The Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  Inside, it took a few seconds for Field’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. He heard a hacking cough and followed Caprisi over to the corner, where he was greeting a young woman and holding both her hands. He had crouched down and was taking something out of his satchel—bread and a metal flask of clean water.

  “This is a”—he hesitated, looking at Field—“a friend.”

  Field knelt down and smiled at the girl. She was pretty. In another world, without the dirt on her face and the rags on her back and without the stench in this place, she might even have been beautiful.

  There were three children behind her. They stared at him, their eyes hollow with suffering. One, a girl, must have been six or seven; another, four or five; the youngest was a boy of, he guessed, two or three. Behind them a man lay flat on a thin straw mat, shirtless, his head on a small pile of clothes. When he coughed, it shook his entire body, shook the glistening sweat from its place.

  Caprisi spoke quickly in Chinese, with his back to Field.

  Field looked around the room. The five of them had only a small corner to themselves, and he estimated that there must be six or seven different families living in here, each with no more than a few square feet of floor space. They were all watching Caprisi and the woman, though most were trying to pretend they were busy with something else.

  Field looked back to see the American take something else from his satchel—a bottle that looked like medicine and what could have been a roll of money. He placed the items in the woman’s hand and closed his own over it.

  Caprisi stood. He touched each of the children on the head, as if blessing them, and then marched out. Field saw, as he passed, that he was upset and angry.

  The American did not slow down until they were back at the rickshaw. “Do you see now?” he asked.

  Field didn’t know how to answer.

  “You see the great city we’re building? We’re always fucking congratulating ourselves on how marvelous it is . . .”

  “Would it be any better if we weren’t here?”

  “Don’t hide behind false moral choices, Field. At least it would be their city.” Caprisi sighed. “She was begging outside my apartment with all her children, looking even worse than tonight. Her husband is an addict and he stole some opium from one of Lu’s men, so if he’s found he’ll be executed. His family probably will, too, as a warning to others.”

  “So you went to see Lu.”

  “They’re small-fry, nothing to him. I said I would pay for what he had stolen.”

  “But he said no?”

  Caprisi nodded.

  Field looked at his colleague, relief and regret threatening to swamp him. “I’m sorry.”

  “After all that we’ve said, you doubted me.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why?”

  Field crossed his arms defensively. “I was watching Granger on the telephone a couple days ago, after our first visit to the factory, and it suddenly occurred to me that if someone had called Lu to warn him that we were going to the factory—I mean if Granger had—then the operator would have made a record of it.”

  “And?”

  “The call came from your telephone.”

  “And you think I made it?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “But you have thought that?”

  Field said nothing for a moment, then nodded slowly. “You’ve been a friend to me—the only one who has—and I’m just so sorry.”

  There was another uneasy silence. Then Caprisi took hold of Field’s hand, shaking it hard. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, Field. That’s it now, all right?”

  Field felt his heart flooding with relief and warmth. “That’s it.” They clasped each other in a bear hug, then stepped apart, awkward in their newly rediscovered affection.

  “You know . . .” Caprisi stopped as a trolley full of night soil was wheeled past and they were both forced to take a step back. The smell, which caught at the back of their throats, hung in the air long after the cart had passed.

  Whatever he had been going to say, the American thought better of it.

  “What will become of them?” Field asked.

  “Of who?”

  “That family.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “To you.”

  Caprisi said, “But does it matter? I’m not changing a thing, am I? There are thousands like them. The parents die, the children are sold or starve to death or, if they’re lucky, wind up in an orphanage.”

  “If they’re lucky.” Field hesitated, his throat dry. “Lu says he has found homes for some of the children from the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage and takes them away . . .”

  “And?”

  “He must have found homes for them, mustn’t he? It’s not possible that he just . . . disposes of them?”

  “Field, this city is run by big business for big business. They pretend it’s part of the empire when it suits them, and if you’re American or British, then fine, but anyone else . . . Look around you.” Caprisi shook his head. “You think they care what Lu does with his own kind? You think your uncle or the French actually care how many little boys Lu takes away and abuses and dumps in the canals? You think what he does with them would make them pause over their breakfast served on silver salvers for a single fucking second? What do you think would be happening to ten times that number if Lu didn’t fund the orphanages in the first place? You’ve seen people dying in the streets. What do you think happens to the children once they’ve gone?”

  Caprisi’s voice had become hoarse with bitterness. He climbed into his rickshaw.

  “Caprisi.”

  “It is all right, Field.”

  “No it’s not.”

  Caprisi put his hand up to tell the rickshaw driver not to pull away. “So who did make that call?”

  Field didn’t have an answer.

  “Macleod left the office with me; we were the last to go. I switched the lights out.”

  Field was about to ask the American who he thought it had been, when Caprisi said, “Is there anything to tie Lewis directly to the murders? Do we have anything approaching evidence?”

  “We’ve just got Lena’s notes. The fact that the shipments are coming from his factory.” Field paused. “What I saw at Delancey’s.”

