The Eastern Mirror

Four days after the radio spoke, somebody knocked at Harriet Keel’s front door.

The radio had no business speaking. It had been left in her Walthamstow house after a case which began with a frightened London man and ended with arrests in Scotland. Its new message contained coordinates, the words DOOR FOUR and enough unfinished business to spoil a perfectly serviceable evening.

This was an improvement. During the previous month, visitors had generally arrived through her telephone, her windows, a compromised data broker or the nervous system of someone she was trying to keep alive. Three ordinary knocks suggested either good manners or a more sophisticated threat. She put down her tea. Behind her, Hamish MacNair continued arguing with a Mandarin lesson.

“Wǒ xiǎng hē chá,” he told the laptop.

The laptop considered him. TRY AGAIN.

“I would like to drink tea,” he explained, in English, as if the software had misunderstood the scale of his ambition.

Jun Wei leaned over his shoulder. “It thinks you wish to drink a fork.”

“That isn’t one of the words.”

“Not yet. You are pioneering.”

Mei Lin, sitting at Harriet’s kitchen table with a newspaper folded into four precise rectangles, said, “Your tones are better when you stop checking whether they are good.”

“That is an unhelpful feedback loop.”

“So is arguing with a computer.”

Harriet went to the door. Her right knee objected to the first step, then settled into the resentful cooperation which had become its usual position. She had tightened the support that morning. Too much, probably. The skin beneath it felt warm and crowded. Outside stood a man in a raincoat with a bouquet of flowers. Harriet looked at the flowers, then at him.

“Wrong house.”

“Detective Chief Inspector Keel?”

“That depends how much the flowers cost.”

The man smiled without showing his teeth. He was in his late fifties, Chinese, carrying himself with the upright economy of someone who had spent years refusing to look hurried. There was a pale mark where a ring might once have been. His shoes were wet; the bottoms of his trousers were dry. He had walked from a nearby car.

“My name is Liu Sheng. I represent a man who would prefer not to use your telephone.”

“So would I. The flowers?”

“For Mrs Keel.”

“There isn’t one.”

He looked genuinely disconcerted.

“My employer was told—”

“Your employer has been reading the wrong file.”

Harriet left him on the step and called, “Mei.”

The newspaper stopped moving. Liu did not turn towards the street. Harriet noticed that. People who expected help generally looked for it. Mei appeared beside her. For a fraction of a second her expression altered, then became entirely professional.

“You are a long way from the academy,” she said in Mandarin.

“Everyone is,” Liu replied.

Jun came into the hall behind them.

“Oh,” he said.

It was the least comic thing Harriet had heard him say. Liu held the bouquet a little higher. Among the white chrysanthemums was a narrow envelope.

“I was told to knock properly,” he said. “And not to mention the fourth door until I was inside.”

Harriet stepped back.

“Then somebody has taught you at least one useful thing.”

They put the flowers in a measuring jug because Harriet owned only one vase, which was currently holding screwdrivers. Liu sat at the table. Jun closed the curtains. Mei asked him three questions in Mandarin too fast for Hamish to follow. Hamish caught a number, a reference to water, and the word for a teacher. Liu answered. Mei watched his hands rather than his face. Finally she nodded once.

“This is Liu Sheng. He managed logistics at our academy. Zhao trusted him before Zhao trusted almost anyone.”

“Do you?” Harriet asked.

“I trust that he is Liu Sheng.”

“Good distinction.”

Liu placed the envelope on the table. Inside was a photograph of Director Zhao sitting beside a window. He had lost weight. An old-fashioned clock stood behind him, together with a newspaper and a cup whose handle had been repaired. On the back, in English, someone had written: I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU BEFORE. Jun drew a slow breath.

“Alive,” he said.

Mei touched the photograph with one finger. Not Zhao’s face. The corner of the paper.

“Where?”

Liu shook his head. “Not in this house. Not while these devices are present.”

Hamish glanced at the laptop.

