The Runner

by Peter May

  And as he hurried out on to the landing he heard Mrs. Campbell call after him in a shrill voice, ‘You’ve lost her, haven’t you? You’ve lost my daughter!’

  The elevator took an eternity to reach the ground floor. Li ran out, down the steps, still limping, and scuffed his way through the snow to the small wooden hut that provided shelter for the grey-uniformed security guard. The guard was sitting inside, muffled up in his coat and hat, hunched over a small heater smoking a cigarette. He was startled by Li’s sudden arrival. He stood up immediately.

  ‘You know the American lady?’ Li said. ‘Lives on the eleventh floor.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the guard.

  ‘Did you see her go out tonight?’

  ‘Yeh. She went on her bike.’

  ‘On her bike?’ Li could barely believe it. ‘Are you sure it was her?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. The two of them left together. Both on bikes.’

  ‘Two of them?’ Li shook his head in consternation. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The guard was becoming uneasy. ‘It was the guy who went up to see her,’ he said. ‘He stopped here to check that this was the right block. I told him she was on the eleventh floor.’

  ‘Describe him,’ Li snapped.

  The guard shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Young, early twenties maybe. Bit scruffy. Looked like a workman.’

  ‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ Li said.

  The guard made a face. ‘I don’t know … ’ And then he remembered. ‘Oh, yeh. He had a tattoo. On the back of his hand. It was like the head of a snake or something.’

  And Li knew straight away that it was Dai Lili’s brother. He remembered the sullen-faced boy at Lili’s family home, the snake tattoo that twisted around his arm, culminating with the head on the back of his hand. The cellphone on his belt rang. He had forgotten it was there. Wu had loaned him his so that he could be contacted at any time. He fumbled to answer it. ‘Wei?’

  ‘Chief?’ It was Qian. ‘We’ve got a murder at the Forbidden City. Deputy Tao’s on his way.’

  ‘So why are you telling me?’ Li was irritated by the interruption. He couldn’t be expected to attend every murder in the city. And right now, he was much more concerned about Margaret.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know, Chief. Apparently the whole place has been closed down for renovation work. The company have a night watchman on site. He found the east gate lying open about an hour ago, and half a dozen tracks or more coming in and out. He called security, and several armed officers went in with flashlights and followed the tracks in the snow. They found the body of a young man with his throat slit in a courtyard outside the Chu Xiu Palace on the north-west corner. The night watchman recognised him as one of the workers employed by the company.’

  ‘Why would I be interested in this?’ Li asked impatiently.

  ‘Because the dead kid is the brother of the missing athlete, Dai Lili.’

  III

  The Donghua Gate was choked with police and forensic vehicles, blue and orange lights strobing in the dark. Several dozen uniformed officers were standing around in groups, smoking and talking and keeping a growing crowd of curious onlookers at bay. The floodlights had been switched on, and so the red walls and russet roofs that towered above them stood out vividly against the night sky.

  Li’s Jeep came roaring up Nanchizi Street, lights flashing, and slewed around the corner into Donghuamen. He leaned on his horn, and the crowd parted to let him through. He jumped out and nearly fell in his hurry to get to the gate. He felt a hand reach out to catch him. A voice. ‘Alright, Chief?’

  He pushed past the officers standing around the open gate and stopped in his tracks. There, leaning against the wall, was Margaret’s bicycle, with its distinctive strip of pink ribbon tied to the basket on the handlebars. Another bicycle was lying in the snow just a few feet away. Tao and Wu emerged from inside the Forbidden City as he looked up. Tao was surprised to see him.

  ‘What are you doing here, Chief?’ he asked coolly.

  Li found he could barely speak. He nodded towards the bike with the pink ribbon. ‘That’s Margaret’s bike,’ he said. ‘Doctor Campbell. She left her apartment about two hours ago with Dai Lili’s brother.’

  Wu said, ‘Shit, Chief, are you sure?’

  Li nodded.

  ‘Well, she’s not with him now,’ Tao said grimly. ‘There’s just the one body in there.’

