China Wife

by Hedley Harrison

  Her husband, for once, seemed to want her endorsement of his decision.

  ‘It has to be done. Xu is a liability. We can either buy him off, get him to disappear somewhere, or … eliminate him ourselves.’

  ‘Killing him won’t get the authorities off your back.’

  Her husband’s dark look told Linda that she was going too far. He wanted endorsement, not criticism. There were limits to how much she could manage him, and she knew that she had now reached them.

  ‘Then be careful.’

  It was almost a pointless admonition; Mr Shi was always careful.

  It didn’t take Mr Shi a long time to get to Mr Xu’s apartment. Xu was not alone. He was accompanied by a young woman, a niece, apparently his personal assistant among other things, called to the flat after the death of his most recent chief of staff. It did, however, take Mr Shi a long time to argue through his plans with Xu. Buying Xu off was not going to be easy.

  The debate was heated. Mr Xu’s assistant, one of the new modern, self-confident young Chinese women that Mr Shi particularly disliked, joined the argument with more force and subtlety than he was used to from any woman other than his wife. And his wife, so he thought, knew her place and when not to resist him.

  The argument was going nowhere; manners and traditional courtesy were breaking down but neither party seemed prepared to change their stance. What with time out for tea drinking and the other inconsequential accompaniments to the negotiations, they had been talking for over two hours. In the end, resolution came violently and unexpectedly.

  Janice made her way out through the Pudong District in a police van that was masquerading as an upmarket catering supplier, to the tower block of Mr Xu’s residence. Julie went with her. They parked at the service entrance in the secluded backyard out of sight from any the flats’ windows. Linda Shen went in her limousine. She swept into the main entrance publicly and openly. Her driver/minder was used to obeying with out question and then reporting back to Mr Shi.

  As always, Linda had a plausible story for visiting the area where Mr Xu lived. Her reason for stopping at the particular block of flats would have been unconvincing but, since she saw no need to explain herself to her minder, it wasn’t tested. Her reason for willingly joining Julie and Janice in their visit to Mr Xu didn’t allow for the fact that she had in effect been arrested by Janice. And as far as the driver was concerned, it wasn’t the first time that her limousine had been given a police escort.

  A small group of plain-clothed police officers was already in position around the block of flats and in the service areas.

  Janice had no reason to suppose that she was being watched, but, with Mr Shi’s empire steadily unravelling, she was mindful that many of his placemen in the various Chinese ministries were rushing for cover and were seeking to protect themselves. That made them dangerous, and as someone known to be investigating Mr Xu’s relations with people like Mr Shi she was taking precautions. Her orders were very clear and it was important that Xu got no warning.

  Mr Xu was an old man. Janice rightly supposed that the post-lunch period would be the best time to visit him when his guard would be relaxed and he was unlikely to be conducting any business. Mr Shi had come to the same conclusion and Linda’s decision to join forces with Julie and Janice was therefore timely. With her small taskforce Janice couldn’t afford any surprises.

  But Janice was good at her job. Now knowing that she wasn’t the only person to recognise this period as a good time to visit, she waited. It was mid-afternoon before they set out. The only uncertainty would be whether Mr Shi had left or not.

  Linda was already talking to the security supervisor for the tower block in the reception area when they arrived. She was looking worried.

  ‘My husband is still with Xu. His PA is with them; she’s also his bodyguard and likely to be armed. There’s extra security but this stupid gorilla won’t tell me what.’

  ‘We don’t have time,’ Janice said as the security supervisor was forced away from the reception desk at gunpoint and manhandled into one of the unmarked police cars that had now been carefully parked by the three entrances to the flats.

  The air conditioning in the tower block was arctic cold, but it wasn’t that that was making the terrified receptionist’s teeth chatter as she went to join the supervisor. As far as they could tell, Mr Xu had not been alerted to their arrival.

  ‘We’ll take the first lift. Follow in five minutes.’

  With their experience as trainees with the Border Agency, Julie and Linda were familiar with the process of raiding the premises of a suspect. They were happy to be in the follow-up team, however, since neither knew what role they were expected to play. One of the police teams sealed the building and stood guard in the reception area.

  The express lift left Janice and the police officer accompanying her with very little time to prepare themselves. As the doors opened at the twenty-seventh floor, the bodyguard lounging beside the apartment door tensed and moved his hand to his gun holster. The geriatric wheezing of the lift doors closing masked the sharp coughing sound of the silenced shot that struck the man in the forehead.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Janice muttered. Her instructions were to be as discreet as possible; they didn’t need a huge body count. The policeman would have argued that the man was reaching for his weapon.

  The shot was positioned in exactly the same place as the one that had killed Alice. Something of Janice’s reluctance died. But she didn’t have time to understand the mix of feelings that were worrying themselves to the surface of her mind.

  There were only two luxury apartments on each floor of the tower block. The entry doors were side by side, and Janice assumed that they were mirror images and that as they entered the one on the right the wall to their left would provide protection for their backs. Janice had no idea what the internal layout would be. They simply hadn’t had time for that sort of preparation.

  With the bodyguard on the outside, Janice also assumed that the apartment door would not be locked. It wasn’t.

