Apricot's Revenge Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  St. Martin’s Press ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Prologue

  Hu Guohao swallowed a mouthful of brackish seawater as he felt a wave pull him under. Swimming for an hour or two was normally a breeze, why was it so hard now?

  That floating white line ought to be the shark barrier. He knew he’d be all right if he could make it that far.

  Hu fought to stay above water, but his head weighed him down and he choked on another mouthful.

  He was starting to black out. Damn it! Where am I? Have I died and gone to Hell?

  He thought he saw a great white gliding up from behind, eyeing him menacingly as it slowly opened and shut its mouth. He struggled to keep his arms moving, but everything he did was like a slow-motion movie scene, unreal and futile. The more he struggled, the faster he sank. A dozen faces—boys and girls, pale with dazzling smiles—floated up from the recesses of his memory.…

  Now it was flames, licking in the air before his eyes. Were they real? An illusion?

  A wisp of green smoke rose up lazily, spreading across the surface like bleeding ink.

  Then the scene began to blur.

  He tried to open his eyes, but a white mist clouding his retinas blocked out everything. Haze that would not go away turned into a gloomy, sinister abyss, sending shudders through his body.

  He could sense that the Angel of Death was inching toward him. His mind was swirling as he heard a faint voice from somewhere up above say, “He’s dead.”

  His heart erupted in a violent spasm, and he began to sink.

  That was the last thing he knew.

  ONE

  Fog Over Lesser Meisha

  — 1 —

  Lesser Meisha, an enchanting beach.

  A famed seaside resort in Shenzhen, it was known as the “Hawai’i of the East.” Swarms of vacationing tourists came every weekend to relax on the sand, ride the waves, or just play in the water.

  A line of beach tents along the water’s edge created a unique scene as night fell. Shaped like yurts or pyramids, they came in a variety of colors—reds and blues and yellows—and from a distance looked like flowers blooming in the setting sun. At eighty yuan a night, they were the favorite lodging choice for young tourists and lovers on vacation, both because they were so much cheaper than the five-hundred-a-night Seaview Hotel and because they were much more romantic. The tents were thrown up as dusk descended, when a pleasant breeze blew in from the sea. Young vacationers began to sing and dance, while others slept to the relaxing accompaniment of ocean waves. Was there anything better than that?

  Six o’clock, or thereabouts, on the morning of June twenty-fifth. Dawn had barely broken when a couple emerged from one of the tents. Lovers, apparently. He was wearing glasses and was dressed in jeans that failed to hide his beer belly. The woman, in a yellow T-shirt over a short white skirt, was not pretty, but her youth made up for that. He had his arm around her waist, contentment from a night of pleasure written all over his face. She smiled shyly and playfully pushed him away. They had arrived the previous afternoon. Beer Belly managed a computer company; she worked as his secretary or, to use the popular term, his Secret Sweetheart.

  Obviously still savoring their night together, they looped their arms around each other and strolled along the misty early-morning beach, padding pleasurably across the spongy sand in bare feet. Gentle waves left rings of white foam on the sandy shore.

  The jutting rocks of Chao Kok were visible through the thin layer of fog that lay over the ocean.

  “Dapeng Bay is such a beautiful spot,” the woman said.

  “‘All my best to you, O eternal ocean! The sound of your waves reminds me of my hometown.…’” Beer Belly spread his arms melodramatically as he declaimed lines of poetry.

  “What’s with you this morning?” She mocked him with a smile.

  “That’s a poem by Heine.”

  “Who’s Heine?”

  Beer Belly smirked. “You don’t know Heine, the famous German poet? Then you probably haven’t read his ‘Ode to the Sea.’”

  “No.”

  “I’ll show it to you next time.”

  “I won’t read it.”

  “I should think you’d be bored with Murakami by now.”

  “I like him. Especially Dance Dance Dance. It’s beautiful.”

  “Right, that Sheep Man again. He’s weird.”

  “I don’t care. I like him.”

  “Hey, look up there.” Beer Belly pointed into the sky.

  She looked up in time to see white birds passing silently overhead.

  “Seagulls. They’re so pretty,” she said with a squint.

  “Wrong again. Look carefully, they’re egrets.”

  The birds were a picture of grace and ease, long legs stretched out behind them.

  “Why are there egrets at the beach?”

  “Because they want to dance dance dance,” Beer Belly teased.

  “Stop that!”

  “See those nests in the trees?” He pointed to a spot at the far end of the beach, where Qitou Ridge rose a hundred meters into the sky and cast a verdant shadow.

  With a cry, the egrets flew off toward the ridge.

  At the base of Qitou Ridge was another of Lesser Meisha’s selling points—Lovers’ Lane. Sandwiched between the hill and the beach, it meandered around a towering banyan tree and led to Guanyin Cliff at the top of the hill, where, after continuing down a dozen paces or so, it crossed a small wooden bridge that led to Chao Kok, the area’s best spot for ocean viewing.

  Following the direction of the flying egrets, they headed west, leaving fresh footprints in the sand.

  The crags of Chao Kok, which extended into Dapeng Bay, slowly emerged from the morning fog.

