The Mysterious Diary
On the drive back to Changchun, Marcus Shaw kept thinking about that old woman.
And the little girl who'd come to retrieve her beanbag. Her eyes were bright, her gaze shy and endearing—heartbreaking to look at.
Before leaving the orphanage, Marcus Shaw had pulled out a hundred-yuan bill and slipped it to her secretly, telling her to buy some new toys. She'd pushed it back into his hand and said, "Thank you, Uncle. Director Sun taught us never to take things from strangers."
Marcus Shaw had nodded, patted her head, and waved goodbye. She'd waved back, smiling.
At the door, he'd fished out a few more bills and pressed them on the director, asking him to buy the old woman a few bags of walnut kernels on his behalf. The director kept refusing, so Marcus Shaw simply bolted without warning.
---
Early the next morning, Marcus Shaw went straight to the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, specifically looking for construction teams from outside the area in the 1980s whose boss was surnamed Magnus.
He found one—a company that had been established for years, neither too big nor too small. The original person in charge was named Kenneth Magnus. In 1990, leadership changed hands, and the current boss was surnamed Collins.
Following the address, Marcus Shaw found the construction company. The middle manager who received him was initially obsequious and deferential, but once he learned Marcus Shaw was looking for a person rather than investigating the company, his smile vanished and his responses became halting and reluctant.
After repeated pressing, the man lazily opened a drawer, pulled out a document, and pointed to a construction address. "Write this down. Go look there. The workers are all at that site."
Marcus Shaw tried to photograph it, but the man covered it with his hand. Marcus Shaw had to copy it into his notebook.
When he arrived, Marcus Shaw realized he'd passed this construction site more than once. Two towers of over thirty stories, only their skeletons poured, standing unfinished for years.
He'd assumed the project was dead, but upon stepping through the corrugated steel fence, he found the interior teeming with life—workers coming and going in a hive of activity.
Like a crew of diminutive servants attending two silent beasts.
Two young men were mixing cement. Marcus Shaw approached, showed his police badge, and held up Vera Magnus's photo, asking if they recognized her. They each looked but shook their heads.
Marcus Shaw thought, Did I get it wrong again? Could there be another site? Or had she moved elsewhere after being adopted? Various guesses raced through his mind.
One of them—the one with stubble—said, "Why don't you go ask the old-timers over there? We've only been here about three months."
Marcus Shaw walked further in and spotted a man in a white hard hat. He greeted him, showed his badge and the photo. The foreman took one look and said, "She worked here. But she's already left."
Marcus Shaw's scalp prickled. "Where did she go?"
"How should I know? She quit."
"She quit? Why?"
The foreman turned his face away, not speaking, yelling instructions at the workers. Marcus Shaw stepped in front of him and asked again. The man's eyes darted.
"This is a serious matter. You'd better not hide anything."
The foreman fanned himself with a clipboard, the papers flapping noisily. He hemmed and hawed before finally saying, "Her man died. She said there was no point staying, so she left."
Marcus Shaw's eyes widened. "Her man? What was his name?"
Before the foreman could answer, Marcus Shaw supplied it himself: "Sean Mercer?"
Now it was the foreman's turn to be surprised. "How did you know?"
Marcus Shaw said nothing. He remembered what Viktor Dunn had previously found about Sean Mercer's cause of death: after his younger brother died, the shock triggered a cerebral hemorrhage while he was working at height. He fell to his death in front of everyone.
Before Marcus Shaw could speak, the foreman rushed to add, "He couldn't handle things—he had high blood pressure and didn't take his medication properly. That's why he fell. It had nothing to do with the site."
Marcus Shaw collected himself and said sternly, "But I heard he was doing high-altitude work when he died. Even if it was a cerebral hemorrhage, how could he just fall? Weren't there safety measures?"
The foreman's face flushed red. He slapped his clipboard repeatedly. "Of course there were! Don't go saying things like that. Go ask around—our site has always promoted safe construction. Hard hats, safety harnesses, gloves, masks—every piece of protective gear you can imagine, plus insurance for everyone. Go ask them yourself."
He called over three or four workers nearby and told them to vouch for him. They all looked directly at the foreman's eyes and nodded vigorously.
After a few more words, the foreman got a phone call and said he had to leave, telling Marcus Shaw to take his time looking around—as long as he didn't interfere with the work.
Marcus Shaw asked several old-timers at the site and, despite their scattered answers, managed to piece together the story.
It turned out that in 1990, when Kenneth Magnus died in a car accident, Vera Magnus lost her only support and began living at the construction site, doing laundry and cooking for the workers. Over twenty years passed—wherever the team went, she followed.
The men at the site needed her for more than just laundry and cooking.
Eight years ago, Sean Mercer joined up. He was big, tough, and strong, quickly earning the foreman's trust and establishing authority among the workers.
Then one day, Sean Mercer announced to everyone: "From now on, Vera Magnus is my woman. Nobody touches her." Someone grumbled, and he drove a shovel into a pile of rubble, saying, "Anyone who wants to die can try."
So the two of them set up house together—though their cohabitation drove the other men to spend their evenings running elsewhere.