  Sheltering behind the door, she pushed it open sufficiently for her to pass inside and then followed her gun into the vestibule. The policeman crept in behind her. She closed the door silently. Advancing, still without a sound, across the thick-piled carpet, she eased the door from the vestibule into the hall open and pushed it wide enough to give her full access to the exit when she needed it.

  A pantomime of gestures ensured that the policeman would stand guard, but would also let his colleagues in when they arrived with Linda and Julie. It was clear that the policeman was not happy with Janice proceeding further on her own.

  ‘This is for Alice,’ Janice told herself.

  The feeling that had emerged into her consciousness was a desire for justice for Alice, a justice that would make sense to her. And even if the courts were open to manipulation, Janice didn’t trust the system to deal with Mr Xu and provide Alice with that justice.

  The hall stretched out in front of her, opening into what she decided was a dining room. As far as she could see, the dining room had a minimum of furniture and wide spaces between it.

  ‘Plenty of space for Mr Xu’s wheelchair,’ she told herself.

  The shot that rang out was close. Janice froze. The policeman moved silently to her side, his machine pistol at the ready.

  41

  As the noise of the shot reverberated around the close confines of the apartment, Janice and the policeman waited nervously. A gabble of excited Mandarin eventually broke the silence. The harsh male voice was accusatory and the strident female voice defensive and truculent. They seemed to be very close to where Janice was hiding. Both listeners raised their weapons and directed then at the corner at the end of the hall.

  The woman was obviously the PA and bodyguard, and, equally obviously, had fired the shot. But at whom, and who the surviving male was, it took Janice a moment or two to work out.

  A short shriek bitten off into a groan rattled around the apa
rtment as the arguing voices seemed to move away. Whoever had been shot was still alive and not being attended to.

  Janice knew they couldn’t wait. If they called for help, they would be in all manner of shit.

  She waved the policeman back to guard the door. Something of the tone of the male voice and the fact that the man and woman had made no move to leave told Janice that it was Mr Shi, or someone else whom they didn’t know about, who had been shot. Mr Xu was still alive and therefore the danger for Janice was still significant.

  Apart from some valuable early Chinese paintings, the hall contained only what Janice assumed was a storage wardrobe for outdoor clothes. She was no connoisseur, so the beauty of the paintings and the contrast they formed with the unpleasant character of their owner were lost on her.

  She moved forward.

  Pausing at the end of the hall, masked from view by moving along the right-hand wall but giving herself the best angle of vision, Janice stopped to listen. Allowing her breathing to settle and her heart rate to slow, she strained to hear voices. She could hear only one male voice.

  This was what she had been expecting after what Linda had told her and what they had also learned from the receptionist for the apartment building. Mr Shi, for whatever reason, had not taken his own bodyguards; he had clearly not been expecting any problems with Xu. But these were only the principles; the possibility of there being another, or more, of Mr Xu’s bodyguards still had to be considered. In addition, while the snatches of conversation had told her that it was the woman who had done the shooting, Janice had no way of knowing whether Xu himself was armed.

  She had to go on.

  Somewhere around to the right and out of sight, and as she imagined in a further room, she could hear the staccato exchanges of a heated argument again. Mr Xu did not appear to be a happy man. The woman was being surprisingly assertive.

  Janice cautioned herself not to assume that, because they were arguing so violently, they would be off their guard.

  A telephone rang.

  Janice froze again, not knowing whether the telephone was in the same room as Mr Xu and his PA, or in the dining room out of her sight. She even didn’t know whether it was a mobile.

  It was answered by the female voice. The conversation was brief and Janice could hear the measured tones of the woman’s voice as she reported its content. The voices faded away into the distance again.

  Holding her breath, Janice once again followed her gun around the corner and into the dining room. The longer she hung around, the more chance there was of her being detected. As she took in the wall displays of exquisite, ancient and clearly valuable pottery, she admonished herself; she didn’t have time for sightseeing.

  Holy shit! (The idiom of her brief stay in Canada kept coming through at moments of stress!)

  Propped against the wall next to the door to what she assumed was the kitchen and breathing raspingly and irregularly, a middle-aged Chinese man stared silently at her. Linda’s husband, she assumed. She felt no sympathy for him. For Janice, he was as complicit in Alice’s death as Xu.

  She paused, her gun trained on the man.

  Don’t! she thought, willing the man to stay silent.

  A glance through the kitchen door told her that it was empty. To get to the lounge with the least chance of being seen, she was going to have to hug the wall and step over the injured man. She kept the gun pointing at Mr Shi’s head as she passed over him.

  This is for Alice, she reminded herself again.

  Clutching his stomach with blood seeping through his fingers, Mr Shi seemed to draw himself into himself. As she glanced back, his eyes flickered. She didn’t have time to speculate on what might be going through his mind. He had neither moved nor made a sound throughout.

  In front again was a wide opening into another sparsely furnished but luxurious lounge area. Janice relaxed a little. Neither of the two people she knew to be there were immediately in her vision. A warm draught, in contrast to the arctic feel of the rest of the rooms, attracted Janice’s attention. As she was to discover, the glass doors on to the balcony were wide enough open for Mr Xu’s wheelchair to pass easily to and fro.

