The Master of Rain

Four

Field’s cubicle was as spartan as his life here. Apart from his telephone and Lena Orlov’s file, which he’d taken out of Registry earlier, there was a huge pile of papers and journals that he was required to “keep an eye on” with “a view to censorship,” as Granger had put it. Apart from the China Weekly Review and the Voice of China, Field was required to read Shopping News and the Law Journal. It was tedious work. Detective Sergeant Prokopieff, his neighbor here and in the housing complex, did most of the big newspapers and journals and all the ones that might conceivably be of any interest, leaving Field with the dross.

On top of the file was a letter that he’d written earlier to his sister and he decided to check through it before dropping it into the mail room on his way down to the registry and the fingerprint lab. He gazed into the middle distance for a moment, then shook his head and took out his fountain pen, ready to make corrections.

Dear Edith, he’d written, I’m so sorry it has taken me all this time to put pen to paper. I have penned a note to Mother, but don’t know whether she will have passed it on or if you’ll have had time to get up to see her.

In case you haven’t, I’ll give you as much of the story as I can manage. Apologies if I’m repeating myself.

I arrived here three months ago and went straight into basic instruction, which involves everything from weapons training (necessary) to the rudiments of the Chinese language (hard, but essential, as our pay is based, to a degree, on our proficiency) to the topography of the city and even the mysteries of street numbering.

I ought to tell you a bit about the journey out, but it was uneventful. I shared my cabin with an Indian and all his luggage(!) and I can’t say it was the most comfortable voyage, but it was good to see Colombo, Penang, and Hong Kong.

I’m now working in the Special Branch, the “intelligence” department. I’m surprised to be here, but I’ll come to that in a minute.

I want to tell you something of this city, but it is hard to know where to begin or what to say. It is like nowhere else I’ve ever been, a cross between the solid majesty of modern Europe or America and the worst kind of barbarism of the Middle Ages.

Field looked up, confronted again with an image of the doorman’s head rolling in the dirt. The doorman, Lena, his father . . .

It is true to say that, though the city assaults your senses at every turn, it is what I’d expected. It is exciting in a way that is hard to do justice to in a letter. It pulses with life and a sense of the possible. I feel I should be more shocked than I am by the poverty and violence, but so far it only adds to a sense of the exotic.

I think of it as like Venice in its heyday, the source of all the art you so love, a mercantile metropolis—the city of the future in the land of the next century, as people here like to say.

My salary is, as yet, very poor, allowing me to survive, but no more. I will get on, though, and make some money here. I will send some to Mother as soon as I can, since I know you . . . well, I know how it is (please don’t show this letter to her).

I will return to take you and Arthur to Venice.

The same foolish fantasy of our childhood, you may think, but I can tell you, Edith, that, out here, I feel you can dare to dream and anything seems within reach. The city has an energy that is hard to describe—don’t they say the same of New York, that it is built on quartz? Nobody has done us any favors in life, but I intend to make my own luck.

I do my duty and I take pleasure in bringing justice to a land where it would be all too easy for there to be none, but more than that, I feel I belong. Maybe it is because no one really does belong here.

Am I making any sense?

I was trying to explain the city. The big groups here are the Americans and British and they’ve built the great houses and offices of the Bund—the waterfront—which makes the city feel like Paris or New York. Together, in the last century, they were awarded this concession of land, which is now called the International Settlement (I’d like you to tell me to stop if you know some of this, but since there are thousands of miles between us, I’ll err on the side of caution) and which is effectively a piece of America and Britain run by the big business interests here and their chiefs. Geoffrey is the secretary to the Municipal Council, an important job that has prompted a lot of “chat” amongst uncharitable police colleagues (the police are low down the social order here, on the whole). I dropped Geoffrey a line when I arrived, but he said he’s been very busy, so we’re only getting to meet tonight.

Field wondered again why this meeting with his uncle had not come sooner, but he blamed his father, not Geoffrey.

Alongside the International Settlement is the French Concession, which is run by the French, so I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. A lot of the White Russians who fled the Bolsheviks live there and have shops and small businesses. There are thousands of them here now, most in a desperate situation—all former army officers and their families, or professionals, or aristocrats. A lot of people like the idea they can take advantage of these people. I mean the women, especially. Well, you know what I mean. There seems nothing you can’t buy here and there is so much for sale.

Field looked up, pulling his collar away from his neck and trying not to think of Natasha Medvedev, with her white gown and tumbling hair and the morning sun caressing her legs.

