Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘By six o’clock, Chief,’ the security guard said. ‘Or whenever it gets dark. Whichever comes first. We always clear people out when the light starts to go.’ He shuffled his feet and slapped leather-clad gloves together to keep his hands warm.

‘What time did you close the gates tonight?’

‘It was about half past five.’

‘Did you check to see if there was anyone still inside?’

‘No, Chief. People are always in a big hurry to get out when we start closing up. No one would want to get locked in.’

Li looked at the railing. It was only about a metre high. Easy enough for anyone to get in or out, whether the gate was locked or not. He nodded. ‘Where’s the body?’

One of the uniforms pointed. ‘Right up the top, Chief, behind the arm of the dial.’

‘How on earth did anyone find it up there after the place was closed up?’

‘It was me, Chief.’ It was the young security guard again. His lips were almost blue with the cold. ‘We do shifts here. Check round the perimeter once every hour or so.’

‘Why?’ Li couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to guard an empty park.

‘There’s a lot of valuable stuff in the museum, Chief.’

‘Okay. Go on.’

‘Well, I checked back here about eight o’clock this evening. That’s when I saw the blood.’ He waved his hand towards where a section of the concourse and the railing had been taped off. Li walked towards it and the security guard followed, stamping his feet. ‘I wasn’t sure what it was at first. I thought maybe it was paint. I don’t know, some kind of vandalism. But I quickly figured out it was blood.’ He fumbled with his gloves to take out and light a cigarette. As an afterthought, he offered one to Li. Li shook his head.

A trail of blood led from the foot of the steps to the railing, where it was smeared all over the chrome. Someone covered in quite a lot of it had clearly clambered over the railing and on to the sidewalk. Li followed the trail with his eyes, but it stopped at the side of the road after four or five metres. Perhaps the killer had got into a car parked there. After all, he could hardly have wandered the streets covered in blood without attracting some attention.

Li said, ‘You say you check the perimeter every hour. So you didn’t see any blood here at seven?’

There was a moment’s hesitation before the security guard said, ‘No, Chief.’

Li fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘I don’t want any bullshit, son. It’s important for establishing time of death.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t check the perimeter at seven, did you?’

Li could almost see the blood draining from the boy’s face.

‘No, Chief.’ He shrugged, trying to dismiss his confession as if it were nothing. ‘When it’s cold like this … well, sometimes it’s more than an hour.’

Li said, ‘I don’t care why, I just want the facts. You weren’t here between locking up at five-thirty and checking the perimeter at eight, is that right.’

The boy nodded and couldn’t meet Li’s eye. ‘Yes, Chief.’

So the girl had been killed sometime in that two-and-a-half-hour window. ‘And you followed the blood up the steps?’

The guard nodded, anxious to make up for his shortcomings. ‘Yes, Chief. There’s a lot more of it up there. It led me right to her. She’s lying at the base of the arm, behind it, about three steps down from the top.’

‘You didn’t touch her?’

‘I did not.’ The boy seemed to shudder at the thought. ‘You could see her throat had been cut. There was a big pool of blood under her head. I could see in the beam of my flashlight that it was already drying. There’s no way she was still alive.’

Li flicked his head at Wu. ‘Get a statement off him. Anything he can remember out of the ordinary before he locked up. Anyone unusual. Just anyone he can remember at all.’ He nodded to Qian and Sang and they started the long climb up the steps. Off to their left, lights blazed in the windows of the China Central TV Media Centre, and Li thought that it probably wouldn’t be long before they woke up to the fact that there was a murder on their doorstep. If this had been the United States, he knew, the street would already be jammed with TV trucks and satellite dishes and newsmen clamouring for information. He wondered how long it would be before China went that way, too. It was not a prospect he relished, and he had to wonder at the apparently limitless appetite of the media and the public for the gory details of man’s capacity for inhumanity to man. Perhaps if they had witnessed some of what he had seen, that appetite might be somewhat diminished.

About two-thirds of the way up, the entrance to the museum was railed off in darkness, and by the time they reached the circle of the dial, immediately below the long, tapering arm that reached into the night sky, all three detectives were puffing for air. What breath they had left was whipped from their mouths by the wind that blew fiercely up here, bitter and cutting. Flights of steps rising past either side of the circle led right to the top, where a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree sweep of chrome railing gave on to an extraordinary view of the city skyline to the north, all the way to the Mountain of Heavenly Longevity and the Yanshan and Taihang mountain ranges. The same TV tower he had looked at catching the sun that afternoon from the windows of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was now a silver-lit arrow against the black of the sky.

A cluster of figures was gathered around the base of the sundial arm. Lights on stands rattled and shook in the ferocity of the wind. The tape which marked off the trail of blood all the way up from the causeway below was in danger of blowing away. Frail stands shifted and scraped across the concrete. Forensics men in tyvek suits, like ghosts, combed the steps for evidence traces. A small group of men crouched around the body. As Li and the others approached, Elvis stood up, his quiff flying about his head, ruined by the wind. They had to shout to make themselves heard above the noise of it.

‘Who is she?’ Li shouted.

‘Don’t know, Chief. We haven’t moved the body yet. And there doesn’t seem to be a purse. The pathologist’s still examining her.’ His scarf flapped into his mouth and he had to pull it free. ‘But it’s the same MO. Strangled, but not dead when he cut the throat. Which is why there’s so much blood. Left to right, same as always.’

Wang stood up behind Elvis and turned to see Li standing there. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The hero’s return. I thought you were busy banqueting tonight.’

‘I lost my appetite.’

‘I’m not surprised. Though this one’s not quite as messy.’

‘What makes you think it’s the same killer?’

‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt, Chief. I read the note you got this afternoon.’ He jerked his head over his shoulder towards the body lying behind him. ‘He’s cut off her ears. Just like he said he would.’

Li was stunned. ‘You’re kidding.’

Wang shrugged. ‘That’s all, though. Apart from cutting her throat, he’s left the rest of her intact. One thing different — he made a bit of a mess of it this time. Severed both carotids and got blood all over himself. You’d better take a look.’

He moved aside and Li took a step down into the light to look at the body. She was wearing a long, dark coat buttoned up to above the breast. There were calfskin gloves on her hands which lay open at her sides. Her legs were twisted sideways beneath the coat, one lying across the other, and Li could see the bottom of her dark pinstriped trousers above chunky-heeled shoes. The gash in her neck was semicircular and very deep, like a wide, dark smile. Her head was lying at an angle, to the left side, but because the hair was cut so short, the gash on the right side of her head where her ear had been was only too apparent. Li was in shock, and it was several moments before he was able to consciously reason why. He put out a hand and found Qian’s arm to steady himself.