Half the World Away

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The shop sells Chinese liquor, and the window has a row of tall plinths. On the top of each is a display bottle beside a matching fancy cardboard case. Gold fabric loops between the plinths. The floor is scattered with white pebbles. On the back wall, behind the counter, there are more bottles.

The shop stands next to an alley, just wide enough to drive down. Across the alley is a fruit and vegetable store, with produce piled up on display outside: melons, oranges and lemons, grapes and pineapples, salad greens and ginger root, turnips and leeks.

Opposite, on the other side of the street, there are more shops with flats above.

‘So where did she find the electrical wires?’ Tom says. ‘Only a minute from here?’

And if we find the site of that picture, I think, we must come back armed with leaflets and make this place the focus for the campaign. It would give us a more accurate time and place for Lori’s disappearance. What if Bradley took the pictures? We could be completely off track. We walk up and down each side of the road, looking for an electrician’s or any place that might have a large amount of plastic-coated copper wire. No luck.

‘Somebody could’ve been rewiring,’ I say. ‘Five weeks ago, and it might all be done by now.’ I shift my weight trying to relieve the pressure on my new blister. I drink some water – it’s unpleasantly warm. The road shimmers in the heat, the sun glancing off the chrome and glass of the cars, dazzling.

Tom swings round, scanning for possibilities.

I watch someone come out of the vegetable shop, put the bags of food in a box strapped to the back of their scooter.

‘The alley,’ I say. ‘We haven’t tried the alley.’

The buildings rise up on either side of the narrow lane, shutting out all but a sliver of sunlight. The ground, packed earth, is peppered with puddles from yesterday’s rain. Mosquitoes hover in clouds over the dank water.

A row of small units runs along at ground level. People fall silent as we pass. It’s off the beaten track: tourists would have no reason to come down this way.

We pass one lock-up, which is full of cardboard, flattened boxes and sheets. Two men in vests are sorting it into piles. Further along a group are playing cards. A baby sleeps in a car seat beside their table. It’s hard to tell whether they are running a business or whether they just use the place to store junk. Their eyes follow us.

Ahead, a van is blocking the alley, its bonnet raised, a man hammering at something in the engine.

We edge past and I try to avoid stepping in the pools of water.

A smell of cooking oil comes from the next unit, where a woman hunkers over a small Calor-gas stove. There are several kids in grubby clothes. I glimpse a mattress behind a curtain at the back. Perhaps the poorest people live here, squat here.

‘He needs somewhere to fix it,’ I say to Tom, ‘his bike.’

‘A workshop,’ Tom says. Then he stops still. ‘Jo.’

The woman sits on a low stool; around her stand polypropylene sacks. In front of her a mound of tangled electrical cables. Mountains of the stuff are piled up around the walls. She has pliers in her hands, which are black with grime, and strips the coating from a lead, throws the plastic into a sack and the metal into a plastic tray. Her eyes are sunken, rimmed with deep shadows. She should have gloves, I think. The metal must cut.

I get out a flier. She gives it a brief glance, shakes her head and returns to her task.

‘Show her a picture of Bradley,’ Tom says.

On my phone, I open the link to Lori’s blog and navigate to the entry with the photos of her new friends.

Bradley has better Mandarin than me (hah! everyone has better Mandarin than me).

I enlarge the image so Bradley fills the frame. Tilt it so the woman can see. Zài nǎli? Zài nǎli? Where? I point to the building adjacent to hers, which is closed up, step nearer and tap on the shutter. Zài nǎli?

But she jerks her chin, as if we need to try further along. The next unit is shuttered too. I gesture to it and she gives a single nod. She picks up a scart cable and cuts off the socket.

I mime a key, point to the padlock at the bottom of the shutters. Zài nǎli? The woman ignores me.

The man with the hammer comes to see what’s going on. He glares at us.

We bang on the shutters. I keep miming a key turning. More people gather. I get out the fliers. Some of them recoil. No one actually takes one from me. Are they wary because it’s police business? My skin tingles. We are not welcome. There’s an atmosphere of suspicion, hostility. The man with the hammer hawks and spits.

Tom checks his phone, finds the word for ‘landlord’. Says it, fang dong, shows the screen.

No one’s willing to help, it seems. They talk to each other in raised voices.

‘Nǚ ér, shī zōng, daughter missing,’ Tom says. He hits the shutter doors once, twice, then kicks as if he’d kick his way in. I think of the suitcase, of the bones and the skull. The Chinese girl. And Lori? My heart bangs against my ribs. Tom is shouting, his hair whipping about as he yells, ‘Nǚ ér, shī zōng, daughter missing.’ The man with the hammer grabs hold of Tom by the shoulder, bellowing at him. Tom swings round and throws him off.

The crowd grows, shouting to each other. Then a man comes running. Squat, pot-bellied with puffy jowls, he wears a tatty cap and has a bunch of keys hanging from his belt.

‘Fang dong?’ I say.

He roars at us.

‘Hello,’ a younger man says to me. ‘English?’

‘You speak English?’ I say.

‘Some, English classes, yes,’ he says.

‘Is this the landlord? Tell him we’re looking for our daughter. We want to look in there.’

He speaks to the landlord, who shakes his head, dismissing us with dramatic hand gestures.

‘For your trouble.’ I hold out a hundred-yuan note to the landlord. The crowd are all shouting. It’s impossible to tell if they are for or against us. The man still shakes his head and turns to go.

‘We’ll fetch the police,’ Tom says to the student. ‘Does he want that?’

I’m aware of sweat on my back, dust in my mouth, the din from the main road nearby.

