Detained (21 page)

There was a long pause before he said. “We’ll work something out. I’m on my way.”

Darcy lent against the sun baked stone of the number twenty-seven and sipped her bottled water. She tried on the idea the man she’d gone to Shangri-La and back with was a murderer. The only way she could get it to fit was to imagine it as self-defence.

She had enough money to hang out in Shanghai for a fortnight if she didn’t freelance a story. But if she could use the information she knew about Will, and write a story that raised questions about his imprisonment, then she’d be able to stay on and see this out, without it costing her every cent she owned. Without it burying her soul in disgust at the chain of events she’d created, at the ruination of a good man.

Will Parker was a good man. She knew it. She believed in it. She’d do whatever she could to make others see it too. And if that meant convincing Peter Parker to drop his suit against her, and allow her to use the information she knew about Will, she’d find a way to do it.

The rest of the press pack had dispersed now. Gone to chase other leads, maybe even other stories. Robert said the urgency would go out of the whole thing now because the news would be controlled by the Ministry of Justice and Will wasn’t going anywhere.

There was one other man loitering about like she was. He kept looking her way, no doubt annoyed to find a rival on the scene. Darcy braced for an argument when he approached.

He said, “Miss Campbell?” and she didn’t know if she should be surprised he knew her name, or was Will Parker’s inscrutable driver.

He put his hand out to shake. “I’m Bo.”

She clasped his hand, feeling something like hope wriggling in her fingertips.

“Why are you here?” he demanded, no longer unreadable—pissed off.

“Because I did wrong by Will. I want to help.”

“You caused his pain. How can you help?”

It was the question she’d been asking herself since she boarded the plane and landed in Pudong. Who was she to think she could face down the Chinese legal system? She didn’t speak the language. She was being sued by Parker Corp. She didn’t even have a job, or enough money to keep her life together for more than a few months. She’d come halfway around the world fuelled on guilt and fairytale.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can try.”

Bo took off his sunglasses. He had a purple bruise around one eye and a nasty scab on his cheek. “I try too. Come inside. We talk to Pete.”

Inside
. Bo could get her inside. In front of Peter. It was too good to be true. She and Bo were already moving when Robert arrived. She did a hasty introduction, and Robert shot her a look that said impressive and holy shit in one quick eyebrow bounce.

Bo swept through the cool, designer interior of Parker’s executive reception, headed straight to Peter’s office.

“Bo. Who? Ah. You can’t go in there,” said the receptionist.

Bo ignored her and that was a cue for Darcy. She and Robert sat on his heels as he went down the corridor. Peter’s door was open, Bo marched through it.

“Bo, how are you feeling?” said Peter, but his weary smile fell away when he saw Darcy. “What? No. Bo, they can’t be here.”

Bo planted himself in front of Peter’s desk. “She can help. We will go to Feng’s village. We will find out the truth. Will did not kill Feng.”

Peter sighed. “I’ve already done that. It’s not going to help.”

“You sent the wrong people. You don’t ask the right questions.”

“And you think this bitch and that scumbag photographer who started this whole thing can do better?” Peter was glaring at them. “Bo, they’re the reason he was hunted down in the first place. The reason you were beaten and left for dead.”

Peter stood. “I know you want to help. But you’ve already done enough. You need to rest.” He came around his desk and pointed at Darcy. “Leave now, and if I find you anywhere near Parker premises again I’ll have the paper pull you out and up the damages bill.”

“I don’t work for them anymore. You’ve already seen to that. And there isn’t anything more you can threaten me with.” At least that was true. Peter Parker might have power to hurt her but it wasn’t infinite.

“Interesting.” Peter’s smile was the flavour of vindication. “Then you’re even more deluded than I could’ve imagined. What could you possibly do to help, and why would I even think about letting you?”

“Because Will means something to me.”

Peter reached for his desk phone, held the handset, about to call security, she guessed.

“Yes, your big career break, your walk on the wild-side, your million dollar chequebook journalism kiss and tell. You’ve done enough damage. I cannot understand what Will saw in you. Leave now, before I have you escorted all the way back to the airport.”

