Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  Both men were Russian, and the one closest, who was bald, indicated with his hand that he wished them to give up their weapons. Caprisi reached reluctantly into his pocket and handed over his revolver. Field followed suit. Chen hesitated, but once he, too, had obliged, they were ushered toward the stairs and left to climb them on their own.

  Field wanted to look back but resisted the temptation. The staircase was wide, the floor above gloomy, too. The place felt like a funeral parlor.

  They walked slowly toward a pair of doors that opened into a large room with shutters closed and thick, dark red curtains half-drawn, the only light coming from a dull lamp in one corner. Lu sat facing them, his legs resting on a footstool while a Chinese girl in a silk dressing gown massaged his feet. He dismissed her and beckoned them toward him, indicating that they should sit on the two chairs that appeared to have been placed opposite him specifically for their visit. He showed no sign of recognizing Field from the altercation in the Majestic.

  Chen was left to stand.

  Lu sat in a low leather armchair, between a Chinese cabinet and a grand piano bedecked with framed photographs. It was a moment or two before Field realized that they were pictures of girls—his girls, Lena and Natasha Medvedev ostentatiously to the fore. They were studio photographs, similar to those one saw of film actresses like Bebe Daniels and Lillian Gish.

  Field stared at them.

  Lu opened and closed his right hand slowly, as if stretching his fingers.

  “Tea?”

  “Yes,” Caprisi said.

  Lu hit a bell and within a second a houseboy appeared.

  Lu coughed once. His lungs sounded heavy, and his complexion, as Field had noticed the other night, was sickly, his cheeks scarred. His expression was sour, his mouth turned down. His eyes were small but piercing, and, if his body appeared weak, his eyes revealed a quick mind and a soul consumed, Field thought again, by burning anger and barely suppressed aggression.

  “You wish to speak to me?” he asked once the houseboy had gone. He raised his hands and placed them together, two sets of portly, manicured fingers resting against each other beneath his chin. He spoke English well but quietly, with an accent that clipped the ends of some words, but not others, so that “wish” was perfectly enunciated, but “speak” half-lost. His voice was cold.

  “About Lena Orlov,” Caprisi said.

  “Lena, yes.” He nodded.

  “We’re obviously sorry to trouble you about it.”

  Lu nodded again. “I spoke to your colleagues in the French police.”

  “But we’re conducting the investigation. Excellent as our colleagues are, you would expect us to wish to speak to those involved.”

  “How am I involved?”

  The houseboy came in with a tray and placed it on a table next to Lu’s chair. Caprisi waited until he had withdrawn. “ ‘Involved’ is perhaps the wrong word. Connected.”

  “How am I connected?”

  Caprisi shifted uneasily in his seat. “Lena Orlov was living in a flat which we have been led to believe belonged to you.”

  Lu frowned, tapping the bottom of his chin with his fingers. “Happy Times block?” he asked himself, as if trying to recall it. “Yes, I believe it is owned by one of my companies. That is all.”

  Field could see that, for the Chinese, this was a game. Recalling the hostility in evidence at the Majestic, he wondered how long it would last.

  “You didn’t allow Lena Orlov to live there for free?”

  “Why would I wish to do that?”

  “So she was paying rent?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps she had a relationship with one of my men.” He shrugged, to emphasize the extent of his disinterest. “I do not know. I have many companies, many men. I cannot know what is happening with them all.”

  “So you did not know her personally?” Caprisi asked, his eyes conspicuously drawn to the photograph of Lena on the grand piano.

  “I know many people, Officer.”

  “So you knew Lena?”

  “This city has many beautiful women to admire.”

  There was something in the way he said this—the grotesque satisfaction of a man of humble peasant origins who has risen far enough to buy the right to abuse women he could once never have dreamed of even meeting—that so outraged Field that he had to restrain himself from getting to his feet. He looked at Caprisi and saw a muscle twitching rapidly in the American’s cheek. For the first time he felt naked without his revolver.

  His aggression dissipated as he sensed the power of this Chinese man. Field could see how often and with what little consideration death was dispensed with a curt wave of one of those hands.

  “So you did know Lena?” Caprisi asked.

  “I knew the girl. I know many.”

  Caprisi was sweating now and he wiped his forehead and took out his notebook. “Do you mind if I take notes?”

  Lu looked unsettled for the first time, waving his hand at them and frowning deeply. “Better not.”

  “We are detectives, Mr. Huang.”

  “You are police.”

  Caprisi left his notebook on his lap but didn’t open it. “Lena Orlov was not, then . . . You knew her, but she did not . . . You had no arrangement with her?”

  “Arrangement?”