Foreigners living in the Settlement or French Concession have the right to live by the laws of their own countries—a unique situation in history—but Chinese people living in these areas and the foreigners who don’t enjoy these rights (Russians, Bulgarians) are subject to the Chinese law of the “mixed courts” in the Settlement, which makes their position precarious. Sometimes, Chinese wrongdoers are just ejected to the Chinese city itself, where they are brutally dealt with by local warlords. This is especially true if their crime is “political.” Anyone caught trying to sow Bolshevik ideas is in deep trouble.

The Chinese city is outside the International Settlement and French Concession. This is the beginning of the real China, where everyone lives under Chinese law, not that there is much. Ever since the fall of the imperial dynasty, the whole of China has been controlled by competing warlords, and Shanghai is no exception. Foreigners are mostly okay, but many of the local Chinese do have a rough time of it.

Field thought again of the sound of the doorman’s head hitting the ground, echoing through the silence of the crowd.

I’ve found myself in the Special Branch, as I said. I’d like to report that this was because my superiors spotted a vein of natural genius, but actually it is because Mother is a Catholic and because of my rugby. I’ve already found this to be the most extraordinary force. It’s made up primarily of Americans, Brits, and Russians (and the locals, of course), but it’s controlled by two factions, the Scots and the Irish, and everyone—American, Russian, English—has to fall into one camp or other, like it or not. The commissioner is from New York but is too fond of the bottle and is rarely seen out of his office on the sixth floor. The real power rests with my boss, Patrick Granger, who is head of Special Branch, and with Macleod, head of Crime.

Granger is from Cork and fought with the IRA after 1916. They say he was a friend of Michael Collins and that the two fell out. I don’t know. Like everyone else here, he doesn’t talk about his past (it’s a strange city like that—I’ll tell you more next time). Macleod, by contrast, is a Protestant (Presbyterian, I think) from Glasgow, who scowls a lot and gives the impression he thinks the city is a mess and a discredit to all concerned. Both men are rugby fanatics and where you end up is largely down to religion and sport, though there are some exceptions. Granger found out that I’d played flanker at school and my mother was a Catholic and that was that. I have my first game for his team this week against—yes, you guessed it, Crime Branch. The two men seem to have a deep-seated enmity and rivalry that everyone has a theory about, not always convincing. You are expected to show loyalty to your faction and I suppose I’m Granger’s man now. He’s a big fellow, in every sense, and gives the impression of looking out for his men, though he also always talks to you as if his mind is elsewhere and sometimes looks right through you. I think you’d find him quite handsome—he certainly dresses well. Hardly like a policeman at all. Macleod has been perfectly friendly too, but it doesn’t do to even contemplate loyalty outside your faction.

I must go. I’ve endless journals to look through, which seems to be my task (all publications in the Settlement are censored for Bolshevik propaganda, which certain Russians living here are secretly trying to export to the Chinese masses). I will try to tell you more of this strange city next time. Sometimes I wish you could see it and sometimes I’m glad you can’t. Opium dens are illegal and we sometimes raid them, but you can get heroin from room service in all the best hotels. You can get anything on room service. No one who has money wants for anything. Anyone who hasn’t money wants for something.

One last thing might interest you. A mythical Chinese gangster—I’ve not met him or seen him—but they say this man called Lu, who lives in the French Concession, controls much in the city and nothing happens without his knowledge and say-so. I find it hard to believe and accept the level of influence ascribed to him, but he appears to have taken the lead in fighting Bolshevism. Whenever they suspect a local Chinese, even if he’s in the Settlement, of working for the Bolsheviks, they expel him to the local warlords in the Chinese city, who cut his head off. This is seen as a necessary expedient on behalf of the British and American authorities in order to persuade local Chinese not to spread Bolshevik propaganda—Lu is making too much money to want a Bolshevik revolution—but there is also a feeling I’ve picked up amongst police colleagues that Lu is getting too big for his boots and shouldn’t be allowed—literally sometimes—to get away with murder. He’s using the well-founded fear of Bolshevism amongst foreigners here to get away with doing anything that he wants and undermining (some feel) the authority of the big international powers.

Field looked up again, running his hand through his hair.

He picked up his pen and wrote, This is a dangerous city, but I’ll do my best to keep safe. Love to Arthur . . . isn’t it about time I was an uncle?

He found he was smiling and was tempted to write that he’d “met” someone very beautiful today, but thinking of Natasha Medvedev and the misleading boast he’d been about to make suddenly brought down a familiar blanket of loneliness and depression.

He still did not believe that a woman like that could submit herself to a man against her will.

