The Firemaker (The China Thrillers 1)

by Peter May

  ‘Was he a smoker?’

  Zhao nodded. ‘Nicotine stains on his fingers, matches and a half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket.’

  ‘Brand?’

  ‘Chinese.’

  Li grunted. There wasn’t a single damned thing in any of this to give them even a start. He sighed. ‘I suppose we’d better start rounding up all the itinerants who’ve registered in the city in the last six weeks.’

  Zhao looked pleased with himself. ‘It’s under way, boss.’ Then his face clouded. ‘Might take some time to do all the interviews, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s more than fifteen hundred of them.’

  ‘So what are you hanging around for?’ Li jerked his thumb towards the door. ‘Get started.’

  As Zhao went out, Wu poked his head in. ‘Just spoke to a couple of Mao Mao’s pals. He didn’t smoke. So that cigarette end wasn’t his.’

  Li nodded. ‘Thanks.’ He got up and closed the door and settled back in the tilting wooden chair he had inherited along with the office. It groaned as if objecting to being sat on, and the tilting mechanism squeaked. It had probably never been oiled since new. He put his hands together as if praying, placed the tips of his fingers beneath his nose, and leaned back with his eyes closed. The first image that floated into his consciousness was Margaret laughing across the table from him at the Sichuan snack-house. He blinked her away furiously and found himself standing on the edge of the clearing in Ritan Park looking at the smouldering cross-legged figure beneath the trees. He was able to visualise his thoughts in three dimensions, words and images co-existing. The first of those words, a question, drifted into his peripheral vision. ‘Why?’ It had all been so elaborate and high-profile. A murder in a public place staged to appear, at least superficially, like some form of ritual self-sacrifice. Li placed himself in the position of the murderer and faced the same difficulties the murderer must have faced. Somewhere, somewhere private, the victim’s home perhaps, the murderer had struck Chao Heng on the head, hard enough to induce unconsciousness, but not to kill him. He had then sedated him by injecting ketamine into his foot. If this had all taken place in Chao’s apartment, then the murderer faced the problem of transporting the body to the park, unseen, to stage the finale. It would have had to have been dark. And he would have had to have manoeuvred the body into the park before first light, long before it opened. He must then have sat with the semiconscious Chao in the privacy of the clearing until early morning activities in the park were well under way. The clearing was hidden from general view, but the risk of discovery must have been high. Another image drifted into the picture in his head. The cigarette end. If the murderer was a smoker, and he had sat for two or three hours waiting for the park to open, why was there only one cigarette end? Wouldn’t he have smoked at least four or five cigarettes, perhaps more in that stressful situation? He put the cigarette end to one side, next to the ‘Why?’. The killer had then arranged the still-dazed and compliant Chao into the lotus position, poured gasoline over him and set him alight. The danger of discovery at that moment must have been at its most intense. He must have retreated through the trees, away from the path that the children ran up just minutes later to make their awful discovery. So the killer was still in the park when the body was discovered. Someone must have seen him. A Witness. As if in some virtual-reality mind game, he placed the ‘Witness’ word next to the ‘Why?’ and the ‘Cigarette End’ and pulled the ‘Why?’ back to centre vision. Why? Why would anyone go to such elaborate and dangerous lengths to fake a suicide? And why would someone so meticulous be careless enough to leave a cigarette end at the scene of the crime. He placed the ‘Cigarette End’ centrally next to the ‘Why?’ and let his eye wander to the ‘Witness’ on the periphery. No matter how careful he was, someone must have seen him.

  He opened his eyes and shouted, ‘Qian.’

  Qian appeared quickly at the door. ‘Boss?’

  ‘How’s your list of habitués in the park progressing?’

  ‘Getting there.’

  ‘Well, get there faster. And start interviewing ASAP. Someone saw the murderer. He was still in the park when the kids found the burning body. We want people’s memories when they’re still fresh. Put as many men on it as are available.’

  Qian said, ‘Consider it done.’ He turned back to the detectives’ room.

  Li called after him, ‘Has anyone been out to Chao’s apartment yet?’

  ‘Just the uniforms, to seal the place up.’ Qian looked at his watch. ‘Forensics should be there within the half-hour.’

