The Killing Room

by Peter May

  She looked at him curiously, and for a moment that curiosity made her forget about herself. “What are you doing here, Jack?” she said. “What are you running away from?”

  He laughed. “Oh, I’m not running away from anything. I wish I could, but I wouldn’t know where to run to.”

  “What about home?”

  “This is it. Shanghai. That’s home. I don’t have another one.”

  She frowned. “How come?”

  “I guess, like Springsteen says, I was born in the USA.” He chuckled. “But I never spent much time there. My folks moved around the world. Africa, Middle-East, South-East Asia. My old man was in the ball-bearing business. You’d be amazed how much money there is in ball-bearings. Anyway, I managed to see the inside of just about every American school on every continent you can think of. Just long enough to get to know the name of the kid at the next desk, and then off again. And then my dad goes and dies on us. In Thailand. And my mom gets offered this job in Shanghai. So she flies him back to the US, puts him in the ground in Connecticut somewhere, and then heads for Shanghai. I’ve spent more of my life here than anywhere else in the world.”

  “How did you get into journalism?”

  “Oh, that was an accident. Amazing really how little of our lives we plan for ourselves.” He lit a cigarette. Down below them, at the International Passenger Terminal, the Japanese cruise liner was pulling out into the deep navigation channel, mid-stream. It looked like a floating Christmas tree as it headed slowly downriver towards the estuary. Geller’s eyes seemed fixed on it for several moments before he said, “My mom met this Chinese guy here. Got married again. I’m in my mid-teens and probably a bit difficult, so they send me off to the States to go to college.” He shook his head, lost in some distant memory. “I hated it. What was I supposed to do there? I didn’t know anyone. Didn’t have any friends. No family—at least, not any that I knew. And then, when I finish college, I see this one-year course in journalism advertised in Boston. I sail through it. For the first time in my life somebody actually thought I might be good at something. I spoke fluent Chinese. So after a couple of years as a cub on the Globe, it wasn’t hard to get a job stringing back here for a whole bunch of US publications. It was like coming home. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “What about your mom. Is she still here?”

  The brightness in his eyes dulled and he lowered his head. “She’s dead,” he said. “So’s my stepdad. Just little ol’ me left.” He looked up and forced a smile. “Goddamn it,” he said. “I could’ve wished for better company.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Margaret said. “I’m quite enjoying it.”

  He looked at her very seriously for a moment. “I come with a lot of baggage,” he said.

  “Don’t we all.” She raised her glass. “To misfits the world over,” she said.

  He grinned and chinked her glass, and they both sipped from the large conical glasses. “So listen,” he said. “You want to give the kid a treat? Put one over on the Chinese chick?”

  Margaret grinned and shook her head. “I’d be happy just to make Xinxin happy.”

  “Then take her to Tiantan Traffic Park.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  He leaned forward, demonstrating with his hands, a boyish enthusiasm about him. “It’s a great place. Out on the west side. You’d never know it was there if you didn’t know it was there—if you know what I mean?”

  She smiled. “I think so.”

  “It’s just a small park, but it’s laid out with miniature roads and sidewalks and replicas of famous buildings in Shanghai. There are traffic lights at the intersections, and little overhead bridges. Folks take their kids there to teach them the rules of the road from an early age. They rent little battery-powered automobiles, and the kids drive them around, with mom or dad sitting in. I tell you, the kids love it. They just love it.”

  “Sounds neat,” Margaret said, and it never occurred to her to ask him how he knew about it.

  The maître d’ came to tell them that their table was ready, and they followed him through to a large dining room with windows down one side and an elaborate buffet down the other. He seated them at a table by the window, and they saw the Japanese cruise liner just before it disappeared round the curve in the river beyond the Yangpu Bridge. Margaret put her hand over his. “Thank you for this,” she said. “You don’t know how much I needed it.”

