The Russian Concubine (50 page)

56

They did the water trick twice more. Each time for longer. Her lungs burned. She retched up filth. Snatched at air. Vision blurred. She wanted to die, yet each time she fought for life like a wild animal.

The man with the gloating laugh enjoyed his work. He kept slapping Box’s sides and chattering in high-pitched Chinese. Only when she knew that this time she would drown for certain, when stars flared in the black tunnel that filled her head and her lungs were seared by fire, did he dart around and slide a narrow slat from under her. The water gushed out and she curled very nearly dead on the floor of Box. Everything hurt.

When her bowels opened, she barely noticed.

She lost track of time.

Sometimes she pinched her cheek to make sure she was still alive. Still Lydia Ivanova.

She was beginning to doubt it.

When the bolt drew back again, her whole body flinched. The footsteps on the stairs. She forced her lungs to drag in air, deep down, expanding even the tiny sacs at the end of each airway. She had to stockpile on air. Before the water came. Her skin felt numb with cold. With panic. She crouched. Ready.

But this time there was no sound of dragging hosepipe. This time it was the scrape of something wooden across the floor and the flickering light grew brighter.

What now?

Focus. Breathe. Don’t cry.

Suddenly the world changed. The roof flew off. A hand reached in and grabbed her hair, wrenching it from its roots, hauling her to her feet. Her stiff body was sluggish and earned her a blow on the ear. She was staring into the face of an olive-skinned Chinese man with a pointed face and black eyes set close together. His teeth were red and for one crazy moment she thought it was blood, that he was eating some live creature, then she saw he was chewing on some dark red seeds that he held in his free hand.

‘Guo lai! Gi nu.’

He yanked her out of Box and she looked around her, eyes screwed up against the dim light. She was right. It was a cellar. Two rats paused in a corner and inspected her, whiskers twitching. Box was a metal cube raised on a wooden plinth with a drain underneath and a small ladder propped against its side. She fell down the ladder, her feet too numb to guide her.

Don’t cry. Don’t beg.

Spit in his goddamn face.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg. She didn’t spit in his face. She did as she was told. Her captor slipped wooden shackles on her wrists and a rope around her neck, then led her like a dog out of the cellar along a narrow dank corridor, slatted walls on both sides like some kind of passage between buildings. Up steps. Five of them. Should she try to break free? Here?

But it took everything inside her just to walk upright. When she stumbled or hesitated the rope was tugged tight with such force, she was under no illusion about the man’s strength and knew her own body was a physical wreck. So. No. No escape yet. The narrow-faced man pushed open a door.

Warmth.

That was what hit her first. It flowed over her skin, silky golden waves of it, sucking out the cold from her bones. She wanted to weep with pleasure. She felt a sudden rush of gratitude toward her captors for giving her this warmth, but part of her mind insisted that was insane. She hated them. Hated.

Then came the noise. The room was so full of sound it made her head spin. Big voices. Boisterous laughter. It boomed inside her hollow brain and the bright lights cramped her eyeballs. She squinted, adjusting quickly, and tried to make out what kind of place she was in. A large high-ceilinged room, ornate carvings peering down at her from painted beams, red patterned tiles under her bare feet, small barred windows. The walls were covered in heavy embroidered drapes and lined with wooden settles. Full of Chinese faces. Jeering. Fingers pointing. Mouths spitting. Black figures everywhere. Too much black. Too much death.

The fact that she was wearing nothing except a primitive form of handcuffs and a rope around her neck did not distress her. She was beyond that. She cared no more about her nakedness than she would if she were standing in front of a pack of wild dogs.

A bunched fist swung lazily at her face. She ducked and it missed. The faces around the room split open into wide red caverns of laughter, but the man who had tried to strike her found no amusement in it. He was broad across the chest, solidly built, with a fleshy face and smooth oily skin. She was useless at guessing Chinese age, but he looked about thirty to her and carried himself with an air of authority. He had a high hairline and dark petulant lips. Oddly he wore a respectable black Western suit. It gave her hope. He stood in front of her and cursed in Chinese.

‘You the filthy bitch whore of the shit-eater without the fingers. ’ The English words startled her. ‘You lose fingers too. And eyes. And white putrid breasts. I feed to rats in cellar.’

The threats came not from the smooth-skinned man but from a young boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old with long unruly hair and nervous eyes, as he mouthed the words with no emotion of any kind. He stood behind the shoulder of the big man who was cursing her, and it dawned on her sluggish mind that the boy was only the interpreter, echoing his master’s words.

