Peter May - The Firemaker

Margaret waited. But Li had finished, and the significance of what he had told her somehow escaped her. ‘So what’s Military Hospital Number 301?’ she asked.

‘It is a high-security VIP hospital. It treats the top people in government and the bureaucracy. Deng Xiaoping received treatment there during his final illness.’

Margaret frowned. ‘But Chao wasn’t in that category of VIP, was he?’

‘No, he was not.’

‘So how come he was being treated there?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

Margaret thought for a moment. ‘I guess he could only have been admitted to Military Hospital Number 301 if someone very powerful had arranged it, right?’ Li nodded. ‘Someone high up in government, or the civil service?’ Li nodded again, and for the first time Margaret began to understand Li’s retreat into himself. ‘Are we getting into something here that’s starting to get a bit scary?’ she asked, a knot like a fist beginning to turn in her stomach.

‘I’ve had a bad feeling about this all day,’ Li said. He breathed deeply. ‘And it’s not going away.’

He sounded his horn more frequently than usual as they weaved through the bicycles and traffic in Chaoyangmen Nanxiaojie Street. He was more used to manoeuvring his way along this street as a cyclist than as a motorist.

‘But you will still be able to access his medical records, won’t you?’

Li looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know. Dealing with a place like that is outside my experience, perhaps even my jurisdiction.’

‘In the States we’d subpoena the records.’

‘But this is China, not the United States.’

‘You told me no one in China refused to co-operate with the police.’

‘Of course, I will ask for the records,’ he said.

‘And if they won’t give you them?’

‘They’ll have to have a very good reason.’ His words sounded braver than he felt. He felt like a weak swimmer who has strayed further from shore than he intended and is a long way out of his depth.

‘Okay,’ Margaret said. ‘Let’s think about this. We’re dealing here with someone who has a great deal of power and influence. Someone with enough clout to have Chao admitted to a high-security hospital. Perhaps the same person who hired Johnny Ren to murder him and is now trying to stop you from finding out why. But this is not some all-powerful, or even infallible, individual. He’s made mistakes. Like making a mess of getting rid of the evidence, if that’s what Chao was. He clearly thought that burning the body would destroy whatever it was in his blood they wanted to hide. It didn’t. Then they made a real clumsy job of stopping us doing the AIDS test. Incinerating the body, for Christ’s sake, and all the samples! An administrative error? That’s not going to hold up for five minutes if you pursue it hard enough.’

‘But he didn’t have AIDS. We know that. So why were they trying to stop us from testing for it?’

‘In case we found something else. Something they didn’t want us to find.’

‘What?’

Margaret shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know.’

‘And what about the other two murders? DNA tests prove that all three were killed by Ren. What’s the connection?’ Li felt the beginnings of a headache. The deeper they got into this, the muddier the waters were becoming.

‘I don’t know,’ Margaret said again. She was beginning to realise how little they really knew about any of it. ‘All I know is that someone must have been watching your investigation every step of the way. Someone with detailed access to your every move, and an understanding of the implications of everything you’ve done.’

Li frowned. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘How else would Johnny Ren have known who was leading the case? How would he have known who to follow? How else would anyone know the autopsy results, or that you had asked for an AIDS test? I mean, who else knew about any of it outside the department?’

‘No one,’ Li said aggressively. He couldn’t believe she was suggesting that someone in Section One was implicated. Then he was struck by a thought that turned his blood to ice. ‘Except…’ He didn’t even dare to voice the thought.

‘Except who?’ When he didn’t respond, Margaret asked again, ‘Except who, Li Yan?’

‘Deputy Procurator General Zeng.’

Her brows furrowed in consternation. ‘Who?’

‘Procurators are a bit like district attorneys. They decide whether to prosecute a case in court. Zeng asked me to provide him with detailed daily reports on the progress of the case. He seemed to know a lot about it already.’ He looked at Margaret. ‘I mean, it was unusual, but he is a DPG. I never really thought anything about it.’

Margaret whistled softly. ‘Well, that tells us something anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Our man’s powerful enough to have the equivalent of a district attorney in his pocket.’ She glanced apprehensively at Li. ‘That makes him pretty formidable opposition.’

‘Thank you for those words of encouragement,’ Li said dryly.

She smiled, and thought at least they could still smile. But the smile faded as she remembered that in the morning she would be boarding a plane and Li would be left to face this on his own. She didn’t want to leave him. She wished he could get on the plane with her and they could both leave all this behind. The game was no longer a game. It had turned dark and frightening.

Li turned right into Dongzhimennei and drew in at the kerb beside Mei Yuan’s jian bing house. Mei Yuan rose from her stool as soon as she saw who it was. She gave Margaret a wide smile and said to Li, ‘You are a little late for breakfast today.’

Li shook his head. ‘No, we are early for breakfast tomorrow.’ Margaret checked the time. It was nearly 6 p.m. ‘Two jian bing ,’ Li said. ‘It has been a long day.’

‘It has,’ Mei Yuan said, beginning her preparations for the cooking. ‘I have been waiting for you for hours. I have a solution for your riddle.’

Li and Margaret exchanged glances. ‘The one about the three murders and the cigarette ends?’ Margaret asked.

Mei Yuan nodded. ‘You said he deliberately left the cigarette ends beside each of the bodies because he knew that you would find them and match the DNA.’

‘That’s right,’ Li said. ‘Why?’

‘I think it is so obvious,’ Mei Yuan said, ‘that maybe I have not understood the question properly.’

Margaret was intrigued. ‘So why do you think he did it?’

Mei Yuan shrugged. ‘To make you believe these murders are connected — when there is no connection.’

Li frowned. ‘But why would he do that?’

‘Wait a minute,’ Margaret said. ‘You once told me that you conducted thousands of interviews to track down a man who murdered a whole family during a burglary. And it took you how long?’

‘Two years.’

‘So how long was it going to take you to track down all those migrant workers from Shanghai, and all the petty drug dealers and gay boys?’

It dawned on Li. ‘Long enough to keep me looking in all the wrong places for months on end, trying to make a connection that doesn’t exist. God!’ It was so simple. But anyone who understood the modus operandi of the Chinese police would know that they would follow a painstaking and pedantic process of information-gathering that could take months, even years. ‘The only connection is that there is no connection,’ he said. It was a revelation. He gave Mei Yuan a big hug, and Margaret felt a twinge of jealousy. ‘How on earth did you think of it, Mei Yuan?’

She glowed with the praise and Li’s attention. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘because I did not have to.’