China Wife

by Hedley Harrison

  Janice and Julie were both distraught in their own ways at Alice’s death. When the ballistics evidence showed that it was Mr Xu’s chief of staff’s bullet that had killed her, Julie’s distress turned to anger. Why the Xu faction had killed off its own asset was beyond her – her own high-stress trip through and from Australia now seemed totally pointless. But she was powerless to express her anger, and in any case she was an outsider whom the authorities would want removed from the scene as quickly as possible.

  Janice, with a clearer understanding of how people like Mr Xu worked, might have agreed with Julie about the pointless waste of an asset but, for her, Alice’s death seemed to be more down to the panicked action of a youthful and inexperienced chief of staff.

  What Janice’s further response to the death would be Julie and David had yet to find out.

  39

  The fallout from events at Hu Hengsen’s country house created high levels of anxiety, even fear and panic, across a whole swathe of Shanghai’s official, political and business establishment.

  ‘Hellfire.’

  Linda Shen’s amusement at her husband’s use of an English expression that was a favourite of hers was tempered by the scowl that went with it.

  ‘What is going on?’

  Mr Shi, when his wife didn’t attend the wedding at the Hu house, didn’t go either. Nonetheless, he proved to be one of the few businessmen to break through the wall of immediate silence that the authorities had erected around events. Linda didn’t ask what he knew or how he had found out; she preferred to be ignorant of such information. She had always been very careful not to know the names of any of her husband’s corrupt contacts.

  She did, however, plan her day so that she could visit the Shanghai Yu Garden Hotel; her contacts had told her that a favoured Westerner, a British journalist, would be staying there. The opportunity to meet up with such people came very rarely in China. How she intended to use the meeting, if it could be engineered, she only had rather vague ideas about.

  With its usual efficiency in managing the media, the Shanghai Communist leadership had spun the reporting of the fracas at the Hu house as in-fighting among the criminal fraternity. To the Shanghai media, and thence to the media of the rest of China, there was no evidence of any involvement by officials or politicians.

  Unlike Linda’s preferred ignorance, however, Janice and David knew full well that there were officials and politicians involved. Much to David’s surprise and consternation, the police vans spiriting these people away were actually on the road back to Shanghai before the ambulances carrying the wounded.

  ‘This is China,’ Janice had said, reading something of David’s thoughts.

  Alice’s death had been a deep shock to Janice. The unfairness of it and the unprofessional murmurings in her head calling for revenge rather than retribution were beginning to disturb her. Contact with David Hutchinson, coupled with her limited experience of life in Canada, was causing her to question the inevitable dismissive official attitude to the killing. Alice’s brutal death should not have happened, yet, because her killer was shot down in the chaos, no one now seemed to care. But this killing was personal to Janice and she knew whom to blame for it.

  The number of businessmen and corrupt officials and politicians arrested at the Hu house and then in the subsequent follow-up campaign came as a shock to some of the more detached members of the Communist hierarchy. The inevitable internecine warfare within the hierarchy, which, as Susie Peveral had suspected, had made it acceptable for David to observe and report on events at the wedding, had led in the past to inaction and connivance. The more enlightened bureaucrats were aware of unresolved issues of corruption within the Chinese State, but with the most senior Party members often shielded from the realities of everyday life the scale of the corruption and the level that it had reached up to were only just beginning to be appreciated. A vigorous response was anticipated once the immediate fallout had been dealt with.

  The lounge of the Shanghai Yu Garden Hotel was deserted. Janice and David had returned the previous evening to be told that they had a meeting the next day with a senior bureaucrat. The invitation, which Janice knew was more an instruction, caused her some anxiety.

  ‘Damage limitation,’ she had said to David. ‘They’ll want to use your report as a means of showing that they were on top of the situation.’

  David wasn’t sure which situation Janice was talking about. His report was about the whole process of importing high-value women into China; the hiatus at the Hu’s house wasn’t something that he’d expected to be involved in or saw as fundamental to his conclusions.

  Normally the centre of the bustling social activity of the hotel, the lounge had been cleared of people. They were shown in by no lesser person than the hotel general manager.

  After two days spent in the gloomy and spartan luxury of an unnamed Army camp following the action at the Hu Hengsen house, the return to something more typical of his lifestyle was very welcome to David.

  ‘That’s the report. And the still photographs and videos that go with it.’

  Handing over the tiny flash drive to the inevitable nameless official from the Interior Ministry from Beijing before they left the Army barracks had seemed like an anticlimax.

  Janice had looked on. The nameless official had ignored her, even though he knew what her contribution to identifying the route of the people traffickers and engineering the final confrontation at Mr Hu’s house had been. For him, there was still unfinished business before the trafficking of high-value women into China was finally suppressed. Mr Xu was as yet untouched and so were his backers like Mr Shi. The official, knowing who Janice was, would have expected her to be a part of any continuing action to be taken.