  ‘Yeh, but lots of footprints,’ Wu said, chewing furiously on his gum.

  ‘You’d better take a look,’ Tao said, and his concern appeared genuine.

  Li was so shaken he could not even respond. He nodded mutely, and the three men went back through the gate and into the Forbidden City. The lights had all been turned on, and the roofs and walkways, and vast open spaces glowed in the snow like a mediaeval winter scene from some classical Chinese painting.

  Fluttering black and yellow tape had been strung between traffic cones to keep investigators from disturbing the tracks left in the snow by the players in whatever tragic drama had unfolded here. A drama whose final act had led to the murder of Dai Lili’s brother. Tao said, ‘Unfortunately, the night watchman and the security people who originally came in did not take any care over where they put their feet. You can see where their tracks cross the originals.’ Some of the older footprints had been partially covered by snowfall but were still clearly visible. ‘Lucky for us it stopped snowing,’ Tao added. Li was feeling anything but lucky.

  In the courtyard of the Palace of Gathering Excellence, the body of Dai Lili’s brother still lay where Margaret and his sister had found it. But here, the snow had been savagely disturbed and was difficult to read. The pathologist’s photographer had rigged up lights and was making a meticulous photographic record of the scene. Pathologist Wang stood smoking in the far corner in hushed conversation with Chief Forensic Officer Fu Qiwei. Li and Tao and Wu followed the tape around the perimeter of the square. Wang looked up grimly and took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘More of the same, Chief,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Li asked.

  ‘Multiple stab wounds. Just like the girl at Jingshan.’

  Li glanced at Tao. ‘I thought he’d had his throat cut.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Wang said. ‘That’s what killed him.’ And he motioned for them to follow him around to where they could look at the body without disturbing the scene. ‘The throat was slit left to right. So the killer was almost certainly a right-hander. Severed the jugular and the windpipe. You can see how the blood spurted from the way it fell across the snow. He’d have been dead within two minutes.’

  ‘You said multiple stab wounds,’ Li said.

  Wang nodded. ‘Somewhere between thirty and forty of them. If you look carefully, you can see where the knives have cut through his clothing. Of course, he was already dead by then, so there was no bleeding from the wounds.’

  ‘Knives?’ Li asked. ‘Plural?’

  ‘Both from the number of wounds, and the number of prints in the snow, I’d say there were several assailants. At least three.’ He glanced at Fu who nodded his silent accord.

  ‘Why would they stab him when he was already dead?’ Li said.

  ‘Death by a myriad of swords,’ Tao said quietly and Li looked at him. Tao glanced up. ‘Symbolic,’ he added. ‘Like leaving a calling card.’

  Li turned to Fu Qiwei. ‘What do you think happened here, Fu?’

  Fu shrugged. ‘It’s a matter of interpretation, Chief. Can’t guarantee I’m right, but I’ll have a go.’ And he took them around the courtyard, and through his interpretation of the events which had unfolded there. Tao and Wu had already been through it all, but tagged along anyway. ‘Looks like two people arrived here together first off. Partially covered tracks. One set of prints smaller than the other. Could be a woman. They went into the palace building there on the north side. At least, they stepped up into the shelter of the terrace.’

  They followed him around and into
the palace itself, now brightly illuminated. Fu pointed to the stuff lying around the floor. ‘Someone’s been living in here. For several days by the look of it. Empty tins, old noodle boxes. The clothes … ’ he lifted up a pair or tracksuit bottoms with his white gloved hands, ‘ … sport stuff. Unisex. But small size. Probably a woman.’ And he retrieved a long black hair as if to prove his point. ‘Oddly enough, we also found some of these.’ And he took out a plastic evidence bag and held it up to the light so that they could see several long, single, blond hairs. ‘So she had company. Maybe one of the two people who came calling tonight.’

  Li’s stomach turned over, and he found Tao watching him closely.