  He shrugged, and was suddenly self-conscious. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Just don’t ever forget why, Margaret.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You said it yourself the other day. You’re just work to me.”

  Margaret felt unaccountably disappointed. “I thought maybe I’d become a little more than that.”

  Geller said, “Even if you had, I couldn’t allow that to get in the way.” And she saw that he was absolutely serious, and felt the first stirrings of anger with him.

  “So it’s all right for you to bring your work to the dinner table.” She snorted. “You wouldn’t be very happy if I did.”

  “That’s exactly what I want you to do, Margaret,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I want to know what’s happening, what progress you’re making with your investigation. You know that.”

  She wondered why she should feel such a sense of betrayal. After all, he had made it clear from the start it was what he wanted. But she really did think they had moved on from there. “And you think you can buy my confidence with dinner and a vodka martini?”

  He made the smallest of shrugs. Perhaps it was an apology. “It’s important to me, Margaret.” And there was a strange intensity about him.

  A waiter was endeavouring to spread a starched white napkin in Margaret’s lap. She took it from him and folded it on the table. She sighed and said, “Well, I’m sorry, Jack, I don’t come that cheap.” She stood up. “But thanks for the offer.” And she turned and made her way back through to the bar and out to the elevators, leaving Geller sitting on his own, a forlorn figure with a medium rare steak in front of him, a piece of roast salmon on the plate opposite, and a very empty feeling inside.

  III

  “Jiang Baofu? The medical student?” Margaret was taken aback. “You don’t really believe he did it?”

  Nine small tables had been pushed together to make one long one in the centre of the room. Margaret sat at one side of it facing Li and Mei-Ling on the other. The skulls of murder and suicide victims watched them from behind the glass doors of a display cabinet at one end of the room. At the opposite end, pieces of human organs hung suspended in jars of preservative: a section of stomach showing the hole where a knife had entered; a bullet hole in a lung. Along the wall facing the window hung a profusion of velvet banners, awards made for police bravery and success in criminal detection.

  Li said, “Do you not think he would be capable of performing these procedures?” Jiang had arrived back at his apartment the previous night, as forensics were completing their search of the place. He had been arrested and spent the night in custody and was now sitting in an interview room downstairs awaiting interrogation.

  “Fifth year at med school? Specialising in surgery? He would certainly have the skills. What’s his motive?”

  “Ah . . .” Mei-Ling said, “the American obsession with motive.”

  “Okay,” Margaret said levelly, determined not to be ruffled, “what evidence do you have against him? Other than the fact that he’s a bit creepy and was the night watchman at the building site.”

  “Everything we have learned about him would lead us to believe that Jiang may be . . . mmm . . .” Mei-Ling searched for the right word, “unbalanced. You said yourself we should be looking for a psycho surgeon.” She said the words with a tone.

  Margaret raised a sceptical eyebrow. “The fact that he might be a little odd hardly constitutes evidence. And, I mean, the collection of evidence, that’s the Chinese way, isn’t it? The painstaking piecing together of th
e facts, bit by bit. Surely you must have some if you’ve arrested him?”

  Li said, “His medical background, the testimony of his tutors, his unique access to the site where the bodies were found—all of these things justify our bringing him in for questioning.”

  “Ah, yes,” Margaret said. “‘Helping the police with their inquiries.’ That’s what the British police say when they’re struggling for evidence, isn’t it?” She clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “So what now? Beat a confession out of him? That how it goes? I mean, why bother with the autopsies? Why bother trying to identify the victims when you can just pull someone off the street and pin a confession on their chest?” She knew she was being unreasonable, but she was enjoying herself. Enjoying their discomfort. “That’s what the Chinese police are always being accused of, isn’t it?” She paused for effect. “So is it true?”

  Li kept his anger buttoned down and, after a very long moment of tense silence, said coldly, “Perhaps you would like to tell us what you discovered in Beijing.”

  “Ah, so now back to the evidence,” Margaret said brightly, opening the file in front of her. “Good. Makes me think there might be some point in my being here after all.”

