by Peter May
Margaret nodded. She had been furiously doing her arithmetic and trying to keep up with the constantly changing calculation.
‘Okay,’ Mei Yuan said. ‘So what height is the driver?’
Which stopped Margaret in her tracks. It was the last question she had been expecting. She had a figure of twenty-three in her head, and was wondering where the trick was. But the driver’s height … ? She blinked uncomprehendingly at Mei Yuan, and Mei Yuan laughed and raised her hands.
‘Don’t try and work it out now. Think about it,’ she said. ‘But do not ask Li Yan until you have the answer yourself. For you will see then how important it is that you ask this question correctly.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Xinxin demanded to know. ‘Speak Chinese, speak Chinese!’
Mei Yuan laughed. ‘I was just giving Margaret a message for your uncle. When you are older, perhaps, Margaret will pass it on to you, too.’
Xinxin was almost beside herself with excitement when they got on to the main concourse in the new departure hall at the Capital Airport. She had never been anywhere so big, with so many people and so many lights mirrored in so many shiny surfaces. It was dazzling. She had never flown before, either, and with the fearlessness of the young could not wait to get aboard the airplane.
Margaret asked Mei Yuan to stay with Xinxin while she checked them in at the airline desk. Xinxin’s little case was small enough to travel as hand-luggage, and Margaret only had her briefcase. She stood in a long line waiting to check in, and then hurried away across the concourse to the shopping area to purchase a pack of mints for Xinxin to suck during take-off and landing. If she had never flown before, her ears might react badly to the change in pressure. There was a queue here, too, and Margaret stood letting her mind and her eyes wander.
Suddenly a face on the far side of the mall impinged on her consciousness, and a stab of fear shook her to the core. It was a face she had seen before. Flat Mongolian features, long greasy hair, a scarred lip stretched over yellow protruding teeth. And he was staring back at her. A tour group led by a guide wearing a silly yellow baseball cap and carrying a blue flag crossed her line of sight and the Mongolian disappeared for several moments. She craned to try to catch a glimpse of him through the heads, but when the group had passed he was gone, and for a moment she began to doubt that she had seen him at all.
She had forgotten all about the mints now, and left the line, rushing across the concourse, eyes darting left and right, trying to get a sight of him. But he was nowhere to be seen. Where could he have gone? How could he possibly have been here in Beijing? She remembered his face from that dark night on the Bund as clearly as she had ever remembered anything in her life. She could not possibly have mistaken him. Could she? She stopped and felt the bumping of her heart beneath her breast, like someone physically punching her. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her mouth dry.
‘Magret, Magret, what wrong?’ Xinxin’s little voice crashed into her thoughts. And a little hand slipped into hers. She turned round to see Mei Yuan and the little girl staring at her curiously. What kind of sight must she have presented?
‘Are you all right?’ Mei Yuan asked, concerned.
‘Sure,’ Margaret said, unconvincingly, trying to control her breathing. ‘I’m fine.’ But she wasn’t.
CHAPTER NINE
I
What Li found hard to understand was the calm with which Sun Jie had identified the mutilated and decomposed body of his wife. He had stood staring at her for several minutes, unaffected apparently by the stench or by the sight of her. His eyes had closed briefly, then he had simply nodded and walked from the room. In the car park, where spots of rain had begun to fall again, Sun Jie had turned to Li and said, ‘So now I know she is at peace I can be at peace also and know that she has moved on to a better place. For she was a good person.’ And for a moment Li had found himself envying that simple faith, that the end of life on earth was not the end of life. It just all seemed too easy, somehow.
He stood now on the concourse at Hongqiao Airport and felt the warmth of Mei-Ling standing close to him. He was excited by the thought of seeing Xinxin, but apprehensive about Margaret’s return. He knew she would not respond well to Mei-Ling being with him, but he was determined not to give in to her petty jealousies. He only wished that in some way it was possible for him to separate his private and professional lives. And then he remembered again those eighteen women who had been slaughtered in Shanghai, their husbands and children, fathers and mothers, and the thought put his own problems back into their proper perspective.
