The Runner (The China Thrillers 5)

by Peter May

  ‘They’re on their way.’

  ‘And the woman?’

  ‘She’ll be okay, Chief. She’s a bit groggy just now from the sedative, but it’ll wear off.’

  Li knelt down beside her and took her hand. Her chin was slumped on her chest. He lifted it up with thumb and forefinger, turning her head slightly to look at him. ‘Is there someone who can come and spend the night with you? A friend maybe?’ Her eyes were glazed. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  There was no response. He looked at Wang. ‘Is there anyone we can get to stay over?’

  But suddenly she clutched his wrist, and the glaze had halfcleared from her eyes. They were dark and frightened now, black mascara smudged all around them. ‘He doesn’t have to know, does he?’ Li didn’t have to ask who. ‘Please … ’ she slurred. ‘Please tell me you won’t tell him.’

  III

  Dongzhimennei Street was a blaze of light and animation as Li nursed his Jeep west towards Beixinqiao. Hundreds of red lanterns outside dozens of restaurants danced in the icy wind that blew down from the Gobi Desert in the north. Ghost Street, they called this road. While most of the city slept, the young and the wealthy, China’s nouveau riche, would haunt Dongzhimennei’s restaurants and bars until three in the morning. Or later. But in the distance, towards the Dongzhimen intersection with the Second Ring Road, the lights of Ghost Street faded into darkness where the hammers of the demolition contractors had done their worst. Whole communities in ancient siheyuan courtyard homes had been dismantled and destroyed to make way for the new Beijing being fashioned for the Olympic Games. The mistakes of the West being repeated forty years on, city communities uprooted and rehoused in soulless tower blocks on the outskirts. A future breeding ground for social unrest and crime.

  Li took a left and saw the lights of Section One above the roof of the food market. There were lights, too, in the windows of the One Nine Nine Bar as he passed, shadowy figures visible behind misted windows. He turned left again into the deserted Beixinqiao Santiao and parked under the trees opposite the brown marble façade of the All China Federation of Returning Overseas Chinese. During the day there would be a constant stream of ethnic Chinese wanting papers to return to the country of their birth, or the birth of their ancestors, anxious to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the fastest growing economy on earth.

  He slipped in the side entrance of the four-storey brick building that housed Section One of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Beijing Municipal Police and climbed the stairs to the top floor. The detectives’ office was buzzing with activity when he poked his head in. It was often busier at night than during the day. Wu was already at his desk, blowing smoke thoughtfully at his computer screen and pushing a fresh strip of gum in his mouth. He looked up when Li appeared in the doorway. ‘How do you want me to play this, Chief?’ he said.

  ‘Dead straight,’ Li said. He was only too well aware of the possible repercussions of what they had witnessed tonight. Members of the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games were political appointees. Its president was the city’s Mayor, its executive president the head of the Chinese Olympic Committee. China regarded the success of the Games as vital to its standing in the world, and the committee itself was invested with a huge weight of responsibility. A scandal involving one of its senior members would send shockwaves rippling through the corridors of power. And it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep scandal out of the media. Li was going to have to prepare his own report on the incident to supplement Wu’s.

  He glanced towards the office of his deputy. The door was ajar, and the office beyond it in darkness. He had not expected to find Tao Heng at his desk at this hour and was relieved not to have to discuss this with him. He made his way down the corridor to his own office and flicked on his desk lamp, tilting back in his chair so that his head was beyond the ring of light it cast. He closed his eyes and wished fervently that he could have a cigarette. But he had promised Margaret that he would give up, for the baby’s sake, and he was not about to break his promise. In any case, she had a nose like a blood-hound and would have smelled it on him immediately.

  A knock on his door brought him sharply back from his tobacco reveries and he tipped forward again in his chair. ‘Come in.’

