The Killing Room

by Peter May

  She found herself looking at a photograph on screen of a young woman with short-cut fair hair. For a disconcerting moment, the face seemed uncannily familiar, before she realised with a start that she was looking at herself. She sat bolt upright, heart pounding. It was her all right. A few years younger, though. A stock photograph taken at the time she assisted on the autopsies at Waco. The TV announcer was saying, “. . . American pathologist, Margaret Campbell. The authorities in Shanghai have, this morning, taken the unusual step of issuing a Press Release announcing the invitation. Dr. Campbell, who has worked previously with police in the Chinese capital of Beijing, grabbed headlines worldwide eighteen months ago when she issued a warning on the Internet about genetically contaminated rice. Latest reports from Shanghai, where it is now nine in the evening, suggest that the body count has risen to eighteen.” The report switched from news to weather, and Margaret sat very still on the bed, her heart pounding. She was confused, disorientated. From somewhere in the house came the distant ringing of a telephone. Why would the authorities in Shanghai ask for her help? She didn’t know anyone there.

  Then she was struck by a thought. E-mail. In the last few months, she had introduced Li to the delights of e-mail as a fast and direct means of communication. He had written to her almost every day since she left to go to her father’s funeral. She leapt out of bed and quickly crossed the room to the dresser where she had set up her iBook laptop computer. She wakened it out of sleep mode and went on-line. Her e-mail software scanned her electronic mailbox before downloading “one of one,” and a soft female voice told her she had mail. She double-clicked on an e-mail titled Autopsies. It was from Li.

  There was a knock at her bedroom door and her mother entered in her housecoat. “Margaret, did you know you’re on television? Diane just phoned to say she’d seen your picture.”

  Margaret was scanning Li’s e-mail with increasing excitement and waved her mother to be quiet. But her mother was not to be put off. She advanced into the room.

  “For God’s sake what are you doing, Margaret? Why are they running your picture on television?” Margaret wheeled around and her mother frowned at her. “For Heaven’s sake cover yourself up.”

  Margaret realised she was stark naked, and was immediately embarrassed in front of her mother. She snatched her robe and pulled it on. “I’m going back to China,” she said.

  “Did I ever think you were going to do anything else?”

  “Frankly, Mom, I don’t care what you thought. I hadn’t made any decisions about my future. Until now. They want me to do the autopsies on those bodies they found in Shanghai.”

  Her mother’s mouth curled in distaste. “I’ll never understand you, Margaret. I never have.”

  “And you never will.” Margaret paused. “Mom . . . I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” her mother said coldly. “I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.” She turned to go, but stopped at the door. “And when is it you intend leaving? Just so I can be sure the maid has your laundry ready.”

  “This afternoon,” Margaret said, and she thought she detected a reaction, like a stoic response to a slap when you don’t want to show how much it has hurt. And she wondered what her mother had expected, why she had talked David into trying to persuade her to stay. Surely she hadn’t thought some kind of reconciliation was possible after all these years of dislocation? And yet, she saw the hurt in her mother’s eyes, and for a moment had an urge to cross the bedroom and throw her arms around her and just hold her, as if that could somehow wipe away all the cruel words, the barbs and the battles. But she didn’t do anything, and her mother turned and walked out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Margaret turned back to the computer and re-read Li’s e-mail, more slowly this time. He signed off, as he always did, with three simple words. I love you.

  III

  Mei-Ling steered Li through the crowds that thronged the narrow streets leading to the heart of the Chinese old town, streets that were alive with traders selling all manner of cooked and cold foods from barrows and braziers, street vendors trading in everything from chopsticks to walking sticks, silks to silverware. Shiny wet cobbled streets ran off to left and right, lit by neon strips and long slabs of bright yellow light flooding out from dozens of shop fronts. Banners and lanterns waved in the breeze. They passed a window where two women in white coats and chef’s hats were making dumplings, folding tasty nuts of spiced minced meat into rolled-out circles of dough for steaming. A crowd was gathered to watch them, hungry eyes following every move.

  “This was all slum land until just a few years ago,” Mei-Ling said. “They’ve spent a fortune restoring it.” A narrow tunnel ran off an alleyway, and beyond it Li saw the lights of a Buddhist temple, incense burning at the altar, saffron-robed monks moving about in the dull light of an interior room.

  The street opened out into a packed square, the four-storeyed Green Wave restaurant dominating the far side and looming over the five-sided Huxinting teahouse which sat in the middle of a rectangular lake, bounded on one side by the walls of the ancient Yu gardens. Every sweep of curling eave was outlined in yellow neon against a black night sky. The teahouse was packed, hundreds of faces crammed together in lit windows, sipping tea and smoking and watching the crowds outside. A zigzagging bridge crossed the water to its main entrance. “The bridge of nine turnings,” Mei-Ling said. “To keep out the evil spirits. Apparently they can’t turn corners.” She laughed, and Li was affected by her enthusiasm.

  “Shanghai your home town?” he asked.

  “Is it that obvious?” Her eyes sparkled in the flickering neon light.

