She jerked, then touched her fingertips to the skin under her eyes. “Mr. Zhang?”
It was his turn to be startled. “Ling Ling? Is that you?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t recognize you,” he said.
He had only met her once or twice, and then only briefly. She’d not made much of an impression.
“I tried to call you,” she said.
“You didn’t leave a message,” he said. “I checked my voice mail a few minutes ago.”
“It’s about Gong Shen.”
“What about him?”
“He didn’t come home. After he went to meet you.”
“But that was two days ago—” He stared at her. “You haven’t seen him since Saturday?”
“No.” She began to cry again, soundlessly, one hand over her eyes.
Zhang suggested they talk indoors.
Once in his apartment, Ling Ling stood in the middle of the living room. Her dress was cheap and poorly made, and the shape of her toes showed through the thin fabric of her shoes. He led her to the sofa, where she sat upright with her knees together and her hands on either side of her thighs. She reminded him of someone sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, prior to getting in. He offered her a glass of water. She shook her head.
“Where’s your daughter?” he asked.
“I left her with my mother.”
“Good.”
He told her what he knew—that he and Mad Dog had left the bar on Beijing East Road at the same time, that they had walked together for an hour or so, and that when he said he was catching a taxi Mad Dog had refused the offer of a lift. This was in the early hours of Sunday morning, he said. About one thirty.
“He’d been drinking,” Ling Ling said.
Zhang nodded. “He always has a few drinks after a practice session. We all do.”
“He usually shouts at me when he gets home.” She looked at Zhang with no expression.
He asked if she had called the police.
“I thought I would come to you first,” she said. “You’re his closest friend.”
This came as a surprise to Zhang, but he concealed it. He told Ling Ling that he would contact the police himself. He would do everything he could. In the meantime, she should go home and look after her daughter. He reminded her that Mad Dog often had trouble getting home. The time he was hit by a moped, for instance.
Ling Ling sat on the sofa without moving, and he had the feeling she hadn’t heard a word he had said.
After a few long moments, her eyes lifted slowly to his, and he felt something unexpected pass between them. It was fear. She wasn’t frightened for Mad Dog, though, or for herself. She was frightened for him.
“In the last few days, he talked about you all the time,” she said. “He thought you were in danger.”
“I know,” Zhang said. “He told me.”
Ling Ling was still looking at him with that oddly expressionless face. “I knew something was going to happen,” she said slowly, “but I thought it would happen to you.”
Later, when she had gone, Zhang stood by the window. Mad Dog was out there somewhere—lost, or hurt, or ill. He wondered what Ling Ling was thinking. His skin prickled as he recalled what she had said. I knew something was going to happen, but I thought it would happen to you. She had hoped it would happen to him—rather than to Mad Dog, anyway. It amounted to a kind of curse.
He took out his phone and called the deputy commissioner of police. When the deputy commissioner answered, he apologized for disturbing him at such a late hour.
“No problem.” The deputy commissioner spoke in a voice made gravelly by years of drinking baijiu and smoking untipped cigarettes. “How’s that nephew of mine?”
“He’s hardworking and responsible—a real credit to his family,” Zhang said. “I foresee a promotion in the near future.”
“I’m glad he’s proving of some use to you, Mr. Zhang. But why are you calling? Is there something I can help you with?”
“I’m sorry to bother you with this, but a friend of mine has been missing for nearly forty-eight hours, and I’m beginning to worry.”
He gave the deputy commissioner Mad Dog’s home address and a physical description, and he pinpointed the junction where he and Mad Dog had parted in the early hours of Sunday morning. Whatever had happened, he said, must have happened somewhere between the two locations. The deputy commissioner promised to look into the matter personally. After thanking him and wishing him a good evening, Zhang ended the call, then he picked up his keys and wallet and left the apartment.
There was a taxi parked on the street near the main entrance to the compound. The driver had fallen asleep. His head was tipped back, and he was breathing through his mouth. Zhang tapped on the window. The driver’s eyes slid open. He yawned and wound the window down. Cold air from inside the car pushed softly against Zhang’s face.
“Tanggu Road,” he said.
Half an hour later, the taxi dropped him at the place where he and Mad Dog had said goodbye. No young couples dancing tonight, just an empty paved area, and leaves shifting on the enormous, overhanging trees. As he set off up Tanggu Road, he remembered how he had found Ling Ling, standing beneath the streetlamp. At first, he had thought she was some kind of apparition. Then he thought that perhaps a woman who was disturbed had strayed into the grounds. He remembered how Ling Ling sat on the sofa, not saying anything, her face quite blank. He didn’t think it was anxiety or nervousness. It was how she was—naturally. He had often teased Mad Dog about having a girlfriend half his age, but now he saw that she might not be so easy to live with. Could that explain why Mad Dog always turned down the offer of a lift? It wasn’t stubbornness or pride. It might just be that he was in no great hurry to get home.
Zhang came to a row of shops and restaurants, only two or three of them still open. Beyond him, the road stretched away into darkness, balls of fuzzy yellow light where the streetlamps were. A man in sunglasses walked past with a white dog on a lead. There was a grating of cicadas, a burst of almost wooden sound that rose to a crescendo and then died away again for no apparent reason. It seemed hotter now than when he had got out of the taxi, even though it was already after midnight.
If Mad Dog had wanted to avoid going home, he might have stopped for something to eat or drink. He might have stopped at any one of these places. Zhang walked into the first restaurant he came to, which was empty. The young waitress was practicing with a rainbow-colored Hula-Hoop, her eyes fixed on a TV high up on the wall.
“Miss?”