  Sun Xi stepped in from the corridor. ‘They told me you were in. Do you have a minute, Chief?’ He was a young man, not yet thirty, who had recently transferred to Beijing from Canton where he had a brilliant record of crime-solving and arrests. As Li had once been, he was now the youngest detective in Section One, which specialised in solving Beijing’s most serious crimes. And like Li before him, he had already tied up an impressive number of cases in just a few short months in the section. He reminded Li very much of himself at the same age, although Sun was more extrovert than Li had ever been, quick to smile, and even quicker with his one-liners. Li had immediately spotted his potential and taken him under his wing. Sun dressed smartly, his white shirts always neatly pressed, pleated slacks folding on to polished black shoes. His hair was cut short above the ears, but grew longer on top, parted in the centre and falling down either side of his forehead above thick dark eyebrows and black, mischievous eyes. He was a good-looking young man, and all the girls in the office were anxious to catch his eye. But he was already spoken for.

  ‘Pull up a chair,’ Li said, glad of the diversion. And as Sun slipped into the seat opposite, he asked, ‘How’s Wen settling in?’

  Sun shrugged. ‘You know how it is, Chief,’ he said. ‘Provincial girl in the big city. It’s blowing her mind. And the little one’s started kicking hell out of her.’ Like Li, Sun was anticipating fatherhood in a little over a month. Unlike Li, Sun had already been allocated a married officer’s apartment in Zhengyi Road, and his wife had just arrived from Canton.

  ‘Has she sorted out her antenatal arrangements yet?’

  ‘You’re kidding! You know what women are like, she’s still unpacking. I’ll need a whole other apartment just to hang her clothes.’

  Li smiled. Although he saw Sun as being like a younger version of himself, they had married very different women. Margaret’s wardrobe could only be described as spartan. She detested shopping. He said, ‘Margaret’s been going to the antenatal classes at the maternity hospital for several months. Maybe she could give Wen some advice on where to go, who to see.’

  ‘I’m sure Wen would appreciate that,’ Sun said.

  Li said, ‘I’ll speak to her.’ Then he sat back. ‘So what’s on your mind?’

  Sun took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Is it okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ Li said reluctantly, and he watched enviously as Sun lit up and pulled a lungful of smoke out of his cigarette.

  ‘I got called out to a suspicious death earlier this evening, Chief. Not long after you left. At the natatorium at Qinghua University.’ He grinned. ‘That’s a swimming pool to you and me.’ He pulled again on his cigarette and his smile faded. ‘Apparent suicide. Champion swimmer. He was supposed to take part in a training session at the pool with the national squad ahead of tomorrow’s two-nation challenge with the Americans.’ He paused and looked at Li. ‘Do you follow sport?’

  Li shook his head. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well they got this challenge thing this week with the US. Two days of swimming events up at Olympic Green, and three days of indoor track and field at the Capital Stadium. First ever between China and America.’

  Li had been aware of it. Vaguely. There had been a considerable build-up to the event in the media, but he hadn’t paid much attention.

  ‘Anyway,’ Sun said, ‘this guy’s been breaking world records, expected to beat the Americans hands down. Only he turns up for tonight’s training session half an hour before the rest of them. The security man on the door claims he never even saw him go in. The place is empty, the coach hasn’t arrived. The swimmer goes into the locker room and drinks half a bottle of brandy for Dutch courage before he undresses and hangs a
ll his stuff neatly in his locker. Then he takes a five-metre length of rope and goes up to the pool wearing nothing but his birthday suit. He climbs to the highest diving platform, ten metres up. Ties one end of the rope to the rail, loops the other round his neck and jumps off. Five metres of rope, ten-metre drop.’ Sun made a cracking sound with his tongue at the back of his mouth. ‘Neck snaps, clean as you like. Dead in an instant.’

  Li felt an icy sensation spreading in his stomach. Random pieces of information, like digital bytes on a computer disk, suddenly began forming unexpected sequences in his head. He said, ‘Weren’t there three members of the national athletics team killed in a car crash in Xuanwu District last month?’ He had seen a report of it in The People’s Daily.

  Sun was surprised. ‘Yeh … that’s right. Members of the spring relay team.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t see the connection.’

  Li held up a hand, his brain sifting and cataloguing the information it had absorbed on a daily basis and filed under Of No Apparent Importance But Worth Retaining. Maybe. He found what he was searching for. ‘There was a cyclist … I can’t remember his name … He came second or third in the Tour de France last summer. Best ever performance by a Chinese. Drowned in a freak swimming accident a couple of weeks ago.’