  “There’s a pride you only ever take in showing off the place you come from.”

  “Actually my family come from Hangzhou, which is a couple of hours away. We have a saying, maybe you know it. Above there is Heaven, and on earth there is Hangzhou and Suzhou. But I was born right here in Shanghai and it’s my idea of heaven. I wouldn’t ever want to leave it.” She smiled. “Come on.” And she slipped her arm through his to lead him across the square. It was a completely natural and unselfconscious act, far too intimate for two people who had just met. She realised it almost immediately and withdrew her arm quickly, blushing and trying to pretend it had never happened. “I thought we’d eat at the Green Wave,” she said hurriedly to mask her discomfort. “If we can get a window seat on the third floor we’ll get a view out over the tearoom and the lake.”

  For Li, it had all happened so fast it was over almost before he realised, and he knew at once that it was an act of intimacy she was accustomed to indulging in with someone else, someone who, in a dangerous moment, she had mixed up with Li. What was more disconcerting to him, was the tiny frisson of pleasure it had given him.

  The third-floor salon was still busy, waitresses in traditional full-length qipao dresses flitting between pillars and among tables, feeding dish after dish on to Lazy Susans on banqueting tables, delivering plates of food and glasses of beer to more intimate tables of fours and twos. Mei-Ling acquired them a table by an open window with the view over the tearoom she had hoped for. Above the chattering at the tables, and the crowd out in the streets, the sound of running water filled the air from a fountain on the lake. Mei-Ling ordered for both of them, half a dozen dishes and half litres of Tsing Tao beer.

  “So what’s the story with your American pathologist?” she asked out of the blue.

  Li felt himself blushing. “What do you mean?”

  “You said you’d worked with her before.”

  “That’s right.” He wondered why he was being evasive.

  “Well, is it just a professional relationship . . . or is there something personal as well?”

  Li chose his words carefully. “I make a point of never letting my personal life intrude on my job.”

  She laughed. “Which doesn’t really answer my question.”

  He grinned. “So what would you say if I told you it was non
e of your business?”

  “I’d say you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes and failing miserably.”

  He accepted defeat then, nodding reluctantly. “Okay, so we have a relationship that isn’t exactly professional. But that had absolutely no bearing on my asking to have her brought into the investigation.”

  She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her cupped palms, smiling at him. “Pity.”

  “What is?”

  “The most attractive men are always taken.” But she didn’t give him time to dwell on this. “Is she pretty?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “I bet she’s got blonde hair and blue eyes.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because if a Chinese man is going to have a relationship with an American woman, he’s not going to pick one with black hair and brown eyes. China’s full of them already.”

  Li cocked an eyebrow. “You disapprove?”

  But she wouldn’t commit herself. “Each to his own,” she said, and turned to gaze out of the window. “I suppose men don’t have the same choice these days, with so many fewer women to choose from in China.” Li was not sure if there was a barb in this. It was true that with the One Child Policy, and so many women aborting baby girls when ultrasound tests revealed the sex of the foetus, the male population was rising in direct relation to the fall in the numbers of females. He decided to switch the focus of their conversation.

  “That would work to your advantage then.”

  She looked at him.

  “How’s that?”

  “Puts women in demand. Particularly if they’re attractive, and intelligent as well.”

  She lowered her head and looked up at him with a demure smile. “You’re not very subtle, Mr. Li.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not something I’ve been accused of very often.” And she laughed, and he found himself laughing with her. When the laughter died there was a moment, a temporary lull between them, and he said, “So . . . who’s the lucky guy?”

  Her face clouded immediately and she gave a noncommittal shrug. “There isn’t one.” And he knew that there was pain here, a raw nerve that he had touched, and that he should proceed with care.

  “You live alone, then?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I live with my family.” He looked at her again, and tried to gauge her age. At least thirty, perhaps even thirty-five. She caught his look and smiled wryly. “Thirty-seven,” she said, as if she had read his mind. “And, no, I’ve never married. Never wanted to.”

  “Never wanted a kid?”

  “Sure. But I always thought I’d wait. Career first, then settle down and start a family.” She gazed off ruefully into the middle distance. “But, then, you turn around and you’re thirty. You turn around again and you’re thirty-five. Suddenly you see forty on the horizon, and you begin to think you’ve missed your chance.”

  “Thirty-seven isn’t so old,” Li said. “It’s never too late.”

  Her eyes flickered back to meet his. “Maybe not,” she said.

  The food arrived then. A plate of fried dumplings, brown and crispy with a soy and chilli dip. Spring rolls. A dish of chicken pieces in a very hot Sichuan sauce. Deep fried tofu in hot and sour sauce. Butterflied shrimp in batter. A bowl of noodles. They ate for a time in silence, chopsticks clicking. “This is great food,” Li said.

  “It is,” she said. “But next time I’ll take you somewhere better. Somewhere special. I just need more notice.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Home.” He paused with a shrimp caught in his chopsticks, midway between his plate and his mouth, which was open to receive it. She laughed, that strange braying laugh again that made him smile, too. “My father and my aunt own a restaurant,” she said. “Nothing much to look at. A small family place tucked up a back alley near the Hilton. We may not be very grand, but we’ve got posh neighbours, and the food’s fantastic.”

