by Peter May
‘What on earth is that?’
‘It’s kind of where Li Yan officially asks me to marry him. In front of both families.’
‘You mean I’m going to have to meet his people tomorrow?’
‘Just his father. His mother died in prison during the Cultural Revolution.’ Mrs. Campbell looked shocked. Such things just didn’t happen in the United States. ‘But Li’s sister and his niece will be there as well. We’ve rented a private room in a restaurant, and we’ll have a traditional meal.’
Mrs. Campbell screwed up her face. ‘Margaret, you know I don’t like Chinese food.’
‘They don’t have Chinese food in China, Mom.’
Her mother frowned. ‘Don’t they?’
‘No, they just call it food here.’ And Margaret added quickly. ‘Just eat what you can. Another traditional thing we’re going to have, before the meal, is an exchange of gifts. Between the families.’
Mrs. Campbell was startled. ‘But I haven’t brought anything.’ She wouldn’t have liked anyone to think of her as mean. Particularly if they were Chinese.
‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing too elaborate. We’ll get what we need tomorrow.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, an easy one is money. Just a token amount. Usually ninety-nine yuan, or even nine hundred and ninety-nine. Nine is a very lucky number in China, because it is three times three, and three is the luckiest number of all.’
‘Hmmm-hmmm,’ her mother said. ‘And who is it who gives the money? Them or us?’
‘Well, I think we should, since we’re a little better off than they are.’ She knew that would please her mother. Anything that underscored her sense of superiority. ‘Other gifts are things like tea, dragon and phoenix cake, a pair of male and female poultry – ’
‘I have no intention of giving or receiving hens,’ Mrs. Campbell said firmly, rising up on her dignity. ‘They’re dreadful, smelly creatures. And what would we do with them? You couldn’t keep them here!’
Margaret couldn’t contain her smile. ‘People in the city don’t exchange real poultry, Mom. Just symbols. Usually china ornaments, or paper cut-outs.’
‘And what would we do with a picture of a hen?’
Margaret shook her head and pressed on. ‘They also usually give candy and sugar, maybe some wine, or tobacco. But tea is the most important one. Because, traditionally, both families will want the couple to provide them with as many descendants as there are tea leaves.’
Mrs. Campbell cocked an eyebrow. ‘That would be a little difficult in a country that only allows couples to have one child, would it not?’
And for a dreadful moment, Margaret saw and heard herself in her mother. The tone. The withering sarcasm. And she was not at all sure that she liked it. Like catching an unexpected glimpse of your own reflection, revealing an unflattering side of yourself you don’t usually see.
Her mother went on, ‘I’m not sure I approve of any of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This … betrothal meeting, and God knows what the wedding itself will be like! Margaret, it all smacks to me of heathen ritual. You were brought up a good Christian, I don’t know why you couldn’t have had a simple church ceremony. But, then, I suppose these Communists are all atheists.’
She headed back down the hall to the living room. Margaret sighed and followed, and found her, hands on hips, looking around the tiny room and shaking her head. ‘And if you think I’m going to spend the next six days sitting around in this pokey little place all day doing nothing, you’re very much mistaken.’ She delved into her purse and pulled out a brochure. Margaret recognised a photograph of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. ‘My travel agent told me if there was one thing worth seeing while I was here, it was the Forbidden City. Of course, I saw it in the film, The Last Emperor, but it’s quite another thing to see a place for yourself.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘And no time like the present.’
Margaret wished she had never even told her mother she was getting married. ‘Aren’t you tired, Mom? I mean, wouldn’t you like a lie-down. It’s the middle of the night back home.’
‘If I sleep now, I’ll never sleep tonight. And there’s nothing like a bit of fresh air for keeping you awake.’
IV
Li had all the reports on his desk in front of him. Autopsy, forensic, toxicology. Reports from officers on every case under investigation. The official results, faxed to Section One that morning, of all the dope tests carried out on the dead athletes in the weeks and months before their deaths. He had read through everything. Twice. From the accounts of the ‘witnesses’ to the death of the cyclist, to Sun’s accounts of their visits to the apartments of Sui Mingshan and Jia Jing. Still nothing made any sense to him. None of them, it seemed, had been taking drugs. The random urine tests, and the results from toxicology, bore each other out.
