Peter May - Chinese Whispers

She glanced at the paper. ‘I see a photograph of you,’ she said. ‘Is that what I’m supposed to be looking at? Maybe I should cut it out and keep it by the bedside, that way I’d probably see more of you than I do at the moment.’

But Li was in no mood for her sarcasm, and in his agitation, he had forgotten that she would not be able to read the headline. ‘ Beijing Ripper Claims Victim No. 5 .’ He read it for her.

She shrugged. ‘So? It’s true, isn’t it?’

‘That’s not the point!’ His voice was strained by exasperation and anger. ‘No one outside of the investigation knows the kind of detail they’ve printed in there.’

‘So someone leaked it.’

Li shook his head. ‘It doesn’t happen in China.’

‘It does now.’ Margaret pushed up an eyebrow. ‘Welcome to the rest of the world.’ She removed the teat from Li Jon’s mouth and wiped his lips. ‘Good morning, by the way.’

Li threw his hands up in frustration. ‘They’re going to blame me for this, Margaret.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘I’m going for a shower.’ And he stormed off to the bathroom.

Margaret called after him. ‘Your son says good morning, too.’

The slamming of the bathroom door came back in response. After a moment she heard the sound of the shower running, and the shower door banged shut. The phone rang. Usually she did not answer it, because the calls were invariably for Li and the callers spoke only Chinese. But he was in the shower, and in spite of her resentment at being abandoned to play the role of the little wife and doting mother, she did understand the pressure he was under. She lifted the receiver. ‘ Wei? ’ A female voice spoke to her in Chinese. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Margaret said. ‘Please hold.’

She hefted Li Jon in her left arm, and took the phone through to the bathroom. Li’s uniform and underwear lay crumpled on the floor where he had dropped them. She opened the shower door and immediately felt the hot spray and steam on her face. She saw the shape of Li lathering his head with soap somewhere in the midst of it all and thrust the phone towards him. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘A call for you.’

He fumbled to turn off the water, stinging shampoo running into his eyes as he reached for the phone. ‘Shit, Margaret, could it not have waited?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, and she slammed the door shut behind her.

Li winced, and stood dripping in the cubicle, clutching the phone to his wet head. The cold of the apartment was already making itself felt as the water cooled, and he started to shiver.

‘ Wei? ’

It was the secretary from the Commissioner’s office at police headquarters. The Commissioner wanted to see him without delay. Li closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. The storm was about to break. And it was going to break right over his head.

By the time he was dressed and ready to go, Margaret had steamed some lotus paste buns and made green tea. He appeared in the kitchen doorway looking harassed, wearing his long, heavy coat. But he had changed into freshly pressed slacks and a white shirt. Margaret thought he looked stunning, and she always loved the smell of him when he came out of the shower. But he never seemed to be around long enough these days for her to enjoy him.

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Commissioner Zhu is going to cut me up into little pieces and feed me to the fish.’

‘Then you should have some breakfast before you go. To fatten you up for the fish.’

‘No time. I’ll call later.’ And he was gone.

She shouted after him, ‘Are you remembering we’re going out for dinner tonight?’ But the door was already closing behind him. She shut her eyes to try to calm herself, and to prepare herself for the emptiness of the day ahead — before remembering that Li’s father had said he would drop by in the afternoon to see his grandson. Perhaps, she reflected, the day would have been better left empty. She felt her blood pressure start to rise once more.

The phone rang again, startling her this time. She swithered about whether to answer it, but if it was important there was still time to call down to Li from the balcony. And, besides, what else did she have to do with her time? She picked up the receiver. ‘ Wei? ’

A man’s voice spoke in a clipped American accent. ‘May I speak with Doctor Campbell?’

It seemed so odd to have someone addressing her as Doctor Campbell, not only in her own language, but in a comfortingly East-coast American accent. ‘This is she,’ she replied.

Police Headquarters was a short walk from Li’s apartment. The main entrance was two streets down on Qianmen Dong Da Jie, along from the EMS Central Post Office, but Li always entered from Jiaominxiang Lane. The old, arched entrance to the rear compound, opposite the Supreme Court, had been demolished to make way for a new building, clad in marble and designed along classical European lines to blend in with the redbrick one-time CID headquarters on the east side, and the former Citibank on the west. The old Citibank building was now a police museum, and beyond it the new entrance was watched over by two armed PLA guards flanking the gate.

The trees that overhung the lane were still thick with leaves, and the leaves were thick with the dust of construction. The roadway was closed to traffic, and workmen crowded the sidewalks, wheeling barrows and shovelling sand into cement mixers. The Supreme Court had been stripped back to its bones and was being given a new face. Ministry apartment blocks beyond were draped in green netting, behind which yet more workmen put in twenty-four-hour shifts in this relentless process of rebuilding and remodelling the new China.

Li walked briskly through the gates into the rear compound, the sound of pneumatic drills hammering in his ears, drowning the sound of the beating of his heart which, until then, was all he had been able to hear.

The Commissioner’s office was on the fifth floor, and Li stood uncomfortably in the elevator with half a dozen other people who, he was sure, could hear his heart beating, too. No pneumatic drills here to drown it out. But if they did, they gave no indication of it. He stepped out into a carpeted corridor and followed it along to the large reception area outside the Commissioner’s office. A poster-sized photograph of the face of an armed policewoman, her gun pointing to the ceiling and pressed against her cheek, dominated one wall. The rest of the room was dominated by the Commissioner’s secretary, a formidable woman in her fifties who, Li had often surmised, probably bought her clothes mail-order from an outsize store in the US. She was not of typical Chinese dimensions. But in a country where a large proportion of domestic crime involved husband battering, she was not untypical of the older Chinese woman. For all his height and rank, Li always found her intimidating. She was, after all, only a secretary. But like many secretaries, she took her status and power from her boss. And since her boss was Beijing’s top cop, that gave her quite a bit of clout.

She glared at Li. ‘You’re late.’ It was not long after seven, and Li figured she must have been called in early. She certainly looked, and sounded, like a woman who had not had her full complement of sleep.

‘I came straight away.’

‘He’s had to go. Deputy Cao will see you.’

Li breathed an inner sigh of relief. Cao was less likely to be riding his high horse. But if he thought he was in for an easier time, he was mistaken.

Cao turned from the window where he had been staring morosely out at the traffic below, and didn’t even give Li time to draw breath. His arms were folded across his chest, and in one hand he held a folded and much thumbed copy of the Beijing Youth Daily . He almost threw it on to his desk. ‘You’ve done it this time, Section Chief.’