Peter May - Chinese Whispers

As she examined the hair and the external scalp, Margaret could smell the faint lingering traces of Lynn Pan’s shampoo. A soft, sweet, peachy smell that made her seem altogether too human, too recently alive. She stepped back and nodded to Doctor Wang who drew blood for toxicology from the femoral vein at the top of her right leg.

Li could not look as Wang handed the blood to an assistant and then held open Pan’s right eyelid to pierce the eyeball with a syringe and draw off a quantity of clear, vitreous fluid. They would turn her over now and examine the back of her, before replacing her front-side-up and carving her open, cutting through delicate ribs with steel shears, removing the heart and lungs and the rest of the organs, cutting round the top of her skull and removing the brain. A monotonous, routine, dehumanising process that would reduce this once vibrant young woman to a dissevered pile of flesh and bones to be stored in a deep freeze for anything up to five years, depending upon how long it took to catch and execute her killer.

Margaret worked her way through the rest of the autopsy with dispassionate detachment. Like riding a bicycle, you never forgot how. She had simply wobbled a little at the beginning. Everything about Lynn Pan was normal and healthy. Her heart, lungs, liver, both kidneys. She had been a model of fitness and good health

Li stood watching, determinedly unemotional, trying to focus his feelings in a positive way. He closed his eyes as Margaret sliced down the length of the intestine and tried not to let the smell affect him. She had been killed for a reason — a reason that had nothing to do with the other murders, although it appeared she had been killed by the same hand. Her computers and files had all been stolen, from her workplace and her home. She knew, or had in her possession, something … information, perhaps, that someone did not wish anyone else to know. So the motive for killing her was different from the others. She did not relate in any way to any of the Jack the Ripper slayings or their Beijing copies. And yet they had so much else in common. The method of killing, the Russian cheroot. And the letter which had promised to cut the ears off the next victim, a promise fulfilled in the killing of Lynn Pan. An incontrovertible link.

‘Did we manage to recover saliva from the cheroot found at the Guo Huan crime scene?’ he asked Wang.

‘English, please,’ Margaret said without looking up.

Li repeated the question in English.

‘Sure,’ Wang said. ‘The lab confirm this morning. We have DNA match with other killings.’

‘How long will it take to DNA-test the cigar end found by Pan’s body?’

‘I gave it to lab last night,’ Wang said.

And Margaret added, ‘I have requested that they fast-track the testing process. We should hear later today.’

Li said, ‘What are you going to put in your report to the Americans?’

Margaret said, ‘For God’s sake, I haven’t finished the autopsy yet!’

‘But you already know the cause of death.’

She sighed, reluctant to commit herself too early. ‘Subject to toxicology, I’ll be telling the embassy that she died from rapid blood loss caused by the severing of the main arteries of the neck. She had been strangled and was probably unconscious when her throat was cut.’

‘Do you think she was killed by the same person who murdered the others?’

She glanced at Wang. ‘What do you think, Doctor? You did the other autopsies.’

Wang pulled a face. ‘Inconclusive,’ he said. ‘She was strangled like others, yes. Throat cut, left to right, like others. Yes. But no other injury. This is not like others. Also, she no prostitute, like others. She no killed in Jianguomen, like others.’ He looked at Margaret. ‘How ‘bout you, Doctah?’

‘I agree,’ Margaret said. ‘As things stand, the evidence is inconclusive.’

‘What about the letter?’ Li said. ‘The ears.’

‘Circumstantial,’ Margaret said. ‘It doesn’t prove anything. You have to make your own judgement on that one.’ She stopped what she was doing and looked at him. ‘The unsmoked end of that Russian cheroot is the crucial piece of the jigsaw that we don’t yet have. If they can recover saliva and we get a DNA match, then I think you’d have to say that it was the same killer. If not …’ she blew a jet of air through pursed lips, ‘… I’d say you were heading for confusion freefall.’

Li and Wu were stepping out into the carpark when Li’s cellphone rang. Qian’s voice sounded oddly strained. ‘Chief, where are you?’

‘We’ve just come out of the autopsy.’

‘Can you come straight back here?’

‘Sure.’

‘And bring Wang?’

‘Why?’

‘We’ve got something here he’s going to have to check out, Chief. It’s not something I really want to tell you about on the phone.’

Li sent Wu back inside to get Wang, and he stood on the steps staring gloomily towards the traffic which sped by on the expressway beyond a vast area of what had once been housing, flattened now for redevelopment. He didn’t really want to think about what it was that Qian needed Wang to check out. Everything about this case seemed to be slipping away from him. Margaret’s confusion freefall . Each time, it seemed, he turned around there was a new development — before he’d even had time to assimilate the last one.

‘What’s happened?’ He turned around to find Margaret, showered and changed, on the steps beside him.

‘I don’t know. Qian didn’t want to talk about it on the phone.’ He looked at her, and she seemed suddenly very small and vulnerable, her hair still wet and combed back from her face. She seemed thinner. Perhaps she had lost weight and he simply hadn’t noticed. He ran a thumb along the line of her jaw and brushed her cheekbone. Her skin was so pale, dotted with tiny faded freckles across the nose. He remembered how Lynn Pan’s lover had described her loss. One minute she’s there. My whole life. The next she’s gone . And he felt how it would be if he ever lost Margaret. The thought struck him like a blow to the solar plexus. It was too easy to take the people you loved for granted, and too late to take it back when they were gone. He knew that Margaret was unhappy, chained to the home and the child, and he simply hadn’t been dealing with it. In the wake of Lynn Pan’s death, she seemed particularly fragile, and he felt the need to hold her and protect her.

Margaret was taken by surprise when he enveloped her in his arms and squeezed all the breath from her lungs. ‘Hey,’ she protested, laughing, and pulled herself free. ‘Who do you think you are, the Beijing Ripper?’

But he wasn’t smiling. He was gazing into the deep, dark blue of her eyes. ‘I love you, Margaret,’ he said.

And she felt the intensity of it. ‘I love you, too,’ she said quietly.

‘I know things aren’t satisfactory right now,’ he said. ‘I know it. I just … I just need to deal with this first. And then we’ll sort it.’

She nodded seriously. ‘I don’t know how we do that.’

‘Neither do I. But we’ve got to try.’ He squeezed both her hands. ‘I can’t promise, but I’ll try and make it to see my father this afternoon.’

She smiled ruefully. ‘I won’t hold my breath.’

They broke apart as her taxi arrived. It was a Mercedes. Li cocked an eyebrow. ‘Can we afford this?’

‘We don’t have to. The good old US of A is picking up the tab.’ She kissed him lightly on the lips and jumped into the back seat. The taxi was pulling out of the gate when Wu came down the steps with Pathologist Wang.

It took them forty minutes to get back to Section One through the lunchtime traffic, sitting in long, frustrating periods of gridlock on the Third Ring Road before turning south and picking their way through some of the less congested back streets. The restaurant on the corner of Beixinqiao Santiao was packed when Li parked their Jeep outside it. The sounds of diners, the smells of lunch, of barbecue and wok, filled the air, making Li aware of a hunger gnawing at his stomach. But he had no appetite and no desire to eat. Beyond Section One, Noah’s Ark Food Room had fallen under the demolition men’s hammer, and behind a hoarding where it had once stood, a giant crane soared into the blue autumn sky, dominating the skyline.