And why would anyone fake the deaths of people who had already died, apparently from natural causes? The odd thing here was that in the case of the three relay sprinters, none of them had even consulted a doctor in the recent past, so clearly they had no idea they were unwell. But where had they been when they died, prior to being bundled into their ill-fated car and sent speeding into a lamppost? And had they all died at the same time? Li found it baffling.
They had no evidence whatsoever that the cyclist had been the victim of foul play. But the witnesses to his ‘accidental’ death were, very conveniently, unavailable to them, and distinctly unreliable.
And he, too, had had his head shaved.
The shaving of the heads worried Li. He felt that somehow this had to be the key to the whole sordid mystery. Was it some kind of ritual? A punishment? And this mystery virus which would probably have killed them all. Where had it come from? How had they been infected? Who wanted to cover it up, and why? No matter how many times Li turned these things over in his mind, it brought him no nearer to enlightenment. There were so many blind alleys he might be tempted to turn into, wasting precious time and deflecting him from the truth. He was missing something, he was sure. Something simple, something obvious that he just wasn’t seeing. Something that would make all the difference and maybe, just maybe, tip him in the right direction.
A knock on the door disturbed his thoughts. He called irritably, ‘Come in.’
It was Qian. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Chief. I got the information you asked for on the break-in at that photographer’s studio.’
Li frowned, for a moment wondering what photographer Qian was talking about. And then he remembered. The American married to Margaret’s Chinese friend at the antenatal classes. He almost told Qian to forget it, but he had taken it this far, he might as well hear him out now. He waved him into a seat. ‘Anything interesting?’
Qian shrugged. ‘Not really, Chief.’ He sat down and opened a folder containing a one-page report from the investigating officers, and notes he had taken during a telephone conversation with the photographer himself. ‘Just a break-in. The photographer’s name is Jon Macken. An American. He’s worked in Beijing for more than five years. Married to a local girl.’
‘Yeh, yeh, I know all about that,’ Li said impatiently. ‘What did they take?’
‘Well, that’s the only strange thing about it, Chief. They didn’t take anything. A roll of film. That was it.’
‘Are we investigating petty robberies now?’ Tao’s voice startled them both. He was standing in the open doorway with an armful of folders.
Li said, ‘I asked Qian to look into this one for me.’
Tao came in and laid the folders on Li’s desk. ‘For signing, when you have a moment,’ he said. Then he glanced at the folder in Li’s lap. ‘What’s our interest?’
‘I don’t know,’ Li said. ‘Maybe none. Why don’t you draw up a chair, Deputy Section Chief, and listen in? Then we can decide together.’
Tao hesitated for a moment, but Li knew he would take up the offer. Curiosity, pride, and the fact that it was a first. Tao was hungry for Li’s job,
and here was a titbit to whet his appetite. He brought a chair to the desk and sat down at the window end of it. Neutral territory. Neither one side nor the other. Qian recapped for him.
‘So why would someone go to the trouble of breaking into a studio with an alarm system just to steal a roll of film?’ Li asked.
‘It was a used roll,’ Qian said. ‘I mean, Macken had already taken a whole bunch of pictures with it and developed them.’
‘So it was the negatives that were taken,’ Tao said.
‘That’s right. They made a bit of a mess of the place, but that was all that he can find missing.’
‘And what was on the film?’ Li asked.
‘Nothing of much interest,’ Qian said. ‘Macken’s been commissioned to take pictures for a glossy brochure advertising a club that opened in town about six months ago. He’d been there on a recce the day before and taken a few pictures for reference. Just gash stuff. Nothing that you would think anyone would want to steal.’
‘Well, that’s something we’ll never know,’ said Tao, ‘since he no longer has them.’
‘Oh, but he has,’ Qian said. ‘Apparently he’d already taken a set of contact prints. He’s still got those. He told me he’d looked at them all very carefully, but can’t find a single reason why anyone would want to steal the negatives.’
