Peter May - Chinese Whispers

They turned into a room with two reclining armchairs, a footstool in front of each and a low table between them. The girl from Reception invited them to sit, and they arranged themselves comfortably in the chairs and removed their shoes and socks. A few moments later both receptionists returned with small wooden barrels lined with plastic and filled with hot, aromatic water. Scented herbs floated on the surface, their fragrance rising with the steam. A barrel was placed in front of each chair and Lyang and Margaret slipped their feet into the water. It was so hot Margaret almost had to withdraw her feet immediately, but the burning quickly subsided and she started to relax.

Lyang said, ‘They’ll leave us now to steep for about twenty minutes.’

Another girl brought in cups of jasmine tea and Margaret took a sip and allowed herself to unwind. A wave of fatigue washed over her and she closed her eyes, remembering the cry of the baby which had wakened her at five that morning. For the next hour and a half her over-sensitised inner alarm system could take a break. Without opening her eyes she said, ‘So what was it about Bill Hart that made him worth giving up your job for?’

‘Oh, I didn’t give it up for him . I gave it up for me.’

A slight frown creased Margaret’s brow. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I fell in love,’ Lyang said simply. ‘What’s a girl gonna do? It was him or my job.’

‘And you didn’t resent that?’

‘Well, sure. But it wasn’t Bill I resented. It was the goddamned stupid rule we have about cops not marrying foreigners. And, anyway, I didn’t do anything he didn’t. He gave up a well-paid job in the States to come and work in China for about a tenth of the money. That makes me feel good. It means he must love me, too.’

‘Didn’t you want to go and live in the States?’

‘Not really. This is my home. And besides, Bill wanted to come and live here. He still can’t get over the idea of a civilisation that’s five thousand years old.’

‘Well, of course, he comes from a country where the most exciting thing we’ve produced in two hundred years is the burger.’

Lyang laughed. ‘You sound just like him. His favourite gag just now is, what happens if you leave an American and a cup of yoghurt alone in a room for a week?’ She paused waiting for a response.

Margaret obliged. ‘And that would be?’

‘The yoghurt develops its own culture.’ Which brought a smile to Margaret’s lips. And Lyang added, almost apologetically, ‘I only tell it because he does.’

Margaret grinned, opening her eyes and tilting her head to look at her. ‘As long as you don’t tell it to Li Yan. I like giving him a hard time about China, and I hate giving him ammunition for return fire.’ She paused. ‘So what do you do all day every day?’

‘I still work.’

Margaret was taken aback. ‘Doing what?’

‘At the Academy. It’s just part time, but I work mornings as Bill’s assistant. I know you don’t think very much of the polygraph …’

Margaret broke in, ‘I’d be lying if I told you otherwise.’

Lyang said, ‘And we’d know if you were.’ They both laughed. Then she said, ‘The truth is, Bill’s more of a scientist than a practitioner. The Academy is employing him to develop something based on the polygraph which is more suited to the Chinese. He was responsible for persuading Lynn Pan to come to China to work on the Chinese version of MERMER.’ She hesitated and glanced over at Margaret. ‘You don’t work at all?’

‘I give the occasional lecture at the Public Security University.’

‘But no pathology?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘The Ministry is not particularly keen on Americans conducting autopsies on Chinese crime victims. I think they think it reflects badly on their own pathologists.’

‘But Bill said you’d done autopsy work for us before.’

‘Special circumstances,’ Margaret said. ‘And, then, when the baby came, things changed.’

‘How?’

‘Well, Li Yan and I are not married, for a start.’

‘Obviously.’

‘But we do live together.’

Lyang sat up, interested. ‘Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.’

Margaret waggled a finger at her. ‘That’s just it, you don’t ask. At least, that’s the position the Ministry takes. They don’t ask, we don’t tell, they don’t know. Officially. That way we get away with it — as long as we don’t marry.’

Lyang whistled softly. ‘And Li Yan wouldn’t think about giving up his job?’

‘I wouldn’t ask him,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s a part of him. It would be like asking him to cut off a leg.’ She sighed. ‘The upshot of it all, though, is that it’s no longer politic for him to request permission to use me for autopsies on special cases.’ She qualified herself. ‘On any cases.’

‘So you’re leading a life of leisure and pleasure as a mother and wife … well, almost wife?’

Margaret laughed. ‘No, I think the word I think you’re looking for is vegetating.’

‘So what do you do all day?’

‘Oh, I stay home and look after our son. Do a bit of housework, a bit of cooking. I never know when Li Yan’ll be coming home or when he’ll be called out. I don’t have any friends in Beijing, so I never go anywhere …’ She shook her head in something close to despair. ‘You know, the kind of domestic bliss every American woman aspires to.’ She sat up and turned towards Lyang. It felt good to talk, to get some of this stuff off her chest. It had been a long time since there had been anyone other than Li to whom she could unburden herself. ‘It’s like I’ve stopped living, Lyang. Like my whole life’s been sucked into my baby, and my only future is to live it vicariously through him.’

‘Jesus, Margaret …’ Lyang had clearly picked up her husband’s slang. ‘You sound like you need a few bodies to cut up.’

Margaret laughed out loud. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That would probably be good therapy. You’ve no idea how much I miss the smell of an open intestine, or that slurping sound the brain makes when it plops out of the skull.’

‘Hmmm,’ Lyang said. ‘I can see how you’d miss that.’

The receptionists looked curiously at the two women lying back laughing on their reclining seats when they came in to take away the soak barrels. They returned a few moments later to dry off the two pairs of feet and place them on towels on each of the footrests. Margaret watched curiously as the two blind masseuses were led in to squat on stools at the end of each footrest. Lyang’s girl was very young, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. Her eyes were bizarrely pale, almost grey, and seemed fixed beneath beautifully slanted lids. Margaret’s masseuse was older, about thirty, and her dark eyes seemed to be constantly on the move, squinting to one side and then back again. Both were slightly built, wearing white cotton overalls, and when Margaret’s girl lathered her tiny hands with soft-scented cream and began working on Margaret’s feet, Margaret was astonished at the strength in them.

‘Of course, you know why Western men like Asian women,’ Lyang said, and Margaret could hear the mischief in her voice.

‘Why?’ she asked, without opening her eyes.

‘Because they have such small hands.’

Margaret smiled and frowned at the same time. ‘And that’s attractive because …?’

‘It makes their dicks seem bigger.’

They laughed again, and saw the incomprehension on the faces of their masseuses. A foot massage was supposed to be relaxing, therapeutic, not funny. But Margaret was finding the whole experience therapeutic in other ways. ‘I guess that must be why I fell for Li Yan,’ she said.