Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  Field closed his eyes and pulled, willing the strength into his arms.

  It was slow, and infinitely painful. He grunted, pushing his feet against the wall to relieve some of the pressure on his arms and shoulder, trying not to lose his grip on the ledge.

  He got his good arm onto the roof and searched again for somewhere to put his feet. He found another tiny hole with the tip of his shoe and this time put less weight on it, pulling himself up slowly until both elbows, then shoulders, and finally his entire upper body were over the ledge.

  He swung his legs around and then rolled over onto his back, staring up at the sky.

  Field got to his feet. He waited until he had regained his balance, then climbed onto the chimney stack and rolled over onto the roof.

  There was a hatch directly ahead of him, but before touching it, Field walked to each side of the building to get his bearings. The front of this building was directly opposite the racecourse, and he could see the truck and cars still parked in the street below.

  A small group of uniformed officers stood behind a wall beyond the entrance to the Happy Times block, but Field couldn’t see any sign of them on the other side or at the back.

  He returned to the hatch, lifted the edge with his foot, and then tipped it off. He ducked down.

  He could hear a baby crying but couldn’t see anyone. He waited for a few moments, then climbed down a metal ladder bolted to the wall. The baby’s wails echoed around the circular stairwell.

  Field stepped onto the stone landing and waited again, breathing deeply. A mother or nanny was trying to soothe the child, but it cried still louder.

  He put his back against the wall and began to walk down the stairs, the revolver in his good hand, his eyes straining in the gloom. He saw a Chinese woman sitting with the baby, soothing it, caressing its forehead, rocking it from side to side. Field kept his revolver up, the sound of his footsteps echoing on the stone steps as he came down toward her.

  The child’s crying lessened. The woman caught sight of him but did not move or recoil, her eyes steadily on his. Field saw something in her look, compassion perhaps, then realized it was a warning.

  “Stay where you are, Field. Lower your gun.”

  Prokopieff emerged from the shadows, the barrel of his revolver pointing at Field’s forehead.

  “Lower your gun.”

  Field hesitated. The Russian’s expression was hard and cold. Field imagined that this was the way he looked when he hurt the girls he brought back to the station house.

  “Your gun.”

  Field slowly lowered his arm. They stared at each other. He thought fleetingly about turning and trying to run.

  Prokopieff shook his head. “Shot in the back while trying to escape.”

  “I’m not escaping.”

  “Not yet.” The Russian smiled.

  “You’ve done this before.”

  Prokopieff nodded. “I have done this before. Do you still believe an officer of the law can afford to be an idealist in this town?”

  “Someone has to try.”

  “Well, now is your chance.” The Russian looked down. “I’m the only one here.”

  Field shook his head, not clear what the Russian meant. The adrenaline still pumped through him.

  “You’re a fool, Richard Field.”

  Field didn’t answer.

  “But a fool is better than a liar.” Prokopieff gestured with his revolver. “Put the gun in your belt. You will need it.”

  Field frowned.

  “This city makes liars of us all, Field. Liars and cheats.” Prokopieff straightened, putting his gun back in its holster. His face was suddenly weary. “What good would it do me to kill you?” he said. “Perhaps you still have a chance to do something useful with your life. Just don’t throw it away making bad choices.” He turned and led Field down the steps. “Through here is a side entrance. All the buildings are being watched front and back, but I alone watch this alley, so go quickly.”

  “So Granger was right,” Field said, almost to himself, “about everything.”

  “Granger was a man to follow, but now he is gone. And all you can do is run while you have the chance.”

  The Russian put a hand on Field’s shoulder and then pushed him out into the sunlight, the steel door banging shut behind him.

  Field walked away in a daze, his eyes half-closed against the sudden glare. He expected to hear a volley of shots and feel the sudden, devastating pain of their impact, but the alley was silent.

  Fifty-five

  The number one boy recoiled at the sight of him in the doorway at Crane Road. Field entered the house without further invitation and walked through to the living room at the back.

  A record was playing. The mournful sound of a jazz band drifted through the open door to the veranda. Penelope was curled up in a ball in the corner of a wicker sofa, like a small child, staring at the lush green of her near-perfect lawn.

  Field sat opposite her. He took out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth, his hand shaking violently as he tried to light it.

  “I always know when he is going to meet one of his girls,” she said. “It’s the only time he allows himself to get excited.” She spoke slowly. “It doesn’t last, of course. They just remind him of everything he has lost.”

