The Killing Room (The China Thrillers 3)

by Peter May

  On the platform the TV lights were blinding, and Margaret had to squint beyond the glare to see the rows of faces looking up at them expectantly. She saw Geller about five rows back. He was sitting with a notebook on his knee, a pair of silver-rimmed half-moon spectacles perched on his nose. He peered at her over the top of them and winked. Margaret looked away self-consciously, and began to wonder what the hell she was doing here. This was all happening so fast, and she was still quite disorientated. She glanced at Li who was, apparently, listening intently to the Commissioner as he droned on in a high-pitched staccato voice. Margaret let her mind wander, barely listening to the interpreter as he conveyed the Commissioner’s long preamble in English. She looked appraisingly, instead, at Mei-Ling. Grudgingly, Margaret had to concede that she was very attractive. Older than she appeared at first sight, but poised and confident and very petite, like a bird. She could speak Li’s language, she shared his culture. Beside her, Margaret felt big and clumsy, and crumpled after all the hours of flying and then being caught in the rain. Her make-up, she knew, was faded and smudged, her hair a tangle. She couldn’t speak Chinese, she had little or no empathy with the culture. How could she even begin to compete with someone like Mei-Ling? And she felt a cloud of depression settle over her, ready almost to concede the fight even before it had begun.

  Then suddenly her attention was brought sharply back into focus by the interpreter. She heard him saying, ‘Initial fears that these were victims of a mass killer have proved unfounded. Preliminary examination by our pathologists at 803 have concluded that the most likely explanation is that these women died of natural causes …’ He broke off as a buzz of speculation rose among the reporters. ‘We believe that their bodies may have been subject to illegal medical experimentation or, even more prosaically, for illicit practice by medical students.’

  Margaret flashed an angry look at Li who met her eye and gave an imperceptible shake of his head.

  The Commissioner spoke again, turning and smiling towards Margaret. Clearly he was pleased with the way things were going. The interpreter said, ‘Our main task will be to identify the bodies. And, to that end, we are fortunate to have acquired the services of leading American pathologist, Margaret Campbell, who has worked before with the Chinese police.’ Margaret felt all eyes turning towards her.

  *

  ‘Jesus!’ Margaret said. ‘I can’t believe you got me all the way over here for this.’ She strode across the lobby of the Peace Palace Hotel after the press conference. Li hurried after her. ‘A bunch of bodies that have been hacked up by medical students!’

  ‘That is only a theory, an initial thought,’ Li said.

  ‘Then why are you telling the press? You’re only going to look fucking stupid if it turns out not to be true.’ She pushed through the revolving door and out into the street. The pavements were choked with affluent shoppers and people hurrying home from work, umbrellas fighting for ascendancy in the airspace above their heads. Someone got into a taxi at the kerbside, and an electronic voice said, Dear passenger, you are welcome in our taxi.

  ‘That was not my idea,’ Li said. ‘The Commissioner thought it would take the heat out of the situation.’

  ‘Which shows how many press conferences he’s taken.’ Margaret was scathing. ‘First rule of public relations: you never tell the press anything you don’t know for certain. Let them do the speculating, not you.’

  Mei-Ling appeared on the steps above them. ‘Is there a problem?’

  Margaret said, ‘If your people have already started carrying out autopsies, then I’m wasting my time.’

  ‘Well, why do we not go and look at the bodies right now, and you can make that judgement for yourself.’ Mei-Ling was the voice of perfect reason.

  Margaret glared at her and turned her anger on Li. ‘I busted my butt to get here. The least you could have done was wait.’

  *

  The city mortuary was out in the north-west of Shanghai, beyond Fudan University, in a quiet street off the residential Zhengli Road. They turned in a gate and passed the administration building, a cream painted house with a steeply pitched red-tile roof that looked like a Swiss guest house. There was an area of green lawn dominated by a large conifer tree. Flower beds bloomed with red and yellow roses, even in November. There was a large parking area, at the far end of which stood the mortuary itself, an elegant two-storey building in the same style of cream and red-tile. Shrubs and small trees had been planted around it. Nothing about the place would have indicated its purpose.