  “What about the boy? We believe he can identify Lewis, correct?”

  “I’ve found the orphanage where the boy was taken, but he’s been moved and the sister is going to need to be persuaded.”

  Caprisi flicked the dust from his trousers with the back of his hand. “What if we went to talk to Lewis? Said we had a witness who’d watched him go into Natalya Simonov’s house on the night of her murder. See how he reacts.”

  “Natalya?”

  “Her or Irina. He won’t be as prepared for questions about them. He knows we’ve got nothing to link him with Lena Orlov’s murder, but the others he may be less confident about.”

  “What about Macleod?”

  Caprisi had a stubborn set to his chin. “He can say he didn’t know we were doing it. As you’ve said, there may not be much time.”

  “I thought you said we should be careful.”

  “We can wait until another girl is killed, if you like.”

  Field shook his head.

  “Tough questioning,” Caprisi said, “might at least make him more cautious. He’ll surely be in less of a hurry to kill again if he thinks we are close to him.”

  “And what about Delancey’s?”

  “What about it?”

  “Perhaps we should begin by finding out exactly how cruel Lewis really is.”

  Caprisi thought about this. “Yes,” he said.

  The iron-framed door of Delancey’s was shut and no one answered the bell, so they had to walk down a dark side alley beneath a huge metal water tank in order to gain access.

  The Chinese secretary sitting at an untidy desk in the back office looked as if she would scream when they walked in. The door through to the s
tage was open, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes pervasive even in here. Two girls were sitting on the edge of the stage and turned nervously in their direction. Field was about to ask where the manager was when a short Chinese man appeared behind them. He had greasy black hair and sallow, pockmarked skin. He wore a dark pinstripe suit and two-tone shoes.

  “Help you?” His voice was higher-pitched than Field had expected, and “help” sounded more like “hep.”

  Caprisi looked at him as though he were a piece of excrement. “Detective Caprisi,” he said. “And this is Detective Field from Special Branch.”

  The man looked even more frightened than his secretary.

  “Charles Lewis is one of your clients.”

  The man looked nervously from Caprisi to Field and back again.

  “I’d like to speak to some of your girls.” Caprisi walked toward the door and out onto the stage.

  The manager was rooted to the spot for a moment, but then fluttered around Caprisi like an anxious bird. “You cannot,” he kept saying, but Caprisi ignored him.

  The American came down the stage and stood in front of two girls. If this club exuded a certain seedy glamour at night, it now appeared merely sad. The girls looked dirty and tired.

  “You both know Charles Lewis.” Caprisi spoke in English. Field knew it was for his benefit.

  The girls gave no sign of any acknowledgment. Field did not recognize their faces.

  “Have either of you been with him?”

  They stared at the floor.

  “We are investigating a series of murders of young women, and we need to know whether Mr. Lewis has ever shown violence to any of you.” Caprisi repeated himself in Shanghainese. “We know he likes to tie girls up. To use handcuffs. We know he likes to beat girls.”

  “You canno, must no,” the manager repeated in English, the ts at the end of the words lost.

  “Mr. Field,” Caprisi said.

  Field took a pace forward. “I’m afraid we believe that this establishment has been employed for the purpose of distributing Bolshevik propaganda.” Field repeated the last part of this sentence in halting Shanghainese. Caprisi corrected him. Field took out his revolver. “You will be handed over to the Chinese authorities; they are waiting for you.”

  Field stepped to the side and pushed the manager roughly toward the door. Caprisi tugged the two girls to their feet by the neck of their dresses. It took a moment for the message to sink in, and then both girls screamed. The manager shook his head but was unable to utter a word. “Taipan,” he managed to say. “Taipan.”

  Field pointed the revolver at his chest. “Have any of the girls here disappeared?” Caprisi asked. “Or has he ever met any of them outside of this club?”

  The manager shook his head so violently Field thought it might fall off. He looked at the girls, but they didn’t add anything.

  “He likes to handcuff the girls?”

  The manager nodded. Both the girls looked down.

  “Sometimes he hits them?”

  The manager nodded again.

  “Always,” the girl on the right said.

  Caprisi turned to her. “What does he do exactly?”

  “He uses handcuffs to the bed,” she said in Shanghainese, clearly enough for Field to understand. “Then he likes to hurt.”

  “Does he require you to wear certain clothes?”

  “He likes underclothes.” She lifted her dress to reveal a stained stocking.

  “What form does the violence take?”

  She didn’t understand this question and looked at the other girl, who indicated, with the flat of her hand against her face, that he liked to slap them.

  “But he has never taken it further than that? He has never asked to meet any of the girls outside of the club?”

  She shook her head.

  “There have been no unexplained disappearances?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Have any of the girls died this year in any circumstances?”

  “No,” she said.

  “How much violence does he like to inflict?”

  The girl looked down again and Caprisi glanced over toward Field, shaking his head.

  The Fraser’s headquarters was on the Bund. A uniformed security guard took them from the reception desk, across the wide marble lobby, to the lifts.