  The young woman’s gasp as she stepped into Janice’s line of fire was terminated by the same sharp cough of her weapon.

  Shot through the heart, Janice didn’t have time to watch the woman collapse in an untidy heap in front of her. Sidestepping the body, she bounded fully into the lounge area, tracking her weapon on to a man whom she instantly assumed to be a second but otherwise silent bodyguard. She fired as she steadied herself.

  The man’s shriek and then strangled groan told Janice that she hadn’t killed him. Staggering back towards the doorway that she subsequently found provided access to the more private parts of the apartment, he pulled sharply at his own weapon. Her second shot at close range was devastatingly successful in ending his resistance. The Glock pistol that he had almost succeeded in aiming at her pitched from his grasp and slithered along the carpet to come to rest against the wheel of Mr Xu’s chair.

  For the first time, Janice was aware of Mr Xu.

  What Janice was not aware of were the movements and noises both from the hallway and from the back stairs that opened into the apartment, as Julie and Linda and the police reinforcements arrived.

  Much to Janice’s surprise, the expression on Mr Xu’s face was a mixture of distaste for her and irritation that his disability wouldn’t allow him to reach down and retrieve the bodyguard’s weapon. Janice had no doubt that he would have used it had he been able to.

  As the sounds of gunfire reverberated away, the quiet hiss of the air conditioning resumed its place as the dominant sound.

  Janice surveyed the scene quickly. Out of her sight and hearing, the arriving police captain assessed the situation. From the hall he could see no more than Janice had been able to. Concerned not to exacerbate any situation, he restrained his men. A groan from Mr Shi concentrated attention. The policeman who had accompanied Janice gave his officer a whispered briefing.

  The captain cautiously peered around the end of the hall wall and saw the blood-covered Mr Shi. Joined by Linda, he was in time to witness the harsh, retching last breaths of the businessman.

  Mr Xu’s wheelchair was a lightweight model imported from Britain. As she continued to check out the apartment, the elderly Chinese man slowly but purposefully moved his chair across in front of the balcony entrance, but, as she quickly realised, also towards the opening into the dining room and entrance hall.

  ‘You’re a cool customer,’ Janice said in as pleasant and as neutral a voice she could manage. She knew that Xu would understand English.

  But she was worried that her calm wasn’t going to last. Surrounded by the signs of such luxury, something that she would never ever have the opportunity to enjoy, her anger at the brutally pointless death of Alice began to boil up inside her.

  She moved to confront Mr Xu standing over him with her back to the very area that he had clearly been heading for.

  ‘You killed Alice Hou,’ she said.

  It was a cold statement.

  Xu didn’t quibble. The look of amused contempt that suffused his face was too much for Janice. Despite his vulnerability, Xu’s arrogant disdain overrode any other feelings.

  His eyes darted from Janice to behind her. He’d seen something else. But Janice was too focused on her sense of injustice to notice the change in Mr Xu’s expression. All she saw, and thought she sensed, was the contempt for Alice, or at least for people like Alice. As she recognised later, Alice was little more than a photograph to Xu.

  Still unnoticed by Janice, Xu looked behind her again and the smugness of his expression increased. He was clearly expecting the arriving police to protect him.

  It was Xu’s attempt to move forward again that finally forced Janice to concentrate all her attention on him. Then she realised what was in his mind.

  ‘Shitty little bastard!’

  Janice’s anger welled
up, heightened by the recognition of the pathetic inadequacy of her Anglo-Canadian invective and by the total lack of reaction from Xu.

  ‘Janice!’

  It was a command that she didn’t hear.

  In one swift movement she grasped the wheelchair, swung it round and propelled it out on to the balcony.

  The startled grunt that the old man emitted sounded like the beginnings of the death throes of the family pig, a memory that instantly surged up from Janice’s childhood.

  ‘Stop!’

  It was another command that Janice didn’t hear. The strident order in Chinese from the police captain and in English from Julie Li simply didn’t penetrate Janice’s consciousness.

  Quickly drawing herself back, she propelled the wheelchair at the balcony railing with all the force she could muster. Mr Xu pitched forward but was trapped by the wrought ironwork until Janice could reposition her hold and force the flimsy chair up and over the rail. Overbalanced by Mr Xu’s weight which was now being unsupported in space, the wheelchair was torn from Janice’s grasp.

  The only noise at first was the collective gasp as Mr Xu ceased to be visible, then a babble of unintelligible questions, accusations and remonstrations took over.

  Two hours later, in the office of her superior, Janice was contrite but not regretful. And to her astonishment she was neither discharged nor demoted nor even reprimanded.

  Untroubled by grief at the loss of her husband, and planning her return to the UK with her son, Linda Shen could have told Janice that somewhere lost in the tortuous minds of the top echelons of the Communist system the fact that Mr Xu was dead was appreciated as a problem that no longer had to be solved. With the command of the media, with ranks closed around the remaining officials and politicians, irrespective of innocence or hidden guilt, the only public admissions that followed from the events surrounding the Hu Hengsen wedding and its aftermath, were of the existence of modest corruption and of the total success in suppressing it.