Chinese Whispers (The China Thrillers 6)

by Peter May

  ‘Cao Xu.’

  The old man stopped in mid wipe and looked at Li, a strange light in his eyes. ‘Why do you want to know about little Xu?’

  ‘You remember him, then?’

  ‘Of course I do. He was a great kid. One of the favourites at the orphanage. Everyone loved him. He used to call me papa.’ Li tried to keep from getting excited. His hopes had been dashed too many times in recent days. ‘Always had a twinkle in his eye and a quip on his lips.’

  It certainly didn’t sound like the Cao Xu that Li knew.

  ‘Have you come to visit him?’

  Li was aware of stopping breathing, and it took a conscious effort for him to draw breath again. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘Of course.’ Old Meng glanced at the big clock on the wall. ‘But you’ll need to wait until I finish at six. And then I’ll take you to him.’

  * * *

  Li had never known an hour to pass so slowly. He sat on a low wall in the courtyard outside the municipal building smoking cigarette after cigarette. More for something to do than anything else, he had crossed the road to a small general store on the corner and bought a pack. Now he was nearly halfway through it, and his mouth felt dry and kippered. It was ten past six and almost dark before the old man pushed open the door of the main building and came down the steps towards him, dwarfed by his big coat and wearing a thermal ski cap. He made Li think of his father, and his heart lurched with the memory of the old man abandoned in Lao Dai’s apartment. He must be wondering what had happened to his son.

  ‘You got a car?’ old Meng said. Li shook his head. ‘We’ll need a taxi then.’

  The taxi ride took less than fifteen minutes. Li sat in the back, while the old man sat up front with the driver arguing about the best route to take, a constant dialogue. Li watched the city slip by him as darkness fell. It was darker than Beijing. Here there were fewer lights. They did not have as much power to waste. Li had no idea where they were, or where they were going. He heard the name Taigang mentioned several times, but it meant nothing to him. And then through the windscreen he saw a huge floodlit tower like a cut-down Washington Monument reaching into the blackness. The taxi drew up on the side of a small square dominated by the stone needle and old Meng climbed stiffly out. Li followed him and looked around. This was no residential area. An area of parkland brooded darkly behind a high fence. The gates to it stood opposite the tower.

  ‘We’d better hurry,’ the old man said. ‘They’ll be closing up shortly.’

  Li followed him across the cobbles and through the gates. There seemed to be one long, treelined avenue washed by the light of ornamental street lamps, and small paths led off at right-angles to left and right. ‘Where the hell are we?’ Li asked.

  ‘Tomb park,’ said old Meng. And he pointed ahead to a large, floodlit monument. As they approached it Li saw that it was a memorial tomb to the soldiers who died fighting to liberate Taiyuan from the grip of the Nationalists in 1948. It was inscribed, Niutuozai Soldiers’ Tomb.

  Li turned away from the glare of the floodlights and looked around him. And as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the poorly lit pathways that criss-crossed the park, he suddenly realised where he was. ‘It’s a cemetery,’ he said. In the cities no one buried their dead any more. Land was at a premium. Cremation was the only permitted form of disposal.

  ‘This way,’ old Meng said. And he headed off to the left down a long pathway strewn with leaves. Small posts with built-in lights every few metres cast feeble illumination across their route. Li could see the mounds on either side, and the stone tablets raised in the memory of the dead. He had seen graves in the countryside, where the peasants still buried their dead on the land. He had attended many cremations. But he had never been in a city cemetery like this before, hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies interred all around him. He pulled his coat tight to keep out the cold, damp sorrow of the place. Old Meng stopped and took out a small flashlight from a bag slung across his shoulder and flashed its beam from one headstone to another. ‘Somewhere around here,’ he mumbled. Then, ‘Ah, here he is.’

  Li’s mouth was dry, and he felt the blood pulsing in his throat, as he knelt down beside a small, plain headstone lying crookedly at one end of a short mound. The municipal authorities clearly made some attempt at keeping the cemetery from falling into total ruin, but still the grass grew up around the tablet, almost obscuring it. He pulled it aside, and by the light of Meng’s lamp rubbed away the layer of moss that concealed the inscription.