Field began to sweat again, the blood pounding in his head. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, fumbling around his throat until he found the silver cross. He took it off and held it in his palm, tightening his fist until it hurt.

He fought to contain the anger that still came upon him when his confusion was complete, knowing what his father would have made of the city and of Natasha and Lena and the women like them.

Field had a sudden, clear image of his father, with his trimmed mustache, neat hair, and carefully polished shoes. He could see the waistcoat and the shirt that his mother had starched, the chain of the silver cross just visible above the collar. For a moment he allowed himself to hate the man, for his unyielding, obstinate, puritanical priggishness, for his cane and the power with which he had wielded it.

He gripped the cross more tightly, thinking of his mother and the quiet shock with which she had met his decision to join the Shanghai police force.

Field breathed out and opened his eyes. He was here now and it was his life. He put the cross in his left hand and ran his right through his hair. He put the chain back around his neck, did up his collar, and tightened his tie.

It was all in the past now. That was the point of being here. It was why he’d made the journey.

Field wrote, Your loving brother, folded the letter and put it in the envelope, sealed the back, then wrote her address in his careful, flowing hand.

He turned and saw Yang looking at him. She was “his” secretary, his and Prokopieff’s, a tiny, slim dark girl with a neat, pretty face and an upturned nose. Her gaze was steady, and for a moment he thought her mind must be elsewhere, but she shifted her head a little, without looking away, and he knew that she was still appraising him. She wore a short cream skirt, without stockings, the thin cotton hem rumpled halfway up her thigh.

Field found it hard to take his eyes from the smooth skin of her legs.

He turned back to his work, distracting himself by reading a memo pinned to the corkboard on the side of his cubicle, which was from Commissioner Biers’s office and instructed them to ensure all files removed from Registry are forwarded to other personnel complete, with cover correspondence detailing any removals. Anyone forwarding a file MUST inform Registry in writing who the file was forwarded to and upon which date. It added: All envelopes will now be opened in Registry, rather than the relevant sections, unless addressed directly to individuals.

Field had never met Biers. He’d only ever seen him once, coming into the lobby, in uniform, his nose and cheeks red from, Prokopieff said, a night’s hard drinking. Field thought he’d seen him stagger, but later decided it might have been his imagination.

He pulled forward the form in front of him. It was form number 6.3000–3.23, the number listed next to the logo of the Shanghai Municipal Police, a star with the words Omnia Juncta in Uno inside it. Field’s Latin was shaky, but he assumed that meant “all acting in unison.”

In the box marked Made by he wrote his own name, and in the one marked Forwarded by he crossed out the “by,” wrote “to,” and wrote Caprisi’s name, before going on to fill out the address at which the fingerprints had been found and the nature of the crime—murder. He left the time blank, not certain whether this referred to the time of discovery or of the murder itself, which had not yet been determined. Caprisi hadn’t mentioned the pathologist, but Field assumed they would go and see him together.

For a moment Field wished he’d ended up in Crime, which had always been his intention. He thought there was something vaguely disreputable about his own department.

He pictured Lena Orlov again, and the way her body had strained to avoid her assailant, then he thought about Natasha and her nonchalant disinterest. What did she really think? Hadn’t the two of them been friends? Perhaps that had been the cause of the moments of fragility he’d witnessed.

Field flicked open the file in front of him and glanced at the small picture clipped to the single sheet of paper it contained. It was a poor photograph, which made Lena look like a convict, her blond hair flattened and her face gaunt. Field thought of the happy family scene in front of the country house in Russia.

He turned, feeling Yang’s eyes on him, but she was staring in a different direction now, toward Granger’s office.

Field wondered about Yang and Granger.

He stood, clutching Lena’s file and the instructions for the fingerprint bureau, ignoring Yang’s casually interested glance as he passed.

In the lift he opened the folder again. It listed where in Russia Lena was from—near Kazan—and detailed three meetings she had attended at the New Shanghai Life, a magazine funded by Bolshevik intelligence officers from Soviet Russia working undercover at the consulate, but most of the file entries had been written by Prokopieff, who was as gifted with written English as Field was with his Chinese, and even by their standards, this was thin. They had files on so many people and most gave few insights. He’d learned more in five minutes at the woman’s flat.

Field wondered why she’d attended meetings at the New Shanghai Life. The family had certainly looked as if it was part of the old, decimated aristocratic class and were unlikely recruits to the Bolshevik cause.

The fingerprint bureau was on the fifth floor, C.6 printed in the middle of its frosted glass door. Field knocked once, then entered.