  There were several cars parked out front. Mei-Ling drew the Santana in beside them and led Li and Margaret inside, turning right out of a small entrance hall into a long cold room. One wall was lined with two tiers of metal doors opening on to refrigerators where the bodies were kept on roll-out shelves. Each door had a gold number on it. There were forty doors.

  ‘There are two roll-out shelves in each,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘We have a capacity for storing eighty bodies in total here.’

  There were two autopsy rooms off, one table in the first, two in the other. Everything was clinically clean, white-tiled floors and walls, scrubbed stainless steel autopsy tables with proper drainers, water fed from below and controlled by levers and buttons at knee height. Margaret noticed closed-circuit TV cameras mounted high on the walls. A stainless-steel work top ran the length of one wall in each room, and above, taped to the tiles, were the charts originally assembled in the underground car park as the bodies were brought in. These included lists of the body parts, photographs of each piece as it had been found, envelopes containing all the initial x-rays and the crudely drawn diagrams of each body, indicating which bits were present and which were missing.

  Margaret walked along the wall in the second room, looking at the charts. Dr Lan entered quietly behind them. He was wearing a dark blue jacket over light-coloured pants and a blue, grey and white striped roll-neck. He stood in the doorway watching Margaret in silence for a few moments before clearing his throat. The others turned, startled, and after a moment of hiatus Li made the introductions in Chinese and English. Lan bowed slightly, a tiny smile playing around his mouth that did not reach his eyes, as he shook Margaret’s hand. ‘I speak a little English,’ he said, in what sounded to Margaret like very good English. He waved his hand around the room. ‘You like our facility here?’

  Margaret nodded solemnly, aware of how Lan’s position had been undermined by her arrival. But he was, at least on the surface, coping well with the loss of face. ‘It’s excellent, Doctor,’ she said. ‘As good as I’ve seen anywhere.’

  His smile widened a little, but still did not make it past his upper lip. He ran a hand down the side of the door and looked at his fingers. ‘Cleaner than most hospitals,’ he said. ‘We have fifteen pathologists here, Dr Campbell, and among us we perform a thousand autopsies each year. We are equally qualified in forensic science, and have, in addition, seven lab technicians at our disposal. We matched all the body bits by DNA comparison.’

  Margaret thought that Dr Lan had more than a little English. And she understood that he was using it to lay out his credentials in case she thought she was dealing with someone of inferior qualification or experience. She looked at the diagrams on the walls. ‘How many of these women have you already autopsied?’

  ‘Two. Although I have made a preliminary examination of them all.’

  ‘Did you establish cause of death?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘But on the basis of what you’ve seen, you have concluded that these women were simply corpses used for practice by medical students, or for some kind of medical research?’

  ‘It is not a conclusion, Doctor. Just an early thought.’

  ‘May I see one of the other bodies?’

  Lan nodded, and they followed him through to the refrigeration room. He opened one of the lower doors and rolled out the upper shelf. He made a small movement of his hand towards the far end of the room, and two white-coated assistants wearing
thick rubber gloves stepped forward and unzipped the white body bag that lay on the shelf. Inside were the roughly assembled pieces of a young woman. The smell of decaying flesh was powerful, even in the refrigerator. Arms, legs and one hand were severed, as was her head. Cold, dried mud still clung to the bleached yellow flesh. A ‘Y’-shaped incision that cut in from each shoulder to the breast bone, and then down to the pubis, had opened up the torso, revealing a chest cavity which had been stripped of its organs and then sewn up with rough twine. Margaret looked quickly at Lan. ‘I wanted to see one that you hadn’t autopsied.’

  Lan said, ‘She is as we found her.’

  Margaret frowned, and bent down to examine the cut more closely. ‘May I have some gloves and a piece of cotton?’ she said. Lan spoke to one of the assistants, who hurried off. Margaret asked, ‘Have all the bodies been cleaned off to this extent.’

