deliberate disregard for the attractiveness of most of the buildings in the Concession. Field felt barely under control—unwanted, uncontrollable images of Lu and Natasha together still tearing through his mind.
It had been another long, sleepless night. For much of it, he had walked through the darkened streets.
Both ground-floor flats had tiny yards beside them, behind a wrought-iron fence, next to the road. In both, lines of laundry swayed in the breeze. Natalya had lived in 1A, and the woman who lived there now also looked like a prostitute—heavily made-up, with high leather boots and a tight top. She must have been fifty, and looking at her made Field feel queasy. The door was slammed in their face.
“Silent again today, polar bear,” Caprisi said as they turned away.
Field didn’t answer.
“But I’m glad you called.”
Field still didn’t respond. He wasn’t certain whether he had been right to give Caprisi Natalya Simonov’s address. He hadn’t told him that she and Natasha had been sisters.
“You’ve done well, polar bear.”
In the flat opposite, they found an elderly couple named Schmidt who, shaking their heads sadly, said they had known Natalya and invited them in.
The sitting room was even smaller than Field had expected, and nothing about it suggested any connection at all with Shanghai. Neither of them was allowed to refuse Mrs. Schmidt’s offer of chocolate torte and coffee, and as they listened to her—she was a talker, he could see, too often devoid of company—Field studied her husband and the photograph of a young boy in uniform on the sideboard.
“Our son,” Mr. Schmidt said proudly.
“Otto,” his wife said, handing each of them a plate with a large slice of cake. “He is the butcher now.”
They both spoke with broad German accents, and Mrs. Schmidt had said this without a hint of irony.
“Your son is a butcher?” Caprisi asked.
“It was Hans’s business when we married and we build it up. Now we give it to our son.”
“He fought in the war?” Field asked.
She looked at him, trying to gauge if there was any hostility in his eyes. “He wished to. For his country.”
“We understood,” Hans said in a manner that indicated they had not.
Hans was a small man, with a face permanently set in a smile, a long nose and forehead, and an almost oval skull, with a few hairs straying in different directions across its crown. His wife was plump, neat, and ordered, her dress pressed, her hands placed carefully in her lap.
They were poor but honest, Field thought.
“Natalya,” Caprisi said.
“You were friends?” Mrs. Schmidt asked him.
“In a manner of speaking.”
She leaned forward. “Do not worry. You are police, I can tell, but we will not . . .” She looked at her husband conspiratorially, then back again. “The French police . . .”
“Yes.” Caprisi cleared his throat. “You knew her?”
“Of course! We are neighbors. I know it is the way of some in the big city to . . . But we are from a small town in Bavaria. It is not our tradition.” She looked at her husband again. “We have lived here so many years.”
“So you knew her well?”
“We would look after her cat sometimes. And her little boy, of course.” She shook her head sorrowfully.
“Her little boy?” Caprisi said.
“Yes. Alexei.”
“How old was he?”
“Her little boy?” Field asked, finally taking in what she’d said.
“Alexei, yes. He is six.”
“She had a son?” Field said.
“Yes.”
“Natalya Simonov had a son?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“It was her own?”
“Natalya Simonov had a boy?” he said once again. They were all frowning at him now. “What has become of him?” he added quickly.
The Schmidts looked at him, as if he were stupid. “The orphanage, of course.” Mrs. Schmidt turned to her husband. “What could we do? We could not have him. Could we, Hans?”
“No.” He shook his head firmly.
