Chinese Whispers (The China Thrillers 6)

by Peter May

  There was a ripple of uneasy laughter around the table.

  ‘Personally, I prefer Tony Roma’s,’ Margaret said. ‘Or the Hard Rock Café – they do good burgers. But I guess I’ll just have to make do with this instead.’

  No one seemed certain whether she was being funny, or just rude, and her response was met with an uneasy silence. Li looked embarrassed.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ Margaret said. ‘I love Sichuan food.’ And she waved a hand in front of her mouth and blew. ‘Hot!’

  ‘You like spicy food, then?’ Deputy Cao said languidly.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Personally, I think Sichuan cuisine lack something in subtlety and sophistication. All that chilli only there to disguise poor quality of meat.’

  ‘What is your taste, then, Deputy Cao?’ the Minister asked him.

  ‘He likes hotpot,’ his wife said. She was a small, wiry woman, with short, bobbed hair the colour of steel. She looked uncomfortable in a black evening gown.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Margaret said. ‘Invented by the Mongols, wasn’t it? Water boiled up in their helmets over an open fire to cook chunks of mutton hacked off the sheep.’

  ‘So?’ Deputy Cao said, a hint of defensiveness in his voice.

  The Minister laughed. ‘I think Ms Campbell is implying that hotpot is not quite the height of sophisticated eating either.’

  Cao shrugged dismissively. ‘Well, that is rich coming from American. Not a country exactly famous for its cuisine.’ He lit a cigarette.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Margaret said breezily. ‘There are a hell of a lot more McDonalds’ around the world than there are hotpot restaurants.’

  Even Commissioner Zhu, silent until now, cracked a smile. ‘She might have a point there, Cao.’ Margaret looked at him carefully, and saw more clearly the weasel in him that Lao Dai had pointed out.

  ‘Only the young in China eat burger,’ Cao said. ‘With age come wisdom. People eat hotpot for thousands of year. In a hundred year they will still be eating hotpot. I wonder how many McDonald’s restaurants there will be.’

  ‘So you don’t approve of American culture, then?’ Margaret said.

  ‘It is short-lived and worthless,’ replied Cao.

  ‘Is that why you smoke American cigarettes?’ Margaret nodded towards his pack of Phillip Morris lying on the table. ‘So your life will be equally short-lived and worthless.’

  There was a moment’s dangerous silence, before the Minister guffawed. ‘I think you’ve finally met your match, Cao,’ he said.

  Margaret caught Li’s eye, and felt pierced by the cold steel of his silent disapproval. She turned her most charming smile on the Deputy Commissioner and said, ‘Actually, I’m only joking, Deputy Cao. I love hotpot, too.’ And she turned the same smile back on Li, as if to say, You see, you can take me places without getting a red face.

  Through all the hubbub of voices in the Sichuan Room, above the sound of crockery as waiters brought food to tables, came the unmistakable warble of a cellphone. Deputy Minister Wei Peng tutted his disapproval. ‘Some people have no sense of propriety,’ he said. But within half a minute, the individual lacking that sense of propriety revealed himself to be Deputy Section Chief Qian. He was clearly embarrassed to interrupt proceedings at Li’s table, but determined nonetheless. His face was drained of colour.

  ‘Please accept my apologies for the interruption, Minister,’ he said, and then turned to Li. ‘I’m sorry, Chief, there’s been another murder.’

  Qian’s words struck him with the force of a fist in the solar plexus. He almost physically winced. ‘There can’t have been,’ he said.

  Qian shrugged. ‘Girl found dead. Strangled. Throat cut. Pathologist Wang seems to think it’s our man again.’

  ‘But that’s not how it’s supposed to be …’ Li had been so sure that the killer would stick to his mentor’s script. He felt sick. He had taken his eye off the case, relaxed for just a moment. And a girl had died. He stood up. ‘Gentlemen, ladies. I’m sorry, I have to go.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Li,’ Commissioner Zhu said sharply. ‘You have a whole section of detectives to handle something like this. You can’t walk out on your own banquet.’ He glanced with some embarrassment towards the Minister. But the Minister remained silent.