  ‘Scarlet fever,’ Meng said. ‘Took him in a matter of days.’

  Li took the flashlight from him and peered through its light at the faded characters carved in the stone. It said simply, Cao Xu. 1948–1962. He had been only fourteen years old when he died.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I

  There were queues of people up ahead trying to get into the hard class waiting room. A female announcer with a high-pitched nasal voice cut above the gabble in the station to announce the departure of the 19.10 train to Shanghai, followed by information about a delay in the arrival of the 14.45 from Xian. Strings of red electronic characters streamed across information boards. A woman in a white smock was selling hot noodles in polystyrene cartons.

  Li checked into the soft class waiting room and glanced at the departure board. As far as he could tell, his train would leave on time. A 7.30p.m. departure, arriving back in Beijing at 2.30 the following morning. Seven hours! He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It seemed like an eternity.

  The real Cao Xu was dead. Carried away in childhood by scarlet fever. He had the testimony of the old man, and knew from him that there were others who worked at the orphanage back then who were still alive and would remember him, too. And there must be kids they could track down who would recall the real Cao Xu – and his passing.

  But Li was the only person who knew how it all fitted together. The only one who could convincingly discredit the man who had stolen a dead child’s identity and lived a lie for more than forty years. That put Li, and everyone close to him, in danger. When he left this morning, his cellphone was dead. He had forgotten to recharge the battery. So Margaret had loaned him hers. He took it out now and dialled the number of the Harts’ apartment. Lyang answered. Her voice sounded dull and lifeless.

  ‘Everything alright?’ Li asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You want to speak to Margaret?’

  Margaret’s voice was full of concern. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘Yes. I found Cao Xu.’

  There was a moment of stunned silence on the other end of the line. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He died, Margaret. From scarlet fever, aged fourteen. I’ve seen his grave. The orphanage where he grew up was destroyed by fire in the early seventies, along with all its records. He must have torched the place to cover his tracks.’

  There was more silence from Margaret’s end. ‘But if he didn’t come from Taiyuan, how did he even know of this boy’s existence to be able to steal his identity? And if he set the place on fire, then he must have been there. Why didn’t he recognise the twin pagodas?’

  Li thought about the overgrown remains of what had once been the Wutaishan Orphanage, almost in the shadow of the twin pagodas. It would have been impossible to have been there without seeing them. And if Cao, or whoever he was, had seen them, then he would have registered a MERMER response during the demonstration. A black cloud descended on his mind, obscuring the clarity he thought he had found here in Taiyuan City. ‘I don’t know. Either the fire at the orphanage was a quirk of fate, and he just took advantage of it, or …’ He hardly dared think about it. ‘Or someone else set the fire for him.’

  ‘Which means that someone else knows that he’s not who he says he is.’

  ‘Or knew,’ Li said. ‘It seems that people don’t live very long when they know the truth.’r />
  ‘Oh, Li Yan.’ He heard the fear in Margaret’s voice. ‘For God’s sake be careful.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back sometime before three.’

  He disconnected the phone, and dropped into a soft leather seat to stare up at the electronic arrivals and departures board, seething with a latent fury that had been building in him these last few days, determined that the killing would stop here, that he would get his life back again, and that the man who called himself Cao Xu would be brought, finally, to justice.

  But he had no idea how he was going to make it through the next seven hours.

  II

  The lights of an airplane tracked their way across the vast expanse of black sky visible through the open curtain. Margaret lay on the bed twisted in her nightshirt. It was warm in the apartment, in spite of the subzero temperatures outside, and she had pushed aside the duvet in an attempt to cool herself. For a second night she could not sleep, too many thoughts crowding an already overcrowded mind. She had tossed and turned restlessly, too hot under the duvet, slightly chilled without it. Again and again she turned everything Li had told her over in her head. But still there was something that did not chime, something that did not quite make sense. And underlying everything, was a dread of what awaited her in just over twenty-four hours. Expulsion from China; the thought that she might be parted from her son; the fear that she might never see him again if she was.