Xinxin saw Li immediately, standing among the waiting crowds on the other side of the Arrivals gate, and she went running to leap up into his arms. Margaret smiled at the sight of the two of them together. Li liked to present an image of himself as tough and unyielding, a hard man, with his flat-top crewcut and his square, jutting jaw. Margaret knew him, in reality, to be a big softie. But the smile on her face froze as Li turned, with Xinxin in his arms, to introduce her to the woman standing on his right. Mei-Ling was all smiles and sweetness, shaking Xinxin’s hand and then delving into her purse for a pack of candy. Xinxin’s initial shyness immediately evaporated and lights shone in her eyes. How easily the affections of a child could be bought. Margaret remembered that in her panic at seeing the man with the hare-lip in Beijing, she had forgotten to buy the mints for Xinxin.
Li put the child back down, and Mei-Ling spoke rapidly to her, eliciting an immediate smiling response. She held out her hand which Xinxin took without hesitation, and the two of them headed off towards the shops on the far side of the concourse. Li turned self-consciously to meet Margaret. Margaret thrust Xinxin’s case into his chest. ‘Maybe Mei-Ling would like to carry her bag for her as well.’ Li’s heart sank, but Margaret wasn’t finished yet. ‘Did you have to bring her with you?’
Li sighed. ‘I do not have transport here. She offered me a lift. All right?’
‘No, not really. But then, I don’t suppose it matters what I feel.’
‘Look, I thought after last night all that jealousy stuff would be behind us.’
A thousand angry responses ran through Margaret’s mind. About Li’s insensitivity in bringing Mei-Ling to the airport, about last night changing nothing as far as Mei-Ling was concerned – or Li, apparently. About how she’d just spent a gruelling day poking over the remains of a rotting corpse as a favour to Li, and how the least she could expect was some time alone with him and Xinxin. But all she said was, ‘It is.’ Then, ‘When do you want my report on the autopsy?’
He was surprised by the sudden change of subject. ‘In the morning,’ he said. ‘You can brief Mei-Ling and myself, and then we’ll brief a full meeting of detectives at Section Two.’
‘Why can’t I brief the meeting myself?’ she asked.
‘Because not enough of them speak English, and to have to translate everything would just be a distraction.’
‘So now I’m a distraction as well. I suppose that’s another one to add to the list,’ Margaret said. She saw the annoyance in Li’s eyes and knew that she was doing nothing to win back his affections. If anything, her continuing hostility was having exactly the opposite effect. But she couldn’t help herself. It was a natural response to the constant hurt – the need to hurt back. She understood Li’s reasoning for not involving her in the full briefing. It made absolute sense. But it only served to increase her sense of exclusion and underline the fact that being Chinese was like being part of a very exclusive club, a club of which she could never be a member. She glanced over to where Mei-Ling and Xinxin were sharing a joke at a toy stand at the shops, and felt her insecurity wrap itself around her like a blanket. No matter how well she and Xinxin got on together, they would always speak different languages. With Mei-Ling, communication would be easy for Xinxin, not an issue. For a moment Margaret caught Mei-Ling’s eye as she glanced towards Margaret and Li, and Margaret knew that Mei-Ling would try to take Xinxin from her as well. And th
at she would probably succeed. Margaret turned back to Li. ‘Shall I come back to the hotel to tuck Xinxin in?’
Li shook his head. ‘No, not tonight. I’m taking her to meet her babysitter. They’ll be sharing a room next to mine.’
Margaret tried again. ‘You said she’ll be going to kindergarten here. I could take her there in the mornings and pick her up again in the afternoons.’
Li shifted uncomfortably. ‘Actually, Mei-Ling will be running her to kindergarten in the mornings – or delegating another officer to do it if she can’t.’
‘How very kind of her,’ Margaret said, and Li felt the sting of her tone. But Margaret was losing the will to fight. ‘Look, why don’t I just get a taxi back to my hotel? Then I won’t have to take you out of your way.’ And she pushed past Li and headed for the exit, forgetting that she had meant to speak to him about the man with the hare-lip.
