by Peter May
‘For heaven’s sake, Li, you are the youngest Section Chief in the history of the department. You are one of the most highly regarded police officers in China. What kind of woman is it who would ask a man to give all that up for the sake of a wedding ring?’
‘Margaret hasn’t asked me to give up anything,’ Li said, quick to her defence.
‘What do you mean? She must know what’ll happen if you marry her.’ Li said nothing, and the Commissioner’s eyes widened. ‘Are you telling me you haven’t told her? That she doesn’t know?’
Li blinked rapidly as he felt his eyes start to fill. ‘She has no idea.’ And for the first time he saw what looked like pity in the Commissioner’s eyes.
‘Then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought,’ he said with sad resignation. ‘It is just a shame that your uncle is not here to talk some sense into your bone head.’
‘If my uncle were here,’ Li said stiffly, ‘I am certain he would be appalled by his old department’s lack of flexibility. He always said to me, if you cannot bend with the wind, then you will break.’
The Commissioner shook his head. ‘Then it’s a pity you didn’t listen to him.’ He snapped his hat firmly back on his head and nodded curtly. ‘You can expect notice to clear your desk in a matter of days.’ And he turned and walked briskly away towards the stairwell.
Li stood, a solitary figure, by the Martyrs’ Wall and felt their eyes upon him. The dead were his only company, and he was not sure he had ever felt quite so alone.
* * *
Heads lifted in only semi-disguised curiosity as Li strode into the detectives’ office. Tao was standing by Wu’s desk reading through a sheaf of forensic reports, peering over the top of his thick-rimmed glasses. He glanced up as Li came in, and his hand fell away, lowering the papers he was holding beyond the range of his lenses. Li looked at him very directly. ‘A word, please, Deputy Section Chief.’ And he walked into Tao’s office leaving his deputy to follow him in with every eye in the office on his back. Li closed the door behind them and turned to face Tao, his voice low and controlled. ‘I’ve been fighting an urge to kick the living shit out of you all the way across town,’ he said.
‘That wouldn’t be very smart.’ Tao removed his glasses as if he thought Li might strike him yet. ‘I would bring charges.’
Li said dangerously, ‘You wouldn’t be in a condition to do anything, Tao. They’d be feeding you with a spoon for the rest of your days.’ Tao held his peace, and Li said, ‘The only thing that stopped me was something my uncle taught me years ago. If you are offended by a quality in your superiors, do not behave in such a manner to those below you. If you dislike a quality in those below you, do not reflect that quality to those who work over you. If something bothers you from the man at your heels, do not push at the one in front of you.’
‘Sound advice,’ Tao said. ‘Pity you didn’t take it.’
Li glared at him for a long time. ‘You went behind my back on the Jia Jing report.’
Tao shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I tried to speak to you about it the other day, but you were “too busy”.’ His lips curled as he spat out the words. ‘A lunch appointment, I think.’ He hesitated, as if waiting for Li to say something.
‘Go on.’
‘I had a call from Procurator General Meng yesterday morning asking me to verify the details contained in Wu’s report.’
‘Why did he call you and not me?’
‘I would have thought that since you had signed off the report and he was seeking verification, that was obvious.’
‘So you told him I’d had it doctored.’
‘No. I had Wu come into my office and tell me exactly what happened that night. I then passed that information on to the Procurator General as requested. I play things by the book, Section Chief Li. I always have. And the way things are these days, I would have thought even you might have seen the merit in doing the same.’ His supercilious smile betrayed just how safe he thought he was, with Li’s expulsion from the force only a matter of days away. It was clearly an open secret now.
