Peter May - The Killing Room

Li sat lost in his own thoughts as Mei-Ling steered them west through the traffic on Huaihai Road. The rain had stayed off and the streets were almost dry. This had once been the heart of the old French Town, the former Avenue Joffre, as smart a shopping street as any to be found in Paris. But there was very little evidence left of the French settlement, only perhaps the art nouveau Printemps department store further west. They passed a bar called The Jurassic Pub, with a sign reading This Way to Dinosaurs , and Li wondered briefly what was happening to five thousand years of Chinese culture in this town. They turned south then into Songshan Road, and Mei-Ling pulled into the kerb. ‘We’re more likely to find it on foot from here,’ she said.

They got out of the car and Li looked down the length of the street. It was lined with trees on either side, leaves only now beginning to yellow. Cramped, narrow shop fronts fought for space along the edge of the sidewalk, beneath two storeys of crumbling apartments, rotting wooden balconies groaning with the detritus of overspill from tiny rooms. Vendors’ goods spilled out on to the pavements, bales of cloth and baskets filled with household goods, boxes of fruit and electrical equipment. Every few metres, narrow alleyways opened off left and right, whitewashed brick, poles slung overhead, bowed with the weight of fresh wet washing.

‘How was the Dragon and Phoenix?’ Mei-Ling asked.

He frowned his confusion. They had barely spoken since they left 803. ‘Last night … the restaurant at the Peace Hotel?’

He looked away, embarrassed to meet her eye. ‘Margaret never showed up,’ he said. ‘She fell asleep, apparently.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Mei-Ling said, and Li glanced at her sharply to see if she was being sarcastic. But she seemed genuine enough. ‘The food’s not brilliant there, but the view is great.’ They walked in silence for a moment, checking the numbers above the shop fronts. ‘Listen,’ she said eventually, ‘why don’t you both come and eat at my family’s restaurant tonight. My father and my aunt would be happy to meet you. The view’s nothing special, but I can promise you the food is wonderful.’

Li’s spirits lifted momentarily. ‘I’d like that,’ he said. And then he wondered how Margaret would react. But he decided that he was not going to spend his life worrying about what Margaret was going to think or say or do next. She lived, he felt, in a very different world from him, even when they were sharing the same space at the time. If she was unhappy eating with Mei-Ling’s family, then she could eat on her own.

They crossed the street and found the tailor’s shop about halfway down. It was really just an opening in the wall. A tiny room, hung on all sides with finished clothes and lengths of material. In the back a young girl in a red jacket with a black-and-white checked collar worked a hot iron over yellow silk under the glare of a single fluorescent strip. On her left was a small table with an ancient hand-cranked sewing machine, a small striplight fixed to the wall above it. At the front, behind a short glass counter, an old woman in a beige jacket was sewing the seam of a black xiangyun silk suit on an equally ancient machine. Both women wore pink plastic sleeves to protect their jackets, and Li noticed that they both had sewing rings on their right hands.

Incongruously, a tall white mannequin, with blue eyes and short blonde hair, stood at the open entrance to the shop, modestly draped from the neck in patterned blue cotton. It was missing an arm. And next to it, the lower half of another dummy stood on one leg, a brown skirt hanging loosely from the waist. A bizarre coincidence, Li thought, that the woman they believed might have worked here had been found in pieces, and was also missing a foot.

The woman in the beige jacket turned and looked at them expectantly, and Li saw that she was about seventy, maybe older. But her hair was still black with just a few seams of silver, and it was drawn back in a loose bun. She ran her eyes over Li from top to bottom, perhaps mentally measuring him up for a suit. He showed her his maroon Public Security ID and she was immediately on her guard. ‘I don’t know what you want here,’ she said. ‘We’re honest people just trying to make a living. I’ve been in this city more than fifty years and I’ve never had trouble.’

Mei-Ling said, ‘Is this the place Fu Yawen used to work?’

‘Ye-es.’ She was even more guarded now. ‘Why? Have you found her? Has she shown up finally?’

‘Any idea where she went?’ Li asked her, ignoring her questions.

‘How would I know? She only worked here. You should ask her husband. I bet he’d like to know where she went. Off with some fancy man probably.’ The woman had lost her reserve and was warming to her subject.

‘How long had she worked here?’ Li said.

‘About three years. Mind you, I’d no complaint about her work. She was a good worker, knew what she was doing. Her own father trained her from when she was just a girl. Just like my father trained me.’ The woman shook a stray strand of her hair back from her face. ‘But she had an eye for the men, that one. Couldn’t keep her hands to herself.’

‘And you have no idea what happened to her?’ Li asked again. He glanced towards the girl in the red jacket who was trying to keep her eyes on her work, but who was clearly listening with interest.

The woman followed his eyes, and cast half a glance at the girl in red. ‘Get on with your work,’ she snapped. ‘This is none of your business.’ And to Li and Mei-Ling, ‘She’ll be no help to you. She never knew Fu Yawen. I brought her in as a replacement. She’ll be hoping that you haven’t found her. At least, not alive.’ She sighed exaggeratedly. ‘They have no idea, these young ones. They never saw the war, like I did.’ She puffed herself up proudly and spat beyond them on to the sidewalk. ‘In the forties I made the qipaos for all the young ladies who went to the bars and the balls. The young ones think they’re daring now, but the dresses were slit just as high in those days.’

‘You didn’t answer the question,’ Mei-Ling said impatiently.

‘How can I reply to a question when I don’t know the answer?’ the old woman said boldly. She had lost all her fear now, and Li thought this was not a person he would like to work for.

‘You can reply here, or at headquarters,’ he said, but the threat only served to harden her defiance.

‘And the answer would still be the same. You can’t frighten an old woman like me. And, anyway, I told you. Ask her husband.’

‘And where would we find him?’ Mei-Ling asked.

The woman flicked her head. ‘Down there,’ she said, indicating an alleyway running off from the side of the shop. ‘At the table on the corner.’

‘They both work for you?’ Li asked, surprised.

‘Only one of them works for me now,’ she replied. ‘And I wouldn’t have the other one back if she came to me on bended knee.’

The girl in red never lifted her eyes from the ironing board. But Li sensed her relief.

Fu Yawen’s husband sat on a stool working an electric sewing machine at a small table pressed against the wall under a corrugated plastic awning. A striplight hung at an angle from a makeshift hanger, throwing a cold light across a trestle table covered with white cloth and strewn with tools. At another table, beyond racks of threads and buttons, a woman was repairing shoes. Wet clothes dripped overhead. It must be cold, Li thought, working out here in the depths of winter.

He was a good-looking young man, his hair cut short and neat. He wore a warm woollen jacket and an apron the colour of dried blood. Li saw in his eyes that he knew why they had come the moment he showed him his ID.