  It did not help that Lyang had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and was now breathing heavily, turned away from Margaret and lying on her side. She had been poor company all day, morose and monosyllabic. Understandable in the circumstances. But Margaret suspected that she had also been taking some kind of sedative. Her eyes were dead, lacking the life that Margaret had seen in them when they’d first met only four days ago. She was slow in response to anything Margaret said to her, and she did not seem to have eaten anything all day. Margaret had done her best to keep the children amused, but it had been a strain. And now when she wanted to sleep, it was eluding her again.

  The red digital display told her it was 1.14 a.m. She closed her eyes, and felt the ache behind them. She tried to empty her mind, and let sleep steal in to carry her off. Instead, she was startled upright by the ringing of a telephone on the bedside table

  Lyang moaned in her sleep and rolled over, but she did not wake up. The phone rang three, four times. Long, single rings. Margaret shook her by the shoulder. ‘Lyang, wake up for God’s sake!’

  Lyang opened bleary eyes. ‘What…’

  ‘The phone!’ Margaret almost shouted at her. She was scared to answer herself in case the caller spoke Chinese.

  Lyang glanced over at the clock, but couldn’t make out the blurred red figures. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s a quarter past one.’

  ‘Who the hell’s phoning at this time of the morning?’ Lyang reached over and lifted the receiver. ‘Wei?’ She listened for a moment, frowning, then thrust the phone towards Margaret. ‘It’s for you.’

  Margaret’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘Me?’ Her heart was still pounding. Who knew she was here apart from Li? ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Someone called Dai. He says you’ll know who he is.’

  ‘Dai?’ Now she was scared. She grabbed the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Magret,’ Dai said. ‘Am so sorry to phone at this hour of night. I don’t wanna scare you, but Li Yan’s father, he is not well. His heart, maybe. I have telephone for ambulance, but who know when it arrive. Please come here. You doctah, right? He need help.’

  ‘Jesus …’ Margaret’s thoughts were racing. ‘Keep him warm, okay? Get him to lie flat with a blanket over him. Don’t let him stop breathing. You know CPR?’

  ‘Sure. It part of police training.’

  ‘Okay, hang on till I get there. How long by taxi?’

  ‘Fifteen minute, maybe. Not long.’

  ‘Okay, give me your address …’ She searched quickly through the drawer in the bedside cabinet and found a pen and a scrap of paper. She scribbled down the address and hung up.

  ‘What is it?’ Lyang asked. She was fully awake now, and watching Margaret, concerned.

  ‘I think Li Yan’s father’s had a heart attack. I’m going straight over there in case the ambulance doesn’t arrive in time. Will you be alright with the kids?’

  ‘Sure I will. They’re out of it anyway.’ She swung her legs out of the bed. ‘Let me call you a taxi. It could be long enough before you pick one up in the street at this time of the morning.’

  * * *

  It was bitterly cold as Margaret stepped from the northwest tower into the garden and hurried along the path by the small stream. She pulled her oversized anorak around herself for warmth. The area of white paving stones indelibly stained with the blood of Bill Hart had been replaced by a gang of workmen first thing the previous morning. The lighting in the garden was muted at this hour. Just enough for Margaret to see by. She crossed the stream and up steps to the entrance lobby on the south side. The night security guard looked up from behind his desk where he was reading some lurid magazine and creating a fog of cigarette smoke all by himself. She scarcely gave him a glance as she ran across the lobby and out through the gate to the street. A taxi stood idling at the kerbside. Margaret climbed into the front seat where she found herself separated from the driver by a metal cage. Through the bars, she slipped him the note in Chinese that Lyang had given her of old Dai’s address. The driver snorted and spat a gob of mucus out through the open window on his side of the cab. ‘OK,’ he said. He rolled up his window, passed her back her note, and the car juddered off into the road.