  Deputy Cao said, ‘Oh, let him go. He hasn’t learned yet that the art of management is delegation. He thinks he’s so good that no one else can do it better. Isn’t that right, Li?’

  Li calmly folded his napkin and laid it on the table. ‘Excuse me,’ was all he said, and he headed off through the tables with Qian to where Wu and several others were waiting for them at the door. Animated conversation became suddenly hushed at the sight of the guest of honour leaving the banquet.

  ‘Well,’ Margaret said brightly, breaking the tense silence around the table. ‘We’d better nominate someone else to toast or we’ll never get a drink tonight.’

  Chapter Five

  I

  The Gate of Heavenly Peace, and Changan Avenue as far as you could see east and west, was bathed in white and blue and green and pink light. The red tail lights of cars and buses and taxis shimmered off into the distance in long lines of sluggish traffic. Qian wound down the window and clamped a blue-flashing magnetic light on the roof of the Jeep, then dropped down a gear and accelerated across six lanes of vehicles to head west.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Li swivelled in surprise in the passenger seat.

  ‘She was found at the Millennium Monument, Chief.’ Qian glanced across at him. Wu and Detective Sang sat mute in the back seat.

  Li felt something close to relief. ‘It can’t have been the Ripper, then.’ Tagging the Beijing killer as the ‘Ripper’ had been completely unconscious.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because all the other murders have been in the same area of Jianguomen. Just like Jack the Ripper killed all his victims in the same square mile of London.’ He knew it hadn’t felt right. ‘And today’s Monday. He’s only ever killed at the weekend. And, anyway, his next victim’s not due for another six weeks.’

  Wu leaned forward and said, ‘Everything else fits, though, Chief. The strangulation, the cutting of the throat …’ He chewed furiously on his gum. ‘And I was really looking forward to that banquet, too.’

  They turned off Fuxing Avenue after Sanlihi Road, heading north and then west again, drifting past the floodlit Ministry of Defence building in its restricted military zone, and next to it the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution, the centrepiece of which rose in three tiers to a spire topped by a star in a circle. To their right, Yuyuantan Park lay brooding in darkness, west of the canal where only hours earlier Li and Lao Dai had discussed the murders in the last light of the day. They were less than a mile from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

  A Dali-esque melting clock above the gate to the Millennium Park told them that it was nearly nine-thirty. Towering above it, the Millennium monument was a huge rotating stone sundial at the top of a broad sweep of steps leading to a circular terrace. The dial was casting its shadows in several conflicting directions, confused by the floodlights now illuminating the crime scene at its base. Its arm was pointing due south, down the length of Yangfangdian Lu to the floodlit spectre of the Beijing West Railway station some two kilometres away. The lights of the multi-storey blocks which lined the avenue, reflected on the two-hundred-and-seventy-metre-long waterway, beneath which five thousand years of Chinese history was carved in bronze plates. It was an impressive vista. And for some poor girl, Li reflected as he pushed through the gate, her last sight on earth. Police and forensics vehicles were pulled into the kerbside at odd angles, and a group of uniformed officers stood stamping and smoking on the causeway just inside the gate. This was not an area dense in housing or nightlife, so only a small crowd of curious spectators had gathered. The uniforms saluted as Li and the other detectives from Section One arrived. There was a young, grey-uniformed security guard amongst them. Beneath a black-p
eaked cap, he had a fresh face reddened by the icy wind. He wore leather boots and a long grey greatcoat, its black collar pulled up around his cheeks, a red band with yellow characters wound around his left arm. Li stopped and asked him, ‘When does this place normally get locked up?’

  ‘By six o’clock, Chief,’ the security guard said. ‘Or whenever it gets dark. Whichever comes first. We always clear people out when the light starts to go.’ He shuffled his feet and slapped leather-clad gloves together to keep his hands warm.

  ‘What time did you close the gates tonight?’

  ‘It was about half past five.’

  ‘Did you check to see if there was anyone still inside?’

  ‘No, Chief. People are always in a big hurry to get out when we start closing up. No one would want to get locked in.’

