The Killing Room

by Peter May

  Li did not think that anyone should profit from ill-health, but he knew better than to say so. Instead he said, “And what kind of medical care do you provide, exactly?”

  “Oh,” Cui said airily, “we can deal with anything from a broken toe to open heart surgery. We have a highly qualified and very experienced international team of doctors and nurses here. And if we don’t have the expertise in-house, we bring in consultants on a freelance basis.”

  “So the bulk of your patients are American, or European,” Mei-Ling said.

  Cui smiled and shook his head. “Actually no, Miss Nien. There are a number of North American or European joint-venture clinics in Shanghai which the Westerners seem to prefer. Perhaps they think that Chinese medicine only deals in acupuncture and tiger’s blood.” There was the merest hint of a bitter edge to his voice. “Surprisingly, perhaps, most of our customers are Japanese.” Li noticed his use of the word “customers” rather than “patients.” It was clear that to Cui medicine was a business and illness an opportunity to make money. Cui said, “Would you like to see our facilities?”

  Li had no desire to inspect the facilities. He disliked all things medical and had a morbid fear of hospitals, which perhaps owed more than a little to all the autopsies he had attended. But before he had a chance to decline the offer, Mei-Ling said, “Yes, we’d like that very much.” Li had forgotten that she had studied medicine for four years, but he was still a little surprised by her apparent interest.

  The clinic was on four floors, including a suite of rooms built into the roof, and a large basement which housed two operating theatres, as well as preparation and recovery rooms. A large elevator had been installed to take patients from operation in the basement to recovery in the attic, and all stops in between. There was a four-bed intensive care ward on the ground floor, as well as several luxurious single-bed rooms that made Li think more of a four-star hotel than a hospital. Each room had en-suite toilet facilities and satellite TV. Office and administration was on the first floor, with another four single-bed rooms. There were a further six bedrooms in the attic. “At any one time,” Cui said, “we can accommodate fourteen patients as well as our four intensive care beds.” But on their tour, Li had seen only a handful of patients. The clinic was far from full.

  “You don’t appear to be very busy,” he said. For some reason he had begun to take a singular dislike to Mr. Cui. He was altogether too smooth, too possessed.

  Cui laughed. “Good health is bad for business, I’m afraid.”

  No doubt, Li thought, the hundreds of thousands of abortions Cui carried out each year would subsidise any slump in business at his Shanghai World Clinic. He stretched out a hand to shake Cui’s. “Thank you very much, Mr. Cui, for your help. We’ll send an officer over to liaise with your staff.”

  Cui smiled beneficently, shaking both their hands. “Not at all, not at all. Anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  In the car, Mei-Ling looked at Li and said, “You don’t like our Mr. Cui very much, do you?”

  Li looked at her, surprised, then conceded, “No, I don’t. Access to health care used to be everyone’s right in this country, not just a privilege afforded to the wealthy.” He paused. “Was it that obvious?”

  “To me. But, then, I don’t like him that much either.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She shrugged. “I hate to find myself agreeing with Margaret Campbell.” She glanced at Li. “But much as I support the principle of the One Child Policy, it doesn’t feel right that someone should make money out of other people’s unhappiness.”

  And Li remembered Margaret’s bold words to Cui’s face, accusing him of profiting from other people’s misery. He had been shocked at the time, and angry. Now he remembered her bluntness almost fondly. Margaret had no sense of tact or diplomacy, but at least whatever she presented to the world came from the heart.

  Almost as if she had read his mind, Mei-Ling said, “If I were to make an educated guess, I’d say that at some time your Miss Campbell has had an abortion herself.”

  II

  Margaret was standing by the window in Li’s office when he and Mei-Ling got back to 803. Li stopped in the doorway, surprised for a moment to see her there. Her hair tumbled freely over her shoulders, catching the late morning sunshine that was squeezing in appearances between banks of dark, wallowing, low cloud. She was wearing khaki cargo pants over brown suede boots, and a yellow tee-shirt under a green waterproof jacket that was drawn in at the waist. There was a touch of red about her lips, and brown-pink around her eyes. She had a radiance about her that Li had not seen in a long time, and the sight of her kick-started a fluttering sensation in his stomach, and the faintest stirring in his loins. With the icy cold presence of Mei-Ling at his side he felt himself flush with embarrassment, as if she or Margaret could somehow read his feelings.