Sean Mercer's younger brother visited often and got along well with Vera Magnus. At night, the three of them would fire up a charcoal grill, have a little barbecue, set out a few bottles of beer, and keep to themselves—just the three of them, enjoying the breeze, the stars, the moon. The other workers were envious.
Marcus Shaw went to see Sean Mercer's quarters—a standalone corrugated steel shed, maybe six or seven square meters. Someone else lived there now, but apparently the original belongings hadn't been touched much.
The doorway was hung with a plastic bead curtain, lavender and semi-translucent—some beads grimy with stains, others bleached white by the sun. Brushing through it set off a tinkling cascade, like tiny hailstones rattling across the body.
The interior was spartan.
On the left stood a bunk bed, its iron poles painted blue with paint peeling in places, exposing rusty streaks like eyes. The bottom bunk held yellowed pillows and bedding; the top bunk supported two old black leather suitcases and some sundries. A towel hung from the bedframe with a yellow stain running through it.
On the right sat a makeshift wooden table—clearly cobbled together from scrap planks and boards—with two glass teacups, a slightly warped red plastic thermos, and half a cake of dried, crumbling Shanghai medicated soap.
Everywhere else, buckets of various sizes were stacked—some for paint, others for industrial adhesive, all visibly filthy. Sunflower seed shells littered the floor, crunching underfoot.
Marcus Shaw lingered, poking around, finding mostly everyday items and some ancient garbage.
He was about to leave when he noticed a world map on the right wall—its bottom left corner had separated from the surface, and from a distance, a diagonal crease line was visible.
He lifted the map and found that the corrugated steel interior had been cut open. The foam insulation had been hollowed out and patched over with half a newspaper page. Behind it, hidden, was a brown leatherette safety production manual.
He pulled it out—and discovered it was actually a diary, filled with crooked pencil writing. Characters the author couldn't write were substituted with pinyin, and spelling errors were everywhere.
As he flipped through, something clattered to the floor.
A bank passbook. Its corners worn white, the cover caked with grime.
Marcus Shaw was about to re-hang the world map when he noticed something else inside. He reached in and pulled out several cheaply packaged condoms printed with "Care for Health, Cherish Life." The batch numbers showed they were long expired.
As Marcus Shaw turned to leave, a weathered old man with a dark face came in, picked up the teacup from the table, unscrewed it, and took a sip. "Find anything?"
"Not really. Were you close with those two?"
The old man set down the cup and dragged over a folding stool. "Wasn't close with the man. Used to be close with the woman—then we weren't close anymore."
"Tell me about Vera Magnus. What kind of person is she?"
"Sharp mind, learns fast. Whenever a tractor or small appliance broke down at the site, she'd tinker with it. Finicky work—three men couldn't equal her."
Marcus Shaw scrambled for his notebook. The old man glanced at it and asked, "What's worth writing down?"
"Force of habit. Keep going—don't mind me."
The old man thought for a moment, then added, "She loved to read. The younger Shan—her man's brother—he'd bring her books. Taught her to read, too. During the day, when everyone was busy, those two would hide in the room reading and writing. Sometimes she'd even forget to cook. Later, once she knew enough characters, she could read on her own—read fast, too. The kid was always buying her new books."
He paused, then added, "I think she even taught the older one to write. People used to laugh at them—they both made a living with muscle, so what was the point of studying?"
---
When Marcus Shaw arrived, Finn Carter set down his wrench, straightened his clothes, rubbed his hands, and came over with a goofy grin. Seeing Marcus Shaw's expressionless face, he quickly dropped the smile and stood there expressionless too.
"Learning well?"
Finn Carter said eagerly, "Very well, very well. The boss switched me to a new mentor—he says I've improved."
Marcus Shaw nodded, staring at a puddle of oil on the ground for a long time without speaking.
Finn Carter was about to go back to work when Marcus Shaw suddenly asked, "Before my car had the accident, didn't the grilled cold noodle lady come by?"
Finn Carter froze, scratching his head. "Did she tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
Finn Carter hesitated. Seeing Marcus Shaw frown, he had no choice but to say, "She was heading out to set up her cart that day, pushing it along, and happened to pass by. She saw me working and came in to chat for a bit."
"She was pushing her cart?"
Finn Carter nodded.
"What did you talk about?"
Finn Carter lowered his head. "What would we talk about? Just asked how I was doing, whether my dad had money for his medication."
"Just that? You'd better not be hiding anything from me."
Finn Carter looked up. "Uncle Marcus, you saved me. How could I hide anything from you?"
Marcus Shaw stared into his eyes. "Then when I asked you before, why didn't you mention she'd been here?"
"You asked me if there were any suspicious people. She's a good person—I didn't think she was suspicious."
A surge of anger rose in Marcus Shaw, but he realized Finn Carter's logic was sound. He couldn't exactly explode at the kid. His face turned red from suppressed frustration.
"Did I really phrase it like that?"
Finn Carter nodded, both hands not knowing where to go.
The fire in Marcus Shaw's chest subsided. He tried again: "You just asked whether she told me something—what do you think she might have told me? Do you two have some unspeakable secret?"