Peter May - The Firemaker

‘Yes.’ She opened it and found a pack of Advil and washed two down with her tea. In fifteen or twenty minutes she might begin to feel a little more human again. She looked at her watch. ‘Jesus Christ! Is that the time?’ It was nine thirty. ‘I’ve got class at nine!’

‘You had class at nine,’ Li corrected her. ‘D’you want me to get you a taxi?’

He watched the taxi pull out into the street below and still felt the burning on his cheek where she had quickly kissed him goodbye. He wondered when he would see her again, if he would see her again. He would be in trouble, he knew, for bringing her back here. The duty policeman would have made his report first thing this morning. But he couldn’t have left her at the hotel in that state, and he still had a niggling worry about her safety. If the man who attacked him last night had been following them, he would know where she was staying. There was a great deal he probably knew, about both of them. Li looked up and down the street. There were a number of cars parked at an angle on the sidewalk immediately below, under the shade of the trees. Several dozen uniformed officers were emerging from the academy across the road, traffic cops stopping vehicles to let them cross. Women pushing prams strolled along the strip of parkland that divided the street down its centre. Old men sat on benches gazing into space and puffing on cigarettes. He wondered if there were hidden eyes watching him from somewhere out there right now. It was a disconcerting thought.

The rain of the previous night had washed some of the dust and humidity out of the atmosphere, and the air was fresher as he followed his habitual route to work, cycling north along Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street. Overhead the sky was blue, instead of a burned-out grey, and the sun was hot on his skin. He was still preoccupied with thoughts of Margaret. Had she been disappointed that nothing had happened between them last night? He had thought she seemed relieved. It was strange, he reflected, how she seemed always on the verge of intimacy, as though they had once known each other well, like old lovers. She seemed often about to touch him, or kiss him, but held back at the last as if realising that she didn’t, after all, know him. Or perhaps it was simply that the habit of casual intimacy, born of years living with the man she had married, was hard to break, and that, really, it had nothing to do with Li at all.

At the corner of Dongzhimennei he waved at Mei Yuan as he passed, and called out, ‘Sorry, I have no time this morning.’ She stood up to wave him over, a sense of urgency in her signalling. But he was already out into the stream of traffic crossing the main road. ‘Later,’ he shouted back at her.

The corridors of Section One were still crowded with citizens awaiting interrogation about the itinerant from Shanghai, or about what they had seen or not seen in Ritan Park two mornings previously. The detectives’ room was empty except for Detective Qian, who was still writing up his report on events in the park the night before. He seemed agitated and tipped his head towards Li’s office. ‘Chief’s waiting for you in there.’

Li braced himself and strode confidently through the door. ‘Morning, Chief. Big breakthrough last night.’

Chen was sitting at Li’s desk flicking idly through a number of reports awaiting Li’s attention. He looked up and said, grimly, ‘Is that in your personal or your professional life?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come off it, Li!’ Chen slammed the flat of his hand down on the desk. ‘We both know that Dr Campbell stayed at your apartment last night. What in God’s name did you think you were playing at?’

‘She’d had too much to drink, Chief. She wasn’t feeling well, so I let her stay over. There wasn’t any more to it than that. She slept in Old Yifu’s room.’

‘Damn you, Li. She’s a foreigner . You are an official of the state!’

‘My relationship with Dr Campbell is strictly work, Chief,’ Li protested.

‘Then it’s time you stopped taking your work home.’ Chen stood up in a temper. ‘Have you any idea the repercussions this could have? I’ve already had a call from the university and they are considering sending Dr Campbell home forthwith. I feel entirely responsible. After all, it was me who asked for her help in the first place. And it’s you I blame, not her. You’re the one who should have known better.’

Li’s head dropped, his resistance wilting. ‘I’m sorry, Chief. I thought I was doing the right thing. Especially after the attack on me last night. I thought there was a possibility she could be in danger.’

But Chen’s anger did not abate. ‘We’ll come to last night in a moment,’ he snapped. ‘The fact is, Li, I’m going to have to consider taking disciplinary action against you. Particularly since this comes right on the heels of an official complaint against you yesterday.’

‘If you’re talking about The Needle…’

‘Don’t insult me by denying it,’ Chen warned. ‘And as for last night, had you followed proper procedure you would never have been attacked in the first place, and you would not have exposed Dr Campbell to the danger that you did.’ He turned towards the window, waving his hands in exasperation. ‘For God’s sake, Li, you’ve not even been in this job three days. I thought you understood. We work as a team here. Your job is to lead that team. It is not a licence for you to go off on some individual crusade, firing off like a loose cannon, like some… American cop. And if you can’t understand that, I’ll personally see to it that you spend the rest of your career directing traffic on Tiananmen Square.’ He glared at Li. ‘Well?’

‘Chief?’

‘ Do you understand? ’

‘Yes, Chief.’

Chen took a deep breath and let a little of the tension seep out of him. He sat down again in Li’s chair. ‘Notwithstanding anything I’ve said, that was a damn smart piece of work yesterday. The glove and the key, and the thumbprint.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t take much credit for that, Chief,’ Li said. ‘It was Dr Campbell’s idea.’ Chen flicked him a look. ‘She also had the idea that Chao might have had AIDS — because of the drugs found in his apartment. We ordered further blood tests yesterday to confirm. Results should be available later today.’

‘Dr Campbell seems to have been very busy,’ Chen said with an edge to his voice, and added, ‘She also seems to have been very right.’ He sighed and lifted a folder from the desk and held it out to Li. ‘This came in by fax from the Hong Kong police about ten minutes ago.’

Li opened the folder and found himself staring at a black-and-white image of the man who had done so much damage to his face the night before. He felt a chill run through him.

Margaret stepped from the taxi outside the university administration block. She had long since stopped hurrying. There was little point. The lecture she should have taken was due to have finished more than an hour ago. She had taken the taxi from Li’s back to her hotel, showered and changed, and collected some notes before getting another taxi to the university. Her hair was just about dry, and she was wearing more make-up than usual to mask the ravages of the night before. Her head still hurt, and her stomach was distinctly wobbly. As she ran up the marble steps inside, she heard the clip, clip of footsteps descending. She looked up to see Lily Peng.

‘Hi,’ Margaret said, a little breathless. ‘You don’t know where Bob is…?’ But Lily failed even to meet her eye as she went past. She disappeared through the doors without a word. Margaret was taken aback. Even when being short with you, the Chinese were usually courteous.