  ‘They were very carefully washed down,’ Lan said. ‘By pathologists. There is no loss of evidence.’

  Margaret said nothing. When the gloves came she pulled them on and then took the cotton and rubbed very gently along one edge of the incision. She peered at it very closely for a long time. Finally, she straightened up and peeled off the gloves. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘this one certainly wasn’t a corpse used for practice.’

  Lan stiffened, colour rising high on his pallid cheeks. He frowned, and glanced down at the contents of the bag. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to commit myself, Doctor, until I’ve done the autopsy.’

  ‘Which will be when?’ Lan asked.

  ‘When I’ve had some sleep,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, I don’t want any more autopsies carried out.’

  Lan said stiffly, ‘I am instructed to proceed as quickly as possible.’

  Margaret turned to Li. ‘Who is the lead pathologist on this case?’ He had called her in, he was going to have to take responsibility. If he didn’t back her now, she was out of there.

  Li glanced uneasily at Lan. Then, ‘You are,’ he told Margaret.

  ‘Good, then we’ll start the autopsies in the morning.’ She nodded to Lan, handed the gloves and the cotton to the assistant, and headed out into the hallway. Li followed her, leaving Mei-Ling to deal with Lan’s loss of mianzi.

  Li lowered his voice almost to a whisper. ‘Was that really necessary?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Putting me on the spot like that?’

  This was not how Margaret wanted it to be. She had taken a momentous decision, travelled a long way to be with Li, and already they were at one another’s throats. But there were principles at stake. ‘I’m the one who’s on the spot here,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice down. ‘You’ve brought me in on an investigation that some people would clearly like to see just disappear.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That press conference,’ she said, ‘was a joke. The Commissioner of Police is telling the press that these women weren’t murdered, even before the investigation’s got properly under way. And Dr Lan might be a very good pathologist, but I think he’s just fulfilling some wishful thinking on behalf of his bosses.’

  ‘Are you saying he’s concealing the findings of his autopsies?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Margaret said. ‘But maybe he’s just not looking very hard.’ She sighed. ‘You’re a good cop, Li Yan, but when it comes to politics you can be pretty naïve.’

  Li frowned. ‘You think someone is actually trying to subvert the investigation?’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, it’s all pretty embarrassing, isn’t it? For the authorities.’

  Li said, ‘It was the Mayor’s policy adviser who put me in charge. It was he who gave me permission to bring you in.’

  ‘Then maybe there are others who don’t like decisions like that being taken over their heads.’

  Li thought about it. His meeting with Huang and the Deputy Commissioner had been pretty frosty, and the Commissioner himself had been briefed by Huang. But he found it hard to believe that any one of them would contrive to hide the truth. Why would they?

  Margaret said, ‘The point is, I have my integrity and a professional reputation to protect. Either I get full access and complete co-operation or I’m on the first plane home.’

  For a moment, Li wondered where she meant by ‘home’. The United States? He was confused. She had stayed on in China to be with him and had only returned to the States to attend her father’s funeral. He dragged his thoughts back to the case. He said, ‘You have my guarantee on that.’

  She nodded. ‘Then that’s good enough for me.’ And suddenly she wilted, fatigue etching itself on her face. She wanted to touch him, feel his skin under her fingers, his soft warm lips on her neck. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel. I need a shower, then we can get something to eat, and …’ Li looked uncomfortable. ‘What?’

  ‘We must attend a banquet tonight.’

  She felt all the strength drain out of her. All the Chinese ever seemed to do was hold banquets. ‘Aw, Jesus, Li, not tonight. Please.’

  He shrugged helplessly. ‘I have got no choice. It is being hosted by the Mayor’s policy adviser, and you and I are the guests of honour. I think he wants to show us off.’

  Mei-Ling came out from the refrigeration room and cast Margaret a chilly look. She said to Li, ‘I will give you a lift back to your hotel after we have dropped off Miss Campbell.’

