by Peter May
The lights of a car raked across the front of the building, and she swivelled in time to see a taxi turning into Pufang Lu. She almost screamed at it to stop, running into the road waving her hands in the air. She saw the driver’s face caught in the light of a streetlamp. A moment of indecision in it as he saw the crazed yangguizi running across the street. But to Margaret’s relief he pulled up. Legs almost buckling under her, she yanked open the passenger door and dropped into the seat beside him. He looked at her, alarmed.
‘Oh, Jesus …’ she whispered, realising that she had no idea how she was going to tell him where to take her. Lyang had not written down her own address. She tried to stop her brain from spiralling into further panic. Think, think, she told herself. Then, ‘Jinsong Bridge,’ she said, suddenly remembering the turn off the ring road. The driver stared at her, clearly not understanding. ‘Jin Song,’ she said, trying to make the tonal distinction between the syllables, as she had heard the Chinese doing. And what was the word for bridge? ‘Jin Song Qiao.’
The driver nodded. ‘Ha,’ he said, and to her relief slipped his taxi into gear. They sped off east and then swung north.
Margaret looked down and saw that her knuckles had turned white, her fingers intertwined in a knot of tension in her lap. She tried to relax, to think positive thoughts, to convince herself that she was blowing this out of all proportion. But she couldn’t. The fact that someone had telephoned her, pretending to be Dai, to get her out of the apartment, simply filled her with the most unthinkable dread. She remembered Li telling her that Lynn Pan had been lured to the Millennium Monument by someone on the telephone pretending to be him. That could only have been Cao. And tonight, it could have been no one else.
The journey back to the Music Home Apartments — frustratingly the name came back to her now — seemed interminable, the city floating past her in slow motion as they headed north on the East Third Ring Road. At last she saw the grand piano lids on top of the two towers. ‘There,’ she shouted at the driver, pointing through the windscreen. ‘I want to go there.’
He peered in the direction she was pointing and nodded, indicating first, and then turning off at the Jinsong Bridge into Jinsong Lu. He pulled up outside the main entrance to the complex and Margaret threw a bunch of notes at him. She slammed the door behind her and ran through the gates and into the glare of the entrance lobby with its arched gold ceiling. The desk where the security guard had been sitting when she left was vacant. The lurid magazine he had been reading was lying on top of it. The ashtray was full to overflowing, and beside it lay an open pack of cigarettes, half full. His lighter was lying on the floor. Margaret stooped to pick it up, and she knew that there was something terribly wrong.
Something like a moan came up from her throat, animallike, involuntary, and she battered through the doors and out into the garden. She ran blindly through the foliage, crossing the artificial stream at the first bridge, and hammering across the pavings to the north-west tower. Past the spot where Bill Hart had fallen from twenty-three floors up. And all she could see were the photographs Pathologist Wang had shown her of the terrible mutilations inflicted on those poor prostitutes by the Beijing Ripper. By Deputy Police Commissioner Cao Xu. In the lobby, she repeatedly pressed the button for the elevator. Gasping for breath, she waited a lifetime for the numbers to descend to the ground floor. And to her complete and utter despair, it had to come all the way down from the twenty-third floor.
Chapter Fourteen
I
In the darkness, something caught a fragment of light, deflecting it towards the door. There was someone there, concealed among the shadows. The creak of a floorboard, and then hot breath in the cold air. A knife arced through a shaft of light that slanted in through the window. No time to avoid it. No room to escape. Li screamed and opened his eyes, breath tearing at his lungs, his face a mask of perspiration. His three travelling companions were staring at him resentfully, all awakened from their slumbers. The thundering in his ears passed with a hiss as the train emerged from a long tunnel back into the starlit night. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, embarrassed, and turned towards the window. The crescent moon lay on its back, like a smile in the sky, amused by his embarrassment.
His dream had left him shaken. He checked the time. It was just after 2.15. They should be back in Beijing in a quarter of an hour. He took out a handkerchief to wipe the coating of fine sweat from his forehead, and fumbled for the cellphone in his pocket. He got it to repeat dial the Harts’ apartment. It rang, and rang. And no one was answering. And still Li let it ring, panic starting to seize him now in its debilitating grip.