  Li jumped to his feet. ‘Okay, as soon as you’ve set up the interviews, you can run me over there. I want to take a look at the place.’

  Qian nodded and disappeared. Li stuck his hands deep in his pockets and wandered to the window. Already it seemed like hours since he had watched Margaret get into the back of the car. She seemed remote now, and irrelevant. He focused his mind back on the picture in his head. The ‘Why?’ was the answer, but not the means of finding it. The cigarette end was what bothered him most. That and the cigarette ends at the other two crime scenes. He had a sudden thought and lifted the phone. He dialled quickly and waited impatiently. Someone picked up at the other end. ‘Dr Wang? I want you to do something for me …’

  IV

  Chao Heng had lived in an apartment just off Xihuashi Street in the Chongwen District in the south-east quarter of the inner city. It was a relatively new high-rise block that stood in its own compound behind high walls. Glassed-in balconies, like miniature conservatories, projected from every apartment, and were used for everything from growing vegetables and pot plants to drying clothes and bedding. The walls of the block, all the way up to the twelfth floor, were studded with self-contained air-conditioning units that blew cool air through the apartments and belted hot air out into an already overheated atmosphere. Qian parked their Jeep in the compound next to a blue-and-white, and the forensics van which had got there ahead of them. Old women sat in the shade of huge umbrellas watching with dull-eyed curiosity. Some children were kicking a ball about in the heat of the sun, their cries echoing back from the walls of high-rise buildings that loomed over them like the walls of some deep secret canyon. Dozens of bicycles stood parked in neat rows under the shade of a line of trees, but there were no other vehicles in the compound.

  The dusty entrance hall seemed gloomy after the sunlight that blasted white off every surface outside. The doors of the elevator stood open. The operator, a skinny man with wizened brown skin, wearing only a pair of old blue shorts and a grubby singlet, squatted on a low stool just inside, smoking cheap, acrid-smelling cigarettes. There was a pile of ends and ash on the floor beside him. The air hummed with the buzz of flies and the distant echo of the kids playing outside. It was hot and airless. He spat on the floor and stood up as Li and Qian approached. ‘Who are you going to see?’

  Li produced his maroon Public Security ID wallet and opened it to show the operator his photograph. ‘Beijing Municipal Police. CID.’

  ‘Oh. You’ve come to see Chao Heng’s place.’ He stood to one side to let them in. ‘Some of your people are already up there.’ He closed the doors and pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  The elevator started its slow assent, groaning and complaining as it went. ‘Does everyone use the elevator?’ Li asked.

  The old man shrugged. ‘Not always. During the night, when the elevator is switched off, residents use their gate keys.’

  ‘And there are gates on all the stairs?’ Li asked. The operator nodded. ‘So what about visitors?’

  ‘They have to take the elevator.’

  ‘What about when the elevator is turned off?’

  ‘No one comes visiting at that time.’

  ‘But if they did?’

  The old man shrugged again. ‘Whoever they were visiting would have to know they were coming, so that they could come down the stairs and unlock the gate to let them in.’

  ‘So
you get to see just about everyone who comes and goes.’

  ‘Yep.’

  Li and Qian exchanged glances. There was a good chance, then, that this man had seen the murderer. Li said, ‘So what about Chao Heng? Has he had many visitors recently?’

  The old man’s lip curled in distaste. ‘Chao Heng always has visitors. Young boys and yangguizi.’

  ‘Young boys?’ Qian looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean, young boys?’

  ‘Young boys!’ the old man repeated as if Qian were deaf. ‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen … Such men should be locked up.’ Qian looked faintly shocked.

  Li said, ‘And foreigners, you said. What kind of foreigners?’

  ‘Americans, I think. They never spoke any Chinese.’

  ‘And other Chinese visitors?’

  ‘Oh, some posh-looking people in big cars. Chao was some big shot at the Ministry of Agriculture.’

  The lift juddered to a halt on the fifth floor. Li said, ‘What about last night? Did he have any visitors last night?’

  The old man opened the doors and shook his head. ‘Not for a week or two.’

  ‘Then he must have gone out himself some time yesterday, or last night.’