  “Hi,” Margaret said brightly. And she cocked her head, frowning slightly and giving Li an odd look. “You look like shit,” she said. “You couldn’t have had much sleep.”

  “I have not had any,” he said.

  “Poor thing,” Margaret smiled, although her tone suggested anything but sincerity. She rounded the desk. “Look, I know you two are busy . . .” She let that hang for a moment. “So I’ll not get under your feet. I just dropped by on my way to pick up Xinxin. I thought you might be interested to see this.” She lifted a sheet of paper off the desk and held it out to Li.

  He took it. “What is it?”

  “A fax from Dr. Wang in Beijing. He sent it to my hotel. I asked him to DNA-match the body parts of the girl in Beijing, just in case the pathologist who did the original autopsy got the visual matching wrong and we were really looking at pieces of two victims.”

  Li looked up at her, horrified by the thought that they could have got it so wrong. “Are you telling me they do not match?”

  “No, they match perfectly.”

  Li frowned. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “There’s no problem,” Margaret said. “It’s the girl’s HLA type that the DNA-matching threw up . . .”

  Mei-Ling took the sheet from Li and examined it. “DQ-alpha allele ‘1.3’?” She shook her head, nonplussed. “What is special about that?”

  “Wait a minute,” Li said. “What is DQ-alpha allele?”

  Mei-Ling said, “The HLA DQ-alpha gene is one of the markers on the DNA panel used to match body parts. Right?” She looked to Margaret for confirmation.

  “Something like that,” Margaret conceded. And then to Li, “An allele is a variant of any particular gene on a chromosome in your DNA. Some of them show statistical differences between races.”

  He said, “So what is significant about this ‘1.3’ allele?”

  “I don’t know about its significance,” Margaret said, “but it’s certainly unusual. In fact the HLA DQ-alpha allele ‘1.3’ is never found in the DNA of a Chinese.”

  Li was being very slow on the uptake. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

  Mei-Ling had the answer. “It means that your little hostess at the Black Rain Club was, in the doctrine of American political correctness, of mixed parentage. Or, as people used to say, a half-caste.” She looked at Margaret. “European? American?”

  “Impossible to say. But on the statistical balance of probability, it’s unlikely.”

  “Why?” Li asked.

  Margaret said, “I did a little checking on the Internet. That’s where I discovered that the ‘1.3’ is never found in Chinese—or South-East Asians for that matter. Hispanics have a pretty low incidence of it. Only about four-and-a-half per cent of blacks have it. Caucasians have the second highest frequency. But that’s still only eight-and-a-half per cent. So it’s pretty rare in any racial group. Strangely, the highest incidence—about twenty-two per cent—is found in Japanese. So the chances are her mom or her dad came from the Land of the Rising Sun.”

  Li started searching through the untidy piles of papers th
at were strewn across his desk.

  “What are you looking for?” Mei-Ling asked.

  Li said, “I asked Dai to dig out as much background on the Chai Rui girl as we had available from public records.” Fatigue was fraying his temper and his patience now. “Where the hell is it?”

  Mei-Ling said, “You’ve kept the guys pretty busy all morning, Li Yan.” She sighed. “I’ll speak to him.” And she picked up the phone.

  Margaret smiled at Li and put a hand lightly on his arm. “Try and get a break if you can,” she said, and this time he saw she meant it. “I’ll see you later.”

  Li had a very powerful desire, then, to kiss her and close his eyes and just hold her there. But all he said was, “Sure.”

  Margaret hesitated briefly, as if perhaps she had felt the same impulse, but then she turned and went out. He lit a cigarette and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, but only succeeded in making them burn. He blinked at Mei-Ling as she hung up the phone. “Well?”