* * *
Margaret heard the phone ringing from the hallway as soon as she left the elevator. She hurried along it to the Harts’ apartment, tempering haste with caution now. To her horror, she found that the door was not shut. It lay six inches ajar, a wedge of feeble light from the dimly lit hallway falling into the darkness beyond. Cautiously, Margaret pushed the door open and felt for the light switch inside. She flicked it down, but nothing happened. And fear washed over her like iced water. Still the phone was ringing. She pushed the door wide and waited a moment for her eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom before stepping in and running through to the living room to pick up the phone. But all she got was a dialling tone. Whoever was calling had finally given up. She quickly replaced the receiver and spun around. There was no one there. She could see clearly enough now in the ambient light of the city reflecting on walls and ceilings through the apartment’s generous windows.
‘Lyang?’ she called out. And her own voice seemed deafening in the silence that followed it. Then another voice, like a muffled cry, sounded from somewhere up the stairs, and Margaret found herself shaking, almost uncontrollably.
She started towards the stairs, listening carefully, and almost fell over something soft lying on the floor. She crouched down to pick it up and saw that it was one of Li Jon’s cuddly toys that she normally kept in the buggy. Her hand flew to her mouth to stop herself from crying out. She stood up and pressed it to her breast, and realised that she had no means of protecting herself or her child. She threw the soft toy on to the settee and moved quickly into the kitchen. On a work surface by the hob, there was a knife block where Lyang kept all her kitchen knives for food preparation. Margaret drew out the biggest of them. A wooden-handled implement with a blade about eight inches long. The weight of it in her hand gave her the tiniest sense of security. Her own preference for autopsy was a French chef’s knife. She knew how to use a blade like this, and would not hesitate to do so if her baby had been harmed in any way.
She moved like a shadow back through the dining room into the hallway at the foot of the stairs and began climbing them very gingerly, one step at a time.
There was an odd smell on the top landing, like the sour stink of the autopsy room, and Margaret saw a trail of something dark on the floor leading to the master bedroom. She knelt down and touched it with the tips of her fingers. It was wet, slightly tacky. She raised her fingers to her nose and immediately knew the smell of blood. For a moment, fear almost robbed her of the strength to stand up straight. And shaking now like the leaves fibrillating among the branches of the autumn trees outside, she inched her way along the hall to the master bedroom in the dead silence of the apartment, trying to avoid stepping on the blood. When she got to the door she tentatively put out her hand and pushed it open wide.
There, on the bed, where Margaret had been so desperately seeking sleep just over an hour ago, was the outline of someone lying on their back, half-wrapped in what looked like black sheets. Margaret glanced back along the hall, then stepped into the bedroom, and almost fell as her foot skidded away from her on the blood pooling there. And in that moment she realised that the sheets were not black. They were soaked in blood. She steadied herself and took a step forward and nearly screamed. Lyang was lying naked in the middle of the bed, her shoulders flat, but the axis of her body inclined to the left side. Her head was tur
ned on her left cheek, her left arm close to her body, the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across her abdomen. Her right arm rested on the mattress, bent at the elbow, her fingers clenched around a wad of blood-drenched sheet. Her legs were wide apart, and the whole surface of her abdomen and thighs had been removed, the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. Her breasts had been cut off, one of them carefully placed under her head along with the uterus and kidneys, the other by her right foot. Her liver was placed between her feet, the intestines on her right side, the spleen on her left.
Margaret knew without looking that the flaps of flesh removed from the abdomen and thighs had been placed on the bedside table. Doctor Thomas Bond’s description came flooding vividly back to her. Words she had read only two days earlier.
The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features, and the tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.
She wheeled away, trying to hold down the vomit rising in her throat. The man was completely insane. He had attempted a full replication of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth and most horribly mutilated of Jack the Ripper’s victims. Almost like some kind of game, he had carved her up according to his mentor’s blueprint, placing pieces of her around the body, just as they had been found one hundred and fifteen years before. It was a feast of savagery such as Margaret had never seen. He must surely have slipped now beyond the realms of this world into some dark abyss where the light of human goodness had never shone. Where only evil resided in its purest, blackest form. And if he had been capable of this, what in the name of God had he done to the children?
