Peter May - The Firemaker

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…’

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.