by Mai Jia
There was a reason: the concubine had never been formally accepted as part of the family, so she had never lived on the Tan Estate. Newly promoted into the role of regional commander, Qian Huyi had been very concerned about his image, so when he moved his household into the Tan Estate, he didn’t bring his concubine. Wang Tianxiang wondered whether the young woman had hated him for that. Since she wasn’t living there when they were all murdered, nobody had suspected her. Now it seemed all too obvious: it was the concubine who’d sent Commander Qian and every single member of his family down to the Yellow Springs, to the Realm of the Dead.
Having recognized who she really was, there were lots of questions that Police Chief Wang no longer needed to ask her, like where she lived, who she spent time with; he knew all of that, and none of it mattered any more. The crucial thing was that she had been Qian Huyi’s woman – that was quite enough to account for him having had her arrested.
Although there was no proof that she’d been involved in the murders, what was wrong with saying there was? So Wang Tianxiang called up a couple of policemen, rushed round to the concubine’s bijou residence and searched it from top to bottom, scaring the old servants out of their wits.
Reporters were on the scent right away – of course, their information had come from Wang Tianxiang himself – and within moments there was a swarm of them there. He was quite happy to answer their questions; there was going to be a lot of publicity in this.
Right enough, that very evening, the concubine’s photograph was on the front page of two local evening papers, with huge headlines letting everyone in Hangzhou know that the truth about the murder of Commander Qian and his family had finally come out and that the guilty party had been dragged off to prison in chains. Of course, once she was in prison there was no way she’d be able to contact her comrades in the underground.
*
Wang Tianxiang had really done an excellent job of providing a cover story, and Colonel Hihara praised him highly.
When people are praised, they often come up with other good ideas. Wang Tianxiang now thought of something else he could do that might bring Ghost out of the woodwork and earn him even more credit. So while Hihara was entertaining his guests at Louwailou, he decided, off his own bat, to move the concubine out to the Tan Estate in secret, so that she might be brought face to face with each of the suspects individually, right there in the conference room.
What for?
An identity parade.
To see if she could pick out Ghost!
He had promised the young woman all kinds of things – so long as she was able to say the word ‘Him!’ Or, of course, ‘Her!’
He had no idea whether the concubine was playing him for an idiot or if she really didn’t know, but to every inducement and promise she simply said, ‘I can’t help you.’ Whatever he said, she stuck to the same line. ‘No comment.’ His nice little scheme went west, and there was not a single thing he could do about it. It was a complete mess. All that effort for nothing. Well, what kind of woman was this concubine? She had had the late Commander butchered, she was hardly likely to crack at the first couple of little questions. Wang Tianxiang had set up his little kangaroo court, wanting to get the whole thing over and done with, but clearly he had been overhasty. Pride comes before a fall.
When he was told that Colonel Hihara was on his way back from Louwailou and was bringing the relatives so that they could see what was going on, he had to get the whole conference-room scene set up in a hurry. The concubine was sent back to the city, Wu Zhiguo was told to take the seat of honour (quite naturally, as he was Chief of Staff), and Wang Tianxiang himself retreated to the sidelines. His own scheme hadn’t worked, but perhaps Colonel Hihara’s would. In Hihara’s scenario, Police Chief Wang wasn’t to be seen to be in charge of anything, he was meant to be merely providing security at the conference table.
*
As soon as the relatives left, Wang rushed out to find Colonel Hihara, who had gone back into the eastern building to collect something. When he re-emerged, it was clear he had no intention of going over to the western building but was instead heading towards the front courtyard. Wang Tianxiang was surprised; he ran after him and told him that the foursome was waiting for him in the conference room, ready to start the meeting.
‘What meeting?’ Hihara said. ‘I’m busy. It will have to wait until tomorrow.’
When Wang Tianxiang asked what was up, Hihara ignored him and simply said, ‘Come with me.’ He was carrying a bag but wouldn’t say anything further, other than, ‘Let’s go.’