  ‘The thing is,’ Fu said, ‘there’s a small heater, but no light.’ He paused. ‘But we found the remains of a smashed oil lamp on the other side of the square, near the body. For what it’s worth, here’s what I think might have happened.’ And he led them back out on to the steps. ‘You can see a single set of footprints heading off across the courtyard here. One of the older ones, partially covered. So I figure one of them went inside, the blond, and the other one, the victim, crossed the square where he was jumped by at least three attackers. They cut his throat, and when he was dead, they kneeled around him in the snow and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest and legs. The two inside heard something. They came out with the oil lamp and found the kid lying dead in the snow. Then they got attacked, too. Now, here’s the interesting thing … ’ They followed him on the safe side of the tape across the square. ‘There’s been a hell of a ruckus here. Broken glass. Melted snow. We found shreds of burned clothing. And this.’ He glanced at Tao and Wu. ‘I only found it a few minutes ago, after you’d gone.’ He shone his flashlight on to a strange, blackened indentation in the snow. ‘Damned if it doesn’t look like a face print to me.’ And Li saw, then, the shape of an eye, a mouth, a nose. Part of a cheek, the curve of a forehead. ‘I figure somebody got that lit oil lamp full in the face and got pretty badly burned. We’ve recovered particles that I’m pretty sure are going to turn out to be burned flesh and singed hair.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ Wu said in awe, then glanced immediately at Tao, wondering if he would be fined another ten yuan for the swear box. But Tao hadn’t heard him.

  ‘Then there was a chase,’ Fu said. They followed him along the gallery and out into the narrow street at the end of which a mêlée of feet had emerged to leave their prints in the snow. ‘You can see these prints are quite different from the ones that arrived. Only half-prints, mainly left by the ball of the foot. They were running. The three bigger sets of feet after the two smaller ones, I’d say.’

  With a heart like lead, Li followed the forensics man along the street, past palaces and pavilions, alleyways and galleries, illuminated now by floodlights, and up steps on to the wide concourse in front of the Qianqing Gate. Tao and Wu walked silently in their wake.

  ‘I guess that the two on the run were probably the women, from the size of their prints. They must have had a bit of a head start, because you can clearly see they went first to one of these copper pots, with one set of tracks leading to the other. They must have hidden inside them.’

  Li closed his eyes, conjuring a dreadful image of Margaret crouched inside one of these pots in fear and panic. It was almost more than he could bear.

  Fu said, ‘With all these lights, we can see their tracks quite clearly. Although it was dark then, I figure their pursuers must have been able to see them, too. The pots were no hiding place at all. You can pick out the other prints that followed them, straight to the pots, and then the scuffles around them where they must have dragged the women out. There’s some blood in the snow here.’

  And they looked at a smear of vivid red in the frozen white. Li looked away quickly. What were the chances that he was looking at Margaret’s blood in the snow? He could not deal with the thought, and tried to keep his mind focused on the facts. Facts which gave him, at least, a little hope. There was only one body, after all. ‘What happened then?’ he asked, nearly in a whisper.

  ‘They dragged them off,’ Fu said. No one had told him that the blonde woman was almost certainly Li’s lover. ‘Back out to the Donghua Gate. Probably bundled them into a vehicle of some kind, then away.’

  Away to where? And why? Li tried hard to think, but his concentration was shot. He felt a hand on his arm, and turned to find Tao looking at him, concerned. Li wondered if it was really sympathy he saw in those dark eyes magnified behind thick lenses. ‘You okay, Chief?’ he asked. Li nodded. ‘We’ll find her.’ And there was an unexpected steel and determination in his voice.

  They left Fu and walked back to the Donghua Gate in silence, Li trying to piece together in his mind what must have happened. Dai Lili’s brother had come to Margaret’s apartment and convinced her to go with him to see his sister. Anger flared briefly in his chest. Why in the name of heaven did she go?

  The boy must have been hiding his sister in the Forbidden City, but it was hardly a secret that Dai Lili had wanted to talk to Margaret. He had, himself, told Supervising Coach Cai as much. Could Cai be involved as he had first suspected? Li cursed himself now for his indiscretion. They must have been watching Margaret, or the boy. Or both. Whichever, they had followed them to the Forbidden City. There, they had killed the brother and snatched the two women. Why had they not just killed the women as well? Why did they want them alive? Information, perhaps? To know how much was known and by whom? If only they realised how little Li really knew or understood any of it. But until they did, maybe there was still the faintest chance of finding Margaret before they killed her. As they surely would.

