Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘We believe so.’

Li could see the thoughts processing behind the manager’s eyes as clearly as if they were windows. ‘We have thousands of people in here every day,’ he said. ‘I think it’s unlikely that a teller would remember any one of them in particular.’

Wu was looking at a small black and white television screen mounted high on the wall in the far corner of the office. It showed a view looking down on the main hall of the post office. His jaw froze, mid-chew. ‘You guys got closed-circuit TV in here?’

The manager glanced towards the screen, the implications of Wu’s question dawning on them all simultaneously. ‘We have two cameras,’ he said. ‘One on each side of the hall.’

‘And do you record what they see?’ Li asked, hardly daring to believe that they might actually have the killer on video.

‘We recycle the tapes every seven days.’

‘We only need to go back one,’ Wu said, his eyes shining with sudden optimism.

* * *

The recording equipment was in the office of the head of security. He removed his grey-peaked cap and scratched his head. ‘Sure,’ he said in answer to Li’s question. ‘The tapes are all time-coded, so we can find the time you want pretty fast.’

‘Let’s do it, then,’ Wu said.

The security man rummaged in a cupboard and pulled out a VHS tape and put it in an empty machine. He flicked the play switch and then began fast rewinding from the end of it. It went backwards from seven p.m. Li watched the speeded-up comings and goings, like an old Chaplin movie gone mad, with a growing sense of disappointment. He glanced at the other two monitors displaying live pictures from the main hall. He said to the manager. ‘And those are your only two camera positions?’

The manager nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘They’re too high for us to see faces. We’re really only getting the tops of heads.’

The managed shrugged. ‘They weren’t designed to pick out faces, just to give us an overview.’

Li felt fingers of frustration choking back his brief optimism. It would be ironic if they managed to catch their killer on tape, but not be able to see his face.

The time-code on the tape was counting back at high speed. The picture was just a blur. Wu said, ‘Stop it at twelve-fifteen. We’ll watch it from there.’ He shoved another piece of gum in his mouth and lit another cigarette.

The tape ran back a little past twelve-fifteen before the security man could stop it. The picture cleared and they had a view of the hall from the left-hand camera. It was running forward now from twelve-thirteen and fifty-three seconds. Li said, ‘Can you cue up the tape from the other camera while we’re watching this?’ The security man nodded. He found the right tape and set it rewinding in another machine.

The others watched a constant stream of activity on the first monitor. A woman with a pushchair. A bunch of schoolgirls posting some letters. Businessmen with express mail. Ordinary folk going about their ordinary business. The main floor was busy, at least thirty people moving around it at any one time. Maybe more. The picture definition was not good, as if the camera had viewed proceedings through gauze stretched across its lens. Suddenly, Wu shouted, ‘There!’ And he stabbed his finger at the screen.

Li leaned in and saw a figure in a long, dark coat with a shoebox parcel under his arm walking through the sunshine that spilled in from the main door. ‘Shit!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘He’s wearing a baseball cap. He knows about the cameras.’ His face was completely masked by the long peak of the black cap, and plunged into shadow by it. His collar was turned up, and they could not even tell if his hair was long or short. He wore gloves, dark trousers, black shoes. There was not one centimetre of him on view.

Wu was shaking his head. ‘He’s playing with us, Chief. He knew we would see these tapes. He knew how fucking frustrated we would be when we had him right there in our sights and still couldn’t see him. He’s like the invisible fucking man.’

They watched as he stood for some time in the centre of the concourse, as if deciding which queue to join. Then he walked to a window at the far end, almost immediately below the other camera. Its view of him would be hopelessly distorted, and he was about as far as he could get from the camera whose shot they were watching now. He conducted his business with a teller they could not see. After a brief exchange, the window was lifted and his parcel taken across the counter. He waited until it had been weighed and costed, and then took a wallet from his coat pocket and paid in cash. He never once looked around, his face hidden from view at every moment. He turned and walked briskly to the door and was gone.

Li turned to the manager. ‘Find out who that teller was and get them in here now.’

The teller turned out to be a plump, middle-aged woman with an attitude. She had done nothing wrong, and as far as she was concerned, she was going to be as unhelpful as possible. They replayed the tape for her and she watched with a bored expression.

‘So what am I supposed to be?’ she asked. ‘Madam Memory? I don’t even look at their faces. It’s bad enough that I can smell their breath through the grilles in the window.’

‘It was an unusual address,’ Wu said.

‘I don’t look at the addresses. I weigh the parcel, I look at the postcode, I get a price. I stamp it, they pay. They go, then it’s who’s next.’

‘You’re not being very helpful, lady,’ Wu said.

‘I’m not paid to be helpful,’ she snapped. ‘I’m paid to do a job. I do it. I’ve done if for years. If anyone’s got any complaint about my work, that’s another matter.’ She looked defiantly around the faces. ‘Is anyone complaining about my work?’

Li said very quietly. ‘Do you have any idea what was in that parcel?’

‘Of course I don’t. What’s it to me what was in the parcel?’

‘Well,’ Li said patiently, ‘it might help you to understand just how much danger you are in.’

For the first time, there was no quick comeback and she visibly blanched. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think it would be helpful if I explained,’ Li said, ‘that the parcel you took from that gentleman contained the kidney of a woman he hacked to death on Sunday.’ Her eyes widened. ‘You might even have heard of him. He was in the paper this morning. They’re calling him the Beijing Ripper.’ There was the smallest intake of breath, and her hand went to her mouth. ‘Did you see that story by any chance?’ She nodded, unable to speak now. ‘Well, you’re the only person we know of who has seen him.’ Her eyes grew wider still. ‘And if we know you’ve seen him, he knows you’ve seen him. So I don’t really think I’d like to be in your shoes tomorrow when he reads that we have interviewed a witness, a teller at the EMS post office, who took a parcel from him on Monday.’

‘You wouldn’t put that in the paper!’ she gasped.

Li shrugged sympathetically. ‘Maybe we won’t have to. Maybe we’ll catch him by then. But we’re going to need some help. We’re going to need a description. Anything at all you can remember. Anything.’ He paused. ‘It could be the most important thing you’ve ever had to do in your life.’

She asked to see the tape again. Then they played her the second tape, but half of the killer was outside the bottom frame of the picture, and they were looking directly down on top of him. There was not so much as a hair on view.

The teller was babbling nervously now. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. His face was shaded by that cap. And really, I don’t look at them, I don’t.’

‘Anything you can remember,’ Li said again. ‘Was he tall, short? Was he clean shaven? Did he wear glasses …?’