II
‘You look like someone who could do with a drink.’
Margaret turned and found Geller standing at her side. She was perched on a stool in the bar of the Peace Hotel leaning over an empty glass. As usual the bar was deserted. She said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
He slipped on to the stool beside her and signalled the waitress. She shimmied along the bar and he ordered a beer and another vodka tonic for Margaret. ‘You look tired.’
‘I am. I’ve been to Beijing and back today.’
‘Do you mind if I ask what for?’ He lit a cigarette and ran a hand back through his mop of unruly hair.
‘No.’
He waited. ‘And … ?’
‘And what?’
‘What were you doing in Beijing?’
‘I said I didn’t mind if you asked. I didn’t say I’d tell you.’
He smiled wryly and rubbed a hand across his unshaven jaw. It made a soft rasping sound. ‘Guess I must be slipping.’
Margaret looked at him. ‘Well, you’re certainly not shaving.’
‘I hate shaving,’ he said. ‘If I use a razor I always cut myself. If I use an electric shaver it makes me break out in a rash.’
‘You’re such a sensitive soul.’ She reached out and ran her fingers lightly over his silvery stubble. ‘Having sex with you must be like making love to a sheet of sandpaper.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘did you say having sex with me? I mean, is that a thought that even crossed your mind?’ She laughed and he said, ‘Listen, lend me your razor and I’ll shave right now.’
She laughed again, and somewhere at the back of her mind she wondered what it would be like making love to Jack Geller. Less intense, she thought, than with Li Yan. But more fun, perhaps. At least she and Jack could share a joke, have a laugh without stopping to choose their words and wonder if they were the right ones. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘All my blades are blunt.’
He said, ‘You could always use your tongue. It’s pretty sharp.’
‘Too sharp for my own good,’ she said. ‘People get too close to me I cut them.’ It was difficult to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
He looked at her for a moment. ‘You’re not a very happy lady.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
He shrugged. ‘You do a pretty good job of hiding it. Most of the time.’
‘But not, of course, to a seasoned student of human nature like yourself.’
‘Naturally.’ He paused and took a long pull at his beer, then studied her for a moment or two as she sipped at her vodka. ‘Have you had dinner?’
‘I did last night,’ she said.
He stubbed out his cigarette, slipped off his stool and drained the last of his beer. ‘Come on, then.’
‘Where?’
‘To a place that’s got the best view of Shanghai in the whole city.’
*
Shanghai opened up below them. The Huangpu River, reflecting lights from both sides, snaked through the heart of it, the Bund glowing along one side of its length like a bejewelled glowworm, the lights of Pudong on the other, reaching into a sky crisscrossed with coloured searchlights dissecting and bisecting the night. Immediately beneath them a Japanese cruise ship, from here no bigger than a model boat, was docked at the International Passenger Terminal, its lights blazing out across the water, its passengers returning from an exploration of the city’s commercial pleasures. From the twenty-eighth floor of the Shanghai Bund International Tower at number ninety-nine Huangpu Road, the semi-circular sweep of floor-to-ceiling window in the bar of the American Club gave on to an unparalleled view of the city. The bar curved around the central sweep of the window, and Margaret and Geller sat at it in comfortably upholstered bar chairs which looked past what appeared to be two very small barmen to the view beyond.
‘Why,’ Margaret said, ‘are all the barmen here so vertically challenged?’
Geller frowned, for a moment not understanding, then he burst out laughing. ‘Dwarf barmen,’ he said choking on his cigarette, and both barmen glared at him, not amused. ‘They’re not really midgets,’ Geller said. ‘It’s a sunken bar.’
‘Why would anyone want to sink a bar?’ Margaret asked.
‘I dunno. I guess so that when you’re sitting at it the bartender’s looking straight into your eyes. Anyway, listen, vertically challenged or not, these guys make great vodka martinis, and they got olives here the size of apples.’