  “Dai’s got the stuff on his desk. But you’ve got an appointment first.” He scowled, and she said, “The Commissioner of Police wants to see you in his office straight away.”

  The Commissioner of Police sat behind his desk, the crossed flags of the Republic on the wall behind him. There was nothing on the desk except for a telephone and a lamp. Not a pen or a pencil, not even so much as a scrap of paper. Its surface was polished to such a high shine that the Commissioner was almost perfectly reflected in it. He wore his official dark green uniform with two gold stripes at the bottom of each sleeve, and the gold, red and blue badge of the Ministry of Public Security on his left arm. His carefully trimmed receding hair, was brushed back from a round, heavy-jowled face. His hands were folded in front of him on the desk. He did not ask Li to sit, and Li stood uncomfortably to attention in the middle of the room. The Procurator General stood by the window, peering at Li over his round steel-rimmed reading glasses. He held a swatch of papers in his hand, but never once referred to them. He remained a mute witness to the proceedings.

  Even before the Commissioner opened his mouth, Li knew that he was going to talk about his Uncle Yifu. “I met your uncle on several occasions,” the Commissioner said, and Li sighed inwardly. “He was a very unusual man.”

  “Unusual?” This was unexpected.

  “He possessed the twin virtues of great intelligence and great humility.” He paused. “I understand that you were abusive to Section Chief Huang this morning and that you threatened to resign from this investigation.”

  Li said stiffly, “That is a matter of interpretation, Commissioner.”

  “And no doubt your interpretation is superior to that of Section Chief Huang?” There could be no doubting the sarcasm in the Commissioner’s tone.

  Li stayed cool. “No, Commissioner. Not superior, just different.”

  The Commissioner bristled. “The use of semantics as a means of deception is self-deluding,” he said sharply.

  “Should I pass that on to the Section Chief?” Li asked. In the silence that followed, the tension was thick enough to cut with a cleaver.

  Eventually the Commissioner, the tremble of anger in his voice, said, “It is a pity you did not inherit your uncle’s gift for humility.”

  “My uncle always said that the cock who hides his feathers will not win the hen,” Li said. And before the Commissioner could respond he looked at him very directly and said, “People are always telling me, Commissioner, what my uncle was and wasn’t. People who had met him ‘on several occasions.’ I lived with him for ten years. I think I know what my uncle was.”

  The Commissioner glowered at him. It was a defining moment. Li knew he had overstepped the mark, but he was determined to stand his ground. Then the Commissioner smiled. But it was a condescending smile, his way of saving face in the presence of the Procurator General. “At least, I see, you have inherited his native cunning.” Perhaps a truer insight into the Commissioner’s real view of Yifu’s humble origins. Li made no comment and waited patiently for the Commissioner to get to the point. Eventually he said, “Section Chief Huang advised you against the harassment of citizen Cui Feng. And yet you chose to ignore that advice.”

  “No, Commissioner. I sought Mr. Cui’s co-operation in gaining access to medical files that might help us throw light on the identity of the remaining victims.”

  “Not according to Mr. Cui.”

  This was a turn for which Li was caught entirely unprepared. “I . . . I don’t understand, Commissioner. Mr. Cui was very co-operative.”

  The Commissioner lifted his hands from the desk, and Li saw the patch of damp they had left on its polished surface. “Mr. Cui is a very influential figure in this city, Deputy Section Chief. Take your investigation along another track.”

  Li glanced from the Commissioner to the Procurator General and back again in disbelief. “Access to Cui’s files is vital to identifying those girls,” he said.

  “Find another way,” the Commissioner said. And before Li could reply, added, “That is not a request, Deputy Section Chief. That is an order.”

  Li dropped heavily into his chair and lit a cigarette. He breathed smoke like fire through his nostrils and looked at Mei-Ling, anger burning in his eyes. “I don’t fucking believe it? Do you believe it? We were as nice as nine kwai to Mr. I-have-powerful-friends Cui. And he goes accusing us of harassment!”

