Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘Where are we at?’

‘About ready for a meeting whenever you are, Chief. The autopsy’s scheduled for nine.’

Li checked his watch. It was six a.m. ‘I need to get changed and showered. Get my brain in gear. Let’s wait until after the autopsy before we do the meeting.’

Wu nodded and was in the corridor before Li called after him, ‘I never saw the statement you took from the security guard.’ Wu had decided to bring him back to Section One, and they had raised all the staff from the museum and the shop who had been on duty at the monument when it closed up for the night, and brought them all in for questioning.

Wu reappeared in the doorway. ‘He didn’t remember her,’ he said. ‘I pulled her pic from the computer, but it didn’t mean anything to him. Only thing that stuck with him was a car parked at the side of the road when he locked up. About five or six metres south of the gate.’

Li had a mental picture of the bloody tracks beyond the fence coming to an abrupt end at just about that point on the sidewalk. ‘Make? Colour? Anyone inside?’

Wu shook his head. ‘He was more concerned about hoofing it back to base for a smoke and a warm and something to eat. He said it was dark-coloured. A saloon. There might have been someone sitting in it, he wasn’t sure.’

Li gasped his frustration.

‘We struck it lucky with the girl, though.’

‘What girl?’

‘From the ticket office. She recognised Pan straight off. Remembered she spoke with a weird accent and was really pretty. Seems she bought a ticket about five-fifteen. Which was unusual, because apparently people don’t normally buy tickets that close to closing time. The girl had already cashed up.’

Li saw Pan striding across the causeway, her long coat flapping about her calves, her collar pulled up around her neck. She must have climbed the steps to the top as the sun was dipping behind the mountains. It had been a spectacular sunset the previous night. It must have been something special from up there. Blue mountains against a red sky, lights going on all across the city. Qian was right. She must have hidden there beneath the arm of the dial, waiting for the place to close up, waiting to meet the man who would take her life. But why? He lifted his coat from the stand. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

His bike was where he had left it the previous morning, chained to the railing leading into what had once been the main entrance to the building. The door had not been in use for as long as Li had been there. He cycled out into Dongzhimen Nanxiao Da Jie and headed south with the traffic, past the restaurant on the corner where Mei Yuan plied her trade. The restaurant was shuttered up, and it was too early for Mei Yuan. There were plenty of other bikes on the road, and traffic was already building up towards rush hour. Li cycled at a leisurely rate, buttoned up tight against the cold, and let the city slip by him. His fatigue had been startled out of him by the icy wind. His thoughts, however, were still full of Lynn Pan and his dream of making love to her. But the only image of her he could conjure in his mind was of her body lying cold and dead under the photographer’s lights at the Millennium Monument. Throat cut. Ears hacked off. Red blood on yellow stone.

On Jianguomen Da Jie, the cycle lane was choked with morning commuters, all wrapped in hats and scarves and gloves, padded jackets thickening slight Chinese frames, white masks strapped across faces to protect against both the cold and the pollution. With the sun at their backs, the stream of cyclists moved like a river, at the same pace, an odd current carrying someone in a hurry past the main flow. A girl chatting breezily on her cellphone weaved in and out amongst the more sedate of her fellow bikers. Cycling with the crowd brought an odd sense of belonging, of being a part of the whole. They passed the footbridge at Dongdan, and the vast new Oriental Plaza at Wangfujing. And at the Grand Hotel, Li moved out into the traffic to take his life in his hands and turn left into Zhengyi Road. He had done it a thousand times, and it only ever got harder. In the distance he saw a formation of PLA guards marching across Changan from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, as they did every morning, to raise the Chinese flag in Tiananmen Square.

Most of the leaves in the trees in Zhengyi Road still clung stubbornly to their branches. Those which dropped were swept up daily by women in blue smocks and white masks. But it was too early for the blue smocks, and the leaves which had fallen overnight scraped and rattled across the tarmac in the wind. Li cycled past the entrance to the Ministry compound and turned in at the news-stand at the end of the road to pick up the first editions of the newspapers. The news vendor was wrapped in layers of clothes, a fur hat with earflaps pulled down over her bobbed hair to overlap the collar and scarf at her neck. She wore fingerless gloves and cradled a glass jar of warm green tea. What was visible of her face smiled a greeting at Li.

‘How are you today, Mr Li?’

‘Very well, Mrs Ma.’

She handed him his usual People’s Daily and Beijing Youth Daily , folded one inside the other, in return for a few coins.

‘You’re up early today.’

He smiled. ‘I haven’t been to bed yet.’

‘Ahhh,’ she said sagely. ‘Of course. Another murder.’

He looked at her in astonishment. ‘How do you know that?’

She nodded towards the bundle in his hand. ‘It’s in the paper.’

Li frowned. ‘It can’t be.’ He looked at the People’s Daily . The front page was covered in the usual CCP propaganda Illiteracy rate among adult people slashed . And, Yangtze water cleanup ensured . There was a story about massive new investment in the western provinces, and a photograph of the executive deputy secretary of Tibet answering questions at a press conference. His heart skipped a beat as he saw a photograph of himself receiving his award from the Minister of Public Security. He would not have expected the public organ of the Party to have carried anything on the murders. The Beijing Youth Daily was another matter. Independent of the Party, and increasingly bold in its coverage of Chinese internal affairs, it had begun to garner a reputation for running high-risk stories. But even so, Li could not imagine the paper carrying a crime story about which no details had yet been released. Particularly since the latest murder had only been committed the night before. He unfolded its front page and felt as if he had been slapped. Beijing Ripper Claims Victim No. 5 . The headline ran almost the full length of the left side of the front page in bold red characters. Two strips of sub-heading matched it, side by side, white characters on a red background. Body discovered at Millennium Monument, throat cut, ears removed . And, Four previous victims in Jianguomen found with body parts missing . Above the story itself, was a photograph of Li pictured at the award ceremony the previous evening. The caption read, Award-winning Beijing cop, Li Yan, leads investigation .

‘It would make you frightened to go out at night,’ the news vendor said. ‘He must be insane, this Beijing Ripper, cutting open these poor women and taking out their insides.’ Her words dragged Li’s eyes from the paper to her face. She must have read the story from start to finish. As, in all probability, would most of the city’s population in the hours ahead. It was going to spread panic, and it would certainly be picked up by the foreign media. The political implications were unthinkable. How in the name of the sky, he wondered, had they got hold of this kind of detail?

* * *

Margaret was feeding Li Jon in the living room when he got in. She was still in her dressing gown, face smudged and bleary from sleep — or the lack of it. He threw the Beijing Youth Daily on to the coffee table in front of her. ‘Look!’ he said.