broadcasting a citywide alert on police frequencies, shouting and pointing nicotine-stained fingers, chewing manically on a huge wad of gum. A sharp rapping on the glass made him turn. And from that distant outside world, he saw Wu’s grinning face looming at the window. It seemed like something surreal. The door opened.

‘Chief, we found him.’

Words Li had not expected to hear. He jumped quickly out of the car, Margaret sliding out behind him, clutching his hand. The crowds parted as a tearful, but smiling, Mei Yuan wheeled Li Jon in his buggy towards the car. Margaret ran and grabbed him up into her arms and held him there as if she intended never to let him out of them again. Her tears now were tears of joy.

Li heard Wu’s voice. ‘The buggy was parked by a bench down on the river walkway, under those willow trees.’ He pointed and Li followed his finger. ‘No more than a couple of hundred metres away.’ There was a huge, four-sided advertising hoarding rising on a tubular steel construction from among scrubby trees and bushes on a piece of waste ground beside the walkway. Beyond it, just visible through the hanging fronds of the willows, there was a bench at the river’s edge where old folk would sit in the summer to escape the city heat.

Someone had pushed the buggy away through the crowds when Mei Yuan’s back was turned, past the vegetable market and down on to the river walkway, abandoning it by the bench, obscured by the trees. Li began to have an uneasy feeling.

Wu followed him to the buggy and watched as he crouched down to examine it in detail, going through the pouch that hung from the push bar, and pulling everything out from the tray beneath it. A blanket, a waterproof bag with a bottle of milk, several soft toys.

‘That’s not Li Jon’s.’

Li looked up and saw Margaret, still clutching their son, looking down at him. ‘What isn’t?’

‘That panda.’

Li looked at the panda. He was not familiar with all of Li Jon’s toys and would not have known that it was not his. It seemed new, as if it had just come out of its wrapping. He turned it over, and there was a folded sheet of paper pinned to its back. He froze, initial uneasiness turning now to real fear. He held out a hand towards Wu. ‘Gloves.’

Wu handed him a pair of latex gloves. Li laid the panda in the buggy and snapped them on, then removed the pin from the note. Carefully he unfolded it, and felt shock, like an electric jolt, when he saw the now familiar characters in red ink.

Chief,

A little gift for baby.

Happy hunting,

Jack

He heard the trilling of a cellphone and looked up to see faces pressed all around. Eager faces full of wonder and curiosity. There was an odd silence at the heart of the crowd fighting for a view of this bizarre piece of street theatre. He heard Wu’s voice speaking on the phone, and then stood up and shouted at the crowd to move back. A ripple went through them like a wave, as the nearest of them recoiled from his anger. He shouted again, and another ripple created more space. He took his wife and baby in his arms and held them tightly, still clutching the note.

‘Chief … Chief …’ Wu’s voice was insistent. ‘Chief you gotta go. They want you at headquarters downtown. Commander Hu’s office.’ Commander Hu Yisheng was the Divisional Head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Beijing Municipal Police. Li’s immediate boss.

Li asked for an evidence bag and dropped the note into it and gave it to Wu. He turned to Margaret and said quietly, ‘Go straight home. Take a taxi. Stay there. Don’t answer the door to anyone but me.’

She stared at him, fear and confusion in her eyes. ‘Li Yan, I’ve got to pick up my passport from the visa office.’

‘Get it another day.’

‘No, they said today. They’ve been real bastards about it. I don’t feel secure without it.’

He sighed. ‘Well, keep the taxi waiting outside, then go straight back to the apartment.’

‘When will I see you?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll be in touch.’ And he turned and pushed off through the crowd, and she could see from the way he moved that he was rigid with tension. Li Jon gurgled in her ear and she squeezed him even more tightly, something close to panic rising inside her, forcing an intake of breath interrupted by sobs, like the wheels of a bicycle running over rutted snow.