Peter May - The Firemaker

‘It was moronic,’ she said. ‘Absolutely moronic. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I learned it from a couple of cops in Chicago. I think, maybe, they did it for my benefit. Back seat of the squad car, up a blind alley. A small-time pusher with dirt on someone higher up the chain. They sure as hell scared the kid. He told them everything they wanted to know.’

She flashed him a look that might have turned him to stone had he met her eye. ‘That doesn’t justify it. For them, or you.’

‘At least I saved a dozen of my detectives maybe six weeks’ work chasing a connection that doesn’t exist.’

‘How can you know that?’

‘Because if there was a drugs connection between Chao Heng and Mao Mao, The Needle would have known about it. And, somehow, I believed him when he said he didn’t.’ He glanced over at her. ‘I wouldn’t spill any tears over The Needle. He’ll get over it.’

‘I don’t give a shit about The Needle,’ she said. ‘It’s what you put me through in that stadium. If I’d known there were no bullets…’

‘You would have approved?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Which is why I did not tell you. I was not sure I would even take you into the stadium.’

‘Oh, I’m supposed to feel honoured now, am I? Jesus!’ She slapped her palms on the dashboard. ‘Why did you take me in?’

‘You were so ready to believe in human rights violations in China, I thought maybe you should see some for yourself, first hand, as inspired by Americans.’

‘Well, first off, let’s not confuse human rights and civil rights. What you saw those cops in America do was a breach of that kid’s civil rights. They also broke the law. And I can assure you it’s not common practice.’

‘Nor is it in China.’

‘Oh yeah? Like there are no violations of civil or human rights in China?’

‘Not on my watch.’

‘Oh, so today was the first time you’ve ever done anything like this, right?’

‘It was.’

‘Sure.’

He turned to meet her disbelief face on. ‘It was.’ And the sincerity in his eyes disconcerted her. ‘For myself, I would happily have killed that man. As a policeman, it is against everything I believe. My uncle would be ashamed of me. He would tell me that the measure of any civilisation is the strength and balance of its system of justice. And he would be right. And he would not listen when I told him that I had a feeling, an instinct, that we could not afford to spend weeks, months, maybe years finding this killer. He would tell me that I should employ good police work to back up that instinct.’

In spite of herself, she was interested. ‘What instinct?’

‘If I knew what it was, maybe today would never have been necessary. There is something… bizarre about these killings. Something in what we already know that I am missing. Something that troubles my unconscious mind, but that my conscious mind has not grasped. So I have taken a short cut that I should not have taken, because somehow I know there is no time.’

‘You think he’s going to kill again?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ They had stopped at traffic lights, and he turned and examined her face, and thought he saw the shadow of doubt in it. ‘Have you never had an instinct about something? Something you can’t explain, you just feel?’

There was a catch in her throat, and she didn’t dare to speak, as she remembered how she had fought her instincts, committing to an act of faith in Michael that went beyond all reasonable expectation. She found it hard, now, to understand why. She should have known better. She dragged her eyes away from Li’s and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘And I didn’t follow it.’ Her hands were clasped in her lap, and Li saw her knuckles go white. ‘And I should have.’

They drove past the top of Wangfujing Street and into Wusi Street, which took them into Jingshanquan Street and past the rear gate of the Forbidden City. The car in front of them braked suddenly to avoid a child on the road, careening sideways into a trolley bus amidst a shower of sparks, before spinning across two lanes of oncoming traffic and ploughing into the cycle lane. Vehicles travelling nose to tail slithered into one another, locking fenders. All traffic ground to a halt, horns blaring, a trail of devastation across the road. The child who had caused the accident ran away, unharmed, down the far sidewalk. Several cyclists picked themselves off the dusty street, and started examining buckled wheels and twisted frames, shouting oaths at drivers, remonstrating with one another. Some were bleeding from grazes on arms and foreheads, others had torn trousers at the knee and shirts at the elbow. Above the noise of horns and raised voices and revving engines was a woman’s single, repeating scream.

Li had swung the Jeep side-on across the middle of the road and planted a flashing red lamp on the roof, and was now making an urgent call on the police radio. Margaret was shaken, but unhurt. She could hear the woman screaming, but couldn’t see her. She got out of the Jeep and started running between the vehicles and the people standing arguing in the road. There was a crowd gathering around the car that had slewed across the street in the first place. It had half mounted the sidewalk and buried its nose in the trunk of a locust tree. The dazed driver was staggering from the vehicle. Margaret grabbed him and looked at the wound on his forehead. He would live. The woman was still screaming, a babble of hysterical voices rising from the crowd around the front of the car. As she rounded the bonnet, Margaret saw the buckled remains of a bicycle under the front wheel and a woman trapped beneath the bicycle, gouts of blood spouting from a wound high on her left leg. She was screaming more in fear than pain as she saw the life flooding out of her. Li appeared at Margaret’s shoulder. ‘She’s going to die if we don’t stop that bleeding fast,’ Margaret said. ‘We’ve got to get her out of there.’

Li’s voice boomed out above the racket, insistent, commanding, and seven or eight men immediately detached themselves from the crowd. Li waved them to either side of the vehicle and they all found what handholds they could. As they lifted, there was a groan of metal, and a jet of steam escaped from the broken radiator. Margaret grabbed the woman under each armpit and pulled. She was aware of others beside her. The bicycle was torn away. The woman was drawn free. The intensity of her screams was fading along with her life. There was blood everywhere, still pumping from her leg as her heart fought vainly against the rapid drain of the wound.

Li said, ‘Emergency services are on their way.’

‘No time!’ Margaret shouted. ‘Hold her down.’ And to Li’s and everyone else’s amazement, this fair-haired, blue-eyed yangguizi kicked off her trainers and stood on top of the injured woman’s thigh, pressing her full body weight down on to the wound. She grabbed one of the men who had lifted the car, and held him for balance. He froze, like a rabbit caught in headlights. The woman lurched and screamed, and tried to buck Margaret off. ‘For Christ’s sake hold her still,’ Margaret said. ‘Her femoral artery’s been severed. This is the only way I can get enough pressure on it to stop the bleeding.’

Li sat in the road by the woman’s head, gently taking her flailing arms and folding them in, raising her head on to his lap, restraining her fight and her fear, talking rapidly, gently, reassuringly. Her resistance subsided and she relaxed and started weeping. There were several hundred people in the street now, pressing around them in silent amazement. Margaret looked down at the blood oozing slowly through her toes. She had staunched the bleeding for the moment, but the woman had lost a great deal of blood. She was in her mid-forties, stockily built, with the flattened features of a peasant Chinese. Her blue print dress was soaked in red. The ribbon that tied her hair back had come free, and long black strands of it sprayed out across Li’s legs. She gazed up at him as he continued softly speaking, stroking her face. Margaret had no idea what he was saying, but she found it almost impossible to equate this gentle, genuinely caring man with the cold, ruthless individual she had witnessed in the stadium just fifteen minutes earlier.