The room was in darkness save for the light from two desk lamps, one of which pointed toward a sheet of paper hanging from a piece of string that ran from one side of the room to the other. A tall man with gray hair and glasses, wearing a white coat, was using the other to look at a brown leather ledger, like the ones that filled the bookshelves above him. He sat hunched over it, holding a magnifying glass. He did not bother to look up.

Field cleared his throat. “I’ve brought the paperwork on the Orlov case.”

“The Russian prostitute?” The man was English.

“Yes.”

“Fine. Put it in the tray by the door.”

Field let it drop into the wire basket. “Have you got anywhere yet?”

The man looked up, staring at Field over his glasses. He had a long nose, with black hairs poking out of both nostrils, and poor teeth. “Do I look like a miracle worker?”

“Not really, no.”

The man stared at him. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you from?”

“Yorkshire.”

“Bad luck.” He exhaled heavily, turning back to his work. “Two days, minimum.”

“Two days?”

“Minimum, I said.” He straightened, gesturing at all the ledgers above him. “Do I look as if I have any assistance?” He muttered something to himself, then added audibly, “There were different prints in the apartment, so it might take longer.”

“Have you found a match for Lu?”

The man hesitated. “Pockmark?”

“Yes.”

“You may be disappointed to discover that I haven’t looked at the Orlov prints and they’re not next in line.”

“It’s a murder case.”

“So tell me something new.”

Field took a step closer, looking over the man’s shoulder at the pages of prints in the ledger that he was using to try to find a match for the one on the piece of paper in front of him.

“I’m Field, by the way.”

He didn’t respond.

“You’re Mr. Ellis.”

“I’m Ellis.”

“Is there any chance that, when you do come to the Orlov case, you might be able to check Lu’s prints against those you took from the bedroom? It’s just it would help to—”

“Field.” The man did not look up. “Have you seen me in S.1 recently?”

“No.”

“Well, when you do, telling you how to do your job, then you can come up here and help me out with mine.”

Field retreated, shut the door quietly, and crossed the corridor to the registry, a stuffy, hot room without ventilation or light. It was run by Danny Black, a first-generation Irish immigrant from New York, who’d fled from the civil war in Ireland to the East Coast of America, only to have found his way mysteriously thereafter to Shanghai. Without ever having talked about it, Field knew that he was Granger’s man, toiling away in the undergrowth for reasons unknown. He worked alongside Maretsky, who had a glass cubicle at the far end; both fat men with glasses and curly hair, they could have been twins. They were assisted by a Russian woman of similar physique who sorted through the files, occasionally filling in at the front desk whenever Danny or Maretsky was involved in Modus Operandi briefings or research. Maretsky also had an office up on the sixth floor.

There was no one in evidence, so Field filled out one of the white forms. He wrote: Natasha Medvedev, Happy Times block, Foochow Road.

He hesitated a second before taking another sheet, writing Lu Huang on it and hitting the brass bell on the front desk beside him.

After a minute Danny emerged from behind one of the iron shelves at the far end of the room. “Mr. Field,” he said. Everyone liked Danny. His face exuded good-humored bonhomie. “What have you been up to?”

“A Russian woman,” Field said.

Danny looked up from the forms. He appeared worried. “Lu?”

Field waited for him to expand, and when he didn’t, said, “Yes, Lu.”

Danny looked shifty. “We’ve not got a file for Lu.”

Field frowned.

“There’s a background file,” Danny added hastily.

“Then I’ll take that.”

Danny turned around, disappearing behind the shelves and reemerging a few moments later with one bulging folder and a slim one.

“Can I get the current file on Lu?”

“There isn’t one.”

“There must be one.”

“We don’t have it.” Danny was flustered.

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Field hesitated. “I thought all files have to be signed out and a memo put through to you if forwarded anywhere different.”

“Yes.”

“So you have a note of who the file’s signed out to?”

“No.”

“But—”

“I mean yes. Granger has it.”

“Well, I’ll get it from him, then.”

“Sure.” Danny looked down. He was filling in the book in front of him, writing the file numbers and subjects alongside Field’s name. He turned it around for him to sign before shutting it and retreating behind the shelves once more, without looking back.

Field took the stairs to the third floor, where Caprisi was on the phone, his jacket over the back of the chair, along with his leather holster. Watching him, Field noticed how well groomed he was, his hair neatly trimmed at the back and side. A leather wallet was open on the desk, and Field saw that there was a photograph inside of a young woman with short dark hair, holding a young boy.

Caprisi put down the phone and swung around. He saw the direction of Field’s gaze and snatched the wallet up, slipping it into his trouser pocket. “Come on, Krauss has got the body.”