  “She was not a concubine?”

  He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the idea of having such a formal relationship with a Russian woman.

  “There was no relationship?”

  “What do you mean relationship?”

  Caprisi sighed, leaning forward in his chair. “Mr. Huang, we have no wish to be difficult, but you will appreciate that Lena Orlov was murdered with extraordinary brutality, even by the standards of Shanghai.”

  “You don’t like Shanghai?”

  Caprisi bent his head.

  “We both find it an exciting city,” Field said.

  Lu shifted his eyes slowly, looking at Field for the first time. “Exciting, yes.”

  “Perhaps the greatest city on earth.”

  “Greater than London? Paris? New York?”

  “Their equal. An example of harnessing the benefits and strengths of two cultures.”

  “Or their faults.” Lu’s face was impassive.

  “And their faults.”

  “Lena was one of your girls,” Caprisi said more bluntly.

  “My girls?” Lu had raised his hand, an ivory bracelet on his wrist trailing down half the length of his forearm. “We spoke a couple of times. I did not know she was living in a flat we owned.”

  “You had no idea she lived in the Happy Times block?”

  “Why should I know? I cannot know everything.” He smiled at Field, as if now considering him an ally.

  “Lena was paying rent?”

  He shrugged again, as if this was becoming absurd. “How can I know?”

  “But you had met her?”

  “Met her? Yes, I’m sure.” He gestured at the photographs. “There are many beautiful women in Shanghai, Officer. I meet many.”

  “It is not possible that you—or one of your men—owned her and gave her to someone else? Lent her.”

  Lu was still frowning. “My men . . .” He shrugged.

  Field could see this was pointless. He edged forward in his seat and looked across at Caprisi, but the American didn’t move, his face fixed on Lu’s. Field wondered if Caprisi would produce the notes Lena had made but now considered that to do so would be a mistake.

  “The doorman of that building . . . the block owned by your company. He was removed, taken to the Chinese city, and then beheaded.”

  “I had not heard it.”

  “It does not concern you?”

  “Concern me, perhaps. He was a communist?”

  “No.”

  “Some are too enthusiastic. Many are accused. These are dangerous times.”

  “But you had not heard that a doorman of your building was taken away and summarily—”

  “I have expl
ained, Officer.” Lu sat up straighter, his tone and manner more menacing. “There are many interests. I believe you will find a company on Bubbling Well Road . . . the owner of this Happy Times block. I will instruct my men there to cooperate with you.”

  Caprisi hesitated, sipping his tea. Field sensed a new, stubborn determination in his colleague.

  “So you barely knew Lena?” Caprisi asked.

  “I have said. I will instruct my men to help you.”

  “I wasn’t asking about your men.”

  Field cleared his throat. “Did you know Irina Ignatiev?”

  Lu turned to him, his head tilted to one side, as if turning the name over in his mind. He shook his head, once.

  “She was murdered two months ago. She was also one of your girls.”

  There was silence for a second, then Lu hit the bell twice and there was the sound of footsteps as his bodyguards arrived, two from downstairs, one through the door at the end, all with machine guns.

  Field had stood, as had Caprisi. Lu pushed himself to his feet. The game was over. “You challenge me?” He took a pace toward them, his head pushed forward. “You come to my house and challenge me?” He was looking at Chen. His right hand was suspended in midair, and as he cut down with one swift motion, the bald-headed bodyguard stepped forward and swung his machine gun into Chen’s stomach.

  “Jesus.” Caprisi stepped toward his colleague.

  “Stay.” It was Chen. He was bent double, kneeling, the instruction barked out through the pain.

  “For Christ’s sake.”

  “Silence,” Chen said, his voice commanding. He slowly stood, straightening with difficulty. No one moved until the Chinese detective had recovered his composure. Once he had done so, he stared at his tormentor.

  “Do not come to this house again,” Lu said quietly. “I have tolerated your rudeness long enough.”

  Lu waved at his bodyguards to lower their weapons.

  The weather had changed while they were inside. The wind had got up, bringing with it a thick bank of cloud, which was advancing on the city like a foreign army. A distant crack of lightning was followed by a loud rumble of thunder. “Typhoon coming,” Chen said once they were back in the car and the first spots of rain were bursting on the windshield.

  Caprisi had tried to assist Chen on the steps but had been waved away. Either the blow had not been as painful as it looked, or it was a matter of face that Chen leave the house unassisted.

  Field looked out of the window at the clouds. He’d seen storms before, of course, but none that had looked quite as malevolent as they approached. It was the temperature, too, he thought, the heat that came with it, that made it feel different.

  “The Master of Rain chooses his moment,” Caprisi said.

