Peter May - Chinese Whispers

They went in the side entrance and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. There was an odd, faintly medical smell in the air as they walked along the top corridor. It was cold, and when they turned into the detectives’ room they saw why. All the windows stood wide open, and officers were sitting around in their coats and typing with their gloves on. Everyone was smoking. In spite of the cold wind blowing in through the open window, and the smoke that filled the room, the smell was stronger here, and carried more than a hint of something rotten.

Qian was sitting on one of the desks talking on the telephone. He hung up when he saw Li and jumped down. ‘In here, Chief.’ Watched by everyone else in the room, Li and Wu and Wang followed Qian into his office. The windows here were also wide open. The desk had been cleared, and on it stood a cardboard box the size of a shoebox. It had been wrapped in brown paper and secured with clear, sticky tape. Someone had cut open the wrapping, and the paper was folded away from the box, its lid lying on the table beside it. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol, and a stink like meat which had been left in the refrigerator a month past its sell-by date.

‘In the name of the sky, Qian …’ Li screwed up his eyes and blew air out through his mouth. ‘What the hell …?’

‘It was addressed to you, Chief. Arrived in this morning’s mail. But it was stinking so bad the head of the mail room thought I should open it.’ Qian looked slightly green around the gills. ‘I wish to hell I hadn’t.’

‘What is it?’ Li and Wu and Pathologist Wang approached the open box with a caution which suggested they thought that something might jump out and bite them. Inside, laid out amongst crumpled paper packing was a smooth, faintly reddish-brown-coloured arc of something organic. It was wrapped in plastic and oozing a clear fluid. The stench was fierce. Wu put a handkerchief to his face and moved back, gagging. Li stood his ground with difficulty as Wang snapped on latex gloves and lifted it out of the box.

‘It’s a kidney,’ he said. ‘The left kidney. You can tell because the adrenal gland in the fat that’s been left along the top edge is still “tall”. The gland on the right kidney gets flattened by the liver. It’s been cut in half longitudinally. There’s about one inch of the renal artery still attached to it.’ He sniffed, long since inured to the aromas of the autopsy. ‘Been preserved in alcohol by the smell of it, which is why it feels firm and has lost some of its colour.’

‘A human kidney?’ Li asked, anticipating Wang’s response with a growing sense of horror.

‘Oh, yes. I’ll need to make the proper comparisons of course, but at an educated guess I’d say this is the kidney that was removed from Guo Huan. The renal artery is normally about three inches long. From memory there was around two inches of it left in the corpse.’

Qian went into the top drawer of his desk and lifted out an A4-sized plastic sleeve. Flattened out inside it was a note that had been folded twice over. He handed it to Li, and then moved away towards the open window for air. Li recognised the scrawl of the large, untidy characters, the distinctive red ink.

Chief ,

I send you half the kidney I took from one woman. Preserved it for you. The other piece I fried and ate. It was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer.

Signed,

Catch me when you can.

Li found the plastic sleeve trembling in his hands. ‘And it was addressed to me by name?’

‘Yes, Chief.’

Li held out his hand. ‘Give me some gloves.’ He had used up his supply. Qian took a pair from his desk and handed them over. Li pulled them on and then carefully lifted the box away from the wrapping paper. He turned the paper over and smoothed it out on the desk. The label was hand-written. There were half a dozen stamps on it, franked and postmarked the previous day. The circle of red ink was not perfect, but it was perfectly readable. 12.30 p.m. EMS Central Post Office, Beijing.

Li tried to contain his excitement. ‘He’s made his first mistake,’ he said. ‘The parcel was too big to post through a letter box. He must have had to pass it across the counter and get it weighed. So somebody saw him. Somebody saw his face. We’ve got a witness!’

* * *

‘Hey, Chief, isn’t that your old man?’ Wu was chewing like a man possessed. He had now pushed several pieces of gum into his mouth to get rid of the taste left there by the lingering smell of the half kidney. Wang had once explained to him at an autopsy that the smell registered by your nasal sensors was carried on actual particles released into the air by the thing you were smelling. Which is why a particularly strong smell could also sometimes leave a taste in your mouth. Wu had found the concept disgusting, and was now furiously trying to wash away any unwanted particles by stimulating saliva production with his chewing gum.

Li glanced out of the passenger window as they passed the side entrance to the Ministry compound in Zhengyi Road. His apartment was less than two hundred metres beyond the wall. A taxi was pulled in at the kerbside, and the driver was helping his father out on to the sidewalk.

‘Yes,’ he said. Mister Li senior was going to visit his grandson. And Li knew that Margaret would not be surprised that Li had failed to turn up. Again. A part of him wanted to ask Wu to stop, so that he could get out and explain. But there was no point. An excuse, even a good one, always sounded like an excuse.

Ironically, the EMS post office was just around the corner at No. 7 Qianmen Da Jie. It was a huge, twelve-storey building that took up half the block. Rows of distinctive green EMS vans were parked out front, in a narrow carpark screened from the road by trees. Wu parked right outside the main door, waving aside protests from a security man by pushing a Ministry ID in his face. Li stepped out and saw, in the afternoon sunshine, the row of red flags lining the roof of police headquarters on the next half of the block. Wu lit a cigarette. ‘Cheeky bastard. Posting the thing to us from right outside HQ. Like he’s thumbing his nose at us. How was it he signed his note? Catch me if you can? ’

Li said grimly. ‘We’ll catch him alright.’ But in his heart he wondered how many more young women would have to die before they did.

The main hall was busy, queues forming at windows along a counter which ran the length of it. Lights reflected off a marble floor, and voices off marble-faced walls. One counter sold nothing but paper, string, tape and glue, and Li wondered if perhaps their killer had wrapped his parcel in the post office itself. He looked along the counters as if he hoped that maybe the murderer’s ghost might still be there, some impression, some presence that he had left behind, even just in the memory of one of tellers.

They made themselves known to security and were taken to the manager’s office. Wu nudged Li and nodded towards a copy of the Beijing Youth Daily lying on his desk. The manager was a dapper man in a dark suit, with a collar and tie. He looked at them warily through steel-framed spectacles and offered them tea. Li declined. He showed the manager a colour photocopy of the parcel label, with its stamps and postmark. He said, ‘One of your tellers took a parcel with this address across his or her counter at twelve-thirty yesterday. He or she stamped it and franked it and put it in the mail basket.’

‘So?’

‘So, I believe that teller is the only person we know of who has set eyes on the Beijing Ripper.’

He had calculated that his use of the term would have some effect. And he was not wrong. The manager’s eyes opened wide and flickered briefly towards the newspaper lying on his desk. ‘He was here?’