Peter May - Chinese Whispers

Li thought about the overgrown remains of what had once been the Wutaishan Orphanage, almost in the shadow of the twin pagodas. It would have been impossible to have been there without seeing them. And if Cao, or whoever he was, had seen them, then he would have registered a MERMER response during the demonstration. A black cloud descended on his mind, obscuring the clarity he thought he had found here in Taiyuan City. ‘I don’t know. Either the fire at the orphanage was a quirk of fate, and he just took advantage of it, or …’ He hardly dared think about it. ‘Or someone else set the fire for him.’

‘Which means that someone else knows that he’s not who he says he is.’

‘Or knew ,’ Li said. ‘It seems that people don’t live very long when they know the truth.’

‘Oh, Li Yan.’ He heard the fear in Margaret’s voice. ‘For God’s sake be careful.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back sometime before three.’

He disconnected the phone, and dropped into a soft leather seat to stare up at the electronic arrivals and departures board, seething with a latent fury that had been building in him these last few days, determined that the killing would stop here, that he would get his life back again, and that the man who called himself Cao Xu would be brought, finally, to justice.

But he had no idea how he was going to make it through the next seven hours.

The lights of an airplane tracked their way across the vast expanse of black sky visible through the open curtain. Margaret lay on the bed twisted in her nightshirt. It was warm in the apartment, in spite of the subzero temperatures outside, and she had pushed aside the duvet in an attempt to cool herself. For a second night she could not sleep, too many thoughts crowding an already overcrowded mind. She had tossed and turned restlessly, too hot under the duvet, slightly chilled without it. Again and again she turned everything Li had told her over in her head. But still there was something that did not chime, something that did not quite make sense. And underlying everything, was a dread of what awaited her in just over twenty-four hours. Expulsion from China; the thought that she might be parted from her son; the fear that she might never see him again if she was.

It did not help that Lyang had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and was now breathing heavily, turned away from Margaret and lying on her side. She had been poor company all day, morose and monosyllabic. Understandable in the circumstances. But Margaret suspected that she had also been taking some kind of sedative. Her eyes were dead, lacking the life that Margaret had seen in them when they’d first met only four days ago. She was slow in response to anything Margaret said to her, and she did not seem to have eaten anything all day. Margaret had done her best to keep the children amused, but it had been a strain. And now when she wanted to sleep, it was eluding her again.

The red digital display told her it was 1.14 a.m. She closed her eyes, and felt the ache behind them. She tried to empty her mind, and let sleep steal in to carry her off. Instead, she was startled upright by the ringing of a telephone on the bedside table

Lyang moaned in her sleep and rolled over, but she did not wake up. The phone rang three, four times. Long, single rings. Margaret shook her by the shoulder. ‘Lyang, wake up for God’s sake!’

Lyang opened bleary eyes. ‘What…’

‘The phone!’ Margaret almost shouted at her. She was scared to answer herself in case the caller spoke Chinese.

Lyang glanced over at the clock, but couldn’t make out the blurred red figures. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s a quarter past one.’

‘Who the hell’s phoning at this time of the morning?’ Lyang reached over and lifted the receiver. ‘ Wei? ’ She listened for a moment, frowning, then thrust the phone towards Margaret. ‘It’s for you.’

Margaret’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘Me?’ Her heart was still pounding. Who knew she was here apart from Li? ‘Who is it?’

‘Someone called Dai. He says you’ll know who he is.’

‘Dai?’ Now she was scared. She grabbed the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Magret,’ Dai said. ‘Am so sorry to phone at this hour of night. I don’t wanna scare you, but Li Yan’s father, he is not well. His heart, maybe. I have telephone for ambulance, but who know when it arrive. Please come here. You doctah, right? He need help.’

‘Jesus …’ Margaret’s thoughts were racing. ‘Keep him warm, okay? Get him to lie flat with a blanket over him. Don’t let him stop breathing. You know CPR?’

‘Sure. It part of police training.’

‘Okay, hang on till I get there. How long by taxi?’

‘Fifteen minute, maybe. Not long.’

‘Okay, give me your address …’ She searched quickly through the drawer in the bedside cabinet and found a pen and a scrap of paper. She scribbled down the address and hung up.

‘What is it?’ Lyang asked. She was fully awake now, and watching Margaret, concerned.

‘I think Li Yan’s father’s had a heart attack. I’m going straight over there in case the ambulance doesn’t arrive in time. Will you be alright with the kids?’

‘Sure I will. They’re out of it anyway.’ She swung her legs out of the bed. ‘Let me call you a taxi. It could be long enough before you pick one up in the street at this time of the morning.’

* * *

It was bitterly cold as Margaret stepped from the northwest tower into the garden and hurried along the path by the small stream. She pulled her oversized anorak around herself for warmth. The area of white paving stones indelibly stained with the blood of Bill Hart had been replaced by a gang of workmen first thing the previous morning. The lighting in the garden was muted at this hour. Just enough for Margaret to see by. She crossed the stream and up steps to the entrance lobby on the south side. The night security guard looked up from behind his desk where he was reading some lurid magazine and creating a fog of cigarette smoke all by himself. She scarcely gave him a glance as she ran across the lobby and out through the gate to the street. A taxi stood idling at the kerbside. Margaret climbed into the front seat where she found herself separated from the driver by a metal cage. Through the bars, she slipped him the note in Chinese that Lyang had given her of old Dai’s address. The driver snorted and spat a gob of mucus out through the open window on his side of the cab. ‘OK,’ he said. He rolled up his window, passed her back her note, and the car juddered off into the road.

The streets were almost deserted as the taxi made its way on to the Third Ring Road and headed south. Margaret was aware of the driver glancing at her curiously. It was not often that some blue-eyed, fair-haired foreign devil would get into his cab in the middle of the night and ask to be taken into the heart of a Chinese residential area. He turned west off the ring road at the Huawei Bridge on to Songyu Nan Lu, and drove along its treelined length without passing another vehicle. At the cancer hospital they joined the Second Ring Road for a short distance before turning south on Fangzhuang Lu.

Margaret’s initial panic was wearing off, to be replaced, as she sat thinking about it, by a growing unease. How on earth had Dai known where to find her? She supposed it was possible that Li had told him. But he had dropped his father off with Dai even before they knew about Bill Hart’s murder. Perhaps he had phoned later to leave a contact number.

She replayed the phone call in her mind. She had only met Dai on a handful of occasions, but been struck each time by just how perfect his command of English was. Tonight he had called her Magret . He had dropped his plurals and spoken always in the present tense. And yet his English had still been good. Perhaps under stress it was just not as good as at other times. She glanced nervously at her watch. If she had known how to, she would have told the driver to hurry up. He seemed to be taking the journey at an unusually leisurely rate.