Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘The community police sent someone out to break the news a short time ago,’ Qian told him.

‘Okay. Wu and I are going to visit the mother. Meantime, pull the kid’s photograph from the database and get it circulating in the lobbies of every hotel in Jianguomen. I’ll see if we can’t get something better from the family. Someone, somewhere saw her with the killer. We need to find that someone. We need a witness.’ He hung up and turned the key in the ignition.

Traffic was unusually light, and they cruised east on the Third Ring Road past row after row of new multistorey apartment blocks, shopping malls, and official buildings clad in stone, aping the classical style of traditional European architecture. The sun was low in the sky and blinded Li as he turned south on Andingmenwei Da Jie. Wu still had his head buried in the book. ‘It’s amazing, chief. It’s like he’s making a carbon copy. The Ripper only killed on weekends, and all the murders were within the same square mile of the Whitechapel district of London. All the victims were prostitutes. They were all strangled and then had their throats cut. And then the mutilation.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s strange, though …’

Li glanced across at him. ‘What is?’

‘Catharine Eddowes wasn’t the Ripper’s fourth victim. You know, like Guo Huan. He killed someone else earlier that night. Someone they called Long Liz . Elizabeth Stride.’ The English name felt odd on his tongue. ‘He strangled her, cut her throat, but that was it. Seems they figured he was interrupted before he could hack her up. So he went off in search of someone else and found Eddowes.’ He looked at Li. ‘You don’t think maybe there was another murder last night, someone we haven’t found yet?’

Li’s heart sank. It wasn’t something he really wanted to think about. ‘If there was another victim, she’s bound to turn up sooner or later,’ he said. ‘With a bit of luck, maybe our man didn’t think an interrupted job was worth copying. Let’s hope so.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘How long has that book been on the shelves, Wu?’

Wu shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ He flipped to the front of the book. ‘First published in China this year. So it could have been out there for months.’

‘Except that Qian said he read a review in the paper yesterday. You don’t review a book that’s been out for months. Find out when it was released.’ Wu made a note, and Li said, ‘How many women did the Ripper kill in the end?’

Wu shook his head. ‘They don’t seem to know for sure. At least five. Maybe as many as eight.’

‘So if our man sticks to the script, we could be looking at another four murders.’

Wu nodded grimly. ‘Worse than that though, Chief. The Ripper was never caught.’

* * *

Guo Huan had lived with her mother in a tiny two-roomed house occupying one side of a siheyuan courtyard close to the Confucian Temple at Yonghegong. A broken-down gate led from a dilapidated hutong alleyway into a narrow, covered passage cluttered by two old armchairs, a smashed-up television set, the rusting carcass of a long-dead bicycle and, at the far end, a neatly stacked row of coal briquettes. The grey-tile roofs of the four ancient Beijing dwellings overhung the courtyard. Moss and weeds grew in the cracks and the courtyard itself was nearly filled by a large scholar tree which had shed most of its leaves. Birds hung in cages from its branches, squawking and screaming at Li and Wu as they ducked in out of the passageway and crunched dry leaves underfoot. The whole area was due for demolition within the next six months.

Sunlight slanted obliquely across the courtyard to shine through the smudged, filthy windows of the Guo house. Li knocked several times and got no response. He shaded his eyes from the light to peer inside, but there appeared to be no one there.

‘What do you want?’

Li and Wu turned at the sound of a woman’s harsh voice, her tongue rolling itself around a very distinctive Beijing r . She wore a dark woollen hat, an old blue Mao jacket over a long pinafore, and woollen leggings under thin cotton trousers, and stood in the doorway of the tiny apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard.

‘Public Security,’ Li said. ‘We’re looking for Mrs Guo.’

‘Do you people never talk to one another?’ she asked, her voice heavy with contempt. ‘There was one of your people here looking for her an hour ago.’ She looked the two detectives up and down. ‘And he had a uniform.’

‘Do you know where she is?’ Wu asked.

‘She’s not here.’

‘Yes, we can see that.’ Wu controlled his impatience. ‘Do you know where we can find her?’

‘Panjiayuan. She and that girl of hers sell antiques down there.’ She snorted. ‘ Antiques ! Hah. Junk, more like. What do you want her for?’

‘None of your business,’ Li said.

As they made their way out into the hutong , they heard her shout after them, ‘And you can stick your public security up your arse!’

Wu and Li exchanged glances that turned into involuntary smiles. Li shook his head. ‘Whatever happened to public respect for the police?’ he asked.

* * *

The Panjiayuan Market did its business behind low grey walls in the treelined Panjiayuan Lu, just west of the East Third Ring Road. A vast covered area of stalls played host to the Sunday fleamarket, but lay empty during the week. A fruit and vegetable market did brisk business in an open cobbled area at the west end of the compound. Stalls selling traditional paintings and antiques were sandwiched between the two, washed by dull sunlight filtered through a plastic roof. In a cul-de-sac opposite the main gate, a trishaw driver sprawled sleeping in the back of his own tricycle under a candy-striped canopy as Li and Wu drove in. A banner was strung across a wall just inside the gates. Gather all the treasure and make friends in the world . Which Li took to be a euphemism for Collect all your junk and sell it to the tourists . Some of the older buildings that lined the outer wall of the market had been restored to their original splendour, and several traditional Chinese shopping streets had been constructed within, in the shadow of the twenty-storey apartment blocks that grew like weeds here in this south-east corner of the city. Empty shop units, empty apartments, populated only by the ghosts of the people whose homes had been razed to make way for them. Building, it seemed, was outstripping demand.

Li and Wu wandered between stalls peddling paintings and wall-hangings, watched by suspicious, dark-eyed vendors nursing glass jars of green tea or sitting around fold-up tables playing cards. It was clear the two men were neither tourists nor casual Chinese. Which could only mean one other thing. At the far end of one of the aisles, a group of tourists was gathered around a table watching an artist at work, carefully crafting a pen and ink scene of ancient China. Next to him a group of men and women, wrapped up warm against the cold, was playing Great Wall on a rusted metal table. Li interrupted them, flipping open his ID. ‘I’m looking for Mrs Guo. She sells antiques.’ One of them nodded towards the far aisle, but none of them spoke.

‘Chatty types,’ Wu muttered to Li as they passed a big-bellied shiny Buddha on a plinth. A wooden pig rose up on its hind legs snorting its derision, and a line of bronze warriors gazed upon them impassively. They turned into the aisle at the end and it stretched ahead of them in gloomy half-darkness for sixty or seventy metres. There were stalls and tiny shop units and tables groaning with junk: teapots and door-knockers; small figurines in armour; inlaid wooden boxes; wristwatches displaying Mao heads that nodded away the seconds. Behind glass, shelves of traditional chinaware, ornate wooden carvings. Two teenage girls sat beside a table of polished gramophone horns. ‘Looka, looka,’ one of them said, not yet savvy enough to recognise police out of uniform.