The limousines of the chief of police and the head of the homicide division were already parked in front of the office building. Both of them were much more than old acquaintances. In a town like Shenzhen a businessman had to have the most important party functionaries and the police on his side. He had taken care of that. He had given the chief of police an apartment and the most senior homicide detective a BMW. He had often taken these men to brothels and been generous with his gifts; he had enough incriminating information about them to finish their careers the next time there was a political campaign against corrupt officials.
He would not have to remind them about that.
XIII
The Cathay Heavy Metal factory was in an industrial park in the northwest of Shenzhen, a good way from the new airport. Zhang had gotten hold of the last one of the unmarked police cars available, an old VW Passat whose seats and suspension were so worn out that every little bump in the road caused him pain in his back. Like most of the manufacturing plants Zhang had visited, the grounds of this one looked like a small fortress. It was surrounded by high metal fences with security guards crouching by watch posts in front; young men in ill-fitting uniforms who stood at attention and saluted whenever a vehicle that they knew passed but who checked on every stranger with an attitude of suspicion. Zhang drove around the factory compound once, slowly; it covered about a block. He saw an office building and several halls, with the workers’ living quarters behind them. Next to the entrance, three big Chinese flags and two big American ones were fluttering in the wind.
Black limousines were waiting in the parking lot outside the office, one of them a big Mercedes. He recognized two of the cars by their number plates: They belonged to the police headquarters’ fleet. He wrote the numbers down so that he could find out later who the Mercedes belonged to and who had ordered the official cars. Zhang could not remember any of his colleagues mentioning a visit to Cathay Heavy Metal during their meeting that morning.
Opposite the factory were several streets full of shops, restaurants, and tearooms where the workers of nearby businesses could meet after their shifts or on weekends. Zhang searched for a Sichuan restaurant. The migrant workers from that province no doubt gathered there, and he could strike up a conversation with them in their dialect without anyone asking him where he came from and what he was doing there. Coming from Sichuan would be enough for them to accept him as one of their own.
He was in luck; only two streets away, he spotted the Old Sichuan. The neon sign over the entrance promised the best hot pot in Shenzhen. The restaurant was run down, the red carpet was worn and covered with oil and food stains, and the fish bobbing up and down in the tank by the back wall looked half dead. But the place was full. The food must be good, Zhang thought, and he walked slowly through the restaurant, glancing around as if he were looking for someone he knew. He did not see anyone he wanted to sit next to. There were a dozen tables with plastic stools in front of the door; even they were all occupied despite the heat.
A group of men wearing gray overalls with the Cathay Heavy Metal logo on them was sitting at one table talking loudly among themselves. He drew up a stool alongside them, asked for a cigarette, asked if they would recommend the hot pot, whether it was as good as it was in Chongqing, said how happy he was to hear his dialect being spoken, and before he knew it they had invited him to eat with them, ordering another plate, a glass, and a beer for him without being asked.
The men were just starting on their meal. In the middle of the table was a pot of bubbling broth that smelled delicious. Around it were several plates of ingredients: shitake and oyster mushrooms, watercress, cauliflower, bean sprouts, lotus roots, tofu, chicken, smoked bacon, thin slices of meat, and pig’s kidneys. The very sight of it all made him homesick. Although he had lived in Shenzhen for over twenty years, he had not taken the town to heart. How was a person to become familiar with a place that changed so quickly that none of its inhabitants recognized it after a few years? New developments had to make way before long for newer buildings, while someone somewhere was already planning even newer buildings. How was a person supposed to put down roots when he was being uprooted every few years? Zhang also did not like the southern Chinese hustle and bustle, doing business here, there, and everywhere. He often missed the relaxed and easygoing atmosphere that he was familiar with in Chengdu. Mei had to constantly promise that they would move back to his hometown once he had retired.
The men around him clearly felt the same way. They told him how homesick they were and how difficult it was for the unmarried among them to find a wife, about their dreams of opening a small shop, tearoom, or restaurant in Chengdu or Chongqing with their savings. They had originally only wanted to stay two years, but now they had been there for five or six years and there was no end in sight. Their salaries supported their families in their villages. He saw the sadness in their faces, their melancholy, their exhaustion, and their fatigue. He knew their stories. They were the typical stories of the migrant workers, who could almost never save enough money to open their own businesses, who worked until their bodies were completely worn out and sucked dry, only to return to families who had grown strangers to them over the years and with whom they no longer had anything in common apart from a terrible wordlessness.
The more Zhang listened, the more the men told him. Getting people talking was one of his gifts. Mei sometimes asked how he managed it: why people said things to him that they normally kept to themselves. He himself did not know why.