  Sun nodded, frowning again, the connections beginning to make themselves.

  ‘And I’ve just come from a house where a weightlifter collapsed and died tonight during the act of sexual intercourse. A heart attack. Apparently.’ Had it not been for this bizarre event, it was possible Li would never even have been aware that there might be connections to be made.

  Sun chuckled. ‘So you figure the Americans are bumping off our top athletes so they’ll get more medals?’

  But Li wasn’t smiling. ‘I’m not figuring anything,’ he said. ‘I’m laying some facts on the table. Perhaps we should look at them.’ The words of his Uncle Yifu came back to him. Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is weakness. He paused. ‘You said apparent suicide.’

  Sun leaned into the light of Li’s desk lamp, cigarette smoke wreathed around his head. ‘I don’t think it was, Chief.’

  The ringing of Li’s telephone crashed into the room like an uninvited guest. Li snatched the receiver irritably. ‘Wei?’

  ‘Section Chief, this is Procurator General Meng Yongji.’ Li’s lungs seized mid-breath. The Procurator General was the highest ranking law officer in Beijing, and Li was not accustomed to taking calls from him. It was the Procurator General’s office which decided whether or not to prosecute a case in the courts, and in some cases would take over an investigation completely. It was a moment before Li could draw in enough air to say, ‘Yes, Procurator General.’

  ‘I received a call several minutes ago from the executive assistant to the Minister of Public Security.’ Meng did not sound too pleased about it and Li glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten-thirty, and there was a good chance Meng had been in his bed when he took the call. ‘It seems the Minister would like to speak to you, Section Chief. In his home. Tonight. There is a car on its way to pick you up.’

  Li understood now why Meng sounded unhappy. Protocol demanded that any request from the Minister should be passed down through a superior officer. But, in effect, the Procurator General had been woken from his sleep to pass on a simple message, and he clearly did not relish the role of message boy. He heard Meng breathing stertorously through his nostrils on the other end of the line. ‘What have you been up to, Li?’

  ‘Nothing, Procurator General. Not that I know of.’

  A snort. ‘I’d appreciate being kept informed.’ A click and the line went dead.

  Li held the receiver halfway between his ear and the phone for several moments before finally hanging up. The icy sensation he had felt earlier in his stomach had returned, and a chill mantle seemed to have descended from his shoulders over his whole body. To be summoned to the home of the Minister of Public Security at ten-thirty on a cold December night could only be bad news.

  IV

  The black, top-of-the-range BMW felt as if it were gliding on air as it sped past the north gate of the Forbidden City and turned south into Beichang Jie where Li had attended the death of Jia Jing only two hours earlier. Li had changed into his uniform in his office, and sat now on soft leather in the back of this ministerial vehicle, stiff and apprehensive. As they passed them, Li saw that the electronic gates of the senior BOCOG official were locked, and there were no lights on in his home. The cops were all gone. Li had stayed long enough to see the body of the weightlifter bagged and taken away in the meat wagon, trying all the while to assuage the growing hysteria of the adulterous wife as her sedative started wearing off. There were, he had told her, no guarantees that her husband would not get to know what had happened there that night, and she had dissolved into uncontrollable sobbing. He had left when finally a girlfriend arrived to spend the night.

  The street was virtually deserted now as they passed through the tunnel of trees that arched across the roadway, and at the Xihuamen intersection they turned west. The high walls of Zhongnanhai rose up before them. When the car stopped at the gate, his electronic window wound down automatically, and Li showed his maroon Public Security ID to the armed guard who scrutinised his face and his photograph carefully in turns. And then the car was waved through, and Li was within the walls of Zhongnanhai for the first time in his life. He found that his breathing had become a little more shallow. Lights burned in the windows of a government office compound away to their left, but they quickly left these behind as the car whisked them along a dark road lined with willows, before emerging into the glare of moonlight shining on frozen water. Zhonghai Lake. It was white with ice and a sprinkling of snow reflecting a nearly full moon.

