Peter May - The Firemaker

Li ignored her. ‘I want you to tell me about Chao Heng and Mao Mao,’ he said, his focus totally on The Needle.

For a moment, consternation replaced fear on the face of the drugs baron. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We both know,’ Li said, ‘that anything you tell me now is just between us. She doesn’t speak Chinese, and I can’t use information extracted at gunpoint against you. So do us both a favour and tell me what I want to know.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

Li sighed deeply. ‘Okay, we’ll do it the hard way.’

‘What?’ The Needle was panicking again. Li turned him round and forced him to his knees. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? You won’t get away with this!’ The Needle tried to get up and Li pushed him back down. ‘Help me!’ The Needle screamed at Margaret in English.

She stood several feet away, breathing hard, eyes wild with fear and anger; fear of what was going to happen, anger that Li had dragged her here. ‘I won’t be any part of this,’ she said.

‘Don’t be,’ Li said.

She looked around. There didn’t appear to be any way out, and the door they’d come in through was shut. ‘If you harm that man I will give evidence against you.’

‘Will you?’ Li glanced at her. ‘ He trades in misery and death. He has ruined thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of lives, and you would give evidence against me ?

‘Why did you bring me here?’

He gazed at her steadily. ‘To watch,’ he said.

The Needle was sprawled on the grass now, trying to edge away as Li turned his attention back to him. ‘Stay where you are,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll give you a chance. Maybe several. But the odds’ll get shorter.’ He flipped the barrel out from the main body of the revolver and took out the bullets one by one, leaving only a single round. ‘A game invented by our neighbours in Russia.’ He snapped the barrel back in place.

‘For God’s sake!’ Margaret said, and she walked away, out towards the centre of the pitch, her back turned towards them. She put her hands on her hips and stared up to the heavens. Physically, she knew, there was nothing she could do to stop it. But she was damned if she was going to watch.

The Needle followed her with his eyes, a sense of hopelessness growing like nausea in his belly. She wasn’t going to do anything. Li hauled him back to his knees and placed the revolver at the base of his skull. The tip of it was cold and hard against his skin and pulled at his hair. ‘Okay, so I’ll ask you again,’ Li said softly.

‘I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The Needle had had a sudden revelation. Li wasn’t going to pull that trigger. Not with the American there. It was obvious there was friction between them. Then he felt, more than heard, the squeezing of the trigger mechanism raising the hammer, and the smack of it against an empty chamber. He lost control of his bladder and felt a rush of hot urine on his thigh.

Margaret heard the sound of the hammer on the empty chamber echo around the terracing, and swivelled to stare at Li in disbelief. Somehow, somewhere deep inside, she hadn’t believed he would actually do it. ‘Jesus!’ And she listened to her voice whispering round the stadium, as if it belonged to someone else.

‘Tell me about Chao Heng,’ Li insisted.

‘I told you…’ The Needle started to weep.

Crack! The hammer smacked down on another empty chamber.

‘Li! For God’s sake!’ Margaret screamed at him.

‘Tell me,’ Li said, his voice tight and controlled. He blinked and flicked his head as a trickle of sweat ran into one eye.

The Needle felt the grate of the trigger mechanism again. ‘Okay, okay, okay!’ he screamed.

‘I’m listening,’ Li said.

‘Chao Heng was well known,’ The Needle gasped. ‘He used to hang around the clubs downtown trying to pick up boys. The younger the better. Everyone knew what he was like.’ The Needle was babbling like a baby now, words and all inhibition loosened, like the muscles of his bladder, by naked fear. ‘I didn’t know him personally, but I knew him by sight. He got his stuff off a guy called Liang Daozu.’

‘One of your people?’

‘I don’t have any people,’ he shouted, and felt the muzzle of the gun push harder into his neck. ‘Okay, yeah, he was one of my guys.’

‘What about Mao Mao?’

‘What about him?’

‘What was his connection with Chao Heng?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Again the muzzle pushed hard into the base of his skull. ‘For God’s sake, I didn’t even know they knew one another! Mao Mao was low life, street scum. He didn’t move in the same circles as someone like Chao Heng.’

‘Or you?’

‘Or me. Shit, I don’t trade stuff on the streets. Never have. That’s for users and losers like Mao Mao.’

‘Maybe Mao Mao was into little boys, like Chao?’

The Needle shook his head. ‘Not that I knew of.’

Not that anyone else knew of either. Li had read the statements of Mao Mao’s family and friends. He’d had a wife and a kid somewhere, and a string of mistresses. Li’s adrenalin rush was slowly giving way to disappointment. He had The Needle on his knees in front of him, confessing to anything and everything. But not only would it be impossible to use any of it against him, none of it helped in the investigation. He pulled the trigger anyway. Crack!

The Needle yelped. ‘Shit, man, what are you doing! I told you what you wanted to know.’

Li pushed him over on to his back, and The Needle lay staring up at him in disbelief, paralysed by fear. Li extended his arm downwards and pointed the revolver straight at the centre of The Needle’s face.

‘Li?’ Margaret took a step towards him. She had thought it was over. The Needle had talked rapidly for nearly a minute, telling Li, it had seemed, what he wanted to know. Now Li was going to kill him in cold blood.

Li pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. The Needle screamed, a long scream of anguish, the pain of knowing he was going to die, almost worse than death itself.

Margaret’s heart stood still. ‘That’s six,’ she said.

The Needle looked up at Li in breathless disbelief. Li extended his left hand towards Margaret and opened his fist. Six bullets nestled in his palm. ‘The speed of the hand deceives the eye,’ he said grimly.

Margaret closed her eyes. She wanted to strike him with her fists, with her feet, to bite him, inflict pain on him in any way she could. ‘You bastard,’ she said.

Li ignored her, holstering the gun and slipping the bullets into his pocket. He stooped and dragged the hapless Needle to his feet and pushed his face into his. ‘Maybe you think you’ve lost a bit of face here today.’ The Needle said nothing. ‘I just hope the next time you go visiting a stadium, it’s to get a bullet in your head for real. And with a bit of luck they’ll blow your face clean off.’ He let go of him, and The Needle dropped back to his knees. Li looked in disgust at the black urine patch on his trousers. ‘I was going to give you a lift back, but I don’t want you fouling up my Jeep. And maybe you’d rather change before you drop back in on the boys.’

The Needle stared up at him with hatred in his eyes and murder in his heart.

‘Just take me straight back to the university.’ Margaret sat tight-lipped and furious in the passenger seat.

‘Sure.’ Li nodded and they drove in silence for some way.

But she was unable to contain her anger for long. ‘You had that all planned, didn’t you?’ He shrugged. ‘And someone at the stadium knew we were coming.’

‘I’ve got my contacts,’ he said.