Darcy looked at Bo. He was facing away from Peter. He’d put his sunglasses on. Unreadable. But Peter was perfectly clear. This was the end of the line.

“Will would not want her hurt,” said Bo.

“Will is not in control here anymore,” snapped Peter.

“When we see men of contrary character we should turn inward and examine ourselves.” — Confucius

Will was one of ninety-two foreigners at Quingpu Prison. But since the others were being held for minor offences on short sentences, like theft or fraud, they were kept separate from the main prison population.

Will was a dangerous murderer so despite his white-devil blue eyes and his ability to buy himself out of almost anything—or maybe because of those two things—he was placed in the general population. The Australian consulate tried reasoning and shouting but in the light of the charges he was facing there was very little they could do, unless he copped another beating, and then they could act. And that wasn’t exactly a remote possibility.

After that first night in a cell on his own he was moved. He now had four cellmates. All of them awaiting sentencing like he was. Two of them were gang members, judging by their tattoos—the bigger of the two had lost an eye and his lid was sewn crudely shut, the other hardly had any teeth. Cellmate number three had lost all but the thumb off his left hand and number four had puckered, contorted scars on his face and body which made Will’s look like they weren’t trying hard enough.

The gang members spoke a Han dialect and patchy Cantonese, Lefty spoke some of their dialect and Scarface didn’t talk. Will didn’t think they’d be exchanging life stories or plotting escape together, huddled happily around a purloined set of Chinese Checkers, any time soon.

On his first day in the group cell the guards offered him a steam bun for breakfast in addition to a root vegetable porridge they all got. He almost had it in his mouth before he realised the trap. Five men, one steam bun. He broke it into four pieces and offered his new besties the treat. He could live without bun, but he wasn’t keen on coping another beating quite so soon.

He didn’t sleep that first night, partly because they kept the lights on—it was never night time at Quingpu—but also from fear of being jumped when he was least able to protect himself. It made him a zombie the next day which was dangerous in itself and freaked Pete out. Pete who thought he’d given up, and who was tearing himself inside out trying to find a way out of this. Trying to avoid what might be the simple answer. Occam’s razor. That Will was guilty.

The second night he had no choice but to sleep though fitfully. He kept waking with a start as if it was possible to forget where he was. And every time he woke, Scarface was watching him.

So a new routine was born. Every morning, Will would break a steamed bun into four and share it around. Outside their cell he would exercise gently, trying to repair, and keep to himself, or spend time with Pete, who came as often as they’d let him. At first every day, and then less and less often.

Every evening he’d lay in his place on the sleeping platform, and let his mind take him somewhere more pleasant. Invariably the Palace Suite at the Pen, often by detour of another cell-like room in the bowls of Pudong airport where he’d first entrapped an ink-stained princess in his web of deceit.

On the evenings where icy cold rooms, bold dares and the surprise of gorgeous satin skin featured, he was restless, tossing and turning as he reviewed the moment he’d become the engineer of his own decline. There were a dozen things he could’ve done differently to change the course of that evening, the course of his life since then.

He could’ve omitted nothing, confessed more or walked away, though he knew no matter how sensible that last path was, he’d never have taken it. Not even if he’d guessed he might end up in the Shanghai Prison Administration Bureau’s model restitution facility for law-breakers.

At the end of the first week, Lefty returned his portion of steamed bun to Will. An offering, a trap; was hard to tell. Three and a half sets of eyes watched him. He said thank you, popped it in his mouth and swallowed it. He got smiles all round. They were bonding over steamed buns. That was the day it was announced publicly he’d been jailed for murder so being amused by a steam bun exchange seemed a frivolous matter. Still, he’d told Pete. He meant it to reassure him he was getting on all right, but it had the opposite effect. It convinced Pete he’d given up.