  Here, on the shores of this lake, his country’s leaders and high officials lived in the luxury and seclusion of their state villas and apartments. The privileged indulging the privileges of power. Catching the light on the far shore, Li saw a pavilion by a small jetty, eaves curling outwards and upwards at each of its four corners. A mist was rising now off the ice, and through it, lights twinkled in homes beyond yet more trees on the other side.

  The driver turned off the lakeside road into a driveway that curved through a bamboo thicket. The hanging fronds of leafless willows rattled gently across the roof. He pulled up outside an impressive villa built on two levels in the traditional Chinese style, pillars the colour of dried blood supporting the sloping roof of a veranda which ran all the way around the house. Inside, the driver left Li standing nervously in a dark hallway of red lacquered furniture and polished wood before a young woman in a black suit appeared and asked him to follow her up thickly carpeted stairs.

  At the end of a long hall of hanging lanterns, she showed him into a small room lit only by an anglepoise and the flickering light of a television set. A soccer match was playing on it, but the sound was turned down. A polished wooden floor was strewn with Xinjiang rugs. A small desk with a laptop computer sat below a window whose view was obscured by wooden slatted Venetian blinds. The walls were covered with framed photographs of the Minister in his dress uniform shaking hands with senior police officers and leading politicians. He was pictured smiling with Jiang Zemin; towering over Deng Xiaoping as they shook hands; warmly embracing Zhu Rongji.

  The Minister was sitting on a soft, black two-seater sofa, scribbling by the light of the anglepoise on a bundle of papers balanced on his knee. More papers and official publications were strewn across the seat next to him. He was wearing soft, corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt and carpet slippers. A pair of half-moon reading glasses was balanced on the end of his nose. He glanced up distractedly and waved Li to a well-worn leather armchair opposite. ‘Sit down, Li, I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he said, and returned to his papers.

  Li felt stiff and awkward in his uniform and wondered if he’d made a mistake in wearing it. He perched uncomfortably on the edge of the seat and removed his braided peaked cap. He g
lanced at the TV screen and saw that China were playing South Korea. Korea were two goals ahead.

  ‘You like football, Li?’ the Minister said, without looking up.

  ‘Not particularly, Minister,’ Li replied.

  ‘Hmmm. Athletics?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Don’t like games at all, then?’

  ‘I enjoy chess.’

  The Minister peered at him over his half-moons. ‘Do you now? Any good?’

  ‘I used to give my uncle a decent game.’

  ‘Ah, yes … ’ The Minister put his papers aside and turned his focus fully on to Li for the first time. ‘Old Yifu. He was a foxy old bastard, your uncle. Good policeman, though.’ He paused. ‘Think you’ll ever make his grade, Section Chief?’

  ‘Not a chance, Minister.’

  ‘Ah … ’ the Minister smiled. ‘Modesty. I like that.’ Then his smile faded. ‘But, then, you’re not going to make any kind of grade at all if you’re not prepared to rethink your personal plans.’

  Li’s heart sank. So this is why he had been summoned.

  But the Minister cut his thoughts short as if he had read them. ‘Though that’s not why you’re here.’ He appeared to be lost in reflection for some moments, as if unsure where to begin. Then he said, ‘A certain wife of a certain member of a certain committee made a telephone call tonight after you left her home.’ The Minister paused to examine Li’s reaction. But Li remained impassive. He should have realised that a woman in her position would always know someone of influence. The Minister continued, ‘The recipient of that call made another call, and then my telephone rang.’ He smiled. ‘You see how connections are made?’ Li saw only too well.

  The Minister removed his reading glasses and fidgeted with them as he spoke. ‘As far as we are aware, no crime was committed tonight. Am I correct?’ Li nodded. ‘Then it is perfectly possible that a certain weightlifter arrived at the home of a certain committee member for reasons unknown to us. Perhaps he wished to make representations on behalf of his sport to that committee member who, unfortunately, was out of the country. But, then, we’ll never know, will we? Since the poor chap collapsed and died. Heart attack, is that right?’