  “He’s dead, Penelope.”

  “I always told myself,” she went on, as if he had not spoken, “that it did not matter because they were Russian girls.”

  He didn’t know if she was trying to provoke him, or if she didn’t even realize he was there.

  He stood and moved to the Gramophone. He lifted the needle, then, in a fit of anger, swept the whole contraption onto the floor.

  He turned, unsteady.

  Penelope was sitting up. “Is it too late for me, Richard?”

  “I’m not a priest.”

  Her eyes pleaded with him. “Please?”

  “For God’s sake . . .”

  “He killed that girl, didn’t he?”

  Field stared at her. “Which one?”

  Penelope frowned, her confusion genuine. Then her face collapsed as the truth finally rose up to swamp her.

  “Do you know how these women died?” Field asked, taking a step toward her. “He stabbed them so many times, bits of skin were left strung across craters in their bodies the size of a bloody fist.”

  Penelope bowed her head.

  “No one can give you absolution for that.”

  Field sat back down. He watched her shaking with her grief, but made no move to comfort her.

  When Penelope looked up, her eyes were dark hollows, her face streaked with makeup. “I used to tell him he was the bravest man I’d ever met,” she said. “But when he looked in the mirror, that wasn’t what he saw.”

  “Everything changed at Delville Wood,” Field said.

  She nodded.

  “And he took his anger out first on you, then on the Russian girls.”

  “He blamed me because I could not arouse him. At first it didn’t seem to matter.” She smiled sadly at him. “I thought love would provide the answer.” She started to cry. “I thought it would be temporary. The impotence and the anger.” She looked up. “His temper was so terrible, Richard. He would become furious with himself, with me. And then with the world.”

  “We know about Irina, Natalya, Lena. Were there others?”

  “When we came to Shanghai . . .” She sighed. “Oh, six years ago, it was to be a new start. For a time, I thought it had worked. At least he stopped hurting me. He didn’t touch me anymore.”

  “But you knew he was hurting others?”

  She looked down again. “I couldn’t face going back, Richard. Please understand. I couldn’t bear to go back.”

  “You knew he’d killed Lena.”

  A sad smile played at the corner of her lips. “Everything changed when you came, Richard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed again. “Everything suddenly seemed so ob
vious. I—I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, but sitting opposite you on that first night, talking about that poor girl. I knew. I knew it must have been him. And, of course, I realized I had known since the beginning.” She smiled again. “And he was always so on edge around you. He hated having you here.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at him, amazed. “You really don’t know?”

  Field shook his head.

  “You reminded him of who he was, Richard. You’re the man he was and the man he could have been.”

  Field stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  Her expression grew more serious. “When the demons faded, you know, he could still be so kind and decent. He was the man you saw, the man you liked and admired. Once, he was like that all the time. He hated what he had become, hated the fact that he could not control himself. And he looked at you and saw the man he used to be and he hated you for it. For all that you have been through, you have kept your honesty. And he couldn’t forgive you for that.”

  Field put his head in his hands.

  Penelope leaned forward. “You need shelter. I can give you that. You will need money, and I can give you that, too.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “It’s not my money, Richard.”

  “They will turn the city upside down looking for me.”

  “They will never think to look for you here.”

  Field stared at the wall at the far end of the garden. He could hear a brass band on the Bund, practicing for tomorrow’s Empire Day celebrations. He stood, walked to the end of the veranda, and looked out across the lawn. A servant was watering flowers. “Geoffrey was involved in a syndicate to smuggle vast quantities of opium into Europe. Did you know about that?”

  “I knew he was getting the money from somewhere. He thought that I didn’t know where he kept the key to his safe.”

  Field moved back toward her. “The opium was being shipped through one of Charles Lewis’s factories, but Lewis’s name doesn’t appear on the list of payoffs that I have.”

  “Geoffrey always wanted to be rich like Charlie.”

  “The absence of Lewis’s name on the list doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t involved.”

  “Charlie has more money than anyone could ever need.” She shook her head. “Anyway, he doesn’t think like that.”

  “How does he think?”

  She looked at him, her gaze level. “He’s more like you than you might imagine.” She raised her hand. “Oh, I know you wouldn’t accept that, and in an everyday sense you’re right. He’s unorthodox, even a little cruel at times. But he’s honorable in his own way. Consistent, anyway.”