  “And you have given us so very much to go on so far,” Mei-Ling said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

  Margaret looked at her steadily. “I can only tell you what’s there, Miss Nien,” she said. “I can’t make it up for your convenience. Although I have been able to provide you with sufficient evidence to identify two of the victims.”

  “Three,” Li said. Margaret looked at him for elucidation. “The girl with the stress fractures in her foot turned out to be an acrobat. She went missing three months ago.”

  “Well, that’s progress. And, of course, there was also the identification made through fingerprints,” Margaret said, and she turned back to her notes. “I’ll give you a full report in due course, but you can take it as read that the girl in Beijing was murdered by the same person who killed the girls in Shanghai. The evidence is overwhelming, from the entry cut to the toxicology.”

  “But there are still major differences,” Li said.

  Margaret said, “Yes, there are. Not all of the organs were removed, and those that were, were found with the body.”

  “Can you explain that?” Mei-Ling asked.

  Margaret shook her head. “No. I can only give you the facts, and you can draw your own conclusions.” She paused. “The girl was a junkie, a heroin addict. One of several things your pathologist missed. I believe the killer only discovered this after he had removed the heart. And it was at that point that he appears to have abandoned the procedure.”

  Li frowned, forgetting for the moment the animosity around the table. “Why would discovering she was a junkie change anything?”

  “Risk of infection,” Mei-Ling said suddenly. “She could have been infected with anything from hepatitis to AIDS.” She thought about it for a moment. “Which would make her organs unusable as well.”

  Margaret nodded acquiescence. “If you chose to believe that organ theft was the purpose of the exercise, yes.”

  Li said, “Tell me why it would not make sense to keep these girls alive to remove their organs. I mean, the organs would be fresher that way, would they not?”

  “Not if you killed the victims and removed the organs immediately,” Margaret said. “Keeping them alive would be a completely unnecessary complication.” She shook her head. “And, anyway, why would they only take the organs of women?”

  None of them had an answer to that. As the evidence accumulated, it made no more sense to them than when they had started collecting it. Mei-Ling said, “And no clues to her identity?”

  Margaret pulled the x-rays of the victim’s jaw from a large brown envelope. “Only her teeth,” she said, “and some pretty expensive gold foil restoration.”

  “We checked those out in Beijing,” Li said.

  “But not in Shanghai,” Margaret said. “Now we know the murders are connected, it’s quite possible the girl you found in Beijing came from here.” She slipped the x-rays back in the envelope and pushed it across the table to Mei-Ling. “Worth checking out?”

  Mei-Ling gave a curt nod, then glanced at Li. “I will put Dai on to it.” And she got up and left the room.

  In the silence that followed her departure, Li lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. Neither Li nor Margaret knew what to say. Margaret was already beginning to regret her petulance. She was driving herself remorselessly and uncontrollably on the road to self-destruction. Li had finally lost patience. And anger with Margaret was a good way of ameliorating his own sense of guilt. But still there were no words. It seemed to both of them then, sitting alone at that large table under the glare of naked fluorescent lamps and the sightless gaze of the yellowing skulls in the cabinet, that their relationship was finally over. And there was something inestimably sad about that, about the loss of the warmth and friendship and humour they had shared, the deep well of emotions that had sustained them for so long. Margaret wondered where these things went. How they could be, and then not be? Had she and Li just thrown them away? Or was it Margaret who had done the damage all on her own, with her petty jealousy and her fiery temper? She picked at a corner of her folder and could not bring herself to meet his eyes. It was extraordinary how articulate the silence between them was. Finally she said, “It looks like my involvement here is just about done. It’ll take me a couple of days to write up my reports, then . . .” Then what? She had no idea. She looked up, finally. “I’d like to spend some time with Xinxin.” Why? she wondered. To say goodbye?

  Li nodded. “Sure.”

