The 3rd Woman

by Jonathan Freedland

  They were listening to what she assumed was Dr Lei’s explanation of the situation, punctuated by gestures in Charlie’s direction. The latter had gone very pale. He was petrified at what he had started, she could tell. He had not bargained for this. He had pictured a chat with Dr Lei, the handing over of a list of names that he could take with him, quiet dummy tests next week and then the whole prank could conclude and be forgotten. But a room full of young, powerful Chinese officers lined up by their beds, staring straight ahead as they now faced a serious disciplinary action that he had triggered? No, this was much more than he had signed up for, even under duress.

  Maddy knew it was getting out of control as soon as Lei started working the phones, despatching orders to bring in those he had deemed suspects. But there was nothing either of them could do. Though Charlie did try.

  ‘There’s really no need to disrupt the men’s day immediately, we can—’

  ‘No, Dr Hughes,’ Lei said, raising his palm to demand hush. ‘You said it was urgent. That means it’s urgent.’

  With that, the doctor had returned earnestly to his task, summoning the men he believed might have smuggled heroin into the base. Madison realized then that she had no idea what the punishment might be for such a crime. Now, her head dizzy with pain, tiredness and the thought she had just released, she guessed it would be extremely severe.

  Then, as if performing another drilled exercise from the parade ground, they turned on Dr Lei’s command in unison and walked the three paces to their bedside closets. More or less in time, they punched in the numbers that unlocked the cupboard doors. When those sprang open, they revealed what had been missing in the other barracks: photos, posters and stickers, marking each man out as an individual. The young officers stood to one side, like sentries, ready for inspection.

  Dr Lei first walked through the aisle that ran down the centre of the dormitory, between the rows of beds, turning his head left or right as he did so, as if expecting to see a giant sack of heroin in one of the closets, so big it couldn’t be missed. It took Maddy a while to realize that this was an exercise in intimidation – surprising in a small, cerebral-looking man, but intimidation all the same.

  As he walked, Maddy did a survey of her own. Rooted to the spot, alongside Charlie, she could only glimpse the decoration on the first few doors. The one nearest to her on the left had family snaps from back home: a picture of the young man as a cadet, flanked by two beaming parents and what she guessed were four proud grandparents. There were postcards too, images of the Chinese countryside mainly. The inside of the closet door on her right was kitted out entirely in the red and white colours of an English soccer team.

  But she stopped at the next one along from that. It was plastered with semi-naked images of women, cut from magazines. Some were topless, most were in bikinis or underwear, all were curved and gorgeous. But that was not what Madison noticed. It was that every woman photographed had the same distinguishing feature: pristine pale skin and long blonde hair.

  Now she looked hard at the junior officer standing to attention by his locker. What lay behind that superficially bored face? There, was that a movement of his Adam’s apple? Was that a nervous swallow? What was he hiding? What did he fear was about to be discovered in his closet?

  Madison kept her gaze fixed, waiting for the reaction of her innards, expecting them to heave at the possibility that here, no more than three or four yards away from her, stood the man who had killed Abigail. She pictured him at her sister’s apartment building, silently climbing the stairs while Abigail was in the elevator, waiting in the gloom, patiently counting the seconds – then stepping out and, from behind, placing his gloved hand over Abigail’s mouth, forcing the front door of the apartment open, then pressing her to the ground, all the while aroused by the sight, the smell, the texture of Abigail’s hair. She had run this sequence through her mind a hundred times, torturing herself with the pain of it, making herself see what she dreaded to see.

  In her imagining, he was a strange, abstinent kind of pervert: motivated by a warped lust that he kept repressed. The police had been clear in each case, Abigail, Rosie, Eveline and, as far as she could tell, Mary. The women had not been sexually assaulted. The killer took a different kind of pleasure; the climax for him had come in seeing these women die.