  “He’s close to Lu.”

  She shook her head. “No, they tolerate each other. They have to.”

  “Lewis doesn’t have to tolerate anyone.”

  Penelope shook her head. “You’re wrong. He once told me that he viewed China as a great river. Sometimes you can divert it a little, but mostly you have to swim in the direction it flows. If Lu didn’t exist, someone else would take his place. He, or his kind, cannot be eradicated, and Charlie likes stability. Rather the devil, you know. That is how he keeps himself and Fraser’s where it is.”

  Field found himself thinking not of Lewis, but of Granger, using similar words on the sidewalk outside the Cathay Hotel in a world that seemed light-years away. Granger had understood.

  He had the uncomfortable sense that he had been responsible in some way for Granger’s death. He wondered if Lu and Geoffrey and Macleod had always intended to dispose of the Irishman, or whether his death had been an accidental by-product of their attempt to eliminate him and Caprisi.

  “What will you do, Richard?”

  Field looked down at the floor, trying to clear his mind. “I will contact Lewis and ask him to arrange a meeting with Lu. Somewhere safe. Somewhere public. I’ll offer them both exactly what they want, a continuation of the status quo.”

  “And what do you want in return?”

  “Something that is of no importance to either of them.”

  “The girl?”

  “The girl, yes. The Russian girl.” Field heard the bitterness and reproach in his voice.

  “Will you forgive me, Richard?”

  He looked at her. She was biting her lip, on the verge of tears again, her face twitching nervously, and he understood her now. “You don’t need me to forgive you,” he said. “You need to forgive yourself.”

  Penelope looked down and began to cry again, but he still did not move.

  She stood, shaking her head, and went inside. Field lit another cigarette, but barely raised it to his lips, watching the smoke drifting up beneath the eaves and melting into the sky, its blue now flecked with thin shards of gray.

  Penelope returned and placed a brown envelope on his lap. “If you’re to stand any chance at all, you will need this.”

  Field opened it up reluctantly, then spilled its contents onto the table in front of him.

  “I haven’t counted it, but I think there’s more than ten thousand American dollars.”

  Field looked up at her.

  “It’s for you, Richard, and your Russian girl. I don’t want it now.”

  “I cannot accept this.”

  “Then take it for her.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Richard. You have nothing left to prove here. You need to accept help.” Her face softened. “I don’t want the money. If you don’t take it, I’ll throw it away.”

  Field stared at the pile of cash spilling across the table in front of him. It was more money than he had seen in his entire life. It was enough money to live an entire life.

  “I will take a thousand,” he said, “if you agree to take the rest of the money to an orphanage. I’ll give you the address.”

  She knelt in front of him. Her face was serious—soft and sane. “I’m not a bad person, am I, Richard?”

  He didn’t know what to say.

  “Please.” Her eyes implored him. She placed her head on his lap, like a child. After a few moments Field reached forward and placed the palm of his hand gently on top of her head.

  The bedroom window was open, and Field could still hear the sound of the band on the Bund, but the garden was strangely quiet, shielded on all sides by new office buildings that had sprung up in the boom years since the end of the Great War.

  There was a light wind up here, just enough to tug at the curtains.

  He turned, realizing Penelope had been watching him from the doorway.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Penelope breathed in deeply. “Forgive me if I don’t come to the door.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good luck, Richard.”

  Field walked across the room, his footsteps loud on the wooden floorboards as he passed the foot of the iron-framed bed. He could not help glancing at the section next to the fireplace beneath which he had concealed the pages from Lu’s ledger the previous night. He wondered if she had heard him pulling up the floorboards and understood.

  He stood in front of her, their faces close. “What will you do?” he asked.

  “Where will I go, do you mean?” Her eyes were peaceful now, her demeanor calm and unhurried. “I’ll stay here, Richard. Unlike you, I have nowhere else to go. Or perhaps I should say, no reason to go anywhere else.” She smiled.

  Field pressed the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other.

  She touched his shoulder. “Good luck.”

  Field bent to kiss her, but she took him into her arms, her grip tight as she held him. Then she released him and stepped back.

  Field hesitated and then walked along the corridor. He stopped by the stairs and looked back.

  She wore a fragile smile.

  “Do you think,” he said, “they will give me what I want?”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, “but you are right to tr
y.”

  Field looked at her. She stood with her legs together and her hands by her side, in a position of studied composure.