Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘My uncle always trusted his instincts, Commissioner, and taught me to trust mine.’

‘Oh, I see. So your instincts are telling you that the Deputy Minister of Public Security might be a murderer. And presumably, since you have such faith in your instincts, you’ll be suggesting that we just lock him up?’

Li felt the serrated edge of the Commissioner’s sarcasm cutting into his fragile confidence. But he stood his ground. ‘There were six of us at the MERMER test, Commissioner.’

Zhu waved his cigarette in the air. ‘Well, that would make you and me suspects, too, I suppose.’

‘I wouldn’t be here, Commissioner, if I thought it was you.’

‘Ah, and that would be your trusty instinct again, Section Chief. Am I supposed to be flattered?’

Li decided not to respond to that one. It might be better to let the Commissioner make the next move. So he stayed silent, gazing through Zhu’s net curtains at the sun casting shortening shadows through the park.

‘And what is it you expect me to do, exactly?’ the Commissioner said finally. He stopped circling, and blew smoke in Li’s direction.

‘There would be one way of shortcutting the whole process, Commissioner.’

‘And that would be?’

‘If all six of us were to submit to a DNA test.’

He heard the Commissioner spluttering. ‘Are you insane, Li? Do you really think I’m going to go to the Deputy Minister, or the Procurator General, or the Director General of the Political Department, and ask them for samples of blood to eliminate them from a murder inquiry?’

Li said nothing, and the Commissioner began pacing agitatedly by the window, smoke trailing in his wake.

‘You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Commissioner.’

Zhu stopped and glared at him. ‘Then you’re going to have to come up with some pretty damned good evidence, because I’m not going to act on this until you have. It would be suicide, Li. For both of us. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes, Commissioner.’

Zhu exhaled deeply. ‘We are talking about people in extremely exalted positions here, Li. We’re talking about power, and politics, not police work.’ He stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray, and Li could see from his concentrated frown that he was thinking furiously. ‘I might take one or two informal soundings — over a few heads. Just to see how we should proceed.’ He glanced at his junior officer sharply. ‘But in the meantime, I don’t want you breathing a word of this to anyone else, do you understand? Carry on with your investigation into the Beijing Ripper, but for the moment keep your other suspicions to yourself.’

From somewhere, the academy’s administrators had secured desks and chairs and a couple of creaking old computers which Hart had got staff and students in Lynn Pan’s old department to set up in the computer room which had been stripped bare by the thieves. Hart had been at the academy since seven, and called them all in early.

Li recognised the student who had briefed them on the murder for the MERMER test. She and a long-haired male student were sitting at one of the computers. Hart was at the other with Professor Hu. He looked up when Li came in, and Li saw the strain in his face. In all likelihood, he had managed as little sleep as Li. Professor Hu had tied her wavy hair back in a pony tail, accentuating the thinness of her face. Today her business suit was black and severe as if she were in mourning. And in truth, Li thought, she probably was.

‘Grab a chair, Section Chief,’ Hart said. ‘We’re making progress, but not fast.’

Li drew up a chair and wheeled it in alongside Hart and the professor. There was a graph on the screen which they were scrolling through. ‘You managed to open up the files, then?’ he said.

Hart said, ‘Professor Hu was able to download software from an internet site shared with some MERMER people in the States. Apparently Lynn had made some changes to her version of it, but it’s essentially the same. The important thing is, it’s allowed us to open up the files so we can look at the graphs.’

‘Not that they tell us anything,’ Professor Hu said. ‘We can’t even begin to decipher them without the photographs which elicited the responses that they chart.’

Li still had the commissioner’s words ringing in his ears. You’re going to have to come up with some pretty damned good evidence . ‘They’re useless, then?’ he said.

‘Ah, no. Not quite.’ Hart’s smile was strained. ‘The student who assembled the picture sequences for each of the testees did most of the work on her computer at home. She thinks she’s got a copy of the pics on a zip disk. I sent her home to find out.’

Li said, ‘I don’t suppose she remembered which one of them was “D”?’

Hart shook his head. ‘Afraid not. As far as she was concerned they were just pictures which related to people she’d never even met. Nor would meet. Hometown pictures were mostly downloaded off the internet, from a list. Another student went and took pictures of apartments at various addresses he was given. But the work had all been shared out. Nobody had a definitive file.’

‘So how do the pictures help us?’

Professor Hu said, ‘If we compare the graphs with the pictures, at the very least we should be able to tell if “D” was one of the testees briefed on the murder. Or not.’

Li frowned. ‘But Professor Pan told me that the computer randomised the pictures. How do you know what order we saw them in?’

Hart said, ‘Apparently first time around the computer takes the pictures and shows them in the order it’s given them. Then it randomises for the subsequent sweeps.’

‘So we only have to look at the first set of charts for each one to tell who had been briefed on the murder and who hadn’t,’ the professor said.

‘Because those of you briefed on the murder will show a MERMER response to every one of the nine photographs that relate to it,’ Hart added.

Li nodded. ‘Okay, but how do we identify who “D” is?’

‘By tying him to the photographs of his apartment and home town,’ Hart said. ‘That’ll be a job for you guys when we get the pics.’ He sighed. ‘But figuring out what the lie was … well, that’s a whole other ballgame.’

Li gave voice to the question which had been niggling at him for hours. The question Zhu had gone to straight off. ‘How could he have told a lie when he wasn’t asked any questions? I mean MERMER’s not a lie detector. What could make Lynn Pan think he was lying?’

Hart shrugged and spread his palms. ‘Beats me.’ He looked at Professor Hu, but she just made a face and shook her head.

Li said, ‘You’ve got my cellphone number. Keep me in touch with progress.’

* * *

Li was eating a jian bing from a seller at the Xidan market when his cellphone rang. He had stopped off at Xidan for something to fill the gnawing void that was his stomach. He had barely eaten anything in twenty-four hours, not since his last jian bing from Mei Yuan. He also wanted time alone to think, to consider how he was going to handle the investigation. Commissioner Zhu’s warning to share his suspicions with no one was weighing heavily on his mind. And he knew he could not investigate without the manpower and resources of Section One. At the same time he was still concerned that someone within the section was feeding information to headquarters, which seriously curtailed the number of officers he was prepared to trust.

Ode to Joy interrupted his thoughts. He swopped the jian bing to his other hand and dug the phone out of his pocket. ‘ Wei? ’ It was Miss Shen Shuji, secretary to Yan Bo, Director General of the Ministry’s Political Department. The Director General, she told him frostily, wished to see him at his earliest convenience. Which was Ministry jargon for now .