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“Are you okay?” I asked.
She looked dazed and was bleeding from a head wound, but she managed to focus on me and nodded.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
She nodded again so I took her arm and led her down a cluttered alleyway that ran between two restaurants. It looked like the perfect place for us to disappear.
CHAPTER 18
I COULDN’T RISK taking Zhang Daiyu to her apartment or the hotel room that had been reserved in my name. It was obvious we’d been targeted. She was dazed but I didn’t think she was suffering from concussion, which was just as well because we couldn’t risk seeking medical treatment either. I pressed her for a suggestion as we ran away, and when we emerged from the network of alleys she gradually began to recover her senses sufficiently to get her bearings. We were on a busy street packed with grocery stores and at the end was a food market.
“Two blocks south,” she mumbled. “On the corner of Dongcui and Changcui Roads there is a hostel for workers.”
The effort of speaking was almost too much for her. She staggered and leant against me for support. I held her and guided her through the busy streets until we found the building she’d spoken of.
Four floors high and a block wide, sweeping curved balconies ran the width of every floor, providing an exterior walkway that offered access to the rooms, each of which was marked by a numbered red door.
There were a couple of old men sitting outside the building, smoking pipes. They eyed us up and down as I steered Zhang Daiyu inside. The lobby reminded me of an old cinema with red drapes, gray marble floor, and metalwork everywhere. Pipe smoke wafted through the open double doors, giving the place a musty scent. An old woman wearing half-moon glasses and traditional Hanfu dress sat behind the reception desk opposite a gold spiral staircase.
“I’d like a room, please,” I said.
The woman rattled off a reply in Mandarin. She seemed to be alarmed, and I guessed she was concerned for Zhang Daiyu’s safety.
“My friend needs rest,” I said.
She replied with growing agitation, bordering on anger, then picked up her mobile phone and shouted to the men outside as she dialed a number.
What was I thinking? Bringing a semi-conscious woman to a hostel while I was unable to speak the language and assure people I had Zhang Daiyu’s best interests at heart? The two pipe smokers came in and approached me warily as the old woman put her phone to her ear.
I hated to do it, but I shook Zhang Daiyu.
“Hey. I really need your help here,” I said, trying to rouse her. “Please, say something to them. Tell them it’s okay.”
To my great relief, she came to and managed to muster the energy to reply. Her voice was weak and faltering, but her tone was soothing. I couldn’t understand what she said, but the old receptionist nodded and ended her call. She spoke sharply to the two smokers, who ambled back outside.
I produced my wallet and handed over notes until the receptionist was satisfied. She gave us a key to room 15.
“Xièxie ni,” I said.
She smiled and I led Zhang Daiyu up the spiral staircase and through a door that took us onto the first-floor balcony. We walked along until we found room 15, and I supported her while I got the door open.
I ushered her into a tiny hostel room with a double bed, chest of drawers, and a dilapidated shower and toilet cubicle. I put her on the bed, and, like a child’s doll, her eyes shut the moment she was horizontal. Soon her breathing grew heavy with sleep, I sat on the end of the bed and watched her, wondering why someone had targeted her.
Was it this investigation or something else? I realized I knew very little about the woman I was working with, and the thought that I might not be able to trust her took root in my mind. Was Ma Yuhang, the deputy governor of Qincheng Prison, really her uncle? I only had her word for it. Had she really been able to gain access to China’s most secure prison because of a family connection? Or was there something else at work here? Could she be involved in something that had put Private at risk? If the gunman had been sent to stop our investigation, why hadn’t he shot me? What if he had been sent to kill a co-conspiratorinstead? Someone who knew too much about what was really going on.
I sat for hours, watching and puzzling over these questions. After a while I used the bathroom and washed my face. As I gazed at my reflection in the mottled, rusting mirror I came to a decision. I needed to find out more about Zhang Daiyu.
I checked she was comfortable, took her purse, grabbed the room key, and locked the door behind me. It was dark outside and the city was quiet. My watch said it was 1:06 a.m., but I wasn’t worried about the lateness of the hour because I was heading somewhere I knew I would always be welcome.
CHAPTER 19
BEING IN A strange city, particularly one in which you can’t speak the language, is a little like disappearing. You can never be an active, full participant and are relegated to the status of an observer, but even in that role you have limitations because you can’t fully understand what’s happening around you. It’s both liberating and disconcerting.
It’s freeing because you’re not bound by social expectation, so once it became clear to the taxi driver that my conversation was limited to what I could output through Google Translate, he gave up trying to talk to me and the two of us traveled through the city in silence.
Being an alien leaves you with this daunting feeling you don’t quite belong, don’t really understand the world around you, so you could drift or be driven into danger without at first realizing it. I had no idea whether the driver was taking me where Iwanted to go, but there was little I could do about it. According to the map on my phone we were heading in vaguely the right direction and that would just have to do.
So I looked out my open window, relishing the feeling of the cool breeze against my face, admiring billboards I couldn’t understand, catching glimpses of Beijing night owls on the street in vehicles we passed, or backlit in their apartment windows.
