Peter May - Chinese Whispers

They were in Pufang Lu now, heading west through a forest of tower blocks rising above trees rattling dying leaves in the wind. The driver dropped her on the corner opposite Dai’s block and pointed it out. She gave him twenty yuan . ‘ Syeh-syeh ,’ she said, and as she ran across the road the wind blew her anorak open to let the November wind caress her with its icy fingers. The cold made her eyes water.

She hurried down the path past the shuttered jian bing stall and turned up steps through the doorway on to the ground floor landing. It was gloomy in here and smelled of stale cooking and body odour. The elevator was turned off, and the gate on the stairwell was shut. She cursed, looking around for some kind of telephone entry system, but could not see anything. By chance she tried the stairgate and it swung open. Either the last resident to use it had forgotten to lock it, or it was broken. She didn’t care. She took the steps two at a time, pausing on the third landing to catch her breath, before running up the next two flights. On the fifth landing she stopped for several moments, leaning against the wall, her breath rasping and abrasive in her lungs. Then she heaved herself off the wall and ran along the doors looking for the number 504 .

Of course, it was the last door she came to. There was no bell, and she banged on it hard with the flat of her hand. When there was no response, she banged again. Harder, and called his name. A door further along the hall flew open, and a man’s voice shouted imprecations at her. She ignored him and kept banging until, finally, she heard stirring within, the rattling of a chain, and the door opened a crack.

‘Mister Dai, Mister Dai, let me in! It’s Margaret.’

The door opened wider, and a pale-faced Dai stood blinking in the landing light, dressed in his pyjamas, a worn silk dressing gown hastily pulled around him. He looked both frightened and puzzled. ‘Margaret … What are you doing here?’

Margaret’s panic was returning now. ‘You phoned me!’ she almost shouted.

‘What?’ The old man looked at her as if she was mad.

‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God.’ Margaret was almost incoherent. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Mister Li, is there?’

Dai was shaking his head. ‘Of course there isn’t. He’s asleep. Or, at least, he was. What in the name …?’

But Margaret pushed past him into the tiny apartment. ‘Where’s your phone?’

Lao Dai shut the door firmly behind them and led her through to a small, tidy sitting room. ‘I will not even ask,’ he said, and pointed to the phone on a low table beside the settee.

Margaret fumbled for the piece of paper with Dai’s address. Thank God Lyang had had the foresight to write her own telephone number on the back of it in case Margaret needed to call. Margaret dialled it now. The phone rang. Three, four, five times. ‘Come on, come on,’ Margaret urged through clenched teeth. ‘Answer, for God’s sake!’ But it just kept on ringing. By the time it reached the tenth ring, her insides had turned to jelly. How could she have been so stupid! She hung up and looked at Dai, as if he might provide her with the inspiration for what to do next. But he only looked perplexed, and not a little scared.

Li Yan, she thought. He had her mobile. He’d know what she should do. She picked up the phone and dialled. But almost immediately the messaging service kicked in. Either the phone was switched off or there was no signal. She hung up the phone and knew she had to get back to Lyang’s apartment. Li Jon and Xinxin were there. She would never forgive herself if something had happened to them. And yet, why else would someone have lured her away with such an elaborate trick? She felt acid rising in her throat.

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered jumping quickly to her feet. ‘Mister Dai, you’ve got to call the police for me. Please. My baby’s life is in danger.’ And she pushed past old Dai and fled down the hall to the front door and out on to the landing.

‘Where?’ he called after her. ‘Where should they go?’

She stopped, thinking furiously. ‘The Music Apartments … I can’t remember what it’s called. There are giant piano lids on the roofs. It’s where Bill Hart lived.’

She almost fell twice on the stairs, before staggering past the stairgate and running out into a wall of freezing cold night air.

Outside, the streets were empty. Not a taxi in sight. She remembered Lyang’s words. It could be long enough before you pick one up in the street at this time of the morning .

She started running east along Pufang Lu crunching dried leaves underfoot, stumbling on uneven pavings. To the south, beyond the sports complex, the lights of the Feng Chung shopping centre still blazed into the night. Every step brought deeper despair, a sense of complete hopelessness. And helplessness. It would take her an hour, longer, at this rate, and what kind of state would she be in when she got there? The tears came, then, turning almost to ice as they streamed down her cheeks. There were lights burning in the police station on the corner of Fangxing Lu, and Margaret hesitated at the steps leading up between chrome pillars to its glass doors. Through them she could see a large board on the wall of the lobby, photographs of every officer working out of that office. And she knew that not one of them would speak English. What could she say to make them understand? Some tearstained mad foreign woman running in out of the night, jabbering incomprehensibly. They would probably lock her up.

The lights of a car raked across the front of the building, and she swivelled in time to see a taxi turning into Pufang Lu. She almost screamed at it to stop, running into the road waving her hands in the air. She saw the driver’s face caught in the light of a streetlamp. A moment of indecision in it as he saw the crazed yangguizi running across the street. But to Margaret’s relief he pulled up. Legs almost buckling under her, she yanked open the passenger door and dropped into the seat beside him. He looked at her, alarmed.

‘Oh, Jesus …’ she whispered, realising that she had no idea how she was going to tell him where to take her. Lyang had not written down her own address. She tried to stop her brain from spiralling into further panic. Think, think, she told herself. Then, ‘Jinsong Bridge,’ she said, suddenly remembering the turn off the ring road. The driver stared at her, clearly not understanding. ‘ Jin Song ,’ she said, trying to make the tonal distinction between the syllables, as she had heard the Chinese doing. And what was the word for bridge? ‘ Jin Song Qiao .’

The driver nodded. ‘ Ha ,’ he said, and to her relief slipped his taxi into gear. They sped off east and then swung north.

Margaret looked down and saw that her knuckles had turned white, her fingers intertwined in a knot of tension in her lap. She tried to relax, to think positive thoughts, to convince herself that she was blowing this out of all proportion. But she couldn’t. The fact that someone had telephoned her, pretending to be Dai, to get her out of the apartment, simply filled her with the most unthinkable dread. She remembered Li telling her that Lynn Pan had been lured to the Millennium Monument by someone on the telephone pretending to be him. That could only have been Cao. And tonight, it could have been no one else.

The journey back to the Music Home Apartments — frustratingly the name came back to her now — seemed interminable, the city floating past her in slow motion as they headed north on the East Third Ring Road. At last she saw the grand piano lids on top of the two towers. ‘There,’ she shouted at the driver, pointing through the windscreen. ‘I want to go there.’