Peter May - The Killing Room

‘That would work to your advantage then.’

She looked at him.

‘How’s that?’

‘Puts women in demand. Particularly if they’re attractive, and intelligent as well.’

She lowered her head and looked up at him with a demure smile. ‘You’re not very subtle, Mr Li.’

He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not something I’ve been accused of very often.’ And she laughed, and he found himself laughing with her. When the laughter died there was a moment, a temporary lull between them, and he said, ‘So … who’s the lucky guy?’

Her face clouded immediately and she gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘There isn’t one.’ And he knew that there was pain here, a raw nerve that he had touched, and that he should proceed with care.

‘You live alone, then?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I live with my family.’ He looked at her again, and tried to gauge her age. At least thirty, perhaps even thirty-five. She caught his look and smiled wryly. ‘Thirty-seven,’ she said, as if she had read his mind. ‘And, no, I’ve never married. Never wanted to.’

‘Never wanted a kid?’

‘Sure. But I always thought I’d wait. Career first, then settle down and start a family.’ She gazed off ruefully into the middle distance. ‘But, then, you turn around and you’re thirty. You turn around again and you’re thirty-five. Suddenly you see forty on the horizon, and you begin to think you’ve missed your chance.’

‘Thirty-seven isn’t so old,’ Li said. ‘It’s never too late.’

Her eyes flickered back to meet his. ‘Maybe not,’ she said.

The food arrived then. A plate of fried dumplings, brown and crispy with a soy and chilli dip. Spring rolls. A dish of chicken pieces in a very hot Sichuan sauce. Deep fried tofu in hot and sour sauce. Butterflyed shrimp in batter. A bowl of noodles. They ate for a time in silence, chopsticks clicking. ‘This is great food,’ Li said.

‘It is,’ she said. ‘But next time I’ll take you somewhere better. Somewhere special. I just need more notice.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Home.’ He paused with a shrimp caught in his chopsticks, midway between his plate and his mouth, which was open to receive it. She laughed, that strange braying laugh again that made him smile, too. ‘My father and my aunt own a restaurant,’ she said. ‘Nothing much to look at. A small family place tucked up a back alley near the Hilton. We may not be very grand, but we’ve got posh neighbours, and the food’s fantastic.’

Li popped the prawn in his mouth. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Your father and your aunt?’

‘My mother’s dead. Has been for years. My dad’s sister never married.’ She chuckled. ‘Maybe I take after her. Anyway, she’s a sort of surrogate mom. My dad’s brother’s boy is the chef, and a couple of local girls come in to chop the veg. It’s …’ she searched for the right word to describe it, ‘… cosy.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Li said.

They finished their beer and ordered more, and Mei-Ling said, ‘You never married either?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m like you. The job always came first.’

‘But you’re younger than me.’

‘A little,’ he conceded.

‘So did you never want a kid?’

For a moment or two he avoided her eye. Then he said, ‘In a way I’ve got one.’

She was taken aback. ‘What do you mean?’

‘My sister’s kid, Xinxin. She’s only six. But when her mom got pregnant again, then found it was a boy, she left Xinxin on my doorstep — almost literally. And she went off into hiding somewhere to have the boy she’d always dreamed of.’ He looked grim. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the One Child Policy doesn’t create as many problems as it solves. All those unwanted little girls. All those kids growing up without brothers or sisters. A whole generation with no aunts or uncles.’

‘What about Xinxin’s dad?’

‘He didn’t want to know. He’d wanted my sister to have an abortion, and when she ran off he just washed his hands of her and the kid.’

‘So you’re bringing up the kid on your own?’ Mei-Ling was incredulous.

He shrugged his frustration. ‘She stays in my apartment, but I have to make arrangements for someone to take her when I’m working, which can be all hours of the day or night.’

‘Who’s looking after her now?’

Li said, ‘A friend. But it looks like I could be here for a while. So I’m going to have to try and make arrangements to bring her to Shanghai.’

‘Anything I can do to help …’ She looked at him earnestly across the table, her sympathy written clearly on her face. ‘I mean it. I can get the department to fix things.’ She put her hand over his, and he smiled.

‘Thanks.’ And he gave her hand a small squeeze of gratitude. It felt small and warm and smooth, and he was aware suddenly of how dry his mouth was.

*

Mei-Ling turned the Santana off the Bund into Yan’an Dong Road. The light show was over for the night, and the city looked very ordinary and dull under its pale yellow wash of sodium street lights. The river was extraordinarily black, a train of barges toiling upstream, its reflected lights scattering across the broken water. Mei-Ling drove west in the shadow of the viaduct road overhead before cutting left across the flow of traffic to pull up outside number 343, the Da Hu Hotel, yellow paint peeling off seven floors of anonymous concrete. Above them, traffic roared past on the viaduct no more than six feet from the windows of the hotel’s second floor. She smiled apologetically at Li in the passenger seat. ‘Cheap and cheerful,’ she said. ‘The best the department has to offer visiting cops. I’m sorry.’

Li shrugged. ‘It’s somewhere to lay my head.’

There was an awkward moment between them then, when neither of them knew how to say goodnight. Finally she said, ‘I’ll pick you up in the morning.’

He said, ‘Thanks for tonight.’

She said, ‘Shanghai hospitality. If I was to wait for a Beijinger to put his hand in his pocket I could grow old in the process.’ She reached across, and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. He moved quickly to avoid her, a knee-jerk reaction.

She laughed and said, ‘Hey, what are you so jumpy about?’ And she unlocked the door to swing it open. ‘I don’t usually attack men the day I meet them. Normally I wait till day two.’

Li grinned stupidly, feeling very foolish. ‘I’d better wear my protective gear tomorrow, then.’

She said, ‘You’d better believe it. Seven a.m. Sharp.’

He slammed the door shut when he got out and went round to retrieve his bag from the trunk. She peeped the horn and pulled away with a squeal of tyres. He watched the car go for a minute, then walked under the overhang of the building to the hotel entrance, a revolving door of shiny chrome and glass. Inside, a girl in black at reception sat beneath a row of clocks showing the time around the world and watched unsmiling as he filled in his registration card.

His room was on the third floor, looking directly on to the traffic on the viaduct. He almost felt he could reach out and touch it. The room was basic but clean. A net curtain hung in the window. He pulled it aside and slid the window open and let in the cold night air and the growling of the traffic. The circular tower of the Agricultural Bank of China, still lit, punctured the sky. Out there, in this city of fourteen million, people made love and slept and ate and worked and died. He wondered how many felt as lonely and confused as he felt right now. He thought of Margaret arriving tomorrow, of those poor women in their collective grave, of Xinxin, and of the dangerous feelings that Mei-Ling had aroused. And he felt a wave of fatigue wash over him.