The Ghost Shift (6 page)

There was nothing left—the barrier was gone, along with all traces of the Dongguan cops. They’d packed up and disappeared, not bothering to track where the woman had come from. She could imagine what Inspector Wen had done as soon as the Wolf had dismissed him. His job was finished, and his boys had fled with the dawn, forgetting the night as soon as it was over. Her admirer was probably directing traffic with white gloves on Yuanling Road.

Mei climbed out of the car, a Chery Cowin allocated to junior officials. This time, she’d brought boots to shield her from the mud, but they weren’t needed—the sun had dried the top layer of mud into a crust. It had preserved a jumble of footprints—the boots of the officers and her own heels punching holes into the ground. She saw the ridge along which she’d walked with the Wolf, between the banana fields. Somewhere—perhaps just visible, she couldn’t tell—was the pool in which the body had lain.

She turned left and marched across the muddy ground toward the cabin where she’d glimpsed a lantern. As she closed in, she saw how flimsy the structure was, although it had been there for a long time. The walls were crumbling, the wooden frames parched by years of
exposure to the wind and sun, and a rusty metal patch had been nailed over part of the tin roof to keep it watertight. Two buckets and an old broom were propped in one corner of the low porch, where a dog slept contentedly in the shade. Mei walked to the rear to find two scraggy-necked chickens pecking for corn in a square of dirt. It was as small and unwelcoming a hovel as she’d seen outside of Guilin.

It was then she saw the woman squatting in a patch of rust-colored ground a few hundred feet away. Her head was covered in a conical hat, fastened under her chin with a frayed silk ribbon, which was the most colorful thing about her. Her blouse and slacks blended into the gray and green like camouflage, and she sat back on her haunches, prodding the earth with wiry fingers. She had a broad, impassive face, and it was hard to tell her age—surely over seventy. She looked as if she’d been occupying that position for many years.

“Is this your farm?” Mei called, walking toward her.

The woman swiveled and raised one arm to gesture behind Mei with her finger. Then she turned away, the hat hiding her head.

Mei didn’t know what she meant. Was she saying it was hers, giving Mei directions, or telling her to go away? Whichever it was, the conversation was over. There wasn’t anything to do short of ordering in the riot police—she’d met enough peasant matriarchs to know how hard they were to shift. So she reversed, stepping onto the porch by the slumbering dog and peering through a loose slat on the door. It was dark inside, one rod of sunlight falling across the floor from a crack in the roof. The light was blurred by smoke, and she could just make out in one corner a clay pipe hovering in the darkness.

She rapped twice but the pipe didn’t move, so she pushed at the door. It opened with a creak, admitting a flood of light. The pipe’s owner, a round-faced man with a wispy gray beard, grimaced at her and spat into a brown bowl. He sat on a rickety chair in a largely empty room, containing only a low table and a grate in which rested the blackened bones of a roasted bird.

“You’re back?” His voice rasped.

“There was a lantern in this house two nights ago. Did you see me?”

The man cackled. “I can’t tell the difference, girl. You’re all the same to me. You try to frighten me, but it won’t work. I’ve seen a lot worse and the answer’s still no.”

“I don’t understand. What’s your name?”

“They didn’t tell you? Just another body to clear?” He laughed again and took a hit from his pipe, tamping the tobacco with a finger.

“I don’t mean you harm.” She gave him her card and he traced the characters warily with the long stem of his pipe.

“The Party, eh? My bit of land must be valuable, if they get you down from Guangzhou. More than they’ve offered.”

Recognition dawned on her. It was a shakedown to acquire land. A Hong Kong real estate developer who wanted him out, maybe a local Party official who’d been offered stock to smooth the way. It sounded like a two-bit scheme—what apartments would even stand upright on this marsh?—and she didn’t want to waste time.

“I’m not here to take your land. I just want to know about the body. The woman who died.”

“I don’t know about a woman.”

“Did you see anything? You must have.”

“I wasn’t here. We were at home.”

“This isn’t your home?”

“This?” The man looked up at the roof and burst out laughing. “Why would I live in this shithole?”

Mei gave up and walked out. Her foray had come to nothing, except uncovering a scandal that hardly deserved the name. Hundreds of such complaints flooded the office every day; this one wouldn’t have merited getting into a car to investigate if she hadn’t stumbled across it.

Looking into the fields, she tried to see where she’d been standing with the Wolf. She set off to retrace her steps and then halted again, unable to face entering the marsh. The body wasn’t there anymore, but even the thought of seeing the fish in the pond was dreadful. She breathed deeply and sat on her haunches to gather her nerves.

She walked to where the crops began, then stopped to stare out at the banana fields and fishponds. Closer to hand was a jigsaw of small fields, some filled with rice, some with tomatoes, others with wheat.
They were bordered by an intricate pattern of ditches to keep them moist. The peasant woman had wandered into the middle to hack at a mud wall and let the water flow. The fields gleamed in the sun, young rice plants poking above a field like hair implants.

Then, from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of something in the marsh—a flash of blue. By the time she looked around, it had vanished into the landscape, and she ran back up the hill to her car, her boots like weights around her ankles. When she got there, she leaned across to unlatch the passenger-side cabinet and pulled out a leather case. She flipped open its buckle and drew out a pair of HiOptic binoculars. Mei had been lent the PLA device—black and stubby with nitrogen-filled chambers—one night to spy on a smuggler in Shenzhen. She had gazed into his apartment from a nearby block but seen nothing.

Mei rested her elbows on the car’s roof to steady the binoculars and scan the landscape. The sun was in the west, casting an intense light across the fields that dazzled her. In the distance she saw the expressway and banana fields, grainy and foreshortened by the magnification. Following the ridges until she came to a thicket of bushes in a dry patch, she paused. After thirty seconds, the wind lifted the branches, showing a patch of blue.

