The Master of Rain

Forty

Number 73 Avenue Joffre was an ugly three-story building, close to the border with the Chinese city, built with deliberate disregard for the attractiveness of most of the buildings in the Concession. Field felt barely under control—unwanted, uncontrollable images of Lu and Natasha together still tearing through his mind.

It had been another long, sleepless night. For much of it, he had walked through the darkened streets.

Both ground-floor flats had tiny yards beside them, behind a wrought-iron fence, next to the road. In both, lines of laundry swayed in the breeze. Natalya had lived in 1A, and the woman who lived there now also looked like a prostitute—heavily made-up, with high leather boots and a tight top. She must have been fifty, and looking at her made Field feel queasy. The door was slammed in their face.

“Silent again today, polar bear,” Caprisi said as they turned away.

Field didn’t answer.

“But I’m glad you called.”

Field still didn’t respond. He wasn’t certain whether he had been right to give Caprisi Natalya Simonov’s address. He hadn’t told him that she and Natasha had been sisters.

“You’ve done well, polar bear.”

In the flat opposite, they found an elderly couple named Schmidt who, shaking their heads sadly, said they had known Natalya and invited them in.

The sitting room was even smaller than Field had expected, and nothing about it suggested any connection at all with Shanghai. Neither of them was allowed to refuse Mrs. Schmidt’s offer of chocolate torte and coffee, and as they listened to her—she was a talker, he could see, too often devoid of company—Field studied her husband and the photograph of a young boy in uniform on the sideboard.

“Our son,” Mr. Schmidt said proudly.

“Otto,” his wife said, handing each of them a plate with a large slice of cake. “He is the butcher now.”

They both spoke with broad German accents, and Mrs. Schmidt had said this without a hint of irony.

“Your son is a butcher?” Caprisi asked.

“It was Hans’s business when we married and we build it up. Now we give it to our son.”

“He fought in the war?” Field asked.

She looked at him, trying to gauge if there was any hostility in his eyes. “He wished to. For his country.”

“We understood,” Hans said in a manner that indicated they had not.

Hans was a small man, with a face permanently set in a smile, a long nose and forehead, and an almost oval skull, with a few hairs straying in different directions across its crown. His wife was plump, neat, and ordered, her dress pressed, her hands placed carefully in her lap.

They were poor but honest, Field thought.

“Natalya,” Caprisi said.

“You were friends?” Mrs. Schmidt asked him.

“In a manner of speaking.”

She leaned forward. “Do not worry. You are police, I can tell, but we will not . . .” She looked at her husband conspiratorially, then back again. “The French police . . .”

“Yes.” Caprisi cleared his throat. “You knew her?”

“Of course! We are neighbors. I know it is the way of some in the big city to . . . But we are from a small town in Bavaria. It is not our tradition.” She looked at her husband again. “We have lived here so many years.”

“So you knew her well?”

“We would look after her cat sometimes. And her little boy, of course.” She shook her head sorrowfully.

“Her little boy?” Caprisi said.

“Yes. Alexei.”

“How old was he?”

“Her little boy?” Field asked, finally taking in what she’d said.

“Alexei, yes. He is six.”

“She had a son?” Field said.

“Yes.”

“Natalya Simonov had a son?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“It was her own?”

“Ja. Of course.”

“Natalya Simonov had a boy?” he said once again. They were all frowning at him now. “What has become of him?” he added quickly.

The Schmidts looked at him, as if he were stupid. “The orphanage, of course.” Mrs. Schmidt turned to her husband. “What could we do? We could not have him. Could we, Hans?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly.

“Where else could he go?” she said.

Field felt a sense of despair creeping over him. “The boy, Alexei, went to an orphanage?”

“Ja.”

“What about his family?”

The Schmidts looked at each other, shaking their heads.

“Natalya had no family?” Field said. “No one who came to see her, no one the boy could have gone to?”

They shook their heads again.

“Which orphanage?”