So they went. They walked out of the estate and headed for West Lake. It was dark by then, but the moon had not yet risen: the contrast with the bright lights of the Nanshan and Hubin roads made the lake seem even darker. The water was pitch black – it didn’t seem like a lake but rather an enormous piece of black cloth that had been spread across the ground, stretching out to the horizon, rippling in the breeze. Police Chief Wang almost had to run to keep up with Colonel Hihara as he strode at speed into the darkness. He seemed like a spectre, walking a familiar route through the night.
After about a kilometre, Hihara stopped in front of a tomb mound. It was right beside the lake. With the water lapping at its base, the tomb almost seemed to be moving – it was quite frightening. Hihara appeared to be entirely familiar with the place: he walked round the mound, patting it here and there, pulling up a few stray weeds. Then he took a few things out of his bag: some joss-paper spirit money and a pair of candlesticks with candles.
‘You’re going to have a memorial ceremony?’ Wang Tianxiang couldn’t keep silent any longer.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Whose grave is this?’
‘A young woman called Yoshiko.’
‘A friend of yours?’
Hihara was silent for a long time. Then he said coldly, ‘You ask too many questions.’
After they left the gravesite, Colonel Hihara seemed depressed – he didn’t say a word on the way back. When they got to the Tan Estate and passed the officers’ club, he suggested going in for a drink.
It wasn’t until several hours later that they emerged; it was late by now and they were very drunk. The ground sparkled in the moonlight, lovely and pure, almost as if there’d been a frost. Hihara was so drunk that for a moment he couldn’t tell which it was. Through the fug of alcohol clouding his brain, he thought to himself, it doesn’t matter if it’s frost or if it’s moonlight, tomorrow will be a lovely day.
5
Sure enough, they had lovely weather the next day. As the rising sun rested on the Qiantang River, it shone with a pale light, almost like the moon. Its rays pierced the gaps in the curtains and probed Colonel Hihara’s blankets, rousing him from his sleep, even though he’d gone to bed late. He felt weak and didn’t want to get up; he’d clearly drunk far too much the night before. He couldn’t even remember whether he’d been with a whore or not. As he lay there, he began thinking about the many things that had happened in that very place several years back. For Colonel Hihara was in fact all too familiar with the Tan Estate. A few years earlier, he… But that was his secret and he wasn’t going to discuss it with anyone, and that included Wang Tianxiang.
Wang Tianxiang was up even earlier and had been listening out for signs of movement from Hihara’s room next door. While he was waiting for him to wake up, he read through the transcript of the previous night’s conversations – several times over. The transcript didn’t even fill a single piece of paper. In other words, the ECCC officers had said almost nothing. Nevertheless, he noticed two things in particular.
Firstly, after the meeting (that is, the ‘conference’ he had stage-managed for their relatives), Chief of Staff Wu Zhiguo had called Gu Xiaomeng to his room on her own and asked her to remember everything she could. Of course, what he really wanted was for her to testify on his behalf and say that he’d gone nowhere near Li Ningyu’s office. But it didn’t work. According to the transcript, Gu Xiaomeng had si
mply said, rather self-righteously, ‘Trust me, Chief of Staff Wu, I will report the facts truthfully to our superiors.’
Secondly, a short time later (the transcript indicated one minute and forty-one seconds), Gu Xiaomeng went back to her room and recounted to Li Ningyu exactly what Wu Zhiguo had just said. Police Chief Wang would have expected some reaction from Li Ningyu, but the transcript simply carried the notation: ‘Li said nothing.’ On being questioned further, the wiretap operative on duty explained that she had merely said ‘Uh-huh’ and then changed the subject, telling Gu Xiaomeng to go and have a wash. She didn’t even thank her.
There was clearly something more to all this. The wiretap operative suspected the two women had some kind of agreement, in which case there’d be no need for either of them to say anything: they’d be able to sense what the other one wanted. But, mindful of Li Ningyu’s detached, arrogant personality, Wang Tianxiang thought it premature to come to that conclusion.
