The Master of Rain Part 34

"I have explained, Officer." Lu sat up straighter, his tone and manner more menacing. "There are many interests. I believe you will find a company on Bubbling Well Road . . . the owner of this Happy Times block. I will instruct my men there to cooperate with you."

Caprisi hesitated, sipping his tea. Field sensed a new, stubborn determination in his colleague.

"So you barely knew Lena?" Caprisi asked.

"I have said. I will instruct my men to help you."

"I wasn't asking about your men."

Field cleared his throat. "Did you know Irina Ignatiev?"

Lu turned to him, his head tilted to one side, as if turning the name over in his mind. He shook his head, once.

"She was murdered two months ago. She was also one of your girls."

There was silence for a second, then Lu hit the bell twice and there was the sound of footsteps as his bodyguards arrived, two from downstairs, one through the door at the end, all with machine guns.

Field had stood, as had Caprisi. Lu pushed himself to his feet. The game was over. "You challenge me?" He took a pace toward them, his head pushed forward. "You come to my house and challenge me?" He was looking at Chen. His right hand was suspended in midair, and as he cut down with one swift motion, the bald-headed bodyguard stepped forward and swung his machine gun into Chen's stomach.

"Jesus." Caprisi stepped toward his colleague.

"Stay." It was Chen. He was bent double, kneeling, the instruction barked out through the pain.

"For Christ's sake."

"Silence," Chen said, his voice commanding. He slowly stood, straightening with difficulty. No one moved until the Chinese detective had recovered his composure. Once he had done so, he stared at his tormentor.

"Do not come to this house again," Lu said quietly. "I have tolerated your rudeness long enough."

Lu waved at his bodyguards to lower their weapons.

The weather had changed while they were inside. The wind had got up, bringing with it a thick bank of cloud, which was advancing on the city like a foreign army. A distant crack of lightning was followed by a loud rumble of thunder. "Typhoon coming," Chen said once they were back in the car and the first spots of rain were bursting on the windshield.

Caprisi had tried to a.s.sist Chen on the steps but had been waved away. Either the blow had not been as painful as it looked, or it was a matter of face that Chen leave the house una.s.sisted.

Field looked out of the window at the clouds. He'd seen storms before, of course, but none that had looked quite as malevolent as they approached. It was the temperature, too, he thought, the heat that came with it, that made it feel different.

"The Master of Rain chooses his moment," Caprisi said.

Field turned to face him, frowning.

"According to legend," Caprisi explained, "affairs in the other world are governed by G.o.ds-"

"Officials," Chen corrected, from the front of the car.

"Officials, of whom the Master of Rain is probably the most powerful. He sits up there, controlling the city, its destiny."

Field nodded. "Have you ever had any dealings with Lu, Chen?"

The Chinese detective did not turn around.

"Chen grew up in Pudong," Caprisi said quietly. "They grew up together. Lu hates him," he added with a finality that did not invite further discussion.

"Will that meeting create difficulties for Macleod?"

Caprisi waited for Chen to turn around and answer. "Not yet," the Chinese detective said. "But the girls are a problem."

"In what way?"

"Now he is aware that we know more than one girl has been murdered. The stakes are raised. He will wait to see what we do, and then we must see how he reacts."

"Why is he guarded by Russians?"

"He doesn't trust Chinese. The Russians are stupid. They know nothing, but their loyalty is absolute. Any threat, they shoot. He remembers how he destroyed the Red Gang and does not trust Chinese." Chen shook his head. "Lu is arrogant now. He has big head. He believes no one can touch him."

As they drove along the wide boulevards of the French Concession, Field watched the pa.s.sersby hurrying to get out of the rain. The houses were all large here, most hidden behind ivy-clad walls. On the corner, as they turned right, a woman with a thin, pretty face held her raincoat around herself with one hand and a little boy in uniform with the other. As they pa.s.sed, Field thought she looked forlorn and lost, her damp hair flattened across her forehead, her boy resting his head against her side as they waited to cross the road.

Field thought of Natasha.

And then he saw her. She was standing on the sidewalk, and he had to look up and down the street to ascertain that they were on the Nanking Road. The car had stopped and there was a crowd ahead, blocking the way, people shouting, some clapping, a firecracker going off in the air, dropped from the roof above. Field looked up to see a group leaning over the wall around the roof garden at the top of the Sun Sun store, dropping leaflets to the crowd below.

Natasha was now alongside him, half hidden by a group of protestors, raincoat pulled tight, her hair whipped by the wind. She had a pile of leaflets and was giving them out to pa.s.sers-by.

"A protest," Chen said, pushing open his door.

The Chinese detective and Caprisi did not seem to have noticed Natasha, but as they got out and walked around to the front of the car, Field watched her.

She was smiling as she gave away each leaflet, but she did not look happy. A couple of police sirens wailed in the distance. She raised her head sharply, trying to make out where the sound was coming from.

The sirens closed in quickly. Field heard a whistle and saw a group of Sikh policemen charge past the car and begin to flail at the edge of the crowd with their batons. Protesters screamed as they were clubbed to the ground.

