Peter May - The Killing Room

Margaret was scanning Li’s e-mail with increasing excitement and waved her mother to be quiet. But her mother was not to be put off. She advanced into the room.

‘For God’s sake what are you doing, Margaret? Why are they running your picture on television?’ Margaret wheeled around and her mother frowned at her. ‘For Heaven’s sake cover yourself up.’

Margaret realised she was stark naked, and was immediately embarrassed in front of her mother. She snatched her robe and pulled it on. ‘I’m going back to China,’ she said.

‘Did I ever think you were going to do anything else?’

‘Frankly, Mom, I don’t care what you thought. I hadn’t made any decisions about my future. Until now. They want me to do the autopsies on those bodies they found in Shanghai.’

Her mother’s mouth curled in distaste. ‘I’ll never understand you, Margaret. I never have.’

‘And you never will.’ Margaret paused. ‘Mom … I don’t want to fight with you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ her mother said coldly. ‘I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.’ She turned to go, but stopped at the door. ‘And when is it you intend leaving? Just so I can be sure the maid has your laundry ready.’

‘This afternoon,’ Margaret said, and she thought she detected a reaction, like a stoic response to a slap when you don’t want to show how much it has hurt. And she wondered what her mother had expected, why she had talked David into trying to persuade her to stay. Surely she hadn’t thought some kind of reconciliation was possible after all these years of dislocation? And yet, she saw the hurt in her mother’s eyes, and for a moment had an urge to cross the bedroom and throw her arms around her and just hold her, as if that could somehow wipe away all the cruel words, the barbs and the battles. But she didn’t do anything, and her mother turned and walked out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

Margaret turned back to the computer and re-read Li’s e-mail, more slowly this time. He signed off, as he always did, with three simple words. I love you .

Mei-Ling steered Li through the crowds that thronged the narrow streets leading to the heart of the Chinese old town, streets that were alive with traders selling all manner of cooked and cold foods from barrows and braziers, street vendors trading in everything from chopsticks to walking sticks, silks to silverware. Shiny wet cobbled streets ran off to left and right, lit by neon strips and long slabs of bright yellow light flooding out from dozens of shop fronts. Banners and lanterns waved in the breeze. They passed a window where two women in white coats and chef’s hats were making dumplings, folding tasty nuts of spiced minced meat into rolled-out circles of dough for steaming. A crowd was gathered to watch them, hungry eyes following every move.

‘This was all slum land until just a few years ago,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘They’ve spent a fortune restoring it.’ A narrow tunnel ran off an alleyway, and beyond it Li saw the lights of a Buddhist temple, incense burning at the altar, saffron-robed monks moving about in the dull light of an interior room.

The street opened out into a packed square, the four-storeyed Green Wave restaurant dominating the far side and looming over the five-sided Huxinting teahouse which sat in the middle of a rectangular lake, bounded on one side by the walls of the ancient Yu gardens. Every sweep of curling eave was outlined in yellow neon against a black night sky. The teahouse was packed, hundreds of faces crammed together in lit windows, sipping tea and smoking and watching the crowds outside. A zigzagging bridge crossed the water to its main entrance. ‘The bridge of nine turnings,’ Mei-Ling said. ‘To keep out the evil spirits. Apparently they can’t turn corners.’ She laughed, and Li was affected by her enthusiasm.

‘Shanghai your home town?’ he asked.

‘Is it that obvious?’ Her eyes sparkled in the flickering neon light.

‘There’s a pride you only ever take in showing off the place you come from.’

‘Actually my family come from Hangzhou, which is a couple of hours away. We have a saying, maybe you know it. Above there is Heaven, and on earth there is Hangzhou and Suzhou. But I was born right here in Shanghai and it’s my idea of heaven. I wouldn’t ever want to leave it.’ She smiled. ‘Come on.’ And she slipped her arm through his to lead him across the square. It was a completely natural and unselfconscious act, far too intimate for two people who had just met. She realised it almost immediately and withdrew her arm quickly, blushing and trying to pretend it had never happened. ‘I thought we’d eat at the Green Wave,’ she said hurriedly to mask her discomfort. ‘If we can get a window seat on the third floor we’ll get a view out over the tearoom and the lake.’

For Li, it had all happened so fast it was over almost before he realised, and he knew at once that it was an act of intimacy she was accustomed to indulging in with someone else, someone who, in a dangerous moment, she had mixed up with Li. What was more disconcerting to him, was the tiny frisson of pleasure it had given him.

The third-floor salon was still busy, waitresses in traditional full-length qipao dresses flitting between pillars and among tables, feeding dish after dish on to Lazy Susans on banqueting tables, delivering plates of food and glasses of beer to more intimate tables of fours and twos. Mei-Ling acquired them a table by an open window with the view over the tearoom she had hoped for. Above the chattering at the tables, and the crowd out in the streets, the sound of running water filled the air from a fountain on the lake. Mei-Ling ordered for both of them, half a dozen dishes and half litres of Tsing Tao beer.

‘So what’s the story with your American pathologist?’ she asked out of the blue.

Li felt himself blushing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You said you’d worked with her before.’

‘That’s right.’ He wondered why he was being evasive.

‘Well, is it just a professional relationship … or is there something personal as well?’

Li chose his words carefully. ‘I make a point of never letting my personal life intrude on my job.’

She laughed. ‘Which doesn’t really answer my question.’

He grinned. ‘So what would you say if I told you it was none of your business?’

‘I’d say you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes and failing miserably.’

He accepted defeat then, nodding reluctantly. ‘Okay, so we have a relationship that isn’t exactly professional. But that had absolutely no bearing on my asking to have her brought into the investigation.’

She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her cupped palms, smiling at him. ‘Pity.’

‘What is?’

‘The most attractive men are always taken.’ But she didn’t give him time to dwell on this. ‘Is she pretty?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘I bet she’s got blonde hair and blue eyes.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Because if a Chinese man is going to have a relationship with an American woman, he’s not going to pick one with black hair and brown eyes. China’s full of them already.’

Li cocked an eyebrow. ‘You disapprove?’

But she wouldn’t commit herself. ‘Each to his own,’ she said, and turned to gaze out of the window. ‘I suppose men don’t have the same choice these days, with so many fewer women to choose from in China.’ Li was not sure if there was a barb in this. It was true that with the One Child Policy, and so many women aborting baby girls when ultrasound tests revealed the sex of the foetus, the male population was rising in direct relation to the fall in the numbers of females. He decided to switch the focus of their conversation.