When they had eaten almost all of the hot pot and the row of empty beer bottles filled half the table, the men started talking about their work at Cathay Heavy Metal. They did not complain. The management did not treat them better or worse than in many other factories. They worked twelve hours a day, six days a week, sometimes more, and they had one week’s holiday per year. They slept eight to a room and earned about a thousand yuan per month. That was enough for a beer in the evening and a meal out now and then; they sent most of the money back to their parents and brothers and sisters in Sichuan. They couldn’t complain; life was work, wasn’t it, and they were better off in comparison with their fathers, who had worked much harder hauling boats up the Yangtze against the current, day in, day out, barbarous drudgery that had caused many of them to collapse and die from sheer exhaustion. And they had not even been able to feed their families properly from the few yuan they got for that work. They would think of their fathers whenever their work seemed too hard or too dangerous for them.
“Why dangerous?” Zhang asked casually.
The circle of men laughed at Zhang’s naïve question. The men raised their glasses of beer and toasted Xu and Yang, who had died in a work accident two weeks ago. There had been an increase in accidents at Cathay Heavy Metal in the last few months. When production was being increased so rapidly and so many inexperienced young men were being employed, it was bound to happen. They had told the management that many times already, but anyone who complained too much would end up like Yee. The security guards had beaten him half to death one evening and had cast him and his few possessions out of the factory gates after that.
Two weeks ago there had nearly been a riot. A young foreigner—supposedly the American joint venture partner—had visited the factory, and a few workers had wanted to speak to him about the lack of safety measures in the factory. On management’s suggestion, they had drawn up a petition that they wanted to present him with. A fight broke out and the petition had fallen on the ground; the foreigner stepped on it and some of the men took this as an insult and a loss of face so it really fired them up. In the end, the foreigner had fled in his car, which the workers had surrounded, shaking it as though they wanted to overturn it.
“And the security guards?” Zhang asked, surprised. “Where were they?”
“They had looked on and only intervened at a very late stage.”
“Why?”
The workers considered
this. They had asked themselves this question before, but not come up with a conclusive answer. They were certain that it wasn’t because of inattention or carelessness.
———
Back at the police headquarters, Zhang checked the Mercedes’s number plate. The car belonged to one of Tang’s companies, so Victor Tang had likely been at the factory. He called the booking office and asked who had used the two service limousines that afternoon. He did not know the man on the other end of the line; he was probably temporary.
“No one,” the unfamiliar voice told him.
“Are you sure?”
“Nothing is recorded.”
“I’m pretty sure I saw the cars,” Zhang said, baffled.
“Where was that?”
Zhang hesitated. Why did the man want to know that? Who was he speaking to? “Never mind. I must have been mistaken,” he said, hanging up.
He hated being suspicious.
———
Chief Detective Luo Mingliang called the homicide division to a meeting. Luo had been friendly with Zhang in the past; they had solved a few difficult cases together and Zhang had come to appreciate what a tough and sharp-witted investigator he was. Apart from that, they shared a passion for Chinese sayings and aphorisms and had often gone out for meals together, engaging in heavyweight verbal duels in which each proverb had to be countered with another until one or the other of them ran dry. Since Luo had been promoted to the head of the division five years ago, they had seen each other less and less outside of work. Luo was now mainly occupied with official matters to do with the authorities and the party and their easy relationship of the past had now turned mistrustful, more and more so with every “gift” or “token of appreciation” that Zhang turned down.
———
Luo Mingliang greeted his colleagues briefly. He was in a great hurry, but he still wanted to let them know about the pleasing developments in the case of the murder of Michael Owen. The very first investigations, ordered by him, had led to a promising trail. There was already a suspect. Zu, a thirty-year-old worker from Henan Province, who worked in the foundry operations at Cathay Heavy Metal, was the man. He had fought with Michael Owen at the factory gates the evening before Owen had disappeared. It had been about the low pay and the poor safety conditions for the workers at the factory; the American and Zu had left the factory grounds together; several security guards had witnessed it. The next day, Zu had not appeared at work. They were now searching for him. Luo told his colleagues that all they had to do now was to help with this search; until further notice, no independent investigations were to take place. With any luck this sensitive case would be solved by the next day.
Zhang saw how his colleagues all exhaled with relief.
“What do we know about Zu?” Zhang asked. Even the sound of his voice made most of them wince.
“Not much yet. He’s been working at the factory for a year. We’ll get a photo and all the personal details from the HR department at Cathay Heavy Metal this afternoon. I’ll let you all know once we have them.”
The policemen got up and returned to their desks. While leaving the room, Luo asked Zhang to come with him.
His office was a large, bright room at the end of a corridor, with a reception area in front and two secretaries. Zhang took note of the new furniture: a red couch and two red armchairs, with white cloths protecting the armrests.
“Take a seat,” Luo said, offering him a cigarette and tea. “Zhang, how long have we known each other now?”
This familiar tone is a bad sign, Zhang thought. What does he want from me? “I don’t know. Nearly fifteen years, I think.”