“It is not connected.”

“Nor was the radio,” Harriet said.

That ended the discussion.

They went into the small back garden, where an ambitious rosemary bush was gradually annexing a cracked paving slab. A neighbour’s dog complained on general principles. Hamish brought a notebook. Harriet brought her tea. Liu did not.

“My employer is Liang Jianwen,” he said. “Infrastructure, logistics, energy systems. Private companies. A foundation. You may not know his name.”

“Should I?”

“He spends money ensuring people do not.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“He has lost something he cannot buy back.”

Liu looked at Mei.

“His brother was killed six weeks ago. Before that, he was persuaded to authorise transfers which should have been impossible. His identity systems approved them. His staff believed them. His brother believed a message asking him to go somewhere alone.”

The garden seemed to become quieter. Harriet put down her cup.

“How was he killed?”

“A fall, according to the first report.”

“And according to your employer?”

“A decision made by someone who knew exactly whom he would trust.”

Hamish had stopped writing.

They recognised the shape of it. Cheshire was the surveillance-and-fraud operation exposed in their last case: ordinary fragments of people’s lives joined into models, then used to find the pressure that would make them pay. They had arrested men, seized servers and broken one chain of command. It did not follow that they had broken a market.

“Why us?” Harriet asked.

“Because you found the people inside the numbers.”

“That sounds like something a publicist would say.”

“Director Zhao said it.”

Mei lifted her eyes.

“He is with Jianwen?”

“He is under his protection.”

“From whom?”

Liu’s pause was sufficiently long to qualify as an answer.

Harriet watched Mei absorb it without moving. Zhao had been their commander for years. He had ordered them to retrieve a ledger, warned them not to come home and then vanished. Trust was not a switch. Mei could be relieved he was alive and furious with him at the same time.

“London first,” Liu said. “There is something at the location he sent you. He cannot ask you to travel until you have seen it.”

“Ask,” Harriet repeated.

“Yes.”

“Not order.”

Liu inclined his head. “He was very particular.”

Jun looked over the garden wall.

“The last time he was particular, we came to Edinburgh with a phrasebook.”

“You bought the phrasebook,” Mei said.

“And without it I would never have learned that a piece was a sandwich.”

Harriet picked up her tea.

“For the record, it wasn’t the phrasebook that taught you.”

Inside, Hamish’s abandoned laptop announced that his pronunciation had improved. Nobody had spoken to it. He looked towards the kitchen.

“See,” Jun said. “Stop trying.”

• • •

After Liu left, carrying the empty bouquet wrapping and a promise to return, Harriet rang Morag from a clean telephone. Morag listened without interruption. This was worrying. Usually she found something worth interrupting within the first seventeen seconds.

“Chinese billionaire,” she said at last.

“Apparently.”

“Dead brother.”

“Yes.”

“Missing intelligence director.”

“Less missing.”

“And you’re standing in your kitchen pretending this is a request for routine assistance.”

“I hadn’t got to that bit.”

“Save yourself the effort.”

Harriet watched Mei washing the measuring jug. There were still two flowers in it. Mei had taken them out carefully, set them on a towel, and was now scrubbing at something nobody else could see.

“I need authority to look at the residual London endpoint,” Harriet said. “Arthur logged it. We have the evidence chain.”

“You’ll have authority. You’ll also have someone who knows where you are.”

“Morag—”

“No. I am perfectly willing to write down that I told you not to get killed. I am less willing to make it up afterwards.”

Harriet smiled.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me until you see the forms.”

When she ended the call, Hamish was waiting beside the fridge. He handed her a mug without looking directly at her.

“You left yours in the garden.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

He had made the replacement exactly as she liked it. Not approximate. Exactly. There was nothing new in that, she told herself. Then he said, “You’re limping.”

“Your Mandarin’s dreadful.”

“Those facts are not related.”

“They are now.”

He smiled a little, which was worse than arguing. Harriet took the mug.