  They emerged into the floodlights in Donghuamen. Outside the gate the crowd of spectators had swelled. There were more than a hundred of them now, straining to catch a glimpse of whatever might be going on, ignoring the barking of the uniformed officers trying to keep them behind the tape.

  Li turned to Wu. ‘I want arrest warrants for Fleischer, and Fan Zhilong, the CEO of the OneChina Recreation Club. And also for Coaching Supervisor Cai Xin. Soon as we can get them, I want them held at Section One for questioning. Nobody gets to talk to them before me. Understood?’

  ‘You got it, Chief.’ Wu shoved a fresh stick of gum in his mouth and hurried off.

  Tao walked with Li to his Jeep. He took out a cigarette and offered him one. Li took it without thinking, and Tao lit them both. They stood for nearly a minute, smoking in silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ Tao said eventually.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About everything.’

  A car pulled in behind Li’s Jeep, and the tall, bespectacled figure of Professor Yang stepped out, wrapped tightly in his warm winter coat. ‘Section Chief,’ he called, and as Li and Tao turned, he hurried carefully through the snow towards them. ‘I’ve been trying to reach Margaret for hours. They told me at Section One that you were here.’ He glanced around. ‘I thought she might be, also.’ Fastidiously, he waggled each foot to flick off the accumulated snow from the shiny black leather of his polished shoes.

  Li shook his head.

  ‘Well, then, I should pass the information on to you.’

  ‘I don’t really have time just now, Professor.’

  ‘I think it could be important, Section Chief. I know Margaret thought it was.’

  It was enough to catch Li’s attention. ‘What?’

  The Professor removed his rimless glasses to polish them with a clean handkerchief as he spoke. ‘Margaret asked me this morning if I knew anyone who could perform a genetic analysis on a sample of blood that she had taken from the swimmer she autopsied.’

  ‘Sui Mingshan?’

  ‘That’s him. Well, I took her up to see my friend at Beida. Professor Xu. He’s head of the College of Biogenic Science there. Margaret wanted him to analyse the sample to see if he could find any evidence of genetic disorder.’ He shrugged and placed his glasses carefully back on the bridge of his nose, smoothing back the hair behind his ears. ‘She didn’t really co
nfide in me. In either of us. But I know she was hoping for more than that.’

  ‘And what did Professor Xu find?’ Li asked.

  ‘Oh, he did indeed find much more than that,’ Yang said. ‘But not a genetic disorder. Genetically modified HERV.’ He waited for Li to be impressed.

  But Li only scowled. ‘HERV? What the hell’s that?’

  Yang’s face fell as he realised he was going to have to explain. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It’s not a particularly easy concept for the layman.’

  ‘Try me,’ Li said.

  Yang cleared his throat. ‘HERV. It’s an acronym, I suppose. From the English. Human endogenous retrovirus.’

  ‘Retrovirus.’ Li remembered Margaret talking about retroviruses the previous night. ‘Margaret told me something about that. It’s in our DNA or something.’

  ‘So you’re not a complete beginner,’ Yang said.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Li said. ‘But I don’t have much time. Get on with it, Professor.’

  Yang glanced at Tao. ‘Endogenous,’ he said. ‘Means it’s something produced from within us. These HERV, they’re in all of us. The viral remnants of primeval diseases that afflicted the species during the earliest stages of evolution. No longer harmful to us, but there nonetheless, subsumed into our germline DNA and passed on from father to son, mother to daughter. An integral part of the human genome.’ He looked around him. ‘A bit like footprints frozen in the winter snow. But footprints which cross the borderland between genes and infection. Because, really, they are not genes, they are retroviruses, or bits of retroviruses, to be found in every human cell.’ His face was a study of concentration in trying to distil the complexities into bite-sized chunks that his audience might understand. ‘The thing is, although they are dormant, some scientists believe that occasionally they can be activated … ’