  The streets were almost deserted as the taxi made its way on to the Third Ring Road and headed south. Margaret was aware of the driver glancing at her curiously. It was not often that some blue-eyed, fair-haired foreign devil would get into his cab in the middle of the night and ask to be taken into the heart of a Chinese residential area. He turned west off the ring road at the Huawei Bridge on to Songyu Nan Lu, and drove along its treelined length without passing another vehicle. At the cancer hospital they joined the Second Ring Road for a short distance before turning south on Fangzhuang Lu.

  Margaret’s initial panic was wearing off, to be replaced, as she sat thinking about it, by a growing unease. How on earth had Dai known where to find her? She supposed it was possible that Li had told him. But he had dropped his father off with Dai even before they knew about Bill Hart’s murder. Perhaps he had phoned later to leave a contact number.

  She replayed the phone call in her mind. She had only met Dai on a handful of occasions, but been struck each time by just how perfect his command of English was. Tonight he had called her Magret. He had dropped his plurals and spoken always in the present tense. And yet his English had still been good. Perhaps under stress it was just not as good as at other times. She glanced nervously at her watch. If she had known how to, she would have told the driver to hurry up. He seemed to be taking the journey at an unusually leisurely rate.

  They were in Pufang Lu now, heading west through a forest of tower blocks rising above trees rattling dying leaves in the wind. The driver dropped her on the corner opposite Dai’s block and pointed it out. She gave him twenty yuan. ‘Syeh-syeh,’ she said, and as she ran across the road the wind blew her anorak open to let the November wind caress her with its icy fingers. The cold made her eyes water.

  She hurried down the path past the shuttered jian bing stall and turned up steps through the doorway on to the ground floor landing. It was gloomy in here and smelled of stale cooking and body odour. The elevator was turned off, and the gate on the stairwell was shut. She cursed, looking around for some kind of telephone entry system, but could not see anything. By chance she tried the stairgate and it swung open. Either the last resident to use it had forgotten to lock it, or it was broken. She didn’t care. She took the steps two at a time, pausing on the third landing to catch her breath, before runn
ing up the next two flights. On the fifth landing she stopped for several moments, leaning against the wall, her breath rasping and abrasive in her lungs. Then she heaved herself off the wall and ran along the doors looking for the number 504.

  Of course, it was the last door she came to. There was no bell, and she banged on it hard with the flat of her hand. When there was no response, she banged again. Harder, and called his name. A door further along the hall flew open, and a man’s voice shouted imprecations at her. She ignored him and kept banging until, finally, she heard stirring within, the rattling of a chain, and the door opened a crack.

  ‘Mister Dai, Mister Dai, let me in! It’s Margaret.’

  The door opened wider, and a pale-faced Dai stood blinking in the landing light, dressed in his pyjamas, a worn silk dressing gown hastily pulled around him. He looked both frightened and puzzled. ‘Margaret … What are you doing here?’

  Margaret’s panic was returning now. ‘You phoned me!’ she almost shouted.

  ‘What?’ The old man looked at her as if she was mad.

  ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God.’ Margaret was almost incoherent. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Mister Li, is there?’

  Dai was shaking his head. ‘Of course there isn’t. He’s asleep. Or, at least, he was. What in the name …?’

  But Margaret pushed past him into the tiny apartment. ‘Where’s your phone?’

  Lao Dai shut the door firmly behind them and led her through to a small, tidy sitting room. ‘I will not even ask,’ he said, and pointed to the phone on a low table beside the settee.

  Margaret fumbled for the piece of paper with Dai’s address. Thank God Lyang had had the foresight to write her own telephone number on the back of it in case Margaret needed to call. Margaret dialled it now. The phone rang. Three, four, five times. ‘Come on, come on,’ Margaret urged through clenched teeth. ‘Answer, for God’s sake!’ But it just kept on ringing. By the time it reached the tenth ring, her insides had turned to jelly. How could she have been so stupid! She hung up and looked at Dai, as if he might provide her with the inspiration for what to do next. But he only looked perplexed, and not a little scared.