  ‘Not when I was on.’ The old man was adamant. ‘He’s hardly been over the door himself in a month. Chao Heng was not a well man.’

  Li and Qian stepped out of the lift. Li said, ‘We’ll want you to come up to headquarters and make a detailed statement. Can you get someone to stand in for you?’

  ‘Sure. The street committee’ll arrange it.’

  A uniformed police officer stood outside the door to Chao Heng’s apartment. Inside, two forensics officers wearing white gloves and plastic slip-on shoe covers were going over every inch of it. The air-conditioning was switched off, so it was unbreathably hot. Li and Qian took gloves and shoe covers from a bag at the door and slipped them on. The forensics men nodded acknowledgment and one of them said, ‘Don’t touch anything unless you have to.’

  By Chinese standards, this was a large apartment for a single person. Off a central hall were two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchenette and dining area and a living room that opened out on to the glassed balcony. It was a measure of Chao Heng’s status that he should be given such an apartment.

  Li and Qian wandered from room to room, observing, absorbing. Li sniffed. Above the rancid smell of stale cigarette smoke, on a higher, sharper note, there was a strange antiseptic smell in the place, like disinfectant or something medical. It was not pleasant. In the kitchen the smell gave way to the stench of rotting food coming from a bin that needed to be emptied. Dishes lay unwashed in the sink. Worktops were dirty and littered with the debris of food preparation. An ashtray was filled to overflowing. Li lifted one of the cigarette ends and looked for the brand name. Marlboro. He put it back. A small refrigerator had virtually no food in it. Apart from a pack of tofu, there were just half a dozen bottles of beer, and one bottle of Californian red wine. Unusual. A gift, perhaps. Or brought back from a trip abroad. Li looked at the label. Ernst and Julio Gallo, Cabernet Sauvignon. Chao Heng obviously didn’t know much about wine, or he wouldn’t have kept a bottle of red in his refrigerator. So it was unlikely he had bought it himself. A wall cupboard was full of dried and canned food: noodles, mushrooms, dried fruit and cans of fruit, tinned vegetables, a large jar of flour, smaller jars of crushed lotus seeds and sweet paste for dim sum. On the work surface beneath it, a can-opener and several empty cans that had once contained lychees in syrup, beansprouts, water chestnuts.

  ‘A vegetarian?’ Qian suggested.

  ‘Possibly.’ Li let his eyes wander over all the different jars and cans and packs of food in the cupboard. There certainly didn’t seem to be any meat, or meat products. There was something else missing, something obvious only because of its absence. But it still took him a few moments to identify it. ‘No rice either,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe he ran out,’ Qian said.

  ‘Maybe he did.’

  They went into the bathroom. Like the kitchen it was a mess. Old tubes of toothpaste, creams and ointments cluttered the shelf above the sink. The mirror was spattered with soap and shaving foam. A bloodstained safety razor that had been less than safe lay in a sink which had a ring of grime around it. Used towels were draped over the side of the bath which was ringed, too, with filth, like the contour of scum left by polluted seawater when the tide retreats. Li removed a glove and felt the towel. There was still a hint of dampness in it.

  Qian opened a small cabinet on the wall, and cardboard boxes and plastic tubs rattled out and on to the floor. He stooped to pick them up, replacing them one by one. Li looked over his shoulder. There were drugs of some kind, commercially packaged Western medicines with strange and exotic names: Epivir, AZT, Crixivan; and a whole range of traditional Chinese and herbal medicines. ‘Either he was a health freak or a hypochondriac,’ Qian said.

  ‘Or sick,’ said Li. ‘Like the elevator man said.’

  Qian closed the cabinet and they went through to the first bedroom where one of the forensics men had found Chao’s needle set. It consisted of a hypodermic, a metal spoon, a length of nylon cord, a small sachet filled with white powder. They were contained within a tarnished and battered metal box, which bore the scars of time and travel. It was significant, Li felt, that it had not been in Chao’s possession when they found him.

