Chinese Whispers

Chapter Thirteen
I

There were queues of people up ahead trying to get into the hard class waiting room. A female announcer with a high-pitched nasal voice cut above the gabble in the station to announce the departure of the 19.10 train to Shanghai, followed by information about a delay in the arrival of the 14.45 from Xian. Strings of red electronic characters streamed across information boards. A woman in a white smock was selling hot noodles in polystyrene cartons.

Li checked into the soft class waiting room and glanced at the departure board. As far as he could tell, his train would leave on time. A 7.30p.m. departure, arriving back in Beijing at 2.30 the following morning. Seven hours! He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It seemed like an eternity.

The real Cao Xu was dead. Carried away in childhood by scarlet fever. He had the testimony of the old man, and knew from him that there were others who worked at the orphanage back then who were still alive and would remember him, too. And there must be kids they could track down who would recall the real Cao Xu — and his passing.

But Li was the only person who knew how it all fitted together. The only one who could convincingly discredit the man who had stolen a dead child’s identity and lived a lie for more than forty years. That put Li, and everyone close to him, in danger. When he left this morning, his cellphone was dead. He had forgotten to recharge the battery. So Margaret had loaned him hers. He took it out now and dialled the number of the Harts’ apartment. Lyang answered. Her voice sounded dull and lifeless.

‘Everything alright?’ Li asked.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You want to speak to Margaret?’

Margaret’s voice was full of concern. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Did you find anything?’

‘Yes. I found Cao Xu.’

There was a moment of stunned silence on the other end of the line. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He died, Margaret. From scarlet fever, aged fourteen. I’ve seen his grave. The orphanage where he grew up was destroyed by fire in the early seventies, along with all its records. He must have torched the place to cover his tracks.’

There was more silence from Margaret’s end. ‘But if he didn’t come from Taiyuan, how did he even know of this boy’s existence to be able to steal his identity? And if he set the place on fire, then he must have been there. Why didn’t he recognise the twin pagodas?’

Li thought about the overgrown remains of what had once been the Wutaishan Orphanage, almost in the shadow of the twin pagodas. It would have been impossible to have been there without seeing them. And if Cao, or whoever he was, had seen them, then he would have registered a MERMER response during the demonstration. A black cloud descended on his mind, obscuring the clarity he thought he had found here in Taiyuan City. ‘I don’t know. Either the fire at the orphanage was a quirk of fate, and he just took advantage of it, or …’ He hardly dared think about it. ‘Or someone else set the fire for him.’

‘Which means that someone else knows that he’s not who he says he is.’

‘Or knew,’ Li said. ‘It seems that people don’t live very long when they know the truth.’

‘Oh, Li Yan.’ He heard the fear in Margaret’s voice. ‘For God’s sake be careful.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back sometime before three.’

He disconnected the phone, and dropped into a soft leather seat to stare up at the electronic arrivals and departures board, seething with a latent fury that had been building in him these last few days, determined that the killing would stop here, that he would get his life back again, and that the man who called himself Cao Xu would be brought, finally, to justice.

But he had no idea how he was going to make it through the next seven hours.