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 passersby 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 passed, 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 passers-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 assault 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 assured 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 fucking Yank a lesson.”
Field smiled at Caprisi as they sat down. “Friend of yours?”
“Brits.” He shook his head.
Field poured himself a glass 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 basement.
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?”
