Whispering Shadows (16 page)

The woman did not move, but looked at Zhang with her small narrow eyes. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Zhang Lin,” Zhang replied.

“What do you want?”

“To help you.”

“Why?”

“Because I've heard that you need help.” Zhang knew that the woman in front of him would have to be a Buddhist already in order to believe in this reason.

“Are you a policeman?” she asked suspiciously.

He had been afraid of this question. He did not want to lie but if he told the truth he would endanger both himself and her.

“I'm also from Chengdu,” he said in a way that implied that someone from that city could never become a policeman in Shenzhen.

A brief smile flitted across her mouth. “Me too.”

“I've heard that you and your child need a bed for a few days.”

The fear returned to her face immediately. “Yes, and what about it?”

“I have a friend who is from Chengdu. He has a restaurant in Shekou and there are two rooms above it for his waitresses. There is often a bed free there. He may even need a worker. I could give him a call.”

She put her baby down on a pillow carefully and crept out of the bed. How small and delicate Zu's wife is, he thought, as she stood in front of him. She looked as if she was in her early twenties, and there were dark shadows in the hollows under her eyes. Her lips were stretched thin and her eyes had the look of a person who had never found much reason to trust a stranger.

Zhang understood why she was frightened. Every year, tens of thousands of young women vanished overnight without a trace, lured into a trap by strangers who promised them a good job. Well-organized gangs smuggled them right across the country to remote provinces and sold them to farmers who often treated them like slaves. The newspapers and the television were full of stories like these. How was she supposed to know that he did not belong to one of these gangs?

“How long do you need somewhere to stay?”

She looked at him for a long time, expressionless, as though the time had now come for her to decide whether to believe him or not.
Their eyes met. He felt uncomfortable; he hated lying or concealing the truth, and always thought that the person being deceived must see that immediately. But for her this was not a question of trust. As far as he could see from her eyes, she had no other option.

He repeated his question.

“I don't know. My husband was arrested the day before yesterday. I don't know when he'll be released.”

“Arrested?” Zhang asked, looking as surprised as he could. He was not a good actor.

“Yes, arrested. Two days ago three policemen came and took him away. They wanted to talk to him, they said. I have no idea what about. He can't have done anything recently. He's been sick.”

“Sick?” The word slipped out of him much too quickly and loudly, but she had either not noticed his agitation or had decided that it didn't matter who this stranger was.

“With stomach problems.”

“Since when?”

She thought for a moment. “For quite some time now. He couldn't even work in the last few days. He's been lying in bed all the time.”

XVI

The taxi took them to Shekou via the Guangshen Expressway. The traffic had gotten heavier with every passing kilometer; they were only moving very slowly now and jolted to a sudden standstill every few meters, making the photo of Mao hanging from the rearview mirror dance back and forth wildly. The air in the car was sticky; the air-conditioning was merely blowing warm air into the back; they had rolled the windows down, but even the breeze created as they drove along was warm. Zhang watched the young woman and her baby from the corner of his eye. The child was half asleep, dozing on the lap of the mother, who was looking out of the window silently. She had given short, brusque replies to his few questions about her husband. He felt sorry for her and he felt a pall come over him at the sight of her.

“I used to work there,” she said, tipping her head toward the factory grounds not far from the expressway.

“What did you do there?”

“I painted wings.”

“You painted wings? What kinds of wings?”

“Angel wings. Small white angels made of clay were delivered, and we had to paint them. Red cheeks, blue eyes, blond hair, and golden wings. They were sold to America. Our boss said the people there would hang them on trees. I don't know if that's true.”

“And?” Zhang asked.

“And what?”

“I mean, what was the work like? Were you treated well?”

She turned to face Zhang and looked at him as though he were mad. “What strange questions you ask.” After a pause she added, “It was fine. I got thrown out when they noticed that I was pregnant.” She turned away again and looked out of the window.