They all worked in the same building, they saw each other every day, so Police Chief Wang knew all the ECCC officers very well. Particularly Li Ningyu. He had fallen out with her once, and he was only too aware of her so-called upright character. It had happened some years ago, and it seemed laughable now. One day he and Li Ningyu had shared a car – she’d been buying some stationery for the office and he had helped her load it into the car and had then helped himself to a notebook. It was such a little thing, right? The two of them had gone off to get this stuff and he got something out of it. She should just have let it go, it wasn’t worth making a fuss about. But Li Ningyu hadn’t just let it go – she was unreasonable like that – which had put him in a very embarrassing position.
Objectively speaking, before they fell out over the notebook, Wang Tianxiang would have said that he quite liked Li Ningyu, or at least that he liked her more than he disliked her. Afterwards, he started to really dislike her and would often tell other people that he thought she was a hypocrite. Even so, if he were to have been asked right then to make a decision regarding her guilt based on such insubstantial material, he wouldn’t have dared. There was only one thing he was certain about, and that was that Gu Xiaomeng was very fond of Li Ningyu, very fond indeed.
He decided to report what had happened to Colonel Hihara and let him analyse it.
Hihara listened to Police Chief Wang’s first couple of sentences and then waved his hand to silence him. He wasn’t interested in any of that. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘and do what I tell you.’
There were three things that he wanted done. Firstly, he wanted Wang Tianxiang to go over to the west building immediately and take the group to breakfast; secondly, he was to inform them that Hihara had gone back to the city the night before and that no one knew when he’d be back; and thirdly, after breakfast he was to have Secretary Bai interview each suspect individually in the conference room.
‘I don’t care whether they confess or whether they denounce someone else, but I want every single one of them to tell me who they think Ghost is.’ He just wanted them to start talking. ‘They don’t have to have a particular reason for their opinion, and it doesn’t matter if they get it wrong, we’re not going to include it in their records – though we don’t want them passing on gossip or settling scores. They just have to say something; the important thing at this point is not what they say but how they say it. We want to see how they deal with the challenge.’
Of course, while Secretary Bai was sitting behind the desk and asking the questions, Colonel Hihara would be lurking in the shadows, watching the proceedings and secretly listening in on every word.
FOUR
1
Ghost couldn’t sleep. The situation was too tense. It was impossible to switch off. Lying there listening to the sound of the wind, Ghost kept picturing Warrior’s eyes in the darkness, blazing through the night like searchlights. It made Ghost feel dizzy and frightened, as if they themselves had been transformed into a ray of light, to be blown out by the wind.
Warrior was the concubine. The moment Police Chief Wang had brought her into the conference room, Ghost had understood exactly what had happened. Ghost wasn’t worried that the concubine would be able to make an identification – that was quite impossible. Even if it had been, Warrior would never betray her comrades. Ghost had heard other comrades praise Warrior on many occasions for her commitment to the Revolution and the anti-Japanese resistance movement; she was unconcerned about her personal circumstances, money and fame meant less than nothing to her, and she was quite prepared to sacrifice her own reputation. In short, she was a good comrade who put the needs of the Revolution above everything else.
Warrior wasn’t the problem – the problem for Ghost was how to get out of there, how to get a message out. That problem hung there, in mid-air, like Warrior’s eyes in the darkness, impossible to ignore.
That was how Ghost spent the long night, and when dawn started to brighten the skies and filter through the windows, a depressing thought came to mind: there might well be another long, long day ahead.
2
Chief of Staff Wu Zhiguo was the first to be summoned into the conference room for the post-breakfast chat with Secretary Bai. He didn’t know he was being recorded (and nor did Secretary Bai), so he began by cursing everyone left, right and centre, in particular Li Ningyu, the Reds, and Commander Zhang. The fact that Commander Zhang had so little faith in him had been deeply hurtful, so it wasn’t surprising he had a lot to say on the subject, but who could be sure that he wasn’t putting it all on? Fortunately, Commander Zhang was not present and didn’t have to listen to it.