  The officer could feel Madison’s eyes on him, the heat of her stare making him glance up. He was not frightened of her stare, but returned it, able to look as steadily into her as she had been looking at him. It was she who blinked. Yet when she glanced back, she thought she saw the faintest tremor of his hand. He was hunted and, Madison told herself, he now knew it.

  Dr Lei began inspecting each locker, moving the contents around to get a proper look, removing some items and placing them on the bed. Weekend clothes: shirts, jackets and shoes. Music equipment; tablets; car keys. The odd book. He looked inside each shoe, he unzipped each wash bag. He went through the same performance fourteen times, but found nothing.

  He resumed his position at the head of the room, Charlie and Madison standing to one side, as if he were the commander and they his faithful lieutenants. He addressed the men in Mandarin, his sentence prompting a sudden inhalation from Charlie. ‘Christ,’ he whispered, too loudly.

  ‘What?’ Maddy said, but there was no time for a reply. Dr Lei turned towards them and said in English, ‘Dr Hughes and Nurse Michaels will now take bloods from all of you.’

  ‘But I thought—’ Charlie began.

  ‘No. You have raised the alarm. It is important that we resolve this speedily. We have not been able to do so as I would have wished, so now we need to try a more direct method. Junior Officer Wang, please step forward.’ The doctor looked at Maddy. ‘Nurse Michaels, will you please bring us two chairs from the adjoining room.’ He gestured towards a door just behind them.

  She went through to discover a kind of communal living room, basically furnished. A few stiff-backed chairs, a table piled with magazines with more past military heroes on the cover. There was no TV set, but there were two computers in the corner. She grabbed a couple of plastic chairs and went back inside.

  Waiting for her, his jacket off and stripped down to his khaki tank vest, was the very man she had suspected, the junior officer apparently obsessed with blondes. Had Lei seen her staring at him? Did Lei have grounds of his own to suspect this Wang? Why else would he pick him to be tested first? As calmly as she could manage, Maddy set down the chairs and gestured for him to sit in one of them. She waited for Charlie to sit in the other. Right now he was hunched over his medical bag, his right leg visibly palpitating through his pants.

  Dr Lei spoke again. ‘Dr Hughes, could I have a word, please?’

  Charlie pretended he couldn’t hear.

  ‘Dr Hughes?’

  Charlie looked up. He was holding a syringe and a vial. He was wearing latex gloves. ‘What, you want to have a word now?’

  ‘Yes, now. Leave Nurse Michaels to take the blood.’

  ‘But, I was going … I mean—’

  ‘That’s what she’s here for, isn’t it? Now please.’

  Maddy stepped forward, willing the last wisps of codeine fog still inside her head to clear. She took the equipment from Charlie’s trembling hands. His eyes glared at her in fervent panic. She noticed his upper lip was damp.

  Unprompted she peered into the medical bag to find another pair of gloves and put them on. She then sat alongside Wang.

  She stared down at the syringe in her hand. All she could think of was what she had seen in the movies, doctors holding the needle up to the light and squirting out a small measure of liquid. But surely there was to be no liquid in this one. She was not injecting in, but taking out. That meant pulling the plunger out, rather than pressing it in, didn’t it? But how did you start that? And where exactly were you meant to put the needle? And how did you attach this little bottle? Her own fingers began to wobble.

  Charlie was staring at her, standing next to Dr Lei but no
t listening. She fussed some more with the syringe, catching the eye of Wang for just a second. The irony of this moment seemed to catch her somewhere in the throat. Hadn’t he plunged a needle into Abigail’s right arm just five days ago? Now she was about to do it to him.

  Her hands were shaking, both of them. She watched them, as if they were not hers. She willed them to stop, her brain sending a direct command. But it made no difference. Her fingers trembled wildly as she tore open the tiny packet containing the wet square of material, infused with antiseptic spirit, that she guessed was to be used as a swab on the site of the injection. She chose the deltoid muscle, at his shoulder; that, after all, was where she had got a shot back in high school. She wiped the swab on the area twice, afterwards letting the moist square fall onto her lap.