Zhang slid around on the backseat trying to find a position in which his legs did not hurt so much. Ever since the young woman had, without knowing, provided her husband with an irrefutable alibi, his whole body had rebelled. The pain in his knee had increased with every passing minute; he felt it creeping slowly but mercilessly and relentlessly up his back; it would reach his head in a few minutes. The old Chinese physician whom he had consulted regularly for years and who, with great dedication, brewed him herbal teas that tasted awful, claiming that they would do Zhang good, was proved right yet again. Everything was connected to everything else; nothing in the body, or, as the doctor liked to add, in life, was to be viewed in isolation. The stomach problems, the nausea, the rheumatism pains, yes, even the knee, was directly connected to his soul and the burden that it bore. It had not taken much for the physician to convince him of this, but Zhang was still constantly surprised at how quickly his body reacted and how little he could outwit or deceive it as he grew older.

The old man claimed that this was a good thing; the detective should count himself lucky that his body was so sensitive. He just had to stop ignoring the signs it was giving him. Zhang was not so sure. There were days like this one when he would have liked to be a little more robust, would have preferred to have a body that reacted a little more leniently to stress. He knew exactly what his knee and his back were protesting against. An innocent man was sitting in a harshly lit, white-tiled room in the basement of the police headquarters and was in the process of signing a confession that had every likelihood of leading to his own death sentence.

Even with the cabdriver's help, he had difficulty finding his friend's restaurant. He had not been there for at least half a year, and
the street looked different now. On the corner, a large supermarket had just opened on what had once been a piece of empty land. It was flanked by two new pink-tiled buildings that had gilded columns and swan statues at the entrances. The two buildings that had stood there six months ago had disappeared.

The restaurant owner greeted Zhang in a friendly manner but looked skeptical when he sized up the young woman and child. Zhang could see that he did not believe that they were distant relations who needed a bed for a couple of days, and a job if possible. He seemed to be calculating what advantages and disadvantages doing this favor could bring him. After few moments' thought, he clearly concluded that the pros outweighed the cons; doing a police detective a small favor could not possibly be a mistake. He led them up to the second floor. There was a bed free there and Zu's wife could help out in the kitchen while the baby was sleeping.

Zhang thanked him, turned down an invitation to stay for dinner in a pleasant but firm manner, and promised to be in touch over the next few days.

He had hoped that the pain in his body would recede a little, at least for a time, after doing this good deed, but he had fooled himself. Now he felt as if someone was sitting on his shoulders, striking him on the head over and over again.

He went to the supermarket, bought a bottle of water and a packet of aspirin, sat down in the pedestrian area in the shade cast by a meter-high plastic inflatable beer bottle, and thought about the possible courses of action left to him.

So many thoughts flitted through his head that he had trouble concentrating. He had to find out more about Michael Owen in order to get any further. Who could help him? Who knew how Michael Owen had spent his time in Shenzhen? Had he always just come over from Hong Kong for the day or had he stayed the night here? Did he have any friends or acquaintances in the city? Zhang had no idea where he should start looking. Maybe Owen's parents knew more, but they would only talk to Paul at best, not to
him. There were probably clues about contacts in Shenzhen on his computer, but Zhang had already asked Paul for help with that and not heard anything back. He really didn't want to ask him again, not because of his pride but because Paul had told him quite clearly that he did not want to have anything more to do with this. He had sworn to himself that he would respect this wish, but there was no one else whom he could turn to right now.

“What will this cost me?” His friend's words still echoed in his ears. It was a strange thing for Paul to say. Paul was not the type who subjected everything he did to a cost-benefit analysis beforehand; he was often remarkably generous. He must have felt very much under pressure from Zhang to have responded as he did. Apart from that, the question was quite justified. The probability of them finding Michael Owen's murderer on their own was very small, and even if they got on the trail of the murderer, it would be practically impossible to bring him before a court. This much was certain: Whoever was behind this had powerful friends in Shenzhen.

As his melancholy worsened, he closed his eyes and tried breathing calmly to meditate for a short period to soothe his nerves, but he could not do it. Instead he saw the young woman and her child before him once again. The image of her cowering on the bed, crouched with her child in her arms and looking at him with fear and suspicion, would not leave his head. Now he knew what he had found so moving about this woman. It was the deep suspicion, distress, and loneliness in her eyes. It reminded him of the frightened look in his own eyes when he was her age. But he was a child of the Cultural Revolution; he had been forced to spend years in the countryside; he had seen Hu die and experienced things that he had not even told Mei or Paul about before. She, on the other hand, was a child of the new era; more than a generation and the economic reforms lay between them; she had left her village of her own accord and moved to the city to determine the course of her own life. Discovering a
familiar fear in her eyes made him feel shaken and confused.