  Margaret frowned and said to Li, ‘Aren’t you staying at the Peace Hotel?’

  Mei-Ling answered for him. ‘I am afraid the budget does not run to two rooms at the Peace Hotel, Miss Campbell. We Chinese have to content ourselves with something a little more austere.’

  For the first time, Li became aware of the friction between the two, and was puzzled by it. After all, they had only just met.

  Mei-Ling said, ‘But do not worry, we will come back and pick you up on the way to the banquet tonight.’

  Margaret bristled. ‘We? Do I take it that you are also going to the banquet?’

  Mei-Ling smiled. ‘Of course.’

  III

  Margaret’s shower had lifted her appearance, but not her spirits. Her hair fell in freshly laundered golden waves across her shoulders. She had put on an elegant but conservative sleeveless black dress for the banquet. But her eyes were stinging from lack of sleep, she felt tired and depressed and in need of alcohol. She wandered in search of the bar along endless marbled corridors dominated by gold and pink squared ceilings and elaborate Art Deco uplighters. But there were no signs in English that she could see. In a lounge opposite the reception lobby, people sat drinking coffee and beer at tables, but it was not exactly what Margaret had in mind.

  ‘S’cuse me. You Miss Maggot Cambo?’

  Margaret turned to find a smiling young Chinese man standing timidly in front of her.

  He held out his hand. ‘Ah … My name … Jiang Baofu.’ His English was hesitant, but he was determined to persevere. ‘Medical student … Read about you in paper, Miss Cambo.’

  Reluctantly she shook his hand.

  ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Ah … very well, thank you.’ He bowed slightly. ‘You … mmmm … very farmers, Miss Cambo.’

  She frowned. ‘Farmers?’

  He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Very farmers.’ And she realised suddenly that he meant ‘famous’.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes. I … mmm … wanna be pathologist like you.’ He smiled, still nodding enthusiastically. ‘I … mmm … night watchman, where they find bodies.’

  And Margaret was immediately on her guard. She had thought, initially, that the young man was harmless enough, but now she had major misgivings. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘you are a material witness and we shouldn’t be talking.’

  She strode off across the lobby, but he hurried after her. ‘I like to help,’ he said. ‘I like to help investigation. I like to help you.’

  She spun around. ‘Just how did you know where to find me
?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh …’ he said. ‘I give statement at 803. Aaa-ll day. I … mmm … follow you to hotel.’

  Margaret was distinctly unhappy now. She looked at him again. She saw that despite the almost cringing obsequiousness of his demeanour, he was a powerfully built young man. He had a strong physical presence, and his lack of confidence was only in his English. ‘I think you should go,’ she said, and turned away. But he caught her arm, and she felt the strength of his fingers as they bit into her bare flesh.

  ‘No, no … I only wanna help,’ he said.

  She pulled her arm free. ‘Don’t ever touch me again,’ she said dangerously, and with more confidence than she felt.

  ‘Lady in need of assistance?’ She turned at the sound of the voice on her right hand and felt a huge wave of relief to see the familiar smiling face of Jack Geller.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to remain composed. ‘I was looking for the bar.’

  ‘Then you found the right man to take you there,’ he said. He glanced at Jiang Baofu, then steered her away past the currency exchange to a narrow wooden staircase leading up to a small mezzanine bookshop. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.

  She shrugged it off. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t look like nothing to me.’

  ‘Believe me, women alone in hotels are always getting pestered.’ She looked around at the rows of books and racks of magazines. ‘Actually, when I said “bar” I was thinking more of something that sold booze, not books.’

  He grinned. ‘Keep walking.’ They passed along a narrow corridor where tall, elaborate glass and wrought-iron lampstands stood sentinel. On one side there were large semi-circular stained-glass windows from floor to ceiling, on the other a marble balustrade protecting a view down into the well of the reception lobby below. The bar opened out before them. Big, comfortable armchairs and sofas gathered around low coffee tables, windows along one side looked down on to the lounge.