  They stopped just before they reached the pier at the far end of the beach, having spotted what looked like a naked man lying in the sand near the stone jetty. Not far from where he lay, craggy rocks nestled up against a breakwater that rose to about the height of an average adult. Above it was Lovers’ Lane.

  Curious, Beer Belly and his lover walked up to the stone jetty, suddenly sensing that something was wrong with the man.

  Barefoot and wearing only a red bathing suit, he lay facedown, his legs spread out away from the water; apparently, he had washed up on the morning tide. His head was resting on his right arm, facing away from them.

  Beer Belly squatted down and placed his finger under the man’s nose. Nothing.

  He touched the man’s bare arm; it was cold.

  “He … he’s dead!” Beer Belly said in a shaky voice.

  The woman’s face paled; she couldn’t speak.

  The man looked around, no one else was in sight.

  “Should we call the police?” he asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Their secret tryst would be exposed if they became police witnesses.

  “I guess we should,” Beer Belly concluded.

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  They rushed b
ack, found the white cabin with a LESSER MEISHA TOURIST OFFICE plaque on the door, and woke up the night clerk.

  “A drowned man washed up on the beach last night,” Beer Belly said—shouted, actually.

  “What did you say? Someone drowned?” The stunned clerk rubbed his sleepy eyes.

  To ensure swimmers’ safety, watchtowers staffed with lifeguards had been installed all up and down Lesser Meisha Beach. That, of course, was no guarantee of safety, and accidents did occur from time to time, especially when all the bathers looked like dumplings bobbing up and down in a pot. The lifeguards could not see everything, and were only on duty during the day, anyway, so people who enjoyed an evening dip took their chances. No one but an experienced swimmer or a die-hard skinny-dipper would risk going into the water alone at night.

  The clerk called the local police station.

  Fifteen minutes later, two uniformed cops arrived.

  Since the body had been discovered near the pier, beyond the designated swimming area, the policemen reported the situation to the Public Security Bureau. Half an hour later, Cui Dajun, head of the Y District Criminal Division, drove up with a team of officers and technicians. They parked their blue-and-white Jetta police cars behind the Lovers’ Lane railing above the scene and cordoned off the area with yellow tape.

  By that time the sun was out, but the fog lingered.

  A gentle morning light bathed the distant tents. The beach was deserted except for a few early risers down at the far end gathering seashells.

  Cui Dajun, a man in his midthirties, wore his jacket unbuttoned, exposing a white-striped T-shirt. Though he was short—under five feet seven—he had eyes that could bore right through a person. He asked Beer Belly and his lover to describe how they’d discovered the body, while his young assistant, Officer Wang Xiaochuan, took their statement. Another officer, a woman by the name of Yao Li, stood next to Cui and watched intently as the eyewitnesses told their story.

  The two local cops were posted at the restricted area marked by the yellow tape.

  After the questioning, Wang had Beer Belly and his lover sign their statement.

  “We’ll contact you if we need more information.”

  They nodded, and Cui told them they could leave.

  Meanwhile, the investigation was under way: a tall man in a vest stenciled with the word POLICE took a camera from his black case and began taking pictures from all angles.

  The dead man, in his mid to late fifties and wearing only a red Lacoste bathing suit, had a medium build, though he was slightly overweight. The body lay on a smooth stretch of beach near the craggy rocks, not far from the roadbed beneath Lovers’ Lane. Traces of white foam from the rising tide were visible four or five meters from his feet.

  There were no footprints on the beach except for those left by the eyewitnesses, but even if there had been before that, they’d have been washed away by the incoming tide. No personal effects or clothing in the vicinity. Not far from the body, a stone jetty stretched from the pier into the water. At high tide, waves crashed against the jetty, producing a rhythmic roar from crevices among the rocks.

  Tian Qing, the bespectacled medical examiner, squatted down to examine the man’s back and the back of his head, gently pressing with his fingers here and there. When he turned the body over, someone remarked that the dead man’s face looked familiar. Grains of sand were stuck to his broad forehead and the tip of his nose. The face was a purplish gray; so were his lips.

  “He looks a little like the CEO of Landmark Properties, Hu Guohao,” the chunky young officer, Wang Xiaochuan, muttered.

  “You know this man?” Cui gave him a questioning look.

  “I think I saw him on TV a few nights ago, on the show Celebrity Realtors. There was a close-up of him,” Wang said.

  The tall officer with the camera came to take pictures of the dead man’s face.

  “I think I’ve seen his picture, too,” Yao Li, the other officer, commented.

  “I guess it does look like him,” Cui said after studying the man’s face carefully. He continued with a surprised voice, “but how can that be?”

  — 2 —

  Hu Guohao was a prominent Shenzhen realty tycoon, the helmsman of Landmark Properties, South China’s realty flagship. As a wealthy and influential businessman in Southern Guangdong, he was always in the limelight, was a member of the Shenzhen Political Consultative Conference, had been selected as one of the outstanding entrepreneurs of Guangdong Province, and was on the top ten list of Southern China’s realty celebrities.

  If it was indeed Hu Guohao, the news would rock the city.

  Cui took out his cell phone and dialed 114 for information.

