Peter May - Chinese Whispers

Li watched her as she worked; hair tucked up in a bun beneath her white cap, quilted blue jacket over jogpants, sweatshirt and trainers. Her white cotton coat hung open, several sizes too small. She made a poor living from her pancakes, augmented only by the money Li and Margaret paid her to baby-sit for Li Jon. Both Li and Mei Yuan had lost people close to them during the Cultural Revolution. He, his mother. She, her son. Now one was a surrogate for the other. There wasn’t anything Li wouldn’t have done for the old lady. Or she for him.

Her demeanour never changed. Her smooth round face was remarkably unlined, crinkling only when she smiled, which was often. Whatever misery she had suffered in her life she kept to herself. And there had been plenty. Wrenched from a university education and forced to work like a peasant in the fields. A baby lost. A husband long gone.

‘What are you reading?’ he asked, and he pulled out the book she had tucked down behind her saddle.

‘A wonderful story,’ she said. ‘A triumph of humanity over ignorance.’

‘ To Kill A Mockingbird ,’ he read from the title in English.

‘The writer is completely inside the little girl’s head,’ Mei Yuan said, and Li could see from her face that she was transported to some place on the other side of the world she would never see. Her escape from a life that offered little else. ‘She must have been in that place herself, to write it like that.’

She put a square of deep-fried whipped eggwhite on top of the pancake, broke it in four and deftly folded it into a brown paper bag which she handed to Li. He dropped some notes in her tin and took a bite. It tasted wonderful. Spicy, savoury, hot. He could not imagine a life that did not start each day with a jian bing . ‘I have a riddle for you,’ he said.

‘I hope it’s harder than the last one.’

He threw her a look. ‘Two coal miners,’ he said. ‘One is the father of the other’s son. How is this possible?’ She tossed her head back and laughed. A deliciously infectious laugh that had him smiling too, albeit ruefully. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’ A group of passing cyclists turned to stare at them, wondering what was so amusing.

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Is it really so easy? I mean, I spent ages trying to work out if maybe one was the father, and the other the stepfather …’

‘Oh, Li Yan, you didn’t!’ Her smile was full of mock pity. ‘It’s obvious that they’re husband and wife.’

‘Well, yes it is,’ Li said. ‘I just didn’t see it immediately, that’s all.’ He had found a website on the internet which specialised in riddles. But none of them were in the same class as the ones Mei Yuan dreamed up for him.

‘I have one for you,’ she said.

‘I thought you might.’ He wolfed down another mouthful of steaming pancake and waited in trepidation.

She watched him chewing for a moment, reflecting on the problem she was about to set him. ‘Two deaf mutes are planting rice in a paddy field, far from their village in Hunan Province,’ she said. ‘It takes them an hour to make their way from one end of the paddy to the other. They have just finished lunch. One has the food, the other the drink. By sign language, they agree to meet again and share their food and drink when they have finished planting the field. They each have to plant another ten rows. When he has finished his work, the man with the food can’t see his friend anywhere, he waits for a while, and then, thinking his friend has gone back to the village, he eats the food himself. The next morning, he wakes up to find the other man shaking him, signing furiously, and accusing him of abandoning him and keeping his food to himself. But the man with the food says he only ate it because the other one went off with the drink and abandoned him. The man with the drink insists he was there all along! They are both telling the truth. How can this be?’

Li groaned. ‘Mei Yuan, I give you two lines. You give me a novel. Too much detail.’

‘Ah,’ Mei Yuan grinned. ‘It is in the detail that you will find the devil.’

Li waved his hand dismissively. ‘I’m not even going to think about it right now.’

‘You have more important things to think about?’

His face darkened, as if a cloud had cast its shadow on him. He closed his eyes, and still the image of the girl was there. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have.’

And she knew she had crossed a line into dangerous territory. She made light of it. ‘Maybe by tonight you will have had time to think.’

‘Tonight?’ Li frowned.

‘Before you go to the Great Hall of the People. I have never been in the Great Hall of the People. If I were not baby-sitting, I would have gone to see you there myself.’

‘The Great Hall of the People,’ Li muttered. He had forgotten that it was tonight. How could he have forgotten? He would, after all, be centre stage. He cringed again with embarrassment at the thought of it. The Public Security Ministry was anxious to improve the image of the police, and with increasing coverage of crime by the media, Li had become one of the most high profile senior officers in the public eye. He was still young — under forty — tall, powerfully built and, if not exactly handsome, then striking in his looks. He had been considered perfect for the propaganda posters. And some PR person in the Minister’s office had dreamed up the idea of a People’s Award for Crime Fighting, to be presented in the full glare of publicity at the Great Hall of the People. Li’s objections had been dismissed out of hand. Summoned to the office of the city’s Police Commissioner, it had been made clear to him that this was not a matter in which he had any choice. When news of it leaked out, it had led to some good-humoured mickey-taking by some of his junior officers at Section One. But he had also become aware of jealousy among more senior officers at police headquarters downtown where he knew he had enemies. His spirits dipped.

‘I have other riddles to solve today, Mei Yuan. Why don’t you try yours on Margaret?’

‘Hah!’ Mei Yuan grunted. ‘She is always too quick. She is smarter than you.’

Li tossed his paper wrapping in the bin. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ He mounted his bike.

‘You are welcome. Maybe I will ask her, when I see her at the park.’

Li wheeled down off the sidewalk on to the road. ‘She won’t be there for tai chi today, Mei Yuan. She has to go to the visa office to get her extension application in.’

‘She still has to do that?’ Mei Yuan raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you have any influence?’

Li snorted. ‘You know the authorities frown on our relationship, Mei Yuan. Pin-up policeman living in sin with foreign devil. Doesn’t exactly fit the image of the poster campaign It’s only tolerated because everyone pretends it doesn’t exist. Besides, the Entry-Exit Police are a law unto themselves.’ He pushed off into the road to the accompaniment of a symphony of horns and called back over his shoulder, ‘See you tonight.’

The new visa office was opposite the Dongzhimen Bridge on the Second Ring Road. It was too far for Margaret to cycle with Li Jon strapped into the baby seat in front of her handlebars. Life had been simpler when the visa office was located in its original crumbling grey brick building on the east side of the Forbidden City, five minutes from the apartment. Now its replacement, in a twin-towered monstrosity of stone, glass and steel, was a twenty-five-minute taxi ride on a good traffic day.

Her taxi parked up beneath the flyover, and the driver settled down, meter still running, to read his Beijing Youth Daily while Margaret struggled to get the baby buggy out of the trunk. She was not in the best of humours by the time she had negotiated four lanes of traffic and a revolving glass door that wouldn’t revolve. And since the counters were on the first floor, there was also the escalator to contend with, which was never easy with the buggy.