Mrs. Schmidt exchanged glances with her husband. “They came in a car . . . there was a nun. I do not know her name. In Shanghai they are all the same.”

“Did he want to come here?” Caprisi asked.

“How could we?”

“We are old,” Hans said. “We are old!”

“It was Otto. He should never have had . . . She was no good for him. Afterwards he could not bear to see the boy.”

“The boy . . . Alexei was his?”

“No!” She shook her head vigorously. “Of course not. My Otto is not like this. He is an honorable man, but the boy reminded him of his love for her and the family they could have had. He could not shake her from his silly head, even before she died.” Mrs. Schmidt looked at her husband, then back at Caprisi. “She was pleasant to us, always friendly. I must say that. But she was—”

“I know.”

“How could our boy be interested in a woman like that?”

“Of course.”

“It was a foolish thing. He had forgotten her, but then . . .”

“Yes.” Caprisi nodded.

She sighed heavily.

“Did Natalya ever . . . entertain . . . people at home?” Caprisi asked.

“Sometimes. Not often, because of the boy. She would go to . . . it is not work. Prostitution is not work.”

“No.” Caprisi cleared his throat. “But men would sometimes come here?”

“Sometimes.”

“During the day? At night?”

“When the boy was at school. Sometimes at night.”

“Was there anyone in particular the last few months before her death?”

Mrs. Schmidt turned to her husband again, seeking his approval. He nodded. “The last month—no, more, two months—there was a change.”

“In her, or the pattern of her behavior?”

“In both. In the day there were no more visitors, but at night I think one man came.”

“You think?”

“She would let him in the side gate, to the yard.”

“Did you see him?”

She shook her head. “From here, we could not see.”

“Never heard his voice?”

“It is too far away.” She clicked her tongue to indicate her frustration.

“And did she talk about him?”

“Yes,” she said, punching the air with her forefinger. “Yes. She was happy, she said, things would get better. She had met a man, a rich man, powerful, and she would be able to get away with Alexei, start again, somewhere new . . . Europe. She asked us where she should go if she were to visit Germany, and what kind of country it was, and if we had ever been to France and England.” She looked at them, suddenly suspicious. “Otto was upset, but it was not serious. He would have got over it, and I said, Liebchen, she is . . . you know. Leave her to her powerful man.”

“So you never saw this man?”

“No.”

“And you never heard his voice or found out his name?”

“Nein, nein.”

“Was he Chinese?”

Mrs. Schmidt shrugged extravagantly. “How could I know? It is possible, likely, given her . . . type. It would be like her type to go with a Chinese.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“So you have no idea who he was?”

“Rich. Powerful. So she said. Good. He makes her happy. Good. Ja. She finds a man willing to consort with her . . . type. He gives the boy presents, so—”

“What kind of presents?” Field asked.

She shrugged again. “A model airplane. Wooden. Nothing special.”

As her good-neighbor act fell away, Field was beginning to find this woman vexatious in the extreme.

“Otto has given her a silk scarf, but she does not like it. She does not like it! She asks him if she can take it back to the shop!”

Somehow Field knew it had not been Otto who had picked out the scarf.

“Do you think he murdered her?” Caprisi asked.

For a moment Mrs. Schmidt’s face went white, until she realized that Caprisi was referring to the mysterious nocturnal visitor and not her son, whereupon she looked as if she would faint with relief.

“Ja,” she said. “We do not know.”

“It is possible,” her husband added. “It is possible.”

“Coming like a thief,” she went on, getting into her stride, “in the middle of the night.” She shook her head, as if desperate now to clear her son beyond doubt. “Otto is not here, of course. The whore drove him away. He has gone to Manila and we have not heard from him. Not a letter . . . With this new man, the thief in the night . . .”

Caprisi stood abruptly, as if unable to contain himself any longer. He thanked them unconvincingly and strode out into the hallway.

Outside, they squinted in the glare of the sun.

