The Master of Rain (14 page)

Authors: Tom Bradby

BOOK: The Master of Rain

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“It is
not
always money. He likes the feeling of absolute control and has developed a taste for more, shall we say, persuasive measures. He is a gangster, a nobody from nowhere who had terrible bad luck as a child in a country where bad luck usually means destitution and death. He survived. With a cunning and ruthlessness and skill we can only imagine, he has dragged himself up through the underbelly of this city to a position he could never have dreamed would ever be his. He has power and money beyond the imagination of most Chinese, let alone those who began life in such desperate circumstances. His position is an obsession. He will leave nothing to chance and do anything to protect it. He has systematically set out to buy everyone and everything in this city so that he can never go back to the world he has fought so hard to get away from. The fear of a return to poverty keeps him awake at night, still. In this city it is the survival of the fittest, and believe me, he has done everything in his power to ensure no one can touch him. He is unassailable. If he is behind these murders, then you cannot win and you may as well not try.”

“So what other measures does he use?”

Maretsky frowned, as if frustrated that his message was not getting through. “Ask Caprisi to tell you about Slugger, Field.” Maretsky shook his head. “But why do you, a bright ambitious young man with the right social connections—or so I have heard—why do you care about a poor Russian princess who fell by the wayside?”

Field straightened. He felt his face reddening.

“You are a knight in shining armor, is that it?”

“No one is unassailable, Maretsky.”

“Then how little you really know.”

Ten

A
s Field and Caprisi stepped out of the car in front of the Happy Times block, a few rays of sunshine broke through the clouds, giving the yellow stone a mellow glow. The building had wide, circular stone steps at its entrance, with a small area of garden on either side, the trees now in bloom, the pink petals of their flowers thick on the ground, where they’d been swept up by the winds that sometimes accompanied the summer monsoons.

In the lift Caprisi checked his hair and turned to Field as they reached the top floor. It was just the two of them. According to the American, Chen had gone off before the briefing to try to establish the identities of the men who’d seized the doorman.

Field thought that Natasha Medvedev had been expecting them, because she was already dressed—in a long, floral skirt, with a simple white blouse—and they were ushered in without any resistance. Natasha ignored him and focused her attentions on Caprisi. She seemed different—quieter, shorn again of the air of sophistication and weary cynicism. All Field could remember was his anger at the sight of the old man clawing her buttocks the previous evening, light from the chandeliers reflecting off the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Some water, please.”

She turned to Field, without expression, but he shook his head.

Natasha came back with a glass of water and handed it to Caprisi.

“You were a friend of Lena Orlov?” Caprisi asked.

“Yes.”

“How close?”

She shrugged. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re both Russian girls. Did you know each other before you came to Shanghai?”

“Yes, we were at school together in Kazan, on the Volga. Our fathers were friends.”

Caprisi got out his notebook, taking the stub of a pencil from the top pocket of his jacket. “Does Lena have any relatives here in Shanghai?”

Natasha shook her head. “No. Most of her close family perished.” She looked at her feet, which were in open sandals. She moved them to and fro, before crossing one long, slim leg over the other, the skirt riding up the smooth skin of her calf.

“Did you see or hear anyone coming to the apartment the night before last?”

She looked up again. “I was out.”

“All night?”

“More or less.”

“What time did you leave?”

She thought for a moment. “About eleven.”

“And you didn’t hear anyone coming up the lift?”

“No.”

“You didn’t drop around before going out?”

Natasha shook her head.

“You went out . . . where?”

“The Majestic.”

“So when was the last time you saw her?”

Natasha hesitated. “In the afternoon.” She sat up straight, flicking her hair from her eyes. “I went for a walk on the recreation ground and, as I returned, Lena was coming in below. She’d been shopping on Nanking Road.”

“How was she?”

“She was . . .” Natasha shrugged. “She was okay.”

“Only okay?”

“What do you want, Detective? Her life wasn’t a picnic.”

Natasha was staring at both of them now, her brown eyes angry.

“She went into her flat,” Caprisi went on, unruffled, “and you into your own, and you heard nothing more until you went out again in the evening?”

“Yes.”

“And what about after your return that night? What time did you come in?”

“Between three and four. I don’t recall exactly.”

“On your own?”

She stared at him. “Yes.”

Field took out a cigarette and lit it. The others ignored him.

“And you . . . There was nothing unusual?” Caprisi asked.

“I was tired, Officer. I went straight to sleep.”

“Did you see anyone arriving or leaving her apartment?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anyone inside?”

She shook her head.

“And, when you awoke, you went over to borrow some milk?”

“Yes.”

Field had been watching Caprisi taking notes. The pencil stub was so thick that it would have been impossible to write neatly, even if that had been his natural disposition. Caprisi’s handwriting was the worst he’d ever seen.

The American looked up, putting the pencil between his lips, as if it were a cigarette. He leaned back in the chair. “Did Lena have a regular man, Miss Medvedev?”

