Later that evening Field moved very slowly into the darkened Special Branch office, trying to determine whether there was any bit of him that wasn’t in pain.
He flicked on the light in his booth and sat down. He stretched his legs, straightened his back, and put his hands behind his head, then slumped forward and fiddled with the light switch.
The buff-colored fingerprint file lay in his in-tray and he flicked the corner of it, ignoring the pile of publications to be censored that had been placed in the middle of his desk. He decided to splash a basinful of cold water over his face before giving the file a closer look.
On the way back from the washroom, Field poured himself a drink, then returned to his desk.
For a moment the significance of the empty tray did not register. The folder had been taken, no note left in its place.
Field stood and took the stairs to the fingerprint bureau two at a time, forgetting his bruises.
Ellis wasn’t there. An elderly Sikh frowned at Field’s inquiry. “No, sahib,” he said. “They have not come back here.”
“Check the originals, will you?”
The man walked over to a row of cabinets. “What’s the name again?”
“Orlov, Lena.”
Field waited, drumming his fingers. Eventually, the man turned. “No,” he said bluntly. “There’s no record of prints for a case under that name.”
“Where is Ellis?”
“Ellis is on leave.”
“On leave?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I believe he has gone to San Francisco. He will be back in three to four months.”
Field took the stairs down to Crime, but the office was as dark and deserted as his own, thin shards of light from the street cutting across the empty desks. He walked to Macleod’s office and back, but there was no one there.
He returned to his own office and stood in the middle of the room, his hands in his pockets.
After a few minutes he headed down the stairs to the ground floor. In front of the reception desk, he waited for Albert, the doorman, to finish his telephone call. Albert was in his seventies and had been wounded in the Boer War.
“Albert, who has been in tonight?”
The old man’s brow creased in concentration.
“It’s quiet up there. Has anyone from my department, or from Crime, been in? I mean in the last few hours, since the match.”
“Mr. Granger made an appearance.”
“Granger?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
Albert shrugged. “Twenty minutes.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
Albert nodded. “And Macleod.”
“Macleod?”
“And Caprisi. They came in together.”
“When was that?”
“About forty minutes ago.”
Field turned and ran back upstairs, first to Crime, where the office was still dark and empty, and then to the Branch, where his desk lamp was still the only sign of life. He stopped again in the middle of the room. “Sir?” he said.
He walked slowly down to Granger’s room, knocked, and waited.
Field glanced over his shoulder, then slipped through Granger’s door. He peered through the blinds, back down toward the lift, then walked around and sat behind the desk, his heart thumping. The in-tray was full of sheets of paper. He lifted the top one and held it up to the light. It was a memo from Commissioner Biers to “Heads of Department,” about the “ordering, use, and abuse of stationery.”
Field put it down, glancing toward the lift again before opening the drawer to his right. An embossed invitation to a function at Fraser’s lay alongside a leather pistol holster. It was four months out of date.
The shrill ring of a telephone made Field start, and it was a moment before he realized that it was coming from his own desk. He shut the drawer and walked out, closing the door quietly behind him.
Field sat and wiped the sweat from his forehead, hoping the ringing would stop, but it didn’t.
He picked it up. “Richard Field.”
“Dickie.”
“Hello… Penelope.”
“I’ve been trying to get you all evening, but there’s been no answer.”
“I’m sorry, there was a-”
“You’ve been busy, I know.”
“I haven’t yet written a note to thank you both for dinner, both dinners. It was a marvelous-”
“Don’t be silly. Don’t mention it. Geoffrey thinks you’re terrific and is very proud to have you as a nephew. And so am I.”
Field felt his face flushing with pleasure. “Well, I-”
“Are you free tonight?”
He looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty.
“I don’t have any plans, but-”
“Then you shall come out with us. There is a dance at the race club and-look, I know it’s last-minute, but Geoffrey wants to show you off to everyone. You won’t disappoint us, will you? Surely Crime can spare you at this time of night?”
Field noticed that Penelope rarely drew breath.
“I’m not busy. But are you sure?”
“Geoffrey is insistent. He instructed me not to take no for an answer, so I shall meet you at the entrance at ten.”
Field put down the phone and stared at it.
“Granger,” he whispered to himself. “Fuck.” He felt the resentment rising inside him, tasting the bile in his mouth. Was it his fault? Hadn’t Caprisi told him enough? Shouldn’t he have been more careful and hidden the fingerprint file? He felt stupid and naive.
He wondered where Granger had gone, and he stood up intending to go and look for him. He stopped. Of course, the building was huge. He could be anywhere.
Field stood outside the race club, looking up at the clock tower, then back across to the Happy Times block, where a light was on in Natasha Medvedev’s apartment.
So far, he’d seen no sign of her through the windows.
He watched the guests arriving, wondering why he hadn’t found an excuse not to come. It was not just that he was incorrectly dressed-all the men were wearing white ties and tails, which he did not possess-but that the others, with their well-cut coats and dresses, jewelry and finely polished shoes, belonged to a world in which he increasingly wanted to be included.
He looked at his watch and then walked in through the tall glass doors. He waited at the bottom of a marble staircase, beneath a magnificent crystal chandelier.
“Dickie!”