Holding the HiOptics in one hand, she walked steadily down the hill. She trained her eyes in front as she went, checking the thicket to make sure that the occupant didn’t slip away. As she approached, she saw through the gaps in the leaves a blue shirt and a pair of eyes.

“Come out,” she called in Cantonese.

The leaves shuffled and there a small boy stood, barefoot and wearing a Chelsea football shirt with a Samsung logo. He clutched a bundle of sticks in one fist, and his legs were streaked with mud. She remembered playing in the fields at his age, while the adults planted rice. The local kids used to play chicken, rushing around for cover in the bushes. She squatted to be at his eye level.

“Are your friends here?”

The boy shook his head, his foot scoring the dirt nervously.

“Who’s looking after you?”

He raised a slender arm and pointed to the shack where she’d met
the pipe smoker and the old woman. His grandparents, she thought—they were too old to be his mother and father.

“I didn’t want to scare you. I’m going now.”

She rose to her feet and headed toward her car, with the setting sun casting her shadow in front of her. She’d been walking for a minute or so when she heard the sound of the boy chasing after her, his feet scuffling on the mud. As he ran up, she took the object he held out. It was a green-bordered rectangle with a metal clip—an employee identity card. The woman in the photograph, staring blankly in a red factory tunic, was the body in the pond.

“Where did you find this?”

The boy’s eyes widened. Mei had raised her voice, not thinking. Leaning down, she placed a hand on the silky material of his shirt, feeling it crease between her fingers. She spoke softly.

“You’re not in trouble. You’re clever to have found it. I’d lost it and I was trying to find it. You understand?”

He nodded, then reached out and took her hand in his. It was small, his slender fingers wrapped around her index finger. Her heart settled a little.

The boy moved and she followed, slinging the binoculars over one shoulder. They reached the bush where had been hiding, and he dropped to all fours and scuttled inside like a marsh animal. She heard him scrabbling in the earth and could see his head bowed at the task. Then he wriggled back out and stood beside her, holding a piece of red material. He gestured for her to take it. She held it up to the sky.

It was a tunic, open-necked and short-sleeved with a line of four buttons at the front and black piping on the collar. The fabric was covered with dust and ripped on one side. Mei tucked two fingers inside its front pocket to check that it was empty and felt a groove in the cloth. She placed the badge against it, noting how the line matched the clip. It was the dead woman’s uniform, the one she’d worn in the photo. Mei held it to her chest as the boy watched. It fit exactly, as the body in the water had matched hers. She raised it to her nose to detect a scent, but it smelled only of musky earth.

“This is where you keep things?”

The boy nodded.

“Where did you find this?”

He seemed eager, now that his cache was revealed. He took her hand again and led her eastward, out beyond the banana fields and into some scrubland beyond. She was pulled forward and had to break into a trot to keep up. The motion twisted his arm behind him, but he didn’t seem to feel pain—the cartilage had not stiffened yet and it moved in ways that no adult’s could. He had taken on the mission she’d given him, like a dog chasing a stick.

At the far end of the field, a line of bushes marked some sort of boundary. He pulled her to a gap and scrambled through, hardly touching the branches. She bent and shuffled after, falling to her knees and crawling with her hands in the earth. Her knees hurt and a twig scratched her face as she pushed through, then she emerged near a canal. It was deep enough to take a small steamer or a fishing vessel—anything that could pass under the bridge half a mile down toward the Pearl River—but there was no activity. Two boats were moored nearby, empty.

The boy led her through clumps of grass toward the riverbank. As they neared, she saw a jetty by the water’s edge. Six wooden stakes had been driven into the wet ground, planks fastened on top. A frayed nylon rope hung from a steel ring fixed to the wood, awaiting a vessel. Mei climbed on top to look around. Water flowed past, leaving muddy rivulets and swirls on the surface of the canal. Apart from the hum of traffic in the distance, it was silent. She looked for the boy, expecting to find him at her side, but he’d vanished from sight. Hearing splashing, she gazed down through the gaps in the planks to see him stamping in the mud at the edge of the bank, thumping the structure.

Mei jumped into the soft mud and clambered under the platform to join him. The space was not high enough for her to stand upright, so she squatted, trying not to fall over.

“There.” The boy pointed to the foot of one of the stakes, where it merged with the mud and water.

“You found these here?” She held out the jacket and the badge. “When?”

“Before.”

“Do your parents know where you are?”

The boy shrugged.

“Where’s your mother?”

He reached out and tapped the badge she held, by the body’s photograph.
Had she been his mother?
Mei wondered, but he didn’t look upset. He moved his finger to the woman’s photo. She held it up to her and, wiping it with a thumb, read the words: “Long Tan Technology.”

“Your mother works here?”

He nodded, then led her from under the jetty, hopping on board to where she had stood. Mei climbed up next to him.

The light was fading, the brown of the water darkening and losing its luster. It was turning black and impenetrable, as it had been in the night. Clouds drifted near the horizon, lit up orange by the dying sun. Mei felt protective toward the boy. How could his parents leave him to play? How could they abandon something so precious? Anger swelled in her.

She felt his hands grasping the binoculars at her side, pushing them upward, and she raised them to her eyes.

At first, she saw nothing on the marsh but a flock of birds settled on a patch of water. Then she lifted the sights and saw the first buildings on the outskirts of the city—a scramble of apartment blocks and roads crossing the landscape. The chaos of squares and lines was broken by a long ribbon, a high wall stretching for miles by the side of a waterway, like the border to another country. Beyond it were rows of factory buildings broken up by apartment blocks and what looked like foundries, with chimneys poking into the sky.