  Li looked at the railing. It was only about a metre high. Easy enough for anyone to get in or out, whether the gate was locked or not. He nodded. ‘Where’s the body?’

  One of the uniforms pointed. ‘Right up the top, Chief, behind the arm of the dial.’

  ‘How on earth did anyone find it up there after the place was closed up?’

  ‘It was me, Chief.’ It was the young security guard again. His lips were almost blue with the cold. ‘We do shifts here. Check round the perimeter once every hour or so.’

  ‘Why?’ Li couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to guard an empty park.

  ‘There’s a lot of valuable stuff in the museum, Chief.’

  ‘Okay. Go on.’

  ‘Well, I checked back here about eight o’clock this evening. That’s when I saw the blood.’ He waved his hand towards where a section of the concourse and the railing had been taped off. Li walked towards it and the security guard followed, stamping his feet. ‘I wasn’t sure what it was at first. I thought maybe it was paint. I don’t know, some kind of vandalism. But I quickly figured out it was blood.’ He fumbled with his gloves to take out and light a cigarette. As an afterthought, he offered one to Li. Li shook his head.

  A trail of blood led from the foot of the steps to the railing, where it was smeared all over the chrome. Someone covered in quite a lot of it had clearly clambered over the railing and on to the sidewalk. Li followed the trail with his eyes, but it stopped at the side of the road after four or five metres. Perhaps the killer had got into a car parked there. After all, he could hardly have wandered the streets covered in blood without attracting some attention.

  Li said, ‘You say you check the perimeter every hour. So you didn’t see any blood here at seven?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation before the security guard said, ‘No, Chief.’

  Li fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘I don’t want any bullshit, son. It’s important for establishing time of death.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t check the perimeter at seven, did you?’

  Li could almost see the blood draining from the boy’s face.

  ‘No, Chief.’ He shrugged, trying to dismiss his confession as if it were nothing. ‘When it’s cold like this … well, sometimes it’s more than an hour.’

  Li said, ‘I don’t care why, I just want the facts. You weren’t here between locking up at five-thirty and checking the perimeter at eight, is that right.’

  The boy nodded and couldn’t meet Li’s eye. ‘Yes, Chief.’

  So the girl had been killed sometime in that two-and-a-half-hour window. ‘And you followed the blood up the steps?’

  The guard nodded, anxious to make up for his shortcomings. ‘Yes, Chief. There’s a lot more of it up there. It led me right to her. She’s lying at the base of the arm, behind it, about three steps down from the top.’

  ‘You didn’t touch her?’

  ‘I did not.’ The boy seemed to shudder at the thought. ‘You could see her throat had been cut. There was a big pool of blood under her head. I could see in the beam of my flashlight that it was already drying. There’s no way she was still alive.’

  Li flicked his head at Wu. ‘Get a statement off him. Anything he can remember out of the ordinary before he locked up. Anyone unusual. Just anyone he can remember at all.’ He nodded to Qian and Sang and they started the long climb up the steps. Off to their left, lights blazed in the windows of the China Central TV Media Centre, and Li thought that it probably wouldn’t be long before they woke up to the fact that there was a murder on their doorstep. If this had been the United States, he knew, the street would already be jammed with TV trucks and satellite dishes and newsmen clamouring for information. He wondered how long it would be before China went that way, too. It was not a prospect he relished, and he had to wonder at the apparently limitless appetite of the media and the public for the gory details of man’s capacity for inhumanity to man. Perhaps if they had witnessed some of what he had seen, that appetite might be somewhat diminished.

  About two-thirds of the way up, the entrance to the museum was railed off in darkness, and by the time they reached the circle of the dial, immediately below the long, tapering arm that reached into the night sky, all three detectives were puffing for air. What breath they had left was whipped from their mouths by the wind that blew fiercely up here, bitter and cutting. Flights of steps rising past either side of the circle led right to the top, where a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree sweep of chrome railing gave on to an extraordinary view of the city skyline to the north, all the way to the Mountain of Heavenly Longevity and the Yanshan and Taihang mountain ranges. The same TV tower he had looked at catching the sun that afternoon from the windows of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was now a silver-lit arrow against the black of the sky.