Li gazed on him with undisguised loathing. He knew he had been wrong to interfere with Wu’s report. He had ignored one of old Yifu’s basic precepts. If there is something that you don’t want anyone to know about, don’t do it. There was no such thing as a secret. A word whispered in the ear can be heard for miles, he used to say. And Li had also, as Tao took such glee in pointing out, ignored Yifu’s advice on treating others as you would wish them to treat you. And in the process had made an enemy of his deputy. It did not matter that he did not like the man. He had treated him badly, and that had come back to haunt him, like bad karma. What made it even worse, the salt in the wound, was the knowledge that Tao would probably succeed him as Section Chief. It was almost more than he could bear. ‘Even if you feel that I am not owed your respect, Deputy Section Chief, my office most certainly is. You should have spoken to me before you spoke to the Procurator General.’ Tao started to protest that he had tried, but Li held up a hand to stop him. This was hard enough to say without having to talk over him. ‘And in the future, I will try to make a point of listening.’
Tao seemed taken aback, realising perhaps that his boss had come just about as close to an apology as he was ever likely to get. It fluttered between them like a white flag of truce, as uneasy as it was unexpected. He made a curt nod of acknowledgement, and Li turned and left his office, ignoring the curious eyes that followed him through the detectives’ room to the door. As he walked down the corridor to his own office, he fought the temptation to feel sorry for himself. Next week they would take away the job he loved. But he was determined to crack this bizarre and puzzling case of the dead athletes before they did, to at least go out with his head held high. And to do that, he would need friends around him, not enemies.
III
Margaret’s taxi dropped her on the upper ramp at Beijing Capital Airport, a bitter wind blowing dark cloud down from the northwest, the air filled with the sound of taut cables whipping against tall flagpoles. She entered the departure lounge and took an escalator down to the arrivals hall below. The large electronic board above the gate told her that her mother’s flight was on time and she groaned inwardly. Any delay would have given her a brief reprieve. A few more moments of freedom before falling finally into the family trap that would hold her at least until after the wedding.
A sleazy-looking young man wearing a leather jacket with a fur collar sidled up. ‘You want dollah?’
‘No.’ Margaret started walking away.
He followed her. ‘You want RMB? I shanja marni.’
‘No.’
‘You want taxi? I get you good price.’
‘I want peace. Go away.’
‘Real good price. Only three hundred yuan.’
‘Fuck off,’ she breathed into his face, and he recoiled in surprise from this fair-haired foreign devil with the mad blue eyes.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said and scuttled off in search of someone more gullible.
Margaret sighed and tried to calm herself. But the imminent arrival of her mother was making her tense beyond her control. She had put off even thinking about it until the very last minute. Almost until she had gone in search of a taxi to take her to the airport. Although they had spoken on the telephone, they had not met face to face since Margaret’s trip to Chicago for her father’s funeral. And then, they had only fought. She had been her daddy’s girl. He had given her hours of his time when she was a child, playing endless games, reading to her, taking her to the movies or out on the lake in the summer. By contrast, her earliest recollections of her mother were of a cold, distant woman who spent hardly any time with her. After Margaret’s brother drowned in a summer accident, she had become even more withdrawn. And as Margaret grew older, her mother only ever seemed to pick fault with her. Margaret, apparently, was incapable of doing anything right.
The first passengers came through the gate in ones and twos, dragging cases or push
ing trolleys. And then slowly it turned into a flood, and the concourse started filling up. Passengers headed for the counters of the Agricultural Bank of China to change money, or out to the rows of taxis waiting on the ramp outside. Margaret scoured the faces, watching nervously for her mother. Finally she saw her, pale and anxious amongst a sea of Chinese faces, tall, slim, lipstick freshly applied, her coiffured grey-streaked hair still immaculate, even after a fifteen-hour flight. She was wearing a dark green suit with a cream blouse and camel-hair coat slung over her shoulders, looking for all the world like a model in a clothes catalogue for the elderly. She had three large suitcases piled on a trolley.
Margaret hurried to intercept her. ‘Mom,’ she called and waved, and her mother turned as she approached. Margaret tipped her head towards the three cases. ‘I thought you were only coming for a week.’
Her mother smiled coolly. ‘Margaret,’ she said, and they exchanged a perfunctory hug and peck on the cheek, before her mother cast a disapproving eye over the swelling that bulged beneath her smock. ‘My God, look at you! I can’t believe you went and got yourself pregnant to that Chinaman.’