———

Zhang started at the sound of his cell phone ringing. A new era, an old fear.

“Zhang, where are you?”

Zhang had to swallow a few times before he could say anything.

Luo raised his voice. “Zhang, for God's sake, can you hear me?”

“Not very well. My phone is running out of battery. I'm waiting for a taxi. Just left the doctor's. My knee . . .”

“We have the murderer, Zhang,” his boss said, interrupting him. “It was that worker. He signed a confession an hour ago.”

Zhang did not know what Luo expected him to say. Congratulations? Well done? Liar? It wasn't Zu; he had an alibi? Who are you covering up for? He could think of neither a stock phrase nor a Chinese saying so he said nothing.

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes.”

“Zhang?” Luo's voice now sounded severe, almost threatening.

“That's . . . that's . . . that's . . . great news,” Zhang stuttered.

“You can tell your friend in Hong Kong. The parents are being told right now. And so the case is closed, Zhang.”

“It certainly looks like it,” Zhang replied.

“It doesn't look like it, Zhang. It is.” After a brief pause he asked, “Are you coming back to the office now?”

If he said no, if he made up some reason not to go back to the police headquarters now and share in Luo and his other colleagues' pleasure at the case being solved, then there would be no going back. Then he would have to start looking for work. He thought about Mei. He thought about his son. He thought about their apartment, having dinner together, and the wonderful gentle smile that often lit up his wife's face when he cooked for her. He thought about the hours that he spent in front of the computer with Zheng playing chess together. What would it cost his family? Did he have the right
to make them pay any price? If he, Zhang, fell foul of those in power in this city, if even one of those people felt threatened by him, his family would have to pay for it. That was how it had always been in China and that was how it was now. He felt his heart pounding more heavily. Did he have any chance of getting something out of it? He would have liked nothing better than to jab the red button of his cell phone and toss the phone straight into the fountain in the square at the end of the street. But that wouldn't have changed anything. He had to make up his mind.

“Zhang?”

“Luo,” he said in a shaky voice. “Luo, I was just at the doctor's. My knee. I can hardly take a step. You know my problem.” Zhang took a deep breath and continued. “He said it would be better if I moved as little as possible in the next few days. Lying down would be best, he said.”

Now it was Luo who was silent.

Did he suspect anything? Was he calculating if Zhang could still do any damage or were his thoughts somewhere else altogether?

“Hm,” was all Zhang heard. His battery beeped once more. He had to hurry.

“I'm sure I'll be fine in three or four days. Call if you need me. I'll be lying on the couch at home.”

Maybe it was this that allayed Luo's doubts or maybe his boss had decided that Zhang was no longer a threat, no matter what he got up to. “All right. Get well soon,” he said, and hung up.

Zhang listened to the hiss of the phone for a moment before he put it back into his pocket with trembling hands.

Had he really made up his mind?

If Mei were in front of him now, he would not have been able to put into words why he was doing what he was doing. Because right now in Shekou, in a shabby room among all the bars and brothels, there was a young mother with a baby whose father was to be executed for a murder that he did not commit? Because he felt that he would be partly responsible if he did not try to find out who was
responsible for the crime? Because as a Buddhist he feared the bad Karma that would result? Because he had looked away more than once before in his life when an innocent man had died? Because three miserable little peppercorns still haunted his dreams?

No, that all sounded much too honorable. He was anything but a hero. He was a human being, small and fearful, defenseless and vulnerable. A human being who wished he had a choice, who wished he could just hide away now, look away, or shout “kill the traitor” when he was ordered to, but he could not. Something in him revolted. It was that simple, that complicated.

Zhang tried to reach Paul. He let it ring through to voice mail, then he hung up. He did not want to leave a message. He wanted to speak to Paul; he tried again and again, without success. Where could his friend be? Why wasn't he picking up his phone? He wanted to call Mei and let her know that he needed to go over to see Paul urgently and that he would be back by tomorrow at the latest, but his phone battery had finally run out. He would call his family from Paul's phone in Hong Kong.

Zhang looked for a taxi and told the driver to take him to the pier by the quickest route possible. He could take one of the express ferries straight to Hong Kong from there.

Paul was now the only one who could help him.