  Li popped the prawn in his mouth. “I’ll look forward to it.” He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Your father and your aunt?”

  “My mother’s dead. Has been for years. My dad’s sister never married.” She chuckled. “Maybe I take after her. Anyway, she’s a sort of surrogate mom. My dad’s brother’s boy is the chef, and a couple of local girls come in to chop the veg. It’s . . .” she searched for the right word to describe it, “cosy.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” Li said.

  They finished their beer and ordered more, and Mei-Ling said, “You never married either?”

  He shook his head. “I’m like you. The job always came first.”

  “But you’re younger than me.”

  “A little,” he conceded.

  “So did you never want a kid?”

  For a moment or two he avoided her eye. Then he said, “In a way I’ve got one.”

  She was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  “My sister’s kid, Xinxin. She’s only six. But when her mom got pregnant again, then found it was a boy, she left Xinxin on my doorstep—almost literally. And she went off into hiding somewhere to have the boy she’d always dreamed of.” He looked grim. “Sometimes I wonder if the One Child Policy doesn’t create as many problems as it solves. All those unwanted little girls. All those kids growing up without brothers or sisters. A whole generation with no aunts or uncles.”

  “What about Xinxin’s dad?”

  “He didn’t want to know. He’d wanted my sister to have an abortion, and when she ran off he just washed his hands of her and the kid.”

  “So you’re bringing up the kid on your own?” Mei-Ling was incredulous.

  He shrugged his frustration. “She stays in my apartment, but I have to make arrangements for someone to take her when I’m working, which can be all hours of the day or night.”

  “Who’s looking after her now?”

  Li said, “A friend. But it looks like I could be here for a while. So I’m going to have to try and make arrangements to bring her to Shanghai.”

  “Anything I can do to help . . .” She looked at him earnestly across the table, her sympathy written clearly on her face. “I mean it. I can get the department to fix things.” She put her hand over his, and he smiled.

  “Thanks.” And he gave her hand a small squeeze of gratitude. It felt small and warm and smooth, and he was aware suddenly of how dry his mouth was.

  Mei-Ling turned the Santana off the Bund into Yan’an Dong Road. The light show was over for the night, and the city looked very ordinary and dull under its pale yellow wash of sodium street lights. The river was extraordinarily black, a train of barges toiling upstream, its reflected lights scattering across the broken water. Mei-Ling drove west in the shadow of the viaduct road overhead before cutting left across the flow of traffic to pull up outside number 343, the Da Hu Hotel, yellow paint peeling off seven floors of anonymous concrete. Above them, traffic roared past on the viaduct no more than six feet from the windows of the hotel’s second floor. She smiled apologetically at Li in the passenger seat. “Cheap and cheerful,” she said. “The best the department has to offer visiting cops. I’m sorry.”

  Li shrugged. “It’s somewhere to lay my head.”

  There was an awkward moment between them then, when neither of them knew how to say goodnight. Finally she said, “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  He said, “Thanks for tonight.”

  She said, “Shanghai hospitality. If I was to wait for a Beijinger to put his hand in his pocket I could grow old in the process.” She reached across, and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. He moved quickly to avoid her, a knee-jerk reaction.

  She laughed and said, “Hey, what are you so jumpy about?” And she unlocked the door to swing it open. “I don’t usually attack men the day I meet them. Normally I wait till day two.”

  Li grinned stupidly, feeling very foolish. “I’d better wear my protective gear tomorrow, then.”

  She said
, “You’d better believe it. Seven a.m. Sharp.”

  He slammed the door shut when he got out and went round to retrieve his bag from the trunk. She peeped the horn and pulled away with a squeal of tyres. He watched the car go for a minute, then walked under the overhang of the building to the hotel entrance, a revolving door of shiny chrome and glass. Inside, a girl in black at reception sat beneath a row of clocks showing the time around the world and watched unsmiling as he filled in his registration card.

  His room was on the third floor, looking directly on to the traffic on the viaduct. He almost felt he could reach out and touch it. The room was basic but clean. A net curtain hung in the window. He pulled it aside and slid the window open and let in the cold night air and the growling of the traffic. The circular tower of the Agricultural Bank of China, still lit, punctured the sky. Out there, in this city of fourteen million, people made love and slept and ate and worked and died. He wondered how many felt as lonely and confused as he felt right now. He thought of Margaret arriving tomorrow, of those poor women in their collective grave, of Xinxin, and of the dangerous feelings that Mei-Ling had aroused. And he felt a wave of fatigue wash over him.

  He slid the window closed, undressed and slipped between the cool starched sheets and drifted quickly away into a dark, dreamless sleep, the only escape he ever had from life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I

  Margaret was too tired to be excited. She had already crossed at least two timezones and an international dateline, and was not sure if she was arriving tomorrow or yesterday.