  Lewis’s office on the top floor reminded Field of the private room at the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, except that the windows were bigger here, affording a still more panoramic view of the bend in the river. Lewis’s desk faced the water and he sat in a leather chair, invisible save for his feet on the desk.

  Field looked out beyond him at a line of junks on the far side of the river that appeared to be sailing tied together. They bobbed up and down violently, their patchwork sails tilting to and fro like fans. A thick plume of smoke from another steamer cut a jagged line through the sky. Field could see the passengers on deck and sticking their heads through dirty portholes. New arrivals, he thought, feeling that his own seemed like years, rather than months, ago.

  When Lewis finally replaced the receiver, he swung round, dropping his legs to the floor. He stood and walked over to the sideboard. He was in a vest and shirtsleeves, and he moved aggressively. “This had better be good. Drink, gentlemen?”

  “No,” Caprisi said. “Thank you.”

  “Never drink on duty?”

  “Something like that. The shipments go the day after tomorrow. Will you be monitoring them?”

  Lewis looked at Caprisi, and then at Field, as if they were insane. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “We have a witness,” Caprisi said. He looked as if he were going to step forward and thump him. “A witness who saw you entering Natalya Simonov’s house on the night of her murder.”

  Lewis poured himself a whiskey. A muscle in his cheek was twitching, and he scratched the end of his long nose with an elegantly manicured fingernail. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You claim you’ve never heard of a Natalya Simonov?” Caprisi pulled out his notebook.

  Lewis was still being icily polite. “If you would care to explain, Officer, then perhaps I could help you.”

  “I’m sure you know that Natayla Simonov was the Orlov killer’s previous victim. We know you were seeing her, and have an eyewitness account of you going into her apartment on the night of her murder.”

  “Should I call a lawyer?”

  “It is your prerogative.”

  “That was a joke, Officer.” Lewis took out his cigarettes, lit one, and then threw the case to Field. “I’m afraid I have no idea who your Natalya is.”

  “She’s Natasha Medvedev’s sister,” Field said, without having intended to.

  “Poor old her.”

  “So you knew her?” Caprisi asked.

  “No.”

  “But you know Natasha Medvedev?”

  Lewis smiled. “There are a lot of fish in the sea, Officer.”

  Caprisi turned toward the wall. Like all the others, it was covered in pictures of previous taipans of the company.

  “Do you have family here?” Caprisi asked.

  “If you’re asking if I’m married, then the answer is no.”

  “Other family?”

  “Why is that relevant?”

  “I’d be grateful if you would answer the question, sir.”

  “Well, Officer, my father is, of course, dead, which is why I am taipan. My mother chose to return to Scotland. My first cousin Hamish and his wife are therefore my only close family here, though I have a number of other cousins involved at different levels of the company.”

  “Did you know Lena Orlov?”

  “As I have previously said, we may have met a couple of times at the Majestic.”

  “But you never went to her apartment?”

  “No.” Lewis had his arm draped over the leather chair. His eyes were steady as they moved between the two of them.

  “You’ve never been to
the Happy Times block?”

  “I didn’t say that, Officer.”

  Field felt his face reddening.

  “You’ve been to Miss Medvedev’s apartment?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Only once or twice?”

  “Generally speaking, Officer, I like to avoid associating with Russians. They’re too much trouble.”

  Caprisi moved toward the window. “Lena Orlov kept detailed notes about illegal shipments from one of your factories. We understand from Delancey’s that you have certain proclivities that would fit the profile of this case.”

  Lewis looked at Field, unperturbed. “Really, Officer.”

  “Lena Orlov believed she was going to escape Shanghai. She told friends that she’d been promised a passport and passage to a new life in Europe. She kept the details of these shipments as an insurance policy.”

  “Influential as I am, Officer, even I don’t have the right, I’m afraid, to hand out passports on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government.”

  The more Caprisi said, Field thought, the more languid and arrogant Lewis appeared to become. If, at first, he’d been irritated, he was now laughing at them. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

  “We have a witness who saw you going into Natalya Simonov’s apartment on the night of her murder. When we approached your factory on the first occasion, your men attempted to kill us.”

  “So what do you want from me, Officer, exactly?”

  “An explanation, before we move to bring charges.”

  “I keep thinking to myself that this must be April Fools’ Day.”

  “You can think what you like, Mr. Lewis.”

  “Gentlemen, I could go on all day. Really, I could. It’s been most amusing, but I have work to do.” His expression hardened. “I’m afraid to say that running the biggest company in Shanghai doesn’t give me much time for listening to this kind of fanciful nonsense.”

  “Very well.”

  “If you wish to bring charges, then please be my guest. But I suggest you run your so-called evidence past your superiors before you do so. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if you don’t.” He narrowed his eyes. “I may say that I’ve always been a great supporter of the work of our police force, but I am beginning to wonder why.” He looked from one to the other. “I’m sure you can show yourselves out. Do give my regards to Mr. Macleod.”