The Far Side of the Night

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  Paul ran back into the foyer.

  “David!?”

  Paul was gradually beginning to feel panic rising in him. Please, David, please come out of your hiding place.

  The lifts. David was fascinated by lifts. Why hadn’t he thought of that in the first instance? He had probably taken the lift alone up to the room on the twenty-eighth floor.

  But he wouldn’t have been able to press the top-most button without help. Had someone lifted him up?

  Paul ran down the long hallway. They had the second last room. He burst into it. David? Oh my David, where are you?

  Nothing.

  He felt ill.

  Had David got out on another floor? He could be on any floor of the hotel.

  In any room.

  On the way back to the lift he heard a child’s voice in another room. He knocked on the door but no one answered. He knocked more loudly, hammered on the door with both fists, and then he heard the child’s voice again, coming from the room next door. A young woman opened that door, carrying a small, frightened-looking little girl, whose big eyes looked at him in alarm. Paul excused himself for disturbing them.

  He tried to remain calm, to gather his thoughts. He must not let fear overwhelm him.

  He noticed cameras beneath the ceiling of the hallway. The hotel had CCTV. He usually detested it, but it was now a blessing. With its help he would find his son in a few minutes.

  The woman at the reception desk did not answer his question. Not in Chinese. Not in English. Paul started shouting.

  An older man took her place and introduced himself as the ‘Duty Manager’.

  No, he had not seen the child, but it was no problem to look at the CCTV footage from the last fifteen minutes. No, Paul could not see it himself, only the trained security personnel could. Everything would be cleared up. He mustn’t worry himself. He just had to be patient.

  Paul kept looking. He took the lift down to the swimming pool. Ran through the fitness studio, the bar and the café next to it, more and more quickly and more and more upset. He wrenched doors open and screamed his son’s name into empty rooms and dark basements.

  When he returned to the foyer he was a different man.

  I’m sorry to have to tell you . . .

  There were two new faces at the reception desk. The duty manager was nowhere to be seen. Where was he and when would he return? They looked at him as though they did not know who he was talking about. Instead, a younger man came up to him. He was responsible for the security in the hotel. They had looked at the footage thoroughly and found nothing suspicious. The cameras covered about eighty percent of the hallways and the pushchair had been in a blind corner.

  Paul did not believe a word he said.

  VII

  Paul sat collapsed into himself on a chair in the police station. Zhang, who was sitting next to him, thought he had aged years. He was muttering to himself, constantly blaming himself. How could he have left his son alone? Every so often he looked questioningly at his friend as if Zhang could tell him where David was.

  The two policemen were exceptionally polite and helpful to him. They acknowledged the presence of a monk with him casually. They offered Paul cigarettes and tea, placed a dish of roasted melon seeds on the table and tried to calm him down. David had most probably slipped out of the hotel without being noticed and got lost. The city center of Shi was almost one hundred percent covered with CCTV cameras. They would find him. No question about it. This sort of thing happened more often than you thought. Only the day before yesterday they had brought a five-year-old girl back to her parents after searching for hours when she had got lost while they were shopping.

  All the things policemen say in situations like this, Zhang thought. He knew better. Time was not on their side. With every hour, no, every minute that passed, the chance of finding David grew slimmer and slimmer.

  People smuggling. Zhang had no doubt that this was what they were dealing with. This was a business that made a lot of money in China. Tens of thousands of young women disappeared every year. Kidnapped, lured into traps with false promises or bundled into lorries in broad daylight and sold as wives in remote provinces. Thousands of children also disappeared every year. Especially boys around David’s age, who were valued goods. They were snatched and sold to childless couples, to farmers without sons or sold abroad. Only very few of them ever saw their parents again.

  Zhang had interrogated a few people smugglers in his time as a police inspector. Most of them lived miserable lives themselves: migrant workers from the countryside who had failed to make a living in the cities, who had no jobs but had families in the villages waiting for their monthly remittances, often depending on them for survival. That did not excuse anything, as he had always said to his skeptical wife and his son when he told them about these criminals. But it explained things a little.

  None of those men would have dared to choose a victim from a luxury hotel. It was only in the last few years of his time as a police inspector that people smuggling had become professionalized. The criminals were younger, smarter, better organized, and educated, though he did not like to use that word in this context. They channeled their victims through the provinces quickly and efficiently. They took orders for size, age, appearance, and gender and gave delivery dates. People had become products.

  Like everything else in this country.

  Many of these criminals organized themselves into larger cartels, entirely in the spirit of the free market economy that now dominated, in order to increase their productivity and market share.

  If David had fallen victim to one of these well-organized people smuggling operations, he would no longer be in the city, Zhang thought. Even if there was CCTV footage showing him disappearing into a car, the number plate would be covered up and the windows would be tinted. The color and the model of the car would be so common that it could not be identified. David had probably disappeared without trace this afternoon, forever.

