Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘And your tag.’

It was a small, electronic identifier about the size of a cigarette lighter that was read by an infrared security scan as you came in the main door. Li dug it out of his breast pocket and handed it to Tao. Now it was just humiliating. He glanced at the watching detectives. But none of them said a word. He brushed past Tao and headed back towards the stairs. ‘I really am sorry, Chief,’ he heard Tao calling after him before his footsteps echoing on the stairs drowned out everything else.

In the street outside, he just kept walking, blinking hard to stop the tears from filling his eyes. He was oblivious to everything around him, blinded by anger and fear and impotence, and an acute sense of loss. It was extraordinary how easy it had been to render him powerless. And completely harmless.

In Hepinglidong Street, Chinese flags whipped in the wind outside a barber’s shop opposite a huge construction clad entirely in green netting and bamboo scaffolding. A worker with a red hard hat stood on the top of it, a green flag raised in one hand, a red one poised in the other, as a huge steel girder was lifted slowly up the outside of the building by a crane that dominated the sky above it. Its shadow followed at a discreet distance. As far as you could see, looking north, blocks of flats wrapped in green net were in various stages of construction. Li passed the entrance to a crumbling old siheyuan courtyard where rusting bicycles nestled under buckled corrugated roofing. There was a tree in the centre of the courtyard, and beyond it you could just see, through its leaves, the windows of Section One.

Someone tugged at his arm. ‘Chief.’ He looked around and saw Wu struggling to keep up with him.

Li did not break stride. ‘What is it, Wu?’

‘They told us we weren’t to talk to you, Chief.’

‘So why are you disobeying orders?’

‘You know I never liked taking orders, Chief.’ Li heard his grin, and the open-mouthed chewing of his gum. ‘Except from you, of course.’

A blue and white wall had been built around the gap site left by the demolition of what had once been a covered food market. Li missed the old Beijing. It had all been comfortingly familiar. Now he felt like a stranger, displaced in an alien city.

‘Chief, I can’t keep up with you.’

Li stopped and looked at Wu who staggered to a halt and stood gasping for air.

‘I had to run to catch you up,’ he said by way of explanation.

‘Maybe you should give up smoking,’ Li said.

‘What, and miss the fun of coughing my lungs up every morning?’ They stood just looking at each other for a moment. When Wu’s smile faded he looked faintly embarrassed. ‘We all know you didn’t sell that story to the Youth Daily , Chief.’

‘You know about that?’ Li was taken aback.

‘Someone’s doing a pretty good job of character assassination, Chief.’ Then he winked. ‘A few of the boys are going to have a quiet word with that journalist. And as for that shit community cop, I’ve already called CID to tell them it was the other way around. That guy assaulted me.’ He paused. ‘The boys are going to have a word with him, too.’

Li shook his head. ‘I don’t want anyone getting into trouble.’

‘You’re the one that’s in trouble, Chief.’

Li said, ‘Wu, I’m not your chief any more.’

Wu’s jaw kept grinding away steadily on his gum. ‘Yeah, you are. Qian’s taken over as acting Chief, but everyone knows it’s just temporary. He’s staying in his old office. And no one’s getting to touch a damned thing in yours until you’re back.’

Li felt unaccountably moved, and had to blink back the tears he felt pricking his eyes. He looked away towards Dongzhimen so that Wu wouldn’t see them. ‘I appreciate it,’ he said. He pushed his hands deep in his coat pockets and felt awkward. He looked at the ground. ‘So what’s happening?’

Wu’s face clouded. ‘Something you need to know, Chief.’ He hesitated and Li looked up, frowning.

‘What is it?’

‘They’ve arrested Margaret.’

Li couldn’t believe it. ‘What?’

‘It’s really stupid,’ Wu said. ‘Everyone knows she’s been living with you for the last year. But officially she’s still supposed to be in that apartment across town at the University of Public Security.’

Li looked towards the heavens. ‘In the name of the sky, Wu, they allocated that apartment to someone else more than six months ago.’

Wu shrugged. ‘The thing is, officially she never informed her local PSB office. So technically she’s in breach of regulations.’

‘Which everyone knew about. From the tea boy to the goddamned minister!’

‘I guess it’s just another club to beat you with, Chief.’

Li saw a taxi in the line of traffic crawling past. He waved it down. ‘Where’s she being held?’

‘Yuetan police station. That’s the headquarters for the Western District. It’s where she’s still registered.’

Li opened the door of the taxi, but paused and turned back. ‘Thanks, Wu,’ he said.

‘Hey, Chief,’ Wu said, ‘I’ll be expecting a big promotion when you get back in the hotseat.’

* * *

Li sat in the back of the taxi watching the city drift past him without seeing it. Someone was trying to dismantle his life, piece by piece by piece. And they were succeeding. He had no job, no car. The life of his child had been threatened, and his lover had been arrested. He felt like a man falling down a mountain, hitting off the rocks, unable to get a hand or a foothold to stop the fall and start the long climb back. He just kept falling. And every time he looked up another rock would smash him in the face. His cellphone trilled. He took it out of his coat pocket and pressed the handset symbol. ‘ Wei? ’

‘Li Yan?’

He knew immediately that it was his father. And he knew that something must be wrong, for his father never phoned him. ‘What is it, Dad?’ It felt odd to call him dad . He never usually addressed him as anything, and father seemed absurdly formal. But the telephone seemed to require some form of address. He heard a child crying in the background. ‘What’s happened?’

His father seemed disorientated, his voice shaky and uncertain. ‘I’m going to miss my train back to Sichuan,’ he said. ‘Your sister did not come home for lunch. I thought maybe she and Xinxin were eating out somewhere and had forgotten to tell me. So I was fixing something to eat for myself when the school phoned.’

‘What school?’

‘Xinxin’s school.’ He sounded indignant. ‘What other school would it be?’

‘What did they say, Dad?’ Li contained his impatience.

‘They said that Xiao Ling never came to pick up Xinxin. She always picks up Xinxin at lunchtime. They thought maybe something was wrong.’

‘Dad, just tell me what happened.’

‘I went to the school myself. In a taxi. And when I got back here with Xinxin I telephoned Xiao Ling’s work. The neighbour across the landing gave me the number.’ Li bit his tongue. Details he did not need to know. ‘When I phoned, they said she had been arrested.’

For what seemed like a lifetime, Li could not even seem to draw a breath. When finally he did, all he could say was, ‘What?’

‘The police raided the Jeep factory this morning and searched all the staff lockers. In Xiao Ling’s locker they found cocaine.’ The incredulity in the old man’s voice found an echo in Li’s brain.

‘That’s not possible.’

‘She’s a good girl, Li Yan. She would not use stuff like that.’

‘Dad, she couldn’t afford stuff like that,’ Li said. Yet another piece of his life being taken apart. Another demonstration of the power his unknown enemy had over him. Another rock in the face. It was not just Li who was being targeted. It was his whole family. He wanted to punch the roof of the taxi, kick the seat in front of him. He wanted to yell and hit out. But instead he held it all inside himself, seething, dangerous.