  Now she removed the plastic cap from the syringe. The needle was just a few inches away from his skin. But it was oscillating in her fingers, her grip so unsteady. She moved closer and, in a single movement, closed her eyes and firmly drove the needle into the muscle.

  What happened next happened so fast, afterwards Madison could barely break it down into its constituent elements. They all seemed to occur at once, in a matter of seconds. It began with a howl from Wang who, shocked at the brutally inept way his muscle had been pierced, instinctively reached for the syringe and pulled it out of his arm. That released a spectacular jet of blood, spraying a sash of red on Maddy’s white uniform.

  A second later, Charlie rushed forward, crying out as he did so. With his gloves still on, he attempted to cap the blood fountain coming from Wang’s arm, simultaneously calling out over his shoulder to Dr Lei as his hands turned red.

  ‘She’s not a nurse! She’s a fake! This was her idea, she made me do it. I didn’t want to, but she made me. That’s not even her real hair, it’s a wig. I can tell you who she is!’

  Chapter 41

  She had no idea of the dimensions of the room. When she coughed, the echo gave nothing away. It could have been a tiny concrete box, no bigger than a closet. Or a space as large as that vast canteen. But the walls and the floors had been treated somehow to make them soundless and dead. She might have been inside a coffin.

  The darkness was complete, thanks to the blindfold clamped onto her face, its seal tight. Instinct made her want to touch, to probe, to feel the hardness of the floor or the nearness of the walls. But that too was impossible. They had tied her hands behind her back and made her squat, so that all the pressure – and the pain – was in her legs.

  In the dark, she could imagine how she looked. She had seen this posture before. It was a so-called stress position, perfect for this purpose. The victim would suffer, rapidly plead for mercy, eventually telling his captors whatever they wanted to know – or whatever they wanted to hear – whether it was true or not. And afterwards, there would not be a scratch to see. Total deniability. The American army had used it against the Viet Cong; Maddy had seen photographs in a college psychology textbook.

  Right now, the pain was concentrated on the balls of her feet; they were taking the strain. But given the battering she had taken at the rally, every part of her ached. The muscles had already been abused; now they were being stretched and torn all over again. Yet she refused to cry out. She knew it was pointless in this soundproofed cell. And she knew that, if anyone heard it, the noise she would make would sound like defeat. And she was not going to give them that.

  Besides, endless time in the dark held little terror for her. Solitude, silence, the constant whir of her own thoughts – this was normal service resumed for Madison Webb.

  One surprise was her lack of anger at Charlie Hughes. When they had led her away, the man was a wreck. He had collapsed into a chair, his body shaking as he sobbed. He had not even needed to be asked. ‘She’s that journalist, Madison Webb. She blackmailed me. I’d never have done it, I swear.’ After that, the babbling continued in Mandarin.

  He was weak, she knew that when she first thought of using him. If she had known anyone else with a line into the garrison, she’d have approached them. But she had no one. And he had let her down, the way most people let you down. And so they had brought her here, into the chamber she guessed the People’s Liberation Army used to punish their own offenders. She wondered if she was the first American to have been brought here. If she was, this was an exclusive she could have done without.

  How much time had passed, she had no idea. Judging time was never one of her strong points; sleeplessness had long ago rendered her inner clock faulty. Mainly she was focused on the throbbing pain coming from her ankles. She tried to distract herself thinking of Abigail. But she could not conjure up the face or voice of her sister, which was what she wanted. She opted for the next best thing, returning herself to the bedroom she had stood in just a few days ago. She pictured the pile of schoolbooks, waiting to be marked. She saw the creases of the bed, dimpled into the shape of Abigail. She imagined herself lying down on that empty bed, finally able to rest.