  Field turned to face him, frowning.

  “According to legend,” Caprisi explained, “affairs in the other world are governed by gods—”

  “Officials,” Chen corrected, from the front of the car.

  “Officials, of whom the Master of Rain is probably the most powerful. He sits up there, controlling the city, its destiny.”

  Field nodded. “Have you ever had any dealings with Lu, Chen?”

  The Chinese detective did not turn around.

  “Chen grew up in Pudong,” Caprisi said quietly. “They grew up together. Lu hates him,” he added with a finality that did not invite further discussion.

  “Will that meeting create difficulties for Macleod?”

  Caprisi waited for Chen to turn around and answer. “Not yet,” the Chinese detective said. “But the girls are a problem.”

  “In what way?”

  “Now he is aware that we know more than one girl has been murdered. The stakes are raised. He will wait to see what we do, and then we must see how he reacts.”

  “Why is he guarded by Russians?”

  “He doesn’t trust Chinese. The Russians are stupid. They know nothing, but their loyalty is absolute. Any threat, they shoot. He remembers how he destroyed the Red Gang and does not trust Chinese.” Chen shook his head. “Lu is arrogant now. He has big head. He believes no one can touch him.”

  As they drove along the wide boulevards of the French Concession, Field watched the passersby hurrying to get out of the rain. The houses were all large here, most hidden behind ivy-clad walls. On the corner, as they turned right, a woman with a thin, pretty face held her raincoat around herself with one hand and a little boy in uniform with the other. As they passed, Field thought she looked forlorn and lost, her damp hair flattened across her forehead, her boy resting his head against her side as they waited to cross the road.

  Field thought of Natasha.

  And then he saw her. She was standing on the sidewalk, and he had to look up and down the street to ascertain that they were on the Nanking Road. The car had stopped and there was a crowd ahead, blocking the way, people shouting, some clapping, a firecracker going off in the air, dropped from the roof above. Field looked up to see a group leaning over the wall around the roof garden at the top of the Sun Sun store, dropping leaflets to the crowd below.

  Natasha was now alongside him, half hidden by a group of protestors, raincoat pulled tight, her hair whipped by the wind. She had a pile of leaflets and was giving them out to passers-by.

  “A protest,” Chen said, pushing open his door.

  The Chinese detective and Caprisi did not seem to have noticed Natasha, but as they got out and walked around to the front of the car, Field watched her.

  She was smiling as she gave away each leaflet, but she did not look happy. A couple of police sirens wailed in the distance. She raised her head sharply, trying to make out where the sound was coming from.

  The sirens closed in quickly. Field heard a whistle and saw a group of Sikh policemen charge past the car and begin to flail at the edge of the crowd with their batons. Protesters screamed as they were clubbed to the ground.

  Natasha had frozen. She was staring at them.

  Field pushed the door open, stepped onto the sidewalk and lunged for her, but her instinctive response was not submission but resistance. She pushed him away, punching him, then grabbing his hair as he tried to move her toward the car.

  “Chen!” he yelled, but the effort distracted him and she bit his hand hard. The pain made him rougher than he’d intended, kicking her legs out and bundling her headfirst toward the rear of the car as the Chinese detective came up to help him, moving easily, as if the assault at Lu’s house had had no discernible effect.

  Caprisi climbed in the other side. “Let’s go,” Field said. Natasha was no longer struggling. Her hair hung limply over her face. She still clutched the leaflets. Caprisi took them from her and glanced through them before looking up at her. “Big mistake,” he said. “Big mistake.”

  They reversed away from the crowd.

  It took only a few minutes to get to the Central Police Station, and Natasha did not raise her head on the journey. As they pulled up outside, Caprisi told Chen to take her down to the cells. Field resisted the temptation to look at her as she was taken away.

  Inside, Caprisi said, “I’m hungry. You want to get some lunch in the canteen?”

  Field tried to think clearly about what he ought to do.

  “If you want my advice,” Caprisi said, “I would leave her to think it over.”

  Twenty-six

  Downstairs, there was a long line for lunch, and Field might have given up if his stomach had not been loudly protesting its hunger. He chose meat that he was assured was beef, potatoes, beans, and overboiled carrots. It was like being back at school.

  On the way to their table, a big gray-haired Scotsman, who’d played lock forward against him two days before, slapped Field on the back. “Well played.” He laughed. “Teach that fucking Yank a lesson.”

  Field smiled at Caprisi as they sat down. “Friend of yours?”

  “Brits.” He shook his head.

  Field poured himself a glass of water and covered his food in salt a
nd pepper in an attempt to instill some taste into it.