‘Police,’ I say. I point to the word on the leaflet next to the number.

The student repeats the threat.

An older woman, with a wrinkled brown face, wearing black clothes and black pumps, walks forward, wrenches the leaflet from my hand and thrusts it at the man, shrieking.

Someone laughs. Before we can ask what’s being said, the landlord flaps his hands towards the crowd and barks some words. People shuffle back a little. A bird squawks. The man unclips his keys, glares at Tom and gives an emphatic nod.

He gets down on one knee and opens the lock, then shoves the roller shutter halfway up. The piercing shriek of metal on metal sets my teeth on edge. We step closer, behind us I sense the bystanders doing the same. The man yells at them, signals them to go away, palms facing the floor, flicking his fingers towards them. He ducks inside and hits a switch. Tom and I follow. A strip light flares blue for a moment, then flickers.

The room is the size of a garage. It smells of damp concrete and motor oil and sewage. There’s a trestle table along one wall, strewn with tools and aerosol cans, a socket set, a metal flight case and bits of machinery. At the back a partition juts out four feet high and maybe half the width of the room – a modesty screen, perhaps? Toilet in the corner? Fixed to it is a poster: James Dean astride his motorbike. Opposite the tool bench are boxes and two large oil drums. In the centre of the room a grey tarpaulin covers what I take to be Bradley’s vintage bike. Tom throws back an edge to reveal a gleaming wheel, chrome and leather. The overhead light snaps and fizzes, goes off and comes on again.

The landlord barks at us, swings his arm around the room. See? he appears to say. Nothing. He waves us towards the lane. The show is over.

Three or four people have come inside but most are still out there, chattering away. I feel like kicking the stupid bike over. Where is Lori? He brought her here, then what? A spin on the bike to some quieter place, a day trip with only Bradley coming back.

The man is flapping at us again. Tom moves to the back of the room and puts his head round the divider. I see him flinch, his back jerk straighter, his head jolt and hear the intake of breath. By the time he has said my name, I’m at his side, eyes adjusting to the gloom of that corner. The smell is stronger here. An open drain, tap on the wall. A pale lump on the concrete floor, a tangle of stick-like limbs, matted hair. My heart implodes.

‘Oh, Lori.’

‘Oh, Lori, oh, Lou-Lou.’ Tom falls to his knees and I crowd in beside him.

She is curled like a foetus. I reach out a hand and touch her cheek. She is cold.

‘Lori? Lori?’ He finds her chin and tilts her head back. Her eyes are closed, crusted with granules that look like brown sugar. Her hair stuck in clumps. Her cheeks sunken. A dark rag is tied around her mouth. The sweet smell is brackish, like baby diarrhoea. She is naked. Insect bites pepper her limbs, angry dots. Her belly is distended – she looks pregnant: a grotesque contrast to the blades of bones in her shins and forearms, the chamber of ribs.

Tom is weeping, his hands cradling her cheeks. Hushing him, I fumble to remove the gag. My fingers slip on the knot – it’s a bandanna, I think, black and purple patterns. The rag is stiff and soiled and it reeks of vomit. I wrest the water bottle from my bag, tip a few drops into her mouth. It dribbles out. Putting two fingers between her lips, I meet no resistance. Her tongue is swollen, dry, like a husk, but I feel faint warmth there. I see dark red in the gaps of her teeth. Blood? If she were dead, if her heart had stopped pumping, would there be blood?

‘Ambulance!’ I call. ‘Get an ambulance.’

I shore myself up. More people have come into the workshop. Faces peer round to see us, wary, frozen. I scan them for the student but can’t see him. The old woman is there. I wave at her, make the sign for a phone call, finger and thumb at my ear and chin. The landlord is shaking his head over and over. I gesture to him, too, making the phone sign. Scrambling up, I yank the old woman by the arm, show her my daughter, and repeat the phone sign. She rattles off something and one of the other women uses her mobile phone.

Tom is talking to Lori now. ‘We’re here, baby, Mum and me. Come to take you home. Lori, you’re OK. It’s going to be all right. Dad’s here, Mum’s here.’ Her hands and feet, rimed with filth, are bound with plastic ties. A length of plastic rope goes from her ankles to an iron bracket low on the wall. I push through the people and search on the workbench for something to cut her free and find some radio pliers.

‘I’ve got these.’ I show Tom. He shuffles her round a little, rests her head on his knee and holds her wrists up so I can work the pliers under the ties and cut. Her arms are like twigs. She makes no response to the snapping sound. Tom catches her arms as they fall apart.

A baby bird, naked, blind, every bone visible through slack skin.

Some of the crowd starts melting away.

She is dead. We are trying to wake a corpse.

Angry with myself for the very thought. Her tongue was warm, I’m sure. I free her ankles, put down the pliers. There are puffy, pus-filled wounds around her wrists and ankles where the ties have cut into her flesh. Open sores on her buttocks, her left hip and elbow, around her mouth. We try the water again, the smallest amount possible, half a teaspoonful between her lips. I watch her throat. She does not swallow.

She is dead.

Tom shifts around, bracing his back against the partition and collecting her onto his lap. He kisses the top of her head. I place my palm flat on her chest, feel the bones, her breasts have melted away. There is no heartbeat.

‘Tom-’ I’m about to tell him that I don’t think she’s breathing, that we should try the kiss of life, when Lori makes a sound, a tiny, tiny sound. Some strength in her clinging to a gossamer thread. Behind us, the old woman claps and shouts something and then I hear the ice-cream sing-song of a Chinese siren coming for us.