Peter May - Chinese Whispers

Li was still struggling to come to terms with what the girl was saying. ‘You mean, you and she …? She was …’

‘A lesbian?’ the girl asked the question for him. She shook her head. ‘I suppose that’s what people would call us. But we were really just two people who loved each other.’ She bit her lip hard to stop herself from crying, and Li saw blood on her front teeth. ‘When she got the job offer out here, there was no question that I wouldn’t come with her. Not that I had the first idea what I would do. In the end I got a job teaching English at a private school near the university.’

Li was stunned. It had never once occurred to him that Pan might have been gay. There had been no hint of it in the way she had flirted with him. But then he remembered how she’d had them all in the palm of her hand the previous day. Every one of the six Ministry officials who had gone for the MERMER test had been smitten by her. I never knew anyone who wasn’t madly in love with her after five minutes , the girl had said. Did that suggest her killer might have been jealous? There was no indication that he knew any of his previous victims. But if he had known Pan, perhaps fallen for her, and then discovered that she was forever beyond his reach … A motive? But then why would he break into her department at the Academy to steal all her files? And what did he hope to find in her apartment? Li was in no doubt that the murder and the break-ins were connected. But none of it made the least sense to him.

He was still trying to come to terms with Pan’s sexuality. ‘You didn’t share the apartment with her,’ he said.

For the first time, the girl showed apprehension. ‘It’s frowned upon here, isn’t it? Officially?’

Li understood. ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me,’ he said.

‘We decided it would be safer if we had separate apartments. At least, that’s how Lynn wanted it. She always liked her own space. Somewhere she could retreat to, to be on her own.’ The sadness in the girl’s face was nearly unbearable. ‘Me? I would have wanted to be with her every living minute.’

Li heard the sound of a vehicle drawing up out front. He stood up and went to the window. It was the forensics van from Pau Jü Hutong. Fu Qiwei’s second team spilled out into the car park. He turned back into the room. ‘That’s the forensics people arriving,’ he said. ‘Before they come in and start taking this place apart, do you think you could have a look around, maybe tell me if anything’s missing?’

She took a deep breath and nodded her head.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Try not to touch or disturb anything.’ He helped her to her feet and squeezed her hand. ‘Take your time. I’ll keep them out of here until you’re done.’

He went out on to the landing to wait for the forensics guys to come up the stairs and ask them to give her a few minutes. And they stood around in silence, smoking and waiting. It was nearly ten minutes before the girl came out. ‘Her computer,’ she said. ‘She always kept a laptop on the coffee table beside the big armchair. It’s gone. And I can’t find any of her disks anywhere.’

Li was glad of the cold air in his face and his lungs as he stepped out with the girl into the yellow autumn sunshine. The wind tugged at their clothes and stung their skin.

She said, ‘Will you need someone to identify her?’

‘Yes.’ He thought about Bill Hart, or perhaps Professor Hu. ‘But you don’t have to worry about that.’

‘I’d like to do it,’ she said.

Li closed his eyes. He saw the gash in her neck, the gaping wounds on each side of her head where her ears had been hacked off. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘I want to,’ the girl insisted. ‘One minute she’s there. My whole life. The next she’s gone. And I don’t even get the chance to say goodbye to her? I want to see her. I want that chance.’

‘Okay.’ Li nodded. There was no point in trying to dissuade her. He knew that people often needed to see the body. A confirmation of death. As if somehow they can’t believe unless they see. It was not a need he shared. He had seen enough bodies in his life to know that they were nothing but empty receptacles, that the person who had once animated them was long gone. And that it was better to remember them as they were. As it was, he knew that this girl’s last and lasting image of her lover would be one of horror, one that would taint every other memory she had of her for the rest of her days. And he grieved for them both.

Li arrived at the pathology centre off the Badaling Expressway shortly before eleven. He pulled in beside a Beijing Jeep from Section One, and saw Wu standing smoking in the doorway, waiting for him.

‘Hey, Chief.’ Wu pushed his shades back on his forehead, threw away his cigarette and followed him into the lobby and along the corridor to the changing rooms.

Li said, ‘Did you turn up anything at the Academy?’

‘Not a thing, Chief. I talked to all the students and staff who worked with her. No one had a bad word to say about her.’

I never knew anyone who wasn’t madly in love with her after five minutes .

‘And there just doesn’t seem any reason why anyone would want to steal those computers and files,’ Wu was saying. ‘The computer equipment wasn’t even new. You’d only get a handful of yuan for that stuff on the black market. And like the security guy said, it was a pro job. Why would they want to steal a lot of old junk?’

Li hung up his coat and slipped a green surgical gown over his shirt. ‘When we figure that out, we might know why she was killed.’ He pulled a shower cap over his head. ‘Someone broke into her apartment and took her laptop.’

Wu was sitting pulling elasticated covers over his shoes. He raised one eyebrow. ‘You still think she was killed by the Ripper? I mean, the same guy who killed those other women?’

‘I know it doesn’t make sense, Wu, but it’s hard to call it any other way. How else do we explain the letter promising to cut off the ears of the next victim, and then Pan turning up with her ears removed? And then there’s the trademark cutting of the throat. The Russian cheroot.’

He looked at Wu, who could only shrug an acknowledgement. ‘I don’t know, Chief. There’s so many inconsistencies. Maybe … maybe the other murders were just a smokescreen — to confuse us, to obscure the real reason for killing Professor Pan. Maybe she’s what it’s all really about.’

Li stopped to consider the idea. ‘It’s a hell of an elaborate smokescreen,’ he said. ‘But it’s a thought, Wu. It’s a thought.’

He pulled plastic covers over his shoes. Regulations in the new facility. Everyone attending an autopsy had to wear protective clothing. They took cotton masks from the locker and pocketed them for later use. It had been established that bone dust breathed in during the cutting of the skull with an oscillating saw, could carry viral particles, including AIDS. These days no one was taking any chances. Although Li thought it unlikely that a woman involved in a long-term relationship with another woman would have AIDS.

They went back out into the corridor and turned towards the autopsy room at the end. ‘So has the American pathologist turned up yet?’ Li asked.

‘Yeah.’

Li felt anger rising in him again, like mercury in a thermometer. ‘It’s madness, Wu. Absolutely fucking insane! Where’s Wang?’

‘In the autopsy suite, Chief. They’re doing the autopsy together.’

‘Well, that’s something at least.’ He pushed open the swing doors into the autopsy room. ‘I don’t suppose he speaks Chinese?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, Chief.’ The two pathologists were standing with their backs to the door, examining photographs taken at the crime scene. Wu said in his halting English, ‘You don’ speak Chinese, Doctah, do you?’