Peter May - Chinese Whispers

Wu said curtly, ‘Mrs Guo.’

The other one nodded towards a shop unit two doors along. ‘Police there,’ she said conspiratorially.

‘Thanks for the warning,’ Li said.

There were three people squeezed around a wooden table in the tiny, cluttered shop unit. A woman with long dark hair who looked in her middle forties, a very old man in a wide-brimmed hat drowned by a heavy coat two sizes too big for him, and a young uniformed community police officer. The shelves were lined with blue-ink china vases, and the ceiling was hung with dozens of bells on chains. The young policeman looked up with what seemed like relief when Li and Wu arrived. The old man stared into some unseen place with glazed eyes, and a large, clear drip of mucus hung from the end of his nose. The woman’s eyes were red, her cheeks blotched and tearstained. Li saw something like hope in her eyes when she looked up at them, as if she thought that somehow they might have come to say it had all been a terrible mistake, and that Guo Huan was really alive and well. He ached for her, and the false hope she was conjuring out of the depths of her despair. He said, ‘I’m Section Chief Li Yan, Mrs Guo. Detective Wu and I are investigating your daughter’s death.’ And whatever hope she might have fostered, he knew he had just stolen away.

He saw her face go bleak. ‘The uniform says she was murdered,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Found her up Silk Street Market,’ the uniform said. ‘Isn’t that right?’ He looked to Li for confirmation, not remotely awed by the presence of superior ranks. ‘Hacked to pieces apparently.’

The girl’s mother gasped her distress and tears blurred her eyes.

Li glared at him. ‘I think you can go now, officer.’

‘That’s alright, Chief. They said I should stay down here and offer support. It’s part of the job in the community branch.’

The mother turned to Li. ‘What was she doing in a place like that at night, alone with a man?’

‘Well, you should know,’ the uniform said, wearing his disapproval like a badge.

Li turned to Wu. ‘Get him out of here.’

Wu grabbed the uniform by the arm and yanked him out of his seat. ‘Hey!’ the officer protested. But Wu had him out of the door and into the alley before he could give further voice to his indignation.

Mrs Guo looked at Li in consternation, her cheeks shining with silent tears. ‘What did he mean?’

Li shook his head and sat down where the uniform had been. ‘ He doesn’t know what he means,’ Li said. ‘These community police are just messenger boys. They don’t know anything.’ Outside in the alley, they heard raised voices, and the sound of something breaking. Li glanced at the old man. He hadn’t moved since they came in. ‘Is he alright?’

A dead look fell across the mother’s face. ‘Who knows? He’s my father. He’s been like that since he had his stroke ten years ago. And what does the State do for him? Nothing. I have to pay for all his medical care. I have to nurse him at home. Me and Huan, with one bedroom among the three of us. That’s why she had to work nights. We needed the money.’

‘Where did she work?’

She shrugged. ‘Different places. Bar work mostly. She said there was always casual work in Bar Street up in Sanlitun.’ Her face crumpled in consternation. ‘Is it true? Was she really … cut up?’

Li nodded. There was no way he could conceal it from her. She would have to identify the body. ‘I’m afraid so.’ And he wondered if Guo Huan’s mother really believed that she was working in bars in Sanlitun all those nights she went off on her own. But, then, if her daughter was bringing in good money, perhaps she didn’t want to know any different.

Wu reappeared and stood in the doorway. He nodded to Li almost imperceptibly. Li said, ‘Did she ever tell you she was meeting anyone? Ever mention a name, a rendezvous?’

The mother held her hands out helplessly. ‘We didn’t talk much,’ she said. ‘About anything. She left school four years ago, and we’ve been working in the shop here together every day since.’ She glanced at her father. ‘With him.’ She paused, dealing with some painful private memory. ‘We ran out of things to talk about a long time ago.’

Li nodded and allowed her a little space before he said, ‘Mrs Guo, I’d like your permission for a team of forensics people to go into your house and go through all your daughter’s things.’

Her mother sat upright suddenly, as if offended by the idea. ‘I don’t think I’d like that. What difference does it make now anyway? She’s dead.’

Li said patiently, ‘She might have known her killer, Mrs Guo, in which case we might find some clue to his identity among her things.’ He paused. ‘She wasn’t his first victim. We want to stop him from doing it again.’

Mrs Guo sank back into her despair and nodded desolately. ‘I suppose.’

‘And if you have a recent photograph of her, that would be very helpful.’

She reached into a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard shoebox tied with pink ribbon. She placed it carefully on the table, undid the ribbon and lifted the lid. It was full of photographs. ‘I always meant to put them in an album.’ She looked around her shop. ‘I sit about here all day and do nothing. The more time you have, the more time you waste.’ She started taking out pictures and laying them in front of her.

They didn’t appear to be in any date order, as if they had been taken in and out of the box often. There were family groups, taken in happier times, a man on Mrs Guo’s arm whom Li took to be her husband. There were pictures of a little girl smiling toothily at the camera, cheap prints on which the colours were faded now. Guo Huan in school uniform — a blue tracksuit and yellow baseball cap. Guo Huan with short hair, Guo Huan with long hair. All appeared to have been taken several years earlier. Her mother fingered every photograph with a kind of reverence, each with its own memory, every one with its own baggage. And then she pulled out a strip of four photographs of a much older Guo Huan. She handed it to Li. ‘These were taken a month or two ago. In one of those booths.’

Li examined them closely. The smile was self-conscious, and each photograph in the sequence was almost identical. She had shoulder-length hair, and a pretty face all made up for the occasion. Having seen her in Silk Street and at the morgue, Li would still never have recognised her. She had a freshness about her, an absence of cynicism, the anticipation of youth for a life ahead. A life that would never be. ‘May I take these?’ he asked. ‘I promise to return them.’ The mother nodded and he handed the strip to Wu. ‘And I’m sorry to ask, Mrs Guo, but we will need you to make a formal identification of the body.’

A look of panic flitted across her face. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’

‘Is there someone else, then?’

She thought for a moment, and then her face collapsed into resignation as she shook her head. ‘When do you want me?’

‘I’ll have a car come and pick you up in the next hour.’ Li glanced at the old man. ‘Will he be alright?’

‘I’ll have someone watch him,’ she said. And Li saw her lower lip start to tremble as she tried to hold back the tears. But they came anyway, big and silent, making wet tracks down her cheeks. ‘They only let you have one child.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m too old to start again.’ She looked at her father, and Li was sure it was resentment he saw in her eyes. ‘He’s all I have left.’

As they made their way back through the gloom of the antiques alley, Wu said to Li, ‘That goddamned community cop was determined he wasn’t leaving. Actually put up a struggle. Bust a vase.’