Penelope was wearing a white dress, a circle of diamonds sparkling brightly around her neck. She kissed him, brushing a white-gloved hand on his arm, her body pressed briefly against his. Her skin was soft, a hint of French perfume catching in his nostrils. She was wearing red lipstick, generously applied, and as she stepped back, she laughed and began to wipe it off his cheek, ignoring the fact that it was staining her glove. He noticed for the first time how long her eyelashes were.
“Come.”
She slipped a hand into the crook of his arm and began to lead him up the marble staircase.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I seem to be improperly dressed. I didn’t-”
“Don’t worry,” she said, and smiled at him.
For the first time, Field liked her, because, of course, his dress was an issue and people would notice.
At the top of the stairs, she led him into a room that was even bigger than the Long Bar at the Shanghai Club. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the track were all open in a fruitless attempt to air the room. In the center stood a table with a silver bowl big enough to bathe in, filled with flowers. At the far end was the biggest brick fireplace he’d ever seen.
The room was packed, so that most people were forced to shout to be heard, and she led him in the direction of the fireplace, clutching his hand and occasionally looking back at him and smiling.
Geoffrey was surrounded by a small group-all men-at the far end of the room. One was Charles Lewis, another a tall, thin man of Middle Eastern appearance with dark hair and a beard.
“Richard!” Geoffrey stepped forward to greet him, the circle widening a fraction. “Charlie you know.”
“Good evening,” Lewis said.
“And this is Simon Hayek, you may remember from the other night at the council meeting.”
They shook hands, the man’s dark eyes scrutinizing his face.
“You’re in the Crime Branch?” Hayek asked.
“No… not normally.”
“You’re a detective… political?”
“We were just discussing,” Geoffrey said, “whether General Chiang Kai-shek was secretly a Red. You probably have views on that.”
They were looking at him.
“It’s not really an area I’ve been working on.” Seeing the disapproval in their faces, Field changed tack. “But I would say that the department’s view is that he is cynical. He will use whomever he can to advance himself, disposing of them later. The Reds have support and money in the south and he will use that to try and unify the country under his rule. What happens then may be a different matter.”
“Or may not,” Hayek said. “Any more sign of protests?”
“I don’t think we are aware of any.”
They nodded vigorously.
“We’ve broken them,” Hayek said. “We said a bit of steel would sort them out and we were right, Borodin or not.”
Field was not so certain that the unrest was over for good or that the decision to open fire on protesters last year had been a good one.
“And that’s what we need now,” Hayek went on, “to show Chiang and the Reds and anyone else with designs on China that they’re not going to get their bloody hands on the Settlement and that is final.” Hayek looked to Geoffrey for approval, but appeared to get no reaction. “Lu Huang runs around the city like he damned well owns the place, and no one says boo to him.”
This time Geoffrey nodded.
“If anyone thinks he’s an insurance policy, then forget it.”
“He’s close to Chiang,” Lewis said. “We know that. He has links with the Reds.”
“He’s a bloody gangster.”
“He’s getting too big for his boots,” Geoffrey said. “That’s certainly true. It’s sending the wrong signals.”
Penelope Donaldson straightened. “Communism will come to China, as surely as it came to Russia. And if you don’t believe that, then you’ve learned nothing.”
There was silence in their small circle.
“Penelope,” Lewis said, turning slowly toward her, “you know, I never saw you as a Bolshevik.”
She melted immediately. “Look, are you boys going to talk politics all night?”
At that moment the band struck up. Lewis, who had begun to look bored, slipped away.
“Dickie?” Penelope asked.
She took his arm.
“I can’t…”
“Come on. I’ll teach you.”
She dragged him away as the band seemed to gather steam, settling into a frantic beat.
“Richard.” It was Geoffrey. Field paused, watching Penelope disappear into the crowd on the dance floor. “I’ve got some work to do-tedious stuff. Would you mind looking after her for me, see she doesn’t get into any trouble?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“She hates it when I desert her and, anyway, I can’t dance.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He laughed. “Make sure she doesn’t damned well drink too much.”
“Yes.”
Penelope came back and grabbed his hand. “Come on,” she said. “Or I shall assume you’re standing me up.”
When Field looked back a second later, he saw Geoffrey moving in the direction of the door.
Penelope paused by a Chinese waiter in a white linen jacket holding a silver tray. She took one of the champagne glasses and drank its contents in one swift movement before placing it back in the same position, all the time keeping a firm grip on Field’s hand.
Then they were on the dance floor, and some-though not all-of the people around them were doing the Charleston. As he watched Penelope step back and begin to dance, he thought of the letter he had read in the North China Daily News at lunchtime exhorting Shanghai’s socialites to give up “this ridiculous dance that has young things who should know better flapping and kicking in a manner that shows no consideration for fellow dancers.”
Field did not know how to do the Charleston. It was not as simple as it looked and Penelope was laughing at him.
“Come on,” she said, leaning forward and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to put your heart into it.”
She moved her arms and her legs and he tried to follow, slowly understanding its jerky ritual, before being bumped from behind by a corpulent man with slicked-back hair.
Penelope moved closer. “You’re getting the hang of it brilliantly.”
Ten yards away, Charles Lewis was looking at him and smiling. He was dancing with a Chinese girl not much more than half his size. She reminded Field of the prostitute he had almost slept with the other night and he could hear again the screams from the other end of the corridor.
The rich, he thought, could get away with anything here.