Colonel Hihara and Police Chief Wang, however, could hear every word. The sun was shining, there wasn’t a breath of wind and the line didn’t have the slightest kink: every sound floated along it clear as a bell. This ensured that these two dangerous men, the master and his servant, one Japanese and the other serving the puppet regime, felt as if they were standing right there in the room, even though they were more than a hundred metres away.
Secretary Bai responded with lots of soothing words and Wu Zhiguo eventually calmed down. He began to describe what had happened that afternoon in great detail – how he had exited the room with Li Ningyu, leaving Gu Xiaomeng behind; how he had discussed something with her out in the corridor (a completely unimportant matter); and how he had then left, without ever setting foot in her office. And so on.
‘So how can she have told me about this top-secret telegram? She’s made the whole thing up. It’s a lie! That’s proof enough for me – she’s making false accusations, so she must be the Communist. It’s obvious she’s trying to muddy the waters and get herself out of trouble.’
Hearing this, Colonel Hihara said rather pompously to Wang Tianxiang, who was standing at his side, ‘He has a point. If he can find someone to testify that he never went near Li Ningyu’s office, then we can be sure that she is Ghost.’
‘But he hasn’t found a witness yet,’ Police Chief Wang replied straight away, almost as if he were afraid that his boss might have forgotten this.
‘Exactly,’ Hihara said. ‘So everything else he has said is worthless.’
Ah, so his boss was being sarcastic… Wang Tianxiang giggled. ‘Including him swearing at Commander Zhang.’
Colonel Hihara gave a hearty laugh. ‘Yes. And let me remind you, none of this is to go any further.’
3
Compared to the building opposite, with its chatter and laughter, the western building was like a tomb. Chief of Staff Wu Zhiguo stomped out of the conference room in a rage, to be replaced by a silent Jin Shenghuo.
Section Chief Jin Shenghuo looked like a pig: he had a low forehead, a wide mouth, tiny little eyes, a bulbous nose and a huge beer belly. His looks did not lie – the man was a pig. But as the saying goes, appearances can be deceptive; even if the man looked like a pig, he might still be highly intelligent.
He was the oldest of the four suspects, being already in his fifties, and the most experienced. In the E
CCC office back at base, he was considered one of the most senior officers. In light of which, a certain snobbishness towards those in subordinate positions was understandable. He was always profoundly respectful and admiring of his superiors, and ordinarily got on perfectly well with everyone, not least because he was so polite. However, the moment he came into the room, he started to complain to Secretary Bai.
Jin Shenghuo: Oh my God, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this! I’m obviously not going to be a Section Chief for much longer…
Secretary Bai: Not necessarily. If you can get Ghost to come out of the woodwork for us, it’ll be a great achievement. There’ll be a reward for that and maybe even a promotion.
Jin Shenghuo: Tell me, Secretary Bai, which one is the Communist agent – do you have any clues?
Secretary Bai: That’s what I wanted to ask you.
Jin Shenghuo: Oh my God, I… I’m not in any position to know that kind of thing.
Secretary Bai: You’re quite wrong, Mr Jin. This has nothing to do with position or rank – this is about being aware of what’s going on right under your nose. There are four people here, one of whom is yourself and two of whom are your subordinates. You must know what’s going on!
Jin Shenghuo: So you don’t trust me?
Secretary Bai: This isn’t about whether I trust you or not. You have to face facts, the situation is what it is, and they want you to name someone.
Jin Shenghuo: I wish they didn’t. Secretary Bai, if I knew who it was, I’d be giving them to you on a plate, but the problem is…
Hihara could hear the man violently shaking his head.
He was shaking his head because the situation was impossible. Faced with Secretary Bai’s question – Who is Ghost? – his mind had gone completely blank. He was reduced to grinning inanely, to muttering and mumbling; he didn’t say a word and he didn’t give a name. He even went so far as to burst into tears, in the hope that Secretary Bai might feel sorry for him and help him through this.