She switched her gaze back to the master and abruptly the cogs inside her brain turned faster. She recognised him. From the Chinese funeral Chang had taken her to. He was the one in white prostrating himself behind the coffin. Yuesheng’s brother, Feng Tu Hong’s son. It was Po Chu himself. She spat at him, the man who tortured Chang An Lo. He hit her hard and growled something.
‘Ni ei xi xue hui vhun.’

‘You learn respect,’ the boy translated.

‘Release me,’ she hissed, tasting blood inside her cheek.

‘You answer questions.’

‘I am the daughter of an important British newspaper tycoon. Release me immediately or the British Army will come with their rifles to . . .’

‘Bao chi!’

‘Silence,’ the boy echoed.

The man’s hand seized a hank of her hair and twisted her head back. He shouted in her face, his breath sour with alcohol, and his dark gaze roamed over her breasts and throat, down to her thighs and . . . She shut her eyes to block him out.

That was when he released her hair, reached down, and yanked out a piece of her pubic hair. The pain was sharp but brief and she didn’t cry out. He held up the copper curl as a trophy for all to see, and the men around the walls cheered. Instead she thought of how Chang An Lo had twirled those same hairs around his good fingers and called them her fox flames. But what disturbed her more was the glimpse she got of her forearm when she struggled to free her hands. The skin was covered in bite marks. They were the marks of her own teeth where in the dark inside Box she’d been gnawing at a limb. Like a fox in a trap. That frightened her.

She made herself stand straight. ‘Sir Edward Carlisle will skin you all alive for this.’

The boy translated. Po Chu laughed. ‘
Zai na?
Where Chang An Lo?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes. You know. You say.’

‘No. I don’t know. He ran away when the Kuomintang troops came.’

‘You lie.’

‘No.
Bu.
’

‘Yes.’

Each time the words came from Po Chu, with the boy echoing softly in English.

‘Tell truth.’

This time the question came with a slap.

‘Tell truth.’ Another slap. ‘Tell truth.’ Slap. Slap. Slap. Again. Again. She lost count.

Her lip split. The space inside her head turned red. Her ears hummed.

Slap. Slap.

Harder. A knife point nicked the corner of her left eyelid and started to slide along the bottom of her eye as if to pop it out.

‘He’s dead.’ She screamed it.

The knife froze. The slaps ceased. She breathed. Small panicky gasps.

‘When dead?’ Po Chu demanded. In English. But she barely noticed. Her mind was struggling.

‘How dead?’ He ran the knife blade in a circle around one breast, and she felt the sting and the trickle of blood.

‘From sickness.’

‘
Shen meshi hou?
When?’

‘On Saturday. I took him to the docks. Nursed him . . . In an old shack . . . he died.’ Tears started to pour down her cheeks. It wasn’t hard.

The boy translated, but it was the tears that seemed to convince Po Chu. He stepped back with a shrewd smile, flicked the knife spinning up into the air, and as it fell caught its ivory handle with an easy sweep of his fist. He stared at her.

‘Guo lai.’

‘Come,’ the boy said.

Po Chu seized the rope attached to her neck and dragged her across the room toward a screen that closed off one corner. Her eyes fixed on its panels inlaid with lapis and coral, ivory and mother-of-pearl, and she burned them into her memory. If this bastard was going to blind her, she had to make her last moment of sight go a long way.

‘See,
gi nu.
’ Po Chu thrust the screen aside.

She saw. And wished she’d drowned inside Box.

On a table, neatly laid out like precision instruments of surgery in an operating theatre, were two rows of tools. Heavy tongs and blades, some serrated and some with needle-sharp points, and beside them lay small blunt hammers, chains and leather collars and cuffs. Her eye was drawn to a piece of iron with a long narrow shovel end and stout wooden handle. Not in her wildest dreams could she begin to guess its purpose.

Her inner organs turned to liquid. Nothing worked anymore. Her breathing stopped. She felt warm fluid dribble down the backs of her thighs and she knew her body was trying to flush out the fear. She felt no shame. She’d left that behind long ago.

‘See,
gi nu
,’ Po Chu repeated. ‘Putrid whore. See.’

Her ears still worked. They heard the anticipation in his voice.

‘Tell truth.’

She nodded.

‘Where Chang An Lo?’