Margaret said patiently. ‘He’s not a Chinaman, Mom. He’s Chinese. And he’s the man I love.’
Whatever went through her mother’s mind, she thought better of expressing it. Instead, as Margaret steered her towards the exit, she said, ‘It was a dreadful flight. Full of … Chinese.’ She said the word as if it left a nasty taste in her mouth. Her mother thought of anyone who was not white, Anglo-Saxon, as being barely human. ‘They ate and snorted and snored and sneezed through fifteen hours of hell,’ she said. ‘And the smell of garlic … You needn’t think that I’ll be a regular visitor.’
‘Well, there’s a blessing,’ Margaret said, drawing a look from her. She smiled. ‘Only kidding. Come on, let’s get a taxi.’
At the rank, they were approached by another tout. ‘You want taxi, lady?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Margaret’s mother.
‘No,’ said Margaret
‘We do,’ her mother protested.
‘Not from him. It’ll cost three times as much.’ She steered her mother towards the queue. The wind whipped and tugged at their clothes, and destroyed in fifteen seconds the coiffure which had survived fifteen hours of air travel. Her mother slipped her arms into her coat and shivered. ‘My God, Margaret, it’s colder than Chicago!’
‘Yes, Mom, and it’s bigger and dirtier and noisier. Get used to it, because that’s how it’s going to be for the next week.’
A middle-aged man came and stood behind them in the queue. He was wheeling a small case. He smiled and nodded, and then very noisily howked a huge gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat it towards the ground. The wind caught it and whipped it away to slap against a square concrete pillar supporting luminescent ads for satellite telephones.
Margaret’s mother’s eyes opened wide. ‘Did you see that?’ she said in a stage whisper.
Margaret sighed. It was going to be a long week. ‘Welcome to China,’ she said.
* * *
Margaret’s mother stared in silence from the window of their taxi as they sped into the city on the freeway from the airport, and Margaret tried to imagine seeing it all again through new eyes. But even in the few years since Margaret’s first trip, Beijing had changed nearly beyond recognition. New high-rise buildings were altering the skyline almost daily. The ubiquitous yellow ‘bread’ taxis had been banished overnight in a desperate attempt to reduce pollution. The number of bicycles was diminishing more or less in direct relation to the increase in the number of motor vehicles. At one time there had been at least twenty-one million bicycles in Beijing. God only knew how many vehicles there were now on the roads. Giant electronic advertising hordings blazed the same logos into the blustery afternoon as you might expect to find in any American city. McDonald’s. Toyota. Sharp. Chrysler.
They hit the Third Ring Road, and started the long loop round to the south side of the city. ‘I’d no idea it would be like this,’ her mother said. She turned her head in astonishment at the sight of a young woman on the sidewalk wearing a miniskirt and thigh-length boots.
‘What did you think it would be like?’
‘I don’t know. Like in the tourist brochures. Chinese lanterns, and curling roofs, and streets filled with people in blue Mao suits.’
‘Well some of these things still survive,’ Margaret said. ‘But, really, Beijing is just a big modern city like you’d find anywhere in the States. Only bigger.’
It took nearly an hour to get to Margaret’s apartment block on the north side of the campus. Margaret’s mother cast a sharp eye over her surroundings – looking for fault, Margaret thought – while their taxi driver carried each of the heavy cases into the lobby, and stacked them in the elevator. There was no sign of the sullen operator. Just the debris of her cigarette ends on the floor and the stale smell of her cigarette smoke in the air.
The driver smiled and nodded and held the elevator door open for them to get in.
‘Xie-xie,’ Margaret said.
‘Syeh-syeh? What does that mean?’ her mother demanded.
‘It means, thank you.’
‘Well, aren’t you going to give him a tip?’
‘No, people don’t give or expect tips in China.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She waved her hand at the taxi driver. ‘Don’t go away.’ And she fished in her purse for some money. She found a five dollar note and held it out.
