On both sides, at the entrances to the bridge, the Shanghai Volunteers had built sandbagged posts to guard the crossing. Three men, armed with rifles, stood in the cold rain outside the defences, their uniforms covered by damp dark green ponchos.
Danilov broke the silence. ‘These weren’t here yesterday.’
‘They’ve gone up on all the major bridges. Inspector Sheehan probably built them. I heard he was in the Royal Engineers during the war.’
‘You’re not in the Volunteers, Strachan?’
‘Won’t have men like me, sir.’ It was said matter-of-factly, but Danilov heard the deep sense of hurt beneath the words.
‘Did you apply?’
‘No point. They won’t accept my application. They will say, “Sorry, old chap, no places at the moment.” Or “Wait till we form a new company for Eurasians, then you can apply.”’
As they passed Broadway on the right-hand side and Tiendong Road on the left, the area began to change character. The conspicuous mix of Western and Chinese elements in the main part of the International Settlement gave way to a different, more alien culture: Chinese characters and the Western alphabet were replaced by Japanese kanji. Restaurants with red lanterns illuminating their doorways gave way to tiny izakaya with blue-cloth noren protecting the entrance. The red, white and blue of the British flag was superseded by the scarlet sun against a white background.
Even the streets were cleaner, the chaos and jumble of Chinese roads replaced by order and cleanliness. Despite the rain, Japanese women carrying waxed umbrellas, dressed in traditional kimonos and wooden sandals, swept the pavements outside their shops, collecting the waste in neat wicker baskets.
This was still the International Settlement, but it was a different place. An alien place.
Danilov immediately noticed another difference. ‘There are no beggars.’
‘The Japanese residents moved them on, sir. Apparently they cluttered up the streets.’
They turned left along Woochang Road. On either side now, the streets were predominantly Japanese, as if the car had been picked up by an airship and dropped in the middle of Tokyo.
‘I sometimes come to eat here with Elina. The sukiyaki is wonderful, especially in winter.’
Danilov didn’t answer.
They turned sharp right.
‘The building site is up here on the left, sir.’
Strachan edged the Buick to the side of the road, provoking loud, expletive-laden shouts from a pair of rickshaw drivers who had to veer sharply out of the way.
Danilov opened the door and stepped out. Instantly, the coal-sodden smell of a cold Shanghai afternoon hit him. At least the air was the same in this part of town.
Up ahead, the busy crossroads in front of Hong Kew market was packed with carts, donkeys, rickshaw drivers, hawkers shouting their wares, trucks and trailers. In the middle of it all, two Sikh policemen wrapped in dark-blue overcoats were trying to bring a semblance of order to the chaos, but failing miserably.
On the right, a group of travelling players had attracted an audience around them, blocking half of the street. Above the assembled shaven heads of the crowd, a woman was balancing on a chair, held aloft by a ladder of three men, her sodden clothes dripping onto her supporters. The performance continued despite the rain, despite the cold, as it did every day of the year.
Danilov loved the streets of Shanghai even on a cold, wet winter’s day. Each road exhibited a human pantomime of sadness and joy, poverty and wealth, despair and happiness. Often, when a case became too complicated or the prolonged silence of his wife too much, he simply walked the streets, each step of his journey clearing his mind of its fog.
He turned through 360 degrees to take in the surrounding neighbourhood. It was thoroughly Japanese, a tiny corner of Tokyo in a foreign land.
‘What’s that, Strachan?’ he said, pointing to an ornate building.
The detective sergeant peered past the railings surrounding the building site to the large brick-built structure towering over the scene. ‘It’s the Japanese Club, I think, sir.’
Danilov stepped away from the car towards the building site. The wooden fence surrounding it was covered in a multitude of posters advertising the latest films, political demonstrations, performances of shentan opera and Noh theatre, and a variety of nightclubs.
Next to the entrance, an unblemished poster depicted a wolf dressed in Japanese uniform holding a samurai sword, about to lop off the head of a Chinese beggar, whose begging cup was extended upwards.
‘What does it say?’ asked Danilov.
‘There are only five characters, sir. The beggar is obviously China asking for the return of Manchuria. I think it’s from one of the student groups criticising what they see as the begging attitude of China’s leaders to the Japanese. The want us to be more aggressive. It’s quite savage. Not very respectful.’
‘Us? asked Danilov with a raised eyebrow.
Before Strachan could answer, a small man dressed in an off-green uniform rushed out from a tiny shed beside the door, halted in front of Danilov, brought his heels together and saluted smartly. ‘Liang, report far dute.’ There followed a long speech in Chinese, which Strachan translated.
‘He says his name is Private Liang Ah Soo, ex-Chinese Expeditionary Force, from Chekiang province, Huchow county, Longshan village. He’s an old soldier. One of the Chinese who sailed to the Western Front in 1916. He considers it an honour to be speaking to an officer of the British Crown again.’
‘Spare me the details of his ancestry, Strachan, and explain to him that I’m just a lowly copper. Did he find the body of the boy?’
Strachan questioned the man. ‘He did, sir. Yesterday afternoon at exactly six o’clock. He always comes back at this time after taking his break.’