‘Dead.’

He picked up a pair of heavy iron-teethed tweezers, casually weighed them in his hand, lowered his thick black eyebrows in a frown of concentration, and clamped the metal teeth round her nipple. He squeezed.

She screamed.

Blood, bright red like paint. A burning pain in her breast. She screamed her anger and her hatred at him, bellowed it in his face, and would have hurled herself at him and bitten his eyes out if the rope around her neck had not been pulled tight from behind.

‘Good.’ Po Chu smiled coldly, a spatter of her blood on his chin. ‘Now tell truth.’

57

They handled him roughly. Grey uniforms all over him like dung flies. A blow to the ribs, a boot in the groin, but Chang An Lo did not retaliate. Only when they thudded a rifle butt down on his damaged hand did he spit, but that was all. The headquarters was in a new concrete blockhouse on the edge of old Junchow, tucked into the shadow of the great stone walls, its entrance guarded by two fresh-faced young Chinese officers eager to impress their superiors. When Chang suddenly appeared before them out of the morning mist, their eyes widened in surprise. They stamped their boots and raised their rifles, expecting trouble, but when none came they led him quickly into their captain’s office.

‘You are the Communist dog we have been hunting,’ the Kuomintang officer said with relish. ‘I am Captain Wah.’

He removed his cap, tossed it to one side, and rummaged through the chaotic piles of paper on his desk. After a moment’s confusion, he pounced on a sheet that he held up at arm’s length to inspect. It was an indistinct portrait of Chang’s face, skilfully sketched, obviously sent out to all Chinese troop centres and police stations. Chang wondered bitterly which of his friends had obliged and for how much.

Captain Wah stared at Chang with cool, sad eyes and lit himself a thin cigar. ‘You will be interrogated first, gutter rat, and then a magistrate will order your execution. All you Communists are cowards who slither on your bellies, like worms under our feet. Your execution is certain, so do not add to the pain of China by worthless loyalty to a cause that is doomed. By great Buddha, we shall rid our country of you vermin.’

Even with wrists handcuffed and the fever in his blood, Chang knew he could kick this man’s teeth down his throat before the soldier at the door could draw his gun. It was tempting. But what good would he be to Lydia with a bullet in his brain?

‘Honourable Captain,’ he said with a humble bow, ‘I have information to give, as you so wisely suspect, but I will give it only to one man.’

Captain Wah’s mouth narrowed with annoyance. ‘You would be wise to give it to me,’ he said in a sharp tone. He rose to his feet, tall and rangy in his dusty grey uniform, and leaned forward threateningly over his desk. ‘Do as I order, or you will die slowly.’

‘One man,’ Chang said quietly. ‘The Russian. The one whose words the Kuomintang listen to.’

A change came over the officer. His cheeks sucked in, he rubbed a hand across his pockmarked chin, and his eyes grew more thoughtful. He bit the end off his cigar and spat it at the floor.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘I will execute you right now.’

‘If you do, I promise you the Russian will have you whipped to the bone,’ Chang murmured with a bow.

58

Theo stepped inside the Rolls-Royce as it purred to a halt at the kerb, and he inhaled the rich odour of leather and money.

‘Good day to you, Feng Tu Hong.’

‘You asked for my time, Willbee. I am here. I am listening.’

Theo slid onto the comfort of the maroon rear seat beside Feng and studied his enemy. Feng was wrapped in a long grey coat with a wide silver fur collar and pale grey kid gloves, but even in all his finery he still had the look of a buffalo ready to charge. Theo smiled.

‘You are looking well, Feng.’

‘Well, but not well pleased.’

‘I appreciate your sparing a few moments from your busy day.’

‘Every day is busy for a man like myself who has so many matters to attend to and no son at his right hand.’

Theo stared through the glass partition at the back of the chauffeur’s head. Outside a few flakes of snow swirled in the wind. Feng had given him the opening but he had to tread with care.

‘It grieves me to hear that Po Chu is no longer one of your household. A father’s heart must hang heavy when his only son departs with harsh words.’

‘Daughter or son. A father’s heart bleeds.’

‘It is about Po Chu I came to speak.’

‘He is a worthless beetle fit only for the sewers.’

‘I fear he will soon be in prison rather than in the sewers.’

Feng sank his neck deeper into the fur collar and glared at Theo. ‘You lie.’