  “I’ll pick her up from kindergarten then.”

  Li said, “I will let Mei-Ling know.”

  And Margaret felt a brief flare of anger. Why did everything need that woman’s approval? But she said nothing, and let the anger seep out of her. What was the point?

  “And maybe we should talk,” Li said.

  “About what?”

  He shrugged. “Things.” A pause. “Us.”

  Margaret wondered if there was any point in that either. “Let’s meet for a drink at my hotel, then. Around eight?” He nodded, and she said, “I’ll try and stay awake this time.”

  Jiang Baofu sat back in his chair, legs crossed and stretched out in front of him, picking bits of food from between his teeth with an old matchstick. He did not appear unduly concerned at his predicament. And when Li and Mei-Ling came in he made no effort to move. “Hey,” he said lazily. “What’s happening? Why am I here?”

  The two detectives drew up chairs on the opposite side of the table. Mei-Ling said with unexpected aggression, “We want some answers from you, you little shit!” Both Li and Jiang were taken aback. Jiang sat up abruptly.

  “What!”

  “And if we don’t get them,” Mei-Ling said, “then we’ll send you along for interrogation by the professionals.” She paused. “And you wouldn’t like that much.”

  “Hey,” Jiang protested, “all I did was go and spend a couple of nights at a friend’s place. So I didn’t tell Public Security. It’s not a crime, is it?”

  “Actually, yes,” Li said. “But we hadn’t thought of that one.”

  Jiang looked as if he wanted to rip his tongue from his mouth. Mei-Ling said, “You told the caretaker at your apartment block that you were going to visit a cousin.”

  “You don’t have a cousin,” Li said.

  “So?” Jiang was getting defensive. “It’s none of her fucking business where I go.”

  “So why tell her anything at all?” This from Li.

  Mei-Ling followed up without waiting for an answer. “Why did you kill them, Jiang? Kicks? Profit? Practice?”

  For a moment there was panic in Jiang’s rabbit eyes. “Me? I didn’t kill them! I didn’t kill anybody. I swear on the grave of my ancestors. Hey, you can’t seriously believe I did it?” And even as he said it, it seemed to strike him as ridi
culous, and he laughed. “Come on, guys. This is crazy. You can’t have any evidence against me, ’cos there isn’t any.”

  Which was true. A preliminary report from forensics had turned up nothing out of the ordinary in Jiang’s apartment. In fact, the chief forensics officer had been moved to comment on how abnormally clean, almost sterile, the place had been. Margaret’s words came back to haunt Li. The fact that he might be a little odd hardly constitutes evidence. And the words of his uncle came back to him, too. The answer always lies in the detail, Li Yan. The trouble was, they had virtually no detail to work with. They had established the identity of only four of the victims. The autopsies had revealed how the women had been murdered, but not why or when. There was nothing to link them, no common factor other than their sex. And beyond the disquieting coincidence of Jiang Baofu being the night watchman at the building site where the bodies were uncovered, there was absolutely nothing to link him to the murders. It didn’t matter that people thought he was weird, or that he was obsessed with the surgeon’s knife. There was no evidence.

  A lack of any response from the detectives seemed to give Jiang confidence. “So, are you going to let me go or what? I mean, I’m still happy to help. If you need to draft in any extra assistants at the mortuary, I’m your man.”

  Li felt almost as if he was laughing at them. There was something not right here, something about Jiang Baofu that didn’t quite figure. Li searched his mind furiously. He had already ordered bank records to be seized, employment and payment records to be obtained from Jiang’s various employers. He was convinced they would never account for Jiang’s apparent affluence. But the lumbering bureaucracy of state enterprises, and the reluctance of foreign companies to release records, meant that the process would take time. In the meantime there had to be something else, something they were missing. He ran back through the details in his head, and almost immediately tripped over a thought which he had tucked away for later scrutiny and then forgotten. He said suddenly, “What did you do last Spring Festival?”