The man saluted once again. His face broke into a broad smile, a solitary brown tooth sitting in a line of pink gums.
‘Can he show me where he found the body?’
The man saluted once more and then marched over the broken ground to the left-hand side of the building site. After passing a stack of rose-coloured bricks and a pallet of cement bags, he stopped in front of a neat pile of wooden planks and joists. The wood was still green and unseasoned, giving off an aroma of fresh pine and bleach.
Strachan brought out the photographs and showed the first one to the man.
‘He says this is how the body was when he found it.’
‘Did he move it or touch it?’
Strachan translated. The man shook his head vigorously.
‘Then how did he know there was a body beneath the tarpaulin?’
Again the broad smile crept across the man’s face. The skin around his eyes wrinkled, swallowing them in its embrace. He began talking in a sing-song voice, heavy with the dialect of Chekiang.
Strachan translated, trying to slow the man down as he spoke. ‘He lifted the tarpaulin and peeked beneath. He knew the boy was dead. Saw a lot of death in France, he says. He was a member of the burial details scouring no-man’s-land after the battles, digging temporary graves.’
Danilov stepped forward to examine the wood. ‘There was no blood here?’
The man spoke again, with Strachan translating. ‘Hardly any blood on the wood, apparently, just a few smears. He was surprised. His boss ordered him to clean what there was off with bleach this morning. They want to use the wood for building, sir.’
‘Nothing goes to waste in Shanghai, Strachan.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Sheehan should have put a constable here to make sure the crime scene wasn’t disturbed.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t have time, sir.’
‘Don’t excuse incompetence, Strachan. Ask the man if he saw anything or anybody suspicious yesterday.’
Strachan asked the question in Shanghainese. The man shook his head.
‘Nothing, sir. It was a normal day. The boss brought a few of the little buggers to see the site. He wants to sell the building to them.’
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br /> ‘Little buggers?’
‘His name for the Japanese, sir.’
Danilov stepped back and looked around. In the building opposite, one window overlooked the murder scene. Had anybody been looking out of the window? ‘Strachan, let’s have a chat with the people inside the Japanese Club.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Strachan made it obvious that he was checking his watch.
‘I do know the time, Strachan.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Come on, we won’t be long. My son isn’t going anywhere.’
Danilov started to stride towards the entrance. Before he could go three steps, his arm was grabbed by the old soldier. There followed a long speech with much pointing and gesturing.
‘He says he tried to tell the other officer but the man was in a hurry. His uniform did look like a soldier’s, though, unlike yours, sir.’
‘What other officer? What uniform?’
‘I think he means Inspector Sheehan. He must have been wearing his Volunteers uniform when he came to the crime scene.’
‘What did he try to tell the officer, Strachan?’
The man grabbed Danilov’s arm again, chattering constantly, and led him to the fence behind the stack of wood. High up on it was painted a symbol. A stylised image of an arch in a flattened circle, the crossbeam flaring into two pointed ends.
‘He says this wasn’t here yesterday afternoon before the murder. He only noticed it after he called the police. He tried to explain to the officer but he didn’t seem to be interested.’
‘Get the photographer and the scene-of-crime people here immediately, Strachan. I want the symbol photographed, the paint swabbed and the whole area fingerprinted again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sheehan’s report was a waste of time. Let’s do it properly.’
The old soldier stepped forward, licked his index finger, reached up above his head and touched the symbol. Danilov could see that a smear of the brownish-red paint had come away from the wood onto the tip of his finger.
The man walked back to Danilov holding his finger aloft, chattering away all the time in his thick Chekiang brogue. Standing in front of the inspector, he tasted the smeared finger with the tip of his tongue.
‘He says this isn’t paint, sir. It’s blood.’
9
The drive to Danilov’s apartment was undertaken in silence, punctuated only by the noise of Strachan striking his horn to clear the rain-drenched rickshaw drivers out of the way.
They had waited at the building site for the arrival of the crime-scene team, and Danilov had stood over them making sure the wood was properly fingerprinted, bloodstains – or what was left of them – collected and the symbol photographed.
All the time, Strachan had been glancing at his watch, seeing the minutes and hours tick away. It had been six o’clock by the time they left.
In the car, the inspector smoked continuously, using the stimulus of tobacco to force his mind to consider the intricacies of the case. Who was the young boy and why had he been mutilated? If it was a simple murder, why desecrate the body? Why place it on a wood pile in the middle of a building site? The killer could have just dumped it beside the road. The fact that it was placed where it was, with an ex-soldier for a security guard, meant it would be found. Had the killer wanted it to be discovered? And what was the meaning of the symbol painted in blood beside the corpse?
Too many questions, not enough answers.
‘We’re nearly there, sir.’
‘Thank you, Strachan.’
They parked the car and rushed up the stairs to the second floor. The ceremony should have been held at Ivan’s graveside in Hung Chiao cemetery, but the drive was too long for Archpriest Simonov, so Maria, Danilov’s wife, had decided to hold it in their apartment.
When Danilov pushed open the door, the air inside was heavy with incense. The ceremony had already started and Archpriest Simonov was in the middle of his oration.