  He thought he could see from the looks that the two policemen exchanged that they thought the same thing. Paul described once more what had happened that afternoon and the minutes before David disappeared. No, he had not felt as if someone was following him. He had not noticed anything suspicious. No strangers had spoken to him. Neither the day before yesterday, after they had arrived, nor yesterday. And not this morning either.

  He described his increasingly desperate search for his son.

  The policemen thought there might be clues in the hotel’s CCTV footage. Their officers were already on the way to the hotel to see the footage. They would soon know more.

  It was the two gray SUVs in front of the hotel that made them suspicious.

  Paul only remembered the man at the wheel vaguely. His face had been scarred. He had not noticed anyone else in the vehicle; he hadn’t been able to see into it.

  Any suspicious sounds? Paul thought about this. No. And even if there had been, the thumping music had drowned everything out.

  The older of the two policemen rang the officers who were viewing the CCTV footage. They were to seek out the footage from the cameras by the driveway and entrance urgently, view it and look out for two gray Mercedes SUVs. He would stay on the line with them.

  They waited in silence. The two policemen lit cigarettes.

  The policeman on the phone did not like what he was told next at all. And it grew worse and worse. Zhang could tell from the flashing of his eyes, the thinning of his lips, and the way he ground his teeth.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he lied to them. He could deceive Paul, perhaps, but not Zhang.

  “We’ll find the owner of the vehicles through the license plates and check them out just in case. Maybe they noticed something suspicious.”

  Paul had to go to the toilet. One of the policemen accompanied him.

  “There were no number plates on the cars,” Zhang said as soon as he was alone with the other policeman.

  The police inspector gave him a searching loo
k and dragged at his cigarette in silence. The two men were about the same age and had probably had many of the same experiences in thirty years of police service. Seen too much of the things people did to each other. Heard too many lies. Too many excuses and too little understanding. Stared into abysses without finding a trace of comfort. Judging by the sadness in his eyes, time had made him a melancholy man too.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I was a police inspector in the homicide division in Shenzhen for thirty years.”

  The policeman started. He took another drag at his cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly through his nose.

  “The number plates are not the problem.”

  “What, then?” Zhang asked, confused.

  “Sometimes knowing is a much greater problem than not knowing.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Your friend will not see his son again.” After a long pause, he added, “He shouldn’t even try to find him. Do him a favor: stop him from doing so.”

  “How do you think you can do that?” Zhang retorted in annoyance. “Of course he will do everything to find his child again. You would do that too.”

  “Maybe he has other children who still need him? A wife that he wishes to see again?”

  A horrible feeling was creeping over Zhang. He asked if he could see the footage. In confidence, of course.

  The policeman shook his head and stubbed his cigarette out.

  It would have been a small gesture to make for a former colleague. With his experience, he might have been able to spot something that passed younger officers by.

  “It’s being erased as we speak,” he said. “Be glad that you don’t know what there is to see on it.”

  VIII

  No, he did not want to go back to the hotel now. He didn’t care what the police inspector recommended. How could Zhang seriously believe that he could rest while the police were looking for his son? Rest! What a ridiculous idea. He wanted to help with the search. He would walk the streets around the Shangri-La in a systematic way, look in every doorway, every courtyard and every building entrance. He would knock on doors and ask other children if they had seen David, he would go to playgrounds. He would not take no for an answer. He had a photograph of David with him. Maybe someone had seen him. A passer by? The sales assistants in the teashop opposite the hotel? In the supermarket. In the kiosk. In the restaurant. In the small row of shops one block away. He would not rest until he had found his son. The policemen themselves said that little children often got lost, more often than you thought; children got lost because they were curious. And they always turned up again.

  Or maybe a car had run over him and he was in one of the city’s hospitals. They hadn’t even talked about that yet – the hospitals. He would ring them up, one after another, no matter if the police were doing the same. Another phone call did no harm. Or was it better to go in person to each of them and ask for information at the accident and emergency departments? He did not care how many hospitals there were in Shi.

  Or maybe someone had seen David crying on the street and taken him home for safety. Now they did not know where to take him because David did not know the name of the hotel. Maybe they should make copies of his photo and pin them to trees and buildings near the hotel. Maybe it was possible to ask the local TV stations for help. They could broadcast a photo of David. Is that a good idea, Zhang? They would find him somewhere in the next few hours, alive and well. Children did not vanish without a trace, did they, Zhang? You were a policeman. You know that. Say something, Zhang. Say something.

  IX

  She had been filled with a sense of quiet anticipation all day. This was the first time since David’s birth that Christine had spent two nights without her son. She had not slept more badly than usual as a result; she was not that kind of mother. The two days in the office had been packed with appointments and she had not had much time to think about him at length. So she was looking forward to seeing him all the more. A long weekend just with David and Paul lay ahead. Without rushing between home and work. Without the constant complaints from her jealous mother.