‘No, Feng Tu Hong, I speak the truth. Your son has kidnapped a
fanqui
girl. She is the daughter of a British journalist who will bring the might of the British Army down on Chinese heads in Junchow if the girl is not released immediately.’

Feng’s huge hand gripped the ivory cane he carried across his lap. Theo knew from Li Mei that it was a swordstick, though he had never seen the thin blade himself. Nor did he care to. Feng breathed heavily but said nothing.

‘Such antipathy,’ Theo continued, ‘between our people would be bad for your . . . business.’

Feng snorted. ‘What is it you want, Willbee?’

‘I want to know where Po Chu is hiding her.’

‘Hah, you take my daughter and now you would take my son. Be careful, Englishman, that I do not take your head.’

‘No, Feng. It is the girl I want, not your son. If I can retrieve her quickly, Po Chu will not be harmed. I came to warn you of the danger he is in.’

Feng turned his sombre face away and stared unseeing out of the side window. On the pavement opposite, an acrobat was balancing on stilts while a stick-thin monkey in a scarlet jacket was holding out a cup for money. The chauffeur tossed in a coin.

‘My son disobeyed me, Willbee. The way his brother, Yuesheng, did before him, and my daughter before that. He is banished from my house but . . . it grieves me, Willbee, because I can father no more sons however young and luscious the maidens I pleasure. My stalk is still willing but the seeds are shrivelled and dry though I eat tiger meat. I grow old.’ He ran a hand over his sleek hair, touching the greying temples with distaste. ‘I need my son.’

‘The British courts will hang him.’

Feng swung back to confront Theo and his eyes were dull with despair. ‘I want him alive, worthless as he is.’

‘There is a chance for him still if I can find her quickly before the authorities get involved.’

Feng leaned close to Theo, and Theo had to work hard to keep his own anger off his face. He did not choose to forget that this was the man who had put Li Mei through so much pain and caused Theo’s own problems with Mason.

‘Very well, Willbee. I trust you because I have no other choice. Po Chu is far too cautious to let any of my people come near, but you are different. Maybe you can speak with him because he will see you as no threat.’ He heaved a deep sigh that shuddered through the bunched muscles of his body. ‘My secret eyes tell me he and his followers are hiding in a farmhouse. Out near the Seven Woods to the east of town.’ His black gaze fixed on Theo. ‘Save him, teacher-man. For me. For his father.’

Theo nodded. ‘When this is over, if Po Chu lives, I will name my price.’ He climbed out of the car.

‘Alfred.’

‘Thank the Lord you’ve come, Theo.’ Alfred’s normally neat exterior was rumpled, his jacket creased and dark circles forming behind his spectacles. ‘Any luck?’

‘I have news.’

‘You’ve found her?’

‘Not yet.’ Theo shook his head and accepted the whisky Alfred held out to him. ‘How’s her mother?’

‘Beside herself with fury. Dear God, I can’t bear to see her in such agony. The police are worse than useless, they’re so slow.’

‘You shouldn’t have involved them yet.’

‘Sorry, old man, but I had to. But look, I didn’t mention that Lydia’s Chinese friend was a Communist fugitive, so you should be safe from any charges. Quickly now, what’s this news you have?’

‘A farmhouse. That’s where they’re keeping her.’ Theo was uncertain quite how much to reveal to Alfred because he didn’t want the police getting hold of the information yet, but he knew he was going to need someone to back him up. ‘I’m going out there in secret to try to bargain with Po Chu.’

‘Damn good.’

‘Come with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Bring a gun.’

‘Alfred, listen to me, take Liev Popkov with you.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t be so dense, you must remember him. The drunken Russian who stormed into our wedding reception. I know where he lives and can send someone to fetch him straightaway.’

‘Ah, yes. Right. Good idea. He’s big.’

‘Take care, both of you. I don’t want my husband dead, Mr Willoughby.’

‘Don’t worry, Valentina. I’ll come back, God willing. With Lydia. She’s my daughter too now.’

‘Oh, Alfred, if you do, I’ll kiss the ground you walk on till the day I die . . . whether God’s willing or not. Come here.’

‘Steady on, old girl. Theo’s watching.’

‘Let him watch.’