  There were mirrors all around the walls, including one full length at the foot of the bed. The bed was unmade, and a dresser was covered in jars of cream and powder, lipstick, eye make-up, perfumes, lotions and potions of every kind. Qian surveyed them with distaste. ‘It’s like a whore’s bedroom,’ he said. And almost as if to bear him out, when he opened the wardrobe he found it hanging with black and red silk dressing gowns hand-embroidered with dragons and butterflies. In the drawers there were silk pyjamas, exotic male underwear, thongs and g-strings. There were suspenders and stockings, women’s shoes, a short leather whip with three tails. ‘This guy really was sick.’ Qian looked around the room. ‘God knows what must have gone on up here with that procession of young boys.’

  They left the forensics man dusting for prints and went through to the other bedroom. By comparison it was neat and tidy. The bed was made up with clean sheets. It didn’t look as if it had been slept in recently. The wardrobe was hung with rows of dark suits and pressed white shirts. Beneath them a row of polished brown and black shoes on a rack. In the other bedroom they had just seen the private face of Chao Heng. In this one they saw the face he showed in public. Two different faces, two different people. Li wondered which, if either, was the real Chao Heng. And how many people, if any, knew who that was?

  Perhaps a third face revealed itself in Chao’s living room. Here was a comfortable, stylish room tastefully furnished with items of traditional Chinese lacquered furniture, many of them antiques; low tables inset with mother-of-pearl, hand-painted screens subdividing the room, embroidered silk throws draped over low settees. Three walls were hung with original scroll-mounted paintings, the fourth groaned with books from floor to ceiling. Books of every description in Chinese and English. Classic fiction in both languages: from Cao Xueqin’s A Dream of Red Mansions, and Ling Li’s Son of Heaven, to Scott’s Redgauntlet, and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. A veritable library of scientific textbooks: Plant DNA Infectious Agents, Risk Assessment in Genetic Engineering, Plant Virology, Genomic Imprinting. Books on health: The Classified Dictionary of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Fighting Drug Abuse with Acupuncture.

  Qian whistled in amazement. ‘Can any one person read that many books in a lifetime?’

  Li picked one out at random, Gene Transfer in the Environment, and examined the spine. ‘Chao Heng apparently,’ he said, slipping the book back into the bookcase.

  In the far corner of the room there was an illuminated fish tank, multicoloured tropical fish zigzagging through a meticulously recreated seabed, air bubbling constantly up through the water
from an oxygen feed. Tins of fish feed were stacked on a small table beside it. Li picked one up. It was half full. He sprinkled some feed on the water and watched the fish peck at it in desultory fashion as it fell slowly to the bottom of the tank. He wandered out on to the glassed balcony. It was north-facing, so no hotter than the rest of the house. There were two comfortable armchairs and a low table with a single, empty bottle of beer on it, an ashtray with half a dozen cigarette ends and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. Li picked up the pack. There were ten or more cigarettes still in it. He replaced it on the table. With the angle at which the light was striking the bottle, he could see smears of greasy fingerprints all over the dark glass. It was strange, he thought, how dead people left physical traces behind them long after they were gone. This apartment would be filled with vestiges of the oily residue left by Chao Heng’s fingers on everything he touched. A touch that was uniquely his. Or hair gathered in the drainer in the sink and the bath, caught on combs and brushes. The fine dust of his dead skin shed over years would lie like a hidden snow among the fibres of the carpet and the bed, and in ledges along undusted surfaces. His scent would linger in the weave of the clothes that hung in the wardrobes. His personality, in all its diversity, reflected in his choice of lifestyle, clothes, furniture, and in the books he read. All of these were clues, not necessarily to the murder, but to the man. And knowing the man was an important step towards knowing his killer.

  From the balcony, Li looked down into the compound below. He could see the three police vehicles and the gate in the high wall that led in from the street. He closed his eyes and pictured the killer carrying Chao’s prostrate form over his shoulder between the door of the apartment block and the nearest parking point. It was about fifteen feet. He opened his eyes and checked the streetlights. They were few and far between, and the trees would cast dense shadows. But there would be a light over the main entrance and it would have illuminated those fifteen feet, making it the highest risk point of the journey from the apartment to the park. And that after carrying Chao down five flights of stairs, unlocking and then locking the stair gate behind him again. His killer was not only a very determined man, but he was strong and fit.