In deference to their position in the French Concession, they had left their pistols and holsters beneath the seat of the car and so they were just in shirts and ties. Field rolled up his sleeves. Caprisi had moved along to the end of the wrought-iron fence, to the gate into the yard, and looked through the bars. Field could see that he was checking whether or not it was possible to see the gate from the Schmidts’ house. He shook his head.

“He wanted to get in and out without being seen,” Field said.

“Yes.” The American detective turned on his heel.

“Why?”

“A rich and powerful man.”

“Lewis?”

“It certainly sounds like a big fish.”

“The boy,” Field said.

Caprisi straightened. “Yes, perhaps the boy saw him. The present may have been given in person.” Field caught sight of a black Buick parked opposite, its engine running. “Prokopieff and Sorenson,” Caprisi said. “They’ve been with us since we left the station this morning.”

They watched the car. It didn’t move off.

“They’re in the back?” Field asked.

“You’re the Special Branch expert.”

Field turned. “You saw them coming out of the lobby, or they were already in the car?”

“They were leaning against it.”

“So they were happy to be seen?”

“I think they thought they were out of sight.”

“So they knew we were coming out this morning?”

Caprisi shrugged. “Do you think the boy is still alive?” he asked.

“I’ve no idea.”

“Which orphanage would they have taken him to?”

Field shook his head, though he had a fairly good idea he knew the answer.

Field waited until he was sure that Sorenson and Prokopieff had chosen to follow the American. Then he headed back to the International Settlement and the Happy Times block.

He took the stairs three at a time and was covered in sweat when he reached the top floor. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket and then knocked once, hard.

There was no answer. He looked at his watch.

Field stepped back to press the button for the lift, then knocked once more.

He waited. He cursed, stepped into the lift, and pulled the iron cage violently across.

He hailed a rickshaw and gave the man Katya’s address. He knocked on the back door and waited.

Katya opened it, but only enough to catch sight of his face. “She’s not here,” she said before Field had had a chance to speak.

Katya tried to shut the door again, but Field jammed his foot in it.

“Please, Katya.”

“She’s not here.”

“Then tell me where she is.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I know the boy was Natalya’s.”

Katya faltered, easing the pressure on Field’s foot.

Ivan said something in Russian behind her. Katya opened the door further, without answering.

“Can I come in?”

“Not here,” Ivan said. He sounded nervous and frail, and his eyes anxiously scanned the garden over Field’s shoulder.

“The boy,” Field said. “She and the boy are in danger. The boy can probably identify Natalya’s killer. The . . .” Field sighed in frustration. Their English wasn’t up to an explanation of the threat posed by the police investigation. If Lu felt they were close to identifying the killer, he wouldn’t hesitate to liquidate the boy. “They are in danger. I have to find them. I have to take them to a safe place.”

They both looked at him with pained disbelief.

“Does she know what happens in that orphanage?” Field cleared his throat, thinking of the picture of the handsome little boy inside. “Boys are taken for Lu to abuse, and then they’re disposed of.”

“Not here,” Ivan said. Field didn’t know if he’d understood any of it.

“Please go,” Katya pleaded.

“I must see her.”

“Not here,” Ivan said, more firmly this time.

“Please get a message to her.”

“She left here,” Katya said, “and told us she would be back to see us soon. We do not know where she is.”

“Is she inside?”

“No,” they said in unison. “No,” Katya added for emphasis.

“She said that she would come here if she was ever in trouble,” Field lied.

“We do not know where she is. Please leave us.”

Field hesitated, then turned away and walked slowly down the path toward the gate, willing them to call him back.

He stepped out into the street, leaned against the railings, and then sat down, his head in his hands, trying to think.

He pushed himself to his feet again and dusted himself down. He lit a cigarette, threw the rest of the pack to a beggar, along with his matches, and strode down toward Avenue Joffre, where he hailed another rickshaw.

He allowed himself to look back once, but there was no one at the gate.