  “I need the switchboard number for Landmark Properties … Got it, thanks.”

  He tried the number, but no one answered.

  He called again, still no answer.

  Someone finally picked up on the third try.

  “Hello?” The operator sounded as if she had just gotten up.

  “Is this Landmark Properties? I’d like to speak with your CEO.”

  “I’m sorry, but everyone’s off today,” the operator said lazily. “There’s no one in the office.”

  Cui’s face hardened as he shouted into his phone: “Are you telling me that in a big company like yours no one works on Sunday?”

  “Er, hold a moment.”

  The call was transferred to a duty office, where a man with a deep baritone voice answered.

  “May I ask what this is about?”

  “I’m with the Public Security Bureau, Y District,” Cui said. “I need to speak to your CEO. It’s urgent.”

  “Oh, he’s not in on Sundays.”

  “How can I reach him?”

  “Well,” the man paused. “I can give you his driver’s cell number.”

  Two minutes later, Cui had Hu’s driver, a fellow named Liu, on the phone.

  “Is this Mr. Liu? Where are you at the moment?”

  “Who’s this? I’m home, in Beilingju.”

  “This is Cui Dajun, head of the criminal division of the Y District branch of Public Security. I have an urgent matter to discuss with your CEO, Mr. Hu Guohao.”

  “Oh, Mr. Hu went to Greater Meisha yesterday.”

  “Greater Meisha? What time was that?”

  Cui signaled Xiaochuan with his eyes that it must be Hu Guohao; they both tensed.

  “Yesterday afternoon. I drove him there.”

  Greater Meisha, another beach resort on Dapeng Bay, abutted Lesser Meisha. According to Liu, Hu Guohao had gone there to swim the previous day, something he did on most Saturdays, sometimes with clients, other times alone. He’d spend the night at the Seaview Hotel and return home Sunday afternoons. Liu had driven him to the beach in his black Mercedes the day before, Saturday, arriving at three fifteen. A room had been reserved under his name. Liu returned to Shenzhen after Hu told him to pick him up Sunday at four.

  “Something may have happened to your boss. Come to Lesser Meisha right away.”

  “Did you say Lesser Meisha?” the driver asked.

  “Yes. Lesser Meisha.”

  Cui closed his cell and told Xiaochuan and Yao Li, “Go check out the Seaview Hotel at Greater Meisha.”

  “We’re on it.” They left, following the shoreline.

  The sun was up and shining brightly by then, and people were beginning to appear on the beach. Curious tourists wanting to get a closer look were stopped by the two local cops, who kept them beyond the yellow tape.

  Cui looked at his watch, telling himself that news of a dead body on Lesser Meisha would soon be all over Dapeng city.

  About a half hour later, Hu’s driver drove up to the Seaview Hotel in the Mercedes. He seemed pale and anxious, and his red polo shirt seemed out of place at the scene.

  He identified the body—as expected, it was Hu Guohao. “Mr. Hu liked to swim at night,” he stammered, looking quite distressed. “He said the water was cooler.”

  “Was he a
good swimmer?” Cui asked.

  “Yes. He could swim five or six kilometers with no problem.”

  “So that means he could swim all the way from Greater Meisha over here to Lesser Meisha?”

  “I’m pretty sure he could.”

  “But why did he drown?” Medical Examiner Tian asked.

  “That’s a good question.” Liu was still in shock. He hesitated. “But Mr. Hu did have a history of heart problems.”

  “Heart problems?” Cui mulled that over.

  Xiaochuan drove up with Yao Li from Greater Meisha in one of the Jettas. He’d barely parked the car before jumping over the railing with his report.

  “We found Hu’s hotel registration and some other important information at the Seaview Hotel.”

  “All right, tell me what you’ve learned.” Cui led them away from the crime scene.

  Xiaochuan told Cui that, according to the hotel staff, room 204 had been reserved under Hu’s name on Friday and that he’d checked in Saturday afternoon at three twenty. The hotel was a stone’s throw from the beach, an ideal spot to enjoy an ocean view and convenient for swimmers. The room rates were high, but Hu was a frequent guest. Xiaochuan was told that Hu was relatively free with his money and enjoyed flirting with the female staff. He was well known there. Someone had seen him enter the hotel and take the spiral staircase to the second floor the day before. Ah-yu, a waitress in the Seaview Restaurant, told them that Hu had had dinner with a tall man the night before. They’d talked for a while before Hu left alone. The tall man had sat for another ten minutes before getting up to leave.

  “Did you get a name?” Cui asked.

  “Yes, we did,” Xiaochuan said, looking pleased with himself. “Hong Yiming, General Manager of Big East Realty.”

  “You’re sure?” Cui persisted.

  “Yes.” Yao Li added, “The hostess at the restaurant, a Miss Bai, knew Hong by sight. Both men were frequent guests at the hotel.”

  “Very good.” Cui was pleased with the report. “Did anyone see Hu go out for a swim after seven o’clock?”

  “There were too many swimmers at Greater Meisha last night, and no one noticed a thing. We even went to the locker room, but didn’t find Hu’s clothes or anything left behind by other swimmers.”