Natasha had frozen. She was staring at them.

Field pushed the door open, stepped onto the sidewalk and lunged for her, but her instinctive response was not submission but resistance. She pushed him away, punching him, then grabbing his hair as he tried to move her toward the car.

"Chen!" he yelled, but the effort distracted him and she bit his hand hard. The pain made him rougher than he'd intended, kicking her legs out and bundling her headfirst toward the rear of the car as the Chinese detective came up to help him, moving easily, as if the a.s.sault at Lu's house had had no discernible effect.

Caprisi climbed in the other side. "Let's go," Field said. Natasha was no longer struggling. Her hair hung limply over her face. She still clutched the leaflets. Caprisi took them from her and glanced through them before looking up at her. "Big mistake," he said. "Big mistake."

They reversed away from the crowd.

It took only a few minutes to get to the Central Police Station, and Natasha did not raise her head on the journey. As they pulled up outside, Caprisi told Chen to take her down to the cells. Field resisted the temptation to look at her as she was taken away.

Inside, Caprisi said, "I'm hungry. You want to get some lunch in the canteen?"

Field tried to think clearly about what he ought to do.

"If you want my advice," Caprisi said, "I would leave her to think it over."

Twenty-six.

Downstairs, there was a long line for lunch, and Field might have given up if his stomach had not been loudly protesting its hunger. He chose meat that he was a.s.sured was beef, potatoes, beans, and overboiled carrots. It was like being back at school.

On the way to their table, a big gray-haired Scotsman, who'd played lock forward against him two days before, slapped Field on the back. "Well played." He laughed. "Teach that f.u.c.king Yank a lesson."

Field smiled at Caprisi as they sat down. "Friend of yours?"

"Brits." He shook his head.

Field poured himself a gla.s.s of water and covered his food in salt and pepper in an attempt to instill some taste into it.

"Will you ever go back to America?" he asked, trying to focus his mind on something other than the woman in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Caprisi didn't react. His elbows rested on the table, his fork pointing down toward his plate as he chewed.

"It's hot in Chicago at this time of year?"

"It's hot."

"But not as hot as here?"

"Nowhere is as hot as here."

"The Gobi desert, possibly."

He gave Field a thin smile. "It doesn't rain in the Gobi."

"Did you meet Capone?"

"No."

"Did you like Chicago?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever answer questions with more than one syllable?"

He smiled again. "No."

Field put a potato into his mouth and spoke as he chewed. "Okay, let's have a compet.i.tion-see who can come up with a topic of conversation that will take us further than three sentences in a row."

"Where are you from?"

"Uh-uh. No. If your past is off-limits, then so is mine. I'm from Yorkshire, you're from Chicago-that means we're quits."

Caprisi leaned back. He pushed away his plate, exchanging it for a bowl of custard and some kind of cake pudding. "You went to one of those smart schools, I know that."

"Not that smart. Where did you go to school?"

Caprisi shook his head, in the midst of another mouthful. "Your uncle's one of the elite."

"He is, yes."

"And your aunt."

Field pushed his own plate away and started on his pudding. "You know, I could lose my sense of humor in a minute."

"Who'd notice?"

They were smiling at each other now. Field looked down at his food and sighed. "G.o.d, this is disgusting."

"Leave it," Caprisi said. "I'd hate to see you poison yourself. I'm looking out for you, remember."

"You're just like my mother."

"She's got hairs on her chest?"

"That same look of anguished concern, as though I'm not capable of looking after myself."

"Maybe it's not you she's thinking about."

Field frowned. "What do you mean?"

The American looked up from his food. "She's looking at your face thinking that she's devoted her whole life to you and now you're gone. So the anguish is for her, not for you."

"How do you know that?" Field said quietly.

Caprisi shook his head. "I've already said enough."

"You can't say one minute that we're friends and then leave us knowing nothing about each other."

"What I like about you, Field, is that you're the best of British-solid and uncomplicated-so don't-"

"You think I am, but you don't know. Solid maybe, I'd like to think so. Uncomplicated? I'm not so sure."

There was a long silence. Caprisi stared at his food as though it were suddenly the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. When he looked up, Field saw something in his eyes that spoke of a loss that was beyond words. Field knew that look.

"My wife's name was Jane and we were childhood sweethearts. My father owned a hardware store and Jane's family lived in the house opposite, just across the street. As kids, we used to wave at each other at night." Caprisi looked down again. "We started dating." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We got married and it always felt right. In a way nothing has since. We had a boy . . ." He seemed about to say the name but was unable to manage it. "He was a good kid." Caprisi looked up, shaking his head slightly, his lips tight and his eyes narrowed as he fought to contain his emotions. "He was a great kid. Affectionate . . . Jane wanted a big family, but we couldn't . . . you know, we only had our one boy. It was okay, we had each other, we'd always said that, you know, even before we got married, we said if we couldn't have kids, that would be all right, because we were in it for each other." Caprisi shook his head again. "It's too cute. I should come up with a better story."

Field did not know what to say.