  Three days, she hoped, that would do her and Paul good as well. They had neglected each other since David’s birth. Their roles as mother and father occupied almost all of their selves. The days were long and the nights with Paul were short. They often got to bed at ten o’clock too tired to talk about the day or to read even a couple of pages of a book. They were parents. They were happy to be parents, but there was little time left for them to be lovers. They had both forgotten or suppressed the memories of how tiring it was to be the parents of a small child.

  _________

  Christine saw at once that something was wrong.

  His eyes. The face drained of blood. Skin like ash. No smile at seeing her again.

  He must have had food poisoning and hardly slept. He should have said something. She could have taken a taxi to the hotel by herself.

  Paul and Zhang. Where was her son?

  Was he hiding behind one of the pillars? Behind his father? Christine stood still and looked around her. She did not like his constant hide-and-seek games.

  The other flight passengers streamed past her toward the exit. Some of them pushed and swore because she was in their way.

  Had he run out in front of a car? Fallen down the stairs? Had an accident in the hotel pool, perhaps? If he was lying somewhere in a hospital, why was Paul not by his side? Why had he not phoned her to give her warning?

  Where was David? She felt an ominous foreboding rising within her.

  Suddenly Paul was next to her and taking her in his arms. For moment she hoped she had just been imagining things.

  David was fine.

  He was in the hotel. A babysitter was watching over him as he slept.

  Tell me that’s where he is, Paul.

  He said nothing. He held her tight with arms that had no strength.

  They sat huddled in a corner of the terminal and he spoke quietly, avoiding her gaze.

  “How could you leave him alone in the foyer?” She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. Look at me!

  “Why didn’t you take him into the toilet with you?” How could he have been so careless?

  He had no answers.

  “Why didn’t you look after him better?” She pushed him away from her, jumped up, and wanted to get away; where to, she did not know.

  She screamed a torrent of random words. Within seconds they were surrounded by plainclothes policemen.

  Zhang explained the situation to them and tried to calm Christine down. He understood how frightened she was, but the police in Shi seemed competent; they were searching for David far and wide. Everything seemed to indicate that David had run out of the hotel and got lost. It was only a matter of time until he was found.

  His body language and the look in his eyes said something different.

  _________

  Christine wanted to see everything. The foyer. The toilets. Tables. Display cabinets. The café. She walked through the foyer and walked every conceivable route that her son could have taken in the hotel. Like a sniffer dog trying to pick up the boy’s scent.

  She pulled herself together and was functioning again: she downloaded the latest photos of David from her phone for the police and described her son in detail: his height and weight, how shy he was, whether he would go off with a stranger, his favorite ice cream, the kinds of toys he liked. The officials took copious notes. It was long past midnight by the time she lay down next to Paul in bed and could give way to endless sobbing.

  He did not try to comfort her. In the last few hours, he had tried several times to take her in his arms, but she had turned away every time. The pain was too great. Her head hurt, as did her limbs, and her stomach. She did not want to be comforted.

  She could barely stand the sound of him breathing heavily next to her and she suddenly found his familiar smell, which she usually loved, unpleasant.

  W
here was David? The fear and the not knowing were driving her crazy. While talking to the police, images had appeared in her head, images that she had immediately suppressed. David lying injured in a ditch. Or bleeding by the side of a road after a hit-and-run accident. He was crying and calling out for her. She had turned her full attention to the official’s questions. But in the loneliness of the night she could no longer manage to block out her imagination.

  Maybe he had really got lost and was now sitting in a garage or dark basement somewhere he had accidentally been locked into.

  Or maybe a pedophile had lured him home. He was easy prey: so trusting and curious. On Lamma there had been no reason to warn him about strangers. She felt ill. There were possibilities that were too huge, too horrific, that she could not allow herself to think about.

  Had someone kidnapped him in order to sell him? In the South China Morning Post she saw articles from time to time about people smugglers and Chinese parents who were desperately searching for their children and whom the authorities ignored. His kidnapper would at least treat him well, she hoped. He was their contraband.

  Her little David. Who was so afraid of the dark. Who had never been apart from his parents for a single day of his life until now. How frightened must he be? Was he crying? Was he sleeping? Was he injured? Was he hurt?

  Why was she not with him? Why could she not help him? It was unforgiveable. They had failed as parents. Their job was to protect their child from harm.

  She shouldn’t have let him travel to Shi alone with his father. Why had she gone to work instead of coming with them? It was all her fault. And Paul’s.

  Her fault.

  Her fault.

  And Paul’s.

  Her fault.

  Her fault.

  And Paul’s.

  When she could no longer think of anything else and when these words were the only thing filling her mind, she took two of the sleeping tablets that Zhang had given her.

  She felt her body relaxing, letting go, and everything receding slowly into the distance and losing its meaning. Then she fell asleep.