  Next Maddy called herself in for questioning. Why had she not seen more of Abigail when she had had the chance? Why had she not visited the school where she taught? Why had she not heard her play guitar for, what, three years? Five? All this energy devoted to finding her killer; if only she had given even half of it to Abigail when she was alive.

  There was a sound of a door opening. No change in the light; the blindfold was too heavy for that. But a voice. She recognized it as Dr Lei’s. Thank God. She was desperate to be released from this position, before there was any lasting damage. She would ask him to examine her wounds from the beating at the rally too.

  ‘Apologies are due, Miss Webb.’

  ‘I’m sorry about misleading you. I can explain everything. I just need you to—’

  ‘No, not from you,’ he laughed at the absurdity of it. ‘From us. It’s awful, holding you this way. I don’t like it. Not at all.’

  ‘Well, your colleagues wanted to teach me a lesson. OK. Job done. If you just untie my hands and let me stand up.’

  ‘Yes, yes, absolutely. Please.’

  She cocked her head up, which in this squatting position pained her neck, as she waited for the doctor to come over and cut the cable ties that were binding her hands. The prospect of release, of being able to uncoil her legs and stand up, of feeling the blood flowing through her once more was delicious. Any second now …

  Yet when he spoke again he was not where he was meant to be. He was not bending down, armed with the scissors or blade that would spring her free, as she had guessed. He was still several paces away, standing up while she remained down here. ‘We must get you out of this position as soon as possible. Just one or two questions.’

  Now the darkness seemed to enter her, bleeding through the blindfold and into her eyes. What was happening?

  ‘Who sent you here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a simple question, Miss Webb. Who sent you here?’

  ‘No one sent me here. What Charlie – Dr Hughes – said is right. I’m a journalist. My sister was murdered this week and I’m looking for the person who killed her. I’ve published most of what I know. You must have seen some of it. It’s been on the news.’ When there was no response, she continued, ‘All the signs point to someone on this base. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Someone on this base who uses heroin three.’

  ‘And you do all this all by yourself?’

  ‘Yes. Please untie me, I can hardly—’

  ‘All these campaigns, politicians, demonstrations? Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, screaming outside this base? Republican candidate for Governor of California, “Tear down this wall”? One girl on her own does all this?’

  ‘I didn’t do all that. I’ve never met the Republican candidate for governor; I had nothing to do with organizing the rally. They’re just responding to what I wrote. Look, at least take off this blindfold.’

  ‘Yes, of course. No need for you to wear a blindfold.’

  She waited
, once again looking forward to the small comfort of opening her eyes, even if only to see more darkness. But it didn’t come. Dr Lei stayed where he was.

  ‘Let me put it another way. You are at the centre of a very large campaign of opposition to the garrison. You do not do this alone. You are a woman. You are just thirty years old. You don’t work like this alone. It can’t be just you.’

  ‘And it can’t be just you either, Dr Lei. You didn’t put that camera in my fucking bathroom on your own, did you? You didn’t send some asshole to fuck my best friend, who’s a lesbian by the way, all by yourself, did you? Just like it wasn’t you who kicked me in the shins and punched me between my legs. That was people who work for you. The difference is, no one works for me. I’m on my own.’

  ‘Enough of this. Enough.’

  She jerked back at that, an involuntary reflex that sent sharp currents of pain through her neck and down her spine. It was the shock that did it. For those last four words were not spoken by Dr Lei, but by a new voice. And it was coming towards her.

  Chapter 42

  She was relieved to feel the presence of another human being near her. Her hands could not move. She had tried to shake off the ties on her wrists, but they were tight and unbending; only the help of another human being would bring her relief. When she caught the smell of a man, and heard the rustle of his clothes, she couldn’t help but let out a bleat. ‘Please.’

  ‘Yes. You need a change from this. So you can think. Here.’ The age of the voice was hard to place. Chinese, most certainly. The accent stronger than Lei’s. But older or younger, she could not tell. That he was in authority was clear. His cry of ‘Enough’ had established him as Dr Lei’s superior.