II
They came up a long, steeply sloping ramp from the platforms below. Steam and smoke filled the air, along with the hissing of old steam-driven boilers and the voices of porters shouting up and down the quays, pushing metal-wheeled trolleys piled with great stacks of mail in canvas sacks.
The stream of passengers, newly alighted from the train, moved slowly, as if in a trance, subdued and still half asleep, about to be rudely awakened by the icy blasts that awaited them above. Li pushed through the bodies ahead of him, heedless of the curses that followed in his wake. When he got no reply from Lyang’s apartment, he had telephoned and got Wu out of his bed for the second night running.
Uniformed ticket collectors stood at the top of the ramp taking tickets from passengers as they filed out through the gates. Li thrust his ticket at the nearest of them and pushed out into the arrivals hall. Wu was waiting by the door, chewing mechanically, scanning the faces as they appeared at the top of the ramp. He raised an arm to catch Li’s eye and called out to him. Li hurried over. Wu looked terrible. ‘We’ve got cars on the way,’ he said. ‘I’ve left the motor running in mine.’
Li followed him down the steps into the bitter cold of the night, new arrivals streaming out behind them in search of buses and taxis. Wu’s Santana was idling in the middle of the concourse, a blue light flashing on the roof.
He called back over his shoulder. ‘You’d better be right about all this, Chief. Or I am in the deepest shit.’
For once in his life, Li hoped earnestly that he was entirely wrong.
* * *
It was with a sickening sense of anticipation that Margaret pushed open the door to the children’s room. The curtains had been drawn and it was darker in here. But there was still enough light for Margaret to see that the bed that Xinxin had been sharing with baby Ling was empty. And so was the cot.
She spun around and looked down the length of the hallway towards the Harts’ study at the far end. The door was pulled to. She had been wrong about the trail of blood leading into the master bedroom. It led from it, all the way to the study door. She started walking slowly towards it, the kitchen knife clutched tightly in her hand. Somehow her fear had gone, to be replaced by a slow burning determination that drove her on, like an automaton, towards the study. He was in there. She knew he was. And so was Li Jon. And Xinxin. With that monster. Chinese wall-hangings that Bill and Lyang had chosen together, stirred slightly in the breeze of her passing, their wooden weights clunking gently against the wall. She hesitated for only a second outside the door before pushing it open.
Her eyes fell immediately on two swaddled bundles propped among the cushions on the settee. No trace of blood, just the gentle sound of breathing. The deep, slow breath of sleep. The sound of life. Miraculously Ling and Li Jon were oblivious to the hell unfolding around them. Unharmed. In her relief, Margaret nearly dropped her knife. She took a step into the room, and a sound off to her right made her turn towards the window. A muffled cry escaped from somewhere behind the hand clamped firmly across Xinxin’s mouth. Margaret froze in horror.
Deputy Commissioner Cao Xu had wheeled one of the desk chairs up to the window and was sitting on it, his back to the city below him. Xinxin, still in her little pink nightie, was held firmly between his legs, one hand nearly covering her face, the other holding the edge of a long-bladed knife hard against her throat. Margaret could see the sheer terror in her eyes.
It was something else altogether that she saw in Cao’s eyes. There was light in them, but a light like darkness, like smouldering coals. Something not quite human. As a little girl, Margaret had heard Biblical tales of the Angel of Death. If such a thing existed, then she was staring it in the eye right now. He was smothered in sticky, dark blood. It was all over his hands and face, as if he had gorged himself on poor Lyang. Indulged himself in a banquet of slaughter.
‘Let her go!’ Margaret said. Her only fear now was for Xinxin.
Cao smiled. He moved his head from left to right and Margaret heard bones cracking in his neck. ‘How is poor old Mistah Li?’