‘Maybe they didn’t,’ Tao said. ‘I mean, not specifically. It might just be coincidence that it was those ones that were taken.’
‘This place that he’s been commissioned to photograph. What is it, a night club?’ Li asked.
‘No, nothing like that, Chief.’ Qian’s eyes widened. ‘Actually, it sounds like a really amazing place. Macken told me all about it. It’s some kind of investment club for the very rich.’
Li frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
Qian said, ‘It costs you a million yuan just to join, Chief. A million!’ He repeated the word with a sense of awe, as if in rolling his tongue around it again he might actually be able to taste it. ‘And that then entitles you to five million in credit.’
‘Credit for what?’ Tao asked.
‘Investment. This place is plumbed into stock exchanges around the world. If you’re a member you can buy and sell stocks and shares anywhere at the touch of a button. Macken says it’s got about thirty private rooms with TV and lounge chairs, two restaurants, four conference rooms, a communications centre that feeds the latest stock market quotes on to every TV screen in the place. There’s a sauna, swimming pool … you name it.’
‘A high-class gambling den, in other words,’ Tao said with a hint of disapproval.
Li was shaking his head in wonder. ‘I had no idea places like that existed,’ he said, and then he remembered Beijing Snow World, and thought that maybe he was more out of touch than he realised.
Qian shrugged. ‘Like everything else, Chief. It’s all change these days. It’s hard to keep up.’
Tao stood up. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like there’s much there to interest us,’ he said.
Li said, ‘I agree. I think we’ll leave it to the locals.’
Qian closed his folder and got to his feet. ‘There was just one other thing,’ he said. Li and Tao waited. ‘Macken got the job because he and his wife are friends with the personal assistant of the club’s Chief Executive. She recommended him.’ He hesitated. ‘Well, apparently, she’s disappeared.’
Li scowled. ‘What do you mean, disappeared?’
‘Well, there’s not necessarily anything sinister about it,’ Qian said quickly. ‘It’s just, you know, she’s a young girl, early twenties. Lives on her own and, well, nobody seems to know where she is. Macken says he can’t raise her by phone, she’s not at her work … ’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Tao said dismissively. ‘She could be anywhere. I mean, has anyone actually reported her missing – apart from Macken?’
Qian shook his head. Tao looked at Li, who shrugged. ‘Pass it back to the bureau,’ Li said. He had more important things on his mind.
V
Overhead lights reflected off the surface of polished marble on the floors and walls and pillars. At the top of the stairs, Margaret handed their tickets to a girl wearing trainers and an army greatcoat who turned timid, dark, inquisitive eyes to watch them descend to the platform below.
‘I don’t see why we couldn’t have taken a taxi,’ Mrs. Campbell said breathlessly.
‘I told you, Mom, it would take twice as long. The subway’ll get us there in ten minutes.’
‘If only it hadn’t taken us half an hour to get to the subway!’
In fact, it had taken twenty minutes to walk to the subway station at Muxidi, wind-chill reducing temperatures to minus twelve or worse. And her mother had complained every step of the way, tottering precariously on unsuitably high heels. Margaret had told her that the walk through the Forbidden City itself would take nearly an hour and that she needed sensible shoes. But her mother said she didn’t have any. Margaret suspected it was more a case of keeping up appearances. Image had always been very important to Mrs. Campbell.
They had only a matter of minutes to wait on the nearly deserted platform before a train arrived that would take them east to Tiananmen Square. Mrs. Campbell endeavoured to recover both her composure and her coiffure. The train was half-empty, and they found seats easily. A hubbub of chatter in the compartment ceased as they came in, but the silence was not at first apparent because of the recorded announcement in Chinese and English informing them which station was next. In this case, Nanlishi Lu. Then there was the rattle of wheels on rails. Margaret became aware of her mother nudging her.
‘What is it?’
‘Everyone’s staring at us.’ It was her mother’s stage whisper again.
