Five minutes later they draw up at an intersection, outside a grand art deco building topped by a cascading neon spire. Coloured lights course up and down its antique facade. Above the portico, the word Paramount blazes into the twilight.
“You like dancing?”
“I… yes,” Eve replies. “I do, actually.”
“The Paramount is a famous landmark from the nineteen-thirties. This is where everyone came to dance. Gangsters, high society, beautiful women…”
She smiles. “You sound as if you’d like those days to return.”
He locks the scooter. “They were interesting times. But then so are these. Come.”
She accompanies him into a foyer hung with sepia photographs, and from there into a small lift that conveys them unhurriedly to the fourth floor. The dance hall is like a music box in gilt and red plush. On the stage, a middle-aged singer in a floor-length evening dress is delivering a smoky-voiced version of “Bye Bye Blackbird,” as a dozen or so couples gravely quickstep around the cantilevered dance floor.
Jin leads Eve to a side table in a booth, and orders Coca-Cola for both of them.
“Business first?” he asks.
“Business first,” she agrees, sipping the sugary drink. A couple glides wordlessly past them.
“What I tell you, you never repeat, OK?”
She shakes her head. “This conversation never took place. We talked about dancing. About nightlife in Old Shanghai.”
He moves closer to her on the banquette, and inclines his head towards hers. “Our late friend, as you know, was killed in an establishment in the Old City. He was a surgery fetishist. A masochist. We knew about this. He visited the place every six weeks or so, and paid a professional sex worker to simulate… various medical procedures. He was discreet about these visits; his colleagues knew nothing about them.”
“But not discreet enough to escape your department’s notice, evidently.”
“Evidently.”
Eve notes that Jin is, in effect, admitting that Zhang Lei was working for the state.
“So we are either looking at an organisation able to mount an extensive and long-term surveillance operation…” She hesitates. “Or one with access to information acquired by your department.”
Jin frowns. “Certainly the former. Just conceivably the latter.”
Eve nods slowly. “Either way, a sophisticated organisation with a long reach.”
“Yes. And I don’t believe it was the British, or the Americans. The economic consequences of discovery would be…”
“Catastrophic?” Eve suggests.
“Yes. That’s right.”
“So do you have any other ideas for who might be responsible?”
“Right now, not really, although one can never discount a Russian connection, especially if, as you suggest, the same organisation is responsible for the death of Viktor Kedrin. So we’re trying very hard to find out more about the woman they sent. We know that she entered by the back stairway, overpowered the sex worker who calls herself Nurse Wu, who remembers nothing beyond the fact that her attacker was a woman, and then eliminated our friend by means of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“You’re sure that was the cause of death? It couldn’t have been an accident on the part of this nurse person? After all, she wasn’t qualified to administer surgical gas or anything of the sort, surely.”
“The only gas she ever gave her ‘patients’ was pure oxygen. We tested all the tanks there. And as it happens, as well as being a part-time sex worker she was also a trained nurse, who worked in a private medical facility in Pudong. So she knew what she was doing. And the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are unmistakable.”
“Cherry-red lips and skin?”
“Exactly. The pathologist was in no doubt.”
“But no sign of a CO tank, or canister?”
“No, the killer took it away with her.”
“And what makes this Wu person so sure that her attacker was a woman?”
“She remembers the feel of a woman’s breasts against her back when she was grabbed. And the hand that went over her mouth was strong, she said, but not a man’s hand.”
“She’s sure about this?”
“Very sure. And there’s a man who has a food stall on Dangfeng Road opposite the backstairs exit. He knows what the building is, and that only men come out of that door. So when he saw a woman, he remembered her.”
“Does he remember what she looked like?”
“No, he said all Westerners look the same to him. Baseball cap is all he remembers. New York Yankees.”
“Our killer’s very good at being invisible. Has the material on the Kedrin murder been any use?”
“Very much so. My service is very grateful, Mrs. Polastri. We showed the images of the woman in the hotel to people who work on Dangfeng Road, and several said they might have seen her that day.”
“But no one was sure?”
“No. Unfortunately.”
“They’re very poor quality images. And you can’t see her face. So I’m not surprised.”
“We are grateful, nevertheless. And of course we’re checking against visas, and watching all border points. We’re talking to people in all the hotels, clubs, and restaurants that a foreigner might visit.”
“I’m sure you’re doing everything that could be done.”
“We are.” Jin smiles. “And now, would you like to dance?”
Dragon-fruit Martini in hand, Simon makes his way towards one of the Star Bar’s few unoccupied seats, which appears to be upholstered in zebra-skin. “Boss Ass Bitch” by Nicki Minaj is pumping from concealed speakers, and the place is filling fast. Simon is wearing Diesel jeans and a cotton jacket, and the Lonely Planet guide from which he chose the bar (“a watering-hole popular with the cashed-up expat crowd”) is weighing down his right-hand pocket.
He would never admit it to Eve, and obviously she’s his head of section and it’s Jin Qiang’s turf, but he’s not exactly happy that she’s swanned off without him for a night on the town with Jin. It’s
