Strachan returned home after a painful two hours at the police club where he had to suffer more condolences, commiserations and heartfelt sorrows. He was glad when he could finally leave the tea, cakes and potted beef sandwiches and escape into the fresh, coal-smoked air of Shanghai.
He had walked around on his own for a while, not knowing where he was going. The streets were full of people going about their business; rickshaw drivers sat smoking cheroots as they waited for their passengers, workmen hammered iron rods into shape to form the bars on windows, beggars crouched in the middle of a forest of rags, their hands held out in supplication, elegant women in tight qipaos and the latest high heels tottered past them, ignoring the detritus at their feet, hawkers extolled the excellence of their noodles, trams rattled by filled with faces.
The streets of Shanghai, always full of life and people. So many people. Going about their business as if nothing had happened.
And nothing had happened. His mother had died but these people didn’t know her and they cared even less. He was the only one who cared. The only one who would miss her.
At one point a man had bumped into him on the street. Without thinking, Strachan lashed out, pushing him backwards into a wall, his right hand gripping the man’s throat. He squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter. The man struggled for breath, fighting to stay alive, kicking feebly with his legs, trying to grab the detective’s arm.
Seeing the fear in the man’s eyes, Strachan’s anger ebbed away, and he let him drop to the pavement, gasping for breath like a stranded fish.
He walked away and carried on walking, roaming the city like a ghost looking for a home.
Somehow, he found himself in front of his own house. It was as if his feet had arrived home without any conscious involvement from him.
He hesitated in front of the door. Should he go in? Or would it be better to walk away and never come back. Find somewhere else to live, far away from here.
Shaking his head, he inserted the key in the lock and pushed the door open. He half expected to hear her voice call to him from the kitchen. ‘You’re back, David. I’ve made some soup for you.’
But there was no welcoming voice, not any more.
The aroma of her cooking still suffused the hallway. The warm, earthy smell of a pig’s ear soup, sitting on the stove for hours, gradually building and developing a wonderfully gelatinous flavour.
A few steps into the kitchen. There was no pot bubbling on the stove, only the black range staring back at him, its cast iron polished to an ebony shine by years of his mother’s sweat.
A tap dripped off to his left. He would have to get it fixed, something he had been promising his mother he would do for a long time.
Another promise he had broken.
In the far corner, there were no more bloodstains on the wall. Somebody had cleaned them up. Nobody would know his mother had been shot and killed here.
But he would know. He would always know.
He backed out of the kitchen and went to sit in the living room. His father’s picture was still staring at him from the mantlepiece.
Joining the police force had been against his mother’s wishes. ‘Be an architect or a doctor,’ she had told him. ‘Look how much building is going up in Shanghai. There’s a profession which will never run out of work.’
But he was set on becoming a policeman, following in his father’s footsteps. He should have listened to her. If he had, she would still be alive. Still cooking her soups in the kitchen. Still waiting for him every night when he came home from work, to listen to his stories of the day.
But she wasn’t.
She was dead.
Because of him.
If only he had protected her better. If only he had not invited the witness to stay with them. If only he had managed to get there earlier.
Too many if onlys.
He sat in the chair and stared at the wall.
On the mantlepiece the clock ticked the hours. His father looked down on him. The house creaked like the bones of an old man getting out of bed.
He imagined himself in a prison cell with a single barred skylight in the ceiling and a wind rustling through a crack in the casement. He could see the world outside but it seemed so far away from where he was; untouchable, unreachable.
And in that sound of the wind and the clock ticking, Strachan finally understood he was alone now.