Margaret glanced down the carriage and saw that nearly everyone was indeed watching them, in silent but unabashed curiosity. It was something Margaret had long since ceased to notice. But even today the sight of a westerner still drew stares of astonishment. Sometimes people would ask to touch Margaret’s hair, and they would gaze, unblinking, into her eyes, amazed at their clear, blue colour. ‘That’s because we look so strange,’ she said.
‘We look strange?’ Mrs. Campbell said indignantly.
‘Yes,’ Margaret said. ‘We’re a curiosity. A couple of bizarre-looking, round-eyed foreign devils.’
‘Foreign devils!’
‘Yangguizi. That’s the word they have for us when they’re not being too polite. Literally, foreign devils. And then there’s da bidze. Big noses. You see, you might think the Chinese have got flat faces and slanted eyes. They think we’ve got prominent brows and gross features, and have more in common with Neanderthal Man. That’s because they consider themselves to be a more highly evolved strain of the species.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Mrs. Campbell said, glaring at the Chinese faces turned in her direction.
‘No more ridiculous than those white, Anglo-Saxon Americans who think they’re somehow better than, say, the blacks or the Hispanics.’
‘I don’t!’ her mother protested.
But Margaret was on a roll. ‘You see, Mom, the lowliest Chinese peasant will look down his nose at the richest American, because he can look back on a civilisation that is thousands of years old. Their name for China translates as the Middle Kingdom. That’s because to them, China is at the centre of everything on earth, and its inhabitants superior to those who live on the periphery. And that’s you and me. So while you might like to look down on some people back home, here you are the one who is looked down on.’
This was clearly a revelation to Mrs. Campbell. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Ridiculous,’ she said under her breath. But now she avoided meeting any of the eyes that were turned in her direction.
Margaret smiled to herself.
The wind almost blew them over as they emerged from the escalators at Tiananmen West, like the earth exhaling its frozen winter breath in a great blustering sigh. Margaret took her mother’s arm and hurried
her along the broad, paved sidewalk, past the white marble bridges that spanned the moat, to the Gate of Heavenly Peace, red flags whipping in the wind all around Mao’s portrait. Mrs. Campbell, clutching her coat to her neck, turned and followed Mao’s gaze south. She had seen pictures of the portrait and the gate many times on the news. It was the cliché TV reporters could never resist, delivering countless reports to camera with Mao and the gate behind them. ‘Where’s the square?’ she said.
‘You’re looking at it.’
Mrs. Campbell’s eyes widened. ‘That’s the square?’ She soaked it up. ‘Margaret, it’s huge’ In the dull haze of this windy, winter’s afternoon, she could not even see its southern end. The History Museum to the east, and the Great Hall of the People to the west were on the very periphery of their vision.
Margaret said, ‘We can walk across it afterwards.’ And she steered her mother through the arched tunnel that took them under the Gate of Heavenly Peace and into the long concourse that led to the towering roofs of the Meridian Gate and the entrance to the Forbidden City itself. Through lines of gnarled cypress trees a constant procession of people walked the concourse in either direction, well-wrapped for warmth, although here the grey-slated buildings that lined the enclosure afforded a measure of protection from the wind. Elaborate stalls in the style of the ancient city sold tourist trinkets and hot drinks. Young girls dressed in the clothes of royal concubines posed with visitors to have their photographs taken. Tinny voices barked constant announcements through megaphones mounted on poles, disembodied voices whose anonymous owners were tucked out of sight.
A scruffy looking man approached them obliquely. ‘You want seedy lom?’
Mrs. Campbell said, ‘Sadie Lom? What’s he talking about?’
‘CD Rom,’ Margaret elucidated, and turning to the tout said firmly, ‘No.’
‘How ‘bout DVD? Hally Potallah. I got Hally Potallah.’
‘Does my mother really look like someone who wants to watch a Harry Potter movie?’ Margaret said. The tout looked confused. ‘That’s a no,’ she added, and she whisked her mother quickly away. ‘If anyone tries to sell you anything, just walk away,’ she told her. ‘Don’t speak or meet their eye.’