“A long time. Enough to get to know each other a little, to know some things about each other, isn’t it?” Luo replied, sipping his tea. “You told me that the killed American was a friend of your friend Paul, right?”
That was not a question but a statement, and Zhang did not know what his boss was getting at. He decided it would be better to stay silent.
“The death of a good friend of one’s best friend cannot leave a person untouched, and of course one wants to do everything to find the murderer. No, what I should say is, one will not rest until he finds him, am I right, Zhang?”
He rephrased it, “One would, especially since one is a detective, leave no stone unturned to solve the case, so that the murderer can be properly punished for this cowardly and dastardly deed. Friendship calls for that, doesn’t it?”
Zhang did what Luo expected him to do: He listened attentively and nodded.
“One would conduct investigations, follow up every trail, independently, if necessary. We all know what we owe our friends. Am I right?”
Before Zhang could nod once again, the slow, lecturing tone fell away from Luo’s voice and it became so hard and severe that it reminded Zhang of party meetings and their endless self-criticisms.
“Is that why you were at the Cathay Heavy Metal factory this morning? What were you doing there?”
“I . . . I . . .” Zhang was so surprised that he started stammering. Why did he have to justify himself for perfectly everyday investigative work? How did his boss know about it anyway? Had the driver told him? Had he been seen at the factory, or was Luo hiding something from him?
Without waiting for a proper reply, Luo continued speaking. “You did not discuss that with me. Making these kinds of wayward inquiries could jeopardize the whole investigation. You must stop immediately. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Zhang replied. He felt sick. Not now. Just don’t throw up on Luo’s couch.
His boss’s voice suddenly grew calmer and sounded almost friendly. “Perhaps there’s an older case that you can occupy yourself with for a few days?” Luo watched him, dragged on his cigarette, and blew the smoke slowly out of the corner of his mouth. “The wise man adjusts to the circumstances like the water fits in the vessel. They knew that even during the Tang dynasty.”
“The greatest victory is the battle we do not fight,” Zhang responded.
“Exactly right. You’ve understood me,” Luo said. “It sounds like a Tang dynasty one.” He paused for a moment, as though he was considering whether to counter with another saying.
His boss could not have given him a clearer warning. At the same time, he was offering him a way out which meant that no one would lose face. “Anything else?” Luo asked, in a tone that left no doubt about the fact that, for him, the conversation was over.
“Be friendly to unfriendly souls; they need it the most,” Zhang heard himself say, regretting the words as soon as he said them. That was neither a fitting proverb nor a pleasant reply; it was nothing but an unnecessary provocation.
Luo pulled at his cigarette again and was silent for a moment. Their eyes met and Zhang saw in the eyes of his counterpart that he was thinking very hard about if and how he should react to this challenge.
Suddenly, a smile flitted across Luo’s face. “Well said, but that can’t be a Chinese saying, Zhang. You can’t tell me that. Perhaps the Buddha might have said that, but surely not someone Chinese,” he said, laughing, quietly at first, then louder and more heartily until he started coughing.
———
When Zhang left the police headquarters half an hour later, the two black Audi limousines that he had seen that morning on the grounds of Cathay Heavy Metal were parked in front. The drivers were in their seats, sleeping. He knocked on a window and woke one of them.
“What do you want?” the man grumbled.
“I need a car urgently,” he lied. “Is one of you free?”
The driver shook his head. “No time. Call the car service. We’re driving Ye and Luo today.”
“All day?” Zhang asked, as casually as possible.
“All day,” the man repeated, closing the window and turning to one side.
———
He made
his way home. The longer he thought about the case, the more mysterious it seemed. He had rarely seen Luo so tense and worked up. Why was this case so explosive that the party secretary was getting involved and Luo was warning him, Zhang, off further investigations so urgently? It had to be more than the fear of reports in the international press and of frightening off a few investors. There was definitely more behind this story.
Zhang thought about what he ought to do next. He could obey Luo’s orders and work on the murder of that prostitute last year, a hopeless case. But something in him resisted being pushed out of solving the Owen case just like that. The police were already looking for a man; when they would arrest him and put him forward as a key suspect was only a matter of time. Even though he would probably not be able to do anything for this man, he did not want to give up at the first warning.
He wondered who had been in Michael Owen’s apartment and what they had been looking for. The hard drive and memory chips that were now hidden in his fridge at home under the bok choy vegetables? It would be best for him to see this apartment for himself, but how was he to get in there without arousing suspicion? He could only do it with Paul’s help, and Zhang was not at all sure that his friend would do him this favor. He had already asked so much of him.
He had no time to lose. He decided to take the quickest route to Lamma. Before that, he had to get Michael Owen’s things from their hiding place. They would be better hidden with Paul in Hong Kong than with him in his fridge. And in case Luo was tapping his phone, he wanted to lay another false trail. He rang Paul, and was glad that he did not pick up the phone.
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