  David’s unease at the whole reporting project had never been very far from the surface. Nor had it been very far from asserting itself as he had spent time preparing and presenting a version of events at the Hu house, something that he didn’t see as relevant to his findings and which he had witnessed only under official insistence. It had been made clear to David that irrespective of the importance that he might place on it, he would have to make more of the handover and marriage of Alice than seemed to be relevant to the main thrust of his report. The intensity of the politics was obvious. His problem was to finalise a version of his findings that satisfied his conscience, contained no untruths, but could still survive the editing attentions of the unnamed men he had been obliged to work with.

  The Beijing official at least accepted the report without question, confident that his minions would ensure that the desired spin would be put on David’s words.

  God knows what will get lost in translation.

  In the event very little was. The subsequent political tinkering with the report had been minimal; the most fiercely contested changes that the Chinese spin doctors wanted were about ensuring that the message that they wanted left in the minds of readers was clear and unambiguous.

  But now, as the flash drive disappeared into the briefcase of the official, a sense of unreality overtook David. He couldn’t believe that he had done what he had just done. He knew that he had produced the report, he knew that he had been at the events at the Hu house, but deep down he was struggling with disbelief. How could such a secretive and exclusive political system as that of the Chinese countenance a Western journalist essentially presenting the facts of a very controversial chain of events exposing the corrupt underbelly of their State? The only way he could understand it was if the Chinese authorities somehow saw themselves as victims of criminal activity that was externally originated and that they were trying to justify themselves to the outside world. There wouldn’t be any need for any political spin to be put on that situation.

  That’d be a first!

  Never again, David thought to himself once again.

  But as Susie Peveral had known when she had originally facilitated the deal for David to work with the Chinese, no journalist ever says ‘Never again’ an
d means it.

  ‘It’s who you are, David,’ she had said after their last exuberant meeting, ‘not what you write that most of the world will remember. And tomorrow an earthquake or a riot in Tehran will take over and all this will be forgotten.’

  ‘Jesus, Susie, you’re no better than the rest of them.’

  Nonetheless he had known, and still knew, that Susie’s cynical take on the report was true. Like so much of the work that he did, it could still end up as a footnote, however significant he or Susie might have thought it to be.

  But as the hotel general manager showed David into the seemingly empty lounge these thoughts disappeared from his mind as he sensed the man’s wary deference to whoever was waiting there to meet them.

  A group of three men were sitting in an arc of chairs in front of the windows. David was aware of two or three other shadowy figures in the background. As they were urged forward, two of the men stood up and moved to seats behind; the third remained seated but gestured at David and Janice to each take one of the seats just vacated. The smile of greeting was open, friendly and rather more animated than David had become used to from Chinese officials. After his initial greeting, the official took no further notice of Janice.

  David was experienced enough to know that, however open, urbane and friendly the man was, it was only his agenda that was going to matter.

  Tea was served. The conversation was slow to get started, for David left it to his host to take the lead. He took his time. The man made no effort to introduce himself, but the all-round deference shown to him identified him as someone very senior in the Communist hierarchy.

  ‘Mr Hutchinson, you will be returning to Hong Kong and then to Australia or Great Britain.’

  It was a statement in impeccable English, not a question, but David got no sense of pressure or urgency. He nodded his agreement.

  The man then referred to a sheaf of papers that he had been holding and had clearly been discussing when David and Janice had arrived.

  ‘This is very good. I wonder whether …?’

  The discussion of David’s report that then took place was detailed, thorough, challenging and intense. The conversation told David nothing about the man beyond the fact that he was very shrewd and perceptive; what his personal views were or whether the report was acceptable as well as ‘very good’ were never addressed.

  David didn’t really care. As he explained the basis of his conclusions, he had an overwhelming desire to get away from the artificiality of the Chinese bureaucracy. He had had his fill of facts being managed to fit conclusions rather conclusions determined from facts. He no longer felt that he owned the report; he really didn’t care what they did with it.

  Finally, they were allowed to go.

  ‘Never again!’

  And he really did mean it.

  40

  It wasn’t as easy in Shanghai for Linda Shen to elude her driver-cum-minder as it was in London. In Shanghai, it was the minder who had the detailed knowledge, not her. And even dressed down as she had tried to be, she was so obviously one of the elite that sliding unnoticed into the hotel via the kitchen basement entrance would have been next to impossible without attracting notice. Attracting notice was something that Linda was desperate not to do.

  ‘Breakfast!’

  She had delivered her son to her mother-in-law with her usual reluctance. Much as she disliked her husband’s mother, the old lady doted on the child and the child responded. But Linda was becoming increasingly aware of the potential need to extract her son and herself from the family if, as she firmly believed was becoming possible, her husband’s whole business edifice came crashing down around their ears.

  ‘Breakfast,’ Linda repeated, egging herself on to enter the hotel dining room.

  As she hesitated, a wave of uncertainty came over her. She hadn’t planned out what she wanted to achieve by visiting the hotel; that was uncharacteristic. Even her husband was beginning to admire, unstated naturally, the detailed way that she organised whatever she did.

