Chinese Whispers (The China Thrillers 6)

by Peter May

  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.’

  ‘They … they know,’ Cao almost whispered. ‘They know everything.’

  She ignored him and took a step closer. ‘I never knew for sure until I found blood on your shirt when that first girl was murdered. But, even then, it wasn’t until the third killing that I went into your study and found the book, and the cuttings taken from the personal ads. Prostitutes advertising their services. And then I knew.’ Margaret saw her lower lip tremble. ‘And still I did nothing.’ She turned to Margaret, tears running slowly down the parchment skin of her cheeks. ‘I am so ashamed. When I read the story in the paper of those terrible murders … I knew I was responsible. And that it had to stop.’

  Cao listened to her with a mouth half opened in disbelief And there was fear in his eyes. Margaret was certain that was what it was. He was afraid of her. She had always been stronger than him, driven him onwards and upwards, forced the agenda. But, in the end, his weakness had been greater than her strength.

  Somewhere from the streets below, they heard the sound of police sirens rising into the night, the squealing of tyres.

  ‘Let her go,’ Tie Ning said suddenly, and Cao flinched. ‘Let. Her. Go!’

  He would not meet her eye, but in sheepish acquiescence took his hand from Xinxin’s mouth and lowered the knife meekly from her neck. Xinxin emitted a long, mournful wail as she ran across the room into Margaret’s arms. Margaret held her tightly for just a few moments then forced her to break her grip. ‘Go!’ she said to her. ‘Get out of here. Now!’

  Xinxin was sobbing hysterically. ‘You come, too, Magret. You come, too.’

  Margaret took her roughly by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Go!’ she almost screamed at her. ‘Take the elevator and don’t stop until you are out of the building.’ Margaret pushed her towards the door and heard her feet slapping on the wooden floor as she ran wailing along the hallway and down the stairs. Margaret would not leave without the babies.

  Tie Ning turned to her. ‘You go, too.’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘We’ll wait here together until the police arrive.’

  Tie Ning shook her head sadly. ‘There will be no police.’ She snatched the knife from Margaret’s hand and in five short strides had crossed the study to the window. Cao sat frozen in fear and disbelief as she swung it viciously across her body from left to right and his neck opened up in a wide, black smile. Blood spurted from severed arteries and gurgled in his open windpipe. He dropped his knife and his hands went to his neck, scrabbling at the wound as if somehow they could keep the blood in.

  Tie Ning stood above him watching, as the life ebbed out of him in moments. Fear of her, fear of death, fear of whatever lay beyond, was clear in his eyes. He slithered from the chair on to the floor, and it ran away on its castors to bump into what had once been Lyang’s desk. His blood pooled around him on the polished floor.

  She turned, her back to the window, silhouetted against floor to ceiling glass giving on to the magnificent panorama of Beijing beyond. And still more sirens sounded in the night. Margaret saw blood running along the blade of the knife as Tie Ning raised it from her side. ‘I am sorry,’ she said.

  III

  There were several police cars in the street out front, officers streaming out and into the main lobby. Wu pulled the wheel of his car sharp left and they cut through a side street at the west end of the complex to turn into the street at the back of the towers, opposite a double-storey red and gold restaurant, deserted now and shrouded in darkness. There were three other police vehicles here already. The rear exit from the north-west tower provided the most direct access.

  As Wu pulled up at the kerb, several officers gathering on the sidewalk looked up suddenly, and Li heard one of them swearing. He peered up through the passenger window in time to see what looked like a giant bird swooping down on them from above. He barely had time to register the fact that it was not a bird, but a human being, arms and legs extended, a coat opened out like the wings of an eagle, before it smashed on to the hood of the Santana. The car lurched sickeningly, and blood immediately spattered across the windscreen, obscuring their view. As he jumped out of the passenger side, Li could hear Wu cursing in shock and disbelief. One of the officers shouted, ‘It’s a woman!’ And Li’s heart seemed to freeze in his chest. He almost couldn’t look. Tiny fragments of glass showered on them like rain.

  As he turned, he saw silver hair and wide open staring eyes. Wu was at the other side of the car. ‘Shit, Chief,’ he said. ‘It’s Cao Xu’s wife.’

  A police radio was crackling in the cold night air. One of the officers said, ‘They found the security guard. Someone cut his throat.’

  Li vaulted up the steps to the exit door from the north-west tower and kicked it until the glass shattered and the door burst inwards. He skidded across the lobby through the broken glass as the doors of the elevator parted to reveal a small child standing there in the light. It took him a moment to realise it was Xinxin. She ran to him, howling, and he swung her up in his arms, holding her so tightly she almost couldn’t breath.

  ‘Where’s Margaret?’ he said.

  ‘She’s still upstairs.’ She fought to draw breath against the sobs that were stealing it from her. ‘Uncle Yan, a man tried to cut my throat …’

  Li turned to the officers running in behind him. ‘Someone get her a medic, fast.’ He thrust her into the arms of a young uniformed policeman, and slipped into the lift just before the doors slid shut.
He heard her call his name as he punched button number twenty-three, and the lift started its high speed ascent.

  Curious residents were up and about now, coming out of their apartments into the hallway on floor twenty-three, wrapped in dressing gowns, scratching their heads. Li shouted at them to get out of the way and ran the length of the hall to the open door of the Harts’ apartment. ‘Margaret!’ He screamed her name into the darkness, and to his intense relief he heard her voice call back from somewhere upstairs.

  He strode up the stairway into the top hall and saw the door of the study lying open. Margaret was sitting on the settee cradling the still sleeping Li Jon in her arms. ‘Thank God,’ he whispered, offering thanks to whatever deity it was that had watched over her, even if it was not one he believed in.

  As he came into the room, she laid the baby carefully back among the cushions and let him take her in his arms, enveloping her, absorbing her, so that they were almost one. He glanced across the room and saw Cao lying in his own blood, twisted, half-propped against the remains of the window, throat and mouth gaping. The freezing November night blew in through the jagged shards of glass that framed the view to the north. ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘Lyang’s dead.’ He shut his eyes in despair. ‘Cao’s wife killed him, then she went through the window.’ Margaret looked up at him. ‘She was the one who burned down the orphanage. She was the one who knew the real Cao Xu. She was one of the orphans.’

  He kissed her forehead. ‘It’s over, Margaret,’ he said. ‘It’s all over.’

  She let him press her head gently into his chest. ‘Li Yan,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. ‘Who was he? Who was he really?’

  Li looked over at the bloody remains of the Deputy Police Commissioner. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Like Jack the Ripper, we probably never will.’ He shook his head. ‘Chances are we might only ever know him by the name he gave himself. The Beijing Ripper.’