Peter May - Chinese Whispers

Lyang frowned, knowing there was a gag coming, but not seeing it. ‘Why?’

‘Because he makes my hands look so small.’

Their raucous laughter was inappropriate, and inordinately loud in the hushed atmosphere of the Jade Fingers Blind Massage Club. Margaret’s masseuse found a painful area on the sole of her foot and seemed to dig into it particularly hard with her thumb. Margaret gasped. But there was also an odd pleasure in the pain. She lay back then and succumbed to both the pain and the pleasure as her girl worked her way around her toes, down all the painful bumps in her arch, around the heel and back up the outside edge. She knew what all the muscles were, could picture them as the girl’s dextrous fingers sought them out, folded one over the other around the delicate bones of the foot. It was deliciously relaxing.

After a long period of silence, Lyang said to her, ‘What have you done about Li Jon?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘His nationality.’

‘Well, he’s both, of course. Chinese and American.’

‘You’ve registered him with the Embassy?’

‘Sure.’ It had been a complex procedure. Chinese and American laws were in conflict over the nationality of a child born to a Chinese-American couple. The Americans, the consul for American Citizen Services at the embassy had told Margaret, defined a child born to one American anywhere in the world as a US citizen at birth. The Chinese used the same legal premise for their citizens abroad, but allowed mixed citizenship couples, legally resident in China, to pick a citizenship for their kid after birth. Margaret had wanted to register Li Jon with the US embassy. Li was anxious for his son to remain Chinese. They had almost fallen out over it. In the end Margaret had persuaded Li that the Chinese were never going to deny his son nationality as long as they were there in China. But she wanted Li Jon properly registered as a US citizen so that there would never be a problem about them taking him to the US if they ever decided to go there. So she had gone to the embassy and had an interview with a sympathetic consul who set in motion a series of background checks on both Li and Margaret before finally issuing Li Jon with a Consular Report of Birth Abroad — which would effectively act as his passport for the first five years and make him officially a US citizen.

‘You got one of those Consular Report things?’ Lyang asked

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah, Bill insisted we did that for Ling, too. So she’s a fully fledged stars and stripes citizen. It stuck in my craw a little to have to register her as a foreigner with the local police. It was expensive, too.’ A thought struck her. ‘Hey, how did you do that when you two aren’t … you know, married? Not even officially living together.’

‘We didn’t,’ Margaret said. ‘It was going to be too complicated. Officially, I still live in an apartment provided by the University of Public Security. That comes under the Western Beijing Police district. In reality, Li Yan and I share his police apartment in the Central Beijing Police district. We were just never going to be able to explain it.’

‘The endless complications of life in China,’ Lyang said. ‘You know, you and Li Yan should come over some night for a meal. We’ve got a lot in common, we four.’

‘I’d like that,’ Margaret said. ‘It would be nice to get out for a change. Where do you live?’

‘Ah,’ Lyang said. ‘That was Bill’s only stipulation — that if we were going to live in China, it wasn’t going to be in some dilapidated apartment where the Government controls the heating. His first wife died in a road accident, and he had been rattling around on his own in their big town house in Boston. So when we got married he sold it, and we bought one of those fabulous new modern apartments near the Central Business District. You know, the ones built for foreigners. We’re in a complex called Music Home International. It’s silly, really, but the two apartment blocks have got like huge grand piano lids on their roofs.’ She seemed a little embarrassed. ‘You can’t miss them. But there’s a health club with a pool and tennis courts, and there’s a beautifully landscaped private garden which is going to be just great for Ling in the summer.’

Margaret felt a twinge of jealousy. Not that any of these things amounted to a lifestyle she aspired to, but they sounded a great deal more appealing than Li’s spartan police apartment with its tiny rooms and irregular heating. And the thought returned her to a reality from which she had escaped all too briefly into a world of laughter and freedom from maternal responsibility. She had forgotten what it was like to have a life of your own, and she wasn’t sure that a friendship with Lyang would be a good thing. It could be very unsettling.

Li sat with Procurator Meng, Deputy Commissioner Cao, Deputy Minister Wei Peng and Director General Yan Bo in a stilted silence in the reception room where they had first gathered. They had come in one by one from their MERMER tests flushed and fatigued and oddly self-conscious. Conversation had been desultory, and none of them had talked about the test. They were all, with the exception of Li, smoking. In exasperation, he had eventually gone to the window to draw the blinds and open it. He stood now gazing west, beyond Yuyuantan Park where he had sometimes played chess with his uncle, towards the distinctive minaret-shaped TV tower catching the mid-afternoon sun. It felt like they had been there all day. In fact it had been little more than two hours. But Li was growing impatient now, anxious to get back to his investigation.

He turned as the door behind him opened and Commissioner Zhu, the last of them to be tested, breezed in from the computer room. He was actually smiling and, like the others before him, faintly flushed. ‘Charming woman,’ he said, adjusting his frameless spectacles on the bridge of his nose.

‘Quit dreaming, Commissioner,’ his deputy said. Cao was draped languidly on his chair watching his boss with knowing eyes, smoke seeping from the corners of his mouth. ‘It’s your backing she’s after, not your body.’ And Li realised that she had probably been doing a number on them all, each of them convinced that her warmth and touch and eye contact meant that they had struck some special chord with her. Li smiled to himself. Whatever it was she had, or did, it worked. And as he glanced around the other faces in the room, he knew that the same thought was also going through their minds.

The door opened and Professor Pan came in briskly, clutching a sheaf of papers. The moment she entered the room, Li knew that something was wrong. Her whole demeanour had altered unmistakably. There was a droop in her shoulders, her face seemed pale suddenly, and drawn. She was still smiling, but the smile was fixed and false, and she seemed reluctant to make eye contact with any of them. ‘Gentlemen, I am so sorry to keep you,’ she said. Her eyes flickered briefly around the room, and Li saw something strange in them. Something like confusion. All the confidence in them had vanished, and yet she was working hard at maintaining the facade. He wondered if something had gone terribly wrong with the tests. If she was going to fail to identify the three ‘criminals’. But then she said, ‘The tests are quite conclusive. Commissioner Zhu, Procurator Meng, Section Chief Li. I think my findings would be sufficient to convict you all of murder in a court of law.’

There was a spontaneous burst of applause, and Li looked around his fellow guinea-pigs. If any of them was aware of the change in Miss Pan it did not show.

‘Congratulations, Professor,’ Procurator General Meng said. ‘I think we are all very impressed.’