Next morning Will offered the whole steamed bun to Lefty. There was a quick exchange of looks all around, an understanding was had, and Lefty ate the whole bun, rolling his eyes at the simple pleasure. By week’s end they’d each had a whole steam bun of their own and Scarface no longer watched Will try to sleep.

This was his life now. Using his privilege as a foreigner to share steam buns with his cellmates, keeping his head down, exercising to rebuild his strength, trying to help Pete come to terms with the fact he’d have to run Parker from now, and spending his nights with Darcy. Until the day the steam bun didn’t arrive and the interrogations started.

That was the day Scarface spoke in broken English. He’d known what was about to happen when the bun didn’t come. He grunted at Will, two words, “Tell nothing.” It was good advice, the same as Pete’s, as it turned out.

Now each day they’d take Will from his cell to an even more brightly lit room where the furniture was bloodstained—deliberately, theatrically; probably both. There wasn’t much preamble. They told him he was going to die for killing Feng, and he should confess so he’d have a clear conscience. They told him this over and over again in multiple languages. They varied the details but the end result was always the same. He’d forfeit his life because he was a foreign capitalist pig, a thieving, murdering scum who didn’t deserve to live. It was kind of like making up words to Green Day songs, except nowhere near as much fun.

The first interrogation made him feel oddly buoyant, because the abuse was only verbal. Verbal abuse he could block out. It was physical abuse he was terrified of. While he’d had medical attention, it’d been basic. He doubted he’d ever be able to breathe through his nose again, and he was glad there were no mirrors around. Pete’s expression had been enough to judge by. His ribs pained constantly, and there was something wrong with his shoulder. If he got beaten again he might end up with severe injuries that never healed.

Being physically weak in a place like this was its own death sentence, and no matter how many superficial friends he made with steamed buns, he was and always would be on his own.

But as the interrogations wore on, they became harder to handle. Will recognised them for the brainwashing technique they were, but it didn’t make it easier to stay mute through each ninety minute harangue. And now he barely saw Pete. He would come to the prison and be turned away by this problem or that, by one lie after another. They were torturing Pete too.

There was one unexpected bright spot. Movie night. Movie night was a monthly privilege for foreign prisoners. Chinese prisoners got to watch four movies a year. Will was told he could watch a movie of his choice from a narrow catalogue of material approved by the prison authorities. It would cost him five yuan, the equivalent of seventy Australian cents. The movie would screen in a partitioned part of the main dining hall in the presence of the other prisoners on that dinner shift, but only Will would be entitled to watch it.

He considered declining. It was simply asking for trouble to go through such a demonstration of his privilege in front of the prison population, which is why of course it was offered. Until he realised movie night was an opportunity to make friends and influence people.

Instead of choosing a movie from the catalogue for foreigners, he chose one from the local catalogue. Bruce Lee’s classic,
Enter the Dragon
. Then, through a multilingual round robin, he told his cellmates. All they had to do was see that the partitions didn’t stay up. And that’s how it happened; courtesy of Will Parker, eleven hundred prisoners in the dining hall were treated to a 1970s view of crime lords, opium rings, corruption, and Kung Fu.

Will watched the opening credits roll, saw the consternation on the faces of the guards and heard the cheer go up. He waited long enough to see he hadn’t inadvertently caused a riot and went to his cell. It was the first chance he’d had to be alone since the night he was brought in. He didn’t think opportunities to be alone were going to come along often.

He lay on the sleeping platform and thought about Feng Kee. He’d known Feng was a gangster. He’d known he was a thief and a cheat, but it was only by working amongst the gangsters, cheats and thieves, officially sanctioned and otherwise petty, that a twenty-four year old from Australia with patchy schooling, an untried mechanical engineering certificate and more ambition than sense, could get a start.

He had the tail end of Norman Vessy’s inheritance, the bit they hadn’t used to get Pete through boarding school, uni and on to London, and he had a plan. He needed big balls and luck.

He had the patent for the production of farm machinery parts he’d won in a poker game off a broken down engineer in a pub in Brisbane. He needed steel, factory capacity and introductions. He needed markets, shipping, sales and forecasting.