As the inspector entered, all ten people in the room, including the archpriest, stopped and stared at him. Each person was holding a lit candle, the flames gently wavering in the still air of the room. In the trembling yellow light, Danilov didn’t recognise most of the faces. Friends of his wife’s perhaps, from the church she prayed in every day.
‘Sorry, we were held up,’ he mumbled in Russian.
Maria looked away.
The furniture in the living room had been pushed back to the far wall, except for one table placed in the centre. On the table stood the family icon, purchased a year ago from the church. In front was a large bowl of kolyva, a traditional dish of boiled wheat, nuts and raisins cooked by his wife that morning. Next to the icon and the bowl, a picture of Ivan when he was only eight years old. The day of a picnic in the Governor’s Garden beside the lake. Ivan wearing a sailor’s outfit with a straw boater, his hand pressed to his head to keep the hat in place and a broad smile etched on his face.
So different from Danilov’s last memory of his son: in a hospital bed, unconscious, a tube leading from his nose to a bottle beside the bed, his body broken by the explosion. It had taken him six weeks to die. Six long weeks during which, every night, Danilov had passed the long hours till dawn dozing in an old chair whilst his wife tried to rest at home.
He had spent those hours with Ivan going over the past, thinking what he could have done differently; how he could have stopped the Character Killer from planting the bomb. How he could have saved his son’s life. Wondering time and time again why Ivan had opened the package rather than him
He never found the answers to his questions in those long hours sitting beside his son’s hospital bed.
He still didn’t have the answer.
A young boy, fourteen years old, paying for the sins of the father.
Archpriest Simonov coughed and continued his sermon in Russian. ‘St Makary of Alexandria states that after bowing down before God on the third day, the soul is directed to view the various pleasant abodes of the saints and the beauty of Paradise. The soul in wonder examines all of this for six days, and praises God, the Creator of all. Contemplating all of this, the soul changes, forgetting the sorrow it felt while in the body.’
Danilov edged forward through the mourners to stand beside his daughter. Elina handed him a candle without saying a word. Maria continued to stare straight ahead at the priest, her face lit from beneath by the flickering light.
To Danilov, she had never looked as beautiful as she did at that moment.
The priest continued. ‘Our dearly departed son Ivan has entered the place of eternal peace. A Christian’s date of death is his birthday into a new, better life. On this date, his second birth, into Heaven, we beg God’s mercy, that the Lord have mercy upon his soul, grant the homeland prepared for eternal enjoyment and make him a resident of Paradise.’
His assistant waved the censer and the room was flooded with the overpowering sweetness of the incense; a rich, heady scent, filling the body and the mind.
‘As love, according to the Apostle, never ceases, so death does not sever the union of love between us and our departed brothers and sisters. They live in spirit with us, who remain on earth; we keep our memory of them alive in our hearts. We especially rekindle that memory on the days of their death, anniversaries on which we hurry to prayer, faith and love, to the most efficacious means by which to satisfy the demands of a heart burning with love, and to bring joy and ease to the souls of those who have moved away from us and into the world upon high.’
The assistant sprinkled water from a pointed silver vessel over Maria, the drops forming on her cheeks like tears. He then walked around the room dispensing the water over the rest of the mourners, and finally on Danilov, before returning to the side of the archpriest.
Inspector Danilov was far too much of a humanist to be a believer any more, but he recognised that his wife found great comfort in the Church. In the time after Ivan’s death, she had offered their son’s name to be commemorated in the lit
urgy and at the panikhida. She had ordered the performance of the sorokoust as soon as the death had occurred and followed it up by paying for the psalter to be read for the first forty days.
Danilov had gone along with this to help her with her grief, and even to help himself. But two years later, she was still grieving and he had never felt more alone. Their son’s death was commemorated during the second Saturday of the Great Fast, the third Saturday of the Great Fast, the fourth Saturday of the Great Fast, Radonitsa, the week before Pentecost Sunday, and the week before the commemoration of St Dimitri.
There was never a time when his death wasn’t being celebrated. It was as if he were still alive, a presence inserted between them because one was responsible for his absence.
The archpriest blessed the small congregation to end the ceremony. Each person then blew out the light to symbolise the transience of life. The room was dark and silent for a second before somebody opened the curtains and the grey light of a Shanghai winter crept in.
His daughter leant over to him and whispered, ‘You were late.’
‘I know: work, a murder.’
‘It’s Shanghai. There’s always work, there’s always murder.’
She moved away from him to rejoin her mother, who was talking to the priest and giving him alms for his trouble. Danilov eyed a second envelope being handed over. The priest was refusing it with elaborate courtesy.
‘No, I insist, Father, to help finish St Nicholas. We must have our own church in Shanghai.’
Finally the priest accepted the extra envelope, slipping it into a pocket stitched into the lining of his golden surplice.
Danilov’s wife still hadn’t spoken to him. He reached over to touch her shoulder. She moved away, into the kitchen, a few moments later bringing out some loaves of flat bread.
The priest raised his arms in blessing. ‘St Phanourios bread. We don’t see this often any more. Mrs Danilova, you are going to give it to the poor?’
The Killing Time Page 4