The road was rough and so rutted it nearly took the sump off Theo’s Morris Cowley. It was little more than a dirt track that skirted fields that stretched bare and grey to the horizon. In the spring they would be a green swathe of young wheat shoots, but in winter they looked like a sea of ash. Depressing under an even greyer sky. Theo cursed and fought the steering wheel around to the left to avoid another pothole. Beside him Alfred was smoking his pipe in silence, and the calmness of each puff irritated Theo. His own heart was thudding like a steam hammer. Damn it, he wished he’d had a pipe of his own before he left, a dream pipe to quiet his nerves.

‘Alfred, be a good chap, and put out the ruddy smoke signals, will you?’

Alfred glanced across, studied him for a moment before winding down the window and tossing his pipe out onto the stony track. ‘Better?’

Theo said nothing, just concentrated on the road. In the backseat the big Russian let out a loud guffaw and hunched forward with anticipation.

The road ended in a goat trail and they left the car behind the few scraps of pine trees that Feng Tu Hong had called a wood. On foot they threaded their way to the far side of it and crouched down to observe the farmhouse that lay five hundred yards ahead. It was a cluster of single-storey wooden buildings covering three sides of a square, with a courtyard at the centre and the fourth side made up of a whitewashed stone wall with high arched gates of solid oak.

They waited thirty minutes by Theo’s watch. A flock of ragged-winged crows dropped out of the grey clouds and settled on the flat lifeless soil in front of the house, where they strutted stiff-legged like old men and dredged for grubs. When one stretched out its neck and took to the air, cawing harshly and circling over the
fanqui
heads, Theo hoped it was not an omen.

‘Nothing,’ he snapped when Alfred’s timepiece pinged two o’clock. They were both staring at the gates, willing them to open. ‘We might as well get over there and take a look. Po Chu and I have old business to settle.’

‘You know this man?’

‘Oh yes. He’s Li Mei’s brother.’

‘You should have said.’

‘I’m saying it now.’

‘So this is personal?’

‘No, I’m here for Lydia.’

‘I see.’

The one-eyed Russian abruptly shook himself and lumbered to his feet behind a huddle of trees. His black eye fixed on Alfred and then Theo.
‘Zhdite zdes,’
he said. ‘You here.’ He pointed at Theo’s watch and indicated the movement of time. ‘One.’ He held up a thick scarred forefinger. ‘One. You here.’

‘One hour?’

‘Da.’
Liev nodded.

‘You want us to stay here an hour?’

‘Da.’

‘And then?’ Alfred asked.

‘You . . . there.’ Liev Popkov pointed at the gate.

‘And you? Where will you be?’

The Russian spread his lips, showing strong teeth inside his black beard, growled something in his own language, and slunk off back into the trees. In his matted fur hat and long grey coat, he merged into the landscape after only a few strides.

‘Christ almighty,’ Theo muttered and settled down to wait.

Alfred removed his spectacles and polished them meticulously.

Theo banged on the oak door. Alfred rang a small bronze bell that hung on a chain to one side and almost immediately a narrow slat slid open at face level. A pair of Chinese eyes stared out, but one was filmy and the other nervous.

‘I have come to speak with Feng Po Chu.’ Theo spoke briskly in Mandarin. ‘Inform your master that the Honourable Tiyo Willbee is here. And be quick. The cold out here is the devil’s breath.’

The eyes grew wider and flicked uneasily from Theo to Alfred and back again. ‘Not here,’ he said and slammed the slat shut.

Alfred thudded his fist on the door, making it rattle in its lock. ‘Open up, damn you.’

To their surprise his words were greeted with the sound of a key turning and a heavy bolt being drawn top and bottom, then the oak door swung open. In front of them an elderly Chinese man with a long old-fashioned braid lay unconscious on the cobbles, while beside the door stood a bearded man with a chunk of firewood gripped in his hand.

‘Liev Popkov!’ Alfred exclaimed. ‘How . . . ?’

‘Never mind how he broke in,’ Theo urged. ‘Let’s get searching. ’

He drew his gun. The Russian pulled a pair of well-used long-barrelled pistols from his belt, and Alfred waved a small Smith & Wesson uneasily in the general direction of the buildings. Theo felt a kick of adrenaline in his guts. Almost as good as opium running on the Peiho on a stormy night. He raced toward the first doorway but found only empty rooms. They searched the place thoroughly, every building and every ramshackle outhouse. No Lydia. A farmer, his two burly sons, and a handful of women were the only occupants.

One of the young wives admitted readily, ‘Feng Po Chu has gone. Two days ago. Took his piss-making men with him.’

The Russian let out a roar of frustration. They were too late.