M. Lee - Death In Shanghai

He wasn’t sitting in the dark though. There was a small light behind him that gave a brown glow through the cell. It was like the light of early dawn in Minsk when the sun is still below the horizon but its rays are reaching out to the world.

The room was empty. There was nothing there but him, the chair he was tied to, and the black walls.

He shouted once again, louder this time.

A crack of light appeared vertically in the wall opposite him and began to get wider. A black shadow stood in the doorway, its height dominating the entrance.

Then it spoke. ‘Shouting will only make your voice hoarse, Inspector Danilov. Nobody can hear you down here.’

So he was underground. The voice was cultured, elegant and vaguely familiar.

The black shadow stepped into the cell, closing the door behind him. The only light now was coming from behind Danilov. He stared into the gloom at the thing in front of him. For a few moments, it appeared to have no face, just darkness where eyes and ears and nose should be. Like the shadow of a man with the shadow of a face.

Then it spoke again.

‘It’s your time, Danilov. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long while but I didn’t think it would come so soon.’

Danilov could see a little more clearly now. The man was dressed from head to toe in black. On his head he wore a mask, but one without definition, just a dull matt-black skin that covered his face and absorbed the light. He saw the man’s eyes. Green. Emerald green.

‘I can see you like my mask, Inspector, you do recognise it, of course?’

Danilov let his head drop to his chest. ‘It’s Yama, I presume. The god of the underworld.’ Every time the man spoke, he caught a whiff of something. Warm, earthy, but with a hint of sweetness in it. Just as the boatman had said.

‘You are probably wondering why you are here?’

Danilov lifted his head and stared straight into the eyes of the black mask. He shook his head.

‘An eye for an eye.’

‘Another saying?’

‘This one from the bible, I think. A terribly judgemental book.’

‘What’s that to do with me?’

‘Everything, Inspector. Today, you are to be judged.’

‘By you?’

‘Today, I’m your judge, your jury, your prosecutor and your executioner.’

‘So, you’ve already decided I’m guilty?’

The man took a step to the side. ‘I didn’t decide, Inspector, you did, long ago.’ The man’s body was close to him now. The sweet smell was even stronger. He tried to lash out, struggling against the ropes that bound his wrists.

‘That won’t help you, Inspector. The others found that out too.’

The door opened behind the man and another shape was silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Do come in, Li Min. My colleague will be the clerk of the court. As you see, we always try to follow the correct procedures for a trial. Shall we begin?’

Li Min moved into the room. For a second, before he closed the door, a shaft of light caught the top of his head and the livid red scar that arched over it.

‘Please read out the charges.’

The Chinese man produced a sheet of thick manuscript paper. ‘Pyotr Alexandrevich Danilov, you are charged that on the 12th November, 1924, you deserted your family, leaving them to face the depredations of the revolutionary authorities alone.’

‘Danilov, you realise in the eighth court of hell, desertion of your family is a very serious offence, to be punished by the gouging out of your eyes, if you are found guilty.’

‘How does the prisoner plead?’ said Li Min, his pen poised over the manuscript waiting for the answer.

Danilov remained quiet, slowly working his wrists against the ropes that bound him.

‘I think you can write down the prisoner pleads guilty, Li Min. After all, the evidence is rather damning.’

‘I didn’t desert my family, I had a job to do.’

‘Please change the plea, Li Min, the prisoner has changed his mind.’

‘Not guilty now, sir?’

The mask turned towards Danilov. He could see the green eyes staring at him from the blackness. ‘That’s right, Li Min, the Inspector pleads not guilty.’

‘When will the trial be, sir?’

‘I think now is as good a time as any, don’t you agree, Li Min?’

The Chinese man nodded.

‘Does the Inspector need time to think about his defence?’

Danilov remained quiet.

‘No, well, let the trial begin.’

‘Before we do,’ Danilov raised his voice, ‘I would like you to remove your mask. I have the right to see my accuser.’

‘You have no rights in my court, only responsibilities and punishments. I’m not on trial here, Inspector Danilov, you are. Request denied.’

The scratching of pen against parchment cut through the silence.

The ropes bit against Danilov’s wrists as he strained against them. He would endure the pain. He had to endure the pain.

The mask sighed. ‘Let’s examine the evidence, shall we? Firstly, you deserted your family in Minsk. Is it true the city was in a state of anarchy?’

‘The government was looking at undesirable elements in the city.’

‘Just “undesirable elements”. So there was no danger?’

There was the sound of pen on parchment again. A scratching, irritating sound that came from Li Min as he wrote down all that was being said. Danilov lifted his head. ‘There didn’t seem to be any. I was a member of the police. I’d never been involved in politics.’

‘Not involved?’ The shadow laughed behind his mask. ‘You say you were not involved?’

‘In Minsk, the Red Army and the Soviets were seen as liberators, welcomed by the people.’

‘And did the Red Army have an equally warm welcome for former officials of the regime?’

Danilov’s head went down and looked at the feet of his jailer. He was wearing brown brogues beneath his black gown. ‘No, they didn’t.’

‘Didn’t they have a history of reprisals against the former officials of the Tsar and the Mensheviks?’

‘Yes but…’

‘And didn’t those reprisals also include members of the families of those officials?’

‘Yes, sometimes. But you have to understand there was no danger at that time.’

‘So you left the city?’

The pen had been scratching all his answers on to a parchment. For a moment, it stopped, waiting for his response.

‘I went to Moscow.’

‘Why?’

Danilov struggled against the restraints again, trying to keep his movement away from the eyes of the man in the mask. ‘I had a case. A murderer had fled there. We went after him.’

‘What had the murderer done?’

‘He had killed his mother and father.’

‘So, you abandoned your family to bring the killer of another family to justice?’

‘I didn’t abandon my family.’

‘But you left them.’ The man held his arms out wide as if appealing to a non-existent jury.

‘I went to do my work.’

‘How long were you away?’

‘Five weeks,’ said Danilov quietly.

The scratching of the pen got louder and then stopped.

‘I didn’t hear you?’

‘Five weeks. I was away five weeks.’

Danilov could hear the noise of the fountain pen as it scratched his words on the parchment.

‘Five weeks to catch a killer?’

‘He escaped.’

‘So you captured him once, he escaped and you stayed on in Moscow to catch him again?’

‘Yes.’ The bald-headed Chinese man stopped writing and looked down at him.

The mask continued. ‘Meanwhile, the situation in Minsk changed, didn’t it?’

‘I tried to get back, but…’

‘The purge began. Officials were being arrested, their families persecuted.’

‘Yes, the town was isolated, even the trains stopped running. I couldn’t return.’