  “Not necessarily,” Mei-Ling said.

  Li frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there is a very thin dividing line between police, politics and power in this city. It might just be that someone up there’s worried that you go ruffling the wrong feathers.”

  “Huang?”

  “Well, you certainly ruffled his, and that won’t have helped. But I think it probably goes higher than that.” She put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath. “What you’re forgetting, Li Yan, is that this is a highly sensitive case. Money, politics, international investment, high-powered reputations. We have to steer a very careful course through them all. But you’re charging around taking on people you can’t hope to beat. People we need on side if we’re going to get through this.” She shook her head. “And when you first arrived, I thought you were smart. Don’t you know you should never fight a war you’re not sure of winning? Sunzi knew it two-and-a-half thousand years ago. You’ve still got a lot to learn.” She dropped a file on his desk. “That’s the stuff Dai dug up on the Black Rain girl. I’d better go and see if I can achieve a little damage limitation here so that we can get this investigation back on track.” Her superiority made Li feel like he had been petulant and immature.

  She left him sitting pulling contemplatively on his cigarette and feeling homesick for the icy winds from the Gobi Desert that would be blowing now through the streets of Beijing. Outside, the rain had started again. He hated this city, he decided. He did not feel like he was in China. It was some strange hybrid that owed more to the influence of the West than the East. He was uncertain of his footsteps here, for he did not know where it was safe to walk. And he hated the rain. He missed the bright, sharp, cold winter days in Beijing. He missed the sun, even when you couldn’t feel its warmth.

  Slowly a sense of defeat began to descend upon him. Gentle at first, but increasing in weight, until it was crushing. All the conflicting facts and contradictory evidence filled his thoughts. Nineteen women, cut open by a skilled surgeon who had gone to great lengths to keep them alive, only to kill them by cutting out their still-beating hearts. Nineteen women who had all had the beginnings of life scraped from their wombs. Was that why they had been selected? Was it some kind of twisted revenge exacted by an avenging surgeon on women who had killed their unborn children? And what had he done with their organs? Sold them as recompense, as an atonement for their sins?

  He thought of the creepy medical student who cut people up for fun, who had worked part-time on the building site and had more than ample opportunity to bury the bodies there.

  He th
ought of Cui Feng in whose clinics most of the victims had probably had their abortions. He thought about the man’s mercenary views on health care, of his status and influence in the upper echelons of power, of the fact that he had been put “off-limits” by Li’s own bosses.

  He thought of Director Hu and his concern for the impact of the murders on inward investment to the city.

  And he wondered how many people really cared about all those poor women whose lives had been so clinically taken. And, of course, he knew exactly who cared. He remembered the thin-faced tailor at his table in a back alley, and his anguish in identifying his dead wife. He remembered the sullen boyfriend of the opera singer, and his silent, surprising tears. He remembered Sun Jie seeking solace in the arms of Buddha in a smoky temple, and the tears he had spilled in a dressing room, remembering the fight he had had with his wife over the decision to abort their second child. And all those others out there who did not yet know that their lover, or their daughter, or their mother, had been butchered and dumped in a hole in the ground.

  Worse than all that, Li felt the force of his own ineffectiveness. For all the evidence accumulated, there had not been a single step forward. In almost a week he had discovered nothing that gave him a clue as to the identity of the killer, or the motive for the slaughter. He had made enemies of his superiors, and had singularly failed to achieve the one thing Director Hu had asked him to do—bring the investigation to a quick conclusion. And there was nothing on the horizon that led him to believe that the end was anywhere in sight.

  He had also failed himself. He had allowed personal feelings, conflicting emotions about Mei-Ling and Margaret, to distract him from his professional obligations. And he had failed to do the only thing he had ever sought to do—to make a difference. It was why he had wanted to join the police all those years ago. He had seen it as a means of reinforcing his own very powerful sense of right and wrong, of fairness and justice. He knew he could never bring fairness to the lives of those poor dead women, but now he was failing to deliver them justice as well.