Natasha stared at her feet again. “Yes, there was a boy in the band at the Majestic . . . Sergei . . . but it was not—”

“There were other men?”

“I don’t know.”

“Men who paid for her favors?”

“She has a sister . . . in Harbin.” Natasha looked up, face burning with righteous anger. “She’s only seventeen. Lena did it so that her sister didn’t have to.”

They were silent.

“This sister,” Caprisi said quietly. “She is the only other survivor from the family we saw in a photo next door?”

“Yes.”

“How many men . . . I mean was Lena a—”

“No.” Natasha shrugged. “When she felt she had to.”

“One consistent man?”

“Sometimes.”

“What about the last few months? Was there anyone—”

“I don’t know. We . . . never talked about it.” She shook her head.

“What work do you do, Miss Medvedev?” Caprisi asked.

There was a long silence.

“If you think it should be obvious to us, then you’re wrong.”

“I sing at the Majestic.”

“Just sing?”

She didn’t dignify this with an answer.

“That was where Lena worked.”

“Well done, Detective.”

“So you would have known . . . would have seen which men she was . . . making an arrangement with.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“How does it work?”

“Some of the men are married . . .” She sighed. “A girl may dance with a hundred in an evening, hints exchanged in whispers. The arrangements you are referring to are not made on the dance floor of the Majestic.”

“How are they made?”

“Lena had a telephone. A man might call on her.”

“But you didn’t see any particular man calling?”

Natasha shook her head.

Caprisi had the pencil in his mouth again. “These flats are owned by Lu Huang.”

She didn’t react.

“So what brings you, or Lena, to live here?”

“We pay rent. To a company on Bubbling Well Road. If they’re connected to Lu, then I’m not aware of it.”

Field did not think Natasha was a good liar. Caprisi must have agreed, because he was looking around the flat, clearly wondering how she could afford to live in such surroundings.

“You must be aware of what happened to the doorman.”

She nodded, again dropping her gaze.

“We believe that Lu’s men were responsible.”

Field looked at her right hand, which was pointing at the ground, her wrist limp. She was wearing a gold bracelet.

“Can you think of any reason,” Caprisi went on, “for such drastic action?”

Natasha shrugged. “They say he was a communist.”

“Like you,” Field said.

She stared at him.

“How does the daughter of a tsarist officer,” he went on, gesturing at the photograph on the bookshelf, “come to attend meetings at the
New Shanghai Life?”

“My father is dead.”

Field felt his face reddening. “So you have decided . . .”

“So it’s none of your business.”

“On the contrary,” Caprisi said slowly. “It’s very much Mr. Field’s business. The Settlement takes a very . . . strong view of émigrés who abuse its hospitality by using this as a base to export political ideas to the Chinese. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr. Field?”

“Yes.”

Caprisi turned back to face her. “So what does Pockmark Lu get in return for allowing you to live here?”

“I told you. We pay rent.”

“I can check that.”

“Well, check it, then.”

“Was Lena his girl . . . I mean his exclusively? Did he let her go with others?”

She shook her head in anger and frustration.

“Did he give her to someone as a favor, or a reward?”

She stared at both of them. “Have you finished?”

Caprisi hesitated. “Lena Orlov was stabbed. You saw the body. You were—”

“Friends, yes, but life has to go on.” The hostility disappeared and Field saw again in her eyes the same deep hurt and fragility that he’d witnessed the day before. “Lena did what she had to do, that’s all.”

Natasha dropped her head again, her long hair tumbling down and obscuring her face.

Caprisi stood, but instead of moving to the door, he went to the window and looked out toward the racecourse. “Lena was stabbed almost twenty times.” He put his hands in his pockets and turned toward her. “In the stomach and in the vagina. It looked worse after they’d cleaned off all the blood.”

Caprisi looked at Field.

“You know, some of the wounds . . . Around the top of the vagina, for example, there were so many, so close together, that they created deep craters, right down to the bone.”

Natasha appeared transfixed by a point on the wall opposite.

“Lena was Lu’s girl, Miss Medvedev, as you certainly know. Can you be sure you or one of your colleagues won’t be next? With that level of anger . . .”

She shook her head, then turned to look at Field. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. Perhaps Caprisi was moved by this, too, because he appeared thoughtful and suddenly more sympathetic. He pulled out Lena Orlov’s notebook and walked over to hand it to her. “We found this hidden inside one of the leather-bound volumes in her bookcase.”

Natasha took it and glanced over the entries, wiping her eyes. She did not look at Field again.

“It’s a list of ships, departure dates, and destinations,” Caprisi explained. “There’s one leaving at the end of this month.”

She handed the notebook back to him.

“You’ve no idea why Lena would have been hiding this?”

She shook her head again.

“There is a note at the bottom: ‘All payments in ledger two.’ What could that mean?”

Natasha shrugged.

“What is ledger two?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never heard Lena talk about any shipments?”

“No.”

“Was she involved in any way in any kind of activity that you think this might refer to?”