‘Let her go,’ Margaret said again, and she took a step towards him. Xinxin squealed as the blade broke the skin on her neck, and Margaret stopped dead in her tracks.
‘Did you recognise her?’ Cao asked, relaxing again. Margaret frowned her confusion. ‘My Mary Jane,’ he added. And she knew that he was talking about Lyang. Except that somewhere in his twisted mind he saw her now only as Mary Jane Kelly. She nodded, and he smiled his pleasure. ‘I am good,’ he said. ‘As good as him.’
‘Let her go.’ Margaret nearly shouted.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We make exchange. Little girl for you. You can be my sixth. My Alice. I don’t wanna hurt the little girl. She still have her innocence. Only when she lose innocence do I take life.’
Margaret realised that the best she could hope for was to buy herself some time to try to figure out what to do. She had to get him talking, keep him talking. ‘It’s all over,’ she said. ‘Li Yan is on his way. We know who you are.’
He smiled. ‘No. Perhaps you know who I am not. But you do not know who I am.’
‘Who are you then?’
‘I am the man who is going to kill you. And your precious Li Yan cannot stop me. He is a fool. He never would catch me, except for the stupid MERMER test. And that idiot Professor Pan. So sure she could seduce us all.’
‘How did you do it?’ Margaret asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Break into the academy. Steal all those computers. Break into her house.’
He shook his head, smiling smugly. ‘No, no, no. I do not do those things. I am policeman for thirty year. So maybe I know a few people. So maybe they owe me some favour. You know. Guanxi. No question ask.’ He pressed the blade harder into Xinxin’s throat, and Margaret saw a trickle of blood appear. Xinxin stood rigid and still, like a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a car. ‘It feels so nice,’ Cao said. ‘That fine edge of steel, when it cut through soft flesh.’
Margaret felt her panic returning. But she forced herself to speak with a cold calm that she did not feel. ‘If you harm a hair on that child’s head, I’ll kill you.’ And she tightened her grip on her knife.
‘You will not have to.’ The voice came from behind Margaret and to her right, so startling her that she
nearly cried out. She turned to see the slight figure of an older woman standing in the doorway. She seemed bizarrely familiar, but Margaret could not place her. She had shortcut silver hair and wore a heavy black jacket buttoned up above grey cotton trousers gathered at the heel over flat, black shoes. Everything about her seemed small and sinewy. Her face, although remarkably unlined, was stretched too tightly over the skull beneath it.
‘Tie Ning!’
The sound of Cao’s voice made Margaret turn her head towards him again, and the shock in his face brought to her a realisation of who this woman was. His wife. The quiet lady who had looked so uncomfortable in her black evening dress at Li’s award ceremony. Her English was better than her husband’s and she spoke it for Margaret’s benefit rather than his.
‘I have been sitting in my car in Jinsong Lu ever since he came in. Trying to find the courage to follow him. Afraid of what I would find if I did. If only I had not been afraid for so many years, perhaps all those young women would still be alive.’
‘You followed me here?’ Cao said in Chinese. He sounded incredulous.
‘You think I don’t know?’ she said, still in English. ‘Ever since I covered up for you all those years ago, when you raped and murdered that poor girl, I have known I made a mistake. I wanted to believe you when you said it was an accident. I was infatuated. I would have done anything.’ She looked at Margaret. ‘She was a Red Guard, just like us. She was my friend. But I loved him. They would have shot him. So we ran. We hid in Henan Province, in the country. And I went to Taiyuan City to burn down the orphanage there, to steal him the identity of a boy who died.’ She took a deep breath, conjuring up some distant memory. ‘I knew him, Cao Xu. A gentle boy. We grew up there together.’ She turned her gaze back on her husband. ‘I pushed you, I know I pushed you. To more success. To greater power. And all the time I wanted to believe. That it had really been an accident. That it had happened only one time. That with time and distance you would become like the boy whose name you took.’ She sighed. ‘But each time a girl was murdered and they could not find her killer I wondered. I wondered if there was something inside you that I could never reach, never touch. Something dark and hidden, beyond my understanding. Beyond yours.’