The driver smiled, embarrassed, and shook his head, waving the note away.
‘Go on, take it,’ her mother insisted.
‘Mom, he won’t take it. It’s considered demeaning to accept tips here. You’re insulting him.’
‘Oh, don’t talk nonsense! Of course he wants the money. Or does he think our American dollars aren’t good enough for him?’ And she threw the note at him.
The taxi driver stepped back, shocked by the gesture, and stood watching as the note fluttered to the floor. The doors of the elevator slid shut.
Margaret was furious and embarrassed. ‘That was an appalling thing to do.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Margaret, as soon as those doors closed you can be sure he was pocketing that note quicker than you could say … syeh-syeh.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Margaret angrily stabbed the button with the outward pointing arrows and the doors slid open again. Beyond the glass at the far side of the lobby they saw the driver hurrying down the steps to his cab. The five dollar note lay untouched on the floor. Margaret turned to her mother. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’
* * *
‘I don’t expect to be treated like that by my own daughter,’ her mother said, as they got the three huge cases into the tiny hallway of Margaret’s apartment. ‘We’ve never gotten along well, you and I, Margaret. But you are my daughter. And at least I made the effort to be here. No matter how much I might disapprove, I have come halfway around the world to be at your wedding. I think I’m entitled to a little consideration in return.’
Margaret kept her teeth firmly clenched and closed the door behind them. ‘Your bedroom’s this way,’ she said, leading her mother up the hall. For the first time, Mrs. Campbell stopped to take in her surroundings. She looked into the bedroom, whose double bed nearly filled the room. It was necessary to squeeze past an old wooden wardrobe to reach the small desk beneath the window which acted as a dressing-table.
‘You live here?’ Her mother was incredulous. She marched down the hall and cast an eye over the tiny kitchen before turning into the living room. A three-seater settee took up nearly half the room. There was one easy chair and there were two dining chairs next to a gate-leg table pushed up against the wall by the window. Margaret took most of her meals alone at the gate-leg, or off her knee in front of the twelve-inch television set. There was no disguising the horror on her mother’s face. ‘The whole apartment would fit into the sitting room at Oak Park.’ She turned earnestly to her daughter. ‘Marg
aret, what have you been reduced to in this God-forsaken country?’
‘I’m perfectly happy here,’ Margaret said, lying. ‘I have everything I need. And, anyway, after the wedding Li and I will be moving into family accommodation provided by the police. They’re big apartments.’
Her mother was struck by another horrifying thought. ‘Margaret, you do have another bedroom here, don’t you?’
‘Nope. Just the one.’
‘Well, I hope you’re not expecting me to share a bed with you?’
‘No, Mom, I’ll be sleeping on the settee.’
Her mother looked at her. ‘Is that wise? In your condition?’
‘Maybe you’d like to sleep on the settee, then.’
‘You know I couldn’t do that, Margaret. Not with my back.’
And Margaret permitted herself a tiny, bitter smile. That fleeting moment of worry about her pregnant daughter sleeping on the settee was the extent of her mother’s concern.
Another thought occurred to Mrs. Campbell. ‘I hope you’re not an early bedder,’ she said. ‘You know how I don’t sleep so well. I like to sit up late watching television.’
‘Mom, you can watch television as much as you like, but you do realise it’s all Chinese?’
‘What? Don’t you have any American channels?’
‘You’re in China, Mom. People here speak Chinese. They don’t watch American television.’
‘I suppose the Communists wouldn’t allow it.’
Margaret shook her head in despair. ‘Nobody would understand it!’
It took nearly an hour for them to unpack and find places for all of her mother’s clothes. And for the first time, Margaret realised just how limited her space really was. She could not imagine trying to cope in this apartment with a baby, and fervently hoped Li would be allocated their new home before the child was born. Her mother was clearly having doubts about whether she could last out until the wedding. ‘Is it really a week till you get married?’
‘Six days,’ Margaret said. ‘But we have the betrothal meeting tomorrow night.’