  ‘Linda … Linda?’

  There was a hesitancy first time, then a more confident assertion of her name. Whoever was addressing her definitely knew her.

  Linda stiffened and relaxed. It was not the voice of one of her trophy wife acquaintances who was quietly hailing her.

  ‘Julie.’

  They were hugging each other before Linda could even initiate any thought of the wisdom of such a public display of recognition and affection.

  They disengaged.

  It was clear that Julie had already been seated by the head waiter. She steered Linda into the buffet queue, silently signifying that she should join her. Linda followed Julie’s lead.

  ‘This is Janice. It’s probably best not to ask!’

  Julie’s introduction was greeted by a surprised but friendly nod and grin from Linda. Janice’s handshake was more cautious. The tension between Janice and Linda was immediately obvious to Julie. Janice recognised the expensively turned-out young woman as one of the new breed of Chinese women like herself; the suspicion that she might be one of the imported high-value woman was quickly confirmed as a name to fit Linda’s face flashed up in her mind.

  ‘Linda Shen.’

  ‘You know each other?’

  Julie looked surprised and Linda looked momentarily anxious. But Janice’s opportunistic mind was already exploring possibilities. The tension eased.

  ‘I know who Linda is,’ she said, ‘but we’ve never met.’

  Julie was starving. She hadn’t slept properly for several nights and the nervous energy that she had been expending had increased her metabolic rate considerably, or at least so she told herself.

  They all ate silently for a while.

  It was down to her, Linda said to herself.

  The tension eased some more; Janice didn’t appear to be threatening in any way. She had to grasp the opportunity of meeting Julie. She had known that she was in Shanghai but hadn’t expected to meet her; she had been more interested in David Hutchinson, in any case; her husband had told her about him. How he knew about the journalist notwithstanding the media blackout was another thing Linda didn’t want to know. The problem for her nonetheless was Janice; Linda didn’t know who she was and why Julie and she were on such friendly terms. But although Linda was beginning to see Janice as an opportunity, much as Janice was now seeing her as one, she still needed to know who she was.

  Enlightenment came quickly. A uniformed policeman approached the table and hovered. Janice got up to go and talk to him. It didn’t then take Linda long to realise what Julie already knew; Janice was in an official capacity and in authority.

  ‘Are you working with her?’ Linda asked, quickly taking advantage of Janice’s absence.

  ‘Yes. She’s one of the good guys. If we get the chance, I’ll tell you what’s going on.’

  Janice re-joined the two other women. If Julie was working with this woman, the risk in talking to her, Linda reasoned, had to be minimal. From everything she knew about her from the past, Linda trusted Julie’s judgement. In any case, having eavesdropped on some of her husband’s conversations, and listened to his convoluted justifications of his devious planned actions, she actually had an increasingly clear picture of what might be going on.

  The ill-formed plan of speaking to David Hutchinson faded in Linda’s mind.

  She made an instant decision.

  ‘My husband has gone to see Mr Xu; you know who Mr Xu is? My husband is a backer of many of Mr Xu’s schemes.’

  Janice knew who Mr Xu was. It was an unexpected and valuable piece of information.

  The timing was right; Janice knew that she had to act now.

  She had yet to consider how Linda could be usefully involved in the action that was to follow. With her husband visiting Mr Xu, the most obviously important thing was to keep his wife with them to avoid any risk of he or Xu being alerted.

  The idea that Linda might be prepared to act against her husband had yet to
form in Janice’s mind.

  ‘This is madness!’

  Linda Shen had been surprised when her husband had made the effort the evening before her decision to seek out David Hutchinson at the Shanghai Yu Garden Hotel, to talk to her. Following events at the abortive wedding, he was clearly more concerned about the current clamp-down by the authorities than he had been about any of the others in the past. His confidence and trust in his small body of bought officials and politicians had been all but destroyed. Action was needed both to distance himself from the more risky aspects of his past activities but also to preserve and protect those other projects that he depended on for his income flow and wealth creation.

  It was a situation that Mr Shi had discussed with his associates, but obviously not Mr Xu, and he already had the tacit agreement of his closest allies to sacrificing their fixer. He wasn’t one of the tight elite group that commanded total loyalty, and Mr Shi suspected that Xu would always act on his own self-interest, just as he would be doing. And for this increasingly depleted elite group, action was imperative and urgent.

  Linda’s immediate and more practical concern, however, was about the unstable relationships that had developed between her husband and his retained corrupt officials and politicians. In their desperate efforts to run for cover and prove themselves whiter than white, the real risk of betrayal was from the fickle self-seekers for whom no clemency would be available within the Communist system. His placemen were not going to sacrifice themselves for her husband, of that she was convinced. Such a high-profile end to his business activities would threaten her plans for a smooth takeover of his assets for her son at his death. That Linda thought his imminent death a very real possibility had coloured her actions ever since the fiasco at the Hus’ non-wedding.