The Ghost Shift (10 page)

“That pair arrived yesterday. The Party thinks I need protecting. Or others must be protected from me. Come in.”

She followed him into a living room, with cream sofas set around a black lacquer table. It was more comfortable than she’d expected. She thought of Chen’s speech and wondered if this was the sanctum of a corrupt official, whose private life was richer than his public image. There was wealth here, but it looked like old money—objects he’d saved for, ornaments he’d kept for a long time. A baby grand piano sat in one corner, the score to a Schubert sonata on its stand. A Poppy tablet, still in its box, was the only hint of modernity.

There was a set of four photographs on the piano in matching frames. They revealed the same woman, a solemn-faced beauty. She was pictured as a girl in a Mao tunic, with university friends, as a young bride, and with her husband by one of the stone
huabiao
columns at the Gate of Heavenly Peace. She looked happier in age, as
her face lost its roundness and lines crept under her eyes. The man next to her was the Wolf, his hair black instead of gray.

“My wife,” he said, walking over to pick up the bridal portrait. He examined it, then handed it to Mei.

“She was beautiful.”

“All of her life.”

“When did she—” Mei stopped, embarrassed by her boldness. His wife’s death felt like common gossip, given a nasty edge by Pan.

“The year you were born. It’s hard to imagine now.” He took the photograph back and replaced it gently on the same spot.

“How do you know when I was born?” she asked.

He stared at her. She thought he might lose his temper at being challenged, but instead he walked over to a sofa and sat, tapping a document on the lacquer table with one finger.

“Your file, Mei. It’s not a mystery. Sit. Tell me why you’re here.”

Mei steeled herself. She took out the envelope and, sitting opposite him on the sofa, put it on the table. The Wolf looked at the blue customs seal and frowned, then leaned forward and picked it up. He squeezed it between finger and thumb, feeling the notes inside, and shook his head.

“Who is this from?”

“Superintendent Hou of Humen Customs. He asked me to bring it to you.” She felt herself falter under the Wolf’s gaze. “He said he knows you.”

“Was there a message?”

“He said it was a note of appreciation.”

“Very kind. Tell me, who instructed you to visit Superintendent Hou? It wasn’t your idea, was it?”

She shook her head. “I was sent by Deputy Secretary Pan, the morning after I saw you in Dongguan.”

The Wolf shook his head again. “She worked fast, didn’t she? I expected this, but not delivered by you. An old surveillance tactic—employ one suspect to trap another. I taught her well.”

He raised the envelope to his nose and sniffed.

“You know what’s inside, don’t you?”

Mei looked down in shame at the Persian rug between their feet. It was lustrous, despite its frayed threads.

“That’s in the book, too. Make the suspect a witness. Use one to crush the other. I’ve done it myself many times. Mao taught us to strengthen the Party through self-criticism. Let’s open it and take a look.”

Slitting the envelope with a steel opener, he let the packet of Swiss notes fall onto the table.

“I’m sorry. They made me do this.” Mei flushed with shame.

“If it hadn’t been you, there would have been someone else at my door with this”—he paused, uttering the word contemptuously—“
evidence.
Perhaps your princeling. Forget it now.”

“I can’t.”

“We don’t have much time.”

Mei had clenched her eyes, unable to look at the Wolf, but his tone made her open them. He extracted a red pack of Chunghwa cigarettes, with its embossed emblem of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, tucked one in his pocket, and rose. Unlocking a glass door at one end of the room, he stepped onto a narrow lawn with a birdcage at the end. A blue cockatoo watched them from a branch.

“I thought it would take longer, but they’re at my gate already. I need you to do something.”

“Of course.”

“You must find the dead girl’s father.”

“I think I have.”

“Have you? Where?” It was the first time she’d surprised the Wolf, and it gratified her.

“Look—”

She pulled the Long Tan badge from her pocket and gave it to him. The Wolf examined it with the flame of his lighter, as she explained how she’d found it in the marsh.

“This is good,” he said. “You’ve turned up something significant. I knew you could. The badge is useful.”

“But this girl came from Changsha and she was—”

“Nineteen, yes.” The Wolf moved away to the cage, checking the
water. “That’s not the point. There aren’t many people who could have fixed it. It’s clever. I told you: Find her father.”

“Is he in Hunan?”

“In Guangdong. He must be close.”

“Tell me.” Mei shook with frustration at the Wolf’s elliptical clues. “We don’t have much time, you said. If you want me to help, you have to guide me. Tell me where he is.”

“I don’t know, but you’ll find him. You found the badge. Why would I have called you if I didn’t believe in you?”

As he spoke, a phone rang inside the house, an insistent sound. The Wolf stepped away from the bird and crossed the lawn in a few steps, passing into the living room. By the time she had caught up, he was already ending the call, and she only heard his final words.

“Wait. I’m coming.”

Mei lingered as the Wolf’s car passed under the barrier from Dengying Road onto Yuexiu Bei Road. She’d retrieved the Chery Cowin and parked at the curb, waiting for him with her headlights dimmed. Her former self—the Mei of two days earlier—would never have taken such a risk, but her life had changed. There was nothing safe for her anymore.