‘Is that an offer?’
‘You bet.’
They ordered two vodka martinis which each came with three enormous olives on cocktail sticks. Margaret took a sip and nodded approvingly. ‘You’re right, they are good.’ On top of her vodka tonics, she felt the alcohol soothe away her tension and began to wonder vaguely if she was heading for a drink problem. She cast an eye distractedly over a large menu handed to her by the maître d’ from the restaurant next door, and realised with some pleasure that the food was very definitely not Chinese. ‘I’ll just have the roast salmon and some salad,’ she said. Geller ordered a steak and a bottle of Californian Zinfandel.
When the waiter had taken their order, Geller looked at Margaret thoughtfully for some moments. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what progress in the battle of American girl versus Chinese girl for the favours of Chinese guy?’
She smiled and sucked in more vodka martini. ‘No competition,’ she said. ‘The Chinese girl’s winning hands down. In fact, it looks like she’ll even get the kid as well.’
‘The kid?’ Geller frowned. ‘You two have a kid?’
Margaret laughed. ‘I entertained thoughts of children once. But I got talked out of that quickly enough.’ She hesitated, then explained to Geller about Li’s niece and the fact that she had instantly become a new battleground in the fight for affections. She shook her head. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure I care any more. If he doesn’t want me, if he wants her, then she can have him. Kid and all.’
‘Only it’s not true,’ Geller said. She turned to find him looking at her earnestly.
‘What isn’t?’
‘That you don’t care.’
‘And you’d know.’
He shrugged. ‘Like you said, I’m a seasoned student of human nature.’
‘Which of course makes you an expert on fucked-up pathologists with a predilection for self-pity and alcohol.’
He let her bitterness wash over him and added a dash of his own. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But when it comes to fucked-up people with a predilection for self-pity and alcohol, I’m the world’s foremost authority.’ He paused and smiled sadly, adding, in case she had missed the point, ‘Being one myself.’
She looked at him curiously, and for a moment that curiosity made her forget about herself. ‘What are you doing here, Jack?’ she said. ‘What are you running away from?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, I’m not running away from anything. I wish I could, but I wouldn’t know where to run to.’
‘What about home?’
‘This is it. Shanghai. That’s home. I don’t have another one.’
She frowned. ‘How come?’
; ‘I guess, like Springstein says, I was born in the USA.’ He chuckled. ‘But I never spent much time there. My folks moved around the world. Africa, Middle-East, South-East Asia. My old man was in the ball-bearing business. You’d be amazed how much money there is in ball-bearings. Anyway, I managed to see the inside of just about every American school on every continent you can think of. Just long enough to get to know the name of the kid at the next desk, and then off again. And then my dad goes and dies on us. In Thailand. And my mom gets offered this job in Shanghai. So she flies him back to the US, puts him in the ground in Connecticut somewhere, and then heads for Shanghai. I’ve spent more of my life here than anywhere else in the world.’
‘How did you get into journalism?’
‘Oh, that was an accident. Amazing really how little of our lives we plan for ourselves.’ He lit a cigarette. Down below them, at the International Passenger Terminal, the Japanese cruise liner was pulling out into the deep navigation channel, mid-stream. It looked like a floating Christmas tree as it headed slowly downriver towards the estuary. Geller’s eyes seemed fixed on it for several moments before he said, ‘My mom met this Chinese guy here. Got married again. I’m in my mid-teens and probably a bit difficult, so they send me off to the States to go to college.’ He shook his head, lost in some distant memory. ‘I hated it. What was I supposed to do there? I didn’t know anyone. Didn’t have any friends. No family – at least, not any that I knew. And then, when I finish college, I see this one-year course in journalism advertised in Boston. I sail through it. For the first time in my life somebody actually thought I might be good at something. I spoke fluent Chinese. So after a couple of years as a cub on the Globe, it wasn’t hard to get a job stringing back here for a whole bunch of US publications. It was like coming home. I’ve been here ever since.’