up the gently falling rain turned suddenly to sleet, then a peppering of snow. The Emerald Garden was in the middle of the parade, a takeaway only, bare floorboards visible through the mesh covering the glazed door. Stanley Zhao opened up for them. He didn’t seem surprised to see them. He didn’t seem anything to see them. Shaw tried not to let the word inscrutable form in his head.
Zhao led the way into the kitchen through a hanging curtain of blue beads. Spotless woks dotted a bank of gas rings, and a set of chopping boards was criss‐crossed with a lifetime’s worth of knife wounds. The only smell was Jeyes’ Fluid.
There was one other knife wound. Zhao had a scar running from his hairline to his cheek, via an eye socket. Shaw had missed it the previous night in the half‐light inside the Corsa. Zhao’s eyes blinked meekly behind metal‐rimmed glasses, and when his lips parted he revealed a line of identical teeth, each one as white as toothpaste. He stood with his back to one of the kitchen’s metal tables, and Shaw thought he’d been right about his height: six feet two, possibly three.
‘I want to help,’ said Zhao, moving over to stand awkwardly by the serving hatch which opened into the shop. The accent was strong; the consonants shaved almost flat by the vowels, but free of any hint of the syntax of the comic‐book Chinaman.
Mr Zhao knew why they were there. He handed Shaw his passport, and a Xeroxed copy of a birth certificate. ‘I have been asked before,’ he said, by way of explanation.
Shaw flicked the passport open. Born Kowloon 1959. Married Hong Kong 1991. Cook. No distinguishing marks.
Shaw raised his eyebrows and touched his own cheek. Zhao pointed at the passport. ‘Inside,’ he said. And it was. A clipping from the Lynn News for 2006. ‘Takeaway owner knifed by burglar.’ Zhao touched the scar. He’d been in Lynn a year, he said, straight from Hong Kong, and he hadn’t expected crime to be so bad.
‘Did they get him?’ asked Shaw. ‘The burglar.’
‘No.’
‘You should get the passport updated,’ said Shaw, handing it back.
They heard a footfall upstairs, and then the distant mosquito‐buzz of a radio.
Shaw apologized if Zhao had been asked the questions before, but they were tying up loose ends, following procedure. Zhao smiled as if he believed them.
‘Remind me,’ said Shaw, trying to recall the details of DC Birley’s interview with the Round Table. ‘Why were you on the old coast road at five o’clock last night?’
Valentine began to walk round the kitchen, inspecting a notice board, a wall chart of the menu, some postcards of Hong Kong, San Francisco, Hamburg.
Zhao’s story was a carbon copy of the one he’d given Valentine at Gallow Marsh Farm. He delivered a large takeaway dinner to a meeting of the Burnham & District Round Table every Monday evening. The order never changed: fourteen chicken chow meins, a vegetable chow mein, ten portions of prawn toast, one of vegetable spring rolls. They met in the village hall at Burnham Overy Staithe. He had a contact number. Shaw remembered the warmth in the van, the fug of soya and sunflower oil.
‘It’s a long drive – but good customers, a big order,’ added Zhao.
‘Please,’ said Shaw, playing for time, looking around. ‘Finish your breakfast.’ On a side table stood a large porcelain cup, the light green liquid inside it giving off a thin scent. Beside it was a white plate, a fork, and the remains of an omelette, a brown smear on the china. A bottle of Daddies Sauce, catering size, stood on the counter.
Valentine took over. ‘You saw the other drivers stranded on Siberia Belt, Mr Zhao, at the farmhouse? Did you recognize any of them? Customers perhaps?’
Zhao shook his head, tucking in a stray piece of omelette at the corner of his mouth. ‘People all look the same to me.’ Valentine didn’t miss the joke, but he didn’t smile either. Finished, Zhao picked up his plate and took it to a metal sink.
‘Do you mix much within the Chinese community here in Lynn, Mr Zhao?’ asked Shaw, aware that the question was as subtle as the Daddies Sauce. There were two Chinese communities in Lynn. The first had come with the Londoners in the seventies and had turned out as respectable as a mock‐Tudor semi. They ran restaurants, chip shops, a big dry‐cleaning plant and a dozen or so of the town’s cabs. The other community was transient: