Chapter 10: The Car Park

Lu Wen did not take the folder up to the office.

He pressed B3 instead, and rode down to the underground car park with the memo held flat against his chest.

The concrete level was nearly empty.

The air smelled of oil and cold stone, and his footsteps came back off the pillars.

He had reached the black sedan when he heard the lift open behind him and fast steps on the floor.

"Lu Wen."

He did not turn round.

"Lu Wen. Please."

"The first note is dated the night of the fourth day," Lu Wen said to the car window.

"The fifth page says, Lu Wen cuts here, and underlines the part where you offer him four berths. Is that your hand, Mr. Yan?"

"Yes," said Yan.

"How many pages?"

"All six."

Lu Wen turned.

Yan stood ten feet away in his shirtsleeves with his jacket lost somewhere upstairs and his hands open at his sides.

He looked nothing like the man at the table.

"I gave you that folder because I couldn't say it," he said. "I'd decided to tell you tonight. I didn't know how to start."

"Then I'll start. For six days I thought I was smuggling a little kindness past a monster."

Lu Wen's voice began to rise.

"I was frightened every morning."

He was nearly shouting.

"I stood at the Minister's shoulder and thought, this is the one that will get me struck off. And you were writing the sentences!"

"I didn't write the cruelty," said Yan. "Gao wrote it."

"You improved it!"

The word rang off the pillars.

Lu Wen was shaking now, with the memo crushed in one fist.

"You let me stand in that lift and think I'd been caught," he said.

"You said, same list tomorrow, in that generous voice. You knew exactly what I was for."

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