An Army car trailed the Audi A8, and the Wolf stared past her as the convoy hit the street, lights flashing. His overcoat collar was lifted, and his eyes were blank. She followed them, feeling the g-force as they tore around the bend onto the Donghaoyong Elevated Road and pulled onto the Inner Ring Road. The cars weaved among lanes, loud and bright, making a spectacle.

I’m coming
, he’d said, and from the hesitation she’d heard in his voice she knew where. She had revealed the evidence against him, and he had given up hiding. They took the Guangyuan Expressway, with White Cloud Mountain looming in the dark, a shooting star above the delta. Approaching Dongguan forty minutes later, they took the exit over the flatlands to Long Tan.

The barrier was raised to allow the convoy through, and the guards stood at alert. A group of Dongguan police stood nearby, and she thought she saw the one who had looked at her card in the marsh. She looped around the apartment block and parked in the back, then walked up the alley to the Internet café. It was as full as before, warmed by the bodies hunched over the screens. Mei paid for some
Internet time and sat among them uncertainly. She had trailed the Wolf this far, but now she was blocked.

As she hesitated, a man near her took off his headphones and stood, stretching before stepping outside. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a purple tunic, like the red one that the boy had found in the fields. She glanced at the card on his chest as the man passed; it also had his photo and the usual details, including his identity number. She watched as he walked along the alley and, ignoring the police, toward the gate. As he disappeared inside the complex, she felt in her pocket.

The victim’s card was right there. All she needed was the tunic.

Mei walked to the car and opened the trunk, delving inside a bag she’d left there. Then she trotted back to the café and went into the toilet. The stall smelled foul and she averted her eyes, pinching her nostrils and trying not to inhale. She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled on the red tunic. The tear in the fabric was visible, and she tucked it into her pants before clipping on the badge. Then she turned to check her appearance in the mirror.

It felt wrong. The disguise shouldn’t have been so perfect, the badge so seamlessly hers. It was as if the woman had risen from the dead.

Hanging the bag on a hook, she set out along the alley, imagining herself a migrant who’d slipped out to call her family. The police ignored her as she quickened her step to catch up to a pair of factory girls who were standing at the barrier.

“Stop! Wait for us!” one of them shouted at an electric vehicle that had halted by the gate.

They were back from a night out, in short skirts and sequined T-shirts. The guard’s face stiffened and Mei shuffled forward. He let her through and she followed them to the eight-seat electric vehicle, which was like a golf cart.

“Where to?” The driver didn’t look around.

“N-5,” the giggling woman said.

Mei nodded and the driver didn’t seem to care. The buggy jerked forward with a whine, rocking her back in her seat, and she grabbed a handle to stop herself from falling out. They sped along the road,
passing couples walking hand in hand. It was like driving through a small city. Mei looked at a line of stores to her right—a barber, a fortune-teller, a neon-lit unit in which fish and turtles swam in tanks, ready to be snatched up in plastic bags. A supermarket stood next to a plaza, its shoppers bent forward, peering at shelves and prodding vegetables. It could have been any town, but its citizens were all in their twenties and wore tunics in white, green, and purple. Mei was the only one in red, she noticed.

The driver accelerated along a narrow road beyond the shops, then halted by an apartment block twenty stories high, shaped like a T and striped with walkways along each side. Each walkway was caged with mesh: it looked more like a jail than a home, a place that kept its dwellers imprisoned. Fixed near the roof, where the walkways intersected, were two English characters on a white background: N-3.

“This is it.” The driver sat back, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his top pocket and tapping one on the back of his hand.

“I can’t walk.” One woman thrust out a leg into the gap next to him. She had four-inch heels, the leather covered with golden glitter.

“Nothing I can do.” He pointed ahead. A few hundred feet away, the road was closed and a crowd of workers stood silently, their backs to her, looking at something.

“Another food bird thought she could fly, huh?”

“Don’t talk that way, Yin.” The taller woman poked her friend in the ribs, but she laughed, wiping her fists under her eyes as if she was crying.

“Poor me, I’m so sad. They don’t pay me enough to go and see my daddy. I know, I’ll take a jump.”

“Shush.” The woman gestured back at Mei with a flick of her head, as if warning her friend of danger.

Mei pushed along the seat and reached for the door before anyone could ask who she was.

“I’ll walk,” she said, stepping out.

There were fifty in the crowd, standing in place, those at the back stretching on their toes to get a better view. Mei threaded through the bodies, whispering apologies as she bumped elbows and hips and ignoring the murmurs of protest at her intrusion. Near the front, she thrust forward to see the spectacle.

It was what she had known it would be—a dead body. It was slumped on the ground, left leg backward and right arm snapped at the elbow, stuck out the wrong way. A man in his twenties, with the shaggy haircut—the first thing the kids got when they made it to the city—puffed out in electric spikes. It looked as if he’d been running vertically at high speed, his attention distracted by something to his left, when he’d smacked into the concrete. A trickle of black blood oozing from his head was the only sign of the collision; otherwise, he’d left hardly a mark. He wore a red tunic and skinny jeans.

She looked up, trying to trace his path through the air. He was about twenty feet from the building, as if he’d launched himself into flight from a balcony or perhaps from the roof.
Food bird
, the party girl had called him, believing it was a woman. Anger surged in Mei. She wished that she could drag that girl over to see what death meant—the ugly surprise of it. She gripped her nails into her palm, the way she’d been taught as a kid.
Breathe in, breathe out.