Питер Мэй - The Ghost Marriage

A call to Wu from his cellphone had pre-armed Li with the information that Lao, although just nineteen, already had a criminal record. For theft. The boy was alarmed by Li’s visit. A tall, thin lad, with long hair that fell into his eyes, he directed the Section Chief away from the house to a dark corner of the courtyard. ‘What do you want? I ain’t done nothing wrong.’

‘I never said you had. But when you act this nervous it makes me wonder.’

‘My father’ll kill me if I get in trouble with the police again.’

Li looked around the courtyard, at all the doors and windows that stood open, and wondered how many ears were listening from the dark beyond. ‘I wanted to ask you about Jiang Meilin.’

Concern immediately inscribed itself on the young face. ‘What’s happened to her?’

‘I was hoping you might tell me. Her parents reported her missing five days ago. Have you seen her?’

The boy paled visibly. He shook his head. ‘Not since Sunday. She came here to the house. My folks like her, but they were out. She stayed quite late and went home about twelve.’

‘You didn’t think it was strange that she hasn’t been in contact since then?’

‘Well, yes. Normally she would call me. From a public telephone. She doesn’t have a cellphone, so I can’t call her. And she wouldn’t ever let me go to the house. Said her parents wouldn’t like it. Usually I only see her at weekends.’

‘So you wouldn’t have any idea where she might have gone?’

‘No.’

‘And she never talked to you about leaving home? Running away, maybe?’

The young man’s hesitation was almost imperceptible. ‘No, she didn’t.’

Li took a fresh business card from his maroon Public Security ID wallet and handed it to the boy, holding it at each corner and facing towards him. Lao Rong looked at Li’s name and rank before glancing up, open-mouthed. ‘Section Chief?’

‘Just call me if you hear from her.’

He was almost at Dahuisi Lu when he heard a woman’s voice calling after him. He stopped his bicycle and looked back to see a middle-aged woman in a black skirt and cardigan and pink running shoes hurrying after him. In spite of the heat, she wore a headscarf, as if somehow that might hide her identity. When finally she reached him it took her a moment to catch her breath.

‘I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Lao Rong in the siheyuan ,’ she said. One of the many ears listening in the dark, Li surmised. ‘He told you that Meilin went home around midnight.’

‘Did she not?’

‘It was later, Section Chief.’ She glanced over her shoulder, back along the hutong . ‘He’s a bad lot, that boy. Been in trouble with your people a few times.’

‘Are you telling me he lied?’

‘Not exactly. But it was nearer one o’clock when she left. And in tears.’

Li cocked his head, interested for the first time. ‘Do you know why?’

She shook her head. ‘I just know they had a big argument. Raised voices. I heard him shouting, her crying. But I don’t know what it was about.’

Li pursed his lips thoughtfully.

The letter arrived three days after Li asked Wu to circulate a poster of the girl’s face — an image reproduced from one of the photographs in Meilin’s medals cabinet. He had also asked Wu for background investigations on the girl’s family, and the boyfriend. Considering his attachment to a missing-persons case to be something close to demotion, Wu had instigated the checks with bad grace, and ordered teams of uniformed Public Security officers to paste up posters in public places all over Haidian. Now he came into Li’s office holding a sheet of paper and a torn envelope. His face was, unusually, bright with excitement.

‘We’ve got a response, Chief.’

Li looked up blankly from his desk.

‘Jiang Meilin. The missing girl.’ Wu waved the paper and envelope. ‘Anonymous letter.’

Li stood up and reached into his pocket. ‘And you didn’t think to wear gloves?’

Wu’s face fell. ‘I didn’t know what it was until after I’d opened it.’

Li produced a pair of latex gloves and put them on. He took the letter and envelope and placed them carefully on the desk, then leaned over to have a look.

‘It was posted yesterday in Haidian,’ Wu said, as if trying to compensate for his mistake.

Li examined the postmark, then ran his eyes over the neat calligraphy that the sender had used to address the envelope. ‘An educated hand,’ he said. His gaze returned to the postmark. ‘And this is the post office that serves Beida, if I’m not mistaken. It could be the letter was written by a student, or a professor, at Beijing University.’

Wu said nothing. He knew that this was not a conclusion he would have reached himself. But then, that was probably why he was still a detective, while Li was Section Chief.

‘The university recently installed a biometric fingerprint scanner to speed up processing in the canteen. So let’s see what prints we can lift off this...’ Li glanced at Wu, ‘... excluding yours, of course. Then do a comparison check with their database.’

Li turned his attention to the letter itself. It was a cryptic note:

I saw your missing girl at a ghost wedding last week. She was the bride.

Li looked up, perplexed. ‘Ghost wedding?’

Wu nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. I did some asking around. Apparently it’s a tradition that still exists in some remote rural communities. It’s bad luck for a young man to die unmarried. So the family buys the corpse of a recently deceased female and they perform some kind of marriage ceremony. A ghost wedding. It seems there’s a sociology professor at Tsinghua University who is something of an expert on the subject.’

Tsinghua University was once described by the nearly president of the United States, Al Gore, as the MIT of China. It was an eclectic collection of faculties, from mechanics and technology to law, sociology and medicine. Each faculty was represented by one of the vast stone or marble edifices on each side of a wide, tree-shaded avenue leading to the massive master building at the far end. At this time of year there were almost no students on campus. Only occasional cyclists passed along the boulevard, possibly here for special summer classes. Many of the staff, however, were still at work.

Professor Bao seemed happy for Li to interrupt the monotony of the summer vacation, and used the excuse to stretch his legs and get some air. Two young men in shorts and T-shirts played basketball on a macadam court as the young policeman and the elderly professor walked by.

‘ Minghun ,’ said Professor Bao, ‘is what it is called among the peoples of the Loëss Plateau. An afterlife marriage. It has its roots in the ancient form of ancestor veneration which maintains that we all continue to exist after death, and that the living are obliged to tend to our needs.’

‘Including the arranging of a marriage?’

‘Indeed. It is traditional Chinese belief that an unmarried life is incomplete, and some parents fear that an unmarried dead son could be an unhappy one. So they find a bride for him after death.’

‘How do they do that?’

‘Oh, usually through an informal network of family or friends, they will find parents who have recently lost a single daughter. Those parents will sell the body as a way of finding their daughter a place in the dead man’s family line. You see, Section Chief Li, outside of the cities, China is really still a paternal clan culture. A woman does not belong to her parents. She has no place on her father’s family tree. She must marry into her husband’s ancestral lineage.’