  A cluster of figures was gathered around the base of the sundial arm. Lights on stands rattled and shook in the ferocity of the wind. The tape which marked off the trail of blood all the way up from the causeway below was in danger of blowing away. Frail stands shifted and scraped across the concrete. Forensics men in tyvek suits, like ghosts, combed the steps for evidence traces. A small group of men crouched around the body. As Li and the others approached, Elvis stood up, his quiff flying about his head, ruined by the wind. They had to shout to make themselves heard above the noise of it.

  ‘Who is she?’ Li shouted.

  ‘Don’t know, Chief. We haven’t moved the body yet. And there doesn’t seem to be a purse. The pathologist’s still examining her.’ His scarf flapped into his mouth and he had to pull it free. ‘But it’s the same MO. Strangled, but not dead when he cut the throat. Which is why there’s so much blood. Left to right, same as always.’

  Wang stood up behind Elvis and turned to see Li standing there. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The hero’s return. I thought you were busy banqueting tonight.’

  ‘I lost my appetite.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Though this one’s not quite as messy.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s the same killer?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt, Chief. I read the note you got this afternoon.’ He jerked his head over his shoulder towards the body lying behind him. ‘He’s cut off her ears. Just like he said he would.’

  Li was stunned. ‘You’re kidding.’

  Wang shrugged. ‘That’s all, though. Apart from cutting her throat, he’s left the rest of her intact. One thing different – he made a bit of a mess of it this time. Severed both carotids and got blood all over himself. You’d better take a look.’

  He moved aside and Li took a step down into the light to look at the body. She was wearing a long, dark coat buttoned up to above the breast. There were calfskin gloves on her hands which lay open at her sides. Her legs were twisted sideways beneath the coat, one lying across the other, and Li could see the bottom of her dark pinstriped trousers above chunky-heeled shoes. The gash in her neck was semicircular and very deep, like a wide, dark smile. Her head was lying at an angle, to the left side, but because the hair was cut so short, the gash on the right side of her head where her ear had been was only too apparent. Li was in shock, and it was several moments before he was able to conscio
usly reason why. He put out a hand and found Qian’s arm to steady himself.

  ‘Chief, are you okay?’ The concern in his deputy’s voice was clear, even although he was having to shout.

  She had been so full of life, and charm and charisma. A smile that would have broken most men’s hearts. Doe-eyes that looked so deeply into yours you felt almost naked.

  ‘He’s broken the pattern in more ways than one,’ Li said, but too quietly for Qian to hear.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Li turned towards him. ‘She’s no prostitute, Qian.’

  Qian was amazed. ‘You know her?’

  Li nodded. ‘I met her this afternoon. She’s a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.’

  He looked back at her fine features spattered with blood. Open eyes staring into oblivion, lips slightly parted, the delicate line of her jaw tracing a shadow to the bloody hole in the side of her head. Short hair gelled into spikes, and he remembered with a dreadful sense of guilt that last look she had given him. What had seemed, unaccountably, like an appeal for help. To which he had failed to respond.

  He turned away, filled with confusion and guilt. Lynn Pan lay dead beneath the Millennium Monument, and he knew that somehow it was his fault.

  ‘Hey, Chief …’ It was one of the forensic ghosts. He was holding up a clear plastic evidence bag, and had to grab the bottom end of it to stop it flapping about in the wind. ‘It’s him, okay.’ And Li saw, in the bag, the unsmoked end of a brown Russian cheroot.

  Li looked at the footprints in the blood, and the trail of it leading away down the steps. The force of it spurting from the severed arteries must have taken the killer by surprise. Maybe he thought she was already dead. He must have been covered in the stuff. It looked, too, as if he had lost his footing, stumbling through the blood pooling around the head. Perhaps removing the ears had been more difficult than he had anticipated. And yet it was all so uncharacteristic of the cold, calculated butchery practised upon the other victims. Then he had worked to a plan and a pattern, paying homage to his nineteenth-century English hero.