Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

‘Somehow or other it seems to be connected with your dead sister Hong Qiu. She was in close contact with some of the top men at the State Security Bureau. Her name keeps cropping up whenever we try to link the men who came to visit us the other morning and others hovering in the background. We think the information can only have been circulating for a short time before she died so tragically. Nevertheless, somebody at the very highest level seems to have given the go-ahead.’

Ya Ru noticed that Mrs Shen broke off. ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Nothing is sure. Has somebody at the very top authorised this investigation into my activities?’

‘I can’t say if it’s true or not, but rumour has it that those in authority are not satisfied with the outcome of the sentence passed on Shen Weixian.’

A shiver ran down Ya Ru’s spine. He understood the implications before Mrs Shen had time to say any more.

‘Another scapegoat? Do they want to condemn another rich man in order to demonstrate that this is now a campaign and not merely an indication that patience is running out?’

Mrs Shen nodded. Ya Ru shrank further back into the shadows. ‘Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘You may go.’

Mrs Shen left the room. Ya Ru didn’t move. He forced himself to think, although what he wanted to do most of all was run away.

When he had made the difficult decision to kill Hong Qiu, and that the murder would take place in Africa, he had been sure that she was still his loyal sister. Of course, they had different views, they often argued. In this very room, on his birthday, she had accused him of taking bribes.

That was when he had realised that sooner or later Hong Qiu would become too big a danger to him. He now saw that he ought to have acted sooner. Hong Qiu had already abandoned him.

Ya Ru shook his head slowly. He now understood something that had never occurred to him before. Hong Qiu had been prepared to do the same thing to him as he had done to her. She hadn’t intended to use a weapon herself — Hong Qiu preferred to proceed via the laws of the land. But if Ya Ru had been condemned to death, she would have been one of those declaring it the right thing to do.

Ya Ru thought of his friend Lai Changxing, who some years previously had been forced to flee the country when the police raided all his companies early one morning. The only reason he managed to save himself and his family had been that he owned a private plane that was always ready to take off at a moment’s notice. He had fled to Canada, which did not have an extradition treaty with China. He was the son of a peasant who had made an amazing career for himself when Deng created a free market. He had started by digging wells but later became a smuggler and invested all he earned in companies that within a few years generated an enormous fortune. Ya Ru had once visited him in the Red Manor he had built in his home district of Xiamen. He had also taken upon himself major social responsibilities by constructing old people’s homes and schools. Even in those days Ya Ru had been put off by Lai Changxing’s arrogant ostentation and had warned his friend that he could be heading for a fall. They had sat one evening discussing the envy many people felt with regard to the new capitalists, the Second Dynasty, as Lai Changxing called them ironically — but only when talking in private with people he trusted.

Ya Ru had not been surprised when the gigantic house of cards collapsed and Lai had to flee the country. After he’d left, several of those involved with his businesses were executed. Others — hundreds of them — had been imprisoned. But at the same time, he was revered as a generous man in his poor home district. He would give fortunes to taxi drivers in the form of tips or give generous gifts to impoverished families whose names he didn’t even know, for no obvious reason. Ya Ru also knew that Lai was now writing his memoir — which worried many high-ranking officials and politicians in China. Lai was in possession of many truths, and as he now lived in Canada, nobody could censure him.

But Ya Ru had no intention of fleeing his country.

There was another thought beginning to gnaw away at his mind. Ma Li, Hong Qiu’s friend, had also been on the visit to Africa. Ya Ru knew that the two women had had long conversations. Moreover, Hong Qiu had always been a letter writer.

Perhaps Ma Li was in possession of an incriminating letter from Hong Qiu? Something she had passed on to people who had in turn informed the security services?

Three days later, when one of the winter’s severe sandstorms was raging over Beijing, Ya Ru visited Ma Li’s office not far from Ritan Gongyuan, the Sun God’s Park. Ma Li worked in a government department devoted to financial analyses and wasn’t sufficiently senior to cause him any serious problems. Mrs Shen and her assistants had investigated Ma Li and found no links with the inner circles of government and the party. Ma Li had two children. Her current husband was an insignificant bureaucrat. As her first husband had died in the war with the Vietnamese in the 1970s, nobody had objected to her remarrying and having another child. Both of the children now led lives of their own: the eldest, a daughter, was an educational adviser in a teacher training college, and the son worked as a surgeon at a hospital in Shanghai. Neither of them had contacts that caused Ya Ru any worries. But he had been careful to note that Ma Li had two grandchildren to whom she devoted a large amount of her time.

Mrs Shen fixed an appointment with Ma Li. She hadn’t mentioned what the meeting was about, only that it was urgent and probably connected with the trip to Africa. That ought to worry her a bit, Ya Ru thought as he sat in the back seat of his car observing the city they were driving through. As he had plenty of time, he had asked the driver to make a diversion past some of the construction sites he had business interests in. His main priority was the Olympic Games. One of Ya Ru’s big contracts was for the demolition of a residential area that had to be cleared in order to make way for roads to the new sports stadia. Ya Ru expected to earn billions, even after he had subtracted the massive payments made to civil servants and politicians.

The car pulled up outside an unremarkable building where Ma Li worked. She was standing on the steps, waiting for him.

‘Ma Li,’ said Ya Ru. ‘Seeing you now makes me think that our trip to Africa, which ended in such tragedy, was a very long time ago.’

‘I think about my dear friend Hong Qiu every day,’ said Ma Li. ‘But I allow Africa to drift away into the past. I shall never go back there.’

‘As you know, we sign new contracts with many countries on the African continent every day. We are building bridges that will last for a long time to come.’

As they talked they walked along a deserted corridor to Ma Li’s office, whose windows looked out onto a little garden surrounded by a high wall. In the middle of the garden was a fountain that had been turned off for the winter.

Ma Li switched off her telephone and served tea. Ya Ru could hear somebody laughing in the distance.

‘Searching for truth is like watching a snail chasing a snail,’ Ya Ru said pensively. ‘It moves slowly, but it is persistent.’

Ya Ru looked her straight in the eye, but Ma Li did not avert her gaze.

‘There are rumours circulating,’ Ya Ru continued, ‘that I don’t like at all. Rumours about my companies, about my character. I wonder where they are coming from. I have to ask who would want to do me damage. Not the usual crowd that is jealous of me, but somebody else, with motives I don’t understand.’

‘Why should I want to damage your reputation?’